Recent reviews by Axii

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Even though the walls might be falling, my expectations aren't, yet even still AWMF exceeds them; Recommended Purchase


All Walls Must Fall is an interesting game, one that reminds me of XCOM, if XCOM had a time limit and was focused on one agent instead of an entire squad. That sounds like a pretty terrible idea, as having unlimited time to make up your mind is a key pillar to strategizing in games like these, but I actually enjoy what AWMF has pulled off. The comparison to XCOM is an extremely tenuous one, as the only real similarities are that they’re both strategy games and they both have a sort of tactical turn-based combat, at least somewhat. I say somewhat because, although we all clearly know that XCOM is a turn-based game, AWMF is technically in real time. You have a certain amount of time that slowly drains as you progress through the level, and the only way to give yourself more time is to explore other rooms and find new areas. I like the idea behind this, it means that the player actually needs to run through new rooms and can’t just sit in one area for the whole mission. However on the contrary to that, it also leads to the player feeling unneccesarily pressured to make hasty moves and decisions just because the timer’s about to run out. Thankfully, in the case of AWMF, there’s more than enough time for you to not only make all your strategic decisions without pressure, but to also fully experience every part of the map. If you somehow find yourself even still lacking in time, there are upgrades you can purchase in between missions to give yourself an edge, and one of these said upgrades allows for a significant increase in allotted time. That’s not the only thing you can upgrade however, you can get your agent some nice new armor or even different guns if you find yourself in the mood for some added firepower. The upgrades aren’t anything special, but they’re a good way to make sure you always have something to spend your money on. However, you’re probably never going to actually need any of them as the game itself is surprisingly easy, due in fact to the main mechanic: time travel.


The whole story of AWMF is centered on a time traveler who goes back to try and do something related to the cold war, but I find myself having a hard time remembering exactly what because of just how forgettable it all really was. That’s not to say that the story is particularly bad, but I doubt it's what you came here for and it certainly isn’t memorable enough to keep you occupied throughout the game. All of it’s just so forgettable, and even though it wasn’t bad, it certainly wasn’t good enough to hold my interest past the time traveling bit. However time travel is not just a plot point, it also plays a key role in gameplay. As you go through your missions you may encounter various points where you find yourself having made a costly mistake, one which would have you in a world of pain were this any other game. The difference is, in AWMF you can teleport back in time, at the cost of a rather hefty amount of time units, to fix your mistakes and avoid that frigid grip of death. I absolutely love this, as not only does it fit perfectly into the narrative they’re trying to make, but it’s also such an ingenious way of allowing the player to patch up small little mistakes that would otherwise ruin a playthrough. My main gripe with this is that while it does create a more forgiving game for the player, that comes with an unintended consequence: the game’s too damn easy. You aren’t forgiven for just the little mistakes, but for pretty much any mistake that you make. With the upgrades available, you have an absurdly large pool of time units from which to constantly flip back and forth in time like a flipbook that can’t make up its mind. You make even the slightest mistake? Turn back time. Accidentally sneezed and shot someone important? Turn back time. Don’t like the way that fat guy in the corner is looking at you? Turn back time. It’s just too damn easy, and that sucks because the combat is actually extremely fun otherwise. You have to plan your moves and prioritize who you’ll be taking down first, otherwise you’ll quickly find yourself in not only an early grave, but a shallow one as well. With the combat being as it is and the time traveling mechanic trivializing any real difficulty, it’s hard for me to say that AWMF is much more than a solid game. Nothing too exceptional, though the time travel mechanic comes close, but nothing game breaking or really all that problematic to deal with either.

All Walls Must Fall may have a rather boring story, but I still love its time travel mechanic and the setting has managed to nest in a special little spot in my heart.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

