Combolands: Roguelike CityBuiler was sent my way by Crux Games which I always appreciate. The idea here is simple, you start your run by picking 2 guilds, you will unlock a few as you play. Each has their own way of playing out. Each week you will get 3 cards to choose from, and you will play one. Each cards effects will earn you citizens in different ways. Your goal is to hit the target amount of citizens before the set amount of weeks is up.
While this sounds simple, and it is simple to understand mastering it will take a bit more work. See some buildings will allow you to remove other buildings or reroll your cards, but they don’t much if anything else. This buildings are important because they may trigger other buildings or allow you to remove structures that have run their course and are no longer needed.
Other buildings only offer a miltiplier or add or remove land which if you use your imagination can be far more useful than you would expect at first. The game is quite forgiving and will offer you extra weeks occasionally when you are close, unless you are at the very end of a run. The game is quite cozy for beginers.
The game also comes in at a very nice price point of around $10 and you can sink avout 30-40 hours into it if you want to 100% the game, thats a pretty nice trade off. The game is a bit slow at times, but it is a 9/10 experience that anyone can enjoy. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Dying Light was a hell of an experience. It was like Far Cry meets 28 Weeks Later. Like many, I was pumped when the sequel crawled out of development hell only to fade into obscurity. Seriously, it’s one of those games I knew so many people waited for but no one really talked about. Is Dying Light 2 a missed masterpiece or better left forgotten?
We play as Aiden, a pilgrim on a quest in plague ravaged Villedor for his lost sister. Aiden, as well as hs sister and a bunch of other children were part of a cruel series of experiments at the hand of Waltz. Villedor holds the answers Aiden seeks, as well bloodthirsty bandits, peace keepers run amok, people trying to survive and of course hordes of zombies. If all this wasn’t enough, Aiden is changing…can he find his sister and a cure before joing the legion of the undead?
So I’m not going to mice words, Dying Light 2 isn’t a bad game. It’s fun in bursts and I appreciate some of what they were trying to do in terms of scope and feeling like you were in a wider cityscape. Unfortunately I gotta drop into the same category of meh games as Dark Souls 2 Scholars of the First Sin , Resident Evil 3 (2020) and Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
First, I tuned out of the story pretty quick. I never really got invested in the factions involved, the choices never packed a punch, and the missions felt pretty repetitive-especially the side missions. I felt like they took the wrong lessons from Fallout 4. Exploration can be fun but the enemies start to become a pain in the ass instead of scary or menacing. There is more than a fair amount of bullshit deaths, especially when it came to the game’s paraglider. Sometimes it would draw super fast, sometimes it would delay and I’d splat on the concrete. Gameplay overall is fine but there was small subtractions from the first I sorely missed- a mini map, being able to customize and repair my own weapons, easily accessible fast travel, and a faster, more fulfilling progression system. In this game, progression feels more like a slog and I never really felt like a badass as I did in the first. Safe zones are also now a chore.
While I have a lot of complaints and I genuinely believe its inferior to the first, it’s not a bad game. It ran fine, it looked really nice throughout, and the voice acting was solid. I had plenty of fun murdering zombies and bandits and using parkour…but it wasn’t much more than that. I never got the fear or intrigue of the first game. Its a ok game overall. Alright. Nothing too special. May the gaming gods bring you glory.
Port of Jumanah was sent my way by the fine folks over at Red Dune Games, which I always appreciate. I have to be honest here; I wasn’t really sure what to expect with the story. You play as a kid named Mansour who collects pearls and inexplicably gets dragged into things well above his pay grade because the adults in his village didn’t really see an issue with a child having his own boat. Then this thing gets destroyed, and they figure the answer is to give him another boat to investigate why he washed up on shore talking about how fish with arms beat him almost to death.
Seriously, do not think about this story too much; there is a gorilla boss that breathes underwater somehow. The entire fight is because the kid insults him, by accident and it just sets up a life long blood fued. That isn’t a joke, thats just a part of the story.
