Recent reviews by Tleno

Did you buy Armored Core 6 expecting it to be a mech pilot power fantasy and not a FromSoft game? Are you fine with environments being store-bought assets cobbled up by a solo dev who can deliver a fun gameplay but for whom level design isn't a priority so every city feels like New York and every outdoor area is a flat field surrounded by cliffs? Do you want to shoot hordes of also bought asset kaiju zombies? This game is for you.

It's overall a pretty short but replayable mecha game where you get to customize your war machine by picking up random weapons on the mission field, with starting tier weapons being somewhat generic but then alter tiers opening up with more fun stuff - if early on getting shotgun instead of assault rifle is a big change, later on you'll get stuff like shoulder-mounted autocannons, energy weapons, themobaric explosives, etc. There's some stats too juggle building the mech too, with a variety of parts and special equipment, and an upgrade system where you upgrade stats or allies- which are mostly static other mechs or tanks unless mission demands them to move in specific direction, plus sometimes you get to do calldowns like airstrikes or railgun targetting as part of mission. There's a surprisingly variety despite simplicity in it all.

Overall the campaign is, well, there's a new Cold War but then weird giant zombie - mutant things emerge in Russia so both NATO and Russian - Chinese alliance team up to fight the things. Despite their immense stupidity there are hordes of them, and increasing new varieties of them, so looking at world map and protagonist's journal between missions you discover things are pretty grim. That doesn't get reflected in gameplay that much and you just keep plowing trough hordes, plus it ends on a cliffhanger unless you go for the DLC which I am yet to try. There's "raid" wave survival game mode where you replay campaign maps there, too, it's handy to squeeze out some more playtime from game by trying out new builds - honestly, this is a proper mecha game with how much fun you can have just messing in the hangar. There's some incentive to play more for more random loot to unlock, too.

I'd describe enemies next but they're kinda run on the mill generic flesh monsters just scaled up - and as mentioned before they're also very unsubtly some asset pack enemies - as a matter of fact looking at dev's twitter seems only the mechs were custom-modeled whereas everything else is a bit haphazard, which makes since, it's a solo project with limited scope and mechs are the stars here. It's fine, it doesn't distract from gameplay, but what does distract is the overwhelming orchestral soundtrack in menus and etc, generic and tiring. Sounds in general aren't the best, some ingame UI sounds make me think of noises older PCs would make when you pressed too many keys at the same time. Voice acting is actually solid though, even if sometimes way too cheesy.

I can recommend giving this one a try, it's short but it's a fun mech pilot power fantasy, I very much enjoyed it even if it looked rather rough initially.

This is a free singleplayer heist game, think Payday but you do the robbing all by yourself, and in a sci-fi setting. It tries to distill the heist FPS gameplay to it's base and I feel like it makes it a bit too simple.

On average missions go like this - you arrive, most often able to walk trough some areas as a "civilian" to get bearings on location, then the moment you pull out your guns every guard present knows your location, you gotta complete some objectives, too many of them involving triggering a thing and waiting for them to count down a timer, a few times approaching them again to re-enable, the move on to next objective. All that time increasingly more numerous and stronger waves of enemies come in to kill you. You got main gun, sidearm, melee, plus special attack, temporary buff and a drone ally to summon - that's your arsenal. And honestly? it feels less like a proper heist and more like horde survival sort of game. The scouting you do early on doesn't do much since map starts off with just basic enemies and not even all layout is accessible nor like you get to identify optional targets or priority enemies, nope. The weapons you get lack distinctiveness too, same with enemies where there are distinct attacks and variants, including factional distinctions, but apart from ones with shields or only meaningfully harmable with headshots they all end up getting treated same way with little special tactics, and not like you'll see many new enemy variants by playing more.

It's a pleasantly complete experience for an Early Access freebie but it desperately begs for ways to actually diversify the gameplay, there's definitely potential there and hopefully it will be revealed in time, but as for now, starting with first mission you'll see everything there is in the game, pretty much, with just better stats adding up to guns and more steps to missions.

This is a promising still-in-early-access survivors-like that honestly shows some promise but I feel like it has some real major flaws that I hope to see remedied.

