Recent reviews by CyberusPunk ×͜×

I'm not sure really what I was expecting from this game, the screenshots don't really tell you much. But then there isn't much you can show, you need to play. Citizen Sleeper is something of a cross between a visual novel, a table top game and an RPG. Its not hard, I'm not even sure if its possible to fail as such, so if you're here for a challenge I'd keep looking.
But what CS lacks in difficulty it makes up for in story. Its a beautifully crafted, deep, engaging story with characters you'll come to really care about. By the time the credits rolled I genuinely felt an emotional reaction. I really can't recommend this game enough.

I wouldn’t normally start a review talking about other people’s reviews of the same game, but I feel it’s important here as ether I’m missing the point with this game or I’m just not like the other people playing this game. I’ll talk more on this as we go through but just to say this game has received mainly positive reviews on Steam and that mine will not be so positive.
Welkin Road is something of a cross between Mirrors Edge and Spiderman, free running with some web slinging thrown in for fun . . . or lack thereof. Each level presents the player in a minimalistic world with nothing but skill and some gloves that allow you to swing in orbs dotted around to traverse the level. Being a huge Mirrors Edge fan I was very hopeful for this game, but I have to say I’m disappointed.
The looks are good, I’ve expressed in previous reviews how much I like this minimalistic approach with levels being composed of white and a single colour that some Indie games are using right now and here is no different. It looks good though I think unlike other games such as Absolute drift and Block ‘hood the first person view of Welkin Road really shows the flaws with this style. I still like it all the same and think Welkin Roads animation is really done well, while I wouldn’t call the game a looker it does look very ok.
The settings are pretty good offering enough tinkering for most to get the game running reasonably smooth, but the game offers no controller support. I normally wouldn’t mind this, especially in a first person game where I will normally opt for keyboard and mouse controls but in this game it has so much going on and the keyboard controls are so bad it really effects the experience. This could have been remedied simply by instead of placing imputes all over the keyboard simply combining them into one action button that would do it all. The game offers two modes currently, the standard campaign which is just about making it to the end of the level and of course speed run. I think there was room here for something more original, but I have little complaint all the same.
So on to the gameplay and this is for me where things go downhill, as I’ve already said the key layout isn’t the best but the game its self also works against you. You can jump off the same platform 100 times and the outcome seems random, sometimes you can latch on to an orb but others not, you can wall run but sometimes not. Now I know this is probably just as much user error as anything else but the game makes no effort to help you, there’s no leeway what so ever. I can already hear the cries of “Get Good” but this game makes Dark Souls look like a teddy bear, I honestly thought I was missing something or just being dumb but then I hit the Steam reviews and realized I wasn’t alone. Others were having the exact same issue but instead of like me finding this an issue many were happy about it as the game respawns you to the last platform you were on. Singing its praises as fun and happy they completed a level in 15 minutes! To me this game lacks accessibility and that really ruins the experience for me, I know I will never complete a level fault free on this game however hard I practice and that’s a big problem to me. I’m happy to put in the effort when a game rewards it or when I can see the mistakes I’m making are my own fault but Welkin Road doesn’t do this, Instead the errors I’m making are undetectable to myself and make me feel like the game is somehow cheating me. It’s just not fun and honestly had me nearly throwing my mouse at the wall in frustration.
All games need to have a learning curve and introduce you in to get you hooked, Welkin Road seems to lack this and while the majority of Steam review disagree with me I found this game more frustrating than fun. Not because I couldn’t complete the levels, with infinite retries that’s not an issue but because perfection eludes me and that’s a problem to me.
If your happy to fall to your death 100 times every level and not be sure it’s your fault check it out, but if not you might want to give it a miss.

