Recent reviews by Freker

It's hilarious and it's one of Xbox One's best, underrated exclusives. I actually bought an Xbox One so I could play this game. This is the sandbox game that Insomniac made before they went into Spiderman, the only games near this would had been the large open hub worlds of Ratchet and Clank.

Sunset Overdrive is basically the Americana equivalent of Jet Set Radio. Think Dead Rising meets Crackdown, but just the open world and all designed for you to hop around and grind everywhere. At it's heart, it's a third person shooter with grinding and wall running. It's barmy, it's mad, it's full of attitude. The script revels in not taking itself seriously and breaking the fourth wall as much as possible, it's just fun. The Apocalypse is here and everything is just anarchic and fun to the max!

You do missions for several groups who have frankly, found their own ways to cope with the madness that happened around them one night involving an experimental energy drink which mutated nearly everyone that drank it into zombified monsters. You have all kind of customising options from your character to enhancing Amp abilities and Badges which are rewarded by Amp Cooking, tower defence style challenges, XP and Badges earned from style by grinding so long, jumping on so many things, killing so many enemies, a kind of sub Achievement system that rewards you for playing the game madly as possible.

I mean, we're talking a game where you bounce on cars, shooting vinyls or explosive teddy bears at monsters and violent gang members whilst grinding along powerlines collecting neon signs, sneakers, balloons and toilet roll, trading weapons with energy drink, dressed how ever you want to a Crazy Taxi like punk rock soundtrack. It's a great follow up after playing Saints Row 4. It's mad and it's name is perfect, that's Sunset Overdrive and it might be one of Insomniacs most original, funny and best, oozing with style.

This PC release also comes with all pre-released Xbox One DLC which had a few mission expansion packs.

There's been a lot of copies since, but this is one of the first rogue-like first person shooters, after this one, the rogue-first person shooter became a genre in itself with games like Heavy Bullets, Ziggurat, Paranautical Activity, Immortal Redneck and of course this game's spiritual sequel Mothergunship. But there's no reason to ignore what I'd consider the original, even after playing Mothergunship, because this game is just so damn wacky and just to add, this was WAY before Enter the Gungeon came up with a roguelike where you were surrounded by anthromorphised guns and turrets.

This game pretty much plays like Quake and Doom and is set in it's namesake, A Tower of Guns. there are multiple storylines and surreal exchanges with unseen characters narrating the story of exactly why, the you are in a tower of guns and none of them matter. Each room you go into, there are loads of various type of guns, turrets drones or projectiles out to get you like a Super Mario gunship nightmare. At the start of each run, you pick ONE GUN and stick with it, you have a health bar which can be refilled with red health pickups can be extended during your run with special pick ups, you have blue pickups which can enhance the power and level of damage with your gun, get damaged too much and the power level goes down as your health does too. Yellow pickups are for your special once you pick one up. Learning what the specials can do can be quite fun as none of them explain whatsoever what their effect are until you use them, they also have ridiculous names which are honestly, most of the time over complicated or nondescript. So it's a learning process but one of those mods or pickups could just save your life.

As a roguelike, most of the levels are a collection of reoccuring layouts with ever so slight changes. The environments are colourful, cartoony and wacky, like an evil lair in a saturday morning cartoon. The music is charming and weird, threatening when it needs to be. The bosses are machines with various weakpoints before they attack you from all sides in a tiny arena. The higher level your weapon is, the more chance you're going to get out of that room alive and with a decent amount of health, up an elevator and to the next themed level with you. Repeat until you destroy the last boss.

Do not slaughter the Hugbots.

What a brilliant remaster!

