Recent reviews by Geobaldi

Super Fantasy Kingdom is a delightful blend of strategy and nostalgia, offering a unique gameplay experience that is both challenging and rewarding. With its charming visuals, deep mechanics, and rewarding progression system, Super Fantasy Kingdom is shaping up to be a standout title for both city-building and rogue-lite fans. For those who appreciate a strategic challenge wrapped in pixel art, this game is a kingdom worth exploring.

Shadows of Doubt is an incredible and must-play detective simulation game. Thanks to its procedurally generated world, you never know what to expect. There’s so much to do in Shadows of Doubt, from rifling through filing cabinets and cupboards, talking to people, hacking computers, security systems and locked doors, exploring the city, piecing together your case via mountains of documents and clues, and more. It’s a detective game with massive scale, If you like a good whodunit, this is one Indie title that you cannot afford to miss.

Finally an actual horror game that gets it right. Tension filled throughout as you investigate the unknown, in the attempts to determine what ghost is haunting the location. You're against the clock, as your sanity drops the ghost gets more aggressive eventually leading to it killing investigators one by one. Easily the most immersive game I've played to date as it just does everything it does so perfectly. It may be in early access at the time of this review, but the atmosphere is in full effect here. The constant spectral hum you hear throughout the investigation is enough to unnerve you, but once the ghost starts to mess with you, that's when the chills and goosebumps hit you. And it only continues to get worse as the mission progresses. Amazing stuff. Fans of horror should not be disappointed with this title. And with Halloween approaching, I can't think of a better thematic game to play solo or with friends. And be careful with your microphone, your teammates are not the only ones listening...

This is how I feel with the current early access build of the game about an hour or two after it released. Gloomhaven is my favorite board game of all time currently since receiving my copy a few years ago, and as such, I have been waiting for this digital implementation of the game as the physical version is hard to bring to the table as much as I would like. The full campaign is not available in this build, and won't be for a while, but what is available is a random dungeon adventure mode. In this mode you choose out of various pre-built parties and advance along the map to various locations. Once in a location, that is where the meat of the game plays out. For those unfamiliar with the physical game, each character has a hand of cards with each card divided into two sections (a top action, and a bottom action). But each card can also be used as a default two power attack, or a default two points of movement. During your turn, you choose two cards per character, and decide which one action you want to do with each card. One top action, and one bottom action. The initiative number on the first card you choose determines how early in the turn order you will go, so you have to decide if you want to go early or late, depending on the situation. The monsters have cards as well that also have an initiative number on them, so they can ruin your plans. Once your turn comes up, then you decide which card to activate first, perform the action of your choice on that card, then do the other card. This proceeds through all the characters, and through each round until you win the scenario, or lose. It should also be mentioned that each characters hand of cards is also their life counter, and some actions will make you remove the card from your hand for the rest of the scenario. You also rest during the scenario at various times to recover your cards but one card is removed each time you do so, when to rest is also something you have to think about. Essentially your hand is a timer for the scenario, and you need to finish the scenario before you run out of cards. Any way, that is just a quick synopsis of the game for those unfamiliar. This digital version handles the rules really well. However, there is no real feedback on screen, that I could see when I was playing. As each character and monster, also have a deck of cards they use during attacks to see if they hit, no dice in this game, but you never see what cards are being drawn so attacks and damage just succeed or fail and you're not sure why exactly. That's my main gripe with the game currently. Other then that, this version plays well, and with no bugs that I encountered. In short I recommend the game in it's current state, and look forward to seeing how the game progresses, with the eventual addition of the main campaign next year. This is a beast of a game they have decided to tackle, but so far, it is being handled quite capably thus far.

