Recent reviews by HalfSquirrel

FTL is a roguelike game based in space, where you guide your ship from beacon to beacon, and sector to sector. At each beacon, you encounter an event. Sometimes it will be nothing, sometimes it will be a pirate fight, sometimes it will be someone in distress that needs your help. It puts you in different scenarios, where your actions determine your fate, your future, and that of the creatures around you. The great soundtrack of this game will easily get stuck in your head, and you still won’t hate it! With runs lasting up to 2 hours if you drag it on to the end, this game is fun and worthwhile, if not simply to get a couple hours for your money’s worth.

The controls are very simple, and most of the buttons have hotkeys to speed things up and make it easier. However, sometimes the controls are unresponsive. You can click and even press the hotkeys as much as you want, and it won’t work. I have played on multiple different computers, and have even talked to friends experiencing the same problem. This is one of the biggest issues with the game, as timing is often vital in battle situations and being delayed even a second can get you screwed in battle.

While this game is very fun to start, and without a doubt quite challenging, it does eventually get boring and repetitive. There isn’t very much variation in the events, and you end up going through the same situations over and over again with very few different possible outcomes. The events are essentially what makes the game interesting, and I think having more to this aspect of the game would increase the amount of time you spend playing FTL by a lot. Even the advanced edition content added very little from what I could tell.

Although this doesn’t affect gameplay at all and isn’t a big deal, I don’t like how you can’t have your own preset ship and crewman names, and crewman positions. If you want to set your own names, you have to reset it individually each time (aside from using the restart button to keep the same names as your last run). And every run, the crew will start in the default positions, so if you don’t like them, you have to move them every time. I often forget and end up moving them in the middle of the first fight, which isn’t a big deal, but can be annoying.

Being able to set the crew positions is one of the most useful features. You can have your crew running around and repairing things or fighting off intruders, and when they’re all done, send them all back to their positions instantly at the press of a button! It’s useful to keep everyone in position at all time. It’s also really helpful given that moving crew individually is kind of awkward. The left click-right click maneuver is weird, and annoying to get used to. Left click to select then left click to move would work fine, as it’s the same system used for the weapons. Then right click can be used to deselect. Currently it’s the reverse of the controls for weapon use, and this makes it even more inconvenient to get used to.

While many people will tell you that this game is extremely difficult, I will have to disagree. I found that it’s challenging, but sometimes in the end you just kind of get killed by random events. Sometimes a random event will get a lucky shot in, and you lose a vital team member or just an unlucky sequence of shots that puts you in a really bad situation. Of course sometimes you will lose of making your own mistake or being new to the game and what not, but often it will be because of an unlucky bad situation you were put in.

The end-game sectors are where the game starts to legitimately get tougher. This is a good thing, because the progressive increase in difficulty forces you to adapt your strategy and equipment to take down shields more efficiently and make sure you can survive yourself. This transition into the more difficult sectors can be tough, and there’s really no way to get past it unless you’re ready for it coming out of the previous sectors. You need to upgrade your ship sufficiently, get better weapons and the system upgrades to power them, at least 3 levels of shield and probably a couple extra crewmen from the default 3. Sometimes this is impossible, and it can ruin a run, but it also forces you to think ahead a bit and prepare, which is good. In the end though, it should always be possible to win a run using just skill of the game.

The final boss is also the only extremely hard part of the game. You have to fight 3 phases of it, in between which you could in theory go back to a repair station and fix up your ship, but chances are you either won’t be able to get to one without it being taken over by the rebels, or on your way back after getting fixed up you’ll fight more rebels and get weakened again. The later phases honestly become close to impossible without certain exact equipment which you have to be lucky to get.

Overall, this game is fun for a while, and if you’re willing to persevere through all the tough parts to get really good at this game, there could easily be more than 100 hours worth of gameplay to unlock all the extra content. But in the end, for your casual gamer or roguelike lover, this game is probably only worthwhile to get while it’s on sale (which does happen pretty frequently). For me, this game was fun for a while, but about 15 hours in I started getting bored of runs half way through and it stopped being worthwhile to keep playing.

