TGA_backloggd
This one took a while to complete because of a confusion between strategy guides. It seems the original PS4 version has the Ace on the first mission placed in a COMPLETELY different location than the one here on the PC where he's nowhere near the battlefield. I've played that mission atleast four times before I found out the one guy I took out to the North-East wasn't the ace!
Venting aside, much like the beach episode, you need to take out the aces in the first two missions that you play to unlock the third and final mission of this storyline.
The story is that a group of side-characters (all who have their own side-missions in squad stories) get together after learning that Ragnarök (Rags the Team Mascot dog) has gone AWOL due to Zaiga not having fed him, so now they have to find him and bring him back, however, hijinks ensue as they come across the empire, fighting large numbers of soldiers and when they finally get back they claim that they were having a picnic, which then spiraled into a snowball fight, a fight against bears and using explosives to create shelters from a blizzard. The names of the missions are a reference to the Teddy Bears' Picnic too.
The third mission is where Claude feels the team needs to prove what happened by, how else, fighting their commander and main characters! Yes, you have to fight the main characters and defeat them!
Afterwards, you get rewarded with more weapons, some of which being pretty damn powerful that'll help you out in the main campaign.
This is a fun edition for characters that don't get much of a screen-time otherwise and it also allows you the chance to fight against the main characters and see how you actually measure up against them!
Venting aside, much like the beach episode, you need to take out the aces in the first two missions that you play to unlock the third and final mission of this storyline.
The story is that a group of side-characters (all who have their own side-missions in squad stories) get together after learning that Ragnarök (Rags the Team Mascot dog) has gone AWOL due to Zaiga not having fed him, so now they have to find him and bring him back, however, hijinks ensue as they come across the empire, fighting large numbers of soldiers and when they finally get back they claim that they were having a picnic, which then spiraled into a snowball fight, a fight against bears and using explosives to create shelters from a blizzard. The names of the missions are a reference to the Teddy Bears' Picnic too.
The third mission is where Claude feels the team needs to prove what happened by, how else, fighting their commander and main characters! Yes, you have to fight the main characters and defeat them!
Afterwards, you get rewarded with more weapons, some of which being pretty damn powerful that'll help you out in the main campaign.
This is a fun edition for characters that don't get much of a screen-time otherwise and it also allows you the chance to fight against the main characters and see how you actually measure up against them!
(Since I can't review "A Captainless Squad" yet due to bugs stopping me to get the final chapters, I'll go with this)
I unlocked this at the end of a stream and, as per what I've been doing recently, doing offline recordings for the extra stuff (otherwise, this game would be MUCH longer to stream if you added all the extra missions, squad missions, replaying levels for A ranks, purchasing all upgrades and ect...) to take a load off my streaming time.
Despite this unlocking only after Chapter 10 (due to a character you get at that point), the story is set after the events of Chapter 4 where Squad E are given the task to find and eliminate a supply route along with finding the origin of where they're going, but things are immediately strange as the soldiers aren't interested in putting their lives on the line for whatever they're transporting to whereever.
This isn't spoilers, as I'm sure you can guess what's happening from the images and name of the DLC alone, but they find that this supply route that was barely guarded was to a holiday resort for the rich and the Ace soldiers in the battles appear to be holding onto swimwear...for whatever reason...which will lead to members of Squad E having their alternative costumes, in case you want to see Minerva in a string bikini for "immersion" reasons ;)
Ultimately what you get is some funny scenes with the characters either drooling over or appreciating each other in swim suits, hijinks and Raz getting punched for being a perv!
You have two battles. One very easy (the base is literally a short tank drive from your starting position) unless you want to take out the Aces to unlock more of this story and the outfits!
The second is a harder one where three of the members (Claude, Raz and Riley) are in their swimwear because "They don't have time to change" which makes sense when an enemy ambushes you like this, but is no less ridiculous.
The story is ultimately a bit of fun and like your typical obligatory beach episode, like one of the last episodes of Outlaw Star where they're on that sauna planet or many Anime shows where the characters end up enjoying a hot spring, for whatever reason.
I'm personally not too interested in using the outfits, but I still enjoyed my time with it both for the funny moments and also how the map has loads of little hiding places to explore and it's always good to get a nice new unique map with this.
Thankfully this is tied into the entire complete edition bundle so I was having a bit of a shock when I was looking for the price to see it say "£39.99" but in reality, that's the entire pack which comes with ALL the extra stuff that includes "A united front with Squad 7", "A Captainless Squad", "Advance Ops", "The Two Valkyria" and "Expert Level Skirmishes" the latter being a requirement for the last two squad stories. It was a fun DLC for what it was and you do gain a decal and few weapons for completing it.
I unlocked this at the end of a stream and, as per what I've been doing recently, doing offline recordings for the extra stuff (otherwise, this game would be MUCH longer to stream if you added all the extra missions, squad missions, replaying levels for A ranks, purchasing all upgrades and ect...) to take a load off my streaming time.
Despite this unlocking only after Chapter 10 (due to a character you get at that point), the story is set after the events of Chapter 4 where Squad E are given the task to find and eliminate a supply route along with finding the origin of where they're going, but things are immediately strange as the soldiers aren't interested in putting their lives on the line for whatever they're transporting to whereever.
This isn't spoilers, as I'm sure you can guess what's happening from the images and name of the DLC alone, but they find that this supply route that was barely guarded was to a holiday resort for the rich and the Ace soldiers in the battles appear to be holding onto swimwear...for whatever reason...which will lead to members of Squad E having their alternative costumes, in case you want to see Minerva in a string bikini for "immersion" reasons ;)
Ultimately what you get is some funny scenes with the characters either drooling over or appreciating each other in swim suits, hijinks and Raz getting punched for being a perv!
You have two battles. One very easy (the base is literally a short tank drive from your starting position) unless you want to take out the Aces to unlock more of this story and the outfits!
The second is a harder one where three of the members (Claude, Raz and Riley) are in their swimwear because "They don't have time to change" which makes sense when an enemy ambushes you like this, but is no less ridiculous.
The story is ultimately a bit of fun and like your typical obligatory beach episode, like one of the last episodes of Outlaw Star where they're on that sauna planet or many Anime shows where the characters end up enjoying a hot spring, for whatever reason.
I'm personally not too interested in using the outfits, but I still enjoyed my time with it both for the funny moments and also how the map has loads of little hiding places to explore and it's always good to get a nice new unique map with this.
Thankfully this is tied into the entire complete edition bundle so I was having a bit of a shock when I was looking for the price to see it say "£39.99" but in reality, that's the entire pack which comes with ALL the extra stuff that includes "A united front with Squad 7", "A Captainless Squad", "Advance Ops", "The Two Valkyria" and "Expert Level Skirmishes" the latter being a requirement for the last two squad stories. It was a fun DLC for what it was and you do gain a decal and few weapons for completing it.
1996
Just recently finished this, so felt I should review it whilst I have the chance!
So anyway, here we play as Drew Blank (Christopher Lloyd) who has been struck with a deadline by his boss (played by Ben Stein) who wants Drew to create even more fluffy adorable bunnies like his super popular cartoon character, Fluffy-Fluffy Bun Bun. However, he is drawing blank (ironically) and he looks at his old design for a character called Flux Wildly who was his intended character for a popular character.
As he reminisces on this, he is sucked into a cartoon world where he nearly gets hits by bolts, the landscape is transformed and he runs into his pal Flux! They are soon tasked with a mission to stop Count Nefarious (voiced by Tim Curry) from using his machine, the Malevolator to turn everything malevolent and create a machine of our own to do the opposite, the Cutifier! However, it is missing parts and we need to obtain parts that act as the opposite/compliment the ones used in the Malevolator.
Being your standard early Point-and-click adventure it requires some help to run (the one on steam came with Scummvm to run it) and being early green screen, along with the stretching, can make it look a little ugly on your screen, but for the smaller window I was capturing for my stream it looked pretty pristine!
Anyway, like typical for these kinds of games you have a bottomless bag (which is actually bottomless, so explains how you can carry so much crap at once!) to store all kinds of useful items that you'll discover on your journey to be used to either construct the Cutifier or help you progress in your adventure, however, as this game runs on cartoon logic there can be moments where you may not know what to do next, but that's why I use walkthroughs for when I get really stuck and the only stage I really struggled was near the end.
