I'm barely scratching the surface of the game but I'm already addicted to the soundtrack, a very unique mix of modern electronic music, with wind organ, for me that alone was worth the purchase. The game itself plays like a mix of Darkest Dungeon and X Com. Visually is very appealing, even though it might not have the greatest models and textures a clever usage of graphical effects makes it a very good looking game, energy beams explode in a magnificent display of lights and smoke. Story so far seems very immersive and unique. Again I cannot even begin to describe how amazing the soundtrack is, I wish it had more tracks.
ION Fury is a very good game built on top of the BUILD engine. It has many elements that made 90's shooters great. That being said, it brings very little to the table. If you are old enough to remember old 90's BUILD games you know that each had their special quirks which were very original and fun in a unique way. On Shadow Warrior you could play with the RC carts, had a laser guided rocket launcher. On Duke3D you had the shrinker weapon (remember those puzzles where you had to shrink yourself??), freeze weapon etc. Other games of the era like Blood had proximity bombs, voodoo dolls, etc. ION Fury seems like an step back in this aspect. Shelly's arsenal is, ok I guess but nothing new or particularly thrilling. You have the stun baton, the obligatory shotgun, the bombs. And that is where ION Fury suffers the most, because the same can be said for the levels, and the sprites. Which even though are gorgeous and carefully designed you never get the feeling that you are really somewhere new. Every game of that era succeeded immersing the player by changing the setting radically. Duke Nukem's trip from L.A. to the canyons felt very differently with environments changing radically, or making his way through a spaceship in the second episode. Same with Caleb's raising from the grave, riding a haunted train, and descending to the depths of hell itself in Monolith's Blood. ION Fury feels same-y in that regard with every scenario feeling like a deja-vu of the previous one. Enemies also feel extremely repetitive with hordes of red and yellow robots shooting at you and occasionally some small annoying cyber spiders. Most of them are very static, briefly moving and then shooting at you. All in all ION Fury is a good game, but it doesn't particularly stand out against the games that it tries to emulate (specially against the ones from the late 90's ).
I never thought that a top-down game could be so scary. The game plays with your mind from the very beginning and you will never know what's going to be hidding in the next corner. The feeling of loneliness and constant danger is always present. The artwork is gorgeous in his own twisted way. Get it if you like games with a heavy atmosphere (kinda reminds me of STALKER), constant tension. Don't get it if you want a light-hearted survival game.
First of all if you have played Rimworld, this game is pretty much the same idea with a twist. But it has enough differences to stand on it's own, it's also way more forgiving. Unlike in the former game you control the pace of the game, deciding how many victims you're going to lure into your mansion of horrors. It's less focused on storytelling and more focused in playing with your victims. It's overall a smaller game but it feels way more polished, altough in my opinion there are some balancing issues, particularly: some stuff is way too expensive and require a lot of grind to build, the devs should consider making them cheaper and adding more tiers of stuff to build/research. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, in this game you build a mansion of horror, inhabited by your minions. Your minions require certain types of food, and you must get more and more clueless victims to feed them (and get some other resources too). It starts quite slow, but eventually it starts snowballing as you require more resources. However if you get too carried away you might arise the villagers attentions and they will pay your minions a visit, armed with torches and pitchforks. As your victims, ahem, visitors enter your mansion you can place certain things to catch their attention (mostly based on horror film tropes), this makes them split up (which we all know it's a great idea ) and your minions can kill them one by one. The game also rewards you if you follow several horror film tropes, such as killing your victims when they are alone, but remember, never, ever kill the dog! You can also set up traps like hidden revolving doors, many of which are targeted to specific types of victims. I say it's an incredibly fun game, altough it has some balancing issues as mentioned, research tree feels quite small, mainly because it has only a few tiers that unlock a lot of stuff. Devs should make the progression feel a little more gradual, and some items less expensive.
