Neue Rezensionen von Revalopod

Dark Souls 3 is the third entry in the brutally challenging dark fantasy series created by From Software. It is a third person action roleplaying game with a focus on intense fast paced combat. The game offers many hours of content and fun amazing boss battles which really are the highlight of this game, finally beating a boss after the 20th or so time gives you a level of satisfaction unrivalled by most games out there. On top of that is some truly amazing level design and a gorgeous soundtrack. The graphics are good for its age and some locations in the game look stunning thanks to great art direction. It will also offer you a generous amount of replayability and you will discover new things even after several times beating it.

• Phenomenal boss battles unrivaled by other games
  
• Third person melee combat
  
• Soundtrack
  
• Level design that requires you to think
  
• Zero handholding
  
• Very fun with a group of friends
  
• Cool magic
  
• Brutally challenging difficulty

• Multiplayer is laggy sometimes
  
• Unsatisfactory PC port
  
• Lack of proper mouse and keyboard controls
  
• Online co-op is needlessly confusing
  
• Questionable placement of two certain bonfires

This has to be one of the hardest and most challenging games I’ve ever played. The gameplay consists of walking around decrepit environments riddled with tough enemies, secret pathways and hidden items. The level design is truly amazing, feels quite interconnected with many shortcuts and you actually have to use your brain, except for one instance where there are two bonfires right next to each other for no reason. That combat in this game is amazing with a huge amount of enemy and weapon variety and it is very fast paced with a large variety of playstyles. Are you someone who plays as a tank with a massive sword or a wizard who shoots spells? You can play as both leading to lots of replayability and messing around with weapons to find the one you like. The best part about this game is the boss battles which are so good you will find all non-Soulsbornekiro game’s boss fights lacking in comparison to this game. There is also online co-op and PvP to play with friends however figuring out how the co-op works is very confusing until you get used to it. I’ve rarely bothered with PvP but it’s usually laggy and frustrating.

The graphics are good for their age of the game and some areas look outstanding. It is also a very good game to see in motion thanks to the fluid enemy animations in combat. However, every single one of the default characters in the character creator screen look like they’re constipated and have brain damage, NPC’s mouths don’t even move when they speak except for one and the game always looks like it has a light grey tinge to everything.

The sound design is good but reused sounds from previous Dark Souls games. The voice acting is consistently good and there’s not a single bad performance. The soundtrack is incredible and sounds great, you will be listening to the soundtrack on Youtube long after you’re finished with the game and gotten bored.

Unfortunately the PC port of this game is rather meh, no 21:9 support and It’s locked at 60fps. As someone who uses an ultrawide 100hz monitor, I am rather disappointed and it is my main flaw with this game. However the gameplay is good enough for this to only seem as a minor issue in the overall experience. Also, when you use a keyboard and mouse there are only Xbox controller inputs for the UI making it almost impossible to play for people who don’t own a controller.

I’m not a fan of RPGs, but this is an exception; it’s made me want to play and finish the other two Dark Souls games, Bloodborne and Sekiro as it’s just that good. Everyone should give this game a try even if they think they’re not going to enjoy it.

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Blazing Beaks is a hardcore top-down rogue-lite shooter with local co-op. This game is similar to Enter the Gungeon, but more straightforward and best played in short bursts. This game gets the basics right: nice pixel art and music, tight and responsive gameplay and it’s own unique greed mechanic. Unfortunately the game feels too basic and simple, lacking depth and replayability which are key components to a good roguelite, and thus isn’t worth the asking price.

• Unique risk/reward gimmick
  
• Great music
  
• Good pixel art
  
• Very challenging and (mostly) fair
  
• Local co-op

• Unbalanced
  
• Severely lacking replayability
  
• Little to no meta-progression
  
• Few types of enemies/bosses
  
• No rare or powerful guns

A typical run in Blazing Beaks is quite short. You beat the first 2 floors, get a choice between 2 different 3rd floors (the red forest or dry lakes), and then beat the last 2 floors. This mid-game choice feels rather pointless as the red forest is significantly harder than dry lakes, yet provides no addition reward to balance it, and the following 2 floors are the same regardless of your choice. After beating the last boss you can accept victory and see the credits roll, or loop and start over in essentially a kind of “newgame+” where the enemy count and difficulty is exponentially higher, but you keep all your obtained items. Level progression works a bit differently in this game than most; here there is no backtracking or exploring, the only way to go is forwards to the next room. I found this works really well for the quick pace this game strives for, but sometimes it can be a detriment if there’s a secret room and a shop available as you can only pick one, because once you exit the shop/secret room it takes you into a new level.

Each floor only has 4-6 unique types of enemies, so you’ll be seeing the same few enemies in pretty much every single room. The enemy design is good and at least the low quantity of types means that they’re all unique, though more variation would be preferred. Guns could also use more variation. There’s a decent variety of weapons, but the problem is that there are very few distinctive or unique feeling guns. There is no super rare powerful gun, or weak meme gun. Instead, all the weapons feel constricted and balanced in terms of power, which makes the combat feel ordinary when there’s never any craziness to spice it up. When you loop, there doesn’t seem to be any new powerful items to compensate for the vast increase in difficulty, thereby making the choice to loop feel a bit dull after you’ve gotten the achievement for it.

A unique mechanic that Blazing Beaks features is “artifacts” which are lootable items that basically serve as downgrades to your character. When you find a shop, you will be able to trade in your accumulated artifacts for random positive items. Many artifacts are heavy detriments to your character so you really need to balance the risk/reward and not hinder yourself too much by stacking on too many negative effects, but at the same time if you don’t take enough artifacts you might end up struggling without the potential bonus items you can get from the shop. This mechanic is interesting but could be balanced better. Some artifacts are just too detrimental to risk taking and the potential payoff isn't enough to compensate.

