Recent reviews by Voidspawn

I wondered if there'd be a John Wick reference, and guess what I saw ten minutes into the game. Jokes aside, this thing is brilliantly put together. It's a smart showcase of how developers can utilize UI cues, sound, and animation to shape the player's perception and create an emotionally charged experience. For a game that hardly uses any dialogue or text, it's remarkably articulate, and you always know exactly what it expects from you. The tutorial efficiently introduces the core mechanics, and once you've learned them, they remain consistent throughout; there isn't much depth to them. The minigames are cleverly designed without being sadistic. I also enjoyed the scenery and cutscene framing, they feel not only functional but also intentionally cinematic. There were only a couple of gameplay sequences where the camera would cut to a genuinely confusing angle. I also encountered some minor performance drops, probably caused by all that fur being rendered at once.

Anyway. I'm getting a dog after this.

Tomorrow comes.

This game deserves more recognition and a bigger community. The amount of love and effort put into it is truly remarkable. It refines the original game's formula and excels beyond its predecessor in many aspects. I know I enjoy the game when I find myself experimenting with every weapon and device available while attempting to beat the main campaign in questionable and unconventional ways, such as without using primary weapons or sticking to the default configuration of the starting ship.

Everspace 2 has accomplished a lot in terms of game design. From the narrative perspective, it introduces a diverse cast of new characters and personalities and builds a strong connection between them. It doesn't take long before you remember what life is like in DMZ and get immersed. The tutorial and the difficulty curve are cleverly designed to ensure the game will be both challenging for returning players and easy to learn for newcomers.

The whole first sector can be seen as a tutorial stage, revealing every new mechanic not present in the previous game in a very natural way and at a comfortable pace. The gameplay won't change much as you move between sectors, but the game will challenge your skills every time you master a new mechanic. Getting too comfortable with controlling your ship and soaring in the sky? Try to navigate through a narrow passage or fight in a fog cloud so thick you can barely see the enemies. Got a fancy overpowered ship? Prepare for underwater missions where your guns are disabled, and the high pressure is slowly killing you.

The gameplay revolves around arcade dogfighting and introduces a variety of tools and options at your disposal, allowing you to select an optimal playstyle, from raising a deadly swarm of drones to sniping your targets from afar one by one and teleporting away unscathed. Besides combat, there are a lot of side quests, location challenges, and random events. They are strictly optional, but Everspace 2 really encourages the player to walk an extra mile. You can stick to the main campaign and still have a great experience. It's just a matter of deciding if getting just what you need is enough when you could have discovered more.

The main storyline takes about 50 hours to complete and is very intense, featuring everything from epic spaceship battles to buddy cop movie episodes. It has room for adventure and exploration, as well as for quite sensitive topics like rogue AI and religious controversy.

Overall, the game is very consistent and has a lot of content to unpack. You can tell the developers care about their project, which shines through in every new patch. It is so refreshing to experience a polished game.

A surprisingly violent creature collector game. It features so many unconventional activities, it turns into a meme. I didn't expect I'd end up playing as a poacher and a slave trader, but here we are.

Apart from forcing adorable creatures and people into unpaid labor, there are many aspects of this game that every player can enjoy: base building, farming, exciting treasure hunting, and intense raids and boss fights. The learning curve is thoughtfully designed to ease players into the main gameplay loop without overwhelming them with complex mechanics, so they will always leave their base with a clear task in mind. The world feels consistent with regions smoothly transitioning into one another, and each region having a distinctive landmark or property that makes it unique. The gameplay area is not limited to the player's base plus a couple of fruitful locations for farming; exploration and free roaming are very rewarding, providing uncommon resources and refreshing encounters.

Every encountered creature possesses distinct traits and personality, prompting players to optimize their choices for character progress, taming and bonding with one Pal, only to replace it with a stronger version ten levels after and dispose of the one no longer needed. This game is both extremely fun and disturbing, and it sets high standards for early access releases.

This game is the Dark Souls version of OSU. The gameplay is super catchy, and I don't even like rhythm games. Using the beat drivers for main menu navigation is a neat feature, as it serves both for tutorial and warm-up purposes, but it kinda gets in the way once you've mastered the basics and are tackling the higher levels. Having to click through extra stuff just to resume playing gets old extremely quick, but it's a small price to pay for the experience.

I would recommend this game to any person involved in the game logic development in whatever way. It shows the basic principles of AI logic execution without causing excessive cognitive overload, but what is most important, it puts a giant smile on your face with an overwhelming feeling of accomplishing a task.

Cholera Squad is about 10-20 hours of dull, unpleasant experience. In this world, XCOM won and you now fight re-used enemy assets and game-breaking bugs using a bunch of pre-generated characters. I expected nothing and I’m still let down. This new thematic entry carries all the drawbacks of XCOM 2 while adding a lot of original ones to boot.

The main USP here is the breach mechanic where you select from the number of pre-determined entry points for attack. This addition that should supposedly expand on the game’s tactical potential. Taking on an enemy on your own terms: pretty good, right?

Not even close. Choosing an entry point gives you bonuses and penalties to units going through it. At the start of the turn a character is very likely to activate with some HP missing or their gun disabled. Close quarters fighting got mixed with claustrophobic camera angles from the previous title. The satisfying turn-based action is botched by the fact that a unit’s seemingly good positioning does not guarantee high to-hit chances.

The new Timeline system is a great tool if you are a tactician, a minmaxer, or anything in between. It makes close quarters battles fresher and more intense. On the other hand, enemies get high base stats, and characters’ shooting animations are long. The operations’ length overstates its welcome.

The issues Chimera Squad solves are strictly business specific. It’s all well and good, but it is not a pleasant game to play. But hey, fans will eat it up, and workshop community will make it playable.