I was hoping for really deep strategies by leading masses of cultists with innovative tools and story. And unfortunatly nothing like this here. Indeed the game lacks crutial commands. As an exemple you can't give a simple order like holding a position and be able to set it permanently. You can't even create queues for fabrication of units to refresh your frontlines. You have to manually promote cultists and send them to the enemy. By talking about units (even if i haven't finished the game) they are pretty common and all with few hp except your prophet who can resurect very easily ( for other heroes their loss means a game over -_-) Meaning that strategies turns as this: make a big group of cannon fodder with few healers. Put your commanders behind with ranged units. Get a big group of hackers in support to build your frontline with sentry turrets with drones to see further. Your Prophet aggros enemies on your deadly turrets with ranged units as fire support. Enemy eliminated you can move your melee units foward. Destroy your turrets and repeat the process. All of this because human units have a short life span and the fact that you can't rally promoted units on a specific point (note that the process of recruit cultists has been automated but they will stay idle at your permanent base waiting to be promoted). Because even if the cyberpunk theme has been splashed all over this game (with nice little effects but nothing amazing) it feels like an old rts with peasants/hackers to make money/ build turrets, you collect mana/faith for units powers,.. Add to that an uninterresting story: You are Elion, an office drone who comes from nowhere and decides to help people. He meets new friends and TADA! He becomes a super badass cyber prophet who butchers his own followers as much as his enemies. And ofc they are numerous and in 2184 humankind is dumb. Even Dogmas (prophet skills) are bad, "mercy" to convert an enemy under 30% hp but gets a killtag ? Disapointing.
Caves of Qud is the most complicate game to rate i've ever seen. That's why I will be straightforward. Why would you buy Caves of Qud ? If you want to try the hardest rogue-like rpg up to date with minimalistic graphics but rich stories and amazing gameplay possibilities then you can buy this game. Otherwise forget it. Because you can have a lot of fun and really rewarding moments as you can become so frustrated and angry to smash your keyboard (wich is actually the only controler). BUT if you still want to buy this game: Few things you must know before playing. Creating character with so much possibilities is a joy but you must follow some rules. You can fail your character build pretty easily. Always think about your vital needs, drinking, eating, staying cool or warm, light your surroundings. Your "origins" have its importance, playing a Mutant is different than playing a True Kin ( The "Vault Boys" all newcomers into Caves of Qud start with). True Kins can discover/craft augments but Mutants can starts right away with crazy mutations. Having 4 arms ? You should use them in combat... quad dagger fighter with a specialty in status effects is a good start. Your a really fast moving guys ?... rely on dodge less than armor value because armor weights a lot. This example goes for almost every mutations, augments and skills. Add to that Wayfaring and Social skills... YES in Caves of Qud you can lost yourself in the wilderness and YES you can learn to befriend people and ask them to join you ! (and there's so much more to tell but not enough space to do so...). Keep your time to learn how to survive in this world otherwise you will miss everything about this game. This is not a walk in the park, this all about discovering a new world tailored by passionate developpers. You have to support them because I can't think about a rpg that deep. About immersing a player, they just nailed the job. A MUST BUY.... if you dare. N.B: Don't forget to save your characters builds and copy and paste in a folder your World seeds. Quests are always hard, expect the worst. Teleportation/Mines might be your best allies... trust me. Roadmap is something you HAVE to read, you can't imagine how they did until this game got released on Gog. Also even without Steam Workshop, you can dowload mods from Freehold Forums.