Excellent Stealth game reviving the long lost Commandos gameplay. The maps are complex and full of challenges, the controls are really without flaws, the graphics are very good for a top-down game (this time it is possible to rotate the map at will which can be very useful), the AI of the enemies is also really good (they are not dumb and they really check everything if they find something strange). Also the characters really have personalities. If you like Stealth games, you should not miss this one

Evolution is a light weight game of creating new species and survival. The game has an average play time with most sessions lasting around thirty minutes to an hour. The artwork is rich and beautiful with a great theme intertwined into every component of the game. The gameplay itself is really fun and has lots of player interaction. It's quite simple to learn and play but still has a lot of strategy involved in it. Every decision made influences everything. Every aspect of the game was thoroughly thought out. Fans of hand management games, and/or even the Jurassic Park movies, should enjoy this game. The game is very rich and detailed and is one that I have greatly enjoyed. I highly recommend it.

It has become increasingly rare to find an Indie game that has a fresh idea. Moonlighter definitely is one of those games. The idea behind this game is as simple as it is incredibly fun: At night, you crawl dungeons in a rogue-lite fashion, and at day... you sell the goods you looted the night before!

Fans of the 2010 game, Recettear, may feel a twinge of deja-vu. The game perfectly blends rogue-lite elements (although perma-death is replaced by losing almost all items you found and a bunch of gold) with elements of a decent economic sim.

The dungeon crawling part is as you'd expect it. You can carry two weapons that you can switch on the fly, with every weapon having a primary and secondary attack. You can dodge-roll and take potions (if you have any) to avoid damage and restore health. Although your goal of the dungeon crawling part is to reach to boss of the dungeon, there is a twist: For some gold, you can use your "amulet" which will teleport you back to town and end the run, so you can secure the loot you already have.

The economic sim part is you being in your shop, selling the loot you grabbed. Cool idea: as you progress in the game, you will unlock other vendors to upgrade your weapons and armor, to buy potions and enchantments etc. From that moment on you need to evaluate: What stuff do you want to sell, and what do you want to keep to upgrade your equipment? If you sell stuff, you actually have to find the right price (customers will show you via emotes if your price is perfect, too high, too low etc) and have an eye on demand (don't sell the same stuff over and over again).

What else? Graphics are an absolutely beautiful example of pixel art, very detailed with amazing animations. Music is a little bland, but still catchy and never really annoying or dull.

In my opinion this could possibly be the best wrestling simulation video game of all time, once it's completed that is. An incredibly deep roster and edit feature that makes your roster virtually limitless. The gameplay is tremendous and is the ONLY video game that has ever re-created the feeling of a real wrasslin' match in my opinion. You'll be sweating bullets in your living room when involved in a thirty minute classic with back and forth near falls, highspots and surprise comebacks. Surprisingly, one of the most enjoyable features in this game is simulating matches. You play the role of a wrestling federation general manager and create a dream card, then sit back and watch the matches unfold. If you've never played a Fire Pro wrestling game before, and want a wrestling game that actually feels like a wrestling game, then give this one a try. There's wrestling games, and then there's wrestling games. This one leans heavily towards the latter.

When a game like this is still being talked about, and still given recognition, 17 years from when it was released, that means a lot. This game has defined the FPS/Survival horror genre so that all the others before it could be inspired. It has also innovated storytelling and having a villain in a game that gets you really involved in what's going on. SHODAN is still considered one of the greatest video game characters and villains of all time. This game has had a profound impact on games and I believe if they made a 100 greatest games of all time list 100 years from now, System Shock 2 would be on the list somewhere. Easily the best FPS/RPG/Horror game ever created, (how many of those have been made up to this point anyway?), and my favorite game of all time.

While it may SEEM like a re-skin of Assassin's Creed with a Batman: Arkham Asylum combat system, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor soars above and beyond, combining a satisfying combat system with unique enemies within a beautiful world.

The main word of this review would be NEMESIS. The nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor generates unique and sometimes hilarious enemies that will remember previous encounters, gloat at you, flee from you, and sometimes generate a feeling of vengeance which leads to a thirst for revenge, making killing a previously encountered captain extremely rewarding. Each playthrough is completely unique, featuring different enemies with different strengths and weaknesses that make no encounter ever the same.

Shadow of Mordor is influenced by other games, but not defined by them. Instead it takes pieces from some of the best games of the last few years, augments them with RPG mechanics and the new Nemesis system, and integrates them all so well together that it's sometimes hard to tell where one system begins and another ends. It's a remarkable achievement.