Perfectly Fine: A Koihime Enbu Review

Roger Ebert once said "Of each thing, ask, who is it for?" He was, of course, talking about the medium of film, but it's a useful metric for criticism in general. For instance, critiquing a racy visual novel on the quantity of fanservice is kind of useless, since that's exactly why people are playing it. Similarly, critiquing a fighting game for average fighting game things isn't really intuitive to the people who want to know if a fighting game's any good, regardless of whether or not the reviewer is actually any good at fighting games.

So with this in mind, I decided to figure out whether or not Koihime Enbu, the 2D fighting game based on the Koihime Musou visual novel series, is a good fighting game, regardless of whether or not I like fighting games all that much. 

For those not familiar, Koihime Musou is essentially Romance of the Three Kingdoms, except every character is actually a cute girl. The visual novel involves the usual ordinary Japanese high school student who is yanked into this world and gains an unwanted harem of strategists, generals, rules, and the like. Koihime Enbu's story is that this same cast of cute strategists and generals and the like have decided to have a fighting tournament for a mystical seal of power. That's all there really is to the plot. Which is more or less okay, because unless you're Mortal Kombat or something, fighting games don't have an immense wealth of plot. It's basically an excuse to get characters to kick the crap out of each other. 

As a fighting game, however, it's decidedly okay. While there isn't a lot of information or a bevy of practice modes a la Skullgirls, the game has a low difficulty curve, each character has a small and very manageable list of supermoves, and mashing buttons doesn't feel like a bad strategy, just one that needs to be curtailed. While the game barely explains the concepts to people who have never played a fighting game before, I didn't feel like I was in over my head, the same way I am every time I pick up a copy of Marvel Vs. Capcom or something similar. It's manageable, and manageable is good. There's really only one mechanic you need to master, and that's the Tactician system, where a companion you pick from one or two choices is able to give you a conditional special move to immobilize or otherwise open your opponent to attack. 

Yeah. About right.

The character variety is also fairly decent, though the simplified controls mean that pretty much every character will play the same way. Sure, there are occasional minor variations in moveset or whatever, but each character will more or less work the same, with only super moves (which I myself find hard to get off, but that's a personal problem, not a mechanical one) to differentiate between them. Compared to other fighting games, where the style and tone can differ wildly from character to character, or at least more than aesthetics and one or two moves. It made me feel like my choice in character was a little meaningless. It's a shame, because the designs are really cool, if anime characters are your thing at all. 

In the end, though, while it's a good game, it's also a game where you won't get very much out of it you can't get elsewhere. Skullgirls, the current high-water mark for fighting games on the PC, is much better. Mortal Kombat, even at its weakest, is much better. If you're a fan of Koihime Musou, maybe this might be for you. But otherwise, it's just too plain and bare-bones to recommend. 

Final Score: 3/5

Full Disclosure: The reviewer received a free copy of this game for the purposes of review.

Massive Property Damage: A Brigador Review

It's difficult to tell, sometimes, whether a game's difficulty and controls are truly to blame, or whether it's just that I've got really stupid fingers. Brigador is one of these times.

The game has an excellent look and feel, the sinister synths and isometric explosions creating just the right atmosphere for an odd early '90s-looking twin-stick shooter. It's also got tank controls that feel odd with mouse aim, so that your body is always pointed in a direction other than where you want to move. But in spite of all this, it's a challenging and ultimately kind of satisfying game in a way few are. 

As the distorted opening text tells the player, Great Leader, the despotic leader of a military faction called Solo Nobre, has been assassinated. You play a mercenary pilot in an overpowered mech, contracted to destroy the remains of his Loyalists, take down all the orbital cannons on the surface of the planet, and cause as much property damage as humanly possible. Levels find you crushing everything in your way and getting to the exit, utilizing a combination of stealth, tactics, and whatever weapons of mass destruction you currently have your tank outfitted with. And while the levels are fun trying to out-think your opponents, it's more fun just to stomp them with whatever you have at your disposal. 

The game plays from a three-quarters isometric perspective, with mostly blank black space apart from the terrain and the vehicles in it. As the levels go on, the graphics open up, but everything stays in a kind of lo-fi 3-D feel. There are, however, a variety of enemies that fling themselves against your mech at breakneck pace, and some of them even succeed. The levels might be missions to destroy, but the gameplay is incredibly satisfying because of this, and they offer a wide range of ways to destroy. Depending on what mech design you pick, you could be playing with stealth and working your way across the map under cover, zipping over it in an A-Grav, or just stomping your way through Loyalist troops with a gigantic metal walker. 

It's here that some of the issues begin to set in. First, that the game's controls are tank controls, no pun intended. Which, when also connected to mouselook, means you are rarely moving in the right direction until you get the hang of the weird control setup and look at the arrow telling you which way to orient. The other problem with the controls is that they require you to be precise. You cannot aim in the direction of things in Brigador and hope to hit stuff; you have to be exact in what you aim at and then hope to hit. Which, when things are moving around quickly (as are you), is almost impossible to do. The Showdown Effect had a similar problem, in that it was difficult to shoot and aim and not get hit by everything as you jumped around. This is like that, but on a much less frustrating level. 

My dilemma, however, is figuring out whether this is my issue with the game, or a legitimate game issue. I'm the kind of person who winds up impaled on a difficulty spike rather than clearing it, and the challenges presented in Brigador are ones to which I am not normally acclimated, having become soft and complacent after years of very slow-paced action games and the like. 

Should the tank controls and bad aiming and general dark aesthetic not turn you off, however, Brigador is an excellent throwback to an age where things didn't have to be easy, humor and fluff writing enriched even the sparsest of settings, and blowing stuff up was really, really cool. Give this one a try. Though maybe not for the current price. 

3/5

Disclosure: The user received a copy of this game for the purposes of writing this review

Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure: A Big Cynical Review

Having been an aficionado of adventure games over the years, I understand that they aren't without their difficulties. For every Monkey Island or Space Quest, there are four that take the route of Phantasmagoria* and about six different games featuring puzzles with solutions that read like poorly translated stereo instructions. While it's the easiest genre to design for (no combat algorithms or anything like that, clean narrative with a few branches) it's also one of the easiest to screw up. All it takes is one puzzle where processor speed determines difficulty, or pouring whiskey into the gas tank of a car to fuel up a spaceship, or an infuriating pixel hunt and instantly people will throw up their hands and uninstall in annoyance. 

Which is what I felt like doing multiple times with Demetrios: The Big Cynical Adventure. With its slow-moving plot, absolutely loathsome main character, constant pixel hunts, impenetrable logic, and poorly designed minigames, it feels less like an adventure game and more like someone assembled a collection of exactly what not to do in an adventure game, then decided to show it off in adventure game form. 

Demetrios starts with Bjorn Thonen receiving a phone call in the middle of the night, alerting him to grave danger. A few moments later, he's beaten over the head and his house is robbed, including a piece of a mysterious bird statue he has in his apartment. Bjorn immediately sets out to figure out who attacked him, and who is murdering antiques dealers over the bird statues. Of course, because Bjorn is, in adventure game tradition, an inept jackwagon, he spends his time annoying people and committing minor crimes in an effort to achieve his goals. Adding to this is a tremendous amount of gross-out "humor," everything from fart jokes to a puzzle involving vomit. 

The game itself takes place on static, hand-drawn screens, where clicking on various hotspots will reveal more about the area, or allow the player to interact with various things.  The puzzles are all fairly simple in construction, with a lot of it being "Take item to someone else," or "assemble a recipe" rather than the longer and more esoteric Rube Goldberg puzzles found elsewhere. This does not in any way, however, make them easy. Even with a handy menu to tell you what direction to go in, and reveal what you can interact with on the screen, some things are incredibly obscure. They assume that the player will visit every location, even ones they have no reason to go back to, just to get the next event flag to trigger. Sometimes you have to talk repeatedly to people with no indication that you haven't exhausted all the dialogue, and try every option repeatedly until they give up their information, which they don't always do. 

