Recent reviews by TopHat

Reigns is a simple game, with a simple concept, and an even simpler mechanism. You are a king that must survive as long as possible through the choices you make. As events occur, you get only two through a "swipe left-swipe right" mechanism very similar to a Tinder profile. You're choices affect four simple attributes related to your kingdom. Too much or too little of each will result in your death. But not to worry, you get to play as the next king in line and the game continues.

The simple game-play makes for a good casual game, but only for a while. I had about two good days of playtime before the game felt redundant and the choices repetitive. Events recycle themselves after a while and you have full knowledge of what will happen at the end of them. This is okay if you are just trying to set a new high score based on how many years you survive as king, it's not very enjoyable if you are looking for a good, long-term gaming experience.

To start off about what was good about the game, the single player campagin was quite fun and a bit challenging even at moderate difficulty. There were times where the suspense was really high and I got startled several times by things creeping around in dark corners. There was the level system that worked perfectly into unlocking weapons and made one want to kill aliens and accomplish achievements to get the experience points to unlock new guns a modifications. And finally, being a fan of the Alien franchise, my inner fanboy squeeled with delight for being able to walk around places I knew from Cameron's Aliens movie.

And now for the bad. I'm pretty sure I got the game at a point where all the patches were already pre-installed into the game but it did not make a lot of things better. The graphics were buggy and I adjusted the brightness several times throughout my playthrough. If it wasn't the graphics, certain aspects of the game were still buggy. Sometimes, things would get caught in the walls and I had one crash of the game happen to me. Also, whenever I exited the game, it would just start itself back up again no matter how many times I had to close it. But I think the worse part was that I wasn't able to do multiplayer. Not because it didn't work, but because of bad design and hardly any player base. There is no server list; you are able to select a mode of play and a map and then the game searches for other players who want to play the same mode and map. Problem is there was no one playing and the game required a complete roster of players for the game mode before it started. This was all very frustrating as the multiplayer features had been the primary reason I had purchased the game. I found some groups on steam who organized themselves for multiplayer play on the game. I suppose one could have been able to play multiplayer through that. But I was just frustrated I couldn't play it under normal circumstances so I discontinued playing it and probably won't ever pick it up again.

This is an excellent tower defense style game that offers a few fun and challenging twists. Most notably, the endless swarms of alien bugs that try to swarm you all over the play area. The swarms may be periodic, specialized and may vary their attack patterns as the games progress. With your mobile marine squards, you must battle the swarms and take care of threats as they arrise. Flexibilty is the key to playing the game as the swarms don't attack just one location and you only have so many resources at your disposal for dealing with them like setting up stationary guns and equiping your marines with the right weapons. This makes the game very challenging and quite fun. I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the tower defense genre.

Fans of the board game will definitely love this computerized version of it. One thing any boardgamer will appreciate is that with with cards shuffled, the board laid out and everything set up, games are very efficient and more time is available for more sessions. Also, the ability to play online will mean you will never be without someone willing to play with you (another thing boardgamers will appreaciate).

An excellent side-scroller with a zombie theme. A challenging game for anyone, and a beutiful environment to play in, I would rocommend this game for any fan of good side-scrolling games.