Category: Game reviews

Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders – Highlands Playstation 5 Review

Yesterday, you may have seen my review for full game review for Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders. Megagon Industries was also kind enough to send me a copy of the Highlands DLC to check out. I won’t be talking much about the game itself here because I recently covered that; instead, we will be discussing is the DLC is worth the $8 price tag.

First, the new slopes. There are 4 new trails with 2 slopes each. All of them add new challenges and times to beat. If you read my review, you would know I spent most of my time smashing into trees once again. I won’t hold my lack of skill against the game, however.

For those who can play the game well, all new leaderboards to master and climb. You won’t see me on them, but you guys feel free to set all sorts of new records.

This DLC also comes with new cosmetic armor to unlock, for example, the armor my character wears. It doesn’t offer any real protection, but it looks hilarious. So does the kilt. This brings us to the conclusion: is it worth $8? Truthfully, it all comes down to do you enjoy this game. Despite my crashing more than a toddler left alone with his Halloween candy, and the sugar wearing off, I am still having a lot of fun trying to figure out the best way to shave a few extra seconds off my time. A few extra trails and cosmetics are a nice add-on. It surely won’t be for everyone, however. It is a 7/10 DLC that only the most avid fans will want to pick up at full price. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Frostpunk 2 Fractured Utopias DLC – PS5 Review

Some of you may remember that not long ago, I covered the release of Frostpunk 2 PS5 Review. 11 Bit Studios was kind enough to send me the Fractured Utopias DLC on PS5. The question is, will this be worth the $13 price tag? Let’s explore that question.

For starters, everything comes into play during the Utopia Builder mode. So if you don’t play this mode, you are already out of luck. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see why you wouldn’t play what is basically the main mode of the game, but it is worth noting that this is where all the content is. Right from the start, you will notice you have the option to start with a faction, of which there are 8 new ones in total to discover.

Each faction also has its very own skill tree to make your way through. This alone will add hours of gameplay, making your way through each one can be a challenge, and it leaves plenty to see. I find this alone well worth the money.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is new. Each faction has new variants on housing, unique laws, HUBS, abilities, and more. So much so that after hours of playing, I haven’t seen them all. I have also seen at least 40 new narrative events, and the store page claims there are over 100.

The only disappointing part of this is that we were only given one new map to play on. The two new premium tales, Doomsayers and Plague, are nice, however.

At the end of the day, this is a very nice DLC. We have all paid far more for DLC and gotten far less. $13 is a fair price for everything it gives. I would have liked one or two more maps, but I can live without them. It is an 8/10 DLC that fans of the game should definitely pick up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sleep Awake Playstation 5 Review

Sleep Awake is a psychological horror game from Blumhouse Games that they were kind enough to send me a copy of to check out. Now, most of you can probably figure out that Blumhouse Games is connected to Blumhouse Films. With that knowledge, you can probably figure you are in for a ride.

The story is simple: you play as Katja, a citizen of the last known city on Earth. Everyone is attempting to stay awake to avoid The Hush. The Hush is a weird phenomenon where anyone who sleeps disappears. Everyone in the world suffers from sleep deprivation; many can’t tell the difference between reality and make-believe. Some are running different types of scientific experiments to stay awake, and others swear pain is the saving grace for staying awake.

I won’t go more into the story than that because this is a game you HAVE to experience with as little knowledge as possible to truly enjoy. Suffice it to say if you see the trailers or enjoy Blumhouse movies, there is a good chance you will enjoy the game.

Instead, I want to focus on the gameplay and music. First, the music. Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails does music for this bad boy, and it is truly worth listening to. Each track lends itself to truly making the environment as eerie as possible when it needs to be, and when it doesn’t need to be, you feel like the world is as empty as you would imagine it to be. It isn’t the best music in gaming lately, but it is up there.

The gameplay itself is nice. The Puzzles aren’t hard for no reason, but they also don’t insult your intelligence. The maps leave you with room to explore without feeling empty and needlessly big. Stealth sections can be a challenge, but I never felt like the game shoehorned me into following an exact route or getting killed by a cheap enemy. Speaking of death, I never died and lost a ton of progress.

The game admittedly isn’t for everyone, but for people in this niche crowd, it is an 8/10 experience. So turn down the lights, and prepare to get creeped out. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dungeon Rampage Steam Review

Some of you may remember the good old days of flash games; Facebook was full of them. Dungeon Rampage was quite popular, and it has returned to Steam. Gamebreaking Studios was kind enough to send me a copy to review.