Blazing Beaks has a great pixel art style which I really like. It’s great quality and is a bit like Nuclear Throne mixed with Enter the Gungeon. The colours are super vibrant and saturated, while the dark caves have some nice dynamic lighting. It doesn't support ultra-wide which is a bit disappointed but to be expected.

I loved the music of Blazing Beaks; it’s very catchy and upbeat rather than ambient. The boss music in particular is really good and exciting. Not many games impress me with their boss/combat music, but Blazing Beaks definitely does. The sound effects are also very good, with a focus on lightheartedness and silliness.

This game certainly performs very well, with unlimited FPS support I was getting over 800FPS average. No ultrawide support which is disappointing, but overall the game is very polished containing little to no bugs.

Blazing Beaks is a charming and fun game, but is lacking the depth and replayability expected from a rogue-lite.

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Believe it or not, my biggest criticism of Prey is the title. Bethesda’s marketing and them forcing the Prey title is what I believe led this game to be unfairly underrated. A better name for this game is instead “Neuroshock,” as it shares a great deal of similarities with the other “shock” games (Bioshock, System Shock) and could be considered a spiritual successor. Prey is an immersive sim, and it is the most expertly crafted game I have played of its genre. This is a game that respects you as a player, as a person who can make their own choices, and allows you a degree of freedom seldom seen in other linear video games. Prey is a great game that I can definitely recommend even at full price.

• Good variety of nifty gadgets and powerful powers
  
• Great level design
  
• Interesting story with a few twists
  
• Many, many possible ways to achieve your goal

• Game lacks an original title
  
• Slow pace may not be for everyone
  
• Gunplay is meh
  
• Average graphics especially for a Cryengine game

Prey is an inventive and exciting experience, but is slower paced than you might expect. This is a game that rewards thorough exploration, and thinking before tackling obstacles. There’s always multiple solutions to every problem, and it’s up to you to choose how you want to deal with things. Combat is great thanks to this freedom. You can have a fridge-throwing build, a John Wick slo-mo gun build, a necromancy build, a fire/electricity wizard build or you could just turn yourself into a banana. This game lets you play in so many unique and interesting ways that it takes a few playthroughs to be able to experiment with every power. The fact that the story and mission objectives allow choices which result in different outcomes makes Prey have good replay value. I’ve personally beat the game 5 times, and each time was a unique experience.

Traversing around space station Talos 1 is great fun thanks to the wonderful level design. The majority of my time was spent exploring every nook and cranny, as this was rewarding and fun. There are many difficult to reach areas which you can get to in different ways. Most commonly I would use the Gloo gun because it’s such a cool and useful weapon. Your Gloo gun can shoot globs of glue that hardens on contact with a surface, allowing you to shoot your own makeshift stairs into existence, or to temporarily immobilize an enemy. Enemies are quite frequent, and combat encounters can be really nasty if you’re not prepared. Simply whacking enemies with your trusty wrench won’t work all the time as some enemies burn or zap you when you get too close. Stealth is a viable option, and this is supported by Arkane’s stellar level design. If you’ve Played Dishonored 1 or 2 then you know what to expect here. Since I explore so much and thus accumulate so much loot and ammo, I always made an effort to engage in any potential combat encounter. Killing enemies means more loot, so it’s hard to resist. The combat is not particularly great though, with subpar gunplay and some annoying bullet-sponge enemies. This is mostly alleviated by neuromods, which are essentially skill points you can use to upgrade yourself in standard ways such as more health, or unlock superpowers. Like the Dishonored games, the superpowers are both really cool and extremely useful.

Different enemies have different weaknesses which you can learn by scanning them with your psychoscope (you invented it, by the way). I like the fact that most weaknesses can be exploited using either a superpower or a gadget. For example, if an enemy is weak to nullify then you can either use the nullwave gadget or the psychoshock power, and if an enemy is weak to electric then you can use either an EMP gadget or the electrostatic burst power. These multiple options are great and especially so if you want to try a zero neuromod playthrough. This game is just filled with options; if there’s a room with a switch you need to press, you can: Hack open the door to get to the switch, search around for a keycode for the door, use brute strength to tear the door open, remotely activate the switch by shooting a toy dart gun through the window, remotely activate the switch with telekinesis, use telekinesis to hack into a computer to open the door, or morph into a banana to fit through the window. Or maybe there’s a hole in the ceiling to drop down into the room with the switch, so then you could either use upgraded mobility to jump up, use the gloo gun to make a way up, or pile lots of objects to make a stairway up. This abundance of choice is stunning and is what makes Prey such an awesome game.

I found the lore explanation of neuromods to be extremely interesting and even grounded in reality, well mostly. It’s not exactly realistic that editing the neural pathways in the brain can allow you to effortlessly toss refrigerators across a room, but the general idea still makes sense. The prologue is great, and is probably the best prologue I’ve experienced in a game, and one of the coolest moments in gaming period. Unfortunately the only other time the story is this epic is at the very end of the game, so I think more could’ve been done with the “looking glass” concept for more wow moments.

The visuals can be impressive at times, most notably in the arboretum level, but oftentimes they are quite noticeably lacking. The chopper flyover scene is particularly egregious in terms of graphics, looking like a game that was made 10 years before it was released. Most of the time the graphics aren’t bad, and at least the lighting is good. The visual style is kind of similar to Dishonored, a kind of painterly look with simple and low resolution textures, but in Prey I can’t tell if this is due to low quality or deliberate style.

Prey has a great original soundtrack by famed video-game musician Mick Gordon. The Mindgame song, the synthwave music in the helicopter, and the song at the Yellow Tulip are particularly good and I even listen to those 3 songs on Youtube sometimes. I did find the combat music to be a little annoying after a while, and the Typhon sound design wasn’t unique or alien enough.