Although the DAH! series never reached PC originally, this remaster of Pandemic's tongue in cheek B-movie inspired sandbox game from nearly 3 console generations back really feels at home. Sure, lots of games have had jetpacks, telekinesis since, but this is one of the originals along with Psi-OPS to perfect telekinesis in third person console games.
For anybody who hasn't played before, imagine a scaled back superpower sandbox game, with elements of stealth draped in satirical comedy, the game soon slips into third person shooter territory with near endless spawns of enemies to kill to keep you busy and completing your main mission task. By playing, you will want to destroy all humans, because the more DNA you collect from dead humans by popping their skulls in grotesque but cartoony fashion, enables you to upgrade Cyrpto and his saucer after missions, the more ease and tools you can swat the flies known as the human race's armed forces and the manipulative Men in Brown with.
Looking mighty forward if THQ choose to get Black Forest Games to remaster DAH!2 too. it's been great to play as an alien which hilariously has a voice like Jack Nickelson, vapourising, disintegrating, electrocuting and anal probing the populace Mars Attacks! style once more.

Great!

This was just what I needed from seeing the finale of Legendary Defender Voltron's Finale on Netflix, set seasons prior, a time where the Paladins had just started to get to grips with the Lions and before the change in pilots with good and evil with no morally grey area.
It's a great interactive piece of VR which plays out like an episode of Voltron with all sorts of different tasks, puzzles, minigames and controls playing as Lance most pf the experience. It feels like you are in the Blue Lion and piloting it, although most of the actual 'piloting' is done automatically on rails, it is an exillarating experience for those curious what a battle and chase with enemy cruisers feels like in first person. The dialogue is typical Voltron humour and it's great to see the Paladins bounce off each other with jokey comments. A lot of the controls are self-explanitory, but the ending scene doesn't make it clear that you can steer by moving the controllers up and down to dodge whilst firing.

My only issues is that I would had loved to play as the other Paladins such as Shiro and Pidge. On reflection, I'm not sure what Keith and Hunk would had done. Althrough there is a really cool VR version of the Voltron transformation sequence, you don't actually get to pilot Voltron, just the lions. But you can at least get a sense of scale witnessing Voltron in front of you. It clocks in at about a enjoyable and too short 20 minute experience unable to skip cinematics and the ones with Zarkon are the ones which just seem to last forever...but it's nice being a fly on the wall.

Overall, one to pick up on the cheap and although the story is set early in the series and probably canon, not essential to the viewing of the show. One for the kids and like me, the unashamed grown up fans.

A bite sized old school PS2 action adventure

This game is essentially the best bits of PS2 era platforming in the vein of Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank. The game mechanics are quite simply jumping and spinning moves like Crash and punching like Jak. There are crystal shards in breakable boxes and spread around the world and these act as currency to save captured creatures in the game (a bit like classic Rayman), the shards also act as health boosters once you collect a certain amount in succession, save enough of the creatures and you can upgrade your health by one heart. There are several types of enemies which can mainly be defeated with your 3 attack moves, the punch, spin and the slam dive.

The cartoonish world the game is set in mostly emulates the art design and humour seen in the Ratchet and Clank and the island design of Jak and Daxter series. The story is told with very simple cinematics which are more of a series of concept art quality animatics, probably due to budget, but it does tell the story and some of the characters dialogue, especially the bad guy CRT, is very funny. CRT heckles you very much in the way that Handsome Jack heckles your progress in Borderlands 2 and this honestly works for what is eseentially a kids game and I don't know why nobody has done this any sooner.

Much like the PS2 era games I mentioned above, Skylar does gain a few additional gadgets throughout the levels and spoiling what they are would spoil how to use them, but I will vaguely describe them. A grappling hook, A jetpack (like Clank on Ratchet), an ability to mess with time and timelines (much like Jak 3 and Ratchet and Clank A Crack in Time) and a magnetic field. The levels are brilliantly designed taking you to all parts of the level seen in the distance with creatures to free and additional boxes of shards on the way as secrets in nooks and crannys of the levels, there are moments where the game will slow the pace and challenge you with a puzzle but nothing too taxing. The game is set out with a very simple hub world and on each level a computer can teleport you to whaever section of the island you want, provided it has been unlocked. The later level design echoes the original Jak and Daxter, with ancient ruins and strange devices left by old races and the typical messy, industrial area built by the bad guys.

