Recent reviews by Rex Bellator

Not amazing, not terrible. "Mid" as the cool kids say. I like it better than Destiny but the plot is just as incomprehensible.

Games like Hell Divers 2 are all the evidence you need that finicky Gamers™, who spend their days lamenting "Games as a Service" and freemium microtransactions, will eat a bucket of excrement as long as you wrap said bucket in memes and internet subculture.

Hell Divers 2 is that bucket of excrement. It is sloppy and lazily designed game disguised as a chaotic hardcore shooter that's not quite arcadey but not quite MilSim but with elements of both.

The problems with HD2 is that it is a 20 dollar game with 10 dollars worth of content being sold for twice as much as it's worth. Missions are simple and repetitive. The developers idea of balance is to throw anything and everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Balance in the game is nigh non-existent and evidence of the developers' amateurish incompetence. They have actively gone out of their to make the default stock of weapons feel utterly useless while waylaying you with a constant deluge of enemies.

Better weapons are paywalled behind "warbonds" which is their version of a battle pass which you can unlock with real money or grind out for hours and hours for super credits, the freemium currency. The incendiary breaker alone can mow down whole hordes of enemies with minimal effort.

None of this is evident until you've put 10-20 hours into the game. Once you advanced to the harder difficulty levels the cracks in this game begin to show. Most deployable weapons and orbital bombardments/airstrikes (called strategems) become useless as relentless hordes of enemies meaning only the strongest ones are good against the non-stop spawning of tough enemies like chargers and bile titans, enemies that absolutely require rail strikes or hellbomb airstrikes. Anything else is just a recipe for a loss and repeated respawns.

Long story short Hell Divers 2 starts off as a fun homage to movies like Aliens and Starship Troopers, but once you get into difficulties above Hard the game's balance and fun fall apart. The lower difficulties are too easy and boring for continued play and there just isn't enough content here to justify this game's 40 dollar pricetag.

This game was gifted to me by a friend and I still feel ripped off. If you value your time and money avoid this game until the developers finish their game development college courses and add more content and balance to the game.

Capitalism in SPAAAAAAAACE!

Whoa - I can't believe I slept on this underrated gem!

I picked this up a few years ago, dabbled in it, then put it down only to pick it up again. A card-based strategy game where you try to build stockpiles while managing a web of different survivor or utility cards with differing - and often, complementary - abilities. However drawing from the pile risks bringing zombies back to your base or triggering a series of bad events that you need to manage.

The flow of the game mimics the drama and plot tropes of zombie apocalypse movies and TV shows, including sacrificing some characters for the sake of averting disaster or achieving victory.

I've been enjoying it quite a bit and despite its subject matter is both relaxing and stimulating.

Demonologist is to Phasmophobia what an Asylum film is to a A24 movie. Demonologist is a bit more colorful, sillier, game-ier, its instruments look like something out of campy horror movie, but in the end, Demonologist nails the experience of spooky ghost hunting better than any ghost hunting game I've tried to date.

Unlike Phasmophobia's sloppy and erratic design, Demonologist doesn't compromise its fun to screw over players in the guise of "difficulty" which is not to say 'Demon' is easy, but it's far better designed as a game.

Level design is definitely its strongest suit, but it also has tons of options that Phasmo hasn't even bothered with, such as character customization, customizable and upgradable player HQs, and tons of interactive little elements both in the HQ and the haunted locations. Also it has better optional objectives like exorcising the ghost for bonus cash.

Negatives right now are some weird wording for missions, probably a translation issue, and some maps are more repetitive than others. But this game continues to give me a good fright from time to time and have fun doing it, unlike Phasmo's snoozefest.

If horniness could be harnessed for energy the amount of horny energy from the community posting big tiddy anime waifu wallpapers could solve our reliance on fossil fuels and reverse man-made climate change.

Air burst a nuke and crashed my game. 11/10 would nuke again.

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If loving cans is wrong I don't want to be Sprite™

Before this game I was just your average white American gamer.

Now I smoke two packsa day and speaka like dis 🤌

11/10 would spagett again.

Pentiment isn't a game. It's a masterpiece.

I started playing Pentiment early on a frigid Christmas Eve with the intention of playing it for a couple of hours and became so engrossed I played it for 11 hours straight. I could not bring myself to stop. It's now daylight outside.

Everything from the presentation, artwork, story, characters, dialogue, and the soundtrack are so polished, so honed to narrative perfection, that you forget you're playing a game. Instead it feels like you're taking part in an interactive stage play / murder mystery co-written by Umberto Eco and Henrik Ibsen.

Graphically the game is gorgeous and told through lush, beautifully animated scenes inspired by the artwork in medieval illuminated manuscripts. However, unlike Terry Gilliam's cutouts in Monty Python's Holy Grail, Pentiment's characters are given high quality animations that avoids feeling 'cartoony'. Character design in particular is excellent, telegraphing information about characters at a glance, yet despite no spoken dialogue in the game they emote their feelings naturally. By the end of the game you will find yourself caring for a lot of Pentiment's characters.

Pentiment's story is about solving a murder but at its heart is a deeply human story about the clash between past and present, progress and tradition, faith and science, power and politics, and uncomfortable truths and necessary lies. Throughout the game you'll be tasked to navigate all these things and more as you explore the game's mystery.

While there are tons of games out there that claim 'choices matter' more often than not I find these choices superficial or simply offer up slightly different outcomes. Pentiment avoids this trap.

At the start of the game you are given a handful of choices for your character's background which, given the opportunity, leads to different dialogue as the story develops. What feels different this time is that the dialogue choices feel weighty and your outcomes will vary greatly depending on what you chose; an artist with a medical background or botanical background will see the world differently than one who went with a theological or legal background.

It also does this without abstract stats or skill boxes; it all comes down to your initial choices and how you interact with characters.

My only quibble (besides a lack of fast travel) is, despite earning a character's respect through saying the right things, pivotal dialogues can still fail because of a dice roll, even when the roll was weighed heavily in my favor. This, combined with the fact there is no way to create a checkpoint (the game continuously autosaves), it means these failures are permanent until your next playthrough. This can lead to some frustration even if it heightens the consequences of your actions.

Nevertheless, after eleven hours I'm still not done with the story. I *think* I may be in the final act, I'm not sure, and even then I haven't even scratched the surface of the mystery. Pentiment is the type of game that requires multiple playthroughs in order to see everything it has to offer. I'm already looking forward to my second playthrough.

So should you get Pentiment? Yes. Pentiment has something for everyone.

If you have an interest in late medieval / early Renaissance history or art history get Pentiment; even if you don't, Pentiment gives you easy to understand info blurbs that you can bring up mid-dialogue.

If you love a good mystery or love losing yourself in a good book Pentiment is for you.

If you like morally complex stories that avoid simple black-and-white characters then Pentiment is for you. Every character has their agenda but none of them are purely good or evil but driven by internally consistent motivations.

Pentiment is a triumph of narrative and artistic design and, despite his already-lofty resume, Josh Sawyer's magnum opus.

Now if you'll excuse me... I need to get some sleep.