Game reviews – Page 10 – Savior Gaming

Hogwarts Legacy

The dream of many has come true: you’ve been accepted into the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Set nearly a century before the Boy who Lived would enter its walls, we play as a newly discovered prodigy first setting foot into the school while a goblin revolution looms in the background.

As a kid into my young adult years, I loved the world of Harry Potter. I found the lore and worldbuilding fascinating while not really being too invested in Harry himself. While the personal politics of J.K. Rowling have soured my taste for Potter, I was curious if all the hype around the project was warranted.

First, I will say the game excels at bringing Hogwarts to life. The castle is a breathtaking marvel to explore; fans of the books and movie are in for one hell of a treat. It was really cool to make friends, each with their own interesting sidequests, and actually attend classes. There is a vast landscape outside of the castle into Hogsmeade village, the Forbidden Forest, and more. For a while, I had a blast exploring all I could. The game offers a lot of character customization options and there are plenty of spells to learn- including the Unforgivable Curses (you can bet your ass I learned those puppies). The game has plenty of Wizarding World fan service…

However, this game gets incredibly stale and becomes a slog once the wonder wears off. Combat essentially boils down to Arkham-lite; the Unforgivable Curses break the game if you want to cruise through the last third of it. The main story is meh. The friend questlines are more interesting than the main game’s. One huge issue I had is that the game is overly stuffed with fetch quests and scavenger hunts for pointless collectables. Given the vast bestiary and enemy pool they could have drawn from, enemy types are pretty limited. There isn’t much Hogwarts life at Hogwarts Legacy- classes, dueling club, races all end quickly enough. You can pick your house, but it has no weight to the story or how the characters react to you. After the first ten hours, I felt like I was merely grinding to finish the story.

In the end, Hogwarts Legacy isn’t terrible but far from what it could’ve been. Potter-heads will love it, but the casual gamer will pick up on the bloat and repetitive nature of the game. I bought it for $25, which I’d say is a fair price for the fun I got out of it. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ale Abbey – Monastery Brewery Tycoon

Ale Abbey is from a company called Hammer and Ravens. Long-time readers may remember that they tossed me a game called Razerewire:Nanowars that I was once the world score leader on. I no longer am.

Anyway, I picked up a copy of Ale Abby because for years they posted screenshots and sent me little pictures, and I knew I didn’t want to miss it. It took a little longer than I would have liked, but it was well worth the wait.

The concept is very simple. You get put in charge of an abbey, this abbey worships beer, so get to brewing. You quickly learn the basics of how to put together a recipe, make booze, and build rooms. This is all very easy at first. Later on, when towns want special brews with certain levels of strength or flavors made with certain ingredients, it does get a bit more challenging, but only slightly. As the game tells you when you can’t pay your bills, this isn’t the Dark Souls of tycoon games. Pick up a couple orders that give you half up front and half when it’s filled, and you are on your way back to brewing.

At no point did I ever feel like I hit a point where I felt like I was so far in the hole I couldn’t keep playing, and my first attempt, I screwed up pretty bad by not paying the bandits cash or ale to leave my carts alone. This cost me a lot of money, more than it would have cost me to keep them happy.

I also made some bad choices on when to build new rooms, which hurt my ability to brew. My second run went much smoother when I paid attention to profit margins, bandits, and when to build. Keeping some booze in the basement, only building when you have extra money lying around, and remembering this is a marathon, not a race, are the keys here.

Ale Abbey has been a pleasure to play, and will be in my rotation of games to play for a long time. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is an old-fashioned RTS from Relic Entertainment that they were kind enough to send me. The game was originally released back in 2004, and if you have fond memories of playing this as a child and think this will bring that back, I honestly can not tell you if that’s true. I never played the original release. What I can tell you is that it has been a long time since I sat down and played an RTS where I just zoned out and enjoyed building a base, teeing up some troops, and just watching the mayhem unfold. And for that, thank you, Relic.

Now graphically, the game looks better than ever, but the game still isn’t as good as most modern games. So if you are looking for this game to be a modern masterpiece, you will be very disappointed. It is, however, a very nice upgrade from 21 years ago.

The controls are simple and easy, and are pretty much on par with any other RTS, with 90% of the controls working from the mouse as you would hope, and being able to do some quick commands from the keyboard. On easy or normal, this isn’t at all necessary, but on hard, it makes a very big difference.

