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Orion Haste from Ratalaika Games is their latest sidescroller shooter that has definite Contra vibes but with a Doom Guy cosplay.

The folks at Ratalaika Games shared another nostalgic filled title with us, this time with Orion Haste. OH is a run and gun side-scroller that pits you against an alien invasion with an array of weapons with unlimited ammo. That’s right! UNLIMITED AMMO! You play as a soldier, who remarkably looks like Doom Guy, who is tasked with ending the alien menace. Along the way you will find extra lives or health and the four weapons. Each stage starts you with having to find the weapons once again and I must say the electric beam is the best option for nearly EVERY fight. It is a never ending beam of destruction. It is great to wield. The only problem with the weapons is aiming. You are limited to up, down, left, right and the left and right upper diagonals. With using a controller with sticks for aiming I hoped for better control. This in turn limits your options when dodging the enemies.

Gameplay looks and feels like the classic Contra games in nearly every way. Even the level of difficulty felt the same. Besides the limited options for shooting the controls are quite fluid. I loved Contra and this hit me in the feels in all the right ways. I had a blast with this one. Thanks to the team at Ratalaika and PR Hound for sharing another nostalgia gem with us!

Outer Terror from Ratalaika Games is an isometric horror title that looks and feels like a twin stick shooter without a trigger.

Ratalaika Games has provided us with a code for their latest horror title, Outer Terror. The game looks and behaves like a twin-stick shooter. Only real difference is you don’t control your shots, they never stop shooting. Your focus, as far as controls are concerned, is on moving and triggering different abilities. As you level up you pick among three cards that will either heal you or power you up further. As each stage begins you get an introductory story clip with artwork that is very reminiscent of Charlie Adlard from The Walking Dead. Adlard is one of my favorite comic artists so I am absolutely here for these intros.

When you start the game there are four chapters and based on the achievement list there are others that will unlock later. As you complete chapters you collect money and can use these funds to pay for upgrades. The more you play, the more you’ll earn. The game is full of dodging and as a tip, the more money you pick up, the faster you’ll level up and that means the more upgrades you’ll unlock. By the time I finished episode 1 I had all upgrades finished within the level.

The gameplay art was a bit of a disappointment. As with most RG titles, the graphics look like it was developed for the Super Nintendo and I love them for that. However, with the fantastic intro art I was disappointed that the sprites weren’t rendered in the same style, by the same hands. Gameplay itself is smooth though and once you learn to read the map you can make quick work of some of the episodes. Overall I had a great time and look forward to seeing more of this great art as I play more episodes.

Code supplied on behalf of Ratalaika Games by PR Hound.

Xatrom Command is a twin stick shooter from the team at Ratalaika Games where you must stop the alien threat.

Aliens have invaded and it is up to you to stop them in Xatrom Command from Ratalaika Games. XC is a twin-stick shooter with blocky graphics where your objective is to kill everything alien you see. Many of these aliens a similar to animals and bugs from Earth, except some of the bosses. As with any twin-stick shooter, it is quite easy to get overwhelmed. Movement is key and NEVER stop shooting. The primary targets are tiny spider-looking things and some sort of four-legged green and purple creature. I thought it was also a bug at first but couldn’t figure out which kind. Later on you fight scorpions, snakes and tarantulas. Not to mention a boss every ten rooms or map squares.

The game is actually quite simple, not just in appearance but in controls. You have one stick to move, one to aim your gun and the right trigger to fire. Again, movement is key. Don’t let the bugs overwhelm you because you will lose health quickly. The good news is the green things that look like bushes regularly drop ammo and health.

At first glance I assumed the game would be just TOO simplistic. Between the graphics and controls there wasn’t much to it. I was wrong. Despite the simplicity I had a great time, so much so that in a single sitting I completed thirty five of the levels and every achievement in the game. Doing so took almost an hour to do total so this is a great one for achievement hunters too!

In a cyberpunk world where corporations control everything you play as Jenet in Cybertrash STATYX from Sometimes You.

You begin Cybertrash Statyx as Jenet, waking up in a facility that is testing your body against numerous stressors. Things like being forced to run an obstacle course during the middle of the night when you should be sleeping. It’s obvious this corporation is EVIL because they are intentionally ruining your sleep. That is sacred. For that, they must pay! You are tested in challenge after challenge while the scientists and corporate bosses watch on.

The game is a two dimensional side scroller from Sometimes You and Uncle Frost Team where your goal is to survive this corporate run world by using their own tools and enhancements against them. Maybe you’ll even uncover a greater conspiracy while you’re at it?