The hint system is just as obscure, relying on finding secret collectibles by dragging your cursor over every inch of the screen to find cookies, which Bjorn then eats while giving some hint about what to do next. Which means you not only have to spend your time looking for difficult to find collectibles that sometimes don't even show up on screen, and are then treated to gulping and smacking noises (you will hear a lot of gross eating noises on the soundtrack. If anyone gets an ASMR reaction from listening to people chew with their mouth open, have I got a game for you) while Bjorn complains about eating another cookie and then drops a hint that more often than not is about useful as the infamous "FIND DON. GIVE HIM WHAT HE NEEDS!" from the aforementioned Phantasmagoria. 

This would be forgivable if the game was at least the slightest bit funny or clever. There are plenty of games out there that have a similar sense of humor. Deponia has a fairly loathsome protagonist who sells people into slavery and screws over his friends for his own profit, but there's some charm, and the character is actively trying to better himself, even if he's a selfish jackass. The humor is also sharper than just trying to make gross-out versions of hoary old adventure cliches. But after the fifth time I had Bjorn eat something off the ground (seriously, with a single-click interface, it gets really annoying when this happens) accompanied by stomach-churning licking noises, or making some joke about how he pops a boner when his hot neighbor is around (so he better not have any sharp objects in his pocket) it just becomes tiresome and sad. Compounding things, the pacing is glacial, spending two chapters on the beginning of the game, when the plot doesn't even begin to get started until halfway through the second. 

As far as all of this goes, I feel at least the slightest bit bad about bashing a game which appears to be the first effort from French-based COWCAT Games. Judging by the art style, this is a bunch of people who just wanted to put a game together, and then went ahead and did so. But their game being a perfect storm of awful jokes, terrible puzzles, and just poor design decisions goes beyond just first-time jitters and the result is a borderline unplayable mess.

I'm going to have to say that this one's a miss. Unless you really like vomit jokes, gross noises, and obtuse, static adventure environments, in which case COWCAT has captured your exact target demographic. Hopefully COWCAT is just working out their birthing pains and will come up with something a little better. There's a good idea buried under all this refuse. I'll just be damned if I want to go looking for it. 

1/5

*I like Phantasmagoria, really, I do. I love the town of Mpawomsett and its inhabitants. But I'm not gonna defend it. 

Full Disclosure: The reviewer received a copy of this game for the purposes of reviewing it

Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart Review

Where do I even begin with this one? 

Okay, so for the past few years, there's been a franchise known as Hyperdimension Neptunia. The general concept is that the games industry is anthropomorphized as a land called Gamindustri, ruled over by warring goddesses who have "console wars" to determine supremacy and games companies are depicted as anthropomorphized anime characters. 

Inexplicably, this has grown into a massive franchise of games, one of which is Hyperdevotion Noire, an alternate universe game where the anime goddess representing the Sony systems has taken over everything. 

It's also not very good.

The plot of the game is fairly simple. Noire, the dark goddess, has conquered Gamarket. All she has left to do is cement her rule, which she tries to do with the help of a traveling fortune teller. Surprising no one, the evil-looking, evil-sounding fortune teller decides to take all the combined power, leave Noire powerless, and forces her to conquer Gamindustri all over again, recruiting friends and allies from her former generals along the way.,

The game takes the form of a tactical strategy game: Each turn, you move over hexes, attacking enemies and trying to complete objectives. Your weapons also do damage based on facing, element, and what abilities you use, as well as what weapons in general you're using. But, problems set in with the basic gameplay soon after, as combat gets kind of tedious when all you do is run around to the back of your opponent, hit them, and then wait for them to run around so you can take your turn again. The optional elements on the battlefield do add something, but it's miniscule at best.

That wasn't even the most egregious thing about the game. That would be the kind of fourth-wall premise to the whole thing. You, the player, are a male secretary assigned to help Noire restore herself to power. You're also kind of a perv. Now, I understand that yes, this game has a target audience, and yes, that target audience has some very specific tastes, but seriously, I felt like making the player a character and that kind of character made me want to play the game less. It just felt forced and cheap. And unnecessary. 

The story also isn't that great unless you're already a huge fan. I can imagine that Noire's story might be something of a treat for the faithful, but I couldn't hit "X" fast enough to get rid of it all. It also didn't seem connected to the game for more than the occasional excuse. While it's true that both the plot and the game open up as Noire begins her conquest of the various lands all over again, it all feels static and linear. This could be excused-- even the worst writing can be okay in the right vehicle (and I'm looking at you, Dark Souls and Fallout 4), but with everything else, the boring mechanics, the arbitrary decisions, and the creepy overtones, it just gets buried under more and more of the same. 

And they're also super-deformed! Thus removing all the appeal of the Console Waifu franchise!

In the end, Hyperdevotion Noire is kind of just airless and cheerless. It's an okay game, but an okay game in a franchise that has seen much better titles is just that-- okay. Spend your money on something that won't put you to sleep, and maybe wait until this goes on sale. Until then, there are probably six or seven visual novels that might scratch your itch much, much better. 

2/5

Full Disclosure: The reviewer received a copy of this game for review.

Marble Mountain Review

Marble Mountain, the new game from LightningRock Studios, is relaxing. With its bouncy synth soundtrack, bright color palette, and levels with just the right amount of challenge, it isn't the frustrating grind of most other arcade style games, but offers more challenge and depth than the average casual game. It's the perfect chillout game, the kind of thing you can do when you just need a break from everything. While not without flaws, it's just a low-key, fun game, and that's really all it needs to be. 

Marble Mountain is fairly simple. You guide a marble along mazes, sometimes having to push switches or navigate terrain as you go, occasionally having to solve movement puzzles or navigate around enemies. There are traps and secret passages hidden throughout, and there are optional gold coins to collect for one hundred percent completion. Other than collecting the coins and getting to the end goal, there's not a ton of other things you need to do-- there are, of course, secret marbles to unlock, but overall, it's fairly simple.

And that's all it needs to be. Everything about the game, from the simple controls to the way you're just allowed to explore everywhere, to the soundtrack, is relaxing. Rolling around levels is incredibly satisfying in a way, as it just allows you to slide into a groove for a while as the marble rolls down slopes and around giant gears. It's a game that moves at its own pace, and the dynamic environments allow for that. 

But it's not without flaws, and this is where it's a bit of a letdown. The controls for the marble are beyond slippery, making it a chore to navigate some of the more narrow pathways, and even some of the wider ones. The physics are bizarre, too. Sometimes you can use the d-pad to roll up and down a see-saw, for instance, but other times, the same situation will result in you either falling off for no reason, or send you spiraling to your death. It's also unclear exactly how one is to unlock some of the marbles, other than going through the levels. And while the par time not being any particular object helps the game at a lesiurely pace, it's kind of unclear why it's even there at all.

It's also easy on some stages to get trapped with no way out. There are, of course, ways to restart the level if absolutely necessary, but it's annoying having to go back to the beginning of the level. Further confounding things, switches sometimes go back to being unswitched when you fall off the course, but that isn't a consistent thing across the board, which means that you have to go back and check if you still need to make the necessary movements to progress. It's a lot of annoying backtracking sometimes, and it makes replaying certain parts of levels beyond boring. 

But...and here's where it's going to get a little difficult to explain-- the flaws don't necessarily matter. They're there, sure, but this isn't the kind of game where you play for six hours to get through the levels and acquire more, more, more. This is the kind of game where you spend your time on a level now and then when you need to unwind. It's casual at its most casual-- no breakneck pace, no white-knuckling, just a pleasant time rolling a marble around.

In the end, that's what matters. It's a game you can relax with. It's a game you can unwind with. It's a game that's comfortable. It's relaxing. Marble Mountain may not be perfect, but it serves all your needs that way, and because of that, the flaws kind of take a backseat to how much fun you can have just rolling from level to level. It's satisfying, and in the end, that matters much more than the flaws do. 

Score 3 out of 5

The Reviewer Received a copy of this game for review

The Last Door Season 2 Review

So first, a disclaimer. Because of the episodic nature of the game, and because this is The Last Door: Season 2, I strongly suggest you go to either the website or Kongregate and play The Last Door: Season 1. It's not the most necessary thing in the world, but it'll fill in the blanks as to Devitt, the weird eye motif, the Four Witnesses, and the secret society known as The Playwright. While the prologue chapter can answer one or two of the questions, a lot of them will be answered by just playing season 1. 

