Category: Game reviews

Farming Simulator 15 (PS4)

Some of you may remember a while back, got curious and bought Farming Simulator 17 (Xbox One) to see what it was like. Well, Farming Simulator 15 was on sale and I had to see what that game was like and not surprisingly it is quite a bit like Farming Simulator 17. There are of course some added tools, crops and animals and the graphics are better but the game is basically the same, even at least one of the farms seems exactly the same.

Now clearly I could be wrong, there may be slight differences as I didn’t go and examine things carefully but they are at least quite similar. There as also some things missing that I liked from 17, such as the ability to tie things down on your trailers. This, of course, isn’t a deal breaker and if you simply want to see if you like the genre, by all means, pick it up on sale. The 2 are similar enough I don’t see a reason to purchase one over the other if you simply want to experiment and see if you like it.

That being said, if you played 15 and never played 17 and are looking to upgrade I would suggest just buying  Farming Simulator 19. I haven’t played it yet but these two are so similar I can’t imagine 19 being vastly different to the point you would dislike it but like these. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cultist Simulator

Cultist Simulator is a rather interesting game. In fact, it is actually a rather interesting review to try to write since to tell you how to play the game in itself would actually mess up a huge part of the game. The game is a card game, you use the card to make choices. Each card is used to do a different thing such as go to work or study. You will need to manage your money, health, and even your mental health, or your dread. Yes, you can go insane and die. You can die in a whole host of ways actually, then pick up as a new character. Once I died and restarted as a detective that had a file on my last character.

This all seems pretty vague, and the reason it sounds vague is telling you too much would actually ruin the game. The idea of the game is mostly figuring out how and what to do and what happens when you do it. I have included a video so you can see it in action, but I suggest just trying it for yourself. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Portal Knights (PS4)

Portal Knights is one of this month’s free games and honestly, I wanted to enjoy this one. It is kind of like Minecraft except with a purpose I can get behind. You build things, fight enemies and explore. That his more or less the entire purpose of the game, as opposed to Minecraft where you simply build stuff. So I was excited to be able to do the same thing for a reason.

The sad fact is the game just wasn’t fun or good. I was constantly hitting slowdowns, framerate drops and being disconnected. Not just once but many times over various attempts. This saddens me because the bit I got to play was fun. Regardless the game is free so feel free to try it, and I hope your luck it better than mine. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Meeple Station (PC)

Meeple Station developed by Vox games and punished by Modularity can be purchased on Steam. The premise is quite simple, build a space station, mine resources, trade with other ships, increase the size of your station and crew, repeat. It sounds easy, but it does take quite a bit of effort and time to learn. You will also be fending off space pirates and, well squids. They will both honestly screw your day up. Honestly, there isn’t much to the game, yet.

Some of the future promised content however is quite impressive if true. They are talking about a co-op mode that would be amazing for this type of game as its rarely done and even rarer is that it is done well. There is also talk that they will be implementing a way to build your own trade ships. The game is in early access and they claim it is only about 20% done which if true means there is a ton more stuff coming in. definitely, do not count this as a complete review but as more of a preview combined with a review as I will be revisiting this time in the future. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Marvel Ultimate Alliance

ultimate alliance

Before Marvel’s Spider-man (PS4) , Marvel was pretty hit or miss with video games. So when we got a game that pretty much promised an Avengers level of epic, spanning most of the Marvel universe.

Ultimate Alliance is a huge dungeon crawler that begins with a massive attack on S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters by the nefarious Dr Victor Von Doom. In his final desperate moments, Nick Fury has non other than Captain America, Thor, Wolverine, and the friendly neighborhood Spider-man to help push back the assault. As the story moves on we go to venture into Atlantis, Asgard, and Hell facing off against Doom’s army, Mephisto’s hellish army, Loki, and even Galactus  as you’re joined by Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Ms Marvel, Spider-Woman, Ghost Rider, Dr Strange as well as many others. Can all these heroes triumph over the machinations of Dr Doom?

I have to admit, I’m not a fan of dungeon crawlers but there were times I was addicted as hell to this game. When you’re knee deep in badass robots, demons, or mythical creatures with a four man group of your favorite heroes, it can be really sweet. The roster is impressive for it’s time and I like the bonuses you get from putting certain characters together like the F4 or X men. What puts me off is how unbalanced some of the characters were: shouldn’t Iron Man or Dr Strange be way stronger than Deadpool or Human Torch? Certain characters were way stronger than they should’ve been while the OP characters were toned way down. Game-play gets monotonous but the sights and cameos help dilute the fact. My favorite thing may be the beautiful loading screens dedicated to each character. In the end, if your a Marvel fan or fan of those kinds of games like Diablo, this is worth a shot and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (PS4)

As always with these things, I like to be upfront and say a huge thank you to the people over at Bandai Namco for the review copy of this fine game. It is always a huge honor to be chosen, and this one meant a lot more than normal to me since I loved this game on the Xbox 360 and I was dying to see how the Definitive Edition was.

The story is pretty much standard JRP fanfare, you start playing as Yuri, right after the town water system controlled by a blastia goes haywire. Blastia controls certain objects of the world and help humanity in various ways. This will lead you to chase down a thief and into the castle. You will meet a woman, Estelle. She will want your help escaping the castle and warning a knight and your childhood friend, Flynn, that he is in danger.

The story goes off from here and eventually leads in a different direction but admittedly I do not want to spoil what is, in my opinion, one of the best stories of its original release era. It stands up pretty solid in 2019 as well to be honest.

As a remaster the game looks and sounds great, but it does have a couple issues. For starters, Yuri is voiced by two different people. Neither voice actor is bad but is extremely distracting and even odd to suddenly be listening to Yuri with a different voice than have it pop back. Also, there was this.

