Recent reviews by Epideme

Pure Catharsis.

And a long mesmerising initial loading screen.
And a lot of rock scanning.

Honestly really chill solo game.
Can i have my internet points now Steam?

So... 78 hours later, and all 67 acheivements, chances are I'm either going to give the game a good review or seriously re-evaluate my use of freetime.

...It's the first one. Yeh, sorry for the spoiler.

The game's central triumph is atmosphere, there's just a few times where you go, well that's a glowing red corridor of nope right there, that are done so well. If you like the lore, world-building, finding out more about the pretty insane world it's in, the collectibles do that exceptionally well, and will also give you hints towards little easter egg puzzles that are dotted around the game - most are not required, but give rewards. Lots of good boss fights to be had, many can be done in any order, and going away and levelling up your abilities does make a notable difference. The game does have a weird as ♥♥♥♥ difficulty curve in some places with the occasional fight just being balls hard, and the next one being comparitively benign, but it's not really a dealbreaker.
It's up there with Bioshock Infinite for me for just a wonderful world to be in... but instead of clouds and victoriana, it's distorted corridors and banshee-esque screams. If the shooting element is a problem for you, there is an option to turn on 'assist mode' which allows you to make it easier for yourself or turn on god mode... the game does remind you 3 times that's not how it's best played, and i would agree with that, but ultimately, it's whatever you enjoy.
Movement is a little janky is places, but you get used to it pretty fast, and to be honest, after a little while you can just levitate over anything anyway.
Lots to explore, lots to collect if that's your thing, lots of side missionsm but even if you'd rather not do any of that the main story on it's own is plenty compelling.
The game isn't totally perfect, but to be honest, pretty much all it's cons for me were negligible or not relevant. I'd happily score it 9.8/10. For whatever stock you put in a review written by a stranger on the internet, this game is definitely worth a punt if you're not sure, especially if you get it on sale. I seem to get ever shorter on freetime these days, and I still found 78 hours for it. (It's probably about 25 if you play just the main story, 40 with DLC)

I need to find a way to rename this in my steam library - it should be called 'StressTrain'.

For an accurate review: Think overcooked but with trains and some really lousy forethought on starting trains moving where no existing track is laid

For a more... personal... review: Oh holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥, How is this £7 game a mixture of fun and masochism. You see StressTrain (Unrailed for the uninitiated), hates you. It has looked deep into your soul and hates you for it; you probably deserved it. So first thing we need to take about is the menu... StressTrain likes it's menus, to play a game it's something like minimum 4 menus to get there, but it's not that big of a deal. You do have to manually walk on that menu with a sprite like you do in game... I have no idea why. And... oh yes... THE MENU HAS A COCKGOBBLING DAY / NIGHT CYCLE. Who thought that was a good idea? Who said, hmmm, this menu is useful, but it would be better if i could only see the nearby 20% of it at once.

StressTrain has you mining iron and wood and placing them in a storage wagon to be crafted in the crafting wagon to make track which you then place in front of the train which is already moving. I'm guessing the H&S guy stopped giving a ♥♥♥♥ recently. The objective is to keep the train moving until the next station. You can also mine your way to some hard to reach location for an upgrade point, and complete an arbitrary task for another. About 20% of those tasks are utter ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the rest are reasonable. Every now and again you will need to buy a new engine to slow down the train (it gets progressively faster) which also introduces a new biome with new hazards. Also camels.

There are sprite versions of the hamburgular coming to rob your resources who you just 'mine' to death with a pickaxe to make them go away (same counts with cows and camels if you find a hatred for quadrapeds). There's a dash function you'll never use except when it makes you. You can get different sprites which is oddly satisfying (I like the magma t-rex). And if you think mining is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you can buy an autominer (oh yeh you can buy different wagons for your train). The autominer will cut the amount of doing stuff by half easily. All hail the autominer. Praise be, to the autominer.

Occasionally the train catches on fire; that's bad. On fire things don't work. Write that down, good life lesson. There will be an exam, bring your own kerosene. It's ok though, you have a small bucket of water to manage all fires. Like I said, Dave the Health & Safety really screwed the pooch on this one.

Despite this, StressTrain's challenge is in its quirky; yeh, lets say quirky, design decisions. And it's got an amazing and oddly addictive charm to it, that makes it well worth a play with friends (I've never actually played it solo yet, so don't trust me for solo play). So, I would well recommend especially at the price it's usually available for. And if anyone buys due to this review, let me know how to rename games in my steam library.

And day/night cycles on a menu is still an unbelievably dumb idea.

I tried to get into this... I mean, I really tried... It's my sort of thing, I like story based shooters... but alas...

The story (as far as I got) is good, and makes you want to play more, SHODAN makes for a wonderful villain, and is quite clearly a malfunctioning computer, and even 26 years after release is unsettling. She's aged well (probably expected for a computer).

