Dark Quest 4 Playstation 5 Review

Dark Quest 4 has just been released on PlayStation, and Brain Seal was nice enough to send me a copy to check out. I always appreciate this, and after spending some time with this one, I have some pretty mixed feelings about it.

Let’s get started with what the game is. It is a turn-based strategy game based on the Hero Quest board game. The game does a fantastic job of showing this from the very start. The story is told in such a way that you feel like a dungeon master is walking you through the entire thing. You build your party from pre-set adventurers, and can even have a friend join you in couch co-op.

Each party member feels differently; they all have their own ideals and reasons for fighting. The camp itself is even set up in such a way that it truly feels like one would expect a forward camp to feel as you make your way through Gulak’s evil horde.

As you make your way through a dungeon, your characters are moved as if on a board; if you ever played a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you know what I mean. Some characters are better at avoiding traps, for example, and the more speedy characters can quickly outpace slower ones. Slow-moving characters are usually able to tank more hits; however, your wizards can deal more damage but are quite easy to kill. All of this sounds fantastic, and it is really well put together.

The story playing out in a sort of storybook manner is also a great addition to the game. I loved listening to it play out as it was being written on the pages. I truly wish more games would take this approach. The game, however, has some areas where it just quickly became less fun to play.

For example, I found myself dreading exploration. My characters are taking turns while no enemies are around is fine on smaller maps, but on larger maps, this is time-consuming. To make matters worse, when every enemy is dead, I now have to slowly move every character to the stairs to move to the next level.

Having to re-equip potions after each time I delve into the dungeons also serves no real purpose. It adds nothing to the gameplay and doesn’t respect my time or effort.

The game is an ok 6/10, I didn’t hate my time with it, and it does a lot of things right. But I can think of better games to spend $20 on. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed, but I don’t see this one making new fans either. I won’t steer people away from buying it; it has very positive reviews on Steam and is sitting at just over 4 stars on PS5. Fans will be happy, as I said, but people getting into it will want to wait for a sale. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Vaesen Starter Set Review

Today I have something a little different for you guys. The people over at Free League Publishing sent me a copy of the new Starter Set for Vaesen, a tabletop game to check out, and after getting to sift through what is a relatively large set, I have to say, it is pretty impressive. For around $35 U.S. Dollars you get

  • Condensed rules for action skill tests, combat, damage, and fear.
  • The complete introductory mystery The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz, letting the players explore the headquarters of the Society itself.
  • Codex Occultum, the Society’s old journal of vaesen to be used as a resource for the players.
  • Five pre-generated and illustrated player characters.
  • A large full-color map with the Mythic North on one side and the town of Upsala on the other.
  • A map of Castle Gyllencreutz.
  • Three handout sheets.
  • Five rules reference cards.
  • Ten initiative cards.
  • Ten engraved custom dice for the game.

Now I know what you are wondering: will this allow you to play the game? Well, I was sent a PDF of this, and with that, I was able to toss together a quick round with the people I live with. We are all Dungeons and Dragons 5E players. So when they say starter set, they do mean starter set.

The real question you may have is, is it worth playing? Well, I won’t spoil the in-game story for you as The Haunting of Castle Gyllencreutz is a tale full of fantastic beasts, plot twists, and intrigue.

This brings us to an even more important question: how do you play? Well, many tabletop gamers get started on a game like D&D that focuses on a D20 system, and while there are other dice involved, most of the time you are rolling a 20-sided die. Vaesen, however, uses a D6, and in this, if you roll a 6, your roll succeeds, and if you do not, it fails. Now you can choose to take on a condition and do what’s called “push” your roll. Doing this allows you to keep any 6 you have rolled and reroll the rest of your dice in an attempt to succeed at the task at hand. You, however, must decide, it is really so important to risk the condition you will now be saddled with until you can be healed?

Now, obviously,attempting to teach you to play the game goes well beyond the scope of this post, but I do want to give you some idea of what I am about to recommend you buy. The combat takes a similar approach, with skills and magic taking a back seat to dodging and parrying as you fight anything from a random guy in a castle to ghosts and fairies. Unlike most tabletop games, you won’t always defeat them by normal means. This is a more dark gothic adventure, and you may find yourself needing something far more sinister to get the job done.

