Recent reviews by OpenRoadRacer | #BOOSTPOWER!

Granvir is a real gem of a game, I'm just going to get that out of the way right now. The only real issue I have is that the game's soundtrack could stand to be more intense, but that's a minor gripe.

So what exactly is Granvir? It's a mech-building third-person scavenger-shooter Rogue-lite where you do battle with the invading Millennium Company to protect the settlers of extra-solar colony Inheritance 01. Beyond that, well, Granvir is basically a kitchen sink of mech games, with parts of all sorts available to build the mech of your dreams.

There are five playable pilot archetypes, each with their own unique features that encourage different styles of play. The game's three campaigns each offer different gameplay possibilities: "Zero Front" is effectively a tutorial designed for quick play sessions; "Millennium Horizon" is a longer campaign with more features and greater challenge; and "Millennium Front" challenges you to build up your base while taking the fight to the Millennium Company in new snowy environments.

Every kind of weapon you can imagine is here. From pickaxes and combat knives to heavy cannons and gatling guns, it's here. Quadruped legs, biped legs, legs with wheels, torsos with differing numbers of side and back mounts, torsos with built-in guns, torsos with extra cargo space, the list goes on.

The real interesting thing is the way the game handles damage: Armor is the first layer that protects Hull, Hull is the second layer that protects Vitals, Vitals are the actual bits inside your mech that make it run. You can repair Hull and Armor with scraps found in missions, but Vitals have to be repaired by your Mechanic. In "Zero Front", this costs "Replacement Parts", while in the other two, it only costs time and money.

Time management between missions is another issue you'll need to deal with in Granvir, with "Millennium Front" and its base building really testing your ability to decide what the most important use of time is. The Groundbreakers in "ZF" and "MH" can be a significant help, especially in "MH" where they can be hired to increase the amount of rest time you have between missions and repair your mech once you build up a reputation with them.

Granvir isn't as fast paced as some mech games, feeling more deliberate and tactical. Personally, melee feels extremely difficult, likely to get you crushed if you're not careful; staying at range is safer, but you'll have to consider your ammunition usage. There are four types of ammo, but the only one with any unique aspects are Energy Cells which can't be combined with each other and must be changed by swapping the entire cell.

My usual builds lean heavily on Gun Armatures or Side Cannons, favoring volume of fire to defeat enemy groups at range. The game lets me play into this, with a playable pilot that gets access to vendors that sell various parts and ammo, and paid for each kill made to pay for all of it. However, that's far from the only way to play Granvir; I don't feel like I'm joking when I say that the possibilities are infinite. If you can dream it, Granvir will let you build it; I think that's the game's greatest strength.

Granvir is a solid and enjoyable mech combat shooter that'll mostly let you play your way, and gives you all the mech parts you need to build your dream machine. Standing tall over a mountain of scrapped enemies, Granvir gets an 8.5 out of 10.

Let me start this review by saying that I am not calling Bears in Space a bad game. It's not that I have issues with the game; it's that I am clearly not aligned with this game's target audience.

The core shooting gameplay, with the running and gunning, the weapon upgrades, and the open combat that emphasizes movement instead of seeking cover, that's all perfectly fun. Where BiS and I don't get along, though, is pretty much everything else.

The humor pretty much entirely flies right past me. One side character, I understood the reference(Vin Botsil, referring to actor Vin Diesel); but the reference is to a franchise that I actively dislike(The Fast & the Furious, where I much prefer Vin's other franchise The Chronicles of Riddick).

The platforming and puzzles in general aren't enjoyable to me; but that's entirely due to the fact that I'm not much for puzzles and/or platforming in any game, with the minor exception of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

And the random gimmick moments that move away from the main shooting gameplay(not including the platforming and puzzles), oh sweet holy crap do they rub me the wrong way. The Time Crisis-inspired sequences are genuinely frustrating at times, mainly because I'm playing on a controller, but still. And the "Radium in the Stadium" boxing match was just beyond unwelcome. But, again, I'm not going to describe them as poorly made or poorly executed; it's entirely my fault for wanting something that Bears in Space clearly isn't.