There's a lot to enjoy in this, along with having Christopher Lloyd interacted with cartoons (in a different way than "Who Frames Roger Rabbit?") and not to mention that MANY recognisable voices in the game coupled with the adult humour, which was rare for some games with cartoon imagery to get away with. For example. "Inherit the Earth" had to be toned down as the publisher wanted them to make it available for kids, but here we get some great bits of humour and it hits the nostalgia quite a bit considering the many recognisable voices in the background from people such as Dom Deluise (Fingers the Octopus), Dan Castellaneta (Flux), Jim Cummings, David Ogden Stiers, Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Rob Paulson, April Winchell and Frank Welker. Many you'll recognise from shows/movies I'm sure you've watched whilst growing up like Pete from "Goof Troop" and other Disney stuff, numerous characters from classics like "The Secret of N.I.M.H.", "An American Tale" and so much more! Jim Cummings is a name I'm getting more familiar with after playing the Army Men games on the PS1!
I was looking forward to coming back to this on stream and I enjoyed every moment of this game, even when getting stuck and frustrated! It's well worth to have a good laugh. Especially if you're a fan of cartoons and animation like I am!
I never grew out of cartoons really and this is certainly a game for you if you feel the same!
Raw Stream
Edited Stream - Coming soon!
So anyway, here we play as Drew Blank (Christopher Lloyd) who has been struck with a deadline by his boss (played by Ben Stein) who wants Drew to create even more fluffy adorable bunnies like his super popular cartoon character, Fluffy-Fluffy Bun Bun. However, he is drawing blank (ironically) and he looks at his old design for a character called Flux Wildly who was his intended character for a popular character.
As he reminisces on this, he is sucked into a cartoon world where he nearly gets hits by bolts, the landscape is transformed and he runs into his pal Flux! They are soon tasked with a mission to stop Count Nefarious (voiced by Tim Curry) from using his machine, the Malevolator to turn everything malevolent and create a machine of our own to do the opposite, the Cutifier! However, it is missing parts and we need to obtain parts that act as the opposite/compliment the ones used in the Malevolator.
Being your standard early Point-and-click adventure it requires some help to run (the one on steam came with Scummvm to run it) and being early green screen, along with the stretching, can make it look a little ugly on your screen, but for the smaller window I was capturing for my stream it looked pretty pristine!
Anyway, like typical for these kinds of games you have a bottomless bag (which is actually bottomless, so explains how you can carry so much crap at once!) to store all kinds of useful items that you'll discover on your journey to be used to either construct the Cutifier or help you progress in your adventure, however, as this game runs on cartoon logic there can be moments where you may not know what to do next, but that's why I use walkthroughs for when I get really stuck and the only stage I really struggled was near the end.
There's a lot to enjoy in this, along with having Christopher Lloyd interacted with cartoons (in a different way than "Who Frames Roger Rabbit?") and not to mention that MANY recognisable voices in the game coupled with the adult humour, which was rare for some games with cartoon imagery to get away with. For example. "Inherit the Earth" had to be toned down as the publisher wanted them to make it available for kids, but here we get some great bits of humour and it hits the nostalgia quite a bit considering the many recognisable voices in the background from people such as Dom Deluise (Fingers the Octopus), Dan Castellaneta (Flux), Jim Cummings, David Ogden Stiers, Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Rob Paulson, April Winchell and Frank Welker. Many you'll recognise from shows/movies I'm sure you've watched whilst growing up like Pete from "Goof Troop" and other Disney stuff, numerous characters from classics like "The Secret of N.I.M.H.", "An American Tale" and so much more! Jim Cummings is a name I'm getting more familiar with after playing the Army Men games on the PS1!
I was looking forward to coming back to this on stream and I enjoyed every moment of this game, even when getting stuck and frustrated! It's well worth to have a good laugh. Especially if you're a fan of cartoons and animation like I am!
I never grew out of cartoons really and this is certainly a game for you if you feel the same!
Raw Stream
Edited Stream - Coming soon!
2024
[I didn't log my hours, due to this game not being on steam, but I did play it for MANY hours, ending up with Resonance Level 78 before stopping.]
I took part in playing this game because my friend needed help in regards to sponsorship and I try my best these days to avoid such games because of how I've had my account wiped out by these systems being far too effective at tugging at my brain and making me spend money. This was most common in Bloodlines.
Now to first focus on the good. The developers were offering quite a big bit of money as part of their program to spread word of the game amongst other streamers. Of course, this is simply to aim for those more likely to gain an unhealthy interest, just like all other similar games, but it's still quite appreciated.
For a start, the art is very beautiful and the wilder characters are adorable with being humans with animal body parts, mostly the ears with the fun bunny people you get to meet.
The story is about you being chosen as one of many "Merlins" from history, a title for the extremely well accomplished wizards and as you wake up your memory has disappeared, being corrupted and you get involved in stopping the fire at the nearby village that's burning and you have to fight off the monsters it attracts and get involved in what soon evolves into a massive conspiracy involving a greedy lord wanting to take all the lands for himself. It's funny how a game created to exploit your money is now lightly touching upon Capitalism. Probably because it's the easiest of plot hooks tbh.
Anyway, so the way the game operates is very similar to others out there where you can summon heroes of a variety of rarities and duplicates increase the base power and rarity of the heroes. I like how it's kinda cute where the items you use for summoning are envelopes that are thrown out and scattered to the winds to either attract heroes or arcorn warriors that are used for much higher levels to enhance your characters.
As is common with this type of game, this summoning can cause what we called "Ludo narrative dissonance" where despite the red-head witch getting arrested, I already had a few copies of her to use in combat whenever I get the chance to and creates the obvious issue that she shouldn't be around certain events and others you unlock long before meeting them, however I did also struggle to focus on the story and skipped some sections of it.
As the name suggests, there's a little idle timer for acquiring resources whilst offline or doing stuff in game. You can often get equipment and other such rewards to help boost your characters, though they genuinely level all together and with the equipment it's by class so you don't need to get every single bit of equipment for every single hero and making levelling up much quicker.
It pretty much is relaxed in regards to daily awards (for if you miss one, at least) but they have all kinds of daily events with rewards available and then there's also a battle pass called "Privilege Track" that gives you free stuff, however you need to pay to get the far better stuff available.
Ultimately I found myself having a lot of fun with this game, however, I had to stop because I cannot take on these kinds of games and NOT spend money. Be warned if you want to try this out for yourself as it will attempt to shake money out of you like so many others.
I took part in playing this game because my friend needed help in regards to sponsorship and I try my best these days to avoid such games because of how I've had my account wiped out by these systems being far too effective at tugging at my brain and making me spend money. This was most common in Bloodlines.
Now to first focus on the good. The developers were offering quite a big bit of money as part of their program to spread word of the game amongst other streamers. Of course, this is simply to aim for those more likely to gain an unhealthy interest, just like all other similar games, but it's still quite appreciated.
For a start, the art is very beautiful and the wilder characters are adorable with being humans with animal body parts, mostly the ears with the fun bunny people you get to meet.
The story is about you being chosen as one of many "Merlins" from history, a title for the extremely well accomplished wizards and as you wake up your memory has disappeared, being corrupted and you get involved in stopping the fire at the nearby village that's burning and you have to fight off the monsters it attracts and get involved in what soon evolves into a massive conspiracy involving a greedy lord wanting to take all the lands for himself. It's funny how a game created to exploit your money is now lightly touching upon Capitalism. Probably because it's the easiest of plot hooks tbh.
Anyway, so the way the game operates is very similar to others out there where you can summon heroes of a variety of rarities and duplicates increase the base power and rarity of the heroes. I like how it's kinda cute where the items you use for summoning are envelopes that are thrown out and scattered to the winds to either attract heroes or arcorn warriors that are used for much higher levels to enhance your characters.
As is common with this type of game, this summoning can cause what we called "Ludo narrative dissonance" where despite the red-head witch getting arrested, I already had a few copies of her to use in combat whenever I get the chance to and creates the obvious issue that she shouldn't be around certain events and others you unlock long before meeting them, however I did also struggle to focus on the story and skipped some sections of it.
As the name suggests, there's a little idle timer for acquiring resources whilst offline or doing stuff in game. You can often get equipment and other such rewards to help boost your characters, though they genuinely level all together and with the equipment it's by class so you don't need to get every single bit of equipment for every single hero and making levelling up much quicker.
It pretty much is relaxed in regards to daily awards (for if you miss one, at least) but they have all kinds of daily events with rewards available and then there's also a battle pass called "Privilege Track" that gives you free stuff, however you need to pay to get the far better stuff available.
Ultimately I found myself having a lot of fun with this game, however, I had to stop because I cannot take on these kinds of games and NOT spend money. Be warned if you want to try this out for yourself as it will attempt to shake money out of you like so many others.