The game looks like a classic title from the days of the Super Nintendo with solid combat mechanics. However where the game really fails is the movement controls. They can be quite sticky at times, especially when trying to jump and move forward at the same time. This has caused me to die more times than any failed reaction by falling short and running into an enemy. Being able to see cinematics and dialogue featuring the heads of the evil corporation make the story more engaging. This in turn makes the events around Jenet make more sense as well as she is fed only the most basic information. The poor movement mechanics do detract from the gameplay but the combat mechanics were surprisingly solid. Being able to switch weapons from item points allows you to better control the combat and made the game enjoyable.

The team at Ratalaika Games have returned along with Stately Snail to release the sequel One More Dungeon 2.

Our friends of Ratalaika Games shared one of their latest titles, One More Dungeon 2, with us and we recently had the chance to sit down and give it a play. We had never heard of the franchise prior to the announcement of this sequel but based on images alone we were excited to dive right in. In both titles you play an unnamed adventurer. I don’t know much of the original storyline but in OMD2 you are held captive by a kingdom of snails, or are they snails and slugs? Either way, they are green and slimy looking, but in a cute way. To earn your freedom, you must run through the dungeons and remove the evil denizens there to keep them from raiding the snail-king’s domain. More than enough justification for me to explore these dangerous spaces.

As I mentioned, the slugs are pretty damn cute and the enemies themselves are rendered in a chunky art style that reminds me of the Super-Hero Squad line that Hasbro released over a decade ago. The stages are randomly generated with each expedition but are hampered by the controls. Most games with a poor controller setup have a chance to make up for this by having easier gameplay, an engaging story or stellar graphics. The controls for this game are obscenely sticky, making aiming with ranged weapons quite difficult. They were so bad that they turned what would have been a great game into one that is only okay. The difficulty (when set higher) was much higher than I expected and provided a great challenge that was made more frustrating by these same controller issues. Overall we enjoyed the game but, without the necessary controls making it nearly impossible at times, it fell short of its potential.

Nukes have fallen and the world all but destroyed in Unlife from Ratalaika Games.

Unlife begins with what looks like vintage, archival footage of the days leading to the end of the world. Bombs falling on city centers and mushroom clouds. It’s a rather grim sight. You play as Michael, the last surviving member of a rescue team and who’s blood may mean the cure to the infection spread by the monsters from the Black Sea. Combining his blood and that of the creatures stops or slows his own infection and may be the key needed for that cure.

The game controls, level formatting and general vibe remind me so much of Shadow Complex from the 360. I absolutely loved that game. With Unlife, the graphics are not nearly as clean but they do the job well enough. In terms of graphics think of Terraria but with a darker pallet. The game suffers from some poor writing but I have a feeling it was originally written in another language and then translated by Google Translate. This is even more apparent when you die. At death you get a message similar to the iconic “You Died” message in Resident Evil and instead see “You Dead”.

Released by Ratalaika Games on Nintendo Switch, PS4/PS5 and Xbox One, the game seems to be one of the few truly original titles from them and not a port or remaster. While much of the game, as I mentioned, reminded me of Shadow Complex it wasn’t enough like it to fully scratch that nostalgic itch. However I found the game to be less smooth with inferior graphics but with the darker tones it actually worked well within the world of the game and game the combat and overall surviving more difficult. The game was fun with enough similarities to keep me playing for a couple hours and the added difficulty, whether intentional or not, kept me playing a bit longer.

The first Adventures of Panzer title was released in 2021 and was rereleased along with it’s sequel in the Legacy Collection from Ratalaika Games.

Originally created by PixelCraft Games in 2021, The Adventures of Panzer is a side scrolling adventure designed to be played on the original NES. A sequel was later developed and added alongside the first for the Legacy Collection release on current generation consoles. This was with the help of Ratalaika Games. You play as General Panzer, a raid leader, who first must find his friend from his raiding party and embark on the most harrowing adventure of his raiding career.

When playing the game I didn’t realize how recent the original was released and immediately began to question it once the first NPCs began talking. Playing a game that looks like it is straight out of the 80’s but dialogue that came from players preparing for a session of World of Warcraft had me really confused. It was also funny as hell. The two experiences shouldn’t have worked as well as they did but they did work. Gameplay felt exactly like I would expect from what I thought was an NES classic. The controls are a little stiff but feels absolutely right for a game that looks the way it does. Further enforcing the NES classic vibe of the game is how unforgiving it is. If you rush forward you will inevitably get injured, frequently. You’ll also fall to your death, quite a bit.

