Recent reviews by Brain Digger

I hate to base my opinion of one game on my experience with another, but the only reason I got this game is that it looks like it takes a lot of inspiration from the Kingdom series. The short way to describe this game to me would be - Kingdom, but a MOBA instead of a Tower Defence game.

A one-dimentional MOBA is what Sons Of Valhalla feels like for the most part. You walk back and forth around in your camp, gather supplies, prepare your army and then attack and conquer the enemy bases one by one.
The game also features a combat system that's inspired by the Dark Souls series with invincible rolls and a stamina bar that you have to keep an eye on. I was personally more interested in the tactical aspect of the game so the boss fights felt more like chore to me for the most part. Also, having the ability to fight through enemy hordes on my own with no warriors by my side weakened the joy of the game's tactical aspect.

That's the game's main campaign mode. You travel between 5 different stages and go through a simple but effective "save the princess" story with beautifully drawn pixel art cutscenes and pretty good voice acting.

The game has two other play modes:
1. A stealth game called "Raya's Escape" where you play as the princess trying to escape her prison, which I personally found to be very clunky to play as it doesn't feel great to use the game's default controls for accurate character movement. Also, the game froze every time I got captured and I had to restart at the tutorial so I lost my patience very fast.

2. A horde mode where you have one base and get waves of enemies coming at set intervals. The fact that you can't interact with your base at all while getting attacked makes this mode frustrating. And it leans heavily on the game's combat mechanics rather than it's tactical aspects.

To sum up, Sons of Valhalla is a fun, short game that mixes tactics with action in a rather simple yet enjoyable package. It leaves a few things to be desired; Maybe multiplayer co-op or PvP; Maybe a better survival mode where you're getting attacked from both directions except for just the right side of the screen; but it's definitely a worthwhile experience.

I played this game a lot when it just came out, then quit when I got stuck and have recently come back to finish it.

This game keeps on giving. After unlocking all achievements, I've found that there are a whole bunch of different game modes to play. There's playing the game with different characters, there's Boss Rush and Boss Revenge modes, there's Classic Mode that's basically the first Castlevania with a Bloodstained skin... There's a ton of content here.

This game is also a true homage to the original Metroidvania - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It really replicates the feeling of playing SotN for the first time again, but it still does enough new things to be considered a brand new game.

Lastly, the soundtrack is amazing and the theme for the Tower of Twin Dragons is an ear worm and I love it.

I've unlocked all achievements in under 8 hours, meaning it took me under 8 hours of gameplay to consume everything this game had to offer.
The secret ending scene adds almost nothing too.

I did enjoy the experience. The art, the voice acting and story telling are all great, but I think the game isn't worth it's full price. I suggest getting it on sale if it's at a 75% discount.

I had this game on my wishlist for a long time and have been gifted it for my birthday.
There was a lot of hype surrounding this game during the early stages of it's development and watching devlog videos made me interested in it. The end product feels incomplete and a bit outdated. Like a 2017 release for a Playstation 2 game.

They hyped up their physics based fighting engine from day one. They promised that there would be importance to hitting and breaking your opponent's limbs, but there's barely any control over combat. All button presses being holds is the most confusing aspect of the game. At the end of the day, the combat feels floaty and uninteresting.

Platforming is a nightmare with bunnies. And the main campain has a lot of platforming and it's just a frustrating experience. Controling jump height and distance is really hard, the character doesn't lock into any background elements like in other games that feature parkour and sometimes you end up bouncing too far off of certain surfaces. It feels like your character is a bouncy pill collider in a quick engine test rather than a polished character in a finished game.

Visually, the characters are exactly in the uncanny place where they look simultaniously too digital and too realistic at the same time. When we see real cats, dogs and bunnies, we thing they're cute, but all of the characters in this game are terrifyingly ugly. A less realistic art style may have worked better for the purpose of this game.

At the end of the day, it feels like a cheap attempt at a physics based Assassin's Creed made with an old first person shooter's engine. This game feels like an Unreal Tournament MOD and not like anything from any recent years.

I got this game for my birthday. Really fun game with beautiful graphics.
I have run into a few bugs during combat, but that just passes by really fast.
The controls are a little hard to get into. They tried making the character move like in Prince Of Persia while being in Out of this World. Everything being locked to tiles is what made POP barable and the character on OOTW would jump instantly on command. Mixing the two together makes for a confusing experience.
I didn't quite understand the narrative, but the story is told beautifully and the atmosphere is great.

The game also has a lot of replay value with NG+, which is basically Iron Man mode; the "Duel" mode, which focuses on one on one combat; and the "Sacrifice" mode, which is like an entire extra game.

This game is incredibly addictive. The fact that it's so heavily physics based makes for some hillarious incidents. I've played it both with two and three players and the game is a ton of fun either way.
We had a bug that causes pushing Y on any controller to throw the keyboard and mouse player's weapon, but it was kind of fun because it just added to the chaos.

I should mention that I did not play the game online at all. I feel like that would make me treat it too seriously, and as it's a silly free for all physics based platformer-fighter - I'd just rather stay casual when playing this game.

I love this game.
I don't have a lot of games with over 100 hours of play time but this is one of them.
Considering how long I've had this game - it's pretty amazing that it's in my top 3 most played games right now.

Dead Cells feels great. The pixel art animations are beautiful and the sound and music just work perfectly with the game.
It gives that nod towards the great classics and has some very nice fan service and joke moments hidden within it.
The controls are amazing. It feels great to run around and fight monsters on the mysterious island.

If there's any criticism to be said - it's this: Dispite being released out of Early Access and being full of content, there is still some missing content. The 5 Boss Cells doors can't be opened without mods since the 5th Boss Cell can't be obtained yet and the giant door in the prisoners' quarters still does nothing dispite hinting at some huge monstrousity hiding behind it.

Monsters telepert/spawn to player's location and you get stuck. No telefrags.
It's hard to tell anything from the environment. Everything seems to be the same color.
And the shotgun has no range. It feels like I'm playing a beat 'em up instead of a first person shooter.
Possesed aren't really enemies, they're moving health pickups. It's stupid.

Also, limited time demo is a stupid idea. It's either demo or limited time. Not both.

The best way to learn how to play guitar.
My skills have improved tenfold ever since I started playing Rocksmith.

The cons:
1. Some guitars work better than others when it comes to the game picking up your audio. You may need to have expansive pickups on your guitar. It's obviously recommended to have a Gibson guitar for this game.
2. The UI isn't built for touch oriented devices. I'm playing on a tablet PC running Windows 10, which doesn't have a built in keyboard.
3. No crazy things like whammy bar detection or support for guitars with more than 6 strings.
4. Some of the songs require 24 frets, and if you're playing on a 22 fret guitar - you're screwed.

The pros:
It's freakin' Guitar Hero but for real! What else do you need?

Easily speedrunable. I got all achivements in 3 playthroughs.

It's very pretty.