Recent reviews by DUNCAN DONUTS

This game is an atrocity.

What gameplay? All you do is run around valleys that look the exact same with no clear objective in mind. "Level design" looks like it was made by someone randomly generating terrain in a 3D modeling program then exporting it to Unreal Engine with no regards to how it plays. There is a system that shows you points of interest if you roar, but the points lead to nowhere. I appreciate the help, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

There are collectibles, but the one I grabbed, a statue of King Kong despite it looking nothing like him when I saw it, did nothing. Are these a half-assed attempt at encouraging the player to explore? Because, if so, they suck.

Combat is horrendous. King ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Kong does jack and ♥♥♥♥ for damage, turning a fight against simple fodder into a chore. Meanwhile, enemies take respectable chunks out of your health bar and frequently gang up on you. This means that you will see the mighty King Kong frequently get his ass handed to him by small dinosaurs the size of a dog, or worse, crabs. Yes, crabs are a serious threat to King Kong.

The game has a rage mode you can activate in order to increase the amount of damage Kong can do to enemies. But, there's a very special "twist" for it: the animation to start this mode is long and you can still be damaged while the animation plays. You can cancel the animation, but the powerup won't pop. This makes what should've been an effective powerup a liability. Who greenlit this moronic idea?

Enemies do not indicate if they're taking damage, so combat feels like Kong randomly slapping animals until they decide to fall down and not get back up. Maybe they're as bored of this game as I was and figured they're better off going to sleep than being in such an awful video game.

You gain nothing from fighting enemies despite how long it takes to kill them, so your best chance at surviving (not winning) is to run from every encounter. Running like a pansy is exactly what I don't expect from a King Kong game, but the developers decided to be rebels and do it anyways.

There is an execution system in the game but it only works on larger enemies and it's a coin flip if Kong will actually do them. Thanks, Kong. Glad you care about killing enemies as much as the devs cared about making this game.

There is some sort of skill system in place, but I have no idea how to unlock skill points. It would've been nice to have the ability to do decent damage to enemies not locked being a skill tree, but that was too much effort for the devs.

Normally I don't review graphics, but this game's visuals are so awful they deserve it. The game looks like a budget Xbox 360 console game made very early in the console's lifespan despite being released in 2023. All of the game's materials look cheaply made and have this nasty glossy effect on them.

There are clear graphical errors, like textures without clear transitions between them and a visible black outline showing where water starts. It's like someone mixed visual issues you'd see in a bad video game mod made in the mid 2000s and a shovelware game from the same time period.

King Kong and the enemies appear to made out of plastic for some reason, with Kong himself having some of the worst fur I've had the displeasure of seeing in a video game. I swear I saw the lower eyelid on Kong's right eye jutting up for some reason as well.

Do not buy this game, period. Even as someone that enjoys going through bad games, I found myself hating every second of this. I would much rather go through inept turds like 2024's stinker of the year, Phantom Fury, than spend another moment trying to play this pitiful excuse for a video game. It is the definition of boredom and unfun design, all made by developers that clearly didn't give half a ♥♥♥♥ about what they were making.

ANNO: Mutationem is an adventure game and 2D sidescroller mix made by ThinkingStars. The game is about Ann Flores, a freelance problem solver, and her journey to find her missing stepbrother in an anime-inspired cyberpunk world.


Anno mixes 3D worlds with 2D sprites, creating a unique and very enjoyable aesthetic. It feels a lot like a modernized Xenogears with how it blends 2D and 3D. It’s one of the game’s major highlights.

The cities the game takes place in look amazing. The developers did a great job with making cool-looking typical cyberpunk cities and a lighter and safer cyberpunk city. There’s lots of details that help the cities come to life.

Character sprites look great for the most part. While most of them don’t have a lot of animation, they are very detailed, and the sheer amount of them is impressive.

Particular standouts are the sprites for Ann and several of the bosses. While Ann isn’t the most detailed character in the game, she has great animations. Quite a few bosses have a mix of well-detailed designs and nice animations, particularly the bosses seen near the end of the game.

The graphical fidelity, unfortunately, doesn’t apply to most of the game’s dungeons. These areas are usually bland sci-fi labs and industrial areas with rooms that looks copy-pasted and few standout visuals. The exception is the first one, which is a rooftop chase in a cyberpunk city that looks absolutely gorgeous. It feels like there wasn’t enough time or budget to make the rest of the game’s dungeons as visually distinct as the rooftop run, which is a shame.


Anno’s gameplay is divided into two parts: overworld exploration and “dungeons”.

The overworld sections let you explore sections of four cities. Each one is unique, such as a bright and hopeful cyberpunk city, a typical Blade Runneresque city you’d expect from a cyberpunk game, and a noir-themed area where it always rains.

Exploring the overworld areas is quite fun. If you like NPC dialogue, the areas are filled to the brim with chatty NPCs. It’ll take you a while to hear what all of them have to say. There are also the usual shops (which this game has a lot of) and a few sidequests to find and complete. The gameplay in them is nothing special, but it’s fun to explore and get yourself immersed in the cities if you’re the type that likes immersion. If you just want to get straight to the action, you’ll find these are mostly a waste of time.

Most sidequests are fairly simple thanks to the game having Batman’s Detective Vision, but there are some where there are no clear clues on what to do, making you stumble around like an idiot until you find what the game wants. It can be annoying.

The other part of the game has the player going through what can best be called dungeons. Generally, these are large areas that mix the usual exploration with 2D sidescrolling sections where you fight enemies and do platforming.

Thankfully, these areas are very easy to explore. They’re mostly quite linear, so you can’t get lost. There is a little bit of backtracking, but the maps are small, so getting to where you need to go is not a hassle. Healing save points that can be used as teleporters to easily go back to previous areas, ala Metroidvania games, are placed enough that you never feel like you have to conserve your health items in case there are long stretches where you won’t have a healing save point to use.

There are few challenges in the game’s dungeons. Combat and the platforming sections never go beyond being simple until the final dungeon, where some challenging enemies and jumping segments appear.

The last dungeon is a little bit of a quality dive compared to previous ones. It reuses the same “collect three keycards to advance” system twice, so it feels like you’re doing the same thing over and over until you get the last keycard. There are some challenging enemies, a few, “avoid the laser” platforming segments in it, and a hidden boss waiting for you. It’s just that the overall structure should’ve been changed so that it doesn’t feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over for a majority of it.


Anno’s combat plays a lot like Mega Man Zero with a Dark Souls-style dodge that lets you slip past enemies and avoid projectiles. Later in the game, you can also do an air dash, which lets you do an aerial version of the dodge movement. You can also unlock new techniques that let you perform new techniques, upgrade some of your abilities, and improve stats like your overall health and damage directly.

