Recent reviews by thepotato

Exo One is a small and compact yet fun and mesmerizing indie game. It adheres to the popular: don’t show or tell story model, and it works brilliantly. Exo One doesn’t deliver only a story or a fun gameplay mechanic, but an experience brought about through these methods. I’ve played many games that have tried to emulate this feeling, yet this is the first and only time I’ve truly felt it worked

Pros:
✅ Stunning atmosphere and visuals
✅ High replayability if you’re looking for something relaxing
✅ Kubrick style space atmosphere
✅ Immersive sound design

Cons:
❌ Most maps work well, but a few can feel rather slow.

Ultimate frisbee

As is evident by the trailer, you play the game in control of a morphing frisbee-ball machine. Though there’s a small amount of lore explanation, much like everything in the game your imagination does most of the hard lifting, which I love. The controls are simple and yet provide so much movement and freedom. Who knew you could have so much fun using only gravity? The game teaches you these controls but doesn’t hold your hand on how to best utilize them, you can truly pioneer your own movement. Simple mechanics to achieve complex tasks are as far as I’m concerned the pinnacle of game design.

Jupiter?

Even if I wanted to spoil the story for you, it would simply be impossible, all the hints you get are through gargled messages and obfuscated images. Yet even though the story might as well be sent via dial-up internet, it provides an atmosphere I haven’t experienced in many games. You truly have no idea and are trying to piece together the world you are in by observation, not by exposition. Though it could be called lazy game design, I feel this has a far greater impact than if it were properly explained

I didn’t know I found clouds attractive

Though from the store page the game looks good it doesn’t even nearly do it enough justice, the game simply looks stunning. It may not be photoreal but the look it has really tickles every nerve I have. The very last level in the game made me say wow out loud. I have seen great forests, tall mountains, and sparkling caves yet the visual of this level is something I regard as a profound experience. Only when moving slow does it start to look slightly less sparkling, which is why the slow levels looked a lot duller. The developer has added a new test mode allowing you to skip to any level in the game, which means you don't have to go through every time and you can relax on your favorite levels after you've completed the game.

Worth the money?

At the time of writing Exo One is 15,99 on steam, for the number of hours it offers that’s not a great deal but for the experience I will say it’s certainly worth it. Especially if the developer adds a more relaxed mode where you can play every level independently. It would add the replayability to just kick back and soar through glistening skies while listening to some smooth jazz, and that experience is priceless.

Technicalities

Exo One while visually marvelous isn’t a very intense game since there’s not a lot of game objects, which means most computers should be able to run it, I certainly had no issue doing so on my GTX 1080, Ryzen 7 2700 and 32 Gigs of ram.

Summary

Exo One is a fantastic experience which is truly and utterly unique, if the developer added more options for replayability, I’d love this game to bits. If effortlessly gliding through vast and beautiful skies sounds like something you could enjoy from time to time, this might be the game for you. It’s not terribly long so if it turns out you don’t enjoy pure bliss you can always return it halfway through, but I doubt that will be necessary.

Score: 9.2/10

Hyperdot is a minimalistic dodge-everything game. A simple concept that can easily be ruined by design choices. The best types of games are the ones that are simple in operating and that is fair to you, and Hyperdot is unique in that it succeeds on all those points

Pros:

✅ Lots of features and variation
✅ It looks beautiful
✅ The game is incredibly fair: if you lose it’s almost always your fault

Cons:

❌If you’re impatient the learning curve will hamper you from enjoying it
❌Quite expensive

Hyperdot is a simple but very intriguing game, it contrasts many similar games by being properly built up and having effort put into it. In this way, it’s not just a glorified mobile game but a full-fledged, feature-packed dodging experience. There are loads of different things you can try, create custom levels or play local multiplayer; perhaps play the extensive single-player campaign.

If only I wasn’t so awful at this, I wouldn’t die so much

A common problem for lots of games is that often ‘the game screws you over’ this can happen when hitboxes are too large or the expectation for the player is too large or the difficulty scales logarithmically meaning it increases in an insane amount while the start is a piece of cake. The opposite is the truth with Hyperdot, I cannot explain to you how exactly but each time I lose it felt as all of it was completely my fault and the only reason that I did was my incompetence. The experience of being in full control is incredibly unique for almost any game nowadays.

I mean I know it’s like 3 colors, but this looks really good

For such a simplistic game Hyperdot is stunning, the simplistic color scheme that’s properly composed with certain effects like lighting and simple shapes creates great visuals. When looking at other minimalistic games like “Super Hexagon” Hyperdot conveys an atmosphere of calm and relaxed that keeps your temper low and doesn’t push you to become a super-fast video game master.

A simplistic game that isn’t a one-trick pony?!

Not only can you dodge stuff, but there’s also a large variety of features for you to keep yourself busy with, it has a level editor with loads of different parameters to keep making it harder and harder to become even more of a professional. It also features local multiplayer to fail with your family and friends. This all as a bonus to the extensive single-player campaign which touches on every single type of enemy and environment you could dodge in keeping you busy without having to invest any more effort.

Those are some average tunes bro, rad

Of course, Hyperdot has a mandatory soundtrack although it’s not much, it’s there to fill the void and does so quite okay it’s still repetitive and after a few hours gets bland to listen to. Although its theme fits the style, which is very laid back and chill; it’s not very engaging so I’d rate it as very average.

Worth the money?

One of the only strong negatives of Hyperdot is its steep price point of 18,2$ it’s not an easy sell for the biggest part of the audience, although if you’re looking for a game that you’re using to fill time but also enjoy some family time with it’s definitely worth the money. However, if you’re just planning to play it occasionally the cost will most likely not be worth it.

Technicalities

Hyperdot is very simple and works incredibly smoothly with 0 bugs or issues in my experience. My Computer or practically any other device should be able to run it without any issues at all.