A poor diner-dash clone with nothing to offer; Not recommended


The captain is screaming. He has been for the past hour, as you desperately clutch your hammer in one hand, and your faith in god firmly in the other. You’ve been trying to repair the ship’s mast for almost as long as the captain has been screaming, with neither yielding any tangible results. These are the kinds of intense situations which will make up the majority of your time playing Abandon Ship, an absolutely exemplary game in the vein of FTL and other such legends. You play as a captain aboard a primitive naval vessel way back in the age of sail, cruising the waves in search of plunder and, more importantly, on the watch for the dark god that pursues you. I expected to find Abandon Ship to be something entirely different than what it actually turned out to be. I didn’t expect it to be styled similarly to FTL, I didn’t expect it to be so complex, and I certainly didn’t expect it to be so damn good. I love FTL, I really do, but Abandon Ship genuinely presents some damn fine competition. It’s nowhere near as polished, nor does it have even remotely as much unique content, but it still possesses a staggering amount of high-quality, extremely enjoyable gameplay. When I mention that it’s similar to FTL, I don’t just mean that in the concept alone. Every little bit of this game, from the way your crew works to the way the overland world map works is structured like FTL. Your ship is manned in the exact same way, as in you give commands to each individual crewman and order them around the ship. The systems that the ship has are also exactly the same, with minor differences, in that you have a medical table for healing, guns to man, a spot for your captain to navigate, and repairs that need to be made in the midst of combat. Normally I would be hesitant to play a game that so directly imitates another, but Abandon ship takes their own twist on it, and does so in such a professional way that this genuinely feels almost like an age of sail mod for FTL itself. Gameplay is divided into two main segments: decisions on the overland map, and ship-to-ship combat. During the overland map stage you’re going to be doing tasks like searching the choppy waves for loot or foes, while when you finally end up in a battle, it’s a fight for survival. I don’t mean to say that the battles are hard per se, at least not the earlier ones, because I actually believe that they went too far in the opposite direction and made them a touch too easy. See, in FTL you were encouraged to play your best in every single encounter because you knew that any damage done to your ship was permanently, at least until you could scrounge up the scrap to pay someone to patch you up. In Abandon Ship however, your health is reset at the end of every encounter, which means that it no longer has any incentive for you to actually play your best, and instead you’ll be fine as long as you just play “well enough”. It’s a minor thing, but it’s one of many which hold Abandon Ship back from being a true FTL-quality gem.


However, you’ll forget all about that once you finally get into battle and start ridding the world of dastardly cultists one cannonball at a time. That does seem to be who you’re mainly fighting, and there’s actually a reason for that: at the start of the story it’s revealed that you’re actually a member of an ancient cult, and you just participated in the summoning of a demonic tentacled beast from the depths. Immediately realizing your mistake you free a handful of prisoners, christen them your “crewmen”, and get going. After you steal a ship of course. Now because of the nature of this game, I haven’t beaten it yet and as such I may be missing out on content that comes later on. I say this because I feel there is a lack of different ships and ship equipment for you to get, however I have no idea whether or not this gets better or changes at all as the game progresses. Regardless, the way that the weapons work puts significantly less focus on exactly what weapon specifically you’re using, and more on the type of weapon. Each weapon type has a different use and effect and you’ll need to actually utilize these if you’re to have any hope of crossing the seas alive. Grapeshot, for example, is used for knocking out enemy crew members, while normal cannonballs are for taking on the ship’s hull itself. These different weapons are neither particularly interesting nor unique, but they do provide a fun way to switch up gameplay and keep you on your toes. On top of those, you also can board enemy ships, which I have yet to actually be able to use. Regardless, just the fact that it’s there makes me extremely happy, not that it’s entirely a surprise in a game about ship-to-ship combat. All of these mechanics have a noticeable theme: they each are essentially the same as their counterparts in FTL, but they also each provide a nice pirate-esque twist that makes them appear as completely unique. I think that’s a good way of describing Abandon Ship as a whole: it’s an extremely similar game to

While it may not be good enough to knock me off my ship, Abandon Ship is still an excellent FTL-like game that's worthy of your money, your time, and about a ships worth of a gunpowder.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

A poor diner-dash clone with nothing to offer; Not recommended


Indie games face a rigorous gauntlet of criticism, and that's something that's never changed throughout gaming history. With limited resources and a budget to match, it's an uphill battle for most developers. It's also a vicious cycle: you don't have the money to make too great of a game, so your game gets bad reviews. Your game gets bad reviews, now nobody wants to play your other games, and on and on it goes. I dearly hope that isn't the case with Baked Games, the developers behind Hotel Dracula, because they definitely could go places so long as they keep working and improving, and aren't bombarded with hate. However, that by no means should indicate that I actually liked Hotel Dracula, on the contrary, I actually found this to be a rather poor game in almost every aspect. Just from the start you're going to notice how low-budget the game is, from the models to the tool-tips with frequent enough grammatical errors to make you squirm. It isn't that the concept of a diner-dash type game is bad, it's just that they've executed it so poorly that you can't help but be frustrated. There seems to only be four levels, and none of those appear any different from the ones before in any way besides being a change of scenery. On top of that, the main mechanics of the levels seem to be extremely poorly made. The game will constantly spam you with diners in an overwhelming horde to attempt to replicate difficulty, and the whole time you have to make sure you don't run their patience dry because you're on the clock. What's more, the game likes to throw you into situations where you can't possibly get the best results. For example, the timer on one customer will literally be so fast that you can't make their food and get it to them in any reasonable time. The game as a whole is just so incredibly, mind-numbingly monotonous that there's no reason that you actually want to play more, or play any of it to begin with.