I found that this DLC was quite fun as you get to play with some of your favourites from the first game. At first you are working together for an exercise and both the hotheads, Rosie and Raz are at each other's throats and Isara has wowed the engineer, Miles (which is sad, considering spoilers for the first game) and you even get them to be added to the team so instead of Dan's APC, you can go for something much heavier for combat in the form of the Edelweiss. The tank only upgrades with your main tank, but you don't get to attach, nor benefit, from any parts you may have attached to your own tank so depending on the mission and the set up, it can either be better than or worse than Dan's APC.
You also have a mission where you play as Riley and Isara bonding over grenadier training, but soon get attacked. All of these characters get added to your main squad which kind of breaks cannon in regards to the story, but it's still enjoyable and fun to work towards improving your score on missions using a second tank or just trying out new kinds of deployment.
You also have a mission where you play as Riley and Isara bonding over grenadier training, but soon get attacked. All of these characters get added to your main squad which kind of breaks cannon in regards to the story, but it's still enjoyable and fun to work towards improving your score on missions using a second tank or just trying out new kinds of deployment.
2016
When my friends Serra Britt (Serra Britt on YouTube) and iNerull (Nerull on YouTube) came up with another co-op game for us to play I wasn't certain what to think about when looking at Grim Dawn due to my past experience with similar games being a little mixed, however, I quickly fell in love with this game: it's mechanics for sorting out loot (so you don't constantly pick up trash to weigh you down), the storyline (an apocalypse in a essentially medieval period) and the fun customisability with the class system allowing you to play YOUR way and giving me the feel for whenever I came up with a concept when making Pathfinder characters and found classes that fit the concepts!
So anyway, back to the actual game!
The story is about a group of entities, known as the Aetherials, have begun invading this world and possessing people (both living and corpses) and being pretty indiscriminate in who they kill. One such person is captured, thanks to a witch, to see if they can gather any information on these creatures as they are the last survivors in the area, using a prison for shelter as the major town nearby was overrun and as they threatened and demanded answers from the being as to why it's kind are attacking their world it chuckles, mysteriously replying
"Your world? It was ours first until your corrupt gods kicked us out. Your kind reached out to us first and now we are taking what is ours." (or something to that extent) and before just as they were being hung, the spirit escapes and both the captain and witch protest to save the life of the human that the spirit had fled. The captain says that with so few people on their side, if this person wakes up, they can atleast use them to fight for them and if not, they can be buried with the others. You play as this person who, after the trauma of possession, has lost their memories and intially used as fodder to help fight off the invading monsters. Due to this, it makes sense that all groups you meet will be distrusting of you and you start out as a blank slate in regards to abilities, classes and ect. That said, you are not just fighting the undead, but many beastmen, beasts, cults, scientific abominations, eldritch beings, bandits and all kinds of groups who are gaining a larger foothold due to all the chaos caused by this apocalyptic invasion.
In regards to gameplay, it plays like many similar ARPGs, like Diablo or Path of Exile where enemies drop all kinds of loot for different classes (or as they're called, masteries), quite a few higher level ones supporting abilities from separate classes so no matter your choice, you're likely to find items that can support your build. No matter what the build is.
Your class/Masteries choices are:
Soldier:
This is a main combat class. Most of the abilities are geared towards physical damage (often in melee combat) and soaking up damage along with stunning enemies with your heavy blows and drawing enemy attacks for any friends you wish to play with.
Demolitionist:
Are you a fan of fire and explosions? Demolitionist is great for those who want to throw explosives, Molotovs and passively set fire to creatures with the attacks tied to your weapons. But maybe you don't want to only use fire? Fair, you also get to set up traps that can stun and slow enemies and allow you to control the battlefield so that the enemies have to fight you on your own terms.
Occultist:
As the name suggests, you use magic mostly associated with cultists and witches. You have a wide selections of spells that can cause acid and corruption to enemies, but you can also go a summoner route and summon creatures such as a familiar (crow) that passively heals everyone and summons lightning to attack along with a hellhound that, with enough upgrades, can breath out fire.
Nightblade:
For the assassin in all of us, most of the skills here are for improving physical damage, causing critical hits, inflicting cold damage, improving evasion and even adding bleeding/poison damage to your strikes to weaken your foes. You can also use this class to duel-wield blades
Arcanist:
This class is fighting fire with fire! You tap into the power of the Aether to cast powerful magical spells or you can channel the energy into the weapons you wield to enhance their damage and use the very power of the Aetherials against again!
Shaman:
A class that takes you back to nature. With it you have abilities that boost your pets, summon totems for temporary buffs/debuffs, summon lightning, summon a Briarthorn (a creature made up of thorns with a bird-like skull), hurl swarms of insects at your opponents or even wield the power of nature in the form of lightning into your weapons to strike down those that would mock the power of nature and corrupt it's natural balance.
Inquisitor (Ashes of Malmouth):
This class drew the attention of my friend as, similar to the Inquisitor in Warhammer universe, you can gain the ability to duel-wield pistols, but many of the spells at their disposal are used to mess with enemy spell casters and counter their attacks. Often placing down sigils to boost yourself or damage your opponents. It has some great skills for improving any gun-wielding build.
Necromancer (Ashes of Malmouth):
Essentially does what it says on the tin. This is a class all about manipulation of life force energies whether that be raising the dead to have an army of undead warriors or using spells to draw upon the life-force of your enemies or maybe a combination of the two, using your spells to destroy and your undead servants as cannon fodder.
Note: However, certain groups will look down upon you for taking this path, like the Kymon's Chosen who view necromancy as a irredeemable practice, regardless of how it's used.
Oathbreaker (Forgotten Gods):
(The only class I've not actually tried yet)
This is their version of a "paladin" however, considering the Gods involved you don't need to be some holy being doing good to tap into your power of the gods to enhance your abilities and bring down the judgement of the fickle Gods upon those that get in your way.
When you combine these masteries, your class is renamed and if you have all the DLC mentioned above, you can have up to 36 combinations and if you're like me, you'll be making all kinds of fun and multiple characters to play with!
Another really cool feature is the stash where you can save rare items you come across to save some space in your inventory or even a global storage so that if you come across cool items that you can't use on your current character, you can leave them there for this other character or even make a character for those items! No judgement, I've done the same far too often!
For those who want a higher difficulty, you need to complete the game with the current class to get New Game+ for higher difficulties, but you can also do an Iron Man difficulty (called Hardcore) where death is permanent which adds to the challenge. Especially if you're in a class that's far more likely to die in combat. That said, any items you put into the global stash are still accessible for your other characters are who under the same difficulty. (It'd be far too easy to get stuff your max-level character can get on a non-iron man difficulty after all).
There are factions in the same, some optional to side with where as others are not, but your standing with them has tangible effects in regards to the ones you ally with giving you access to unique items, blueprints and equipment and those that you are enemies with will start adding more enemies to their groups and more "heroes" who are the powerful bosses of their groups, but when you hit max to "Nemesis" each map the group appears on has a chance to spawn a extremely dangerous boss who brings a chest with them. Once you defeat them, you can open the chest and get the rarest and most powerful of items in the game! Making many places worth a revisit and the game highly replayable. Not to mention the many extra difficult side-mission areas that are often filled with unique and dangerous creatures that have their own back stories of how they came to be.
I've enjoyed this game so much, I've even played it a little just now when writing this review to try and get as much accurate information as I can!
Now, I do have some issues with it. One is that the multiplayer, like quite a few, is dependent on what DLC you have, but only in regards to the major ones that add classes, weapons and areas to explore like Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods. I did this mistake by falling so in love with this game that I bought Forgotten Gods whilst I was still streaming this with my friends, so I had to buy them the DLC or we'd have to cut ourselves off from the game and I wanted to get to the end of Ashes of Malmouth to see how it all ends! The game can be repetitive, but only if you've played it as many times as I have and I had to pull myself away from it because I still have thousands of games in my backlog to get through, but this game is always here for me to return to if I want to blow off some steam and have a little fun. It's great fun and I highly recommend it to anyone interested!
Gameplay/Stream
iNerull's Grim Dawn Videos
So anyway, back to the actual game!
The story is about a group of entities, known as the Aetherials, have begun invading this world and possessing people (both living and corpses) and being pretty indiscriminate in who they kill. One such person is captured, thanks to a witch, to see if they can gather any information on these creatures as they are the last survivors in the area, using a prison for shelter as the major town nearby was overrun and as they threatened and demanded answers from the being as to why it's kind are attacking their world it chuckles, mysteriously replying
"Your world? It was ours first until your corrupt gods kicked us out. Your kind reached out to us first and now we are taking what is ours." (or something to that extent) and before just as they were being hung, the spirit escapes and both the captain and witch protest to save the life of the human that the spirit had fled. The captain says that with so few people on their side, if this person wakes up, they can atleast use them to fight for them and if not, they can be buried with the others. You play as this person who, after the trauma of possession, has lost their memories and intially used as fodder to help fight off the invading monsters. Due to this, it makes sense that all groups you meet will be distrusting of you and you start out as a blank slate in regards to abilities, classes and ect. That said, you are not just fighting the undead, but many beastmen, beasts, cults, scientific abominations, eldritch beings, bandits and all kinds of groups who are gaining a larger foothold due to all the chaos caused by this apocalyptic invasion.
