Recent reviews by Poogy

In short, Zombieville USA 3D is an incredible amount of fun if you like arcade-styled games, with roguelite elements no less. Whether playing by yourself, or in a group of 3, it's a good time that's well worth the price tag. If you want to try before you buy, the demo lets you sample a big chunk of the game!


While I haven't played any of the prior games in the series and thus have no nostalgia, this entry stands on its own merits of being a solid experience with its simple-yet-engrossing gameplay that makes it hard to put down. Your objective is to survive for as long as you can against an increasingly-ravenous zombie horde that absolutely will not stop, ever, until you're dead. At first you'll start with a peashooter as your only weapon, but the map has crates scattered around which spawn weapons with varying degrees of qualities, and sometimes traits, so it's up to you to adapt to whatever the game throws to--and at--you in order to get a new high score.

Zombies drop money when killed, which is where the roguelite part comes in. You can purchase new weapons, upgrades and perks in the lobby when you're not out on a run to even your odds a bit more. The wide variety of weapons and perks you can acquire allow you to craft a build of sorts, at least until you have enough cash to own everything.

There's a catch to upgrading your perks, however. For every perk point you purchase, the price of all other perks in the game goes up. This is likely to prevent players from getting everything in a few hours' play and then becoming so powerful that they become bored of the game, and it makes sense, though this can mean spending quite a bit of additional time to get new perk points after a while. Because of this I recommend first maxing out the perk to increase the amount of cash dropped by killed zombies.

Zombie spawns can feel a bit..cheap at times. It's been toned down a little already, but you'll run into the occasional spawning of a zed right in your face, and sometimes it's one that can cause heavy damage (and usually end your run right there). While an unforgiving challenge is understandable, and it can be mostly negated with enough experience and character progression, it hits a little too close to that familiar arcade experience where it decides you've played for long enough on one credit and need to insert more coins into the machine...only that's not quite how this works!

A fair word of warning, melee can be quite weak starting out, so be prepared to be disappointed if you were hoping to be an axe murderer who cuts through a horde like a hot knife through butter...at first, anyways. The upgrades do help, although the action can eventually become so hectic that melee's out of the question in most cases. Hopefully we can see that change in the future, because as fun as guns and explosives are, there's something to be said for slashing or smashing your way out of a bad situation.

Still, shortcomings aside, these aren't enough to sour the experience beyond enjoyment. The developer's willingness to listen to feedback, engage with the community and provide fixes/quality-of-life updates (at a pretty quick pace i might add!) is admirable, and already we've received some very important ones (autofire, seeing other players' health, ability to shoot in other directions like a true twin-stick shooter, etc.) in less than a week of the game's launch. While it would have been better if some of these features came prepackaged with the game, this is much preferable to simply ignoring all criticism.

Speaking of other players, coop is by far the most fun I've had with the game. It's fun enough on its own, but a real blast with others (sometimes literally, if you get someone popping an exploder too close for your comfort!) If you don't have friends to play with yet then public servers will do the job just fine. Just note that there's no way to communicate with each other outside of other means not found in the game. Regardless, I've had public teams which pull off some amazing plays without so much as uttering a word to each other, but maybe a quickchat or some sort of emote feature couldn't hurt for those who would prefer their teams to be more social.

All in all, while the game's difficulty may take a little adjusting to from how fast zombies like to nibble at you, Zombieville USA 3D is a wonderfully fun game and well worth the price. It checks a lot of the right boxes and will leave you coming back for more, a hunger as insatiable as the zombies nipping at your heels. I really can't recommend it enough, this is the sort of game I've been waiting for years to play and didn't even know it. And hey, if you're not sure, there's a demo which allows for quite a generous sample of the gameplay!

Back 4 Blood is..okay. I mainly choose "not recommended" because there's a chance people will still remember the marketing scheme of calling this a "spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead" and poised it to be the "L4D killer." In a way, it is similar: four survivors have to battle a horde of infected individuals, some of which have mutated to gain special abilities that set them apart from your average Joe. The only problem is that this game lacks one of the most important qualities the Left 4 Dead series had, and that's the soul of it.

The writing is unremarkable. As interesting as it is to see survivors trying to rebuild society, the problem with this is it strips away a lot of the desperation and bleakness from their situation, whereas the L4D games were rife with this. While there is a lot of characters to choose from, much moreso than L4D, Back 4 Blood offers quantity over quality. Whereas some characters like Jim, Doc or Heng just leave me feeling disappointed that these people aren't expanded upon further, there's others that I don't want on my team ever because they're either written poorly, come across as self inserts, or have the sort of personality which makes you wish they were eaten first. Karlee looks and acts horrible, and will never hold a candle to Nick, who, for being such a massive jerk when he first meets the Savannah Survivors, eventually thaws out and still holds some level of camaraderie with the people who he knows deep down he needs in order to survive.