The problem is the combat. Junky as ♥♥♥♥ is an understatement. Certain enemies, for all intents and purposes require certain weapons. This is not made remotely clear, so trial and error. If you don't have that ammo, erm, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥, you might be able to think of a creative way of getting round the combat like running like ♥♥♥♥ across the room? Grenades?... Yeh, like 70% of the time you're going to hit the corner you're throwing them around and blow yourself up. Hitboxes seem... wierd... They don't seem to match the enemies actual graphics well. This is the fun killer and what ultimately stopped the game for me. There are other annoyances like you have to press 'E' to turn on mouselook, and press 'E' again to interact with the HUD, and press it each time to alternate between the two, and whilst irritating, you can deal with it. Some of the initial controls are a bit odd for today's typical control set, but you can change that. The puzzles whilst far from impossible, or even that hard, just aren't explained well... like what makes the progress bar go up or down. But you can sort of get there without explanation, and to be fair, I think that was a thing of the times in 1994, where adventure type games with puzzles were more prevalent. The mission at any given time isn't the clearest, but again, adventure type game, and any good completionist would figure it out without much change to their play style, again, just leaves you looking around a fair bit. The lore element from reading emails, and logs are great, and really do bring you into the world of Citadel station. But ultimately it all comes back to the combat system, which it seems to be agreed is a bit lousy... for me, it was just a bit too lousy to endure, and i suspect most people would feel the same.

Game is not THAT bad. Monetary model was designed by the greediest piece of ♥♥♥♥ imaginable. You get to pay for the game, then pay for the cards that are in-meta, because you can have 3 of any one card, and you're not getting them randomly any time soon, then you can get to pay to enter any sort of non-casual game mode. Game itself is pretty RNG based, there are legit about 6 people left playing the game... so if you like paying to roll a dice against people who are somehow super awesome at dice rolling this is the game for you, if you like not bankruptacy, sanity and aren't feeling masochistic try anything else. At all. Leave this cursed place.

A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece of a game. You would be happy to let this game do your mum, and not even call her the next day. If you're reading this review, wondering whether you should buy this game, I am angry with you, you should be angry at you, no christmas card for you this year, because if you're considering whether to buy it, that means you don't already own it. You need to own this game. Come back to me when you own the game...

Got it? Good! (You can go back on the christmas card list)

Next thing, buy the Arrival DLC - if no others, Arrival was immensely fun (and strangely the events that precede Mass Effect 3, which you will have to buy on Origin. Origin is garbage. But at least Mass Effect 2 you can safely enjoy on good old steam without sticking your ♥♥♥♥ in that cesspit run by EA - That's how you get HerpEAs.

Personally I liked all the DLC and the game enough to recommend buying them, but Kasumi and Zaeed are more just if you fancy an extra squad member to play with (which is still fun) but Arrival is a big chunky DLC, story-driven and damn good fun.

The game feels excellently crafted, the writing is amazing, and the characters feel fleshed out and real and don't just follow you blindly - you do ♥♥♥♥ they don't like, they will turn on you, they have more than 1 right or wrong 2D motive.

Also, Liara <3

Buy Mass Effect 2.

Review time (Because steam peer pressured me into it).

Into the Breach is surprisingly addictive. For full price it's pretty much impossible to be disappointed by this game, it costs a fraction of AAA games yet delivers an experience easily on par. Definitely pick this up if you like puzzle games, enjoyed FTL (it has a similiar progression through nodes, and levelling / gearing up your team experience, but instead of each node being a text event, it's a FF Tactics-esque shooting puzzle). There's a lot of freedom in how you tackle the available puzzles (how many, which islands, what order, with what equipment). Never come across a bug in 67+ hours of gameplay, the progression system has provided me plenty of compelling reasons to keep playing and keep playing in different playstyles. Music's pretty good too. And a real nice game you can play in the background whilst waiting for you friend to show up for that dota or CS:GO game.

It's slight negatives (and they are slight!), the final boss fight feels quite easy - i don't think i've ever lost it playing on normal. erm... if you're bothered by deliberate 8 bit graphics, then it looks much the same as FTL did. So far lacks any additional content in the form of DLC, but i'm sure this will come. Honestly, I'm scraping the barrel for these.

I'd highly recommend this game for honestly most people. The only ones i really wouldn't probably haven't got this far reading. If you're umming and aaahing, it's worth picking up and at worst you're £11 out of pocket for the decision. Absolutely worth easily double or more of the selling price.

The most expensive laxative I've ever bought!

It's a roguelike / text adventure / ship management type thingy, which is curiously addictive, and already there exists several good mods to get you on your way (Weaponanza etc). It's great fun, and quite difficult to explain why it's fun, but for the £4 or so it's up for, you will get plenty for the money :)

Honestly, A brilliant single-player game, And Metro: Last Light promises even more. But basically, any fan of an atmospheric survival shooter will find this game money well spent