This brings me to the very few complaints I have. None of them are major, but while the game will run on just about anything these days, when battles get massive, there can be some frame rate drop on slower machines. On the bright side, I did this on my laptop and was purposely seeing if I could make it happen, and it never happened during normal gameplay. Just be aware that if you are riding that line on the recommended specs, don’t try to hit that cap on troops and vehicles for the hell of it.

Next, there is no keybinding. This doesn’t bother me personally, but the few negative review on Steam seems to mention it. I get it in a way since most games have it now, but to me it isn’t worth being upset that they didn’t add it to a game that never had it to begin with, and it was never important to do anyway.

At the end of the day, the game is called the definitive edition, and for $30 you get everything the game has ever offered, in the best-looking version that has ever been offered. Does it have its issues? Yes, is it perfect? No. Is it worth the price? Absolutely. This 8/10 experience truly is the definitive experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (sn1)

During an exploration on the moon, a strange object was found. A space dumpster. Inside the long sealed empress of evil, Rita Repulsa, is unleashed to conquer Earth. Zordon, an ancient alien wizard, and his trusty robot servant Alpha 5 spring into action. Zordon has Alpha find five teenagers with attitude from the nearby city of Angel Grove. Jason, Zack, Trini, Billy, and Kimberly were chosen to become the Power Rangers, the only heroes mighty enough to stop the forces of evil…

If you grew up as a 90’s kid as Savior and I did, this show is peak nostaglia as you can get. Fighting, monsters, a colorful giant robot fighting said giant monsters- what else can any kid ask for? Hell, I was a Power Ranger for Halloween the years I wasn’t Batman. The first season with the classic 6 rangers is lightning in a bottle. The core 6 had good chemistry and for the first 60-episode season, it is it cool seeing the characters grow. For example, Billy starts as a weak, stereotypical nerd who gradually becomes the team’s tech wizard as well as a competent, confident fighter. The show’s structure is aligned with self-contained episodes but the multi-part arcs are some of the show’s highlights. The evil Green Ranger arc that introduces the legendary Tommy into the group is still awesome all these years later. The original Zords are iconic: the Mastodon, Triceratops, Pterodactyl, Sabre-Tooth Tiger, Tyrannosaurus, and the Dragon Zord. The theme is one of my all-time favorites and I still smile each time I hear it; the music all around kicks ass.

Like many show’s there’s some dull episodes here and there. Because of the use of Japanese footage, there is quite a bit of repetition to the Ranger and Zord scenes. This show looks goofy and over the top, but to a charming degree. A couple of times in the first season, plotlines do repeat, just slightly altered. As a kid I remember thinking Bulk and Skull, the comic relief bullies, were annoying, and they are, but they grew on me. Rita is a goofball villain with a shrill voice and neither her or her lackeys are competent, but damn if it isn’t funny.

In the end, Power Rangers is a fun, goofy, kids show but it’s still plenty of fun. Whether you’re riffing it with friends, or getting hyped whenever you hear “It’s Morphin Time!”, the first season of Power Rangers is a good, light-hearted time in our dreary world I recommend. May the power protect you.

Bus Flipper: Renovator Simulator Steam Review

Bus Flipper: Renovator Simulator from Polden Publishing is an odd game for me. I love that they sent it for me to check out, and I normally love games like this. The premise alone seems like it would be great: buy old buses and campers, fix them up, furnish them nicely, and sell them for a profit. How can this possibly miss?

Truth be told, the game doesn’t really miss. The game is exactly as advertised. It also doesn’t even do a single thing badly. It looks pretty decent, and it controls pretty well. The sound is nice, and even the story that goes along with it is ok.

That, however, is kind of the issue; everything about it is just painfully average. Now the game costs less than $15, so expecting anything on par with House Flipper would be unfair, but there is very little room for you to be original. The game gives you some idea of how to furnish each bus after you clean it up. The ideas they give you are honestly what you should do, not because it gets you the best price, but because it doesn’t seem to matter. I tried the first mission twice and got the same offer on my bus when I tossed a bunch of coffee cups and a plant into the yard, as I did when they were on the bus.

