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Let me start off by saying that if you're here for historical accuracy or realism, look elsewhere. Dogfight 1942 is intended as a fast-paced, highly aggressive, pure arcade WWII flight action experience. It goes so far as to include a scoring system that rewards you for chaining multiple kills in rapid succession.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in the missions on offer. You've got missions where you intercept enemy bombers, ones where you escort friendly bombers, ground attack and anti-ship operations, and some missions where the objectives change dynamically in the middle of the fight. You have to remain alert at all times as the enemy are always after you, and the music feels entirely appropriate to the fast-paced action on historic battlefields.

Another thing the game does well is the variety of airplanes for players to fly. Some of them more useful than others(honestly, you're never going to use bombers unless absolutely forced to), but all of them able to hold their own in most missions. In addition, all of the game's sounds are well done, with the sounds of machine gun fire picking apart aircraft, the sounds of rocket and bomb explosions, even the sounds of aircraft exploding when they're shot down all having a really nice oomph to them.

The fact that the North Africa and Soviet campaigns are DLC might be a minor turn-off, but they both add a number of new missions and planes, as well as adding new environments to the "Quick Play" mode. Lastly, I do want to say that while the character voices might seem too exaggerated, they fit with the generally over-the-top feel of the gameplay.

Honestly, don't expect much out of the squadron command system or the other allied pilots; it's pretty much just up to you to do everything. The game's lack of online multiplayer is a pretty sad shortcoming, but at least there's splitscreen play if you have two controllers.

Overall, a fast and fun WWII dogfighting game, if you're willing to put up with the fact of it being a low-budget title. I give Dogfight 1942 an 8.5 out of 10.

This game is like if you took the first FlatOut by Bugbear, removed the driver ragdolls, and replaced the regular street cars with diesel-powered semi-tractors. But I have to say, Truck Racer is a surprisingly fun and surprisingly fast arcade racing game.

While there are only six trucks available to drive, there are numerous ways to modify and tune them. One thing that I honestly didn't see explained well enough and never really felt the influence of(maybe I just wasn't paying attention) is having to select suspension components to attune your truck to race on different surfaces; but then again, there are only two surface types represented - Asphalt and Dirt - and trucks seem to drive about the same on either. But maybe I've just been too methodical in upgrading my trucks and need to deliberately tune my truck wrong to see the difference.

And let me remind you: this game is actually quite fast. Don't pay attention to the numbers on the speedometer; feel how fast the tracks and the races feel. Once you've fully tuned even the Raion Calvin, the game's slowest truck, you'll feel like you're driving a finely tuned racing machine, to say nothing of the more expensive trucks later down the line.

The racing environments are all nicely varied; though again, there are only two racing surfaces present, and none of the in-game environments mix the two surface types in a single locale, let alone a single circuit. But that aside, they're all pleasant enough to look at. This is no Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010; but it's not trying to be a AAA title.

The biggest faults I have are the lack of in-race music, and the abysmal rival AI. The menu music loop isn't terrible, at least. The rival driver AI, however, is awful. They'll spend all race bouncing from one wall to the other, and often wrecking themselves out with no influence from the player. This does make the "Championship" mode feel uneven in its difficulty, though, as it seems like the Time Trial events replace the dummies you usually race against with drivers that can actually stay off the wall. However, once you get one of the later trucks upgraded, the Time Trials as well fall into the category of "dreadfully easy".

I haven't tried the multiplayer yet, and I fear I'll never find another living soul playing this piece of ancient history online. Pity that, because having actual human drivers to compete against could make this game more exciting.

Honestly, for its current $2.49USD sale price, it's an easy buy. No major bugs or glitches that I could find, no serious problems with anything other than the AI of the rival truckers, just fairly simple straightforward fun. I give Truck Racer an 8 out of 10.

For reference, I bought the 2010 "Limited Edition" version of this game's original release for PS3 pretty much as soon as it was available. I played through all of its DLCs, too. Is this remaster a faithful recreation of everything from that version of the game? Pretty much, yeah.

I understand that a few cars were removed for the remaster. However, from what I've read online, the Carbon Motors E7 was removed because Carbon Motors no longer exists as a company, and the two Mercedes SLR McLarens(Mercedes McLaren 722 Edition and Mercedes McLaren Sterling Moss) due to Mercedes selling off their stake in McLaren starting back in 2009 and not completing until 2011(after the original NFS:HP 2010 release).

