Game Reviews

Game Title: I Am Future: Cozy Apocalypse Survival Released: November 13, 2024 Game Length: 20 Hours Grade: A   Setting Story: You wake up from cryogenic sleep to find yourself on the top of a giant skyscraper without any of your memories. Water has covered the ground and most of the buildings around you. There's quite a number of rafts still floating around but not a living soul in sight. Nearby you find a fridge that begins talking to you the moment power is restored. He tells you that there are individuals who have survived this long on the planet by having their consciousness uploaded into a machine. What appears to be mutated vegetation has engulfed the inside of the building and through the cracks. Toxic plants shoot out worms during the night that seek out food before morphing into some form of weed. Nearby is a tower that controls a little drone that can be sent out to explore the landscape.  Gameplay: As this is a cozy game, you need not panic. There are safeguard...

Game Title: Everholm Released: November 11, 2024 Game Length: N/A Grade: C Development Early Access: For a lot of these games, there doesn't seem to be a point when a game is considered completely done when it officially releases. Waiting at least a year for all the bugs, optimizations, and controller support is usually the smart move. However, more and more games are pushing the envelope when they announce Version 1.0 with a lot of missing features. Even big games such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and Palia seem to offer exclusive content for playing the game from the beginning when it releases to the public. Release: Everholm is no different in this situation. The opening sequence of the game holds strong with a nice introduction to the story, a few tutorials that encourage you to explore, and a few time-gates so not to overwhelm you from the start. You are chasing after a lady, coincidentally receive amnesia, and have gone missing for a couple weeks. Your tools are returne...

Extra Coin: Extra Coin Released: October 8, 2024 Game Length: 8 Hours Grade: C   Setting Gameplay: If you chose to play this game blind, then you are going to be quite surprised with what the developers chose to be the main attraction. There are two loops that the game tries to push on you. A good loop encourages you to take some time off and relax. Depending on where you choose to go, a specific mini-game will be available where you must react to some button prompts to receive points. After completing one course, you will then be sent to a secondary duel loop where they hand you a giant blade to go do battle with another user. When you do challenge someone, you will be sent to a... tennis court? Not exactly. The only rule you have is to get the ball to touch your opponent's back wall. You can hit the ball as many times as you want and bounce it against the side walls. You don't have to worry about a net or trying to strike the ball in the air. Challenges are optional but ...

Game Title: Melatonin Released: December 15, 2022 Game Length: 3 Hours Grade: A- Gameplay Rhythm: The game is simple. You need to press the button at the appropriate time as the music progresses. Sometimes you press a button on or off the beat. Sometimes you hold the button. Then there are levels where you press the side buttons. The game is really tight when it comes to the timing of your press. The amount of points you earn depends on if you are perfect, late, early, or not at all. Bonus points are awarded for a stream of perfects. While the game does give you plenty of visual cues, there will be the occasional moment where you will need to rely on your hearing to respond. There are a number of settings you can change like how you can add a button prompt, a metronome, smooth out the time it takes to receive a perfect, or lower the penalty of not obtaining a perfect.  Levels: There are 4 levels for each night. There are over 20 songs total. You will have a chance to practice ...

Game Title: MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries Released: May 26, 2021 Game Length: 82 Hours Grade: B- Background History: Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries came out in 2002. For years, things were rather quiet until they came out with a trailer for a reboot . Then they released a surprise - Mechwarrior Online in 2012. For years, Piranha Games released one mech after another with some content that supported multiplayer. When they released the trailer for Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, I decided to go back in time and try Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries in 2016 . Unfortunately, the test of time was not good as the poor AI and bad objectives left me quickly wanting to stop playing. Mods could have salvaged the game, but my enthusiasm towards the genre was pretty flimsy at the time. Then Battletech released in 2018, and I played that game for approximately 60 hours. I enjoyed the game so much that I didn't even bother making notes for a proper review. Unfortunately, I did not buy any of the add-ons that ...

Game Title: My Time At Sandrock Released: November 2, 2023 Game Length: 160 Hours (seriously) Grade: A Updates Problems and Patches: Scattered about between the updates are a list of patches that fix a number of bugs and crashes. The developers were generally  on top of letting people know the known issues . Most of the focus was put on the finishing touches for the multiplayer after their announcement that it will have a completely different experience than the main campaign . To avoid spoilers, there were some additions and features made to the endgame as well. With a game this size, there is a chance you are going to run across a few of them. One obvious bug that took them awhile is removing the sand in the machine checks . The only blatant problem that prevented me from making any progress was when Cheery Conspiracy Quest didn't quite have all the objects move to their positions to complete the quest. What you are supposed to do isn't quite clear during Whisper of th...