Recent reviews by Flipz

There are genuinely enjoyable bones beneath the surface of Heat Signature, but unintuitive controls, atrocious UI scaling, and an inability to zoom in enough on larger displays ruin what could have otherwise been a fun few hours. The poor accessibility issues are doubly unfortunate, as the dialogue and item descriptions clearly demonstrate the same wit and charm I enjoyed so much in the developer's prior game Gunpoint.

Cities: Skylines is THE city-builder sim, having utterly dominated its competition by being simultaneously simple to start but also infinitely deep. If there is an aspect of urban planning and design you're interested in in real life, chances are Cities has at least some representation of it, and it's probably incredibly fun to play around with and explore. Additionally, the seemingly endless support given to the game both by the developers (through free content patches and paid DLC) and by the mod-making community ensures that the game will remain fresh and relevant for years to come.

The game does have a few notable flaws; tutorials and tooltips are helpful in explaining what various buildings and tools are, but not really how to use them effectively. Progression can be illogical and unintuitive, particularly without some of the DLC packs to smooth over the rough edges. Traffic remains an incredibly unresponsive problem to try to manage without the help of mods like Traffic Manager: Presidential Edition, even after seven years on the market. Most noticeably, the game is still a massive resource hog that will require fine-tuning in the settings on older hardware.

However, the game's community has worked tirelessly to provide support and solutions to most, if not all, of the game's flaws; if you're on the fence about buying this game, chances are someone on YouTube has already addressed your concerns and has a solution for you. No game is perfect, but Cities: Skylines is a rare game that continually attempts to address its own shortcomings, and for that I both commend and recommend it.

Been a while since I've posted a review, so please bear with me.

Earlier this year (2016), I saw this game rocket up out of nowhere to massive popularity, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. Nearly a hundred hours later, I've found the answer: Stardew Valley just feels good to play.

Fair warning: there is no "goal" to Stardew Valley; sure, the game goes out of its way to point out features like the Community Center, Museum, and marriage candidates and gently suggests you explore all three, but at the end of the day everything happens at your own pace, with only the limits of the in-game days and seasons pushing you forward. If you want to just be a stay-at-home hermit and have nothing to do with the townsfolk aside from the occasional trip to the General Store for seeds for your farm, you can do that; conversely, if you want to just leave the farm to rot and spend your days fishing, foraging, and exploring the mines, you can do that too. No matter how you decide to spend each ~15 minute day, every single action is charmingly satisfying to perform, from the surprisingly nuanced pixel animations to the pitch-perfect sounds and score. Fun, too, are the mechanics; while you'll often find yourself short of energy early on (using tools of any kind other than the scythe or weapons will drain a bit of energy based on your skill with that specific kind of tool), as you keep playing you'll find that between your improved skills, your increased energy supply, and the various foods you find, grow, and eventually cook around the valley, energy will slowly become a concern of the past, and the rate at which the game opens itself up to you is pretty much perfect for a first-time exploration.

Now, most games would require a summary of the plot, but Stardew Valley is not most games. Unlike even the Harvest Moon games upon which it is based, the "plot" of Stardew Valley is almost completely what you make of it; while there are events and questlines scattered about, these are all either completed within the first fortnight of in-game days or else completable in any order desired. The game (and to a lesser extent, the in-game Stardew Valley) is truly a sandbox for your own exploration and experimentation, and while there are indeed certain ideal methods of, say, making large profits (i.e. the now-infamous "blueberries in Summer, cranberries in Fall" advice given to most newcomers), the game is really just about the experience of living life in the valley, so even if it takes you a few in-game years to farm all the crops or build all the buildings or finish the museum or even get married, it doesn't really matter, since it's the experience that makes it worthwhile.

