Recent reviews by ThreeSon

My favorite of all the Vampire Survivor-likes released so far. Almost certainly the most original as well; it's no mere clone. Here it's your underlings that do the killing for you, plus there's a bit of tower defense mixed in as well. And as with most other Caiysware games, there's quite a lot of extra game modes available to keep you busy. $5 is a great price for what's included.

If you are wondering just how sleazily a single developer can behave towards their customers, look no further than Neocore and this game. The Steam store page used to have a clear notification that Inquisitor has online-only DRM as well as requiring a Neocore account to play. That notice was removed in an update a few months ago, five years after the game first went on sale.

So good news, right? - the DRM has been removed! ..... Ah no, it hasn't. Other than the DRM disclosure being hidden, there were no other changes made to the game that day. They just didn't like that consumers being properly informed was eating into their profits.

A fuller explanation would be that Neocore's WH40K license is probably about to expire, and they are trying to milk every last dollar they can out of Steam customers before they delist the game and then quietly, a year or so later, shut down the servers and leave the single-player game completely unplayable.

I expect this sort of behavior from AAA publishers like Rockstar, Activision, EA and Ubisoft. But it just goes to show that smaller developers like Neocore can be just as horrible.


EDIT: Just a few hours after I posted this review, Neocore posted their own update claiming that they are planning on an offline mode. That would certainly be welcome if true, but I am highly skeptical at this point and I think everyone else should be too.

The reason being: I can't think of any plausible reason why they chose to hide the DRM notice from the store page other than that they are intentionally misleading Steam users (I asked them this question in the discussion forum and have not received an answer yet). Given that, there's no reason to believe they aren't also being misleading now with their recent announcement.

Any developer that willfully lies to their customers should not be given the benefit of the doubt.


EDIT (30 May 2024): The third-party DRM has finally been removed, 10 months after the store page notice was hidden. Still sleazy behavior by Neocore to hide that information while the DRM was still present for so long, but at least they followed through.

Unique and oddly addictive. The gameplay is difficult to describe in words but it's basically a sort of blend of photography, fishing, and a particle physics simulator, all wrapped in the skin of a 1980s Namco arcade cabinet.

There are two modes: Basic which has six stages with fixed goals and no time limit, and a Timed "roguelike" mode with random objectives for each stage. There is Steam Leaderboard support for both modes, and since the Timed mode has no predetermined end point I think will be the main appeal for most players (Basic mode seems to have a fixed score cap of about 162,000 once you've mastered it).

The game's six different colored particles are controlled with the arrow keys for movement, and by clicking on their respective icons at the bottom they can be "mutated," which causes one of the colors to be repelled from or attracted to the other five each time it is clicked. The basic idea is to cycle through mutations in a way that allows you to group the colors together into tight formations, which makes them easier to control with the arrow keys, and thus easier to take a high-scoring photograph.

It may sound complicated but you'll get the hang of it fairly quickly. My only real complaint about the game is that the Timed mode feels too easy, in that the difficulty doesn't seem to increase much, if at all, from stage to stage. I played about 30 minutes of Timed after a couple of hours in Basic, and even after getting through a dozen stages, the objectives remained quite simple and I had more than 3 minutes of extra time left.

For $7 though I've had a lot of fun. And these days it's a pleasure to play something that is genuinely original, as D Life is.

Something that also needs special mention: The sound and music are superb, honestly good enough to be worth the cost of the game by themselves. It is as you would expect from Yuriko Keino, who was also responsible for Dig Dug, Pole Position, and Xevious back in the early 80s. 40 years on, she hasn't lost her touch.

Cat Quest is not a bad game, but it's shallow and forgettable. The marketing claim of being "Diablo with cats" or "Super-cute Skyrim" is ridiculous. Both of those games have Dwarf Fortress-levels of complexity and challenge compared to this one.

The entire gameplay loop involves following the quest markers around the small world map and killing 'x' number of enemies at each stop, either on the overworld or in a cave. Repeat for 5-6 hours to get to a high enough level, then go to the final boss location and win. There are a few moments where a new type of enemy attack is introduced, but that is the extent of the variety and it's not enough to really hold your interest for the whole game.

