Recent reviews by SanderVB

The Armored Core franchise has always been notorious for having a high learning curve and not as open for new players to give it a go.
However, Armored Core 6 is the perfect starting point for new players as it finally offers some guidance to newer players on how to pilot and where to go.

This is by far the best Armored Core has ever been:
- super smooth gameplay, moving the mech (or rather AC) has never been this easy to do
- amazing graphics and effects
- very extensive customization options, especially the paint & sticker system leaves for infinite possibilities
- boss battles

However, as an AC nerd I have a couple of gripes:
- I mentioned the smoothness of moving, personally I like the weighty feel of older games
- I like the third generation games more in terms of worldbuilding, story and lore
- I miss the old Arena system and the funny emails you'd receive from other pilots

All in all, this is a great entrypoint for players who want to get into the Armored Core franchise, as it's obviously the most polished Armored Core and easiest one to get into.

Good game, mostly due to being already great game in a not so great remake:
- while not too jarring, the graphics and animations are a bit basic and sometimes even subpar.
- some weird bugs (clicking next in dialogue on the map can open the new location, skipping a big part of dialogue) but nothing really game-breaking

+ gameplay is classic Front Mission, if you're familiar with the franchise you know what to expect and it delivers
+ solid strategy game that requires you to plan well because you're usually in lower numbers with similar firepower
+ same thing for the story, being part of the big interwoven story you can expect a lot of political games and military drama in the background

This game is pretty fun when you can actually get in a match.
Sadly that's apparently the most difficult part of the game.

The sad thing is, I played this game a ton on the PS4 when it came out (2018) and all these matchmaking / network stability issues were the major roadblock for me trying to get to A+ rank.
Most of the time was spent waiting on lobbies to get formed, only for them to get disconnected for whatever reason.
I honestly had a couple of amazing matches with crazy last minute upsets and this game can be great, but that comes with like 90% of your time just sitting around doing nothing.
Even though I eventually got to A+ in both categories, I just lost motivation because just hopping online for a couple of minutes and play a match wasn't an option.

My 2.2 hours of playtime on PC were exactly 3 matches of around 8 minutes, rest was getting matchmaking failures and getting transferred lobby to lobby.

So don't keep your hopes up that these issues will get fixed anytime soon seeing that the same issues were apparent in 2018 and just move on to a better experience.

As a big fan of the Advance Wars and Fire Emblem series, I was really eager to try out Wargroove.
And as much as I'd try to like it and tried to give it a second & third chance, in my eyes it's just not enjoyable at all.

The gameplay loop seems fine at first, but the more time you sink in the more obvious that the balance of the units seems off, or rather the roles of the units aren't specific enough resulting in less tactical play being possible resulting in a very shallow gameplay loop.

A lot of the maps feel too big, and in combination with little depth to the gameplay makes finishing maps feels more like a chore than having fun.

This point is very subjective, but I'm not a big fan of the atmosphere of the game and the character designs.
While the art assets of the units and environments are great on a technical level, I'm not a fan of the character designs and in my eyes they lack any form of personality.
And this is a very unimportant point, but I cannot stand the red noses on most of the characters, do they all have a cold or are they constantly drunk?
The sporadic voice lines / grunts / noises in the story parts where characters are talking are really off-putting.
It all feels very childlike, which doesn't fit with the setting at all.

All in all, this game is not for me, and I definitely wouldn't recommend it to others who are looking for an Advance Wars / Fire Emblem experience because that will result in just a major disappointment.

Game is decent to good:

- The atmosphere and graphics are flawless. The lighting is sublime and the audio effects of everything that's happening in the scenery really creates that scary and tense atmosphere I was hoping for. For example, you frequently hear creatures move around you and you're not sure if they are dropping in or just passing through.

- The story is as good/bad as Dead Space, nothing too special but also engaging enough in my opinion.

- Combat is a bit clunky, especially when you are surrounded. It felt a bit like the old RE4 but with less options. Weapon switching & healing are so slow that it's near impossible to do so during a certain bossfight.

- The save & checkpoint system is horrible; manual saves do nothing other than redirecting to the last checkpoint, and let's say you die after doing some upgrading, you need to do it all over again.

- At the end of the game some jump scares get stale, and I was actively eye rolling because I could see them coming from a mile away ("oh look 3 lockers, I bet the middle one has a bug inside", "oh look a chest in the middle of a room without the need of taking a side path, I bet it has a bug inside").

All things considered I think my experience with the game was worth it and I would definitely recommend it.
It took me about 12 to 13 hours to beat the game while running around exploring everything, so if that's too short for your liking and you're on a limited budget, you might want to wait for a sale.

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(As a side note, on release it ran horrible but the patch has solved all issues for me, and it ran smooth all the way through.)