Enemies can have either health or health and armor. Armored enemies can eat a lot of damage until their armor is depleted, after which the player can use an instant kill attack to take a decent chunk of health out of them and hit them for full damage before the armor meter recharges back to full.

Your arsenal is broken into three weapon types: regular sword, greatsword, and firearms. Your regular sword (which also shares a slot with twin swords) is your damage dealer and has fast attack speed, the great sword is for defeating enemy armor due to having naturally high penetration but has a slow attack speed, and firearms are used when you need to reach out and touch enemies from a distance, such as popping flying enemies.

The game’s combat is easy if you have some experience with platformers, at least in Normal difficulty. Enemies can do a good amount of damage to Ann if you let them, but they have telegraphed attacks you can easily avoid with your dodge (or air dash). You might get smacked around while learning some of the late-game boss attacks, but once you do, you’ll be dodging their attacks like its nothing. Paying attention and knowing what enemy types to prioritize killing first makes dealing with regular enemies a sinch. A relative abundance of healing items means that people that are terrible at 2D platformer combat can tank their way through the game with relative ease and gives more experienced players a quick way to recover from any sort of loss or a botched dodge.

This doesn’t mean the combat is a complete cakewalk from start to end; there are two bosses that hit like trucks, and the lack of invincibility frames after getting hit means they can tear you into pieces if you’re not paying attention to your health. Playing smart and cautiously is well-rewarded when fighting them.

The game has several difficulty options selectable when you start the game, so those that want a challenge can get one right out the gate.

Despite being easy, the combat is fun. Ann controls well and chopping enemies to bits is enjoyable. Once you start getting into a rhythm and figure out how to best deal with enemies, you feel unstoppable, especially with the power boosts you get with endgame weapons.


The game originally shipped with an ambiguous ending that made the game end on a wet fart. However, the game has since been updated to include a new good and bad ending that depends on a choice made after beating the final boss. These endings are much better than the original, with the good ending having some heartwarming moment and lots of new graphical work, while the new bad ending is in line with what’s been previously established in the game.


ANNO: Mutationem is a fun game with amazing visuals. While the gameplay itself isn’t as impressive as the graphics, it’s a great romp through an anime cyberpunk world with a character that controls well and has fun but easy combat. If you like (or can at least tolerate) anime, it’s very much worth picking up.

PowerSlave Exhumed is a first-person shooter originally by Lobotomy Software and ported to PC by Nighdive Studios. The game features a commando in Egypt as he saves the body of the Pharaoh Ramses from aliens that seek to use its powers for their own ends.

It’s important to note that this game is very different from the game PowerSlave (DOS Classic Edition), despite looking very similar to it. PowerSlave Exhumed is based on a combination of the Sega Saturn and Playstation 1 PowerSlave games in order to create a “definitive” version of the console PowerSlave experience.


The game is structured like a Metroidvania game; your character uses upgrades in order to unlock new paths and areas in previous levels and you can backtrack at will once you’ve beaten an area for the first time.

However, PowerSlave Exhumed is a bit more linear in terms of where you can go. The “world map” is a set of levels strung together in a map screen and there’s only one way to enter a level, so don’t expect a large, interconnected world with large areas, like you’d expect in a game such as Metroid. A good way to look at the game’s world map is that it’s a set of linear paths, with a little backtracking to completed levels required to find some paths.

Figuring out where to go is simple. Ramses will tell you what your main objective is for each section of the game. If you need further help, darkened arrows can be found on the map screen in levels where there’s an exit that leads to another level. If you find somewhere in a level with one of those arrows you can’t reach, you can come back later with new items and give it a shot.

Like any Metroidvania, there are several powerups. PowerSlave Exhumed’s powerups focus mostly on increasing your movement options, such as a higher jump, the ability to glide, or float. The only lame one is the items that lets you disable barriers because there are around two or so barriers in the entire game to disable.

There are a handful of misc. goodies to find in levels, such as ankhs that give you an extra lifebar and radio parts, which are required to get the good ending. The ankhs and radio parts are easy to find for the most part as long as you keep an eye out on things like alternate paths and odd-looking walls that could be destroyed. A guide is recommended to find the tricky ones, like one radio part that requires a grenade jump to get.

For people that want more challenging items to find, there are the developer dolls. Unlike other collectibles, these are a pain to find, requiring a lot of out of the box thinking and exploring to get. Thankfully, these are 100% optional.


PowerSlave Exhumed’s level design is your standard “collect the keys and get to the exit”-style levels that is seen in games like Doom, but there is a lot of platforming and jumping in most levels. This might turn people off, but it’s executed well. The Powerslave guy jumps higher than he seems to at first glance and the game is pretty forgiving of mistakes for the most part. Unless you despise platforming in first person games, you’ll be fine and will enjoy them.

Levels also take into account powerups you get as you proceed through the game. Several levels require usage of abilities like gliding and floating in order to succeed. One particular level has brilliant usage of the float ability that requires you to think in 3D, something you don’t see often in first person shooters.

The game features destructible walls that can be blown up with any kind of explosion. The issue is that not all of these walls are obviously destructible, such as one found in the second level, and the game never hints that you can destroy walls until you get bored and start firing at explosive pots in the second level. It’s a case where the game would’ve benefited from having a crack texture on walls that can be destroyed, ala Duke Nukem 3D, or something like it to show they can be destroyed.

Level navigation depends on how good you are at remembering things. The game expects that you’ll remember unusual places, such as a large pool of water you don’t have enough oxygen to swim through, and notice small details that indicate where a path is, like a light in a pool of water, in order to proceed through levels. This is fine, but if you’re the type that tends to ignore or forget details that suggest a path is available, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. There’s only one or two truly obscure things you have to notice to proceed, so figuring out where to go is manageable for the most part.


PowerSlave Exhumed’s combat is pretty basic. Most enemies are about as difficult as the enemies in the original Doom (not 2, 1), so there’s not a lot of challenge.

The major exception to this is the Bastet, a teleporting bikini babe with a tiger head. These ladies not only randomly teleport, they also have a good amount of health and do a ridiculous amount of damage quickly when you’re in melee range. It might seem unfair, but considering how easy most of the other enemies are, they’re actually a pretty good challenge and make combat more intense and engaging whenever they appear.

There is a minor enemy distribution problem. You’ll spend the majority of the game’s first half taking on the same weak enemy types with stronger enemies popping up here and there. It’s only until the later portions of the game do stronger foes start reliably appearing. It feels like the game drags it’s heels for way too long in fully integrating stronger foes into maps.