General premise is that you're fighting endless increasingly growing in power waves, this time alien bugs, and as a mech pilot. You level up unlocking new upgrades of different types, with each unlockable character providing a different number of these slots apart from stat bonuses and different main type of attack. A lot of upgrades hinge around status effects that are actually really creative, like laser-effecting enemies detonating when hit by laser again, or enemies killed by Reaper bioweapon providing you with specific stat boost based on what upgrades with Reaper attacks you got, with those all stacking providing an incentive to more easily maintain the buff stack. There's also no actual on-hit damage, instead enemies create visible indicators for when they're about to damage you, be it charges, shots or detonations after death, so dodging is both important and intuitive, instead of making you fall to the flood of hard to read enemies, it's all surprisingly readable when it matters. Also there are bosses and those also demand you dodge their attack patterns be it projectiles or charges.

Now, the issues I have with game that I hope to see revised:
- There's no shared upgrades or progression between different characters, all upgrades are character-specific despite game providing whole TWO different progression resources. Even the genre establisher Vampire Survivors had global upgrades as primary thing and then character-specific as lategame money sink. So instead of encouraging creative experimenting with different characters you will always be feeling disappointed by starts with new characters feeling weaker than with more played character. At very least, some tickle down with other characters also gaining a smaller payout of one of currencies when you finish a game as one? Right now it feels very padded out to maximize palytime and in a unpelasant way.
- Right now there are some really clever status-effect centric abilities and upgrades to themm creating interesting synergies, but nothing apart from starting character weapon and ocassional rare bit that really alters your playstyle, a thing that would actually force you to corral enemies into a specific point or otherwise change your movement patterns mid-battle. It gets repetitive quick.
- Apparently devs communicate exclusively on Discord and not here? Come on people is iut so hard to drop an update blog with upcoming additions or changes as a teaser?

Yeah this has potential, hope to see it improve. For now though, I feel like it's a bit too grind-focused and making major missteps that add to repetitiveness and reduce the joy of experimentation, which may really harm the game's longevity if you ask me.

Genuinely one of best singleplayer indie FPSes so far. 100%.

So, first thing first, this come off as an indie boomer shooter, or one of modern Doom-inspired titles, and it very much is similar to Doom 2016 and Eternal in many ways, combining classic health and pickups and a huge roster of weapons with different mobility options and non-weapon ablities to use situationally. The pacing got similar vibes too with occasional traversal section or arenas where you get locked up in single open area with more enemies. Where the game excels is in being quite imaginative and just plain damn good with all this. There's some real cool locations or setpieces, nice own takes on genre classics like shotguns or rocket launchers, and the visuals got real sweet details like extremely juicy gore from all the blown enemies dripping off ceilings and such. There's a storyline that doesn't distract from gameplay, and some bits like vehicle sections, and yet the game still manages to remain focused on the regular combat and not that or traversal.

The storyline has you play as Johnny Turbo, a sort of mercenary "Street Cleaner" who's task to stop SYN an advanced AI from taking over an entire planet. It doesn't go well, and some other, more deranged mercenaries step in too, which, surprise, just makes situation worse! There's some nice characters there like AI assistant SAM, voiced by Duke Nukem's voice actor John St John providing you with guidance, or Maw the psycho merc voiced by Gianni Matragano in case you forgot this is an indie FPS. Along the way you'll visit a variety of locales and while not all of them are distinctly memorable, the game definitely paced out the memorable unique scenes so you never get overwhelmed by more generic slum corridors and cyberpunk factories - but, still, those are quite common here. Level design is generally thoughtful though, easy to read where to go next and there's loads of secrets and nooks to explore.

Another cool bit is how the game goes out of it's way to go above the other indie FPSes by, say, offering a slottable in upgrade system so you can create your own "build". Honestly I feel like some things like recovering health with chainsaw leg kills are just waaay too good to pass on comparing to alternatives. Chainsaw leg itself is worth of note as unique feature, since it's both your melee attack AND a way too speed up level traversal since you can slide forward with it while shooting and such, almost instantly obliterating all the basic fodder enemies, it's quite a unique and memorable feature, and later on you get arm chainsaws and optional extra leg saw, too, which is ridiculous. Other cool bits you get are time slow, auto-target rocket barrages that helps with crowds, plus some mobility staples like wall runs.

If you enjoy singlepalyer FPSes this is an absolute must-have. It may not be the longest shooter but every hour is just full of cool moments and new weapons or abilities to unlock.It's plain super good. Play it!