At the end of the day, I'm left wishing that the game leaned harder into the core shooting gameplay; but, at the same time, I feel like cutting out everything outside of that would destroy the identity of Bears in Space.

Call me an unhappy, unfunny lout that needs to go back to the 1990s, but I simply cannot find enough of what I enjoy from Bears in Space to say that it's worth my time. Bears in Space has left me crashed and burned with a 4 out of 10.

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Let me start off by saying that if you're here for historical accuracy or realism, look elsewhere. Dogfight 1942 is intended as a fast-paced, highly aggressive, pure arcade WWII flight action experience. It goes so far as to include a scoring system that rewards you for chaining multiple kills in rapid succession.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in the missions on offer. You've got missions where you intercept enemy bombers, ones where you escort friendly bombers, ground attack and anti-ship operations, and some missions where the objectives change dynamically in the middle of the fight. You have to remain alert at all times as the enemy are always after you, and the music feels entirely appropriate to the fast-paced action on historic battlefields.

Another thing the game does well is the variety of airplanes for players to fly. Some of them more useful than others(honestly, you're never going to use bombers unless absolutely forced to), but all of them able to hold their own in most missions. In addition, all of the game's sounds are well done, with the sounds of machine gun fire picking apart aircraft, the sounds of rocket and bomb explosions, even the sounds of aircraft exploding when they're shot down all having a really nice oomph to them.

The fact that the North Africa and Soviet campaigns are DLC might be a minor turn-off, but they both add a number of new missions and planes, as well as adding new environments to the "Quick Play" mode. Lastly, I do want to say that while the character voices might seem too exaggerated, they fit with the generally over-the-top feel of the gameplay.

Honestly, don't expect much out of the squadron command system or the other allied pilots; it's pretty much just up to you to do everything. The game's lack of online multiplayer is a pretty sad shortcoming, but at least there's splitscreen play if you have two controllers.

Overall, a fast and fun WWII dogfighting game, if you're willing to put up with the fact of it being a low-budget title. I give Dogfight 1942 an 8.5 out of 10.

This game is like if you took the first FlatOut by Bugbear, removed the driver ragdolls, and replaced the regular street cars with diesel-powered semi-tractors. But I have to say, Truck Racer is a surprisingly fun and surprisingly fast arcade racing game.

While there are only six trucks available to drive, there are numerous ways to modify and tune them. One thing that I honestly didn't see explained well enough and never really felt the influence of(maybe I just wasn't paying attention) is having to select suspension components to attune your truck to race on different surfaces; but then again, there are only two surface types represented - Asphalt and Dirt - and trucks seem to drive about the same on either. But maybe I've just been too methodical in upgrading my trucks and need to deliberately tune my truck wrong to see the difference.

And let me remind you: this game is actually quite fast. Don't pay attention to the numbers on the speedometer; feel how fast the tracks and the races feel. Once you've fully tuned even the Raion Calvin, the game's slowest truck, you'll feel like you're driving a finely tuned racing machine, to say nothing of the more expensive trucks later down the line.

The racing environments are all nicely varied; though again, there are only two racing surfaces present, and none of the in-game environments mix the two surface types in a single locale, let alone a single circuit. But that aside, they're all pleasant enough to look at. This is no Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010; but it's not trying to be a AAA title.

The biggest faults I have are the lack of in-race music, and the abysmal rival AI. The menu music loop isn't terrible, at least. The rival driver AI, however, is awful. They'll spend all race bouncing from one wall to the other, and often wrecking themselves out with no influence from the player. This does make the "Championship" mode feel uneven in its difficulty, though, as it seems like the Time Trial events replace the dummies you usually race against with drivers that can actually stay off the wall. However, once you get one of the later trucks upgraded, the Time Trials as well fall into the category of "dreadfully easy".

