Recent reviews by Zack Spades

Had this game on my wishlist for a while and much of what I found intriguing about the game is very well-presented within it. The low-poly, texture-warped PS1 visuals, the unmistakably jungle/dnb soundtrack associated with the era and an intriguingly ominous and mysterious setting that leaves quite a lot to imagination in the early game.

Also the use of a kei truck is adorable and just feels very in line with what an indie developer would idealize as the perfect delivery truck. While it also makes some of the deliveries very funny, the main question I had going in would be "how does it handle?". Driving games live and die by these models by design, and Easy Delivery's kei truck for the most part delivers. It's responsive, has decent speed and can be either tense or quite hilarious when it gets all floaty and bouncy. It can also take a bit of a fall too, which is pretty useful on the undulating terrain of this game.

Speaking of the terrain, you better learn it, because for the most part you'll be driving around, doing deliveries between towns and regions to earn money to afford gas, an unhealthy amount of caffeine, and upgrades necessary to advance the game's vague and esoteric plot. It's an indie game, what did you expect, really.

I think the general loop is fine. I find the maps fun to traverse, and it was fun to invent shortcuts that I knew I could get away with. Nice thing about the deliveries is that you don't lose the whole payload until your truck bed is completely empty, so you can bounce over terrain quite generously. Just be warned that if you take a tumble while off the beaten path, the payload may not spawn where you think it might.

Most of my criticisms of the game are fairly minor. Like there not being an indicator of your present location when you pull up the map (you'll have to learn that on your own, which is a little more tricky in a game with such limited draw distance and lack of landmarks), a few mechanics that go underutilised (especially in the last chapter), needing to get out of the car to top up on energy, and the vagueness of the plot that ultimately feels like more a flimsy justification to do deliveries than a goal to work towards.

I feel like many indie games use indirect, abstract or environmental storytelling as an excuse to not explain stories in a more concrete way, and this game is a little guilty of that, but I'd rather it be done this way than through an exposition dump. And in the end it's thematically relevant so I can't fault the game for it either.

Overall I enjoyed the game and appreciate that it's a fairly short and self-contained little experience. Also the soundtrack is immaculate and justifies the asking price on its own I'm not kidding. If you enjoy driving games and this type of aesthetic, it's well worth it.

This is such a quaint and enjoyable puzzle game, the type that is perfect for doing a 30-40 minute run to stretch a brain muscle, relax some other brain muscles, and then head on with your day, and come back to it another time.

Ultimately it is a simple tile-based puzzle game. Your limited number of tiles are hexagonal, and have different components to each of its six sides. Tiles have missions (a specific or minimum number of houses/rails/water/trees/farmlands) and you get 5 more tiles to prolong the game.

Additionally, you get a bonus tile for every perfect placement, which is when all six sides of a tile are connected to a complimentary attribute (trees connected to trees, for instance). Not all pieces can be placed next to one another, especially rails and bodies of water, so you have to plan out your placements accordingly. It can be a challenge, but it's never stressful.

In part because the game looks and sounds so relaxing. Full kudos to the lovely art direction, but also to the relaxing soundtrack and relaxing ambient SFX. Strongly recommended.

I want to like this game, really. It scratches an itch for a casual, turn-your-brain-off type of party game, and it comes cloaked in the sights and sounds of a franchise I've enjoyed on and off since my childhood. And sort of succeeds in both, enough that if it wasn't for the utterly massive elephant in the (closet-sized) room, it would be like many other Sonic games: Flawed -even sometimes in fundamental ways- but ultimately enjoyable.

But I can't not address the elephant in the room that is the monetization system of the game. Even given the fact that we as a society have allowed this predatory multi-billion dollar game model to become so normalized doesn't make it good or permissible. It's hard to enjoy anything about these games when it takes every conceivable opportunity to remind you that it wants you to spend money on it, often absurd amounts of it.

I played this game for 16 hours because that's how long it took for my enjoyment of the game to be outstripped by its despicable monetization practices. I haven't spend a cent on this game, and if you're going to keep playing this game, I'd suggest doing the same. But this is where I hop off.

If we've learnt anything from these style of games, they will NEVER fix the prices, it's not in the shareholder interest to do so. So just let it die. The best thing about this game is by far and away the music remixes used in the themed stages, and that will be extracted and archived by fans on the internet. And they won't ask you to pay through the nose on every other screen for the privilege.

The more times I go back to Bioshock, the more glaring a lot of its faults become to me.

I'll always appreciate how the game accurately depicts the logical conclusion of an anarcho-capitalistic society, the game gets really full of its own philosophy and intellectual enlightenment yet rarely conveys it into a compelling story or in moment to moment gameplay.