With that said, if you're looking for a surreal horror game with a ton of atmosphere and a lo-fi aesthetic that manages to play perfectly with the player's imagination and delivers old-school adventure without all the pointless death, you need look no further. 

The Last Door: Season 2 follows Dr. Wakefield, whose patient, Jeremiah Devitt, vanished under mysterious circumstances. With his mentor and colleague Doctor Kaufmann, Wakefield investigates the disappearance, which leads him through an upsetting mental asylum, a strange mansion filled with puzzles, and into the heart of a deep conspiracy involving an otherworldly presence trapped behind a "curtain" between our world and the next.  As Wakefield is drawn further and further into dealings with the sinister masked cabal that call themselves The Playwright, he will be called upon to make a choice, one that will change the course of his world forever. 

The Last Door is a game that trades mainly on an all-encompassing atmosphere brought together by the pixelated visuals, mind-screwy plot, and excellent sound design. As you explore the various levels, the ambient noise creeps in slowly, cluing you in to a variety of goings-on just out of sight, be they cats bricked up in the walls or a vaguely unsettling room full off birds. The pixel graphics are good enough you can usually discern what's going on, but obscure enough that your imagination will easily fill in the blanks. And then the plot, which includes an entire level in a space between worlds, and a surrealistic homage to The Wicker Man, keeps the player convincingly unnerved. 

The episodic length also helps immensely. I took a break after each chapter and played one a day, personally, because doing so allowed for a break and the chapters stayed fresh. Had I just played straight through, I'd imagine I'd have been more fatigued, but as it was, the puzzles were less aggravating when I played the game one chapter at a time instead of taking it in as a full story. 

About those puzzles: They're frustrating. It was frequently difficult to tell where I was supposed to go, and at least two puzzles relied heavily on backtracking, memory, and constant trial and error. I actually put the game down for a while after Episode 2, because the puzzles in that section were much more traditional and thus involved an incredibly frustrating bit of trial and error where you have to move from a series of switches indoors to the outdoor garden, either utilizing an attic window or having to go outside the house entire. A memory/note-taking puzzle also occurs in the last part, where you have to find your way through a forest. Neither is particularly a lot of fun. 

But despite the few puzzles, the game is a masterpiece. There are some genuinely scary scenes, and despite the trial and error, the puzzles are mostly logical and aid with the atmosphere. There's an awesome moment in the last chapter that I don't dare spoil where others games have definitely stumbled, but The Last Door manages to knock it out of the park. 

As one final note, I cannot suggest enough that you play this game through headphones. A huge chunk of the game is sound design, and it has to be experienced to be believed. It plays just fine anyway, but there's just something about dampening the extraneous noise and immersing yourself in The Last Door's soundscape that makes it so much better. 

If you're in the mood for a deep, atmospheric, episodic adventure game, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. The first season is free, so not being caught up isn't even a good excuse. It may take you a few nights, but the visuals will stay with you forever. 

Full disclosure: The author of this review received the collector's edition of The Last Door Season 2 for this review. They had previously played season one online.

Final score: 4/5

Zombasite Preview

Zombasite, currently in beta from Soldak Entertainment, is the most fun you will have not knowing what it is you're doing. 

And before that sounds too much like faint praise, allow me to explain, it is a lot of fun. 

Zombasite is an isometric action RPG similar to Soldak's earlier game, Depths of Peril. In it, you control a clan in a small settlement. You and other clans are fighting for control of a world on the brink of total collapse, thanks to a twisted necrotic parasite known as the "Zombasite." While you attempt to keep control of your clan and stop the various members from killing each other whenever they get bored or angry enough, a bar at the bottom slowly rises, showing the growth and infection rate of the parasites.

And so, a desperate struggle emerges between you and the various forces. While clans will try to raid you and your enemies below and above ground will send gruesome monsters to attack you, you also have to protect your clan from zombies and research ways to slow down or stop the parasite. You will find yourself focusing on a billion different systems and subsystems in an attempt to keep your clan from collapsing. Even at the lower difficulty levels, I can tell you it is going to be an uphill battle to keep that from happening. I have put several hours into the game, and trying to do everything at once is going to leave you wandering the wasteland and wondering just how your illustrious clan wound up being two people in a fort with no doors. 

But that isn't to say the barrier of entry is all that high. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Zombasite provides its players with many more ways to win than to lose: simply killing all the opposing clans (military victory), having an alliance with the remaining clans left on the map (diplomacy), to completing all the quests on the map. The game also tracks your knowledge and lore about the parasite, making the zombies and infection more manageable as you discover more things about the world. Most enemies are fairly easy to kill early on provided you know what you're doing, while giving you a game experience with a very slow difficulty curve, to its benefit. 

The world is also dynamic and persistent. You can start a new game in an already-generated world, with all that would entail, and as you go along, the world will change. Sometimes people will kill your targets before you can get to them. Clans are constantly shifting in alliance and loyalty between each other, and will go out on raids. Your own clanmates have specific weapon and armor preferences, all of which impact how well they'll be able to fend off invasion and join you on raids. Clans may leave you alone, or they might rush full-on towards you, or spawn demon gates, or any number of things. When  you pop someone into a new instance of the world, they take up a new region, but use the same lore and other features of the older space.

But while the game is in good form currently, it still has a long way to go before it's out of early access. The systems are a little obtuse, and while the help system is helpful, it's also a row of icons along the bottom of the screen that are easy to miss and don't always contain the most useful of information. The sound design also sometimes borders on oppressive, especially in larger battles. When coupled with a skill system that's obtuse even at the best of times, this can make things incredibly frustrating as enemies skill upward. 

Overall, though, I'm looking forward to seeing what Zombasite gets with a full version. It's original, unique, and very complex in spite of its basic trappings, and with a few kinks worked out, should be a new classic. 

The Reviewer was given a copy of the game in exchange for this review. The game is still in early access and is subject to change.

The Culling Early Access Review

There's not much to say about The Culling, really. It's the kind of game that, if you like arena-based deathmatch shooters, you will probably like. If you don't like multiplayer arena-based deathmatch shooters, you will not like it. That's pretty much the delineation. 

Granted, as far as arena-based deathmatch shooters go, I like it a lot more than most, but it's going to be pretty clear when I describe the mechanics whether or not this is your kind of thing.

The Culling is a game that functions on a simple premise: You have signed up (or maybe been coerced) into the internet's leading game show, a deathmatch where you are packed up in a crate and dropped on a tropical island to murder complete strangers with a variety of implements, most of which you will have to make yourself. When you are murdered, you are out. No respawn, no "back to start," you can spectate, or you can bounce. 

So that's pretty much it. Simple. Run around, kill other people, don't get killed. 

But what makes The Culling interesting is how it deals with those details. First, everything involves an in-game currency called FUNC. Want to craft something? You need FUNC. Want to heal? FUNC. Access the higher-level airdrops you can call in? More FUNC. It kind of allows for prioritizing your sources for the most part-- it might be better to save up and get the airdrop rather than opening the crate near the center of the arena, or even better still to roll your own weapons and avoid using much of the currency at all, saving it to heal. The ability to craft weapons also adds some strategy, allowing for both ranged and melee options.

And melee is actually now a huge part of the game. The Culling does away with the usual run-n-gun in exchange for tense melee fights between you and your opponents, with the optimal tactic seeming to be a "hit  and run" approach where one swings wildly at their opponent, or turtles while waiting for an opening, constantly moving in and out and in and out in an attempt to gain the other hand. It's a marked change from bunny-hopping and circle strafing (though people who have tried that met the business end of my taser pretty quickly).

Also, the sound design is amazing. This may be one of the few FPS's I play with headphones on, because sound matters that much. You can hear the direction your opponents are coming from, the whirr of nearby cameras, and just about everything else. It's also direction-dependent, with sounds popping up in the proper location, allowing you to plan or run away when someone gets too close. It feels like the noise has reason and body, which adds another dimension over the usual run-n-guns. 

And finally, the game actually has a good sense of humor. While the callouts might get annoying and repetitive, there are some amusing moments, and the tutorial doesn't actually make me want to rush through it immediately. Overall, it's not bad.

