Recent reviews by The Gaming Archaeologist

I just finished this and got to admit, I had a hell of a lot of fun with this game and getting the absolute ♥♥♥♥ scared out of me!

I was initially sceptical, after having played Capcoms other attempts at a FPS Resident Evil with Survivor, Survivor 2 and Dead Aim (Though Dead Aim was actually quite enjoyable, despite being kinda janky and weird translations here and there) so hopes were not too high of what kind of game this would be as it's first person, however, screenshots and trailers were certainly a good sign. Especially getting a "Chainsaw Massacre" vibe from the Baker family and more so with that iconic lunch scene where Lucas keeps throwing stuff at you and they keep trying to make you eat that nasty crap.

You play as Ethan, a guy who's...wife? Girlfriend? I forget (It doesn't get brought up too often and I ended up disliking her due to reasons that I won't give due to spoilers) has sent a email to Ethan to tell him to come and get her when previously, he got a video from her telling him to stay away and NOT come here.

Soon, you come to the property that was given to you in the email and you have to search the creepy old and falling apart residence of the Baker family who are all extremely violent and dangerous. There's something wrong with them, clearly, but at this point you have no idea what, yet us players well have a good idea as the game is named "Resident Evil" that it certainly isn't something as mundane as a cold.

Like others in the series, you have a limited inventory (less so than others in the series, but for good reasons) and you can craft items by mixing them together like herbs with chemicals to turn it into medicine that you pour on your hands, rounds for the grenade launcher like RE3 and you can even make all kinds of other items that feels more like you're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chemist, but again, this is Resident Evil where in past games you could mix three herbs to create something that heals you up and even boosts your hp, though here you can create a more powerful healing item, special rounds for you pistol and even pills that are used to find items in the environment, that I wished I had used more of considering I ended the game with like, 5 of them in my box.

There's a bit of backtracking to be done, much like other RE games in regards to puzzles to solve, but also something I found is that there are repair kids in the game and if you actually keep the broken shotgun, you end up with a weapon that ended up being the best damn weapon in the game! At least on Normal mode, which you have to play through if you want to unlock the harder difficulty (unless you bought that DLC that gives you special passive bonuses) and you even get weapons unlocked for all your hard work too, such as the weapon you use right at the end to defeat the final boss!

Not yet tried the DLC stuff yet, but will review those in my own time after I stream them for fun and all I can really say is that I had a real good time with this, but the lighting pissed me off, often not being able to see things at all from how dark it was when following what it suggested to do for the "correct" lighting settings and got lost a bunch of times.

The only other nit-pick I have is the song. I had no idea what the damn lyrics were until I saw the credits! Still a very creepy song though that fits the whole game.

For those interested, here's my stream: https://youtube.com/live/vmxfr3kSGvo

So I've been playing these Skirmishes for quite some time as I was both chasing after an achievement (though turns out, the one I was missing had nothing to do with this DLC, nor any) and to get some of the best weapons possible and now I've got a mortor so powerful that it has only 1 shot in it!

Anyway, this gives you 6 extremely difficult skirmish maps. Recycled from the campaign like the other skirmish maps, however all the enemies are Paragon level (Max after the game), better stats and up tiered weapons that are more powerful than those in the campaign, making even your tankiest characters get shot down fairly quickly.

Just finishing the level gives you a weapon too that's unique to the DLC, but is a federation one whilst the weapons that the aces have are pretty devastating in the right hands.

Well worth DLC that'll give you many hours of replyable fun and attempting to get an A is a challenge, even if you have the OP characters since you have a limited number of command points.

So it seems despite the much better DLC that gives you the chance of recruiting Squad 7 members from the first one, this one is a single mission that isn't even difficult and you get another member of Squad 7 member, Edy. A entertainer who is so memorable and important, that I had to look up her name when writing up this DLC.

