Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem is a standalone expansion to Serious Sam 4 developed by a group of modders-turned-pro with the help of Croteam. While shorter and cheaper, the level design by this team of enthusiasts is head and shoulders better than the frequently empty and barren level design of SS4. The central hook of Serious Sam is managing hordes of hundreds of enemies with basic AI like a first-person Robotron 2084. Circle-strafing and bunching up groups of enemies to provide the maximum splatter with a well-timed grenade toss is the name of the game. Like Serious Sam: Second Encounter, this game starts at a difficulty level aimed at someone who just finished SS4; do not expect any hand-holding. Long-running fans of the series will recognize variations of several famous rooms from previous games in the series. I just found myself in the famous pillar room from First Encounter, albeit with a Russian oil rig aesthetic. This really feels like a love-letter to the series. Also the Russian winter setting prevents the problem in SS4 of certain enemies and powerups blending into the bright and colorful bloomy backgrounds. I can't give much info on the technical side of things because I am one of the lucky few whose hardware let me run SS4 at playable framerates. Apparently it's a CPU hog, though I have heard that disabling depth of field and enabling prebaked lighting does wonders. I have never encountered a CTD bug never fixed in SS4, fingers crossed, so I'm going to say it's probably more stable than the original game. Imagine Serious Sam 4, but with most of the half-baked ideas cut out and just the excellent horde-shooting with some of the best enemy and weapon balance in the series. Then improve the level design tenfold. That's Siberian Mayhem. Highly recommended!
Blackwind is a 3rd person platformer action-adventure indie game by a 2-person development crew. You play a teenage kid who takes refuge from a crashing spaceship in an experimental AI-driven battlesuit and ends up having to take on an entire alien invasion by himself. As most teens in mecha anime do. Gameplay is equal parts combat, exploration, and puzzle-platforming. The combat portion of the game is solid. You have a peashooter that can upgrade to multi-shot, energy blades with normal and heavy attacks in a 4-hit combo, multi-target missile swarms, a double-jump that can do an area-effect ground-pound, dashing, parries, and more. Certain enemies require certain moves be used to make them vulnerable. Get their HP low enough and you can do glory kills ala. nu-DOOM for a quick burst of health. Dead enemies drop orbs that can be used to unlock and upgrade new moves at upgrade centers. Exploration parts have you inside maze-like facilities battling aliens in tight hallways and small rooms as you search for consoles and passkeys to open doors and get out. Pay close attention to the minimap, it'll indicate important things like possible key locations with a white dot. You can also explore narrow vents and other small openings with a tiny detachable laser drone at points, giving the game a kind of Blaster Master feel. Exploration is probably the weakest portion of the game because all the reused assets make it easy to get lost. Finally there are 3rd-person platforming challenges, often with zelda-style timed button platforms. Not much to say about this except learn what grab-able ledges look like and you'll save yourself a world of frustration. As for negatives, while the graphics are bright and the music is pleasant, but the cheesy voice acting for your teenage protagonist can grate. The camera is out of the player's control and its tracking and panning can be weird sometimes. While keyboard-mouse controls are supported, this game's made for a pad.
The original Ziggurat was IMO head-and-shoulders the best roguelite FPS on the market, then part 2 came along and made everything better. The premise is the big wizard order from the first game had a civil war that resulted in the titular Ziggurat being destroyed, releasing all the imprisoned monsters on the world and scattering the order to the winds. You play the hardscrabble remains of the wizard order setting out into the world to recover lost magic and wayward wizards in the hopes of gathering enough of a force to clean up this mess. Ziggurat is a basic but very fast-paced FPS with strong emphasis on constant movement to avoid area-effect attacks. Enemies drop powerups on death, most importantly experience orbs that allow you to level up for a full health and ammo refill as well as a minor perk. You have a weak but infinite-ammo wand, and can find up to 3 more types of weapons: spells that function like shotguns, wands like machine guns, and alchemical devices that function like rocket launchers, each with a seperate ammo pool. Perks in this game tend to have fairly minor effects (like +5% damage, etc.) and your skill will make a much bigger difference than your build. The graphics are somehow even more bright and colorful than the original, with a more overtly cartoony look. Level design seems to incorporate even more verticality than the original (no falling damage) though the basic enemy AI has a tendency to fall off ledges and congregate in the lowest levels. Music is boisterous military marches punctuated with unusual instruments like bagpipes and didgeridoos. The meta portion of the game is expanded compared to the original. Instead of a full-length assault on the Ziggurat every time, the game offers short randomly-generated missions from as little as two-floors long. Each individual wizard and piece of equipment can unlock permanent perks between runs. Main downside is enemies are still a little bullet-spongey. Recommended!