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product when all is said and done. There are some good ideas here, and while the single arena offers no real variety, it's nice to have something familiar and figure out the ins and outs of where you find yourself. The game definitely could benefit from more models and better options, but in its current form, it's beyond solid. 

This game was early access. The reviewer was provided with a release code.

Blood Alloy: Reborn Review

                   Blood Alloy: Reborn from Suppressive Fire Games is an arena-style platform shooter with a 16-bit aesthetic. It promises fast-paced gameplay, fully traversable terrain, swarms of enemies, and an awesome soundtrack. And, for what it's worth, it delivers on at least some of those things. But overall, the game is a weird, messy thing. It's an arena shooter that behaves like it's a platformer, a game that requires more precision than either the controls or the game type allows for. But even if this were all, it's flaws far outweigh it's strengths, and the game ultimately falters in spite of itself. But more, as always, below.

                Blood Alloy Reborn casts you as Nia Rhys, a cyborg warrior who uses the BLade Assisted Traversal System (or BLAST) to slide and whirl around arenas and carve up robots. As the combos grow, Nia will regain lost health, de-cloak "kidnap drones" that allow her to rescue soldiers at a bonus, and of course, face more difficult enemies. The BLAST system allows you to slide around the arena, traveling up surfaces and bouncing from point to point as you shoot down robots in your way, even giving you alternate combat options like homing missiles and devastating wave attacks. When it works correctly, it can be really cool as you slide through arenas carving up metal enemies and bouncing from surface to surface as you slide.

                   When it works properly. But the problem is, even with a controller and when played as recommended, the controls are slippery and weird. In spite of the range of weapons, I found myself using the same three or four over and over again, or mashing buttons as I flailed around the arena, the metal onslaught mainly dying out of embarrassment rather than anything I had direct agency over. Maybe it's that I'm spoiled from SUPERHOT last week, but nothing I did felt particularly awesome, or even like it had much impact on the game I was playing. It just seemed like I was sliding around the arena for who knows what ends. And you will slide quite a bit, as pretty much anything puts you into a slide. 

                   Even then, the dodgy hit detection meant that it wasn't all that much fun, either. It's difficult to tell if you've been hit, or sometimes what was even in the vicinity to hit you. More often than not, the ride comes to an end with a measly score, having no idea how or why to continue. If this weren't bad enough, the way you regenerate health is pretty much a nonstarter as well. The game tells you that once you reach a 10-combo or above, you'll start regenerating health. This...strangely did not happen too much. I actually took a moment in the action (the enemy patterns are...bizarre) to watch, and sure enough, no movement. 

                      The graphics are also a bit of an issue. There is not clear delineation between the environments, making some jumps more guesswork than solid. There were several times I leapt at what I thought was a traversible surface, only to find that it was set dressing. Similarly, I would try to rush through what looked like background, only to find out it was all too solid. While in a regular platformer, this is something easily overcome, in an arena setting this kind of thing tends to seriously bog the game down. And while the arenas are large, that combined with enemy behavior means it's a lot of running around, and the gunning is sporadic when it does come. I also didn't notice a ton of enemy variety.

                       In fact, just looking at the title screen, the whole thing feels very rough. With a few updates, I'm sure it'll become polished and play great, but as of right now, it just feels off, unsatisfying. 

                    So in the end, I have to say that this is, while a game with potential, not a game I'm interested in playing until the kinks are worked out. I hope it improves from the early issues into the game it wants to be, but right now, it's far too rough. A shame, because there really are some awesome moments when you're sliding around arenas laying waste to enemies. 

2/5

The reviewer received an early access copy of this game for review.

SUPERHOT Review: Maximum Effort!

Okay, so let me lay it on the line right here: If you have recently seen an action movie and said, "I would like a game that lets me do that," then SUPERHOT is the game for you. If you have ever seen a gunfight and wondered why first-person shooters don't give you the same ability to be a badass, this is the game for you. And, well, if you have recently seen Deadpool and want to turn literally everything within range into an instrument of murder, chances are SUPERHOT is your kind of game, too. 

But allow me to explain.

SUPERHOT is a bizarre abstract shooter that showed up first as a prototype for the 7-day FPS challenge way back in 2014.  The central concept is that time only moves when you do, allowing you to plot a couple of moves in advance and actually think about how to maneuver through the scene. This, combined with its incredibly simple controls (left click shoot, right click throw things, WSAD moves, space jumps. And that is literally all you need to know. And even then, jumping can be optional) puts me in mind of a slightly less difficult Hotline Miami, another game that involved incredibly simple controls and a byzantine plot to combine for an orgy of mad violence. 

The word "byzantine" is pretty much exactly the word to describe the plot. Without giving too much away, you (as yourself) are sent a cracked .exe file for a game called SUPERHOT. The game you are currently playing. As you enter each new level and mow down red guy after red guy, messages on screen appear, telling you essentially "MORE MORE FASTER FASTER" and encouraging you to waste guys. But then, around the time you get the first message of "YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE," things get...weird. The game takes an abrupt shift into a genre I wouldn't dare give away, and then plumbs its bizarre depths from there. Exactly what is going on or how much the game is aware of the fourth wall is in doubt, but it's clear that the creators are trying to make it so the usual sense of detachment no longer applies. 

The game's commitment to immersion is really cool. The menu screen is set up like an older-model CRT with text, offering you a variety of apps and programs, including a chat program where characters discuss their experiences with SUPERHOT, an old-school arcade game or two, older applications like Sand Simulator and Water Simulator, and even Conway's Game of Life. It really helps drive home the atmosphere of the game, that you've somehow stumbled upon this odd virtual reality interface and been drawn into a cyberpunk world full of bizarre concepts that are mostly spoilers I can't give away. 

The plot actually gives the game an odd contrast, a game that makes it seem bad to do this cool thing, while at the same time reinforcing how cool doing this thing is. The game is addictive, especially when it plays back an entire kill streak and you see yourself rush through a kinetic action movie-style setpiece, leaving a trail of red polygons and glass-shattering noises in your wake. SUPERHOT also contains several "challenge" modes and an "endless" mode that will basically satisfy your craving for wasting a ton of trichromatic polygons from now until doomsday. 

In terms of the plot doing that, I'm actually reminded of Harvester, another game that involved a game supporting violence, while at the same time being a game that took an anti-violence stance. I'm not sure how much SUPERHOT played it tongue-in-cheek, since the plot deliberately plays against the nature of the game or frames the actions of the player as being enthralled and controlled by the game, but either way, it's just interesting enough for me to keep going. 

In the end, this is the most innovative shooter I've played in a few years, and I thoroughly recommend buying it. I also recommend watching Killstagram if you have any further doubts about playing the game. It's well worth it, and is by far the most satisfying burst of violence since Hotline Miami.

5/5

Full disclosure: The reviewer received a copy of the full game in exchange for this review. 

Overfall Early Access Review

              Overfall is a game with a lot of good things going for it. There is the distinct art style, an excellent modular story engine, some interesting tactical combat, and a very dynamic setting. It's a game that promises a staggering amount of depth, especially when one gets into it. It's a big, expansive game with a big expansive map and big expansive ideas. 

                Unfortunately, this is where things fall a little flat. For a big, expansive game world with an easy to use storyline editor and a lot of cool stuff going for it, the game doesn't exactly deliver on the bountiful promises that it set out to make. It's that failure to deliver that makes everything that much more difficult. What should be an awesome game is only an okay one. 

And this is the issue with Overfall.  But as always, more below. 

                 Overfall is a tactical roleplaying game with procedurally generated elements. In it, you guide a team of adventurers around a series of islands, stopping off at each one for a different story fragment or adventure. The object is to build enough of a reputation to find the lost king who can reunite the world against a group of terrifying barbarian invaders streaming out through a portal. Your heroes solve various problems through a mixture of diplomacy and turn-based hex-based tactical combat, gaining reputation points that slowly build a rapport with various races. This in turn means the races are more likely to help you against the barbarians, and so on and so forth. 

