Recent reviews by Trip Fisk

Man, its hard to pick recommend or not for this review when whether or not someone will like it comes down to preference.

Here's why I'd recommend Mythforce:

Watch the trailer. Be impressed by the well done eye candy and 80's aesthetic. This is what Mythforce is trying to achieve, and it absolutely nails it. Cel shading has been 25 years of making bad and ugly looking polygons and saying 'it looks like a cartoon!' when it never did. Mythforce is the first time I've seen something actually pull it off, and Beamdog deserves massive credit for that. Mythforce honest to God looks and sounds like an 80's cartoon down to some of the stiff acting. Thumbs up for that.

Here's why I don't recommend:

The game itself. I'm not an arrogant gamer and I'd typically never say something like this, but Mythforce is made for casuals. Its a very light, easy take on Left 4 Dead style shooters. Not that difficult. Very simple and repetitive. Each room is an arena with enemies you've got to clear to move onto the next. Beamdog is still working on the game, and they're trying to add more variety to it. Despite these efforts, Mythforce is as deep as a puddle and tends to be as dull as dishwater. If you don't mind its simplicity, the game might click with you. If you're looking for something deeper, faster, and more complex, you likely won't like Mythforce.

Mythforce goes on sale for 50% off a lot. $30 is kind of expensive for a game in a congested genre where other games do the same thing better for cheaper. The user base is also very low, so you're likely not going to match with anyone unless you're playing with friends.

I guess I'm hitting recommend when I shouldn't. Mythforce may be too successful in trying to be like an 80's cartoon. Meaning just like crappy forgotten 80's cartoons named The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, all the effort went into a catchy theme song and an eye catching intro in service of a product that is not anywhere near as good as it was hyped up to be (to be fair, Mythforce is NOT as bad as the crappy cartoons I mentioned...)

In fact, I'll leave an example of bad 80's cartoon habits.
Watch and listen to the following video:
https://youtu.be/fmDckVV5vxQ?si=QV3b6yrvSLRByXLf
Amazing stuff, right?
Watch ANY episode of that cartoon, it is PURE garbage. NONE of the energy or effort went into the cartoon at all.

Microcivilization is an odd duck of a game as it's a mixture of recent genres where it doesn't quite fit in any of them. This explains some of the negative reviews since Microcivilization winds up defying some people's expectations. Its a clicker game that's too involved to be a clicker game. Its an idle game that requires the game be played far enough where its safe to idle. Then it has the trappings of a 4x game that's been simplified to a point that its almost like an internet flash game. Somehow this stupid game captivated me for 2 days straight. Then I got the beta build for the next major update and got sucked in 2 more days. I don't get it. I shouldn't like this game, but I do.

Microcivilization is a great time waster. Its fairly short and isn't too hard (unless you start the latest beta). You reach the end, unlock new tiers and bonuses, then start over again. The game is so short and impersonal, it doesn't take away from scrapping your civ and starting over.

Game is still in early access. What I've played so far is shaping up to be a unique and fairly enjoyable time waster. That is unless you get one of those games where it's laying like 50 crisises on top of you all at the same time. I never thought I'd see a difficult cliker game, but Microcivilization gets like that sometimes. It IS easy overall though.

Bought it on sale for roughly $15. Definitely felt like I got my money's worth.

Etrian Odyssey is Atlus' take on Wizardry. It's as good now as it was 17 years ago! Wow does saying that make me feel old

Only complaint I have is the dual screen/touch controls are poorly adapted in this remaster. The map display is kind of a mess and gets obscured by the tool overlay. And while they did convert the ability to draw the map with a controller, it's convoluted and awful. Having a mouse handy to draw the map is recommended IMHO.

Another sort of complaint is Sega/Atlus didn't use the EO ancient flash animation to promote this remaster:
https://youtu.be/dB_PVPyn6n8?si=MuB0sSrEYLpQW2TU

If you play this game and find it too difficult, I recommend putting the following in your party:

Alchemist:
1 in Toxin (not entirely sure adding points ups poison damage... DS version says yes, HD remaster says no)
10 in Poison

This guy poisoning enemies will easily push you through the first 2 strata and well into the 3rd. Unless an enemy is resistant, you'll only need to cast once and let the poison kill within 2-3 turns. Poison resistant enemies can be a little stubborn, but they can be poisoned and you might need to cast it a few times.