While not too buggy, this is a game you’ll be thankful for the inclusion of quick saving/loading hotkeys. I had a poltergeist lift me up into the ceiling once, and I had to reload to my last save and luckily losing only a few seconds of progress. The performance is a bit low, averaging around 60-70FPS while sometimes dropping below 60 during intense moments, and this was on medium settings. (Specs: GTX1070, i5-6500, 16GB RAM, 3440x1440p)

Prey is an absolute must-have for fans of immersive sims and/or the Shock games. The abundance of choice and freedom in the gameplay makes Prey highly enjoyable even for multiple playthroughs. I can thus recommend this game even at full price.

Darq is a highly unique and creative puzzle horror game about a boy who is trying to escape from his nightmare. Though the gameplay is 2D, certain puzzles include the 3rd dimension in mind-bending ways. The boy Lloyd is lucid dreaming and therefore can manipulate the dreamworld in certain ways such as walking along walls. Despite that, he is still very vulnerable and will have to hide or outmanoeuvre the monsters he encounters. The atmosphere of Darq is incredible and perfectly encapsulates the feeling of a dream or nightmare. The biggest complaint I have is that the game is too short; $20 for a 2 hour game will definitely be a dealbreaker for many people. And the developer declining Epic exclusivity will definitely be a dealmaker for some.

• Great visuals
  
• Simple but fun puzzles
  
• Good sound design
  
• Excellent horror/nightmare atmosphere
  
• Perfect pacing

• Very short, only 2 hours (3 if you want all achievements)
  
• Story could have been done better

Darq is a horror game and it’s not just because of the unsettling atmosphere or general creepiness; there is the occasional jumpscare and tense gameplay moment. It was quite a bit scarier than I was anticipating, especially for a puzzle game, which I was glad for. It won’t win any awards for scariest horror game though, so don’t go expecting an Outlast or Amnesia. What this game truly excels in is the ingenious puzzles and level design. Darq has 7 chapters, each one around 15 minutes long and set in a different locale. So although Darq is quite short, the pacing is impeccable and any padding or repetition is absent. It’s a short, quality little indie game.

One of the things I liked regarding the puzzles is the variety. While most puzzle games would introduce a puzzle and then repeat it later as a harder version, Darq just keeps introducing new puzzles. Most puzzles are the standard affair, such as the classic sliding blocks puzzle, while others are a bit more inventive and have you flipping the orientation of the world or closing a live circuit using your bare hands to blow up a TNT. There was even a maze puzzle that involved rotating entire rooms. The surrealistic nature of the game lends itself very well to the design of the puzzles, and even though the puzzles aren’t much of a challenge, they are fun just because they’re so well made.

The story is simple and does not really develop throughout the game. The boy Lloyd is stuck in a lucid dream, and is trying to wake up. There are secrets to find which have dream journals, however this is purely for achievement purposes and they’re not something you can actually read which is a missed opportunity. I also found the ending to be anticlimactic, mainly because it’s very vague and the lack of any info makes it hard to discern what actually happened. I would have been fine with this if there was another secret ending. Unfortunately the ending is still the same even if you find all dream journals, despite being rewarded with the achievement “Enlightened.” I was anything but enlightened.

The visuals look even better in motion than in static images. The general aesthetic is really well done, with great lighting effects. People have said the visual style is very Tim Burton-esque, which is true to a degree but it’s actually really unique. Some letters and numbers in the environment are continuously morphing which not only is an original concept (as far as I’m aware), but adds to the dream aesthetic greatly. I’ve never been as impressed by something completely black and white before. There’s no colour, but it’s still beautiful in its own dark and twisted way.

The sound design in Darq is one of its strong points, and pairs well with the visuals to really sell the dream setting. The general sound quality is very high and can be quite spooky when it needs to be. The music didn’t stand out much though, and I never particularly noticed or appreciated it.

No ultrawide support which is a bit disappointing, and no continuing a level if you exit it part way. I only encountered a single bug: an enemy’s AI was messed up and I had no choice but to let it kill me so it could be reset. Luckily there are generous checkpoints so I lost no progress.

Darq is a short but fantastic horror puzzle game, featuring some impressive puzzle design, although is never particularly challenging.

A key was provided for review purposes courtesy of the developer. This does not affect my opinion.

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Levelhead is a creation-focused 2d platformer which features an awesome and intuitive level editor. The campaign is essentially a glorified tutorial which familiarises you with every obstacle before granting it for use in the level editor. The campaign on its own is fairly short, taking me only 9 hours to 100% complete, so luckily the level editor is as good as it is. Also elevating the game is great music which is upbeat and catchy. Unfortunately I’m unable to test the online components (such as the community made levels) due to a bug which crashes and corrupts the entire game when ever I try to login, thus severely diminishing my enjoyment.

• Colourful and vibrant graphics in hand-drawn style
  
• Catchy music
  
• Solid platforming with proper controller support
  
• An incredibly intuitive level editor

• Some mechanics are unreasonably difficult
  
• Short campaign
  
• Only 3 biomes; the standard trio of forest, desert and arctic.
  
• An unfortunate encounter with a game-breaking bug

This is a fairly standard level based platformer, complete with powerups and collectibles. What’s unique here is that you always need to deliver the ‘package’ to the end to be able to win. Combat exists too, and every enemy can be killed by jumping on their head. Certain levels and/or reward caches are locked off until you complete a prior level in its entirety (by finding every secret and collectible), meaning you’re forced to win almost every level if you want to unlock all editor components. Some levels are really difficult, so you do need to be decent at platformers to fully enjoy the game. If you only just want to mess around with a level editor, then this isn’t the game for you.