                  Time is also kept by way of a clock in the corner of the screen, as the invaders set up bases and begin to siege the various islands throughout the vast archipelago. The game becomes more difficult as you go, with new challenges and different ships. Overfall makes an effort to make sure the player feels like there's a world, with various factions, ships, fights, and various other factors. You can actually watch wars going on as you sail from village to village and the Vorn become a bigger threat, and that's really cool. 

                When you die (and your characters will die), the game plops you back at the portal with more options unlocked: different party members, new trinkets, various abilities, and other things like that. Thus, the game becomes easier and also gains depth as you go on, with new abilities unlocking and old ones shifting, as the player goes along. The player also gains new classes and characters to unlock as the game goes along, and as your ship becomes more renowned, you can hire new characters for your party to make battles a little easier. You also unlock new weapons, relics, and a ton of other things.

                  Unfortunately, while there is a lot of depth and the game is fun enough, it's very slow. All your unlocks are tied to in-game progress, which is based on the quests you get. As the quests are completely random, it's difficult to make much headway in the plot. You can get completely screwed over just as easily as you can run through a series of all-important reputation missions that allow you access to a faction's homeland. One run may see you getting inconsequential quest after inconsequential quest, others may see you racking up rewards faster than you can spit, and that luck kind of causes the game to bounce off it's players. 

                 Which is a shame, because if you can set up a rhythm, the game is really good. When it's firing on all cylinders and lets you see its depth, it's something amazing. As a shallow time-killer, it can also be pretty cool. But when all you're doing is finding the quests that mean you get minimal rewards and there's no sense of progression, it's really annoying. The game becomes an exercise in gambling and tedium, neither of which really make for a good roleplaying game, as anyone who's played Chinese MMOs can tell you. 

                 And then there's the story editor. The crown jewel of Overfall's engine, the story editor is a crown jewel in the game. A Twine-like interface, it allows you to craft your own miniature narrative and add it to the possible random generation in the game. Furthermore, it allows you to download community adventures, play them, and rate them as you see fit. It's the kind of democratized storytelling that more games should have. It's simple to use, has a lot of applications, and can be used to tell any number of awesome mini-stories. 

                 But between the luck-based content, the tactical battle system that takes a lot to get used to (seriously, some kind of manual would be a godsend), and the just weird nature of the game, Overfall just seems like kind of a mess. In the end, I'd wait for a sale or see how much it's going to be before going out and buying it. It's a good game, but it lacks the vital spark needed to make it a truly amazing one, and I can't fully recommend it based on that.

Final score: 3/5

Full disclosure: The reviewer received a pre-release early access copy for review.

Pathologic Review

Why should you get this game? Because for the first time in it's long and checkered history, the cult horror game Pathologic is finally in a playable form. The graphics are better, the English translation actually matches up with what's being said in the game, and many of the truly game-breaking bugs are nowhere to be found. For the first time, players are finally able to play a rare gem in the form the authors intended it to be played.

Why should you play Pathologic at all? Well, that's a lot more complicated. The short answer is simple:

Everyone needs their mind messed with a little sometimes. 

But let me explain: Pathologic is the first game by cult favorite developers Ice Pick Lodge, the twisted geniuses behind such games as impenetrable and incredibly difficult afterlife FPS The Void, psychological 2D stealth adventure Knock! Knock!, and a gaming satire known as Cargo!: The Quest for Gravity. They're also nuts, and responsible for manufacturing games that usually aren't seen outside of creepypasta. But I'm getting away from my point a little. Let me try again.

 In Pathologic, you choose from one of two characters (a third is unlockable, but you have to play the game at least once)-- Danil Danofsky, a bachelor of medicine investigating the murder of someone who was supposed to be immortal; or Artemii Burakh, a Haruspex and one of the few people allowed to perform autopsies in the game's world. There's also Klara, the Devotress, an unlockable character who has mysterious healing powers and a higher calling than the other two, but chances are unless you're really determined or edit your save file, you're not gonna see very much of her outside the opening cinematic. I'll get to why in a moment. 

This little playlet is your character selection screen

While these three go about their business, a mysterious plague known as the "sand plague" takes over the small unnamed town they find themselves in. Furthermore, the three families who run the town with the aid of their precognitive "mistresses" are locked in a power struggle that seems to finally be coming to a head. Bizarre customs involving children and their animal companions, the massive hilltop slaughterhouse, the local asylum, two alien buildings at opposite ends of town, burning people suspected of being artificial humans at the stake in the district centers, and the odd play that goes on every night at midnight run rampant. And before the end, things will get a lot, lot worse. 

The game is nominally an FPS/Survival horror/Adventure game. As whatever character you choose, you investigate the town and its inhabitants, running errands and trying to get to the bottom of the numerous mysteries. You can also dumpster-dive, barter with townsfolk, and explore the impossibly weird geography of the small town on the steppe. There's a constantly running game clock, and it's not possible to see everything, so players have to think in terms of what they do want to see. And if you think of it in terms of a game, you will die. A lot. 

BALD. MUTE. LUNATIC. SKINFLINT.

Yes, the game is kind of unforgiving about that. Quest-givers will wind up lying to you more often than not, in fact, most people in the town are exercising some kind of dishonesty. Prices at most of the shops in town are controlled by a bald, mute lunatic who jacks up the price day after day while giving you corrupt pawnshop-style prices on anything you try to sell. Maintaining a good supply of food is absolutely essential, as is getting enough sleep. Most times you get in a fight, it's deadly, and even a common fistfight could take off half your health. Ammo and guns are so scarce that it's actually more useful to barter them for supplies you need, than it is to shoot people. It's a difficult, punishing game, even more so than stuff like Dark Souls. But there's a purpose.

Typical conversation in Pathologic

Pathologic is a game that gets inside your head. It forces you to think not as a player, but as the character you chose. It even reveals much of the artifice other games would normally hide, showing you that yes, this is a play, this is artificial, but if you think that's going to save you, ha ha ha, nope. Further driving this home are the Adherents, plot-critical characters that you have to keep alive and safe through each of the plot's twelve days. They can and will die unless you pay attention to their needs, leaving you high and dry. So can quest-givers and major NPCs, and not all of this is scripted. Of course, some of them have to die over the course of the plot anyway, but figuring out which is which depends on how you yourself feel the character would act. It's a game that dumps all the choices squarely in your lap, and then reminds you that not choosing is still just as much a choice. 

However, once you actually learn to live in the game's world, the game becomes unsettling and engrossing in equal amounts. It's one of the very few games that casts you in the role of a detective, and then actually makes you deduce, detect, and interact with the characters. Every aspect of the mystery is left up to you to solve, every clue waiting for you to discover it, all the conclusions your own within the scope of the game. It's amazing to have that degree of agency when the controls and interface aren't that complex (NOTE: There is no tutorial, get a manual. I know, some of you aren't used to it, but seriously, GET. A. MANUAL). 

These two are all the tutorial you're gonna get.

The game also kind of seeps into your head a little. It's very immersive once you get the basics down, allowing the surreality of the world to seep in. You also get some instruction and direction from the two masked "players," one wearing a raven-like plague doctor mask and cloak, and the other dressed up as a mime in a black bodysuit with a white mask. While this is incredibly vague, it does give some insight in how the world in the game works and what you're supposed to do in the world. Even if a lot of it still remains for you to find, rather than being pointed out to you.

But if you want a challenging, unique, innovative experience that breaks genre barriers and gives you something that everyone says they crave out of their gaming experience, you need look no further. There may be other games that make you feel this way, other games that challenge the way you think and act in games, other games as challenging, but in the end Pathologic stands on its own, a titanic work that neither begs for your attention nor particularly needs it, but instead waits and bides its time until you're ready. And when you are, it'll be waiting with its own peculiar welcome. On an ancient steppe. In the fog.

Children at play on the Steppe. Burying a doll. No big deal. 

Score: 5 out of 5 - with the caveat that you should seriously look into this game and understand further what you're getting into. Some people hear "complex and challenging" and go charging into things headfirst, I will warn you immediately that this is not an experience for many, and you should search around. 

