Recent reviews by ssyx

I cannot adequately sum up the satisfaction I feel when I absolutely total my car, barely limping over the finish line and Nicky Grist, who has been sitting next to me the entire time, exclaims "Nice job! That's unbeatable!"

A fun little game that checks all the boxes for the roguelike gameplay loop. Kill things, earn money, return to base, upgrade incrementally, repeat.

The 'twist' that Mechanibot offers is that you are not the solo raider like in games such as Enter the Gungeon or Binding of Isaac. Instead, you're a robot that micromanages lots of other little robots. The game has a fun soundtrack and a cool graphical style, and it costs less than a cup of coffee. I recommend this to anyone interested in the roguelike genre.

It also works on Deck!

Genuinely enjoyable. Easy to jump into, difficult to master. Enjoy the art style and music

Several achievements are bugged and are not gettable.

Amazing game.

A charming little game that has some small issues but is in general well polished, entertaining and unique.

This game takes it's source material from the aforementioned Agatha Christie Story - The ABC Murders. You play as Poirot and follow the narrative collecting clues, deducing elements of the crime and interviewing potential suspects. The game is mostly point-and-click, but features some puzzle solving elements too. My largest complaint is that some of the puzzle-solving sections can be needlessly tricky to solve - You are sometimes required to click on specific, small parts of an object and the input doesn't always register correctly. It's not game-breaking however, you will get it in two or three tries at most.

Otherwise, the game offers an intriguing yet laid-back experience. What really sets it apart is the stellar character of Poirot and the setting of early 1900's England, both of which contribute to an irreverent charm, as if, despite the murders, there was nothing to worry about at all. Poirot's French accent and gentlemanly quips are great and the world you inhabit is one of butlers, steam-trains and bow-ties. A welcome change of pace!

I would definitely recommend this game and, as you can see from my play-time, it isn't much of a time sink from start to finish. There are trophies to collect which gives the game some replayability and if you haven't ever read Agatha Christie before this is the perfect encouragement!

Review of a person who didn't experience loading screen crashes and got to experience the game proper:

This is not a good game. If you've read any of the other reviews, you will notice that people frequently experience crashes and game-breaking glitches. I didn't encounter these, but there are enough people who have that I would stay away from the game for this reason alone, but this is not where the problems end.

I have played the WWE franchise games starting with 2K17 and as a casual fan of professional wrestling, there are some things to like about these sorts of games, so I'll start with the positives:

The core mechanics are fun but require some skill in mastering and there is a variety of body types and move sets, which make jumping in to each casual match feel fresh and different to the last. This is the strongest selling point of these games. When you're playing in a royal rumble, desperately trying to avoid elimination as more and more superstars keep barrelling in, unashamedly tag-teaming you, the game is at its best - it's fun, fast-paced and challenging.

Secondly, the story mode was surprisingly entertaining, despite being riddled with cliche narratives and sub-arcs. Then again, what did you expect? This is WWE, not highbrow fiction. The main characters grew on me over time and by the end of the story I really found myself rooting for them and enjoying the progression of the tale.

This is where the positives end, because this game is all types of bad:

It's lazy-bad - I didn't encounter game-breaking glitches but I certainly encountered numerous bugs, people glitching through objects, matches not ending after I had won, leaving my character standing in an empty ring, button inputs not registering correctly, ring-ropes gaining sentience and flying across the screen like they were on adderall.

It's cynical-bad - Half of the characters, outfits, locations, weapons etc. have been put behind a pseudo-paywall. You have to 'unlock' them with in-game points, which can be earned at a slow rate through game-time but can also just be bought. I've paid for a game, why do I have to deal with these micro-transactions? Considering the general unfinished feel of this game, it's a slap in the face. Some games do micro-transactions well, by ensuring the add-ons are cosmetic and not game-changing. These are cosmetic changes, but in a mostly single-player game, where players invariably have their favourite wrestler, it feels exploitative to put The Undertaker or Stone Cold Steve Austin behind a pay wall, especially when the story-line hits repeatedly on beats of how wrestlers help 'inspire fans' and 'make people feel like they belong'. Well, it looks like you too can belong - for the small price of 10,000 coins!