Summary

Hyperdot is a simplistic and gorgeous stylized top-down dodging experience that will provide you with loads of fun for hours on end with many different ways to keep yourself entertained. However, it’s very steep price point kneecaps it for a large part of the audience and significantly decreases it’s worth quite a bit as the number of hours you will get out of it on average will not compensate for the price.

Score: 81/100

This game was provided for free by the developers.

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“Ministry of Broadcast” published by Hitcents and PLAYSIM and produced by the aptly-named Ministry of Broadcast Studios is a game revolving around the story of an almost dystopian ‘society’ in presumably the middle of nowhere. Although with a quick look around the store page it’s easily visible that this game likes to pride itself on its metaphors so you’re practically playing a less dramatic Shakespeare play. Although it may look similar this is far from any other game you’ve ever played although I do not know if that’s positive or not.

Pros:

✅ An allure of mysteriousness, keeps the game engaging for a while
✅ Character interactions keep the game from becoming too stale
✅ The environment you’re running around in is varied and interesting to look at nor boring

Cons:

❌ Movement is quite poor, there’s a variety of controls but they’re slow and imprecise which is particularly annoying as jumping certain distances is a large part of the game.
❌ Getting to know much about the story requires multiple playthroughs and hoping you are lucky enough to find different paths

It’s quite obvious what this game is trying to achieve, and that’s very fair games driven by a strong narrative can often be incredibly entertaining even if the gameplay isn’t the best. Think of ‘Spec-ops: The Line’ or in a scenario where the gameplay is really good but the story itself as very poor like the relatively new ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’ However it doesn’t work out as well when, in my opinion, neither are that strong. In the end, having nothing outstanding but just okay makes it end up feeling like a rather mediocre or flat experience.

It’s dystopian and it’s about television and it’s snowing!? Wow fascinating how original

I, like many others, like a good dystopian tale to shake the nerves a little. The prospect of an awful society and no one knowing has something interestingly unnerving to it. This, however, brings a natural supply of different forms of media of those also interested in them but not quite as good in explaining why there should even be a dystopian society. The same goes here, sure it looks awful and there is some backstory provided for how things came to be however some are just quite simply assumed. The most blatant one is regarding the title “Ministry of Broadcast” because apparently, every dystopian society revolves around broadcasting things. The question is never asked as to why they would even be broadcasting at all and we’re just left to assume that you can either do one or the other. Metaphorically this works great but for making it a cohesive story I find it to be weak.

However, regarding anything that is not the main story, subjects like dialogue are handled incredibly well. Even though all dialogue is done via text bubbles it’s entertaining, sometimes funny but most importantly useful. Although there are some issues regarding when it is used it’s still done. The same goes for the characters: although almost all of them are entirely flat characters, they’re excellent for conveying the general message the game is trying to send you.

No one slides over the floor to brake when they stop running, right?

For a game that consists of mostly jumping I find the way this is done to be quite lackluster. Your character moves sluggishly, he jumps and crawls slowly and after running he has to slow down a bit. All very realistic but rather awful trying to make that one jump for the ninth time. A lot is done by platforming and often different challenges can be quite hampered by missing a jump over and over. Turning a challenging jump into the actual problem which to me just seems like bad game design as to me this is not a platformer, and it shouldn’t be. The same goes for the jumping distance and how to jump forward or just up and particularly how slow doing so is. My character behaving more like a sloth and less like Mario downgraded my enjoyment of the game.

I wonder how I’ll miss that platform and fall my death this time

A game where you run in a straight line and are monologued to for 4 hours isn’t very exciting so naturally, some puzzles have to be introduced. As the gameplay can be seen as a ‘platformer’ one might be able to figure out that practically all of the puzzles consist of jumping somewhere or timing some other action to achieve something else. However, because of the aforementioned inconsistencies in the entire platforming aspect, every single challenge or puzzle is a slow crawl of agony as you retry the same action for the hundredths time as if you’re playing ‘Dark Souls’. Perhaps if suffering is your cup of tea you’ll thoroughly enjoy it however for most I doubt it will be any fun. That does not mean that there are no good puzzles just not enough of them.

No I can see what it is, no you don’t have to- I don’t need an unskippable monologue

I am a big fan of ‘show don’t tell’ so the user figures out what’s going on and isn’t just lectured to about what’s going on and what they’re seeing. When this doesn’t happen, as you can see in the intro’s of some movies, you’re practically being monologued to about information that you should have been able to discover yourself. Sadly here practically all information is monologued to you mostly by a crow. Although it’s new to have it be a crow it’s rather sad that at every single mural or other significant objects the crow monologues to you what it means, which in a way is useful because all of the murals are super vague, however, that gives way to being told about everything instead of exploring it yourself. At times you’re told about information that you could not have known about in any way which means it holds practically no value.

Yes I know it’s tense I don’t need to hear the same key combination over and over

When all of the characters only speak via text bubbles it’s quite essential to have something to fill that void. And here it’s been filled with hours upon hours of melodic boring music that keeps repeating the same 10-second segment over and over and starts working on your nerves and it’s by far the worst part of this game. The music adds absolutely nothing to what is happening onscreen and feels a lot like the backing track to a 20 minute YouTube video essay, totally bland and useless. Even when it’s trying to be tense it’s overdone and hearing the same ‘tense’ segment over and over starts to work on your nerves.

Worth the money

I’m not overly fond of this game however the price is it’s only redeeming factor, at 12,50$ I find it to be very affordable which is also the reason I can even recommend it. Every playthrough will grant you about 4 hours of playtime so if you play about 2 runs you’ll be paying 1.5$ for every hour you play which is quite good.

Technicalities

Ministry of Broadcast isn’t a very complex game, Its simple and should work on any computer.

Summary

Ministry of Broadcast is while acceptable, still riddled with issues and annoyances that do seriously inhibit the fun you will have playing it. It’s the relatively low price is the major reason why I can still ‘recommend’ it but do take caution that you will have to enjoy this style of game as you will not get your money out of it if you don’t. I like that it tackles many themes and ideas very relevant to the modern world however how it is done is less optimal.