Reviewer received a copy of the game for review

Sublevel Zero Review

There's a very easy test to see if you'd like Sublevel Zero, the new PC game from Sigtrap Games. I'll even link it here. Go on. I'll wait. All right, did you like what you saw there? Then congratulations, this is the game for you.

Joking aside, Sublevel Zero is actually a pretty good game. It's not something I would gladly rush out and buy, but is a good solid game with a decent control scheme and enough depth to be worth the replay value. It also has an aggressive dislike of people who get motion-sick, but then again, considering it's a game with about three hundred sixty degrees of movement range and expects you to dogfight, then you kind of know what you're getting into.

The plot is pretty bare, and advanced through that time-honored plot device: Text logs left around for you to find (as a side note, remember when this was actually used as a narrative device instead of something people could do to just fling around the bare bones of exposition?). Humans have spread all over the galaxy, and have become so tribalized and separated that they have formed "clans" around "warlords" and finding ancient technology. You're a pilot from one of these clans, having found an odd station filled with automated defenses that seems to be responsible for warping the space around it. You head inside, hoping to figure out what's going on, and thus the game begins.

The rest of the game is fairly simple. Fly around neon hallways shooting enemies for parts and currency, find big thing, shoot big thing, collect macguffin, move on to next level for a more difficult course. Sublevel Zero is of course a roguelike (because procedural generation is really buzzy right now), and so each time you die, it will generate a new maze for you to explore at your leisure. It's actually kind of meditative at times, flying through tunnels and performing aerial maneuvers while a soundtrack reminiscient of Artificial Intelligence is pumped through your speakers. 

And then, of course, you hit a dogfight with a bunch of hyper-aggressive turrets and suddenly the game turns into the most dissonant example of a kinetic bullet ballet I've ever seen, with the soundtrack pumping music with a definite chill-out bent while the scores of enemy robots and automated turrets do their level best to make you careen around rooms. With the game's pace, this doesn't seem as jarring as other games with similar themes, but it's still odd to have this ambient world around you and at the same time an absolute blastout with a series of malevolent bots. 

But beyond that, it's surprisingly deep. Bots will explode after they've taken enough damage, so if you cluster another one nearby, they can get hit with the splash effect. In later levels, you can even shoot other surfaces (lava, for one example) to cause splash effects and damage some bots. There's also a wide variety of weapons one can pick up with varying stats, that can then be combined into even more powerful forms to further murder the hell out of the robots in your path (the house recommends anything that calls itself 'room-clearing'.) There are also other ships you can unlock, more powerful hulls, and a variety of goodies to find. 

The one issue I have with the game is that it sits on this depressing trend that, for the purposes of things, I will call "Ernest Cline Syndrome." Ernest Cline Syndrome is what happens when things are retro for not much of a purpose other than being kinda quirky and retro. So. All the precursor logs you find in the game are represented by old-school game boys. There's not really any reason for this, and it kind of took me out of what was actually kind of a cool experience. It also has an issue where it'll build the levels out of pre-set parts, which can be a little annoying at times, with sudden dead ends.

But in the end, a little bit of meh flavor shouldn't scare anyone off. It's a lot of fun, and it's good to start up if you just want to swirl around the inside of the station for a little while. Definitely give this one a go sometime. 

Score a 4 out of 5 

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.

Age of Decadence Review

I just trashed a city's infrastructure for the mob.

I was totally justified in doing so. My character was serving the Commercium, the entirely unscrupulous merchant's guild who runs the trading quarters in every major city. They plot and conspire all over the place to topple the ruling houses in the cities where they work, and they're pretty much the closest thing this world has to the mob. So now, because of me, they control the city's military as it descends into lawlessness, and they could probably take over whenever they like. The scary part is, that's probably not even the nastiest thing I'll do this playthrough. 

This is Age of Decadence, and it's possibly one of the best games I've played this year.

The Age of Decadence is an isometric roleplaying game from Iron Tower Studios. I came across it early in its development after hearing it talked about on a gaming site, and in particular, after an interview with the dev team. From there, I followed the open development as much as I could, downloading each new release and dying frequently with each new character I made. This game has a history with me. 

The thing that makes me absolutely love the game and come back to it again and again no matter how many times I die or screw up, though, is that the game is that deep. The game begins with a message that combat is highly lethal, and it would be better to negotiate your way through each situation. You can get through the first act of the game by only killing one person, or if you really want to see how low you can get your body count, you don't have to kill anyone at all (this won't make anything any easier). The game is incredibly open-ended, and even failing a quest in one way will give you options to succeed at another. 

And it's beautiful. There's technically no "wrong" path, and while there are certain paths that will leave you without many good options, each choice follows on the back of other choices. Screw over a local lord? He's not going to want to put in a good word for you. Fail too many missions for someone? They're not going to trust you with the fate of their grand schemes. Fail to decipher that inscription? Then it's probably not best to operate that piece of machinery. The world is essentially yours to do with what you like.

There is just one problem, and it's sadly one worth mentioning. There is a lot of trial and error, and there's a high barrier of entry that comes with that. You'll find yourself not necessarily save-scumming, but testing out situation after situation to figure out what does what, and at which threshold. Even if you specialize enough, there's a chance the skill level thresholds are just too high, and it is that way by design, not by any cruel trick. I had to try several different combinations before I figured out the right way to approach situations. My advice: Pick up Streetwise and pump a lot of points into that. And Lore, too. 

But in the end, is it all worth it? Absolutely, yes it is. You will not find a more player-driven game this year, with the possible exception of Fallout 4, which hasn't come out yet. While the barrier of entry is ridiculous, it's also rewarding. Seriously, check this one out. Also-- the demo is the first town of the game. For you to explore. For free. There is no reason not to at least give this a look.

Final score: 5/5

Full disclosure: Reviewer received a press copy of this game

Cross of the Dutchman Review

Maybe I'm just spoiled. Maybe that's it. I've been going over and over in my head exactly what it is about Cross of the Dutchman that makes it so unsatisfying to play. It's not a bad game. It's definitely not like Chariot Wars or The Weaponographist, where I was able to pinpoint (violently) what I disliked about it. I don't dislike anything about Cross of the Dutchman, it's a perfectly okay small game about a folk hero and his attempt to drive the Saxons from his homelands. Violently. With his fists. The art style is pretty terrific, the controls aren't too bad, and it's a nice little hack-and-slasher. 

But the game just falls a little short. Maybe not in what it is...it's a hack-and-slash actioner and that's really all I expected from it after a few minutes of play. But definitely in what it could be.  I just felt like after playing it, I hadn't experienced anything that I would really take time out of my day otherwise to do. And I suppose that's the real issue.

Cross of the Dutchman retells the story of Big Pier, or Pier Gerlofs Donia. A big man, fed up with what the occupying Saxons were doing to his people and his lands, Pier Donia decided to take the fight to them. First by beating the everloving crap out of every Saxon he could find, and then by rounding up a band of vigilantes and making targeted strikes on the Saxon forces, stealing supplies, and the like. The player takes the role of Pier, who starts out just trying to get through his day in the village. At first, the player only has a pair of fists and some basic moves, but as the story progresses, they gain companions, a sword, and even a plow at one point as they drive the hordes of vile Saxons from their land. The game alternates between regular hack-and-slash gameplay and stealth sections as you sneak around Saxons during night raids and hold your own against onslaught after onslaught of enemies. 

But here's where it breaks down a little. There's not much to do other than that. There's also not much in the way of tactics or anything other than "Run around, avoid getting hit, power up attack, release attack, repeat." The stealth sections contain moments where, if you go too far off the rails, the game penalizes you by having you caught by people who don't even appear onscreen. In fact, the game as a whole is pretty railsy, which is normally all right (not every game has to be an open-world extravaganza), but chafes when one of the things the game has you do is explore the wide-open levels looking for treasure chests, shortcuts, and alternate routes. 

Captured! By the forces of absolutely no one!

What you can do within those rules isn't really all that great, either. Pacing and progress in the game are slow. It makes sense for the narrative to have Pier not immediately get a sword and go to town on everyone, but spending that much time using his fists before getting the option of a sword just doesn't make that much sense game design-wise. The longer you keep players from progress, the more the players get frustrated with the game. In telling the story of how the legend becomes who he is, the fundamental satisfaction of being the legend is actually lost. Also, the aforementioned rails kind of left me feeling confined. 