I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, and I fear I'll never find another living soul playing this piece of ancient history online. Pity that, because having actual human drivers to compete against could make this game more exciting.

Honestly, for its current $2.49USD sale price, it's an easy buy. No major bugs or glitches that I could find, no serious problems with anything other than the AI of the rival truckers, just fairly simple straightforward fun. I give Truck Racer an 8 out of 10.

For reference, I bought the 2010 "Limited Edition" version of this game's original release for PS3 pretty much as soon as it was available. I played through all of its DLCs, too. Is this remaster a faithful recreation of everything from that version of the game? Pretty much, yeah.

I understand that a few cars were removed for the remaster. However, from what I've read online, the Carbon Motors E7 was removed because Carbon Motors no longer exists as a company, and the two Mercedes SLR McLarens(Mercedes McLaren 722 Edition and Mercedes McLaren Sterling Moss) due to Mercedes selling off their stake in McLaren starting back in 2009 and not completing until 2011(after the original NFS:HP 2010 release).

Aside from that, if you've played the 2010 release, everything's the same as you remember it. But if you never played it, I'll give you a rundown:

So, first things first, this isn't your Underground-style, The Fast & the Furious-inspired import tuner street racing. This game focuses on exotic supercars in a scenic, semi-rural territory with elements taken from multiple parts of the American West(southeast part of Seacrest County is based on parts of the Mojave Desert, some of the northern mountainous parts of the county are based on the Colorado Rockies, the western coastal parts are based on the California coast from the redwood forests in the northwest of the county to the beaches in the southwest of the county being similar to beaches just north of Los Angeles, central parts of the county are based on California's Central Valley, etc. etc.). And take it from me, this game is gorgeous. The cars are all finely detailed and the environments of Seacrest County are breathtaking. I understand that they decided to use the lower resolution textures from the X360 and PS3 versions of the 2010 game as a base, but it's still pretty awe-inspiring that this game can look as good as it does. And for me at least, it runs buttery smooth at a consistent 60 frames per second.

In addition, all of the sounds in the game are about as close to perfect as you can get. The engines of the cars all feel powerful, from the deep roar of American muscle cars like the Dodge Charger and Shelby GT500, to the banshee-like screams of the top-of-the-line exotics from Lamborghini and Porsche. The crashes are incredibly visceral, as should be expected from Criterion Games, developers of the Burnout franchise. The various gadgets all make clear and distinctive sounds, from the metallic clanks of the spike strips, to the sounds being dulled by Jammers, and the monstrous blast of the Turbo Booster. The police helicopter in particular is especially menacing as it flies right over you; it's only slightly less intimidating than a military gunship, if only because it's restricted to setting spike strips on the road, instead of trying to target you with its own EMP device.

The controls aren't quite as snappy as the likes of Burnout Paradise, but that does a good job of making all of the vehicles feel like they have weight to them, making it clear that this isn't going to be as crazy of a game as Burnout usually is, and I'm not going to fault the game for that. It's still rather responsive, and all of the vehicles feel distinctive in their handling without making it difficult to go from one to another.

In all, this is an excellent game of racing and chasing, with fast and intense arcade driving at ludicrous speeds. The car roster is full of beautiful high performance racing machines, Seacrest County is a gorgeous environment full of thrilling roads to drive, and the controls are sharp but weighty. I still say that the games that came out before the first NFS: Underground are better, but this game's good on its own; and in my eyes, FAR better than anything in the franchise from 2003-2009, or from Ghost Games. I give Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 - Remastered a 9 out of 10.

Let me start this off by noting that I don't play 40K tabletop, but I do have quite a bit of knowledge of the setting from browsing the pages of 1d4Chan[1d4chan.org]. I'll also state that, from what I read on 1d4Chan, despite them being portrayed as relatively nice people by the standards of the Imperium of Man, I was always going to think of the Ultramarines as bland and boring.

