- By Ash
- in Reviews
[Update]: No Man's Sky update has changed quite considerably since this initial review. As such, I'd highly recommend doing a little bit more research before making up your mind, just so you have the complete picture.
At its very core No Man's Sky is a game about exploration. Its just you, a nifty little space ship, and a practically infinite amount of planets to visit. With such a massive and varied universe it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that the world I started my journey on was a rather... special one.
Instead of the vibrant red and green pastures I've so frequently seen in the trailers, my humble world was a hellish mixture between a desert and a swamp, an environment so hostile there was literally no sentient life to be found. To top it all off, my swampy heaven also suffered from constant acidic rain that slowly but surely eroded my armor and forced me to stay within a hundred meters of my ship, lest I found myself dissolved into a pile of ash and swept away by some of the numerous daily storms.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
While I have never actually played the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game I did read the majority of the books, and out of all the various authors that took a crack at the grim darkness of the 41st millennium I consider Dan Abnett my favorite. From the very moment I picked up his Eisenhorn trilogy I knew I was in for a treat as he has a real knack for portraying sympathetic, flawed characters stuck in situations far beyond their grasp.
With that in mind, you can only begin to imagine how excited I was when I heard that Eisenhorn: Xenos, the first book in the series, would be getting the video game treatment. Not only is it an RPG set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, something I've been waiting for decades now, but its also based on a story by one of my favorite authors! How could this possibly go wrong?
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is far lengthier than I could have ever anticipated. Pretty much every aspect of gameplay, from storytelling to combat, is suffering from a number of annoying issues, all of which combine together to create a thoroughly mediocre game. To make you understand what exactly is wrong with Eisenhorn: Xenos we need to go through all of its elements, one by one, starting with the most important factor - the story.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Demons Age is a classic isometric RPG heavily inspired by old school Dungeons & Dragons games such as Baldur's Gate and Temple of Elemental Evil. As you might expect given its pedigree, it features a wide variety of spells and abilities to use against your enemies, numerous followers to recruit and travel with, a wide open world to explore, and naturally, a whole bunch of absurd items to collect and peddle to some poor innkeeper.
Its still under heavy development, but I've recently gotten a preview copy to try out, which as a massive fan of classic RPGs I was more than willing to take for a spin. Since making a proper review based around 2 hours of alpha gameplay would be a pointless venture, I'm mostly going to be focusing on what exactly Demons Age does right and which areas still need improvement.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
The amount of places you can explore through games these days is nearly limitless. You can strap on a rifle and witness the horrors of D-Day firsthand, you can put on your wizard's hat and act as an errand boy for a whole variety of fantasy races, and you can even become a space-trucker, endlessly delivering cargo between the stars. What you can't do very often, however, is explore the sea.
This is where Insomniac's Song of the Deep, a metroidvania-styled action adventure, comes in to play. Not only does it allow you to dive below the waves and observe the ocean's splendor, it manages to do so in a way that is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, a notion you will only truly come to understand when you're swimming through the dark, open ocean with monstrous giants for company. Whether its any good or not though, that is a question that's not easy to answer.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
I'm sure you've always wondered, at least as a kid, about what in the world hides within the Bermuda Triangle. Well, according to Lost Sea its a whole bunch of overgrown wildlife, an insane scientist, teleportation technology, and enough gold coins to make El Dorado look practically impoverished.
While its certainly a charming little adventure with some beautiful locales to visit, its combat is a bit too basic to stay enjoyable for very long, and due to various balancing problems its far too easy to create a monstrously overpowered character that just sweeps through the entire game. To put it simply, Lost Sea is not a bad game, but it just isn't designed with your hardcore roguelike fan in mind.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
[Note]: This review is now greatly outdated, so instead I would recommend you head over to my final, release version review instead. It should give you the best and most accurate overview of what Torment: Tides of Numenera is really all about.
The last time I played Torment was back in January, and even though it showed great potential it wasn't something I felt comfortable recommending, mostly because it was both unfinished and unpolished. Many months and updates have come and gone since that review, however, and I'm happy to say that the Torment of today is a greatly improved version of the rough demo I experienced so long ago.
Its still unpolished, there's no doubt about that, but most of the missing content has been filled in, the stuttering has been taken care of, and the extremely bare-bones UI has been granted a couple of meals, though its still quite undernourished. It might not be complete just yet, but this version of Torment is the closest the game has ever been to its final form, and as such I have decided to revisit it and see what exactly got improved, and what still requires work.
Before we begin, allow me to just say that I am basing all of my opinions on the first 5-6 hours. While I am definitely excited to play Tides of Numenera, on account of Planescape: Torment being one of my favorite games of all time, I want to have a mostly "pure" experience once I finally get my hands on the fully finished, bug-free version. This does mean I might miss out on some issues that occur only in the late game, but I've gone to great lengths in order to experience everything Torment has to offer, so I do believe I can still offer a comprehensive review.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Watching the Witcher series evolve over time has been a truly inspirational experience for me. Even though it all started with the incredibly buggy and downright unplayable Witcher 1 CDPR has managed to not only correct their mistakes, but steadily improve upon their formula to the point where they're now considered one of the best RPG developers out there. Quite the turnaround when you consider the... colorful reception they've garnered with their first release.
Speaking of the original Witcher, the final expansion for The Witcher 3, Blood and Wine, reminds me of it in many ways. Instead of struggling against nearly godlike foes and ancient prophecies you're simply plying your Witcher trade by investigating crime scenes, tracking down monsters, and attempting to figure out what in the world is going on. Politics do eventually rear their ugly head as well, but for the most part its just Geralt, the gorgeous duchy of Toussaint, and a monster that doesn't make itself easy to hate.
If this is to be the final expansion for The Witcher 3 and the end of Geralt's long and storied journey, I cannot imagine a better way to say farewell than by taking all of the good elements from the entire series and combining them together to form one last, grand adventure worthy of a true Witcher.
- By Ash
- in Reviews
After spending a thousand hours in Team Fortress 2 and more than I'm comfortable to admit in other team-based shooters I've become rather difficult to impress, and since almost all of the recent multiplayer gun-fests have been fairly boring I slowly started getting used to the idea that the genre might not be for me anymore. Thankfully, Overwatch came along and not only managed to meet my lofty expectations, but exceed them to the point where I constantly find myself playing more of it instead of doing any actual work!
The characters are charming, their mechanics deceptively complex, and the gameplay as a whole leaves a lot of room for personal growth and improvement, on top of simply being a bundle of fun. However, while I genuinely do think Overwatch is a great game, it isn't a flawless gift from the heavens as the various Internet forums might lead you to believe. It has its own balance problems, issues with servers and matchmaking, occasionally clunky mechanics, as well as a couple of bugbears when it comes to the design in general, but its nothing that can't be fixed through a couple of patches.
With that said, let's begin with the one element of Overwatch everyone can agree is superb, the presentation!
- By Ash
- in Reviews
The End Times have arrived. Chaos fanatics and abominations led by Archaon the Everchosen, the Three-Eyed King and favored son of Chaos, march ever-forward from the desolate North with a single goal set before them, to bring forth the end of the world in honor of the dark gods.
Entire nations of men have fallen, Orks have been wiped out from the world, and the only thing standing against the tides of darkness is an uneasy alliance between the mountain Dwarfs and the undead legions of Sylvania... or at least it would be if the damnable Dwarfs didn't decide this was prime time to exact revenge for a trade dispute that occurred ages ago!
- By Ash
- in Reviews
Shadwen is a stealth-action game from Frozenbyte, the creators of the Trine series, and while it doesn't feature the same sort of whimsical art style it does manage to perform a miracle of its own, and by that I mean somehow making an entire game based around an escort quest an actually enjoyable, thought surprisingly easy experience.
Throughout all 15 levels you will be accompanied by a poor peasant girl named Lilly that you brought along because... uhh... reasons, and while she isn't able to pull off the same combat and grappling hook maneuvers as you are she is quite adept at sneaking around, so her presence is never an annoyance, but rather an extra element to the stealth-based puzzle Shadwen presents you with.