Heroes of Loot is a very basic roguelike with dungeon crawler elements, where your goal is to progress through the various levels of the game. You fight increasingly difficult monsters along the way, ranging from little skulls that will barely hurt you to long range fiery monsters that will be your doom on many-a-run. This game was ported from mobile devices, and while it may be a fun game to play on your phones and tablets, it does not meet the standards for a PC game.

The settings are very simple and do not allow you to control much. To start off, the few options available are not very clear. They have unusual icons, that You can’t control the overall volume of sounds and music, and both of these are extremely loud by default. You have to turn it off entirely to get rid of it, which kills the point of having a soundtrack placed in your game. PC games need volume sliders or whatever it might be to control the exact volume of the noise, because many PC gamers may have other audio playing while playing games and you may want to make certain things louder than others. There is the volume mixer, but sometimes there isn’t enough space on that to make it the appropriate volume and honestly, add a volume slider if you’re going to being making games on PC.

The font has proven to be quite confusing at times. When learning the controls, the messages popping up can be confusing for certain letters, like ‘O’ and ‘D’. These can be easily misread, which makes the controls very confusing and this quite simply shouldn’t happen in games. The font should be very clear, and while it should suit the game and not just be a fancy cursive font all the time, every letter should still be clear and distinguishable to make all the text fully legible.

When you first play the game, as you get farther, the difficulty of the game will automatically increase and more difficult monsters will be introduced to the game.This is an interesting concept, but in my opinion it doesn’t work with roguelike gameplay. You should be able to choose your own difficulty whenever you want. This is a vital aspect that makes the game progressively more difficult, and stay that way even when you’re starting a run. Sometimes the scaling can be very steep, and you will start fine but then get pummeled on even the very next floors. The automatic difficulty increase makes it so you can’t control how hard the game is, and can be very frustrating.

The classes in this game all play very similarly. Of course there are differences, and they are quite apparent in terms of actual character stats and the stat increases as you level up, but generally the play style for all of the classes is quite the same. Classes with shorter range are much more difficult to use, and classes with lower damage are for the most part useless. Classes with higher magic can keep spells going for longer, but spells are mostly uncontrollable in this game, making it pretty useless. As soon as you get a spell it activates, and they aren’t even very common so having a high magic stat will not be very beneficial most of the time.

The PC controls can be very inconvenient at times, even with the 2 separate sets of options. The standard WASD is available, which is fine, but the arrow key controls are entirely useless because they are so difficult to use. If you don’t like WASD and you want to use the arrow keys anyways, you should be able to customize these controls in the settings, which is also unavailable because of how little you can control in the settings.

One of the most annoying aspects of this game is that the auto-fire, which in my opinion is a core aspect of this game to truly make it unique and honestly more fun to play from the get-go, doesn’t work properly. You can press any of the given auto-fire buttons (I believe it’s X and A) and it will fire, but it won’t always continuously shoot as it should and you have to keep holding it down to get it to aim and fire properly. On my first runs, the auto-fire would keep firing after I pressed the button once, which was as an auto-fire should be, but later it stopped doing this and I had to hold the button down to get it to aim, which is extremely inconvenient given the control scheme for this game and the other buttons you need to press to play the game.

The quests in this game, which you can get by entering the rooms that will sometimes show up on the level, are very badly made. It will give you a random quest to either kill monsters, collect a certain type of money or save friends, but sometimes these quests are impossible because the type of monster you need to kill can only be found on much deeper floors or much higher floors so you can’t find enough of them, or the time period is simply too short to be able to find enough of the item given the size of each floor. The quests should always be completable, and since you’re given a time limit, the game should give you quests based off amounts of certain enemies and items that you will be able to find on your current and upcoming floors.

The graphics are exactly what you’d expect for a game ported from mobile devices, and while it’s not that bad for a roguelike game, I wouldn’t say it’s quite up to par. It’s cute and everything is very pixelated, which is generally a normal thing for roguelike games, but some things are a bit too pixelated and unclear as to what the shape is supposed to be. This isn’t the worst aspect of the game, and doesn’t really affect gameplay too much, but it’s worth mentioning to anyone who finds graphics to be very important.