Score: 58/100

This game was provided for free by the developers.

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“Memorrha” published and produced by ‘StickyStoneStudio’ is a game that takes place in a fictitious jungle without much explanation as to why. According to the store page, it’s trying to orient itself to games just like ‘The Witness’ another visually distinct puzzle game. ‘The Witness’ did have several issues the most prominent being that the number of puzzles were a tedious amount making it more a chore to do than actually challenging something that Memorrha has fixed maybe a little too well.

Pros:

✅ An atmospheric and engaging world that really conveys the setting you’re in.
✅ The concept of the puzzles are unique and quite creative.
✅ Things you explore earlier in the game can be used later to open secret passages

Cons:

❌ The game tells you almost nothing, while it does show you a few glimpses of some form of society that might have existed before the amount of vagueness can be annoying.
❌ The puzzles quite rapidly become insanely challenging, at least for someone that doesn’t play puzzle games often, and require a serious amount of thought to solve them.

When creating a puzzle game like Memorrha it is important to balance all the aspects, that being traits like discovery, difficulty and the style you’re going for. I think that for most of these aspects the developers have done quite a good job balancing out how much they should have of each, except difficulty. This is not only because the puzzles themselves are difficult but also because with each new puzzle you have to get to know the rules and ways to approach it, which can change in the middle of a set of puzzles without you knowing. Please be aware that if you’re very good at solving puzzles in videogames that you might find these easier to do.

Of course, an ancient XOR gate, I didn’t know ancient civilizations had computers

Memorrha works around a set of base rules that go for every puzzle, each symbol represents an operational like OR, XOR, and a few others. This is the only thing that you will recognize throughout the puzzles as practically all the other parts change. This choice is something that I can commend as it allows all the puzzles to at least have a recognizable part that players know how they will respond like. I can also only speak fondly in the manner which they are introduced in, you are given quite a wide area to test out all the different combinations you make with the various logic gates so you can get comfortable with them, something which is vital if you’re going to be solving the much harder puzzles later on. Sadly the same cannot be said for the later puzzles, which brings up a new concept every set of puzzles which, while very innovative and quite exciting to see, can be a pain after you’ve just understood the last set of puzzles.

At its core the entire game is just about solving puzzles to get to the next area to solve puzzles, so you will only enjoy it if you like solving puzzles, this is not a bad feature but it is something to keep in mind. Personally, though I can only find enjoyment out of puzzles for so long because after while I started struggling with them. Not because the original puzzles were made more complex but because the goal of the puzzle was completely different, it had gone from connecting some lines with logic gates to combining multiple shapes in layers to create 3D objects. While I do like the concept and I’m really fond of the new approach instead of just making one type of puzzle more difficult these became so hard that I got very stuck and it took me quite a while to solve. For playability for everyone, a difficulty slider might be advisable in the future even if that is not the way the game was meant to played. Take this with a grain of salt however, as I am a novice puzzler.

Who were these people? If only they had mastered writing instead of super complex energy puzzles with lasers and colored liquids.

I am a large fan of 'show don’t tell', making the user come to conclusions and revelations themselves is much more exciting than being spoon-fed prologue. Memorrha doesn’t tell but it doesn’t show either. Instead, you’re given a myriad of crude drawings of characters which you have to scan so you can look at them later and try to figure out why anyone would put that on a big stone slab in the jungle. I’m all for a bit of mystery and trying to figure out why all these puzzles are here and why there is no one around now but instead, it seems much more likely that the puzzles exist because this is a puzzle game and that the drawings are only there because it has to have a story. This is something that ‘The Witness’ does better as it doesn’t require you to imagine your owns story according to a bunch of statues.

Worth the money?

As I am not the biggest fan of these types of games I’d have an average amount of money ready for a game like this but 25$ is too much. While I will have to say that it costs significantly less than The Witness at 36$ it’s still far above what the game is worth in my opinion. As a hardcore puzzler, you might find it worth a lot more but for your average Joe, I would not recommend it.

Technicalities

While Memorrha isn’t a very complex game with lots of effects it still runs quite averagely. Most sections work fine but some parts run sluggishly without much reason. This is most likely due to poor optimization since my computer should be able to handle this game without any issue at all [I5-7600K, 16GB DDR4, GTX1050 TI OC] Although with more recent updates this could’ve been reduced, although I would not expect any new updates as none have been revealed since October.

Summary

Memorrha is a unique and semi-exciting puzzle game that, while entertaining for the first few hours, becomes a tedious slow grind to figure out the various puzzles while still not understanding why you even should as the story is practically non-existent. I will recommend it but be aware that this only goes for those that really enjoy puzzle games since this will not under any circumstances satisfy your need for exploration or discovery.

Score: 62/100

This game was provided for free by the developers.

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“Rising Storm 2” a game by ‘Antimatter Games’ and ‘Tripwire Interactive’ places itself in the Vietnam war. Continuing on the success of “Red Orchestra” and “Rising Storm” this second installment has a good reputation from the prior game to uphold. While it is certainly a challenge to bring a shooter from 2013 into the modern era however 9 years later I can certainly say that they have succeeded in doing so.

Pros

✅ Great multiplayer system: Ping can be high but the gameplay and connection is always smooth and steady.
✅ Great audio and visuals: The weapons sound very nice to fire and the game
looks good but not so good that it’s unplayable.
✅ Incredible amounts of content especially for a multiplayer game, different armies
maps and customization options.
✅ Good map atmosphere will make you feel like you’re in the conflict zone without
overdoing detail or extensive color grading.

Cons

❌ if your network is slow or the drive on which you have this game is installed getting an in-game role or class you want is very challenging.
❌ Team balancing is virtually nonexistent and in almost every single scenario the winning team in one round will keep the upper hand.

