Category: Game reviews

When developer Soleil and publisher 110 Industries tossed me a copy of this one to review I wasn’t really sure how I would feel about this one, and I am grateful they took me out of my comfort zone with this one. Thanks by the way guys and gals. The makers of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive also created this one, so I knew I was getting into something special, even if I was about to hate my life for a while.

LT Stone

You play as LT Stone, leader of what is known as a Zombie Squad ( don’t worry you aren’t actual zombies) and the game takes place over about a week in Hong Kong. while the game is a combination hack-and-slash third-person shooter there are plenty of mini-games to pass the time between missions. I want to get this out of the way first because honestly they are pretty minor but range from interesting such as the crane game and the many different options to play in the shooting gallery to the more annoying or nonsensical such as eating as much Ramen as possible. Don’t worry though you can’t get stuck at them and they don’t change the story it is simply a do-your-best sort of deal and many can be outright ignored.

I just like this cat

Graphically the game is nice and gory. It won’t be long before heads and arms are flying off. There is even a chainsaw at some point and they actually censor bar parts of it. It is actually rather refreshing. This isn’t the only thing I loved, setting off a sprinkler system and watching the water just cascade down was a nice touch. The lights on the water were also fantastic I thought.

The sound was also pretty great, I wasn’t exactly fond of the music but the guns sounded nice and powerful, and swords slamming into each other or cutting through was excellent.

The part everyone is here for however is how-is the gameplay and I will not lie you can tell the Ninja Gaiden creators were involved. It is very fast-paced, whether you are dodging strikes, grenades, or bullets. Taking cover is quick and intuitive, and for me, it didn’t even matter. The game offers two difficulty settings, essentially normal and hard. So the first level I was doing ok until I hit around halfway and I died. Over and over again. Then something pops up, in true Nina Gaiden style, and asked if I wanted a hidden difficulty setting and made the game even easier. I of course said no and died over and over again. countering and dodging and I still could not get the hang of it.

Eventually, I just accepted the difficulty setting whos name I can’t spell and won’t even try, I will just call it Savior Sucks at Life Mode. Now Savior Sucks At Life Mode made the game a lot more enjoyable, gave me some more heals, made the game a bit easier and let me die a little less. I still died, the game isn’t at all easy but it is fun. I love the characters and the 80’s action feel to it.

The game isn’t for everyone, but for fans of action games, especially those that want to relive their love of Ninja Gaiden, this game is for you. A solid 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always with these things I like to start out with a huge shout out to Publisher Deck 13 for tossing me a copy of this one to check out as well as Matthias Linda. I know it’s weird to see me toss a specific name out there but he actually developed the game himself, and for that he has my eternal gratitude.

In case you want to go into this game 100% blind like I was blessed to do, here is my quick opinion. Don’t walk to purchase this game, run. If you like RPG’s that will remind you of what many consider the golden era of the genre, this is your game. If you want to know why, keep reading.

The story starts off introducing you to what will basically be the main characters, of which there are many. There is Lenne a princess her friend and admittedly but obsessive guard Robb. My personal favorite Sienna whose one goal in life seems to be to steal anything that isn’t nailed down. This is a small portion of the characters admittedly.

The battle system is very reminiscent of Chrono Trigger in many ways, there are no random battles and you will see exactly what you are about to engage with with a few exceptions for boss battles. Another very nice thing is at the end of all battles your HP and TP will replenish completely and anyone that dropped will be revived.

This doesn’t mean you can just go all out with your best moves however. In the upper left hand corner there is an overdrive gauge. When it is yellow you will take normal damage and when it is red, that damage you take is increased. But that sweet green spot is where you want to keep it. When it is there you will take less damage and give more. Every action you or an enemy take will move that gauge. Defending will always lower it,and certain move types will also lower it but that move type changes often.

This is a level of strategy that does nothing to take away from the enjoyment of the game, in fact some of the best times I had with this game were losing a boss battle because I screwed up, trying again and winning with no issue because I managed to keep the gauge where I needed it while taking advantage of my ability to paralyze the boss with one character and attack that weakness with another. Each time I did this however it became harder to paralyze the enemy. The game doesn’t allow you to simply spam a strategy and rewards experimenting without making the game a chore.

The story itself isn’t as simple as it seems either. It starts out as a simple story of stopping the evil kingdom from taking over the continent. You however will start to notice little things intertwined that make you second guess what is going on even within your party.

By mid game I wasn’t sure if I should even trust my own people as an unexpected ode to Suikoden kicked in and I’m building my own clan and recruiting people to my island to provide various services.

I haven’t even touched on the reward system that will allow you to unlock bonus grimoire shards to help strengthen your characters and many other items. All of these are basically optional but mostly they happen as you play the game anyway and are worth doing.

There is so much to say about this game, and I am sure I missed a ton. The important thing to know here is that in about 6 years of reviewing games I have never given out a perfect score,and while that still stands this game has come closer than any other. This one is a 9.5/10 with my one and only complaint being there were a few times I managed to accidentally climb through the side of a wall while going up or down a rock ladder. This isn’t anything major and didn’t even interfere with game play,but unfortunately it does exist and it would be dishonest to not mention it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As always when I start these things, huge shout out to NIS America for hooking me up with this one. Always appreciated.