This brings me to my next point, the mini game for negotiations. It is essentially a bar that zips back and forth, and it is basically a game of luck. The game isn’t by any means bad; for less than $15, there is some fun to be had. There are just much better games out there. Unless your heart is truly into fixing up buses, this one is better off staying on the auction block. 5/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Giant Machines 2017 PS5 Review

Giant Machines 2017 on PS5 is another game I am grateful to Ultimate Games for sending me to Review. The game itself is a simple concept; they take some of the biggest machines known to man and let people use them to help launch a spaceship. The type they used to rip a mountain to pieces, for example. Some of these things are quite literally bigger than houses.

The issue is that the game is terrible. Driving a huge dump truck and hitting even a small guardrail will send your truck bouncing around like a character from a fighting game. If this wasn’t bad enough, sometimes you don’t have to hit anything to make this happen. You can mitigate this by staying on the road, but not everywhere you need to be is even near the road.

You would think that maybe using a huge saw and tearing apart a mountain would at least be fun, but you would be wrong there as well. I never expected getting this thing into position to be fast, since you are essentially moving a small building around. I did, however, expect it to be entertaining in some form when I got there. It was really just frustrating.

Steer very clear of this game. Between the bugs, lack of polish, and the fact that the game was originally released back in September 2016 on Steam, there is no reason to buy this 3/10 experience. I’ve never driven these machines in real life, but I have driven some large machinery, and it fails in every way as a simulator and as entertainment. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mecha Godzilla, not in the game. But I wanted something positive

You will notice above I have a picture of Mecha Godzilla. He isn’t in the game, but he is a giant machine. I wanted something positive in this post, and this is what you are getting.

Whimside Steam Review

Whimside is a cute creature collector sent my way by Toadzillart, which I am always grateful for. The concept is quite simple and straightforward. It sits at the bottom of your screen while you go about your day; in fact, I am playing it right now as I type this. Every so often, creatures will wander past, and you click on them to capture them. You can then breed them to make new creatures with various physical attributes to unlock new areas to visit, which allows you to continue on your quest to unlock more areas.

This doesn’t mean the game is easy; it takes time and a bit of luck to breed the right creature to unlock the next area. You also get a small area you can decorate and keep creatures that will spawn gems to spend in the store to buy new things and upgrades to make your quest easier. This can be things like more room for eggs, auto collectors for gems, or just new decorations.

This is honestly a very niche title; it won’t appeal to everyone. The collector in me that loves to have something to do while I write or just watch random videos, however, loves having this thing on the bottom of my screen. There is also a setting that lets you minimize it completely and gives you a notification when something you need to be aware of happens. The game is sitting at very positive reviews on Steam, and with very good reason. At less than $6, the game is a steal. 8/10 experience at this price point. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Gold Gold Adventure Gold Steam Review

Gold Gold Adventure Gold is an early access title with an extremely catchy song sent to me by a company whose name I think someone was stoned when they came up with, not judging, I have made some amazing decisions that way. But huge shout out to Can can can a man for hooking me up with this one.

Seriously, I love the song. I could give you the early access trailer, but I won’t; you are getting this one. Enjoy.

Anyway, now that I have attempted to make you listen to a song and said I thought the guy who named a company was a stoner, let’s move on to why you are here. The game is all about building a city, inviting heroes to live there, and then using those heroes to go out on missions to kill monsters and go on adventures to make you money. Think Majesty for those old school gamers.

This game has a ton of potential; it even has a built-in way to make sure you, even if you run out of money, have a hero available in the form of a pet. You can choose between 2 as of now, and it evolves as it levels up into a much larger creature. Make sure you pet him and give him love, by the wa,y so he does what you want. That isn’t a joke; there is an in-game mechanic that allows you to pet and brush him when he does things you like.

We all know what this looks like, but it’s a forge

The main way to progress through the game is to build different buildings, places to recruit heroes, a forge so your heroes can improve their weapons, or a place for them to train.

The premise is quite simple, and the game works fine about half the time. I lost my first game, however, because of a weird glitch. Most of my heroes either got stuck on a wall and couldn’t attack the enemies, or were shot through the walls and were killed by the enemies. Both scenarios made the walls completely useless.

The game did pay me back with my first win. Which also came when on day 2 of 6, a level 40 spider came and killed all my heroes while I was attempting to upgrade my main building. This caused them to not be able to attack my main building at all because of the fence that gets put up around it. They were forced to just stand next to it, then attack the farms that pop up automatically. 6 days later, I won my first game.

