Recent reviews by ACWraith

This remains a fun series. I've played all three. I enjoy the casual exploration. I enjoy the button mashing battles. It's an easy recommendation. I await the next addition.

However, I still wish the equipment leveling was removed. Just tie items to character level and be done with it. I'm adverse to ever swinging any weapon below my character level because I'm sure as frell not going to farm the gold to level it up on a whim. Special effects may tempt me to experiment with the head, torso and trinket slots. However, no details are given on how an effect levels up. I didn't spend gold on them until nearing max character level and wanting another source of passive stat gains. CQ3's New Game+ seems like it could have been an excuse to try a new loadout. However, it increases the level cap which in my mind compounds the problem and fails to tempt me.

Would I still recommend this game as a one-and-done campaign? Yup! It's a lighthearted affair and if you treat it as such instead of worrying about systems and character builds then you'll have plenty of fun. =)

I'm a 1980s kid. I recognize many of the games that influenced this, but I did not play them myself. I've been catching up in the modern era. 3030 Deathwar is one of the best space games I have played.

Admittedly, it's not perfect. Procedural station missions are where the bulk of the money is made, but they don't seem to take the stats of one's current ship into account. For instance, cargo space never matters outside of holding extra fuel and the destination range doesn't seem to extend with ship speed. Meanwhile, there's a limit of 4 simultaneous missions so it's never made up for in bulk. Fortunately, the ship/upgrade prices are balanced such that the grind isn't excessive. It just makes the ships feel less rewarding.

Outside of stations, mining seemed nigh useless even with sensors and trading felt like too much manual tracking. Salvaging, however, at least provided a distraction and allowed items like nebula sector maps to found. All three of these activities give a reason to actually have that cargo space if you're interested.

The flying is fun. Momentum and turn rate are considered. There's obstacles to avoid, debris to shoot, and ship traffic for you to use your best judgement on. Dogfighting can be performed with a front-facing gun and/or a turret while split engines double as quick dodges.

The campaign is light, but enjoyable. The jokes, thankfully, are not as full of pop culture references as the visual art of the NPC species wandering the galaxy. (Don't worry about those Steam workshop ship mods breaking immersion.) I spent about 20 hours. There is no real replay value. However, it is possible to continue playing in the open world once the story has ended. I bought a ship just under the highest tier, flew it out of the station, and closed the program in high spirits.

A procedural metroidvania done right, A Robot Named Fight has been my addiction. I've been making sure to beat it once or twice a day. I love this game and highly recommend it.

While other games attempting to mimic this type of exploration have fallen into a trap of showing their entire hand in one long go, A Robot Named Fight remains extremely replayable. Sessions last roughly 2 hours for thorough players not speed-running to one of the endings. There's a save if that's still too long. Meanwhile, key items have variants so the basic tools may change each run. For instance, a mobility upgrade could involve either a high jump, a double jump, a jet pack, or maybe even an adorable trampoline dog that fights nearby enemies and changes costumes with you but also makes you struggle to avoid stepping on it unintentionally and launching into spikes.

A Robot Named Fight is also a rogue-like rather than an RPG hiding inside a metagame. Unlocks might gift a random item at the start of a run, but play involves permadeath with no permanent cross-session upgrade nonsense. This game can be beaten on the first try rather than forcing a grind in the pursuit of later fun.

As of this review, the Big Wet area/bosses could probably use some balance tweaks and there's some quality of life issues like weapon selection that could stand to be ironed out. However, these are all relatively minor and updates are still coming. The game was a bargain even before I ventured into the beta version and I'm confident in it's value now that it's released.

War Tech Fighters is a fun flight game with vehicle customization. After being gifted this by a friend on Steam who saw it on my wishlist, I beat the campaign on normal difficulty with the middle build, the Lynx War Tech. Honestly, much of my love is probably due to the mecha theme, but there's enough goofy arcade fun to recommend to others.

