Game reviews – Savior Gaming

Sleep Awake Playstation 5 Review

Sleep Awake is a psychological horror game from Blumhouse Games that they were kind enough to send me a copy of to check out. Now, most of you can probably figure out that Blumhouse Games is connected to Blumhouse Films. With that knowledge, you can probably figure you are in for a ride.

The story is simple: you play as Katja, a citizen of the last known city on Earth. Everyone is attempting to stay awake to avoid The Hush. The Hush is a weird phenomenon where anyone who sleeps disappears. Everyone in the world suffers from sleep deprivation; many can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. Some are running different types of scientific experiments to stay awake, and others swear pain is the saving grace for staying awake.

I won’t go more into the story than that because this is a game you HAVE to experience with as little knowledge as possible to truly enjoy. Suffice it to say if you see the trailers or enjoy Blumhouse movies, there is a good chance you will enjoy the game.

Instead, I want to focus on the gameplay and music. First, the music. Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails does music for this bad boy, and it is truly worth listening to. Each track lends itself to truly making the environment as eerie as possible when it needs to be, and when it doesn’t need to be, you feel like the world is as empty as you would imagine it to be. It isn’t the best music in gaming lately, but it is up there.

The gameplay itself is nice. The Puzzles aren’t hard for no reason, but they also don’t insult your intelligence. The maps leave you with room to explore without feeling empty and needlessly big. Stealth sections can be a challenge, but I never felt like the game shoehorned me into following an exact route or getting killed by a cheap enemy. Speaking of death, I never died and lost a ton of progress.

The game admittedly isn’t for everyone, but for people in this niche crowd, it is an 8/10 experience. So turn down the lights, and prepare to get creeped out. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dungeon Rampage Steam Review

Some of you may remember the good old days of flash games; Facebook was full of them. Dungeon Rampage was quite popular, and it has returned to Steam. Gamebreaking Studios was kind enough to send me a copy to review.

The game is quite simple: 1-4 people hack and slash their way through levels to find gold and treasure chests. You can use that gold to buy keys to open those chests to get powerful weapons and items. The experience you gain from this will also help you level up, and each time you level up, you will gain 5 gems. Gems can be used to buy new characters and cosmetic items for them, such as outfits.

This is where the flaw comes into an otherwise decently fun game for $10. The original version of the game was free to play, and like many of those games, it was essentially pay to progress. If you weren’t willing to sink potentially 100 or more hours into the game, you weren’t unlocking everything. The real money aspect has been completely removed; you buy the game, and you can play it as much as you want.

The issue is that they do not seem to have rebalanced the game. After the first hour, you will have more chest than you can open. Without the option to buy gold as the game intended, you start collecting more than you can open. Relying on leveling up and daily rewards to get gems also puts you on an extremely slow path to unlocking characters. The archer character is the cheapest to unlock, costing only 150 gems, which isn’t bad. The next 2, however, cost a whopping 800 each. That’s roughly 350 levels, which is way too long to be playing a game that doesn’t have a ton to offer to begin with.

The game does function as advertised, if that is worth playing or not is completely debatable, and I legitimately worry they will eventually turn it back into a pay-to-progress situation. It is a 5/10 for me. It functions, but I can’t recommend it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Playstation 5 Remaster Review

Dragon Quest 3 HD 2-2D Remake is one of those games that truly show how these games should be done. They don’t try to change the original, they simply improve the orginal by updating it for a modern audience while keeping what people loved about the initial release.

For starters, you will need to create your own character, take a little quiz, and find out what your personality is. This will help determine your stat growth. When you make your group, you will essentially be assigned random ones as you choose a vocation for each member. Don’t worry, there are plenty of ways to change these during your adventure, and you can even swap out people pretty easily. I definitely recommend keeping a monster rangler with you at all times, however. I didn’t do this, and finding friendly monsters to help me in the arena became annoying. There is an item known as Musk that can help replace them, and a move the thief learns also helps, but it is easier to just have a wrangler.

