Reviews – Page 14 – Savior Gaming

Hot Rod Mayhem (Xbox Review)

Hot Rod Mayhem is a kart racer sent to me by Casual Brothers, and of course, I always like to disclose that and thank them up front. There are probably a million kart racers out there, so it is always a dicey genre to enter. This one is available basically anywhere you play games.

The biggest selling point of this game for me is that they chose a very old-school feel for this one. There is no online mode; this is a couch co-op adventure. Each person (up to 4) just creates a character before the race, with plenty of options from perfectly normal to pretty outrageous. Then you pick a car to race with, each with its own good and bad points.

There are only two real options when it comes to racing: a single race or a full-blown championship series. I like this choice as well because they do a lot with a little. You can unlock 10 tracks, but each one of these tracks can be reversed, and there are multiple difficulty options. When you add in the power-ups, races can get kind of wild and hectic.

The game is far from perfect. It relies heavily on boosting as opposed to skill to win races at times, it seems, and bumping other racers can end your race faster than anything else. As far as I can tell, the computer racers don’t suffer from this issue the same way human players do.

The game cost $20, and for kart games I’ve played at that price, it is definitely solid. There are certainly better out there, especially if you are playing on the Switch. But for Xbox on PlayStation, the game is solid enough. It is a 7/10 game in a genre piled with quickly tossed-together junk. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Hook: Complete Edition (xbox review)

Hook Complete Edition is another game sent my way by Ultimate Games, and it is kind of an odd one for me. I don’t normally like Puzzle games. In fact, I am not exactly a fan of this one, yet I couldn’t really stop playing it. Even my 8-year-old daughter gave it a try. The concept is simple and very minimalistic. Each level has a few hooks. All you have to do is click on them to release them in order so that they all come loose without anything preventing it.

Pretty much every level you complete gives you that nice achievement sound. It starts off pretty simple. Do I mean this one first or this one first. It isn’t long, however, before you are following lines and trying to figure out if something needs to be twisted so only one half moves. It gets addictive fast.

Full disclosure, there are already multiple videos out there that will allow you to speed through this game and collect every achievement in a few hours. The game isn’t long if you want to do it that way, but there is plenty of fun to be had here if you like this sort of game. It won’t be the game that makes you fall in love with puzzle games, but if you like them or just want some quick achievement points, this is a great option. This is even more true when you see the price point is less than $5. 8/10 on this great low-price game. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Drug Dealer Simulator (Xbox Review)

Drug Dealer Simulator has been around for a while on PC, but it finally made its way to Xbox, and later this year will make its way to PS5. For now, however, Ultimate Games was kind enough to toss me a copy to check out on Xbox.

This game has a very simple premise. You are poor as hell, you want to not be poor, and you know a guy who can get you in touch with the right people to buy the drugs you need to keep the locals happy.

From the start, a typical day starts like this. Use your laptop to contact Eddie and tell him how much of each drug you want. Then go pick them up from the drop-off point and bring them home. Hopefully, you don’t get nailed by the cops and really screw yourself over. Don’t worry, early in the game, this is pretty easy to do. From here, you set up your deals again with the laptop. Use your table to split your drugs up into smaller quantities and make your deals.

This is the basic game loop, but if you want to truly succeed, you need to do more. Grab yourself some salt and mix some in with your meth to boost how far it goes, turning extra profit. Be careful, tho, while certain things make your drugs more addictive, they can also be toxic and kill your customers.

More money means you can expand your business into new areas and buy businesses that will make your income seem more legitimate. This will be important in keeping the cops and DEA from kicking your door in. Suspicious activity will bring up your risk meter, and so will depositing large amounts of money into your account. The account is needed for all your bills because in this world, Big Brother is watching.

Graphically, it is undeniable that Drug Dealer Simulator is lacking. The game doesn’t look bad, but it has been out a while on PC, and there is even a sequel (that will also be coming to consoles at some point), but the gameplay itself is top-notch. Ducking behind buildings and hopping fences to avoid police while you have a backpack filled with cash and weed is a lot of fun. I don’t suggest playing the home version, but the simulator? 8/10 must play. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Collectible Cars Shop Simulator (PS5 Review)

This is another shop game sent to me by the fine folks over at Nostra Games, and if you read my review of Collectible Card Shop Master (PS5 Review) you know exactly what to expect. This time, instead of game cards, however, you are selling toy cards.

I don’t really know how this works, but they seem happy

Also, instead of playing a card game, they somehow race them on a track, which I don’t understand how that works exactly, but they all seem happy to do it, and they pay me money, so have at it. My confusion aside on how a store would stay open or have so many clients selling exclusively toy cars and toy car paraphernalia, the game works.