This turtle gives you power-ups each run
Now that I have warned you the story is ridiculous; don’t worry; all that is basically the least insane stuff that happens. Let’s talk about the gameplay. In a typical roguelike fashion, losing and repeating levels is all part of the fun. You will win some and lose some; upgrade your ship to carry up to 3 crew members to boost your skills and rewards. Buy and upgrade weapons, gain new abilities, and maybe find a few secrets.
This dude should probably be reported to the cops.
I only have one big complaint about this game: there is a super weird and sudden difficulty spike about halfway through the game. There is nothing you can really do about it; I had upgraded my ship and weapons basically as much as I could, and suddenly a boss just started stomping me run after run. It is the weirdest place for a skill check possibly ever in a game. I beat the boss eventually, but the game suddenly turning into Dark Souls was not something I expected.
Now, is it worth playing? Honestly, the game is about $12 and is good for about that in hours of playtime, if not more. This is an easy buy in my opinion. It is a 7/10 title that fans of the genre shouldn’t miss. The weird difficulty spike aside, and the fact that it doesn’t do anything new, doesn’t change the fact that it is simply fun. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Every so often there are moments in gaming that you will remember forever. One of those for me was playing Subnautica for the first time and seeing the water as you leave the life pod for the very first time. Honeycomb: The World Beyond was sent my way by Snail Games and in many ways manages to catch that same feeling except on land.
You work for Eon Corp, and as Hennessy, a bioengineer you are sent to a distant planet to help find clues on how to save the human race an possibly the Earth. SOTA7 is the name of the planet you find yourself on and it is beautiful, and home to many forms of life, some plant, some animal and not all of it friendly.
The first creature I came across was adorable admittedly, and attempted to mimic what I did. When I jumped or crouched, so did it. Eventually this made it trust me enough to pet it. Like an idiot I thought every animal would follow a similar pattern. This is how I died for the first time, a large bird looking creature and its friends killed me.
This one is a friend
The game is filled with things like this, and you will spend much of your time taking in sights, building a base and running experiments. Sometimes on the very animals and plants you have grown fond of. Don’t worry, you aren’t a monster, you aren’t murdering them in a lab or anything like that. It is all really more similar to creating new animals through breeding.
I don’t want to spoil to much for you, but suffice it to say the game is beautiful, but it does come with a warning. If you are looking for a combat focused game, this isn’t it. You can stun dangerous animals but you won’t be fighting anything really. This is a science focused game. You will spend a lot of time traveling, searching for samples and simply taking in the view. This is fun for a lot of people, others are going to hate it. I thought it was a nice way to relax after work. it is an 8/10 experience that fans of the genre will get into, but others will want to look at other Snail Game titles to get their fill of death in. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
If you remember, it was not that long ago I was talking about iRacing Arcade over on Steam. It has finally made its way over to the PlayStation 5 for people to enjoy. How does it hold up to its PC counterpart is what some of you may be wondering, however.
Truth be told, if you read my original review, there really isn’t anything new for you to learn here. The game has all of the newest updates, the same licensed tracks and series, and the controls feel even more natural on a controller than they do on a keyboard. This is where I will break from my Steam review a little bit.
In my Steam review, I said it would have been nice if the controls were a little more responsive, and I don’t know if it is due to updates or whatever, but they certainly are more responsive now than when I played it on Steam back in March.
My favorite part of iRacing Arcade is how approachable the game is, yet how much you can tinker with things if you want. iRacing has mastered making racing games, but they continue to find ways to make games that different types of fans can enjoy. This one is a 9/10 experience, with no wrong way to experience this title. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Orc Incremental was sent my way by the fine folks over at Nice Ride, which is just 3 people making games, and according to their website, they don’t like AI making art or Dairy before 3p.m. You can also destroy their logo by playing a game similar to Brick Break, but you only get one chance, and if you miss the ball, the logo comes back, so I don’t know if anything happens if you succeed. I tried for like 20 minutes. So if anyone finds out, let me know.
The game is an homage to Warcraft 2 in many ways; you’ve got orcs vs elves and human-looking things, though the game didn’t seem to specify what they were. You will recruit all sorts of other creatures, like dragons and trolls, and fight griffins and others if you get far enough.