Extra advice: if you plan on beating the game in its entirety, you'll need a Medic with maxed out Immunize. Immunize is a stupidly powerful defensive skill.

edit: there seems to be some confusion over Etrian Odyssey HD. This is an HD remaster of the original DS game on Steam and Nintendo Switch. This is NOT Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl. That is a remake that is only available on the 3DS.

I'm surprised I didn't write a review for Thronefall

Its very good! Highly addictive. Recommended even at full price

Swarm Grinder's tags are misleading and wrong. Its not a bullet hell and I definitely wouldn't call it a rogue anything.

Its a lot like Vampire Survivor in that the player walks their character around avoiding enemies while ♥♥♥♥ just keeps shooting out of it on its own and lots of swarming enemies walk into the ♥♥♥♥ and die. The only real difference in terms of gameplay is power ups are collected by unveiling marked off hexes instead of leveling up, enemies drop fuel instead of xp, and you'll start dying when out of fuel.

Its not a bad game!

Pretty sure the Turkish developers have a Gadget Hackwrench fettish given the mechanic girl featured throughout the game. Its a shame she married a fly and mated with it.

Personally, Dead Rising is among the top 3 best games of the PS3/360 console generation. Its craziest accomplishment is it was clearly a tech demo designed to show off next gen hardware 20 years ago. Not only did Dead Rising manage to pull off amazing stuff on a technical level with limited hardware doing things that really haven't been done since, but Dead Rising was also an incredible and enjoyable, if not sometimes flawed, game. Its rare for a tech demo to also be a good game.

The reason I'm writing this review concerns the Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster. There's a youtube channel called Crowbcat that makes videos about video games. These videos showcase corporate laziness and industry incompetence that result in sloppy overhyped crap product. Certain digital insane asylums hate that channel so much they will ban you for even mentioning it. Anyway, Crowbcat made a video comparing the original Dead Rising to the Deluxe Remaster and there's one major thing that stands out between the two:

Dead Rising 2006 was made by people who gave a ♥♥♥♥. 2024's DR:DR was made by people who don't.

Here's a brief history and how you can tell:

20 years ago, the video game industry was healthy and lucrative. It was flush with experienced talent that was consistently knocking out bangers. After dipping their toe in the market with the Xbox, Microsoft wanted a bigger piece of the market with the xbox 360. Their strategy was to recruit seasoned talent to make exclusives for their new system. They recruited near peak Capcom and the result was Dead Rising.

There were obvious signs someone wanted Dead Rising to succeed. It was a fusion of what Japan is good at with what America is good at. In other words, excellent Japanese game development with American entertainment. The acting was considered important and the producers went to a talent agency.

You might not know names like Steve Blum, John Kassir, Phil Proctor, and most of the other actors for the original Dead Rising, but look them up on IMDB and you'll surely know their voice from something. Stand out performances were the main characters Frank (TJ Rotolo) and Brad Garrison (TJ Storm) who were cast perfectly and nailed their roles. If you do not believe me, a main reason Dead Rising 4 failed was people hated Frank's recasting.

When compared to DR:DR, everything about the remaster is lazy and cheap. Capcom kept the original mocap, but replaced the original actors with n00bs and nobodies. The only guy I recognize is Frank Todaro a very talented weirdo (he can almost pull off Chris Latta's Starscream). The new acting is poorly directed with sound levels and effects being off or missing. The remaster distinctly lacks the polish of the original, and Capcom could not have given less of a ♥♥♥♥ about it.

Capcom outsourced development for the remaster to NeoBards who literally just fed the original game into an AI that spat out a version running on REengine. The remaster really is a half assed, watered down port.

Making things worse for the remaster is the other, lesser obvious stand out between the orignal and the remaster: unusual censorship. Dead Rising was made for an audence that was Western or like Western media. The Deluxe Remater was obviously changed for a 'new' audience that strongly points at China. Examples: Cliff is no longer a stereotyped PTSDing Vietnam war vet. All references to the war and communism were removed and his new dialogue sounds retarded and nonsensical, not really military. Larry Chiang was race swapped into a white man, but his name is unchanged (lazy). Kent Swanson is now no longer a pervert and seems (to me) race swapped from vaguely Asian to Scott Farkas. Erotica photo tags were removed and strangely mass reported by games journalists to dunk on chuds, but I suspect this was removed so it wouldn't give perverts in some not-American countries ideas. These specific changes are so odd, they don't hold up to the DEI or PC excuses. Nobody was outraged or offended by the original, and you can't race swap a BIPOC into a white dude and claim its for 'diversity'.

