Recent reviews by Arkveveen

Addictive, fun, and frantic, full of delightfully varied heroes for just about any kind of person!

The one major problem is the 60 frames per second lock, I advise any NVIDIA users to try low latency mode to alleviate how awful it feels. Set it via your manual GPU settings on the desktop, not GeForce Experience. You will get used to it, if you have a 75hz or higher monitor like mine. If you have a 60hz monitor, it should feel good and look just fine.

Secondary problems with the game are the numerous bugs, balance issues, and other broken problems such as matchmaking not always working correctly especially in a lobby with friends. There's a ton of small glitches and problems with grading, fortunes, and things such as in-game audio still playing even after a match ends.

This is a game I never got the chance to play. It's wonderful to see game preservation like this for once, and as a fan of hero shooters like ORIGINAL Overwatch, MOBAs like League of Legends, and other character-based PvP games, Gigantic hits all the right notes.

There's a more Casual mode with Rush, which is such a perfect "just one more match" mode and great to get practice with any hero at their full strength, and to try out the many different builds you can either customize yourself or choose from two premade builds. Clash is the primary competitive mode, and it's very hard to describe, you just have to play it for yourself it is truly quite something. Unfortunately, Rush feels like a... well, RUSHED game mode and has some flaws, including players not seeming to understand the objective even slightly, resulting in extremely one-sided matches. Rush is still great, chaotic fun for quick casual matches, but Clash IS the bread and butter mode the game was born with.

In Gigantic, and if you're a fan of progression systems or rewards, there is so many things to collect it is DIZZYING. All the unlockables are here for free, just collect Crowns to buy what you want, and continue leveling up individual hero masteries. Fortunes are in-game achievements that can be complete to unlock lore tidbits for the world of Gigantic and the individual heroes themselves.

Visually, the game is kind of dated. But it's also quite a striking style that is colorful and full of life. The 60 frame lock is such a letdown, and feels pretty bad for input lag, but as I said you can fix this with low latency GPU modes. The fights do get very frantic and chaotic, which is hard for visual clarity, but it's also extremely fun and vibrant.

I see complaints about this game from detractors, and I hear you. And, to be fair, the market is saturated with MOBAs or character-based PvP games. But the thing is, Gigantic feels like it exists to NOT compete with those games. It clearly exists for us who have tried it for the first time and enjoy it, or for the longtime fans who miss the game from way back then. It is perfectly fine to worry for the lifespan of a PvP game that relies on engagement in the longterm. I want to see new heroes, I want to see more and more players to play with or against, and I want to see new maps. But the thing is... my argument? Just play the game and try to have fun, if it's so bad that the game is dead on arrival or already dying, then you can alleviate that... by becoming a player IN the playerbase rather than complain about the game dying. How about that, huh?

Horizon Zero Dawn was an excellent game, but some aspects of it have aged more poorly than others. However, Forbidden West takes everything excellent about Zero Dawn and makes it even better, while improving on so many things that have aged poorly from before. I highly recommend you play the first game first before playing Forbidden West, it's still a great game but you can definitely see and feel the age.

Character interactions and conversations feel much more alive, more realistic, and immersive. Side quests are way better and more varied, mainly because these NPCs are so much more interesting or likable.

Combat is more fluid, more punchy, and more fast, the archery itself feels better. Although it might be due to the hitboxes being more generous when shooting arrows, they almost feel like they home in on a particular weakpoint you are aiming at.

The skill tree is... man, where do I even start? In the first game, it was a decent skill tree with plenty of game changing abilities, but in Forbidden West there are so many skills and so much improvement it is dizzying. There are playstyle defining "ultimate" abilities, and they are so fun!

The open world is still full of a lot of map icons and stuff to check out, so if you're tired of that then it hasn't really gotten that much better than the first game. However, you will stumble upon "unknown" things that are question marks on the map, and they will reveal themselves when you get closer, and this is such an excellent way of improving this tired Ubisoft-style trope. You can still easily navigate the world with waypoints or fast travel, but as before there are fast travel packs which are a limited resource and more often than not I want to walk around on foot because the world is breathtaking. You can even climb on more surfaces that are less obviously climbable, but we still get some yellow paint objects. You can ping with the Focus to see where you can climb on natural geometry.