This is a bit flawed but very emotionally strong metroidvania, combining sidescroller bike riding with pretty clever combat and an emotional story about a bunch of anthropomorphic living trough a bleak post-apocalypse.

Brainwash Gang have previously already released an emotional hard-hitter also involving animal people before, Grotto, which had you invested into fates of some beastfolk tribe trying to get trough divisions and outside dangers. This time, instead of being at a dawn of civilization you're generations after it ended. A similar tribe of varied animal people trying to get by - beset by birds, like, a militarist ethnostate of birds, all birds, treating others as an underclass, something still resembling a major state where others regressed to tiny communities. They murder other creatures for fun, they exploit already scarce resources, experiment creating brand new wunderwaffes - a flock of psychopaths, though later you learn there's futile but principled resistance within. Anyways, a kid gets gutted by birds and eponymous Laika sets out to both right the wrongs and stave of the encroaching bird threat onto the community. Things don't go well, every victory ends up either futile or taking a sacrifice - it's a surprisingly bleak game though for every setback you still are given a reason to carry on, the heavy storyline doesn't ever feel outright defeatist. Another nice bit about storyline is that Laika is both a mother and a daughter, with her mother Maya being an aging warrior, former defender of the village who is unhappy Laika had to take her place, and Laika not too happy about the burden is apprehensive of training the daughter Puppy to be a fighter like her - it's a compelling conflict and exploration of family, don't see something like that in games often.

Now, gameplay. At it's core it's a motorbike platformer, where you use velocity to jump over slopes and platforms, and you need to balance midair not to hit your head and die - something like Elasto Mania but less focused on precision and more on crossing large areas. That's the first part. Second is firing your gun - as you press fire time slows down so you indeed get enough time to aim even performing all the stunts, which is cool, but you also you MUST perform stunts like backflips and frontflips to actually recover your ammo and enemy shot reflection charges, despite having a revolver you start off with two rounds and end up with four-five tops, so backflipping is essential, which both adds depth and feels cool, one of more elegant mechanics in this game. What is less elegant is the metroidvania world here, there's quite some barren areas in this one, and it takes quite some time for game world to start opening up, and fast travel for some reason requires a special resource that makes early game really dependent on crossing same challenging locales, and then many sidequests are pretty vague in where to go outside locales so they may lead to you doing circles looking for a thing. Also while there's sidquests with interesting stories, their rewards are pretty modest, and then three extra guns outside the revolver and shotgun must-haves have very limited utility, you can beat the whole game without them. So while core loop is very cool and unique, the metroidvania part and general scope feel kinda weird, like they wanted to do more but couldn't deliver on it or just never came up with interesting ways to actually integrate extra stuff into game meaningfully.

Art direction, it tries to be an indie comic of sorts and it delivers on that, really matches the overall vibes and looks great both whens tanding still and on the move. There's a few brief cinematics after a moment like beating a boss, there, pretty neat. Oh and soundtrack? You actually get to collect mixtapes a lot, for that one, with coval tracks by game's composer, and some areas got their own mood tracks. The tracks are quite emotional yet still something you can listen to on the loop.

I wholeheartedly recommend this one as a pretty unique and memorable experience but I must warn the metroidvania aspect is rather suboptimal so you may need some time for world to open up properly. My advice would be: After burial, just rush to Where Rock Bleeds and collect bones for the shotgun to break open barricades. Don't stress over the way currency works, you'll get good enough to collect enough of it eventually - and you can use shots or food recipes giving you magnet to recover lost bags. This will help you tackle stress and confusion as to what to do after Where Rock Bleeds, shotgun is indeed that essential. Hopefully this advice will help you avoid early game confusion - which may take away some joy from an otherwise great game. Hope the devs revise some things given chance to make this one a recommendation without caveats like that.

A short, very cute pastiche of all the explorationy games like Zelda series and such, really getting into what makes them fun. You're a kid (a gator kid! Less boring!) who gets to an island an island full of other animal kids to get the older sister, soon to enter college, to reminisce about their earlier years playing pretend.

It's a quick and simple game but it's a joy wandering and finding new items or unlocking new things or, like, trying to climb the tallest points. Imo the only thing taking away from experience is the fog that's stronger than you'd wish, hiding a lot of world if you get real high but I guess that's a necessary compromise to make the world feel bigger. I WAS lost and unsure where to find a main quest character at few moments but that's probably on me, it's very easy to unlock all sorts of tools and devices that improve your mobility so soon you'll be soaring exploring the world at much higher pace.