Overall, this game is quite simply not worth your money. You may be able to get a couple hours of mild fun out of it, but in the end it doesn’t seem worth getting, even when it’s on sale. Playing a short 2 hours of this game, I found far too many flaws for my liking to continue playing and it was just far too annoying and boring to keep going. With so many flaws and things that haven’t been looked into after the porting of the game, it’s not worth the money you spend on it and the little space it takes up on your hard drive.

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a remake of Binding of Isaac with new graphics, new mechanics, new monsters, new items and every aspect of the game has been enhanced. New content has been added everywhere possible, the game feels infinitely smoother, is so much nicer to play, and has many more hours of content to keep you satisfied for longer. If you enjoyed the original Binding of Isaac, Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is going to be infinitely better and I can promise instant satisfaction. This review will consist of comparisons between the original and Rebirth, what’s good, what’s bad, possible changes and just an overall look at various aspects of the game including everything that comes to mind. It is often a bit rambly, because I talk extensively about every detail I like and every component that irks me. For a full recommendation of the game and a continuation of the review, visit the last paragraph.

A basic introduction to Binding of Isaac overall is an attempt to run away from your Mother who is trying to kill you. You run into the basement, where you find various items which can be beneficial, harmful or simply useless to your overall goal of surviving. You shoot the enemies with your tears to kill them while running away from them and their tears to avoid taking damage. Once you die, that run is over. The game is perma-death, so you have to start again from scratch. The game is also absolutely disgusting. There isn’t too much blood, but knowing that these monsters have lived in your dusty old basement, been transformed into ugly mutilated creatures and that this is what becomes of you as you take pills and pick up items is gross. Once you get past the horrid enemies, the game is pretty simple and is extremely fun to all who like the challenge of a game like this..

This game has a bunch of different characters, all of which have different unique aspects. Some characters are easier to play than others, which in the eyes of many people, makes those characters more fun. I wish the characters were more balanced, but it’s very rarely possible to have 10 different characters you can play as that all play with equal difficulty. There are bound to be some easier, more fun and more interesting characters, and that’s what makes them unique. Something that’s missing from the classes however, is all the characters being unique. Some of the playstyles of the characters feel too similar, and some of the things that made characters unique in the original Binding of Isaac have disappeared in Rebirth.

Samson no longer starts with a soul heart along with 1 red heart, an interesting aspect of Samson that made him a challenge in the original game. Rather, he starts with 3 red hearts, probably to accompany the change in the item of Bloody Lust making it a damage output increase relative to the amount of damage taken for the entire floor. This is an interesting change, but it makes Samson more of a tanky character, similar to Magdalene, rather than the weaker character with more potential. I believe a better change would have been to give Samson a spacebar item and keep his stats the same as they are in the original, and the effect of Bloody Lust relative to the amount of kills you get while still maintaining it’s effect over the floor.

Lucky Foot, the item that made Cain a fun character to play in the original, has been significantly nerfed, making Cain a character that lacks a truly unique aspect. While Lucky Foot is still a luck up, a single luck increase does not have much of an effect as most items that use luck to work require a lot of it to work extremely well. If the Lucky Foot could still make the Fortune Machine work all the time, or at least most of the time, and increase the luck stat by multiple points rather than just one, Cain would be a much more interesting character to play and much more unique.

A good addition to Rebirth is that all the stats are finally given good use and are recorded. The luck stat is used in everything it should, with a bunch of items now using the luck stat to perform more efficiently, all methods of gambling in the game being affected by luck and it now being shown on the pause screen when you press escape. They’ve also shown all the stats, including shot speed and luck as previously mentioned, on the pause screen, which were not there in the original game.

There are some enemies in the game that have been made impossible to fight. Bloat is a boss that shoots brimstone like lasers out of his eyes, which wasn’t too bad in the original but in this game there is no ‘tell’ (something that means he’s going to do a certain attack) for when he is going to shoot it, and before you can move out of the way, there is a laser and you’ve been hit. The same thing applies to the Lumps in the womb and the Mom eyes in the red champion Mom fight, which shoot instantly upon popping up and you have no time to react to the high speed shot. There are a lot of enemies that do similar things, and still a lot of rooms remain where it’s almost impossible to leave without taking damage.

