Tag: Review

TheHunter: Call of the Wild’s “Peru Hunting Reserve” DLC PlayStation Review

TheHunter: Call of the Wild’s “Peru Hunting Reserve” DLC was once again sent my way by the fine folks over at Avalanche Studios, which I always appreciate, and I always love working with these guys on The Hunter series. This new DLC brings us to Peru for a whole new place to hunt, and it will set you back about $12. Now, the question that is always asked is, is it worth the money? Well, let’s be honest, 14 new animals in a beautiful and scenic tropical jungle, what can go wrong?

From a gameplay perspective, not much. The place is beautiful, every square inch of it is stunning. Peru quickly became my favorite place to just walk around and take in the sights. But if I get attacked by one more damn jaguar, I am going to hunt them to extinction. ( in the game, not in real life.) These things will attack you if you get too close to them, make no mistake. This is the first time playing this game where I felt like an animal actually hunted me. I can’t prove they do, but the only thing that has done more damage to me than the jaguars in Peru is me driving the quads like an idiot. This is not a complaint; it is amazing.

Also, don’t shoot the capybara. Nothing happens if you do other than make some money; I just like them. Such cute little guys running around, I once got attacked by my mortal enemy, the jaguar, just watching the capys hang out eating. Admittedly, that one was on me.

Even the places you sleep and adventure to are unlike anywhere else in the game. They have such character to them. This DLC is a home run. It is a 9/10 experience that every fan of the game should pick up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Gate Must Stand Steam Review

The Gate Must Stand is a new tower defense game sent my way by Yogscast Games and Gamersky Games, both of which are always great to work with. The concept here is very simple: hack and slash your way through demons that are attacking your gate. Doing so will gain you experience and coins, which can be used to hire all sorts of help from the tavern, from different types of mages to guys with huge shields to distract enemies, and so much more.

Occasionally, you will be offered missions, such as guiding a transport to the gate, dealing a certain amount of magic damage, repairing the gate, or even keeping the gate at full health for a certain amount of time. These will reward you in various ways, such as increasing the level of your minions, giving you money or even just giving you free minions. These minions can then be placed on the map at key places to help you fight the enemies or combined with the same type to increase or promote them. For example, two level 1 fire mages to make a level 2 fire mage. Now, if the levels don’t match, they can still be combined to increase the level of the minion, which is nice. Once they reach level ten, they transform into an ultimate form.

Relics have all sorts of uses and will help you in all manner of ways, from increasing your speed or attack power to increasing stacks of bleed on enemies. These usually come from beating mini bosses or bosses throughout the run.

At the $10 price point, the game offers plenty of replay value and is quite fun. While the game is far from perfect, I really don’t have anything to complain about, except that it just isn’t as much fun as it could be. They really seemed to make the game harder than it needed to be simply to increase the time it takes to play it, rather than just making the game longer or adding more to the game to unlock. This will never sit well with me. The game is still a 7/10 experience and worth picking up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Horde of Distraction Steam Demo

Horde of Distraction is a game being made by Static Feed, and they asked me to check out their demo. The game is described as “An incremental game inspired by classic RPGs. Fight monsters, collect rare gear, progress through a vast skill tree, and defeat powerful bosses!” on their Steam page, and honestly, I really didn’t know what that meant. Turns out it means use your mouse to hover over stationary enemies, and either they die, or you do.

After an hour of playing, this is me killing everything

Now this sounds pretty boring, honestly. Trust me, I understand being skeptical; I certainly was. The demo starts out pretty slow, in typical RPG fashion, killing rats for a little bit of money and maybe earning some levels. You then use that money to buy some upgrades. I tell myself one more run.

I went a little overboard and got them all

After a little bit of rat killing and barrel breaking, some new enemies show up. They are a bit tougher; they do more damage. I tell myself one more run, again. I can’t go out this way. At this point, I have some basic gear, and I am hoping to get some more so I can merge it into better stuff. One more run turned into many more runs.

Before I realize it, I have killed the final boss of the demo, and I am asking myself questions about my life I didn’t know I had, most notably, how was this fun, or when can I get my hands on the full game? Most importantly, why is there a skull in my inventory that seems to have no use?