In regards to gameplay, it plays like many similar ARPGs, like Diablo or Path of Exile where enemies drop all kinds of loot for different classes (or as they're called, masteries), quite a few higher level ones supporting abilities from separate classes so no matter your choice, you're likely to find items that can support your build. No matter what the build is.
Your class/Masteries choices are:
Soldier:
This is a main combat class. Most of the abilities are geared towards physical damage (often in melee combat) and soaking up damage along with stunning enemies with your heavy blows and drawing enemy attacks for any friends you wish to play with.
Demolitionist:
Are you a fan of fire and explosions? Demolitionist is great for those who want to throw explosives, Molotovs and passively set fire to creatures with the attacks tied to your weapons. But maybe you don't want to only use fire? Fair, you also get to set up traps that can stun and slow enemies and allow you to control the battlefield so that the enemies have to fight you on your own terms.
Occultist:
As the name suggests, you use magic mostly associated with cultists and witches. You have a wide selections of spells that can cause acid and corruption to enemies, but you can also go a summoner route and summon creatures such as a familiar (crow) that passively heals everyone and summons lightning to attack along with a hellhound that, with enough upgrades, can breath out fire.
Nightblade:
For the assassin in all of us, most of the skills here are for improving physical damage, causing critical hits, inflicting cold damage, improving evasion and even adding bleeding/poison damage to your strikes to weaken your foes. You can also use this class to duel-wield blades
Arcanist:
This class is fighting fire with fire! You tap into the power of the Aether to cast powerful magical spells or you can channel the energy into the weapons you wield to enhance their damage and use the very power of the Aetherials against again!
Shaman:
A class that takes you back to nature. With it you have abilities that boost your pets, summon totems for temporary buffs/debuffs, summon lightning, summon a Briarthorn (a creature made up of thorns with a bird-like skull), hurl swarms of insects at your opponents or even wield the power of nature in the form of lightning into your weapons to strike down those that would mock the power of nature and corrupt it's natural balance.
Inquisitor (Ashes of Malmouth):
This class drew the attention of my friend as, similar to the Inquisitor in Warhammer universe, you can gain the ability to duel-wield pistols, but many of the spells at their disposal are used to mess with enemy spell casters and counter their attacks. Often placing down sigils to boost yourself or damage your opponents. It has some great skills for improving any gun-wielding build.
Necromancer (Ashes of Malmouth):
Essentially does what it says on the tin. This is a class all about manipulation of life force energies whether that be raising the dead to have an army of undead warriors or using spells to draw upon the life-force of your enemies or maybe a combination of the two, using your spells to destroy and your undead servants as cannon fodder.
Note: However, certain groups will look down upon you for taking this path, like the Kymon's Chosen who view necromancy as a irredeemable practice, regardless of how it's used.
Oathbreaker (Forgotten Gods):
(The only class I've not actually tried yet)
This is their version of a "paladin" however, considering the Gods involved you don't need to be some holy being doing good to tap into your power of the gods to enhance your abilities and bring down the judgement of the fickle Gods upon those that get in your way.
When you combine these masteries, your class is renamed and if you have all the DLC mentioned above, you can have up to 36 combinations and if you're like me, you'll be making all kinds of fun and multiple characters to play with!
Another really cool feature is the stash where you can save rare items you come across to save some space in your inventory or even a global storage so that if you come across cool items that you can't use on your current character, you can leave them there for this other character or even make a character for those items! No judgement, I've done the same far too often!
For those who want a higher difficulty, you need to complete the game with the current class to get New Game+ for higher difficulties, but you can also do an Iron Man difficulty (called Hardcore) where death is permanent which adds to the challenge. Especially if you're in a class that's far more likely to die in combat. That said, any items you put into the global stash are still accessible for your other characters are who under the same difficulty. (It'd be far too easy to get stuff your max-level character can get on a non-iron man difficulty after all).
There are factions in the same, some optional to side with where as others are not, but your standing with them has tangible effects in regards to the ones you ally with giving you access to unique items, blueprints and equipment and those that you are enemies with will start adding more enemies to their groups and more "heroes" who are the powerful bosses of their groups, but when you hit max to "Nemesis" each map the group appears on has a chance to spawn a extremely dangerous boss who brings a chest with them. Once you defeat them, you can open the chest and get the rarest and most powerful of items in the game! Making many places worth a revisit and the game highly replayable. Not to mention the many extra difficult side-mission areas that are often filled with unique and dangerous creatures that have their own back stories of how they came to be.
I've enjoyed this game so much, I've even played it a little just now when writing this review to try and get as much accurate information as I can!
Now, I do have some issues with it. One is that the multiplayer, like quite a few, is dependent on what DLC you have, but only in regards to the major ones that add classes, weapons and areas to explore like Ashes of Malmouth and Forgotten Gods. I did this mistake by falling so in love with this game that I bought Forgotten Gods whilst I was still streaming this with my friends, so I had to buy them the DLC or we'd have to cut ourselves off from the game and I wanted to get to the end of Ashes of Malmouth to see how it all ends! The game can be repetitive, but only if you've played it as many times as I have and I had to pull myself away from it because I still have thousands of games in my backlog to get through, but this game is always here for me to return to if I want to blow off some steam and have a little fun. It's great fun and I highly recommend it to anyone interested!
Gameplay/Stream
iNerull's Grim Dawn Videos
Original Steam review made right after streaming the game
After I had finished off Cringetober 2022 I had decided to experiment in clearing my backlog of games through a list of games I had not actually played yet, but had been really wanting to! I was in the mood for something Sci-Fi related and this one had my interest, considering it being based on the old retro sci-fi from many movies made infamous by MST3K and such that often get referenced along with the meta humour in the narrative of this game. I was also reminded of those many times I watched some of those cheesy B-movies with my dad such as "The Earth Dies Screaming" or "This Island Earth" and more, many of which do get referenced in this game in many ways.
The story is the director of the movie has come into a studio to record lines for a director's cut of his movie, "The Deadly Tower of Monsters" about a typical hero character (flying in a ship held up by strings) crashing onto this tower to fight the evil overlord of this enormous tower, but soon ends up free-falling to the bottom and having to work his way up to the tower, getting companions along the way in the form of a robot and the daughter of the villainous overlord. Stopping you from your ascent are men in monkey suits weilding "Laserblast" arm blasters, kids in rubber octopus suits, claymation dinosaurs, giant ants and so much more!
The gameplay is of a twin-stick shooter in many ways and you can not only upgrade your weapons, but get a variety along with extra abilities specific characters that can help you progress up the tower and into hidden areas to collect items for upgrades and such. I also love the mechanic of being able to aim off the edge of the tower to shoot at any approaching monsters that are trying to scale their way up to get at you and many boss battles are based around this, making it feel like they a truly massive monsters. The whole time, the narrator is talking to the one hosting this director's cut, asking questions and getting answers he really did not expect to get such as if you die in the game, it's considered a cut scene and that the one who died was "Just an extra" or how the villain was a used-car salesman with an evil laugh that they hired on the spot after the producer had been scammed by him.
I really did love streaming every moment of this and reflected that love in going through the game to get all the achievements as possible because of how much I loved it. I even over-streamed, going over 5 hours because I was having such a good time with it!
I highly recommend it for any big fan of these B-movie settings out there and absurdist humour.
One line that'll always stick with me when collecting film reels:
"Ah, so that's where the cut sex scene went. I didn't think it was that awkward. Especially with the robot in the corner."
Stream/Gameplay
After I had finished off Cringetober 2022 I had decided to experiment in clearing my backlog of games through a list of games I had not actually played yet, but had been really wanting to! I was in the mood for something Sci-Fi related and this one had my interest, considering it being based on the old retro sci-fi from many movies made infamous by MST3K and such that often get referenced along with the meta humour in the narrative of this game. I was also reminded of those many times I watched some of those cheesy B-movies with my dad such as "The Earth Dies Screaming" or "This Island Earth" and more, many of which do get referenced in this game in many ways.
The story is the director of the movie has come into a studio to record lines for a director's cut of his movie, "The Deadly Tower of Monsters" about a typical hero character (flying in a ship held up by strings) crashing onto this tower to fight the evil overlord of this enormous tower, but soon ends up free-falling to the bottom and having to work his way up to the tower, getting companions along the way in the form of a robot and the daughter of the villainous overlord. Stopping you from your ascent are men in monkey suits weilding "Laserblast" arm blasters, kids in rubber octopus suits, claymation dinosaurs, giant ants and so much more!
The gameplay is of a twin-stick shooter in many ways and you can not only upgrade your weapons, but get a variety along with extra abilities specific characters that can help you progress up the tower and into hidden areas to collect items for upgrades and such. I also love the mechanic of being able to aim off the edge of the tower to shoot at any approaching monsters that are trying to scale their way up to get at you and many boss battles are based around this, making it feel like they a truly massive monsters. The whole time, the narrator is talking to the one hosting this director's cut, asking questions and getting answers he really did not expect to get such as if you die in the game, it's considered a cut scene and that the one who died was "Just an extra" or how the villain was a used-car salesman with an evil laugh that they hired on the spot after the producer had been scammed by him.
I really did love streaming every moment of this and reflected that love in going through the game to get all the achievements as possible because of how much I loved it. I even over-streamed, going over 5 hours because I was having such a good time with it!
I highly recommend it for any big fan of these B-movie settings out there and absurdist humour.
One line that'll always stick with me when collecting film reels:
"Ah, so that's where the cut sex scene went. I didn't think it was that awkward. Especially with the robot in the corner."
Stream/Gameplay
2016
I really wanted to like this game, but as I played it, the game felt a little like a shallow hole of what it could've been and with no real story I found it very boring so I couldn't even justify playing anymore for the story.
All you have in terms of gameplay is Tutorial, a few scenarios and a sandbox mode. Beyond this, not much else to talk about.
Your residents in the vault start out unassigned and you have to give them roles, however, you are severely limited because only certain people, via RNG, are able to do roles such as scientist (which does both research and medical), Worker (Who does mining, building, deconstruction stuff), Janitor (Meant for cleaning up rubble and such. Also cleaning up Molemen tunnels to stop more from spawning), Engineers (Who repair and maintain all of the buildings in your entire base), Farmer (Used to help grow food for those in the vault to eat), Chef (Cooking up meals, ready for whenever the dwellers need food.) and both the elderly and children are unable to take any jobs, often simply using up your resources until they die or, in case of the children, until they're adults and you assign them.
Since there are no stats, it's a pain in the ass to get more residents, which you do via use of the incubator where you grow new children. You can spend research points to pick what their job is and get them ready for it, but that's still quite a wait and will ware you down. It's especially annoying the older ones can't do anything, considering my experience with Rimworld, not to mention the flexibility in jobs in the game too so you can always make up for shortages. Here, you can't. You just have to hope you remembered to give out enough correct jobs or you'll end up losing all your buildings by having no engineers, everyone starving to death because of no chef, unable to build anything or dig because of no workers, place gets extremely dirty because of no cleaners and no research or medical help with no scientists and, as I said, you have to wait for the kids to reach adulthood and unless you chose their skills with research points, it's up to RNG if they have any of the jobs you want. Beyond this, you can research everything and then your research points are next-to-worthless.
When building a lift for the new floors, I was glad that you can go down to new levels, however, you cannot your power, oxygen or water from the upper floors to the lower floors, making it a pain in the ass as you have to now rebuild generators and such on the new floor too!
I'm sad to say I was pretty disappointed in this game.
All you have in terms of gameplay is Tutorial, a few scenarios and a sandbox mode. Beyond this, not much else to talk about.
Your residents in the vault start out unassigned and you have to give them roles, however, you are severely limited because only certain people, via RNG, are able to do roles such as scientist (which does both research and medical), Worker (Who does mining, building, deconstruction stuff), Janitor (Meant for cleaning up rubble and such. Also cleaning up Molemen tunnels to stop more from spawning), Engineers (Who repair and maintain all of the buildings in your entire base), Farmer (Used to help grow food for those in the vault to eat), Chef (Cooking up meals, ready for whenever the dwellers need food.) and both the elderly and children are unable to take any jobs, often simply using up your resources until they die or, in case of the children, until they're adults and you assign them.
Since there are no stats, it's a pain in the ass to get more residents, which you do via use of the incubator where you grow new children. You can spend research points to pick what their job is and get them ready for it, but that's still quite a wait and will ware you down. It's especially annoying the older ones can't do anything, considering my experience with Rimworld, not to mention the flexibility in jobs in the game too so you can always make up for shortages. Here, you can't. You just have to hope you remembered to give out enough correct jobs or you'll end up losing all your buildings by having no engineers, everyone starving to death because of no chef, unable to build anything or dig because of no workers, place gets extremely dirty because of no cleaners and no research or medical help with no scientists and, as I said, you have to wait for the kids to reach adulthood and unless you chose their skills with research points, it's up to RNG if they have any of the jobs you want. Beyond this, you can research everything and then your research points are next-to-worthless.
When building a lift for the new floors, I was glad that you can go down to new levels, however, you cannot your power, oxygen or water from the upper floors to the lower floors, making it a pain in the ass as you have to now rebuild generators and such on the new floor too!
I'm sad to say I was pretty disappointed in this game.
2019
So, just completed this and got the achievements so now's the time. What did I think of it?
Well I decided to put this into my offline games because I've been really itching to play a strategy sim for quite some time. Especially after seeing Undead Inc and thinking that it looks amazing! But I have to hold my cash back. Especially as opening reviews haven't been too...friendly towards it, but enough of that game what about this one?
The game is the story of someone who has an idea for a video game, however, he's unable to impress any investors and he has no money to make that dream possible, so he just goes out to get high and once he does he has the idea from his friend to get into the dealing trade! After this we are taken on a story where we deal in all kinds of illicit substances and keep getting blocked whenever we try to build up the cash to hire our programmers, artists and writers for the game as we get involved in a turf war, the police and even the biggest of all evils. Bitcoin!
The story has it's moments and can be a little funny, but I often found it not that funny, though the one thing I loved was the building up your group, selling/producing drugs to better equip your people before you start clearing up the map and taking everyone out!
I have my own petpeeves however. You are expected to get sales and depending on upgrades and such, you may not get that many sale a day where as the AI has no such restriction and merely by taking over properties, they have an increased income, allowing them to attack you and others with more people. They don't have to mess around with dealers to sell the stuff, producers to make the various products and take part in researching so they get a slight advantage there in regards to attacking since they seem to have no other actual function, which feels weird. It's like if an enemy in Command & Conquer had no harvesters, yet were still getting money to produce units to attack you with.
I still had fun with it though and I felt like some of the missions flew in the face of what you're taught earlier on, such as one requiring you don't sell anything, but have to produce to sell wholesale or how you get discovered if you have anything over $100 (most buildings and upgrades and units cost far more than this) which in these cases, I've had to look up solutions online which isn't fun. It makes you feel like it's your fault and that you were meant to adapt to these new instructions without being told how to deal with it...or maybe that's my Autism creating a block there...
Just checked it's price (as of 24/05/2024) and got to say, I think it's a little high for what you ultimately get. I've played cheaper and better RTS games out there. That said, however, there is a Sandbox mode where you can choose to have all kinds of buildings set up (though it's often random, only dictated by size) so you can truly play it endlessly if you want and set the AI to 3 so you can fight all the main villains in the game at once! There's also fun unique events that happen too, which are certainly worth a chuckle or at least gaining more money to keep expanding.
It's not a great game, but it did scratch that itch I had and would recommend it when discounted. It's certainly not bad, but it didn't really wow me much. Especially as your units can only equip 1 item, making things limited and often meaning that I NEVER choose certain items because, why would I bother with them when I can get a more powerful weapon?
Well I decided to put this into my offline games because I've been really itching to play a strategy sim for quite some time. Especially after seeing Undead Inc and thinking that it looks amazing! But I have to hold my cash back. Especially as opening reviews haven't been too...friendly towards it, but enough of that game what about this one?
The game is the story of someone who has an idea for a video game, however, he's unable to impress any investors and he has no money to make that dream possible, so he just goes out to get high and once he does he has the idea from his friend to get into the dealing trade! After this we are taken on a story where we deal in all kinds of illicit substances and keep getting blocked whenever we try to build up the cash to hire our programmers, artists and writers for the game as we get involved in a turf war, the police and even the biggest of all evils. Bitcoin!
The story has it's moments and can be a little funny, but I often found it not that funny, though the one thing I loved was the building up your group, selling/producing drugs to better equip your people before you start clearing up the map and taking everyone out!