The platforming itself is fluid and the controls are tight and responsive. There are numerous movement modifying objects such as springs, conveyor belts, portals and slippery slime which offer good variety in the platforming. Some aren’t so good, for example the grapple swing is particularly annoying and feels clunky to use at times. You need to be moving to position yourself correctly and then use the same movement controls to aim in the correct direction to swing, all within a split second. It doesn’t feel intuitive and I never got used to the mechanics. Even worse is the manoeuvre where you have to pick up a block mid-jump and then move across and place it back underneath yourself to land on, which requires the most ridiculous finger ninja skills and is unreasonable to be expected of a typical human being. Other than those couple of annoying mechanics, the platforming is really enjoyable. I especially appreciate the generous use of checkpoints and the super fast respawn time which helps mitigate frustration. There's also full controller support which is very welcome in any platformer.

The campaign features a great variety of different types of levels, such as pure combat challenges, puzzles and parkour. These are then greatly expanded upon with the introduction of powerups. The ninja powerup enhances mobility and allows new platforming abilities, and the teleport ability allows you to phase through thin walls. There’s also bosses, which are basically oversized enemies. An innovative mechanic of the editor is the tiling system that combines groups of small obstacles into a larger one. To make a boss, you simply place a 4x4 group of an enemy. Basic tiles such as leaves use this tiling mechanic in really cool ways; rows or columns of leaves become branches, and thus trees become super easy and fun to make. You can also put “fake” leaves, which tile with normal leaves but allow you to pass through them, perfect for secret areas or creating the illusion of being inside a tree. With the click of a button you can swap the biome and the tiles will change to match (leaves/branches become rocks/pillars). Another great feature of the editor is the option to turn on a jump height meter, allowing you to build properly build parkour sections without needing to test them every 2 seconds.

You control a GR-18 bot and help train it to deliver packages to people. So basically, all the levels you play in this game are obstacle courses designed to help the little robot fellow learn how to deal with any potential obstacles when/if it actually starts delivering for real. The beginning cutscene is really silly and humorous but that’s the only cutscene as far as I’ve seen.

The graphics are in a beautiful hand-drawn style which I really like. Every obstacle, item and block has obvious care and attention put into it, especially GR-18 itself which is really cute. Generally, my favourite graphical feature of a platformer is the background, and Levelhead does not disappoint here. They’re detailed and quite unique despite the cliched settings. I do wish there was more environments like volcanic, space, cityscape, or something more unique and specific such as a theme park or crystal cavern. Overall, the visual style is great and so is the quality, but there could be more variety.

There is a good amount of music tracks in Levelhead and they’re all catchy and fit their environment well. You can set music in the level editor and even make it so different music plays at certain parts of the level which is great for a designated boss fight.

As a game made with Gamemaker, it’s very well polished all around, with little to no performance issues. Unfortunately the one issue I had was a game-breaking one; attempting to log-in online caused the game to crash and corrupt itself, being unable to launch again and not even reinstalling the game would make it work again. Due to this, I was unable to experience any community made levels which are one of the main focuses of the game.

Overall I did enjoy my time with this game and will likely revisit it when the bug is fixed. I can only recommend this game based the assumption that you don’t experience this bug. If you do buy the game, then you should try to login straight away (or at least before 2 hours) while the opportunity for a refund still exists. Otherwise, Levelhead is a good game that fans of platformers, especially creation based ones, should definitely check it out.

A key was provided for review purposes courtesy of the developer. This does not affect my opinion.

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Deep Rock Galactic is a game where players are thrown into a procedurally generated cavern to mine for riches. All of the starting caverns are different, and require different gear to survive. It is frantic, frantic and chaotic. At first, I wasn't sure if it was my cup of tea. It looks like a Minecraft clone, and the mechanic sounds like a clone of Spelunky. The game presents a somewhat familiar mechanic where a handful of different starting caverns need to be mined for materials, but this is where things get interesting. Once you've amassed enough 'rocks' in your inventory, you can return to ‘Molly’ to dump the loot. Players can also pick up dynamite and use it to blast away caves and cause various environmental damage to underground caverns.

The characters in Deep Rock Galactic feel believable and that is not something you can say about a lot of titles. The writers give each of the characters very distinct personalities which are displayed clearly in-game. Some of the dialogue is laughable but this isn’t the point of the game and if that’s a big factor for you, perhaps Deep Rock Galactic will not be for you. You can bring the occasional sarcasm and chit-chat with friends while you’re at it.

The music of Deep Rock Galactic is so in-depth and it’s great to have a full soundtrack to enjoy while you’re exploring new worlds and working your way up the game’s difficulties. I think the music is part of the reason I played this game for such a long time, because of how good the music is. The music only feels better in the higher difficulties.

The enemies in Deep Rock Galactic are varied and will keep you on your toes. They are also fun to shoot and a lot of fun to discover. The only issue I have with the enemies is the lack of enemy variation between biomes. Deep Rock Galactic has very good enemy diversity when you are traveling from mission to mission, but the enemies get repetitive on the same biomes, and this is not very fun.

Your arsenal in Deep Rock Galactic is capable of devastating damage and changing the dynamic of the game in an instant. Each of the weapons has its own unique capabilities and upgrades that are unique to each gun. The sound design is superb and really takes a step towards modern shooters.

In the zombie genre some of the weapons, especially shotguns, are very unrealistic and powerful. In contrast, some of the guns you use in Deep Rock Galactic are quite realistic but at the same time it still feels like an action game. This is another plus for the game and it creates a great feeling of depth for the mechanics and mechanics.

Pros:

• Super balanced class selection and level progression system; each class has different strengths and weaknesses which means balance isn't an issue
  
  
• The destruction component adds a nice amount of strategic complexity to the game
  
  
• Amazing amount of content
  
  
• Great game play
  
  
• Deep Dungeon mode with randomly generated environments

Cons:

• Simplistic AI
  
  
• Graphics are ugly
  
  
• Combat is very limited
  
  
• Doesn't have a well-structured end-game

Technical issues:

• Game may lag on lower end PCs
  
  
• Camera may stutter at times
  
  
• FPS may drop in the end zone
  
  
• Sometimes the soundtrack gets stuck
  
  
• Keyboard is too sensitive and switches around easily
  
  
• Game may freeze on loading a new game scene
  
  
• Control buttons may not work sometimes

Conclusion:
If you’re a fan of fast paced genre shooters and simply want to immerse yourself into all-new alien worlds, Deep Rock Galactic gives you the ultimate playground. Most new players will go into the game with high expectations and struggle to achieve success for the first month or so. If you can live with that it will change your perception of what a good, balanced game is. You can put hours into it and still enjoy it at the end.

