Tag: gaming

Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition PS5 Review

Reviewing Neverwinter Nights 2 on PS5 is a bit odd for me. No, it isn’t because it is based on the 3.5 system, and I played Dungeons and Dragons 5.0. Also, before I go further, shout out to Aspyr Media for hooking me up with a copy of this one.

The story of Neverwinter Nights 2 is pretty standard fare in 2025. You are an adopted child whose parents died and are thrust by your uncle into an adventure you seemingly were born to take. After what was a rather in-depth character creator for its time, which for today’s world is bare bones. You move on to participating in a summer festival of games, which serves as your tutorial. It will teach you everything you need to know about casting spells, how to steal, and avoid traps, and equipping weapons and combat.

You can skip the tutorial if you want, and move right on to the city being attacked, but you will miss some story elements and the chance at some early items, nothing fantastic, and that you will outgrow soon anyway.

But how does this enhanced edition play? Well, it is the definitive way to play it on console. It comes with all previously released DLC, and graphically, it has never looked better. So if you happen to own the original release, this is definitely an upgrade. If you have never played it and have Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition (PS4), this is definitely something you will want to pick up as well. The game isn’t without faults; however, a few times, my main character would get stuck on seemingly nothing. This is easily fixed by simply switching to a different person. The stuck character simply moves on his own, and you are free to swap back. Once or twice during the dialogue, people’s lower jaws decided to just overlap their front jaws, and their teeth just sort of appeared in front of their faces. I also once had to restart when, mid-fight, I got stuck in the pause menu while swapping characters.

All of these things were very rare, happening once, maybe twice, across an entire playthrough that could easily last 60 hours if you are a completionist. I wouldn’t at all advise against picking it up based on these minor and rare bugs that I haven’t seen anyone else really mention. It is still a 7/10 experience that I think fans of D&D and Neverwinter will enjoy. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

JET OFF ON A ‘STARSAND ISLAND’ ADVENTURE, YOUR WAY!

Chinese developer, Seed Lab, is today exploring the great outdoors of its upcoming life sim, Starsand Island, and has hinted at some of the game’s adventures and scenic journeys to be had when it launches on PC and consoles in late 2025.

Players will be able to skate, ride, drive, and fly a range of vehicles, including skateboards, rollerblades, cars, scooters with (and without) sidecars, and even a paraglider, across the island’s lush pastures, green- and amber-hued woodlands, glistening sandy beaches, and the surrounding azure seas. Amphibious craft will also be available, enabling seamless land and water traversal, further expanding players’ horizons.

Exploring the island won’t have to be done solo: a number of vehicles have passenger seats, allowing NPC pals and pets – and even real-life friends via the Starsand Island’s multiplayer gameplay – to go along for the ride, while the game’s photo mode will allow players to capture memories and moments from every part of their adventure.

Showcasing the game at this year’s BitSummit expo in Japan, Seed Lab is also unveiling more details on both the character and vehicle customization available in Starsand Island. The game’s vehicle modification system lets players fully customize their rides; for example, cars can be painted with new colors, and detailed with a range of decals, wheel rims, and interiors.

Starsand Island also features extensive customization for the player’s character, including the ability to finely tune them with a range of facial features, skin tones, makeup, and hairstyles, while choosing from a vast wardrobe of outfits and accessories to complete a fresh, edgy vibe ready for island life. Further customisable options will be expanded post-launch, along with additional social and collaborative gameplay, while more information on Starsand Island’s multiplayer functionality will be released in the coming months.

Horror Night with Tung Tung Tung Sahur PS5 Review

Horror Night with Tung Tung Tung Sahur on PS5 was sent my way by Source Byte, which I am grateful for, but admittedly, they don’t always put out the best games. They help a lot of very small indie companies publish their work, and it can be a bit hit and miss for them. Horror Night honestly is one of their hits, and I did not expect that from a meme game.

For those that don’t know, and I imagine it is most of you without children, Tung Tung Sahur is considered an Italian brain to character that shows up a lot as one of the bad guys in Sprunki Logi videos.

The game itself follows typical horror movie and game logic: you crash your car outside, you knock on the closest building for help. The door creaks open, and you walk inside only to be trapped inside with some crazed or demented entity or person.

There is honestly absolutely nothing new or inventive about this game, and for $10, you shouldn’t expect there to be. What you should be asking for at that price is, was the game entertaining, and was it functional, and the answer is yes, it is, for about 2 hours if you take your time. The game has 11 ratings on PS5 and is sitting at 4 out of 5 stars, and this seems fair to me. I call it an 8/10 experience compared to other games at this price point. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Co-op Space Roguelite “Void Crew” Comes to PS5, XSX Sept. 4

After a successful launch on PC, Focus Entertainment and Hutlihut Games are thrilled to announce that Void Crew—the chaotic co-op space adventure where you explore, fight and scavenge loot across the galaxy with your crewmates—is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on Sept. 4, 2025. Console porting has been handled by Piktiv AB, ensuring a smooth and optimized experience wherever you play!

