Recent reviews by adam_bisset

Revisiting this game and it's hugely improved. Can't stop playing now.

I've very much enjoyed my time with Wildermyth. The writing and art of the comic strips are great and create a distinct theme and atmosphere to your adventures. The battle phases seemed pretty simple to get through at the standard difficulty setting but as I've ranked up the difficulty I've come to appreciate that there is a depth to the strategy there that I didn't initially appreciate.

The randomly generated events are a mixed blessing in that the first time you get an event repeated it seems jarring - this happened to me on only my second adventure - but I did get used to it and here I am now after over a dozen campaigns still finding new events now and again.

I really hope that they keep updating the game with additional stories! I still enjoy playing the game and feel that I have had more than my money's worth out of it but more content would be great. That's hpw good it is that I finished it and still want more.

The modding scene provides lots of strong additions to the game in terms of cosmetics, classes and tweaks although mods that add to the story rarely manage to match the tone and quality of the original in my opinion.

Not a natural fit for my normal gaming habits but I really enjoyed this game. Went straight onto a second play through immediately.

Its led by the narrative with lots of choices being thrown at you at each turn. You govern your realm's petty demands while never quite having enough resources to keep everyone happy. Lots of little narratives and decisions flash past and by the end you need to have made enough friends to survive.

Graphics are basic but well implemented. There's a fair bit of reading involved but its well spread out with strategic game play in each turn.

Despite my great love for FF7 I have to not recommend this port as I suffered just too many crashes to desktop - losing progress each time.

This conversion hasn't seen as much love put in to it as some of the other FF remasters and I can put up with that as I was just after a nostalgia fix anyway. Lack of controller support is a miss too although there are workarounds.

I have been saving wherever I can but it's simply too frustrating to battle 9/10ths of the way through a dungeon to get dumped to desktop and have to replay all those encounters again.

I was close to a thumbs down for this game but it does manage to get my recommendation on the basis that I purchased it as part of a cheap bundle and paid in the region of 45p for it.

This game is another in Artifex Mundi's ever expanding collection of HOGs/puzzle games and it benefits from their substantial experience as well as suffering from their usual defects. AM has some pretty wacky storylines in their catalogue but this one is particularly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy and I have to say the player character is one of the most unlikable characters I've ever played - he invents a world threatening menace for which he assumes no responsibility and blames on everyone else.

I like the mix of puzzles though and the game play is quit enjoyable if you like puzzle games. Unfortunately there are several clumsy translations and a couple of puzzles have faults where their solutions don't match the hints the game gives you.

Having just Finished Family Mysteries 1 I'm puzzled as to why this is named as a sequel when it seems to bear no relation to the first one at all!

In summary: Buy? If you are an Artifex Mundi fan then yes, but only at a cheap price.

6/10

I came across this while trying to curb my game expenditure by trawling the depths of the cheapest games on steam and the fact this review (and many of the steem reviews) is positive reflects how cheap/bundled this game often is. It's a simple, short but quite well done little time-killer that might appeal when you are in the mood for something slower.

You progress through a series of reasonably pretty full-screen maps. Each one you visit might hold a handfull of missions plus perhaps a merchant, tradesman, somewhere to rest, etc and will definately hide a number of hidden objects to find. Once you unlocked each screen you can return at any time to use the merchants, finish side quests or pick up any hidden objects you missed.

The story is standard fantasy fare but is fine. The graphics are ok for a game so much about staring at the screen and set the mood well. The game play is good initially though starts to grate and grind a bit in the later stages even in a comparatively short game. For example consuming food at a camp is essential to gain heart points (used to perform most quests/activities) which is accompanied by a pretty but time consuming little 'nighty night' graphic sequence. Very atmospheric the first couple of times but you need loads of heart points to get through the game and end up spamming the camp sites.

It is a game that you cannot really lose - instead you just kind of amble through it... That said, I did finish it... And I did hunt about a bit for the hidden items before finishing the well-flagged final quest... And I paid £0.69 for 5 hours gameplay... Overall that makes it hard not to recommend.

This is a slightly guilty pleasure for me. Guilty because I'm an older guy and it's obviously aimed at a young audience. On the other hand I still love Star Wars and Pixar movies so what the hell...

The game is set in an alternate universe World War 2ish with the main quest following one military unit and it's soon-to-be-a-hero commander as their own small country becomes the fulcrum in a continental war between two vastly larger powers. The enemy are also busy digging out ancient mystical artifacts which adds an Indiana Jones touch to the story.

Well polished (and child friendly) as it is the story aspect of the game is not the draw here. It's fun enough with lots of chat between missions and builds relationships with your team well. It also ties in nicely with the upgrade systems for your tank and troops but it's largely filler for me.

The campaign features turn-based tactical battles which are great fun and have greater tactical depth and graphical polish than the last XCOM. However, Valkyria swaps XCOM's more random spawnings in favour of more varied and strictly set-piece battles and this sacrifices replay value for a more definite winning tactic and subesquently a more satisfying victory. Apart from the early missions you go in to each battle first time hopefully, but expecting to lose and learning from your loss.

There is a good mix of large mass combat and small squad missions as well as skirmish maps to be unlocked as you progress and I've really enjoyed puzzling through the campaign. 8/10

A well balanced and addictive space 4X. As a fan of Gal Civ and Masters of Orion back in the day this is the streamlined, modern equivalent with a focus on customisation at every level.

This a a genre that's crying out for a new benchmark with some great potentials going through kickstarter right now. In the meantime Endless Space provides that one-more-turn fix for me.

9/10
A wonderful open-world toybox of a game full of humour. It's more of the same silliness from SR3 (which I loved) but taken up a further notch with a Matrix style artificial reality, new superhero powers and an alien invasion to fight.

I've seen some complaints that it keeps the same engine as SR3 but it really still looks pretty good and the new powers provide a genuine change in play style. The devs play around a lot with deliberate graphical glitches and sillyness which also helps any minor graphics issues get overlooked.

On a personal note I'd probably have got this earlier and paid more for it if the devs weren't so relentless in the huge amount of paid for DLC that they ALWAYS churn out in the months after release. Still, they're all out now and come boxed with Game of the Century Edition. Get it for £5 on sale and it's a real bargain.

Insubstantial.