The game is by no means original and IS short; It took me all but 3 hours in two sittings with the total of probably 4 levels each with 2 sub sections. The game has PS3 HD quality graphics, but nothing special in fluidiity and animation, but it's a great throwback to those 2000 games of old where gaming was simplier and it made me laugh quite a bit in a Saturday morning cartoon way.

Recommended as a quick fix for anyone that wants more Jak and Daxter with a slight flavour of Ratchet in places.

I am somewhat a glutton for First Person Shooter Roguelikes since they appeared on Steam with the likes of Tower of Guns, Fancy Skulls, Ziggurat, Edlrich, Paranautical Activity, Rogue Shooter, Heavy Bullets and Devil Daggers, Strafe is simply added onto this list and to date, I still haven't passed the penultimate zone.

How Strafe differs from the previosuly mentioned games is the selection of one core weapon and picking up secondary weapons with limited ammo through the levels, your primary weapon can be upgraded at certain vending machines which can sometime help or hinder your progress when it comes to either close combat or far combat. You start a level with basic health and are tasked to navigate the level whilst killing all the enemies running up to you.
This IS a corridor shooter and walking backwards and obviously, strafing is part of the gameplay like Quake. Throughout the levels you are encouraged to collect scrap, from either chests or dead enemies and credits for later use. The scrap can be used at workbenches found in levels to buy either ammo for your primary weapon or energy for your shield, you can also revert your primary weapon to without the upgrades and gets some credits in return. Health is only found in ration stations which dwindle in number of blocks as the levels go on. You WILL sometimes be relying on your shield as you run around with 5% health trying to avoid acid projectiles.

At each of the second levels in each zone, you will find a merchant wherre you can spend your credits or sell your scrap for credits to buy powerups which affect the rest of your game, such as when reloading, sending out a pulse of energy killing nearby enemies, a drone that shoots when you shoot, gain 1% health everytime you kill an enemy, boost boots, acid protection or teleporter parts to fix teleporters spread throughout levels to warp to later zone.

Later elevels involve collecting keycards, 'ID of crew members', detonating caved in caverns or collecting reactor parts to get through the next door.

Each foe in Strafe has a different strategy to deal with them, some are mindless following the sound of your shots, some dart across the levels like a ninja firing bullets and some attempt to leap and charge into you, some spray acid which you can 'paint over' with enemies blood to make ihe floor safe again. Enemy closets will suddenly open behind walls when you retrace your steps and watch out for secrets switches.

A great throw back with some original roguelike elements, now I just need to finish that last zone...

Become a Badass Ninja-Assassin

This is a pretty cool game in really early stages reminiscent of the the quick violence weapon grabbing of the Madness Combat Interactive game, the stealth and use of gadgets of Tenchu amd the kind of level design of Hotline Miami, but rendered in 3D, with the low-fi visual look of Superhot. I know that's an awful lot of games to take from, but it works.

First of all, don't dive in the game like I did without the tutorial. The tutorial is reccomended to act like a true baddass ninja-assassin, you can wallrun, wall jump and use a grappling hook, lay down traps for enemies to walk into or activate. In this game you can slice enemies in one swoop, stealthily slice their neck from behind them and throw your sword as a melee ala Hotline Miami and the ability to pick up guns whcih can be used in ironsights from slayed enemies with the remaining bullets left in the clip. not to mention the use of a quick gadget weapon wheel.

The combat in the game can be crouching, sneaking or sprinting up to enemies gung ho whilst parrying sword strakes and deflecting bullets, how you tackle the level is entirely up to you. Make use of wallrunning and leaping to platforms at the end. This makes you feel like a true badass Ninja-Assassin. A great little time waster for that bout of wanted visceral, sneaky violence.

There are only a handful of levels and a survival mode which can be turned on for each, but each playthrough will be something different depending how you tackle taking out the guards.