After the mission you get her, a unique machine gun and that's it. I don't even see a point in this...does the developer just have a thing for this character or something? It's not like she's OP like the Valkyria characters from the other DLC, nor does she give you a cool tank like with getting the Edelweiss from the Squad 7 DLC. This was a very lack-luster DLC.

This was quite the fun DLC!

The story of it is you can play as either of the Valkyrias in a battle against the other one. You have to play as either side to fully unlock and finish the story and can take some getting used to. Especially as they appear as classes you already known (Selvaria being a Scout and Crymaria being a Grenadier) but after you get to see their amazing power for yourself, blowing tanks apart and groups of soldiers with little-to-no effort, you then get granted them as playable units!

Yes, you can have Selvaria and Crymaria the Valkyria as units (using up two command points instead of one, just like the story you play them in) and even the two girls that served under Belgar. Nikola and Chiara along with two copies of their crossbows which are single-shot but deal more damage than even the highest researched rifle. They'll turn any mission into a cake-walk. Especially Selvaria who not only takes very little damage from enemy attacks, but has a potential where she just fully restores her hitpoints anyway, making her a Goddess on the battlefield! For fun I even tested them out and found that Walz's black tank couldn't even stand up to two of her beam blasts, not even aiming at the radiator! That's how OP these units are! So they're certainly a lot of fun. Especially if you just wanted to finish a mission quickly and were pissed off with it. I don't blame anyone for taking advantage of the girls here.

Speaking of taking advantage, to add to this when you unlock them as playable units, you also gain some very sexy clothing for them all. Almost as a reference back to the beach DLC. For both the Valkyrias and the two that served Belgar as his lapdogs.

So this DLC was certainly quite fun, if short and a little cheaty, but it is still fun and ultimately you are the one to decide if you want to bring them in on a mission or not.

I had decided to play this off-stream since I have an issue with all these damn simulators that have sprung up over the years. Often being poorly programmed and a sad attempt to hit a viral high. Now, thankfully this is not that which is a good thing because ever since playing Thief and Thief 2 I've been after a similar styled game. A first-person game where you sneak around, steal stuff, fulfil missions and use all kinds of unique tools to accomplish these things and this game covers much of that.

Beyond that, the Thief similarities end I'm afraid. Especially in regards to the story.

You play as someone who was recently given bail by a crime family, with the intent to have you continue your thieving ways to pay back the debt to them by doing little missions for them, stealing certain items, planting devices and more. Your contact, Vinnie (fairly generic gangster name right there), tells you the basics and you have helpful tutorials to teach you how to use all the different tools you get, including different kinds of lock picks for different locks, a glass cutter, car signal cloner, hacking devices and more!

The downsides to me however are the following.
1. Glitchy - Obviously, don't be too harsh on this small company for releasing a game with glitches. Hell, people praise Bethesda and their glitches for some stupid reason and have much less of an excuse than the developers behind this game. That said, I've had issues where sometimes items don't move with the draw when opening it or there's clipping issues with walls and fences, which suggests to me that these building parts were from a pack. No hate if they are or not. Unfortunately there are issues with clipping that's all.
2. Weight limit - I'm not a fan of weight limits of encumbrance. There's a reason I always mod the fallout games to get rid of it by setting the max load to being extremely high! For this game I understand as they want you to be want to revisit the locations multiple times as the game is more Sandbox in how it approaches these locations.
That said, I still feel the limit on the cars is too low, but once you get your electronics skill high enough, big heavy items are usually worth nowhere near as much as phones, laptops and pads once you remove the security on them. In Thief you could take as much as possible, however, they were split into levels that you couldn't revisit and it made it much more fun that you could take as much time as you want finding all the secrets and leaving with a huge horde. Certain items have weights that I really think they shouldn't have, like climbing gloves or the lockpicks. Thankfully the money doesn't have any weight or I'd be losing it! Jewellery also seems to have a weight despite, arguably, being lighter than the stacks of bills that are about to explode out of your wallet!
3. Not enough skills - When you get to the point of the game I'm in with a level well into the 30s, I have 9 points to spend, but nothing to spend it on! This is a bit of a pain and makes me wonder if they shouldn't have just created a level-cap or if they are still actively adding more content to the game? They have released a second game so it seems unlikely, however, they did release a DLC recently and have announced another one on the way!