The game is quite simple: 1-4 people hack and slash their way through levels to find gold and treasure chests. You can use that gold to buy keys to open those chests to get powerful weapons and items. The experience you gain from this will also help you level up, and each time you level up, you will gain 5 gems. Gems can be used to buy new characters and cosmetic items for them, such as outfits.

This is where the flaw comes into an otherwise decently fun game for $10. The original version of the game was free to play, and like many of those games, it was essentially pay to progress. If you weren’t willing to sink potentially 100 or more hours into the game, you weren’t unlocking everything. The real money aspect has been completely removed; you buy the game, and you can play it as much as you want.

The issue is that they do not seem to have rebalanced the game. After the first hour, you will have more chest than you can open. Without the option to buy gold as the game intended, you start collecting more than you can open. Relying on leveling up and daily rewards to get gems also puts you on an extremely slow path to unlocking characters. The archer character is the cheapest to unlock, costing only 150 gems, which isn’t bad. The next 2, however, cost a whopping 800 each. That’s roughly 350 levels, which is way too long to be playing a game that doesn’t have a ton to offer to begin with.

The game does function as advertised, if that is worth playing or not is completely debatable, and I legitimately worry they will eventually turn it back into a pay-to-progress situation. It is a 5/10 for me. It functions, but I can’t recommend it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Playstation 5 Remaster Review

Dragon Quest 3 HD 2-2D Remake is one of those games that truly show how these games should be done. They don’t try to change the original, they simply improve the orginal by updating it for a modern audience while keeping what people loved about the initial release.

For starters, you will need to create your own character, take a little quiz, and find out what your personality is. This will help determine your stat growth. When you make your group, you will essentially be assigned random ones as you choose a vocation for each member. Don’t worry, there are plenty of ways to change these during your adventure, and you can even swap out people pretty easily. I definitely recommend keeping a monster rangler with you at all times, however. I didn’t do this, and finding friendly monsters to help me in the arena became annoying. There is an item known as Musk that can help replace them, and a move the thief learns also helps, but it is easier to just have a wrangler.

The story itself is nice, but it is the typical you are the child of a great hero and go on a quest to defeat a great evil. You will spend part of the game finding orbs and following in your father’s footsteps. I won’t say more than that because I don’t want to spoil anything, but most of you will already know where this story is going.

The combat is also a typical turn-based adventure, but it is also one of the more challenging games in the series. The difficulty spikes can be brutal if you aren’t expecting them, and when you change vocations for your other characters, they restart at level one and lose half of their stats. This is a great way for people to build an extensive spell and ability list, and a character that has reached level 20 in two different vocations will absolutely be stronger than a character that has reached level 30 in one. (It takes a similar amount of experience to do this.) So it is worth doing this, but choosing when and how is important.

As always, killing metal slimes before they run away is important for leveling

If you had any reservations about picking up the HD remakes of Dragon Quest, lay them to bed and pick them up. They are fantastic, and are easily up there with Suikoden 1 HD Remaster Review in quality of Remakes and Remasters. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Psychonauts

Hasn’t everybody wanted to be a superhero at least once in there lives? Raz has big dreams of becoming a Psychonaut, even going so far as to sneak into the Whispering Heights Camp for young Psychonauts in training. He was only a few days at the camp before his parents come for him, leaving him precious time to master his powers and uncover a dark mystery threatening the campers and instructors and maybe even the world. Will Raz rise to the occasion?

If any game deserved a modern day facelift or remake, it’s this precious gem. I absolutely love the insane mix of shockingly deep psychological storytelling and dark humor in a pretty complex and creative platformer. This game is a giant acid trip and I love it. Raz is a interesting kid amongst other weird, funny, tragic, or damn creepy characters- seriously the Milkman creeped me out more than most modern horror monsters. The worldbuilding is fantastic and I was really invested in the lore. It was so cool being able to jump into other characters brains, exploring entirely new universes, including bosses.

Unfortunately this game has some deep drawbacks. While extremely creative, that partially leads to how obtuse a lot of the goals and pathfinding are. Way to often I found myself relying on walkthroughs, scratching my head when seeing where I was supposed to go or what the hell I needed. Another big issue I had was items cost too damn much. In the Milkman section, if you don’t have a certain tool, get ready for the game to come to a stop and you have to grind to afford it. The powers are a mixed bag but when they are a blast, they are awesome.