There are a lot of things that go into making a good multiplayer first-person shooter. It is important to make sure that not only the gameplay is entertaining but that networking isn't done poorly which will have your opponents teleporting all over the place. On top of that development team has to uphold the reputation of the previous installments in this series. Certainly a daunting challenge but in my opinion, it has been done exquisitely, only a few small problems exist that are not detrimental to the experience.

“The enemy has taken Derta!” Nice attempt saying ‘Delta’ Ho Chi Minh

RS2 is a multiplayer game, its core gameplay consists of a few game modes. While they are all different they revolve around the same premise: Capture point x until victory. This type of gameplay, while simple is a lot more engaging than simple deathmatch or free-for-all game-modes, it involves strategy and team coordination which is something that simplistic shooters cannot benefit from. To achieve these goals you work in a common way of organizing players in semi-realistic shooter games: Squads. All the players are divided into 6 man squads which then all answer to the game commander. An advantage this game has over others with similar structures is that, while it’s very useful, using your microphone to play is not required nor will anyone tell you to do so.

A design step various games with similar core components take is to make sure you understand as little of what is going on as possible, this is done by not showing important or useful HUD (Heads-up-display) elements or by making them about as hard to use as Linux. RS2, however, doesn’t do this and gives you all the information you could want making the game not only useful to play but pretty when you need to, a lot of information can be hidden by a single button press.

“is there an enemy there?” ‘No I just like how the gun sounds’

The visuals have gotten quite an upgrade since 2013 luckily however they have not overdone it like some other newer titles like “Hell let Loose” or “Post Scriptum” have done where your PC needs to have quite decent specs to begin with to make it consistently playable. Instead, this game, while not as pretty as the aforementioned titles, plays very nicely and consistently. The visuals look good enough to not be bothersome and provide clarity to properly engage in gameplay.

The sound design is exquisite, the weapons stay authentic to how the real-life version sounds but they feel as good to fire as a weapon from ‘Call of Duty’ Firing the guns doesn’t get boring or repetitive which many other games suffer from, firing something that sounds like an auto-cannon takes a lot longer to get repetitive than a gun which sounds like a peashooter at best. I have caught myself picking certain guns more just because of the sound they make when fired, the combination with other sounds make the gunplay very enjoyable. A criticism I do have is that only your gun sounds like it packs a punch, even when standing next to an ally their gun still sounds like a box of paperclips being shaken around. Feeling the punch behind all of the guns would be better.

Yes Nixon, the napalm smells like containment

When making a game in a historical period the history of the conflict you’re basing your game in is important. A good choice the developers made was to use history however to not be influenced by it. The maps, weapons, and vehicles follow the history but they are not limited by it. You can name quite a few historical inaccuracies for example that the Vietcong did not engage in open battle as much. However, this is not important since the focus is on producing a game that’s actually fun to play and properly works instead of one you can use to study for a history test.

I’m sorry kid you enlisted 1.4 seconds too late now you can only be the standard class

RS2 has 2 major problems, the first is that getting roles which only a few players can use on the team is quite difficult if you do not have it installed on a very fast hard drive or SSD. It’s a first come first serve system where the players that load the fastest can pick the roles they want before many of the other players have loaded forcing other users to take standard roles. While this works quite well for players with more higher-end PC's it ends up that with an average computer you will have to fight at the beginning of the round to get a role you want and just hope you are first, I find this to be flawed at best.

The second issue is that team balancing is practically non-existent. If you join the losing team you’re going to lose the current and the next round as the teams are not auto balanced. I can understand this to an extent since you pick your team however nothing is done to give the losing team a hand so winning or losing depends on which team you pick upon joining a server which I think is relatively flawed but it’s not game-breaking.

“It’s gonna be one of those 60 dollar- huh 23$?”

Surprisingly RS2 only costs 23 euros, that’s not a lot for such a large scale game when 30 euros would have also been an acceptable price. You’re essentially getting more bang for your buck then almost any other multiplayer shooter can offer you and the minimum requirements are quite low. So I would definitely recommend picking it up if you have the money to spend on it and well with a price this low most people do.

Technicalities

RS2 has quite low system requirements so a vast majority of computers can run it and it will look comparable enough to higher-end systems. I was able to run on a mix of high to ultra on my computer : [GTX 1050TI OC, 16GB DDR4, I5-7600K] and I have noticed frame drops only once which was because of the server I was playing on. The multiplayer experience is great, even when your ping is high it’s hardly noticeable so only extremely high latency is a problem.

Summary

Rising Storm 2 is a well-designed and well-executed game that not only provides you with a lot of playtime but with an enjoyable experience with great audio, functional visuals, and smooth multiplayer capabilities. All in all combined with a large amount of content, especially for a multiplayer game, it offers and the very low price for a game of this caliber I can do nothing but firmly recommend it.

Score: 91/100

This game was provided for free by the developers.

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”Hell Let Loose” Is a new game by Black Matter Pty Ltd set in the second world war where you can play from either the German or American side. It focuses on a blend between arcade gameplay and realism although I do not always agree with the balance they have chosen between the two. As the name states the game is meant as a more or less realistic portrayal of the second world war and picture it as some of the soldiers described it: “Like hell”

Pros:

✅ Beautiful and historically accurate maps
✅ A large variety of classes able to be used in coordinated squad-based gameplay
✅ massive multiplayer with up to 100 players

Cons:

❌ Weird choices between arcade and realism which makes the game feel inconsistent in its buildup
❌ Balancing is mostly non-existent, if one side is winning they will always win the entire battle
❌ Poor optimization

The environments and quality of “Hell Let Loose” are astounding, however, while the gameplay itself does function quite well there are several other problems the game deals with. These can be seen as optimization problems, balancing issues, UI design flaws, and a problem every shooter that has long ranges and impressive graphics deals with: LOD (Level of detail) render distance. The shrubbery you might be hiding behind won’t render for your enemy 500 meters away and he will graciously blow your brains out through the bush you thought was so safe.

