Recent reviews by Adela

Recommended only for masochists!

Armello is an aesthetically beautiful, yet structurally deep board game where you aim to aid or kill the king, who has been taken ill with a plague known as The Rot. Each day, the Rot drives him closer to to death.

There are multiple possible victory conditions in this game, whether it’s slaying the king, waiting for him to die of rot, purifying him of rot, or becoming more rotten than him. Every game has a set turn limit as well, as the king slowly rots away to his death. If none of the other win conditions are met, the player with the highest prestige level becomes the winner and new king. Prestige is earned with certain cards and mainly by killing your rivals - both players and banes. You can kill them buy rolling a certain number of dice, also determined buy specific conditions.

Whichever route to victory you set out on, the general gameplay remains the same. You choose your hero from one of the animal clans, and then, after the game selects your three rivals (each with unique statistics and skills), you find yourself on a randomly generated board. Each turn you have a certain number of cards which is determined by the character you chose at the start of the game. These cards make up a hand that fills up every turn, giving more options for buffs and interactions. You can move three tiles in any direction towards an objective.

In any given turn there is so many options - you could go hunting for treasure, look to attack a rival, try to complete subquests, or try to make your way over to a different part of the map. You’re free to pursue whatever style of victory you desire, though certain quests will yield various items and stat boosts that will prove more helpful to a specific method.

Overall this is a lovingly crafted game that manages to reconstruct the joy of a great board game. It is simple to pick up but has a deceptive degree of complexity under the hood as you never have the feeling that you played the same game twice.

Find a picture that looks like a typical Japanese landscape, turn it into a jigsaw puzzle of unusually shaped puzzle pieces, put all the pieces in a pond with koi fish, take some relaxing songs and put them on a short repeat, get one of those bamboo water features that clunks every few minutes as it fills with water and finally a mouse that does not click where you want it to. That’s Pixel Puzzles: Japan!

This is a typical 2014 jigsaw puzzle solving game, where the gameplay is pretty much what you'd expect, although it does offer some interesting features which differ it from the wide variety of jigsaw puzzle games on the market. It certainly does have a traditional Japanese feel, especially with the Koi pond filled with water and floating Lilly pads.

As with a traditional jigsaw puzzle, the most efficient way to complete it is by finding the edge pieces first and then working your way inward. If you place a piece correctly, it locks into place and cannot be removed again by accident which is useful.

The game utilizes a sort of an original “fishing” mechanic in order to to retrieve the puzzle pieces. They can move around and you have to “fish up” the piece you want from a koi pond that surrounds the play area.

Using a piece is just a matter of dragging it out of the pond and placing it somewhere. My opinion is that it is an interesting way to show all of the unused pieces without struggling to fit them all on the screen.

All in all, there are 21 puzzles for you to solve (unlocked by playing from easiest to hardest). Each of these are tiered by difficulty, starting with the lowest piece count and eventually reaching over two hundred pieces per puzzle. The puzzles themselves are images of landscapes or buildings from Japan.

Depending on the amount of puzzle pieces and how keen your eyesight is, some puzzles can take quite a while to complete. Unfortunately you cannot save a puzzle that is in progress so if you have to stop playing in the middle of a puzzle your only option is to minimize the game.

Overall, if you are looking for a good and relaxing game where you don’t need to worry about quick reflexes, then you can’t go wrong with this one. Being a fan of jigsaw puzzles obviously helps, but the game has enough unique touches to make it appealing to all fans of casual titles.

Just as with the original Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 is a first-person shooter which pits players against hordes of zombie-like enemies. It is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic and focuses on four survivors who have to take on the infected specimens. These survivors must fight their way through levels, cooperate with one another, so that they can reach safe rooms that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign's finale.

Whereas the first game had a limited selection of weaponry, this sequel gives you multiple shotguns, multiple handguns, and multiple fully-automatic weapons, melee weapons as well as incendiary ammunition, explosive ammo and laser sights. You'll be putting these weapons to the test against common, uncommon and special infected (which have higher intelligence, are more aggresive and more likely to attack, rather than passively sitting until disturbed). Four of these special Infected (the Hunter, Smoker, Charger and Jockey) are 'pinners' and require another Surviour to knock them off. The other ones (Spitter and Boomer) support the pinning infected, mainly because their attacks can help slow down the Survivors. The last two specials (Tank and Witch) are considered "Boss infected" as they have a very high amount of health, they spawn at the rarest rates and they can easily kill a Survivor in a matter of seconds.

Like before, there are multiple difficulties such as an easy and normal one, serving as a good entry-level challenge for new players, advanced difficulty for more experienced players and and an expert one where you have to be extremely cautious when moving forward since witches can instantly kill you when starting them, health kits are extremely rare to find outside the saferoom and friendly fire inflicts half damage to the Survivors.

There are thirteen playable official campaigns that take the survivors through a wide variety of detailed environments - from swamplands to a creepy carnival ground, from flooded suburbs to claustrophobic city streets.
There are also several multiplayer mods such as:

1. Survival mode - (A 4 player co-operative mode where survivors try outlast a never ending horde);
2. Realism mode - (With some changes to game mechanics, the hardest one off all)
3. Realism versus mode
4. Versus mode - (Two separate teams of 4 players take turns playing as Survivors and Special infected, competing for the most points).
5. Scavenger mode - (Another 4v4 versus mode where survivors attempt to fill a generator with gas cans, scattered throughout a map while the infected team must work together to stop or delay the survivors from filling the generator).

