Finally, you can experience the exhilaration of obliterating your landlord. All you have to do is play a LOT of rogue-like randomly generated slots. It's purposefully repetitive and designed so you can stretch your legs a little by trying new builds. And that's where the fun is, in trying new builds and experimenting with near limitless interactions. But you will quickly find that certain builds have slight advantages over others. Often time, I'd try a new build only to get so many ore and gem items and symbols that I had to fall back into that playstyle to survive. If that kind of imbalance bothers you, you might not have as much fun, but overall I can promise that at the low price, this little RNG slot machine will give you enough fun to recoup its cost.

Having played through all the Serious Sam titles to one degree or another, Serious Sam 4 was, admittedly, really repetitive. It's a slog to play through and moves slow, with Sam even remarking on how annoying it is that gates keep sealing him into combat arenas every ten minutes or so.

That being said, it isn't bad by any stretch. It's a Serious Sam game with no extra frills aside from side-missions that play the exact same as the main missions, and if you like the games you'll like this one if you haven't gotten franchise fatigue.

But if you make it to the later half of the game, you'll find the quality meat of it hidden deep under the minutiae. Suddenly you're on a harvesting combine, mulching enemies, or biking through the fields of France, blasting heads as you go. And then you'll find a very un-sam boss fight tucked at the title's end that I won't spoil here but was a HUGE breath of fresh air after 10 hours. It's too little too late, introducing modern shooter fixtures in the last twenty minutes of gameplay as gimmicks that won't save an attention span that can't endure the front 7/8ths of the game.

If you enjoy it? Power to you, you're strong of will and your tunnels haven't quite yet carpal-ed. But if you're a fan that was already feeling tired after Serious Sam 3? You won't find the fresh take you hoped for here.

Wearing its cringe on its sleeve, Slayers X is an incredibly fun and well-paced boomer shooter underneath layers of edgy 90s vibes (but not in spite of them). The player is properly powered and allowed to tear through the game with relative ease until the final few levels crank up the difficulty. Keycards are present but not overly grating like in other games in the genre, and the quips, deliberately childish and lame, are just well dispersed enough to not grow annoying.

This game would have been easy to overdo but it dodges every hurdle and then some, dotting lore and tragedy from within the life of Hypnospace Outlaw character Zane throughout to ensure that a human core still exists beneath the hyper-exaggerated style and humor. Fans of Hypnospace or of the genre will eat this game up, and the game's near perfect runtime ensures that even those unsure of trying the title know what they're getting right away, and that even those initially unenthused won't have to wait long to find the fun.

A hyper-short one level rail shooter clearly inspired by the House of the Dead series. All in all it's a wonderful experiment with the genre, with high levels of gore and simple emulation of essential mechanics, that's worth the ten or so minutes it takes to play, especially if you haven't had the light-gun game itch scratched in a while. I'm also a huge fan of the combo healing mechanic, which provides healing only if players kill 4 targets in a row, ensuring accuracy is more necessary than in other genre heavy-hitters.

Very excited for any larger scale or further polished experiences the developer makes using this first stab into the tech and mechanics introduced!

An easy to miss re-release of a Sega Genesis platformer, Tinhead is an extremely particular challenge. The first few levels are cute and simple, luring you into a false sense of security once levels start spawning enemies on top of you at level start, covering every surface in spikes, and demanding Mega Man-esque perfect jumps to reach the goal.

Levels are completed by collecting a star hidden somewhere on the map before taking it to the goal, usually placed quite far from the star, with some levels essentially requiring two run-throughs of their entirety.

Top it all off with some half-helpful, half hurtful utility power ups (like a propeller that helps by killing enemies and a unicycle that makes it even easier to fall of each and every ledge) and you have a strong platformer with excellent charm and music, and an EXTREMELY cool projectile bounce mechanic, muddled down by overbearing difficulty.

Thank god the QUByte Classics series provides save states...but you're still in for a tough time.

A shoot-em-up where your space ship is also a car. The designs themselves are compelling, but where the game shines is the driving sequences, which are just a bit too few compared to the less exciting traditional segments, allowing you to jump gaps, dodge slippery ice patches, and use throttle control to maneuver precisely against enemy projectiles.

If you're feeling shmup malaise and want one that will reinvigorate you a bit, this is a good candidate, just be warned you may walk away wishing the best pieces of the game were just a little more prevalent.

I was fully astonished by how much I enjoyed this game. Resource management of any kind is normally so stressful for me, but Citizen Sleeper couples those mechanics with compelling narrative and a UI that makes the ravage of time's passing exciting and known.

This game really touched me and I found myself playing late into the night for hours straight. I can't recommend it enough, especially to fans of other post-capitalist narratives, or visual novels. It really speaks a wonder into a genre that stagnates easily, making something with an incredibly strong shelf-life.

After the bloated equipment arsenal and color rarity systems of Shadow Warrior 2, the third entry in this franchise comes in fast, with an incredibly short runtime, simple and speedy combat mechanics, and a somewhat self-contained narrative that make it a pretty good time (as long as you can get through the choppy humor).

Comparisons to Doom Eternal are inevitable, with the base gameplay loop requiring players to swap weapons often and use "finishers" to get resources from enemies. But where it stands out is its gore weapon system. When you execute an enemy, you get a limited-time weapon that mirrors their attack powers, allowing you to go on a rampage through the crowded arenas. Combine this feature with environmental kills, and wall-run mechanics reminiscent of Titanfall 2 with a bit more float and you have the general idea.

If you liked the series first entry (the 2013 reboot of the franchise) then you'll likely love this one. And if you enjoy movement based shooters like Doom Eternal and Titanfall 2 you'll likely have fun using this game as a diversion. Overall I can safely recommend it to most, just bring a mouth guard so you don't grit your teeth after the eightieth Wang joke...

Played through this to 100% (as it's leaving Xbox Gamepass on the 31st) and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It's a simple time-loop game with a cute but roughly cohesive charm that makes playing fun if you're aiming to get from start to finish. However once you begin to embark on side quests and friendship missions, things start to slow down quite a bit, taking a game that felt like a blast three hours in and making it into an 8 hour cycle of pressing x over and over.

I definitely wouldn't mind seeing another game in this universe with a little more mechanical variance behind it, but if you're content with a short visual novel-like experience to enjoy for a while it's a perfectly acceptable candidate for the position.