I obviously won’t be giving a score to a demo, but I encourage everyone to go check this thing out. It plays very well and is far more fun than I ever expected it to be. As an added bonus, the trailer has a bull playing guitar. Check it out below, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Arms of God Steam Review

Arms of God was sent my way by Galaktus Publishing and Dark Jay Studio, which I always appreciate. The best way to describe this game would be a roguelite arena shooter with a sort of bullet-hell (or heaven) feel. Top that off with some pretty serious gore and some metal music, and you pretty much have Arms of God. Imagine Doom if Doom Guy were a religious zealot and could use 5 weapons all at once.

They kick ass for the Lord

Here is where I won’t pull punches; the game for many will feel short. You can run through it if you don’t care to do it all in about 3-4 hours, depending on your skill level. Honestly, for less than $12 thats not bad, especially in early access. If you are the type, however, that wants to truly dig in and experience all the difficulty settings and unlock more characters and see how all the weapons can be combined, this game offers far more than the surface implies.

I quickly found myself wanting to know if my holy hammer would work better as an electric hammer. Could this pitiful gun be made into some sort of beast of a weapon? Just when I thought I was done and had this thing figured out, I found a new blessing that made what I thought was an ok weapon an amazing weapon.

Is the game perfect? No, of course not, nothing is. Enemies, for the most part, feel kind of meh to me. I would like to see some more variety in what I am killing on each level, or maybe they could be scarier since they are demons after all. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad by any means. We have all seen far worse in more expensive titles. The rest of my complaints are so minor that I am more than happy to blame them on my system than the game. This is a 9/10 title that fans of the genre owe it to themselves to play. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Psyvariar 3 Xbox Review

Psyvariar 3 was sent my way by Red Art Games, something I always appreciate. First, a little good news, bad news. Bad news, Psyvariar 3 takes place many years after Psyvariar 2, and the stories are connected. Good news, it doesn’t really matter. Reading the game’s description, or my review, will catch you right up. Basically, a group of people decided Earth was too important to leave abandoned and went back and resettled it. Now an alien signal sends everyone off to war. I am, of course, paraphrasing.

Ok, now that the story is out of the way, which let’s be honest, I can’t be the only one that didn’t care, I just wanted to fly cool ships and blow stuff up. With 7 playable characters and Cotton from the Cotton series to fly around as each with their own way of shooting and their own bomb type, there are plenty of ways to play. On top of this there are numerous game modes, ranging from arcade to quicker mission based modes.

The gameplay felt a bit, odd to me however. You don’t really collect power ups and level up in the typical way. See you get “buzzed” by enemy fire, this is essentially getting hit but not quite hit to gain shields and levels that power you up. This is basically skilled flying giving you an advantage. It takes a lot of getting used to, and at times it felt like what counted as getting “buzzed” one time got you blown up the next. This may have been on me, but sometimes it felt more luck based than skill based. That isn’t to say the game isn’t fun, I had plenty of fun with it.

More importantly, the game stacks up well against games at a much higher price point while this one cost less than $20. For fans of the genre this is easy to recommend. it is a 8/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hotel Architect Steam Review

Some of you may remember that a long time ago, I played the Hotel Architect Steamfest Demo Review, and now they were nice enough to send me the full game as it hits 1.0. So if you still haven’t checked out Hotel Architect from Wired Games, now is a great time.

First, as I noted in my Steam Demo review, a game that revolves around building anything, how building functions matter more than anything. It felt great in the demo, and it feels even better now. The menus aren’t clunky, and sorting through different things like carpets and wood floors is simple and intuitive. This applies to anything you want to build, from rooms to items for the rooms. Even adding an extra floor is super simple.

The graphics are also great, I love just watching my little characters bounce around the hotel, cooking meals, or cleaning, and my guests hitting the gym or relaxing. I do mean my people because, since my last time playing, you can create your own guests and workers. The community as a whole is pretty great. I’ve been in their Discord for a while, and there always seems to be some sort of contest going on if that is your sort of thing.

It is also nice how all the menus are crisp and clean and easy to understand. I was never left guessing what a customer wanted or why a critic left unhappy. Don’t let the cute graphics fool you; the game isn’t easy. I have made mistakes that were hard to come back from. The early levels will lead you into a false sense of security.

