Tag: Games

Rising Lords is another game Deck13 was cool enough to send me and it’s honestly another game I sank far more time into than I expected. With the help of Argonwood they have crafted a beautiful,if not slightly flawed, strategy game.

Rising Lords is a strategy game through and through and comes with a couple of game modes (and a tutorial). I spent most of my time in the custom games after I finished the tutorial because I found the story a bit difficult to learn the ropes in,but honestly that could just be a me issue. It is also worth noting the game comes with a full multiplayer mode but I never got the chance to dig into it prior to this review.

The game plays as you would expect with you controlling a small town and it’s peasants. Every 250 population gets you a new peasant that you can use to work fields, work the blacksmith or any number of other things to keep your resources like food,wood or iron coming in.

When the time is right however you are going to want to build an army to spread your influence around. This will let you have an easier time collecting the things you need. (some things aren’t even available in every area it seems) Luckily it is very easy to send things from one town you own to another so even if you end up in a position like I found myself in where one town had more food than I would really need but another town starving you cam easily ship it over.

Combat is also very well done with a sort of rock paper scissors way of units being better against some than others with the terrain also playing a big part. Take your knights charging through a swamp into some spearmen and it’s going to be a bad day even when you out number the enemy almost 2 to 1. Use those same knights to catch some peasants or swordsmen on the plains and they will make quick work of them.

The graphics are great for what they are aiming for and I couldn’t ask for more from the sound. You will notice I’ve only had one complaint so far and it wasn’t the controls,which is intentional. The controls have come a long way on console for this sort of game and this is no exception. While the mouse and keyboard will probably always be king for strategy games, console developers have hit a point where I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

This game is an easy buy for strategy game fans and even the slight balancing issues in the story mode aren’t anything to worry about. Definitely check this one out,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Truck and Logistics Simulator is one of many simulator games I have played over the years,and I am grateful for Aerosoft tossing me this one to review on PS5.

First,while you can get this on PC, I won’t be comparing this to other PC titles. I only played this on PS5, and with the limited amount of games in the genre you get to choose from on console I always find it silly when people say hey a game is ok but there’s better on something you probably can’t play on.

  The idea here is pretty simple. You will start with a small vehicle that you can do some basic customizing to. (mine was a bright purple mini van sort of deal because I like the ridiculous) Then you can go places to pick up jobs where you will be tasked with loading up your fan,or trailer using various tools such as a forklift at the start. Then driving from point A to point B and delivering them for money. Repeat this until you can buy more impressive vehicles like box trucks, a sports car, semi trucks or a monster truck. Yes,I do mean monster truck with giant wheels usually used in an arena to crush cars.

  Graphically the game is unimpressive, most of these games however are. The things it does well however are pretty nice. Outside of some clipping graphics when getting on and off the highway everything is stable including the FPS. I never noticed cars disappearing or suddenly appearing either, which is something I have noticed on other titles like this when it comes to console releases.

Hitting stuff is rather mundane however, general damage is pretty much always the same to cargo and vehicles and don’t expect to go cannon balling through traffic and watching them go flipping down embankments. Don’t get me wrong, you can knock cars out of your way but they mostly just roll out of the way.

The sound is also nice,nothing special,but nice. I liked listening to my engine roar on my new semi as I went down the road and my breaks squealing because I decided to slam on them at the last possible moment was a cheap thrill I enjoyed.

I do have several minor complaints. For example there is an option to turn off traffic violations,which is awesome. But you can and will still get speeding tickets. And even with traffic violations on,I never noticed using turn indicators (blinkers for some Americans on the east coast) means nothing. I stopped using them and never got a ticket. A legal system that you can turn on and off that never matters if you do or not seems pointless.

Another issue I had unless I missed something,the only way to know about speed limits was to read the actual signs on the road, which are not universal. UK speed limit signs look vastly different from American ones which look totally different from the ones in Canada (in terms of shape and design. Despite popular belief most Americans understand the metric system and KPH) so a little thing in your dashboard that said the current speed limit like many other games would have been nice.

The news isn’t all bad however,for example I love that you can skip loading up your cargo if you want and the punishment for doing it may as well not even exist. The map is also a nice size, but the variety of jobs is done in such a way that if you want a 5 minute drive or 30 minute drive in real time, you can find a mission for you quite easily. It also isn’t a simulator lite game, but at the same time you won’t get bogged down in things like having to drive back to your garage to switch vehicles if you see a job you want. I appreciate a game that respects my time but is also willing to let me waste hours of my life if I want.

Here is where I may disagree with a lot of other reviewers. The game is 29.99, and offers a full game experience online as well as offline. Anything you have in one mode is available in the other, and you can happily play and work with other people or just watch and see what they are doing,like flipping off a bridge with a trailer full of cargo. (Real thing I saw) This one is definitely worth a buy and is an 8/10 simulator, possibly the best on console. So enjoy,and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

When I first saw this game by Thunderful Group and The Station,it had my interest. A trailer or two later and it definitely had my attention. Then came the fateful day I got an email saying they would be happy to supply me with a review code, and that made me very happy and grateful. It also made my girlfriend very unhappy.

See Steamworld Build seems like a simple and straightforward game. You pull up on a wagon with your little robo people and a mysterious ball talking on the back of the wagon, get a short bit comprehensive tutorial and find all the pieces to a rocket to launch yourselves into space.

And honestly, the game is technically that simple. On the surface you will build basic buildings, a warehouse, farms, charcoal kilns etc. These will keep your robo people happy and functional. It is also quite in depth with how it is done, but not so in depth that it drags. Simply build a wood cutter near trees and they will chop them down and move them to the warehouse. From there they will go to a kiln or logger etc and they will become charcoal or planks.

