Category: Game reviews

Sudden Strike 5 PlayStation Review

Sudden Strike 5 was sent my way by Kalypso Media, a company I always enjoy working with. If you are unfamiliar with this series, Sudden Strike 5 is a real-time strategy game that will allow you to fight through various battles from different sides of World War 2.

For example, the first battle as the Nazi’s will see you sending paratroopers down in an attempt to take over certain spots on a map where you can resupply before taking over the cities on the map. This will require some strategy on your part, as you will be outnumbered and outgunned. You can take over some abandoned equipment and call in air support when needed, admittedly, only a limited number of times.

While moving your troops will march in formation if you tell them to, which is a very nice touch that even today many of these types of games are missing. I really only have one major complaint about the game, and it isn’t the sound, which is great. It also isn’t the visuals, which, while I feel the infantry characters could pop out a little better, so they would be easier to pick out, this isn’t a huge issue. No, the game is visually great.

My biggest issue is that what passes as a tutorial is just horrible. This takes what should be an enjoyable, difficult real-time strategy game and creates an unapproachable nightmare for many. Don’t get me wrong, the game is great if you are a veteran of these types of games because you will be able to work it out, but that shouldn’t be a prerequisite to playing it. No, I am not saying make the game easier; I am saying teach people how to play your game. This is a 7/10 title that probably should have been much better. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ash & Adam’s Existential Treads Steam Review

Ash & Adam’s Existential Treads was sent my way by the people over at Game Taste. I always appreciate working with new people and companies.

To start, I don’t truly know how to explain this game. You start by building a small settlement, then building towers to defend it. You do this in a sort of post-apocalyptic world filled with old buildings. This is how you gather resources: you destroy these with your tank.

After they fall, your little helpers will run and grab parts to build new buildings, which can be used to upgrade things like your ammo or your defensive towers. Work fast because every so often, you will be attacked by waves of enemies. In between these waves, and while building your settlement, you will need to find the towers they come from so you can destroy those towers.

This is the game loop in a nutshell. Once you destroy all the towers, you are given a cannon to launch yourself to the next island. You can keep a helper permanently, which gives you a bonus to things like how fast your tank moves or how fast the first 6 people will move to collect things.

This is around the time I would tell you the graphics are nice, and it sounds good, which is all true. Then I would tell you the problems with the game. Then I ran into a problem. I couldn’t find any outside of one. The game is just a little too short. I’ve never given a perfect score, and I have only given out a handful of near-perfect scores. This is a 9/10 game. I can’t give you a single reason you won’t love this game, except I feel like they should have added a few more islands. Go pick this one up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

City States: Medieval Steam Review

City State: Medieval is one of those games I am glad to have been sent by Indie Io. I would also like to say I spent dozens of hours mastering its systems, conquering the three different lords you can play as, and being a badass at City States Medieval.

If I were the type of person to lie to you, I would say these things. The truth is, I spent hours playing a game I enjoyed, and that rightfully sits at positive reviews on Steam. While graphically, it won’t be winning any awards, the music is nice, and the game loop is great.

I enjoyed the fact that you have different city sizes to deal with that were better at different things. For example, bigger cities are better for hosting military buildings, while Hamlets are much better for your resource buildings and such. The ability to enter them and actually guide how this is done is also a nice touch. The combat is another place where the game truly shines. You can’t simply build a ton of one unit or a few overpowered units and expect to win. Trust me, that is how I lost at first.

You will need to understand that backing up foot soldiers with archers is basically mandatory. This is all alongside the fact that trade is the name of the game here. Without that, your city-states are sunk. By making the game smaller in scope to a single city-state to run, they have made the game much better in many ways, and at around $15, the game is a great 8/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Above The Snow Steam Review

Above the Snow was sent my way by the fine people at Wandering Wizard, which is always appreciated. The game has a cool premise: you play as a man being sent to join a shelter crew to run a run-down ski resort and make it the best resort possible. You hate it, but your options were that or prison.

The people up here all seem to be pretty damn shady, honestly. The story is truly pretty unique for this type of game. How the rest of the game translates is really going to come down to the individual player. The game is, in many ways, Baby’s First Management Game when you play it on the lowest difficulty setting. The story will walk you through everything you should be doing.

I don’t mean this as an insult; you are free to ignore it and do other stuff when you want. This is a cozy game after all. Even with all the usual elements of a management game, they managed to make it stress-free if you want it to be. Well, sort of, the user interface needs a ton of work. I love the look of it, but it can be buggy at times. There are also some quality-of-life updates needed. Why can’t I set up a task in advance?

