Recent reviews by todd_russell

Konami has done it again -- in a good way! My first play reaction to this is -- wow! There's a lot of meat on this shooter with some killer graphics. I don't like the cap at 60FPS, but the fact that the first stage of 7 (!) on easy difficulty (medium was kicking me hard) took me 15 minutes to beat, I'm digging that somehow.

I like the switch between the ground firing (hold left trigger, lock) and normal fire. This is twin sticks on steroids. My hand got a little fatigued, won't lie, because there is no auto-fire (maybe that's an upgrade at some point?)

Some might complain about how much some of these enemies are bullet sponges, but I dig the challenge. There is a % indicator on the bosses which is a nice touch, a bunch of achievements to unlock in game, upgrades, a tutorial. This is one I'm going to spend some time with because it's not going to be just memorize the pattern, move, shoot, move.

A timely game to play on Easter for the young to the young at heart. Happy Easter! Did not think I'd enjoy this game as much as have. It plays well on the Steam Deck. The drawings are excellent and it's a challenge to find all the cats and includes hints when you get stuck. See how many different arcade games you can name with cat-like names. Creative! Well done and recommended.

Let's hit the big questions first: there is no cabinet mode, and there are sparse options for video. It does work and play on Steam Deck but clumsily, you'll have to mess around with controls a bit to get it to work right.

This is not Zen pinball quality, definitely not VPX or FP, more like the game it's based on Balls of Steel from 1997 which had five tables, updated with two new tables: Centipede and Missile Command. The physics are kinda floaty and not up to current virtual pinball standards of comparison. However, it's a nice update on the older style virtual pinball games from yesterday. None of those had great physics and they look pretty bad compared to modern vpin games. These tables, by comparison, especially the two newer ones that take up more screen look much improved.

The five older tables are smaller on the screen, leaving a lot of black on screen space (too much!). This won't format on a virtual pincab even if you format it in TATE mode. Basically, this is an old school virtual pinball game, the kind we saw for years on consoles and early PC games and it's best played on desktop or on the Steam Deck in desktop mode, not optimized or seemingly even acknowledging current virtual pinball. Come on, Atari, you go halfway on this stuff.

The upper flippers in some games require pressing different keys or buttons, which you can get around by remapping to the same keys as the main flippers, but this is strange and not intuitive. Default number of balls is 5, which will lead to long play sessions, maybe too long, because the tables while graphically decent are kinda similar with fairly basic sounds and music (where is the music?)

Leaderboards? There are top five scores for each table that I played, but no tournaments or any online shared scores with friends, which is a bummer.

If you compare this to older virtual pinball games, it's worth checking out and playing, but if you compare to current, modern virtual pinball options, it will likely disappoint.

I personally enjoy playing all different types of virtual pinball, but am rating -- reluctantly -- a thumbs down, not recommended, but my true recommendation is: wait for a sale and check it out when it's not full price. We all know these games go on sale. 7 tables for $9 is OK pricing for this, but there are options and features missing that could really up the replay value here. It should be priced at $4.99 or less for current features, quality and modes. This feels and plays like it was rushed.

All in all, a pretty bare bones virtual pinball offering. There are much, much worse pinball games on Steam. And there are significantly better for the $$.

This is a deceptively simple to play, yet difficult to master game that only uses one button. The goal is to push (which I think is how the game "poosh" is pronounced) your ship upwards past a bunch of obstacles and to avoid striking the wall. A typical game lasts less than 30 seconds making this a perfect game to score chase while waiting in line, at a doctor's office and so on. It plays perfectly on the Steam Deck has both global and friends leaderboards, Steam achievements and 20 different challenge modes. I mean, what else could score chasing fans ask for? It's addictive, too, with a whole bunch of "just one more" plays type game. Try to get to five digit score in survival mode. Have done it a few times, and it's not easy. You'll be in the top 200 in the world if you can. See you on the leaderboards!

I liked this game so much that I bought and gifted additional copies to some Steam friends. Need to stop writing this review and get back to playing -- again -- just one more poosh!

With six somewhat short levels and three bonus levels, it's not a long game, but the level design for this platformer is above average and you'll need some expert timing in some spots to get all the cereal boxes. No idea what the "Golden Jeffy" does, as it seems like nothing and still working on the final three bonus levels. Plays good on the Steam Deck, also.

After going through a couple dozen recent free games on Steam, this one sticks out, in a positive way. If you like platformers, you might enjoy this one. I did.