All of this is a shame, because the game has some great points, too. The cutscenes are all illustrations, as if they came out of a rather cartoony stained glass window or illuminated manuscript, what voice acting there is isn't terrible, and the two-second sequence where I got to mow down people with a plow was good.

But for every decent sequence, there are six or seven problems with it. Combat doesn't flow, even with the sword. Sometimes you'll be able to hold down the mouse button and cleave through your enemies, sometimes you'll be unable to do anything of the kind, and Pier will stand there and get beat on. Most of the basic moves in combat are irrelevant anyway, as you will find yourself relying more and more on the obscene and unbalanced one-hit kill move that, conveniently enough, also works as an AOE and recharges with relative quickness. This turns the battles into a pattern of running around the map to recharge the super, taking out a cloud of Saxons, and then running around the map to recharge again. 

The tutorial sequences delving into parody doesn't exactly help either. It worked in Fairy Fencer F because it was just that kind of game. But Cross of the Dutchman is very much not that kind of game, and so when Pier's wife constantly talks about minimaps and the like, it just rings hollow.

In the end, I wouldn't recommend Cross of the Dutchman. It's not a great game, and what is there isn't enough to keep me interested. If I hadn't gotten this review copy, I wouldn't be giving it a second look, and I'm not sure anyone should.

2/5

Full disclosure: Reviewer received a free review copy of this game on Steam​

Fairy Fencer F Review

I had a lot of fun with this one.

Fairy Fencer F is kind of a unique experience among JRPGs. It throws a tremendous amount of stuff at the wall, and most of it actually winds up sticking pretty well. It's a game where you can release an ancient evil god for special powers, accumulate sword spirits like crazy, have to pay an info broker repeatedly to progress in the story, and where the hero really doesn't want to do anything he doesn't have to. 

And it is brilliant. More, as always, below. 

Fairy Fencer F begins with it's hero locked in a dungeon and asleep. From this noblest of beginnings, the player is introduced to Fang. Fang wants nothing more than to eat and sleep and not much else. Accompanying Fang, however, is a fairy named Eryn, the spirit of his sword. Fang pulled Eryn out of a tree, and from that point on he is tasked with finding the "Furies" locked within swords so he can unseal the Goddess and she can once again preside over the land. Fang is warned, however, that other "fencers" are out looking for powerful furies, and he'll have lots of competition if he wants to unseal the Goddess and bring the world back to its rightful place. 

Eryn, tutorialing it up

What this entails is a staggering series of subsystems, from boosting your stats to giving your characters new abilities, to giving the characters bonus powers. On top of all of this, is a system that awards you stat boosts and various power-ups for doing things as simple as jumping up and down a hundred times. While the game doesn't feel very big at first, and the simple map/town interactions don't do a lot to dissuade that notion, it's what happens when you get into the interlocking systems that really makes the game pop. Something as simple as grinding your jumping ability, for instance, immediately moves you up in the initiative order. You use your spirits to gain new lands to explore, giving you stat bonuses and resistances based on the fury's power. And it keeps going up from there. 

The one issue with the game is that it takes a lot of grinding to do things. Something as simple as leveling up a combat power can sometimes take killing every single enemy in a level. There's a whole ton of systems, but each one requires a ton of points and money. There is a lot to see and do, and the amount of grinding you have to do is kind of tremendous to get anywhere. Combined with the game's lack of an auto-save or save anywhere feature, suddenly the difficulty curve gets a lot more difficult than it usually would be. 

The game is well worth it, though, as it has a sense of humor about itself (and other JRPGs). The characters lean on the fourth wall just enough while still committing to the premise that it's really funny, and having the bosses comment on their place in the story is hilarious. Similarly, Fang's reactions, which range from "No, please, no." to "What the hell did I just do?!" help keep the tone fairly light. 

In the end, if you're looking for a good, innovative JRPG with a surprising amount of depth and some interesting plot turns within its "Get the plot coupons" plot, then I would go with this one. While it might be prudent to wait for a sale, you should definitely pick this one up.

5/5

Full Disclosure: Reviewer received a Steam review copy of this game

The Flock Review

The title screen, with the dreaded population counter

I'm playing The Flock to lose.

The Flock is interesting in this regard, as there is a global endgame condition, and that condition is "lose or make others lose enough times." The count starts at something like three hundred and thirteen million "population." When the population counter reaches zero, the game will no longer be on the market. The more people who play or the more players who die, the more the population counter goes down, and the closer the players get to endgame. 

This is actually pretty interesting to me. I'm always interested when something is difficult to find, or permanently out of reach. I kind of find this more interesting than the actual game itself. So I'm playing The Flock to lose.

The Flock is an asymmetrical multiplayer game. Something like abstract surrealist flashlight tag. In one of several crumbling arenas, everybody plays The Flock, monsters that bound through the tunnels and passageways and hallways of the level, all of them hunting for the Artifact. The creature designs of The Flock are amazing, Creatures with hunched, visible spines and creepy skull-like faces. A lot of thought went into the way they act and the way they move, and even from a first-person perspective, you can tell that there's a unique form of movement and a very creepy aesthetic to these guys. 

When a player gets the Artifact, then they immediately transform into the Wielder. The Wielder runs around the level with the Artifact (basically a massive flashlight) trying to capture points with it while avoiding the Flock, all of whom are trying to become the Wielder. The flashlight can also kill the Flock if one of them is unlucky enough to move through its beam, but if a Flock player simply stands still for long enough, they're "petrified" and immune to the Artifact's deadly beam. The object is to stay alive as long as you can with the Artifact (which gives you points) and then have the most points at the end of the round. Objectives also net you a set amount of points. 

The temple ruins

Now, all of this would be slightly more interesting to me if I didn't suck so hard at the game. I can kind of grasp the subtlety and complexities of the game, of course, and how the Wielder has to watch their back at all times, and all of that. But too often, I find myself getting burned up or ambushed by a corner I didn't check or some far part of the maze. But instead I die a lot. Die, respawn, rush around the map, die again, respawn. Not a lot of fun. 

However, death in The Flock carries something of a boon with it. Each death lowers the population counter. Each time someone dies, the experience clicks that much closer towards being unique. When the counter hits zero, as previously said, that's it. The game has sold out. So if I keep dying, I keep upping the scarcity of the game. I can contribute to that. And that's cool for me. The more I lose, the more people wipe me out, the closer we get to zero. The closer I get to a unique thing.

So I'm playing The Flock to lose. 

I will say that while the game requires a controller, the controls are exceptionally smooth. I loved leaping around and jumping from place to place. I also loved trying to plan the perfect spot to leap and scream at the Wielder. It's a lot of fun to play, and I haven't played many games where controls were so satisfying. I love the fluid movement I can use just before the cleansing light blows me away another time. 

In the end, I'd say wait for a sale. If you've already bought it, though, I'd hope you'd play it the same way I do. It's a cool game, and even when you die, you're contributing to something cool in it. 

3/5

Full Disclosure: The reviewer received a press copy of this game

Warhammer 40,000: Regicide Review

I will give the twisted minds behind the Warhammer 40,000 universe credit, they at least know what they're doing with atmosphere. The series, a reductio ad absurdam of pretty much all science fiction and a little fantasy, is known for its rich atmosphere and utterly insane character designs. (Well, and codex creep, but that's for another article). It's a huge, bombastic setting of spaceships the size of former Soviet republics and ten foot tall warriors with six lungs and specially made ribs. 

Queen takes Bishop. Check. 

Regicide, by comparison, is a tactical strategy game taking some of the elements of chess and mixing them with XCOM and Warhammer 40,000. It's not nearly as expansive as the source material it takes from, but in its own weird, restrained way, it does manage to be a lot of fun. 

Given the blitz of games in the Warhammer universe lately, I don't feel as much of a need to recap the plot, but I'll give a primer for those who are unfamiliar. In the year 40,000, humans have expanded all over the place due to the ability to travel through "the Warp," a terrifying dimensional layer filled with things that literally make people's heads explode just by looking at them. This has taken them all over space, and put them into contact with hyper-aggressive race after hyper-aggressive race, all of which they want to kill for various reasons, and who want to kill them in kind. That's all. That's the plot.