So please, if you are a fan of tabletop games, Vaesen welcomes you to the mythic north, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Painkiller Playstation 5 Review

Painkiller on PlayStation 5 is a new shooter from Saber Interactive that I have thought very hard about how to describe without saying “Doom with multiplayer.” Then I sat down with @torstenvblog because Saber was kind enough to send me a couple of codes, since you can play with the game’s bots (and they are very good on the normal difficulty), it is a multiplayer experience. Between the two of us, we really could not think of a better description than Doom with multiplayer.

The movement is crisp and clean; it feels great to slide through a pile of demons, then leap into the air and blast a bunch with my weapon of choice for the raid. This changes because I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t feel viable. The shotgun just showers guts and gore everywhere, and one of its alternative firing modes essentially forces enemies away, and at higher levels, they many times simply explode.

Graphically, the game stands toe-to-toe with many of the AAA titles I have played this year. The game is beautiful on PS5. Each nephilim is especially full of detail and is a horror to behold. The thralls ( the name for the common demons on the levels) themselves are also full of small details that you simply don’t find in most games. There is one that just runs up to you and explodes, and for a brief second, you can see him pulsate and see his insides before he attempts to kill you.

The game isn’t perfect; however, I did run into the occasional slowdown and even got booted from a game when playing online. This wasn’t anything insane or even common enough for me to not play or trash the game, but it did happen enough for me to feel the need to mention it, and Torsten playing the tutorial did enter the menu and became stuck there and was forced to exit the game and force close the entire game. (This did allow him to skip that portion of the game, however, so pro tip)

If somehow you are asking if I recommend the game still, I do. I am still having a blast with it, and I still haven’t finished leveling up the weapons the way I would like. It is a 8/10 experience. It truly is the best parts of Doom, with friends. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring yoy glory.

theHunter: Call of the Wild – Game Feeders DLC Playstation 5 Review

This will honestly be a rather short review. Not because I don’t have much to say or because it is bad, I actually have more hours than I care to admit into The Hunter Call of the Wild. I picked it up back in 2017, when Avalanche Studios first released it. I have been grateful when they have sent me a few DLCs to check out, and I have bought others. This time, they have sent me a Feeder Pack, which gives you access to three feeders with distinct uses.

It gives you access to three feeders, a box, a post, and a barrel feeder. The barrel feeder basically distracts things like bears and hogs away from your Box and Post feeders. This can be useful to save those from damage, but also lets you hunt those animals.

The box feeder will let you hunt smaller deer, like your white tails, while your post feeder lets you hunt bigger animals like your moose. It is really quite simple to get used to, but this doesn’t mean it’s as simple as setting it and shooting animals.

Like most things in hunting, there is a strategy to things. You can put these things anywhere you want, but if you place them where animals don’t go, it doesn’t matter. It also won’t matter much if you simply stand next to it. The key is to place them in places animals travel and fill them with the right bait. Animals will remember and frequent these places. A good strategy I found is to place them near a tree stand, and you can wait and time your shot well.

I have a nice setup between a tower and the saltwater crocodile on the Australia map. This allows me to shoot a few animals in one spot, and then walk over to the other and get a few there. For the price, it isn’t bad, but it won’t be something everyone is interested in for sure. For people who want to make the game easier in a lateral direction, however, it is a great addition to the game. I would have liked something to feed the birds or the crocodiles, but aside from that, it’s solid. 7/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ed Gein: The Musical

I can only imagine what you most be thinking, but I assure you this isn’t a joke post. This movie is real. Ed Gein is one of the infamous figures in American history and inspired dozens if not hundreds of books, documentaries, biopics, as well as being the inspiration behind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lambs, and Psycho. If you want any actual factual knowledge about Gein and his crimes, plenty of those documentaries are free on YouTube (don’t go to Netflix for the latest season of Monster; were you really expecting the dude behind AHS to give a account of Ed Gein?). Certainly don’t watch this.

So we follow Ed Gein as he’s busted after killing his final victim and through delusional songs, many parodying others such as “Luck be a Lady”, “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka, and “Hard Knock Life” from Annie, we uncover a very loose account of Gein’s story. I mean loose in the most sincere way possible.

