Recent reviews by The Horror

Best game of the last decade. An RPG of the kind that has not been seen since the old Bioware era. And it does D&D better than the tabletop game.

I have been playing the free Warzone and DMZ modes.
Warzone is ok. It is a battle royale shooter. You know the type. Arena gets smaller over time, players loot for gear and kill each other. Some missions can be done along the way against AI opponents to earn cash, use the cash to buy gear and respawn dead team mates. It is ok, but there are many games like it out there.

DMZ mode for me is the real winner here. Teams of three players drop into a very large map and complete missions against the AI, then try to extract with their loot. Killing other players is optional, and you might go entire rounds without encountering other teams.

There have been other games like DMZ before. The Division had very similar game modes, such as the Dark Zone and Survival mode. Others in the same vein include Hunt Showdown, Tarkov, and Hazard Zone mode in BF2042. For me DMZ is easy to play, polished, fun and engaging. It has held my interest more than any of these other games.

They are free. Give them a try.

Free to play action RPG MMO. Lots of classes all very unique, excellent gameplay, good story, absolutely huge world. I have never been the biggest fan of action RPGs like Diablo, but this one is very very well done.

Initially the main thing that makes this stand out are the awesome combat, unique classes, and depth of the progression system. Unfortunately the first 20 or so hours are fairly boring. Maps are linear, quests are as lazy and boring as they come. Once you hit the level cap (50) the game really opens up though. That is when you find out the game is truly full of content. Yes there is an end level gear grind, but it is not a bad one. The game has been out for four years in Korea, so we get the version with all the catch up mechanics in place.

For example, once you hit level 50 you get two free passes to auto level another two characters to level 50. You also have another system in the game that lets you level up to another 9 characters to level 50.

At the level cap everything you do progresses your character. You can do massive pve against mobs, boss fights, raids, open world exploration on your ship, etc. All of it grants an abundance of upgrade materials for your gear, so you can essentially pick the content you like doing.

I changed my mind on this game. Initially I thought it was a good bit of entertainment but that it wouldnt last for me. Right now I am thinking it is one of the best MMORPGs out in the market right now. It doesnt dethrone GW2 as my favourite MMO, but it is certainly on par with the likes of ESO though in ARPG format.

The first knock off I have seen of Quantum League. Very similar concept, even better execution.

This is a first person, turn based, time loop shooter.
You are given an objective. This could be for example to destroy one of two targets. You pick a character and spawn into the arena. Characters each have different weapons and abilities, similar to any hero shooter. For example you might have a sniper, a fast moving character with dual pistols, one that can set up sentry guns, or one with an assault rifle + grenades.

On spawning into the arena you are alone. This is your turn. You have 25 seconds to move to your objective and destroy it. Very easy.

After the 25 seconds are up your opponent has a 25 second turn. You sit out and watch what you just did be played by a bot, while your opponent uses their character of choice to stop your bot from destroying the objective.

Next turn it is back to you. You get 25 seconds again, only both your first playthrough bot is now in the match and so is your opponent's bot. You play the same 25 second match again. If you take out your opponents bot before they kill your first bot, then your first bot can keep going and kill the objective. Or you can ignore everything and go for the objective again with your new turn.

The idea is both sides will keep going through their turns, adding more and more characters to the same 25 second turn. By turn 4-5 the map if filled with action, and this is where the game really shines. It is at this point you realise that you are not really playing a shooter, that you are actually playing a complex game of four dimensional first person chess. You start coming up with strategies such as shooting mines into an area where your opponent will be, to prevent the death of your earlier playthrough bot, so that this previous bot in turn can go on to destroy the objective. You will be positioning yourself in such ways as to force your opponent to move into certain zones, so that during your next turn you can set up a turret to clean up multiple bots at once. Or setting a shield now so that the next playthrough it provides cover for something else you do.

Like Quantum League there is a good amount of depth to this game. Worth a look.

So after 30 hours with Cyberpunk, I feel I can definitely recommend it with a few caveats.

Reviews and the internet are full of talk about bugs. I have noticed almost none of them, likely because I have an RTX 3070 GPU. If you have an older PC you may want to hold off on getting it, and definitely dont get it on console. On my rig the game looks drop dead gorgeous.

Gameplay is first person RPG with some grand theft auto. The focus is on the RPG and story, not on vehicular mass murder. The story and the side missions are just spectacular. Add to it the tabletop Cyberpunk setting I grew up with straight out of the late 80s and it is a winner. The level of detail is just astounding. Every poster, radio station, TV show, advert, the clothing styles, the cars. I often just pause to take it all in. Today I stopped in the middle of a mission to watch a Mr Studd implant advert on a random screen. Just hilarious.

The way you approach missions is entirely up to you. Some people will prefer sneaking and hacking their way through, others will run in with katanas and mono wires to dismember everything in sight. I have enjoyed focusing on a high reflex and high intelligence build letting me try to sneak in and if it fails quick hack enemies while I gun them down. I can easily see myself playing the game again with a different build entirely.