Goliath is one of those games it’s hard to compartmentalize, it’s a survival game while also being and RPG and brawler too. There’s no shame in this, many great game straddle the genres making something new and goliath want desperately to be the next. You are placed in the role of a 1930’s fighter pilot landed on a strange world, who must make behemoth type mechanical automations to survive the hostile indigenous creatures that inhabit this strange environment. Pretty cool idea but things are never that clear cut.
The story is the first place things start to fall apart, you know who you are kind of and you are taught about the world by a voice on your radio claiming to be you co-pilot. I’m not going to give away spoilers but things get odd very quickly. As you start to discover the world around you things get stranger more still, with fox like creatures and rat like creatures becoming friendly towards you depending on the choices you make, it’s a great idea but through the entirety of it all the game explains very little and this makes it hard to invest in the world. Your character just gains the ability to make these technological marvels that are goliaths, he just knows how to use teleporters and fix them with no explanation why. The cardinal sin though is that the game offers you conversational options but you’re never sure if you’re moving the story the way you want. This might seem odd but your character is such a douche that it’s sometimes hard to tell if the choice you make is the good or bad one. He really is a bit of a prick that way, for a hero this isn’t a good thing.
But hey what does story mater when you can drive giant robots around and that’s true, apart from they really aren’t as giant as your lead to believe. The reality is your character is a little shorter than most of the creatures you encounter and your goliath is a little taller, it’s almost like you strapped on body armour and a pair of stilts. Not exactly the “Shadow of Colossus” idea the Goliath title might suggest. There’s just no feeling of power about them and they take damage so easily, it’s more glass cannon than raging hulk.
The mechanics also take a big hit too with the keyboard and mouse being virtually unusable and it only being when you use a controller that the game really works. For a PC game to make such a bad job of the K&M controls is shameful it’s just a mess. Even when you switch to a controller there are still issue, attacking and moving around become far more natural, but the game lacks the ability to move the camera lower than its almost top down view giving you no peripheral vision what so ever. This combined with overly complex to navigate menus and an overly difficult upgrade system make it a turn off.
Difficulty is an issue to, as the game doesn’t so much ramp as you tend to just avoid creature for the most part as you will lose. That’s really it, you avoid and the AI is dumb enough to let you. It again comes back to the fact you never get a sense of power with a goliath, it’s more a case of extending your health bar long enough to reach the next goal.
Oh those goals too! Go here, go there, go everywhere and achieve very little with very little in the way of plot development. You could spend your life going back and forward in this game just talking to the next person before they tell you to talk to someone else. Occasionally they will chuck in something to defeat before you can talk to someone and then you’re back to it again and god it’s tiresome.
If there is one area though it’s the visuals, the style is something a kin to if you crossed the looney toons with anime and strangely it works stunningly. But still even cranked up to max settings it doesn’t look as good as the screen shots and trailers do, not far off but noticeable all the same. It’s a good looker all the same but with the art style not really pushing my system I wonder why it couldn’t have looked as good as they show it could, why the down grade?
I suspect it’s to do with the engines performance, I think this because even though my GPU doesn’t break a sweat and my CPU even less so the game still stutters and lags horrendously. There’s no real reason for this I can see as there is plenty of power left in my system for it to use, it just doesn’t. On top of this the loading times are some of the longest I’ve come across in ages and while I’m not running it off an SSD it really shouldn’t take as long as it does. Thankfully after the initial load things speed up a little, but I honestly believe the reason we don’t get peripheral vision and micro stutters is all related to the engine having major issues they have tried to hide.
When I asked for this game I asked because I looked great and I really wanted to play it, it really caught my eye and imagination. But now after spending some time with it and experiencing its gameplay or lack thereof I just feel a little cheated. For an indie game it’s not cheap and just because it carries the indie title doesn’t mean it should be treated any less harsh than the games of equal price.
Goliath is a game I want to recommend but it makes it impossible with it being subpar in almost all areas.

