Recent reviews by Oyeatia

Caves of Qud is a quality roguelike. With interesting lore, a massive world to explore, a fantastic bestiary full of enemies-and potential allies with the right build-to populate the world and a plethora of different builds and types of characters to explore, this game is absolutely worth the price and your time.

Whether you want to be a cybernetically enhanced, technologically advanced warrior from one of the aristocratic Arcologies or a mutated human that starts out weak but has near limitless potential, Caves of Qud has so much to show you and so much for you to find. Each of the cybernetic augmentations for the True Kin race is useful and will benefit anyone who takes them. Night vision, extra arms, steadier aim with guns, natural armor plating, lifeform and technology scanners, hardened bones and even a prettier face? They can do all that.

The mutations available to the humans have a wide variety of uses as well. Want to be a 'big brain' esper with the ability to shoot beams of concentrated light, set fires with your mind, charm enemies into being your companions and utterly dominate and mind control others? Mutants can do that. Want to say 'screw psychic powers!' and go full swole instead? Go ahead! Multiple arms, superdense muscle, the ability to fire off spiked quills, freeze enemies or set them on fire with your hands, dig into walls and through floors with massive claws, fire off stunning or sleeping gas from gas sacs, have multiple heads for multiple helmets and reduced mental ability costs and even grow wings to fly? Qud has that. The best part? You aren't restricted to one or the other. While you can spend points to restrict yourself to only getting physical or only getting mental mutations, you can choose to get both with random chance on leveling up if you so desire.

All of this is just barely scratching the surface of what awaits you in this game.

Is that all not enough for you? Then guess what? The game has mods. A ton of mods. With Steam Workshop integration for the game, finding and installing the mods is no hassle at all. Does the ASCII presentation put you off? There are plenty of tilesets to make things look more aesthetically pleasing. Want more races in the game? There are tons of user-created races that fit right into the universe. Want more weapons? More mutations? The ability to make your own housing and towns? Mods have you covered.

I already stated it but I'll state it again. This game is fantastic and there's so much value packed into it. If you are a fan of roguelike games, of RPGs or of sandbox games, you owe it to yourself to check this out.

The one thing I'll warn you about? This game is difficult. Brutally so, at times. It's going to kill you at the start. A lot. Once you learn how to roll with the punches, though and learn how the game works-perhaps with some help from an online beginner-friendly build-you'll get farther and father until you reach the point where I'm at where I'll make a character, play a decent way into the game and then start a new character just to see if a build I thought up works. This game was worth every penny I paid for it and I can't wait to see what the upcoming patches bring.

With Ritual of the Night having come out, it really is a shame the two games are separate canon-wise. While this game is nowhere near as long or expansive as Ritual of the Night, it is a fantastic game that is worth your time if you are a fan of NES-era platformers and a fan of the OG Castlevania titles. Many of the locations, enemies, bosses and other aspects of the game show back up in RotN in very fun and interesting ways. With the game at a low price thanks to the sale, now is the best time to pick it up and see what a retro throwback with some modern improvements sprinkled here and there can offer. The multiple modes and endings offers the game plenty of replay ability and for any fan of Castlevania, is is sure to leave an excellent lasting impression.

As a diehard fan of the series right from the start, I can say that DMCV is pretty much everything I wanted out of a new DMC game-and more, to my delight. At the point of this review, I have just under three hours played and I have gotten my hands on two of the playable cast members. Nero I knew I was going to like, even though the new Devil Breaker system takes some getting used to. Once you get it down, messing with the new system and new toys at your disposal is a blast.

I wasn't really sure what to think about V as a character, as what I saw of him looked interesting but his playstyle was completely different than anything else in the series. The departure from direct combat to instead relying on familiars until enemies are weak enough to finish off is somewhat comparable to the focus on guns and gunplay that made up Lady's combat system and style in DMC4SE in that it is odd and not at all what players of the series will be used to but once you get down the ins and outs of the new mechanics, the character has a ton of potential. In the first level you play as V his special Devil Trigger has a mechanic that affects level progression though I won't come out and say exactly what it is or where it comes in.

The fact that you also get to see the way other players played their characters through the levels you are progressing through in the background is fun as well. While speed is the name of the game when trying to gun for high style ranks for levels, I still found myself stopping to watch someone else play V while running through a level as Nero just to see how they did. It's a fun feature that I am looking forward to seeing more of as I play on.