Which leads me to my only real complaint. There does seem to be some odd difficulty spikes for me. Nothing that can’t be handled, mind you, but they did seem odd. Like going from playing a game on very easy to suddenly being on normal. It was a bit jarring. It is still one of the best simulators out there currently. 9/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 R-Type Dimensions 3 PlayStation 5 Review

 R-Type Dimensions 3 was sent my way by Inin Games, and there is a pretty excellent physical edition available on their website. I know how much you guys love that. ( I do NOT make any money if you buy it from that link) I just know many of you enjoy that sort of thing. Anyway, on to my review.

As you can tell from the trailer above, it is your typical old-school side-scrolling arcade shooter. If you like that sort of game and how they play, and you want to be able to play in the old-school 2D or new 3d graphics, you will be happy here. The sounds and music are fantastic, and the controls are crisp and clean.

Now I am sure you are wondering, I said a lot of good things all at once. The review can’t be this short. Is there that much bad stuff? No, not at all. The bad things I have to say aren’t even that bad, but admittedly, they will either have you running to the store to buy it or running away from it. Let’s hit the story first. It is pretty standard stuff. You fight for the Earth Defense Corps, flying the R-90 Ragnorok. A new ship dedicated to defeating the Bydo Empire, a sort of bio-machine empire trying to destroy humanity.

Onto the bad. This game is hard. I don’t mean like when people say something is hard, but it was hard for them. The game has two modes, normal and infinite. Infinite gives you unlimited lives just to let you learn how to play the game and see all the levels, so you can memorize them without having to restart over and over again. There are entire sections of the game where there is only one place on the screen you can go, so you won’t die. The game is fair, I never felt the deaths were cheap, or because the game didn’t co/ntrol well. This is just the design of the game and who it is made for. It is an 8/10 title. I enjoyed my time with it. Not everyone will feel it is worth the $35 price point, though. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Grind Survivors PlayStation 5 Review

Grind Survivors was sent my way by Assemble Entertainment, a company that has been great to work with in the past. This time around, they sent me their new Rogue Survivor game that has a nice twist to it. Rather than the usual fight until you die, unlock things, and move along, you will also collect weapons. You can then either recycle these weapons to collect ashes that can then improve other weapons or combine weapons to create stronger weapons.

There is no shortage of weapon types either. While initially you only have a couple, such as dual machine guns, a pistol, and a shotgun, as you beat more difficult runs, you get a Tesla rifle that shoots electricity and buzz saws. Multiple characters to choose from will also increase the strategies available to you, as each one has its own special ability.

The first level and difficulty last 10 minutes, with every one after that usually lasting about 20 minutes. Each biome also has an endless mode to truly test your skill and build on. This brings me to my biggest complaint about the game. When you start, you can only choose the burnt forest biome. Until you beat this at level 5, you can move on to the others. Each time you move up, you are basically stuck repeatedly running through the new difficulty level, upgrading a legendary weapon to beat it, as your old weapon is essentially outdated already. This really throws off your flow.

I honestly can’t pick a favorite game of this genre right now, between this and Devil Jam. PlayStation 5 Review: Fans of the genre are eating well right now. At $15, this 8/10 should not be missed. This game will test your skills in the best way possible, and the replay value is absolutely there. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Frostpunk 2 Fractured Utopias DLC – PS5 Review

Some of you may remember that not long ago, I covered the release of Frostpunk 2 PS5 Review. 11 Bit Studios was kind enough to send me the Fractured Utopias DLC on PS5. The question is, will this be worth the $13 price tag? Let’s explore that question.

For starters, everything comes into play during the Utopia Builder mode. So if you don’t play this mode, you are already out of luck. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see why you wouldn’t play what is basically the main mode of the game, but it is worth noting that this is where all the content is. Right from the start, you will notice you have the option to start with a faction, of which there are 8 new ones in total to discover.

Each faction also has its very own skill tree to make your way through. This alone will add hours of gameplay, making your way through each one can be a challenge, and it leaves plenty to see. I find this alone well worth the money.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is new. Each faction has new variants on housing, unique laws, HUBS, abilities, and more. So much so that after hours of playing, I haven’t seen them all. I have also seen at least 40 new narrative events, and the store page claims there are over 100.

The only disappointing part of this is that we were only given one new map to play on. The two new premium tales, Doomsayers and Plague, are nice, however.

At the end of the day, this is a very nice DLC. We have all paid far more for DLC and gotten far less. $13 is a fair price for everything it gives. I would have liked one or two more maps, but I can live without them. It is an 8/10 DLC that fans of the game should definitely pick up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.