BattleSouls is a competitive PvP based in medieval times, with five classes available that can be switched on the fly does it bring something new to the table? Well no, you see through this review you’re going to find me comparing this game to another called Bierzerkers. These two games are so similar it’s uncanny, so it’s pretty natural to draw the comparison.
The big difference being that since my review of Bierzerkers its changer to a more arena based sporting affair, I feel this was a bad more but even so BattleSouls destroy the crystal setup can still be compared. The idea being that player are split in two teams’ red and blue, each team tries to capture certain points on the map leaving the opponent’s crystal vulnerable to attack. Once it’s vulnerable you can destroy their crystal leaving your team one point up or them one crystal down depending how you look at it.
This is an ok set up, but not to blow my own trumpet but I often found that my team mates held me back, even when taking part in a live stream set up by the PR company for this game nobody seemed able to grasp the mechanics often leaving me trying to maintain the captured points and destroy the crystals at the same time. Not much fun and near on impossible, while I don’t like Bierzerkers new format I would take it over this setup.
The controls are also a point of contention for me too, often finding the game struggling to keep up with inputs and doing the opposite of what I was pressing, sometimes just not responding at all or moving while my hands were off the keyboard. Even with that aside I find the ability to change between your three pre-set characters on the fly also to BattleSouls detriment as it makes things a little too easy, attack with a long range character until you close the gap and switch, it’s really that easy. This means no strategy is really needed unlike Bierzerkers where you can switch when you die but not mid game. Add to this the fact your attacks are so limited with only one skill and an alt, you don’t even have a sprint or power attack! In Bierzerkers you have to learn your characters weakness and strengths, with BattleSouls there’s really no need.
Graphically it’s colourful and bright but lack detail and verity, even with the graphics maxed out in settings it not amazing. Serviceable and not much more, again Bierzerkers comes out on top here with far better visuals and a much more varied roster. BattleSouls just lacks interest all round really, whether it be maps, characters or details and again the comparison to Bierzerkers compounds this but it’s simply unavoidable.
I know it sounds like I hate the game, I don’t. But unfortunately as a reviewer however hard you try to treat a game on its own merits it’s not always easy. This is really compounded by the fact this game is so similar to Bierzerkers, both being free to play and both being so similar in gameplay. Unfortunately BattleSouls doesn’t hold up well in the comparison. For me I’d say it’s free so check it out, but don’t expect too much.

If you caught my Holodrive video last week you already know I really like this game, I think it’s one of the few games we see these days that’s still just about having fun instead of trying to force some longwinded story down our throats. That’s not to say narrative should always take a backseat in games, not at all but not every game. Holodrive has no complex story or hour long tutorial, Holodrive just throws you in with simple and easy to learn controls and says shoot the other guys. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
Holodrive keeps it simple putting you on a 2D plain in what I can only describe as a platform death match, as you traverse the level jumping and using your jetpack to reach higher levels you can pick up more and more weird and wonderful weapons. These include sniper rifles, phasor beams, rocket launchers and even assault rifles, these all have their advantages and disadvantages such as the sniper rifle stopping your jetpack from powering up when in use. As you progress you’ll also unlock variations of these weapons that can be setup in your load out, these also have their own stats.
You also unlock outfits as you play, letting you customize your little robot/avatar which is pretty much the main goal in Holodrive. Holodrive doesn’t really give players advantages as they level, even the alternate weapons don’t offer advantage just work in different ways so you can find what suits you the most. I can see this turning some players off as they like to gain an edge, but I favour this more balanced approach.
There are a plethora of levels and ways to play available to the player, team Deathmatch, standard Deathmatch, a capture the flag style game and the list goes on. But this is where I begin to have an issue, the game explains very little about what you are meant to be doing and while I value the hands of approach Holodrive takes it wouldn’t hurt to have some info instead of being left to work it out yourself.
But this unfortunately is where my review takes a turn for the worse, you see while I love the game and hugely enjoy playing it. There are some glaring issue to contend with, like the micro-transactions. Now I’m fine with micro-transactions in a free to play game, but currently Holodrive is £6.99 on steam while it’s in early access. When it’s officially realised it will be free, but if you want to get in early you’ll have to pay. I’m not sure Holodrive need to be early access and I don’t think it’s right to charge your earliest supporters for something you’re going to give to everyone for free eventually. Add to this the game is peppered with “Buy credits!” adverts and it leave a little bit of a sour taste in the mouth. I think BitCake are walking a very thin line with this way of developing and I could see it causing issues later on in the games life.
Outside of this the biggest issue that might be implemented in time is the lack of any way to setup your own matches, invite friends or have any control what so ever. I’m reluctant to critic this as it may well be coming, but it is missed and I look forward to its implementation.
I like Holodrive, I really do. It’s a game full of fun and enjoyment, but a game isn’t just successful on its gameplay alone. It takes clever marketing and friends wanting to play with each other, this is an area Holodrive suffers in greatly and I’m unsure of its future because of this. I personally can’t recommend it for these reasons as knowing it will become free at some point I’d have to say wait.