Speaking of map icons and the huge open world. There's A LOT to do in Forbidden West, a lot more than even in Zero Dawn. I love this in open world games, personally, but it's up to you whether or not this is all padding or worthwhile content. I feel like any excuse to explore the world, the cultures, the ruins, and the machines is a good excuse to me. If you're a completionist, you'll have A LOT on your plate with this game.

Speaking of breathtaking, the graphics are truly "next gen", at least in my eyes. The first game was the same way, and it visually holds up, but it's even better now in Forbidden West. I appreciate this commitment to color and visual style while still hammering home the graphical fidelity, and it all runs pretty damn good from what I can tell. There's a few odd little graphical glitches, such as flickering shadows for specific details on characters, especially indoors, but it's not that big of a deal.

The music is great, and it's full of motifs, which is something I love. The only problem is that the sound overall is kind of low or strangely mixed, where it feels like the music is too loud but the sounds are too quiet.

There is now swimming, you can dive and it's actually pretty terrifying for me as a thalasaphobe. You have to worry about water machines and drowning, which is scary, but I love that now there are even mechanics for swimming, such as grabbing an object and boosting yourself forward to swim faster. There is real attention to detail in how you navigate the world in general, on foot or even when swimming, such as wall jumping and other such climbing abilities.

There's tons of loot to find and to upgrade ( or to buy ), it's far better than in the first game in how fun it is, but sadly the upgrades don't change how your stuff looks which annoys me a lot. But this is how it often is.

Look, I could go on and on. This review was already going on long enough. So do yourself a favor and play the first game, and then this game, you will not regret it. Did I mention the story is tense, compelling, and amazing? Hm?

Banishers is excellent, if you love God of War and The Witcher 3, or other cinematic action RPGs, this game is a MUST PLAY!

This game starts out slow and kind of boring. But, it then starts drawing you in with the excellent voiceacting, cinematic presentation, and interesting world.

After that, it starts introducing the RPG and loot mechanics, which are all quite damn solid and fun, with a skill tree featuring branching choices that you can respec on the fly. I like this trend of offering choices instead of just allowing you to get every single skill in the skill tree, in Banishers you have to choose one upgrade over the other in a path.

I know we are all tired of color coded loot and whatnot, but Banishers makes it fun and rewarding again... well, just like any GOOD action RPG not trying to be a live service nightmare. You can upgrade your equipment with various items you scavenge, and I like how there is a lore reason for why you do it: Because Banishers are also alchemists, survivalists, wanderers, and herbalists who use plants in rituals or fur/leather/metal/thread to reinforce equipment.

The combat is standard, but it's challenging and starts growing on you, there is a real sense of weight to the sword swings and the game steadily introduces new abilities for you to use in combat or while exploring. Combat starts getting more fresh and fun.

The world is semi-open, with just enough branching paths to explore and find secrets.

Then, after all of that awesomeness, the game introduces the central story-driven choice mechanics. You are going to make some DIFFICULT choices, and it's up to you to decide whether or not it's right or wrong.

In summary, Banishers is a game that gets better the more you play it, just be patient with the slow start and you'll love it IF you loved God of War.

A solid free to play game, The Finals has excellent and fun game show vibes underpinned by a dystopian corporate theme, infused with neon-drenched and amazing disco synth music! Gunplay and gameplay are great once you get into a groove, then come to grips with how the game plays.

This is a game about teamwork and objectives, simply getting them sweet kills won't win anything. The more I play, the more I enjoy and appreciate the objective-focused gameplay. A deathmatch mode would sadly be more generic. The primary game mode is "Bank It", or some variation of it for the competitive Tournament mode. In Bank It, you collect coins from a vault ( or enemy players you kill ) that spawns at a random location, then you cash them in at temporary cashout points that spawn in and disappear at random locations, lasting a minute or two. In the Tournament mode, you have to BRING a cash vault to a cashout point which you have to defend until the thing is finished cashing in your coins. First team to reach $40,000.00 wins, from what I can tell, or perhaps it changes. It is hectic, good fun!

The environments are almost entirely destructible, and it's impressive just how much can be blasted down with little to no performance impact. Not to mention just how gorgeous this game looks, probably one of the most visually impressive free to play games I've ever seen. All of this with beautiful explosions and effects blasting away entire buildings until they crumble.