Beyond this, I've been struggling to NOT play it as you get that adrenalin rush and scratch that itch I had from playing the Thief games where you were sneaking around and trying to explore things before escaping...though often I knocked out all the potential witnesses and hid them away so I could go around without worrying about a guard around the corner!

With this game, though, you can mark items of interest and people to get a good idea where they're going about the house, what their daily routine is and as there's a day and night cycle, when they're going to be in bed too so you can effectively plan around this and sleep in your car if needed to pass the time.

I'm looking to spending many more hours in this game and having a whole lot of fun in this and probably buying the second when I get around to it.

Edit: Just remembered I forgot to mention that in the game you are able to steal cars and take them apart piece-by-piece. It's oddly educational in a way there and also certain people on the in-game website "BlackBay" request item parts of these cars and you can get far more money from it than simply selling the vehicle to the junkyard if you've spent time tearing parts out of it to sell either to the online buyers who might want them or just individually afterwards. Thankfully you don't need to drag your whole inventory to the junkyard as you can access your storage in your home base.

I also neglected to mention that when you have enough levels, you can take on contracts to steal items for people who request it and certain areas, like the new DLC and something that was added to the base game, the farmers, require you to use new items like the round lockpick or data decryption devices and ect.

So, I got this a while back and was so glad to finally stream and play it online, though I will say that you'll have to be ready to be in for the long haul as it's a VERY long game. Not including all the side stuff like extra stories, squad stories, skirmishes and other things that I mostly relegated to offline so that I don't end up streaming this same game for several months coming...

So the game itself. I've played the first one that came out on steam, but none of the others, though I can say confidently that if you liked that game, you'll like this one too!

It takes place during the same war between the Federation and the Empire but you play as a group of elite soldiers known as Rangers. Often called in for the front-line and special missions. Just like Squad 7, Squad E here has it's own group of unique main and side-characters who have been drafted into this group as they're all kinds of misfits who end up growing a strong bond as they fight together (especially in the squad stories) as they execute their plan to make a bee-line straight for the capital to end the war as quickly as possible.

The gameplay is just like the previous version, being turn-based but where both sides have reaction fire if an enemy comes within weapon range (for most classes) meaning you'll have to plan out where you go more effectively and it makes things like Bunkers and mounted guns far more deadly and something you'll want to plan your route around to not have your soldiers end up dead.

All the soldiers have "Potentials" which can be triggered due to all kinds of rules and sometimes not every time. For example, Neige has "Stage Fright" so when too many enemies are looking at her she gets scared and loses all her AP (action points. Represented by a bar for movement, including climbing, crawling and ect.) but others have abilities that increase your damage output, refill your ammo, lose your ammo and so much more. This will make you consider who to bring out with you more often as some have very problematic potentials that can lead to you losing a match, like the aforementioned losing ammo, losing AP or in one case, losing your entire turn! Beyond the personal ones they come with, you can earn more from leveling up the class (which affects everyone associated with that class) and by taking part in Squad Stories too.

The best bit of character growth you'll see will not simply be from the main storyline (where the main character's "Potentials" will change. Often from a really bad negative to an amazing positive) but from the Squad Stories (which has the same effect with "Potentials" but for your side-characters) and diving into the backstory and reasoning of all the characters involved. How Rosetta was a nun who served a priest that was a Darcsan, killed in a hate crime attack or why Ferrier wears a helmet everywhere, Why Fleuret hates guns and loves swords and so on. Some of the more unhinged characters can be surprisingly deep and sadly not ALL the negatives are removed, but generally those with the worst ones are replaced with a positive that has a golden background like Vancey who has all her stats boosted.

