Ereban: Shadow Legacy was sent to me by Baby Robot Games, and I always appreciate that. The story is very basic but intriguing; you play as the last known member of a race that can literally become one with the shadows. You can use these powers to either kill or simply hide from enemies and make your way through levels and discover what really happened to your people.
There are a few things I didn’t care for, but let’s start with what I liked. First off, as far as a port from a PC game goes, it was really well done. Playing on the base PS5, it was really well done. I never experienced any frame rate drops, and graphics maintained their beautiful cell-shaded look without popping in or out.
The game’s stealth is also really well done, to the point that it won’t allow you not to use it. Killing enemies must be done from stealth; if you try to just run in and stab someone, you will fail. The flip side of this is that the game makes the stealth controls and functions very well. I never felt like I was guessing if an enemy would see me or if I were in shadow.
As for the thing I didn’t like, well, for starters, the game might be 6-7 hour and this is without knowing where I was going. The dialogue also leaves much to be desired. It isn’t the worst I have heard, but it wasn’t great. None of that should be taken as the game is bad; I still had fun with it. It is a solid 7/10 that stealth and even platformer fans will want to pick up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Etrange Overlord is an action RPG sent my way by NIS America, which is always appreciated. It has been a while since I worked with them, and I picked a nice title to return with. Etrange Overlord is the story of Etrange Von Rosenburg, and upper class woman obsessed with sweets. She is falsely accused of a crime and sentenced to death, and finds herself in Hell.
What is a noble woman obsessed with sweets to do in hell? Take over and get sweets, of course. Now, if you are familiar with the Disgaea series, you will feel right at home playing this one. The sense of humor is the same, and considering some of the creators are the same, this shouldn’t surprise you. There is even a bad guy named Doomaz. Yes thats said the way you probably think it is.
With adorable graphics and a cast that would be right at home in any anime, the real question becomes, how is the gameplay? Well, it is quite good, honestly. Each character feels different, and it is easy to switch between them at the touch of a button. With items floating around the battlefield to either power you up or toss at enemies that come at you in waves, you will never feel at a loss for something to do during battles. More importantly, with up to 4 players online, there is plenty of strategy involved for those who care to partake in this. You can beat the game without ever doing this. I never found myself being punished for wanting to play solo, as the AI-controlled players are more than competent.
The real question is, do you enjoy these types of games? It is a 9/10 title from NIS America; any fan of theirs or the genre should pick it up. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Icarus Console Edition was sent to me by Grip Digital, which has made more games than I realized. Either way, it is always appreciated. This is one of those games that was on Steam for a long time, so I never really got to play it, so I was pretty excited to get the chance.
The game has a story, and I am sure someone who paid attention to it will happily explain it to you. I didn’t pay attention beyond that. Icarus was supposed to be humanity’s second home, and the attempt to terraform it messed the place up really badly. Now basically everything wants you dead: the weather, the animals, the air, and the water. The planet does have valuable resources, however.
There are multiple ways to play the game; you can go on increasingly difficult time missions or simply play a standard game, and see how long you can survive. In the first one, you will land on a planet with next to nothing and do whatever the game tells you. This might be as simple as building a small house and building a fire, which is more or less the tutorial, or more difficult things like exploring faraway places. Either way, you will learn new things and unlock better things that carry over to future missions. When you level up your character and unlock new technology or skills, they aren’t lost, which I rather like. It made me truly feel like my character was myself.
On the flip side of things, the game can be very unforgiving, and if you don’t have friends to play with, I feel like the game suffers a bit. While the game is completely playable alone, I never felt locked out of anything or like it was designed unfairly for solo players. This really is a game I think is more fun with friends. If you want a co-op survival game to play with friends, this might be the best one on consoles in my opinion. It is a 7/10 experience alone but a 9/10 experience with friends. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Basketball Classics is a retro basketball game sent my way by a company that I honestly never expected to work with, not because they are some huge AAA company or anything like that. Acclaim was simply big when I was a kid, and it went out of business for a long time and came back last year, and I played a lot of their games as a kid. So, to sit with my girlfriend and play a retro basketball game with my 9-year-old daughter, and my girlfriend was sent to me by Acclaim, was simply one of those moments in life that seemed surreal to me.
So right out the gate, I have to say, if you are looking for some amazing, graphically impressive game or an alternative to modern games, this is not the game for you. There are no high-definition graphics, in-depth movements, or any of that sort of thing going on. We are going back to the old days of holding A button to jump and a timed release to shoot, B button to pass, and Y to switch characters here. That is essentially all the controls.