(My playtime shows 13 hours but that is wrong, the first 7 hours was idling for card drops.)

There's not much to appeal to cat lovers either. The cat skin is entirely cosmetic - if not for the character's faces and various puns scattered around like names of towns and such, it could be called "dog quest" or "human quest" or anything at all.

I played Cat Quest on Steam Deck, and to the game's credit, it plays perfectly on the handheld. Battery life was excellent and the interface is clear and legible the entire way. If you're planning on getting this to play for short periods, during lunch breaks or while riding the bus to work or school or whatever, then it's well-suited for that purpose.

Otherwise though, I wouldn't recommend spending more than $5 for it, and know in advance that it tilts very heavily towards the casual end of action-RPGs. The sequel may be more robust and satisfying, though I don't have much desire to try it based on this initial entry.

Fun and innovative, but also very easy. The two early card packs you have available are self-reproducing, meaning that they are basically guaranteed to provide cards that end up being worth around 2x the cost of the pack itself. So even with just the single villager you get at the start of the game, you can acquire an infinite supply of coins and resources with no game progression required.

There is a "hard" difficulty mode, though even that is not much of a challenge since all it does is increase the amount of food you need, and the increase is still not enough to prevent you from just sitting back and stockpiling resources.

I still enjoy playing the game, primarily because finding new cards is always a nice surprise and it still feels like there is several hours worth of content left for me to uncover. But I do hope the developer adds a genuine challenge mode at some point, preferably with some achievements to go along with it. I think the most obvious way to add challenge would be random enemy spawns and maybe food spoilage.

Playing the recently released Vampire Survivors reminded me of this game and compelled me to play it again after many years, as both games have similar "one hero against the horde" gameplay. The main difference between the two is that VS uses auto-attacking and the strategy comes from picking the right weapon combinations when leveling up, while in Overture you choose your weapons at the beginning and keep them through the whole run, but attacking is directly controlled.

I like Vampire Survivors a lot and am glad it's been so successful, but I honestly think Overture is the better game overall. My only real complaint with VS, for now, is that it's just too easy to beat after only a few hours of play time. Overture on the other hand is quite difficult and I haven't beaten it once yet despite 15+ hours of attempts, yet I still am determined to keep trying.

I've loved trying all the different characters and there's a surprising amount of variety in how each of them plays. Plus even though the combat is relatively straightforward, there's genuine strategy involved in staying alive and dealing with the different enemy types (bosses are particularly fun to fight). I love the intense, high-energy soundtrack as well.

Anyway, if you're coming off of VS and looking for a game that scratches the same itch but is considerably more challenging, don't sleep on this one. It's an underappreciated gem.

For about 6 hours, Vampire Survivors is outstanding - Good presentation, simple and fun gameplay loop, very addictive. It's certainly one of the best sub-$5 games on Steam.

After that initial period of greatness though, my enjoyment started dropping rapidly. At about 8.5 hours of play time as I write this, I have very little desire to play it again. The main problem being that the game becomes way too easy once that early experience has passed. I comfortably beat all of my last 5 attempts at the game without coming close to dying. Compared to most other action roguelikes, VS doesn't have nearly as much depth as it should, and it really needs to be tougher to beat.

So, at $3 it's a no-brainer purchase if you're even mildly interested in it. I just hope the developer follows through with their ambitious-sounding plans to expand the game during early access, which would preferably include adding some much-needed challenge.

You'll finish it in 30 minutes, maybe 15 more to get 100% achievements.

There's really not much of a "game" here - It's essentially the same "click groups of icons with the same color" exercise that I first encountered 20 years ago in Popcap's Big Money! Deluxe, except this version is much shorter and any semblance of difficulty or challenge has been removed. The catgirls aren't actually part of the game; they're just collectibles that you can unlock once you've completed enough levels.

There's nothing here that I feel would hold anyone's interest. The main appeal seems to be to highlight the available items in the Points Shop, which collectively have much more personality and charm than anything in the game itself.