If you think it sounds appealing and if you have a decent rig just go ahead and get it. Ignore the people hating on the game game. They will always find something small to critique. Night city is a hellish meat grinder of despair. Real life doesn't have to be.

Richard Garfield has yet again created a masterpiece. Artifact is another game by the same man who created Magic the Gathering, Vampire, Netrunner and Keyforge to name a few. This is in my opinion the best online card game I have played to date. It is built to simulate a MOBA. Watch this video for a great guide on how the game plays and what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIQ21gPNix0

Best features:
1) Highly complex game with low randomness. Yes, there are some random elements built into the game. None dramatically impact the game. Winning the game is hardly ever due to random events (eg. poor card draw, no land). Instead winning is a culmination of small deliberate decisions. The winning player is usually the player who played consistently better throughout the match.

2) Cheap.
The game costs the exact same as buying 10 booster packs of cards, and you get 10 boosters with the game. Every card can be sold or bought in the Steam marketplace. Commons currently go for about $0.05 each, uncommons for up to $0.15 each, most rares under $1. The occasional powerful card you may want 3x in the deck could cost up to $4 each. Occasional heroes with a 1x limit per deck can be more expensive. You can buy probably buy most decks of your choice for under $30. Once you are done with the game you can sell all the cards in the Steam marketplace and use the money to buy other games on Steam. Games like MtG:A and Hearthstone are money sinks where you are forced to grind for cards or pay huge amounts of money, then can never get the value back from the game. Additionally just by buying the game you get access to free phantom draft game mode, allowing you to play as many draft games as you want but with no card pack rewards.

Note: you cannot earn cards by playing for free. You must either buy boosters or buy singles from the market - just like a physical CCG. The advantage is that you can also sell your cards when you are done with them.

If you like card games then you have to check this one out. No, it is not as good as Netrunner or Vampire. No, it is not a substitute for playing cards face to face. It is however easily the best online CCG I have played to date.

Another great shooter. Think of counter-strike, only better. Matches are 5v5. One side is defending an objective (hostage, bomb), one side is attacking. The defending team has a 30 second window to set up defenses, like barricades on windows and doors, reinforced metal barriers against walls and trapdoors, deployable waist high barriers, etc. The attacking team uses that 30 second window to scout the area with drones, which the defending team can destroy. Once the match starts the attacking team has to breach the defenses. They rappel down from skylights, crash through windows, set charges to blast through walls, and do whatever it takes to get through. The game is exceptionally deadly. About as deadly as Battlefield hardcore mode, with a few bullets from most weapons dropping you immediately.

This is already a fun setup as it is. On top of that attackers and defenders have different classes to choose from, each with a special ability. These can include heart monitors that can see through walls, thermite charges that can cut through metal reinforced defences, cluster grenades, electric or explosive traps, and so on.

Its not a bad game. Get this if you kind of miss counter strike. It hits all the right notes.

It is not often that I stop playing a game because it is too intense for me. This was one such title. Intense and frustrating. The Alien is finally done right in this game. It is a terrifying force of nature. Even watching streams of this game is an intense experience.

Unfortunately I hit a section that was just too difficult and frustrating. The most annoying part about this game is that save checkpoints can be quite far from each other, and it might take you 20 minutes of crawling around like an insect in absolute fear before you can hit your next checkpoint. Combine a 20 minute replay with repeated dying and it makes for a very frustrating experience.

Despite this the game truly is amazing. Do yourself a favour and pick it up.

Ah No Man's Sky. This game is amazing for what it delivers, yet delivers so very much less than it promises. Think of this game as an early access title. The developers released a shell of a game that while impressive was not really a full game. They appear to be correcting this with the latest updates, and adding an element of crafting to the exploration.

Yes it is worth checking out. Just dont pay full price for it. While I feel I got my moneys worth for it, I did in the end pay for an unfinished product. Wait for it to be on special a year or two from now then check it out.

War Thunder is a WWII flight combat game, and is to aircraft what World of Tanks is to tanks. What sets this one apart is the superb flight physics, the great graphics, and the tiers of gameplay. If you want to fly around and pew pew enemy fighters then jump straight into the arcade mode. If you want more realism you can crank it all the way up to the full simulator, where you are locked into first person view, have to operate every little aspect of your plane, and will likely get lost just trying to fly to your target - if you dont crash your plane on takeoff.

Then as if that was not enough the game went and added a tanks expansion, and is in the process of adding a ships expansion. You can now play super realistic tank battles, where damage to tanks is based on shell type, angle of attack, angle and thickness or armor, fragmentation, etc. It is brutal and intense, especially on the highest simulation modes.

I cant wait for the ships expansion to be done so this game can bury World of Ships, World of Tanks and World of Airplanes all at the same time.