There are a few options to choose from when it comes to the game, such as the type of court, CPU difficulty, and quarter length. Just like the old days, Acclaim has really gone hard on recreating that retro feel with Baseketball Classics. They even have all-star teams for most years you can pick teams for, which there are a lot of years.
Truth be told, if you love retro sports games, this is a 9/10 title. It has everything you could want, A story mode to unlock things in, classic graphics, and easy controls. More teams than you could ever need, couch co-op. Everything you could possibly need to relive your childhood. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Trash Goblin was sent my way by Spilt Milk Studios, which I always appreciate. The name has a super simple premise: you are a goblin that owns a small store. You will discover, clean, and fix up little trinkets to sell to some of the weirdest clients you will ever come across.
Thats it, that’s the game. It is just a cute, cozy shop game. Sound like your kind of game? Keep reading. If you already hate it, keep reading anyway. First thing is first, you will need to use a chisel to free the trinket from what seems to be a clay prison. After this comes the next mini game of cleaning it with a sponge. Some customers don’t care if it is clean, but honestly, you always get a cash bonus if it is clean, so as your mother said, always clean your room. I mean trinkets.
If you are still with me and interested, now is the time to sell them to the random people who come looking for trinkets. They may want something specific, like a certain lamp. They also may be vague, like hey, I just want a container. If you don’t have the item, it is possible to just send them away so someone new shows up, and if it is a story person, you can get them to come back, so don’t worry about that.
Now is the time for me to tell you the truth that many reviewers won’t. I did not enjoy playing this game. It was 100% a me thing, by the way, the characters are cute and charming. Graphically, it is nice, and it even has a wonderful price point of only $20. It sits at 5 stars on the PlayStation Store at the time I write this, and Very Positive on Steam. It is an 8/10 title that simply wasn’t for me. If you like cozy games, this is worth checking out. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
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.
Overthrown has finally hit full release and come to PlayStation 5. Maximum Entertainment was nice enough to set me up with a copy to play, which is always appreciated. The game itself allows you to play as a king ruling and building his kingdom from scratch in a very hands-on way, literally.
The game starts out with you picking up your crown, then placing your town center. This is where your citizens will emerge from every so often. When you build things like farms or sawmills, they will just go to work if you have someone unemployed. If you want, you can also just pick up the nearest person and throw them at the building and make them work there. Where you place your building does and does not matter, because if you are unhappy with its placement, you can just pick it up and put it somewhere new later and rearrange the town as you see fit. So while buildings do need to be in certain places, for example, a place that uses fruit being nowhere near fruit is useless, you can always move it later if need be.
Picking stuff up isn’t limited to buildings. Feel free to toss a tree into your sawmill and help the production cycle along if you want. You can chop it down if you want as well.
This kind of leads me to my only issue with the game: it gets quite repetitive fast, and the challenge just isn’t there. While the game is fun, and if you aren’t looking for a huge challenge, that is fine. The only real risk of death doesn’t come for probably 10-12 hours when the raids start, except for the occasional monster picking off a villager. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, and this admittedly could be simply because the combat is very well done and fun to use. As you make your way through the tech tree, you will discover a ton of weapons, from swords to spears.
The game is a solid, 7/10 experience that is worth checking out. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is one of those games that looked interesting, but I won’t lie to you, I did not have high hopes for it. It is also worth noting that Dark Horse Comics did a 3-issue limited run of comics called Toxic Commando Rise of the Sludge God that works as a prequel to this game, which you don’t need to read to understand this game at all. I, in fact, never heard of it until I was doing some research on this. Also, huge shout-out to Saber Interactive for setting me up with a pair of codes so me and @torstenvblog could check this out together.
Now, if you have ever played a game like Left 4 Dead or World War Z you know the idea of how the game is played. You and a group of friends fight through a massive number of enemies with a loadout of guns you choose beforehand and try to survive. If you are smart, you won’t head right for the objectives; you will hit the spots to pick up things like spare parts, which can be used to unlock special boxes or fix up weapons that can only be compared to the finales of Left 4 Dead.
Speaking of Left 4 Dead, this comparison is bound to be made; the special enemies here are quite similar in some ways and vastly different in others. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory by describing each one of them. Part of the fun of both games for me was having no real knowledge of them and running into these things at random. I will say there is no equivalent to The Witch, a lady crying until you get close, that you can sneak by, but if you startle her, she attacks you. Everything else is pretty well represented in some way.