There's also weird ?????? gender changes in the remaster. The word 'lady' was removed from a store's name for some reason. Also, the original had female zombies who are..... Hungry? For head? If you know what I mean. Well male zombies now suck Frank off in the Remaster, too. I wasn't a big fan of the obvious sodomy in the original, but I'm less of a fan taking it there. They kept that innuendo, but removed the erotica tag? Make it make sense....

Also, gore, death, and blood were toned down, things Chinese culture has an aversion to and things their government has mandates to censor. This not a guess or conspiracy, many of these changes really do point at China meddling with the game. China's communist government is known for making silly censorship demands as a flex when it comes to foreigners selling their media there.

edit: A big reason might be NeoBards being a Chinese developer. Their Communist government would no doubt be upset over their people handling a game where an American wants to kill Communists and demand that be changed. None of this makes any sense to me. Communism hates capitalism. If Capcom wants to chase after Chinese money, that's fine. But China's government shouldn't have say over what gets censored for other countries. They do this compulsively.

To be honest though.... I guess this sort of makes sense for Dead Rising. Kind of. Vaguely.

Dead Rising 1, like Dawn of the Dead, has a distinct subtext where consumers at a shopping mall are essentially like mindless zombies... What makes this a subtext is the 'like' is removed, and the similarity is made literal.

Example of what Dead Rising's subtext works off of:

https://youtu.be/-JmVjdYE7qY?si=6d1izAUsDbgWPT0v

See, the thing about Dead Rising 1 is it wasn't making a statement by doing this. If it was, it wasn't so on the nose that it was obvious and could be explained as a working concept.

I can't say the same for the sequels where Capcom immediately handed off development to Canadian communists who lazily flipped assets for 2 and had the story make no sense until it became capitalism bad and evil! OMG, zombies are a capitalistic scheme to infect and grind up poors into a temporary medicine for infected wealthy who will pay for it until they run out of money or die! Then you got 3 which is a thinly veiled allegory for illegal immigration making white people bad and evil and racist. Then 4 was just an awful game missing features and reusing 1's subtext while being beyond flagrant with 'consumers are mindless zombies!'

The state of Dead Rising.... Can you imagine it? You have a popular, classic game a video game company wants to update for modern hardware. And the game industry has become such a pathetic joke, the remake winds up being inferior to the original and have it cost 5x as much... No you're not dreaming, that's exactly where we're at!

Dead Rising 4 was so bad, it killed the series. What was Capcom's brainiac idea to bring Dead Rising back from the dead? Remaking the only one that was ever good. Aaaaaaaaaaand they screwed it up. GJ, Capcom. Its a corpse so thoroughly dead, it can't even be turned into a zombie. Ultimately Dead Rising is a tale about how communists hate capitalism because they don't know how to make money doing it.

I think Dead Rising as a series is done.

Original Dead Rising 1 is the only genuine classic out of the series. If you haven't played it, $10 is a deal. There's also the chance it might get delisted. Another reason to pick it up.

Capcom has that at least. Dead Rising Case Zero is decent, but basically a demo servicing an underwhelming sequel. Dead Rising 2: Off the Record is ok too. It has the same flaws as 2, but the story makes sense and the main character can pronounce 'about' and 'sorry' properly.

Like others have said, Necrosmith 2 sits smack dab in the center of recommend and don't recommend. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to say 'meh'.

I wouldn't call Necrosmith 2 a tower defense. Its more like babby's first RTS where the troops you summon are given generic orders and automate themselves while mindless creeps make a straight line right towards your tower.

Game went on sale for 50% off. Bought it and played it for 10 hours. I enjoyed the first few hours.

5 hours in, I noticed how shallow and easy Necrosmith 2 is as a game.

10 hours in, Necrosmith 2 felt boring and repetitious. There's no victory condition to win a map. Once all the creep spawns are destroyed, death appears and ends your game. This makes me think the game is set up to discourage playing well. Keeping creep spawns around allows you to farm gold and buy power ups to make the game... easier... I should probably move on from the 1st map and try to actually complete the game... But there's not much to look forward to since Necrosmith 2 is short and has a total of 3 maps.

Overall the game is ok. It's not bad. Neat concept. But there's nothing that makes it stand out. Game really could use a speed up option. It also has some QoL issues that could use some tidying.