Remember fondly playing Berzerk when it first came out. This updated version attempts to capture that spirit with the confined mazes, the invincible Otto and add a few new twists. I'd argue most of the new twists they added negatively impacted the gameplay experience.

Take, for example, the utterly dumb bottom 1/8th of the screen that is shadowed and makes it difficult to see enemies. Yeah, cool, they can hide from you, but then you can't even see yourself very well. The developers need an option to turn this off. The original Berzerk was a flat maze and you could see everything. What developer Sneakybox tried to do here actually distracts from gameplay.

Dash in Berzerk? Huh? Why add Dash? Part of the fun of Berzerk is that Otto can outrun you. The enemies can eventually outrun you, too. Sure, a dash action can save you, but it's totally unnecessary until deeper in the game, which the vast majority of players will never see. Luckily, the devs offer an option to play with the dash disabled and earn a multiple of your score. That's cool.

Some of the powerups are kinda useful, like the shotgun fire, but anything to do with dash is unnecessary (see above). Slowdown? Yeah, that helps with the enemies that fix on you and come after you fast, but by the time you get the powerup, the level is cleared or almost cleared and Otto is coming out. Bottom line: play without powerup, get a 100% multiplier on your score.

Another problem: there are only two leaderboards, the single player leaderboard and multiplayer. The single player leaderboard actually covers three different modes: Iron Man, which is one life only, powerups enabled/disabled and dash enabled/disabled. If you run Iron Man mode only, then it's one life, with no powerups and dash and you get 300% boost of score on the same leaderboard. Apparently the developer thinks that score should be shared with others that do not use this mode and the score bonus. IMO, they should have different leaderboards for each configuration/mode. It's more fair to compete that way. It's fine to have one leaderboard with the score multiplier bonus (it isn't their actual score, which is strange, btw) but why not have more leaderboards with all options/configurations?

And the leaderboard for multiplayer is local only, so only the player logged in gets credit. That's a bummer for your friend that plays with you, because they get zero credit for being on the leaderboard. This is something that future Recharged titles need to fix. Mutliple Steam users should be able to get credit for a multiplayer session. I get that there would only be a login for the second player when playing remotely, so probably a challenge to incorporate this, but it's a bummer for multiplayer gaming sessions with your friends. The multiplayer Berzerk: Recharged experience is fun.

Glitches. Oh my. This feels glitchy in a number of ways. One, what's the deal with zoning between rooms? It's very jarring and not smooth like a game that was created for arcades 40+ years ago? Another is the fact that when you first zone in, sometimes your character will stall or glitch move into a different part of the screen near the doorway? What? This makes firing at enemies right away unnecessarily difficult.
 
By now, you're probably figuring out all the reasons this game is a thumbs down for me. I'm not going to refund it, because I've kept the other Recharged games, including some that should have been refunded. Buy Asteroids: Recharged or Yar's Revenge: Recharged instead of Berzerk: Recharged, but get them when they are on sale. These games should not cost $9.99. They are $5 and less games, at best. This one needs some more work with updates before it's worth even that.
 
On one hand, glad to see Atari pushing for these updated versions of classic games, but on the other, they need to put more love and time into these than what's being packaged and presented here. We want it to truly represents the gameplay experience those of us loved with the original game with modern update. One comment from a friend who played this with me was "this seems like a mobile game" and that wasn't meant complimentary. The version I played at launch feels more than a little rushed in the development process.

Mixed emotions on Robocop, but the TL;DR version is simple: recommend waiting for a sale on this one, because this has AAA pricing but lacks the features and depth to justify. I bought two Alex Murphy editions, btw. One was a gift for one of our group members as a giveaway and the other for me.

First, the good. There is a lot to love about how the story incorporates better elements of the Robocop movies. I'm talking the first two, really, as those were the ones worth watching/rewatching. The language, the blood spatter, the shooting system is all good, although it takes a bit to get used to first person shooter with a controller.

I have two ultra high end gaming rigs, so running this at epic settings at 4K with 120hz+ OLED at 100+FPS is no problem. Found the graphics to be definitely a notch above average. No, they aren't as good as Cyberpunk or Mortal Kombat 1, but they are good. As for how Robocop looks? Yeah, his lips look a little bloated and Anne Lewis is a mix between the younger Lewis in Robocop 1 and as she got older and was more weathered in sequels. I though the voice acting was merely OK, not great, not bad. It didn't disappoint. The sounds are for the most part good, if a bit plain at times.

