Playtime: 3,5 hours (three short runs completed) **Intro** LOKCOAD is a roguelike "strategy" game that combines a simplified version of Darkest Dungeon's positional turn-based attacks with node travel like in Monster Train or Slay The Spire. You pick an area to defend and an overlord, and that's it - everything else is pre-determined. After the starting battle you can pick between 1-3 nodes where you buy/sell stuff, get an event or fight another battle. Battles take place in pre-generated dungeons where you place two traps and two groups of monsters to fight incoming heroes. **Review** The main problem with the game is lack of input. The only permanent upgrades are the skills you pick on the very limited skill tree. You don't get to pick different factions or anything that really lets you strategise. Dungeons are random so few options there. You can't even pick which monster to attack in many cases. There's no changing positions either. When placing units you can only try to match resistances with enemy attacks, and hope they don't scramble your formation. Your units will die quickly, sometimes even before you get to use them. You do get to upgrade units a bit, but there are no choices there and you need money and the right node. There's all kinds of different artifacts, attacks and status effects that are somewhat interesting to interact with, but getting to do that is randomly determined. **Conclusion** LoK is a game that makes you feel useless. Your carefully placed units get moved randomly. Your carefully selected unit dies before it even gets to act. You end up with a ton of some resources and a lack of others because of random nodes. And after an hour or so you lose all progression except for some XP that you get to spend on exciting skills like "+x% bonus to y". This had a lot of potential. Dungeon Keeper has always been a fun concept and the various units and such are nice. It's just overly random and kind of feels like it plays itself.
Playtime: 102 minutes (71% completed... or something) **Review** Haven Park is a game about finding resources, trying to find your way around, backtracking a lot, repairing broken objects and building the exact same handful of things in each campsite. Outside of campsites you can only repair streetlamps and fences, you don't get to place your own. Campsites are small areas where you build the exact same campfire, bench, vendor and tents each time. There are a few other things to build, but half of them are locked behind a skill that requires two level ups early on - when you want faster movement and more resources instead. Aside from the dull building element there's almost nothing to this game. A couple of lines of dialogue at best (not voiced, of course). There isn't even any half-decent music. What are you supposed to get from this? I've literally seen more creative asset flips.
Playtime: 31 minutes (tutorial completed) ==Intro== GAO is a mix of FPS and ship management. You have a ship where you have to manage modules, crew, resources and threats - somewhat like FTL. You can also land on planets to gather resources while being attacked by aliens à la Deep Rock Galactic. ==Review== The first indication that this isn't a good game is the menu. It has wildly moving animations and loud music. The controls are also weirdly bad. I still have no idea how to close some of the menus. The game is also pretty vague when it comes to some elements. You can "reassign the crew on the right" or something like that, but i have no idea what they mean or how to do this. The worst thing is that the gameplay just isn't very good. I absolutely love building bases like in Fallout 4, Hinterland and Riftbreaker. But that aspect is incredibly basic here (no pun intended). You can just build pre-designed halls and rooms. The combat is equally basic with a vague promise of becoming more interesting later on. Presumably after a lot of grinding. ==Conclusion== I love the concept of this game, but the execution is bland and user-unfriendly. With pre-designed corporations and rooms there's basically no personal input. Everything seemingly interesting (like artifacts) has to be unlocked through luck and grinding. It's such a weird design choice. The whole thing feels half-baked, like some mod that got abandoned after a few months. Except if it had been a mod would probably have been better.
Playtime: 7,5 hours (abandoned) ==Review== Ok, so i stopped playing this 2,5 years ago and i've just decided i'm going to uninstall it. It's a perfectly passable pause-based strategy game with a couple of nice ideas. This is the kind of game that gets a 5/10. Not bad, but not really worth playing either. It's completely linear and balance between the characters is kinda wonky. In a world with Baldur's Gates and Dragon Ages and stuff you'd have to be a real genre enthusiast to get something out of this. 5/10
No one is playing this. There are no bots. You can't even host a map without a second player. Wow.
Playtime: 2h41m (beaten the Giant, first of three paths/campaigns) **Intro** IATG is a turn-based strategy game in which you play a card each turn (some cards allow further plays) to battle monsters. In turn the monsters in the first row or those with ranged attacks attack you. Cards can hurt monsters, defend/heal you or draw/steal cards. Each card can only played once. You get new cards from chests or abilities. Killing monsters and finding gems gives you XP, which can be used to buy abilities or chests. **The Good** - IATG has a cool, clean style that represents most game elements really well. - There's a solid variety in monsters and enemy abilities. - The little story elements are nice. **The Bad** - The game is terribly unbalanced. Even on the "super-easy" Story difficulty it took me several tries to reach the giant. - Some monsters require specific cards to beat, making the game too random. - I have no idea how you're supposed to win without maxing the Shield upgrade. - You have to replay the exact same levels every time you die. - The exact same story elements play each time. - Puzzle levels also remain exactly the same. - The game does a little zoom each time a new level starts. This can be skipped but not disabled. - While being branded as a deckbuilding game, cards are one-use only and very basic. There's no real strategising here. **Conclusion** Iris And The Giant has some really solid content, but there's very little of it. I already dislike how roguelikes make you start over constantly, but at least every other one i have played had randomisation. Here you have to sit through the exact same stuff a bunch of times hoping you draw the right cards this time. This game shouldn't have been a roguelike in the first place.
