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.
MIO: Memories In Orbit is developed by Douze Dixièmes, a small French studio previously known for their acclaimed debut, Shady Part of Me. True to their creative philosophy, the team has crafted MIO in a deeply artisanal way, building the entire experience atop a proprietary, in-house engine developed specifically for the project. This approach has allowed the studio to shape every aspect of the game’s mechanics, art direction and atmosphere with complete freedom.
Douze Dixièmes also maintains a seasonal (quarterly) blog where the team shares insights into studio life, their evolving creative process, and behind-the-scenes making-of content. Follow their journey here.
Cast light into an obscured past
Showcasing more of its unforgiving danger and atmospheric wonder, MIO: Memories In Orbit’s new trailer delves further into the game’s mesmerizing sci-fi world, which blends a mysterious narrative, challenging action gameplay, and a spellbinding art direction.
Come January 20, players will uncover it all as MIO, a nimble robot who awakens alone aboard the Vessel — a vast, drifting spaceship left in ruin. Once maintained by AI caretakers known as the Pearls, the Vessel is now overrun by wild vegetation and malfunctioning machines. With the ship facing imminent shutdown, MIO must explore its labyrinthine depths, recover its lost memories, and uncover the truth behind the collapse.
Start your journey now with the acclaimed demo
MIO: Memories In Orbit’s 2-3-hour-long demo is still live on Steam and the Microsoft Store. Experience the game’s beginning, with a secret area to discover and a major challenge to overcome.
MIO: Memories In Orbit launches on Jan. 20, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Pre-orders are live today on Steam, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 — with a 10% discount* available on all platforms. Pre-orders on Nintendo Switch 2 will open on December 22.
Romancing SaGa -Minstrel Song- Remastered International was sent to me to check out by Red Art Games and, of course, Square Enix. It is always appreciated. It is also important to note that if you already own the 2022 version of Minstrel Saga and want to access new things released in the international version of the game:
Features
Localization in French, German, Italian and Spanish (exclusive to the International edition)
Full HD graphical update
Schiele, Marina, Monica and Flammar can now be recruited
Enhanced and more difficult bosses
High speed mode
Mini Maps
New Game+ mode
Voices in either Japanese or English
You will need to buy this separately. Now on to my actual review.
The story itself depends on which of the 8 characters you pick to start, they are all different, and how hard they are to start changes quite a bit. In fact, there are a number of guides for older versions of the game, and I strongly advise you to look one of them up if you aren’t familiar with this series. It might save you hours of headache and possibly needing to start over, as certain characters are very much intended for second and third play-throughs.
Another thing to know, and this is a thing that you may love, and you may hate it. Grinding will not only help you raise stats and learn moves, but it will also increase things called your battle rank and your event rank. This will mean your current gear will not be able to handle the monsters that scale with your level. Worse, as your event rank climbs, some quests become completely locked. Those rewards will disappear unless you start a new game. This now makes the game even harder and forces you into endgame content that you aren’t equipped to do. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t fight at all, but many RPGs allow you to outlevel your problems, and this is not one of them.
This brings us to graphics. Graphically, this is probably the best way to play this game, but it is still very behind modern times. They feel very slow and out of place compared to modern games, and honestly, while they are better than ever, they still look rough.
I will say this: the Saga series as a whole has always been a series that you either love or hate. This game won’t suddenly make you a fan. Fans of the series, however, will love this game, and if you missed out on the 2022 release, this is a 2nd chance to pick it up with some great add-ons that made the best version even better. Personally, I didn’t enjoy my time with it; I felt it was a 6/10 game that was better left in the past. Fans of the series, however, will absolutely disagree with me, and I am fine with that. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Pathea Games, the studio behind the beloved life-sim series My Time, is delighted to unveil ‘The God Slayer’ – a new third-person, open-world steampunk fantasy, roleplaying game in development for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox platforms.
Enter an Eastern-inspired steampunk metropolis where gods known as Celestials reign with a divine fist! In this premium open-world RPG, you are an Elemancer who refuses to bow to his creators. Infused with elemental powers and a heart of vengeance, you will dethrone them all. You will rise to be The God Slayer.
For a more complete feature rundown please see below:
A Reactive Steampunk Metropolis Lose yourself in a unique fantasy steampunk setting, enhanced with Eastern flair. Set foot in the capital city of the Zhou Kingdom, an urban metropolis that is experiencing a technological revolution, with an assortment of airships, steamboats, monorails, and steam vehicles. A fortunate few in the upper class savor the miracle of air-conditioned homes and mechanical washing drums, while in the poor neighborhoods the vast majority still toil in soot-blackened factories or bow beneath the weight of noble privilege.
Customisable Elemental Combat Combine water, earth, metal and fire to create powerful attacks and weaponry. Use these abilities to bend the environment to your whim and in direct combat. Experiment with different strategic options and create your own fully customisable fighting style to dominate enemies big and small. Every encounter is a challenge, every battle a chance to unleash thrilling elemental combos that scratch your creative itch.
Confront Challenges Your Way Missions in The God Slayer will allow players to approach them in multiple ways. For instance, players are free to attack all enemies head-on, they can bribe guards to look the other way, they can activate elemental powers to create diversions / distract enemies, they can pathfind usually hidden side routes and utilize other means to achieve their objective.
A Story of Vengeance Embark on a thrilling story-driven campaign filled with interesting characters and intriguing twists and turns. Choose your allies, inspire people across the city, and overthrow scheming gods to bring justice to the world.
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.
Indie team Megagon have announced a delay to the upcoming launch of their PC & Game Pass hit Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders on the PS5. Originally slated to launch on December 3rd, the title will now be pushed back – but the good news is, it shouldn’t take long.