This game would be so much easier if the enemies didn’t shoot back

“Hell Let Loose” is set in the second world war, particularly in the conflicts after and during 1944. This works in-game by pitting, at maximum, 100 players in teams of 50 against each other. The battles are usually about an hour-long however if you kill a lot of your teammates you will be done a whole lot quicker. Victory is achieved by capturing ‘sectors’ these are strongpoints on the map which, when captured, will provide your team with resources. These will generally be quite useless to you since these resources are used by your teammates firing artillery or by the game commander using abilities like airstrikes. Another important aspect is that everything is player oriented, the players fight the battles, they drive the tanks and fire the artillery. The only thing the players can’t do is fly the planes but I’m sure that will be introduced at some point. Resources aren’t too useful for players as the only way to win is by waiting out the timer or capturing all the sectors.

You ruined the mud textures with your corpse!

This game is very pretty, the quality is simply astounding with graphics you expect from a game made in 2019, utilizing Unreal Engine 4 at its maximum potential. The maps are built incredibly well, they represent the real-life locations incredibly and have been recreated in stunning detail, I say this the most about the recently added map ‘Utah beach’ which well obviously takes place on Utah beach. Having personally been on this beach I can tell you that even the color of the sand and the type of grass match its real-life counterpart. With mud prints and leftover food cans in the bunkers, it really does feel like some very frightened men ran out to defend the beach. I can only say good things about the level of detail and attention the developers have put into creating these maps and the sheer amount of research that has gone into them. An example of this is the glider poles put up to well stop gliders and these can be seen in-game with a mostly intact glider having smashed through a bunch of them.

Why carry a radio when you can tell your teammate he’s annoying over direct chat?

“Hell Let Loose” makes some interesting choices when it comes to realism. The game is meant to be a mix between realism and arcade however I think the balance between the two is a bit off. As stated in the title you can communicate with your team with a direct chat function and you can talk via voice chat with the commander and the platoon you’re in regardless if your character has a radio. In an update notice the game developers stated that they rationalized the hit chances on enemy vehicles so that, while not historically accurate, players would get the same experience if they fired upon the same spot making it easier. Opposite of that is that armored vehicles are incredibly powerful. This is certainly realistic however it doesn’t fit with the arcade-style these other choices make. You might be thinking: well yes but that’s what a mix is supposed to be right? I would say you are correct however a choice like this goes against the game being fun or playable that the arcade elements want to deliver. Why make it easier to hit a vehicle in the same spot when it can literally zoom in across half the map and shoot you with a machine gun when you haven’t even seen the vehicle yet.

Historical accuracy

Being a WW2 game historical accuracy is of course, at least in my mind, an important aspect. Regarding the maps, I do think this has been done exquisitely especially for a game in early access which does say something about the distribution of work by developers but that’s not too much of an issue. I do however find some of the gameplay inaccuracies mildly annoying. For example that none of the armored vehicles have correct top speeds or amount of gears. All the vehicles have 4 forward gears and 1 reverse gear when in reality the ‘Panther’ had 7 forward and 1 reverse. The medium tanks are locked at about 24km/h when realistically they could go much faster and the same goes for the light tanks which are locked at 30 km/h when some could go twice that. These things do annoy me quite a bit as it takes such a realistic model and gameplay system and mocks it up with the wrong data.

Another problem is that commanders can call in air support on the map ‘Foy’ this is an issue because this assault was part of ‘The Battle of the Bulge’ in which the weather was infamously bad making neither side able to use air support. Although this can be overlooked for gameplay purposes the earlier point does annoy me.

How expensive is it? “Team17 published it” ah, expensive

The base price is 29,99€ and on sale it’s 25,49€. While I would say this is a fair price for a completed product I would say this is simply too much for a game in early access in its current state. I would deem 15,- or 20,- euros a much better price when more content is added later it will be deserving of the price it has now but as of now, you would be better off waiting.

Technicalities

This game isn’t easy on your GPU so make sure to at least match the minimum requirements and if you barely do be prepared to cut corners because the optimization isn’t very good. I have been able to run the game at about 60fps with a mix of medium to high settings with these specs: [GTX 1050TI OC, 16GB DDR4, I5-7600K] however I have experienced a multitude of crashes and while they are not common they are very annoying. Before the latest patch I also experienced moments where my framerate would be cut in half for no reason but that seems to be fixed now.

Summary

“Hell Let Loose” is while already quite enjoyable still a very flawed game which isn’t very surprising for a recently released early access game so while I won’t judge too much against it it’s something to be aware of when you’re planning to buy this game. With its exquisite maps and fleshed-out gameplay mechanics, it’s fun to play however not fully worth the price.

Score: 68/100

This game was provided for free by the developers.

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Retromancer is a new game by a new indie developer, Spinfoam games, decides not to focus on hideous 3D graphics or boring dialogue but on great optimized combat and action. To simplify so many concepts into one streamlined experience, so you will neither want to rip your eyes out or refund the game because it’s so unplayable


Pros:


✅ Great mechanics making the gameplay a blast and be almost always enjoyable
✅ Super large variety of enemies so you will always find something new to shoot
✅ Different characters with different abilities and the possibility to play with up to 4 people

Cons:


❌ In certain sections, the ground, enemies, and projectiles can be hard to differentiate
❌ In certain sections, the difficulty varies to an extreme extent although this is only in 1 or 2 sections


Because an indie developer doesn’t have a large budget one can only pay so much attention to each element of the game. Because the graphics have been kept simple the developer's attention has gone towards gameplay which has created a really enjoyable game to play


“We should probably devise a combat plan and-“ [INCOHERENT YELLING]


Retromancer works relatively simply, a rectangular field in which you, as any of the 4 available characters, shoot either long or short range projectiles to damage and kill every varying enemy. But even though it sounds simple it does take some getting used to. This is because Retromancer doesn’t hold back, it’s not a game like “Enter The Gungeon” that will make you rip your hair out but it’s most certainly challenging and it’s meant that way. You will find that you’re quickly wondering if you accidentally set the difficulty to the max as within the first levels it will throw all the types of enemies that spawn in those levels, at you. The the enemies do get stronger the later in the game you get. Not only this but you can also play it co-op which not only makes this is a fun experience for yourself but also to play with as many controllers as your computer's I/O supports.


so I’m supposed to play a 4 person game by myself? I think not!


