Tag: gaming

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam was sent my way by the fine folks of Team 17 who I always love working with. Ironically, this game brought me some trouble before it was announced because many of my friends are shooter fans, and as I have been reviewing games for so long and have been working with Team 17 for many of them, they actually sent me the reveal trailer a few days before it was revealed as part of the announcement. Not being able to tell or show people I KNEW would be excited about it was brutal. So when the clock struck 0 and we were able to post about it, I did get a couple of phone calls asking me how I could keep that to myself. Ok so it didn’t cause me trouble; it was hilarious.

As for the game, this will be hit and miss for many people, because it is essentially a hardcore shooter. It is as close to being in Vietnam as you can get without having been in Vietnam. In my first game, I decided I wanted to launch mortars and ended up the leader of a mortar crew, but I had no crew at first. This meant I was just a regular soldier because you need all 3 people to set up the mortar. The leader is simply a spotter, while another has the supplies needed to build it, and the third has the actual mortar launcher. You can then work as a team with the spotter finding targets, helping you aim, finding enemies an telling you where they land. One person aims the actual launcher while the third actively fires.

Many things in the game work this way; one person on each team is even the overall commander, and if that person doesn’t have a mic, you will be in a lot of trouble. In one game I joined, we were backed into the upper right corner of the map; however, the team didn’t quit, and the commander had a great strategy. We managed to fight our way out and come back and win. See, unlike Battlefield, you aren’t necessarily limited to deaths or time; you have to take the entire battlefield itself like a real war.

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam is not for everyone; I love the game for many reasons, but it is very team-based. If you want to simply run and gun, this game is not for you. Worse, if you don’t want to be careful every step of the way, you are going to have a bad time. This is the Vietnam War at its best, by showing it at its worst. People will hide in the trees, behind rocks, and death will rain from the skies, and sometimes you can do everything right, and it will still go wrong. This is a 9/10 experience for those who love the style. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Hearth and Hamlet was sent my way by Gamersky Games, and I always appreciate it. Hearth and Hamlet is a little weird for me because, admittedly, the start is a bit boring and slow to get going. You start out assigning a worker and clicking the mouse to get some resources to and get your camp set up, and build the very bare basics of a place to live.

Eventually, you can build more and bigger houses and logging camps and fishing; this unlocks more workers that you can assign to auto-collect resources and more of them faster with more advanced buildings that you can upgrade. How interesting you find this is completely subjective; I enjoyed it once the game started moving, but the opening hour or so was kind of a slog.

There are a few issues with this cozy game; however, you don’t really get to choose where anything goes, or even what you build when. You simply get the option to build things at certain times as you finish quests. Now I understand why I am not allowed to start the game building a fishing dock or why options are limited at first, but to completely streamline the choices feels less like a game where I can help shape a country and more like I am simply there to hit the button while my friend builds it, without the added benefit of hanging out with my friend.

That being said, I don’t expect a ton out of an $8 game. I do expect a little more engagement, however. It is a 6/10 title that, on sale for 50% off, becomes worth buying. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Void Salvage was sent my way by Myrdann Games, which has made several small titles over the last few years, with Void Salvage seemingly being the best one. It is a sort of roguelike/ incremental game similar to many free to play game except you avoid many of the pitfalls of the free-to-play genre by paying a very reasonable $7 for what is actually quite a bit of gameplay.

Now I won’t pretend the game is perfect; there are some issues- nothing major and some of it could just be the system I am playing on, I suppose, but I doubt it. Minor slowdowns when things get busy, for example. The game is still being worked on and updated, however.

The game has a massive amount of skills, weapons, cores, and upgrades to find and use. While some balancing would be nice, it can drag after a couple of prestiges; what game doesn’t? The soundtrack is pretty relaxing, which surprised me; I wasn’t really expecting such a relaxing experience when I booted this one up. Half the fun is finding new and fun ways to kill enemies in both game modes, tho the game does favor one over the other; I won’t spoil which.

The game could use some quality-of-life upgrades. It would be nice to see more about the enemies more easily and faster, or have it be clearer about where I am going and what’s happening when I get there. But for the price tag, the game is damn good. 7/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

Anyone who knows me knows I love a good shadow drop, and not only did Aspyr surprise us all recently with a big one, but they were nice enough to hook me up with a review copy of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North -Legacy Edition on PlayStation 5.

Now, for those of you who missed the series of Lord of the Rings games that came out in the same time period- this one was 2011, for example the concept of this hack-and-slash multiplayer adventure is simple. While the hobbits were off on their walk, screwing around, what was everyone else doing in the world? Surely other people did things that were noteworthy, right?

You can play as one of three characters: an elf magic user, a dwarf melee user, or a human ranger who will also use a melee weapon way more often than his bow that you would spend a fortune on arrows trying to use strictly as an archer. Each character is better at certain things, and even the special armor and such you get from this edition strongly push you to upgrade certain stats.

The story is admittedly pretty much what you would expect. You are essentially providing a distraction and keeping the enemy occupied while the Fellowship tosses some jewelry into a volcano. Unlike them, however, you get the help of an eagle. Seriously, quite early in the game, you save one and get to summon him when you need him in combat. It is a pretty sweet mechanic and very helpful if you use him right in combat.