The game is a lot of fun, but most of my games have come with some weird issue. Only those 2 were of the sort I would consider game-breaking, but both soured the experience quite a bit. The game is at best a 6/10 experience. It has a lot of potential, but it needs a bit more time. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Chained Echos- Ashes of Elrant Review

Back in 2022, Deck13 and Mathias Linda tossed me a copy of what I can only describe as a masterpiece in Chained Echoes PS5 Review. Fast forward a few years, later they offered me a copy of the DLC Ashes of Elrant. I took my own advice from my review of Echos and ran to say yes. But could lightning strike in the same place twice?

Well, let’s get the facts out of the way: it costs about $10, which falls in the middle of DLC prices. It costs less than most season passes or expansions, but more than most cosmetic packs. This price point nails it perfectly. You can easily spend 10 hours on the DLC just taking in the sights, trying to finish up the new board, and playing the new mini games.

I won’t say much about the new character, not because I don’t enjoy him, I love this dude. I won’t say much because it would spoil the story, and I can’t think of a way to explain him without doing so. What I will say is that he never left my party, he is relatively simple to use, has some great abilities, and his character arc itself is fantastic to see play out.

Speaking of the story, this is another one that is hard to speak about. It takes place before the very end of the main story, and you select it from the title screen. You can just hop right in if you want. It involves the Crimson Wings being hired for an important mission that also happens to pay far too well to pass up. (Small spoiler alert, for once in this situation, you actually do get the money)

The story primarily focuses on certain characters over others, making some of them sort of just feel along for the ride, but the lore we get is great. Many of the in-game changes this time around are much appreciated as well. No more searching for crystals out in the wild; monsters just drop them. They are all just one level now and can just be equipped at will from your inventory screen.

Another interesting addition is that you can increase stats from these sorts of glowing wells, and every area pretty much has one or two for you to find. This, combined with the new Party Point (PP) system, lets you unlock things like a fishing minigame or the chance to do damage before the battle starts.

There are a few downsides this time around. Part of that PP system, for example, lets you increase the size of the green overdrive bar. If you took your fully leveled characters into the DLC, you can basically just destroy everything when you start in overdrive mode. It is nice to feel like a god however. Which brings me to my next point: the DLC is self-contained, the new character and the changes stay in the DLC, away from the base game. So if you love the new character, you won’t be able to bring him back to the game and enjoy him there. The same goes for all the weapons and stuff you gather there, since you lose anything you have in the main game when you load it over. (don’t worry, it’s still in your game over there)

So did lightning strike in the same place twice? Chained Echoes is still my highest rated game ever, and the DLC is a respectable 8/10. The lore is great, and while I’m not a fan of all of the mini games, or that it is a self-contained experience, it did give me more of what I wanted at a fair price. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dead Space (2023)

We live in a world of nostalgia and remakes, most of which exist for a quick cash grab. DeadSpace was a classic in horror gaming. Well, thankfully, the folks at Motive understood the assignment. Dead Space is honestly the best horror remake I’ve played, beating Resident Evil 2 (2019) .

The story at it’s core is virtually the same. What changes is everything around it. Issac is no longer a mute protagonist but rather is voiced by the same VA as Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 3 as well as given a much-needed backstory, adding to the pathos of the engineer. All the characters are flushed out more. The story is told with a deeper narrative emphesis instead of being hidden away in the logs around the ship.

The Ishimura has expanded. Now there are side missions that make you want to retrace your way through the doomed vessel. There is a price, however. Combat has drastically improved but so have the nercomorphs. The weapons are the same but reworked so that the Plasma cutter won’t easily carry you through the whole game. Ammo is much more scarce so you do have to get creative. On the flipside, the necromorphs are smarter, more aggressive, and respawn more throughout the ship. The necromorphs are nothing short of nightmare fuel. The attention to realism, especially when chopping them down, is nothing short of masterwork.

Perhaps what I really admired was that Motive fixed nothing that didn’t need it. The controls are basically the same as 2 and 3. They replaced the annoying gravity jump mechanic with the booster jets from the later games. Parts like the meteor shower and the congestion boss are no longer a pain in the ass but are arguably highlights now. Every weapon has a good pro and con to it. The atmosphere, creatures, story and experience have either remained pure terror or have been carefully elevated.

Unfortunately, this is an EA game. While well-loved by critics and players, they canceled the Dead Space 2 remake, so as of now, this slice of horror game perfection is all we have. Stranger things have happened but I cannot recommend this horror masterpiece enough. May the gaming gods bring you glory.