Steam definitely needs an option between recommend and don't recommend. I'm picking recommend since I feel like I got my money's worth. But honestly, I feel that $4 could have been better spent on something better. Necrosmith 2 is about as mid as you can get.

Oh my God!! Sunsoft?! Remember THEM?? on the NES???? And then they just disappeared??

They're BACK. With Ark of Charon

Having played it for over 15 hours, I can say Ark of Charon is Sunsoft's take on Oxygen Not Included, but the gameplay loop makes it completely different from Oxygen Not Included.

Ark of Charon basically has 2+1 phases. The 2 main phases are 1: mining resources within a time limit forcing phase 2: transporting to the next resource area and this is the protecting your base shooting enemies 'turret defense' part of the game. The +1 is laid overtop of both these phases is base building.

As an 'early access' game it appears to be a mostly complete beta. Its far enough along to have a start animation and an ending.

What's there, overall, is competent, well designed, and mostly bug free. However, the gameplay loop is a lather, rinse, and repeat affair and can get stale. After playing a bit more, Ark of Charon grew on me. There's a distinct strategic element that isn't present in other base builders. Tech choices and golem management is far more important in this game than other management/base building games I've played.

IMHO, Ark of Charon currently has 2 weaknesses:

1. the base building element. Its fine, but the multiple building options are kind of useless. You're given all these structures to use, but the best, most efficient base to build is making 2 separate towers of 9x6 houses stacked on top of each other on both sides of the core. This made the game a little boring for me.

Actually, the base building is fine. Based on what buildings are offered to the player, it looks like the developers encourage building 2 towers of 9x6 houses. After playing a 2nd game, I came to realize the challenge in Ark of Charon is base building is held back by building materials, and the player needs to tech up and, eventually, manage golems effectively to have an impressive base.

after my second game I did notice another weakness:

1. The turret defense bit is kinda boring. It does feel good to blow away a bunch of monsters, but there's not much variation in enemies and its the same thing over and over. Kinda boring. The only thing that mixes things up is the final boss which is the only enemy in the entire game that will make your turrets ever shoot towards the left.

2. The tech tree is weak and currently nonsensical. I'm not sure if what's there is a place holder or what, but it doesn't make sense to me I can learn techs that require iron without first learning the tech to make iron. Otherwise its ok.

After a 2nd play, I'd say Ark of Charon is solid. Its a different take on the base building/management genre. Again, not sure how finished the game is, but I recommend it. $22 is a fair price, but it's been on sale already, so you might want to pick it up at a discount in case you don't like it.

I originally recommended ONI over Ark of Charon, but my opinion has changed. Ark is very similar to ONI, but the differences in game design pressure the player to play it differently, so I don't see the games as the same anymore.

Special disappointment with Ark of Charon: the soundtrack. Back in the NES days, Sunsoft had some of the finest composers in the game industry. Examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmoIkmgJTD8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCNJuxV5EJg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=072rxGo_x3U

edit: forgot Sunsoft also did the Genesis/MD Batman which also has a phenomenal OST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadfHTCan1Q

Ark of Charon's soundtrack is Western influenced Japanese orchestra. If you know what i'm talking about, its symphonic sound heavy on strings. Its not bad, but Japan over does this kind of music to the point it's stereotyped and it all sounds the same to me IMHO.

When the Royalty and Ideology DLCs originally came out, they added so little, they were described as a tip for Ludeon Studio. I avoided buying them based on that.

About a year ago, these DLCs went on sale and I decided to take the plunge with Royalty. This was a smart choice since I came to discover Royalty has become a bonafide expansion that gives the base game some much needed variety.

Royalty adds the following:
- new raids
- new quests
- new factions
- new techs
- lots of new fancy clothing
- nose body parts! yeah, yeah, Royalty adds other new body parts too, but I don't care. Pawns so frequently have their noses cut, shot, or bashed off you don't need healer serum to fix the injury anymore! This is a big deal for me!
- new quest/method to win the game
- new music

The biggest addition is the inclusion of a nobility title system and psycasting. Royalty's new royal faction offers quests that can promote your pawns up the chain of nobility. At rank 2 (Yeoman), your pawn gains a psylink which basically offers magic spells/psychic abilities. As a pawn continues to gain rank they gain more spells and privileges, it comes at the expense of limiting what they can eat, do, and wear and forces you to give them bigger bedrooms and thronerooms.

I don't care much for the new nobility feature. I feel like it needlessly complicates things. The good news is it's completely optional. However, the other, basic additions I really like a lot.