Blood Alloy desperately wants to be a Metroidvania game crossed with a twin stick shooter, the truth is it struggles to do ether well. You’re put in the role of a cyborg ninja style character that can fly around the screen taking out enemies and looking flashy as you do it.
Unfortunately this doesn’t cover the gaping holes in its control scheme and this is where the game really falls apart. When played with mouse and keyboard the game is a mess and makes some really odd choices like having two jump keys but on controller things become a little easier. Even then though the choice to make the shoot button something you have to press repeatedly instead of the traditional hold to fire that’s been tried and tested just serves to frustrate even more than is necessary.
These aren’t the only issue I find with the controls ether, much of the time these controls seem to focus on style rather than substance. The character has a dodge that takes you so far across the screen chances are you’ll avoid one enemy only to land on another. Your sword attack can be done in any direction, but its hit and miss if the game will pay any attention to the direction you’re pressing. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. There are even issues with level design too, sometimes you can shoot through platforms and more an inch to the left and suddenly you can’t. There’s no consistency with the game.
On top of all this there’s no guidance on what you’re even doing, you wonder round shooting things until an onscreen marker shows up and you go kill what its pointing too and you’re on your own again until it decides to show up again. I don’t know if you have to kill X amount of these to progress or if the game is just score attack as it doesn’t tell me. You get a brief glimpse at a plot when completing training mode, but nothing to give you any idea of what the hell is going on. The game shows me an upgrades menu, but gives me no idea of how to unlock them and this story continues. . .
The Steam reviews so far show a very different story than mine, it seems to be really well received. Maybe if you persist with the game thing improve, maybe it becomes clearer but I have little to no incentive to do so as the game gives me no hint of this and I’m not inclined to continue in some blind hope. This isn’t an early access game, I have no reason to suggest it might improve or get better. Maybe this game just isn’t for me, or maybe everyone else is wrong. I don’t know but I do know I don’t recommend it.

Tiny Build had recently told me they were sending me out a code for Dungelot but as I hadn’t asked for it I really wasn’t too bothered, so when it arrived I thought I’d take a look but I still wasn’t sure if I’d write a review. I’m not big on games that move over from the mobile platform to PC as nine times out of ten they just don’t work for me. Dungelot has been a pleasant surprise in this respect, it’s not all that bad.
Dungelot is described as a hybrid between a dungeon crawler and minesweeper and it’s a pretty accurate description, but it’s far deeper than that. The game is played on a 5x5 grid that’s covered with rocks, as you uncover each square you might find one of a few things. Items, food, enemies or the dungeon key which is perhaps the most important thing, as opening the door to the dungeon takes you to the next floor. Enemies will restrict you from uncovering the squares around them until they are defeated but don’t be tricked into taking on every enemy as this is a quick way to die, rather avoid it if you can. Food is needed for progression as moving to another floor with no food will give you a penalty to your health and items offer a range of benefits to the player like bombs to fight enemies or buff giving potions. Items used correctly can be a life saver and you quickly learn to manage your inventory to match your style of play.
The game also has a selection of mini games and diversions to partake of which pop up as you quest, these are a nice little extra that keeps things fresh. All in all it’s an enjoyable experience to play with a fair bit of humour in the narrative too and while I’m not a huge fan of puzzle games which I would consider this to be I have found myself playing quite regularly. It also helps that the art is pretty good in its cutesy anime style, I’m a sucker for good artwork.
The heart of Dungelot is a mobile game no doubt, but it’s not a mobile game that needs you to keep playing every hour to collect something or do something, there aren’t even micro-transactions and this helps to make the experience a pleasurable one. I’m not being forced to play or strong armed into spending money, I can hop in as and when I please and have a quick blast. It doesn’t matter if I played an hour ago or a week, which probably makes me play it even more.
It’s not a hard game to understand, it’s a simple puzzle game that’s all about having a bit of fun. It’s enjoyable and the fact it came out on mobile first really doesn’t matter as this is just a puzzle game that happens to have been on mobile, it looks great and plays great on PC instead of being a bad port of a bad game which is what I’ve come to think of when I talk about mobile ports. There’s no earth shattering graphics or gameplay that reinvents the wheel, it’s a colourful, bright and fun little game that I highly enjoyed.

https://youtu.be/P2JyVSGpMFI
I grew up with Streets of Rage, in fact I’ve probably spent far more time playing its various iterations. So whenever a side scrolling beat em up hits steam I’m normally there and while there are a few good ones, nothing that really captures the spirit of the 90’s versions. Well that was until now, the TakeOver’s developer is a person after my own heart and feels as I that there is still a place for games like this in the world of hyper realistic titles we have today. Sometimes I just want to mindlessly crack a few heads and not have to read a phone book sized manual to do it, or practice five hours a day. I want to sit down and jump in for instant stress relief!

