Tag game review

Gun Interactive, the team behind the Friday the 13th game, have returned with another horror classic- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!

I admit I have never seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films (original and remake) but have always liked the concept of Leatherface as a horror character. A man carrying a chainsaw, following you menacingly is such a terrifying vision, add the fact that he is wearing another victim’s mask over his own makes it more so. Imagine playing a survival game where you are trapped in his territory along with his family. Now imagine that they know you’re there and they are coming for you.

I have never played Friday the 13th or Dead by Daylight but the mechanics appear almost completely identical, at least in format and style from the few videos I’ve seen. You play as either a member of the family hunting survivors or as one of the survivors. Each time I played I did quick match and played as a survivor. I always enjoy playing the killers or villains so my normal playstyle wouldn’t work here. That playstyle is to charge into the direction of my enemy and start killing. As a survivor you must sneak around and collect gear to help protect yourself, like medical supplies or items to help pick locks. The are chimes made of bone hanging through the stages that need to be cut down to prevent the enemies from hearing you. Playing as one of the survivors is highly stressful.

Visually the detail in the game was quite impressive and the use of lighting and environmental sounds even more so. The controls are easy to master, at least for the survivors. With stunning graphics, edge of your seat tension and fluid controls I found this game to a great addition to any horror fan’s library.

Dreamworks and GameMill have partnered together to release Trolls Remix Rescue, an adventure game through the vibrant world of the Trolls.

Just in time for the upcoming Trolls film, Dreamworks and GameMill have partnered to release Trolls Remix Rescue. You start the game by choosing or creating your own custom Troll and after grabbing your headphones you are ready to show off your DJ skills. Like any Troll custom you must complete a dance battle before you can show your music skills. Those familiar with films will instantly recognize the game’s villain- Chaz the smooth jazz troll. Even in the films and show Poppy was always quick to forgive and forget. Chaz has convinced her that he lost his mojo and wants to play music at the Pop Troll’s music festival to try to find it. He then uses smooth jazz to brainwash all of the trolls but you, because you are the only one wearing headphones.

Both films had some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen in an animated film and as such my expectations were a little high. Sadly the game fell short in a big way there. The water effects were quite similar to those in the films but the glare at times was too intense that my kids had to leave the room as it was giving them a headache using the default settings. The story feels like it is truly from the same world as Poppy and her crew but the graphics just fail to live up to the same quality. Controls are simple to learn for an adult but mastering some of the combos with the unforgiving nature of some of the enemies can be overwhelming for a child. The game quickly became too difficult for my 8-year old daughter. Overall I enjoyed the game but I think the controls made it too difficult for my children to enjoy for their overall experience. Basically the best options if your kids want to play is to play for them and have the younger ones watch.

Murder is Game Over is murder mystery title from Ratalaika Games the features a detective and his dog but they aren’t part of Mystery Inc.

Ratalaika Games brings another graphics-nostalgia title with Murder is Game Over. You play as Detective Guy and his dog Cleo. You’ve both been summoned to a castle in rural Vermont to investigate the murder of a famous game designer. This is the first of three games in the franchise and the first to come to consoles. The copy provided to us for our review was for the Xbox One Series X.

As you play the game you can swap between Guy and Cleo on the fly. This is essential to the gameplay because when questioning suspects you need to be in control of Guy and when looking for clues you need Cleo. Hidden throughout the map are not just clues but also doggy bags. To get the best ending you need to find all thirty doggy bags and as long as you do most of your walking as Cleo you won’t have trouble finding them all. There is also a hidden treasure you might find that helps towards finding the true ending as well. The officer on scene tells you at the start to return to her when you are ready to make an arrest but you are blocked from doing so until you find all the clues.

Once you have all the clues you go through a list of the suspects and their motives, like watching Hercules Poirot or Sherlock, as you explain why each suspect couldn’t have done it and then in detail explain who the real culprit was. There are a few missable achievements so I suggest reviewing the descriptions FIRST. The two easiest are petting the cat and finding the bear in the woods.

Visually the game looks and feels like the classic Zelda: A Link to the Past. The controls are simple and work well with the game. The overall experience interesting. The story begins with an excessive amount of dialogue that must be read and is quite dry. I admit that I was tired when I started and fell asleep during the intro twice (at least). Once I got control of the character tough and started interacting with the story it started to pick up and kept me awake until completing the game in a single sitting. The complete story and the whodunit at the end made it worth the experience and overall I enjoyed the game, I just suggest not being sleepy when you start it because you might have some difficulty at the start.

The Behemoth has released their first title in 7 years and takes them back to their roots with Alien Hominid Invasion.

Each game from The Behemoth has brought an entirely different playstyle to gaming compared to their other titles, each bringing their own unique experience. Alien Hominid was a side-scrolling action game. Castle Crashers was a Streets of Rage style brawler featuring adorable knights. Battle Block Theater was a hybrid of the side-scrolling action game that place major focus on level building. Pit People was the most recent release that took the Behemoth art style and applied it to tactics gameplay. Each game after the original Alien Hominid featured easter eggs from the prior games. All of their titles are known for their sophomoric humor, like the diarrhea deer or guns that shoot blobs that sound like wet farts. Alien Hominid Invasion though is the first time they have returned to one of their game worlds for a second helping. This time is a little different though.

Both Alien Hominid Invasion and the original allowed you to play as a small yellow alien that causes incalculable damage. You face off against members of the FBI and all manner of machines, each drawn in an adorable manner. For the old school players this is essentially Contra on a kilo of speed but instead of playing a human commando, you are an Alien that is fighting the FBI and the mad science of Doctor Robotnik. The original was by far the hardest run and gun title I’ve ever had the pleasure to play.

What makes this game really stand it, besides the vibrant art work and plethora of customization options, is that the game has a variable difficulty. The longer you play, the harder the game gets. As the difficulty ramps up the visuals get absolutely insane. There were several moments I thought it would be too much and the game would start lagging. It never did. The Behemoth has yet to make a game that wasn’t worth the price tag and they aren’t starting now. If you like the run and gun format or their art style you will love this one!

The Kingdom franchise from Fury Games takes on it’s newest, and most unique, genre yet- the 80’s in Kingdom Eighties.

As one would expect, Kingdom Eighties is the latest edition of the Kingdom franchise from Fury Games and is based in the 80’s. That means no cell phones, playing outside and lots of neon. Feels like home, even though I have trouble disconnecting from my devices. Just like in the eighties, as a kid, if you went anywhere without your parents it was on a bicycle and in this game it is no different there. The overall aesthetic feels very much like you are living/playing within the right-side up version of the Stranger Things world. Maybe it’s just the eighties vibe or the fact that everyone uses bikes. Either way I got major Stranger Things vibes. My question is, was that intentional or a happy accident?

Mechanics are quite simple utilizing very limited buttons that repeat the same command for various results. Graphics are simple but draw you in with either eight or sixteen bit character models but a world that is much heavier in pixels, resulting in detailed environments that can distract from the action at times. Especially the reflection on the water.

The game follows your rise to power as you fight to protect the town from the Greed. You don’t have to do it alone either. Using kids to farm and build for you, there are also three members of your party the come to aid you along the way.

Overall I found the game to hit the nostalgia buttons in all the right ways while mixing in the new. Having never played a Kingdom game before I didn’t know was to expect and was pleasantly surprised by how simple and enjoyable the game was.

Overboss Duel is exactly what it sounds like, a battle between two Overbosses to see who is the best in this title from Brotherwise Games.

Based in the Boss Monster world created by Brotherwise Games, Overboss Duel focuses on building your own power while weakening the other boss. Each turn you and your rival place location tiles and monsters, but you need to watch out for wandering heroes that will slow your progress to increasing your power. The overall mechanics also follow their Boss Monster game, making learning even easier if you have played those previously. The game also introduces four new bosses, along with updated versions of the classic King Croak and Belladonna bosses. The boss at the end with the most power wins.

Their Boss Monster game has you play as one of the bosses where you build dungeons with the goals of killing the heroes so Overboss fits perfectly within the world. It is however a step up in visual quality. BM had more of an 8-bit look to it where Overboss and Overboss Duel both have more of a 16-bit feel.

The art style makes you feel like you are in a classic Zelda game or Gauntlet, namely from the NES. I am loving the style, it is exactly what caught my eye with other Brotherwise’s titles. Gameplay is quite simple and from what I’ve been told by players of the original Overboss it is even more streamlined compared to the original game. In most games, if given the chance, I will always choose to play one of the bad guys but in Overboss Duel you get to be the BIG bad guy and I’m here for it. Even my son who never wants to play a villain had fun with this one and it is well worth the play.

Usachev Nikolai and USANIK STD have published Fusion Paradox, a roguelite bullet hell where you must take on a goddess of war and her minions.

The Supernatural Threat Reduction Agency, in Fusion Paradox, discovers an entombed woman who was laid to rest with a spear. Naming her after a war goddess, she soon wakes and enthralls everyone but you and the AI that guides you. The AI tasks you with defeating your fellow Agents in order to defeat her, each death bringing you closer to winning but unleashing further hell. You must rely on quick reflexes to avoid the seemingly unending waves of bullets so you can reach the goddess and end her reign. The AI starts you through some basic training, teaching you to dodge, switch polarity and even teleport. The polarity is a great feature, adding a unique mechanic that forces you to swap between different colors to defeat matching enemies. If the enemy is blue, you need to be blue. Yellow to defeat yellow. With a tap of a button you can toggle between the two.

Graphically the game looks similar to other indie titles like Crossyroad with that chunky block style. The “bullets” shine bright, almost neon at most times. This makes spotting them easier but due to their speed it isn’t much easier to avoid. Those are flying fast and often, hence the labeling bullet hell. Controls are simple to get down but remembering some of the abilities like dodging or teleporting are difficult to remember when the bullets are unleashed. The story is rather straight forward, nothing terribly original but not overly played out either. If I wasn’t prone to panic in bullet hell styled situations I wouldn’t die so often so patience is key. Overall, it was a difficult but enjoyable experience.

Airo Games and Daedelic Entertainment are the team behind Life of Delta, a post-apocalyptic tale of a robot searching for his surrogate father.

Airo Games designed Life of Delta and Daedalic Entertainment published. The story focuses on a robot, Delta, who was scheduled for decommissioning but was saved before he was destroyed. He was saved by a robot that then treated him like his son, but the fairytale doesn’t last as the father is taken. The abductors took him in hopes of finding the robot main character, never realizing you were hiding in a cabinet near the door where they were standing.

Once the captors have left, you crawl out of your hiding spot and start your quest to find him. First though is to recharge. There are multiple puzzles at the start with very littler instruction. The complexity of them, like using the radio waves to determine the combination of the lock, were quite ingenious. The game was surprisingly light in terms of a tutorial and that honestly made the puzzles much more rewarding. You and your character are discovering this world together and like the real world, it is void of instructions. The fact that all of the puzzles require some actual thought to figure out instead of just giving you the answers make finding the solution so much more rewarding.

The art style is a beautiful blend of robotics and nature as it grows over the world that was. Controls are quite simple as a point and click adventure but on consoles the pointer lacks the finesse of a mouse. Hitting the exact button or item on the screen can be quite frustrating because of this. The story was intriguing but not enough to make the clunky controls worth the effort. Overall I would love to spend more time exploring the world itself but the controls made this a hard pass.

Hero Survival is a top-down shooter where you fight hordes of movie monsters from the team at PigeonDev, creators of Paladin Dream and Kill Fish.

You have been transported into the video game world of Hero Survival at the hands of an evil wizard. This wizard wants nothing more than to use his army of monsters to kill you but that doesn’t mean you have to let him. You control one of nearly a dozen heroes to take on the hordes, each with their own perks. As you slaughter the monsters, you earn experience points and eventually level up.

Each time you level up you unlock a skill or item/weapon. These range from improving your attack or damage to a temporary boost your skills. You also collect various weapon options that are randomly chosen like a knife or a sniper rifle. The downside is that you are only able to carry four weapons at a time. Choosing the right weapons and items can mean the difference between life and death. Imagine how easy this game would be if you could carry more than four though, it would be bonkers but I expect a ton of fun. After enough mayhem you will eventually have to fight the devil to unlock the next world/level. I have never survived long enough for this to happen.

Utilizing 8-bit graphics, the game looks quite simple but with the sheer mayhem and number of sprites on screen at the same time, I imagine this was a necessity for system resources. Controls are simple but with all the enemies appearing all the time there is still a significant challenge. If you enjoy games with a simple concept, easy to play but still challenge you at every step you will definitely enjoy this one.

Fatshark Games’ latest game Darktide has finally arrived on Xbox One Series X but was it worth the wait?

Warhammer 40000 Darktide was originally announced for the Xbox One but that was soon changed to the Series X due to computing power. Having played their Vermintide 2 on both versions of the Xbox One I can say this decision made sense. The downside was it delayed the release a bit longer. It received further delays as the team at Fatshark worked to resolve some major server issues to make the game more playable. During this time I sat and watched patiently, hoping for the slightest bit of news regarding the console release. The wait FELT so long that I had given up hope on it until Games Workshop shared the announcement that it was finally coming. Fast forward a couple week and now we have the release downloaded and are ready to play.

Your first time starting the game you pick between four classes, each with their own abilities and unique stats. The includes a member of the Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum, a Psyker, an Ogryn and a Priest. At the time of writing I have only tried the member of the Guard. With each class you have the same task, to customize your character. The level of customization options are insane. My character ended up with hair and similar scars as me and even chose to give him some ink that I’d love to have if my day job or wife would allow it on the side of his head.

The story begins with you being moved with other prisoners, destined to be jailed or executed. Chaos troops raid the ship and accidentally free you in the process. You see discover one of your captors in need of help. This is your chance to either run away or prove you are still loyal to the Golden Throne. The game doesn’t give you a choice here but your character had one whether you impacted it or not. Helping her to her feet, you join forces and work to the landing deck where you are picked up and taken to an Inquisitor’s ship. This ship works like the keep in Vermintide 2 or the tavern in the first Vermintide. The difference here is that instead of proceeding through precisely defined level progression you have missions to different parts of Tertium. Each of these missions have their own threats and level of difficulty. They also have varying rewards that can make the fight easier for you.

The game was written by none other than Black Library legend Dan Abnett himself, it was only fitting that I named my character after one of his characters. Add his superb writing to the design skills at Fatshark you get not only a gorgeous world to fight the forces of Chaos on but also a fantastically written story. The controls feel like home, meaning I expected them to feel similar or exactly like Vermintide does and it’s perfect. After the first levels and time aboard the ship I had chills and was beyond excited. I cannot wait for my next play session. In the name of Holy Terra I will do my part to end the scourge on Tertium.