Though it has an interesting premise behind it, there's extremely little that Hotel Dracula has to offer that isn't buggy, extremely low quality, or just unenjoyable to play.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

A hint too repetitive, but still a great ; Pick it up on a sale

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1317480009&fileuploadsuccess=1
Although they’ve been dead for thousands of years, dinosaurs are universally loved as both animals and just a fun topic of conversation. I’ve both seen and played games where you murder dinosaurs, use them to kill other people, ride them, befriend them, and even be them. However I have never seen a game that lets you make dinosaurs of your own. Sadly you can’t make your own living dinosaurs in Fossil Hunters, however you can make your own dead ones. The main mechanic of fossil hunters is putting together various dinosaur fossils in a set way to create a full dinosaur skeleton, however you also are given various side dinosaurs to build, guided only by a vague hint or two. For instance you may be told t o create a dinosaur with two heads, or one with an extra foot placed squarely on his nose, or maybe even a dino with three nuts and night vision goggles. What dinosaur you’re to build on the side is determined by a quirky little voice coming out of a radio, a radio that quickly informs you that the man on the other side wants dinosaur skeletons and has the money to pay. Ultimately though, whether or not you actually try and build these side dinosaurs doesn’t matter, because from what I can tell the benefits are purely arbitrary, like your score in Space Invaders. Not that this is a bad thing, if you’re into raising your score and other things like that then you’ll love it, it’s an extremely interesting and fun side objective that’ll suit you perfectly. I simply don’t like that kind of thing and instead would rather focus on the main game and the mechanics therewithin. Fossil Hunters is an extremely simple game, and the only thing you need to know how to do is dust off discovered fossils, dig for new ones, and arrange those you’ve already found. It’s one of a growing genre of games which rely on simple and strong core mechanics rather than an abundance of content, because the fun which you have with those mechanics creates an infinite amount of said content.

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1317480293&fileuploadsuccess=1
However, those games still need to have enough varied and different content to allow those mechanics to actually be fully realized and to truly shine. Fossil Hunters seems to have some of that, just not nearly enough. The objectives seem to be all the the same, put together a certain kind of dinosaur with the parts you find throughout the level and then head back to the elevator and leave. This isn’t a significant issues but it shows a disturbing trend in the gaming industry, especially when it comes to indie games. All too often games are barely providing enough content, and instead inserting a multiplayer or co-op component as a replacement. The game then just becomes a method by which you and your friends have fun, and instead of enjoying the game, you end up enjoying your friends’ company. I’m not trying to make it sound as if there’s no way you can have fun in the company of your friends and also enjoy a game, but there’s a serious problem when your game is barebones and relies on people to have good times with their friends instead of you doing your job and providing good experiences for them. If you couldn’t tell, Fossil Hunters does have a multiplayer component, though I honestly don’t see any real benefit to it. Although I haven’t played it, it seems like a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. The levels are already filled with dozens of chunks of fossil-containing rock, so it isn’t like you’ve got that much space to begin with. Adding up to four players on top of that might sound like a fair bit of fun, but I can’t imagine anything would actually get done, besides making everyone ragequit 20 minutes in. Tagging onto what I said about group play, you can pick one of four characters when you start the game, each having their own distinct look and feel, but seemingly being entirely devoid of any kind of impactful difference. I get that they can’t be giving characters abilities that could hurt the singleplayer experience, but I genuinely feel as though they could have at least given them something to make each character feel different from the next. With its flaws kept in mind, I definitely do enjoy playing Fossil Hunters. Its multiplayer component is unignorable and quite honestly unnecessary, but the premise behind the game, and the dinosaur building itself, is actually a lot of fun. I can appreciate that yes, it’s a very obviously indie game and has its fair share of flaws, but does what it’s trying to do well and with a degree of professionalism almost resembling a Nintendo title in some places.

While I don't particularly like seeing many indie games go in the same direction trying to force multiplayer where it doesn't fit, I can't argue that Fossil Hunters is a fun little time-waster that makes me feel like a kid again.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