Captain Titus is pretty much the exact opposite of "boring".

He starts off his campaign by using a Jump Pack to drop out of a transport ship onto the deck of an Ork ship, then use nothing more than a pistol and a combat knife to fight his way across the ship and use one of its own turrets to destroy the ship's bridge. And he doesn't do it by getting in the turret; he grabs the front of it and manually cranks it around from the outside like the super soldier he is.

This game makes a point, at least in the earlier parts, of making clear just how powerful the Adeptus Astartes really are. Whether it be choke-slamming Orks with one hand, chopping through entire packs of them in rapid succession, or just feeling the brute FORCE behind all of the game's guns, you feel like a massive, heavily-engineered, power-armored BAD@$$. But even in these early phases, it's not like you're completely unstoppable: Ork Nobz can deal quite a bit of damage, Rokkit Boyz can kill you from a distance, Bomb Squigz can make your life Hell. Don't even get me started on the forces of Chaos under Lord Nemeroth later; they're a LOT tougher.

And secondarily, not only does the game do a great job of showing just how powerful both you and your enemies are, but it also shows the allied Astra Militarum troopers as genuinely competent and effective in their own right. Titus may well be a one man army; but the game would have been much harder were there not allied forces on the planet with you. Especially at the end, when you have to cross a bridge held by Nemeroth's forces, and a squad of Blood Ravens are there with you, then later in that fight a squad of fellow Ultramarines drop pod into the fight.

The issue of the relative lack of variety in the game's environments can be easily explained by the fact that you're on a Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus, basically a planet-wide factory. And even then, there are the sections outside of Inquisitor Drogan's Kalkys experimental research complex that look less like industrial complexes and more like natural desert and canyons. And overall, the game's graphics and depictions of the involved factions of the Imperium shows an incredible attention to detail. The only issue is the effects for explosions being incredibly poor.

If you have even a passing interest in Warhammer 40,000, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It starts off as a power fantasy rampage against green-skinned hooligans, and ends with a desperate fight against forces from the Warp to save the planet from corruption. It's a shame that the multiplayer feels so much like a tacked-on afterthought; a cooperative campaign would've done this game wonders. Overall, I give Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine a 9 out of 10.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not really the type for racing city streets. Never was the type for Midnight Club or Need for Speed: Underground. However, thankfully, Xenon Racer steers clear of that style of racing and instead presents itself as a kind of cyberpunk future version of modern day Sports Car Racing, i.e. IMSA or the FIA World Endurance Championship; but, of course, with much shorter races.

The car customization is actually pretty deep, but the fact that a fair number of parts are locked behind driving hours and multiplayer is kind of off-putting. Not nearly enough to make this a bad game, though. The other big issue is with the driving physics: steering and drifting feel rather stiff and jerky, and the cars will instantly snap out of drifting when their wheels get back to straight. This can make it a bit difficult to get used to, and it's all but impossible to chain drifts from one direction to the other.

A much more subjective issue I have with the game personally is the soundtrack: It's all electronic music taken from MonsterCat, makes my ears bleed. Thankfully, it can be turned off; but I just wish there was a choice to have some blazing electric guitars.

Ultimately, this game isn't as smooth or fluid or enjoyable of an experience as Hotshot Racing. But, if you're in the market for an arcade drift racer, I figure you could do a lot worse than this. 8 out of 10.

After over 500 flight hours with this game, I'm going to warn you: If you enjoy arcade aerial combat, prepare to be hooked. This is easily one of the most addictive games I've ever played.

So first things first, what are we dealing with here? Well, I would personally make comparisons to the Ace Combat franchise; but, if I'm honest, Sky Rogue makes most other air combat games look slow in comparison: if Ace Combat is Call of Duty, Sky Rogue is basically 90s DooM by comparison. Seriously, it's that fast.

