Reviews – Page 9 – Savior Gaming

Dark Quest 4 Playstation 5 Review

Dark Quest 4 has just been released on PlayStation, and Brain Seal was nice enough to send me a copy to check out. I always appreciate this, and after spending some time with this one, I have some pretty mixed feelings about it.

Let’s get started with what the game is. It is a turn-based strategy game based on the Hero Quest board game. The game does a fantastic job of showing this from the very start. The story is told in such a way that you feel like a dungeon master is walking you through the entire thing. You build your party from pre-set adventurers, and can even have a friend join you in couch co-op.

Each party member feels differently; they all have their own ideals and reasons for fighting. The camp itself is even set up in such a way that it truly feels like one would expect a forward camp to feel as you make your way through Gulak’s evil horde.

As you make your way through a dungeon, your characters are moved as if on a board; if you ever played a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you know what I mean. Some characters are better at avoiding traps, for example, and the more speedy characters can quickly outpace slower ones. Slow-moving characters are usually able to tank more hits; however, your wizards can deal more damage but are quite easy to kill. All of this sounds fantastic, and it is really well put together.

The story playing out in a sort of storybook manner is also a great addition to the game. I loved listening to it play out as it was being written on the pages. I truly wish more games would take this approach. The game, however, has some areas where it just quickly became less fun to play.

For example, I found myself dreading exploration. My characters are taking turns while no enemies are around is fine on smaller maps, but on larger maps, this is time-consuming. To make matters worse, when every enemy is dead, I now have to slowly move every character to the stairs to move to the next level.

Having to re-equip potions after each time I delve into the dungeons also serves no real purpose. It adds nothing to the gameplay and doesn’t respect my time or effort.

The game is an ok 6/10, I didn’t hate my time with it, and it does a lot of things right. But I can think of better games to spend $20 on. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed, but I don’t see this one making new fans either. I won’t steer people away from buying it; it has very positive reviews on Steam and is sitting at just over 4 stars on PS5. Fans will be happy, as I said, but people getting into it will want to wait for a sale. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Painkiller Playstation 5 Review

Painkiller on PlayStation 5 is a new shooter from Saber Interactive that I have thought very hard about how to describe without saying “Doom with multiplayer.” Then I sat down with @torstenvblog because Saber was kind enough to send me a couple of codes, since you can play with the game’s bots (and they are very good on the normal difficulty), it is a multiplayer experience. Between the two of us, we really could not think of a better description than Doom with multiplayer.

The movement is crisp and clean; it feels great to slide through a pile of demons, then leap into the air and blast a bunch with my weapon of choice for the raid. This changes because I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t feel viable. The shotgun just showers guts and gore everywhere, and one of its alternative firing modes essentially forces enemies away, and at higher levels, they many times simply explode.

Graphically, the game stands toe-to-toe with many of the AAA titles I have played this year. The game is beautiful on PS5. Each nephilim is especially full of detail and is a horror to behold. The thralls ( the name for the common demons on the levels) themselves are also full of small details that you simply don’t find in most games. There is one that just runs up to you and explodes, and for a brief second, you can see him pulsate and see his insides before he attempts to kill you.

The game isn’t perfect; however, I did run into the occasional slowdown and even got booted from a game when playing online. This wasn’t anything insane or even common enough for me to not play or trash the game, but it did happen enough for me to feel the need to mention it, and Torsten playing the tutorial did enter the menu and became stuck there and was forced to exit the game and force close the entire game. (This did allow him to skip that portion of the game, however, so pro tip)

If somehow you are asking if I recommend the game still, I do. I am still having a blast with it, and I still haven’t finished leveling up the weapons the way I would like. It is a 8/10 experience. It truly is the best parts of Doom, with friends. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring yoy glory.

theHunter: Call of the Wild – Game Feeders DLC Playstation 5 Review

This will honestly be a rather short review. Not because I don’t have much to say or because it is bad, I actually have more hours than I care to admit into The Hunter Call of the Wild. I picked it up back in 2017, when Avalanche Studios first released it. I have been grateful when they have sent me a few DLCs to check out, and I have bought others. This time, they have sent me a Feeder Pack, which gives you access to three feeders with distinct uses.

It gives you access to three feeders, a box, a post, and a barrel feeder. The barrel feeder basically distracts things like bears and hogs away from your Box and Post feeders. This can be useful to save those from damage, but also lets you hunt those animals.

