Recent reviews by Dance - Longbai Bonsai

Very fun if you have a consistent Squad to play with, if you dont have at least one other Dark Souls bro to play with on the regular though, give it a miss, public matchmaking is servicable but without proper comms its usually too hard to coordinate.

Its Dark Souls 4.

Mechanically intense climbing game with a low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling, spiced up with sensible dashes of resource management, exploration and horror. You will start off cautiously picking your way through each area and puzzling over zones without obvious climbing spots but will eventually be leaping and bounding across huge gaps to and from tiny grab spots your experienced climbers eyes will pick out.

Sank over 20 hours into the demo for this alone before the Early Access even launched, so if youre at all curious just give it a try there, they even included an endless mode for just the first 2 areas they packaged into it, and the game has enough randomization and addictive mechanics that I found myself coming back repeatedly just to that vertical slice, enough said.

Quality throwback game in the style of 90s survival horror classics, inspired particularly heavily by the original Resident Evil. The game looks and feels like it really could be some lost 90s game, the prerendered background and fixed angles that are so iconic of the mid and late 90s JRPG and survival horror genres are recreated perfectly.

Alisa, however also has a few smart modernizations and even features from later resident evil titles that enhance rather than detract from the experience, including a basic but functional dodge mechanic, a surprisingly robust melee combat system and a streamlined inventory that removes the need to repeatedly backtrack to storage locations to retrieve key items. The game features a surprising variety thematically and mechanically distinct zones despite its relatively short length.

Alisa is short at about 8-10 hours for a first run and 3-4 for subsequent runs, but a large arsenal of weapons, character upgrades, unique endings and dozens of unlockable costumes, each with unique stats and mechanical quirks, ensures the game retains a high degree of replayability well into NG++++ .

**Possible Malware Warning - Do not purchase or install**

Solid RE Game and a mostly competent port from the 3DS with no serious issues. Unfortunately Capcom made the bewildering decision to update this game 11 years after its release to ADD an additional layer of DRM to it.

The DRM in question is called ENIGMA and is extremely suspicious, being run by a company operating out of Russia without a business address and only 1 known employee. At time of writing it has been documented as having over 34 virus warnings associated with it on VirusTotal and users have reported significant and noticeable performance issues in the games that it was installed under.

All of this was done to prevent players from modding a primarily single player experience mind you. They say they're concerned that modded games could damage their reputation, likely as a kneejerk response to the SF6 Nude Mod incident that happened a few months ago. I would posit however that they're damaging their reputation themselves far worse by attempting to address the situation in such a fly-and-bazooka fashion.

There is no obscure scenario in which mods for an 11 year old single player game could possibly damage your reputation worse than giving your paying customers shady software that may be actual malware, Capcom. Get a hold of yourselves.

Top tier Search Action/Metroidvania action platformer and a big step up from the first game, which was excellent in its own right. I recommend playing both back to back if possible, as there is a strong sense of continuity between both that makes them excellent companion pieces.

+Solid Search Action/Metroidvania game play
+Excellent Platforming.
+Great Boss fights.
+Touching Story.
+Fun Side quests.

-Some abilities become redundant or have too much overlap with others.
-Some combat moves are objectively worse than others.
-Too many functions mapped to the same buttons with context sensitive activation, occasionally causes you to use the wrong ability.
-Early railroading lasts just a touch too long before the game really opens up.

Absurdly high quality free game with a decent runtime to boot. Unique and interesting weapons and enemies, clever level design, pretty visuals, would easily be worth 10 bucks as a retail title. Top Shelf, check out the Devs other games as well.

Its not a game, its a lifestyle choice.

A classic bit of 00s action gaming with all the Hallmarks of the era, pill popping, satan worshiping gangsters, faceless corporate goons, slow motion gun battles and a down on his luck protagonist who wears a sick leather jacket. Max Payne has aged with surprising grace mechanically, and its snappy pain killer and slow-mo powered gunfights are as fun now as they ever were, and despite its age this revenge romp easily outpaces a lot of modern "AAA" action experiences. At about 10-12 hrs for a first playthrough, this is a decent proposition at full price($/€10), and a no brainer at 50% off or more.

One Finger Death Punch is a stripped down 2D beat em up that puts the players reflexes to the test. The concept is simple, left click punches to the left, right click punches to the right, if an enemy is in range on that side of the screen when the player clicks, they stike the enemy, otherwise, they miss and give enemies a chance to move closer to them uncontested. Enemies move in towards to centre of the screen where the player is, and if they reach the player, the player takes damage. The more success you are finding in a mission, and the more enemies you defeat without taking a hit, the faster the enemies begin to move towards you.

This straightforward mechanic is the axis the gameplay rotates around, and while it sounds overly basic, the developers have done an impressive job of injecting lots of variety into this simple formula, with enemies that take multiple hits to defeat, enemies that require combos to defeat, powerups, weapons and special abilities, as well as a wide variety of mission types. The Combat itself is surprisingly impactful and satisifying thanks to some well thought out sound design and animation work, enemies sometimes fly through the air when defeated and can take out pieces of scenery as they go, get impalled on upturned weapons and occasionally have their ribs crushed or their eyeballs sent flying from their heads with a killing blow.

There is no delay between your clicks and your punches, allowing you string together combos and kills and switch between targets on either side of the screen as needed. As a result, gameplay feels extremely tight and snappy, and starts to bare a certain resemblance to rythm games once the enemies really begin to speed up, with successive defeated foes, combos and ability usages becoming a gratifying flury of success, and taking a single hit bringing you to a jarring halt that can throw your momentum and groove totally off. This is a game that really makes you want to get a perfect score on every mission.

The result of all this is a basic but highly polished, very fun and surprisingly replayable game. If you can look past the primative visuals, One Finger Death Punch is a damn fine time killer.