The story of this game, in the later part of the game, opens up a dialog for discussion of how those in the army are not simply good or evil but everyone is an individual. There are a few cases this gets raised up like an Imperial soldier not killing a young woman when he had a clear shot because she reminded him of his sister or how people are treated when you take over a city due to the fear they have of you causing trouble (since you're invaders) or the fear of if the Empire returned how they'd treat the people who were nice to those soldiers. You get a real deep look into these characters, why they joined the army and after the story concludes, they become a better person. Much like the "hardening" in Dragon Age Origins when you pursue a character's backstory and do the correct choice to help them move forward as a better person.

I streamed the game on YouTube which is available [here](https://youtube.com/live/eyAUVL65QdY), but I will still be playing offline to continue with the extra post-game content which includes more missions, more skirmishes, more squad members and related stories and upgrades too! Essentially, the game is pretty endless considering how much content there is so if you're looking for value in regards of time used, this certainly covers it as the main story missions are infinitely replayable if you want to get a better score on the mission or grind up things like command points for characters to promote them, issuing orders or ship orders to fill out the quota for the achievement and related decoration (Medal) you get for it! The best upgrades are hidden behind the post-game content so some of the trickier later missions will probably be easier to do later with better equipment and weapons.

Just reminded me about equipment! Anyway, this is pretty long, but I'll try to be brief.
All the classes are locked to certain weapons (Rifles for Scouts, Engineers, Machine Guns for Storm Troopers, Lances ((Anti-Armour weapons that, in the first and hands of the Empire, are shaped like Lances)) for the Lancers, Sniper Rifles for the Snipers and Mortars for the Grenadiers. The newest class here.) and each weapon has it's own tech-tree that splinters off, but you can buy ALL items down each route. If you go down one branch, you aren't locked off from all of the others, however, each research costs you currency and unless you grind, you may want to be careful where you spend that money.

Most weapons are fairly straight-forward with their upgrades. You have the Standard line (average stats everywhere) then you have divergent ones that either enhance accuracy at the loss of damage or clip size. Those that diverge at mortar lances for the Lancers which are anti-personnel instead of armour and the Mortars which have, instead, a focus on Anti-Armour or Anti-Personnel. This works really well as you may want certain soldiers, based on their potentials, to have a different weapon. I give one Grenadiers an Anti-Personnel weapon because one of his random Potentials gives a debuff to attacks on tanks so I use him to clear out enemies that try to seek cover or are hiding behind walls. There's even more in regards to weapons used by the Empire that can be devastating or lame. Low-accuracy, but high damage kind of trade offs that, again, work if you're intending to have that character up close to the enemy. In "Bad Breath" distance as my friend calls it. But these weapons can sometimes have status effects too, like removing the enemy's ammo or lowering their defence.

All tanks in the game (apart from the one in Squad 7 DLC) have unique parts you can equip in a Tetris-style layout where better upgrades take on a much larger space and you have to play around with what ones you feel suit you or perhaps you want to chance aspects of your tank for a battle you are struggling with regardless of if it's thicker armour, better accuracy, more ammo or something else.

(Since I can't review "A Captainless Squad" yet due to bugs stopping me to get the final chapters, I'll go with this)

I unlocked this at the end of a stream and, as per what I've been doing recently, doing offline recordings for the extra stuff (otherwise, this game would be MUCH longer to stream if you added all the extra missions, squad missions, replaying levels for A ranks, purchasing all upgrades and ect...) to take a load off my streaming time.

Despite this unlocking only after Chapter 10 (due to a character you get at that point), the story is set after the events of Chapter 4 where Squad E are given the task to find and eliminate a supply route along with finding the origin of where they're going, but things are immediately strange as the soldiers aren't interested in putting their lives on the line for whatever they're transporting to whereever.