Now, it is worth mentioning that at times the game does feel its age. While they have upgraded everything from graphics to the controls, they can still feel a bit stiff at times, and the map by today’s standards is possibly a crime against humanity. It is practically useless, really. The combat, however, is a ton of fun; leveling always feels rewarding, and at no point did I ever feel like dying was anything but my fault. Having played the original, this feels like a nice upgrade without feeling like a different game. It is an 8/10 game that is worth the money. Also, don’t worry if this isn’t the Lord of the Rings remaster you were hoping for; Aspyr has confirmed this is simply the first, and more of them are coming. Which ones they have not confirmed, but there are more, and i have to assume Return of the King and The Third Age are on the list. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

The Severed Gods was sent my way by Topebox Games, which I always appreciate. Many of yoy may remember me checking out the demo a while back and speaking quite highly of it. One of my favorite things about what I do is getting to see games go from concepts to demos to finished projects. A few times I have been disappointed; others, they have been amazing; mostly they just kind of land in the middle. The Severed Gods, however, falls into that category that scared me at first.

See, the day they sent me this one, I excitedly downloaded it, booted it up, started playing, hit the battles, and took my turn. And then the enemy stood there. This happened twice. So I did all the usual tech stuff, made sure it wasn’t my system while I uninstalled and reinstalled it, and checked to see if anyone else had this issue. Turns out, it was quite common.

Woke up the next morning to see an update. Please be the fix. Answer a couple of emails, start the game. Battle starts, slaughter the first couple of enemies. Ok, so far so good; run into the same enemy type that froze yesterday a bit later than last night. The true test, and it worked just fine. Quickly fixed the issue.

The game is a typical turn-based RPG at its heart; enemies are weak or strong against certain attacks, use these to break their guard, and when you do, keep using them to do more damage. Attack high, mid, or low to make sure your attacks hit, and if you don’t have one at that level, don’t worry; they can still hit, it just becomes a lower chance. I’ve won entire early boss battles without the right level of attack.

My only real issue with the game is that getting new attacks and healing items can be a bit rough at first, so there is some losing involved until you can gather enough points to get the permanent upgrades that allow you to do so. I feel like they sort of leaned a little heavily into the roguelike aspect instead of the RPG aspect for that. Admittedly, that could just be me; the game is an 8/10 regardless and well worth the $15. More importantly, they have openly said the price will increase when it leaves early access, but they intend to add more characters, special villages, and an entire subclass system, so getting in now would be the best way to save money on a game you may want later anyway. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy

The Relic: First Guardian is a game I first saw about a month or so before it released, and Perp Games was nice enough to send me a copy to check out. Now I am going to let you guys in on a little secret here. 95% of the time, when someone gets a review copy of a game, they ask for it. Yes, I do get offered some here and there, but probably 9/10 games I review it is because I saw it, thought it looked interesting, and it was something you guys might want to read about, and I sent an email.

As someone who prides himself on being upfront with you guys, The Relic: First Guardian is not a game I got at release. They passed over me, which happens quite often, and when they decided to send out more codes to how case around 12 updates of work, I got one from that batch. I am well aware this game did not get off to a good start, so is Perp Games. Remember this review reflects a lot of hard work, and I did not play the released version; I played the version released 12 updates later.

The game starts off quite suddenly, much like any souls-like. You get a cutscene and off you go to learn the game by walking down a trail, with the game explaining how to play. I won’t lie, probably could have figured this out without this section. For the most part, combat is very minimalist. I don’t mean this as a criticism; I rather enjoy the less-is-more setup. Something I loved that many people seemed to dislike was the stamina system. Unlike most games in this genre, you don’t lose stamina from attacking, only from running and dodging. So feel free to swing away and get hammered like I did. It is still very much a souls-like in many ways. You will still need to dodge and block. Once you figure that out, it is more forgiving than most.

Now, after playing for a few hours, I did go and read some early reviews and check out some early gameplay videos because I wanted to see what many of the issues were. Early versions suffered from some severe issues with lag, frame rate drops, and many of the visuals were kind of hard to look at. I think the visuals thing was from poor optimization because, 12 updates later, I ran into very little, if any, frame rate drops, and the early videos I watched and the game I played did not really match. I am not saying this is the most beautiful game ever, but if I woke up next to her Sunday morning, I wouldn’t deny it to my friends.

Now, the game still has some issues; for example, there is no traditional leveling system. You just sort of collect an in-game currency to buy upgrades like new magic or upgrades for your weapon of choice that give you more power or hit points, or even new moves. There are enough weapon choices to be interesting, but gaining enough of this currency to buy anything is a huge slog that kills a lot of the enjoyment. I am not saying I should be running around like a god at 3 hours in, but I should be at least 2 or 3 upgrades in.

All in all, the game is now playable, and with a dark story that I just instantly found myself invested in, it was a 6/10 experience, one that, when the game is on sale, is worth experiencing, but I can’t really justify spending $50 on. Credit where credit is due, however, The Relic: First Guardian has made substantial improvements, and Perp Games deserves a ton of credit for that. If you already own it and gave up on it, it is time to give it another go.

• Descend Further Into Tertium With Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s Upcoming Free Update – Depths of the Damned
• Honeycomb: The World Beyond Xbox Review
• iRacing Arcade PlayStation 5 Review
• Carrie 2026 trailer
• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy