Having never played a trucking game, I have to say that this is a pretty decent game. The gist of this game is: you get some cargo contract, you drive to your destination, you get paid. Rinse, lather repeat. No, it isn't super exciting - mostly I just enjoy the long drives and occasional road challenges like heavy traffic or navigating tight roads with large loads. There's a very simple cb radio system that is fun to break the monotony. It's a chill game overall. The map covers parts of the USA, Canada and Mexico. The world feels appropriately large, but it is "compacted" and cities are made of just a few major streets and points of interest. There is no real "point" to the game though: it's a "sandbox" where you do what you want. There is some progression to it: you start with a single truck and a bit of money and once you get more money eventually you start buying more trucks and hiring drivers that work for you. There are a few downsides. The game feels "cheap". Graphics aren't amazing (they are serviceable). Audio is kinda bad. It crashes a bit (always save before interacting with notebook!). The game also has no tutorial and only a short manual. It is confusing for a newcomer. It lacks a the polish that you expect in modern games. The police system is also under-developed. You gain "wanted" level for doing illegal things, which is fine, but sometimes it isn't obvious what is going on - for example: driving after 6pm with your headlights off gives you wanted level but you might not notice this and you will rack up a huge amount and possibly a fine. Visibility is also terrible which you will feel while you struggle to get a good angle to be able to see what you are doing while backing up with your trailer. That said, overall, the game is a chill experience despite the flaws and I am happy with it. The price even discounted is a bit steep for what you are getting IMHO. If you are bored and want something different you can consider this game.
The men of war series are legendary for their tactical depth and epic battles. Assault Squad is no different, but it is more focused on multiplayer than its predecessor and brings a bunch of quality of life improvements over the base game, making it easier to manage the large-scale battles. In single player it offers some basic campaigns with missions that vary from capturing points in a linear fashion to a "last stand" style thing where you defend your base against waves of attackers. The "story" is paper-thin and the dialogue or terrible, but you aren't here for that - you are here to obliterate tanks :) The engine also has some improvements with graphics being slightly better and animations smoother. And Japan becomes a "proper" faction with voiced units and a campaign. One downside is lack of variety in units: because the game is MP focused all factions essentially got "gamified" - they have the same "classes" of equipment (infantry, light vehicle, tank, artillery, etc) with a couple of choices per class that fall into a normalized army list (light howitzer, heavy howitzer, self-propelled light howitzer...). They still have their own particularities and uniqueness but it feels a lot less "asymmetric" and realistic. The AI is still dumb as a brick: they send masses of troops straight into your defenses in a haphazard formation only to get massacred, eventually overwhelming you with numbers or a some big tank like a Tiger (if you let them that is). Thankfully there are SP mods that bring more interesting missions with better structure and slightly more intelligent AI that makes good use of artillery and things to give you a run for your money. Disappointingly, there are no bots in MP. You still need to convince a few friends to play. This game is still great. However I still prefer the original MoW because there are more mods and more community content for it. Strongly recommend this one but grab the original MoW too - they are usually cheap.
Brutal orchestra is essentially a turn-based, "roguelike" RPG game. A normal run has you progressing through each area in a non-linear fashion culminating with a boss fight. Beat the last boss to win. If you die, it's game over. You unlock new characters and items as you play. Standard stuff. Combat is mechanically straightforward, but gets complex and deep as you progress and new kinds of enemies begin appearing, forcing you to carefully consider your actions. Up until the last area, combat is, I think, 100% skill based (in the last area some enemies have a lot of randomness to them, so you need some luck and the right equipment). Abilities synergize in interesting ways and enemies present some dilemmas that force you to balance damage output with positioning and potential return fire. Expect to die a lot as you learn how these synergies work. But to me where the game shines is the presentation. The graphics are a very nice pixel art style with good simple animations and the music is cool - different enemies get different music (and some enemies transform causing the music to change accordingly). A great deal of care was put into the presentation and it shows. The story is also gripping. You start alone basically knowing nothing about your character or your motivations. After the brief tutorial you are let loose in the world. You are fed tidbits of story until eventually the full scope of your situation is revealed - and then the "real" game begins. You also find characters whose stories are funny, heart-breaking, infuriating - all kinds of situations. Though the game never develops characters much, what it reveals is believable and relatable The only real weaknesses of the game are: the interface is initially very confusing and overwhelming (you get used to it). And also: it ends too soon! I wanted more bosses, more enemies, more :) Kidding aside, this game is a rare gem: a rare combination of tight mechanics and amazing presentation. Strongly recommended.
