Recent reviews by PROGRAM_IX

I'm a card-carrying SD/chibi style mech hater but I picked this up because some friends were going wild for it and I'm so happy I did. Easily my favourite non-mainstream fighter in years.

If you're picking up this game, after the tutorial go to the Single Player -> Pilot Training page and try a few characters' trials to see who's fun for you. Try both arsenal types as well if you like a character's feel, they change movesets in really interesting ways.

The combo trials get you up and running with a character/arsenal pairing pretty quickly, and overall I've found combos in this game a lot easier than most fighting games I play. You still have to be fairly consistent but the rewards are great.

I haven't had too much trouble with the online play even at 150ms, I've played 10-20 game sets both with friends and random players without anything substantial going wrong. The public lobbies are perfectly functional even if they're basic. I haven't tried ranked because yes the population is low, so I ping friends or just check the public rooms, and apparently there is an active Discord community.

The story/arcade stuff is fine, useful to try out tactics in a somewhat 'real' battle. Fans of the properties will be interested in the VN-style story bits and as a new player I found the Easy mode fairly easy but still entertaining and the Normal mode a fun challenge.

The training mode is pretty decent, plenty of settings to tweak etc. and most blessed of all a quick character switch in the menu.

Some of the mechs from Iron Saga itself are a bit too visually greebly for me in this shrunk style, but all the guest characters look great. I don't think I'll be running to play Super Robot Wars but I maybe get it more now. Anyway, the SD/chibi look is helpful here in a fighting game where big hands and feet are important to legibility.

For the reasons above I decided to try Boss Borot from Mazinger Z when playing with my friends, who we can generally agree is a silly goofy guy anyway. The style suits him. And once I understood how Rolling Thunder works (arsenal 1) I knew I had to stick with this game. Few games, and certainly very few characters, have made me yell with laughter so often when playing. There's no point writing out combo strings for this review but suffice to say any game where you can spin an opponent around in a circle to throw them and then fling yourself after them because you're dizzy from the spin, deserves a serious look.

Sony's unilateral decision to remove this game from sale in one hundred and seventy-seven countries, months after release, when it has been working fine all this time, is simply absurd. Those places are (by Sony's own rules) not eligible for Sony platform accounts, therefore users from those places are suddenly no longer allowed to participate in the game's silly antics. I love this game but the utter annihilation of goodwill Sony is seeking here goes even further than the utter annihilation of mankind's enemies desired in the game. Much love to Arrowhead as they are trying to manage this mess.

I don't play many driving games, but I really enjoyed Absolute Drift a couple of years ago and despite rallying being the least interesting racing to me after F1, I decided to give this game a try. In brief: this is a driving game anyone can pick up if you are happy to spend a little time getting used to it, and I think that time investment is well worth it.

The driving itself feels crisp and consistent, so much so that after a while you find yourself making instinctive changes to your speed/angle in the approach to a corner, without having a good explanation as to why, but when those instinctive changes are right and you slide through the corner perfectly...there's few experiences like it.

You can play this a bit like Absolute Drift, where you explore the open areas and find collectibles/do challenges, or you can do what I did and absolutely laser through the career mode after you do your first race. There's something incredibly compelling about knocking out just one or two more stages, gambling with your restarts to try and get a better placement, trying out a new car and struggling with its nuances.

I like the game a lot because it rarely makes you repeat stuff, you usually only repeat if _you_ want to do better. Really messing up a stage isn't that uncommon, but this is not a game where you make one or two mistakes and have to retry to proceed. It's not so much that it is forgiving, as that pretty much every driver is going to have screwups and slow stages across a rally. So if you come 5th in a stage, and you don't feel confident in a rerun, just let the cards fall where they may and you could have a huge time advantage after another stage or two. Get used to using the 'back to road' rescue button though, just because sometimes you'll waste far more than the 5-second penalty getting yourself back.

*If you are struggling early on:* Try more cars! I found the initial group a bit of a struggle to get to grips with, possibly just because getting used to the control system, but I probably stuck to one of them for too long. I was afraid of failing badly in season mode with an unfamiliar car and being 'stuck' but you can always just try again. Worst case, quit the season and try another if it's feeling bad after two races. Or if you're better at preparing than me, try the car in single races instead of in a season!

The music bears mentioning all on its own for being truly great, a serious contributor to the relaxed feeling I have when proceeding through a stage that isn't going terribly. Tatreal did an unreal job and I went directly to Bandcamp to buy the OST.

Thank you Funselektor and especially thank you for the continued updates, I hopped on pretty late (only a couple of months ago) and there is a TON to see and do.

Receiver 2 is a sequel to one of my favourite PC games ever. The thrill I got from playing the original game stays with me to this day. I played it again a couple of months ago when looking forward to this, and that holds true. As such, this game has a lot to live up to! But in short, it does live up to, and surpass, the original.
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I had been playing carefully but got caught in a corner and wasted most of my remaining bullets trying to destroy a flying drone. Frantic to get away, I retreated through two cleared areas, only to realise as I gathered myself to go back, that I had just one bullet left. Very carefully, I managed to take out the distracted flying drone with a single shot, and pushed on. But every way was blocked by enemies, some of whom would be near impossible to deal with. No further pickups were available no matter how hard I looked. I backtracked three different routes before I found it. A high roof courtyard, with nothing but a single flying drone and a tape, just lying in the open. My last tape. The tape that would get me to level 4, for the first time. I waited patiently, crept out, and grabbed it. As I turned, I heard the beep of recognition from the enemy. It shouldn't have been able to see me! With the tape's eerie voice playing in my head, my life flashing before my eyes, I ran. Back through a high construction passage. Across a small gap in the buildings. Terrified I would feel death at any second. As I heard the tape start to wind down, I slowed my run as well. Turned. Nothing behind me. I couldn't believe I had gotten away with it. As the screen faded to black to indicate my success, I knew I would have to write a review like this.

No other game has given me the panic of what it might be for me, a normal person who has no access to firearms, to actually use a gun in defence of my own life. The fiddliness and unreliability. The terror of wondering how many bullets remain! It's incredible. Play Receiver. (And try the mods that add new guns.)

This is one of the games I have lost most consistently, most humiliatingly, at and kept playing. Find some people who are good at it and get ready to learn. Feeling the improvement is always beautiful.

I followed this game on Twitter for more than a year and it did not disappoint. Beautiful music, puzzles that I thought were too hard until they clicked, and an easily-unlockable drawing mode that lets you make delicious geometric designs all your own. Well worth your money.

I've been playing this game for a lot longer than my hours would suggest. Followed it on itch.io back sometime in 2014, and it's always been fun. Now it feels like it's reaching its potential and I'm excited to see where it goes next. A blend of flat textures and shadows giving maximum nostalgia coupled with awe at pretty graphics. Delicious full-bodied sounds, and perfectly upbeat music. Controls make sense and feel satisfying (dodging missiles and pulling away just before a crash!!!), and the enemies really give you a run for your money.

The fwooshiness is hard to describe without that word, but it's there and it's real. Play Sky Rogue.