Now, for the many things I do not like. The save feature sucks. I mean, you can't save where and when you want. Instead, it autosaves at cut scenes. This means if you aren't a cut scene and need to exit out, when you return you'll have to redo the fights leading up to the cut scene. Some might like this, I don't. There are a decent amount of save slots, however, so saving at different checkpoints is OK, but again, why can't we save ourselves. This is 2023, not the late 80s when Robocop hit theaters.

That fact that Robocop is limited in environment objects that can be interacted with is another major bummer to me. I want to be able to pick up and look at EVERYTHING, not just very specific things. You go into a storeroom and there are some cool things Robocop could "use" to creatively take out bad guys, but nope, can't use them. There are scattered files and nuke drugs to pick up all over the place, but it's like you have to look in every single room, in every single nook and cranny to find them and be bummed out that you can't interact with other things that would be cool. Letdown.

You can't drive that bada$$ OCP car. Robocop is purely a walk around and bust lawbreaking people on foot affair. At least as far as I played through up to the writing of this review. Is it ever possible to drive a car like in Cyberpunk? A miss for me. I want to drive around, too, not just walk everywhere. The sounds, as mentioned before are pretty good.

Saving what I like least for last. The lack of any different play modes besides first person shooting. If you are a huge first person shooter fan, then maybe this is appealing, but for those of us that loved the old Robocop arcade games from Data East, this first person with no scoring, no leaderboards, no multiplayer is ... thin. It leaves me wanting more than the story mode. I do like the story mode, but it's like needing DLC to give me more.

Can we get the original two Robocop arcade modes? Or at least a more open world mode? This all feels a bit unfinished to me for the pricing. If it had more modes, multiplayer, leaderboards and arcade mode with callbacks to the Robocop arcade history, I'd be all about this game, but instead I'm feeling like it's just a stripped down first person shooter Robocop that is worth maybe $20 or less.

I do appreciate the passion from the developers to put some of Robocop's soul into this release, but it's missing vital parts of what the Robocop gaming experience was like. Robocop is the best cop ever. Part machine, part man, and here he's reduced and limited by the environment, by the linear missions and side missions (you do need to do those for the best grade) and that all is a bit tiring instead of super fun as any exercise in replayability.

For these reasons and perhaps a few more I have yet to discover, can't recommend this to my friends. I like it enough not to refund it, so keeping and will play. And one last good thing, it's playable on Steam Deck. But at the end of the day, I'm not inviting friends, dead or alive, to come with me on this purchase.

As a huge fan of the arcade Mortal Kombat, the first three are epic fighting gams, I sort of lost track of the franchise after the 90s, returning time and again and not feeling that magic. I came back for Mortal Kombat 11 and enjoyed that one on the Nintendo Switch and now comes this follow-up in 2023. I preordered, excited for the first time in many years for a new Mortal Kombat. It's hard to describe that feeling one gets when they see an old gaming friend. Those reading that played MK1, then were excited for MK2 and then perhaps even more for MK3 ... wow, it's been almost 30 years for that feeling.

That is what Mortal Kombat 1 (2023), this "new" game captures somewhat.

More than MK11 because the combat is more fluid mixed with the story. One of the issues others have complained about with other games are cut scenes, because they disrupt the flow. In this game, you will be watching a story mode in high resolution, if you're fortunate enough to have a higher end PC and then seamlessly it morphs into a battle. This is something we could only dream about in the 90s and blends the past, the foundation, with the modern. It is masterful and helps cement the gaming experience.

Will admit I was nervous paying for the preorder that it might underwhelm me, but I happily played all 5 days of that early access, beat the story mode which took like 8 hours and excitedly shared this with our gaming group, Play Games More, through live streams in Ultra 4K. I even streamed from my local network to my Steam Deck and enjoyed playing there, though admittedly not as much as on the 55" OLED 4k screen. System specs will definitely vary your graphic experience as I tried this on a top end Alienware with 40-series card and my lower spec gaming HP with 1650 Super and feel like the former was overkill but was underpowered on the latter. Probably something in the middle of these specs would be fine. I don't know about the minimum specs being as good an experience, however.

The fighting is fluid, but not as fast as Mortal Kombat X. It's perhaps more simplified and back to roots, but for those that want to go after the advanced combos, they're there and just as memory intensive to pull off. A bread and butter block, punch, kick strategy will beat the story mode, so for beginner to intermediate players, you can hang with this game. Online matchmaking, what little I tried, seemed solid as well, matching me against opponents I felt could be beaten with my skill set (but I didn't beat any of the few I played against).