The story itself is nice, but it is the typical you are the child of a great hero and go on a quest to defeat a great evil. You will spend part of the game finding orbs and following in your father’s footsteps. I won’t say more than that because I don’t want to spoil anything, but most of you will already know where this story is going.

The combat is also a typical turn-based adventure, but it is also one of the more challenging games in the series. The difficulty spikes can be brutal if you aren’t expecting them, and when you change vocations for your other characters, they restart at level one and lose half of their stats. This is a great way for people to build an extensive spell and ability list, and a character that has reached level 20 in two different vocations will absolutely be stronger than a character that has reached level 30 in one. (It takes a similar amount of experience to do this.) So it is worth doing this, but choosing when and how is important.

As always, killing metal slimes before they run away is important for leveling

If you had any reservations about picking up the HD remakes of Dragon Quest, lay them to bed and pick them up. They are fantastic, and are easily up there with Suikoden 1 HD Remaster Review in quality of Remakes and Remasters. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Psychonauts

Hasn’t everybody wanted to be a superhero at least once in there lives? Raz has big dreams of becoming a Psychonaut, even going so far as to sneak into the Whispering Heights Camp for young Psychonauts in training. He was only a few days at the camp before his parents come for him, leaving him precious time to master his powers and uncover a dark mystery threatening the campers and instructors and maybe even the world. Will Raz rise to the occasion?

If any game deserved a modern day facelift or remake, it’s this precious gem. I absolutely love the insane mix of shockingly deep psychological storytelling and dark humor in a pretty complex and creative platformer. This game is a giant acid trip and I love it. Raz is a interesting kid amongst other weird, funny, tragic, or damn creepy characters- seriously the Milkman creeped me out more than most modern horror monsters. The worldbuilding is fantastic and I was really invested in the lore. It was so cool being able to jump into other characters brains, exploring entirely new universes, including bosses.

Unfortunately this game has some deep drawbacks. While extremely creative, that partially leads to how obtuse a lot of the goals and pathfinding are. Way to often I found myself relying on walkthroughs, scratching my head when seeing where I was supposed to go or what the hell I needed. Another big issue I had was items cost too damn much. In the Milkman section, if you don’t have a certain tool, get ready for the game to come to a stop and you have to grind to afford it. The powers are a mixed bag but when they are a blast, they are awesome.

In the end, I highly recommend it but I urge you to stay patient. Originally this game came from PS2/ original X Box era so a lot of the modern gaming comforts aren’t there, and like all platformers, there’s going to be some frustration. Stick around and you will be rewarded with a cool world of memorable characters and one of the most unique games I might’ve ever played. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

So this is the 3rd go around for doing Lego Star Wars as a whole. I loved the classic PS2 games that covered both the original and newly finished prequel trilogies (damn I’m old). I never played the Clone Wars game. When they remade and added the sequel trilogy’s content, I felt nostalgia nibbling at my heels again.

The game is packed with Star Wars nostalgia and Lego’s whacky humor I found myself chuckling at a few times. The gameplay is pretty solid. I like that they added actually third person shooting mechanics as well as added some complexity to the Jedi/Sith characters. The game is full of open segments where you can explore, solve puzzles, find side quests, collectibles, or just break stuff. They made an upgrading system that breaks down by character type as well as overall upgrades that I didn’t use often but it’s not a bad way to introduce kids to RPG mechanics. Calling this game “Baby’s first RPG” isn’t too far off.

The only complaint I have is the boss fights are a tad too repetitive. They aren’t bad, and I wasn’t expecting Elden Ring by any means, but I was able to autopilot most of the boss encounters. It could be said for the game as a whole but it never got annoying or took me out of it.

In the end, Skywalker Saga is a solid Lego game worth picking up if you find it on sale. Alot of your enjoyment will come from how much you’re into Star Wars and if you like the Lego games. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) Steam Review

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) might be the game with the longest name I’ve ever reviewed, and was sent to me by the nice people over at Polden Publishing.