Starbound is an action sandbox game with a focus on exploration. The story is very short and lacklustre, but that’s not a huge issue for a sandbox game. Starbound features different playable races, space travel, and a plethora of biomes and mini-biomes to give the game genuine variety. There’s a good amount of optional side activities like farming/cooking, fossil excavation, bug catching and fishing to keep you busy throughout the game.

• The best video game soundtrack I’ve ever heard
  
• Your own personal spaceship, which can be upgraded and adorned
  
• Good exploration and space travel
  
• Great pixel art
  
• Impressive lighting
  
• Advanced mod support and active modding community

• Underwhelming, forgettable story
  
• Unbalanced combat; guns are weak and use too much energy making them outclassed by melee
  
• Enemies feel more like a nuisance than an obstacle
  
• Armour/weapon progression is limited

Starbound has an exciting and great prologue mission, but a lot of the game is actually very peaceful and calm. You’ll be spending most of your time exploring underground, mining all the ores and looting every chest. Indeed there are enemies everywhere, but even in the early-game they’re not life-threatening monsters like in Terraria. The difficulty in Starbound scales very smoothly, though there is a hardcore permadeath mode if you’re pro enough. Crafting is a prominent mechanic, and there’s a bazillion crafting tables with some being upgradable. However, the best weapons are generally looted as opposed to being crafted. Armour is mostly only obtained from crafting, but unfortunately there’s only a few tiers (6 to be precise) so the progression feels limited and shallow. The guns in this game are quite dull, and rarely feel adequate when you have a decent melee weapon. Guns don’t have ammo and instead use a regenerating energy pool, but you can only fire most guns for a few seconds before your energy runs out. Melee on the other hand can be spammed to your heart’s content, and generally just has far superior DPS than any ranged alternative.

One of my favourite things about Starbound is the personal ship. Here you can keep all your storage and crafting tables in one convenient and portable base. Initially the ship is small and broken, but you can hire crew members and then upgrade your ship to a huge size. The ship is able to travel FTL and thus you can travel to any star system in the universe without limits. There’s a good variety of different types planets and dozens of unique biomes, and most planets have settlements with intelligent life so the universe doesn’t feel empty at all. When you come across a settlement, there’s usually at least a few NPCs with randomly generated quests to give you. Obliging and fulfilling the quest earns you a random reward, and occasionally the quest giver will request to become a crew member. Upgrading your ship to each tier requires you to obtain 2 more crew members, so it’s best to accept as many crew members as possible. Crew members can even follow you on to planets if you wish, aiding you in combat.

Outside of combat and mining there’s many other fun activities to do. You can build colonies and people will move into them, you can go fishing, and farming, or just simply build whatever you want. In all my 80+ hours of playtime I haven’t gotten around to doing a single of the above mentioned activities yet. I am currently into fossils and have a museum set up in my spaceship. Finding fossils underground and doing a little (but challenging) mini-game to obtain it is quite fun and satisfying, especially since you get to show it off in a display stand afterwards. There’s also cooking, and even though hunger is optional, all food gives desirable buffs such as health regen among other things.

Starbound offers hundreds of hours of gameplay and even replay value; the 7 playable races all have their own unique pet, ship and armour progression. There’s endgame content: a procedurally generated dungeon called a vault, which upon completion, gives the opportunity to use a weapon upgrade station. Starbound also has Steam workshop and an active modding community, and by using mods (especially Frackin’ Universe which is essential in my opinion) the game becomes hugely more in-depth and replayable, possibly even more so than Terraria.


The visual variety in Starbound is fantastic; there’s alien eyeball trees, snowy steampunk villages, and almost any climate you can imagine. The game is beautiful to look at no matter what environment you’re in. I am more impressed by the lighting, as it’s some of the best lighting I’ve seen in a 2d pixel game. Light sources cast dynamic shadows, and I still haven’t gotten over how awesome it looks when you’re holding a lantern/torch in dark cave and then cover yourself in blocks, and watching the shadows devour all the light. And then dig the blocks away and see light pouring through and illuminating the cave once more. This lighting system works wonders for immersion, and greatly enhances the cave exploration.


Starbound has a total soundtrack duration of over 6 hours. Most triple A games have an OST between 1-3 hours, so you might assume the indie game Starbound favours quantity over quality. However, Starbound has the greatest soundtrack I’ve ever heard in a video game, and I mean that sincerely without any hyperbole. The music is orchestral and predominantly features piano and violin. Most tracks are peaceful, emotional and full of wonder which is perfect for when you’re exploring. I would recommend anyone to listen to the song On The Beach At Night as it’s just such a beautiful song. Sadly, the sound effects aren’t quite so good. They’re decent, just nothing special.


The story actually starts out quite intense and promising: your home planet, Earth, gets destroyed by some kind of intergalactic virus called The Ruin, but you manage to escape in a spaceship. But after that, the story ends up being very basic and cliche. You find yourself orbiting some random planet, and your FTL drive is busted so you have to beam down to the planet and find a way to fix it. Once your spaceship is fully functional again, your job is to kill The Ruin to save the universe. To do so, you must find and collect all 6 artifacts to open the gateway to The Ruin. That’s pretty much the whole story. There’s also the mystery of who unleashed The Ruin, but it’s not as interesting or significant as it tries to be. Outside of the intro and a single story quest, The Ruin is pretty much non-existent and never feels like the universe-destroying threat it supposedly is. Yes, it destroyed Earth, but then you run away and forget it exists until the story permits you to see it again. At least in Terraria the Corruption/Crimson spreads and slowly consumes the planet, and after a certain point in the game it speeds up and starts becoming an actual gameplay threat.