Something I noticed that’s new in Rebirth is that everything from the original now has an equivalent. Every form of fly-related enemy now has a spider version that does the same thing, and a lot of similar aspects like that. It makes the game more uniform, because now there are a lot more interesting spiders which were missing from the original game and a lot of new versions of both flies and spiders which add a lot to the challenge of learning new elements of the game.

Easily one of the best new additions in Rebirth is the ability to save your progress in a run. You can stop it at any time, close the game, and start again from where you left off at a later point. You can’t start another run while in the middle of a previous one without overriding the previous run’s data, but it’s still an extremely useful feature, since in the previous game we had to leave the game running to continue a round of BoI.

One of the more fun new additions is rooms of varying sizes. They aren’t anything like a random size, but they can now be a single normal room, as all the rooms were in the original BoI, they can be double rooms extended either horizontally or vertically, and they can even be quadruple rooms that extend in both directions. The animation for travelling through such rooms can apparently cause motion sickness, and it can be turned off by changing something in one of the files (I’m not quite sure what). Personally, I quite like the animation, and it makes moving around large rooms extremely fun.

Overall, this game is easily worth the $15 if you liked the original Binding of Isaac, and at the time of the making of this review there was no DLC released (if there ever will be any), so that might be added in the future. This is an action packed perma-death roguelike with infinite replayability and hundreds of hours of gameplay to unlock all the achievements and secrets. As Steam limits the size of community reviews, you can find the rest of my review here[1drv.ms].

In the rest of the review, I go over:

• Synergies
  
• Chained/Boarded Rooms
  
• Ludovico Technique
  
• Boss Rush rooms
  
• Multiplayer

My favourite thing about this game is it’s captivating story. With a lot of humour, this game pulls off an action shooter with RPG aspects and a storyline you should follow. There are lots of sidequests that will take hours to complete, but the benefits of completing this game are well worth the time. With millions of different guns, a lot of different character skins and a unique experience with all the various classes, this game has hours of fun built straight in.

The game will be fun no matter which class you play, but that’s not entirely due to the class. I found that most of the classes really lack something to keep you interested in, and throughout the whole game it feels like more attention was given to certain classes over others. Story-wise, the siren is pretty much the only class that gets any attention and backstory, as an individual with a history and as a class with abilities. All of the classes have a slight amount of backstory that becomes obvious throughout the game, but Siren has significantly more, and even then it’s very little.

Beyond that, the entertainment value of playing as certain classes over others was very noticeable to me. I played as all the classes, including the 2 DLC classes, and some of the abilities and skill trees and other class-specific aspects were lacking for a bunch of the classes. Some things that were common for all of the classes were that there are certain skill trees that seem obviously better than other ones and significantly simpler to think about, making them seem more attractive, and all of the classes lack enough in-game backstory to really get a feel for them. With all these classes, it comes down to a matter of opinion, what sort of playstyle you like and other such things, but I’ve found that there are some that are distinctly more enjoyable than others.

I think if there were more random Echo Recorders placed around the maps with a bunch of stories about the characters, with more information on them the game could be a lot more interesting. Throughout my playing of the game, I found a couple about Maya (the siren), one about Zer0 (the assassin/ghost) and nothing about any other character. That’s always been something that annoyed me. The stories of the characters may exist somewhere, but if they do, they are probably too hard to find.

In terms of story, I loved this game. There was a hint of humour in just about every interaction you had with the other characters, and the story overall was very captivating and kept me playing. I think the end-game was a bit lacking and didn’t completely match up with the story, but it was still interesting and I don’t regret playing this game through at all. The side quests in this game were very extensive, and easily one of my favourite aspects of the game. Some sidequests are very tedious and boring, but others are absolutely a blast, like those given to you by Tiny Tina (pun intended ;) ).

The replayability of this game isn’t infinite, it does get boring to play through the same parts over and over again in this game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play it more than once at all. Replaying the game in True Vault Hunter Mode, a difficulty increase that allows you to replay the game using your already powerful character, can still be quite fun. The difficulty of the game overall becomes harder while maintaining the same story with no new additions aside from more powerful guns.