I'm a true Synth/Dark/Vapor Wave fan. And Dan Terminus is one of the best Dark Synth Wave music artist out there. So if you add his talented work into one of the funniest rogue-like twin stick shooter out there... you know you have something that deserve your interrest. I have to admit that I've only finished the game (on Steam) with FORTRESS. Because you can choose between 3 types of "Frames" with a basic skill to start with. DASH the light robot that can DASH... through bullets. FORTRESS (my favourite) the heavy robot with a personnal shield that deflects attacks but prevents moving. And the last RAMPAGE who can increase his movements and attacks speed and use both of his weapons at the same time. You can mount 2 weapons and a special skill per robots. Skills are mounted at the beginning of the game. Weapons can be found. Lasers, Machine guns, Plasma guns, Rocket launchers, Laser Axes/Swords.... you name it. They are only limited by the energy they draw from your frame and you can mix almost any weapons to your convenience. Usefull because enemies are really dangerous. Considering that rather often you fight near hazards such as toxic canisters or explosiv barrels, even your objectives can kill you: most of the time generators that you have to destroy. That's why most of the time you blind fire from a far to try to trigger an explosion or aggro few enemies from a patrolling mob. But it's related to your weapons too. Of course if you fight in close combat, your experience will be completely different. Also body parts of robots have stats and you can find/buy new ones and upgrade them. Wich makes this little rpg side I really liked because parts have a rarity indicator and it's always good to find nice stuff ! Neurovoider is exactly what he tries to be an excellent action game where you can tailor a machine to destroy hordes of robots with badass soundtrack in your ears. And if this soundtrack is not enough try "New Retro Wave" channel :D N.B: Haven't tried multiplayer, i'm a lone robot !
Red Faction Guerilla is now on Gog and remastered ! Seriously this game is so much fun that you might feel guilty... Playing in a big Red sandbox with tools of destruction with almost everything that can be turned into rubbles and this in a really realistic way ! Pure gold. Even if some other games did a bit better after (Just Cause, ect...), for me it's still the pioneer in the genre and for this it has a special place in my heart. This the only action game where: You can customize mining tools to get a wolfenstein ubber soldier tesla gun or even [for finesse :D] a frikin' awesome quintuplet rocket launcher ! You can set embuches to convoys and return enemy vehicles back to them filled with explosives ! You can slam baddies with a towering Demolition Mech for true moments of joy (If you search enough you can find others mechs to play with !). You can relax on puzzles about bringing down buildings with chain reactions of explosives or with real physics. Because YES demolition is cool and YES it can be done with style. And YES sir you can do it too ! TO CONCLUDE: Reworked it's only a better version of one of the best action game ever made. Maybe we could ask for a better story or less dumb allies but honestly you don't play for that. You play Red Faction to be a demolition man who can wreak avoc and escape like a badass. Even the act of destroying is not only fun but rewarding, by this way you get a currency to upgrade your gear. Breaking things has never been this cool. A must buy.
Most of the novels written by Lovecraft doesn't face the horror itself in the first place... "it" crawls around characters, affects them until you discover, too late, that there will be no salvation, only terrible aftermaths... or death. Lovecraft's Untold Stories has nothing to do with Lovecraft's novels. It only copies some of its creatures and setup. The rest is only a failed attempt to revive the unique atmosphere from Lovecraft's work. The Story is vague an uninterresting: A detective, follow his old police chief in an obscure investigation. At the scene, a "Resident Evil Mansion", apparently something went wrong and he decides to storm the place with only a miserable shotgun and his "brilliant" mind. Why "brilliant" ? Because when you activate certain pieces of furniture/item, and select one of the few options you have, they are almost all dumb or predictable. Or even the fact that you collect some useless books or pseudo informations that seems to have no purpose. Absolutely nothing is explained about this aspect during gameplay ! BUT this game would be good enough if the "finesse" of Lovecraft's stories was forgotten for fun gun blazings ? Unfortunately even this, it's awfull. First the basic weapon is a piece of garbage. Second enemies are right at the beginning fully armed and followed by Cthulu minions. Enraged cultists with sledgehammers that stuns, spell books that stuns, tommy guns wich makes you bleed, octopus things that poison you. Even an hilarious sentry turret that fires napalm !! And luckily, because of a bug, i could see giant mosquitos with laser rifles in the second level ! SERIOUSLY ?! Add to that horrible difficulty where enemies have perfect reflexes and vision in the dark, but not you.. Terrible controls even on a xbox gamepad. Throwing a grenade has never been that hard ! Same musique on both first and second levels. No explanation about sanity effect. Ect... Ect.. This game needs tons of work. Avoid it for now, there's no fun.