With everything in the experience telling my mind that this was a classic I had never experienced when it came out in the 80’s it left me thinking I was deprived of an experience I should have had. Having actually been released in 2021 I’m actually surprised I had never heard of it until this year. Clearly PixelCraft had done a poor job on marketing it because former NES players will love this one and with the current generation release of the Legacy Collection they now have no excuse to jump in. Same goes for the second game in the series that is also included. They are not only worth playing but are easily some of the best to be released from Ratalaika to date.

In Fearmonium from Ratalaika Games you play a Phobia of a young boy, collecting and defeating his fears.

The folks at Ratalaika Games have deviated from their normal platform of simply restoring vintage titles and have added Fearmonium to their ever growing library. Max is a teen plagued by fears and phobias. You play as one of these phobias and are on a quest to help Max not only overcome his fears but to embrace some of them. Let’s face it, a little fear can be healthy at times.

The game is a Metroidvania, meaning a platformer in the style of Metroid or Castlevania, where you move through various parts of Max’s mind, eliminating the things that plague him while also collecting balloons as currency. The art style looks like it was hand-drawn like Cuphead with a similar macabre style where the more hideous things in Max’s head are actually there to assist you. Reviewing the details about the game I can confirm that it is hand-drawn. Unlike Cuphead though is that the story is primarily told through comic book-styled panels.

Lady Depression runs most of the nightmare-scape that is Max’s head and assists you from time to time by providing advice. More often than not though, the advice is simply to remind you save the game often. The phobia you play as looks very much like a female version of Pennywise in the art but in game looks less like the terrible clown and more like clown that is meant to look more sad and painted in predominantly blacks and whites. I found the stages to be rather simple in their layout with sections clearly meant to return to with no obvious way of reaching them but otherwise quite easy to navigate. The art is clean and draws you in to the darkness as you eliminate every foe in your path. The game as a whole was enjoyable but not entirely engaging in terms of story. That being said, it may just be that I haven’t spent enough time in the game but it felt like it was lacking in overall substance even though most Metroidvanias are focused more on the mechanics than they are on story.

GameMill and Nickelodeon have teamed up to bring the second installment of the Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl to consoles, how does it fare?

I enjoy a good fighting game, Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter will forever hold special places in my heart. When GameMill reached out with the opportunity to review Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, I jumped at the chance, despite never having played the original. For obvious reasons I can’t speak to how it compares or builds on the original, however being a fan of fighting games I CAN speak to fighting games. When it comes to fighting games I have a weird relationship where I regularly lose and keep coming back for more. My biggest failure is that I can never learn or master combos.

In nearly every way the game feels like a clone of the latest version of Super Smash Bros from Nintendo. The biggest difference is the characters in the game, SSB focuses on Nintendo characters and IPs where NASB is centered around the many characters from Nickelodeon. Controls are similar but only about as similar as you can make them comparing Switch to Xbox controllers. In both games they mix stunning 3d models with cartoon or 8-bit drawn stickers battling in fully rendered worlds. The combat plays almost exactly like SSB or Multiversus but in the story mode you alternate between picking up boosts, fighting other characters and then fighting nameless foes. This game is more than just a simple fighter, there’s a story (admittedly I haven’t made it too far into the story, like I said, I’m not that great at these games) with branching paths to unlock different characters and bonuses. SSB had something similar that made it feel more like an RPG but this is more linear. We had a great time with this one and look forward to playing some more soon.

Theme park simulators are a dime a dozen these days but none capture the simplicity and joy that I had playing RollerCoaster Tycoon and Atari brought it BACK!

The folks at Atari are on fire with all of their gaming reskins/reboots/recharged titles and I was hoping that RollerCoaster Tycoon would be on deck soon. I even told my wife I would love for them to revisit the game again. As the name would imply, the game is centered around building theme parks full of various rides and themes, including rollercoasters. As your park grows there are dozens of features and attractions that can be researched to further fit certain themes or styles.

Do you have what it takes to manage the needs of your guests while also keeping the park profitable. The first step towards these ends for me was to raise the prices of EVERYTHING. Sounds counterintuitive to keeping guests happy but you can raise the prices without it negatively impacting the park. This means you can revenue faster and allowing your park to grow faster. Anytime you need an influx of cash you can always speed up the time mechanics. I only recommend doing this when you have enough facilities in place to keep everyone happy, otherwise you risk the deterioration of your overall park happiness.

Originally designed for computer, the user interface was designed to work best with a mouse on a computer but is one of the easiest to navigate compared to other park builders. Menus are divided into categories, each with subcategories that allow you to find everything rather easily, focusing on overall simplicity. The graphics have also received an overhaul, looking crisp, vibrant and better than ever. The overall simplicity of the game may not be too flashy but it all just works so well. The ability to quickly switch between menus and the simple controls makes playing much more enjoyable than most of the alternatives out there.