Tag: Games

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.

Survival Horror VR Game “Dread Meridian” Gets New Trailer During UploadVR Showcase

During today’s UploadVR Winter Showcase 2025, Level Infinite unveiled a new look at Dread Meridian, the upcoming atmospheric VR survival horror game from developer KUKRGAME. The showcase offered a chilling glimpse of Oglanbyen, a forsaken island where players will confront terrifying creatures, unravel cryptic puzzles and navigate dread-filled environments. Level Infinite also teased an upcoming multiplayer playtest scheduled before the end of 2025. Ahead of the game’s January 2026 launch, players can gear up with a slew of pre-order bonuses and 15 percent discount, available via Meta Quest.

Play as Daniella, a researcher who ventures to a remote arctic island in a desperate search for her missing twin sister, Isabella. In this harrowing adventure, players will scavenge for resources, solve cryptic puzzles and come face to face with unimaginable creatures while unraveling the mystery of Isabella’s disappearance. It’ll be up to players to choose how to best utilize their limited resources and customizable weapons to battle the island’s hostile monsters with intense VR combat and tactical decisions. When ammo is low, players can pull out their trusty knife and fight to their last breath.

Dread Meridian Website

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.

The Conjuring: Last Rites

The Conjuring: Last Rights is basically the perfect example of how to not make a AAA horror movie. As I do every year around my birthday, I crashed at @torstenvblog house, ordered pizza, and we watched movies. Nine this year to be exact, and I am sure you will be reading about the rest soon enough from him. This one, however, I insisted on writing about myself.

The movie itself mostly revolves around the Warren family and how Ed and Lorrain had a daughter, Judy. They had stopped their investigations for years by the time the Smurl family haunting had taken place, and they were focusing on Judy’s upcoming wedding.

This obviously has nothing to do with the Smurl house, but they did shoehorn Judy having visions and whatnot into this about the Smurl house and the demon that is haunting the family; they came from a mirror shown earlier in the movie connecting the Warrens and Smurls. This never happened in real life, by the way.

In fact, the entire movie never even bothers to make you care about the Smurl family. You spend very little time with them. The little kids are mostly shown running around, playing. The older kids scream a bit about how they can’t keep living like this, but outside of a few scenes, they never really show what this even is. We do get a couple of great scenes towards the end where one daughter finds a video from her birthday and is chased by a crazy ghost with an axe, and this is the same night we see the father molested by one. This, however, is after she screams about living like this; what was going on before then is very little that is even mentioned.

Even ignoring that I come from the same area as this Smurl house (I’ve literally driven past it more than once in my travels) and shared emails with people who lived there while working on a book and helping a friend with a podcast (decades of people who lived there have denied anything happening there, going all the way back to the 1980s) and even ignoring the fact I personally think the Warrens are probably frauds, the potental for this to be a good movie exist. The first two Conjuring movies are good. This movie, however, does everything wrong, and nobody should ever watch this pile of garbage. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Blumhouse Games Reveals New Trailer for Grave Seasons During PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted

I honestly don’t know too much about Grave Seasons aside from the fact that it is a cozy horror game where you can fill your day getting to know the townspeople, fishing, farming, and doing all the things you would expect to do. The town also appears to have a serial killer on the loose. You can wishlist the game on Steam now, and it will be released on PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Enjoy the Trailer, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

MIO: Memories In Orbit Sets Course to Launch on January 20, 2026

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.

Pathea Unveils New Action RPG ‘The God Slayer’ in WORLD FIRST Gameplay Video

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.

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.

Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders PS5 launch delayed

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.