The playstyle in this game is very different from that of most other shooters. In Borderlands, you don’t really need to conserve any ammo and you can run around, jump and do a bunch of other crazy things while still attacking enemies. This makes the game more casual and relaxed, which I found to be pretty enjoyable. You very rarely run out of ammo, with all the excessive boxes with tons of different types of ammunition and the cheap price at which you can buy ammo in shops.

That brings me to my next point, which is the excess of money in this game. There is very rarely an opportunity where spending money makes much sense or is beneficial, with ammo being really cheap and not really affecting your money and most of the items in shops being pretty bad compared to the ones you can get outside from drops. I know a lot of people enjoy using the slot machines at Moxxi’s bar, but I never found it that entertaining when it for the most part doesn’t get me anything decent. Pretty much the only point of collecting money is to get the badass ranks.

The whole badass system is something I really like in Borderlands. Being able to slightly upgrade your character in about every way imaginable pretty awesome. Slowly, you’ll amass badass ranks by completing these missions, the more difficult missions resulting in more badass ranks, and for every 25 badass ranks you’ll get 1 badass token which can be used to upgrade one of the 5 stats presented. I really like the additional content that this adds to the game.

Personally, I far prefer playing this game with other people. I don’t like playing very many games alone, and even if I’m playing a singleplayer game, I like to be talking to other people at the same time. I find it a lot more enjoyable, and the same thing applies to this game. I’ve never played this game without other people simply because every moment allows for a lot more laughing and interaction when you’re doing it with other people. If I had played through this game alone, I might have noticed some interesting bits of humour, but I never would have started laughing hysterically at some glitchy motion or funny joke. The enjoyment is multiplied by a lot when playing this game with other people.

Something I noticed is that everyone plays this game differently. Personally, I like to play it patiently, doing all the sidequests, and being sure I’m making the right decisions with my skill points and gun choices. When I play Borderlands, I also like to play for as long of a period as possible. Of course I know nothing is that big of a deal, but I like being patient with this game and spending time on everything because I like feeling that I’m making the right decisions. Some of the people I have played with like to speed through the game and skip any extra content and make the easiest decisions possible. I think it’s important to play with people that have at least a similar mindset to you so that you aren’t being forced to play in a way that you aren’t entirely comfortable with.

Warning: Slight spoilers in following paragraph. Reader discretion is advised.
The final boss of the game really irked me. There was a whole obsession with how it was summoned using a siren and the key, both of which are very eridium oriented. The final boss used a lot of fiery attacks and swam in the pools of lava that surrounded the boss fight. I think it would have made a lot more sense if they were pools of molten eridium or something, with the boss spewing out eridium, or at least something purple, rather than fire.

This game also has some really amazing individual lines. They are scared all throughout the game, but easily my favourite is the line that Scooter says when you meet him in Sanctuary. I’ve probably ruined the rewatching of that line several times when replaying the game with friends, through my inability to repeat the line properly and because I keep on trying.

Overall, this game can easily be worth $20 depending on how much you play it and how much you enjoy it. I’d recommend getting it on sale simply because I’ve seen it go on sale reasonably often, for at least 66% off, but the game is also getting older and the Pre-Sequel (another game in this series, taking place between the first and second games) did come out recently. Quite simply, I love the amount of humour in this game, it’s a fun game to sink plenty of time into, and probably one of my top 10 all time games because of how much of a blast I had with it.

Mount Your Friends is honestly such a hilarious game that it’s worth the $5 just for that reason. You can play with friends pretty easily over steam, on a couple different levels of varying difficulty. It’s fun to customize your character so that you look really funny, and to play with friends with your willy hanging about like it’s no big deal.

The game does have some Steam achievements too. However, most if not all are achieved through playing singleplayer, which I must say is honestly not very fun. I am definitely more of a multiplayer kind of guy, but it’s just so much more fun to play with other people. Trying to be the last one alive over your friends is far more fun than doing a long distance cannonball in your own singleplayer game.