So basically, you're a lone pilot fighting for some nebulous "Aeroforce" against some "Crimson State" and its poorly defined allies. The thing is, death is not the end: Every time you get shot down, you get to unlock new planes and weapons that can enable you to fight further until you confront this massive boss machine that the enemy forces have been cooking up.

You've got three roles of aircraft: versatile and agile Fighters, lightning-fast Interceptors that specialize in air-to-air, and slow but durable Bombers that excel in air-to-ground; and they come in the classes of faster but more fragile Lights, well-rounded Mediums, Swing-Wings that give you even more versatility than the Mediums at the expense of a little durability, tough and heavily armed Heavies, and powerful Experimentals. The weapons on offer cover all the bases, with unguided rockets, bombs and machine guns; various air-to-air and air-to-ground guided missiles; and even a handful of large caliber cannons with high damage but requiring more skill in their use.

In general, the controls are excellent. The game allows you to completely rebind every control that you can use, making it easy to set up most gamepads or flight sticks. And as mentioned before, this game is fast: Especially after upgrading them, every aircraft in the game feels extremely responsive; and the weapons all feel quite powerful, with the effects for hitting and destroying enemies sending small pieces of material scattering in all directions(though you never actually blast holes in them, sadly).

But the real rabbit hole with this game isn't the gameplay itself, as crazy as that sounds. No, we need to talk about mod support. If you've got the software and the know-how, you can create almost anything: new playable aircraft including support for custom aircraft stats, new weapons with custom models and abilities, entire new missions with their own environmental color palettes. They've got tons of stuff in the Workshop, and the possibilities are almost literally endless here. There are various crafts from various shmups, movies, other games, silly stuff like literal flying tanks, modern and historic real-life aircraft, you name it. If you're ever feeling nostalgic for the old Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games, they've got multiple Star Wars starfighters in there waiting for you. Or you could bring the squadrons of Ace Combat into this game with various skins and aircraft from that.

In all, Sky Rogue is an excellent air combat game, and anyone who likes arcade air combat must play this game at some point in their lives. I can't praise this game enough. 10 out of 10.

I know I'm going to sound a bit hyperbolic when I say this, but I honestly feel like this is pretty much the best arcade racer released in the last ten years.

Okay, let me take a step back and explain. Hotshot Racing is clearly descended from the old Sega arcade cabinets of the 90s, mostly Virtua Racing in terms of aesthetics, but you could argue at least some Daytona USA influence and even some Ridge Racer.

The controls are mostly alright; however, as an XBox controller player, I wish they'd move the gear shift buttons from the bumpers to the face buttons. That minor issue aside, the game controls very well, with all of the vehicles feeling responsive and unique.

The track details are admittedly a bit sparse; but each track really does feel like its own locale, even when most of them overlap with other circuits. The sense of speed is also there: I'm an F-Zero GX veteran, and I'll tell you that tackling the "Drive or Explode" mode can get extremely intense if you run it on a higher difficulty and/or for greater numbers of laps.

There is a pretty decent amount of car customization on offer here; however, despite things like spoilers and engine blowers being able to be added or changed around, none of these customizations actually effect performance, which is a bit of a lost opportunity here. If you've played Xenon Racer, you'll remember how important car customization was in that game for being able to beat your opponents; Hotshot doesn't have any performance altering effects available.

The only other complaint I'd have would be the soundtrack. I know the aesthetic they're going for, and the music fits with that aesthetic; it just doesn't suit my style, but then my style of racing music is basically F-Zero X[vid.puffyan.us] or Jet Moto[vid.puffyan.us], so take what I say with a grain of salt.

For the record, I nominated this game in the 2020 Steam Awards for "Outstanding Visual Style", because it was nice having a game with a clean and bright aesthetic like this. The cars all look great, if slightly blocky, and the myriad number of color palettes and skin combinations allow you to make your ride really stand out. In general, this is a fast, fun, simple arcade racer that goes back to basics and does it right. I give Hotshot Racing a 9 out of 10.