With more than 5,600 reviews and an 87% “Very Positive” rating on Steam, Void Crew continues to build momentum with its most recent 1.1 update. This version expands the chaos to support up to six players, introduces new ship modules, adds a “Survivor” game mode and ramps up the challenge with even more intense space battles.

Console players will also be able to enjoy full six-player crossplay encompassing PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. So get ready to rally your crew, command your vessel, and journey into deep space on thrilling missions. Just watch out for asteroid storms, solar flares, hostile aliens, desperate human scavengers, your buddies’ screw-ups, and the rest of the galaxy!

Void Crew is available now on Steam and will release for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on September 4 in its 1.1 version.

Silence of the Siren becomes Heroes of Science and Fiction! Also, Map Editor and Random Maps!

As many of you may know, I have been a long-time supporter and player of Silence of the Siren (PC), and Oxymoron Games has shared some news with me that we don’t often hear. They have quite literally changed the name. Due to confusion with other titles out there, Silence of the Siren is now Heroes of Science and Fiction. I have added some other news about the game below as well. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

What’s new?

  • The Map Editor we used to create all the maps in the game (there’s an official Steam Guide)!
  • BETA version of the Random Map Generator
  • A powerful Event/Scripting Editor battle-tested by creating different campaigns (there’s also a Steam Guide for this part of the editor)
  • A simple Steam Workshop integration so you can share your maps directly from the Editor
  • A new planet with a 6-phase day-night cycle, new maps. This includes the map from the Next Fest Demo 2024 and an even older demo map uploaded as an example to the Workshop!
  • 4 new units
  • Random commander selection for scenarios and skirmishes
  • Statistics for the victory screen with the army strength timeline
  • New commander list UI

Holdfast: Nations At War PS5 Review

Holdfast: Nations At War is now a new game; it is simply new to consoles. Anvil Studios released it back in 2020 on Steam and finally put it on consoles, and were kind enough to send me this masterpiece of a game. I am not calling it a masterpiece because it is beyond reproach; it is actually quite flawed.

For example, the graphics are pretty dated, and the controls can be clunky. I am not a fan of the melee weapons at all, and it feels like swinging through pudding regardless of the weapon. If you know anything about the Napoleonic Wars or World War One, you can imagine what it is like playing a FPS where half the weapons are essentially black powder rifles with slow reload times.

I know I just said a lot of bad things about a game I just called a masterpiece. Truthfully, I have not had this much fun with a $20 game in a very long time. I even spent $5 on the American Forces pack because I wanted to support the company and use the 103rd Infantry Regiment stuff that comes with it, along with in-game shouts. and such. Admittedly, it is basically just character skins you can pick, but it is a small detail that the game gets right.

This is where the game shines. The player base is full of people just enjoying themselves. Proximity chat is full of people laughing, making harmless period jokes about doing it for queen and crumpets while charging over a wall only to get shot down and respawn and hop on a boat and play with a steam whistle. You will see guys chatting while launching shells of artillery shells, and as an artilleryman myself in the army, I appreciate this because that’s basically how it really goes. But it is real people just chatting away in these 150-person games. (75 on each team)

The gameplay is basically as average as it gets, but the community is as good as it comes, and the game itself is a blast to play, and for $20, it shouldn’t be missed. It is truly one of those hidden gems on the PS5. 8/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Scum Steam Review

Scum recently transitioned from early access to 1.0, and Gamepires sent me a copy, which I greatly appreciate. SCUM prides itself on being the most realistic open-world survival game on the market, and honestly, it might just be. Where most games are happy to let you just eat anything to refill your hunger, what you eat matters here.

The story is no slouch either, you find yourself on SCUM island, a place for criminals to work of their crimes by entertaining the masses. Death doesn’t save you, as you are revived and sent back to the start of your attempt to be the last one standing. Ok, so that part doesn’t really make any sense. To be fair, none of us is playing a game with a genitalia modifier for the story anyway, right?

A few words of warning, the requirements to play this game are hefty. For the first time ever, my laptop struggled, and it struggled hard. I have more than the minimum requirements, and I still find myself messing with settings. Also, ignore the negative reviews you find on Steam for the most part. Many of them are long-time players, with over 1000-2000 hours, complaining about what isn’t in the game or how their ideas weren’t used, etc. While some of them are perfectly valid, they do ignore the fact that the game is incredibly detailed.