Obviously this positive review of the game is being put together without having finished the game or really gotten too deep in-up to Mission 5 at this point-but if things keep going on as they have been right from second one of the game, I can't imagine anything I have to say will change. Here's to looking forward to finally getting my hands on Dante and the arsenal and Styles his playstyle is known for.

Short and sweet. An excellent little experimental game. There is a sense of dread that hangs over the player the moment they enter the caves and the payoff for exploring them and reaching the ending of the game is very satisfying. Give it a play and see what you think. It's free so you don't really lose anything by doing so.

Man, this game... I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it right now and I mean that in a very good way. I love it for the atmosphere, the asthetic, the tense moment-to-moment gameplay, the customization for your crew and the unrelenting difficult of the game. At the same time, the unrelenting difficult of the game also makes me hate it. I don't mean hate as in 'despise' it, I mean hate as in me going through a mission carefully and methodically and either making a mistake or getting a bad room and completely wiping after several successful missions. All it takes is one slip up and the entire campaign can be over! This definitely isn't a game for people who don't embrace the 'Losing is fun' mindset that comes with many roguelikes and games such as Dwarf Fortress. I have more speciifc thoughts that I'll list below.

The atmosphere and aesthetic of this game is fantastic. You, the player, are a character in the game. Specifically, you are the overseer of the Deadnauts, your crew of five you send on missions to derelict ships to discover just what happened on board the ship in question as well as to complete various missions, like recovering data from the ship, restoring power to the ship to initiate a sterilization procedure, destroying mysterious artifacts on board and so on. To this end, you use the games UI to order the Deadnauts about. The UI resembles something you'd see onboard a submarine, with a radar screen with all sorts of switches and knobs and whatnot controlling various functions of your display. It's very 'hard sci-fi' with plenty of retro love thrown in. Perhaps retro isn't the right word. It's along the lines of the type of equipment you'd see on board the Nostromo from Alien, only more primitive. This display is your only window into the world your crew is entering. It gives you all information you need to know in the form of health displays for your crew, a log window and a chat window to show your objectives and your crew's responses to what is happening and the center view screen, which gives you a very light but detailed look into the action with each of your crew members represented by their last name and first initial and the Deadnaut insignia. Here, you move them around and instruct them to interact with the environment-things like opening and closing doors, unlocking doors, investigating objects and bodies, initiating hacks, attacking hostiles and so on.

Since you are not actually with the crew and are instead onboard the Deadnaut ship supervising the mission from afar, there are many ways for the display to fail. It will never fail completely, of course, but there are forms of interference that can and will affect your ability to issue orders to your crew as well as to see just what is happening within the derelict ship. These different types of interference can be something within your control or something out of your control. An example of one within your control is a Flaw that you can take for one of your crew to get more points to customize them that causes the Deadnaut in question to occasionally interfere with the display, causing static to flicker across the screen and some lag to occur between what is actually happening and what your scanner is telling you is happening. As well, for one that is out of your control, certain enemies can interfere with your scanners when they are nearby your crew. This can provide some really tense moments when your display is washed out with static and you are left not knowing just what is happening.

The customization for the Deadnauts is great. When making a character, you start off at their birth by allocating points to the four stats in game Vigor-physical ability-, Acuity-accuracy and detection ability-, Wits-intelligence and hacking ability-and Grit-mental fortitude and cooperation ability-. You then move onto their education, which has you spending points to pick what kind of education they received. The different typs of education provide training in specfic stats. After that, you move onto their early career and select a flaw to give you more points that you will need to select what kind of training they have received. Again, what kind of training they receive provides training in particular stats that will decide what your character will specialize in. It is absolutely possible to either go with a general 'jack/jill of all trades' type character that will be good at everything for you to fall back on if a specialist dies or run with a full crew of specialists at certain tasks. After the Early Career, you can save the character and use them right away. You can also choose to select their Late Career and their Wisdom, both of which also provide further training and bonuses to the character to make them better at what they do while also forcing you to take more flaws to be able to afford these abilities. Once you have a full crew of five Deadnauts, you are able to jump into the game. If you do not wish to create your own Deadnauts, you also have the ability to just jump right in with Deadnauts created by the game.