Before we wrap up, let's go over a few quick notes of caution. Firstly, while a lot of people compare this game to Animal Crossing (mostly due to a similar tone and an emphasis on relationships with the townspeople), Stardew Valley is nothing like the AC series mechanically; villagers and town layout are completely preset, time passes at an EXTREMELY accelerated rate, and most importantly Stardew Valley is built for bingeing (as opposed to the AC series' emphasis on playing for a couple hours and then putting the game away until the next day). Second, there are a lot of mechanics that go unexplained (for example, nowhere is it mentioned in-game that using your pickaxe on tilled soil will revert it to an un-tilled state); while the in-game TV shows will explain a lot of the more minute mechanics, you're going to have to visit the wiki sooner or later to look up at least some strange situations. Lastly, as mentioned earlier, this game is built for bingeing; you WILL get hooked within the first couple hours, and you WILL look up after "just ten more minutes" and realize that it's 5:47 AM and you're supposed to get up for your weekly Pathfinder session in less than five hours (true story). Just accept the inevitable and save your first sessions for days when you know you can sleep in (or through) the next day. ;-)

Drawbacks aside, this is an incredibly engaging indie game with solid design and addictive gameplay that will leave you coming back for more again and again and again--not to mention an incredibly talented and dedicated developer who's consistently active in the community and constantly working on bug fixes and new updates. You want Stardew Valley in your library--it's worth far more than the US$14.99 it normally costs, and the usual sale price of $9.99 makes it an even sweeter deal.

Dungeon Defenders. While the name may be remniscent of the classic tabletop fantasy RPG many of us know and love, Dungeon Defenders offers an entirely different world and a completely unique game experience.

A hybrid between tower defense and action RPG, Dungeon Defenders places you in the role of one of four young warriors left home alone while the Heroes of the Realm are away in battle. When a mishap threatens to unleash the diabolical Old Ones from their imprisonment within the Eternia Crystals, however, it's up to you to devend the Eternia Crystals and save the world from a new age of darkness!

The gameplay of Dungeon Defenders is deceptively simple: find choke points you can use to defend the Eternia Crystals, build your towers in the Build Phase, and fight alongside and manage those towers during the Combat Phase. But the simplicity of this system belies its incredible depth. The real strategy of the game comes from upgrading your characters and equipment, allowing you to tackle increasingly-difficult challenges and difficulty levels, all the way up to the dreaded Nightmare Hardcore mode.

While the content included in the base game is great, it pales in comparison to the array of incredible DLC available for the game. The opposite-gendered Heroes offer speed boosts and different abilities compared to the original four, the Barbarian allows for incredible DPS-oriented gameplay, the Series EV offers a number of variable-cost beams to buff and protect your towers, the Summoner brings forth minions and can even transform his play experience into a full-time RTS, and the Jester can move towers, run and upgrade speedily, deal incredible damage, and (with luck) control the battlefield with her Wheel of Fortuna skill, a true jack of all trades. Each of these heroes comes with their own map that highlights their skills while offering new and innovative gameplay mechanics. However, the ultimate challenge comes in the Quest for the Lost Eternia Shards DLC, which not only includes an entirely new campaign with even more difficult enemies, but also unlocks the aforementioned Nightmare and Hardcore options for all of the game's levels.

Still not enough for you? Each level, once completed, offers Pure Strategy and Survival modes, where you can pit your tower-building skills against increasingly-difficult waves of enemies for increasingly powerful rewards, as well as a number of special Challenges that range from holiday celebrations to complete inversions of the core gameplay experience. There are literally hundreds of hours of content available in Dungeon Defenders, and the experience is worth every one of them.

The game does have its problems. The menus can be rather clunky, the Eternia Shards maps are an incredible difficulty spike from the campaign levels even on the easier difficulties, and the loot dropping mechanics are a little obtuse. Additionally, while they don't overshadow the original characters, the DLC hero classes tend to be a requirement rather than an option on some of the more difficult maps, and the DLC map packs tend to drop better reward loot than the originals. Still, the problems don't really get in the way of the fun, and the developers at Trendy Entertainment are always responsive to feedback.

On that note, I'd like to point out that Trendy Entertainment (the people who make the game) are incredibly open and helpful, and always willing to help people out in a pinch. These are some of the most hardworking game developers I've seen, and they engage with the Dungeon Defenders community on an almost unprecedented level--even rivaling Mojang of Minecraft fame. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to visit the Dungeon Defenders forums, which, in addition to offering numerous helpful guides and trading opportunities for the game, also serve as home to the Trendy blog, which provides and open window into the development of Dungeon Defenders, as well as into their current developments of Dungeon Defenders' upcoming sequel. This is a studio incredibly devoted to their art, and they have a bright future ahead of them. :)