Recent reviews by Rex Bellator

Games like Hell Divers 2 are all the evidence you need that finicky Gamers™, who spend their days lamenting "Games as a Service" and freemium microtransactions, will eat a bucket of excrement as long as you wrap said bucket in memes and internet subculture.

Hell Divers 2 is that bucket of excrement. It is sloppy and lazily designed game disguised as a chaotic hardcore shooter that's not quite arcadey but not quite MilSim but with elements of both.

The problems with HD2 is that it is a 20 dollar game with 10 dollars worth of content being sold for twice as much as it's worth. Missions are simple and repetitive. The developers idea of balance is to throw anything and everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Balance in the game is nigh non-existent and evidence of the developers' amateurish incompetence. They have actively gone out of their to make the default stock of weapons feel utterly useless while waylaying you with a constant deluge of enemies.

Better weapons are paywalled behind "warbonds" which is their version of a battle pass which you can unlock with real money or grind out for hours and hours for super credits, the freemium currency. The incendiary breaker alone can mow down whole hordes of enemies with minimal effort.

None of this is evident until you've put 10-20 hours into the game. Once you advanced to the harder difficulty levels the cracks in this game begin to show. Most deployable weapons and orbital bombardments/airstrikes (called strategems) become useless as relentless hordes of enemies meaning only the strongest ones are good against the non-stop spawning of tough enemies like chargers and bile titans, enemies that absolutely require rail strikes or hellbomb airstrikes. Anything else is just a recipe for a loss and repeated respawns.

Long story short Hell Divers 2 starts off as a fun homage to movies like Aliens and Starship Troopers, but once you get into difficulties above Hard the game's balance and fun fall apart. The lower difficulties are too easy and boring for continued play and there just isn't enough content here to justify this game's 40 dollar pricetag.

This game was gifted to me by a friend and I still feel ripped off. If you value your time and money avoid this game until the developers finish their game development college courses and add more content and balance to the game.

Capitalism in SPAAAAAAAACE!

Whoa - I can't believe I slept on this underrated gem!

I picked this up a few years ago, dabbled in it, then put it down only to pick it up again. A card-based strategy game where you try to build stockpiles while managing a web of different survivor or utility cards with differing - and often, complementary - abilities. However drawing from the pile risks bringing zombies back to your base or triggering a series of bad events that you need to manage.

The flow of the game mimics the drama and plot tropes of zombie apocalypse movies and TV shows, including sacrificing some characters for the sake of averting disaster or achieving victory.

I've been enjoying it quite a bit and despite its subject matter is both relaxing and stimulating.

Demonologist is to Phasmophobia what an Asylum film is to a A24 movie. Demonologist is a bit more colorful, sillier, game-ier, its instruments look like something out of campy horror movie, but in the end, Demonologist nails the experience of spooky ghost hunting better than any ghost hunting game I've tried to date.

Unlike Phasmophobia's sloppy and erratic design, Demonologist doesn't compromise its fun to screw over players in the guise of "difficulty" which is not to say 'Demon' is easy, but it's far better designed as a game.

Level design is definitely its strongest suit, but it also has tons of options that Phasmo hasn't even bothered with, such as character customization, customizable and upgradable player HQs, and tons of interactive little elements both in the HQ and the haunted locations. Also it has better optional objectives like exorcising the ghost for bonus cash.

Negatives right now are some weird wording for missions, probably a translation issue, and some maps are more repetitive than others. But this game continues to give me a good fright from time to time and have fun doing it, unlike Phasmo's snoozefest.

If horniness could be harnessed for energy the amount of horny energy from the community posting big tiddy anime waifu wallpapers could solve our reliance on fossil fuels and reverse man-made climate change.

Air burst a nuke and crashed my game. 11/10 would nuke again.

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If loving cans is wrong I don't want to be Sprite™

Before this game I was just your average white American gamer.

Now I smoke two packsa day and speaka like dis 🤌

11/10 would spagett again.

Pentiment isn't a game. It's a masterpiece.

I started playing Pentiment early on a frigid Christmas Eve with the intention of playing it for a couple of hours and became so engrossed I played it for 11 hours straight. I could not bring myself to stop. It's now daylight outside.

Everything from the presentation, artwork, story, characters, dialogue, and the soundtrack are so polished, so honed to narrative perfection, that you forget you're playing a game. Instead it feels like you're taking part in an interactive stage play / murder mystery co-written by Umberto Eco and Henrik Ibsen.

Graphically the game is gorgeous and told through lush, beautifully animated scenes inspired by the artwork in medieval illuminated manuscripts. However, unlike Terry Gilliam's cutouts in Monty Python's Holy Grail, Pentiment's characters are given high quality animations that avoids feeling 'cartoony'. Character design in particular is excellent, telegraphing information about characters at a glance, yet despite no spoken dialogue in the game they emote their feelings naturally. By the end of the game you will find yourself caring for a lot of Pentiment's characters.

Pentiment's story is about solving a murder but at its heart is a deeply human story about the clash between past and present, progress and tradition, faith and science, power and politics, and uncomfortable truths and necessary lies. Throughout the game you'll be tasked to navigate all these things and more as you explore the game's mystery.

While there are tons of games out there that claim 'choices matter' more often than not I find these choices superficial or simply offer up slightly different outcomes. Pentiment avoids this trap.