For this game to be in alpha and so stylish and addictive already is nothing short of amazing, especially for a one man project, I simply can't wait for the game to be updated over time.

Incredible. The gameplay behond Deadcore is essentially a first person platform game which just so happens to have a gun to activate things. The game challanges you to climb a large mechanical tower made of levitating blocks higher and higher with checkpoints along the way. Sometimes it seems incredible how high one level can go.
The way you get around in Deadcore is by jumping platform to platform, using jump pads, stragetically whilst activating markings on some of the surrounding blocks, whilst dodging red lazers, autoturrets and floating security droids shaped as blocks or orbs which try to knock you off or into lazers in various ways. timing is important.

Throughout the early levels you get introduced to different abilities to climb this monstrous tower of jumping puzzles, turrets and lazers. A double jump at first, a boost which you can use twice before recharging, or hold down for a powerful boost forward and finally a kind of boost orb which when used properly can help propel you in the air after a double jump. However the gun you carry around is more like a tool and you can only fire 30 times, until you get a checkpoint where the gun refils with shots. This can be specially annoying when defending yourself from drones as you try to figure something out, only to reach where you wanted to go and find a marking to activate, with no point but to kill yourself and try again and learn through trial and error.
Just as you get used to the rhythm of shooting markings to activate jump pads at the exact moment, barely fit through lazers like the Japanese game show concept 'Hole in the Wall', then the game literally turns itself upside down with transparent markings on to of blocks which temporaliy affect your gravity in that purple highlighted area and that's where it gets a bit like Portal, getting completely misco-ordinated whilst climbing a tower upwards, suddenly realising what direction you are facing in mid air and quickly making a landing whilst some floating drones are trying to send a pulse wave so you can get incinerated by a nearby patch of red lazer.

Utterly brilliant and taxing, like my earlier reviewed 'A Story About My Uncle' but instead relies on perfectly timed jumps and a repetition and rhythm as you jump pad to pad and activate marking by marking. It's more like a physical training course and the reward of getting to a checkpoint where you can auto save your progress (and go back to the real world) is so satisfying, but it's so easy to fall into a trance doing each action at the right time and each move at the right measurement and you will swear a lot.

Minimal, mysterious, thrilling and very rewarding.

This game is just brilliant for anyone that likes first person puzzlers such as Portal, QUBE and Quantum Conundrum. The diffeence with this game is the main focus of a narrarive told in the first person with the games events being told as a story to the protaganist's daughter. It's a wonderful little tale about a boy looking for his eccentric, adventurous, ingenious, inventing Uncle whom has been gone sometime from his workshop/laboratory, Upon steeping into his lab, the boy finds a suit just like his Uncle's exploring suit and accidentally sends himself to where his Uncle has been during his disappearance.

The gameplay is mainly first person twitch platforming, using precisely timed jumps and the use of an grappling hook ray fired from your suits glove, level by level, various ways of traversing are introduced such as a charged jump and a rocket boost. The game becomes almost rhythmical with it's perfect timing of using each ability clinking onto rock to rock and reaching platform to platform.

The story is a sweet, otherworldly little tale about the boy's adventures in living up to his Uncle in trying to find and/or rescue him, meeting characters along the way. Halfway through, the story goes through a 'buddy aventure' kind of phase, but then lets the boy fend for himself.

You'll get about 5 hours out of the game and some occasional frustrating parts with checkpoints about 3 platforms ago, but the whole art and sound design is beautiful, the levels have such a sense of scale with perfect draw distance teasing you what puzzle is next. It really does feel like you just sat through a whimsical little tale about a boy's enchanted adventure in uncharted territory using his Uncles inventions.

Innovation at it's best. A prime example of next gen gaming not available on Xbox One or PS4 and unlikely to be seen due to it's complexity of handling physics on the fly and state of the art collision detection.

The next best thing to PS3's Pain on the PC, plus, did you know you play as a goat?

Workshop is going to make this game massive.