Tag game review

When it comes to family games if there is a cat we will usually play it and Tacocat Spelled Backwards is no exception.

The folks at Exploding Kittens shared another game with us to review and that was Tacocat Spelled Backwards. As this is technically sponsored content the agreement is only that we would review the game but that agreement does not guarantee a certain opinion. The below are our thoughts on the game and ours alone.

The mechanics of the game are quite simple, like most games from Exploding Kittens. Each round both players draw up to seven cards and play those cards until ultimately you have your lowest number left in your hand to end the round. Whomever has the lower card at this point wins the round. In between depending on how you want to play you will either play a high or equal card to play first next turn or play lower cards and give control to the other player. Now, there are more advanced rules and I played the game with my children so we did not explore those options at this time. Specifically I played with my thirteen year old son and my five year old daughter.

For both children this game was a ton of fun but as my youngest doesn’t know her numbers very well it did slow the game a bit. After playing two games though she can now visually identify the numbers 1-12!

As can be expected the cards and other pieces for the game were adorable and/or quite funny, like the baby yelling “Doom” on a yam. Hella random but we found it funny as hell. Now despite the simplicity of the game we had a blast as a family and immediately after the four games we played my youngest was begging to teach it to my father in law, and she rarely enjoys games that aren’t aimed at her age group. If that’s not a deal of approval I don’t know what it. As for myself I found the game to be quite enjoyable and well worth the low price point of $14.99!

Biomutant as an RPG set in the distant future where corporations have made the planet unlivable for human and the mutations inherit it all!

Published by Experiment 101, Biomutant is an RPG that follow a mutant ronin that has returned to the land of his upbringing in search of revenge. Of course if you choose a lighter path your revenge takes the form of helping to restore the Tree of Life. You start the game with some amazing cinematics that gave me a lot of hope for this title.

As your character escapes the monster who killed your family, you go into a character creation screen. The level of customization is much higher than I expect but this is your first taste of the real visuals to expect through the game, and it’s not as stellar as the opening cinematic that’s for certain. You then pick up with your created character just before the fight you watched and must escape a bunker. Following the tutorial you will make it topside pretty quickly where the fight begins and you must play out the scene you watched.

Controls are easy to master and visuals are about on par with most titles you’d see on the previous generations of systems. Not the visuals may be a product of the fact that I’m playing this on the original Xbox One and it might be more dynamic on the new Xbox but I don’t have one myself to test that theory. The story is typical of an “all ages” role playing game that relies too heavily on slow dialogue trees and wandering through the world than with cut scenes.

Overall I found this game to be wanting and before picking up a copy yourself I would wait until you found it in the bargain bin or on a massive price reduction.

Leisure Suit Larry returns with the follow up game Wet Dreams Dry Twice from Assemble Entertainment!

Leisure Suit Larry started as an indie title that was always about getting Larry laid. The humor was crude and the breasts were large, as were other appendages.  Wet Dreams Dry Twice is the direct sequel to their first game in the franchise to hit the next gen consoles- Wet Dreams Don’t Dry and picks up where the story left off.

Larry is slated to marry the daughter of the village Chief to fulfill a prophecy and the love of his live is presumed dead. Following a discovery on your phone Larry decides to leave Cancum in search of his lost love, building a boat out of some rather useless junk and heading to sea.

The game plays like your standard point and click adventures but with a very adult theme. This game is in no way family friendly but that doesn’t stop it from building a game world that is simple to navigate and full of laughs. Thankfully this game doesn’t support any sort of virtual reality because interacting with many of the world objects would require a shower after or three, definitely three.

Cyanide & Happiness has brought the first installment in their new trilogy Freakpocalypse on Switch and Steam!

In Freakpocalypse you play as Coop, an orphan that must help save the school and more importantly survive in it. The problem is EVERYONE needs help and not a single one of them even likes you! The game starts with a battle between a heroic version of yourself against the sinister Dr Dropout and his army of Droogs. Of course to no-one’s surprise this turns out to be only Coop’s daydream amid doodles in his notebook.

Videos are skippable in the story but I advise not to as some of your tasks make little to no sense without them. Life like the story of this game can be an adventure but seem completely random and pointless at times. Visually it is the quality you’ve come to expect from the art and videos from C&H. The controls however leave much to be desired, it looks and feels like a traditional point and click adventure but on the Switch feels overly complicated. If you are a fan of C&H’s style of crude humor and storytelling you will enjoy this game, as long as you can tolerate the convoluted controls.

Check out the trailer from Cyanide & Happiness:

Orbit Studio brings us Retro Machina, a game about finding beauty in a world where you are expected to conform.

Retro Machina begins with a your robot working on the assembly line as a butterfly flies in through the window. Distracted, your robot stops working and sets off alarms. With your newfound sense of adventure you seek an escape from the factory and soon begin your search for a machine to repair you entirely. This JRPG, or Junior Role Playing Game, takes you through a world where only robots and plant life remain.

The visuals are colorful and highly detailed but even when things are dire they give you a feeling of cheerful hope. Controls are simple to pick up but keep in mind that you can only hold onto one health item at a time so use them when you see another. Life and death is not a huge concern with this game as every time you you lose all your health you respawn at the point you entered the section of the same map section. Overall the game is quite a lot of fun, especially using the ability to hijack control of other robots and using them to destroy the others. The world is huge and I can’t wait to keep exploring it and not just to find all of the hidden references like the Tardis or Back to the Future’s Delorian!

Merge Games takes the ‘build a city’ game type to a new perspective- that of the buildings themselves with Buildings Have Feelings Too!