I’m going to frank, this movie isn’t good. Did I laugh? Plenty, but I wasn’t feeling good about it. The whole thing is in bad taste at it’s core but its so flat, over the top, and cheap its not meant to be taken seriously, not even remotely (unlike Netflix’s Monster). The acting is porn level bad. The pacing is awful and feels way longer than it is. The musical numbers are funny and just trippy at times- like Gein arguing with a woman’s corpse over what style of lampshade she wants to be. The sheriff was great and his reactions to the whole thing were my favorite part of the whole movie. In the end, I can’t recommend this movie unless you’re already drunk or stoned off your ass. May the gaming god’s bring you glory.

Necesse Steam Review

Neccese is a sort of adventure game where you live in a procedurally generated world, and it has finally been released into 1.0 from early access. Fair Games was nice enough to send me a copy to check out, and I am glad they did.

The general idea is simple: build a settlement, explore the world, kill bosses and enemies. If you ever played games like Terraria, you know the routine, except this time it is top-down, and now you can make villagers do all the stuff you hate. You can also bring friends from online to help; in fact, I recommend this. The game is completely playable solo; in fact, I did at first. It wasn’t until much later that I joined in with some others, and the extra help was great. Having someone else do the mining I didn’t want to be doing while I went fishing was nice.

Bosses are pretty tough but are reasonable with proper prep work, some of which can be summoned right into your town if you want. I find it preferable not to do this; however, not for any reason, my town didn’t get destroyed or anything, it just felt weird fighting a giant monster next to my house.

This does bring me to my few complaints about the game. For one, it gives you very little direction. If you are into the survival element of games like this, within a few minutes, you are pretty much self-sufficient with food. Enemies will spawn next to your house constantly at night, but they are never really a threat, so they are more annoying than anything. Thankfully, your villagers will kill them for you. I built right next to the elder, and he was dead set on murder. He would wake up from a dead sleep to kill anything that came near us. It was pretty impressive.

Is the game worth playing, though? Absolutely. It costs $15 and is sitting at very positive reviews with over 17 thousand reviews, and with very good reason. The replay value is excellent, and if you have friends to play with, you can lose yourself for hours. It is an 8/10 experience that fans of the genre should not miss. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slots and Daggers Steam Review

Slots and Daggers is the newest game from Future Friends Games, the same people who brought you CloverPit Steam Review. They were kind enough to send me a copy of Slots and Daggers to check out as well, and I have to say, for an $8 game, it is very impressive.

The graphics are very simple, so it feels like you are playing a real slot machine. You start by picking 3 items, which represent possible outcomes on the wheel; they can be attacks, defense or even magic powers, such as healing or buffs,or attacks. You spin a slot, and those outcomes represent your turn. Certain outcomes will require a skill check, however. These skill checks keep you engaged and act as a sort of timed button press. If this sounds simple, it truly is. I sat here playing with one hand for a few hours before I even noticed time had passed.

Now you won’t win your first time through, or probably even your 5th. There is a good 6 to 9 hours of gameplay here, depending on your luck and what order you buy modifiers in. These modifiers do an assortment of things, such as raising your defense against physical or magic attacks, and granting you more wheels. You buy them with chips you gain by scoring points on your runs. The modifiers are permanent unless you refund them to change out which ones you want to buy.

How you want to play the game is completely up to you, but I suggest bringing at least one attack, one shield, and then whatever you enjoy playing with to start. This gives you a way to deal damage and defend yourself at the bare minimum. Personally, I liked the hammer. It may not have done a ton of damage, but the 10% chance to stun saved my run more than a couple of times.

I won’t say the game is for everyone; a lot of people won’t like it. It is sitting at very positive reviews on Steam with over 1300 reviews, and the main complaint is the lack of content, which I understand. However, when I review, I like to review things based on how they compare to other games at their price point, and what kind of time you get from it. Getting around 6 hours from an $8 game isn’t bad, and I have played a lot of low-cost games that just function very badly. This is an 8/10 game on those grounds alone. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Instruments of Destruction Playstation 5 Review

Instruments of Destruction on PlayStation 5 is an interesting title sent my way by the fine folks over at Secret Mode. At its heart is essentially a sort of puzzle game, and the puzzle you are trying to solve is how to destroy things on the map with different vehicles made by your company.

Each map has a different vehicle and different rules; for example, one map might give you a bulldozer and tell you to destroy 90% of the buildings without destroying 15% of the ruins, and a bonus objective to do it in less than 3 minutes. The next may have similar objectives, but tell you to use a helicopter and use bombs.