Despite there being plenty of problems to complain about - long-standing issues with control mapping being one of the major ones - RetroArch is still easily the best emulation software I've ever used, and my experience goes all the way back to Nesticle in the late '90s.

The major benefit of RetroArch is being emulate pretty much every console or computer system prior to the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation, plus a few more modern ones like the PSP. Not only that, but the available cores also tend to be more accurate when compared to standalone emulators. This is particularly notable for systems like Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1, and Sega Saturn, all of which were difficult to emulate for many years, but today have high-accuracy cores available in RetroArch.

RetroArch also has a pair of incredible features that, since I started using them, I now can no longer live without:

Run Ahead: Added in early 2018 by the creator of the PocketNES emulator. This allows you to eliminate input latency in any core that supports save states (which is nearly all of them). Zero frame latency is something that often isn't even possible when using the original consoles on a CRT display, assuming you even have access to those. But with Run Ahead you can get it on any halfway decent PC, which is awesome and feels amazing to play.

G-Sync/Freesync support: This is another feature that provides a global benefit which would otherwise require a bulky CRT display. Modern LCD screens typically have integer refresh rates like 120Hz, 60Hz, and so on. But older consoles like the SNES output their video at 60.1Hz (NTSC). That slight offset means your monitor can't display the emulated SNES video at the same rate it is received, which causes the video to stutter and is especially noticeable and irritating while the game screen is scrolling in any direction. RetroArch's support for variable refresh rate monitors means you can have perfectly smooth scrolling using any monitor that supports G-Sync or Freesync.

There is a substantial learning curve involved when you first start out using RetroArch, due to the initial complexity in setting up each core, but if you are serious about emulation I'd say it is absolutely worth the time investment. Plus now that it's on Steam, there are already some helpful beginner guides posted that can get you started, and you can also ask for help from the RA subreddit or discord.

As far as single-player campaigns go, this is my favorite Medal of Honor game out of the half-dozen or so that I've had experience with (finished the 2 PSX games and Allied Assault on the PC, and played some of Pacific Assault and the 2010 reboot).

My reasons for enjoying Airborne so much aren't because of anything particularly special about it. It looks decent for a 15-year old game, the maps are well-designed, and the guns are fun to shoot. But it's more because most of the annoying crap which is so common in FPS games of the late 2000s is mercifully missing from this one. Some examples:

- Unskippable cutscenes are kept to a minimum, and empty gameplay (e.g. waiting for AI companions or holding down the W key) is completely absent. There are mission briefings you have to sit through before each level, but they're only about a minute long and are followed by 30 to 45 minutes of virtually uninterrupted running and gunning.
- The friendly AI is actually helpful. They aren't exactly intelligent (nor are the enemies for that matter), but they get their share of kills and don't crowd you as much as in other games, for example by trying to force themselves into cover you're currently occupying or walking into your line of fire (the latter does tend to happen in the game's few close-quarter battles however). They also do a good job of pressing forward as soon as the immediate area is clear, instead of waiting for you to lead the way.
- The enemies are not psychic. If you flank them without being seen, they will not turn their attention to you until after you've started shooting. And they don't have pinpoint-perfect aim either, so peeking out of cover for a split-second doesn't result in an immediate bullet to the head from an enemy who's 100 yards away (hello Call of Duty).

Speaking of cover - Airborne uses one of the better implementations of an FPS cover system, in that you can peek in any direction (including up and down) while aiming down sights. It would have been nice to be able to peek without aiming, but it's quite useful as it is, and makes shooting through small gaps in the geometry both possible and satisfying.

Airborne is a short game - just a few hours long on normal difficulty - but that's basically the perfect length for a game that now costs only $10. And there's more replayability than usual since the 6 levels all take place in open-ended maps, allowing for a fair amount of variation in how you approach each objective and in what order.

I only wish EA would revisit the game for some needed maintenance. Add Steam achievements to give it a little more value, remove the censorship (at least for regions where it's not necessary to hide Nazi imagery), and clean up the technical issues people have encountered.