Games Xtreme's Reviews
Fighting in Dead Cells is an unavoidable showcase of the game. With every different enemy comes their own flair on how they come at you. Some will have shields that deflect, others throw energy bombs. Even the most simplest of baddies toss their entire bodies at you, like a meaty, gelatinous bullet. Every fight requires careful strategy and razor sharp reflexes. Getting hit even once can send you into a spiral of pain that leads to only one place--back to the beginning of the game. It's a brilliant and brutal system, and I would be lying if I said it wasn't utterly addicting.
So what's the actual premise to lead to this? Why, it's simple. Your poor sad little dude starts the game without this time limit. ...And then the first thing you do is pick up a cursed sword that kills you in sixty seconds and it all goes to shit. Every time you come back to life, a good chunk of your progress holds. The big stuff. But all the little things reset. It's kind of like a compressed Majora's Mask, except that reset a lot more than this does.
Absolutely brilliant. This game, the concept and depth kept me hooked. Its always interesting to see what I come up with and which enemy has a piece I've never seen before and taking it from them. I like this game a lot. Two thumbs up.
This game is just fun. It's a big smashy explody mess of a game that's willing to do things like hand you over twenty jumps and just see what you do with them. I went through one stage with four shotguns, which actually was pretty damn effective. There's a ton to like here, and quite a bit of character and charm for such a simple setup and loop.
The actual premise is simple, set in a comical fantasy land where a vaguely-English royal army faces down an invading Viking horde. The royal army has to, of course, defend itself with all means available, though not everything is as it first seems... So all of this is fairly well-treaded ground. It's the execution where things get interesting. Because CastleStorm basically has three separate mechanical layers going on at once in a given stage, and each of them presents something very different.
Insane Robots is a fun game with strategy packed into it. It may seem a little childish at first glance, but when you enter the world of the insane, there is nothing adolescent about it. Here we have a turn-based game with energy tokens gained every turn. It reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links, but with more in depth game play.
It's cute to look at, which is a big plus when you're chopping up dead, rotting-by-the-minute bodies. It's colourful, the different parts of the map are distinct, the animations are totally in line and with all this--it makes it a joy to walk around and explore. I never felt lost (even with the map on standby) and I never felt bored of what I was looking at on screen.
There's a story going on here, about existence, simulation, and all that. It's not a story that sits well with some folks, and I can't say it's all that well written. It's oddly jarring to see it in No Man's Sky to be honest and the delivery of the textual parts of Atlas Rises always slams me out of the immersion of the game due to its reliance on 'choose your own adventure' narrative elements.
This is not exactly an action game. More of an strategic approach would be the way to go. I mentioned before that I pride myself on my vocabulary skills and cleverness with fitting words together like a puzzle, but here I was faced with literature obstacles that I nearly couldn't climb. As far as gameplay goes, not much here to describe or brag about.
The Great War has ended, and London is caught now in the grip of the Spanish Flu epidemic that devastated the city. This is the backdrop for Vampyr, and thus begins the tale of newly embraced Doctor Jonathan Reid, a brilliant physician and a man who is very much blessed and cursed by his new found powers. All around Doctor Reid, the shadows move, there are vampires who pull at the strings of Britain's government, and vampire hunters that seek to shove a steak through the good doctor's newly dead heart. It's a great backdrop for a story, and provides a slower paced, interesting narrative for anyone who engages their brain rather than their 'bash things in the face' button on the gamepad. If you're going to rush through Vampyr, know that you're going to miss a lot of subtle narrative and expanded story hidden within the expansive dialogue trees of every single character in the game.
Say hello to Will, Will is a nice guy, a nice guy who inherited his family-owned shop known as Moonlighter, as time passed and Will's family declined in years he eventually ended up as the sole owner of the business. Will is also an adventurous sort of lad who loves nothing more than to grab a sword, a shield, and go wandering into the nearest dungeon to test his mettle and grab a bunch of bits and bobs that he can sell in the shop.
Easily the best version of the game, Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition comes so packed with content that it boggles the mind. It's a game well worth revisiting, and an amazing value if it's your first time visiting this take on the land of Hyrule. Don't let it slip you by.
What makes Juicy Realm so much fun is how off the wall it all is. Bullet-hellish in its own right, you have enemies that descend upon you from every direction imaginable--and they have quite good aim too! The challenge is definitely there which is something that's essential for twin-stickers.
Conan Exiles genre-wise is a survival sandbox fantasy game, which cleaves to the ideas and aesthetic of Conan quite nicely. I've read virtually every bit of Conan literature there is to read, and seen the movies, followed the comics. As a fan of Conan in that regard I'm really happy with Conan Exiles since it brings to life part of Conan's world extremely well. From harsh desert climes, to deep jungles and frosty northern wastes, there's a lot to see and do here and many hidden dark secret places that can corrupt the mind just as much as they destroy the body.
It's got the 40K atmosphere nailed to a T. It's got the sound, the sights, and the feel of 40K perfectly - but it's just let down massively by bugs, long loading times, horrible mission design and a lack-lustre campaign mode that not even the Emperor himself would condone. I feel it's a bit of a waste of old Gav's talents as a writer really and when you're dealing with a Librarian, the constant purge the xenos motivation comes across as a bit thin.
Storywise, you've got your classic beats here. Things went wrong, science went too far, the dead walk and hunger, and so on and so forth. The game's riffing on some very vintage ideas here, and isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. Rather, it's trying to make that wheel look like it belongs in a grindhouse film's crappy VHS bootleg, from the scanlines to the warped color palettes to the copious amounts of gore.
So how do you feel about Ghosts & Goblins? It's not a comparison I make lightly. Cast of the Seven Godsends feels like nothing less than a complete and total love-letter to that franchise, borrowing several of its key stylistic elements and core mechanics to form something that is very, very much pulling from the classic arcade franchise...for better and for worse.
The mechanics are simple but solid. While the game ostensibly operates like a hack-and-slash, the actual beats of combat and of Thora's axe make it feel like anything but. This is a heavy weapon, one she has to shift back to a solid starting place after she swings it, or take a moment to lift it overhead to slam down. Rolling can get you quickly out of harm's way, but Thora needs a moment after just to reorient herself and get back on her feet. This is a human woman struggling to face challenges set by gods, and it feels like it.
As a Blob you can soak up color like a sponge. You will come across Transformation engines, they transform that area of the map back to the original state before Comrade Black showed up. Before you can activate the engine, you must add a dash of color to various things, thus opening the path to completing that part of the map. Style pickups grants you the ability to add a little creativity and funk to items you color by adding designs.
Before we go deeper into my thoughts on gameplay, a quick thing you should know: This is one of those "premium mobile game ported to Switch" situations. Now, like a lot of the ones of these I've actually sat down and played, this is a pretty solid port, with solid graphics, and with all of the microtransaction stuff chopped off. This doesn't leave a perfect situation, with some of the seams of old mobile-focused content still showing, but it holds together quite well...and quite frankly, almost certainly ends up working better and less expensively than the original free-to-play form.