There is simply a massive amount of machines to play with, and most of them work great and quite differently from each other. Aside from the main story missions, there are also challenge missions. These will challenge you to do things like use a certain machine on a map you already completed, but race around the map and destroy new buildings in as fast a time as possible.

This is honestly where my issue comes into the game. While there is a massive amount of machines to use and plenty of levels to complete, the controls on some of the machines, typically the flying machines, leave much to be desired. I found myself unable to complete certain missions in a reliable way because the button that at one point would allow me to fly up suddenly would send me left or right, or worse, down. If I were over land, this wasn’t so bad, but when it sent me slamming into water, it resulted in failing missions. I would eventually succeed in the mission but many times it felt more like luck than skill, and this is disappointing since most controls for driving and even other flying vehicles felt nice to drive.

The controls are honestly the one blemish on an otherwise fun game to play, but it is a rather large blemish that I think might kill the game for many people. I still enjoyed my time with this one, and for 20 dollars, there are far worse games out there. It is a 6/10 experience, and maybe waiting for a sale to try is a good idea if you are unsure. A small patch for the controls on flying would improve the score. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Decktamer Steam Review

Decktamer released on Steam this week, and Assemble Entertainment was nice enough to send me a copy. The best way I can describe this experience would be if Magic: The Gathering and a Pokémon Nuzloke run had a baby and spit this Deckbuilding roguelike out.

The concept is simple: you start with a deck of cards, which are living monsters. You delve into this cave and fight other monsters, where you can capture new ones when you weaken them, assuming you have the right food. For example, herbivores won’t join you if you try to toss them a hunk of meat. Creatures that prefer fish aren’t likely to accept plants. Worse, if your creature dies during a fight, it is gone forever.

Red is Health, green is speed

Each card has a health and speed rating, while their attacks do different amounts of damage and have different abilities. Some are weaker but may do damage to every monster on the side. A slower monster may have stronger attacks; it is up to you what you want to try to do. However, remember that if that health reaches zero, it is gone forever. It is very high-risk high high-reward sometimes. Knowing when to switch your monster means more than in most games.

The artwork is also amazing; this is honestly where I thought the game would fall short, considering its $16 price tag. I was very wrong; the sound and art are nothing short of amazing, and I really thought going into this, these would be the areas I would have complaints. In fact, if you look at the Steam reviews, which are very positive with over 150 currently the only complaints you will see are that the game is insanely hard.

This is honestly true; this game is not for the faint of heart. I love the game, it is fun and I am having a blast with it, but damn, will it wreck you. Each battle and each move involves some strategy. Each item matters the further you go. It may even need some balancing tweaks to be honest, but in the meantime, it is a 9/10 experience that fans of the genre must experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Space Chef PlayStation 5 Review

Space Chef is a survival RPG cooking sim sent to me by the fine folks at Kwalee, a company that is always great to work with. The concept is straightforward in this case. Your grandmother left you to cook for the people in the local solar system. You start out learning to create a spatula, kill some roach-looking things, and cook them up.

I don’t know why people are ok eating these things that live in your basement, or why you are ok with them living there in the first place, but hey $20 is $20. So get cooking and deliver some bug kabobs. This will get you out exploring and meeting people and introduce you to other in-game mechanics, such as picking up space junk. This will let you craft new weapons, cooking surfaces, and upgrades for your ship.

It won’t be long before you are landing on planets for better ingredients to cook better food that you can sell for more money. This will also lead to a better reputation and even a real restaurant.

This all sounds good, but does it function well? The short answer is yes; the long answer is absolutely yes. I never felt lost or out of things to be doing while playing. I always had some place I could go or something I could be working towards. Even when I was simply grinding out materials, I had a business to run, and when that got in the way, I could close up shop at the push of a button.

My only real complaint was combat. There isn’t anything wrong with it; it feels fine, but it simply isn’t all that fun or engaging. Just equip a weapon, mash a button, and hope for the best. You could manipulate it so enemy attacks miss by moving at the right time, but for a survival game, the fighting really felt like an afterthought sometimes.

But is the game worth buying? Without a doubt. When I first heard about it I thought this could only go one of two ways: it would either be amazing or it would be a train wreck. This is definitely one of those games that will be in my rotation for a while. It won’t be for everyone, but for fans of this type of game, it is an 8/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.