Biggest complaint I have with the Nobility DLC is some of the new challenges are unbalanced a little.

- A new quest offers a bunch of guest workers to show up at your base for a time. If you can manage to support them, they speed up base development by a lot. Makes the game a little easier.

- The new mechanoid cluster raid sucks. Maybe I'm dumb, but I have hard time with mechs. They give me trouble, but I CAN deal with them. The new mechanoid cluster raid is far worse since they're extra hard. This new raid has a mechanoid fort with a bunch of sleeping mechs and turrets air dropped right outside of yours. This fort has facilities that you will likely need to destroy quickly. Frequently this fort has shields preventing your pawns from destroying the cluster at a distance. Sometimes the cluster has shields AND a mortar casually pounding your fort to pieces. Predictably, the only way to deal with this is to rush the cluster and have your pawns torn up by the turrets and mechs. Mech cluster raids are really annoying and I hate them! Thankfully you can turn them off when starting a new game. I'd rather have them on, but scaled down a bit. They're excessively difficult compared to other raids IMHO.

Anyway, if you like Rimworld, got bored of it, and are looking for an excuse to play it again with a new twist, I definitely recommend getting Royalty.

This is definitely a 'if you hate it, why did you play it so much?" review. I actually find Megaloot very addicting, but it has a definite and distinct ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ problem.

Recently, Megaloot had a big update. The update fixes some things, and makes Megaloot slightly better overall. It no longer feels like a clicker game to me. Unfortunately, it doesn't fix Megaloot's major problems. Here are my thoughts:

-OVERALL BALANCE- Its a little better. Income isn't tied to gear anymore, it now scales by floor. This change is a big improvement. But the sudden steep increases in enemy armor/hp is still there, still unfair, and might be worse than before. RNG on gear seems a little better balanced now too offering higher grade gear earlier, but it also feels like it tops out too early where enemy stat increases still outpace the rate at which better gear appears.

-ENEMY BALANCE- Pre-update, runs typically ended by being overwhelmed from raw enemy stat increases. There was really only 1 tricky enemy that could instantly end a run if the player wasn't careful: Kotya. With this new update, there are now more and new enemies that end your run with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ status effects. Do you like playing as Tyr? Yeah, your game is basically over once you run into a Saturn for the first time whether you loaded up on dazzle or not. Did you get scared away from that one chest that makes you always hit enemies but buffs them by 25%? Well I hope you like getting stun locked by an enemy that stuns you every time it dodges.

-LOOT RNG- A little better too, but still bad. Garbage starter gear still appears on later floors while some intermediate gear seemingly vanishes from the loot pool as you progress. The player really needs to be given an option to remove crap from the loot pool in a run. Wooden shoes are never useful, ever.

-BUFF/DEBUFF SELECTION- This was an honest to god good change made by the developer. Character buffs are now no longer tied to an overall penalty to increase the difficulty. The penalties are now optional and tied to special chests the player can choose to open. Unfortunately, the difficulty increasing chests are tied to RNG and only appear once in a run.

-GEAR- The update adds some new gear. But I still feel some gear sets aren't complete while others are useless/trash. Megaloot still retains late game imbalance where the best gear favors certain stats which leads me to my next category:

-CHARACTERS & GAME DESIGN- The biggest problem is the developer's sense of game balance is stupid. Megaloot's design leads me to think having a successful run is dependent on picking gear that synergizes with the character's innate abilities, but Megaloot doesn't follow through on that setup at all. Fren for example prioritizes dodging, but there's basically 1 gear set that compliments this (hunter), and it doesn't take long before dodge becomes useless and Fren gets squashed unless dressing him in damage sponges. The update also doesn't address magic and late game gear still prioritizes physical damage. Playing to a character's strengths doesn't work, succeeding in Megaloot is all about finding that gear set that breaks the game. Previously this was the royal set which made the game easy and worked for every character. This latest update nerfed the royal set and despite the downgrade it's STILL better than if you try to play the game legit. Its unreasonably difficult if not impossible to reach level 60 unless you find gear that breaks the game.

Given this game just got an update, I have hope the developer might straighten it out to be good sooner or later. Right now, floor 20 is where the game becomes frustratingly impossible. I've read guides trying to figure out how to navigate it, but my run always ends to a combination of enemies that now have too much hp/attack and stunlock me with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ status effects.

I really want to like Megaloot. Its addicting, but it eventually pulls ♥♥♥♥ that makes me hate it and not want to play it ever again!