This is the third Kingdom Rush game and the best of the series so far in terms of gameplay. It's one of the best if not THE best in the tower defense genre because it keeps all the action in a single screen while giving the player plenty to do (casting spells, ordering heroes) when saving up for new towers/upgrades. KR:O features the best balanced towers in the series, no overpowered teslas to be found. The premise of KR:O is basically a goofball take on the Silmarillion, taking place at a time when elves ruled the world and the big bad of the series was ostensibly on the side of the good guys. The major change in KR:O is your choice of hero adds a third spell that can be upgraded with the hero's earned XP in addition to their active and passive skills. Heroes still have persistent XP between levels like in Frontiers. And a huge change is heroes can be used in challenge maps now. BUT AN IMPORTANT NOTE! While the $15 price tag includes all the DLC, not all of it has been implemented for the PC just yet. As of October 19th, the PC port has 15 levels (with 3 difficulty levels each) and 9 heroes. The developer plans rolling out monthly updates until all the DLC are implemented in the last week of February 2019. Recommended, but know that it's gonna be incomplete for a while.
Synthetik is an isometric shooter/roguelike that has you playing a rebel cyborg fighting its way through a robot-crewed military base to destroy the mysterious heart of armageddon. One of the game's main hooks is its more complicated gun mechanics. You have to manually eject a spent clip before reloading with a Gears-of-War-style qte, with various bonuses for a perfectly timed reload. Guns can jam, get hot, have recoil, damage falls off over distance, standing still increases accuracy. You also have a halo-style regenerating shield. The result is a very staccato style of gameplay with picking precise shots before dodging behind cover. The sprites are very polygonal and the music is a crunchy synthwave, but the weapon effects and sound effects are excellent. This is some of the most kinetic feeling gunplay I've experienced in any videogame. There's a surprising amount of RPG elements in the game. Your cyborg comes from several classes with a choice of starting pistol, three passive abilities and three pieces of backup gear. You level up mastery of specific guns as you use them more, the guns themselves can gain perks from upgrade kits, you can pick up side quests for permanent stat increases. And there are permanent class boosts collected after you die. I definitely recommend this game, but be aware what you're getting into. This is NOT a robotron clone where you skate around the arena firing a nonstop lead hose. This is a game of tossing a grenade at a loitering group of robots, popping out from cover, firing in short controlled bursts, then dashing behind cover to reload.
Do you remember when they brought Age of Empires and Age of Mythology to the Nintendo DS and changed them into Advance Wars-esque turn based strategy games with upgradeable cities? Gladius is like that for Dawn of War 1. The premise is that a warp storm has ravaged a once-prosperous Imperial stronghold, destroying everything, randomizing the map, and littering the place with Old One artifacts. It's a hex-grid turn-based strategy game with city founding/developing/spreading, units with a movement phase and an attacking phase who get overwatch if they finish their turn without firing, and cappable resource hexes and goodie hut-equivalents. The factions collect resources in significantly different ways that encourage different playstyles (Orkz gain resources by fighting and winning!) Research in this game isn't so much discovering new technologies civ-style but more building up your war infrastructure Dawn of War-style. With researchable upgrades, (like grenades for guardsmen) even beginning units have a role to play in the endgame. Units also gain XP up to 10 levels and a nice thing is kill XP is spread through nearby supporting units. Other than setting permanent alliances in the game setup, there is no diplomacy in this game. There isn't even city-capturing. You defeat your enemy by demolishing their capitol, which is heavily armored and has heavy defensive guns. In fact everything in this game has guns, even basic resource harvesting structures. The only victory besides total extermination is an optional story questline. Independent monsters are scary powerful in this game. Think Conquest of Elysium 4 powerful. And the AI is smart enough to retreat and heal heavily damaged units. You're going to be fighting a war before you even see the enemy. Aesthetics-wise it's the most professional-looking of the Slitherine 40K games, but it's still pretty bare-bones compared to modern standards. Like I said, a turn-based Dawn of War 1.
