Game reviews – Savior Gaming

Tomb Raider (2013)

Remember that time when everyone ran out of ideas in the late 00s, mid 010’s and we kept getting gritty remakes no one asked for? Torsten remembers. The Tomb Raider reboot found it’s way into my staggering backlog as did its sequels and I haven’t played them mainly because I assumed they would be Uncharted knockoffs- but edgy! Was I wrong?

Young archaeologist Lara Croft is part of an expedition to a island in search for relics about an ancient sun princess. A freak storm destroys her her ship, leaving her and her crewmates stranded on a island full of militarized zealots aiming to resurrect the princess. Can Lara overcome the odds, save her friends and escape?

Ok, let me be frank, I wasn’t invested in the characters or plot worth a damn. The game wanted me to take it seriously but I couldn’t. Mostly because of the gratuitous, over the top action scenes that made me wonder if this rendition of Lara Croft was a Kryptonian or was a X mutant the whole time. On top of that, some of Lara’s facial expressions during the few scenes that are supposed to be heavy or intense are unintentionally funny as hell. The characters are ok, nothing special, though Mathias, the main antagonist is a cookie cutter villain. I wasn’t expecting an unforgettable villain like Dutch from Red Dead Redemption 2 or Vas from Far Cry 3 but I wanted something more than his generic ass.

Speaking of Far Cry, the game feels like Far Cry, Uncharted, and a lil bit of The Last of Us gameplay went into a blender with a Michael Bay movie. The game is fun. Combat is smooth but simple. Platforming is pretty well done except some of the set pieces caused a few bullshit deaths. The survival instincts holds your hand bigtime when it comes to combat, puzzles, item finding, and platforming. Its a nice palette cleanser after weeks playing SystemShock. My biggest grievance with the gameplay is this game feels like a time capsule of every PS3 era gaming trope I can think of: QTEs galore, forced multiplayer, COD health regeneration, gritty paintjob on a existing IP, voice and motion controls no one asked for, blood splatter all over the screen after each stealth kill, and hunting akin to Assassin’s Creed 3 without purpose.

In the end, the Tomb Raider reboot is a fun product of its time. It’s not great but a fun, disposable playthrough worth checking out if you find it on sale. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

System Shock (2023)

We begin our story as a hacker getting busted by the Trioptimum Corporation after failing to steal tech. Edward Diego, the man in charge, offers us a deal: face the wraith of the company or do disable the safety protocols on Shodan, the AI for Citadel Station. After disabling the AI, we find ourselves on Citadel. Shodan has gone insane. Most of the crew is slaughtered, many reconfigured into cybernetic monstrosities, the machines have gone rogue, and genetic experiments are running amok. Can you escape the wrathful clutches of a wannabe god?

The original System Shock is a pioneer of immersive sims, heavily inspiring games like Bioshock and Prey. I was thrilled when the remake dropped, having never been able to experience the original.

First, Shodan is easily my favorite part of the game. Terry Brosius is absolutely iconic with her cold, hateful delivery. Shodan has become one of my all time favorite game villains. She is a all encompassing presence on Citadel with multiple Doomsday schemes to eradicate humanity. The game is a lot more eerie and unsettling than I thought it’d be, even more so having Shodan’s face following you, and her cameras eyeing your every step. The enemies themselves are haunting. I love he game’s overall cyberpunk sci-fi horror aesthetic.

Gameplay is very old school in some of the best and worst ways. This game does not hold your hand. You had better pay attention, take some notes, and be ready to dig through every nook and cranny for audio logs and data sticks for what the hell to do and where to go. Like the horror games of old, there’s a hell of a lot of back tracking but I found it fun. The environment tells a story and every floor I found either something fascinating or terrifying. Most of the combat is FPS which is solid, even awesome at times. It was pretty awesome beheading Temu Borg with a laser sword or setting mutants on fire with dragon breath shotgun rounds. There are plenty of puzzles and the cyberspace segments which give me a retro Star Fox meets 80’s space shooter vibe.

While there’s so much of this game I love, I’d be lying if I said this game didn’t piss me off at times. Their were times the game’s objectives are too abstract and for the second half I had to lean real heavy on Youtube to finish the game. Much like Dark Souls dying has big consequences. Autosave is unpredictable and more than I want to admit, it made my life way harder so save often. I also love the game’s retro approach but dammit a few small quality of life improvements would’ve done wonders like having your total ammo on your HUD, not just what’s in the clip. Automatically reloading would be nice too. Like every game, there are pain in the ass part, System Shock’s are FromSoft levels of brutal. I played the game on all the easiest difficulties possible and still took me 36 hours because of the back tracking and difficulty spikes. It wasn’t always fun but it was fulfilling much like my time with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

In the end, I loved the System Shock remake and I’m willing to say it’s up their with Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Dead Space (2023) as far as horror game remakes go. It’s absolutely not a game for everyone, its hard as hell but well worth a play. May the gaming gods bring you glory, insect.