There was a temptation to grind for money and the worry that this would turn into one more farm-looping action RPG. Fortunately, I decided I probably could have done fine with what I earned just exploring the missions thoroughly. I suggest ignoring elemental damage upgrades until the end game as earlier elements will be rendered largely obsolete. My own play style focused on the high power weapon category with some choices made to increase the reticle size. After that, it was mainly a matter of managing my energy and making sure I upgraded to the last element, antimatter. I fired missiles on occasion and used the melee combat when I was forced to, but I found the fast weapons to be not worth my time. Hopefully, different builds would allow for a different opinion.

I share much of the complaints about the stealth and radiation missions. I think the frustration is often due to how far the reticle/camera is offset. Sometimes the mech is colliding with geometry so that it can't interact with whatever object is highlighted. Sometimes the mech is out in the open even though you could swear there's an asteroid to block damage. It's a lot of guesswork imitating what it might be like if one's left eye was blind and their nose grew thrice its size. It's generally fine in the action missions because the focus is on getting enemies into the reticle so they can be fired upon. The stealth and radiation missions, however, seem to require more nimble mech movement than provided. They're doable, but annoying and sometimes frustrating.

Overall, War Tech Fighters is not perfect. However, if you can avoid being tricked into grinding then this game has legs. Even if they are superfluous without ground missions. ;)

Thankfully the RPG tag is misplaced. This is an action adventure like the Zelda games that inspired it. It also goes one step further than the item randomizers some of us enjoy watching/playing on Twitch to add varying maps with each seeded run. With secrets, upgrades, and key items to gather across beautiful pixelated landscapes, Songbringer gave me the experience I desired.

At least it did for one run. Like Sweezy Gunner, Songbringer grants access to all of its content each campaign and only promises a shuffle of items and mazes. A player can choose to apply elemental upgrades to different items, but the selection of tools will always remain the same. I don't feel the need to play again any time soon. Players may wish to take advantage of the game's permadeath mode to get more use out of the procedural generation.

The combat is all button mashing, but I had fun with it. The only real problem I had was trying to move with my controller. Fortunately, Steam's configuration tool came to the rescue by allowing me to mimic my keyboard. While this made the in-game UI display keyboard keys instead of the buttons I was using, I got used to it.

Overall, it's easy to recommend Songbringer to action adventure fans and I hope to see Twitch speedrun competitions take advantage of this title someday.

Naka Teleeli's 2008-2009 playthrough of this game led me to watch Let's Play videos and streams in general. My recommendation stands, but less forgiving players may wish to purchase the version available on PlayStation's download store instead as it has tweaked controls and content.

This still isn't the version I watched back then. Fortunately, the graphics can be turned back to their classic look. The remastered backgrounds failed to clear old frames on my current setup and turned my screen into a messy puddle of duplication. What was more upsetting was how Chelsea's automated elixirs became the equivalent of a cure light wounds spell with 10 required for a full health bar instead of each being an extra life. This was an unpleasant surprise versus the final boss segment.

As has been stated by multiple reviewers, Bunny controls in a frustrating manner with lots of nuance that is difficult to master. Attacking stops turning. Jumping while pressing in a direction is vastly different from (the often required) jumping before pressing in a direction. Jumping sideways is different from jumping diagonally. I used Steam Controller Configuration to emulate a keyboard on my PS1 DualShock, but believe it or not this game may play better on a keyboard itself.

Fortunately, Chelsea felt great with a gliding jump and upgrades that nullified the platforming challenges which vexed me. (I admit, the inclusion of those upgrades tends to be what I love in metroidvanias.) Playing her mode was a reward after all of the pain.

As far as I know, bosses between areas may block some sequence breaking. However, there are definitely minor upgrades that can be ignored and/or backtracked for. More importantly, there are huge, important upgrades that can be skipped entirely if you're skilled enough. Even if you find yourself following the same route through the game, you can change the way you play through it drastically.

Overall, I'm very happy having completed my own playthrough. If it had ended with Bunny's janky platforming then I might have chalked it all up to nostalgia. However, much of Bunny's adventure was still fun and by the time I was playing Chelsea the bad memories were nigh forgotten. I don't plan on recreating any expert runs I've seen in videos, but I can say that it doesn't take an expert to get enjoyment out of this game.

I've played roughly 700 hours of Duel Links including my phone time and never spent a penny. There has always been an in-game way to earn the primary currency so I was never lacking for cards. The constant events always give something to do. Most importantly, the gameplay is fast and fun. It has been perfect for playing in the background while I watch a Twitch stream.