The Finals has you playing as 3 different classes. Light, Medium, and Heavy, all with their own entirely unique sets of weapons, with some shared gadgets, and totally unique gadgets or abilities as the cherry on top. You can customize them completely ( skins and all ), so if you prefer something different you have plenty to unlock using a specific in-game currency for equipment or abilities. Each class has their own strengths and weaknesses. Nothing too wild in terms of weapon selection, but still fun and packed with guns I tend to enjoy using in these games.

The Battlepass is far better than something you'd see in some other free to play or stupidly freemium games like Diablo 4. In fact, you can earn 1,500 in-game currency in the Battlepass which you can use to get next season's Battlepass which is only 1,150, which is $10.00. The game is still not without its faults in terms of monetization, there are still manipulative things here including a FOMO-inducing storefront that preys on impulse buyers. There's plenty of solid and fun skins and unlockables going on here. But it does feel like a strange mishmash in terms of themes. But it is weird enough to make it enjoyable rather than just bland.

The game does feel a bit "sluggish". It's hard to describe, but it's actually not even as bad as people are saying it is. The matches feel fast-paced and hectic. It's possible that the sluggishness is with things such as animation transitions between running and aiming down the sights of your gun. I feel that there. Or, perhaps it's because you have to manually switch to things like grenades, and there is a bit of a delay there.

The problem with The Finals, potentially for me or for others, is that without the destructible environments... is it even good enough to stand against industry juggernauts in an overcrowded market? You know, I'd say yes! This is taking into account the excellent, big, and open maps that also feature really fun GAMEPLAY MODIFIERS where weird things can happen such as alien UFO invasions, which can occur at halftime during matches. There are also other map modifiers which add exciting twists to existing levels, and you get a different one each time. Thanks to that, and the ability to make your character play however you want in a genre OBSESSED with strict-playing "hero" characters, The Finals actually is pretty good when standing on its own.

I hope The Finals can withstand the test of time. That's the main problem here. But so far, I'm having a blast and I love the vibes thanks to that excellent music and fun game show feel.

I played Laika for just a bit and it was sadly too much for me. This is a case where accessibility options are necessary, because I'm autistic and can suffer sensory overload. This is strange, because I beat plenty of very difficult games in the past such as Lies of P, Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, or even Bloodborne. Sekiro was too much though. Laika hooked me in with its wonderful artstyle and compelling story, which was apparent from what little I played, but this game is overwhelming. I can't keep up with the difficult controls, having to worry about backflipping or frontflipping to recharge the deflect and reload my weapon. All the while dying in ONE HIT from any stray enemy bullet, and having to keep moving at a quick pace. It was sensory overload I don't think I quite experienced in a game before. This game, I'm sure, is something I would seriously love but the gameplay breaks my brain too much.

Dragon Spirits, in so many ways, is THE ultimate dragon game for dragon lovers. Every kind of dragon you can imagine is here in this Pokemon style RPG. 158 dragons ranging from fearsome and scary to gorgeous and expressive, sometimes even full of personality or humanity. It's great to see a game where dragons are mostly friends and not foes, making my heart soar as high as any dragon in the sky!

The artwork on the dragons is stunning, despite them all basically being static images bashing against eachother in the decently fun battles. The combat is a nice hybrid between turn taking and real time action, kind of like ATB in Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, and 9. You can have up to 4 of these lovely, huggable, sometimes kissable dragons ( well, not always ) in your party and swap them out for others in a very Pokemon-like manner.

The main hurdle with Dragon Spirits is that if you like leveling up a lot, the level limit for your dragon friends is 20. The game features a very strange leveling system I'm still trying to get to grips with, but you basically build up your dragon's individual stats by using certain abilities or getting hit by certain abilities, or sometimes it's random what stats will increase. The main fun of the game, if not the progression system, is collecting dragons for your dragon friend army.

As the stats increase, your dragon levels up, until hitting 20. There is more of a focus on balance here compared to Pokemon, and over-leveling is basically impossible in Dragon Spirits, although you can maximize your dragon's abilities by combining trinkets, stat "potentials", and ability combinations which you can change at healing/rest points. Each dragon already knows a unique set of abilities, except for cool "talents" which are powerful passive abilities. Once your dragon hits level 20, the stats stop increasing.

