Sea Dogs clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Sid Meiers Pirates but replaces the fun with frustration. The controls are a complete mess and often make no sense. For example, the world map is accessed by pressing Enter, not once but twice. Yes, I know that older games did often have awkward control schemes, but Sea Dogs was released in 2000 not 1989. I will give the developers credit for making the sailing and naval combat feel realistic, as it does take what seems like months to sail anywhere (unless you chart a course) and cannon reload time is so slow it is almost painful.
Dagon is less a game and more a very fancy looking slideshow and is really not worth the time and effort even though it is only about 30 minutes long and free. Although it is a faithful adaption of Dagon, it doesn't fully capture the atmosphere of Lovecraft's work. The main reason for this is the lack of any meaningful interaction, you are essentially just listening to a bored sounding narrator quoting lines directly from the short story and left clicking to listen to the next line. Oh and you get to look around a minimally animated area, which outside of the first few screens consists of looking at a table, a clock on a wall, a window and a door! If you want to truely experience Dagon, just read the short story, it isn't Lovecrafts best story but it is better than this slideshow.
I know beat em ups do tend to be repetitive, but Fight'N Rage is more than most, as you endlessly spam the attack button while being swarmed by dozens of enemies. Each character does have a good selection of moves to pull off and attacks feel impactful, but it is too often frustrating. This is because there can be so much on screen that it can be difficult to tell what is going on, coupled with your attacks having so little range you basically have to be sitting on top of an enemy to hit them, yet they don't have the same complaint. It can also be very easy to get stuck in an infinite juggle, especially against bosses, who can quite easily wipe out half your life in one attack. It might be okay for a quick blast to kill half an hour, but it is definately no Streets of Rage.
I really like the concept of a first person shooter where your actions are linked to the rhythm of the music. When it clicks it can be really fun and satisfying to clear a room without missing a beat or taking out a boss without taking a hit. Unfortunately, though the rhythm mechanic often feels like it is holding back the action and I found that changing the game to auto-rhythm actually made the action much more hectic and gives you more freedom to experiment as it really does change up how the movement and weapons feel. It does also lean too much on the rogue-like aspect, to the point that it just feels like you are constantly grinding with little to show for it. As unlike many other rogue-likes you cannot carry anything over to a new run or unlock new perks or skills etc (apart from a barely useful banking and shop loyalty system). That said the good parts of BPM outweigh the bad, most of the time, although your milage may vary.
Judge Dredd is perfect as a protagonist in an action packed FPS game, unfortunately Dredd vs Death just falls short. There are a couple of interesting concepts here but they aren't really fully realised. Firstly, you can arrest perps which increases your lawmeter, rather than just mowing everyone down. The problem is that after the first couple of missions you will mostly be fighting the undead. Also, the lawmeter doesn't have much of an impact on gameplay as it seems to mostly exist to give you a better score at the end of a level in order to unlock cheat modes and skins for multiplayer etc. Dredds multi-ammo type gun could also have been a great way to stand out from the crowd, maybe using different fireing modes on different enemies, maybe even using it for solving environmental puzzles. But, instead you will find yourself using just one or two modes, for example rebound shot is next to useless and even the standard shot is overshadowed by pretty much every other secondary weapon you can pick up in Mega City One. This is not to say Dredd vs Death is a bad game, it is just a very middle of the road paint by numbers and is the sort of game you might play through on a rainy afternoon then never come back too.
I really wanted to love Gangsters: Organised Crime, instead I just like it. You start the game as, well a gangster, with a small crew and an office with the goal of dominating the city and fighting off other gangs, or going straight, if a life of crime isn't your thing. The game is split between two modes. The first one you can issue orders to your gang, such as extorting residents and shops to increase your territory, robbing banks, buying property and attacking rivals. The amount of options available to play with is really commendable and it can be really fun experimenting to see what mayhem you can cause. Once, you have issued orders you are then moved to a real time isometric view of the city as you watch your gang complete their tasks. In this mode you are mostly just a spectator, although you can issue basic commands on the fly to assualt or kill other gangsters you bump into on the streets. Although, this does carry a risk of starting an all out war or having your gangsters gunned down by the police or arrested. Once the week ends you are then taken back to the first mode, where you can review your progress and set up your orders for the following week. Unfortunately, the game suffers from being unintuitive and it oftentimes it boils down to trial and error which leads to it becoming a little frustrating at times. This is made worse by the clunky UI, where it feels like you have to click through a few too many tabs or menus to get to the option you are after. That being said, once you do manage to figure out what you are doing and the get to grips with the poorly explained mechanics there is fun to be had. Just a little bit more polish, it would have been fantastic, but it is still definately worth a try.
Mars: War Logs, clearly borrows from better games and although it won't set the world on fire, it is solid enough to get a few hours of entertainment from. You start the game in a POW camp and are swifty introduced to the main character Roy as he rescues a new immate from the less than romantic attentions of a fellow prisoner. After this "edgy" but oh so cheesy opening, you are tasked with attempting to escape from the prison whilst completing numerous side quests. As to the side quests, they don't offer much and most of them revolve around collecting X amount of Y or hitting people until they stop moving. I won't go to much into the story, not because I will spoil it, but because it isn't something that hasn't been done a million times before. It is not that it is bad as such, it is just very generic and uninspired. Although, the game has RPG elements, they are fairly basic and amount to upgrading a couple of dozen skills and some item crafting but most of the skills have little impact on game play and you can get through most of the game without needing to craft anything, The combat, like much of the game has been done before and if you have played any action game in the last 10 years you should pick it up instantly. You can perform a couple of types of attack, block, use hot key special moves and roll, oh how you can roll. They do attempt to spice up the fighting by giving you the option to issue commands to NPCs who are with you, but I never used it. But, it is there I suppose. Overall, Mars: War Logs is an average game but it makes a good distraction and there is the skeleton of a good game buried within it, and for a budget title, you could do a lot worse.