The box feeder will let you hunt smaller deer, like your white tails, while your post feeder lets you hunt bigger animals like your moose. It is really quite simple to get used to, but this doesn’t mean it’s as simple as setting it and shooting animals.

Like most things in hunting, there is a strategy to things. You can put these things anywhere you want, but if you place them where animals don’t go, it doesn’t matter. It also won’t matter much if you simply stand next to it. The key is to place them in places animals travel and fill them with the right bait. Animals will remember and frequent these places. A good strategy I found is to place them near a tree stand, and you can wait and time your shot well.

I have a nice setup between a tower and the saltwater crocodile on the Australia map. This allows me to shoot a few animals in one spot, and then walk over to the other and get a few there. For the price, it isn’t bad, but it won’t be something everyone is interested in for sure. For people who want to make the game easier in a lateral direction, however, it is a great addition to the game. I would have liked something to feed the birds or the crocodiles, but aside from that, it’s solid. 7/10, best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Necesse Steam Review

Neccese is a sort of adventure game where you live in a procedurally generated world, and it has finally been released into 1.0 from early access. Fair Games was nice enough to send me a copy to check out, and I am glad they did.

The general idea is simple: build a settlement, explore the world, kill bosses and enemies. If you ever played games like Terraria, you know the routine, except this time it is top-down, and now you can make villagers do all the stuff you hate. You can also bring friends from online to help; in fact, I recommend this. The game is completely playable solo; in fact, I did at first. It wasn’t until much later that I joined in with some others, and the extra help was great. Having someone else do the mining I didn’t want to be doing while I went fishing was nice.

Bosses are pretty tough but are reasonable with proper prep work, some of which can be summoned right into your town if you want. I find it preferable not to do this; however, not for any reason, my town didn’t get destroyed or anything, it just felt weird fighting a giant monster next to my house.

This does bring me to my few complaints about the game. For one, it gives you very little direction. If you are into the survival element of games like this, within a few minutes, you are pretty much self-sufficient with food. Enemies will spawn next to your house constantly at night, but they are never really a threat, so they are more annoying than anything. Thankfully, your villagers will kill them for you. I built right next to the elder, and he was dead set on murder. He would wake up from a dead sleep to kill anything that came near us. It was pretty impressive.

Is the game worth playing, though? Absolutely. It costs $15 and is sitting at very positive reviews with over 17 thousand reviews, and with very good reason. The replay value is excellent, and if you have friends to play with, you can lose yourself for hours. It is an 8/10 experience that fans of the genre should not miss. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Slots and Daggers Steam Review

Slots and Daggers is the newest game from Future Friends Games, the same people who brought you CloverPit Steam Review. They were kind enough to send me a copy of Slots and Daggers to check out as well, and I have to say, for an $8 game, it is very impressive.

The graphics are very simple, so it feels like you are playing a real slot machine. You start by picking 3 items, which represent possible outcomes on the wheel; they can be attacks, defense or even magic powers, such as healing or buffs,or attacks. You spin a slot, and those outcomes represent your turn. Certain outcomes will require a skill check, however. These skill checks keep you engaged and act as a sort of timed button press. If this sounds simple, it truly is. I sat here playing with one hand for a few hours before I even noticed time had passed.

Now you won’t win your first time through, or probably even your 5th. There is a good 6 to 9 hours of gameplay here, depending on your luck and what order you buy modifiers in. These modifiers do an assortment of things, such as raising your defense against physical or magic attacks, and granting you more wheels. You buy them with chips you gain by scoring points on your runs. The modifiers are permanent unless you refund them to change out which ones you want to buy.

How you want to play the game is completely up to you, but I suggest bringing at least one attack, one shield, and then whatever you enjoy playing with to start. This gives you a way to deal damage and defend yourself at the bare minimum. Personally, I liked the hammer. It may not have done a ton of damage, but the 10% chance to stun saved my run more than a couple of times.