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition_20190118201215
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As you can see both voice bubbles are coming from Yuri, tho one of them is Karol speaking. Again, this isn’t a major mistake but it was a bit odd to see and seemed a bit careless to have not fixed. Another issue is the DLC you can get with it essentially breaks the game. It gives you access to high-level gear and items from the very beginning and gives you about 40 levels for all your characters allowing you to just walk through the game. So unless you are having a really hard time or just want to see the story I really encourage you not to use it.

None of that, however, is a deal breaker. The voice thing is annoying but tolerable and without the items, the combat is challenging and rewarding when it needs to be but fair. The artes system functions well and each new move feels like its own reward. All in all, I agree with the other reviews I have seen. This game is a solid title worth your purchase, which I will post amazon links for at the bottom. 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

PS4

Xbox One

Switch

Celebrity Deathmatch: the game

deathmatch game

When we were kids, didn’t all of us get a bit giddy when our favorite movies or shows got a game? Later in life, we see the ploy and can see it as the usual cash grab it is. There are exceptions of course, like Alien: Isolation but those feats of effort and love are rare. And then we get the game for Celebrity Deathmatch

It’s a basic fighter with an incredibly small roster and very limited play ability. A problem with a game like this, based on celebrities is that its going to feel dated and here is a prime example: we got celebs like Anna Nicole Smith, Mr T, Marilyn Manson, Ms Cleo, and the Frankenstein monster to name a few; it’s also a point I have to say I played this in 2004 and even then it felt pretty dated then, let alone how ancient it would feel now. There are some really funny movements, especially Ron Jeremy’s moveset and sicking Ann Nicole’s dog on people to hump there leg’s. The controls are crap; you mash buttons and hope for the best. The weapons are meh except for the chainsaw which is nice for hacking limbs off. There is some gore, but nowhere what you would expect sadly. The campaign is a series of episodes, 3 fights each for 6 episodes total so you can finish the game super quick. In the end, the game ain’t really worth it for fans or gamers and it’s worth skipping. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn

evil dead 2

As much as I love the original Evil Dead I admit, I never really set out to follow Ash’s further adventures. I wasn’t a fan of how the series slipped into comedy at a slope but I had a chance to sit down and judge for myself if I was being too hasty. Was I right?

We begin the story with an alternate retelling of events from the first movie: a much more rugged, manly Ash and his love Linda crash a vacant cabin one picturesque weekend only to stumble on the book of the dead and the book proceeds to take her over. Where the last film leaves over, the demons won’t let Ash leave the cabin and Linda won’t stay dead. His mind is slipping as even his own flesh turns against him, forcing him to chop his own hand off with a chainsaw. To make matters worse, the daughter of the professor who translated the book and set this all into action is going to the cabin to see what became of her parents. can Ash pull it together and live to see dawn?

While nowhere as creepy as the first movie, I do love how off the rails it goes. This movie’s greatest strength is just how creative a lot of the scenes are. My favorite maybe when Ash is trying to chase his severed hand and when he finally shoots it through the wall and he gets sprayed with what seems to be hundreds of gallons of blood, only to have time reset like it never happened.  I did laugh a lot but I give the movie credit, it knows how to show some creepy shit and have it feel like slapstick comedy. Ash is a great horror icon and dare I say- groovy. I love the ending which sets up the batshit insanity that is Army of Darkness. Evil Dead 2 is a damn good horror comedy I recommend to new commers to the series and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Chronicles Of Quiver Dick

So I follow a guy on Twitter named CrankageGames that makes some games and post some funny stuff. So I figured he is a good guy and I would buy one to check out and this name caught my attention. The Chronicles Of Quiver Dick so, I headed over to Steam and picked it up.

A few things people should know going in, the game is relatively short. Considering the game cost $2.99 if you were expecting a 30-hour adventure you had expectations that were far too high. Another thing is the game is made with RPG Maker, MV if I am correct. I use the program myself but to nowhere near as much skill. That is the main point here, RPG Maker games get a bad rep for being horrible games which is kind of fair, for every good one out there, there are some that seem like broken cash grabs. This is not the case here. Much of the assets used and music used are not stock RPG maker. The characters are crafted not lazily thrown together.

All of that means nothing if the story isn’t well written or good. Well assuming you don’t mind dick jokes and profanity, you are in for a good time. The story is a parody of How I Met Your Mother, but Old man Dick and Young man Dick will spend plenty of time talking to each other, in fact, their banter may be the best part of the game. I won’t go into any more detail because I don’t want to spoil the story or best parts but about 10 minutes into the game I had decided it was already worth the 3 bucks I spent on it.

The combat is also nice. Simple turn-based battles. There are no random encounters to try to pump up the amount of time you are playing, simply characters you fight at specific spots most of which are challenging but fair. Even here tho there is plenty of humor to be found.

At the end of the day this game is entertaining and funny, from start to finish the key goal was obviously to make the player laugh, and it succeeds nicely with plenty of pop culture reference and even some of the Patreon members seem to have gotten a shout out in game. This one should not be missed, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Resident Evil 2 Demo

30 minutes isn’t a ton of time to play a demo, but it is more than enough to get a feel for what this game will be. What it will be is a Resident Evil game. Having played the Dreamcast version of the game and not this demo I can honestly say I am looking forward to it. From the who the hell thought of these puzzles to the for the love of god where the hell did all my ammo go, the game is classic Resident Evil. At least the first 30 minutes are. I found the get to a door in the entry was all the way up on the upper floor for example.

Graphically the game looks amazing, the pictures in this I snapped in the game on my PS4 pro.

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All in all the demo is pretty solid, tho, while I understand the limiting the demo time as opposed to a checkpoint, was rather annoying. It would have been nice to have been able to take my time and just look around. Regardless, go have fun with it and may the gaming gods bring you glory.