I have my own petpeeves however. You are expected to get sales and depending on upgrades and such, you may not get that many sale a day where as the AI has no such restriction and merely by taking over properties, they have an increased income, allowing them to attack you and others with more people. They don't have to mess around with dealers to sell the stuff, producers to make the various products and take part in researching so they get a slight advantage there in regards to attacking since they seem to have no other actual function, which feels weird. It's like if an enemy in Command & Conquer had no harvesters, yet were still getting money to produce units to attack you with.
I still had fun with it though and I felt like some of the missions flew in the face of what you're taught earlier on, such as one requiring you don't sell anything, but have to produce to sell wholesale or how you get discovered if you have anything over $100 (most buildings and upgrades and units cost far more than this) which in these cases, I've had to look up solutions online which isn't fun. It makes you feel like it's your fault and that you were meant to adapt to these new instructions without being told how to deal with it...or maybe that's my Autism creating a block there...
Just checked it's price (as of 24/05/2024) and got to say, I think it's a little high for what you ultimately get. I've played cheaper and better RTS games out there. That said, however, there is a Sandbox mode where you can choose to have all kinds of buildings set up (though it's often random, only dictated by size) so you can truly play it endlessly if you want and set the AI to 3 so you can fight all the main villains in the game at once! There's also fun unique events that happen too, which are certainly worth a chuckle or at least gaining more money to keep expanding.
It's not a great game, but it did scratch that itch I had and would recommend it when discounted. It's certainly not bad, but it didn't really wow me much. Especially as your units can only equip 1 item, making things limited and often meaning that I NEVER choose certain items because, why would I bother with them when I can get a more powerful weapon?
This is one of those that I've lost the videos too, so most of this will be based off memory.
As a big fan of Rocko's Modern Life (yes, loved the movie as well) there are some positives in how they use their humour in this game and everything is very colourful and accurate to the show, however the gameplay is where it really falls on it's ass.
The whole game is essentially an Escort Mission Simulator where you have to help Spunky (Rocko's dog) to get to the Golden Hydrant at the end of the level, avoiding or fighting off hazards that get in his way as once his health is all gone, you lose.
Now, the positive is that he has a healthbar and it isn't like certain games I've played where your escort has no health and dies from a single attack from the enemies! This gives you quite a bit of flexibility so you can hopefully salvage a situation if you ever mess up. The best way to approach each mission is to get Spunky stuck somewhere whilst you explore the level and set things up to that Spunky can get to the end without much harm.
Another issue is, something common with many of these games, you have no tutorial and the last few missions add new elements and devices you've not seen before, so it can be a pain when trying to figure out until I looked online on how to pass a level and then I knew how to do it!
I wouldn't recommend the game, tbh. It is fun to look back at the series and the humour is much the same, however, it is ultimately just an escort mission and as cute as Spunky is, he can't do all the heavy lifting for this game. There's better games out there for you to be using your time on.
As a big fan of Rocko's Modern Life (yes, loved the movie as well) there are some positives in how they use their humour in this game and everything is very colourful and accurate to the show, however the gameplay is where it really falls on it's ass.
The whole game is essentially an Escort Mission Simulator where you have to help Spunky (Rocko's dog) to get to the Golden Hydrant at the end of the level, avoiding or fighting off hazards that get in his way as once his health is all gone, you lose.
Now, the positive is that he has a healthbar and it isn't like certain games I've played where your escort has no health and dies from a single attack from the enemies! This gives you quite a bit of flexibility so you can hopefully salvage a situation if you ever mess up. The best way to approach each mission is to get Spunky stuck somewhere whilst you explore the level and set things up to that Spunky can get to the end without much harm.
Another issue is, something common with many of these games, you have no tutorial and the last few missions add new elements and devices you've not seen before, so it can be a pain when trying to figure out until I looked online on how to pass a level and then I knew how to do it!
I wouldn't recommend the game, tbh. It is fun to look back at the series and the humour is much the same, however, it is ultimately just an escort mission and as cute as Spunky is, he can't do all the heavy lifting for this game. There's better games out there for you to be using your time on.
I remember playing this many years back, though I admit I was disappointed by it in a few areas. Still, I enjoyed what they tried to do by making an RTS based on the AVP universe.
Each group as their own campaign, which the story for is covered in a wall of text before each mission. No acting, no animation and voice overs. Just text. This gets pretty frustrating, however the story was very interesting for the alien faction as humans are once again attempting to experiment on them, even managing to create a species of Xenomorphs where the Predalian is a queen! Needless to say, the normal species don't like this unnatural version.
Gameplay: I'll note how each group works. They obtain resources in a different way compared to your typical RTS.
Aliens: As the aliens, you usually start with a queen and a drone. The hive has walls that spread, similar to Zerg in Starcraft and when on these walls, your units regenerate. This, coupled with any creatures that your subdue and then impregnate with a face-hugger adds to DNA points, which can be used for creating praetorian facehuggers to birth the "princess" of the hives, being the praetorians who can not only evolve into a queen if you lose yours, but also a set of different special aliens, such as one that can carry facehuggers (whose limited lifespan normally runs out, outside of the egg) and have them launch off in combat or a heavily armoured one that has huge hitpoints and massive blades which often kill so you can't harvest the bodies for impregnation. This is a point as they don't "kill" the enemies you fight, be they humans, predators or wild animals that inhabit the planet. This is why the drone is often needed as they can go out hunting and then drag the body to the hive where the eggs are for the facehuggers.
Your normal facehuggers only birth whatever they have grabbed onto. For example, Predators creating the Predalian and four-legged beasts to create the runner one from Alien 3.
Of course, these resources are limited, so you need to be careful that you don't send all your warriors to their death as you aren't going to be able to get many, if any, back.
Marines: Here we have the Wayland-Yutani marines and as such, their resources are credits used to call down dropships that give them more troops or even mechs. One of the most fun units, being those with the smart gun that can very easily take down any xeno you come across! I'm sure is what the manual says.
They earn resources by finding ATMOS generators (like the one from Aliens, but in the game they are MUCH smaller and blow up after being used up) to help terraform the planet for the company that has contracted them. There are only a small number of these on the map, so be careful with your troops! Also, as you kill creatures with bullets, you make it so that neither of the other groups can obtain points from the bodies.
Predators: As the predators, you get new predators dropped in, often all of the units are a type of predator excelling with a certain weapon. More can be called in, similar to the marines, however, the only way you obtain points is by killing creatures (humans, aliens or wild animals) and afterwards, commanding the predator to tear off the skull for collection, much like in the space ship in Predator 2. This gives you a certain amount of points per kill and may be one of the longest lasting resources out of the three factions.
Of course, you can't collect from those not killed by your predators, nor can you kill and collect from creatures that were incapacitated by aliens and not decapitated by those big ones and synths net no points because they aren't considered a prey, being a machine. Makes sense as you can't impregnate them as the aliens because, again, being a machine.
I'm not a fan of this form of resource gathering, but I did enjoy it due to the licence being attached here, but I think the biggest issue is that this is a RTS being put on console only! I really don't get that. I'm not being a snob, like with PC gamers saying "Mouse and Keyboard is superior in FPSs" but it is in regards to RTS as that's the platform it was made for and attempting to navigate a map with a controller is like trying to move around the map of games like C&C, but not being allowed to click on the minimap and you have to drag your mouse to the corner of the map and wait.
It's not a mind-blowing game by any means, but it's not that awful as it could've been in regards to what I've seen happen to numerous other licences in the series.
Each group as their own campaign, which the story for is covered in a wall of text before each mission. No acting, no animation and voice overs. Just text. This gets pretty frustrating, however the story was very interesting for the alien faction as humans are once again attempting to experiment on them, even managing to create a species of Xenomorphs where the Predalian is a queen! Needless to say, the normal species don't like this unnatural version.
Gameplay: I'll note how each group works. They obtain resources in a different way compared to your typical RTS.
Aliens: As the aliens, you usually start with a queen and a drone. The hive has walls that spread, similar to Zerg in Starcraft and when on these walls, your units regenerate. This, coupled with any creatures that your subdue and then impregnate with a face-hugger adds to DNA points, which can be used for creating praetorian facehuggers to birth the "princess" of the hives, being the praetorians who can not only evolve into a queen if you lose yours, but also a set of different special aliens, such as one that can carry facehuggers (whose limited lifespan normally runs out, outside of the egg) and have them launch off in combat or a heavily armoured one that has huge hitpoints and massive blades which often kill so you can't harvest the bodies for impregnation. This is a point as they don't "kill" the enemies you fight, be they humans, predators or wild animals that inhabit the planet. This is why the drone is often needed as they can go out hunting and then drag the body to the hive where the eggs are for the facehuggers.
Your normal facehuggers only birth whatever they have grabbed onto. For example, Predators creating the Predalian and four-legged beasts to create the runner one from Alien 3.