I won’t say the game is for everyone; a lot of people won’t like it. It is sitting at very positive reviews on Steam with over 1300 reviews, and the main complaint is the lack of content, which I understand. However, when I review, I like to review things based on how they compare to other games at their price point, and what kind of time you get from it. Getting around 6 hours from an $8 game isn’t bad, and I have played a lot of low-cost games that just function very badly. This is an 8/10 game on those grounds alone. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Instruments of Destruction Playstation 5 Review

Instruments of Destruction on PlayStation 5 is an interesting title sent my way by the fine folks over at Secret Mode. At its heart is essentially a sort of puzzle game, and the puzzle you are trying to solve is how to destroy things on the map with different vehicles made by your company.

Each map has a different vehicle and different rules; for example, one map might give you a bulldozer and tell you to destroy 90% of the buildings without destroying 15% of the ruins, and a bonus objective to do it in less than 3 minutes. The next may have similar objectives, but tell you to use a helicopter and use bombs.

There is simply a massive amount of machines to play with, and most of them work great and quite differently from each other. Aside from the main story missions, there are also challenge missions. These will challenge you to do things like use a certain machine on a map you already completed, but race around the map and destroy new buildings in as fast a time as possible.

This is honestly where my issue comes into the game. While there is a massive amount of machines to use and plenty of levels to complete, the controls on some of the machines, typically the flying machines, leave much to be desired. I found myself unable to complete certain missions in a reliable way because the button that at one point would allow me to fly up suddenly would send me left or right, or worse, down. If I were over land, this wasn’t so bad, but when it sent me slamming into water, it resulted in failing missions. I would eventually succeed in the mission but many times it felt more like luck than skill, and this is disappointing since most controls for driving and even other flying vehicles felt nice to drive.

The controls are honestly the one blemish on an otherwise fun game to play, but it is a rather large blemish that I think might kill the game for many people. I still enjoyed my time with this one, and for 20 dollars, there are far worse games out there. It is a 6/10 experience, and maybe waiting for a sale to try is a good idea if you are unsure. A small patch for the controls on flying would improve the score. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Decktamer Steam Review

Decktamer released on Steam this week, and Assemble Entertainment was nice enough to send me a copy. The best way I can describe this experience would be if Magic: The Gathering and a Pokémon Nuzloke run had a baby and spit this Deckbuilding roguelike out.

The concept is simple: you start with a deck of cards, which are living monsters. You delve into this cave and fight other monsters, where you can capture new ones when you weaken them, assuming you have the right food. For example, herbivores won’t join you if you try to toss them a hunk of meat. Creatures that prefer fish aren’t likely to accept plants. Worse, if your creature dies during a fight, it is gone forever.

Each card has a health and speed rating, while their attacks do different amounts of damage and have different abilities. Some are weaker but may do damage to every monster on the side. A slower monster may have stronger attacks; it is up to you what you want to try to do. However, remember that if that health reaches zero, it is gone forever. It is very high-risk high high-reward sometimes. Knowing when to switch your monster means more than in most games.

The artwork is also amazing; this is honestly where I thought the game would fall short, considering its $16 price tag. I was very wrong; the sound and art are nothing short of amazing, and I really thought going into this, these would be the areas I would have complaints. In fact, if you look at the Steam reviews, which are very positive with over 150 currently the only complaints you will see are that the game is insanely hard.

This is honestly true; this game is not for the faint of heart. I love the game, it is fun and I am having a blast with it, but damn, will it wreck you. Each battle and each move involves some strategy. Each item matters the further you go. It may even need some balancing tweaks to be honest, but in the meantime, it is a 9/10 experience that fans of the genre must experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lost in Fantaland Playstation 5 Review

Lost in Fantaland is the newest tactical RPG roguelike from Game Source Entertainment, and they were kind enough to send me a PlayStation 5 copy to check out.

The game starts out in a simple yet comical way, which honestly is pretty standard for the game. It takes a rather light-hearted tone throughout the entire game. You start out as a kid walking through the woods and get more or less kidnapped into a world you need to save. This leads you into the tutorial where your character is freaking out about how he can’t move. A hooded but friendly figure explains that you can’t move yet because it isn’t quite your turn.

He then explains what the cards do, how to avoid getting hit, and how to deal damage. This, as you would expect, leaves your character a bit unhappy, but they are convinced to play along. The battles take place on an 8×8 grid, which makes for pretty fast-paced battles that really push you to focus on strategy rather than trying to overpower the enemy. This is especially true if you are playing as one of the mage classes, which really prefer more of a hit-and-run strategy than to stand there and tank hits with shields like the warrior class.