The game is quite simple, your wife tossed out your prized card collection, so now you are combing through the garbage dump you bought to find them all. So you spend your time filling a garbage bag with bottles, ammo boxes, and various other garbage, then tossing them into what appears to be a mimic for money. When you run out of energy, you grab some beer from a nearby vending machine to get more.

Every so often, you will come across something of real value that you can sell in the online store for a bit more money than the garbage sells for. This can be used to buy various upgrades, such as a bigger bag, more energy, better beer, or even a dog. This will let you rummage through your garbage piles faster, so you can find more cards or valuables.

You can also occasionally find birds and return them to their nest. The game loop can be fun, and honestly, for $8, you will get some decent time and laughs out of it. Nothing about the game is groundbreaking, but it is still a fun little title. Graphically, it is cute, and the sound isn’t bad at all. It is a solid 7/10 title that will give you a good bit of fun for the money you spend, and that is really all you can ask for. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage Steam Review

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage is an upcoming deckbuilder from Fabled Game Studios, for which they were kind enough to send me an early copy. You play as a young child who survived a catastrophe and is following in the footsteps of their parents to be a famous pirate adventurer.

All the usual tropes of these games are here: build a deck, travel on a map to different locations, fight monsters that grow stronger over time, and try not to die. This time, it is all pirate-themed. Of course, you will eventually die, and when you do, you can spend gold on perks to come back stronger than ever and do better on your next run.

There are some added things this time around, however. You can get some different companions to help out, for example, my first one was a chicken. I picked him because he was cute. There is a black market that allows you to ban cards you don’t like using, or a workshop that enables you to upgrade cards, making your starting cards stronger.

Another nice touch to the game is that you have to manage supplies throughout your run as you sail around. This isn’t some huge issue; it isn’t a survival game after all. Pay attention and make stops here and there to restock, and you are fine. You can also heal in much the same way. The downside to doing this is that it takes time, and elite enemies can disappear while you do this, costing you valuable rewards.

The biggest downside to this game, honestly, is that it is fun and can be challenging. The game doesn’t really bring anything new to the table or do anything we haven’t seen before. It also doesn’t do anything better than any of the other 50 games in the genre already available. To give credit where it is due, it also doesn’t do any of it worse. The game is fun, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of the first game in the series or the genre as a whole. It also isn’t a bad starting point for people wanting to get into the genre. But if you are specifically looking for something new and fresh within the genre, this isn’t it. It is still a solid 7/10 game that’s worth playing. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Vaesen: Castle of Gyllencreutz

As some of you may be aware, not long Free League Publishing sent me a PDF of their Starter set for Vaesen. If you want more details about what is in that, you can read about it here. A few weeks after that, I got home from work to a package on my doorstep, and it was the physical version of that same starter set and the core rule book. Now it is an excellent starter set, but I got to wondering, can someone with no experience playing this game, truly get a group together and play this game? So I gathered the women in my life together, a case of our prefered alchol, and got started.

Beautiful cover art for the core rule book. I didn’t use this for my experiment

The first thing I did was have everyone blindly choose one of the 5 playable characters that the set came with. My daughter decided to play as a rugged Soldier named Fronz who couldn’t read. I don’t know why she decided he couldn’t read, but I just went with it. The other ladies chose the 2 ladies in the group; they have names, but admittedly, that isn’t important. By not important, I mean I forgot their names.

Now, the Castle of Gyllemcreutz story that comes with the set is a great starting point that introduces you to the basics of the game. I don’t want to get too in-depth with what is involved with this story because it is easy to give too much away. Much of the story involves investigating a large castle to find clues on how to solve the mystery involving ghostly lights and missing people.

Dice rolls are all based on rolling a D6; players need to roll a certain number of 6’s to succeed. How many completely depends on how difficult the task is. There is also very little combat in this module, but the person running it could easily change that if they chose to. Nothing is stopping them, and all the information needed to do it is included.