Starbound is a remarkable 2d sandbox game, and although it has a few faults, the modding community has sorted that out. If you enjoy Terraria or just sandbox/exploration games in general then Starbound is certainly worth a buy.

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Treasure Hunter Simulator is a simple game that could be likened to walking simulators. Armed with a shovel and metal detector, you explore exotic locations to uncover every hunk of metal hoping to find a jackpot. You walk, your detector beeps, then you dig, repeat ad nauseam. To find anything worthwhile, you need to have accepted an email which permits finding a specific treasure, which I found to be annoying and detracts from the simulation.

• Gameplay is simple and repetitive but still fairly fun, at least for a few hours
  
• Interesting locations to explore
  
• Interesting history information upon finding treasure
  
• Great audio and beautiful music
  
• The visuals look good most of the time

• Gameplay hindered by slow and annoying animations
  
• Optional jobs add variety but are poorly implemented
  
• Finding treasure is never particularly exciting
  
• Good treasure can only be found when other people say so, not on your own accord
  
• Extremely poor performance
  
• Odd graphical anomalies and non-toggleable graphic effects like chromatic aberration
  
• Many typos and textual errors

The core gameplay loop simply involves wandering around a location, and enjoying the beautiful views. When an item is nearby, you will be alerted by a sudden beeping, and now you can press right click to bring out your metal detector to find the item. At this point it’s basically a game of “hotter or colder.” You move your mouse to wave the detector around, while the frequency of its beeps lets you know if you are getting closer. A bar at the bottom of the screen will increase or decrease based on how close you are, which I found is much easier and more reliable than the beeping. When you hover the detector directly above a buried item, it will ding and change colour, and now you press left click to equip your shovel and click a few more times to dig. Click again to pick up the buried treasure, and then click the identify button to clean it and reveal some info/history about it such as pricing and rarity. That’s pretty much it; very basic with only a few clicks involved. The gameplay can be fun for a while, but the simplicity means it gets repetitive after a few hours. Uncovering buttons, bullets and bonesaws a hundred times isn’t exactly exciting, plus factor in the painfully slow digging and silly spray-can cleaning animations and the game just feels much slower and less exciting than it could or should have been. Aside from the quest-specific legendary artifacts, you never really get to uncover anything valuable that I would deem “treasure.” After digging up a few hundred relics and seeing that the best ones barely exceed $30 in value, that is kind of disheartening. Maybe this is supposed to make the game feel realistic because it’s a simulator, but in real life I don’t see stores refusing to sell me better metal detectors when I didn’t photograph some flowers to increase my prestige rank to the next level.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover this game offers other activities besides treasure hunting. I was, however, disappointed in their application. Most jobs (basically missions/quests) involve finding items and you will probably complete these without really trying, but there are a couple of unique side jobs you that involve a small activity such as photographing particular flora, or races. The time trial races are a frustrating affair that clashes with the whole point of the game. I came here to seek out treasure in my own leisure, not to race between point A and B. What’s particularly annoying is that the timer counts upwards, so you don’t know how much time is remaining until it’s too late. On top of that, there’s no UI indication of where the destination is, so the races are essentially trial and error about which direction to run in. On the subject of trial and error, jobs that require finding particular items do not specify the size of the item, so you may need to replay a certain level numerous times using different metal detectors. On top of THAT, the objects in a level are also randomised from a few categories, so you might need to restart a level yet again, simply to get a chance at being able to find the target item (I spent 3 hours on a single level using the best metal detector and still did not find a prosthetic nose.)


Visuals - Treasure Hunter is a visually impressive game. At least, that was my first impression. Most textures are very highly detailed, and the lighting looks pretty good. There is also very lusciously dense foliage, as well as god rays which are always great. I was also happy to see that when digging a hole, the ground actually deforms which is a nice realistic touch. There are a couple of graphical anomalies and drawbacks however. Some textures starting warping and stretching as I got closer to them like this[i.imgur.com], while in some levels the visuals overall have some questionable post processing such as film grain and chromatic aberration.[i.imgur.com] Those effects, as well as the FOV (which is way too low for my comfort), can not be altered. On a couple of occasions, textures would be abnormally low resolution like this[i.imgur.com] and this,[i.imgur.com] but that was a fairly rare occurrence. The environment design is undoubtedly beautiful, ignoring the gratuitous graphical effects that not only degrade the visuals but also performance. Overall, I think the visuals are decent.

Audio - The audio is one thing I have no qualms with. The music is really relaxing to listen to, and each location has its own tune which is great; I dislike when games only have a few tracks that repeat throughout the entirety of the game. There’s also great ambience that makes levels feel really atmospheric, like hearing birds chirping.

Story - The story is the history behind the treasures you find. I found an amputee’s hook and learnt that prosthetics were used as far back as Ancient Egypt 900BC, and many other objects also reveal interesting history facts like this. However, there are plentiful spelling errors such as “Hilter’s gold,” and messy sentence structuring that demonstrate a clear lack of proofreading.

Functionality - From my experience, I would have to say that the game has extremely poor optimisation. I use a GTX 1070 and played on max settings with a resolution of 3440x1440p, and the game was averaging 20-40 FPS. On minimum settings, the game would average 30-50FPS, which is very low considering how bad the game looks on min settings.


Longevity/replayability - The length of Treasure Hunter is certainly good, taking me 15 hours to beat. I’m actually quite pleased with the amount and variety of locations there are to visit, but the game could use much more variation in buried treasures; I found that I was finding the same items in every location.

