Joshua Smith's Reviews
This is the first game calling itself a “Rogue-Like” in a while, where I really feel fans of the inspiration are going to be extremely happy. The creation of Kitsune Games, MidBoss is a really clever take on the old idea.
Endless Space 2 is exactly what you would hope of a sequel to a beloved 4X game series. It takes what it learned not just from the previous incarnation, but also from community feedback via Games2gether and from other games as well.
While I wanted to get in and explore the beautiful looking world of Shiness I was constantly routed in my efforts by the frustrating fighting system and some strange design choices.
At the end of May in 2013, the company Logic Artists released Expeditions: Conquistador. The title was a well-received tactical RPG with a fantastic take on simulating a journey to the new world. It was with great anticipation that a sequel arrived on our shores here in 2017. Not a direct sequel mind you… This adventure would focus on another group of explorers: The Vikings.
This game tried to actively stop me from playing it and eventually it won. Sniper games are something I love, and there is a great game here, but it is buried deep under bugs, assumptive tutorials, and other problems.
When Renowned Explorers: International Society was first released I was unsure of what to make of its goofy but well-designed art style. I was quickly made a believer of the game. Put out by Abbey Games in 2015, two years after their other title Reus, RE:IS was a well received hit. Seeing the success of RE:IS, Abbey Games turned their focus to expanding the series and here we are now, at the next major DLC.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 3 is the latest in a series of popular Real Time Strategy games put out by Relic Entertainment and published by Sega. Currently it sits at a modest price of 59.99 USD. So we’ll be digging out the old man glasses and taking a gander to see if it’s worth the cost of admission.
I noticed a bit of frame stuttering as the drop ship put my mercenaries down for our first mission on Hephæst. After putting the difficulty down on the lowest, most condescendingly-titled setting, I was prepared to get a feel for the mechanics. But then it crashed and I had to do it all over again. This was the first and only Crash to Desktop I suffered with the game, but unfortunately it wasn’t the only issue I wound up having.
Right off the bat, I started asking who the villain of this game was supposed to be. Was it the heavenly Daeva with their making morally questionable choices? Or was it the Rhaksasha-empowered Asura, controlled by me, laying seige to the heavenly realms as a one man army? Normally in a roguelike game I don’t get wrapped up in plot or backstory. But Asura is a different beast. Touching on a mythology that we hardly ever see represented in video games, Ogre Head Studio’s two man team takes us on a challenging journey through Indian lore.
It became very clear to me early on that it wasn't that Has Been Heroes was bad. I was just really bad at it. For the same reasons I shy away from bullethell games, I was really really bad at this one. So take everything I am saying from the perspective of someone who appreciates the game, but who struggled and screamed at it several times.
Utopia is being released alongside the Banks update, which adds a great deal of free content to Stellaris. Banks makes the game feels very different, as it adds Traditions and Unity mechanics, changes the way Factions are handled, and provides a complete overhaul of the way governments and ethics are done. It also adds ways to monitor your populace’s ethics and Faction support.
Battle Brothers is a single-player military strategy/rpg set in a low fantasy setting, developed by indie publisher Overhype Studios. When I read that this was a mercenary game with a character leveling system, I honestly expected something like Final Fantasy Tactics. What I got was something completely different than my expectations, however something that still felt very familiar. It also gave me the tale of No Nose.