Aside from that, if you've played the 2010 release, everything's the same as you remember it. But if you never played it, I'll give you a rundown:

So, first things first, this isn't your Underground-style, The Fast & the Furious-inspired import tuner street racing. This game focuses on exotic supercars in a scenic, semi-rural territory with elements taken from multiple parts of the American West(southeast part of Seacrest County is based on parts of the Mojave Desert, some of the northern mountainous parts of the county are based on the Colorado Rockies, the western coastal parts are based on the California coast from the redwood forests in the northwest of the county to the beaches in the southwest of the county being similar to beaches just north of Los Angeles, central parts of the county are based on California's Central Valley, etc. etc.). And take it from me, this game is gorgeous. The cars are all finely detailed and the environments of Seacrest County are breathtaking. I understand that they decided to use the lower resolution textures from the X360 and PS3 versions of the 2010 game as a base, but it's still pretty awe-inspiring that this game can look as good as it does. And for me at least, it runs buttery smooth at a consistent 60 frames per second.

In addition, all of the sounds in the game are about as close to perfect as you can get. The engines of the cars all feel powerful, from the deep roar of American muscle cars like the Dodge Charger and Shelby GT500, to the banshee-like screams of the top-of-the-line exotics from Lamborghini and Porsche. The crashes are incredibly visceral, as should be expected from Criterion Games, developers of the Burnout franchise. The various gadgets all make clear and distinctive sounds, from the metallic clanks of the spike strips, to the sounds being dulled by Jammers, and the monstrous blast of the Turbo Booster. The police helicopter in particular is especially menacing as it flies right over you; it's only slightly less intimidating than a military gunship, if only because it's restricted to setting spike strips on the road, instead of trying to target you with its own EMP device.

The controls aren't quite as snappy as the likes of Burnout Paradise, but that does a good job of making all of the vehicles feel like they have weight to them, making it clear that this isn't going to be as crazy of a game as Burnout usually is, and I'm not going to fault the game for that. It's still rather responsive, and all of the vehicles feel distinctive in their handling without making it difficult to go from one to another.

In all, this is an excellent game of racing and chasing, with fast and intense arcade driving at ludicrous speeds. The car roster is full of beautiful high performance racing machines, Seacrest County is a gorgeous environment full of thrilling roads to drive, and the controls are sharp but weighty. I still say that the games that came out before the first NFS: Underground are better, but this game's good on its own; and in my eyes, FAR better than anything in the franchise from 2003-2009, or from Ghost Games. I give Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010 - Remastered a 9 out of 10.

Let me start this off by noting that I don't play 40K tabletop, but I do have quite a bit of knowledge of the setting from browsing the pages of 1d4Chan[1d4chan.org]. I'll also state that, from what I read on 1d4Chan, despite them being portrayed as relatively nice people by the standards of the Imperium of Man, I was always going to think of the Ultramarines as bland and boring.

Captain Titus is pretty much the exact opposite of "boring".

He starts off his campaign by using a Jump Pack to drop out of a transport ship onto the deck of an Ork ship, then use nothing more than a pistol and a combat knife to fight his way across the ship and use one of its own turrets to destroy the ship's bridge. And he doesn't do it by getting in the turret; he grabs the front of it and manually cranks it around from the outside like the super soldier he is.

This game makes a point, at least in the earlier parts, of making clear just how powerful the Adeptus Astartes really are. Whether it be choke-slamming Orks with one hand, chopping through entire packs of them in rapid succession, or just feeling the brute FORCE behind all of the game's guns, you feel like a massive, heavily-engineered, power-armored BAD@$$. But even in these early phases, it's not like you're completely unstoppable: Ork Nobz can deal quite a bit of damage, Rokkit Boyz can kill you from a distance, Bomb Squigz can make your life Hell. Don't even get me started on the forces of Chaos under Lord Nemeroth later; they're a LOT tougher.

And secondarily, not only does the game do a great job of showing just how powerful both you and your enemies are, but it also shows the allied Astra Militarum troopers as genuinely competent and effective in their own right. Titus may well be a one man army; but the game would have been much harder were there not allied forces on the planet with you. Especially at the end, when you have to cross a bridge held by Nemeroth's forces, and a squad of Blood Ravens are there with you, then later in that fight a squad of fellow Ultramarines drop pod into the fight.

The issue of the relative lack of variety in the game's environments can be easily explained by the fact that you're on a Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus, basically a planet-wide factory. And even then, there are the sections outside of Inquisitor Drogan's Kalkys experimental research complex that look less like industrial complexes and more like natural desert and canyons. And overall, the game's graphics and depictions of the involved factions of the Imperium shows an incredible attention to detail. The only issue is the effects for explosions being incredibly poor.