If nautical nonsense is something you wish, then buy Salt; Recommended Purchase


There’s plenty of open-world survival games out there on the market, but not too many of them actually manage to slither from the absolute hellhole that is Steam Early Access. Salt miraculously did just that, and I think as such it’s definitely worthy of a look at the very least. It’s a game about naval exploration back in the time of pirates and swashbuckling adventures, and as such has a massive focus on naval exploration. Coincidentally that’s also my favorite part of the game, all the nautical nonsense that can be done with little more than a raft and copious amounts of ambition. Before I decide to nosedive into the game as a whole, I’d like to address some of the obvious problems that may turn potential buyers away at the doors. The biggest of these is the graphics, and more specifically, the player models themselves. Now, I didn’t experience this to as bad a degree considering I played alone and as such didn’t really interact with too many other people, but it’s clearly a problem. It’s definitely a sad state of things when I can best compare your models to those present in Roblox, and there seems to have been absolutely zero work put into them at all. It’s extremely disorienting, going from island to island in your swashbuckling escapades, killing wildlife and exploring jungles, only to be interrupted at first sight of one of the aforementioned disfigured monstrosities. Not only did it take me out of the experience, it honestly just made me laugh, and that’s not really what you want your player to be feeling when they’re in the middle of combat or attempting to uncover story. On top of the hilariously horrendous player and NPC models, another issue is that of the combat. It’s not particularly good, however it also isn’t particularly bad in any way either. That’s the problem though, it just feels like it could have been more than it currently is. Like there was a pool of potential for these devs, but even over the course of a little over three years they still managed to ignore it. I have no real problems with how the combat is now, it’s definitely functional and, in some cases, a lot of fun. However in a game where I found myself fighting fairly often, it’s pathetic that the only real options for attacking are to hit them, and to hit them slightly harder.


Both the player models and the overly basic combat are minor complaints in an otherwise well-rounded adventure game. In the patch released when they pulled Salt out of early access they also added a main story, however I ignored it almost instantly and instead chose to head island to island in search of plunder. Just about every island has something for you to do, although it’s usually only that one thing. What I mean by this is that if you go to an island that has an objective for killing a bunch of pirates, that’s the only objective you’ll have on the entire island. So although they’re all different objectives, there’s still only one per island. Regardless of how many objectives each island has, they all feel rewarding and incentivize you to take part in whatever that islands task might be. For an island holding a hunting challenge, I’d find a tall cabin decked out with some armor and weapons, all ready to be swiped once I killed the required amount of deer. I like that you actually have a reason to do these objectives, as all too often games put the objectives there for you to do, but don’t actually give you any real reason to do them. Something else I think that Salt does well is give a feeling of genuine realism without actually having too many realistic mechanics. I think the premise of the game itself, coupled with the extremely minimalistic way the game is made, makes for a weird experience where you don’t have too many particularly realistic mechanics, yet all the same you feel as if you’re actually there. It’s a difficult feeling to describe, but it’s what makes Salt able to pull you in with gameplay that’s really rather simple. Your time on these high seas is going to be spent either crafting, killing, or sailing, and that’s surprisingly enough to keep you occupied. However I haven’t gotten too far into Salt and I certainly haven’t even touched the main storyline, but as it stands now I feel that there’s enough content here to almost, in places, make the game feel like simulator rather than an arcade-y survival game.

Swashbuckling fun! Roaming the high seas and plundering a variety of islands is a blast, and Salt does a perfect job of making you feel immersed in the role of both an explorer and a pirate; the only problem is the all too average combat and horrendous player models.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

An extraordinarily fun, pulse-pounding co-op game that desperately needs more players; Purchase on a sale


To me, multiplayer only games belong to that of a dying breed. One which forces the player into a certain mode of gameplay that’s both unreliable and prone to quickly dying off. The problem with a game being multiplayer only is that it’s incredibly unpredictable and relies wholly on one important thing: that the game actually has a significant playerbase. However, especially with smaller indie games in the same market as Treadnauts, that’s something that’s incredibly hard to actually guarantee. Players often flirt between different indie games from one weekend to the next, just to experience the mass variety that the indie market truly has to offer. By extension then, smaller games have a serious problem of audience retention and struggle to keep player counts from falling. Now, if your game is singleplayer only, or even singleplayer with a multiplayer component, this problem is essentially neutralized and turns into a minor complaint. However this is the exact opposite when it comes to multiplayer exclusive titles, of which Treadnauts is one, and that raises many new concerns as well as a matching amount of problems. Treadnauts has an extremely small, even if passionate, community and struggles to hold double digit player counts throughout even the most busy hours of the day. So you can see where this would be a problem in a game where being able to actually play is reliant solely on there being enough people for you to start a game. When I first played the game, I was overjoyed to see that there was online matchmaking, something that many multiplayer only indie titles seem to have thrown to the wayside in favor of local co-op. However upon queing for a match I quickly realized that no matter how long I waited for them, the players simply wouldn’t come. While I appreciate immensely the fact that they even chose to include such matchmaking, the fact that no players are actively taking part in the search que nullifies it entirely. As such, you have a miniscule chance of actually finding a game without outside help, a chance so slim it verges on none. Considering this is an online-only title, that inability to find a match at any reasonably rate means that you’re essentially buying a game that you only play “sometimes”.


