This is probably the best tower defense game on the market. On top of that, it also combines it with shoot 'em up gameplay in a truly enjoyable mix. Add to that the superb physics and particle effects and you got a winner. There are a lot of strategies you can employ. You get an infinite amount of time before every wave so you can plan the defense as long as you want. I found myself stuck in planning phase often, just bringing the tower positions as close to perfection as possible. The hardest difficulty really makes think extremely strategically as every single tower and your choice of what to do with it matters. You can also connect laser fences between tower to shape enemy paths. On top of that, you can actually collapse tall building so that they also block some of them. Just place a powerful bomb at the base of the building and watch it crumble realistically with amazingly well done physics. But that alone is not enough. Some enemies can jump over terrain, there are aerial attacks that just travel along a set path and more. I found myself adjusting the towers and strategy between almost every wave. There are not that many levels but I easily found myself spending 45+ minutes in every single one of them. Making even small changes can lead to vastly different results As for the shoot em' up part, many enemies will shoot projectiles at you, unguided or homing. There are also periodic aerial attacks that don't attack your core but go after your ship directly. You really have to be on your toes as eating a full salvo from enemies can equal a swift death. You respawn pretty quickly, but any lost time is a big loss. There are also upgrades. For your ship's weapons, unlocking towers and utility upgrades. You accumulate points throughout the campaign and can freely switch them at any time, allowing experimentation. This was an unexpected hidden gem for me and I'd go as far as saying that it's the best tower defense game I've ever played. Giving this a 9.5/10.
To sum it up, the game is basically a wave assault simulator. As long as you are near enemy spawn points, it will keep spamming them at you at an impossible rate. This basically makes it just a speedrunning game since staying anywhere even for a bit longer than necessary or exploring around at all severely punishes you by yet another enemy wave. Resources and healing are limited so your main objective is to rush to all the mission objectives as fast as possible and GTFO as soon as you can. You are also supposed to be collecting relics in the missions for bonus points but that would demand exploring around, meaning getting constantly swarmed by enemies. The only chance is probably looking up their locations and then planning the fastest route through the level that collects them all. There are gimmicks like locking doors, hacking turrets etc. but they are mostly useless. Enemies stop spawning anyway once you get far enough from the room with the spawn points anyway so locking doors is not necessary. Hacking turrets does not turn them against your enemies, just lets you control them manually while you get mauled by the endless horde. If you are not controlling the turret, it shoots at you and only you. The graphics, setting and atmoshpere are perfect, but it's definitely not the kind of gameplay I was hoping for. It is extremely difficult to manage your AI team-mates while you are under constant attack from an endless horde. The moment you let up for even a moment, you and your team immediately get swarmed and it's over. Might try easier difficulties but I heard that all it does is affect enemy damage output so the core experience will not change. Played through 2 levels and got bored by the constant enemy spam. It looked great at first glance and was hoping for a great single player 40K FPS game but unfortunately, it's not my cup of tea at all. Multiplayer would probably be more fun, but I rarely play that at all. Gotta give this a 6.5/10 which is a damn shame.
Ever since Mars: War Logs, Spiders have been improving and iterating on the same formula and it shows. This is most likely their best offering yet. Wait for a 50+% discount (happens pretty often) and it's very much worth it. The story is pretty interesting and the amount of spoken dialogue is insane. You will spend hours upon hours listening to people talk in this game, unveiling mysteries, history, deception and intrigue . Most characters are consistent and very well fleshed out. If story and immersion are what you are after, then this game won't disappoint. Combat is OK. Not as bad as many reviews claim IMO. It also greatly depends on the difficulty you pick. I played on the hardest with a melee build and had only a few issues. The camera can sometimes get obstructed by foliage and some enemy moves are dubious at best. Humanoid enemies have a propensity to teleport to you with their every swing (mainly 2-handers) and some animals' attacks have very unclear hitboxes/animations (it swings nowhere near you, you get close to it and you magically get hit anyway). But these issues are pretty minor, happen mostly only when fighting melee and can be worked around (with proper timings and play). My main issue with the game was the pacing. Pretty much from the get-go, the game allows you to visit like 80% of the areas that are in it. This means that you can visit quest areas prepared for a quest 40 hours from where you are. Fight certain enemies very early before they are shockingly revealed later in some main story mission. Leads to scenarios where everyone is gasping and in amazement at something you already met and killed before etc. I would actually have preferred if this was more limited. Open up an area only when a quest leads you there. What I did was explore everything I could before doing any story missions and most areas had pretty much nothing of relevance in them until a quest led me there. I greatly enjoyed my time with the game and give it an 8.5/10.