Of course, these resources are limited, so you need to be careful that you don't send all your warriors to their death as you aren't going to be able to get many, if any, back.
Marines: Here we have the Wayland-Yutani marines and as such, their resources are credits used to call down dropships that give them more troops or even mechs. One of the most fun units, being those with the smart gun that can very easily take down any xeno you come across! I'm sure is what the manual says.
They earn resources by finding ATMOS generators (like the one from Aliens, but in the game they are MUCH smaller and blow up after being used up) to help terraform the planet for the company that has contracted them. There are only a small number of these on the map, so be careful with your troops! Also, as you kill creatures with bullets, you make it so that neither of the other groups can obtain points from the bodies.
Predators: As the predators, you get new predators dropped in, often all of the units are a type of predator excelling with a certain weapon. More can be called in, similar to the marines, however, the only way you obtain points is by killing creatures (humans, aliens or wild animals) and afterwards, commanding the predator to tear off the skull for collection, much like in the space ship in Predator 2. This gives you a certain amount of points per kill and may be one of the longest lasting resources out of the three factions.
Of course, you can't collect from those not killed by your predators, nor can you kill and collect from creatures that were incapacitated by aliens and not decapitated by those big ones and synths net no points because they aren't considered a prey, being a machine. Makes sense as you can't impregnate them as the aliens because, again, being a machine.
I'm not a fan of this form of resource gathering, but I did enjoy it due to the licence being attached here, but I think the biggest issue is that this is a RTS being put on console only! I really don't get that. I'm not being a snob, like with PC gamers saying "Mouse and Keyboard is superior in FPSs" but it is in regards to RTS as that's the platform it was made for and attempting to navigate a map with a controller is like trying to move around the map of games like C&C, but not being allowed to click on the minimap and you have to drag your mouse to the corner of the map and wait.
It's not a mind-blowing game by any means, but it's not that awful as it could've been in regards to what I've seen happen to numerous other licences in the series.
2013
This is a game I had fun with in the past after someone I knew got me into it. I admit, I wasn't too certain with an online game, however, I found myself having a whole lot of fun in this ARPG!
Styled after similar games like Diablo, you are at a bird's eye view and control a single character, chosen from a selection as that will be your class, however, you can branch out from that class into a few different ways, though I found that bit more complicated than it probably should've been.
I chose the witch and focused on summoning undead to fight for me, filling up the screen with hordes of zombies and skeletons after my friend had shown me the ropes, given me a few useful items and gems and explains what stats boost what for me.
The story is also quite interesting, being where you play as a ship-wrecked prisoner who was on your way to be exiled, but as the boat crashed you and other survivors start making up camp and slowly exploring this strange new island that's filled with dangerous monsters wanting to kill you all!
I admit I lost my attention with this game, mostly because I have so many games out there that I can finish and being a online one, this one will probably never be "completed" but I have it installed, ready to return to it whenever I would like to sometime.
Styled after similar games like Diablo, you are at a bird's eye view and control a single character, chosen from a selection as that will be your class, however, you can branch out from that class into a few different ways, though I found that bit more complicated than it probably should've been.
I chose the witch and focused on summoning undead to fight for me, filling up the screen with hordes of zombies and skeletons after my friend had shown me the ropes, given me a few useful items and gems and explains what stats boost what for me.
The story is also quite interesting, being where you play as a ship-wrecked prisoner who was on your way to be exiled, but as the boat crashed you and other survivors start making up camp and slowly exploring this strange new island that's filled with dangerous monsters wanting to kill you all!
I admit I lost my attention with this game, mostly because I have so many games out there that I can finish and being a online one, this one will probably never be "completed" but I have it installed, ready to return to it whenever I would like to sometime.
As usual, my first part of this stream has dropped so here comes the review!
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom was originally kickstarted to the tune of $139,865 which was just over it's goal of $100,000. Quite an achievement and with the game they delivered a very fun game that I enjoyed greatly! It ended up being one of those hidden gems that had been sitting in my library, begging to be found until I finally stumbled across it!
In the game, the magical energy that people use to cast spells and also govern their lives is called Shi. Due to wars and attempts of exploiting Shi for their own good, the planet has become fractured into many pieces, yet still manages to just barely hold on.
There are multiple story threads going on with many interesting characters. Starting with these two Wakis (short furry people, who aren't taken seriously as a race) who are travelling on a roughly made air ship of their own making that crashes and are looking for a mythical land, said not to even exist. That said, one of them has an invisible companion, Terra, who swears it's real and is trying to lead the two there.
A Shelk (tall furry humanoid) is escorting a human under cover of darkness to his people's home in an attempt to request asylum and escape from whatever she was being drawn into.
A ruthless mercenary is also chasing after this young woman to attempt to bring her back home to a family who are willing to pay handsomely for her return. Armed with a rose-whip he's considered extremely dangerous.
The gameplay takes place in the form of an adventure. Running around and unlocking new areas with the use of powers obtained from different members of your party that you unlock, similar to the many open-world lego games! The first two characters have their own abilities with Pooky being able to manipulate energy to link nodes to crystals and Chado (pronounced Shadow) can summon a huge rock that can be used to throw at enemies to stun them, throw into breakable walls to smash them apart and even use them for distractions or puzzles that often involve a pressure plate. Until you get more members of the group, old areas will have areas blocked off from you, making you want to revisit these areas in a metroidvania kind of style.
Combat is played more like a beat-em-up where you need to be aware for attacks if you're attempting to cast some kind of spells and to be on your toes for those casting spells directly at you. There are moves and combos that you get to learn as you travel, buy new techniques and pick others up as you level.
Combat is started when you make contact with a creature (apart from bounties as they often have their own little story attached) where you get thrown into an arena and have to fight them, not leaving until you've defeated them where, in typical RPG style, you obtain money, materials and items! It's a fun change from the usual combat being turn-based, as much as I do love turn-based combat it's fun to try something new like with this game and fight in a tense combat situation where not being aware of the game mechanics can really screw you up. Along with being potentially over-confident with how I was in some cases where an enemy looked just like it's weaker cousins and it'd end up smacking me around like I was nothing!
I had also found the story really engaging and after finishing the game I was hungry for more, however, it appears that the company closed down due to bankrupcy within three months after the games release so I'm afraid to say that a sequel looks like may never happen. It seems we may never actually get a conclusion to this and that's a real shame because there was a lot of potential with this game and the series that could've potentially spun off from this game, but for the moment we'll always have this game as a reminder of what could've been and maybe even inspire others in the future with ideas for their own projects! Until then, this is another case of a game with no sequel and the story will have to remain in limbo.
Gameplay/Stream
Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom was originally kickstarted to the tune of $139,865 which was just over it's goal of $100,000. Quite an achievement and with the game they delivered a very fun game that I enjoyed greatly! It ended up being one of those hidden gems that had been sitting in my library, begging to be found until I finally stumbled across it!
In the game, the magical energy that people use to cast spells and also govern their lives is called Shi. Due to wars and attempts of exploiting Shi for their own good, the planet has become fractured into many pieces, yet still manages to just barely hold on.
There are multiple story threads going on with many interesting characters. Starting with these two Wakis (short furry people, who aren't taken seriously as a race) who are travelling on a roughly made air ship of their own making that crashes and are looking for a mythical land, said not to even exist. That said, one of them has an invisible companion, Terra, who swears it's real and is trying to lead the two there.
A Shelk (tall furry humanoid) is escorting a human under cover of darkness to his people's home in an attempt to request asylum and escape from whatever she was being drawn into.
A ruthless mercenary is also chasing after this young woman to attempt to bring her back home to a family who are willing to pay handsomely for her return. Armed with a rose-whip he's considered extremely dangerous.
The gameplay takes place in the form of an adventure. Running around and unlocking new areas with the use of powers obtained from different members of your party that you unlock, similar to the many open-world lego games! The first two characters have their own abilities with Pooky being able to manipulate energy to link nodes to crystals and Chado (pronounced Shadow) can summon a huge rock that can be used to throw at enemies to stun them, throw into breakable walls to smash them apart and even use them for distractions or puzzles that often involve a pressure plate. Until you get more members of the group, old areas will have areas blocked off from you, making you want to revisit these areas in a metroidvania kind of style.
Combat is played more like a beat-em-up where you need to be aware for attacks if you're attempting to cast some kind of spells and to be on your toes for those casting spells directly at you. There are moves and combos that you get to learn as you travel, buy new techniques and pick others up as you level.
Combat is started when you make contact with a creature (apart from bounties as they often have their own little story attached) where you get thrown into an arena and have to fight them, not leaving until you've defeated them where, in typical RPG style, you obtain money, materials and items! It's a fun change from the usual combat being turn-based, as much as I do love turn-based combat it's fun to try something new like with this game and fight in a tense combat situation where not being aware of the game mechanics can really screw you up. Along with being potentially over-confident with how I was in some cases where an enemy looked just like it's weaker cousins and it'd end up smacking me around like I was nothing!