That's only one survivor, with half or more of them suffering from bad writing and overall design. I also think it's obscenely ironic that she has a "corporate microtransactions suck" shirt in a game that is published by WB Games, who is notorious for their egregious microtransactions. Sorry guys, this isn't the own you think it is, it really isn't, even if I do agree with you.

Another issue I have with the survivors is that they are simply too chatty. I understand one of the appeals with L4D is the dialogue between the characters, but you do not need them to talk whenever shoving or using melee. Valve knew the importance of including dialogue for certain cues, like when someone was affected by Boomer bile, healing another player, etc., but they were also aware that too much chatter would be annoying. B4B did not. L4D's intermittent dialogue felt special because of how rare it was, whereas here they talk so much you'll wish they'd just shut up sometimes.

Crowbcat has already done a great job of pointing out how Back 4 Blood has traded graphic fidelity for every other quality Left 4 Dead had in spades, from characterizing the survivors and zombies alike with solid animations to physics-based props which left you with a much more lifelike world. The guns do look nice, but I've long shut off the option to have survivors covered in grime because it simply looks like they've had ketchup or whatever else splattered all over them. The first time I used the minigun placement, it was incredibly underwhelming visually. I wish this game would have adopted Valve's idea of silhouettes, or in other words making the special infected more visually unique so you can identify what kind of threat they are much quicker. I won't say the taller ones blend in well, because they don't, but the smaller jumpy ones are harder to pick out in a horde.

The one thing B4B does bring to the table which L4D doesn't, and may be what you ultimately have to ask yourself whether or not you want to try the game, is the card/character perk system. Not a big fan of cards, however I do like the ability to augment your play however you feel. Just a warning, though, that you should ultimately build your deck for the sake of your own survival if you're playing with randoms. Players still seem to have issues recognizing when teammates are in trouble, and if your team has poor coordination you will personally suffer greatly when using support builds. And maybe turn off that crossplay (which is a welcome feature if you've got friends on other consoles, regardless).

All things considered, I got this for $10 on Greenmangaming and am glad I got it at that price rather than full retail. I knew ahead of time its shortcomings, as well as strengths, and what I wanted is a game which plays like L4D but with RPG elements. And that is what B4B is, ultimately. To call it a spiritual successor to L4D is, however, incorrect, as it so sorely lacks in the spirit which made L4D so great to begin with. If you simply want a L4D-like horde shooter with RPG mechanics and are willing to look past the game's faults, you can't go wrong for $10 or less. Otherwise, just wait until L4D2 is on sale for its ridiculously low price, or simply keep playing that instead. Who knows, maybe there's an RPG mod on the workshop which can supplement having to consider this game at all.

While I am enjoying my time with this game, again, I don't recommend it on the basis it is not the L4D replacement they made it out to be. And it never will.

If I were to very briefly explain why I recommend BTD6, it would be the fact that I like it despite not liking tower defense games as a whole. That's pretty impressive! If you're curious as to why that is, read below.

Surprisingly really good for a game which pushes incentive for micros constantly (which I also don't like). The progression system is fun and while you can buy a lot of things, earning them isn't tough once you get good at the game. Multiplayer is a little screwy at times but it's very fun when it works. I recommend trying to play and learn each map on Hard without using any Powers (special abilities you don't get from monkeys or heroes) or Insta-Monkeys (monkeys you can place with no ingame cost that often have free upgrades) because these won't always be available during gameplay, especially when you get into the harder content.

I also really appreciate the abilities and some of the different types of towers you can put down which involve active gameplay, like the Gunner or Helicopter monkies. Not only does it give you a little more control over what they can do, but sometimes it's nice to be a little more engaged than sitting back and watching your towers do the hard work for you. You can automate these towers, but the abilities will always be there for active defense.

Above all else, it's very fun to try different strategies to win and theorycraft multiple ways to achieve the same outcome. You don't really need to do this if you simply want to watch your monkeys go wild on balloons, either, there's plenty of guides on how to win in most of the content and the easy mode is there for simple fun. BTD6 also lets you create an account with NinjaKiwi and sync your progress across platforms, in case you want to play on the go.

I would recommend BTD6 even if you don't like tower defense games. It's ridiculously fun and anyone of any skill level can enjoy it.

"What if we took Arceus with all its potential for a new direction in the Pokemon game series and put a bunch of other popular game mechanics in it?"

That's how you get Palworld, and aside from my own personal grievances with generic survival crafting game mechanics (there's not enough pals or work speed stat boosts in the world to make me stop hating crafting timers), it's pretty fun. Do note that it's not offering anything groundbreakingly innovative or different, just a mishmash of what a lot of people like, which is just fine by me. No MTX either! People like to say things such as "it's Pokemon with ARK," and that's a fair comparison.

Some bugs, still, but if you wanted something beyond what Arceus offers, Palworld is for you!