If you have even a passing interest in Warhammer 40,000, you owe it to yourself to play this game. It starts off as a power fantasy rampage against green-skinned hooligans, and ends with a desperate fight against forces from the Warp to save the planet from corruption. It's a shame that the multiplayer feels so much like a tacked-on afterthought; a cooperative campaign would've done this game wonders. Overall, I give Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine a 9 out of 10.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not really the type for racing city streets. Never was the type for Midnight Club or Need for Speed: Underground. However, thankfully, Xenon Racer steers clear of that style of racing and instead presents itself as a kind of cyberpunk future version of modern day Sports Car Racing, i.e. IMSA or the FIA World Endurance Championship; but, of course, with much shorter races.

The car customization is actually pretty deep, but the fact that a fair number of parts are locked behind driving hours and multiplayer is kind of off-putting. Not nearly enough to make this a bad game, though. The other big issue is with the driving physics: steering and drifting feel rather stiff and jerky, and the cars will instantly snap out of drifting when their wheels get back to straight. This can make it a bit difficult to get used to, and it's all but impossible to chain drifts from one direction to the other.

A much more subjective issue I have with the game personally is the soundtrack: It's all electronic music taken from MonsterCat, makes my ears bleed. Thankfully, it can be turned off; but I just wish there was a choice to have some blazing electric guitars.

Ultimately, this game isn't as smooth or fluid or enjoyable of an experience as Hotshot Racing. But, if you're in the market for an arcade drift racer, I figure you could do a lot worse than this. 8 out of 10.

After over 500 flight hours with this game, I'm going to warn you: If you enjoy arcade aerial combat, prepare to be hooked. This is easily one of the most addictive games I've ever played.

So first things first, what are we dealing with here? Well, I would personally make comparisons to the Ace Combat franchise; but, if I'm honest, Sky Rogue makes most other air combat games look slow in comparison: if Ace Combat is Call of Duty, Sky Rogue is basically 90s DooM by comparison. Seriously, it's that fast.

So basically, you're a lone pilot fighting for some nebulous "Aeroforce" against some "Crimson State" and its poorly defined allies. The thing is, death is not the end: Every time you get shot down, you get to unlock new planes and weapons that can enable you to fight further until you confront this massive boss machine that the enemy forces have been cooking up.

You've got three roles of aircraft: versatile and agile Fighters, lightning-fast Interceptors that specialize in air-to-air, and slow but durable Bombers that excel in air-to-ground; and they come in the classes of faster but more fragile Lights, well-rounded Mediums, Swing-Wings that give you even more versatility than the Mediums at the expense of a little durability, tough and heavily armed Heavies, and powerful Experimentals. The weapons on offer cover all the bases, with unguided rockets, bombs and machine guns; various air-to-air and air-to-ground guided missiles; and even a handful of large caliber cannons with high damage but requiring more skill in their use.

In general, the controls are excellent. The game allows you to completely rebind every control that you can use, making it easy to set up most gamepads or flight sticks. And as mentioned before, this game is fast: Especially after upgrading them, every aircraft in the game feels extremely responsive; and the weapons all feel quite powerful, with the effects for hitting and destroying enemies sending small pieces of material scattering in all directions(though you never actually blast holes in them, sadly).

But the real rabbit hole with this game isn't the gameplay itself, as crazy as that sounds. No, we need to talk about mod support. If you've got the software and the know-how, you can create almost anything: new playable aircraft including support for custom aircraft stats, new weapons with custom models and abilities, entire new missions with their own environmental color palettes. They've got tons of stuff in the Workshop, and the possibilities are almost literally endless here. There are various crafts from various shmups, movies, other games, silly stuff like literal flying tanks, modern and historic real-life aircraft, you name it. If you're ever feeling nostalgic for the old Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games, they've got multiple Star Wars starfighters in there waiting for you. Or you could bring the squadrons of Ace Combat into this game with various skins and aircraft from that.

In all, Sky Rogue is an excellent air combat game, and anyone who likes arcade air combat must play this game at some point in their lives. I can't praise this game enough. 10 out of 10.

I know I'm going to sound a bit hyperbolic when I say this, but I honestly feel like this is pretty much the best arcade racer released in the last ten years.