Great graphics , great music, decent gameplay.

It's a pretty straightforward game, just shoot everything that moves while dodging enemies who charge or shoot at you. There are enough enemy types with each their own move patterns and ways of attack for each of the 7 different levels to keep the experience fresh and not feel like a drag.
Only issues for me were not always seeing projectiles and enemies spawning at my location resulting in cheap HP loss, and with only 4 to 7 HP that matters.

But that's not enough to ruin the fun imo, definitely recommended.

Blasphemous is one of my favorite games, and that's not for its gameplay.
Let me be clear, it is a wonderful game and it plays more than fine, the gameplay itself is just nothing new or special.
Sure it's more difficult than most 'metroidvanias' (I hate this term) but it's not breaking new grounds imo.

The atmosphere however, created by the artstyle and music, is one of a kind.
Never have I ever seen better pixelart in any other game, especially the gory visuals and animations.
The backgrounds are wonderfully detailed and the color palette is really well chosen for the atmosphere.
The designs of most the enemies were great, especially the bosses: that one bossfight with the pope skeleton still gives me chills. Accompanying the artstyle is music that fits the Spanish medival setting, and I love how eerie it sounds during the bossfights especially.

As somewhat of a pixelartist myself, I can only be amazed what was accomplished here by names I recognize from pixeljoint & Twitter.
Amazing game thanks to a one-of-a-kind atmopshere, accompanied by not so amazing gameplay.
Special thanks to my friend who bought the game for me, even when he kept getting freaked out by the creepy enemy designs.

The only program you need for making pixelart. It has a ton of feautures that make it way easier / less of a hassle than making pixelart in Photoshop.
I highly recommend it to anyone who makes or wants to get into making pixelart.
Well worth the money.

I tried this game before and I didn't like it, but hearing a lot was changed and updated I decided to give it a go again.
First off, I bought this game because I played Road Rash I & II a lot as a kid. This game was hailed as a spiritual succesor to the Road Rash franchise, so buying this seemed as a no-brainer.

The biggest difference (to me) between Road Rash and Road Redemption is that the racing in Road Rash is a lot of fun and challenging. In Road Redemption the racing isn't fun and only challenging because it handles so weird from time to time.
The driving feels decent at normal speeds and normal turns, however tight turns feel unnatural and handling on slow speeds feels way too sluggish. Especially when you try to recover after hitting a car or one of the vents on the rooftops. You can also get stuck behind cars who are getting stuck on the track (namely on the last part of the game).

I do like the campaign mode, the rogue-like lite method is a nice way to progress through the campaign. I personally prefer the campaign in the Road Rash games where you upgrade bikes gradually and you try to win races, but the main mode in Road Redemption is good in a very different way.

The fighting mechanics can range from good to bad in different areas: hitting with meelee weapons feels good and dodging feels fluent, however the shooting while driving at the same time can feel a bit dodgy from time to time (especially with tight turns coming up).

The soundtrack is a hit and miss as well: some songs got my blood pumping, other ones really didn't fit the tone in my eyes (or ears, in this case hurrhurr).

All in all I don't recommend this game because it's not the game I hoped for: I wanted a race game like Road Rash where the fighting is a side mechanic. In Road Redemption it's obvious that the fighting is the main mechanic and while that can be fun from time to time, it's not what I prefer. This game might be great for others, especially people who never played any Road Rash game, but if you're looking to a successor to the Road Rash games I advise you to save your money and move along.

Quake Champions has a lot of potential:
- never a dull moment / constant action (and no looting, thank god)
- both a proper duel mode for 1v1 and teammodes for people who prefer to play with others
- nice variety of Champions with different abilities
- instagib (1 hit kill with railgun) is a lot of fun
- you get better by practice, namely by learning when and where to use specific weapons & how to move around properly
- the same fun factor as Quake III Arena

Now for some negative points, QC has to improve on certain aspects before it can become a success:
- low playerbase results in relative long wait times for a match, but that'll (hopefully) be fixed when the game becomes free to play
- proper matchmaking, it's not fun when I try to introduce a friend to the game and he gets matched to high level players when it's his first game
- more tutorials on advanced topics, otherwise new players will never pick up on the 'advanced tactics'
- bots for practice mode. Even if it's just characters or targets standing still, it's vital that people can practice their gameplay. I'd prefer a full campaign like in Q3A, but that's just because I loved that game so much :)

All in all I really recommend Quake Champions because I have so much fun with this game, even though I'm only a mediocre player at best. This game deserves a lot more love from its current playerbase (a lot of people seem to just want a rehashed Quake Live or whatever) otherwise it'll never become a success.
If you're not sure about buying this game, wait for it to become free to play in the near future and give it a go! And if you can't wait, the scalebearer-pack is a cheap way to start.