In Buildings Have Feelings Too players take control of a building who walks and talks along with other buildings. The intro to the game you see as several buildings discuss how they are falling apart, some due to negligence and your building decides to move to a new town. Upon arrival you meet two buildings that want to improve their own wellbeing and suggest you build a new structure and as you bring it to life determine that it will be a factory which upsets your new friends.

The rest of the game you must play a balancing act between improving certain stats by managing which buildings are near each other and what products they offer. What makes this easier is you can move the buildings back and forth without much consequence like moving the residences to be near the factory that is a giant smoke stack. This makes the residence upset but as soon as you use the move to upgrade the factory you can then immediately move one or the other immediately after, restoring the happiness of each building.

Controls are simple to master and the graphics are solid in this cute family friendly game about micromanagement and construction. The game itself was bit on the dull side but it takes a new look at building a city.

El Hijo is a stealth game about a young boy named, wait for it, El Hijo. He must escape the monks who are raising him and find his mother.

El Hijo and his mother live on a farm that is raised to the ground by bandits. Prior to the arrival of the bandits his mother teaches him how to sneak around and avoid detection, setting up a slowly paced tutorial that will serve you through each stage of the game. After the bandits have destroyed his farm, his mother leaves him with a group of monks in order to save him from the bandits.

Very quickly he decides to escape the monastery and begin his magical adventure through mythical land meant to resemble the American Mid-West. In the end all that matters for our little hero is that he find his mother.

Honig Studios created hybrid stealth adventure with about as many puzzles as as a Lara Croft game. Graphics are a little on the simple side but stop short of just the going for the retro 8 bit. The stealth aspect of the game is handled superbly. Each piece of the environment can help you if you time patrols right and use them to your advantage. Overall I found the game to be quite enjoyable with more challenge than I expected.

In Sir Lovelot your goal is to woo the girl by bringing her gifts and climbing through her window, seems a bit pervy to me.

The above is a rather simplistic summary of the Sir Lovelot and his overall concept but it’s not entirely wrong either. Each level you must find a list of items to give to your princess and by the time you start the next level your Knight leaves another princess broken hearted.  Pixel Games crafted a platformer that I can honestly say is unlike any other I have ever played before.

Be prepared to die a lot. Most platformers allow you to get injured and recover your health but with Sir Lovelot each time you touch an enemy or an obstacle it is instant death. The good news here is that you respawn and any collectibles picked up or enemies defeat remain in the same state. Each stage feels very much like Splosion Man in that it is a fast paced platformer that has some similar jumping mechanics but missing the meat explosion when you dispose of your foes. This knight is also armed with was equates to a gun.

Conceptually this is an odd title as you are using mechanics that don’t fit with your typical knight in shining armor, but the game style is fast paced and quite enjoyable. What makes it stand out though is the womanizing nature of our protagonist but done in a family friendly way. Very perplexing but still enjoyable as a whole.

Games Workshop releases the first expansion for Kill Team in nearly two years- Pariah Nexus!

Kill Team has been a staple of the Warhammer 40,000 family for many years now and it wasn’t until a couple year ago that I gave it a try. The concept of Kill Team is quite simple, a small force for either faction tries to complete their objectives. Pariah Nexus is not quite the first step towards a newer style of Kill Team. Traditional games will play out like any other game of 40k or even Age of Sigmar where you play three dimensionally, where Pariah Nexus and Kill Team Arena before it were more two dimensional. 

One main item of note is that this truly is an expansion. It requires a rulebook for Kill Team itself for full gameplay. Other than the two dimensional rules this book includes six story missions and two scenarios for matched play. More importantly though is that it includes rules for nearly every (if not all) infantry types for both the Necron and Space Marine factions.

The biggest problem with this box is it’s natural imbalance. From the start (without modifying the lineups) the Space Marine forces make up nearly double the cost of the Necron force. However, the total number of models per side is comparable and the new sculpts look fantastic.

Gameplay for this style is reminiscent of the similar release for Necromunda a couple years ago where you had a face paced game that was a ton of fun but felt somewhat lacking without the third dimension. With a little imagination though this easily will feel similar to crawlers like SpaceHulk where you navigate corridors and all of your fighting requires your head on a swivel but there being no need to look high or low as everyone is one the same level. For value and replayability this box offers a lot especially for those that are already fans of the KT and 40K properties. My best recommendation though would be to homebrew a few extra scenarios and look to upcoming issues of White Dwarf for more.

Feel free to check out our live unboxing video on the official Table Talk channel:

Have you ever wanted to build a bridge AND kill zombies at the same time? With Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead you can!

Merging Headup’s series of Bridge Constructor titles and AMC’s The Walking Dead, players must help fan favorite characters reach the other side while keeping them alive. The Bridge Constructor games have been full of innovations including a partnership with the Portal franchise. The concept is rather simple, you have a gap of some sort and a vehicle or people need to cross. Queue the builder, that means you, builds a bridge of some sort.

Each stage has a resource limit to reach but is not required to finish the level. With The Walking Dead version of the franchise you must also kill the occasional zombie. Each stage shows a broken building or ravine to cross, many of which include zombies trying to eat characters like Eugene Porter and fan favorite Daryl Dixon. Characters like Daryl will aggressively remove zombie threats while others will use their brains to out think the walkers.

Like the other Bridge Constructor titles this game is quite enjoyable but at the same time absolutely maddening. Some stages I simply lack the imagination needed to build my bridge effectively enough to complete the level while using less than the resource limit. I love this game despite my skill though.