In this game the developers just said "screw physics and common sense" and made a completely over-the-top insane shooter. A typical map starts like this: kick a door (door flies and kills the guy behind it), slide into the next guy (trip him, steal his weapon), shoot the next two guys, but - wait - there are two guys in the back. No biggie, wall-run to get close then dive and shoot them from behind while doing a backflip. All in slow motion. And then you move to the next room and more chaos ensues. It's nuts. The core mechanic here is: as long as you are doing stunts, you are invulnerable, and as long as you are making kills you can have slow-mo. Weapons have only one magazine (you have to steal weapons from enemies). The invulnerability and slow-mo are not get out of jail free cards as you still need to actually pull out the stunts and use ammo judiciously. There are tons of different weapons of different types and a handful of enemy types (it does not get boring). The campaign is short-ish, but there are other modes: shootout which is basically "you + X baddies in a room: fight!" and "rogue steel" which is a set of 10 levels and each level you get to pick a perk (positive or negative). The game also has an editor (have not tried it). So on top of being a fun shooter, it also has tons of different content. There are only three potential downsides - the graphics are kind strange (lots of weirdly reflective surfaces - it's hard to describe but you can't miss it), some maps are confusing and you'll wander around lost for a minute, and the music is a bit hit or miss (you can shuffle the tracks in-game). On discount it is dirt-cheap. You have no excuse not to get this!
People complain about the dice in this game but the dice aren't the problem. The developers crammed as many sources of randomness they could into the game - random damaged modules, random hazards, random events between turns, random research cards - and crammed it with hidden or unexplained mechanics that affect the game (stress, teamwork) - with the end result being a game where you are getting batted around every turn like a windsock in a hurricane. You survive likewise: flap around for a while without much control and in the last turn you dive for the escape pod. I have won a single game in easy difficulty (1 crew member survived with the ship nearly destroyed) after a 12-loss streak where I didn't even have a prayer. Afterwards I lost another 5 games in a row where I'm all confused about why the previously winning strategy didn't even survive past turn 3. There is no obvious pattern - sometimes you just get a bunch of events in a row that drain hull or health and then you can't survive the big hit that will come around turn 6. There is no variety in gameplay: every game is the same thing and develops in roughly the same way. There is no character development, no narrative, the ship layout is always the same - heck, you even start with the same destroyed module from the tutorial. There isn't even some kind of "endless" mode. You get the 10-turn normal mode and a few short premade scenarios (that are for masochists). The game is also not a "casual" game - it is actually quite stressful. I've played roguelike and bullet hell games where I'm getting slaughtered and it is still less depressing than this game. Strongly recommend that you read a guide and learn a few strategies before diving it. Cannot recommend this - certainly not at €15. There are FAR better games than this out there for that kind of price.