The game is kind of huge. I'm actually shocked at how open-ended it can be. The problem is, earlier on you have to go to classes at the Dragon Spirit Academy, and if you want to explore the big open world or do side quests you have to skip class. The teacher... well, he'll come looking for you and chase you down. He is very tough, and if you lose to him in Dragon Spirit combat he will drag you back to school. You can, however, do those side quests before class or after class, but you are limited to where you can go to in the open world after class. So you MUST skip class if you want to explore the big world, dungeons, and more. You ARE rewarded for attending class, but you also might miss on certain moments in the story from what I can tell. Eventually, the game does give you a couple of weeks where you can explore the big world freely.

The broken English is annoying to say the least. It really takes me out of the game and it's an unfortunately huge flaw. I try to ignore it and make a big effort to immerse myself in the story or characters, but it's hard when they talk like how racists think Chinese people talk, in broken English. Despite that glaring flaw, there is another flaw in the form of poor visual quality, where the game is quite blurry in full screen, which I prefer to play it at.

If you love dragons like I do, you owe it to yourself to get this game. Because, well, we really haven't got much to speak of right now... besides Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, Angels with Scaly Wings, and Glyde. Some honorable mentions are Age of Wonders 4 and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. It's either way too many multiplayer games, or really bad asset flip singleplayer games like Dragon Forge. It's kind of dumb that we have to rely on indie devs to give us what we want, but for once I would just like a AAA dev to give us a game where dragons are either friends or you ARE the dragon. Dragon Spirits, for now, will wet my dragon-sized appetite for my true dream dragon game!

The timeless classic, Half Life, is a game I grew up with when I first started PC gaming on a crappy EMachines computer way back then. I don't know how, but this game holds up so well despite it being so old. It shows you that good design, centered around fun and immersion, can withstand the ultimate test of time. I've always loved these games, including Half Life 2 which builds upon what makes Half Life great, but after the big 25th anniversary update, Half Life is now an even better starting point for younger gamers who've only ever seen or played Half Life 2. Heck, even for those who know about Half Life through osmosis because of Half Life 2 or Garry's Mod. Half Life, an "actual boomer shooter", that so many games are inspired by and built upon! After the big update, you can combine crispy pixelated textures with high resolutions up to an incredible 4K, turn on/off HD models which I personally like the HD models especially with the unfiltered textures, and have more fun goodies in multiplayer such as new maps. It's funny how such small updates can have such a huge impact on an old game, but it deserves that much for the community it has created and the insanely awesome modding sub culture it spawned. That's Half Life for you!

The amazing classic returns, better than ever with improved and more expressive pixel art, especially on the characters you play as. There's more of everything too. With new items, new bosses, new monsters, new game modes, and new classes to play as I've never seen my beloved Risk of Rain as good as it is here! Risk of Rain 2 was already so damn good too, but the original getting the same kind of love and attention has blown my mind. Not only is this so nostalgic... yeah I am that old, I'm 35 years old going on 36 soon as of this review... it was made fresh again with this complete overhaul! One of the best Roguelites ever next to the likes of Hades!

What if Doom Eternal and Borderlands joined together in harmony? What if it the result was a Roguelite just like Immortal Redneck, and the Ziggurat series? You'd get Roboquest!

It has the same "push forward" type of gameplay as "Nu Doom". Don't sit still, keep moving, and pick up healing orbs from destroyed enemy bots! It's so addictive, fun, and filled with so many weapons or upgrades that it's quite frankly dizzying.

You have one class at the start but slowly unlock more, each one giving you a different playstyle to play, and all sorts of fun passives or perks to unlock that further change the gameplay of that class. Such as the Commando THROWING its weapon like an impact grenade upon reloading, and endlessly because there is infinite ammo with reloading magazines.

This is how you design a Roguelite correctly. You eventually find keys that will unlock further paths, new levels, to take. So even if you die a lot in this difficult game, starting all over again isn't a boring affair because you have more choices of where to go, such as the Oasis, the Ruins, or the Quarry. There is SOME randomization, but it is more carefully crafted and based around "modular" rooms that sort of fit together seamlessly. The levels even have secrets to find, and minor Metroidvania elements requiring you to use unlocked gadgets to get to unreachable places. Although most of what I saw is just needing triple jump rather than the regular double jump.