Something you'll see a ton of in this game are tower battles. I welcome these, as this so central to MK. There might, however, be a bit of over-reliance on towers as there is a dedicated towers mode to unlock character endings, towers inside individual invasion areas and a complete area of towers with hourly, daily and weekly tower challenges. If you don't like towers, you won't like MK 1 (2023).

One significant criticism is the somewhat grindy nature of the new board game-like Invasions. There are 8 unlockable worlds where you must fight your way through to the next portal. At first this is exciting, but loses its luster after many, many, many dozens of fights and begins to feel a little too repetitive. There are might challenges, but it would have been cooler to see more variation of these minigames, as there are only a small few of them. One positive thing is NetherRealm has promised these Invasions would reset every six weeks and have new content, enemies and goals added and -- bonus! they are saying there will be no additional charge for these updates. I did like the inclusion of additional fight to the top tower-related fights within Invasions.

As for unlockables, there are a ton. This is how you unlock skins/palettes, brutalities, additional fatalities, talismen and relics to power up your character and more. Did I mention that each character can have a maximum mastery level of 35 and each Kameo (your partner in the fight) has a lower max level. Speaking of these kameos? I'm sort of mixed on their inclusion. In some ways I wish it was co-op so a friend could be swapped instead -- or another characte that you could play through with full health -- and the Kameo isn't able to fully swap in, which would have made them better. Maybe in the future co-op fighting will be added, making it so these Kameos aren't sort of just there for extra damage at the end of a combo,

The character roster of 24 fighters is more than the original games, but is small and somewhat incomplete at launch compared to MK11. Likely with future DLC and packs this will become more fleshed out and there will be more characters. Don't get me wrong, 24 is enough for now and it doesn't *need* to be one of those fighters that launches with like 50+ fighters, but as a modern title it feels a bit thin.

In summary, I'm recommending this reboot of Mortal Kombat 1. It feels fresh enough and yet pays plenty of homage to the original trilogy. Honestly, this feels more like the MK4 I wanted instead of the one that sort of had me drifting away from the series. A good sequel can bring you back to a franchise and if it's really good, like this fighter, it can even re-ignite your feelings about playing more games in the genre.

Digital Eclipse did a great job on the emulation for the Atari Jaguar, offering up the best, most playable emulated version of Tempest 2000 in this collection that I've played compared to the real cart (which is still superior, but the version herein is very, very good). For this game alone, I was interested in playing this collection, but then pepper in a bunch of Atari gems like Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Centipede, Milipede, Missile Command, the original Tempest and some rarities like Akka Arrh, and that's just two categories. They have a bunch of Atari 2600 and a small few (a complaint, really) of the Atari 5200. There are more Atari 7800 titles and a few Atari Lynx, another one wished they had more, but there's plenty to play here including a few new games with the standout for me there being Vctr-Sctr.

Add to this the timeline history and several very well done videos from former Atari employees talking up the good ole days, and this one scores historical points galore. Would love to see more collections like this from other publishers (cough, cough, Nintendo). For those that love a trip down memory lane with their collection of games, many with tons of replay value.

It's not all great here, like they are missing some publishers that were noteworthy with Atari (ahem, Activision) but it *is* an Atari collection. There is enough to keep any retrogaming fan busy for quite some time. I see a number of my friends have this on their wishlist but haven't pulled the trigger and bought as of this writing. Get this in the next big sale (Winter, Summer, whatever). I paid full price for it and feel like it's worth every penny.

Want to get this review in before the ridiculously good 89% off sale on this game ends on Sep 11, 2023 (4 bucks for this game is a steal). I wouldn't pay the regular full price for this (It's a $20 or less game to me, just for those curious), but this game is packed with features that will make Battlezone fans happy, both traditional and modern ones.

There is a really fun online co-op mode where you have multiple, changing objectives taking out huge mechs, flying drones, and of course tanks. The AI is solid, the graphics are very good, especially in 4K. It has a VR mode for those that play that, and at least one friend has told me it's fun to play this in VR. There is also a deep solo mode.

My one gripe about the game is the limited firepower system. Your best ammunition is limited. You can upgrade this and buy more, but it makes you save that ammo and spend a lot of time in the unlimited, but very slow reload mode. There was no such mechanic in the original Battlezone, the tank could fire forever and no reload. This is not annoying enough for me to not recommend the game.

For those of us that love classic arcade games modernized, this one totally does that well.