Sclash is a 2d fighting game with "one hit kill" mechanics. There are two modes: story and versus. The story mode is essentially a side-scrolling fighter - you walk to the right, enemies spawn, you kill them, you move some more to the right. Repeat until done. Most enemies die to a single hit (and so do you), except for bosses who have multiple lives. The story mode is incredibly short (finished it in about one hour). The story itself is forgettable. There is low replayability. Versus mode is just player vs player duels. I have not tested it a lot, but there is no AI which means that you need a friend to enjoy this mode. The game is beautiful. Backgrounds have a "hand painted" feel to them and audio strikes the right tone. Visual and audio elements integrate well into the game - for example, during boss fights the background and music change as the fight progresses (a storm breaks out, etc). Artistically the game is 5 stars. The fighting mechanics are interesting "in theory" - you can strike, parry, dodge and perform a "pommel strike" that drains stamina. Each action cost stamina and most fights boil down to draining your opponent's stamina or performing feints until they leave themselves open and striking at a decisive moment. It's a different pace from your usual "button mashing" fighting game - here it is about positioning, pacing and tactics. Unfortunately the mechanics are not fully fleshed out and combat comes out feeling stiff and wooden. Most fights can just be won by abusing the AI. Toward the end of story mode you unlock the charged attack and fights become "Charge up attack. Wait for AI to come into range. Release.". Boring. With a few tweaks it would have been amazing. So much wasted potential here. Controls are awkward, but you CAN rebind them (this was added in an update - explains the other reviews). So it is a very short and very beautiful game with poor mechanics. Soft recommend, but don't expect much value out of this game.
Another great game on the Amnesia series, but this one takes a different approach: this is primarily a survival horror game. You play as a French soldier during WWI stuck inside a bunker and you have to find a way to escape. The game is non-linear: you can complete the objectives in any order. The bunker is abandoned, it is incredibly dark and eerie, and falling to pieces. And then there is the monster: an ever-present and intelligent threat. It hides in the walls and reacts to your movements. If you make too much noise, it comes out starts hunting you. It knows how to open doors and will smash anything that is in the way. But it also knows to hide in holes and wait for prey (ie: you) to run by to kill it. You CAN fight the monster, but this only buys you a few minutes of relative safety. There is a very unexpected depth to this game. Unlike other Amnesia games where you are basically a victim all the time, here you have several options at your disposal. You have some control - but you have to very carefully balance your scarce resources. Another unexpected feature is the monster's behaviour. It has its routines and it is predictable to a point, but it WILL surprise you. Don't get complacent. The game is not exactly "scary", but there are genuinely blood pumping moments. The thrill of having the monster mere centimetres from you as you tiptoe around. The primal fear as you turn tail and just RUN LIKE HELL when the monster spots you. It is a game of highs and lows. A lot of time you are just feeling your way in the darkness and hiding in a closet, or you are just scouting for resources. But then you decide "let's do this" load up on grenades and just push through some obstacle to grab a key item, monster be damned! After completing the game you unlock new game+ which gives you tons of options to customise the game - like monster aggression or amount of resources. This makes the game superbly replayable. It's a great game. I really recommend it.
This game starts out interesting, but it becomes shockingly boring after a while. I haven't finished it, but I played long enough (20 hours) to get the point. The enemies are uninspired. The first enemy you encounter is basically a headcrab, except that it morphs into stuff. So you're walking around and HA! mimic in your face. That's kinda cool, except for the part that it happens ALL. THE. TIME. EVERYWHERE. The rest of the enemies are either floating blobs that shoot balls of stuff at you or walking scribbles that shoot balls of stuff at you. Also, exploding blobs. You get the point Weapons are underwhelming, and you are always artificially low on ammo - you can manufacture ammo, but you carry so little that you have to constantly go back and forth to replenish ammo. Also, the point of these kinds of games is that you can focus on some kind of specialization, but specialisation is for chumps. I invested a lot in engineering early to be able to upgrade sentry guns, but sentry guns just get demolished no matter how much I upgrade them. So I learned my lesson: just go for maximum conventional damage output. Enemies jus get deleted - problem solved. Exploration? You are absolutely not rewarded for it and the game forces you to follow a preset path anyway. Story? It's the old "you suffer from amnesia" bit. It's been done. Characters? Completely irrelevant. I did not care one iota if they lived or died. The game does have is a bunch of gimmicks. The mimic thing and being able to trigger computers with a foam dart crossbow - those are cool, but they don't carry the game. And just to finish, the game sort of implies that you are "prey" hunted by this unimaginable threat. There is nothing of the sort: enemies are pre-placed and they act like every other enemy in every other game: they see you, they shoot you. You move away, they forget that you ever existed. All that this games does has been done better elsewhere. Don't spend €30 on this.
