Recent reviews by Elgo!

Great story mod, sad that it ends so fast

If you don't want to read you can watch the video review which basically says the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_DHc9MYzoY

This War of Mine is a Survival/Resource Management game inspired in the Bosnian War, that focus on the civilian side of the struggle, a great and fresh premise for a game.

The game takes place in a Eastern European country amidst a civil war between the government supported soldiers and a rebel faction called the Vyseni liberation uprising. Our characters (which we can chose from a different bunch) are caught in the middle just like everyone else that didn't manage to flee the country. The job of the player is to make sure that his characters are taken care of until an halt is put to this situation.

The game is divided in two phases, the morning phase that takes place in the shelter, which is the only phase where you can control all your characters. In the shelter you can craft items, make improvements, feed your characters, take care of their medical needs, brew moonshine among other things. Every now and again an event will happen, either someone wanting to barter, or anyone needing your help where you can decide to help or not. These events are very interesting since they have different rewards for different outcomes and the fact that most of the times your choices will be made based on the amount of resources you have or not, bring out your survival instincts which will probably bother you sometimes, but then again that is great for such a scenario.

The second phase takes place during the night where you gotta decide which of your characters will guard the shelter, which character get to sleep and (and this is my first issue with the game) which single character will you take to scavenge, and yes unfortunately you heard right, you can only go scavenge with one character, which means less resources, and also means no backup in case of a bad situation, might be for balancing reasons, yet feels like it could be way better.
During these scavenges you can be faced with different struggles, like the lack of equipment to reach the place you want, some encounters that are interesting like saving the girl at the supermarket and risk getting killed or just turn a blind eye, you can also find random military searches or thugs which can turn your life into hell, since one day without loot might mean a exponentially difficult task to keep everyone healthy.

Into the mechanics, the one I enjoyed the most was the noise circle, really makes stealth scavenging feel like its in your control and at the same time fun and nerve-wrecking really well accomplished. A mechanic I didn't enjoy as much was the combat, even though it looked really cool sometimes like melee attack into shotgun shot, more often than not it felt clunky and really unresponsive, sometimes when i was in close range, the game struggled to understand if i wanted to shoot my shotgun or to melee attack, since it doesn't allow me to pick ranged weapon only, and that was really bothersome. Maybe a turn-based combat would turn out better.

In the arts department the aesthetics of the game looked lovely with that sketchy background and the great 2D models. The soundtrack, although limited, helped set the mood really well.

I found this game to be a breath of fresh air, but I still feel like it could be so much more, although there are a considerable number of events their number isn't that great per playthrough, after day 20 I had so many resources that every scavenge run was only for exploring purposes and to try to trigger events. I also expected that places disappeared after X days to give room to other locations so there could be more stuff per playthrough or that NPC's looted places as well so we'd have to make more decisions regarding where to go first according to what items we needed the most, unfortunately that wasn't the case.

Overall it is a solid experience and I'd love to play more games like this, however after having a successful start the game can really start to drag, and that's not what you want for a game that takes 10 hours to finish.

+ Addictive game;
+ Great setup;
+ Amazing Atmosphere;

- Clunky Mechanics;
- Lack of more events per playthrough.

78% cool game!

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Great learning tool!

If you don't want to read you can watch the video review which basically says the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7owdm5BJ4Y

Bastion is a hack n' slash role playing game, however this game has some really interesting aspects that contrast from other games inside the same genre.

You play as "The Kid" someone that just woke up in the middle of a catastrophe that neither the player nor the character know anything about, however we can count on the strong presence of the Narrator to enlighten us during our adventure.

I want my first point on this review to be exactly about the Narrator, something that really standed out from any game I've ever played. We are used to games which story develops over time with strong interactions between characters, or with the environment however in Bastion, every interaction is very subtle, and that's where the Narrator comes in, as someone telling and unfolding a story and interacting as much with the main character as with the player himself which is awesome. And the developers really hit gold here, since first of all the voice fits perfectly on the western theme that surrounds the game, and at the same time the voice acting is also amazing, since you can feel every emotion which helps create a certain empathy with this being, and that's something fundamental in this story.

Since we're talking about voices and sounds let's jump to the soundtrack, which after the Narrator is the best aspect of the game, since it manages to develop and transform according to the story which is phenomenal. You'll understand what i mean since it's quite rare to hear a soundtrack which contain tracks with lyrics, and even though I think that including something like that is risky since it could break the atmosphere of the game, it does exactly the opposite and traps you even more on this brilliant story.

Now onto the gameplay, this is up to you to decide if it is a good thing or not according to your standards but to me it felt like the combat and exploration is something secondary. Don't get me wrong, the combat is fun and this aspect of the game is very well developed with a big array of weaponry, abilities and upgrades. The developers even managed to make this part of the game more interesting with the fact that all the way to the last part of the game you unlock a new mechanic, however it didn't feel as good as the plot, which was what really kept me going.

The visuals are very interesting, the 2D visuals with the isometric camera really fitted into the style, nevertheless some models seemed quite odd, as an example the main character which on some drawings shows up as someone quite slim, when you look at the model you see someone quite bulky which doesn't make much sense. Same goes for Rucks which the model doesn't look that good either.