Difficulty wise the game is, like I said, a challenge, this doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near impossible. It does challenge your skills but it adapts to how many people are playing, so you won’t have to take on a 4 player difficulty setting all by yourself. The game bases the damage and health of enemies on the number of players so you won’t get have any fewer enemies so you will still be running for dear life. The difficulty isn’t static if you play alone either, when you beat the revered Retromancer, which is the final enemy, you can start a new playthrough and the difficulty increases so you can keep playing until you finally get beaten or until you win for the 4th time since the difficulty doesn’t scale up after that anymore.


Dying does have an interesting characteristic, you don’t work on hit points or health, instead you work by a very interesting mechanic called “death’s door” it basically gives you 2 hits worth of life before you die, which causes you to die, if you are playing alone,or be able to be revived by your team members, if they're not dead as well. if you have any. It shows you this so you can switch to a more defensive playstyle when you’ve noticed that you’re about to die so you can run away and pretend you’re invisible.


When you do die though, because you will at some point, what happens? Well, we don’t know, really no one knows! Oh, you meant in the game? Well, the game contains 6 Stages, each containing 5 levels, if you die on any of those levels you can start over at the first level of that stage so it’s not a 1 life mechanic but it will set you back some time for sure which can become irritating in certain sections, but in general this is only helpful as you can easily fight your way back to the level you died at last time and try again.


Battle noises and flashy magic stuff


Graphically "Retromancer" isn’t a very complicated game, it's made of only a few elemtns: the floor and walls, you and of course those annoying enemies that won't stop shooting at you for some reason. This is done simplistically with high-quality assets. The game runs on Unreal Engine 4 however so it still looks sharp and clear where the effects actually look like proper effects and not the kind that comes straight out of 1998.


Sound effects are okay and while it does technically have music it’s mostly drums going in the rhythm of some arena style music. After a while, I just turned off the music completely and put on my own because it was so painfully boring. I would like to see perhaps some stage-specific music in the future.


Is it worth your money?


Retromancer costs 8 euros which is a great price, in my opinion, you will get at least 6 hours out of it and many more with friends, and even with timed discounts it really is a bargain for such an enjoyable game. Don’t worry if you don’t have friends that hang out at your house a lot or a very boring family it works great as well to kill some time when you don’t know what to play.


Technicalities


Retromancer isn’t a complex game but it still runs on UE4 so a 2 year old laptop will struggle but you can turn off enough settings to make it work for your machine. I’ve never experienced lag except when dealing with a soon to be patched ability so it’s very stable. My specs [I5-7600K,1050TI OC, 16GB RAM]


Summary


Retromancer is not a perfect game but I still very much enjoy with very fleshed out combat and mechanic. Its great variety of enemies keep each and every level as a new and intriguing adventure for you to explore and conquer. It’s an easy game to learn but a difficult one to master. You can play it on most computers even if it runs on Unreal Engine 4.


Score: 91/100


This game was provided for free by the developers.

Follow our curator page, Alexander's Club Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

The prison is a local multiplayer ‘mini-game’ experience that you play on your own computer with friends and only with friends, it’s not playable without any so sorry if you don’t have any this game isn’t for you. Essentially the entire game revolves around beating your friends in a variety of games and not much more than that.

Pros:

✅ Easy to play with your friends with plenty of replayability
✅ Very easy learning curve with a medium to high skill ceiling

Cons:

❌ When starting out figuring out what to do can be very confusing, this is not the same as learning the game, this is merely figuring out where to start

The game developers have built a platform on which they can endlessly expand new games on which, while at the time of writing, isn’t a lot I’m quite sure it will increase to a rather large amount in later development. What kinds of games they’ll add in the future is a good question.

Breaking friendships in even more innovative ways

By this I mean that because this game is a hotseat game and you will be playing against each other a long streak of victories will seriously upset the other player. See it like playing Mario kart but where the goal is to kill the other player. Luckily there is enough variation to be a master in one game and be rather terrible in another. As of writing, there are about 3-4 different games that all play a bit different. These are not simple shooting games or anything alike they’re almost like puzzle games as you try to figure out well who the other person is playing. This is mostly interesting since everyone is the exact same character so even figuring out where you are can be a bit of a challenge as you have to find the character that’s moving like you without alerting the other players. This makes every single game you start tense every time since there’s time pressure to find the others before they find you.

Free advice above since the game won’t tell you anything anyway

A thing I really dislike though is the fact that the game literally explains nothing, you just start existing at you’re just expected to figure it out on your own. This has taken a lot of time I would have rather spent on actually playing the game and not trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Not only did this go for trying to figure out where to start the game. This also applied to understanding what I had to do inside the games themselves, as that often took quite a lot of trial and error before realizing what I had to do.

Another problem is the fact that while each of the games has their own settings you can modify this can only be done very inefficiently. You have to go through a door which closes after you so you have to press a button to open it again, and then you can change a single setting at a time by pressing a single button and if it loops back around, tough luck starts again. I find this and the aforementioned lack of information just lazy as it’s something that’s not hard to add and yet the availability of this is very limited and even the information that is shown is very vague and covers not even a handful of all the things you have to do to get going.

Is it worth your money?

At 6,59€ it’s not an incredibly expensive game yet its value very much depends on what your social life is like. Since like I mentioned you cannot play this game without friends as it is hotseat only. If you often have friends coming over or just lots of video game interested family the cost is most certainly justified ,however, if you don’t and often only play single player games it will be unlikely to ever see the cost justified as playing alone is basically winning instantly.

