Recent reviews by Sledgehammer

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Terminator: Resistance is an AA (and low budget) game based on the Terminator franchise, set during the original future war depicted in the films The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). It was developed by Teyon, a company responsible for titles such as Rambo: The Video Game and most importantly RoboCop: Rogue City.

Long story short, this is the best Terminator video game, even if you're not a fan of this franchise, I definitely recommend you to get this. It's a labor of love to Terminator franchise.

Now, to elaborate, Terminator: Resistance is basically a true trequel to the first two movies except it's in a video game format, this is how the franchise should've ended. It has a good and engaging plot that fits too well to this franchise, it has an extremely great Terminator aesthetics, the music and atmosphere are just like in the movies, the composer nailed the OST and it's a shame they didn't officially release the OST, by the way. The gameplay is also quite enjoyable, especially if you wanted to shoot all these futuristic guns from Terminator movies and if you wanted to see and kill many cool Skynet machines, not to mention the fact that T-800 are actually quite terrifying in this game, the devs nailed them here as well.

You play, you guessed it, as a resistance soldier named Jacob Rivers. You'll have to deal with many Skynet units on your way, you'll meet a lot of interesting people as well, some of them can be romanced even. You'll also have to make various decisions that have various consequences, the ending depends from them, in fact. Also, the game has an infiltrator mode where you can play as a T-800 itself and of course there is a DLC where you'd have to work with Kyle Reese.

Now, the gameplay is inspired by various video games, such as Fallout, Duke Nukem, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Deus Ex and other FPS games, and yes, this is a FPS game with RPG elements (leveling, skills, inventory system, choices matter mechanics, dialogs, influence, weapon upgrades, crafting, etc). It's not that great or unique (they even took lookpick minigame from FO3 without changing it), however, I still found it very enjoyable, shooting all these futuristic weapons felt very satisfying, I definitely would replay the game for gameplay as well. Dealing with T-800 is especially cool considering you won't be able to hurt it with standard guns and thus there are some horror elements to this game too. The infiltrator mode is also very satisfying, as I said, you're taking a role of T-800, your goal is to find an intel and kill an important resistance soldier, and you're about to kill many resistance members or scavengers on your way. Terminator vision and sound effects with brute force are included of course, in fact, RoboCop gameplay is kind of based on infiltrator mode.

The only flaws I could mention is that there is no new game plus, RoboCop game is more polished and has more cool features (so, don't play that game first), the Infiltrator mode is the same everytime you replay it and they couldn't use Schwarzenegger and Michael Biehn likeness.

Anyway, I'm not a huge Terminator fan, but I truly enjoyed this great game and I plan to replay it many times. I played it two weeks straght and was consumed by the game which doesn't happen too often, especially when it comes to modern video games. I even regret not buying it when it earlier, so if you actually enjoy playing video games get this one, you won't regret this.

P.S.: "critics" actually didn't like this game that much, it had rather mixed reviews from game "journalists" that usually praise boring AAA garbage games at the same time, meanwhile this game is definitely better than the garbage they love to praise, so, here is to you another reason why you should never rely on their opinions. Never trust game "journalists".

If you're new to Shin Megami Tensei, then basically it's a turn-based JRPG series with some dungeon crawler elements about demons, deities and humans fighting each other in post-apocalyptic Tokyo while you, a silent protagonist, use your devil summoner program to collect and even fuse them, just like in Pokemon, except all the demons and deities are based on real-life mythology (MegaTen was created way before Pokemon, however). If you're familiar with SMT series then you know what to expect. This version in particular is an enchanced re-release of SMT:V that previously was released exclusively for Nintendo Switch in 2021. It adds a new storyline while and many QOL features in general, so it's the original SMT:V with even more additional content (before Atlus did separate releases of original and enchanced editions of their games).


As it's been mentioned, this game series is about collecting and fusing demons and deities, you can upgrade them and make them learn new skills, and there is ton of demons and deities in SMTV:Vengeance, "catching them all" alone can consume you for hundreds of hours, Demonic Compendium has everything you really need to help you (an archive of every demon fused, evolved, and recruited throughout the game). You recruit your demons through negotiations mechanics that can be very unpredictable and quite funny. You fight other demons and deities with your team of your own that you encounter in an open world-like dungeons, the game uses unique press-turn battle mechanics that force you to strategize your battles, especially with bosses (there are weaknesses, critical hits that gives you or your enemy an additional turn, you and your enemies can miss, repel or drain particular skills that may result in turn loss). You and your party can level up and as a result can learn new skills or gain more stat points, you can also collect, consume, buy and sell various items. Unlike previous entries, SMTV:Vengeance has a lot of QOL features on top of polished gameplay that's based on SMTIV:Apocalypse that was released exclusively for Nintendo 3DS, though in general the game itself is heavily inspired by SMT:III Nocturne Maniax (hence Atlus re-released SMT:III first). Gameplay and Demonic Compendium are the strongest points of this game and are nearly perfect among other games in the mainline series and especially among spin-offs (looking at you, Persona games).