But how did my players do? Well, they never were confused on how to play; they made their way through the castle with very little coaching besides trying to get them to stop goofing off, and the big finale of the whole thing was figured out before we figured out how to finish off a case of alcohol in 2 hours between the 4 of us.

I would absolutely say this starter kit provides everything you need to get you started playing Vaesen with limited or no experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

Remember when you got hyped seeing the iconic headline “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” followed by the legendary boom of John William’s score that promised adventure, new worlds, and the unforgettable yet simple clash of good vs evil? Depressed yet? I went back to the good old days to experience a classic (before the dark times, before the real Empire came) for the first time.

We play as Jaden, one of many young force sensitives on our way to Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. As an upcoming Jedi, we go across the galaxy in various missions fighting the last remnants of the Empire as well as the looming threat of a Sith cult trying to revive a ancient god-level, forging our own path as either a Guardian of peace or weapon of the dark side. What will you choose?

I’ve lost lost count how many people have told me either Academy or Jedi Outcast were their favorite Star Wars games and honestly, I can see why. The game is peak Star Wars in so many ways, full of the characters, weapons, locations and music we love. The story isn’t too complicated but effective with diverging paths I appreciated for some replayability. Most of the gameplay holds up remarkably well in places. The FPS features hold up very well and combining guns with force powers can be a blast at time. The saber combat definitely takes some getting used to but it does become intoxicating once you do. Academy and Outcast walked so Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order could run. I do also appreciate you getting to customize not only your lightsaber but your style, whether single, dual wield, or double bladed (I went green and orange dual wield).

Unfortunately, this game does show its age in many ways. The game has some really unpredictable difficulty spikes. There’s moments towards the end that pissed me off because dirty enemy placement, obtuse pathfinding, or bullshit environmental deaths. You’d better get used to manually saving because their are checkpoints, but they’re sporadic and sometimes dying means a hell of a fall back and a long stretch of progress gone. Younger gamers will also hate that there’s no map, waypoints, autosaves, tutorials, and a loose reminder of your current objective. There’s one mission though that absolutely killed the entire game for me- the damn speeder bike mission. It’s nearly unplayable. The bike is nearly uncontrollable, the game clips out between speed and slow- mo, there’s a jump that killed me too many times. I almost rage-quit the whole game because of that one level alone.

In the end, Jedi Academy is a fun blast from the past for Star Wars fans. A nice reminder of better times, before the era of the Mouse set in. It definitely has it’s faults and shows its 20+ year age but with patience, a little help from Youtube, and your favorite booze for that damn speeder bike level, you’ll get through. I recommend picking it up for a good time overall. May the Force be with you and the gaming gods bring you glory.

Forever Skys PS5 Review

Forever Skys was released by Far From Home earlier this year on consoles after being in early access on Steam. They were nice enough to send me a copy recently to check out, and I have to say it is one of the more original survival games I have played.

All the typical survival types are here: gather food and water so you don’t die, build a bed so you can sleep. The usual suspects. Even having a special gun and scanner to discover new things to build isn’t new. It is all very well done, however, which is important.

What is new, however, is that instead of building just a base somewhere, you are building an airship. Yes, it is fully functional, needs engines and fuel, etc, to fly, and you will fly it yourself. It can be damaged, and you can fall off of it. You also gather food by fishing off the side of it.

The game really picks up when you have to find bigger and better things in the underworld. See, the game does have a story, and that story is basically to save humanity. And while you are pretty much safe while flying through the sky on your ship, traveling below the clouds is when it gets dangerous. This will require special preparation, because most things down there want you dead.

This brings me to my only real complaint about the game: getting around can be annoying if you are an idiot like me and don’t put the radar somewhere easy to see while flying. Don’t worry, I fixed it. Even then, a lot of the map looks the same regardless of where you go, and I just wish there was some sort of variety. The game is still an 8/10 survival game, and the ability to build and fly a ship from the start is nice. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.