It does the Half-Life approach of giving you the illusion that you're in charge of your own destiny, while the game design and the NPCs in your head basically guide you on a rail from start to finish, with morality choices and character decisions barely mattering and the game going from fascinating set pieces to basically busywork of deactivating alarms, puzzle minigames and dealing with an ever-increasing number of bullet sponge enemies.

But we rarely remember this game's faults, shortcomings and questionable decisions. Because none of that really matters when you get lost in the decaying, destroyed remnants of Rapture. It's twisted, it's dark, it's bleak and it's absolutely beautiful. Helps that the game for the most part swaps the scatological yellow and brown of the 7th gen for bluer hues that make the grime and blood and wreckage much more palatable, and the crumbling art deco aesthetic is just so well done.

It was style over substance back in the day and is even more so now with the power of hindsight and reflection, but man is that style just kind of immaculate.

Game goes for pretty cheap on sale. Worth it for the atmosphere, but if you come out of the game thinking Ayn Rand had a point or something along those lines, please read a book. Any book will do.

Risk of Rain 2 is a near perfect example of roguelike game design, wrapped up with a lovely visual direction and a phenomenal soudtrack courtesy of Chris Christodoulou. There's ample choices of survivors to pick before crash-landing on an alien planet, and in true rougelike fashion they're all very varied in gameplay and get unlocked as you get a handle on the game.

It is very easily to get overwhelmed and frustrated in your first hours, admittedly, Trying to comprehend the various enemies that never stop spawning, figuring out which powerups are worth your time and synergize with your chosen survivor, trying to find the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ teleporter to move onto the next stage Protip: Follow the sparkling red lights once you see them and then getting your butt kicked by an unexpected horde or unfamiliar boss that seems to kill you in one hit.

But stick with it, it's like riding a horse. It may try to throw you off, but once you get the handle on it everything opens up, and with the right skills and builds you will be virtually unstoppable. I can't express the absolute power trip and visual spectacle a synergized, overly powered-up run gives me. It stops being about surviving the horde, the horde has to SURVIVE you.

And in typical rougelike fashion, there's plenty of powerups, hidden realms and additional abilities and assists to unlock, which just add further to the game's incredible replay value. It's even got a DLC now that adds even more to the game, and opens up even more possibilities in every run. And the best thing is only one person in a multiplayer lobby needs to own the DLC for other players to experience it.

Of course the game has multiplayer, so if you have 1-3 other friends who play the game, rope them into the chaos, it's always a fun time. Fool around even more with survivor synergy and beating the stuffing out of every single enemy foolish enough to spawn in your way.

In short: Buy this game, pick your survivor, stack your powerups, and CHALLENGE THE MOUNTAIN.

I used to find the genre of simulators to be a funny but otherwise uninteresting genre. Then a contact I had on Discord streamed American Truck SImulator for a bit in their server, and I started to get the appeal, or at least one angle of it.

American Truck Simulator, like the other truck sims made my SCS Software, is a good game to relax to. You drive a truck across numerous west coast USA states, either as a hire or as your own man, navigate traffic and the roads both big and small,keep your truck in good condition, keep it fuelled, and get stuff done on time.

But because you're driving a truck in a simulated setting, it's much slower and more relaxed, which makes it a great game to passively drive to. Heck, invite a friend to chat, either to watch or to drive with you, and it's a good, relaxing time.

Plus, it's very accessible, with all its assists and modifiers. I've found it a lot of fun to learn driving with a wheel on, with manual gears and traffic rules on and all. I've greatly enjoyed it, and SCS is constantly adding more and more to the game to complete even more of America. Right now you can theoretically go from Washington state to Texas, and hopefully cross-country becomes a reality.

There's a LOT of DLC though, but with a lot of it being cosmetic or simply cargo, it's not that bad. The extra states are the DLCs that add the most, and depending on their age they can sell for quite cheap too.

So yeah, keep on trucking.

Wreckfest is truly one of those feel good stories of the late 2010s in terms of games stuck in the purgatory of development hell.

Bugbear found modest success in the destructive arcade racing series Flatout, responsible for the first two entries in the franchise plus Ultimate Carnage (and HD version of Flatout 2 complete with some additional content) that have since become cult classics for their impressive levels of vehicular destruction (especially for the time) and personalized AI -each with their own levels of aggression, speed and behaviour, also impressive for its time- and just general audiovisual spectacle of crashing into other cars, causing explosions and hearing the screams of your victims amidst the crunching of metal on metal violence.

Then Bugbear lost the rights to the franchise that had gotten them the attention they deserved, and the series has been in the doldrums ever since. Flatout 4 was a competent but boring entry, and there was no 3rd entry. Trust me, it's better that there wasn't. But Bugbear still had a penchant for destructive racing games, and after a few years, were ready to take a crack at a brand new project.