This is the only game about Zombies where they are not a threat. Infectonator start is promising. Customizing and managing zombies is fun. The overall look is cute and full of details: missions results presented like a news report , characters with different speech bubble depending of their nationalities, levels represents almost each continent in a decent way, funny looking Zeds, ect... However the game difficulty becomes brutal. As I allready mentionned, Humans starts to fight back the outbreak really fast and really hard. They call cops, swat or soldiers and even civilians starts to equip weapons. Making mid- late levels desperates struggle against huge mobs of furious and armed humans. With only 12 zombies in 4 types and the random infection or mutation attributes to increase your "horde"... your tries will be pointless. And I didn't mentionned Cure research, wich is hilarious in difficulty. Lab spawns randomly and then, YOU HAVE TO destroy them. For an average game without any labs destroyed, 60 days or almost 1 hr it's Game Over. There's no other way to counter that and honestly I couldn't even destroy a single one... Add to that random starting unit pools. The fact that like in the game "Majesty" you don't control zombies so they wander almost all the time and miss lone humans. That Infectonator is a near rogue-like game where not every tools are availiable at start: the usual bait to keep you on your toes with limited strategic options... Zombies have a life span of few seconds making every decisions critical. Even buying units after fights is tedious with no automation for refreshing troops... You can't even pause the game to spawn zombies during missions, leading to messy fights that tends to be more calling on your reflexes than your strategic skills ! To conclude, after a while I felt disgusted. This rogue-like pseudo strategy game is bad and frustrating. Maybe if they update some aspects of the game It might be decent otherwise avoid it.
Ion Maiden is just a demo for 20 dollars. There's simply no reasons to put 5 stars to something like that. Steam and Fan boys... an annoying story. There's no introduction or cutscenes. No alternate fire-mode (contrary to what they've advertised). Not enough polish, at least on this first level: contrary to Duke 3D: Megaton Edition, mouse look pans up and down in a disgusting way (Redneck Rampage has the same... seriously in 2018 ?!?), Bowling Bomb are a pain to use: they get stuck all the time and bounce a weird way... I can't wait to see "physics" in this game ! No more than 1 or 2 hours of gameplay. Okay it's an early access but based on an old game engine... great. But between an absolute classic and a tribute with it's own charisma and gameplay to renew the genre... there's a long way to go. Ion Maiden is the prequel to Bomshell, wich was a desperate attempt to surpass Duke Nukem released few years ago. We play again with Shelly "Bombshell" a sort of grand daughter of Sire Duke... charisma in less. And the same happens here in Ion Maiden ( Pardon: here in the Demo of Ion Maiden ). I have nothing about playing Shelly and to be honest I really liked to see her in a very Doom/ Wolfenstein way, but frankly she has no charisma and the universe is not presented. For newcomers It could be hard to swallow. As an exemple Shelly works for the GDF, Global Defense Force, that employed Duke back in the days. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (a great game btw) tried to developpe a bit more about this organisation during the time paradox that lead him to create an Nuclear Winter or Travel to Victorian England... Yeah I'm really talking about the last true Duke Nukem released before the "thing" created by Gearbox. It has potential that's for sure but, for now, I can't recommand Ion Maiden. Developper you have to choose a side, go back to the roots of "Duke-Likes" or make your own thing. As A great man said, it's time to have some: "Balls of Steel"
Ion Maiden is just a demo for 20 dollars. There's simply no reasons to put 5 stars to something like that. Steam and Fan boys... an annoying story. There's no introduction or cutscenes. No alternate fire-mode (contrary to what they've advertised). Not enough polish, at least on this first level: contrary to Duke 3D: Megaton Edition, mouse look pans up and down in a disgusting way (Redneck Rampage has the same... seriously in 2018 ?!?), Bowling Bomb are a pain to use: they get stuck all the time and bounce a weird way... I can't wait to see "physics" in this game ! No more than 1 or 2 hours of gameplay. Okay it's an early access but based on an old game engine... great. But between an absolute classic and a tribute with it's own charisma and gameplay to renew the genre... there's a long way to go. Ion Maiden is the prequel to Bomshell, wich was a desperate attempt to surpass Duke Nukem released few years ago. We play again with Shelly "Bombshell" a sort of grand daughter of Sire Duke... charisma in less. And the same happens here in Ion Maiden ( Pardon: here in the Demo of Ion Maiden ). I have nothing about playing Shelly and to be honest I really liked to see her in a very Doom/ Wolfenstein way, but frankly she has no charisma and the universe is not presented. For newcomers It could be hard to swallow. As an exemple Shelly works for the GDF, Global Defense Force, that employed Duke back in the days. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (a great game btw) tried to developpe a bit more about this organisation during the time paradox that lead him to create an Nuclear Winter or Travel to Victorian England... Yeah I'm really talking about the last true Duke Nukem released before the "thing" created by Gearbox. It has potential that's for sure but, for now, I can't recommand Ion Maiden. Developper you have to choose a side, go back to the roots of "Duke-Likes" or make your own thing. As A great man said, it's time to have some: "Balls of Steel"
Fear Effect was a UFO back in the days. One of the first games with a "cell shading" look and a mature content centered around the main charaters: femal protagonists. I didn't played any of the two first episodes but I remember the inuendos in the commercials with Hana and Rain. Quite a change especially compared to Lara Croft, who changed as the icon we know today and not as siliconned bimbo tailored for nerds of that time... So yes Fear Effect: Sedna is a tribute to the old Fear Effect. Atmosphere, visuals, seems to be close enough of what was the roots of the franchise. Sushee Fish worked well on that point and apparently they plan to release a remake of the first Fear Effect. But now it's a Tactical/ Stealth game. And it's where the game hurts. Because it's bad, really bad. Enemies are dumb and run straight to their death. Covers doesn't really matter and it becomes rather obvious that you just need to shoot on sight without any tactictal pausing. Tactical is a big word because you don't have much choices in this game. 2 covering options, 1 dodge roll, 2 skills per character with no explanations about how they work or their potential synergies. No armored enemies with uniques skills, excepts some creatures of the Inuit lore. The game as nothing special to offer in terms of challenge. Puzzles have a weird logic that can test your nerves, but to be honest I figured out most of them and I didn't found them that much unfair. I really liked the cutscenes of when you fail some puzzle. By talking about cutscenes... . Many people complained about cutscene who didn't worked properly on the Demo released last year. To be honest actually everything in the game works fine for me except cutscenes... Threads on Steam shows that few people had this problem and nothing has been done for almost one year: https://steamcommunity.com/app/639010/discussions/0/1290691308569593620/ Avoid this game you have far better alternatives around. N.B: 1 star for Hana and Rain
I was blessed to start this franchise on Gamecube with Medal of Honor: Frontline, developed by E.A Los Angeles. Just think about it: After the famous speech of Dwight D. Eisenhower you start the game on Omaha beach just like in Saving Private Ryan. The payers, the fear , the fight that starts when you get knocked into the sea by an artillery strike. Bullets cutting through water and hitting your brothers in arms. Running behind cover and shooting the gun nests when sergents screams for covering fire... One of the best gaming experience I had in my life. Medal of Honor: War Chest ( or Allied Assault) is, however, a huge disapointment. Especially compared to Frontline released on Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox that same year of 2002 but developped by another team. Missions order is ridiculous compared to Frontline. Here Africa, Northern Europe, Omaha beach ?! Breaks totally the intensity, the thrill of sucess of behing a trooper promoted to a special agent behind enemy lines. They didn't even took time to show your character the Lt. Powell, contrary to Frontline where you can see the ID of Jimmy Patterson. Difficulty is insane, the AI throw you swarms of enemies, Trondheim in Norway you have to kill hundreds of nazis that shoots homing bullets. Or bugs and simply awfull design, like at Omaha beach where instead of Frontline, you advance without being able to see the bunkers (with a fog at 20-30 meters that vanishes when you reach them). So you can't provide a covering fire, leaving the stupid AI shoot , like this hilarious moment when a sergent order to fire and two guys do it just right behind his head ! By talking about heads, characters models are uggly especially for Allied troops who are clones. Comrades hinding in artillery craters who looks the same.. soldiers who hold their rifle in a weird angle that cut their arms... stupide face animations... great for immersion ! Seriously Medal of Honor: War Chest is bad. Frontline was far more polished that this one. Same case on another excellent title: James Bond- Night Fire. Where you must forget the Pc and go grab the console version. Proof of a Time where Pc ports could be bad.... N.B: Two stars for the music.