My only previous experience with WonderBoy games was the first one, I wasn't a big fan. I bought this mainly for the artwork, and not only I wasn't dissapointed but I was amazed on how great the gameplay is. The game takes the mechanics from the old-school version and goes with it, just updating graphics and music (which you can switch to the old school mode just like the Monkey Island remakes). The gameplay appears forgiving at first, but it starts becoming more challenging quite fast. You can die often if you are not careful enough, you will lose all your items but not your money, but fret not, items are quite easy to come by since enemies drop them a lot. Remember to upgrade your equipment everytime you can, as it will make the game easier, or if you feel like you want a challenge, do a vanilla run and try not to die (it won't be easy). The artwork is stunning, whenever you switch with the retro mode you wonder how they did come up with these concepts from the original style, since most of the stages of the original seem to miss them. The remake has incredible backgrounds with very creative features. The animation is incredible, very fluid, it looks like a movie. The soundtrack is very pleasant, with quite an upbeat rhythm characteristic of old-school games and a wide range of instruments with a strong presence of wind instruments, there are hints of jazz here and there. Get it if you like: solid platformer mechanics, simple yet interesting items, stunning artwork, cute stuff.
There are several things that set apart Realpolitiks from other games in the genre. Many of the mechanics are greatly streamlined and simplified, which might not be good for everyone. But in the other hand, it's very nature allows you to take a lot of more freedoms in the way you play. In my current game as Turkey with a couple of decades in, I've seen quite a lot going on in the war, Russia annexing it's neighboring countries, a ramp up of nationalism in latin america, Mexico attacking the US and North Korea seizing the opportunity to make an attempt of unification (which failed). I also went to war, although my attempts of expanding through conquest met a sudden stop with US intervention after the UN denounced my country, however I managed to take Chipre, and after recovering from the war I begun the slow process of becoming a first world superpower. Now in a more subtle way I finance wars that match my interests while keeping the "developing nation" facade to the UN. I make my markets more profitable and stimulate my stock market by inviting strong regional associates. In Realpolitks, proxy wars, espionage, strengthening regional power is the way to go. Realpolitiks is less realistic than your average GSG, you will also find it's mechanics quite simplified, specially when comparing it with other titles. However it's systems are quite believable, and even though some of the conflicts and crises that arise are crazy for today's world they build up in the game in a very convincing way and are very fun to watch. Even though warfare is perhaps the least interesting part of the game, I like that it's not just a matter of blobbing and spamming troops. Many times some wars get into a stalemate (In my game Iran and Germany have been at war for years) even when one side has been steamrolling the opposition, smaller states sometimes get a chance to fight back. People who want a lighthearted, dynamic GSG or that never played the genre before should play this.
Star Ruler 2 is a massive scale space 4x game, which innovates in almost every aspect of the genre and succeeds in doing so. In Star Ruler 2, your empire is very much alive, and you're very much it's ruler, you're not it's architect, it's city planner or his fleet commander. You don't need for example to build a colony ship to colonize a planet, you just right click on it, and select the appropiate option, your empire will send as many colony ships as it needs, with you only having to care to have enough funds, and to cover each planet's needs. Because in order to level up your planets, you will need to get more elaborate types of resources, so every empire in Star Ruler becomes an impressive commercial grid of planets interacting with each other. You can build things in your planets, but you won't be building everything, for each planet will build it's own buildings depending the type of resources it's importing. So if you have a highly developed planet that imports tons of iron, titanium and other minerals, you'll have a industrial powerhouse in no time. Diplomacy is a weird beast, but it's remarkably innovative. Each diplomatic action (besides declaring war, trade agreements and alliances), is given to you in form of cards you can purchase. Once each action is played, you and the opposing faction will have to play different influence cards to pass that action. You can annex planets, systems that way. Ship design deserves it's own post on it's own, you build ships placing blocks, armor, weapons, generators. Then on battle those blocks will get hit in real-time, so you have to plan carefully your design, trying to avoid exposing power generators and bridges, and not exaggerating with armor either, since it will slow down your ships considerably. Each race plays differently and there are ancient artifacts you can reactivate. There are a lot of other subsystems on Star Ruler 2 for you to discover sadly I'm hitting the character limit of this review.
