Nested Lands Review - A Great Idea That Goes Nowhere
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Nested Lands might be one of the coolest survival game concepts I’ve seen in a while... and also one of the most frustrating. The premise is that you're rebuilding society after a supernatural, sentient plague wiped out the entire world.
The land is rotting, corpses lie discarded on the ground, and strange cultists wander the woods. Yet somehow... it all still feels weirdly tame. Because every time the game gets close to doing something interesting - it immediately pulls back.
Nioh 3 Beginner's Guide - 13 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting
- By Ash
- in Tips and Guides
Nioh 3 is a very technical game with loads of mechanics and systems thrown at you all at once. So let me help you overcome that difficulty hump so you can focus on what truly matters - dissecting demons!
Nioh 3 is So Close to Being a Masterpiece – 35-Hour Review
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Nioh 3 is without a doubt one of the best Souls-like games I've ever played. It can stand tall and proud next to even giants like Elden Ring, and I don't say that lightly.
But, that greatness does come at a cost - some of it expected, and some of it just kind of... weird. Let me show you what I mean, and don't worry - I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum. The stuff you'll see will be from the first chapter only.
13 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Mount & Blade 2 in 2026 | Beginner's Guide
- By Ash
- in Tips and Guides
After forty hours of epic battles and embarrassing failures, I realized that Mount & Blade 2 is an awesome game that simply doesn't teach you how to have fun with it. So with this guide I'd like to help you skip past the learning curve and get to the good stuff.
1) What Do I Do?
Your first order of business after finishing the tutorial should be to gain reputation. Once you have enough you'll be able to pledge yourself as a mercenary to one of the kingdoms, and that's where the real game begins. At that point you can tag along with their armies, fight massive siege battles, and eventually even become one of the nobles.
So how do you do that? Fight bandits, do tournaments in big cities, and solve any quests that don't sound like a pain in the ass. It really is that simple.
Against the Storm - The Best Strategy Game You're Still Not Playing (2026 Review)
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Usually city-builders want you to kick back, chillax, and just watch the taxes roll in. But not Against the Storm. It wants you to suffer... which is an insane way to sell a game to someone. I mean, the trees want to strangle you and your boss is a phoenix god who will fire you - and I have to emphasize the fire - if morale drops too low. So why did I spend over fifty hours with it these past two weeks? Well, as I found out, there is a surprisingly addictive pleasure to be found in the pain.
When you don't even know what buildings and tools you'll be able to use in each mission, something weird happens with your brain. You stop thinking about creating a mathematically optimal beaver labor camp and just start working miracles with whatever garbage you have on hand. And then, five hours later, you'll finally wake up from your trance and realize it's 3 in the morning and you have to get up for work soon.
Outer Wilds in 2026 - Is It Still Worth Playing? (7-Year Retrospective)
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Twenty-two minutes. That's exactly how long you have before the sun goes supernova, everyone you know and love is turned into dust, and you wake up back at your campfire roasting the world's crispiest marshmallows.
In most games, falling head-first into a black hole or trying to tap-dance on a cactus would be an obvious mistake. But Outer Wilds encourages you to be curious. This is a game with no loot to find, no XP to grind, and no gear to upgrade. Your only currency is information - and your only objective is to figure out why the universe is ending before the clock hits zero again.
This focus on curiosity over stats creates a very unique form of progression. If you know exactly what to do and where, you could finish the entire game in under 10 minutes. But you don't. So instead, you're forced to step into your rickety, wooden spaceship and fly into the unknown - trying one insane idea after another just to see which ones kill you the slowest, all the while piecing together a cosmic puzzle that spans an entire solar system!
Does Project Zomboid's Build 42 Live Up to the Hype?
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Project Zomboid's Build 41 didn't so much launch in December 2021, as it did explode onto the scene. New animations, vastly better immersion, and actually functional multiplayer - it was the update that turned Zomboid from a cult classic into a full-blown juggernaut. In that single month, the playerbase skyrocketed to seven times its previous size!
So naturally, expectations for Build 42 were sky-high. What's going to happen next? How could they possibly top this? The community was beyond excited, and then... nothing.