Something that also bugged me was the fact that you're being told a story and all of a sudden the game gives you the option to make a couple decisions on the final stage and to me it felt out of place, I think you should be either given more choices to make or none at all. Although i think I'll play this game again someday I can't justify playing the main storyline for 5 hours again just to make a diferent decision at the end and see an alternate ending, but if I had more choices throughout the game I could justify a second playthrough immediately after the first one.

Nonetheless I consider this game to be a master piece, the story is interesting, the length feels just right and the western/badass vibe throughout the game is an amazing experience.


+ Great story;
+ Fun mechanics;
+ Amazing Atmosphere;

- Some models are just ugly;
- Lack of more decisions.

92% cool game!

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If you don't want to read you can watch the video review which basically says the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ZRO6Lbnqc&nohtml5=False

Faster Than Light is a 2D roguelike game set in space, the roguelike genre has been crawling its way back into the spotlight, however it's not common to be set in such environment.

You're part of the Galactic Federation that assigned you critical information that you must deliver eight sectors away, to do so you're given a spaceship that you must upgrade and fill with crew... All this, while being chased by the Rebel force, nice setup.

Faster Than Light relies heavily in random generated encounters since every time you warp to a location, you have hundreds of possible encounters with multiple outcomes, however this outcomes are sometime random as well, since the answer you gave on one playthrough might not have the same outcome on the next one. Often enough you'll feel the game cheated on you and that the result wasn't fair, however this also makes the game alive and filled with high risk high reward situations.

The combat system is pretty straight forward, when your weapons are loaded you can fire, when your enemy has their weapons loaded they can fire back, however you can assign crew members to certain stations, for example to the shield station which will make the shields recharge faster or to the engine station that will help you dodge incoming fire. Even though encounters are important you also have to make decisions inside your ship by choosing your crew members which unlock special encounters solutions but also come with their pros and cons. You'll have a whole bunch to choose from the Humans, the Engi, the Mantis, the Rockmen, the Zoltan, the Slugs, The Crystal and finally the Lanius.

The art of this game really stands out mainly the soundtrack that is masterfully done setting the perfect atmosphere for a game that leaves you on the edge of your chair, you'll know what I'm talking about once everythings starts going wrong and your entire ship is set ablaze or when you find yourself drifting in space with no fuel, waiting for friend or foe to approach you with a helping hand or a loaded cannon.

However not everythings perfect, even though the game is filled with Quests and Encounters they somewhat lose their essence after some playthroughs when you start seeing them repeat too often with outcomes that you are now aware and can predict most of the time. Also the difficulty even on the easiest setting might be too hard for the casual gamers, which might put some people off the game after some tries.


+ Diferent Strategies and Aproaches
+ Great Variety of Items and Races
+ Amazing Soundtrack

- Encounters get repetitive after a while

88% Cool Game!

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If you don't want to read you can watch the video review which basically says the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLS_Oy7TzIo&nohtml5=False

Kingdom is a 2D side scrolling/strategy game this concept might sound farfetched however after starting to play you are able to see how it makes sense and how well it works together.

In this game you are a King or a Queen that just established a Kingdom and of course your objective is to make it prosper while protecting your crown from the enemies.
The game starts by holding your hand for a 30 seconds tutorial just to immediately after leave you to fend for yourself, In my opinion this is pretty cool since it's awesome to be able to try stuff while being amazed by the results.

Now onto the mechanics you have that pouch on the top left corner that you can fill with gold, gold that you can use to build and improve structures, to recruit citizens, to get buffs, and to get tools.

Now this next part might sound confusing, every time you recruit a citizen they'll walk to the center of your kingdom, while doing this journey the first tool they touch will become assigned to them, this might be hard to grasp at first, since it can give you a hard time to manage every villager job, I don't know if this was really intended by the game devs, or if it happened during development but it looks sloppy, but, just as much as it makes for a better game mechanic.

Every night your land will be attacked by the enemy, and every five nights the red moon arises and the enemy wave is even more deadly, the enemies can go from simple Greeds, called like that cause their objective is to steal as much as they can, to Floaters and Giants that are even more deadly.

Your main objective has to be to protect your crown since if you lose it, it's game over.

However you have offensive responsibilities just as much as you have defensive ones, since the end game objective is to destroy the 4 enemy portals, which might sound like fun but it's really not, since it makes the game dull and boring, the same steps every single time, attack, recruit more villagers, attack, recruit, and so on.

As you might have noticed by now the game aesthetics are just gorgeous, from the beautiful and fitting pixel art, to the water reflection that is just amazing, to the soundtrack that just makes for a great atmosphere, overall everything fits really well together.

Even after failing a couple of times before completing this game my total game time was 6 hours, which for a game with no replay value isn't that good, which makes the price of 10 bucks a little steeper since you can have games that will last you much longer with that same pricetag.

Summing it up:

+ Fresh Concept
+ Art
+ Fun first couple hours

- Repetitive
- No replay value for such short game
- Overpriced

70% Cool Game!

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