I've rarely had to participate in PVP unless I felt like it. For those who are into PVP, know that the game loves power creep and meta decks rule the day. It's not all about money as some of the decks are vary easy to get. However, I find the lack of variance boring and begin to lose all interest once I beat the lower ranks.

I've always felt this is a game I can recommend to new players. However, those who are prone to becoming collection addicts like me may find that the constant events begin to feel like work. I have tons of cards I never use and many of the cards I get in events only become viable with cards I lack. I am writing this review just as I've decided I should quit for my health. I've spent hours a day on this game and it's time to reclaim my life.

I'm probably just a low-to-intermediate skill player who manages to take over my friends' leaderboards when they're not looking. However, I have played a decent amount of digital pinball including PFX2, PFX3, The Pinball Arcade, and various others. I just came away from a session of leaderboard attempts (ending in success) so my impressions are fresh and, hopefully, accurate.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I am not a fan of The Walking Dead and it's not just because the ball often seems to be lost in the right gutter (even with a kickback if it rebounds poorly).

PFX3's lighting model leaves the table dark enough that I had to turn up the gamma and it still didn't quite help the night scenes. (Leaving ball trails on might be advised.) Meanwhile, the call outs are story-driven rather than goal-descriptive, the lights for mission goals are often concurrently used for combos/animation, there's a hole where the ball ejects on the lower left with little fanfare, and the ball lock can stay lit even after a locked ball closes the path.

However decent the rules of The Walking Dead might be, it appears uninterested in giving proper feedback. This table seems designed to do a little dance on top of people who memorized the manual as they squint and try to play in the background. Perhaps the old PFX2 lighting model was somehow more informative, but I'm going to have to give myself a stern talking to the next time I decide to challenge a friend's score. Clementine is cute, but she's not THAT cute.

I was lucky enough to beta test Shoot 1UP. I offered myself up as a low tech option since I'm still running Vista 64-bit. The game runs well. A 1.5x video scale option was even introduced for those with low resolutions.

I'm not the most skilled player, but I managed to 1CC the game on normal difficulty on my first attempt. I've been a wannabe long enough to know I should spend that time on survival. However, I often found myself risking a wide formation to earn greater point medals just because it felt so natural... As expected, my meandering was punished on the higher difficulty. ;)

There's room to tweak runs. Ship spread can be adjusted for multipliers, levels fork, and there's a rechargeable shield mechanism which can result in a score multiplier when used offensively. For those with casual-intermediate skill like myself, trying to master the basics while taking the harder fork choices on normal difficulty seems a good fit.

Some may believe the game is short. However, the circles I lurk in have always claimed that roughly 20 minutes is the perfect time for a shmup. The goal is to continue playing and reaching higher scores. You're going to get out of it what you put in. If you're still dedicated to completing it only once, I recommend playing for survival on the highest difficulty to pad the time with your deaths/retries. There's also an endless mode which trades the fleet for a more traditional lone ship and saves progress.

Please pardon my lack of Steam time. After winning a giveaway for a Desura key, I played and ended up buying it myself because I wanted it on Steam too. I've completed the campaign and fought in quite a few of the smaller battle modes. What follows is my Desura review:


The line which divides player access makes Bret Airborne shine. Anything along the outer edge is relatively safe while items neighboring the line are in danger of being stolen. The grace period allows players to shift items around instead of being forced into specific swaps. There is a tug of war as large matches move the line towards the opponent and swapping items with no match moves the line towards oneself. Being aware of items to steal and large matches to perform is encouraged further as skills may count those events as bonus resources.

The campaign is short, upgrades are offered in small quantities and player's can't grind endlessly for funds. The result is analysis paralysis is reduced and players are encouraged to try again with different options. There are also other modes for session-based play.

The story is just an excuse for puzzle battles, but that's fine. [When I played on Desura,] I would have appreciated the ability to play in a window, grouped skill messages to avoid (rare) spam from opponents and the ability to immediately jump around a map when enemies are gone. These were all minor annoyances though. [Since then at least some of these, like playing in a window, have been fixed.] =)