The game functions well, I had no issues with shelves, customers glitching in or out, and my employees did what I wanted. Oddly, that is all I can say about the game. It isn’t a bad game. It functions well, it’s got some easy trophies to collect, and it is worth the price you pay to buy it. I just don’t understand why it exists. It seems so random to me. That being said, if it catches your interest, there’s no reason not to pick it up. 7/10, game functions, and is as much fun to play as any other shop simulator. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Farming Simulator 16 Bit Review

Yes, you read that title correctly. This is a review for Farming Simulator 16-bit. No, this is not some weird, far-too-late April Fool’s joke. My good friends at Strictly Limited Games ( that is a store link for those interested in picking this bad boy up) and GIANTS Software sent me a copy to check out, and I am grateful for that. Anyone who’s followed me for a while knows I started playing these games when I picked up Farming Simulator 15 on sale and have been hooked ever since. Some years ( like 19 and 22) have been sent to me to review, others, like 25 I bought myself happily.

I went into this with odd expectations. My first game was my dad’s Intellivision, and I played Asteroids sitting on his lap. I grew up on Sega Genesis and Nintendo systems, so I know what those systems can do, so to hear a playable version of Farming Simulator was coming out for it, I was intrigued.

Yes, it’s playable on an original Sega or anything that plays them.

Let me start by saying yes, it is clearly a scaled-back version. Don’t expect to be raising hundreds of animals and buying businesses with full-on supply chains etc.

What you will get is a straightforward and simple game loop. Grow crops, harvest crops, take them to the selling point, repeat. When you get enough money, buy better equipment, at which point you can either store or sell your older stuff. Then repeat the process. You can also save up and buy another map, at which point the process continues. Your equipment can easily be moved between maps, and as you play a map, your crops will continue to grow on the others.

This means you can play each map simultaneously if you want, or just ignore them if you so choose. What is also nice is that the maps are relatively compact, so getting fuel or seeds for your tractors is super easy.

None of this means anything if the controls are bad, and honestly, I didn’t even bother hooking a controller up to my laptop. It’s 3 buttons and some arrow keys basically. That is hard to screw up, which they did not. If they made this when I was a kid, I would have wasted hundreds of hours playing instead of just a couple of dozen. As far as a 16-bit Demake of a game goes, this is as close to perfect as it can get. My only real complaint is that I wish the game explained things a little better. It, however, is nothing you can’t figure out on your own, 9/10, definitely worth picking up. Once again, I will leave the link below in case any of my collectors want to grab it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Farming Simulator 16-Bit Edition

Inhuman Resources: A Literary Machination (Steam Review)

Inhuman Resources is a dark visual novel sent to me by Indie Asylum, and man, does it get dark fast. It starts out as just a woman being woken up by a phone call from her aunt. You can choose to ignore it or not. You can choose how to react. I ended up going on a job interview that my aunt set up for me, since she is also my landlady and I owe her money.

This is pretty much the most normal part of the game. The game also allows you to check out as much detail as you want, or as little. There are extra things you can look at and click on that will give you all sorts of information on the world around you. Some are as innocent as what the building looks like, but later on, much of it is less innocent.

Fast forward a bit to the actual job interview, and yes, I am skipping a bit to avoid spoilers, and it is heavily implied that the man you are speaking to has been around for a while. What is less implied and is outright stated, the company you are interviewing for has, for a very long time, been intervening with much of human history to decide how it will flow. For example, you are listening to the only record (I do literally mean record) that exists of what was supposed to be the most famous duo in the world. Instead, we got the Beatles. This man liked the music and saved this single record. It is worth pointing out that the game takes place in modern times.

After getting the job, the game takes an even darker turn, one that I can’t truly explain without giving away the plot. Suffice it to say, if you like something a bit more mature that is happy to explore deeper and darker tones, including corporate espionage, secret cabals that control the world, and insane medical practices, this is the game for you. With multiple endings, there is plenty of reason to replay this. 9/10 for lovers of visual novels. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ixion Playstation 5 Review

It isn’t often that I get excited for a space builder on consoles, but when Bulwark Studios sent me a copy of Ixion I won’t deny I couldn’t wait to check this bad boy out. The story alone had me interested. The Earth is on the brink of extinction due to ecological collapse. A company (DOLAS) steps up with new technology to possibly save humanity in the form of a new engine that can take humanity to new heights in space travel, finding a new home. The dreamer in me loves this.