Technicalities

The Prison is a game that will most likely run on any machine you try to run it on as its graphics are incredibly simple and character movement isn’t difficult so your CPU won’t blow up either. It ran fine both on my Main PC[1050TI,I5-7600K,16GB RAM] but it also ran fine on a very old 150 euro laptop I have so really the bottom limit is that you need to have a computer.

Summary

The Prison is an intriguing yet at times frustrating hotseat experience that anyone who often plays games with others will most certainly enjoy. With a relatively low entry price, you will be trying to figure out what you are doing in no time as you get more annoyed at the fact that pressing ESC doesn’t bring up a menu. Still ,the base now exists, and the developers are adding more and more mechanics and new games for you to enjoy.

Score: 68/100

This game was provided for free by the developers, however, my opinion has not been influenced by it.

Follow our curator page, Alexander's Club Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Sigma Theory a new game by Goblinz Studio, set in the fictional second installment of the cold war is a strategic game about world domination through alternative means. With a new approach to “world domination” straying from the standard blow up your enemies with the military approach. It’s not an easy game though so don’t think it’s a lax learning curve.

Pros:

✅ Very wide selection of agents all with different skills, personalities and traits
✅ Many different approaches to achieve victory
✅ Is rather difficult mostly in a good way as there is constant pressure and minor events can at times influence the entire
run of the game

Cons:

❌ The game is quite dependent on RNG(Random Number Generation) which will hinder
even very good players quite often
which is the only bad part about the difficulty since you cannot influence it.
❌ Your opponents seem to not suffer the same issues you do and get a lot of advantages
from tasks of which you get none,
now for difficulty this may not be horrible, but it puts you at an immediate disadvantage
which in my opinion, is very annoying.

Taking a new approach to global domination is interesting for sure as you, the player, are in command of an entirely different branch of a country: the secret service. And while the majority of this new concept has been executed quite well with many components working as intended I, like stated before, still think the difficulty section of the game is either lacking or just poorly executed.

Diplomatic super violent turbo spy deluxe Xtreme Edition

In the far future, another cold war is brewing, with the development of a new technology called “Sigma” after the Greek letter the world is once again in turmoil as countries try to obtain new technologies in this field as fast as possible to take global control of all people’s. Examples of these technologies are a universal cure for cancer or just straight up teleportation so it makes sense countries want them so badly. You, the player, are desperately trying to obtain as many technologies before all the other players so that you can be the first to research the ultimate technology to rule the entire world, a bundle of all the different fields of research. You have to do this before the countdown timer reaches 0 though or it’s game over for everyone. You may think: Countdown timer? Hell no! But instead it’s not a countdown timer like the word suggests, It only moves forward with specific events like starting a war with china or on the research of a particularly dangerous technology so it’s not a very annoying timer which will make the game end at a set time every single playthrough. You obtain new technologies by essentially “stealing” scientists from other countries, this can be done through just converting them to your cause in a couple of ways or just straight up abducting them, which with how often converting them will fail is often the best solution.

You failed! Again….

Sigma Theory is not the kind of game you are good at on your first playthrough, the game developers know this because with actions you do in every single playthrough you unlock new agents to use in the next playthrough thus encouraging you to start new playthroughs. Now while I am a fan of this concept, I am less a fan of the RNG system in place, In fact, I’d go as far as that it almost sabotages the entire difficulty aspect of the game. I think you also see the problem with a strategy game relying very heavily on RNG as it removes the user from a part of the events and the game just decided to screw you over whether you’re a good player or not. Now as you get better you also get better at using certain agents for certain tasks thus making the chances for failure much smaller but the fact that still, so many things rely on it is very annoying to me. Of course, I understand why it's been implemented but if anything I’d like to see an adjustable difficulty in the future.

Yay, another terrorist organization to talk to….

In Sigma Theory the world is quite alive as you will encounter many prestigious groups of various origins with various goals that you can aid in return for their help and support. With aid I mean giving them research from your Sigma research. Now I very much like this concept as not only does it make the world more alive it also gives you the choice in supporting originations or for your own benefit or even for the entire world to use. What I don’t like about these organizations is that not only do they just show up whenever and almost force you to do certain tasks and waste your time on them they also pop up in the middle of the screen and take forever the process the same conversation. What I mean by this is that every single conversation you have with someone, which is just simply clicking a predefined option, takes forever as the text bubbles appear incredibly slowly and will appear the same and at the same speed every single playthrough so it gets increasingly more annoying the longer you play.

Is it worth your money?

I enjoy Sigma Theory for sure but I don’t enjoy it enough for it be worth 18 Euro. With it being in early access now and with the bugs and the kind of messed up difficulty I’d say for now 18 euros is too much. Perhaps in the future, the game will improve to such an extent that it’ll be worth it but at least, in my opinion, it’s not worth it yet. Right now I’d say 10 euros would be a better price but again it’s all personal taste; if you like to mentally torture yourself while playing this game and losing to a random event go ahead be my guest.

Technicalities

Sigma Theory is a simple game graphically speaking, sure it looks fancy but there’s a limited amount of graphics at play and I’d say that really any computer could run it. My specs are: [GTX 1050TI OC, I5-7600K, 16GB RAM] Ran it fine without any issues ever which is not surprising but just so you know if you can’t run this you should probably not be playing it on your Gameboy advance.

Summary

Sigma Theory is while good in many aspects, still lacking in the department of difficulty, not because it’s not difficult but because it’s overly difficult a part of which is out of the users control. While its flashy visuals are nice and it’s super massive selection of agents and thus varying playstyles is great the learning curve will most likely scare off many new players if they would even buy it that is as the price for such a “simple” game is quite high in comparison to many games that are cheaper and not as much a pain to get into.