From there you move onto the underground section. This is where all the mining takes place where you can find different materials and even locate the rocket parts.

Down in the mines you will create different places for different robots to live, whether they be minors, guards or other things you need. There are multiple levels or biomes down here and each time you find 2 rocket parts you can move down to the next level. Each level gradually gets harder and it never feels unfair. Even the enemies on each level grow stronger,with the first level not even seeming to have any just to ease you into the experience.

Each new material underground will help you build new things and robots above ground,these will help you get further down into the mines. The whole thing is very well done and interconnected in a way that is a master class in how it should be done.

My only real complaint is that as you get new robots above ground is that you don’t build new ones, you upgrade old ones. Workers become engineers, engineers become aristocrats and those become scientists. Each new class has new requirements of things they want to live near and have access to. This made me feel like I was constantly rebuilding and rearranging my town. This wasn’t game breaking or killing my fun at all, it was just kind of annoying when I really wanted to be in the mines.

Now I haven’t really touched in the sound or graphics, and that’s because nobody expects a game like this to break new ground in these departments. The game looks good and the sound is great. I never got sick of hearing the train come in and each level of the mine had its own sights and sounds to enjoy.

The controls however will make it break this type of game traditionally on consoles,but in recent years companies have been nailing them. Steamworld Build is no exception,the controls won’t please mouse and keyboard purist, but nothing on console will. They felt great to me however,and if that’s a concern of yours this felt like one of the best to ever do it.

This game is just fantastic,9/10. I spent hours ignoring my family just to play it. Ok maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, they simply wouldn’t let me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Whisper Games was kind enough to toss me a review copy of this one, and damn am I glad they did. It has gotten great reviews over on Steam and many other places, but I had never really heard of this action RPG with gameplay that reminded me a lot of Act Raiser.

It’s side scrolling with pretty simple button commands. Move left or right, a button to jump another to swing your sword or dodge it block and use magic is as simple as hold this button and tap a direction a few times.

These easy controls make the game far from easy easy,in fact I ended up turning the difficulty down from hard to normal. Still I don’t recommend simply running around trying to stab things with no strategy.

Another fun addition to the game is creating weapons and items from the enemies you kill. This will let you create a variety of things instead of buying them exclusively from shops. Unfortunately on the flip side, you need both money and materials to get new weapons and such from shops and that always bothers me.

All of that aside though the story is where this game really shines. It starts off with you waking up with no real memory in a cabin with a talking bird. Eventually you will leave to search for people, it will take 8 years before you finally find people. This will set off a chain of events that will send you through time itself to discover more about yourself and the other characters.

I won’t say more than that because the story is stellar, but these graphics are spectacular and the sound serves its purpose well. While it isn’t perfect by any means the setting is helped when in caves or a forest.

My biggest complaint,if you can truly call it that, was I don’t feel the level up system was explained very well. Sure you go from level one to two etc, but you also collect bonus items to increase different stats but how you get them and why just felt tacked on. It’s simple enough to figure out but some sort of deeper explanation would have been nice.

The game however is a must play for fans of the genre, 8/10 easily. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crymachina is an action RPG from NIS America that they were kind enough to send me, so a huge shout out to them for that one.

The story is where this game really shines so I don’t want to ruin that on you. Suffice it to say I absolutely enjoyed my time playing it BECAUSE of the story. The character conversation between the ladies and the different personalities was always interesting and the different twist and turns was enough to keep me coming back for more in the around 20 hours of gameplay.

Thankfully the story is great because the combat, while smooth and easy to get into does get repetitive quite quickly. The gameplay loop itself leaves much to be desired. You will take on missions,many of which are simply on a very linear path leading to some sort of boss battle. Then you simply see some story and rinse and repeat.

Thankfully the story is worth the trip. The game is also beautiful and has the sound and music to really set the tone.

This unfortunately is one of those games you are going to want to pick up on sale. It’s a decent 6/10 and worth a play through for RPG fans, but I can’t recommend it at full price.

Disgaea 7 is the newest in the series and once again I was able to get a review copy from NIS America,so a huge shout out to them for hooking me up.

I won’t waste too much time explaining the gameplay for this one, if you are reading this you are probably familiar with the Disgaea series. The general things haven’t changed. You will dispatch your units from the usual starting point, and on a grid map turn based series of moves you will do things like toss Prinnys that explode, take out or move geo blocks to buff or debuff units and of course over the course of time hopefully deal insane amounts of damage.

The story this time around was quite fun, you start out as a rich business person obsessed with what is essentially Japanese Shogun culture a world was known for. That however has fallen to pieces much to the dismay of Pirilika. She hires a warrior named Fuji who is in massive debt to help recover sacred weapons and revive this world’s culture.

These sacred weapons allow a new form of attack for some characters called “hell mode” which allows for special skills to decimate enemies with. Think of them sort of like Limit Breaks for the final fantasy series.

There is also a new thing called Jumbofication, which essentially makes your unit (or an enemy unit) huge. This makes some battles a bit harder or easier,but really just feels like a gimmick. It’s a fun one tho, but still a gimmick.

They have changed a few things from the 6th instalment, for example maps feel better mostly, and I enjoy the cut scenes. That being said I rather hate the new way the auto battle system works. It can still be done,but now you need to beat a battle first,and have a special item to do it. The auto battle however made some of the grind feel less grindy and let me enjoy the rest of the game more. Others however will love the new system as many didn’t like the last one.

All and all tho, the reason you are here is to know if this is worth buying and the answer is yes. The game is an 8/10 and for fans of the series or just the genre in general, it’s worth picking up. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.