I do love the characters; however, they are just fun and interesting. While the game won’t be for everyone, there is a reason with 250 reviews, it sits at mostly positive reviews. This is a 7/10 title that I can see a few updates pushing higher up there. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Doom: The Dark Ages

In the years before Doom and Doom: Eternal , the Doom Slayer was a slave to the Kreed Makyr. Dispatched to a world overrun by the demon scourge, the Doom Slayer must band together with a kingdom to make a stand against the endless armies of hell.

Ok guys, real talk time: there’s A Lot of story in this particular entry. No longer is the story stuffed into notes or audio logs most of us didn’t pay a lick of attention to. It’s Doom. Most of us come for the brutal demon slaughter with badass weapons to loud, unrelenting metal music. Thankfully we get plenty of that. I love the aesthetic of this game. The weapons are a mix of medieval and sci fi, with giant robots, biomechanical dragons, and a certain special horror figure tossed in. The shield is the biggest gameplay change. You can whip it around like Captain America, sawing through fodder hoards and stunning bigger enemies, as well as parrying critical attacks. The parrying mechanic is fine but I felt like it was overused to living hell. Instead frantic combat that made you think on a microsecond’s notice like Eternal, most of this game comes down to the shield. It made the game stale in a way the previous entries weren’t for me.

The game takes a grander, more open approach than any other Doom has. I found it mostly fun to explore and gather loot to upgrade my abilities. The enemies are your pretty standard Doom fare, with a couple new enemies that can murder you real quick if you don’t learn to parry. The weapons themselves range from great to meh- the Super Shotgun, the Ravager, the Accelerator, Rocket Launcher, and Chainshot were my personal go-tos. Some weapons I felt were cool in theory but I nevr found much use for a lot of the options I was given all around. The epic set pieces were a huge win for me, fighting giant kaiju demons in a robot mech and flying around on my badass dragon were a long time metal nerd’s dream come true.

The game leans heavy on it’s story but sadly I wasn’t really invested. There’s long cutscenes that while beautiful feel like they belong in another game. A lot of the game is basically generic fantasy game dialogue and hyping the Slayer up as if he wasn’t already a absolute legend. As I said, while I appreciate the effort, the story didn’t really do anything for me.

In the end, I found Dark Ages to be the weak point of the trilogy but far from terrible. It’s a damn fun, truly epic experience at times that just leans too heavy on the shield parry and a meh story for me but still well worth grabbing. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Reptilian Rising Steam Review

Reptilian Rising was recently released on Steam, and Numskull Games was nice enough to send me a copy. The thing to know about Reptilian Rising is that you shouldn’t take a deep dive into the story. It isn’t supposed to make sense, kind of like when you play Dungeons and Dragons with your friends and the bard wants to seduce the dragon, and your other friend wants to donate weapons and drugs to the orphanage.

The story is simple: a bunch of reptiles from another time invade, and the only way to stop them is for the greatest heroes from all of Earth’s history to gather and kill them. You can see how it falls apart quickly when you start asking how Winston Churchill is going to kill a T. rex, right? Right, glad you are going with me on this one. It is, however, a lot of fun to watch Albert Einstein kill a triceratops.

Ok, now admittedly, the game has some issues. For example, the combat can be slow at times, and it can be quite janky. It definitely needed some more polish for the price they are asking. This is honestly where my issue with recommending it comes in. The game isn’t bad, and it is quite unique; it many times feels like something you would play with your friends in the basement at a table, which I am sure is what they were aiming for.

The real issue is a $30 game being maybe 10-15 hours long, while having so many issues, from camera angles and things being blocked by the UI, while minor issues just seem hard to justify for me. This is a 6/10 title that, while a good pick up on sale, I can’t recommend with a clean conscience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Crown: Sin Eater PlayStation 5 Review

Monster Crown: Sin Eater is the newest game in the Monster Crown series, and Red Art Games was nice enough to send me a copy of this one early. I always appreciate this, and they are quickly becoming a joy to work with.

Now I don’t want to give anything away or spoil anything, that has never been my thing, but right out the gate, I do want to warn you that if you go into this thinking this is a Pokémon clone like Nexomon, you will be in for a shock. The game deals with far more complex and adult issues. It isn’t anything you haven’t seen in games before, but things will die in front of you on screen, and there is a sort of religious tone to things. Not in a mocking tone or preaching tone. It is just something that exists in the world.

So while your main character is out on his quest, which I won’t discuss for spoiler reasons, he will be creating pacts with monsters and even demons. There is, of course, the usual rock, paper, scissors type battle system where one type of attack is good against one type of monster, and so on and so forth. What makes Sin Eater so complex is that while your levels matter, you won’t be “evolving” your monsters. See, monsters aren’t so much viewed as companions in this world, tho some certainly are, they are quite literally viewed as monsters to be used as tools. People breed them to create new monsters, and you can fuse two together to create a new monster that will average out the levels of the monsters you used. The game even keeps track of which generation the monster is for you.