The multiplayer aspect is amazing, the base building is very in-depth, and while the learning curve is pretty steep, you are rewarded with a one-of-a-kind experience. Everything needs to be balanced in this game, from your diet to weight management with your inventory, but not to such an extent that I ever felt like the game was a chore to play.

I do have a few small issues, and you will see these are pretty common complaints. Melee combat is basically as clunky as it gets. The learning curve is also huge, making the game pretty much impossible to just dive right into. The community also isn’t always exactly the most inviting, either. You can find great people in it, don’t get me wrong, but others are pretty much the definition of toxic and take the last man standing part very seriously.

So is it worth the $40, however? As a survival fan, absolutely, it is a 7/10 experience that I don’t regret for a moment. Just maybe avoid it if you don’t have the time or patience to learn it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cattle Country Rides Into Town! Physical Edition OUT NOW on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch!

I know some of you guys still love physical copies of games ( I do as well), and as someone who enjoyed Cattle Country ( you can see my review Cattle Country PS5 Review ), I figured I would share the news that you can get it now on PS5 and Switch. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

About Cattle Country

Ranchin’ and Handcraftin’ – Work the land, raise cattle, and build your dream homestead from sunup to sundown.

Swappin’ Stories – Make friends, share tales, and earn your place in the heart of the community.

Beware of Bandits – Stay sharp, as rustlers and rogues aren’t far behind.

Rodeos to Romance – Meet and woo one of 18 romanceable locals.

Buried Treasure – Brave the mines and unearth secrets from the old frontier.

Trackin’ Game – Hunt, explore, or simply soak in the wild beauty of the open range.

The physical edition is OUT NOW. Go on, cowboy, make Cattle Country part of your cozy collection!  

Empyreal PS5 Review

Empyreal on PS5 is an action RPG, which I think is fair to call a soulslike, that doesn’t tell you that’s what it is. Secret Mode sent me a copy of this to check out, and I had a great time playing it. They also did a great job lulling me into a false sense of security.

The game starts out with a letter explaining to a young man that he is inheriting a family mission. To explore a monolith full of treasure and secrets. This results in us fast-forwarding to the present day, when you, an elite mercenary, show up to search the monolith that everyone else has failed to truly discover the purpose of.

You start off meeting some people who honestly aren’t thrilled to meet you, except the bartender. The man in charge sends you through the front door of the place, but doesn’t bother telling you that the place essentially spits you back out after you get through the hallway.

The game employs a card system where you enter the monolith, and it informs you if the area is Very Easy, Very Hard, or somewhere in between based on your gear score. The look of the game is to enter the place, find stuff to upgrade your gear, and challenge new places. This moves the story along and lets you find new gear and upgrade certain shops and NPCs.

Unlike most games of this type, where skill means more than gear, they took a very different approach here. If you aren’t upgrading your gear, rerolling stats, and abilities, you will find yourself dead and having to go back to easier places to grind for gear. The first couple of hours, this doesn’t seem all that necessary until you notice the bosses and such getting a bit harder. Then the levels, which do not have a map, start taking more out of you as you have to explore more and more.

The game itself is a ton of fun; it looks and plays great. It isn’t going to match games like Dark Souls, obviously, but it has a nice sci-fi feel to it, and you aren’t limited to a sword. You can smash enemies with a shield or blast them with a /huge gun. The game is definitely a 7/10 experience. The price is $30, so I might wait for a sale if you are on the fence, but if it is something you are definitely looking forward to, feel free to pull the trigger. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Worms Armageddon Anniversary Edition (PS5 Review)

Worms Armageddon on PS5 is a hard one for me to review. Team 17 was nice enough to send me a copy to check out, and I love those guys for hooking me up with a game I loved playing during my childhood. I spent countless hours with my friends blowing each other up as little worms and laughing at the silly noises they made, or as they put on little bandanas before punching each other off a cliff.

It’s hard for me because the game looks better than ever. It truly has also never sounded better. Each worm is now rendered in great detail, and their voices are immaculate. The battlefields now look like I imagined they did as a kid and a young adult, when we had epic battles, and we laughed as my friends’ final worm would find itself on the receiving end of a perfectly timed sheep bouncing into a hole he dropped into thinking it was salvation.

It is hard because the game just is not fun. Playing with my kids, some the same age I was when I found this game amazing, really drives home how much I have changed as a gamer. My 8-year-old finds it hilarious, if not a bit frustrating, and my 20-year-old thinks it’s a nice way to kill time; however hates the controls. At my age, the game just isn’t what nostalgia remembers it as. The game is still a 7/10 experience, graphically, functionally, and all the game is what you would expect. But beware, if nostalgia is what you are looking for, you may not get what you are thinking.

Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.