The game also lasts a long while. It's not the game you play all the time, but if you've got a few friends around, you can just spend a few minutes messing around in a game of Mount Your Friends before moving on to other things. I've now had this game for a couple years and if I have an opportunity to play it, I'm glad to enjoy a few minutes of it!

There isn’t too much to say about this game. There is some nice character customization, online play is pretty well organized, the different methods of play allow for a good bit of variation, and if you just play this game for 1 hour with your buddies, that will make up your money. That experience will probably be up there for the most laughing you did in an hour.

If you don't feel like reading, full recommendation in the last paragraph.

First things first: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is EXTREMELY addictive. You might disagree, but that's probably because you're one of those people that just wants to try and be unique so you hate the game because you want to hate it rather than because it's actually bad. If you're playing this game to have a good time, good times will be had. With a bunch of different gamemodes to choose from, there is always something for you to do, whether you're looking for a fun way to spend a few minutes before leaving or if you're looking for an intense match against other players.

The game itself is unique. In the main gametype (competitive), the Terrorists and the Counter Terrorists, face off to see who will come out on top. The terrorists have to plant the bomb in one of the sites, and the counter terrorists have to try to prevent that. If it happens, then they have to try and defuse the bomb in the time given. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn the game, because it involves learning a lot of different maps and the various locations that can be found there, learning how to shoot properly in this game with very unusual shooting patterns, and learning how to work as a team to come out on top.

Learning to shoot in this game involves learning how to stop before shooting, not shooting in mid-air and controlling your spray so that as many shots as possible hit the target. All of these involve lots of practice for people new to the Counter Strike series. You also need to work together with your team. You have to make sure to use your money appropriately for the situation, and determine a buying plan with the team. You also need to develop a strategy for which players will go where to get the bomb planted in the site, or how your team is going to defend the site. You need to learn and make callouts and preferably use the voice chat to make sure your team has as much information as possible. You need to remember to buy grenades and remember that they are an important part of the game so it’s worth spending the money on. Then you need to learn how to use these grenades you’ve got. There is a lot to consider when playing CS:GO, and it’s an enjoyable experience to learn what to do in what situations.

Communication is a really fun and important thing to have in this game. From callouts of enemy players, to casual conversations about Madagascar, communication is everything in CS:GO. Your teammates will depend on you, and you will depend on them and that’s what makes playing this game so fun. You have to be able to trust your teammates to give you the right information, but you also have to know that no intel is 100%. It’s also important that there is no dislike on the team, which you can’t always control because you might end up playing with some of the most annoying people in existence, but if you dislike someone or someone dislikes you, they won’t be playing their best and they might not even be playing at all.

However, the matchmaking and ranking systems in CS:GO are not very good. In your average competitive game where you’re playing alone, you will often notice that you’re either with some of the dumbest people on the planet or (rarely) that your team consists of some pretty cool people that you might want to play with again. Smurfs (people that buy new accounts to play with people below their rank) are very common, so it’s not rare that you’ll get placed in a game with a player that is supposedly far below your rank and playing like a top player.

The system for dealing with hackers is still a pain even with recent updates that improved it, because if you get put against a hacker you’re expected to have to deal with playing the entire 45 minute game, even if you don’t have to deal with the result of the game when the hacker gets banned. Also, there is a chance you’ll get put against extremely high ranked players if they queued with someone of a low rank. On a similar topic, you can’t surrender when your team is obviously being wrecked and there is no chance of success unless someone on your team abandons. I think it’s really annoying to have to play through 45 minute games, even though it tells you at the beginning you’re committing to it, if no one is enjoying the game. It’s a pain, and really just not worth the effort.

The ranking up/down system is extremely painful. You never know how close you are to ranking up, and it’s determined solely by whether you win or lose (as far as I know). It doesn’t take into account individual skill (this is extremely important in matchmaking, since you could get put in a team with awful players and lose because of that), and I don’t think it takes into account how much your team wins by or the rank difference between the players. The rankings are still generally a good representation of a player’s skill (except for the player’s starting rank, but that’s not that big of a deal anyways), but I believe it’s still too vague and has a lack of depth.