The only factor which redeems Treadnauts crippling inability to find you a decent game is the fact that there’s a decently sized community outside of the game to help put together matches. The Discord channel that I was linked to had a few dozen people in it, however even in this hub of players it still took me almost an hour to find someone willing to play. The day before when I went in to try and find people, I found nothing for hours and then right after I went AFK for a while, a match popped up. So definitely don’t count on any reliable playerbase to be present. However understand that when you do get a match, it’s one of the most thrilling experiences you can possibly have. Tank on tank combat is fluid and incredibly attractive from a visual standpoint, and the maps and characters are no different. There’s five or so different characters for you to toy with, and while they each have their own visually distinct look, they aren’t at all different from a gameplay perspective. No matter who you’re playing as you can jump, shoot, and speed around the map with the same ability and grace as any other player out there. Treadnauts isn’t a game about picking the best character or equipping the best equipment, but instead about pure and unadulterated skill. That also means that since you aren’t really playing through content like missions or levels, and instead you’re organically forming experiences. For a game like Treadnauts this way of doing things works much better and essentially means that you’ll never get bored or run out of content regardless of how long you play. It’s a simple game with simple mechanics, but those simple mechanics somehow evolve into the realm of “Easy to learn, hard to master” quicker than you can say “what do you mean it’s only 13 bucks?”. Again, while it may be hard to actually get into a game, the gameplay itself is impeccable. Flying around the map shooting rockets at each other never gets old, and the destructible environments of some levels make for interestingly unique experiences every time. There’s a good variety of maps too, and as I mentioned before, every single one of them has such an incredibly attractive art style that I was left begging for more. I truly hope to see this game blossom, and if it didn’t have such a low player count it would be a significantly more appealing purchase. As it stands however, get it on sale, and make sure you don’t end up missing out on such an exemplary game.

Brilliantly designed, Treadnauts brings a fresh take on co-op gameplay that sadly you have little chance of actually experiencing due to a minuscule playerbase at best.

Check out my Youtube channel for hilarious playthroughs of other such games!

A gorgeous platforming experience on a sweet, slow burn; Necessary Purchase

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1299080127
Being blind and playing a platforming game are two things you would imagine should never go together, but Candleman somehow not only merges the two, but does so in a cutely unique way. You are Candleman, a somehow sentient candle who becomes absolutely enamoured with a lighthouse he sees in the distance, and journeys to become just as bright. It’s an adorable quest, and it’s hilarious when I think about how emotionally attached I got to this sentient stick of wax, but that speaks only to the developers credit. I don’t know how they managed to make me empathetic towards a stick of wax that’s not only faceless, but also voiceless, but they somehow did. The whole shtick of the game is that, since you’re a candle, you can’t burn forever. Now you might ask, why do you need to burn? Well burning is the only way you can produce light, with a few environmental exceptions, and considering the entire world is pitch black, you’re definitely going to need light. It’s such a fantastic idea for a game, and they pulled it off impeccably. The controls are tight and extremely responsive, making for platforming that feels like that of a classic rather than that of an indie game. On top of that the game’s premise is not only filled with potential, but they’ve made sure to expertly wield every bit of that potential to craft an exemplary experience. What impresses me even more about these developers is that they designed all of the environments in the most beautiful way, even though you’re only going to see them for a couple of seconds at a time. When it comes to environment design, there’s only about three different ones you’re going to see. You’ve got levels in the deepest darkest bowels of an abandoned ship, then levels in a vicious jungle, and finally levels in the stoney lighthouse. It seems like this wouldn’t be enough variety, but considering how little of a candle you are, everything is on a much smaller scale. Meaning that you’re only experiencing a small part of each of those environments every level, and it’s such a small part that there’s plenty for you to see later on. I can’t say enough good things about how they’ve designed Candleman. From the environments, all the way down to the idea of the game itself, it’s just such a special game in a genre where innovation is hard to come by.

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1299645596
The game’s main mechanic, the limited burn time of your candle, fits perfectly for a platforming game. It means that you have to learn your environment, and actually remember where things were and are, because you may not have enough wax left to see for yourself. Total burn time for your candle is something like thirty seconds, which sounds like barely anything at all, but if you ration it out you’ll find it’s just enough. You also have ten lives for each level, and each time you respawn you’re given some wax, though I don’t think it’s actually a full stick. No matter how good you think you are, just by nature of the game-induced blindness you’re going to die. I personally found myself constantly falling off of platforms and missing jumps because I either didn’t have enough wax, or was just too cocky to use it. What’s interesting however, is that I rarely found myself angry at the game, instead I just laughed it off and got right back into it. I think that’s because the game is just so adorable and beautiful, and every one of its facets so unique, so that I just couldn’t find any reason to get mad. The soothing music instantly killed any anger I had, and if that hadn’t done the trick then the adorable narration and character itself would have finished the job. It’s just such a fantastic platforming experience, constantly adding new environmental mechanics that you need to either utilize or work around. These additions also fit incredibly well with the environments you go through, for example in the jungle you encounter all sorts of plants that each react differently. In the deepest bowels of the abandoned ship however, you’ll encounter mechanical obstacles like spouts of flame spawning from broken pipes or coded doors which you need to unlock. It’s nothing major, at least until you get to the jungle, but it’s loads of fun to see just what new things you’ll encounter next. The new stuff is introduced just at the right time too, exactly when you start to get bored of the last mechanic, something new gets thrown into the mix and shakes everything up.

