Recent reviews by JadedSynic

Finally, a Paradox game where I'm not horrifically lost out of the gates. I'm just mildly lost, but I can navigate the UI and survive until endgame now. Room for improvement across the board, as always, but it's a huge step up from earlier titles.

A perfect game for when you just need to switch off and vibe. And you're a cat.

If you're looking for a mindless, cathartic, and hilarious couch party game, this is your game! It works by sticking buzzsaw blades to the underside of lawnmowers as you play a three-way game of Mortal Kombat between you, the defenseless grass, and your capitalist competitors. Mow everything to get paid, because people apparently count as grass according to the company charter.

Danger pay not included.

Got a friend? Got a PC? (Evidently...) Got a few controllers? Do any of them say, "Lemme smash..." like a memer from 2017?

Smash away.

With a kick-ass soundtrack and a dazzlingly handcrafted environment, Damsel's 80s B-film camp, simplistic controls and fluid combat make this a must-have for any prospective speedrunner and arcade junkie. The high level of polished content promises much from the Australian Indie, stoked with a fearsome reputation from the region's prevalent small development teams.

The campy cyber aesthetic harkens to a love child between They Live, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Akira, while its combat shamelessly alludes to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's rip-'n-tear fun in its protagonist, Damsel. The various enemy types reference vampire culture, with clear reference to Count Orlock, Dracula, and the extras of every mentioned forerunner. This doesn't mean that Damsel can't bring a few ideas to its own table - the vampires themselves are muchly deprived of the more incredulous, fantastical abilities, while likening them to organised criminals and business owners. Damsel herself - indeed the game itself - takes her own cues in the way only a moody teen could; nonchalant off-job, bursting with energy on the job, and a taste for total rip-♥♥♥♥-riot anarchy.

The controls are clunky and the collision is funky at times, but this is to be expected. A perfect 100 on an early access title is unheard of. But for an early access, Damsel holds its own in the action-platformer market. It demands your pennies' attention and deserves it.

If Damsel is a shape of things to come in 2018, we can expect great things this year, and more from the developers - a solid 8 thumbs up!

Never have I ever been punished so much for opting to base-build instead of playing the game... but in saying that, it's the punishment you get for eating the Christmas chocolates in November - you have the right idea, just not at the right time.

Ultimately, there's a gold-mine of satisfaction to be had in outsmarting your opponent's construction strategy; more still to be had in recognising one of the many physics faults of the structure and toppling it with one well-placed shot.

I have to get this out of the way first and foremost - I am a HUGE fan of werewolf fiction. Not Stephenie Meyer's shape-shifting pet poodles, or the wolf anthros that plaster Furaffinity, Tumblr and DeviantART; the horror werewolves that made the werewolf the legendary creature it is today. And I'm sure you are too! But I just can't help but feel that this is a cash-in on one of horror's most venerated creatures.

When I first started Identity of the Canine, it was good enough for an indie game. The atmosphere of some serious faecal matter was about to happen was great and the controls were intuitive enough that I didn't need to reference the controls at all. Then it came to an abrupt halt when I was rudly told at the front gate that I had to look for some special item. Scrounging around the countryside (if it can be called that) of naked trees with a ridiculous cartoony outline for about 45 minutes, I finally found an axe in the least probable area one would expect to find it: Lodged on the opposite area of the map where the logging cabin was! Suffice it to say that it was one of the most jarring treasure-hunts for the most basic item that shattered the suspension of disbelief. But a voice in my head said, "Be nice. It is their first game. They at least took your advice to take out the irrelevant jump-scares."

I was starting to wonder why I listened to that voice in the first place until I saw the highlight of the gaming year so far - a poorly voiced Russian princess (who oddly has a Spanish name and British-American accent) with a shocking taste in clothing and historical accuracy, and a comical outline that gave her the hint of a five o' clock shadow. After I finally stopped laughing if only to save my underpants, I began laughing at the dialogue structure. It's so clichèd with the genre and roles of the characters that I had to step out for five minutes to calm down. It's not totally asinine, though. There is a nichè choice structure that at least changed the next piece of dialogue, but for the sake of the chair and linen - I muted the sound. The magic-man behind bars was a similar story, though his voice acting was at least a cut above the rest. The Count wasn't much better than either, and his lines screamed of his role in the story. Probably the most organic lines came from the guard to the front door, and that was just plain flat. But I calmly reminded myself that Shape of the Lupine was still an indie game.

I know I said the controls were tight and intuitive enough that I didn't need to look up the controls again, but the gameplay itself was like the graphics - patchy, glitchy and unforgiving at best, and nightmarish cluster-bomb on common sense's front doorstep at worst. Getting chased by the hairy attack dog was a nice shot of adrenaline through the game, but its appearances give you no option to escape or hide other than the linear chase prescribed by the developers. One chase even has you charging TOWARD the werewolf when there are no less than three good hiding spots to wait for the hulking mastiff to pass on. And no less than five times did I think, "Hang on. There are windows around with moonlight coming through, and I have an axe which smashes through baricades. Why can't I fight the poodle?" I discovered the answer after being savaged for the umpteenth time: because it's not using your brain. I know that the protagonist is a brainiac in his own little lunch-box, but we, the cruel angels of fate, are not. By this point, I was thoroughly outraged I spent $15 on a game worth about $7 for its cheap laughs and wacky graphics. But brace yourself for a shock, because there are some things that did go right. Just enough to bump its worth up to a possible $8.50.

The fact that you can turn into a werewolf, if only for two minutes and in set checkpoints of moonlight, is really what gives a credible note to the game. It was a nice little feature but it sucks in that the only combat takes place in wolf form. Even then, it's you - the unstoppable pet bulldog of The Hulk - against a scared guardsman just following orders. Horror games like Outlast and Amnesia have little, if any, combat, but it's done well! You can run, you can stun, you can hide, you can be savaged and wait for the beasties to pass on post-mortem - not follow blind instructions to the letter by running down a hall and pressing the "I Won the Race" button. Taking a chunk out of the guards was oddly satisfying in its own demented way, but I soon felt guilty after killing the most human and realistic characters in the game.

I still think it was a damn shame that you couldn't take a chunk out of the characters that mattered to the wearily predictable plot. You have so many stereotypes packed into each character that you can judge their role just by looking at them - the cursed love interest (if you hadn't worked that out within the first ten minutes, you were probably too busy staring at her incredibly well-endowed bosum), the bad guy with a name, the deus ex chamberpot, the bored guard, the scared castle hand, the self-insert know-it-all-but-can't-remember-a-thing protagonist, the.... Oh wait, that's the list. They're so riddled with nits and bullet-holes that it's hard to sympathise with any of the characters. Hard at best and frustratingly difficult at worst, but it is possible. I did find myself at one point going, "Awww.... Poor Filch." Though it still doesn't excuse the fact that he only shows up once in a while to say a few lines, give you a book and reveal his backstory, only to leave you hanging for the puzzles. The princess is about as useless as you would expect as anything other than the protagonist's love-interest McGuffin, and the Count's plan was sure to backfire from stage one. I'm sure it sounded great to the drunk, semi-literate peasant farmer who the Count discussed the plans with, but he could have at least planned it with someone along the lines of Caesar or Alexander to get the kinks out

For those cheaky strumpets that skipped right to the bottom: A good game this is not. Good and Likeness of the Wild Tundra Dog just don't mix. Not bad for what it's worth, but just not good! By all means, get it in a sale or for the cheap laughs or if only for the fact it has werewolves in it, but not for something serious.