A big issue, though it would be a hard one to solve, is community support. When you get banned from competitive because you timed out and couldn’t get back in time, or due to something out of your control unless you want to spend tons of money on it, there is nothing to help you get back in. Although it’s always a temporary ban, it can still be a pain to have to wait it out. It’s pretty unfair at times. Although it’s good that the community is involved and gets to contribute to the game in the form of weapon skins and maps, it’s just not enough to have a good, strong community.

Another thing I really don’t like about CS:GO is it’s community. Of course there are a lot of good people that are extremely helpful, but some people just want to piss you off. I made a thread about the above issue at some point, and there were too many people telling me “if you can’t get back to the game in 3 minutes, you should spend an unreasonably large amount of money upgrading your PC and router”. It’s even worse in game. There are constantly trolls that don’t even try, annoying players that will be abusive in the chats (although you can block that, it’s still an issue in the community) and smurfs and hackers that shouldn’t exist.

A really big issue for me is bots. In competitive matches, a full team is essential and having a player that can’t do anything, and won’t even listen to the ingame commands that control them half the time, is extremely harmful. Sometimes you can’t control when someone has to leave or times out and things like that, and not having a lot of control over how that 5th player does things can easily cause the loss of rounds. It’s one of the worst things in the game to be playing at a disadvantage, because having an advantage over the other team is everything in CS:GO competitive. You also have no decent way of getting rid of them, because if you hurt them, you get banned as much as you would for killing an actual person.

Overall, I think the game can easily be worth $15. Though it does have some flaws, most of them aren’t really gameplay related and I would easily recommend this extremely fun and addicting game. I’d still suggest getting it while it’s on sale, because then of course it’s cheaper and they’re pretty common so you won’t have to wait long, but if you’re really excited to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, then I wouldn’t be against buying the game at it’s original price. Congratulations if you read through this entire review, and I hope it helped in your decision on whether or not to buy this game!

As the Steam description for the game says, Rogue Legacy is a Rogue-”Lite” platformer-type thing where you travel through 2D rooms slaying the castle’s inhabitants either by sword or by spell. There is a large variety of traits you can get to either benefit or harm your Rogue Legacy run as the heir to a hero trying to save the king with a cure that can be found in the castle. There’s even a pretty interesting amount of different spells you can get, ranging from throwing a dagger, to a circle of fireballs around you, to a couple crows that will home in on enemies and kill them.

You might have heard that this game is extremely difficult, and in a way, it is. It’s hard to start out against the new monsters and the weird mechanics of the game, but once you get the hang of it, there really isn’t much else you can do to get better other than upgrade your castle. So rather than it being particularly challenging, it’s more just time consuming. I’m not saying this in a bad way though, I rather like it. It’s still never extremely easy, and as you complete the game more it still gets more difficult. It’s really fun to slowly upgrade your character, barely managing to pay for that upgrade and having to do another run to get some more.

The world generation in this game gives you a lot of different rooms that you will experience a lot and eventually get the hang of. There are spike traps, wall turrets and platforms that only come out when you hit them, all used to add to the challenge of moving around, which is a very important mechanic to get the hang of. Some rooms will be extremely challenging with valuable prizes when completed, and some rooms will be a simple stroll through a hall.

Spending your money properly is vital to performing well. You need to buy the things that will benefit you most and improve your runs. If you find yourself running out of mana quickly, maybe you should increase your mana capacity, or if you find yourself not doing enough damage, you should increase your health. If you find yourself playing as certain classes a lot, you should upgrade them to improve their abilities. And then there’s always the blacksmith and enchantress, who will get you very important items that may even benefit you more than a manor upgrade. You can buy swords and armour and capes from the blacksmith, along with runes from the enchantress to allow your character to do all sorts of different abilities like draining the health of your enemies and being able to fly, or making the difficulty a bit harder for better rewards. What do you think is more important? That will determine the success of a Rogue Legacy run.

Though the storyline isn’t one of the bigger aspects of the game, I find it kind of intriguing to learn things from the Prince’s Journal that you’ve experienced yourself. After completing the journal, I haven’t gone back to read them all in order but it was fun to find the journals scattered around the castles randomly and read a bit of the backstory of the game.