A fantastic idea for a game that's been perfectly executed. Exemplary environmental design, an innovative main mechanic that expertly ties in with the main character, and such amusingly adorable gameplay that you'll never want to stop playing.

Let me know what you thought of this review in the comments below!

Mopping away the evidence, one grotesque body at a time; Necessary Purchase

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1295567725&fileuploadsuccess=1
Imagine a scene straight from one of the most gruesome levels of Hotline Miami. Smoking bullet casings litter the ground, bodies exposed in twisted positions and tossed around the map like ragdolls. Each wall is painted in so much blood you wouldn’t even be able to tell the original color, or that there was anything other than a red void there in the first place. Now after all of that carnage, after the killer’s ravenous appetite for blood has finally been sated, imagine you have to come in and clean it all up. That’s the premise behind Serial Cleaner, a strange little indie game set way back in the 1970’s when police were neither as technologically advanced or as competent as they are today. These lax lawmen are on the hunt for a killer running rampant throughout this tiny little town, and it’s your job to sneak in after he’s had his fun and give the whole scene the good ol’ spit n’ shine. That’s way easier said than done, but regardless you’re being paid to clean so clean you will. The main challenge is the most obvious one: the cops. They’ve completely infested the crime scenes and have its majority mapped out and surveilled, meaning that you have to pull off some Dishonored-level antics if you want to out-mop the cops. Again, easier said than done. Ironically for a game about mopping up blood and evidence, the controls are slippery as can be, often resulting in you missing a narrow turn because your character decided to fill his shoes with ice that morning and now can’t get a solid footing. It’s ridiculously frustrating trying to outrun the cops, and successfully doing so, only to be thwarted because Janitor John slipped and went head-first into the wall. Jokes aside, it’s a minor issue that doesn’t interrupt gameplay too frequently, and as such isn’t worthy of much more scorn. Through each of the 20 levels you’re going to be required to collect pieces of evidence, mop up blood stains, and play the body snatcher for all victims you find, often having to do all three. It may not sound like it, but when you actually get into the level and get a good look at everything, you realize how much work that ends up being. I don’t have a problem with doing the work, I have a problem with being forced to completely do it over again when I get caught, because that’s absurdity in the extreme. Which is what you have to do, by the way, each and every time those dastardly coppers smack the cuffs on you. It wouldn’t feel like as big of a problem were it not for the randomness of each level. They’re always randomized, with the different bodies or pieces of evidence spawning in different places each time you try the mission. It’s just incredibly frustrating not only having to restart every time you fail, but having to deal with completely switched around spawning locations.

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That’s not to say that the levels are completely devoid of fun, not in the slightest. It just means that you have to wade through a quagmire of frustration at times to get to the fun, which I imagine is the same thing for some. Even if you repeatedly fail every mission, at least you’ll get to have some truly fantastic and beautiful thematic art to keep you occupied. Since the game is set in the 70’s, the art style has lots of different colors and enough wood paneling to make a lumberjack kill himself. It fits well with the setting and the way all of the characters are though, and it results in an experience that feels both distinctly 70’s, yet HD and modern in its own ways. I think that the 70’s was the absolute perfect time in which to have Serial Cleaner take place, with cops not having the technology with which they operate using today, making it all the easier for things to slip through the cracks. I can’t imagine it would have been nearly as fun of an experience if it took place in the modern day. Sneaking around some crime scene, only to get spotted by a satellite thousands of feet in the air and have the authorities immediately dispatched. However it doesn’t take place in the modern day and it’s all the better for it. Something I also like is how they don’t force a story down your throat, because some games just don’t need one. The gist of it is that you’re a cleaner for a few different clients and have the sole responsibility of picking up after they’ve gone through and trashed the place. Some of your clients you know personally, like your friend Joe, whom you play poker with on the weekends, while others are more mysterious. The mysterious character’s identity is never interesting enough for me to have actively demanded to know more, but it was enough for me to always have that little curious thought in the back of my head.