This isn't spoilers, as I'm sure you can guess what's happening from the images and name of the DLC alone, but they find that this supply route that was barely guarded was to a holiday resort for the rich and the Ace soldiers in the battles appear to be holding onto swimwear...for whatever reason...which will lead to members of Squad E having their alternative costumes, in case you want to see Minerva in a string bikini for "immersion" reasons ;)

Ultimately what you get is some funny scenes with the characters either drooling over or appreciating each other in swim suits, hijinks and Raz getting punched for being a perv!

You have two battles. One very easy (the base is literally a short tank drive from your starting position) unless you want to take out the Aces to unlock more of this story and the outfits!

The second is a harder one where three of the members (Claude, Raz and Riley) are in their swimwear because "They don't have time to change" which makes sense when an enemy ambushes you like this, but is no less ridiculous.

The story is ultimately a bit of fun and like your typical obligatory beach episode, like one of the last episodes of Outlaw Star where they're on that sauna planet or many Anime shows where the characters end up enjoying a hot spring, for whatever reason.

I'm personally not too interested in using the outfits, but I still enjoyed my time with it both for the funny moments and also how the map has loads of little hiding places to explore and it's always good to get a nice new unique map with this.

Thankfully this is tied into the entire complete edition bundle so I was having a bit of a shock when I was looking for the price to see it say "£39.99" but in reality, that's the entire pack which comes with ALL the extra stuff that includes "A united front with Squad 7", "A Captainless Squad", "Advance Ops", "The Two Valkyria" and "Expert Level Skirmishes" the latter being a requirement for the last two squad stories. It was a fun DLC for what it was and you do gain a decal and few weapons for completing it.

Just recently finished this, so felt I should review it whilst I have the chance!

So anyway, here we play as Drew Blank (Christopher Lloyd) who has been struck with a deadline by his boss (played by Ben Stein) who wants Drew to create even more fluffy adorable bunnies like his super popular cartoon character, Fluffy-Fluffy Bun Bun. However, he is drawing blank (ironically) and he looks at his old design for a character called Flux Wildly who was his intended character for a popular character.

As he reminisces on this, he is sucked into a cartoon world where he nearly gets hits by bolts, the landscape is transformed and he runs into his pal Flux! They are soon tasked with a mission to stop Count Nefarious (voiced by Tim Curry) from using his machine, the Malevolator to turn everything malevolent and create a machine of our own to do the opposite, the Cutifier! However, it is missing parts and we need to obtain parts that act as the opposite/compliment the ones used in the Malevolator.

Being your standard early Point-and-click adventure it requires some help to run (the one on steam came with Scummvm to run it) and being early green screen, along with the stretching, can make it look a little ugly on your screen, but for the smaller window I was capturing for my stream it looked pretty pristine!

Anyway, like typical for these kinds of games you have a bottomless bag (which is actually bottomless, so explains how you can carry so much crap at once!) to store all kinds of useful items that you'll discover on your journey to be used to either construct the Cutifier or help you progress in your adventure, however, as this game runs on cartoon logic there can be moments where you may not know what to do next, but that's why I use walkthroughs for when I get really stuck and the only stage I really struggled was near the end.

There's a lot to enjoy in this, along with having Christopher Lloyd interacted with cartoons (in a different way than "Who Frames Roger Rabbit?") and not to mention that MANY recognisable voices in the game coupled with the adult humour, which was rare for some games with cartoon imagery to get away with. For example. "Inherit the Earth" had to be toned down as the publisher wanted them to make it available for kids, but here we get some great bits of humour and it hits the nostalgia quite a bit considering the many recognisable voices in the background from people such as Dom Deluise (Fingers the Octopus), Dan Castellaneta (Flux), Jim Cummings, David Ogden Stiers, Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Rob Paulson, April Winchell and Frank Welker. Many you'll recognise from shows/movies I'm sure you've watched whilst growing up like Pete from "Goof Troop" and other Disney stuff, numerous characters from classics like "The Secret of N.I.M.H.", "An American Tale" and so much more! Jim Cummings is a name I'm getting more familiar with after playing the Army Men games on the PS1!