Bellwright PlayStation 5 Review

Bellwright was sent my way by Snail Games USA, and I greatly appreciate it. I have been looking forward to this game hitting consoles for a very long time now, it seems. The release itself has been somewhat mixed, if I am being honest. I will start with the bad because the bad is quite annoying, but there have been a few patches since I was sent the game the day it released, and having played it most days since then, I can say many of these issues have gotten much better.

First, there has been an issue with saves, which, while I have never lost data, is easily fixed; it is annoying. Basically, the game flags the autosave file as having an issue whenever you pick anything up or use an item, and your system gives you an error message to close out. If you save your game manually, shut the game down, and reopen it, the issue disappears at least for a while. While the first few days this happened a lot, an update seems to have fixed this, as I have not had the issue the last couple of days.

My next issue is graphical; while the game mostly looks great, I have seen some weird things happen. People sawing wood well above where the wood is, people walking around without complete bodies that then suddenly return, which is completely cosmetic. If you see a bandit like this, you can still stab him in the chest.

The pathfinding also is not great for NPCs; I have had my townspeople get stuck on trees they could easily just walk around, for example. They don’t need constant supervision by any means, but occasionally you may have to help them out.

Let’s move on to the good, because I don’t want people to think I hate this game. It is quite the opposite; I actually love this game. I have played a few games like this, and this is the best. You can build almost anywhere on the map as long as you aren’t too close to a town, and once you start, you aren’t limited to where you started. The game encourages you to recruit a lot of people and build in a lot of places. You can even build new roads and send people out with carts to move things back and forth, with one person acting as a sort of merchant and others acting as guards. If you want to build a main settlement and a few others that do nothing but chop wood, mine rocks and copper, or hunt, and then have people that simply deliver those goods to your settlement to be processed and sold, you can.

The difficulty is also fully customizable from the in-game menu, so if you find you hate dealing with bandits and just want to build an epic city, feel free to turn off raids and make bandits hang out where they live. Want to turn the world into a war zone? Crank those things up if you want.

The story itself is quite simple: you return to your home in the Lowlands to find out the meaning of a sigil found on the body of your murdered uncle. This takes place years after some sort of war or rebellion, which you will quickly find out more about, so I won’t ruin it for you. Truthfully, I don’t know a ton about the story anyway. I spent my first 20 hours building and researching things, and doing missions for local people to make a town trust me. Why, you may ask? I wanted a pet cat, a warhammer, and to build a town hall as fast as I could. I have a cat and a warhammer.

Before this gets longer, the issues do take away from some of the enjoyment, but the game is still great. My only other complaint is that the game didn’t launch on console with multiplayer, but much of the balance is still designed for it. Now this is easily circumvented with a few townspeople, and it is coming with a future update. The game is a 7/10 title, which, with a couple of updates, will improve even more. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

One Fenix Down Steam Demo

One Fenix Down recently had a demo as part of Steamfest, and I decided to check it out. The game started out as just something someone who loves RPGs started making, and it eventually turned into far more, now under the umbrella of a studio called Regalcraft Games.

Game told me not to fight this guy, so I did. Maybe don’t do that.

The game is a classic old-school turn-based RPG, through and through. From the graphics to the audio, everything about this feels ripped out of the 90s. Playing with a controller is basically mandatory. The game will tell you to use one when you boot it up, and I didn’t argue. The game demo doesn’t even feature voice-overs, and to my knowledge, there are no plans to add them; the game is better for this.

In true 90s fashion, I can’t pronounce this dudes name.

The combat feels great, sitting at my computer playing it, ironically sipping a monster, wishing I got more sleep last night, reminded me of the days I was up, swearing to my mother I was looking for a save point while I tried to grind out one more level, while I was right next to one. She honestly didn’t know what they looked like.

I don’t know how the full game will turn out, but the Steam page boasts about having over 40 hours of gameplay and over 14 playable characters, and considering the demo had 5 playable characters, 4 with unique skills and abilities, I believe it. Full disclosure, the 5th may have as well, but the goal is to NOT use him in combat, so I didn’t. He did have weapons and such equipped, so he is capable of battle. If the demo is any indication of what’s to come, I look forward to the planned September release date. As you know, I don’t give demos a score, but this one is worth trying. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Solarpunk PlayStation 5 Review

Solarpunk is a relaxed survival game made by just two people and sent my way by Rokaplay. I would be lying if I said this one wasn’t on my radar for a while. Everyone who follows Savior Gaming knows I am a sucker for a good survival game, and Solarpunk ticks all my boxes. I can relax, craft stuff, fly an airship, build a house as small or big as I want, and just all around do whatever I feel like doing in my own time. The question is, does it live up to my expectations?