Those that have played the PS4 version of this one are already familiar with this game. Adol an adventurer is traveling with his friend Dogi across the ocean on a ship heading for adventure when said ship sinks and he wakes up shipwrecked on a cursed island. Adol and his new companions then start to work on building a camp to start escaping the island and other castaways while Adol starts having weird dreams about a blue haired woman and an advanced civilization. It is up to you to make all this happen.

The story is nice, but it isn’t anything ground breaking. The real fun here is combat. You can quickly switch between characters with the touch of a button and each character does well against certain types of enemies. Some will break the defense of flying enemies and knock them to the ground or make armored enemies much easier to deal with.

It is also important to know when to time your special attacks because killing an enemy with one makes them cheaper to you. At higher difficulties the ability to dodge and block at exactly the right time to enable free attacks or stun enemies will mean the difference between life or death, especially with boss monsters even at the earliest of levels. That being said there are enough variety in difficulty levels that can be changed in the option menu that you should never feel overwhelmed or like the game is too easy.

Graphically the game is a step up from its PS4 counterpart,but unless you are a huge fan the graphical upgrade alone isn’t really worth purchasing the game again and the same can be said for the sound. The game was never a juggernaut in their departments anyway and this doesn’t change that. It does look and feel better,and with the many extras it comes with it is the definitive version to play. First time buyers should absolutely pick this one up as it is the best way to experience it,I just can’t justify spending the full price on it again.

There isn’t a lot left to say except it is a great rpg for the PS5, it is a solid 8/10 and worth a buy, assuming you haven’t already purchased it on the PS4. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

As far As the Eye is another title tossed to me by the great folks over at Klabater and developed by Goblinz Studio.Huge shout out to them both for hooking me up.

As Far As The Eye is an interesting title full of special words to simply say you will help a tribe survive on a hexagonal map by collecting food,wood and other supplies. There are no enemies to fight,but you are probably going to see the game over screen a few times anyway.

I’d like to describe my first experience with the game. I started the campaign knowing this is where I would be able to learn to play. While they did teach me to play it wasn’t exactly well done. Some of the instructions were unclear or simply not explained at all. It wasn’t too bad to figure out but this did carry over into later lessons and that became more of a challenge.

It wasn’t long however before I managed to get exploring and found the forest I was supposed to find and watch my little pupil turn into an animal that would collect wood. Yes your pupils turn into cute animals to do different tasks,I don’t know or care why but I appreciate it.

So after I collected enough wood, well I didn’t. The flood came and washed my tribe away. I had to restart it. I mean my entire Xbox, for whatever reason when this happened it also decided nothing would respond. I could move the map but I couldn’t pause,enter any menus.

Now if you keep with it and try to figure things out you will be rewarded with a pretty good experience. I enjoyed trying to figure out the best way to build things up, did I want to build a cheaper but permanent structure I would have to abandon? Or do I try to build that expensive one I can bring with me?

There isn’t exactly a wrong answer honestly and unlike most games like this it was usually far better to have just enough stuff to get you by as opposed to stock piling things you would lose to the floor anyway. The journey to the center will be perilous and full of danger but all of them are your poor planning, except when it’s one of the bugs that crashes your game or fighting with the UI.

As much as I enjoyed my time with this game it isn’t for everyone. The bugs are easy to fix so don’t let that dissuade you but the UI isn’t fantastic. I give this one a 7/10, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

First and foremost,I want to take a moment to give a huge shout out to Astragon Entertainment for tossing me a copy of Police Simulator: Patrol Officers.

So what is Police Simulator? Well the name says it all. Let me walk you through my first day on the job. I walked out the door, read a couple tutorials, and read a manual for the job about all the laws while not realizing I did nothing to stop the time from passing and my shift ended while giving someone a parking ticket. So I walked right back inside.

My second day on the job I remember words from the movie The Other Guys. You aren’t a cop until you do a desk pop. So I pulled my gun and shot a round into the air. Huh, nobody cares. Time to walk outside and shoot the first person I see. Don’t do this,you will instantly be fired.

You also can’t shoot at cars and buildings, actually just do what the game tells you and don’t shoot your gun. There truly are no situations in the game that let you fire your weapon. This led to seeing how many innocent people I could just blast with my taser. The answer is four, then you will be fired.

Now that I had that out of the way I decided to take the game more seriously and moved on to my real day one without being a psycho or reading the entire shift. You can play in one of two modes, casual or simulation. I recommend you start with casual because the game is more forgiving of mistakes, for example you can’t really hit pedestrians with your car or get hit by them. In simulation both of these will instantly end your day.

The first few days will be foot patrols handing out speeding tickets, catching jaywalkers and stopping people for littering. The game does an excellent job explaining when you can ticket a car and it is quite easy to look up if you forget. Their explanation on when to tow cars isn’t quite as good but is still solid.