There's too many guns. I have no words for it, many of them are fun even weapon types I don't usually enjoy, and there's still my beloved dakka dakka bullet hoses such as SMGs, LMGs or miniguns. So many attachments, upgrades, and affixes! The gunplay is so good!

There is excellent potential for synergies and builds with every class. Leveling up is always a fun, addictive affair because of it, and when you die you do have to start at level 1 again in both progress and character. But you can find persistent currency, unlock persistent upgrades, and more to help make each run easier without it becoming TOO easy.

The artstyle is really cozy and quite optimized, if you can't run this game then you're doing something wrong in my opinion.

The music is thumping electronica, and a lot of weapons sound chunky or satisfying.

The story isn't anything to write home about, but it's charming and does have a pretty cool mystery that keeps you playing, with hidden logs that reveal more about the world and what happened to human civilization.

What can I say, it was worth waiting to play this until it came out of Early Access! It's excellent, cozy, and satisfying! A good Roguelite!

A damn solid game, Endless Dungeon is a "remake" of the amazing classic Dungeon of the Endless!

I mean, first we have some of the best hero characters overflowing with personality, charisma, and variety. Each hero brings their own mechanics to the table, including strengths and weaknesses. This includes ultimate abilities and regular active abilities, including passives. The game slowly unlocks more for you to have in your roster. Also, there is actual fully voiced dialogue, and quips, for each character that brings them to life and makes them so likeable. I'm partial to Shroom, Zed, Sweeper, Fassie, and ESPECIALLY adorable little bug person Cartie!

Like Dungeon of the Endless, it's hard to describe Endless Dungeon. It's sort of if you take a dungeon crawling rogue-lite, then combine it with tower defense, top-down ARPG/shooter, wave-based survival, and real time tactics. The same formula is a winner here, since it's been refined to an absurd degree! More rewards, more unlockables, and more replayability.

The same amazing, eerie, surreal, and mysterious music is back better than ever, so expect some good tunes. The audio mixing is quite strange in this game where it seems to feel like the music begins to overpower sound effects. They might fix this if it's a known problem, so perhaps take this with a grain of salt. Sound effects are damn on point and so satisfying, even something as simple as opening a door, bullet casings hitting the floor, or the adorable pitter patter of Cartie's feet.

The graphics are quite good, they feel "next gen" without requiring terribly demanding hardware and most of it is all style rather than sheer realism. There is this beautiful comic book half tone shader that drives me crazy, and it's just one of a few very lovely effects in the game. However, what we have is another game where Raytracing seems to be forced, because it's either NO SHADOWS or Raytraced shadows. With my AMD RX 6700 and AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, the game hasn't dropped a single frame even when there's a ton of enemies, leading me to a state of astonishment. All of this on max settings at 1080p on a 75hz monitor. How did they do this? Well, it doesn't matter, these shadows look gorgeous and add to the overall visual style. If you can't Raytrace, you might be in trouble because the game looks much worse without shadows.

The weapons are a mixed bag unfortunately. Each hero has their own weapon type they can use. Some weapons just feel too slow or situational, and it really is such a shame because the variety is pretty immense, but I found that any weapon with a low rate of fire is a death sentence in intense situations. This makes some characters feel worse to play, especially when their starting weapon has a tiny range and a low rate of fire like Bunker. You can, however, pick up other weapons during a run. There are different elements which are strong against certain enemies, or weak against certain enemies, and I like this added bit of strategy to encourage using even not terribly viable weapons such as the weird "Campfire" heavy weapon that creates a ring of fire around you. Upgrading weapons is something you can do, and it DOES shore up some of the deficiencies in the worst weapons.

Like any roguelite, this game is challenging, and it can be quite grueling. When you die, you lose everything but keep persistent currency, unlocked goodies, and unlocked heroes that can help make it easier slowly but surely, including unlocking a slot for a THIRD party member which is extremely vital to save up Scrap for. The other currency are Cores, which you can use to upgrade your heroes with powerful passive abilities called Chips. You can also use these to upgrade weapons. All of these upgrades are permanent and aren't lost after a party wipe.

What else can I say? Everything about Endless Dungeon is brilliant and rewarding, it's so hard to put down and such a joy with its charming-beyond-all-belief characters and larger than life presentation in the UI design, the visual style, the music, and the world. Endless Dungeon is a damn fine roguelite!