Recent reviews by Drizz

I've got my money's worth. I have played solo on my own local server and a little bit of private co-op. I have yet to try the game on a public PvP-enabled server.


The ARPG elements start off pretty slow. in ACT 1 you'll have your choice of 2 spells, an evade, and basic weapon attacks. By Act II when you have iron weapons, you'll have access to 2 weapon abilities, your choice of 2 spells, an evasion move (veil) and an ultimate ability. There are six schools of magic you can select from: Blood (life leech) Unholy (minions) Chaos (DoTs) Illusion (debuffs) Frost (CC and defense) & Storm (weapon attack speed). I do like being able to mix and match spells at any time - it makes trying out new builds very easy.

The core draw of the game is being a vampire and I think Stunlock Studios did a good job! This is a game with survival/crafting elements so I expected needing blood to be implemented with a simple meter that drains throughout the day like a hunger/water system. I was glad to see there is more nuance to it. You have a Blood Pool, and when it runs out you begin to lose HP until you find a creature to bite and refill the pool. Your blood pool drains slowly over time, but drains quicker while in combat and you lose 10% of your max pool on death.

Every living being (with blood) has a blood type and quality. The blood type (e.g. Rogue, Scholar, Creature, Warrior, etc.) determines what selection of passive bonuses you can have. The blood quality from 1%-100% determines how many of those passive bonuses are enabled! Draining a 1% Rogue gives you access to 1 bonus - crit chance. Draining a 100% scholar grants 5 bonuses related to spell casting. This gives you an incentive to regularly hunt for a quality human with the type of blood helpful for your build.

This ain't Path of Exile. Some of the RNG elements for rolling on passive bonuses don't kick in until mid-late game. You can acquire or craft gems with varying bonus types and ranges to slot into your skills. Depending on Tier, they will grant 1-3 passive bonuses. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but some weapons appear to have varying stat bonuses as well.

I tend to want to play games with as vanilla/"as intended" settings, but I don't find grinding and long wait times fun. Frame of reference: I think Valheim is too grindy by default. If you relate to this and also plan to play solo private, I recommend changing the following settings:

Teleport blood bound items: Disable (Leaving it enabled means you can't use teleporters with most items in your inventory)
Loot/Resource Quantity: 1.25x
Crafting speed: 2x
Refining speed: 3x
Servant conversion rate: 3x
Servant Limit: 6/7/8/9/10

This is a very democratic game.
Helldivers 2 is an absolute blast. The moment-to-moment gameplay is quite fun and chaotic. You equip your soldier with a loadout suited for the mission at hand. Primary Weapon, Secondary Weapon, grenade, "Booster" (passive squad utility buff), and STRATAGEMS. These are the cool powerful things you call in including machine guns, sentry turrets, airstrikes, shield generators, and maybe a patriotic mech suit.

Enemies roaming around can easily become a dangerous waste of resources to fight in higher difficulties, so there is an incentive to plan your route to avoid enemy patrols with stealth or deploying a smoke strike to provide cover when disengaging. The map is full of (initially hidden) Points of Interest that reward you with extra currency/XP for clearing them. This will almost always lead to a fight so make sure you're prepared. Some POIs have positive benefits for the rest of the mission like revealing the map, providing an arsenal of extra airstrikes for the team - and others counter negative effects like an enemy stratagem scrambler.

There were 2 rounds of issues that affected the game and earned some negative reviews; both have since been resolved. At launch, the game was way too popular for the servers to handle and we had difficulty joining and staying connected. The team at Arrowhead began deploying additional server capacity and fixes to accommodate the player count.
The second and most recent was the requirement to have a linked PlayStation Network account to play the game. This was initially disabled during the game launch, but still listed as a requirement on the Store page. The plan was for this requirement to be enforced by May 30, 2024. This is frustrating on its own, but horrid for players who could purchase the game through Steam in their region, but not able to create a PSN account. Sony walked back this decision after the righteous player backlash. I'm making a point to post my review now to demonstrate my satisfaction in a way that can be quantitatively backed up.

I highly recommend this game if you want to play a fun tongue-in-cheek squad shooter with Starship Troopers vibes....the 1st movie of course for the fascist propaganda parody.

I bought this game 3 times; Vita, Switch, and PC. Love the premise and the soundtrack by Danny B. and so many more.

It's tight, precise, and hard (I'm just not very good at it)

Love this adorable and fun action roguelite base-building cult sim. Nice amount of varied tasks my hyper-fixatable brain loves, while being very chill and entertaining. The music is excellent as well!

Game is funny (good meta-humor) and charming, the game play is quite enjoyable, and the quality of the 3D scenes and animations exceeded my expectations.

Very very playable and fun Early Access title. I've played a lot solo, but it goes by much smoother and easier with even 1 more friend to help out.

Make it to the end without dying. There's a combination of permanent items you unlock over time. At first you'll see some in the form of extra healing flask charges and retained money on death, but the rest are mostly alternative weapons and abilities unlocked so they may appear in future runs. If you've played Rogue Legacy 1 or 2, Dead Cells does not take the approach of permanent stat upgrades for future runs.

I like the variety of approaches to combat you're able to utilize; allocating stat upgrades to Brutality, Tactics, and Survival and choosing matching weapons+powers over the course of your run is neat! The "Metroidvania" design involves discovering permanent abilities that allow you to reach new locations and alternate stages. I love the branching stage selection and how you can take more paths through the stages as you progress over time. The sense of risk and reward is strong. I take riskier bets and die in dumb ways....

I think Dead Cells has a fun, meta sense of humor. The tie-ins with other indie games are pleasant. The accessibility options are very welcome and I'm happy they are included. And definitely a lot of optional features to make the game harder too! Options always good!

I'm loving DST a lot. The survival aspects of this game definitely feel good as a core part of the experience rather than an afterthought. There is always some impending need you should be attending to for your character to survive. Whether you're ready or not, danger WILL find its way to you somewhat frequently. Prepare for the seasons, and survive as long as you can!

The same solid premise as the original, and a lot more fun. Rogue Legacy 2 feels very friendly and there are a good amount of accessibility options to choose from as well. It's cool of Cellar Door to directly tell you rewards and achievements aren't disabled if you use any of the "House Rules" difficulty settings.

The feature to have conversations with NPCs in the post-run prep area is a great touch - it was my favorite part of Hades!

I came into this thinking it would be like other MMOs where there'd be some compromised to the gameplay features present in the single-player games to adapt it to be more suitable for "MMO-type" features. I was wrong. This is quite literally "Elder Scrolls, but online".

For those new-ish to the series, it's got a lot of exploration + discovery, narrative everywhere you look, and set in a very very fleshed-out world that has a lot of history to it. The monetization scheme is not offensive as far as I can tell. I do appreciate being able to buy the game and expansions without a mandatory monthly subscription. It may or may not be problematic or "pay-to-win" at higher-level or more intense/demanding activities, but as a mainly solo player with occasional nonsense with friends I have no complaints.