A Blood Angel captures an Orc

But chances are, if you've picked up this game, you haven't picked it up for the rich campaign, so allow me to get into the mechanics: This game is weird. It requires a few games to develop a good tactical strategy, as playing with traditional chess tactics and doing things like attempting to weaken the back rank and truck through the opponent's specialized pieces will end your strategy in a hail of bullets. The game's strategy requires more finesse, using good tactical moves and a variety of special abilities to brutally slaughter the enemy's pieces and win the day. 

Every turn is divided into two phases. The first is the movement phase, which plays exactly like chess. You move one piece a turn, and are allowed to capture pieces if they can move on to an enemy space. But where it gets interesting is the Initiative phase. Every turn, you're given a certain number of action points to spend on things like defenses, grenades, and firing on the enemy. What could be a brilliant chess move suddenly turns into a rout when your piece is left within firing range of three or four enemies that then tear you apart. Similarly, I'm a terrible chess player, but with the added dimensions of being able to fling hand grenades at your opponent's well-developed center, I found myself winning a lot more often. (I may have also had the thing on novice difficulty...shhh...)

There's also an added level of complexity with abilities and orders that advance as you win more matches. Some of these can shield your units from damage, add movement, and restrict your opponent's movement around the field. A lot of these, at the beginning, minimize damage for the most part. 

However, there are two issues I have with the game right now, possibly because it's just been released. First, the boards and backgrounds are kind of boring. As far as I've gotten (played a few games to get the mechanics down), I haven't unlocked many more, and wasn't too interested in getting heavy into online play (losing constantly isn't really something that excites me). Second, it can be a little difficult even with the tutorials to find a good balance on the game. This barrier of entry goes away after a few games, but it is there, and it can be difficult to get used to the strategies. More than once, I found myself winning by a hair after concentrating fire on the enemy King, my board devastated.

In the end, though, it's definitely worth it. It's an interesting take on a classic game, and it has just enough replayability to keep it interesting. 

4/5

Full Disclosure: Reviewer received early-access version of this game

Victor Vran Review

I previewed this game in my first article ever for the site. I played it, and it was full of promise and life and all kinds of exciting potential. In short, while it was definitely rough, at the same time, it was a lot of fun to play.

I don't know what the developers did, to take that game so full of potential, a game with a decent premise, and drop it off a cliff, but I intend to find out in great detail. Because this is not the game I previewed way back in the spring. This is a game that is significantly not that game, and it bothers me.

The plot, such as it is: Victor Vran, a renowned monster hunter, comes to the walled city of Zagoravia looking for a fellow hunter. Instead, he finds the entire city overrun by monsters and under attack from some kind of demonic force. Using the palace of Queen Katarina as his home base, Vran sets out to liberate the town and destroy the monsters bit by bit. 

All of this is kind of an excuse plot for a Diablo-like (or, since it's more Victorian gothic horror, a Van Helsing-like) where your demonically powered generic hunter, with the generic voice that sounds like he's been gargling two pounds of driveway gravel, battles his way through spiders, skeletons, and other baddies that one might find decorating a front door on Halloween. In addition to the usual isometric gameplay, Victor Vran adds another dimension to the mix: Height. 

Yes, in Victor Vran, you can actually leap on to high obstacles, wall jump, and in one area solve a maze by jumping over its walls. You can use these abilities to maneuver around the battlefield, keep from being overrun, or even gain the high ground over your opposition. In theory, anyway. In fact, I'll go one better, that is exactly what it was like in the preview and what made me like it so much.

Unfortunately, the released version of Victor Vran is somewhat hampered. Many of the areas I could previously jump to are now railed-- you can jump over the hedges in the maze in the first part of the game, but can no longer run along them shotgunning enemies to your heart's content. The weapon ranges are also changed-- no more shooting across gaps or nice area control situations any more. In fact, much of what has been changed is meant to get you into combat more, something which rubs against my play style. I never liked the "hordes of enemies" approach, and Vran lured me in with the premise of something fresh, only to show it kept it as a pretense, not the reality.

What's left is kind of bland. The environments are colorful, to be sure, but the gameplay is kind of samey. While challenges help mitigate the blandness a little and add some dimensions of play, your achievements shouldn't be doing all the heavy lifting, and what else there is of the game feels unsatisfying. Instead of a skill tree, you gain equippable cards that take the place of such things. Each level you gain unlocks new things: levels, abilities, extra weapon slots, and extra item slots. Instead of an overworld you can travel and explore, you get a map with level select and a rating of stars and secrets in terms of completion. 

I do like the streamlined level process out of all those things, but at times I wish it were more customizable. It's a game about hitting things, it makes that very obvious from the first step. It's not as interested in magic or area control or strategy, it's very much about combat. Head-to-head combat. It's also got a lot more rails than the pre-release version, forcing me to change my strategies but...not leaving me very much to change them to. 

Enough about what this version subtracts. What it adds are some very nice visuals and pieces of art, and full (unneeded) voice overs. This is especially egregious as the ultimate evil has some kind of taunting voice in the protagonist's head, but the writing staff didn't bother to make him particularly funny. There's also more of a story than previously, but the story isn't really the point here. 

So in the end, if you want a game that reaches for innovation with a ton of action, and some interesting choices in height, then this is definitely a game you should watch out for. But be warned, it doesn't really do anything out of the ordinary, and even the few charms it has aren't really worth the full price of admission. Wait for a sale. 

2/5

Full Disclosure: Reviewer received a review copy of the game.

The Red Solstice Review

I can see how this might be fun in multiplayer.

I can see how, in the heat of the moment, with all cylinders firing and everyone trying to figure out a tactical position against the alien hordes, it could be pretty cool. Hell, I'm sure there are guilds out there who would do great, shouting orders to one another and locking down a position, mowing down shrieking monsters as they run straight at you.

Then, there's a part of me that thinks it really missed the boat. A big part of me, actually. And it has to do with independence. 

The Red Solstice doesn't seem to have very much in the way of independence. The game takes place in dark, monster-filled corridors where you guide four soldiers through an overrun base on Mars. It's a real-time tactical game where you can pick various equipment, stats, and skills, but there isn't much more than that. You and your team wander through cramped corridors on a relatively linear path filled with monsters. Occasionally, you hold a position against an onslaught of creatures, with your marines holding off wave after wave until you can collapse the lair for good. Then you move on, towards the next objective and another hole. 

And...that's all there is to it. While the game does have differentiation between classes as you go forward, the entire thing's kind of...samey. Hold position, move, hold position, move, mow down the STROL (their name for the insane mutants), move further, mow down more STROL, complete objectives. I don't feel like there's any real independence or method to stationing my bulky dudes at a choke point and then letting them fire until I need them to move to another choke point. That isn't a game to me. Or particularly fun. 

The controls are kind of wonky, too. More than once, I moved my soldiers into position, only to have them then stay there when I needed to move again. The tutorial is incredibly noncommittal on the subject of what to do about things, instead choosing to tell you how to move, and then leaving the rest up to you. Worse still, the controls choose to work at times, and then choose not to work at other times. More than once, I was left in the lurch because the game just decided the explosives hotkeys were no longer necessary. 

The game also conflates difficulty with "more monsters," throwing more and more enemies in your way. I'd have liked an enemy variety, and maybe that happens in the part of the game I didn't give up on, but the same two or three enemy types were boring. I'd also have liked different behaviors than "Run at the PCs from all directions."

In fact, most of the aesthetics were pretty boring. Your marines look like chiseled spam in helmets and I honestly wasn't able to tell the various types of enemies apart (nor did I care to), and the exteriors all blurred together. Not that there was much to see, given that it was all kind of "generic space" and the usual low horror lighting, but there was really no distinction. 

In the end, I'm sure that, had I powered through the boring, repetitive, bland, passive gameplay, I would have found a game that might have been a rewarding experience. But when the part of the game I can play is supposed to be a backdrop to the part I can't, it isn't worth the price of admission. 

Final score: 2/5

Full disclosure: The reviewer received a copy of the game to review.