At the start of the game you are given a handful of choices for your character's background which, given the opportunity, leads to different dialogue as the story develops. What feels different this time is that the dialogue choices feel weighty and your outcomes will vary greatly depending on what you chose; an artist with a medical background or botanical background will see the world differently than one who went with a theological or legal background.

It also does this without abstract stats or skill boxes; it all comes down to your initial choices and how you interact with characters.

My only quibble (besides a lack of fast travel) is, despite earning a character's respect through saying the right things, pivotal dialogues can still fail because of a dice roll, even when the roll was weighed heavily in my favor. This, combined with the fact there is no way to create a checkpoint (the game continuously autosaves), it means these failures are permanent until your next playthrough. This can lead to some frustration even if it heightens the consequences of your actions.

Nevertheless, after eleven hours I'm still not done with the story. I *think* I may be in the final act, I'm not sure, and even then I haven't even scratched the surface of the mystery. Pentiment is the type of game that requires multiple playthroughs in order to see everything it has to offer. I'm already looking forward to my second playthrough.

So should you get Pentiment? Yes. Pentiment has something for everyone.

If you have an interest in late medieval / early Renaissance history or art history get Pentiment; even if you don't, Pentiment gives you easy to understand info blurbs that you can bring up mid-dialogue.

If you love a good mystery or love losing yourself in a good book Pentiment is for you.

If you like morally complex stories that avoid simple black-and-white characters then Pentiment is for you. Every character has their agenda but none of them are purely good or evil but driven by internally consistent motivations.

Pentiment is a triumph of narrative and artistic design and, despite his already-lofty resume, Josh Sawyer's magnum opus.

Now if you'll excuse me... I need to get some sleep.

Can a game possess glaring flaws yet still be considered underrated? Absolutely and Back 4 Blood embodies this paradox perfectly.

The Good:

o Fantastic graphics that capture both the icky body horror of the Ridden and their environments. Nice lighting effects make for some really nicely lit outdoor areas and moody subterranean areas (like Tunnels of Terror).

o A nice roster of characters with their unique perks which alters how the game plays.

o Combined with the cards/deck system it adds a lot of replayability by making different playthroughs feel different enough.

o B4B's deck system allows for a number of different play styles and its fun to come up with your own powerful combinations.

o Gunplay feels tight and responsive. A nice assortment of firearms for every occasion. Plus firearms can be improved with found upgrades that adds another nice touch of replayability.

o Corruption cards adds a lot of variety to the game, adding different types of Ridden mutations that can change up how you approach a level.

o AI teammates know how to use throwables!

o Excellent difficulty scaling, Veteran difficulty feels like a nice sweet spot between hard / expert difficulties. High difficulties are good but at times feel a little unfair.

o I like a lot of the player characters and their banter, as well as their many interactions with each other. Hoffman and Mom are the best to play as.

The Meh:

o One too many scripted sequences that always play out the same, Act I Episode 2 always has a giant RIdden called an Ogre spawn and it just gets repetitive.

o AI teammates either lag behind or stupidly walk right into your line of fire even though you're crouched and not moving.

o It's not always clear when you have a gauntlet to run through rather than a simple horde, which can be costly as you face off against a never-ending horde of Ridden; this is only a big deal at higher difficulty levels.

o Corruption cards (random conditions that are rolled at the beginning of a new map) can often suck the fun out of the game, especially if you get certain bad combinations.

o Some characters repeat certain catchphrases a little too often.


The Bad:

o Put simply: the multiplayer experience sucks but it's not a single thing that makes it suck but a lot of little bad decisions that ruins it for me - for example:

o Setting up a game on your own takes far too long to get going; it's almost as if Turtle Rock wants to double check you don't have anyone else to play with before reserving a server for you.

o Hosting a game leaves you at the mercy of disruptive players, unless you have majority you cannot kick people. This on its own isn't a big deal but because campaigns are played in "runs" it means quitting a campaign represents a loss of that time, forcing you to start a campaign over.

o Difficulty in multiplayer can be far harder than playing with bots at the same difficulty

o Bizarre design choices that prevent you from starting a game with a friend if, for instance, you have two different matchmaking preferences (you have crossplay enabled and they have it disabled will prevent you from starting).

Outside of multiplayer:

o Special spawns are a little too RNG and can absolutely f**k you if the RNG goes against you; most times it's not bad but story events can be extremely brutal on higher difficulties.

o Why the hell is Act I so long Turtle Rock? Act I is a SLOG composed of 9 different maps; it really should have been two separate campaigns. This, again, wouldn't be a big deal in a traditional game but because of the game's 'run' system, playing through a long act means they sometimes have to be played in two separate sessions. It can also mean that if you take on too much trauma (as you take damage your max health is reduced) it can put you into a fail state before your run is completed.


The Bottom Line: Back 4 Blood is a solid 4-player co-op zombie shooter with a lot of replayability and a lot of things to appreciate and I say this as a definitive Left 4 Dead veteran with over 3000 hours in Left 4 Dead 2, half of which was spent playing co-op.

Please note: Back 4 Blood is NOT for players of Left 4 Dead Versus, the only feature that Turtle Rock did not carry over from Left 4 Dead, which is fine by me because versus was overall incredibly toxic and full of exploits that Turtle Rock was right to avoid, something that Valve fanboys have criticized, yet oddly turn a blind eye toward Valve for never bothering to give us Left 4 Dead 3.

At least Turtle Rock got off their duffs and actually made a game unlike Valve.