7/20/24: For the foreseeable future, I have quit Party Animals, and suspect it will be indefinite. Instead of updates to refine connectivity and reduce latency input from an unfortunately always-online game, we got those which managed to make PAWS less fun. The new power-up mode was kind of fun, if not broken, and certainly not suitable for Quick Match, a mode that already suffers from being somewhat a good time at best and utterly insufferable at worst. Soon after, an update introduces it to Quick Match. Now, we have a kart game mode in early beta. All of this while the skin prices and battle pass progression continue to be utterly egregious, at the same time as xp rewards continue to dwindle so you'll just keep playing this live service game. While I understand why this is being done from a business perspective, I do not have time for a game which seems to prefer having an identity crisis compared to what the game originally was when I demoed it years ago, versus fixing what I originally paid for. No more. None of what I originally criticized has been fixed in the game's current state, therefore no more. There are too many excellent and outright better games to play out there compared to Party Animals, and I suggest you spend your time elsewhere even if you find the characters adorable.

Note #3: will edit again, but to keep it short, I've discovered custom matches only award you a quarter of what quick matches do for winning. Will reflect this proper in review. It is apparent that earning only 1 xp in custom matches on release seems to have been a bug, and I appreciate the developers fixing that.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who wanted the game solely to play custom matches with friends.

Started playing second playtest, was awesome, wasn't even aware of an XP cap on custom games because it was so lenient.

Third playtest, hit the cap in less than an hour of play. Okay, a little fair, can't have people grinding premium cosmetics with bots, but still. Gave feedback requesting that it should be increased, or that we should receive a % less once the daily limit is hit, until it's reset.

Boot up the game today to see what's happened, earned exactly 1 XP for a match by myself, based on "game time". Later I would see the same thing happen when playing with a friend locally, no matter how long our match lasted. What on earth. It's possible to earn XP with one other online player in your lobby, albeit much less than we ever earned during playtests, so it's still far from ideal.

While cosmetics are not everything, to be able to earn fair progression by playing with friends is all I ever originally asked for. I tried quick matches, and it was awful; everyone was sweating for achievements and/or xp, and i suspect it will only get much, much worse now that custom matches are no longer an option (unless you want to play literal thousands of matches to progress *one* level). Not me, not my friends, not anybody should be walled off from progressing in a party game because we decide how we want to have fun with it.

The microtransactions are frankly egregious, and initially I excused it because it wouldn't be that hard to earn them with xp, even with the third playtest's crappy daily cap. Now? Money is the only way for me & others who refuse quick matches, and I'm not very inclined to spend anything further after the game's turning out on release day.

And there's the fact that the game is online-only, which is pretty silly for a party game. While the team is chalking it up to a misinterpretation due to translation, and that could very well be the truth, I'm not sure. There had to be time to make this very clear to the players, especially considering the practice of online-only games has gained infamy for its use.

Please make it so that people can actually earn XP/earn a decent amount of XP from custom games again. What took a few hours of play over the course of 2 days during Playtest #2 to get to Level 26 has already been a crawl in comparison over 3; currently just hit Level 20.

While I understand offline mode won't come in a day, that would be great, too.

When I first played the game in 2020, I saw it as the new Gang Beasts, because said game managed to be ruined from the alpha days leading up to final release, and I thought Party Animals would be an exception. I hoped it would not become the same story, but here we are. Although I am certainly enjoying the core gameplay--it is much more fun than Gang Beasts was on retail release--I cannot recommend anyone buy this game in its current state, until, at the very least, the grievances about micros & XP gain are fixed.

Please do not let the game go out like this.

it is friggin surreal how i haven't even finished a game yet and every moment of it is full of whimsy, discovering what's to come

i don't care much at all for strategy games, in any sense, and this is plain awesome

that should tell you all you need to know when it comes to whether or not this is worth your time

pro tip: the game has settings for an ingame real clock and alarm, and i strongly recommend you make use of them, because otherwise you'll keep saying "just one turn" and it's 5 hours later

I have no idea what happened. For over a month it played just fine, but now? Matches with my friend are super laggy, performance is in the toilet, and the game will often freeze and/or crash mid-session. We can't complete a single game now.

Shame, because it's a good time when it works. Better than GW2? No, but I would argue it's an interesting change of gameplay mechanics, even if the shooter spinoff series would've been better off just sticking to GW2. Anyways, don't buy it until this issue goes away, or you'll find yourself hard-pressed to actually play it. Even if the issue does go away, wait until it's on sale for $6 like it was when I picked it up; the game is no longer supported.

Good time with friends! There's a pretty heavy incentive for microtransactions--your progression is tied to them, too--and the multiplayer's ridden with hackers, but if you don't mind playing against bots there's hours of fun here. Super Brainz is the best character by far, no wonder they stuck him in promo material as much as possible.

Somehow aged better than the sequel did. Other than the fact that healing darts may not always work, and melee isn't as much of a crutch anymore, good times!

same problem pacific faces; better version of the vanilla game, have to pay again to play this less cringy version