The story admittedly is pretty much non-existent, but there is a reason the game is sitting at very positive reviews on Steam. The combat itself is just fun and easy to get into. Permanent unlocks can be useful, but for the most part, they are perks that make the game more fun and aren’t truly required to make deep runs like most games of the genre. With a price point of around 15 dollars, it’s easy to recommend this game. I would like a bit more variety in the cards you can get your hands on, but it is still a 7/10 experience. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022) Review

Christmas Bloody Christmas by writer/director Joe Begos, is a very odd slasher flick for me. It has all the staples of a slasher movie you would want: gory kills, campy acting that isn’t over the top, and a story that makes just enough sense to suspend disbelief but isn’t so far out there to make me just want to turn it off.

The story goes like this: a music store owner named Tori, played by the talented Riley Dandy, is convinced by her long-time employee, Robbie (the equally gifted Sam Delich), to blow off a Tinder date to drink and hang out with him instead. After a quick stop at the local toy store to visit some friends who have decided to stay late for a drunken sex filled night after hours at the store, they are off to the bar. The thing is, the toy store is where they are shown a somewhat creepy electronic Santa that is very popular because it does all the stuff a normal store Santa does, except it isn’t a real person. Personally, I took this as a shot at unfettered capitalism and how companies would rather get rid of an employee and use (quite literally in this case) repurposed military equipment to save money than hire an old man to play Santa.

At the bar, you can hear on the TV that there has been a recall on these Santas because some of them have been reverting back to their original programming. This obviously can’t mean anything bad for our drunk sex fiend friends back at the store, right? Yeah, they are about to get killed mid-coiatis. Tori and Robbie are leaving the bar around this time on their way back to Tori’s house, and assume they are just having a great time.

This, of course, leads to the eventual sex between our main characters, and this is where I need to give a shout-out to Joe. Movies like this tend to take sex scenes and turn them into an excuse to just show a ton of nudity for the sake of having nudity, and this is done quite well. Very little actual nudity ( and this is assuming you consider a thong nudity)

My only real issue comes down to the massive amount of false finishes with the villain. They start at around halfway through the movie, and I completely understand the concept of building suspense and building to a climax and building hope, etc. There does come a point when you are no longer building anything, and you are simply killing momentum for an audience.

I can only watch Mecha Santa get hit by so many cars or take so many shotgun blasts that “kill him” so many times before I don’t care if he gets up or not, and by the time Tori actually kills him, I didn’t care who died as long as the movie ended. I went from rooting for Tori to rooting for the movie to just end. I started out enjoying the movie, but by the end, I simply didn’t care. It isn’t the acting or even the story; it is simply a matter of how they chose to play it out. More deaths and fewer false deaths for Santa would have gone a long way. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

NASCAR 25 Playstation Review

NASCAR 25 is the newest racing game from iRacing, and it really shows their dedication to making the game simply about racing. They sent me a copy to check out, which I always appreciate.

The first thing I noticed was how simple and streamlined everything is compared to previous years. If you want to jump into a race, even in career mode, everything is just a couple of quick button presses away with very few menus to flip through. This isn’t to say there is a lack of options; you can still do all the things you would want to do, from customizing your cars and team to tinkering with your car. It is all just easy to access.

Even online racing is quite simple to get into, with picking your race having options laid out simply to see what kind of race you are joining or starting, easy to see. You want a quick or long race with full flags and laps; it is easy to find.

All of this means nothing if the game plays badly or doesn’t look good. Truthfully, this is the best-looking NASCAR game we have seen on consoles. The controls are also very nice. I am far from being an expert at racing, but the controls for me are great. They aren’t super touchy like many other racing games, where if I do the smallest movement, I am flying off the track, but it doesn’t hold my hand either. More than once, I have managed to oversteer and toss myself into a wall or other cars. Sorry guys, online, I didn’t mean to cause that pile-up.

This brings me to the online community. I had about a dozen races, and only twice have I seen any real wrecks, once by me and once by someone else who seemed to have had a similar mistake. People on the mics had a good laugh and seemed to be understanding, and enjoyed a good, clean race. I don’t doubt there are trolls out there that want to ruin a good time, but they certainly aren’t the majority of people.

So is NASCAR 25 worth your money? Well, if you are a racing fan, absolutely. This is a 9/10 NASCAR game. Easily the best I have played in years. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.