It's unintuitive-bad - During the storyline, for instance, the game makes you watch unskippable cutscenes before your fight, which is bad but mostly forgivable. What isn't forgivable is that if you replay that same mission because you lost the fight or just feel like it - you have to watch that same cutscene all over again without being able to skip. Sometimes it's like 5 of them all in a row - 15 minutes of waiting over something you've already watched. It's like the game is sitting you down and telling you that you can't play the game.

It's game engine is bad - Oh my god, the amount of achingly tedious loading screens. I have a pretty good PC, but my god it's almost comical the amount of loading screens they'll stick in. Sometimes you'll be in the ring fighting, then someone will interrupt your fight and the game will cut to a loading screen so it can load a separate level for you to fight this new person in. This is a triple-A class game - there is money enough that I shouldn't have to be taken out of the story for 2 minutes twiddling my thumbs before continuing. Given that there are only something like 5 songs in the game which play on a continuous loop, there were moments where I genuinely felt sorry for the victims of torture that you hear have to sit and listen to the same radiohead song on repeat for 12 hours.

This game isn't even fun-bad. At every turn it's frustrating, boring, unrewarding, cynical and lazy. Please don't buy it.

Enjoyable and atmospheric, but if a game is a movie - this is just a scene. I look forward to seeing what this develops into, because the maker clearly has an eye for good story-telling and ambience.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is a rebundling of all the Street Fighter I, II and III games (and spinoffs) in one package, with a few added extras for people interested in the history of the franchise. This is a great product for anyone that enjoys the nostalgia of retro titles and isn't phased by having a pretty steep skill curve.


When you load the game, you'll notice that the UI is simple and effective - all the games are accessible on one screen without any overcomplicated menuing that some game packages fall victim to. I especially liked the way you can compare all the logos of the different street fighter games side by side and notice the aesthetic progression - it was a cool touch.

You can dip in and out of these games casually - there is a novelty to noticing the different loading screens and retro character themes present in the various iterations, it made me feel like I was hopping in a time machine to various arcades throughout history. As somebody who grew up playing Street Fighter II, the nostalgia felt great.

In terms of gameplay, you get exactly what you might expect from a street fighter game. Whilst you can play casually, you'll only progress if you can learn how to time your attacks and combos with some precision. I can see more casual players regretting buying this because not winning gets boring after a couple of hours, but for those that enjoy persevering, there's a great catharsis in FINALLY beating M. Bison after a lot of losing.

Thankfully, the developers have added a difficulty setting into all of the titles, which is helpful when you consider that the arcade titles were created with the intention of you repeatedly dying so you could pay more credits to get another life.

Finally, there is a great 'museum' style section of the game detailing some of the concept art and imagining behind each of the titles. If you are interested in the history behind one of the most well-known titles in gaming history, this is an amazing place to learn about it all.

One of the most bizarre and disjointed games I have ever played - Featuring a competent and intriguing story-line for the first act, at which point the writers collectively decided to smoke peyote and smash their faces onto a keyboard repeatedly until the script was done.

This is a negative review, but the game wasn't entirely unenjoyable. I laughed out loud at least 4 or 5 times, but I always felt I was laughing AT the game and not with it. The developers have also licensed some cool throwback tunes which are present in some of the scenes and were a nice touch.

Gameplay-wise, Fahrenheit is at best uninteresting and at worst, infuriating. The button mashing QTE's are so lazy. They don't develop as the story progresses and have probably caused at least one person carpal tunnel. On occasion you have multiple protagonists in the same scene and you don't even know who the QTE is for.

As a final caveat, you can see I have completed all achievements for the game with only 8 hours playtime. It isn't long. If this game is on sale and you have a morbid curiosity, you might get a couple of laughs out of it, but I'm not sure it's worth the pain of having to actually play the game.