Playtime: About an hour? (tutorials + first mission and Babylon 5 tutorials) ==Intro== FS2 is a space combat game. You play through various missions in a linear campaign which involve protecting allies and/or fighting enemies. There are also dozens of mods that add new content, from new missions to total conversions. I used Knossos to install mods. Vanilla FS2 worked too but looks worse, obviously. ==Review== As a kid i used to play Fury³, Terminal Velocity, X Wing/TIE Fighter, Rebel Assault II and the like. FS2 is a similar straight-forward flight combat game. There's no open world, no trading, no wide variety in ships and weapons, no factions - just simple missions. It's alright for what it is, and it's definitely cool to install the Babylon 5 mod and pilot an actual Star Fury, but i miss the freedom and options of X3TC or even Rebel Galaxy.
Playtime: 14 hours (completed campaign on Cakewalk) =The Good= - You can quicksave, so you can just load if you lose. - The Cakewalk difficulty setting lets you just play the game without grinding or strategising. - Despite the necromancer theme there's a decent variety in units. - Solid variety in enemies. - The bosses are neat. The "witcher" boss was a nice touch. - Most unlockable units can be gained by playing normally (and attacking your own team). - You get lots of parts (used to create units) so a unit dying isn't too big of a deal. =The Bad= - Confirmation screens have to be clicked, Enter, Space or Escape don't work. - The game displays a pointless confirmation screen when booting. - There's no replay value. You can get all the items and try out all the units the first time. - A run takes ~14 hours which is far too long for a roguelike. - Unlocking Dhampirs requires outside knowledge and can take several runs. =The Ugly= - Clicks often don't register, which can even make you lose a battle. - The game does not explain how to reorganise spells (apparently you can right-click on them). - There's no proper way to regenerate mana or talents (player skills) that improve spellpower, making a magic-oriented build non-viable. - Every time you change to the maze map you have to select your "battle group". Every single time. And these clicks often don't register, and the selection is only indicated by a vague yellow haze. It is beyond obnoxious and could've simply been fixed by... keeping the freaking group selected. FFS. There's not enough variation in combat for a 14-hour game. =Conclusion= Iratus is one of those games that is just "okay". It's not as obnoxiously grindy as Darkest Dungeon and IMO the more playable of the two, but not something i would recommend. Especially not for freaking €30 (!!). There are countless better strategy games and roguelikes that are often cheaper too.
You are "Cutter Slade" (yes, that's your real name) and you travel to an alien planet to save Earth. You wake up to discover aliens who conveniently speak English, have tons of ammo for your gun laying around and believe you are Jesus. Outcast was updated to allow for modern resolutions in 2014 and it worked without a hitch. Unfortunately, it has some problems. One are the really bizarre controls. You use WASD to navigate menus and confirm with Left Mouse. Why not just let me use the mouse to navigate?? Saving is done with an item and is quite tedious. You run by default but you're still quite slow. The game definitely looks old of course. The biggest problem is knowing that there's a remake. I mostly just tried the original to see if i was interested in the remake and i am, but i wouldn't want anyone to think this is still worth playing.
Crime Cities is a game in which you fly around a city, desperately try to figure out where things are while constantly bumping into stuff because you have no sense of how big your ship is. At first i had absolute no idea what to do because the essential bottom part of the UI is hidden if you use the 16:9 aspect ratio. After fixing that i did a "kill stuff" mission which was quite poor even compared to Terminal Velocity or Fury³. Then i did a "collect stuff" mission which i failed because the timer ran out while i was trying to figure out where to drop the stuff. I have no idea why it even uses a timer since you also get chased by enemies. Aside from clunky and boring gameplay the Crime Cities also has atrocious menus that you have to cycle through with... PageUp and PageDown? I've never encountered that in a game. There are other, minor problems as well, such as the fact that it is almost impossible to come to a complete stop. Even when the shield recharge station says you're docked you still drift. Only a handful of ancient 3D games still hold up, like Half-Life and Deus Ex. Crime Cities definitely isn't one of them.