You start at level one, and as you kill enemies, you will gain money to spend on upgrades. You start with 1 single orc and the ability to throw a fireball yourself. It won’t take long before you can recruit another.
The upgrades you pick are very important, as is the fireball you can throw. Eventually, the formation you pick will become important as well. I was lucky enough to play alongside another reviewer, and he had to do his first rebirth well before I did, and I believe this is because we used wildly different strategies. He put his orcs and ground troops in the front and mid-range to the sides, while I had my mid-range guys in the back. My longer-range catapults ended up in the back, and his ended up where my mid-range guys were. This resulted in me making it to around level 110 or so before I chose to rebirth the first time, while he had to do it before level 100.
Rebirthing is very important, as this is where you can unlock permanent upgrades as well as other game modes, such as the ability to do quests, which will also unlock other stronger permanent upgrades. They all make you restart ( in a separate game mode; you can switch back and forth willingly. The further you get and the more money you earn, the more points you will get to buy those upgrades.
So is the game worth buying? Yes, absolutely. My favorite part is that even when you walk away, your little army will continue to earn money for you. So feel free to shut the game down, turn your laptop off, go to work, and come home to some money to upgrade with. The game is a 9/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Ground Zero Hero Was Sent my way by the one and only Atari, which still blows my mind that I get to work with. But here we are, about to discuss what I can only describe as the most bonkers action roguelike I have ever played. For the low price of $10, you can control some sort of weird nuclear apocalypse as a mutated freak with a random mutation, such as laying eggs, shooting spikes from your back, or being a cyclops shooting a laser out of your eye. You can then kill weird enemies, like living trees during the day, for example, with the exploding eggs you lay. This is assuming one of the eggs doesn’t hatch into a superhero named Chicken Man, who will fight with you for a bit before leaving for the home planet that apparently needs him.
Yes, that is a UFO; no, I can’t and Won’t try to explain that crocodile with a hat.
The more enemies you kill and absorb, I guess, the more nuclear fallout from it, the stronger you get. You can collect new mutations or upgrade the ones you have to make it easier to survive. This is all before nightfall, when vampires and werewolves show up. You can, of course, simply go underground and sleep in the sewers for the night to pass time and save, of course. This makes the far deadlier night creatures go away.
There are, of course, different biomes with different enemies and different animals to ride. Yes, you can, for example, ride a two-headed cow in one, for a little bit. Then it explodes killed a bunch of animals. To make things a little extra wtf is you do have a food meter to watch. That food is candy, and if it runs out, you will start to die. So if you see a piñata, go smash it. Don’t worry; this is pretty easy to keep track of, and unless you are kind of negligent, it never really becomes an issue.
This brings me to my only real issue with the game: the upgrades you get between the runs seem kind of lackluster and pointless. They are kind of expensive, and unless you buy a ton at once never felt like they made a difference, as opposed to just upgrading my powers did. This isn’t a deal breaker or anything, but it did kind of take away from it a bit. It is still an 8/10 experience for me. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault was sent my way by 11 Bit Studios, a company I love working with. Obviously, I appreciate being sent a copy of what could be argued is their most anticipated title. Being a fan of the first game, I have been waiting for this one to hit consoles and to see what Will has been up to. Now, it is worth saying this: Moonlighter 2 is a direct continuation of the first game; it takes place right after the first game, and you will play as Will, the main character from the original, with many characters returning. The game does a great job of catching you up if you want to start here, however.
You can quickly switch weapons before heading out to collect relics.
The main gameplay is simple: at night, head out into the dimensional gate, collect relics to sell in your shop, and sell them to the people of Tresna. The more money you earn, the more upgrades you can buy to make these journeys easier, grab more loot, make more money, and appease the endless vault to get more of its secrets. Why do you want its secrets? Well, to find out, you will need to play the game; I won’t spoil the story for you.
Each weapon feels vastly different, and you will find your favorite very quickly, just to discover that every weapon within those categories of weapons are also quite different. I fell in love with the great sort originally to later find a spear I didn’t want to live without, even though I didn’t like my first spear.