There's a bit more to the game than I feel like describing, the story takes a nice to in finale from very obvious message about growing up to both a cheeky message about game dev while also still being about growing up, and I must say majority of game's appeal is into funny dialogues with other kids - Lil' Gator is a bit of a doof and everyone has their own quirks, I can see you not enjoying it but it works great for such a lighthearted low stakes game.

As a miser I think the price tag is kinda high for a real nice but short game but eh, just get it in a sale or bundle if you also feel that I guess, that's what I did. I still very much recommend this as a simpler more relaxing open world exploration experience.

A neat, real short but satisfying, tiny team-made FPS that plays very modernly but also is a really nice throwback to early 00s aesthetics in quite some ways.

Overall premise is that you are a cyborg in a dying cyberpunk dystopia, one of a kind, and you take on a regime. Which is, well, mostly an excuse plot but it comes together nicely with a cool plot twist. Main highlight storytelling-wise here are the environments which are very drab and grey but that's the intention, all the locales are either decaying or industrial, but done rather tastefully and distinctively which makes otherwise generic premises dull. The music is also really on point for levels, I must add.

Now, gameplay, it looks classic boomer shooter but it's very modern with huge focus on mobility and low ammo and takedowns. Think something between modern Doom, Titanfall 2 and other mobility shooters, and ok a little bit of boomer shooter there too, guns-wise. Doom-wise there's really familiar feeling paced platforming sections to wind down between combat, and you mostly traverse world, beyond regular walking, by wall-leaping. It sounds eclectic and it is but it all comes together appealingly. The enemy variety and general depth aren't immense but they're perfectly paced for the existing scope. I also really loved how arena fights with coming in enemies, while more common in second half of game, didn't overshadow just plain navigating the world and discovering new locales like so many indie shooters do to pad out time and be more like Doom 2016.

I think this is really cool but may wanna wait for a sale or buy it bundled if you're a frugal type like me.

Borderlands series are primarily focused on their shlooter gameplay and art style, and infamous for eschewing proper writing in favor of cramming all dialogue interactions with trending memes and detached post-ironising so you'd expect a Borderlands game 100% focused on story to be a disaster. Buuuut... it's great??! Dare I say, it feels like more of an adventure than mainline series do, even!

Overall premise is that you get to control two characters- Rhys a corporate failure, and Fiona the Pandoran native conwoman, who gets intertwined in a plot involving a sale of fake Vault Key, the big plot device in almost all Borderlands games, that eventually leads to an actual vault key. So, the writing I mentioned? It is distinctly different from Borderlands original, with more proper character growth, while still unafraid to be zany and ironising, but in way more focused bursts. There's a lot of that signature Borderlands stuff like wacky bandits and comically cruel megacorporations, but ultimately it's about a journey of random shmucks into heroes, and it delivers.

Also the peak Borderlands art style they're unfortunately walking away from is here, very comicbook-y with thick black lines on characters and all, faithfully recreated. Must say, there is some sloppyness of the game's art bits sometimes, odd very blatant clipping or sfx stuff but I imagine they really had to rush the episodes and not sure if Telltale can afford to go back and revise stuff hard. Seems their engine of choice is pretty dated, too, but they still delivered nice setpieces and animations with what they got.

Honestly if you ever played a Borderlands game, in particular 2 and 3, and felt like all the memery and poor comedy undersells a really cool setting, you should absolutely play this. The gameplay is standard Telltale dialogue choices and QTE fare but they deliver an overall great ride of a story, here.

This game is a combat-free survival-crafting experience, and while it promises a "cozy" survival I honestly felt more cozy with a lot of other crafting games so I feel it doesn't really fulfill it's goal.

Anyways, for starters the story - you wake up from some cryogenic pod or whatever to wake up on a rooftop of overgrown skyscrapper. You're alone in a whole futuristic city! Well until you meet some companions that give you guidance. Imo, they're not great. For whatever reason people of future suspended their bodies in immortal machine shells (only vulnerable to electricity drain which unsurprisingly IS caused by one of threats on planet) but all your newfound buddies got bodies like fridges, jukeboxes and... suicide bomb munitions? Huh. Anyways, these characters take up a very odd spot where they're kinda self-sufficient and self-content as is but then give you quests and guidance and some plot stuff. It really disrupts this Robinson Crusoe fantasy you got going with only some grindy relationship raising for rewards as a payoff. Sorry, not a fan.