I had also found the story really engaging and after finishing the game I was hungry for more, however, it appears that the company closed down due to bankrupcy within three months after the games release so I'm afraid to say that a sequel looks like may never happen. It seems we may never actually get a conclusion to this and that's a real shame because there was a lot of potential with this game and the series that could've potentially spun off from this game, but for the moment we'll always have this game as a reminder of what could've been and maybe even inspire others in the future with ideas for their own projects! Until then, this is another case of a game with no sequel and the story will have to remain in limbo.
Gameplay/Stream
1999
This one really takes me back, but I'll do my best to remember it as much as I can!
I remember reading the title on the rectangular box. Due to some naming conventions, sometimes the biggest word is read out so me and others would joke it was either "Super Smash Bros." or "Smash Super Bros." but this was a game that had the great idea, as demonstrated in the opening with the master hand, mixing up combat with multiple franchises from Nintendo's library that they had full rights over!
Again, as illustrated from the beginning, it's like those moments where as a little kids you could play with action figures and have people from totally different genres fighting each other because you didn't give a shit about copyright as a kid and exactly who was going to stop you from enacting the Enterprise encountering the Death Star or Luke Skywalker and He Man having a dual before taking on the staypuft marshmellow man!
The game was a fairly interesting fighting game, allowing movement up and down onto multiple platforms and with no actual health bar to speak of, you have to rack up damage on the other opponent until your hits are able to knock them so far away off the arena that they can't get back. It has many fun levels based on all the different universes that are interracting here with Hyrule, The Starfox, Pokemon centre and many more that I can't quite remember.
All the characters have their own abilities that feel unique to them and are, I feel, balanced in a way that it works really well. Not to mention all the items you can pick up and use to give yourself an edge and to reference the classic games they come from with the hammer from the classic Donkey Kong games, a pokeball holding a random pokemon, a fire flower and many others. Including a large crate that these items can arrive in.
Like any good fighter, there's multiple secret characters that can be unlocked and have later now just appeared in the sequels as starting characters.
The main campaign has you fight all the different fighters, plus a few unique ones like an army of Yoshis, army of polygon people (basic poly versions of in-game characters), a metal mario (Mario, but as he's metal he's much heavier and harder to knock out) and the Master Hand which, as a flying hand, doesn't have a % to be knocked out but instead, hit points.
Playing this game was a massive blast and it's very obvious to see why they made sequels of it years later for the follow up consoles that came after the N64 and I can't say I blame them.
I remember reading the title on the rectangular box. Due to some naming conventions, sometimes the biggest word is read out so me and others would joke it was either "Super Smash Bros." or "Smash Super Bros." but this was a game that had the great idea, as demonstrated in the opening with the master hand, mixing up combat with multiple franchises from Nintendo's library that they had full rights over!
Again, as illustrated from the beginning, it's like those moments where as a little kids you could play with action figures and have people from totally different genres fighting each other because you didn't give a shit about copyright as a kid and exactly who was going to stop you from enacting the Enterprise encountering the Death Star or Luke Skywalker and He Man having a dual before taking on the staypuft marshmellow man!
The game was a fairly interesting fighting game, allowing movement up and down onto multiple platforms and with no actual health bar to speak of, you have to rack up damage on the other opponent until your hits are able to knock them so far away off the arena that they can't get back. It has many fun levels based on all the different universes that are interracting here with Hyrule, The Starfox, Pokemon centre and many more that I can't quite remember.
All the characters have their own abilities that feel unique to them and are, I feel, balanced in a way that it works really well. Not to mention all the items you can pick up and use to give yourself an edge and to reference the classic games they come from with the hammer from the classic Donkey Kong games, a pokeball holding a random pokemon, a fire flower and many others. Including a large crate that these items can arrive in.
Like any good fighter, there's multiple secret characters that can be unlocked and have later now just appeared in the sequels as starting characters.
The main campaign has you fight all the different fighters, plus a few unique ones like an army of Yoshis, army of polygon people (basic poly versions of in-game characters), a metal mario (Mario, but as he's metal he's much heavier and harder to knock out) and the Master Hand which, as a flying hand, doesn't have a % to be knocked out but instead, hit points.
Playing this game was a massive blast and it's very obvious to see why they made sequels of it years later for the follow up consoles that came after the N64 and I can't say I blame them.
2023
So it's come to this...yes I did play this and decided to add it, retroactivly, to the Cringetober 2022 listing for fun to wind up Yuudachi and others who unconditionally love the series for some reason.
Much of this game reminds me of Team Fortress 2 with the colourful characters, variety of classes and the objectives too such as capturing points, escort missions and in regards to classes, having healers, tanks and damage dealers, but they did expand outwards with having the characters function very differently from each other. The characters have their own functions and abilities such as Tracer's ability to reverse time, a character's ability to heal others and another who goes between healing and harming and the same games for pretty much all of them. All having some fun and different ways they play and certainly leading to some fun gameplay engagement.
Now, I never played the first one. I had no interest as my opinion as "I have TF2, why do I need this?" and that only went on in regards to the excessive microtransactions that the pushing of inspired Star Wars Battlefront 2, to go even further and incur the wrath of governments wanting to protect kids and the vulnerable from the abusive practice.
Despite being a sequel, not all the characters are released from the beginning. They locked many behind in-game progression such as x number of kills, matches, wins and so on which makes sense if you have nothing to actually add to the game, however, as a new player this is a pain in the ass because certain characters are more likely to gel with your gameplay style and who knows what your main might be? Hopefully you find out before you get too frustrated and dying all the time.
I don't see myself as too good at the game, buy my friend, Yuudachi says I could get to high Bronze or low Silver, whatever that means, so I don't know. He claims that's good, but feels kinda mediocre to me. Nothing special you know.
I do love that there's a training course so you can try out characters and see what one you have a feel for and don't have to go through what you do in most games, with a trial by fire before you know if you're any good with it or not. It's a similar experience I have in War Thunder with new tanks, aircraft, ammo and so on. It also doesn't help that I'm not too patient either.
I also don't want to support this game because of all the stuff Activision Blizzard has done over the years. Including the thing J. Allen Brack, and his hair, said about that "Tough E-sports moment" as he cowardly tries not to address it immediately or even apologise for essentially bowing and obeying their paymasters in China.
So my review will be covered by this, but also how they've handled micro-tractions certainly doesn't help and I am trying my best not to exposed to these predatory systems designed to torment me and others who are vulnerable to them.
Stream/Gameplay
Much of this game reminds me of Team Fortress 2 with the colourful characters, variety of classes and the objectives too such as capturing points, escort missions and in regards to classes, having healers, tanks and damage dealers, but they did expand outwards with having the characters function very differently from each other. The characters have their own functions and abilities such as Tracer's ability to reverse time, a character's ability to heal others and another who goes between healing and harming and the same games for pretty much all of them. All having some fun and different ways they play and certainly leading to some fun gameplay engagement.
Now, I never played the first one. I had no interest as my opinion as "I have TF2, why do I need this?" and that only went on in regards to the excessive microtransactions that the pushing of inspired Star Wars Battlefront 2, to go even further and incur the wrath of governments wanting to protect kids and the vulnerable from the abusive practice.
Despite being a sequel, not all the characters are released from the beginning. They locked many behind in-game progression such as x number of kills, matches, wins and so on which makes sense if you have nothing to actually add to the game, however, as a new player this is a pain in the ass because certain characters are more likely to gel with your gameplay style and who knows what your main might be? Hopefully you find out before you get too frustrated and dying all the time.
I don't see myself as too good at the game, buy my friend, Yuudachi says I could get to high Bronze or low Silver, whatever that means, so I don't know. He claims that's good, but feels kinda mediocre to me. Nothing special you know.
I do love that there's a training course so you can try out characters and see what one you have a feel for and don't have to go through what you do in most games, with a trial by fire before you know if you're any good with it or not. It's a similar experience I have in War Thunder with new tanks, aircraft, ammo and so on. It also doesn't help that I'm not too patient either.
I also don't want to support this game because of all the stuff Activision Blizzard has done over the years. Including the thing J. Allen Brack, and his hair, said about that "Tough E-sports moment" as he cowardly tries not to address it immediately or even apologise for essentially bowing and obeying their paymasters in China.
So my review will be covered by this, but also how they've handled micro-tractions certainly doesn't help and I am trying my best not to exposed to these predatory systems designed to torment me and others who are vulnerable to them.
Stream/Gameplay