Well, if you don’t feel like reading this entire thing, feel free to go and spend the $23 and buy it; you have my blessing. If you want to know more, keep reading. Starting out, you are tasked with the usual: collect some rocks and sticks, build some basic equipment, chop down some trees, collect some berries, we all know the drill. You will quickly be researching new things, however. This is very intuitive. It is as simple as using the research table and bringing what it asks for, such as wood or glass, depending on what you want to research.

I won’t bore you with the minor details; if you’ve played one survival game, you know how it all works. Where Solarpunk shines is that you can bring friends to do all this and build insane structures while checking out other islands. In between this, you can build things like solar panels and things to water or mine minerals for you. All of this starts to unlock pretty fast as well; these aren’t late-game items you need to grind for.

Now I know I make the game sound damn near perfect, and well, there are a few complaints I have. If you are playing alone, things will take a bit of time and get a bit repetitive. You will need to chop down and replant a lot of trees to build things, for example, and it feels like more so than most survival games. The same goes for most resources. Watering things before you unlock sprinklers is also a chore since you will need to refill your watering can quite often. This wouldn’t be so bad, but you will need things like watermelons to trade and berries to eat, as well as cotton for building, and all this takes some time. The game is definitely better with friends.

None of this makes the game not worth playing. I loved playing the game and will be playing it more, but it is worth mentioning. It is an 8/10 title. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Underchoice Steam Review

Underchoice is the newest title from Targem Games, and they were kind enough to send it my way to check out. Underchoice will see you running a vault as an overseer. Every choice you make will determine if your people survive, since the outside world is no longer safe to live in. They are playing fast and loose with no longer safe to live in, however, since people will be showing up asking to live there, and someone does occasionally drop bombs that may or may not land close enough to cause damage to your vault.

You will start out choosing some people to live in your vault, each with different skills and randomly assigned negative traits. I find this works really well and makes every run feel different. The person you pick to create food might end up as a smoker. This requires you to buy cigarettes from the trader who shows up weekly. Speaking of weekly things, every week you will be given some sort of update from the company that runs the vault.

The art style is great, honestly, it is probably the best part of the game. It truly has a lot of potential, with multiple endings, a good number of people to unlock, and a decent number of things to see. I wish it were a game I could put more time into.

The issues with the game kind of start popping up after an hour or two. You will quickly see just about every event possible. By the end of my second run, I felt like I had seen it all, and when there were still more people and endings to unlock, this stopped being fun when things were just repeating already. On the bright side, the game is only $8, so I can’t be too upset by the price point and the amount there is to do. It won’t be for everyone. If you enjoy games like Papers Please and the like, this will be a fun way to spend a few hours. It is a 7/10 game, particularly because it has a nice price point. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Voice of Belldona Steam Review

Voice of Belldona was sent my way by Okasan’s Recipe, which I always appreciate when someone new reaches out to me. They seem to work with a lot of anime-inspired games, which is pretty cool to see. Now, on the surface, Voice of Belldona looks like any other card battle builder you have seen. In many ways, it is. You will add or remove cards from your deck, make your way around a map, and fight battles with the usual array of enemies, ranging from soldiers to cult members, to giant iron golems, and much more.

The real question with these roguelite deckbuilders at this point isn’t how they are the same; they all have things in common, and if you played one, you understand how to play them all. You really need to ask, what, if anything, does Voice of Belldona do differently or better than the dozens of others? First, the artwork is amazing, and the music did not need to go as hard as it did when the game cost $12, but when the boss battles kicked in, I found myself getting into it more than I probably should have.

She was definitely one of those nuns who hit kids with rulers

The story itself is also above many of these games I have played. I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice it to say, finally, the world is ending, and the person trying to fix it is the one who rightfully should be trying to fix it. No randomly chosen hero here, just a family squabble amongst gods, it seems.

Last but not least, the battles are hard to describe because there are different deck styles and characters to pick. You can summon allies to help, but depending on your character, you might be using shields, so you can pick your moment to strike while inflicting burns. You might be skipping shields altogether to save energy for brutal combos to win fights fast.

