Recent reviews by SodiumBasic

SCP: Secret Laboratory is a free-to-play, competitive multiplayer horror game based on the crowd-sourced, loose anthology of series thousands of stories strong known as Secure, Contain, Protect, or SCP for short. You play as one of many roles, such as Class D, whose goal is to escape the facility and starts off with no items, Scientist, whose goal is the same but starts with a keycard to open security doors and is helped along the way by the facility's guard as well as the military, or SCP, who are monsters simply want to kill everyone. Fortunately, when you die, you are likely to spawn back in later in the game as a member of the Nine Tailed Fox, or NTF, or the Chaos Insurgency, both of which spawn with guns you can use to get some damage in on those pesky SCP's.

This game succeeds highly in replayability, with many possible scenarios and hijinks that are likely to take place. Trying to survive as a D-Class or a Scientist is delightfully horrifying, playing as a Nine Tailed Fox officer or Chaos Insurgency is intense and results in firefights and terrifying confrontations with SCP's, and playing as an SCP is always the most exciting part of any SCP:SL game. You can do so many things with your life in the short-but-not-too-short rounds, like banding together with other D-Class to escape the facility and fight back against the NTF, or being a Chaos Insurgent and working together with the SCP's. I have never had a dull round in this game and it's fantastic.

When the game first started it was definitely rough around the edged, but after consistent updates from the development team and in-depth community canvassing, it is becoming a polished and well-oiled machine. As I write this, the next major update is still in the works on revamping the gun and class system, which is an update I, personally, am very excited for.

Final verdict: If you like multiplayer horror games where you can get up to some crazy and funny antics with a bunch of strangers and/or friends, while still being able to get spooked (or do the spooking), this game will be right up your alley. As well, it's free, so there's no risk of wasting your money even if you don't like it. Definitely try out SCP: Secret Laboratory!

Terraria is a survival game most easily equatable to Minecraft mixed with an RPG; however, in my opinion, Minecraft has nothing on this game.

In Terraria, your goal is to work up through a litany of bosses ending at the pinnacle of Terraria, The Moon Lord. There's plenty of content in the game, from the previously mentioned bosses to world events like the Blood Moon to collectables like music boxes and banners. You can choose from different soft "classes" to play, depending on which armor, weapons, and other equipment you craft. (Some of the classes are Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summoner.) You can build houses for NPCs to move in to, from your very own crafting guide, THE Guide, to a cyborg to a witch doctor. As well, you can choose how much pain you want to go through during your game, which choices of expert mode or normal mode, and soft/medium/hardcore deaths. All of this provides hours of fun, which are multiplied when you're playing with friends!

Now, as for the negatives, I'd say it gets a bit boring once you defeat the final boss. Granted, it takes hours upon hours of playing a world to beat the final boss if you're not a speedrunner or super expert at the game, even on normal mode w/ softcore. When you DO beat that final boss for the first time, it's a fantastic occurrence, you are filled with such pride and excitement... But then you're sitting around with your end-game items wondering, "What should I do now?" You could go after all the banners, but killing every enemy in the game 50 times seems excessive. You could refight all the bosses, but you already did that. You could go fishing, but, well, it's just fishing. The best thing to do here is to start a new world on a higher difficulty if you were on normal mode, but if you're like me, then you're good enough to beat normal mode without too much hassle, but not good enough to get very far in expert. Obviously, of course, it'd be unrealistic to expect infinite content, but I'm including this paragraph so you know what you're getting into if you decide to read my review. Although, this whole "content deficit" can be solved by my next point.

Mods! The glorious bottomless pit of content for any game. With mod clients like tModLoader, you can easily download and use mods on any world, with complete overhauls and thousands of new items, enemies, bosses, and much more. Some of the most popular ones include Calamity, a massive mod that adds in a lot of post-vanilla game bosses and content that will keep you busy with its difficulty curve for as long as it took you to complete the vanilla game. Then there's Thorium, which adds in more vanilla content that scales nicely with the regular progression, but becomes moot once you get into things like Calamity (Except for the Ragnarok bosses which are post-final boss). Tremor is much like Calamity, it adds many new items, NPC's, and bosses to fight after you beat the vanilla game. However, sometimes you'll find a gem in one of the lesser known mods, for instance, I am a fan of the anime Dragon Ball Z, so I found the mod Dragon Ball Terraria, which beautifully implements the attacks and transformations from the show. (In fact, the mod developers are currently working on a complete revamp of the entire mod for their version 1.1, but this isn't a review of the DBT mod.) The inclusion of mods like these can easily destroy the problem I have with this game: lack of post-game content.

In conclusion, Terraria is a fantastic game with hours and hours worth of fun and challenging content that will keep you enthralled while you're fighting bosses like the iconic Eye of Cthulhu. The post-game content deficit can easily be solved by using mods like Calamity, Tremor, and Thorium.

Without mods: 7/10
With mods: 9/10

Definitely recommended!

Gameplay - 7/10
Enter the Gungeon is a very entertaining game with just enough challenge to give it that difficulty curve, but not so much that rogue-like/twin-stick amateurs will find themselves helpless. With long runs, funny dialogue, and optional challenges, Gungeon has a lot of entertainment value for all skill levels. The only reason I do not give this a 8/10+ in this category is that I sometimes get bored of investing so much time into a run, dying, and being required to start again from the beginning. However, this is basically unavoidable apart from the elevator that takes you to different floors, so I applaud Dodge Roll for trying to combat this problem that plagues many rogue-likes.

Story/dialogue - 8/10
Obviously, the story and dialogue are not the main attraction or point of the game. That said, I enjoyed and continue to enjoy the entirety of the lore which is simultaneously genuinely interesting and funny. The dialogue is found through interactions with the various characters around the breach and in the Gungeon itself. Each character has unique responses that can be insightful hints, or just ridiculous banter. Both are enjoyable and intuitively written.

Replayability - 10/10
This is one of the most replayable rogue-likes I have played. Enter the Gungeon has so many items and enemies/bosses that I've played for 300 hours and I've only just now started to get near to fully beating the game, (although that might just be because I'm not the best player haha) Along with this, there are tons of secrets and bonus challenges that you'll be finding and doing new things for run upon run upon run. Not only this, though, but Dodge Roll are constantly updating the game and adding new content, adding on to the colossal mountain of replayability that there already is.

Overall Enjoyability - 9/10
I play Enter the Gungeon at least once a day on average, which is more than I can say for many of my other games. The previous 3 categories paired with the generally unique and charming atmosphere that Gungeon gives off, I keep coming back to this game. It's a load of fun every time I play it, even when I die to that dang Lich when I have a great run!

Enter the Gungeon is my favorite rogue-like game. I've played many others, including The Binding of Isaac, which is regarded by many as one of, if not the, best of its genre. However, this is one of those rogue-likes with amazing replayability, extra content, and challenging optional routes that just keeps you coming back for more.

Total rating: 9/10, definitely recommended.
(also, my profile says ive played .7 hours in the last two weeks, but i mostly play when my computer is not connected to the internet, so that is not the most accurate representation.)