Combat is harder than it seems because your character’s hitbox is much wider than your view suggests. The intention seems to be that the devs made your character wide in order to prevent squeezing through cracks and skipping parts of levels that way, but this causes a problem in combat because it feels like your view and hitbox aren’t fully synced, leading to situations where an enemy will hit you when you swear it should’ve missed.

This is a particular problem in close quarters, as it makes strafing from side to side impractical due to how easy it is for you to get hit. As a result, facing enemies in close quarters can be a real gamble and can lead to you eating a lot of unnecessary damage.

The game also has an unusual ammo system; each weapon has its own ammo pool, but enemies and pots drop one kind of ammo pickup called Weapon Energy. Picking up a Weapon Energy orb will only replenish ammo for the weapon you’re currently holding. As a result, you’ll have to take out weapons that need ammo in order to refill their ammo, which feels pretty awkward, especially if you need to refill a lot of weapons and/or there are multiple Weapon Energy pickups nearby.


PowerSlave Exhumed is a fun experiment in merging classic FPS gameplay with Metroidvania-style level layouts. While it doesn’t fully take advantage of the freedom it has, there’s enough exploration and alternate paths to create a fun experience. The levels make platforming in FPS games fun and interesting. Combat is serviceable, but could certainly be better. However, if you don’t like platforming in FPS games or tend to get lost easily in games, PowerSlave Exhumed is a hard pass.

Postal 4: No Regerts is an open world first person shooter by Running with Scissors. You play as the Postal Dude, your friendly psychopath, as he tries to complete odd jobs and errands in a crazy town located in Arizona.


The game is broken down into five different days, each containing various errands the player must complete to finish the day. The player can navigate an open world to reach errands, cause chaos, and go through houses to find items such as ammo and collectibles.

Gameplay suffers two big problems; inconsistent errand quality and an empty world map.


Errands vary widely as far as quality goes. Some of them just plain suck, such as a very dull errand to fix things in a sewer, which includes a crappy platforming section ripped straight from an FPS made in the late 90s and a section where you have to go down a linear corridor and block steam with boxes…in order to change lightbulbs. Zzzz.

Later in the game, you start to get better errands that are actually engaging and fun, such as fixing a mobility scooter race or stopping a cult from poisoning the town’s water supply while plugging leaks in a dam. The problem is that these appear in the second half of the game, after you’re forced to endure the first half. The team either needs to cut the early errands or significantly redo them so that they’re as good as or exceed the ones seen on Thursday and Friday, because right now, most of them are pretty bad.

There are also errands that could be good ideas, but are hampered by dull gameplay. A good example is when you need to ruin a theme park’s opening day. There are plenty of ways you could do this that would fit with Postal, such as destroying rides or simply opening fire on the park-goers, but the devs decides that the only way to do this is to shoot or pull power switches located throughout the park. What could’ve been a very creative mission for the player ends up being a literal switch hunt. Is this Postal or a bad Doom map set?


The game’s map has potential, but as it stands, there’s not nearly enough to do and find to justify its size.

Early on, most houses and buildings will have something, such as a box of ammo or two or a collectible, but around Wednesday, the amount of interesting things to find in the world plummets while buildings get larger. The upper class and industrial sections are particularly egregious examples, as they contain huge buildings, but most of them have nothing in them. There’s simply no reason to explore these areas unless you want to take the chance of getting SOMETHING from one in three houses, no matter how good or useless it is.

There are challenges found throughout the world that let you earn rewards in exchange for tasks like “kill x amount of people with y weapon under z time”, ala the Rampages seen in a few 3D-era GTA games. These are fun and fit the game perfectly, but there’s just not enough of them throughout the world considering how large the game world is. It would be nice if they were easier to find as well, as some of them are in pretty obscure spots.

Sidequests can be found at a variety of points in the game, such as participating in a time trial with a mobility scooter and stealing art for an art gallery. These are nice side diversions that add things to do besides go from one errand to another while optionally killing NPCs, but most of them aren’t marked at all and there aren’t enough of them.

Traveling through the game world can feel boring at time. It’s not only large, there’s not enough happening on the streets. No matter what day it is, the world will feature the same people mindlessly walking around on the road in large areas. Walking feels too slow, so you have to use the mobility scooters scattered throughout the world to get to places at a decent time.

All of this leads up to a map that feels like it’s simply too big. There’s not enough content to justify to its size in its current state.

A fast travel system has been included, but it forces you to go to and use a terminal instead of selecting a location from your world map, like in Bethesda games, and there aren’t enough fast travel spots to make it all that useful.


The game’s combat ranges from bad to surprisingly satisfying, depending on what weapons you’re using.

Most of the weapons feel pretty good, with satisfying firing sounds and gore. However, most of the weapons you get early on feel bad to use. The Pistol, despite being a large caliber handgun, makes enemies slump over like you gave them a hard push, while the assault rifles, your workhorses, seem to be only able to cut off hands at its best, with most enemies suddenly collapsing like crappy ragdolls with no real damage on them despite being riddled with multiple 5.56mm or 7.62mm rounds.

Once you get the shotgun, combat starts getting a lot more satisfying thanks to how much gore a headshot from it can cause. The game’s four-barreled shotgun ups the ante with its sheer power that can send people flying under the right circumstances, which is always fun. The Hunting Rifle, found later in the game, has satisfying headshots, and the M60, found late, makes enemies fall apart while doing a lot of damage per bullet. Combat definitely gets more fun the further you get in with these tools of destruction.

The fire weapons are disappointing. No matter which one you use, they’re not all that fun to use because of how lackluster the fire effects are. Even the gruesome “death by fire” animations aren’t satisfying compared to Postal 2’s. It’s something that’ll need definite improvement at some point.

It’s a bit silly that Postal 4 still doesn’t have a quick grenade button. Having one would make grenades a lot more usable, even if it meant not being able to use their alt fires.


Make no mistake; this game is buggy and unoptimized.

Expect major multiple performance issues at some point unless you have a high-end computer. Even then, you might run into one or two big FPS drops. An upgrade is highly recommended if you want to play this game, but haven’t gotten new parts in a while. The developers say they’ll optimize the game, but who knows how long it’ll take them to do this.

The real killer in this game is how buggy it is. The game is filled with bugs, from annoying to outright crashes.

One bizarre bug early on is when you’re unable to get rid of the “looking for work” sign your character creates early in the game, so you’re forced to take it out whenever you don’t have a weapon. This also means you’re unable to use emotes because the sign is taking the “unarmed” slot emotes are used in.

The game becomes noticeably more unstable once you hit Thursday. Suddenly, violation access errors that crash the game start ramping up, with Friday spewing more of them the further you go into the day. This is a game where you’ll want to save as much as you can to avoid losing too much progress from crashes.