There are some minor issues, some I experienced, some I have seen others reporting. For example, there was an issue with changing language options, forcing the game to close suddenly. I also noticed some minor slowdowns randomly, despite my system more than meeting the specs recommended, and there didn’t really seem to be any reason for it. Sometimes it was when there was a ton going on, sometimes I was simply in a menu. These were few and far between, and for an early access title, it was at a more than acceptable level. There are hours of game to be enjoyed in Voice of Belldona; it is an 8/10 title you would be more than happy with. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tour de France 2026 PlayStation 5 Review

Tour de France 2026 was sent my way by Nacon, a company I have recently started working with, and I really enjoy it, so please show them some love when you can.

Now, for those of you who may not be familiar with the Tour de France, it is the world’s most prestigious bike race. It takes place annually in July and lasts about 23 days, covering (for Americans) about 2,200 miles, or 3,500 km for everyone else.

Now, for the gameplay itself, it is fantastic. It seems like anything you could ever want in a bike racing game is here. Want to switch team members mid-race? Feel free. Want to slam into a wall and fly off your bike? I’ve done it. Guy with an accent, I don’t know, lecturing you because you suck? Yup, he is there, and boy, do I suck. I will not be winning the Tour de France

Let me be perfectly clear about this: I will not be winning because of my skill level, not because of the game. There are multiple difficulty levels and tutorials that teach you everything you need to know to play this game. You can play different races, different modes ect, it isn’t only one race to play, and you can save mid-race, you aren’t forced to try to run the whole 21 legs of the race in one go. This is simply the hardest racing game I have ever played.

Now I have seen other people play these games and seen videos of them playing this one, and they are fantastic. Zooming down hills, taking turns like a pro, not even using many of the helpful options that exist, like the arrows to let you know when you are attempting to take turns too fast and at the wrong angle. The game truly does want you to succeed. Unfortunately for the Tour de France 2026, despite its best efforts to help me, I was unable to help myself.

Now I know what you are thinking, Savior, should I buy it? Honestly, yes. It was still a 9/10 experience to me. The sound and graphics are great. The controls are wonderful. This is a sports game done right. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Arms of God Steam Review

Arms of God was sent my way by Galaktus Publishing and Dark Jay Studio, which I always appreciate. The best way to describe this game would be a roguelite arena shooter with a sort of bullet-hell (or heaven) feel. Top that off with some pretty serious gore and some metal music, and you pretty much have Arms of God. Imagine Doom if Doom Guy were a religious zealot and could use 5 weapons all at once.

Here is where I won’t pull punches; the game for many will feel short. You can run through it if you don’t care to do it all in about 3-4 hours, depending on your skill level. Honestly, for less than $12 thats not bad, especially in early access. If you are the type, however, that wants to truly dig in and experience all the difficulty settings and unlock more characters and see how all the weapons can be combined, this game offers far more than the surface implies.

I quickly found myself wanting to know if my holy hammer would work better as an electric hammer. Could this pitiful gun be made into some sort of beast of a weapon? Just when I thought I was done and had this thing figured out, I found a new blessing that made what I thought was an ok weapon an amazing weapon.

Is the game perfect? No, of course not, nothing is. Enemies, for the most part, feel kind of meh to me. I would like to see some more variety in what I am killing on each level, or maybe they could be scarier since they are demons after all. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad by any means. We have all seen far worse in more expensive titles. The rest of my complaints are so minor that I am more than happy to blame them on my system than the game. This is a 9/10 title that fans of the genre owe it to themselves to play. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Realm of Ink PlayStation 5 Review

Realm of Ink is a new action roguelite from Leap Studios, which I am glad they sent me. You play as swordsman Red, though there are other characters you can unlock. With you is your trusty ink companion, Momo. Together, you fight through different levels and worlds using the power of the Fox and different ink powers to defeat destiny. Death is meaningless, as it just gives you a chance to rewrite the story, quite literally, as you will discover throughout the story.

It has always been my experience with these games that, while a good story helps, it is the graphics, gameplay, and quality of upgrades and abilities that determine if the loop is worth it. All of this is where Realm of Ink truly shines. With a unique, almost washed-painted background aesthetic and a seemingly endless combination of weapons, gems, and forms, there is plenty of replay value. If that weren’t enough, just when you think you have mastered the game, there is the endless trials of challenge mode in the Trial Valleys.

Is the game perfect? No, far from. I feel like Momo, while cute, doesn’t exactly serve much of a purpose aside from being a sort of mascot. Many of the characters you meet also sort of feel stale and one-dimensional, and only exist to sort of fill a role and nothing else. The shopkeeper is basically just greedy and money-hungry, but you get hints that he is actually nice and charitable if you are his friend. The cook is sort of ditsy and obsessed with cooking, but you get hints that there is more to her. Every character falls into this same pattern. They are X thing, but let’s hint at more. The game is a 9/10 experience, one I can’t possibly recommend enough. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.