That project was, of course: Next Car Game. Somewhat generic title aside, the title promised a lot. It had a fantastic damage model that looked spectacular. Perhaps not quite as sophisticated as BeamNG.Drive would be, but unlike the sandbox driver, Next Car Game was intended to make full use of the damage model by building the game around it, with the Wreckfest suffix added to the title to prove it. It was going to be a fantastic spiritual successor to Flatout, made by it's original team, with brand new technology to boot it.

But big ambitions rarely go to plan, and sadly, Next Car Game was no exception.

Bugbear did not have the money needed to fully realize their ambitious new entry after losing their old publisher, and once their original Kickstarter failed to meet its original goal, they turned to Steam's Early Access programme to try and raise funding, which got them an extra $1million in funding. But in an era of increasingly expensive development, that proved to be insufficient, and after the coffers ran dry, development slowed to a trickle, and the game would remain dormant for a few years.

And that would have been the end of it, in most circumstances. Another game lost to the development hell of abandoned early access titles, brimming with promise but unable to be sustained into an official release, with many fans and early buyers losing faith and others turning on the project entirely. A sad end, or at least it would have been, had they not found a saviour after a few years out in the wilderness.

That saviour turned out to be the revived THQ, now going by THQNordic after Nordic Games acquired everyone's favourite published of sixth-gen licensed tie-in game. With a new publisher and a fresh injection of much-needed cash, the project was rebranded simply as Wreckfest, and to the surprise of many (myself included, as I hadn't followed the development closely), a completed game launched in mid-June 2018, with console ports following the next year.

And oh boy, did we get a complete gem of a game.

Remember how I said this game was the spiritual successor to Flatout and shared parallels with BeamNG.Drive? Well, Wreckfest strikes, in my opinion, a wonderful balance between the two. It is definitely more serious and grounded than it's arcadey predecessor, with weightier physics, meaty collisions, and a wide plethora of cars and tracks that wouldn't be too out of place in a racer of this genre. You've got your beaters, from hatchbacks or dinged up coupes and muscle cars, you've got big land barge sedans and vans, and tracks ranging from short tarmac ovals and twisties to dirt tracks.

Pretty tame stuff, even with the inclusion of derby arenas and demolition derby modes, you would think. But the game stays true to its routes by knowing how to have fun with itself. What I haven't mentioned are the sheer variety of zany vehicles. This includes such oddities like:

-a big rig
-a motorhome
-a double-decker car
-a bumper car
-a lawnmower
-a combine harvester
-a school bus
-a big rig
-a motorized sofa
-a motorized outhouse
-probably a few other weird inclusions, it's 2AM as I'm writing this and don't have the game open

And it doesn't stop with the vehicles, some of the tracks are equally nutty, with exaggerated figure of eight courses that just invite you to smash into your rivals, courses with diverging routes, courses with big jumps, courses with rollercoaster levels of banked corners, hell there's even a course with a gosh dang loop-de-loop in it.

And it never stops being fun. Sure, the campaign can be beaten in a few hours and it's much like Forza Motorsport where you do a bunch of invitationals and cups with specific vehicle requirements, but that's just fine when the core gameplay is as good as it is. The sheer delight of wrecking your opponent into a wall, flipping them over or T-boning them at full speed at a crossover is as exhilarating as desperately trying to keep the smouldering remains of your nearly totalled car from being finished off by much beefier, much angrier opponents.

And regardless of whether or not you're done with the campaign, you can customize the quick events to your hearts content. Want to keep your dinky bumper car from being flattened by a 23 angry buses on a short oval? You can do that! Want to do a down to earth race on a twisty half-dirt half-asphalt course with beaten up American muscle? You can do that! You want to completely randomize all your opponents on the deathloop and throw complete and utter disregard for everything and everyone, yourself included? You can do that!

Your event choices are as varied as your vehicle customization; sure it's not the most varied but you've got plenty for tens of hours, whether you want to do it in long durations or if you want to pick the game up for 20 minutes of wanton wrecking.

And that's about the best way to sum up the game, I feel. The core is so good you can do whatever you want with it, and the game is constantly adding new content to keep your choices varied. Sure, the season passes aren't my cup of tea, but it helps fund the extra content and the ports to both the Switch and the newest consoles, so as long as more people get to enjoy the game then really, that's all I ask for.

So go have fun with this fun bit of simulation vehicular violence. It's less than 30$, which isn't that much more expensive than attending a demolition derby at a local fairgrounds or short track. It's also much more fun.

I was gifted this game sometime close to its full release and enjoyed it, before depression and computer issues made me fall out of it. Now that I'm over those hurdles and have people to play with, I enjoy it even more.