Besides performance, there are a lot of small issues throughout the game that make things look sloppy. There are still houses where your character is too tall to clear a roof when climbing stairs, parts where your character can phase through the wall, and even a part where the default Unreal Engine 4 texture can be seen in an obvious place. It makes the game feel more like a student project than something that you should be paying for.


Postal 4 has a lot of potential as a worthy follow-up to Postal 2, but is plagued by mostly mediocre to outright bad errands, a map that’s too big for its own good, and a lot of bugginess. Despite the game being out of Early Access, it’s blatantly unfinished and probably needs at least another year and 50 or more people working on it before declaring it done. The game is fun and certainly better than the mess that is Postal 3, but falls way short of matching Postal 2.

VA-11 Hall-A is an anime-inspired visual novel by Sukeban Games. In it, you play as a bartender named Jill Stingray as she works in a dive bar located in a dystopian cyberpunk city ruled by an evil corporation.


The game’s story is unusual in that it’s more like a set of small vignettes than a single unified story from start to end. A main story focused on the main character does appear, but not until the halfway point, and even then, it shares time with the vignettes.

You’ll be spending most of the game serving drinks to customers and hearing their woes while occasionally helping them yourself. Some of the local misfits that you serve include

• A cheerful sexbot
  
• A rich cat girl
  
• The head of a crappy but popular newspaper
  
• A genuinely nice member of the local evil corporate police force
  
• A playful hacker
  
• A pretentious prick
  
• Jason Alexander playing a private detective

None of these characters are particularly deep or thought-provoking, but each has their own story that’ll keep you wanting more because of how fun and enjoyable they are. Seeing the characters go through personal issues and grow will keep you hooked.

However, the game’s writing does have issues. At some points, it focuses on sex and humor a little too much to the point where you wish it would focus on something else for a little bit. Sure, a few gags are fine, but when you’re constantly being hit by jokes that don’t really work in a certain part of the game (mainly the ones involving certain dogs), it starts to wear out its welcome.

The protagonist herself is interesting. She starts out as a soundboard for other characters to talk to while making grumpy quips in her mind about the more jerkish characters, but begins to grow into her own character around the 1/3rd mark with the player learning about her past and getting a feel of what makes her tick. By the halfway mark, she gets her own story, which is quite poignant if you’ve ever experienced a missed opportunity to make amends with people. She also starts building up a rapport with characters she was previously passive with, giving them advice, and even getting some emotional support when she’s down herself. Seeing her get out of her shell, become friends with people, and start accepting her past is quite enjoyable.

There’s also a trend where important things happen in the story’s world…but they serve as background fodder that Jill has no involvement in. It’s an intriguing reversal of how most games work, where your character would be directly involved in important events and the characters in VA-11 Hall-A (including Jill herself) would be little more than background NPCs, with maybe Dana and Stella, the rich cat girl, having small questlines. In a way, it shows how life goes on in a world when you’re not the awesome killer protagonist that effortlessly annihilates bad guys and single-handily brings down evil plans. It’s a unique perspective for a game and something more video games should touch upon.

There’s a plotline where the protagonist is haunted by the cyberghost of a deceased teenage girl. It’s set up as an important storyline, but ultimately ends up going nowhere. The story seems like it was made so the developers could insert “meta” thinks like interface screws, a glitching character, and someone that recognizes she’s stuck in a video game instead of being “real”. Definitely feels like something that could’ve been cut without any negative consequences.


At its core, the game is a visual novel, but instead of choosing dialogue, you serve characters drinks. Drinks can easily be found in a recipe book and consist of a mixture of five kinds of ingredients with some optional settings, so the actual process of mixing is as easy as could be. In most cases, you’ll be serving characters exactly what they want to proceed. You can get a game over, but only if you constantly screw up orders. Losing takes effort to achieve, so you don’t have to worry about game overing often, or ever, if you’re playing even very casually.

Serving drinks isn’t always as easy as it seems. One character likes to cryptically order drinks, forcing you to thumb through the recipe book and connect the dots to figure out what he’s looking for. Others might prefer a certain type of drink over others, such as ones with no alcohol, encouraging you to pay attention to their dialogue to see what they like and find drinks that satisfy this. Or, some will ask for “the usual” with no hints as to what it is, making you remember what they preferred to order earlier in the game. It’s a smart way to encourage you to actually pay attention to what’s being said instead of speed reading. Writing down notes about what people likes can also help too.

Since this game takes place in a bar, you can get characters drunk by flooding a drink with alcohol if the recipe says that alcohol is optional. This opens up new dialogue for several characters you wouldn’t otherwise see, which is a neat twist.

The interface for mixing drinks is a little clunky, since you have to drag each ingredient into the mixing device manually, which gets tiring after a while. There’s also no obvious way to remove ingredients, so if you mess up, you’re gonna have to make a bad drink, then retry. The game does have keyboard shortcuts that remove the dragging issue and let you undo ingredients…but it doesn’t tell you about them at all. It’s something that would’ve been nice to know about early on instead of having to use a guide outside the game to learn about.

The game is broken down into days, with each day starting with Jill in her apartment with her cat. During this, you can save the game, browse websites such as a rag-mag newspaper and a knockoff of 4chan on Jill’s smartphone, purchase goodies to put in Jill’s apartment, and later in the game, change the colors in her apartment.

Besides serving drinks, you also have to manage Jill’s finances. See, poor Jill is terrible at balancing a checkbook and works a poorly paying job, so it’s up to you to ensure that she can pay for

• A porn service subscription
  
• Electricity
  
• Her rent

during the game. If she can’t pay her rent, she’s kicked out of her apartment, and you’re given the bad ending.

To earn money, you have to serve customers drinks. Seems simple, but you get a bonus at the end of each day if you get everyone’s orders right the first time. If you want the good ending, you’re going to need getting this bonus as much as possible since it offers a good boost for Jill’s end of day wages.

Compounding this is that, at the start of each day, Jill will want to purchase something that’s occupied her mind. If you don’t, she’ll be distracted at work, which means that when you’re in the drink-mixing menu, she’ll think about nonsense like her boss’ hair instead of what a customer wants or giving a tip for most of the more cryptic orders. First timers will definitely want the tips, so buying what she wants is important.

The game then turns into a balancing act; you have to get Jill what she wants AND still have enough money to pay for bills when they come due. This means that you can do very little frivolous shopping and that getting perfect bonuses on almost all of the days is fundamental to success. You will need to pay attention and remember what customers like and dislike in order to earn the good ending and keep Jill focused. It’s not as hard as it sounds, but you need to focus on what characters are saying if you want to succeed.