Okay, let me take a step back and explain. Hotshot Racing is clearly descended from the old Sega arcade cabinets of the 90s, mostly Virtua Racing in terms of aesthetics, but you could argue at least some Daytona USA influence and even some Ridge Racer.

The controls are mostly alright; however, as an XBox controller player, I wish they'd move the gear shift buttons from the bumpers to the face buttons. That minor issue aside, the game controls very well, with all of the vehicles feeling responsive and unique.

The track details are admittedly a bit sparse; but each track really does feel like its own locale, even when most of them overlap with other circuits. The sense of speed is also there: I'm an F-Zero GX veteran, and I'll tell you that tackling the "Drive or Explode" mode can get extremely intense if you run it on a higher difficulty and/or for greater numbers of laps.

There is a pretty decent amount of car customization on offer here; however, despite things like spoilers and engine blowers being able to be added or changed around, none of these customizations actually effect performance, which is a bit of a lost opportunity here. If you've played Xenon Racer, you'll remember how important car customization was in that game for being able to beat your opponents; Hotshot doesn't have any performance altering effects available.

The only other complaint I'd have would be the soundtrack. I know the aesthetic they're going for, and the music fits with that aesthetic; it just doesn't suit my style, but then my style of racing music is basically F-Zero X[vid.puffyan.us] or Jet Moto[vid.puffyan.us], so take what I say with a grain of salt.

For the record, I nominated this game in the 2020 Steam Awards for "Outstanding Visual Style", because it was nice having a game with a clean and bright aesthetic like this. The cars all look great, if slightly blocky, and the myriad number of color palettes and skin combinations allow you to make your ride really stand out. In general, this is a fast, fun, simple arcade racer that goes back to basics and does it right. I give Hotshot Racing a 9 out of 10.

I figure I ought to start here by addressing whether this game is a faithful remaster or not; which, honestly, it is. If you enjoyed the older original release of Burnout Paradise and want to race with your friends again, this game most definitely lives up to that.

Basically, everything's the exact same as you remember it; it just has a new coat of paint on it that makes it just a little bit shinier. The only vehicles missing from the game are the old handful of "Sponsor Cars" that could be unlocked in the very oldest versions of the original Burnout Paradise and the code entry system for them was disabled in later updates. However, considering that said Sponsor Cars were literally just direct reskins of regular cars already in the game, you're not really missing anything. Might have been nice if they'd figured out a way to put them back in as alternate car finishes, but I don't miss them enough to really complain.

However, all that said, this remaster doesn't add anything new. There aren't any options to enable online races to use Big Surf Island, which is a shame. There also aren't means to allow bikes to run actual races, just the same old time trials and Freeburn Challenges.

At the end of the day, if you're just here to relive the old days of Burnout Paradise, this remaster will do the trick. But the lack of any new content or features limits my recommendation to only those that are either desperate for arcade racers or really miss Burnout as a series. I'll give this game an 8.5 out of 10.

I really wanted to like this game more; I'm an old-school gamer that got hooked on classic arcade racers like the old San Francisco Rush back in 1996(parents bought me a Nintendo64 with SFR for my fifth birthday), and I've always enjoyed arcade-style racers. Unfortunately, this recommendation is extremely tentative and comes with tons of caveats.

Basically, you start by naming your driver, picking a profile picture for them, and buying one of two cheap cars. You run some early races, get acquainted with the controls, and then find out the hard way that this game is pretty harsh about making you budget your resources.

You have to keep enough fuel in your car to be able to race. You have to keep your car repaired to be able to drive it. You have to keep enough money on hand to pay to enter the races; and if you can't manage that, you'll have to wash cars to make up enough pocket change to run the very first race again. Eventually, you'll manage to start upgrading your car, which is when the real grind starts.

If you can make it up to the point where you've got at least two well-upgraded cars, the grind starts to ease off a bit, as you'll be able to juggle your cars and keep at least one race-ready. After that, it's mainly just a matter of keeping your car on the road and not running into traffic, rivals or cops.

But overall, this game just isn't as engaging as a driving game as it could be. Ultimately, if you think you'll like 80s Overdrive based purely off the looks, you'd probably be better served getting Slipstream. Slipstream allows you to drift your car through corners, has a drafting mechanic for riding close behind rivals and traffic to speed you up, and allows you to set your own soundtracks instead of being restricted to only what's in the game by default.

But if you're like me and you've already played Slipstream to death, 80s Overdrive is at least a decent game with good driving mechanics. I'd give 80s Overdrive a 6.5 out of 10.