Recent reviews by The White Lion

The Invincible is about the science crew of the starship Dragonfly exploring the planet Regis III and discovering its mysteries, you play as the character Yasna, an astrobiologist a part of the Dragonfly crew. The game takes the form of an interactive story, giving you dialogue options to choose from, and a beautifully crafted game world to explore. The visuals of this game are stunning and very impressive, they will captivate you and inspire wonder in you. The dialogue of the characters is interesting too, it is at a level of quality greater than mundane conversation and common English. The characters are intelligent, and they speak intelligently, and they have meaningful things to say. You are given choices in the game that will determine the dialogue spoken by characters, so there is some reason to play this game more than once, or at least reload saves multiple times, but in many cases the outcome of the choices is the same and inevitable. Speaking for the gameplay, there is not much complexity beyond interacting with the environment, using some player equipped tools, and choosing dialogue, so I would say that the gameplay in itself is not very interesting, but this game is not about its gameplay, it is about the story. The plot is critical to the game, it will direct the player's choices and outcomes, it is basically like an interactive 3D novel, and this game is based on a text novel by Stanislaw Lem. However, the story does not disappoint in my opinion, it is interesting and captivating, although perhaps it features stereotypical hard science fiction ideas. The game is essentially about humans encountering an unusual and novel type of alien life on an alien planet, so I think it is not particularly remarkable in that sense, this does not devalue the plot itself, I think you will find it quite interesting and sometimes thrilling. Maybe the gameplay is not the best and most fun that could be, but the story is good enough to give you a reason to keep playing. Buy and play, please.

Elderborn is about a warrior chosen by his tribe's elders, proven worthy by a trial of combat, to go on a quest to infiltrate the city of Jurmum to fight the enemies that dwell within and to discover its mysteries. The game is short, there is 2 chapters plus an epilogue that finishes the game, I finished it in 4 hours of game time. I feel that it should be much longer than this, although the content that does exist does not lack quality or completeness. The combat is fun, you discover a variety of different weapons with different attributes and various abilities. I recommend using the weapons that gives you the ability to parry, because the parry mechanic is powerful and gives you an advantage. In some ways, this game reminds me of Hexen, an old FPS game with simple game design, but Elderborn is more complex and the combat is more intricate. The sound effects of Elderborn did not fully satisfy me, I feel like the sounds of weapon collisions could be more impressive and satisfying. All in all, I do recommend this game, but for how much it costs there should be more content.

I was playing table-top MTG when I was in high school circa 2013, it was a lot of fun to play and I grew to love the game. Eventually I lost interest in MTG, sometime around Khans of Tarkir, so I just stopped playing for many years, until 2023 when I discovered Magic The Gathering: Arena (MTGA). Playing MTGA rekindled my love for the game, and I quickly became fond of MTGA that allowed me to play the game again. Playing a computerized version of MTG is better than playing table-top MTG, for various reasons. 1) the game is overall easier to play than table-top MTG, because the computer program keeps track of card states, counters, life totals, permanents on the battlefield, etc. 2) it's almost impossible to cheat (with the exception of program bugs), you cannot do any illegal moves because the rules of the game are written in program logic that the computer will execute, you can't do things like drawing extra cards (like casting Brainstorm and drawing 4 cards instead of 3), shuffling your deck in a certain manner as to keep some of the cards in your deck unshuffled, or maybe playing an extra land during your turn that you are not allowed to, and other such ways that table-top players have done before. 3) it is easier to obtain cards for your deck in MTGA than it is for table-top MTG, and 4) you don't have to argue with your opponent about the rules of the game because they are less experienced than you and don't know the game as well as you do, again the functions of the cards is implemented in computer logic so the game executes card effects exactly as they are supposed to happen. All of these reasons make MTGA better to play than table-top MTG, but it's not perfect and there are some issues I experience while playing the game. The one issue that is most frustrating to me and makes me dislike the game as a whole is the matchmaking system. I can tell you based on my experience that the matchmaking logic will play against you, the game KNOWS all the cards in your deck and it will find an opponent with cards that would be highly effective AGAINST your deck, the matchmaking is rigged against you and so you will end up playing against decks that you are most probably not going to win against and this can lead to multiple consecutive losses because your deck is matched with its perfect ANTITHESIS. For example, let's say you have the card Go For The Throat in your deck that targets any creature type except artifact creatures, then the game will match with you a deck that has only artifacts and artifact creatures, that's what I'm talking about and it is the most infuriating thing about this game. Sometimes the game may match you with an opponent with an obviously inferior deck against yours and then you are likely to win, it's like the game decides when you will win and when you will lose, I don't think matchmaking is a truly random decision. At this time I have almost 700 hours playing this game and I've had enough of it, I'm uninstalling it.

I am overall pleased with Lunacid, the music and gameplay are my favorite things about this game. It is built in a retro style, it is supposed to be inspired by an old game called Kings Field. The music is similar to the style of dungeon synth music, it features computer synthesized sounds and it helps create mood for the game environments. The gameplay is fun to me, you use weapons to attack hostile NPCs and game items to help yourself. Lunacid features exploration gameplay, there are various game levels to explore and the game gives you no map so you must explore the game environments yourself and learn them which I find to be some fun, and each game level has a distinct and unique theme which makes the game world diverse and more interesting. I recommend this game.

I have played DMC 1 to 4 and 4 is the best one I have played among all 4. The graphics quality is the best, DMC 4 has fun game mechanics you don't find of the previous 3, and there are more melee combos. The only negative criticism I have for this one is that exiting the game program is tedious because you have to travel backwards through all the game menus to exit the program, and sometimes the program window doesn't fullscreen and you have to manually switch from windowed mode to fullscreen mode to fix this.

Sludge Life is about graffiti tagging various locations in the game world. You play as Ghost, his graffiti tag is the image of a green ghost that resembles a pac-man ghost. The game is short but very stylish and has a unique aesthetic. Sludge Life is well designed and built with quality. The game also features an original soundtrack and is worth purchasing for listening as well, if you like electronic music with hip-hop elements.

Amid Evil is very similar to the Hexen, an old first-person shooter game made by Raven Software and published in 1995. This game may well as be a modernized and enhanced version of Hexen on the Unreal 4 engine; if you have played Hexen before and enjoyed that game then you will enjoy Amid Evil as well. In Amid Evil, the player assumes the role of the champion who is called upon by a voice to travel among the different worlds and vanquish the villains corrupting those worlds and ultimately slay the source of all evil.

The level design is simple and mimics the design of levels in the original Hexen. In Amid Evil the game world is designed such that all sub-levels are connected together via a central hub level and the player travels to the sub-levels via portals from the main hub. Each level or episode is linear but contain secrets and culminate in a boss fight at the end. The levels in Amid Evil are beautifully created and have visually impressive vistas and details.
Personally I felt that the last level of Amid Evil was disappointing in terms of its design, the player must travel across platforms that move into place when the player approaches them and these platforms are sometimes rotated at angles relative to the player character's orientation so I found it was sometimes difficult to travel on these platforms and because of this navigating the final levels was disorientating.

The game is an FPS. The player acquires weapons from the levels they visit and stored in an inventory of 7 unique weapons. Each weapon uses a color type of mana and there are 4 colors of blue, green, orange, and purple. The only weapon that does not require mana is the axe and this weapon is always carried by the player between levels. The player uses these weapons to slay monsters in the game to accomplish the level objective.

I really enjoyed this game and in my opinion it is worth the money.

Stardew Valley is basically Harvest Moon for the PC.

BUY IT!