Recent reviews by Zeag

As a big fan of Hammerwatch and Heroes of Hammerwatch, I can understand the mixed reviews. However I can say the game is still fun for fans of the franchise, but you have to keep in mind it's meant to be more like Dungeon Explorer / Diablo than its rogue-like predecessors. If you're looking for a spiritual successor / evolution of the Gauntlet / Dungeon Explorer series, this fits the bill nicely.

The other big thing weighing it down at the moment is the controller support that feels spotty. it shouldn't be necessary to use the right stick / mouse to navigate the menu, and the binding of items / skills is needlessly complex. It really feels tailored to keyboard and mouse play at the moment and I hope these get ironed out eventually so it becomes a better portable / Steam Deck experience.

Very enjoyable with friends, as with other Hammerwatch games.

I'm doing my part!

(It's Helldivers 1 but in third person view. Good stuff. Hard AF. Play with friends.)

Getting into Monster Hunter is kind of like Dungeons & Dragons: If you try it by yourself you're likely to be like: "I don't get it." and move on after a few moments. However, if you have seasoned friends dragging you into it and showing you the beats along the way, you'll soon be swinging oversized weapons and cursing at cheap deaths for hundreds of hours.

Basically Hollow Knight but with a cutesy robot.

This is essentially what happens when somebody who grew up playing JRPGs in the 90s ends up making his dream game. This is filled to the brim with references to SNES and PS1 classics but at the same time eschews the time-consuming and tech-limited aspects of the era. If you like Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire, you'll be supremely entertained with this little gem.

Astalon is a great little Metroidvania gem. While at first it might feel a bit linear and the abilities of your characters limited, fear not! Upgrades and items discovered along the way will greatly flesh out your moveset. Aesthetics are also very nicely done and closely respect the 8-bit NES limitations, so if that's your kind of thing, you will definitely enjoy the graphics. It totally looks and feel like a game that could've released on the later years of the system.

Now, I've seen some people complain about how some of the level design forces you to go back with a certain character to unlock paths, causing unnecessary backtracking. Spoilers: You won't need to go back forever to a fireplace to switch characters. You will most likely unlock that ability not long after you start thinking how troublesome that is. I think its smart that the games forces you to play a bit with each character before giving you free reigns over who you want to main.

Recommended.

Retroarch is all-in-one emulation solution that offers unparalleled levels of customization to the user to make sure each console is experienced exactly the way you want.

Want to play your handheld games with a dot-matrix LCD filter to simulate the authentic feel of early LCD screens? You can! Want this setting to apply only to certain games or consoles? yep! Want to apply a specific control-scheme to a game because you use another controller or layout? Sure can!

A big downside at the moment is the steep learning curve. If you have no idea what a bios is, don't expect the interface to hold your hand through the process. However, the team is aware of user-unfriendliness and working on improving it in recent updates.

2023 Update: With the SteamDeck and other similar devices getting more popular than ever. Having RetroArch natively available on Steam is pure bliss.

This game is basically "What if SNES Star Fox, but at smooth 60fps?". Don't worry, there's a hard-capped 16 fps option for you hardcore old-schoolers out there.

The only fundamentally wrong thing with this game is it's name. Compared to its predecessor, they got nothing in common except your race engineer's voice.

If you like semi-Arcade racers such as Forza Motorsports, Gran Turismo and GRID, then PC3 is a very competent game with a smooth progression system and stands right up there amongst the others.

However if you were looking for, you know, a game that felt like Project Cars... Well that ain't it. Even at the highest simulation settings, this game feels nothing like its PC1 and 2, especially in terms of handling and difficulty. Races are short few lap stints with side-objectives and there's no tweaking of parameters like race length or whatever.

If they'd called this something like SideProject Cars or Project Cars Arcade, nobody would've complained, instead thousands of fans have been mislead into buying a game that wasn't what they wanted.

EDIT: Since this review I discovered that a lot of the SMS crew were part of the team that developped the Need for Speed Shift sub-series back in the days. You will definitely feel that influence in PC3. In multiple ways this is, for all intent and purposes the spiritual successor of Shift.

You'll crash a lot at the beginning and think the physics are floaty, but the synthwave soundtrack will keep you in a few stages more... Then it finally all clicks together and you start chaining corners in a strangely relaxing manner. Truly a neat little gem for all racing fans.

PS: Experiment with the different camera views, they can vastly change your experience / enjoyment of the game.