Ok I might be exaggerating a little, but it does feel more and more that games are losing that pick up and play ethos. To be fair I don’t want all games to be that ether, but it’s always great when a good one comes along and that leads me nicely into the TakeOver. Right now the TakeOver is out on early access and as such it’s quiet limited, one level with three stages and a survival mode. Currently there’s also only one playable character too, but on the survival character select it shows four slots so we can assume there will be more in time. It might seem there’s really very little to interest you, that is until you play it.

You see the TakeOver has perfectly captured the spirit of those 90’s games, it’s tweaked and improved the control scheme but only just enough to make it not so much of a mindless button basher, but not so much it feels completely different. Fans of Final Fight, Streets of Rage and any of the other classic side scrollers will be right at home here. You even have a gun that tremendously handy for crowd control, but at its core it’s not a huge jump from the familiar. So much so it encored some criticism on Steam for being too much like its peers, but this is to be expected.

The developer finds themselves in a difficult situation with games like this in that if they stay too close to their inspiration it’s considered copying and if they move to far away it loses some of the interest that first attracted people. I see that the game may need to differentiate it’s self a little more, in fact I know the developer is working on this right now. But I hope they maintain the feel and heart of the game, as for fans this really is the game we’ve been waiting for.

High praise it might seem, but while I know this game won’t appeal to the masses that obsess about FPS or MOBA games for us who grew up with Megadrives and SNES’s, piling 10p’s into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the arcade it’s a little like coming home. If the developer continues the good work it could be the game that Double Dragon Neon failed to be, a must for 90’s kids.

Let’s Sing 2016 might not convert anyone to this style of game, but fans of the genre will find this a great example. While there are issues, most of them are fairly easy to overlook as it plays so well when you get into it. PC players must also consider there peripherals too as while the game is perfectly playable on a cheap mic, you will have a better experience with something a little more high quality, though this would be the case with any game of this style. But if you like karaoke style games, this is a good one and one that will no doubt be seeing a lot more play in this house.

I’ve known about Punch Club for a while now, in fact I was one of the first to be able to make a video of it. I loved the idea from the first moment I heard about it, an 80’s/90’s influenced management sim about fighting. It sounded like Streets of Rage crossed with the Sims, to me this seemed like an amazing combination. But in reality I could sum this game up in one simple sentence “Failed to deliver on all the promise it held!” and that would be accurate.

It would be unfair to say I hate the game, there really is a lot here to like. The visuals are gorgeous and really capture that retro feel, the characters look like who they so often parody and that’s not easy when you choose this 16bit style. The locations are colorful and interesting, again with a huge amount of homages to the films from the 80’s and 90’s.

The story while hugely cheesy is exactly right, it takes all the best bits of Rocky, The Godfather and many other familiar greats. Whether it be facing off against teenage mutant ninja crocodiles or finding yourself in trouble in little china it’s all here, everything you’d expect and probably lots you’ve forgotten if you were a child of the 80’s.

This sounds amazing, what could be so bad? That’s probably what you’re asking yourself and it’s something I’ve been asking too, a game with great music, plot and concept could be bad? The answer of course is yes and it really all comes down to execution, you see the game is a huge grind and I don’t mean that figuratively. No, I mean you’ll spend all your time in the gym just to keep your stats up let alone improving them. There’s so much to see in the game but chances are you won’t as one unexpected trip can really put your progress back. If you want to master the game it’s really as simple as train, eat, work and fight, there really is little else if you wish to succeed.

But it’s a management sim I hear you cry, that’s how they work and you would of course be right. But this game promised so much more, it could have spanned genres and made something amazing. Instead you have very little connection to the main character, not even being able to control them in fights and this is a travesty. A game that’s basis is really about unlocking fighting moves and skills, that gives you zero control of those moves but instead throws them in at random with you left to watch. A frustrating affair and a huge error by the developers if you ask me.

That of course sum’s the game up, it really wouldn’t have taken a lot to make this a great game. Just make training more effective with less degeneration over time and give the player some control in fights, even if it was just a rock, paper, scissors affair it would have been something. But instead I’ve been left a little deflated at the whole experience, it’s not a terrible game but it’s not a great one. Maybe not even a good one, but passable and nothing more. It’s a shame as there are some great moments here and interesting plot lines, but it’s hard to enjoy as your always planning that next trip to the gym!