I was looking forward to coming back to this on stream and I enjoyed every moment of this game, even when getting stuck and frustrated! It's well worth to have a good laugh. Especially if you're a fan of cartoons and animation like I am!

I never grew out of cartoons really and this is certainly a game for you if you feel the same!

[Raw Stream](https://youtube.com/live/qiOmJwXYp9w)

Edited Stream - Coming soon!

I found that this DLC was quite fun as you get to play with some of your favourites from the first game. At first you are working together for an exercise and both the hotheads, Rosie and Raz are at each other's throats and Isara has wowed the engineer, Miles (which is sad, considering spoilers for the first game) and you even get them to be added to the team so instead of Dan's APC, you can go for something much heavier for combat in the form of the Edelweiss. The tank only upgrades with your main tank, but you don't get to attach, nor benefit, from any parts you may have attached to your own tank so depending on the mission and the set up, it can either be better than or worse than Dan's APC.

You also have a mission where you play as Riley and Isara bonding over grenadier training, but soon get attacked. All of these characters get added to your main squad which kind of breaks cannon in regards to the story, but it's still enjoyable and fun to work towards improving your score on missions using a second tank or just trying out new kinds of deployment.

When my friends Serra Britt: https://www.twitch.tv/serrabritt) (Serra Britt: https://www.youtube.com/@serrabritt on YouTube) and iNerull: https://www.twitch.tv/inerull (Nerull: https://www.youtube.com/@inerullvt2587 on YouTube) came up with another co-op game for us to play I wasn't certain what to think about when looking at Grim Dawn due to my past experience with similar games being a little mixed, however, I quickly fell in love with this game: it's mechanics for sorting out loot (so you don't constantly pick up trash to weigh you down), the storyline (an apocalypse in a essentially medieval period) and the fun customisability with the class system allowing you to play YOUR way and giving me the feel for whenever I came up with a concept when making Pathfinder characters and found classes that fit the concepts!

So anyway, back to the actual game!

The story is about a group of entities, known as the Aetherials, have begun invading this world and possessing people (both living and corpses) and being pretty indiscriminate in who they kill. One such person is captured, thanks to a witch, to see if they can gather any information on these creatures as they are the last survivors in the area, using a prison for shelter as the major town nearby was overrun and as they threatened and demanded answers from the being as to why it's kind are attacking their world it chuckles, mysteriously replying
"Your world? It was ours first until your corrupt gods kicked us out. Your kind reached out to us first and now we are taking what is ours." (or something to that extent) and before just as they were being hung, the spirit escapes and both the captain and witch protest to save the life of the human that the spirit had fled. The captain says that with so few people on their side, if this person wakes up, they can atleast use them to fight for them and if not, they can be buried with the others. You play as this person who, after the trauma of possession, has lost their memories and intially used as fodder to help fight off the invading monsters. Due to this, it makes sense that all groups you meet will be distrusting of you and you start out as a blank slate in regards to abilities, classes and ect. That said, you are not just fighting the undead, but many beastmen, beasts, cults, scientific abominations, eldritch beings, bandits and all kinds of groups who are gaining a larger foothold due to all the chaos caused by this apocalyptic invasion.

In regards to gameplay, it plays like many similar ARPGs, like Diablo or Path of Exile where enemies drop all kinds of loot for different classes (or as they're called, masteries), quite a few higher level ones supporting abilities from separate classes so no matter your choice, you're likely to find items that can support your build. No matter what the build is.

(The rest of this review is too big to fit on here, so I have the full one on Backloggd: https://www.backloggd.com/u/TGA_backloggd/review/1671407/)

Gameplay/Stream: https://youtu.be/ldqMXl5j4rs

iNerull's Grim Dawn Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB4Vvt-kpNgmutmeW1FruAgXE1Glikrbg&si=1ua4an2RWnuNgMS2