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It’s definitely a fantastic game, but the difficulty is pretty much the only reason it took me as long as it did to complete, and even that was still a measly handful of hours. Were it not for that, this would have been a quick two hours and then done experience, which I think would have made it feel much worse. From what I’ve seen, the difficulty is the main complaint of the majority of negative reviews and I personally don’t see that as a justified complaint. At least not for the game as a whole, because it’s definitely a real problem in a handful of spots. I’ve seen lots of arguing coming from both sides of this; on one hand it does get a bit excessive in some places, and frustrating in others, but it’s also an extremely satisfying challenge throughout most of the game. What’s more, the game has that Hotline Miami style respawn system where it wastes absolutely no time letting you get back into the action, so you never feel like you’re being forced to sit there and boil over. I get that it seems frustrating, but it seems like a lot of people are forming their opinions about the game based on the most frustrating moments and only the most frustrating moments. Don’t mistake me, there are some extremely valid complaints to be had with the difficulty, but they’re only a problem in about two or three of the twenty different story levels. It’s a problem, just not as big of one as it’s made out to be. If you aren’t a fan of the story missions though, there are some unlockable side missions where you clean up various scenes from movies, which is both nostalgic and well-executed. Overall I’m a big fan of Serial Cleaner. While yes, the difficulty could absolutely use a tweak, or even a full rework on some levels, the funky music and art style, as well as the strong core gameplay, truly make for a fantastic experience regardless.

With a gorgeous 70's aesthetic firmly grasped in one hand, and an innovative concept clutched in the other, Serial Cleaner makes for one of the most unique games I've ever played, and is definitely a hell of a lot of fun.

Let me know what you thought of this review in the comments below!

Exemplary combat hampered by just about everything else; Purchase only on a heavy sale


I count Mount and Blade among my favorite series of all time, and one which I will both never forget and never stop playing. Many a time I wondered what this would be like if it took place in the modern day instead of the medieval era, and after playing Freeman: Guerilla Warfare I have a pretty good idea. If I told you FGW was a similar game to Mount and Blade I’d be lying, it’s the exact same game just with a different setting and some extremely minor gameplay tweaks. The character stats screen is the exact same, the town system is the same, if not worse, and even the overland max is pixel for pixel a mimicry of Mount and Blade. The only thing I can say that’s even remotely different is the pre-battle screen where you can send out orders to your squads, other than that? Nothing. I suppose the fact that the men under your command are in squads, as opposed to just being individuals of a certain class, is unique, but it’s not in a particularly good way. See, FGW has a system of morale for your squads. If it gets too low, they run away at the first signs of combat, and even if they don’t they’ll face significant penalties to effectiveness. This is absurd. Mount and Blade did see you worry about morale, but it wasn’t nearly as bad because it actually went up by a significant amount if you won battles or increased certain skills. In FGW, the only real way for you to increase squad morale is to give them a pay reward of a couple hundred dollars, and though you can get morale from winning battles it’s such an insignificant amount that it doesn’t matter. In FGW you’re already going to be tight on money, so having the only way to really increase morale be through pay makes for yet another drain on your already almost exhausted resources. That’s not the only drain however, you also have to deal with absurd troop wages and weapon costs. You start out with a squad of volunteers and a squad of militiamen, with the latter being significantly better than the former in just about every way. If you want to upgrade or pick up some better squads, you have to be prepared to pay out the wazoo for the privilege. This makes it incredibly hard to actually upgrade the men who fight alongside you. I hate this, because the AI is great and I’d love to make better use of it with stronger teammates. However even if I could afford their initial cost, better squads are simply not viable for the long-term. On top of increased wages, you also have to pay respawn costs for every single man that dies in the squad, each costing hundreds to replace. It’s just frustrating feeling like your resources are constantly being drained while your enemies only grow stronger.


When you start the game, you’re given a pathetic loadout of just a single 9mm handgun and some fragmentation grenades, while the squads beside you carry full assault rifles and submachine guns. So you’re forced to almost wholly rely on your squadmates to do all the work for you, having to sit in hidden cover so that you make it out alive. Like Mount and Blade, FGW ends the battle if your commander dies, which is quite possibly the dumbest mechanic in the whole damn game. If you die and choose to send your men in without, never expect to win. Even though you may have crack troops and top-tier weapons, you’ll still lose 9/10 times. It seems the AI has swung the entirely opposite direction on the pendulum. Whereas the in-battle AI listens to your commands and tactically operates, they seem to turn into lobotomites when you’re not there, losing battles where the enemy is both outgunned and outnumbered. If you do manage to lose all your men, you may as well just start a new game instead of trying to work your way back to where you previously were. What was perfect about Mount and Blade is that no matter where you were, you could always find a town nearby to recruit ambitious peasants to fight and die at your side. This meant that regardless of how bad you messed up you always had a way to replenish your army and head out to win back the day. In FGW, even the most basic of volunteer squads with the most inadequate stats and dirt-poor gear costs way more than it should, meaning if you make a mistake it’s almost impossible to recover. The root of all my problems comes back to that one point: you never have enough money to actually get to the fun parts of the game. In a game like Mount and Blade, you can just do quests for different lords, compete in a tournament, become a merchant, or even rob small towns if you had enough men. In FGW you can’t do nearly as much. You can either loot the armies which you’ve conquered for some money and random plunder, or run dry and starve. That’s about it. There are quests in the game, but I went to dozens of different armies and every single one told me that they had no work available for me. I went around and checked the towns and, you may have guessed it, they were devoid of any sort of paying work as well. So I don’t know if there actually are quests for you to do or not, because the only ones I ever had in my quest log were the few that you start off with. Things like annihilate another faction or control 10 towns, things you simply can’t do without more resources.