Second, this one starts off like one of those mobile idle breaker games where you need to use tools to break garbage around you to get items to upgrade stuff with and both garbage you break and items you get from it improve over time, all in the name of progressive upgrades. It's a fun, addicting loop, here too, but at certain times you will be stuck for a time trying to scrape up enough hard to get resources to craft a new thing. See, there's a lot of things on side to do - grow plants, which take time, set up machinery like crypto miners or resource crafting machinery which also takes energy which takes setting up generator infrastructure. And it isn't kept simple like you'd hope for a cozy relaxing game, stuff like setting up power infrastructure is involved with each connector power pole needing upgrades to allow more connections, for a time you'll be limited to like three connects per pole even, which means a pole per one or, sometimes, two pieces of tech. Why aren't things kept simple? Whole unwiring and rewiring is involed and you may have things down for a time. Another thing, there are toggles for the low danger level parasite enemies to be completely harmless and food to decline faster, but why are there no options to speed up crafting done by both player AND the machinery you build? Imo there's gonna be quite some mild but building up frustration within most folks playtroughs, if you are for customizing the experience this could help.

Finally there's just frustrating to experience bits like for some reason inexplicably long-ish load times when visiting locales with a drone as part of quests or visiting vendors, or how much busywork some seemingly minor things can have - and inventory is kinda modest too. A lot of other crafting-ofuxsed relaxing games I played like Forager really had way more cozyness to them than this one, a game promising to be cozy in a title! BRUH.

On the bright side I must say the art style is lovely, and there's quite some variety in things to do even if a lot of them eventually turn into a slog. Early game is extremely hooking though, collecting and breaking things and exploring means to break more, harder stuff into useful parts. You keep expanding and developing stuff and cozying it up... then at some point it starts to get a bit too grindy and too wait-heavy to feel invested in. This isn't a freemium game devs, why are you making us wait like this, come ooon, give a speed up option, for real! I know there's sleep but time still passes, slimes spawn, hunger drops, it's not an excuse for making players wait for huge amounts of lategame materials.

I believe this may be still improved but having played pre-release and post-release I feel like a lot of core bits already in game are a bit too cemented to actually change and improve general experience, so I think this whole game is rather flawed and is likely bound to stay that way.

Ok, so, this mod, hear me out: play it on Easy. Just consider it:

This is a somewhat offbeat mod about a noir detective who fights a gang consisting entirely of metrocops only to discover there's some Combine plot to retroactively conquer human history, so he goes further into the future - WW2, 80s, HL2 present - to stop them. It's absurd and story is told trough static comic panel cinematics like in Max Payne or something, and each episode has own art style (even though 2nd one is just 90s grunge photomontage not something properly 40s - but oh well project's artist isn't exactly a comicker). There's some filters too, and lemme tell you first two episodes are worse off with their monochrome and sepia. Also, each episode gives you period-appropriate guns, though sometimes they're weirdly upgraded by combines.

Now, back to my proposal, consider this: the level design here isn't too exciting and some points especially early on really stretch out too long. The enemies are standard HL2 metrocops even if they get custom fits and guns. BUT their placement, the general level pacing with non-stop combat and no puzzles? Player character having endless sprint for some reason? This damn thing is just perfect for quick romps! Just dash onwards, kill enemies quick, the music even in the grimmest levels is constantly upbeat - it's a surprisingly perfect match! Just a perfect, mindless but super fun, romp!

Anyways I got a kick out of this one, don't hesitate doing what I did and treating this as a ride and not a challenge too. And I must say, despite finding a bunch of flaws in this one's experience, like visual design of some locales for example, I must congratulate the mod author for trying and delivering something so unique in context of HL2. Time travel with art style shifts? Retroactive history takeover by combines? Breen being replaced by goofiest sounding mf ever? Gold, even if some of it is comedy gold!

Honestly my only suggestions would be truncating the first chapter, reducing the filters in first two chapters to be less overt, and maybe giving the combines new guns, like molotovs with short-lasting area damage as seen in beta for 30s, or, I dunno, riot shields for 80s? 40s oughtta get a variety boosy too with how repetitive the levels are, just dunno what.