Overall, Left 4 Dead 2 was very much worth the purchase. The thing I like the most about this game is that it does promote teamwork (more than most of the games on the market). Players have to work together, healing, helping and protecting one another in order to survive.

A lot of friends suggested to me that this is a good game and i should play it. I wasn't impressed of it before i started playing, because it is a 2D game and I'm not a fan of them (when i say im not a fan of them i mean i hate the graphis of these types of games), so you can conclude that this has to be a very special game to impress me so much and make me write a review about it. What I like a lot about this game is that it is so simple to learn, yet so challenging, especially when you have to beat bosses.
At first you have to create your own character and island. You can customize your character, but the game gets to choose wheather you will have one of the following types of island - infected with corruption or with crimson.
The crimson and corruption are types of bioms which everybody will have on their island. You can have only one of them. The two contain similar hazards, though each has its own unique enemies, items, and blocks. The tools, weapons, and armor obtained via Corruption materials are slightly less powerful than those obtained via Crimson materials, and Corruption enemies are also slightly less powerful.The corruption is purple colloured and the crimson is red colloured. This infection spreads with the time you spend playing on your island. Although some players don't mind it and even let it grow, I personally would advise all new players to make sure that this infection doesn't spread on your island. It infects trees, blocks, even the creatures are different and the music is kinda creepy and really annoying. So at the very beggining of your game find the infected part of your island and try to dig around it - maybe - 4,5 blocks around every infected part. One more thing this infection can spread even underground, so is very important to dig fastly, so you don't have more work later. In the end you will have something like an underground tunell. You can put lights so that it is easier to dig. If you feel lazy to dig, keep in mind that while you dig underground, you can stumble on to different furnitures (yes there are a lot of furnitures, decorated small rooms undrerground which you can take and decorate your house with it). So that can motivate you to dig more. When your tunell is ready, you island is now safe and can't get get infected anymore.
An NPC is an non-player character. This is a friendly automated character that provides different services to players. You just need to stand close to them and you will be able to buy the items they provide. They will generally walk around during the day, they can talk to each other, or to the player. Why it is good to have more NPC in your house?
The more rooms your house has, the more NPC will move in and the wider choice of bying items you will have. Also town NPCs that have moved into Houses reduce enemy spawn rates in the area, an effect that increases when more of them move in your house.
While digging underground you can find weapons too. Keep in mind that you can equip those weapons and make your character stronger. Also when you beat a boss, you earn even more powerfull weapons. You can equip wings, so that you move faster, different kinds of items which boost your atack speed, health regeneration and e.t.c.
There are 3 types of character modes - softcore, mediumcore and hardcore mode. And there are 2 types of world modes - normal and expert mode.
Defeating bosses makes you advance in the game in some way. Each boss has its own particular way of being summoned, and warning messages appear whenever one is about to appear. There are pre - hard mode bosses, hadmode bosses and event bosses. When defeating a boss, he can drop and item or a weapon (or nothing xD). Stronger bosses drop stronger weapons.
Health is the character's life count, they look like heart icons and you can find them at the top-right of your screen. Each red heart is equal to 20 health. Taking a lot of damage causes health to drop. Your health will regenerate when you stop taking damage. Regeneration can also be boosted using various equippable items. Also when you dig undreground, you can find Life Fruit to increase your health. With 15 Life Crystals and 20 Life Fruits used, a character can reach 20 yellow hearts, which equals 500 maximum health.
The most enjoyable part of this game. If you want to progress faster, you will deffinetelly need friends to play with. The more people, the easier to beat bosses and creatures, find materials and build different kinds of buildings or just explore your island.
In conculstion, you can continue playing this game hours and hours before you are able to stop. There is a countless number of materials which you use to make weapons, armor and a whole bunch of cool stuff you can find exploring your island. You can construct different buildings using the materials you have found and decorate them, you just have to have a big imagination. I absolutelly love the co - op part and it is really fun when you play with someone else. There are bosses which you have to take down and they become harder to kill with higher difficulties, so it is essential to have a buddy to help you out. There is just simply so much to learn about this game that it can never make you bored. Overall 11/10 one of my best choices so far ^^

Warning:

It is also very important that you back up your files. It is done when you open the game, before entering your island. You will see a little cloud icon under your character. That is steam cloud and I strongly advise everybody to move their character and world to it.

Overall this is one of the best games I have played so far and there are not many games which are near to give you that joy of playing them.

Killing Floor is a sickness, a wicked one at its finest. There is a very impressive selection of guns that you get to use to fight the specimens off. The players also get to choose their class. The class system is great, because it allows teammates to specialise, what means that teamwork is encouraged greatly. Requires good tactics and has great atmosphere. Every class has their own sets of priorities, each have their drawbacks and advantages.The sound effects are great, and the soundtracks made by Zynthetic are phenomenal. Overall Tripwire has truly put so much content and work into this game that it's a must in your inventory. <3