The real question is how it plays, and the answer is far better than I expected. The controls are tight, with guns feeling powerful. I never counted how many there are, but there is a trophy for killing at least 1 enemy with 19 different primary and secondary guns ( which I went out of my way to get), and each gun feels different. Better, there is a nice mix of SMGs, shotguns, and assault rifles, but sadly, only one Sniper Rifle.
The superpowers for classes are also a nice addition to the formula, however. I really enjoyed playing as a healer because at later levels, the healing circle also damaged zombies. The thing is, each class functions differently depending on how you set it up. Your drone can do vastly different things over time, which gives you plenty of reason to experiment. Better yet, with Sabers’ history of driving games the cars have never felt better. Most of them have a wench attached to them for tearing down doors and such, but in true Snowrunner style they can also be used to get you out of mud while traversing the decently sized maps.
Now I could keep going on about this game, but I feel like you get the idea. This is probably the best game like this we have had in a long time, and as someone who still plays Left 4 Dead to this day, I am going to say something very unpopular. This is better. It is a 9/10 experience, and if you don’t let nostalgia for the past and rose-tinted glasses get in the way, you will see that this is all the fun of those games from the past, in a beautiful new era, with some nice perks. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Star Wanderer DX was recently released on PlayStation 5, and Leoful was nice enough to send me a copy to check out, which is always appreciated. Star Wanderer is an old-fashioned open-world space sim. You will be doing the typical things here: dog fights, trading, mining, and buying some new ships as you do freelance work. Don’t work the very originally named Mr. Anderson will walk you though everything.
The game looks pretty good for its $20 price point. I have no real complaints here, and the game, while short, maybe about 10 hours of story, is voice-acted. If you are looking for something to simply sit down and play on a budget, this game isn’t bad, as long as you realize this isn’t a AAA title. This isn’t the next Elite Dangerous on console, it won’t scratch that No Man’s Sky Itch.
The good news is, this game never claimed it would. The mining feels nice, it is quick and easy to get into, just shoot space rocks and collect minerals. The combat is what I like to call fast and dirty. Just you and enemy ships shooting at each other until someone dies. Trading is also quite simple, but low sell high. You can do this by mining minerals or even smuggling, and yes, you may have to outrun the police to do so.
Now the game is far from perfect or even great. Much of the galaxy feels empty, and jumping from system to system is by flying to special gateways, which feels like a chore when you really just want to get from one place to another. I truly feel like we have outgrown this mechanic by about a decade. Let me just use a galaxy map to jump to where I want to go. Also, with all these stations floating around I would think there would be more people for me to talk to and interact with.
While the game isn’t bad for $20, it also isn’t great. I have a hard time recommending this one with games like No Man’s Sky out there, but at the same time, if you need a change, I can’t say this one isn’t enjoyable. There is fun to be had in this 6/10 title. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Going Medieval is what I can only describe as the ultimate town castle management simulator. You will start with basically nothing, and if you play your cards right, you will end up with a fully functional medieval city and castle. Huge shout-out to Mythwright for setting me up with a copy of this one as it enters 1.0.
Now I have told you what the game is, let me tell you what the game isn’t. This isn’t a game for someone who just wants to hop in and build a simple village and ignore all the options to customize their playthrough. There are enough options that I have not messed with them all. There are things like how many villagers you start with, the season you start in, how often you get attacked, and much more. Going Medieval did not skimp out on these options.
Building a city also has its own challenges because each of the four seasons has its own challenges. For example, any resources not under a roof will spoil faster. In the summer, this happens even faster, even if they are under a roof. There is a simple fix for this; you can just put them underground with any number of buildings. See, you can build or do things very easily with layers. Don’t worry, the game has a very well-done tutorial explaining all of this.
Graphically, the game is cute, I wouldn’t call it, pun intended, game-changing. I enjoy them and find the music relaxing, but people who think graphics are the most important aspect of a game may find it disappointing. The game, however, functions extremely well. This brings me to my biggest warning about this game. This is very much a game where, if you pay attention to your villagers ( they come with little stories) and allow yourself to exist within your little world, take the time to learn the game, you will have a lot of fun. But if you simply want to quickly build a castle, you will be disappointed. If you don’t plan your food right, make sure you have defenses you will lose your village. But seeing them start to strive after struggling is a true joy. Small bugs aside, this is a 7/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 