Recent reviews by Alex

Probably the most complex economy of all of Paradox's games so far. Definitely a recommend.

The game runs slow as hell but even if it ran smoothly, it is not as good as the originals on the PSP.

Disclosure: I received this game for 'free' as a backer of Bloodstained Ritual of the Night's Kickstarter, in which I pledged about a hundred pounds included shipping fees for the PC physical edition.

As for the game itself, it's basically Castlevania 3 but revised and expanded, with some touches of Rondo of Blood. If you liked the original NES ones, you'll love this stuff. It is NOT a Metroidvania like Symphony of the Night and Order of Ecclesia. A really good game for a Kickstarter stretch goal, I can't wait to see Ritual of the Night, which will be the Metroidvania game like the aforementioned Konami games.

The graphics are a midway point between the original Castlevania for the NES and that magick that Shovel Knight does with it's stuff. It's really good and the aesthetics of the game make it seem like it jumped out of the Konami franchise, albeit with it's own stylized look, it is also it's own distinct thing - all the main characters have a predominant color, for an instance, but they're leaner and taller than the NES Castlevania characters, for an instance. Also, dat parallax scrolling.

The soundtrack is really catchy but could use with a killer track - the songs are ok but aside from the Boat Stage track none are really remarkable, and there's nothing as cool as Bloody Tears or Vampire Killer in the game.

The difficulty is hard but not harrrrrrd, you just have to get good at it. Certain modes have some shortcuts but you can't avoid Ninja Gaidening forever and the later modes get a lot closer to how hard and almost unfair the original Castlevania felt. That's good because Zangetsu and his friends are really responsibe, and they kinda fixed that issue where you have to buy an engagement ring for your jumping arc every time you wanna cross a platform like in the original NES games.

The game has a lot of replayability in the sense that you have to beat it like six times to see all endings and earn all achievements, although repeating the same 8 stages over and over gets a little boring after the third time, even with branching paths.

I can safely recommend this game - you can get nearly ten hours of fun out of it if you're into challenging platformers. It's a good Castlevania game and a great treat for the people who've been waiting for Iga's project to launch.

What's the point of selling the digital special edition with an extra copy of the game if THERE IS NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER?

You will need a hug by the end of it.

I just voted on this game for the "I'm not crying. there's something in my eye" category on the Steam Awards, and you should too. If you don't know why, all it takes is 4 hours to play it back to back.

Super Hexagon is a massive achievement in gaming narrative.

The game tells the story of a person desperatly trying to find her way out of a rave while under the effects of amphetamines and LSD. This is done solely through the mechanics of the game, with no plot exposition or writing of any kind.

10/10 best drug abuse simulator ever

I am not recommending this title. If the game had at least another hour of content on the main mission it might have received a more general recommendation. Don't be fooled by that thumbs up.

This game could have been released as a demo for The Phantom Pain, since the main mission takes around 50 minutes to complete the first time, and there's videos out there of people finishing the game in fifteen minutes or so, so don't buy this game if you're looking for a full experience. Wait for the full release

OTHER THAN THAT... the game is awesome. It really is. The mechanics, graphics, animation and level design are the best of all the series, and maybe even of it's entire genre.

The mechanics and play style changed a lot, you've got a lot more fluidity and freedom of movement, and the graphics really show this is a next gen title, even though the game is currently capped at 60fps and uses subpar texture resolution for PC standards. I recommend you play this game on a controller, as the controls have not been optimized for keyboard and mouse, althought I did played the entire game without a joystick and I did fine.

IF you are like me and literally can't wait for another Metal Gear Solid game, then I recommend you buy it to check out what to expect on the Phanton Pain. I for one can't wait for it.

Hands of Fate is, usurprisingly, the hidden pearl of the new EC Humble Bundle. Hidden behind the $15 dollar paywall, it's most likely the one game people won't bother paying the extra few bucks to check out.

Shame on them.

The game is, hands down (ba dum tsh), awesome. For those of you living under a rock and that have never any of the Extra Credits reviews of this game (they actually did it twice), lemme summurize it for ya:

The game is a cross between card game, Arkham City arena battles, and choose-your-adventure book. Basically you have a table with face-down cards and a character token that moves through those cards. Each card is an Event card, which can range from "You have been ambushed by Goblins who took your stuff" stage, made classic by the Golden Axe games, a maze stage filled with traps, or a plain-text event where you have to use your wits to avoid being on the receiving end of a prostate exam. The It's Toasted of the game is that during combat events the game zooms in and you control your character (with customizable gear!) to fight the hordes of enemies in the aforementioned Arkham City arena battles. It's pretty neat, althought it gets really unfair sometimes as the game has no challenge ballance - if you got dealt a bad hand of cards you're gonna have a bad time. You "improve" (as much as adding harder challenges is an improvement) by acquiring cards after beating the dealer's challenges along stages. So no way this is gonna be monetised in the future. Yey!

The game is still in Early Access, as of the time of this review the latest patch marks it as Beta1, so there's a lot of unpolished and unfinished things. The dealer has only a couple few animations and sometimes runs out of voice lines, there's not much variation between enemy models, the menu's navigability is horrible, and every now and again you stumble into attrociously unballanced dificulty spikes, but this is all expected from Early Access titles.

I highly recommend the game, even in it's current form. One of the best card game concepts I've seen, reminds me a lot of the old Shadowrun TGC game.

With the WC and everything, quite a few people have asked me When The ♥♥♥♥ Did I Started To Care About Football. Well it started with the 2001 interation of this game.

Lots of people don't realiase the FM is not a football game, but a grand-strategy game. And a very complicated one. But like all the good grand-strategy games, after you get past the learning curve wall you get to see where the game really shines. Being able to figure out how football really works takes some time, and figuring out the rest of the game mechanics (you have to set your players trainning schedule, negotiate contracts with greedy agents, all sorts of shenanigans) takes some extra effort too.

But once you figure out how things work and who is who on the game, it becomes one of the heviest time sinks I've ever experienced, even more than Crusader Kings II. The loading times themselves account for a lot of that time. A good way to not waste time with loading times is to watch something on Netflix while playing. The game is already super slow-paced so it's not like interrupting it will do any damage.

Overally I recommend this game for people who like strategy games and want to try something new, that doesn't involve sending military units to burn villages and whatnot.