This brings me to my one and only issue with this game. I thought we, as gamers moved past the concept that grinding is what made games hard? Every time I breed monsters yea they get stronger, but I have to level them up from level one all over again. Yes, there are items you can buy to make this go faster, but they are kind of expensive, and they aren’t exactly unlimited. This definitely killed much of the fun in what should have been the best part of the game for me. It is still a 7/10 game for me, and one I plan to spend even more time with. It is definitely a viable alternative to Pokémon for those who want a more adult story and more of a challenge. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Under Par Golf Architect PlayStation 5 Review

Under Par Golf Architect hit PlayStation 5 recently, and Broken Arms Games was nice enough to send me a copy to check out. Don’t worry if you have no clue how to play golf, this is a game about builing an running a golf course. The game assumes you can’t really do that and will teach you how, and more importantly, it grades each aspect of the holes as you build them independently. You will discover fast what you are good at and what you aren’t good at, and hopefully, how to fix it.

The game is also really good about not tossing it at you too fast. It won’t be asking you to build 18 holes right out of the gate. The first area starts with placing down your clubhouse, building a hole or two, and opening your course. From there, it will teach you how you can use your avatar to play on your holes and how to place things like benches and water fountains. There is also very little guesswork involved in this, since the game will show you the effective range of these as you place them. This is something I wish more of these games would do.

This is the entire flow of the game: make customers happy so they return, take their money, and they become better customers. This is represented by them having ratings from bronze to silver or higher. There is a story involved, but truth be told, I wasn’t too interested in the guy who kept showing up. I think he was the mayor, but he seemed like kind of a dick.

The important part is that the game functions extremely well on consoles, and the graphics are cute. I really enjoyed watching people yell about all my sand traps. The game is an 8/10 experience for people who enjoy business simulators and designing things. It truly felt like an old Theme Park type title. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

theHunter Call of the Wild Multiclass Weapon Pack Review PlayStation 5

The Hunter Call of the Wild is back with its new Multiclass weapons pack. Avalanche Studios was once again nice enough to hook me up with this DLC to try out, and I have to say, if you only buy one gun pack for this game, this is the one you buy.

I won’t bore you with any of the insane details, like how the Joneros .17HMR is perfect for game levels 1 and 2, and we finally have a fun that is just as good at shooting birds as it is at shooting all the little animals floating around the various maps.

And I certainly won’t sit here and tell you that the Richardson .500 can easily take down level 8 and 9 game at long range, regardless of whether you prefer soft or solid rounds. No, what I am going to say is simply that the four guns in this pack are technically all you will need to hunt basically everything in the game with a firearm. Truthfully, with the $6 price tag attached to this, it is a must-buy for fans of this game. I can no longer imagine myself going on a hunt without at least one of these on my loadout going forward. It is a 9/10 DLC, with the only flaw being that while rifle and shotgun hunters get something, handguns were left high and dry. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege PlayStation 5 Review

Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege was sent my way by Lillymo Games, and not only am I grateful they sent it, but I am also grateful that I decided to take a step out of my comfort zone and play this one. See, I love retro-style games, but I am not really a fan of Castlevania-style games. This one wears the Castlevania homage not only on its sleeve, but it also waves a huge flag for it.

That isn’t to say it is a rip-off of that game, not by a long shot. This isn’t even in just small ways; this game features full co-op from the moment you boot the game up. All 21 levels can be played with your friend. Fight all 7 bosses with your best friend sitting right next to you in old school couch co-op, chugging monster, and eating pizza just like your school days all over again.

While the game is done in 8-bit chiptune sound we love, and the NES graphics, many of us miss, there are some things you will want to be warned about. Many people who didn’t grow up playing games like this will want to be warned that when you die, you will be starting the game over again. This game is truly retro in many regards, including a password system. I won’t spoil what that does for you.

The controls are nice and better than I expected. Many of these games forget that while people love retro games, we don’t miss the stiff controls. While certain things do come with the graphics, things like input lag are not one of them. I feel like Saint Slayer does an amazing job of walking this line.

You may have noticed I still haven’t mentioned the story, and that is because, honestly, that is where the game is probably weakest. A long war has just ended, and your character has returned home just for that short peace to be shattered by an evil force he must now fight. It is very basic and been there, done that. While far from bad, it isn’t new or special. Saint Slayer Spear of Sacrilege is a must-play retro-style title, however. 9/10 for fans of this type of game, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.