Combat is quick and fluid, and each dimension has its own enemies and gimmicks to contend with, and relics that act differently in your backpack. If you want to make the most money, you will need to master them all, and dying will bring their worth down immensely, so know when to retreat with what you have. It is far better to retreat with a couple of relics worth a bit of money than to leave with a lot worth next to nothing. Trust me, I have the trophy for dying with a backpack filled with relics, and not on purpose.
The one issue I had with the game is that the very beginning of the game can be one hell of a grind if you aren’t smart about how you pick your upgrades, and if you are, it is still a hell of a grind. You only get 2 potions to start healing, and very few hit points, with no way to really replenish them, and the money early game just isn’t there to afford upgrades. Unless RNgeus is on your side and blesses you with some great loot and perks early, your starting runs will be a struggle to even reach the boss, let alone beat him. But once the upgrades start a couple of hours in, the game really opens up.
/ So is Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault worth the $30 price tag? If you liked the original, this is everything the first one was and better; if you missed the first and are worried because it is a continuation, don’t be. The game starts by telling you how we got here. It is a 9/10 experience that I am glad to have experienced. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was sent my way by the fine folks of Team 17 who I always love working with. Ironically, this game brought me some trouble before it was announced because many of my friends are shooter fans, and as I have been reviewing games for so long and have been working with Team 17 for many of them, they actually sent me the reveal trailer a few days before it was revealed as part of the announcement. Not being able to tell or show people I KNEW would be excited about it was brutal. So when the clock struck 0 and we were able to post about it, I did get a couple of phone calls asking me how I could keep that to myself. Ok so it didn’t cause me trouble; it was hilarious.
As for the game, this will be hit and miss for many people, because it is essentially a hardcore shooter. It is as close to being in Vietnam as you can get without having been in Vietnam. In my first game, I decided I wanted to launch mortars and ended up the leader of a mortar crew, but I had no crew at first. This meant I was just a regular soldier because you need all 3 people to set up the mortar. The leader is simply a spotter, while another has the supplies needed to build it, and the third has the actual mortar launcher. You can then work as a team with the spotter finding targets, helping you aim, finding enemies an telling you where they land. One person aims the actual launcher while the third actively fires.
Many things in the game work this way; one person on each team is even the overall commander, and if that person doesn’t have a mic, you will be in a lot of trouble. In one game I joined, we were backed into the upper right corner of the map; however, the team didn’t quit, and the commander had a great strategy. We managed to fight our way out and come back and win. See, unlike Battlefield, you aren’t necessarily limited to deaths or time; you have to take the entire battlefield itself like a real war.
Even snipers work as a group, sniper and spotter, like real life
Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is not for everyone; I love the game for many reasons, but it is very team-based. If you want to simply run and gun, this game is not for you. Worse, if you don’t want to be careful every step of the way, you are going to have a bad time. This is the Vietnam War at its best, by showing it at its worst. People will hide in the trees, behind rocks, and death will rain from the skies, and sometimes you can do everything right, and it will still go wrong. This is a 9/10 experience for those who love the style. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Hearth and Hamlet was sent my way by Gamersky Games, and I always appreciate it. Hearth and Hamlet is a little weird for me because, admittedly, the start is a bit boring and slow to get going. You start out assigning a worker and clicking the mouse to get some resources to and get your camp set up, and build the very bare basics of a place to live.
You get here eventually
Eventually, you can build more and bigger houses and logging camps and fishing; this unlocks more workers that you can assign to auto-collect resources and more of them faster with more advanced buildings that you can upgrade. How interesting you find this is completely subjective; I enjoyed it once the game started moving, but the opening hour or so was kind of a slog.
There are a few issues with this cozy game; however, you don’t really get to choose where anything goes, or even what you build when. You simply get the option to build things at certain times as you finish quests. Now I understand why I am not allowed to start the game building a fishing dock or why options are limited at first, but to completely streamline the choices feels less like a game where I can help shape a country and more like I am simply there to hit the button while my friend builds it, without the added benefit of hanging out with my friend.
That being said, I don’t expect a ton out of an $8 game. I do expect a little more engagement, however. It is a 6/10 title that, on sale for 50% off, becomes worth buying. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