Eventually you will get your own patrol car and have the option to choose between foot patrol or a car patrol. You can do everything in a car you can do on foot, you can even park your car and walk around if you want. I do recommend however you be careful pulling people over as they tend to simply slam on their breaks and you will slam into the back of them. Nothing worse than catching that dude showing off his under glow lights and then doing an accident report instead. Speaking from experience.

This may be one of the most realistic simulation games I have ever played, and anyone that follows the page knows I have played my fair share. Giving tickets or arresting someone is as simple as a radial menu after speaking to them or interacting with a car and the options of what you can find or arrest people for range from something as simple as jaywalking to things like DUI for alcohol or amphetamines or simply having an outstanding warrant. This isn’t even getting into the times I’ve sat at a red light and suddenly see an accident in front of me and need to call an ambulance for some now laying on the sidewalk and discover the accident was two drunk drivers.

No game is perfect,and Police Simulator is no exception. I’d say I loved my time with it but my time with it is far from over but I have to hope there is more to come. There are plenty of bugs that need to be patched out. The graphics are beautiful, but the amount of times I’ve seen cars go around corners and drivers not be in the cars for a few seconds are beyond anything I could even try to count. A few times pulling up to an accident there was no way to take pictures of the accident and I never figured out why,or a witness would be impossible to access because they were pushed in-between cars by a third car and were blocked away.

Also me and a friend (he plays on PS5) ran into an issue where we would lose conduct points for trying to find or tow a car in a space directly in front of a sign that says taxi zone no parking. Nothing game breaking or even anything I would consider taking away from my enjoyment,but it would be wrong if I did not tell you they do exist.

So what’s the verdict on this one? Should you sign up for a shift or avoid it? Truthfully this is easily one of the best simulator games I have ever played and there is far more potential of what they can do with it if they choose. I’m giving this a 7/10 because of the before mentioned glitches but once those are fixed the score definitely goes up a point or two. If you like simulator games, you need to pick this one up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lunistice is a game from Deck 13 that I was lucky enough to get a review copy tossed my way at the last moment. Going into it I didn’t know much besides that it was a 3D platformer inspired by the 32 bit era. Think along the lines of Mario 64 (yes despite it’s name it was a 32 bit game)

Lunistice takes place in a world right after something called the “Moonfall” and traps people in their dreams. That is where the game play takes place.

You will traverse about 15 levels in multiple biomes, collecting various collectables, following multiple paths and trying to get the fastest time to get that elusive “S” rank.

“S” rank will unlock some things for you but truthfully they weren’t really worth it to me. I have never been a fan of trying to speed run things however so please keep that in mind.

The graphics however are nice, I enjoyed running around and seeing the gems in the ground in the first couple levels or seeing what was over the side of a bridge down below. This however was offset when you notice the enemies you fight don’t have much variety to them and you really just kill them all with one attack.

The music does set the stage nicely though and I never grew tired of it. More than once I found myself simply jumping around and nodding my head to whatever the instruments were, I’m not sure what they were but they sounded like maybe flutes to me.

The game did have moments of being harder than I would have expected admittedly. Many of the reasons were simply because jumping was hard to manage without a darker shadow as a reference point or because once I spun to kill an enemy and destroyed the crystal we were standing in because it didn’t look like a crystal. Another time I simply walked off an edge thinking I was walking into water. The water one might be on me admittedly. As a fan of the Soulsborne series however I can’t complain about a challenge.

When all is said and done I enjoyed my time with this game,and my five year old thought Hana was adorable. She wasn’t so good at the game, maybe don’t let small children play. But at $4.99 (US) fans of platformers should grab it. 7/10

I first mentioned Bones of Halloween Out October 28th when I heard about it and the guys over at Ratalaika Games and Petite Games were cool enough to send me a copy to check out which is always appreciated. Huge thank you to them for always hooking me up when they can.

The concept they floated out here is simple. You wake up in a forest, you will be attacked by pumpkin-headed monsters and your job is to kill everything until they kill you. As you kill these creatures they will drop money and after you kill so many you get to pick a random card. This card will have a random positive or negative effect on you and your game.

This thing doesn’t need to exist.

The creatures all come in different variations, some will shoot arrows at you, and some are faster with swords or will try to run up to you and explode. As you saw above one annoying one shoots lasers out of its eyes and it’s annoyingly hard to hit while not getting hit with its laser eyes.

This one also should have stayed in hell.

This game cost $5, and as such you have to know going in this isn’t going to be some graphically stunning game with a grand soundtrack. Both are good, you are getting better than what you pay for in both departments. The game also comes with an impressive amount of game modes, enemy variety, and weapons types for the price point. I would be amazed if you haven’t paid more for games offering less variety. The challenges were my favorite part, but there is one more thing to note. Platinum hunters will LOVE this game because it is a super quick platinum to get. You can probably do it in about half an hour.

Admittedly I am always happy to make things explode.

The game is fun, it doesn’t exactly have a ton of replay value, however. With only one level you will quickly see pretty much all there is to see. It is well worth the small price it is to play. I definitely suggest anyone looking for quick trophies or just something cheap to play on Halloween pick this one up. 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.