My realistic part loves where it goes from here, and I won’t go into detail. But I will say I would watch an entire TV series based on it. All of this, however, means very little if the gameplay is lacking or the controls don’t function well.

I am happy to say the game controls fantastically on PS5. At no point was I left wishing I had a mouse or that things were more precise, with one small exception. Some of the larger buildings must be built in certain spots, such as anything that leads outside. For example, probe stations. This isn’t a control issue so much as a design issue. It bothers me, and it probably shouldn’t. Aside from that, the controls are great.

The gameplay is also top-notch. The game flows nicely, from the prologue through each chapter I never felt like I was being forced to do new things I hadn’t had the chance to prepare for, and while graphically the game isn’t steller it is one of the better-looking games of its type out there.

If you enjoy this type of game, you really need to pick this 9/10 game up. This game will be in my catalog for a long time to come. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Grinch That Stole B*tches (2024)

I like to keep my reviews positive, anyone that’s followed for any real amount of time knows that. I don’t really like shitting on peoples hard work, especially work I don’t or can’t do myself. You can tell the director and writer Malik Marcell and fellow writer Ulrick Hopkins put time and love into this movie. And stars Otis Mcintosh and Christianne Jones enjoyed working on this and worked well together. Honestly, I would love to see them in more movies. Navv Green showing up in what is clearly a movie made friends wanting to get something done was cool to see, and I respect that.

But damn this movie hurt to watch at times. The premise is essentially this: The Grinch (Otis), fresh out of jail after basically being set up by Santa (Navv) wants to continue his work to destroy Christmas. This has been an ongoing thing for all time. It’s hinted that Santa is a title passed down from father to son and that The Grinch is similarly a title passed from person to person, which I like.

The goal? Rob Santa of all his toys so he can’t deliver them, people won’t belive in santa, chirsmas will go away. During the break-in, which involves a drug addict and a dwarf, they run into a very unhappy Mrs. Clause. (Ms. Jones) who decides she’s gonna sleep with the Grinch and go back to his place to get back at Santa for ignoring her. Since she is gorgeous, the Grinch agrees.

Discovering his plan to ruin Santa, the wife decides that since the Grinch is great in the sack, they will get all the lonely moms to come back to his place. This will somehow ruin Christmas. I think the plan was to make the kids misbehave or something. This results in the best scene in the movie: all these women sign up to be “kidnapped” in a fun and playful way and get tossed into the back of a car, bags packed. Husbands are mad as hell, women are laughing, the Grinch, his pet crack head and dwarf are having a great time.

I won’t ruin the ending of this hour long movie for you in case you want to see the twist ending for yourself. The movie isn’t good, and it really doesn’t paint the black community in a good light. I think it may be the worst thing done to the black community since slavery, Jim Crow laws, and P. Diddy parties. Watch it at your own risk. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ammossum (Steam Demo Review)

Ammossum is a demo sent to me by West Glade, and I have to be honest: I’m not sure I will ever forgive them for that. Don’t get me wrong; the game is perfectly functional. It looks pretty decent, and while the controls are way too slow for this type of game, they work.

I use the term works very vaguely. The demo does a very bad job of explaining what anything does. Does anything carry over from one run to another? What do weapon upgrades do? Why do they suddenly split off but don’t seem to do anything new? It doesn’t really say, and trial and error doesn’t do much when you die and get tossed new stuff to try to figure out every five minutes.

Eventually, you will figure it out, but that doesn’t really change how you end up feeling once you do. There is no sense of achievement since all you did was figure out a basic game function.

The game looks fun, and it sounds fun, but truthfully, it ends up just being an overall frustrating experience. At no point did I enjoy my time with this demo, but the potential is there, and with a few months before release, I am hoping it turns it around. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cargo! Xbox Review

Cargo! is the last of the games sent to me by Ultimate Games and is probably the most difficult to play but the easiest to review. If you ever played games like Order Up! or any of the similar games where you simply run around a kitchen making stuff or fixing cars with a little person and multiple stations you will feel right at home here.

Pick up stuff in one spot, drop it in another, get paid

You quite literally just pick up something from one spot in your truck, drop it in another, and get paid. In later levels, you have multiple stops to make. Sometimes, there are bridges or road blocks in the way. Of course, there is multiplayer (couch co-op).

Honestly, there isn’t much to say here. The game just is what it is. If you like games like this, there are hours of enjoyment here for you and your friends, and you definitely want to play with friends. If you don’t like games like this, this won’t be the one that changes your mind. It is another 7/10 game from Ultimate Games and to me, that’s a solid record to have. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.