If it sounds like I’ve got a serious bone to pick with this game, well that’s because I do. While I’ve compared the game itself to Mount and Blade, the combat in particular is closer to that of ARMA. It’s incredibly tense and equally tactical, making for some memorable engagements that felt borderline real. Every gun you pick up has the most satisfying kick and feels like you’re out on the range instead of playing a video game. I was overjoyed when I fired even the most basic handgun, and don’t even get me started on my feelings once I finally acquired an assault rifle. Not only is the act of firing the guns themselves satisfying, but commanding your men in the midst of battle, while being extremely basic, makes you feel like a badass squad leader. Some of the sounds need a bit of work, but the gunplay itself is impeccable and the aspect of command is something I would love to see improved upon. Sadly though, there’s a catch. You can never get the most satisfying weapons like the AK-47 or the M4 because you’ve spent all your money trying to keep the various squads under your employ from deserting. You can’t afford to buy better squads to make even more money because you’re too busy trying to scrounge up the weekly pay for your squad. Which sucks not only because it’s annoying and discouraging for the player to deal with, it also makes it borderline impossible to get to the actually fun part of the game: the combat. I could go on for hours and hours, spewing page after page of praise for the combat in this game, but there wouldn’t be a point. It doesn’t matter if the later parts of your game are perfect if you can’t ever get there in the first place because the early parts of the game are too frustrating and grindy. It’s not fun, and it shows the game not only holds no respect for your time, but holds just as little respect for your money. Sad as it is, the one or two redeeming aspects of Freeman: Guerilla Warfare are gated by so many absolutely infuriating trivialities that it’s just not worth your time.

Trivial core mechanics constantly hamstring the only good part of Freeman: Guerilla Warfare, the combat, and keep it from truly shining.

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Nothing too new, but nothing done poorly; Purchase on a sale

If Devil May Cry and Lethal League had a malformed child, then this would be it. Hidden Dragon: Legend is essentially a 2.5D Devil May Cry, and I mean that in the best way I possibly can. It’s fast paced when it comes to combat, yet it also offers you brief moments of respite to look around and pick over a few of the nooks and crannies. Not that there’s really that many of them of course, this is a 2.5D action game so it isn’t as if you have that many options. By not many options I really mean none at all. There’s pretty much no exploration for you to do whatsoever, which kinda sucks because the game takes place in a mystical oriental land, which is literally the perfect setting for a game chock full of exploration and secrets. However, this is where I’m first let down. I’m fully aware that this is a 2.5D game so it’s going to be severely limited, but with the fantastic environments and the creepy story, I think even a minimal amount of exploration would have been beneficial in a major way. Regardless of that gripe, the levels are otherwise laid out rather well, with intriguing backdrops that actually make you want to be there, instead of feeling forced. Now, I made comparisons to Devil May Cry, and I feel that’s incredibly accurate. The combat is all about you stringing together combos to get enough energy to cast special attacks. These special attacks are pretty enjoyable to use but ultimately end up being useless because the game is just too easy. What I mean by this is, with the exception of bosses, every enemy can be knocked down by your basic attack, essentially stun-locking them until they die. If you’re able to get all the enemies on one side and stun-lock them like this, it literally rips any difficulty out of the game and makes it just a LMB spam fest. The enemies I was talking about though are extremely cool, being different variants of typical oriental themed enemies such as ninjas and the like. They vary the gameplay enough for it to feel different, but still similar enough to be recognizably the same. This is a rare occasion for me, because there’s just so little that I can say about Hidden Dragon: Legend. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, it’s just nothing new. It’s the same old 2.5D hack-and-slash gameplay with a more interesting setting and some basic enemies to go right along with it. I can’t say too many unique things about the game because it doesn’t really have anything unique. The story is bland, the gameplay is satisfying but average and uninnovative, and the setting is really the only thing differentiating the game from others in the genre.

While it's nothing more than an average hack-and-slash game with a 2.5D view, I found the setting to be enough to both make Hidden Dragon stand out, and be worth a purchase.