SMTV:Vengeance has two storylines, "Canon of Creation" and "Canon of Vengeance" with the former being original game storyline and the latter came with Vengeance edition. Many say that the story is weak in this game, however, to fully experience it you shoud do as many quests as possible and always talk to habitants of Tokyo because this time around the devs wanted to focus on the game world. The main plot isn't as strong as in SMT:I, II and IV as a result, I guess. Alignment mechanic was watered-down as well compared to SMT:IV. Still, you can also read lore of all the demons in the game. In this game you play as your typical Japanese high school student that ends up in apocalyptic Tokyo and becomes a god-like creature called nahobino.


Now, one of the biggest reasons why many people didn't like this game as much is due to the fact that it was released, as I mentioned before, on Nintendo Switch that impacted game's performance in a negative way. The game experienced constant FPS drops and didn't look great either despite being an exclusive title for the platform. However, with Vengeance release we've finally got the definitive version of SMT:V. Not only the game looks gorgeous it's also very optimized (despite having Denuvo) and very mod friendly (the game was made with Unreal Engine 4 after all). There is a native support for Sony controllers with Dualshock 4 and Dualsense buttons (however, they ruined native support for DS at least with the latest patch, use Steam settings until they fix it) and there are plenty of settings you can fiddle with (there is higher than 60 FPS support, 4k resolution support, FOV settings), although they could add more PC-related settings (especially AA-related settings, but people fixed that problem with mods). Atlus also released a pretty good and big update that added a new demon and new navigators (the demons that follow the protagonist around and discover search points that contains items or can lead to the enemy battles). Hopefully they'll give us more content in the future, DLC included, because it seems Vengeance re-release was a big success because, well, it's a great game and one of a few great modern high budget video games.


SMT:V Vengeance is one of the best modern JRPGs and maybe even one of the best video games released in general despite some of its flaws, it's a game that people bought their Nintendo Switch for, and now it's finally available on PC. Even older or weak hardware can run it with no issues, it's extremely rare that something like this happens nowadays. Not only that, it's a great game because it's actually a video game not some kind of a movie or a walking sim, it has very deep gameplay, it has quite rich lore and good story, it has great atmosphere and it will consume you for hunded of hours (despite performance issues I replayed the game on Switch countless times). It's worth it even for its price with no discount, SMT:VV is simply a must-have for the people who love video games, if you will.

P.S.: Atlus, please bring us SMT:IV and Apocalypse, better even if you also give us enchanced (or PS1 versions) SMT:I and II re-releases as well. We need all mainline games on PC and spin-offs too, especially PS2 ones, especially Digital Devil Saga games.

HEAVEN OR HELL? DUEL 1, LET'S ROCK!
Guilty Gear XX #Reload (and all GG game series) is a 2D anime fighting game with metal soundtrack and it has interesting plot, good characters and also various references to metal and rock music what makes game pretty unique. There is a lot of singleplayer content such as "Gallery", "Arcade Mode", "M.O.M. (Medal of Millionaire)", "Survival Mode", "Mission Mode", Story Mode, "Training Mode" and, of course, "Vs CPU" and "Vs 2P".

Mostly important is that GG XX#Reload has pretty fast gameplay, nice graphics and animations, good balance, decent mechanic and interesting combat system about which I want to talk more. First, as you probably know, there is special attacks and "Overdrives". To perform overdrives and some attacks you need a "Tension" gauge. Also, player able to kill an enemy instantly by "Instant Kill", but if missed, player lose his tension guage. There is also "Psych Bursts" that can stop enemy's attack or give full tension by performing in a neutral state. Another special attack is "Roman Cancel" which can cancel enemy's move and require tension. All this allows to come up with a variety of strategies and tactics.

Furthermore, you can unlock not just gallery arts, but also 2 secret characters (Justice and Kliff) and EX, Shadow (infinite tension) and Gold (characters become overpowered) versions characters and there are various ways. For example, to unlock Justice and Kliff player can beat Story mode or Mission Mode.

In addition, there is multiplayer mod for Steam version (see guide) which works fine.

Why else would I recommend it? Because #Reload is one of the best versions of GGXX and because there is no AC+R version for PC yet.

Update: finally AC+R is available on Steam, along with Xrd -SIGN-! Now time to bring -Revelator- and wow, here is Steam store page for it.