Deep Rock Galactic is a really fun, co-operative First Person Shooter on its own. Every class has its own neat abilities and perks, the procedural generation throws up plenty of variety (and sometimes just has fun punching you into ground), and the dwarves and their quotes never get old.

But the game really shines when playing with others. I've had such immense fun working with friends to accomplish objectives, find goodies and shoot up a whole ton of bugs. Playing with friends also really overcomes the games one big flaw, which is that solo play can get very repetitive and often feel like a grind, and so I find myself playing solo much less often nowadays (though it is still fun in short session, don't get me wrong).

Fine tune your loadout, stick on the silliest cosmetics you can find (no microtransactions here, respect), grab up to three buddies, and remember: IF YOU DON'T ROCK AND STONE, YOU'RE DYING ALONE!

I only found this game at the tail end of last year, not realizing it was part of itch.io's BLM bundle until November when a friend started streaming it for the first time. After dunking about a dozen hours into the DRM-free version, I bought this during the Holiday sale.

I am not very good at this game. I am hooked on this game. This game is not very kind to players. You will die. A lot. Often you will want to toss your keyboard/controller across the room. But you will love it. Even if you hate top down shooters. Even if you hate rougelikes.

Why? This game is just that good. It strikes this perfect blend between well balanced and random. Every character has perks (except Melting, you play him only if you're a dodging god), there's such a wide array of weapons and upgrades and you can win with virtually any loadout, though your mileage will vary greatly depending on your skill and your luck of the draw.

And presentation wise? This game is phenomenal. Every character has a unique charm to them, meshing that old-school cool with creative silliness, you're bound to find at least three that win you over. And the sound design, I can't do it justice in words. Every weapon is loud and punchy, the characters all make memorable noises, each level has a distinct and bumping music track (shoutout to Venus Mansion for spitting only the fattest bars) and even after countless hours and thousands of dead bodies, the dying noise of the common bandit still makes me giggle every time.

The game lures you in with its simple but effective presentation, then proceeds to kick you in the nuts constantly with its randomly generated levels, enemy variety, and enemy counts that can get frankly absurd if you happen to have a bad spawn. You will die a lot, and it will be equal parts the game's devilishness and equal parts your own fault. And that's when it hooks you. You will either want to get even with the game or you will want to amend for a foolish, game-ending mistake (which, if you're naive and favour brute force, will probably be because your trash brain blew yourself up with an explosive weapon).

And there is just so much to find, too. Plenty of unlockable characters and weapons, lots of secret areas and level skips, and many other things the devoted community has already made tons of guides for if you can't find them yourself (and some of them are incredibly esoteric, don't feel bad about it). And with no two playthroughs being the same, every single run will offer you something different. I know randomly-generated games say that a lot to sell the game, but this game truly delivers on that statement.

I can't recommend Nuclear Throne enough. This game may have been out for 5 years and Vlambeer may have broken up, with its two devs moving onto different endavours in the gaming industry, but this little gem of a top-down rougelike shooter will endure. And on that note, I leave you with some words of advice.

Fish can roll
Crystal can shield
Robot can eat weapons
Yung Venuz is cool

Oh, a personal diamond in the rough from a time forgotten..

Pros:
+ Soft Body Physics (ish) before BeamNG.Drive was the talk of the town
+ Different game modes
+ As a rock guy, I enjoyed the soundtrack
+ Driving is plenty of fun, if you get to grips with the handling
+ Some pretty darn good AI, with plenty of notable differences in behaviour.

Cons:
- R U B B E R B A N D I N G
- Floaty arcade handling may be a turnoff to some.
- Could've used some more variety in tracks.
- Multiplayer is basically dead

Easily the definitive Flatout game, developed by the original developers BugBear. Flatout 2 has provided plenty of fun for a guy like me, who likes racing games with a more arcade-y feel.
You've got your traditional race mode, which equates to crashing opponents into obstacles and crossing the line first, silly stunt modes that let you live out your inner ragdoll butcher, and derbies, which are the only mode really worth playing, and you do exactly what you expect to do: Survive being blown up while blowing everyone else up.
Much like Need for Speed and Burnout, Flatout 2 had a boost system, which has you rewarded with juice in your boost bar by hitting destructible objects and dealing collateral damage to your rivals. And that's essential for combating the game's biggest flaw: Rubberbanding. No matter how good you are, or how fast your car is, the opponents will always find a way to blow past you unless you wreck them. And you CAN wreck them. It's satisfying.
Speaking of opponents, they all behave differently. You know which ones you can use a punching bag or which ones are going to try and run you off the road. And this was in 2006, which I think is a pretty nifty feature for its time.

I won't recommend the game at full price, but it's definitely worth it on sale if you're hoping to get an arcade racer that let's you live out your inner murder fantasies built up from years of being stuck in traffic.