VA-11 Hall-A is a fun visual novel brimming with soul. Learning each character’s story is enjoyable and relaxing, while the gameplay is easy enough that you won’t have any problems proceeding. It’s a great casual game with a surprising amount of heartwarming moments with the occasional rough moment as far as writing goes. However, if you’re not into anime, this game is not for you.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk is a visual novel by Nikita Kryukov. In it, you are a person that helps a mentally unwell girl purchase a bag of milk from a store.


Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk focuses on what seems like a simple task; help a girl get some milk from a store. However, the girl has…how do you put it…severe anxiety issues and needs some pep-talk from you in order to complete her task.

The game’s story is designed to be a small vignette in the life of a mentally unwell girl instead of a large and sprawling epic. It executes this well by having the player help the girl and learn just enough about her to help the player understand why she needs help.

Not to spoil anything, but the oddness in the story seems to suggest that, while she has her “issues”, her world in general is just plain weird since you both see the same things she does despite you not being stated to have any problems. Perhaps this is just an issue caused by only seeing things from her perspective, but it’s fun to think about.

There are some sweet moments later on where she opens up to you about how she feels about her situation and herself. It feels like a nice reward for helping her complete what seems to be a simple task.

The game was written by someone that speaks English as a second language, so the English version has some errors and can be a little hard to follow at times because of that. However, the story is already weird as-is, so it fits the game instead of detracting from it. It’s an interesting example of how mistakes enhance the experience.


Gameplay is like your typical visual novel; read text and select a choice to see what happens. There’s only one alternate ending, and it can be obtained early on.

Occasionally, you’ll have to type in things directly. This is pretty easy, but it does add a extra touch to moments when the protagonist starts getting personal with you.

The game is very short. It’ll take around half an hour to beat it and get all the achievements. Normally, this would be a big problem, but the game is so cheap that you’ll get your money’s worth.


The game uses heavily pixelated graphics with a heavy red tint to give the feeling that something is off.
The highlight of the game’s graphics is when the game shows some of the denizens of the world that the protagonist interacts with. They have pretty damn nice designs that look even better thanks to the art style.


Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of is an enjoyable, but very short visual novel. The story is simple, but engaging enough to get you hooked, and has cool visuals that fit the story well. Visual novel newbies will probably get the most of out it, since the straightforwardness of the gameplay and very short length makes it a good way to get your feet wet in the world of visual novels.

It’s cheap as or cheaper than a candy bar, depending on your country, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack is a runner game by Be-Rad Entertainment. In the game, you play as Serious Sam’s most famous enemy, the Beheaded Kamikaze, and must blow up the series’ protagonist, Serious Sam, after running towards him while avoiding obstacles.


Kamikaze Attack is a typical runner game; your character constantly runs in one direction and you have to bypass obstacles in order to reach the end of the stage. The obstacles include

• Rockets flying in from the right side of the screen
  
• Bouncing bombs (Serious Bombs for fans of the series)
  
• Cacti and tree logs

In addition to jumping over obstacles, the protagonist can kick rockets and bombs way from him and destroy cacti and tree logs. The character stays in place while doing this.

To balance being able to trivialize obstacles, the game has a rage meter that increases the longer you kick, with the meter cooling down when you aren’t kicking. If you hit maximum, you’ll receive a warning, and continuing to attack will cause your character to explode, costing you a life. Run out of lives, and you have to start the level from the beginning.

The rage meter adds a good amount of depth and challenge to the game. You have to strike a good balance between jumping over obstacles and using kicking them in a way that you don’t accidentally screw yourself over by having your rage meter filled when you really need to kick an obstacle away.

The game features a score system. Points are obtained by kicking objects. The more multiplier powerups you get, the higher your multiplier. Your multiplier is initially capped at a very low value, but is increased whenever you complete a level’s side objective.

The scoring adds even more challenge to the game, as keeping a multiplier as far as it can go can be tricky, especially in later levels. There’s no real reward for getting high scores, but those that like score attacks will find themselves running through levels to get the highest scores they can on. It adds a bit of replay value to the game.

The game also has several powerups in levels, like instantly decreasing your rage meter to zero, increasing your multiplier, slowing down time, and extra lives, that can be picked up by jumping into them. All of these are very useful, so it’s smart to grab them whenever you can. Some, like the slow down time one, can be lifesavers.

It seems the game starts to favor giving out extra lives when your current life reserve is low. So, if you’re not too good at runner games, don’t worry, because the game will give you enough livres to preserve as long as you’re not completely awful at the game. If you are, then you’re going to have a tough time no matter how many lives it gives you.

The game contains quite a few bonuses that unlock as you proceed throughout the game, such as increasing you extra life stock by one, letting your rage meter cool down faster, powerups appearing more often, or unlocking new game modes. Most of the unlockables have a very small effect on their own, but near the end of the game, you’ll get enough of them that you’ll notice them making a positive difference.

You can also add heads to your Beheaded Kamikaze for bonuses. The heads consist of references to other enemies in the Serious Sam franchise, a zombie version of Serious Sam, the publisher’s mascot, and a character from one of the developer’s other games. Roughly half of the heads let your rage meter cool down faster, while the others let you keep your score multiplier if you die once. Generally, the rage meter cool down heads are a lot more useful since managing your rage meter is a core part of the game, but the multiplier heads are handy for those going for a high score. It’s nice of the devs to throw a bone to score attackers.


Kamikaze Attack contains 40 levels divided into two chapters, desert and jungle, with each chapter containing 20 levels.

Since this is a fairly basic runner game, don’t expect a lot of variety from the levels as far as design goes. Instead, what makes levels stand out are their objectives and how long they are.

Each level has an optional bonus objective which involves kicking or destroying “x” amount of obstacles or frogs (the latter of which behaves like bombs, but cannot harm the player). Early levels have objectives that are easy to complete, but the later half of the game starts having ones that take a lot of focus and smart rage meter management to complete, such as kicking over 70 rockets.

Complicating things further is that levels become longer and faster the more you get into the game. Attempting to complete the objective and the level itself in one go can be a real challenge since you have to juggle your rage meter, kicking a lot of the obstacle type the game wants you to kick, and avoid running into any kind of obstacle at the same time. Replaying the levels to figure out

The cherry on top? The game not only tracks if you complete a level with the objective completed, but also if you did it without dying once. If you want to truly 100% the game, you’re going to have to basically master the entire game by doing everything without dying once. This is a hell of a challenge, but it gives veterans of runner games a nice challenge to bite into. Definitely something only the hardcore should even attempt.