‘We were very set on the December 3rd date, but unfortunately a last minute bug has forced us to delay,’ said Megagon co-founder Daniel Helbig. ‘Me and the team are truly sorry for the disappointment. Rest assured we are working hard on a fix, and are optimistic that the game will be released the following week.’
We will be back with the official release date ASAP!
Thankfully, the delay shouldn’t be long. Until then, enjoy the trailer, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
From Blumhouse Games and developer EYES OUT, led by Cory Davis (Spec Ops: The Line) and Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails), SLEEP AWAKE blurs the boundaries between sleep and death.
In a desperate attempt to remain awake, the denizens of the last known city on Earth are reaching a panic crisis of reckless experiments in their effort to avoid The HUSH, the inexplicable disappearance of those who sleep. Playing as Katja, players must survive the devotees of various depraved death cults, try to stay awake and solve the puzzles of this mysterious world.
Key features include:
A psychedelic trip of the senses: Hand-crafted environments combine with a stunning color palette, unique FMV integration, and bending light to submerge the player in a cosmic horror like they’ve never seen before.
A world where sleep means extinction: Step into a unique setting, where an unfathomable phenomenon means that humans are disappearing when they fall asleep. The result is a warring world where dogmatic factions insist they have the one true solution for staying awake.
Arresting audio experience: Musician Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails has crafted an auditory experience to create heart-pumping moments and exhilarating dream-like sequences.
Survive to save the ones you love: Stealth and wits are your only weapons against the warped minds and bodies of humanity’s last remaining citizens. Avoid their twisted experiments, solve the puzzles of a distorted reality, and save the remaining good in the world.
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.
As some of you may be aware, not long Free League Publishing sent me a PDF of their Starter set for Vaesen. If you want more details about what is in that, you can read about it here. A few weeks after that, I got home from work to a package on my doorstep, and it was the physical version of that same starter set and the core rule book. Now it is an excellent starter set, but I got to wondering, can someone with no experience playing this game, truly get a group together and play this game? So I gathered the women in my life together, a case of our prefered alchol, and got started.
Beautiful cover art for the core rule book. I didn’t use this for my experiment
The first thing I did was have everyone blindly choose one of the 5 playable characters that the set came with. My daughter decided to play as a rugged Soldier named Fronz who couldn’t read. I don’t know why she decided he couldn’t read, but I just went with it. The other ladies chose the 2 ladies in the group; they have names, but admittedly, that isn’t important. By not important, I mean I forgot their names.
The starter set we used
Now, the Castle of Gyllemcreutz story that comes with the set is a great starting point that introduces you to the basics of the game. I don’t want to get too in-depth with what is involved with this story because it is easy to give too much away. Much of the story involves investigating a large castle to find clues on how to solve the mystery involving ghostly lights and missing people.
Dice rolls are all based on rolling a D6; players need to roll a certain number of 6’s to succeed. How many completely depends on how difficult the task is. There is also very little combat in this module, but the person running it could easily change that if they chose to. Nothing is stopping them, and all the information needed to do it is included.
But how did my players do? Well, they never were confused on how to play; they made their way through the castle with very little coaching besides trying to get them to stop goofing off, and the big finale of the whole thing was figured out before we figured out how to finish off a case of alcohol in 2 hours between the 4 of us.
I would absolutely say this starter kit provides everything you need to get you started playing Vaesen with limited or no experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Remember when you got hyped seeing the iconic headline “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” followed by the legendary boom of John William’s score that promised adventure, new worlds, and the unforgettable yet simple clash of good vs evil? Depressed yet? I went back to the good old days to experience a classic (before the dark times, before the real Empire came) for the first time.
We play as Jaden, one of many young force sensitives on our way to Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. As an upcoming Jedi, we go across the galaxy in various missions fighting the last remnants of the Empire as well as the looming threat of a Sith cult trying to revive a ancient god-level, forging our own path as either a Guardian of peace or weapon of the dark side. What will you choose?
I’ve lost lost count how many people have told me either Academy or Jedi Outcast were their favorite Star Wars games and honestly, I can see why. The game is peak Star Wars in so many ways, full of the characters, weapons, locations and music we love. The story isn’t too complicated but effective with diverging paths I appreciated for some replayability. Most of the gameplay holds up remarkably well in places. The FPS features hold up very well and combining guns with force powers can be a blast at time. The saber combat definitely takes some getting used to but it does become intoxicating once you do. Academy and Outcast walked so Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order could run. I do also appreciate you getting to customize not only your lightsaber but your style, whether single, dual wield, or double bladed (I went green and orange dual wield).
Unfortunately, this game does show its age in many ways. The game has some really unpredictable difficulty spikes. There’s moments towards the end that pissed me off because dirty enemy placement, obtuse pathfinding, or bullshit environmental deaths. You’d better get used to manually saving because their are checkpoints, but they’re sporadic and sometimes dying means a hell of a fall back and a long stretch of progress gone. Younger gamers will also hate that there’s no map, waypoints, autosaves, tutorials, and a loose reminder of your current objective. There’s one mission though that absolutely killed the entire game for me- the damn speeder bike mission. It’s nearly unplayable. The bike is nearly uncontrollable, the game clips out between speed and slow- mo, there’s a jump that killed me too many times. I almost rage-quit the whole game because of that one level alone.
In the end, Jedi Academy is a fun blast from the past for Star Wars fans. A nice reminder of better times, before the era of the Mouse set in. It definitely has it’s faults and shows its 20+ year age but with patience, a little help from Youtube, and your favorite booze for that damn speeder bike level, you’ll get through. I recommend picking it up for a good time overall. May the Force be with you and the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 