Is it worth the money? This is a simple and fun game but with many drawbacks, and therefore I don’t think a price above $10 reflects the entertainment value and quality state. I would say it is worth the money if it were $10 or cheaper, and if you have a beefy computer.



Treasure Hunter makes an admirable attempt of simulating treasure hunting, but multiple technical issues and a few dud design choices detract both from enjoyment and realism.

A key was provided for review purposes courtesy of the developer. This does not affect my opinion.

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Tasty Planet Forever is the 4th installment in Dingo Games' series of eat ‘em ups, and is by far the largest. The whole premise of the game is to eat that which is smaller than yourself. Every object consumed increases your size and thus the amount of things you can eat. You might start off eating baguettes until you get big enough to engulf an entire human. The vast majority of levels follow this basic formula of ‘eat to get bigger to eat bigger things,’ but in this game there’s also levels with objectives. And instead of only just a grey goo, there are now 8 playable characters each with their own campaign which takes place in a new area, and includes many unlockable bonus levels.

• Unique type of level with objective to complete
  
• 8 different locations including Paris, oceans, floating cities and Mars.
  
• Some levels have clever designs
  
• Impressive size scale, the biggest yet (from quark to universe)
  
• Staggering amount of levels and bonus levels

• Some levels are way too repetitive and lack originality
  
• Disappointing lack of story and no character interaction
  
• No collection stats or unlockable cheats

The average level involves eating everything you can, and when you get big enough the screen will zoom out and present larger objects to consume. This zoom-out mechanic is quite fun. In one level the entire screen is a flower, and you control a bee devouring pollen and other bees. Once you get large enough, the screen zooms out and reveals that the flower was just one of many on a bush. Soon you get big enough to eat entire flowers, then bushes, and then trees, and eventually entire buildings. This sense of scale is what I love about this game, and the example I gave dwarfs in comparison to the final level, where the smallest item are quarks and the largest are entire universes.

My main issue with this game has to be the level design, which is sometimes great, but other times seems lazy. “Goo’s Labyrinth” is a great level that cleverly used the zoom-out mechanic to achieve an expanding labyrinth, but unfortunately it is one of a small few memorable levels. The problem is that many levels only have feature the ground, a couple of large objects, and a few spawners where a never-ending supply of food streams out from. An example would be a grassy level with roads where cars endlessly spawn, and you just eat the cars for a few minutes until you reach a new size threshold. These levels are boring because there’s barely any thought put into the level design, just a few sparsely placed objects. The levels where there’s no endless food spawners for you to bounce between I found much more enjoyable, because the design of the level forces you to be thoughtful of your actions. Another memorable level is “Tour de Baguette,” which is a labyrinth of baguettes which cyclists ride through. There’s crumbs for you to eat scattered around, forcing you to navigate the labyrinth until you’re big enough to eat the baguettes and cyclists. The objects you can eat are finite, and getting injured will shrink your character, so avoiding the cyclists is actually important. Tasty Planet Forever has few such great levels, and I think the reason may be because the focus was on the sheer quantity on levels, rather than quality.

A good new addition are levels which feature an objective, as opposed to just eating everything. One level you must eat landmines before a horde of elephants trample them, and in another you must sort and push rubbish into the correct bins. The variety is nice, however the objectives just seem arbitrary and pointless when the next level I’m eating the very thing I tried to help. Why save people by eating cyanide out of water when I’m going to end up eating everyone anyway? Illogicalities aside, I really enjoyed these levels for their uniqueness.


Visuals - The game’s cartoony style looks quite nice, as does the distinct themes of each campaign. The underwater levels look really cool, and the penguin levels have an interesting futuristic style with floating islands and hovertanks. The level of detail is fairly low though, and some levels are way too barren like this one.[i.imgur.com] There needs to be a lot more finer details, because that flat and barren landscape isn’t particularly appealing. There could have been trails of ants, anthills, tiny pebbles, small dead shrubs, or any details that could make a level more varied than just having a flat ground and 2 species of animals spawning.

Audio - Some of the great tracks from the original games return here, and there’s a few new ones too. The old music still sounds great, and I shall never tire of hearing it. I can’t say the same for the new music though. One track sounds like some royalty-free casino music, and another has annoying sounds and loops poorly. The new music definitely doesn’t have the same charm or quality as the classics. The sound effects are quite alright and nothing to complain about.

Story - The story is disappointing honestly, because it barely exists. Even less so than the previous games. Each campaign starts with a comic, but there is no comic at the end of a campaign. There’s not even a comic after the very last level, just straight to the credits, which felt quite anti-climatic when such an awesome and lengthy level just ends. The rat campaign has a bit of interesting story, which was some actual story rather than “scientist make a thing to eat things but goes wrong.” I wish the story would actually develop, and that the 8 main characters would meet eventually. The best story element is the symbolic meaning of the final level, which was quite clever honestly. But still, there definitely should have been an epilogue comic.

Functionality - This game performs so well you don’t even need a graphics card; it runs flawlessly on integrated. The touch controls are intuitive and definitely the superior way to play the game.


Longevity/replayability - I beat the main game in ~7 hours, however that is only half the content as there is hundreds of bonus levels to do afterwards. Unlocking bonus levels requires stars, which you can earn up to 3 of from every level by completing them quickly and with minimal injury. There is a lot of replayability and incentive to repeat levels if you want to unlock bonus levels. I am kind of sad that there's no special unlockable cheats or collections menu this time.

Is it worth the money? I wouldn’t advise buying this game unless you’ve played all 3 previous ones. They are cheaper, and in my opinion, better. I still do think this game is worth the money, as it is a good game with plenty of content, but you may not enjoy this as much as the others.


Tasty Planet Forever may not be the best in its series, but its length and variety will still thoroughly entertain.

A key was provided for review purposes courtesy of the developer. This does not affect my opinion.

