Recent reviews by Alpine

A challenging missiontype of this game is completely negated by this 3€ DLC that most players have.

As a latecomer I will probably never get the chance to slowly waddle (or drive) through snowplanets like the devolopers intended before they opted out (and cashed in) with this DLC.
Players either wish this was part of the base game or they wish it didn't exist (and possibly that there would be slightly more counterplay like more routes without snow or a faster vehicle than a mech that wasn't a DLC)

The cosmetics are nice though

or if half of it bored you to tears, length, difficulty, complexity, polish, OST, visuals and whatnot are amazing, and an improvement from hk and I won't harp on them

Here are some criticisms or things you should know before you start playing:

Use a keyboard and bind your own keys.
Everyone, their mother and even the game itself will gaslight you into using a controller. Don't fall for it. Four very important attacks/tools are locked behind up/down as modifiers. Not being able to run left/right before and after doing these important actions is a disadvantage. Controller play is 2x as hard. I would have quit and never looked back if i was forced to keep playing on controller

The game is very nonlinear, which can be frustrating with the wrong mindset. It felt like I was playing it "in the wrong order" constantly, doing things the hard way, and when i finally found overdue upgrades the drop in difficulty was staggering.

the game wants you to play evasively, zooming across the screen, yet all enemies do contactdamage, including some bosses that unpredictably reset, jump and reposition without telegraphs. Only attacks are telegraphed. It's a real headscratcher, and feels cheap when 80% of the damage you take comes not from attacks, but from the boss deciding to teleport where you are in between attacks.

Fun economy management and army management game.
It boasts some very impressive achivement stats right now with 20% of game owners having completed difficulty 5.
Games can be a bit long if you pause a lot or don't speed it up.
minimum of 40 hours of playtime until you get bored

Mage arena is an epic power fantasy. It's fun building up your strength and mobility to overpower your enemies with thunderbolts or freezing them in place before blasting them with a deathray

many people check it out for goofy fun (and it really is a goofy and funny voip game)
but if you stay for a few games you will realize its very sweaty because every PvP arena shooter is inherently competitive

its quake+moba: mapcontrol grants you passive damage increases and valuable crafting materials
There are a lot of different items to craft from utility to movement, and a lot of player choice in how you want to spend your time
scavenging for spells, setting up portals across the map, rushing their base early, capturing territories to gain an advantage over time and get specific crafting materials delivered to your base, defending your base, pestering the enemy so they can't achieve any of those things,etc.
It has issues and bugs but it's a fun and refreshing experience. ~30 hours to learn most of the game

PEAK is a fun and goofy four player coop climbing game with proximity Voicechat that can be enjoyed by casual and skilled players alike.

The gameplay consists of creatively planning your routes, using powerful equipment to take shortcuts or rescue your friends, and foraging for safe and poisonous food. Teamwork is very rewarding and built into the game, you will be pulling up your friends and launching them by crouchjumping.
There are meaningful difficulty settings and fun achievements that unlock an honestly impressively polished cosmetic loadout. The sounddesign and visuals are very immersive.
The randomly generated maps change every 24 hours and vary in difficulty, adding a social aspect to the game

This game has a lot of dimensions to it. It's the kind of game that will make your brain all wrinkly and gross. It's a hordeshooter where the enemies come from all directions equally, crawling down from the ceiling and along the wall. A movement shooter, a coop game, and a ... 3D building game?

The procedurally generated cavesystems are hard to walk and fight in and favor your enemies. You will need to mold the map to your liking to simply move around, or create arenas to fight the tides of bugs in.

It's also a true asymmetrical coop game . Each of the four classes has a different cave traversal tool and is most efficient at killing different targets during combat. This means that if one teammate is absent or not doing what only they can provide to the team it can become painful since you can't pick up the slack. I think this is inevitable in a true coop game but it makes teamwork very rewarding and intuitive. Voicechat is not required, but knowing how to play all four classes is. To be proficient at one class you need to play the other three and understand what they struggle with and excel at.

Every class has a different tool to build bridges or funnel bugs into chokepoints, drill and blast away rock, set ziplines to get around, light the darkness or herd bugs into groups.

Downtime between waves is spent terraforming the map, collecting ammo and doing objectives. This creates a fun constant swing in gameplay between with high and low tension moments where you can strategically plan and prepare for the next big engagement.

It's also has great visuals, worldbuilding and OST. The four dozen Weapons/equipments are highly customizable and keep the gameplay fresh even within the same class.

If you played the demo a long time ago and liked it, buy it! The new characters keep the gameplay fresh

A fun, complete Inventory management/ autobattler game with five characters that play completely different and have different itempools. Hundreds of items. One character even plays like a deck building card game

The Story is fine but the village management / item unlock system can be a bit clunky at times. It doesn't add much for me.

Playtime: 40-80 hours?

Short but very fun 2-4 hour experience
Part atmospheric walking simulator with a small world to explore and fitting OST, part pan flipping minigame
Nice visuals

50 -good to great- "modern" retro games of varying lengths and genres

From a deckbuilder autobattler to an excellently atmospheric click-and-point horror game, there WILL be a handful of games you love and make the purchase worth all on their own.
Because of the wide range of genres there will also be games you don't care much about

Playtime is 80-150 hours

Mixed
It's fun for a bit if you've played too much Lethal company. Has a few novel things going for it. The main gameplayloop is tedious and not rewarding enough

Novel fun parts of gameplay:
+Coordinating with 2-5 players to man a submarine
+Navigation in three dimensional rooms

-Movement isn't very enjoyable
-Avoiding traps and enemies is not interactive and fun. they're just annoying things to swim away from
-Finding and transporting items is a bit of a chore and not as rewarding as in LC and it doesn't interact with any of the games movement/enemy systems in a fun way
-Manning the submarine while fun, is a short part of the gameplay loop you can mostly ignore if you want to
- No lows and highs in tension. missions are 7-10 minutes long, enemies seem to be spawned in from the start, outside of nursing your oxygen meter every 4 minutes and finding your way back to the sub
-no necessity to communicate with teammates during a dive except occasionally pointing them towards the exit. Needing to constantly swim away from enemies deters you from talking.