First off, I don't own the DLC but looked up what the items are and do. Understandable that they have to be somewhat desirable for anyone to pay for them but what sucks is that out of all the items, the game has no other equivalent for the hat which gives +1 to a certain talent skill. Other items, you will exchange pretty quickly but the hat will forever stay in your inventory because it gives you a talent point you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Even if some other hat with the same bonus was available normally in the game but at around mid or late game, it would be OK. But as it is now, this DLC basically equals 1 free talent point for your playthrough (if you keep swapping hats when needed). Besides the hat, it is basically an easier start cheat. You find other gloves with +1 to crafting pretty quickly in the prologue anyway and the other items are meh/get exchanged quickly.
First off, this is a good game. But unfortunately, it fell victim to some terrible design decisions. Autoheal, extreme linearity, hit markers, grenade (dynamite) markers, corpses disappearing pretty much instantly the moment you turn the camera away from them even slightly and so on... There are secrets hidden about but you will constantly keep getting a message that you are straying too far, making exploration extremely annoying. Enemies also drop money which you can use to buy stuff, but because the corpses vaporize within seconds, it is very difficult to find where exactly you killed each enemy, leading to many missed drops and of course zero immersion and no satisfaction of looking over a battlefield littered with your dead enemies after a big shootout. Besides the shooting itself, the story is not that bad. I finished this game a long time ago but after trying to replay it recently, I couldn't bring myself to play it for long because of all the little things I described above. It just seems way too obvious that the main target were the consoles and PC was an afterthought. Really a shame but the best Call of Juarez game is still the first one. That made me feel like I'm playing a proper PC shooter, not just a port of another console game. Have to give this one a 6.5/10. I remembered having fun with the game in the past but I guess my tolerance for consolified FPS games has gone down over the years.
First off, if you played Vikings - Wolves of Midgard and liked it, you will like this game too as it plays pretty much the same. The story actually continues some time after where Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition left off. This is a definite plus in this age of constant reboots and revamps. I finished the original game before playing this and appreciated Awakening much more because of that. Thus I sincerely recommend playing it before this one. As for gameplay, it is basically an ARPG where you can switch between 4 active characters at will (you have much more in total later on). But its focus is quality, not quantity. This is not a loot grinder where you kill hundreds of enemies every minute. Actually the loot and enemies are very limited (but more on that later). You will basically never fight more than 10 enemies at once and even then, such occasions are rare. The main focus seems to be on the story and it was pretty enjoyable. The game is split into 6 chapters and takes a while to get through. Everything is well voice acted and many story segments are different between the 3 main characters you can choose at the start. This is the first game that makes me feel like another playthrough would be worth it just to see the story differences. As for the mechanics, I had one major gripe and that is loot and economy. Most of the affixes are pretty useless and the game does its best to always give you the most disappointing trash (except fixedly placed items) and drop rates are terrible overall. The economy is extremely stingy. Items at merchants cost ludicrous sums and you sell items only at 10% of their value. Enchanting items with essence is also incredibly expensive and no farming is possible as nothing respawns. Because of this, you will just choose your 3 favorite characters and play through the entire game with them because there is simply not enough money available to gear them all. Overall a 7.5/10. 8 if you played its predecessor.
I had fun with the game. The soundtrack is great, the gameplay feels smooth and once you master the combat, it can make you feel pretty badass. You eventually get 3 different weapons which are both strong and weak against particular enemies, encouraging switching them on the fly to adapt to the situation The pixel art is actually good and pretty gory. No problems there. The length of the game is the main offender here. It took me exactly 199 minutes to complete it. Definitely would have liked for the ride to take at least a few hours longer. When it comes to controls and difficulty, I had 0 issues completing the game on a keyboard. Played and controlled perfectly fine. As for the difficulty, there are only really a few enemies that can be troublesome, until you learn the proper tactics to deal with them. Your biggest enemy will probably be the environment. It is littered with traps that instantly kill you and any fall out of bounds is instant death too. Luckily, the checkpoints are mostly placed well (there were some spots where they were pretty far apart though) and after every death, you are healed to full. You can usually take a decent amount of hits from enemies before dying, so there is plenty of room for error. I felt the difficulty was actually spot on which considering that there are no difficulty options, is quite an accomplishment. Overall, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. If it were longer, it could have easily been an 8.