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Parkasaurus is a delightfully whacky dinosaur park simulator. With other similar competing games, such as the triple A title Jurassic World Evolution, and contemporarily scientific Prehistoric Kingdom, there is quite a bit of pressure on this game to stand out. It is without a doubt that Parkasaurus is a worthwhile title and a great addition to the voguish “dinopark sim” genre. One spectacular aspect is that you can put hats on your dinosaurs. Need I say more?


Visuals - First and foremost, it is the distinctly cartoony graphics style that makes this game stand out. The dinosaurs in this game are rendered beautifully with bright colours and their big googly eyes. There’s a surprisingly good lighting system, and it even expands on the depth of the gameplay: having your park well lit will encourage guests to stay later at night. More profit! And as I’ve previously mentioned, you can put hats on dinosaurs. There’s a good variety of unique hats and accessories, like a twirly cap or a bowtie. I do wish there was even more customisation though. I’d certainly like to be able to colour my dinosaurs or give them appropriate attire during Winter. And that brings me to my next point: seasons. As the days and months go by, the seasons will change. Autumn (or Fall) will make all the foliage change to hues of reds and oranges, and Winter will cover trees in snow. Overall, I am very fond of Parkasaurus’ visual style, and I think it’s perfect for the game.

Audio - Parkasaurus has a couple of good music tracks, but I wish there were more. Hearing the same few songs repeatedly (even if those songs are good) can get annoying. The music really is lovely though, with a good mix of retro sounds and good instrumentals. The sound effects provide great feedback and definitely elevated my experience. Every interaction will be accompanied with a fitting sound, and the plethora of ambient sounds contribute greatly to the soundscape. When zoomed in you can even hear the footsteps of bigger dinos.

Gameplay - As you probably know by now, Parkasaurus is a dinosaur park management simulation game. What I like about this game in particular is the focus on the individual dinosaur’s needs and happiness. A dinosaur will need to be in an enclosure with a suitable biome, which needs to be decorated realistically with an appropriate variety of foliage, and it needs to be sizeable enough, with enough food, resting spots, toys, and privacy. You want to make sure guests can see the dinosaurs but also make sure the dinosaurs can chill out when they get overwhelmed. If a dinosaur is a herd type then you need multiple of the same species together, while solitary types will need to be isolated. The dinosaurs also need to be regularly taken care of by veterinarians, who will heal sick dinos, comfort baby dinos and clean up enclosures. Failing to neglect any of these myriad duties will decrease a dino’s happiness, and if that gets too low then they will attempt to break out of the enclosure.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular goal in the game yet, so the endgame simply involves making the biggest possible park with the most dinosaur species that will fit. There are a lot of dinosaur species, so good luck getting them all. Apart from housing dinosaurs, a good park will also need to be cater towards the guests in order to be financially successful. The more happy a guest is, the longer they will stay in the park and in turn the more money they will spend. Like dinos, there are a lot of factors in determining a guests happiness, and each of the factors can be satisfied by placing a good variety of facilities like cafes, bathrooms, benches, tables, bins, and especially the dinosaurs exhibits themselves. You also need to hire employees to keep the park running well, and employees will do their jobs automatically without you ever needing to tell them to.

Parkasaurus features several progression systems to keep you engaged. Firstly and most importantly is making new dinosaur eggs. To make an egg for a certain species of dinosaurs, you will need to find skulls and footprints of that dinosaur’s genus. If you want a T-rex, then you’ll need Theropoda items. Gathering the materials involves a fun little mini-game where you open up a portal back in time to the excavate for the chosen genus’ materials. I found this mini-game to be quite entertaining and is definitely a clever addition to the game. There’s also a science system, where you can unlock new decorations, facilities and upgrades for your park by spending science points in the science skill-tree. You can even unlock special perks to apply to food facilities that give buffs to guests. Science points are obtained by having a scientist do their sciency stuff on a science building. And then there’s the hearts skill-tree, where you spend hearts to unlock new genera of dinos, better decorations/feeders/resting areas for enclosures, and new hats for your dinos. At the end of each day, every happy dino gives 1 heart, and every super happy dino gives an extra. With hearts and science points, there is a decent amount of progression involved. However, each of the skill-trees are currently quite short and I have almost fully completed them after ~9 hours. Oh, and there’s also a park tier system, which is basically your park level. This is increased by earning money, hatching dinos and other activities. Currently it feels like a basic template for a feature that will be added later, because right now it’s pretty much inconsequential and I don’t notice it exists.


Functionality - I was quite surprised with the performance of this game. I experienced a couple of harmless bugs which is perfectly fine for an Early Access game, but I was not fine with the framerate hovering slightly above 40. I like the visuals very much, but they do not justify such low performance especially considering I was using the medium quality preset.
I’m also disappointed that there’s not yet any 21:9 resolution support, so I can only hope that will be added later (and I will edit my review if it does).
I played this game using a GTX 1070, i5-6500 and 16GB DDR4 RAM.


Longevity/replayability - In its current state the game should entertain for at least 10 hours. In the future there will be challenges/scenarios so that will add longevity.

Is it worth the money? Yeah, I think it is. This is the only dinopark sim that appealed to me, and I was left impressed after playing it. This game is in Early Access, but it’s still great in its current form which makes me very hopeful.

• Lovely visual style and adorable dinosaurs
  
• Seasons
  
• A focus on the dinosaurs themselves
  
• Quite good guest system
  
• Fun excavation minigame
  
• A good variety of progression systems

• Low performance and lack of 21:9 support
  
• Early Access: not necessarily a bad thing but subsequently there are bugs and issues to be expected
  
• Progression systems are a little short

I give this game an 8/10 - Despite a couple of issues, Parkasaurus is a great dinopark sim that keeps the player engaged with use of numerous progression systems.

A key was provided for review purposes courtesy of the developer. This does not affect my opinion.