Every fifth level is a boss level where you see Serious Sam at the start of the level, but have to weaken Serious Sam before you can blow him up. To weaken him, your character has to kick rockets, bombs, and grenades fired by his grenade launcher back at him a certain amount of times. You also have to deal with cacti or logs in your path and pits to jump over, like you would in a regular level. Later levels include red grenades or red-tipped rockets which explode when kicked, so you can’t use them to hurt Sam.

These levels are a fun change of pace from the rest of the game. You have to keep track of what kind of projectile you’re kicking back and trying to time it so that it hits Sam in addition to managing your rage meter. The fast pace of these levels means that Sam could hop over a rocket you thought was guaranteed to hit him because he had to jump over a pit just as you kicked the rocket.

Some of the later bosses are a little annoying. One of them has Sam only throwing bombs until he breaks out the grenade launcher. Trying to kick the bombs so that they hit him at the right angle to blow him up gets a bit aggravating since you can’t get the darn thing high enough to hit him if you hit the bomb when it’s a close to the ground.

The last two boss levels have a majority of the projectiles be unreflectable. This gets a little annoying since it feels like the game is wasting your time instead of being an actual challenge. It doesn’t ruin the game, but it would’ve been a little nice if there were just a tiny bit more reflectable projectiles in these boss fights.



Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack is a fun but short runner that has a good difficulty curve and plenty of extra challenges for runner veterans. It’s pick up and play style makes means you have fun whenever and however you want.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a casual, Zelda-style action game developed by Snoozy Kazoo. The game is about an anthropomorphic turnip that is forced to work for the town mayor after refusing to pay property taxes.


Gameplay is very similar to how 2D Legend of Zelda games play. The game features an overhead perspective and contains an overworld that connects to dungeons seen in the game’s world. You can find items that’ll help you get through obstacles in the overworld and progress in dungeons. Unlike some Zelda games, each dungeon must be completed in order.

The game has several items to use to help you proceed, such as a watering can to grow objects required to pass, Turnip Boy version of Portal’s Portal Gun, and even a hazmat suit so you can safely set poor Turnip Boy on fire so he can burn obstacles! Items can also be used in almost any direction, so there’s no need to make Turnip Boy face something in order to use an item at the angle you want.

In most cases, items stop being useful after a dungeon or area that needs it. The only item that you’ll keep using throughout the game is the watering can since you’ll need it to activate objects in nearly every area.

Accessing items is a little janky; the inventory menu is accessed by using a button and you have to keep it held down while in the inventory or else it’ll close the moment the button stops being held. It would’ve been a better idea to have the inventory menu open after pressing the inventory button and have to press it again to close the inventory.

The biggest deviation from Zelda is how it handles bombs. Instead of being items the player can put down at any time, bombs have to be grown by watering them with the watering can, then knocked into a certain direction by dashing into it. This turns bombs from an item used to easily remove roadblocks into puzzle elements, which makes for more fun and clever usage of bombs than how Zelda games use them.

The game has plenty of hats for you to customize Turnip Boy with. They can be obtained by doing side quests and exploring. They don’t affect gameplay, but it is fun to dress Turnip Boy up like an idiot.

Turnip Boy features notes as collectables. However, unlike other games, Turnip Boy tears them in half whenever he gets them instead of storing them. He’s such a rebel that nothing is safe from him; tax paperwork, images drawn in appreciation for helping someone, property deeds, depressing journal entries, and background information for the game’s setting will all be torn up by him and he won’t shed a single tear for their loss. Things like “important paperwork” and “emotional backstories” mean nothing to Turnip Boy.

Tearing notes up isn’t just for fun, as the true final boss is unlocked by showing the world you don’t care by ripping up every note in the game. Thankfully, notes are easy to find, so unlocking the true final boss isn’t a pain in the butt.


Combat is simple. All you need to do with most enemies is to run up to them and beat the hell out of them with your sword.

There is a dash button that’s meant to help you avoid attacks. This isn’t all too useful since Turnip Boy is fast enough to evade a majority of the game’s enemies and attacks on his own. You’ll find yourself using it to punt bombs around far more than dodging enemies.

The game features several bosses, but almost all of the fall into the same; water a bomb plant, then dash into it so that it hits the boss for major damage. Your weapons do little damage on their own to most bosses, so bomb punting is a must to defeat them. Even the true final boss requires kicking bombs at him to win! It would’ve been nice to have more variety, or at least more than two bosses that you can reasonably take down with just your sword.

Dungeons are short but fun. They’re straightforward and never last more than 20 or so minutes. Puzzles are easy to figure out as well. Some would consider short and easy dungeons a downside, but the game is designed to be a casual experience, so they fit just right with the rest of the game.


The standout parts of the game are writing and graphics.

The writing is technically nothing special, but it’s filled with charm. Each of the denizens of Turnip Boy’s world have something unique to say. Some would say the writing is a bit too “current internet-y”, but that’s part of the fun.

There are some jokes in the game that will become dated soon in it, but it’s not game-ruining unless you’re the kind of person that throws a temper tantrum whenever you see an outdated joke.

The game’s story takes a jarring shift towards a darker storyline around the 3/4ths point. It feels pretty out of place compared to the rest of how the story is. It’s like the developers tried to add some edge to a story that didn’t need it.

The graphics are also cute and fit the game well. There’s nothing outstanding about them, but the bright and cherry graphics will put a smile on your face.


A roguelike mode is unlocked after beating the game. The player starts with everything that he had in the original game, such as health, and must get through as many enemy-filled rooms in a special dungeon as possible without dying. Most of the game’s bosses also appear in special rooms, but this time, the player can take them down with regular weapons instead of having to punt bombs around to defeat them.

The mode is broken down into smaller “runs” that each end with a special boss. The player can pick from three random items after defeating a previous boss in the first run, but cannot get any more items starting in the second run. Starting from the second run, enemies will gain new abilities, such as increased HP or the ability to poison the player, with enemies getting more buffs per run. This also applies to bosses, including the final one in each run.

Dying sends the player back to stage 1 on the first run and removes any new items obtained. The further the player gets in each session, the more points he gets. These points can be redeemed for new hats at a shop outside the dungeon containing the roguelike mode.

While an interesting idea, Turnip Boy’s combat doesn’t have enough meat on it to justify a roguelike mode. Enemies have braindead AI and are simple to deal with, no matter how many buffs are stacked on them. Several items trivialize the mode, even if you get just get one or two of them due to RNG. The rewards for going through the mode are pointless since you’ve already beaten the game and there’s nothing else to do besides endlessly run the roguelike mode.

The new boss at the end of each run is quite good for the game. He’s a straight fight with no gimmicks, hits hard, and requires some pattern memorization. Having a few regular game bosses be like him would’ve made bosses a lot more engaging.


Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a fun casual game that has enough gameplay to be engaging, but not enough to be deep by any stretch of the imagination. This is a great choice if you’re looking for an enjoyable casual experience that’ll let you have fun and make you smile.

However, regardless of if the game appeals to you or not, there’s not enough content to justify buying it at full price. It’s best to wait until there’s at least a 50% discount before trying it.

Amid Evil is a first-person shooter with a medieval theme by Indefatigable, which was founded by some of the developers behind the 2013 reboot of Rise of the Triad.


Amid Evil’s gameplay is designed like an old-school FPS, where you play as a fast character that kills a lot of enemies per level.

There is no armor in the game, so your character is a bit squishier than in games like Doom or Quake. This means you’ll have to make sure you’re constantly moving because enemies can make mincemeat out of you quickly if you aren’t constantly on the move.

The gameplay also borrows a bit from the game Hexen. Like Hexen, weapons are magic-infused staves and medieval weapons that are powered by mana instead of ammo, down to having the same blue and green mana that Hexen had. The game adds two extra mana types, orange and purple for some variety.

The game features seven weapons. Some of these are fairly typical FPS weapons with a medieval twist, while others are unorthodox in how they work. The Star of Torment is a mace that behaves like a shotgun, but shoots projectiles that pin enemies to the wall when killed, while the Voltrider is a fairly weak hitscan weapon that can cause dying enemies to explode if you keep hitting them with it as they die, causing electricity to spew out of the victim’s body and annihilate any living enemies near the victim.

The arsenal is well-balanced. Each weapon has its own purpose, and you’ll be finding new ways to use weapons as you proceed. For example, the Staff of the Azure Orb, the first ranged weapon you’ll get, is your best weapon against small flying enemies and enemies that like to dodge your attacks because it’s projectiles home in on enemies. This makes it very useful throughout the game instead of being the token crappy starter weapon. Even the game’s melee weapon, the axe, is useful due to how powerful it is. You’ll find yourself switching weapons often instead of relying on one or two obviously overpowered weapons throughout the entire game, making combat feel dynamic and fun throughout the entire game. It’s one of those games where you can tell a lot of care was put into making all of your weapons useful, and it shows.

The game also has powerful alt-fires for each weapon, like in Hexen, but they’re triggered differently. Instead of using a consumable item, they’re activated by collecting souls dropped from dead enemies and found in levels. Once your “soul meter” is at 100%, you can enable alt-fires for a limited time by hitting the alt-fire key. The time you have alt-fires can be extended by collecting souls while you’re in alt-fire mode.

The alt-fire modes kick your weapons into overdrive. The Voltrider turns into a beam gun that melts the opposition, the Star of Torment shoots more projectiles that home in on enemies, and the game’s BFG9000 clone, the Aetherum, shoots black holes that can kill everything except bosses in one hit, but can also kill you if you’re too close to it.

These alt-fire modes are a great addition to the game. Besides being a blast to use, they’re also handy for getting out of a sticky situation. Since they can be used at any time once the soul meter is full, it might be tempting to conserve it until you absolutely need it, but levels have enough souls that you can go nuts with them.

The only issue with the alt-fires is that the Axe and Staff of the Azure Orb have fairly underwhelming alt-fires that are either a fun but not the most practical gimmick (the axe) or made obsolete by another weapon’s alt-fire (the Staff of the Azure Orb). It’s not much of a problem though, since the other weapons have great alt-fires and you’ll always have a ranged weapon when you can activate alt-fire mode, so you’ll never need to depend on the axe’s alt-fire.

Each episode has its own enemies, which makes them play differently from each other. Enemies follow generic types, such as “big flying guy” or “small cannon fodder”, but they have just enough quirks per episode to make you change how you play. One episode might have dodge-happy enemies, while another will have lots of cannon fodder that’s small and surprisingly fast, forcing you to use a weapon in a way you weren’t expecting, then the next episode will make you focus more on taking down mini-bosses with powerful weapons. It adds a lot of variety to episodes.


The game is broken down into seven episodes with four levels each, with the last level being a dedicated boss level. There is also a secret gag level and a standalone bonus level that’s meant to show off RTX lighting. Completing each episode will strip you of every weapon except the axe.

Make no mistake; this game’s levels are gorgeous. They might look pixely and a little ugly in images, but it’s completely different in motion. The colors are vivid and there’s a lot of unique architecture (particularly in later episodes) that’ll make you say “wow!” when you see it. The episodes Arcane Expanse and The Abyss in particular are a perfect blend of great color usage and amazing architecture. Even the skyboxes are great, mixing realistic skies with old-school looking mountains that perfectly nail the look of how old skyboxes. You’ll find RTX lighting makes levels look even better, so turn it on if your GPU can support it.

The unique architecture isn’t just for show; you’ll often find yourself walking or jumping through it. This means you’ll occasionally be fighting enemies on tight but spiraling paths or unusual architecture, so the cool-looking architecture provides for fun and unique challenges instead of merely being eye candy. It’s great to see a developer use cool-looking architecture for gameplay instead of being merely background props.

Levels are large, except for boss stages. You’ll likely spend around 15 minutes for levels in your first playthrough, so there’s plenty of meat in each episode despite them being “only” four levels each. This gives episodes great pacing; there’s enough content in each episode to make it a satisfying romp, but they never overextend their stay.

The actual level design itself is straightforward. Where you’re supposed to go is clearly laid out and levels are chunked in a way that you’re not going to have to do things like backtrack all the way back to a small and obscure area at the start of a map after getting a key on the opposite side of the level.

There is a bit of platforming in this game, but it’s fine for the most part since your character has good air control and platforms are wide enough that there’s plenty of space to land on. There are two episodes where the platforming segments might give someone trouble: the heavy amount of platforming in The Forge and the water bubbles in the Arcane Expanse, which have unusual mechanics that’ll take some time bit to get used to.

The worst levels are in The Forge. The Forge’s level design puts too much emphasis on annoying traps and jumping around, which gets grating after a while. There’s a bit of platforming in other episodes, sure, but The Forge combines a lot of platforming segments with traps that just get on your nerves after a while, like having to run between gears that can crush you, ride gears up and hop between them to get somewhere, or hit switches, avoid spikes, and jump on platforms before the platforms retract, forcing you to do the whole thing over. Lots of platforming and traps in one episode just doesn’t work together in an FPS. At least the enemies are fun and challenging.


Amid Evil is a very well-made FPS that combines a great weapon set, a diverse cast of enemies, and amazing levels to create a fantastic experience. It draws influence from old FPS games, such as Hexen and Unreal 1, but stands on its own as a unique experience instead of being a mere copy of 90s FPS games. It’s highly recommended for any fans of FPS games or for gamers that want a feast for the eyes.

Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is an FPS that is a standalone expansion for Serious Sam 4 created by a new studio, Timelock Studios, that consists of veteran Russian Serious Sam modders.


At its core, Siberian Mayhem plays like Serious Sam 4, so expect a lot of enemies on screen at once, a lot of firepower to take them down, and gadgets to give you a boost during battle. SS4 is one of the most solid entries in the series as far as gameplay goes, so Siberian Mayhem has a solid foundation.

Siberian Mayhem contains new weapons:

• The AK-74MX is Siberian Mayhem’s assault rifle, and it’s better than the one in Serious Sam 4. Besides doing more damage than the vanilla SS4 one, it has a satisfying firing sound. It feels like the assault rifle that Serious Sam 4 should’ve had from the start.
  
• The Burner is an absolute riot of a gun. It’s a heat ray that causes enemies to explode when you kill someone with it. It’s not as effective on larger enemies as the Minigun is, but the larger the enemy, the bigger the boom when it dies, so you can take down a large group of smaller enemies and the big guy near it for the price of one enemy! Using this weapon is a blast, pun intended, as watching enemy groups explode into pieces after killing just one enemy is not only very satisfying, it also makes a serious dent in hordes. Seeing hordes of Gnaars or Kleer explode into gigantic piles of gibs as you melt them with the Burner is so, so fun.
  
• The Perun is a scoped crossbow that replaces Serious Sam 4’s sniper rifle. It doesn’t need to be reloaded and does more damage per hit than the sniper rifle, but has a noticeably lower fire rate. Headshots are incredibly powerful with this weapon, making it a beast of a weapon. Large enemies like Adult Arachnoids are cake with this weapon. And, it’s fun to use! Gibbing tough enemies with one headshot is always nice

The game also has new enemies:

• The Octanaian Grenadier is grenade-throwing variant of the generic Octanaian Trooper. He throws a generic grenade, which can be easily dodged and isn’t much of a threat, but his real power comes in the red homing bomb he occasionally throws. These floor-hugging bombs will make a beeline towards you as soon as it’s thrown and cannot be shaken off; you have to shoot them to blow them up. These little buggers tend to sneak up on you in battle since most people aren’t exactly looking at the ground when taking out enemies, despite being red and making noise. It adds one extra thing to worry about in combat and encourages you to take the Grenadiers out as soon as you can so they don’t start spamming mines. Unfortunately, they’re not used nearly as much as they should be.
  
• The Draconian Burner is a modified version of Serious Sam 4’s Draconian Pyromaniac (the fat flying guys) that has lasers instead of flamethrowers. This enemy is a beast; he can fire twin lasers on the ground or in the air, and he can fire a horizontal laser that sweeps the ground. These guys add a serious aerial threat and a horizontal attack in a game that mostly focuses on sidestepping to take down enemies. They’re a real kick in the pants to the game’s combat and are used just enough to be a threat, but not enough that it feels like the game is spamming them in a cheap way to increase difficulty.
  
• The Octanian Legionnaire is a large guy that charges the player with a mace while holding a shield that is invulnerable to everything except cannon shots. He is vulnerable to headshots and hits on his backside. He sounds like a simple enemy, but adds a lot to combat because you simply can’t mow him down with powerful weapons. He’s one of those enemies where you need to dedicate yourself to taking him out instead of being cannon fodder you can blast into pieces like most of the game’s melee enemies are. He adds a lot to how melee enemies are managed in the game, and in a good way.

Co-op is also included. Unfortunately, it caps the amount of players to four by default like Serious Sam 4 does. There is a mod that lets you bypass this.

Like Serious Sam 4, the game has a skill system that lets you upgrade your character as you progress through the game, such as getting the ability to dual-wield various kinds of weapons. Skill points are found in special boxes in the game world, either normally or as secrets. The game takes Serious Sam 4’s skill level and improves it a little bit by having one of the early skills link to both the weapons and melee trees so you can invest in either tree easier. It’s a small but nice change that makes it easier to invest in a diverse set of skills instead of feeling like you’re fast-tracked to one part of the skill tree early on.


Good levels are the lifeblood of a Serious Sam game, and Siberian Mayhem does not disappoint.

The game consists of five levels, but these levels are long and packed with content. Levels will take around a minimum of 50 minutes to complete your first time around, and that’s for the shorter levels. Longer ones can easily take over an hour and a half to complete.

Levels are a bit harder than the ones in SS4. The first level starts to throw large hordes at you a little bit before the halfway point and does not let up for the rest of the level.

However, things really kick up in level 4, which is the most intense levels as far as combat goes. Right off the bat the game throws a huge horde at you on a mountainside and does not let up as you progress through the level. There are some breather fights later on to help you get your bearings, thankfully.

There are also optional objectives that contain extra rewards and goodies at the end of them. You’ll want to do these because they contain a lot of great fights you’d otherwise miss. In fact, skipping the optional objective in the second level will make you miss a large area that has multiple fights in it!

One of Serious Sam 4’s selling points was that it could handle gigantic levels. It did, but the large levels themselves really didn’t take advantage of the tech. Siberian Mayhem fixes this by adding a lot more enemies and adding enemy bases you can raid in that contain keycards that unlock a goodie at the end of the section. Level size combined with the enemies it throws at you makes going through huge levels feel like a journey instead of a tech demo, like SS4’s huge levels do.

For secret lovers, this game is filled with all sorts of cool and useful secrets. The game’s secrets contain plenty of ammo and health this time around instead of being just gadgets over and over, like in Serious Sam 4, or boring parkour secrets with no good rewards, like in Serious Sam 3. There are also tons of wacky secrets, such as special mini-bosses that can’t be found anywhere else, a shine to a certain Serious Sam character, some throwback areas, and even a unique fight that pays homage to a game involving spirits and the sun! This game easily has the best secrets since The Second Encounter in both usefulness and humor.

Some levels contain vehicle segments that are much improved over the ones in Serious Sam 4.

The game’s sole mech section is vastly improved over the ones in Serious Sam 4 due to the fact that it’s much faster than the SS4 one and has a chainsaw melee weapon. The mech’s gun is a bit weaker than the ones the Serious Sam 4 mech has, but the mechs section throws far fewer strong enemies than the ones in SS4 did. The vastly increased speed makes SM’s mech section a blast. Running circles around enemies and hacking them up with a chainsaw is much more fun than slowly plodding forward and being forced to tank a ton of hits.


Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is a fantastic entry in the Serious Sam franchise. The team that made it get what makes Serious Sam tick and know how to expand on the game in ways that Croteam didn’t with Serious Sam 4. It’s highly recommended for any FPS fan that loves high-octane action and/or has played SS4.