Easily the best multiplayer game I’ve played in years, the only live service game I can confidently say is done right. Super Earth… more like Super Fun! – Message vetted and approved by Super Earth Federation

In all seriousness, there’s not much more I can say, I’ve had a great time playing Helldivers 2. It can be a bit buggy at times (heh get it – so sorry), with the occasional crash and my loadout just never saving between sessions but its mostly super polished and works really well for everything it has going on. The general fun-ness of the gameplay reminds me of the old Halo 3 multiplayer days, simpler times, it’s just downright fun to play and the humour present in the game elevates this. The gunplay/gameplay, especially the stratagems, and the general gameplay loop are excellent, it has a fantastic core to its gameplay. It can get a little repetitive after a while but there’s just something about it that just brings me back for one more hell dive. With all the updates and stuff getting added to the game I imagine I will be doing just that now and again throughout the year. An easy recommended for all, especially with friends but still really good with randoms, the community is (mostly) great. For Freedom, for Liberty, I’ll see you out their fellow Helldivers!

I’m struggling to come up with better words to describe Rollerdrome other than it’s super cool and downright fun to play. It’s not a perfect game by any means but if I was to take anything away from the experience that would be it.

This game absolutely oozes style, from the cell shaded aesthetic to the incredible sound design, Rollerdrome is really knocking it out of the park when it comes to presentation.

The gameplay isn’t fair behind either. Presumably someone at Roll7 dared asked the question: what if Tony hawk with guns? And I would have never have imagined the game they answered with would work this well. The ‘boomer shooter’ esc combat tied together with Max Payne like slow mo, all on Rollerblades with tricks replenishing your ammo sounds bonkers but it works flawlessly and surprisingly well, making for some extremely fun combat.

There is a downside however, and I think it comes down to the games length and it’s difficulty spikes. After the first few levels, Rollerdrome gets damn hard. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing due to the short length of the game, you don’t want to breeze on through a 4 hour game after all. However I do think if the game was a little longer and had another set of mid difficulty levels it would undoubtedly make the game more appealing and let you have more fun with its combat. There is an even harder mode after you finish the story too called ‘Out for Blood’, I thought the main game got hard but that mode is something else and as much as I wanted to keep playing the game, it just got too hard for me past that point. You can replay levels to complete Tony Hawk like challenges but there really isn’t that much replay-ability.

Overall, it may have been short, but I really did enjoy my time with Rollerdrome. There are loads of ideas I and I’m sure the team at Roll7 can think of for a sequel and I hope and look forward to those ideas seeing the light of day. I hope they give me an excuse to strap the rollerblades back on.

I never got round to playing the original fable back in the day (over 20 years ago now wow) but absolutely loved fable 2 as a teen. So I was very excited to play this remaster for the upcoming episode of the gaming garnish podcast. I found myself having a bit of a love/hate relationship with this one by the end but I’ll start with what I loved…

The style or rather charm of the game is great, the voice acting is hilariously British (being born and raised here surely helps). It’s weird, mostly in a good way, still don’t know why you start off being called ‘chicken chaser’ but hell I’m along for the ride! Now the remaster is 10 years old as well at this point so I can’t critique it too much but some of the character models aren’t great, some specifically being nightmare-ish. However this is a product of its time and overall the game, mostly, gives off a lovely fairytale style in its visuals.

Now for something I didn’t like… the combat. Again you have to bear in mind the game is old but the combat really hasn’t aged well, it’s just very clunky. To be honest it’s not so bad at first when you’re fighting simple enemies and I like the easy way you can jump between melee, ranged and spell attacks on the fly. However, as the game progresses and you start getting mobbed and you’re attacked by harder enemies it just starts to fall apart. I think they were trying to do a lot of different things, very commendable for the time, but not everything worked out well. Stealth for example is horrendously bad and the mission they tie it to is so frustrating. It can really become quite a slog unfortunately. Especially the undead, they just constantly respawn immediately after killing them, the only way to get through them it seems is to just run past them. Unfortunately that’s just what I ended up doing towards the end of the game, running past a lot of enemies.

The story isn’t anything to write home about but it’s done rather well, it’s a testament to the game that despite my problems with the combat I still wanted to get through it to see it to its end. It was good to see where the story of fable all began and I really liked the main villain. Sprinkle in the choice system, which is a little black and white, and some funny side quests and you’ve got yourself a decent time.

Lastly, I’ll quickly mention, it can be a bit of a buggy game too unfortunately. Textures will randomly just all turn off sometimes and the frame rate is a bit choppy.

As mentioned at the start I had a love/hate relationship with fable at the end. Love being the world it was building, the choices, it was doing a lot for a game of its time. The hate being combat being hit and miss and sometimes the game just feeling like a big slog to get through. Overall I think this is a good game for its time but I think it’s heavily held up by its nostalgia. And having not played the game originally I just found it hard to overcome its shortcomings. Fable 2 is the better game to get into the series in my opinion but again that’s the power of nostalgia. It was nice to see where it all began though.