Score: 74/100

This game was provided for free by the developers, however, my opinion has not been influenced by it.

Follow our curator page, Alexander's Club Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

One Finger Death Punch is back in the new installment by Silver Dollar. Bringing back such a classic game is not something you can easily do as it’s hard to improve on already great games. Yet they still managed to pull through and create something that is not only more aesthetic than before but also more fun to play.

Pros

✅ Super fast addictive gameplay
✅ Great visuals and sounds
✅ Massive campaign mode with lots of varying maps
✅ Easy to begin hard to master, great difficulty curve

Cons

❌ If you are used to the first game getting used to some of the new visual elements can be challenging or annoying at first.
❌ UI(user interface) is too varying, some parts look sleek, modern and professional and other still look like they’re from a game out of 2005

While often trying to make a sequel to a game that was incredibly good is near to impossible because overcoming past expectations is hard, I do feel like it’s been achieved properly even when that is such a challenge. They’ve essentially taken all the clunky and unpolished parts from the first game and made them proper in the second one; except the UI like I stated. Improving all the parts that the game was lacking in or just straight up bad has given this new installment such a boost I’d say it’s just like the old game, but better.

Super Ninja Deluxe

In One Finger Death Punch 2 you are the most kickass ninja the world has ever seen. The kind that can high kick a flying arrow out of mid-air and punch a man in half. After all, it’s in the name that with just one click total annihilation can be achieved. The controls are the easiest you’ll ever find a game that’s not a clicker, only the left and right mouse buttons. Or 2 keyboard keys or 2 controller buttons whichever you prefer. This way of fighting has been made very intuitively with a handy bar under your character telling you when to strike left or right. Still, at very high speeds you’ll find that you’re often more guessing how close you are to the enemy as you don’t have time to check if the bar is red to the exact point.

Because you are such a super ninja, you can do all sorts of epic things that fit well as game mechanics. You can catch weapons, evade weapons but most importantly shoot laser beams out of your eyes. OFDP2 has quite a large selection of skills available to you all with varying degrees of power. You unlock these by playing the colossal campaign mode as you get points to unlock skills with certain, more difficult, levels. The new system is an improvement over the one in the old game as now all your skills are always active if you’ve spent some skill points on them and are thus always charging up and used the moment they’re done charging. The new skills are also much more powerful than in the old game where a large selection can clear the left, right or both sides of the entire screen of enemies. Because after a while of collecting skill points these abilities activate quite often you really do feel like an unstoppable ninja ravaging his way through thousands of mindless blobs.

This is all way too fast for me! I’ll stick to candy crush

While you may think that this game is only for the swiftest among men really anyone can start playing it. It utilizes a system so that the game is only as fast as your skill can carry you. It will speed up if you’re performing incredibly well and slow down if you’re performing poorly. Of course, you can also manually change the speed, but I’ve found this system to be very useful, so it doesn’t feel like you’re either being pushed too hard or, for the ones with more experience, not challenged. While of course in earlier levels a smaller selection of varying enemies will appear, which will still make it easier to play the added speed should stop you from getting bored anytime soon. The difficulty does increase the further you get in the campaign, this doesn’t mean speed, but it means that there are more enemies that require more varying attack patterns or more enemies that throw weapons at you which can be a pain to deal with.

More rainbow lights than a rave party

OFDP2 has quite a lot of visuals, often bright and flashy. So, it’s not exactly epilepsy friendly. However, if you have no such condition, it almost turns into an experience as the sounds and light blend into a fast-paced punching experience. And while the new look has been upgraded tremendously, the transition has not been made universally. The main screen on which you play looks hip and flashy, but the menu screen does most certainly not. It retains many of the UI elements of the old game like big round buttons and low-quality images of ninjas. Now while I would be fine with an older style for the sake of that being your style; I can’t accept that the style is so varied. The attack bar has thin illuminated lines that really look modern and stylish, however, you switch between options in the “more” section of the menu by clicking on massive arrows to the left and right that are decorated in medium quality gold textures. I am disappointed that they couldn’t stick with a single style as it is odd to see because the main menu does kind of look like a joke in comparison to the rest of the game.

Another point I also mentioned in the cons section is that a certain visual element has changed quite drastically from the other game and not for the better. This is the UI that appears if you engage a brawler, a type of enemy that you have to ‘duel’ (click on multiple sides subsequently) with and this happens in a sort of small menu or box in the middle of the screen. In OFDP 1 this would take place above the 2 characters, so you are staying in the main screen but in OFDP 2 you are taken out of the rest of the fighting and the box with the attacks covers the entire middle section of the screen which completely removes you from any other engagements you had going on or were about to take. I also dislike this section as the audio feedback on hits is much weaker than any of the other units or weapons so It’s, at least for me, a bit annoying to see if I hit a certain attack or not as the little attack markers don’t go away instantly after a hit. That however is really the only criticism I have on the game.

Is it worth your money?

Absolutely, for its standard price of 6.99 Euro it’s almost a steal. While the original game now costs only 99 cents and thus only 1/7th of the cost I’d say the cost is most certainly worth it. My experience with the second game has been much better than with the first and I’ve had much more fun playing it, so I’d advise you to go ahead and try it out!

Technicalities

As this game is quite light it’ll most likely run on any system you throw at it. So my computer [I5-7600K, 16GB RAM, GTX 1050TI OC] could easily handle it on max settings at over 300 fps. If you need a game to play on vacation this is the game for you.

Summary

One Finger Death Punch 2 is a great improvement over the older game and is in my opinion also much more fun. So even though it’s 7 times the cost I’d say it’s a cost that’s worth it in every single regard as the experience is a 1000 times better. With better graphics, more responsive sound and flashy visuals I’d say it’s a game you can sink loads of time in without even noticing.

Score: 94/100

This game was provided for free by the developers, however, my opinion has not been influenced by it.

Follow our curator page, Alexander's Club Curations if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.