So far, I can't get enough of this game. I have written quite a lot about everything I love about it. I suppose now I'll have to talk about what I dislike about it. While the punishing difficulty is certainly fun and I certainly feel that it is a core aspect of the game and it's 'one more run' type of gameplay, it can also be unfair at times. More often than not, if you end up losing a crew member or getting a wipe, it is your own fault for not being more careful as far as scouting out a room and ensuring that those crew members of yours that are better suited to taking hits for the team and returning them are out in front or rushing into a room and having a defensive turret open fire on your crew and kill them, there are times when the randomly generated nature of the game can rear it's ugly head and remind you that randomly generated levels and such aren't always a good thing. I recall one campaign where I started the mission, opened the first door and before I even stepped through the door, a turret on the otherside of the door with a clear line of sight to the only exit to the inital room of the ship opened fire and killed two of my crew. There was no way to get around it so I ended up quitting and starting a new campaign. Stuff like that hasn't happened a ton for me but it has happened. This is when the game's difficulty goes from 'punishing' to 'unfair'. It doesn't happen often, as I said, but it would be nice if stuff like that could be prevented from happening. If there was another exit to the room then alright, that was my bad for opening the wrong door. With only the one exit and what is basically an instant kill turret aiming at the doorway, though, there isn't much I can do other than quit and start a new game.

Don't let that last bit deter you, though. If you like tough, challenging games, games within the 'rougelike' genre and games that demand that you play them one more time for a better run, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. It is a fantastic experience and one I will continue to enjoy. For the price as well, it's hard to beat. If any of this sounds like something you might like, I hope you come to enjoy it soon enough as well.

The Long Dark is a reaslistic survival simulator, placing the player in the shoes of either a male or female survival of a plane crash over a remote part of Canada due to an electrical storm interfering with plane's systems. Starting only with the clothes on your back and a single flare, you are left to make your way through the remote wilderness in harsh winter conditions to seek shelter, food, water and other things to drink, resources like wood to make fires and keep yourself warm and even a weapon to allow you to hunt and to defend yourself. Though some days are better than others, blizzards and snowstorms and intense wind can sweep in at a moments notice, making an otherwise relatively safe trek deadly.

Everything from your tools to your clothes to even your food has a 'condition', showing you how usable they are. A tool that gets too low condition-wise will break. Clothes whose condition has deteriorated will no longer keep you warm and food that has deteriorated too much will not even come close to restoring the amount of calories-the game's stamina-and Hunger and Thrist that it otherwise would. Packaged food like candy bars and drinks like soda or bottled water are scarce. What's more, aggressive and territorial wolves roam the wilderness, attacking the wildlife and even the player, should you catch their attention, with a single wolf attack quite possibly being the end of a playthrough. The only long-term way to survive is to learn to live off of the land, gathering wood, tinder and matches for fire, learning to hunt and gather meat from the carcasses of animals and melting snow for water, then boiling that water to make it drinkable. All of this must be done while minding your Hunger, your Thirst, your Temperature and your Fatigue. Any one of these getting to a critical state can be deadly, making the game an exercise in balance and maintenance-both of your equipment, and of yourself.

This game is fantastic as is and I can only see it improving once the game's crafting system is implemented and new areas are developed. As is, the game's map is small. This is offset by the fact that staying out in the open is a bad idea unless it is to gather resources, due to being out and about and moving all over increasing the players Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue and making the player cold. It really doesn't take long to learn the entire map, though the presence of a randomly spawning bunker does spice things up. The game's story mode is said to be launching soon, and I can't wait to see what the developers do with the story mode.

Though I do have a lot of good things to say about The Long Dark, I am somewhat confused by some decisions, such as the inability of the player to use a Hatchet or a Hunting Knife as a weapon and only as a means of gathering wood and meat from frozen animal carcasses respectively. I understand those are the tasks they are best suited for but realistically, if a hatchet was your only weapon and you were being chased or hunted or even pinned down by a ravenous wolf, you wouldn't stop to think "I can only use this for gathering wood!". You would hack at the wolf or stab at it until it either let you go or it died. This does leave the hunting rifle as quite the coveted find, since it is the only weapon currently in the game and it makes finding it that much more satisfying but I would still like to see some sort of ability to use the hatchet and hunting knife as weapons.

Overall, this game is a fantastic experience and when you're down to the last of you food and drink, in the dark and the cold and attempting to clean and bandage your injuries form a wolf attack before the wolf comes back or you go into shock and bleed to death, you'll really feel the stress setting in. I can absolutely recommend this as a buy even if it is still in Alpha. If you are a fan of realistic survival simulation and you've always wanted to see if you could maybe make it out in the frozen wastes without the things we take for granted in every day life, then you will love The Long Dark.