In the end, I highly recommend it but I urge you to stay patient. Originally this game came from PS2/ original X Box era so a lot of the modern gaming comforts aren’t there, and like all platformers, there’s going to be some frustration. Stick around and you will be rewarded with a cool world of memorable characters and one of the most unique games I might’ve ever played. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

So this is the 3rd go around for doing Lego Star Wars as a whole. I loved the classic PS2 games that covered both the original and newly finished prequel trilogies (damn I’m old). I never played the Clone Wars game. When they remade and added the sequel trilogy’s content, I felt nostalgia nibbling at my heels again.

The game is packed with Star Wars nostalgia and Lego’s whacky humor I found myself chuckling at a few times. The gameplay is pretty solid. I like that they added actually third person shooting mechanics as well as added some complexity to the Jedi/Sith characters. The game is full of open segments where you can explore, solve puzzles, find side quests, collectibles, or just break stuff. They made an upgrading system that breaks down by character type as well as overall upgrades that I didn’t use often but it’s not a bad way to introduce kids to RPG mechanics. Calling this game “Baby’s first RPG” isn’t too far off.

The only complaint I have is the boss fights are a tad too repetitive. They aren’t bad, and I wasn’t expecting Elden Ring by any means, but I was able to autopilot most of the boss encounters. It could be said for the game as a whole but it never got annoying or took me out of it.

In the end, Skywalker Saga is a solid Lego game worth picking up if you find it on sale. Alot of your enjoyment will come from how much you’re into Star Wars and if you like the Lego games. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) Steam Review

My Wife Threw Out My Card Collection (So I Bought a Dump to Find Them All) might be the game with the longest name I’ve ever reviewed, and was sent to me by the nice people over at Polden Publishing.

The game is quite simple, your wife tossed out your prized card collection, so now you are combing through the garbage dump you bought to find them all. So you spend your time filling a garbage bag with bottles, ammo boxes, and various other garbage, then tossing them into what appears to be a mimic for money. When you run out of energy, you grab some beer from a nearby vending machine to get more.

Every so often, you will come across something of real value that you can sell in the online store for a bit more money than the garbage sells for. This can be used to buy various upgrades, such as a bigger bag, more energy, better beer, or even a dog. This will let you rummage through your garbage piles faster, so you can find more cards or valuables.

You can also occasionally find birds and return them to their nest. The game loop can be fun, and honestly, for $8, you will get some decent time and laughs out of it. Nothing about the game is groundbreaking, but it is still a fun little title. Graphically, it is cute, and the sound isn’t bad at all. It is a solid 7/10 title that will give you a good bit of fun for the money you spend, and that is really all you can ask for. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage Steam Review

Pirates Outlaws 2: Heritage is an upcoming deckbuilder from Fabled Game Studios, for which they were kind enough to send me an early copy. You play as a young child who survived a catastrophe and is following in the footsteps of their parents to be a famous pirate adventurer.

Your first test, fight chickens

All the usual tropes of these games are here: build a deck, travel on a map to different locations, fight monsters that grow stronger over time, and try not to die. This time, it is all pirate-themed. Of course, you will eventually die, and when you do, you can spend gold on perks to come back stronger than ever and do better on your next run.

There are some added things this time around, however. You can get some different companions to help out, for example, my first one was a chicken. I picked him because he was cute. There is a black market that allows you to ban cards you don’t like using, or a workshop that enables you to upgrade cards, making your starting cards stronger.

Another nice touch to the game is that you have to manage supplies throughout your run as you sail around. This isn’t some huge issue; it isn’t a survival game after all. Pay attention and make stops here and there to restock, and you are fine. You can also heal in much the same way. The downside to doing this is that it takes time, and elite enemies can disappear while you do this, costing you valuable rewards.

The biggest downside to this game, honestly, is that it is fun and can be challenging. The game doesn’t really bring anything new to the table or do anything we haven’t seen before. It also doesn’t do anything better than any of the other 50 games in the genre already available. To give credit where it is due, it also doesn’t do any of it worse. The game is fun, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of the first game in the series or the genre as a whole. It also isn’t a bad starting point for people wanting to get into the genre. But if you are specifically looking for something new and fresh within the genre, this isn’t it. It is still a solid 7/10 game that’s worth playing. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.