Although this game does last a lot of hours, and you will be able to play it for a while, it doesn’t have infinite replayability. Once you get through all the bosses enough times, all that makes the game harder is increased damage/health, and not new enemies to fight. It does get boring eventually, and once it gets to a certain point there’s just no reason to continue. Still, this game will last enough hours to be worth buying.

This game may not be worth $15, but any sale that happens for this game makes it probably worth looking into if you like Rogue-lite platformer type games. It’s extremely fun, a challenge worth looking into and plenty of gameplay to go through. I recommend Rogue Legacy to anyone who likes this sort of game.

Bastion is a very unique game. The story line is extremely captivating, and it's easily one of the aspects I love most in this game. The biggest thing that kept me playing this game was wanting to find out what happened next (I'm a huge story fan - A game with a good story is a game that I finished with love). The gameplay in this game is also something I haven't experienced before. The combat is very interesting, and there are a lot of small details in this game that I took for granted when I started playing this game (the automatic targeting system helps a lot more than I thought :p).

The Bastion area in the game is also new to me. Various buildings, all with unique purposes that all work together to make the gameplay more fun and interesting, and are all beneficial in their own special way. My favourite one easily being the Distillery, because I like being able to customize the bonuses I get for each level at any time, and always being able to unlock more and become even more powerful.

I really enjoyed being able to upgrade my weapons, and then choose from a pair of upgrades that you can go with. Differently from most games, you don't have to pick your way through an entire skill tree to get to cool abilities, and you also have the option of easily changing what you picked at any time. Though the normal skill tree is fun, and can easily change how you play a game, I always found it difficult to decide which tree to go with and worried about picking the one that I wouldn't like. What if I don't like freezing enemies, and I would rather burn them? What I like about this game is that you can easily switch between the weapon upgrade that you want to use. It may not affect gameplay as much, but I still found this to be more enjoyable.

Something I think this game lacks is replayability. When I first completed the game, I figured I would start again and continue trying to improve my character. I did it for a little while, and restarted the story, but it just didn't have the same effect. It wasn't quite the same after the first playthrough. It didn't have anything new, even in the new gametypes you unlock that allow you to continue with all your old gear. Another issue is that at that point, the game is pretty easy. You have all the best weapons, all with really good bonuses, and the difficulty is barely increased. It's possible that it gets more difficult farther in, because I didn't get far before I stopped the replay of the game.

*WARNING* WEAPON SPOILERS IN FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH
Another aspect I don't like about this game is that certain weapons are far better than others. I always found the fang repeater and the duel wielded guns (that I don't remember the name of) to be completely useless, having never used them outside of the practice zone for those weapons. For long range weapons, I used the bow until I got the Galleon cannon thing (that I also don't remember the proper name of) and then I used the calamity cannon once I got that. I never really had the need for anything else.

I also never used the skill associated with Q. It could be just me, but I was never particularly aware of it's existence and the only time I really used it was the occasional fight where that's what you were supposed to do. There's no particular emphasis to remind you to use it other than the constant finding of new abilities (which also never gives you the chance to use the old ones if you're like me), and there is no need to use it as I got through the game without too much trouble not using the Q skill.

I think the usage of Shrine Idols rather than an actual automatic difficulty increase is interesting, but I also never wanted to do it. I prefer a simple switch from Normal to Hard, rather than having to activate shrine idols and worry about which ones seem harder than others. This is probably just a personal thing, but the Shrine is always a building I avoided.

Overall, I don't think the game is worth $15. I wouldn't want to pay more than $7 for a game that I'm going to play less than 10 hours of, but when this game goes on sale (it seems to have some pretty big sales when it goes on sale too), I hope it gets into your Steam Library because you won't regret playing through this epic adventure.

Binding of Isaac is one of the best games I've played on Steam. It has the right level of difficulty, an interesting base story, and a lot of secrets to uncover. Being able to play as a bunch of different characters, all with different stats and starting items, and random items every time you play through the game, makes the game extremely fun and random. Some runs will work, some won't and a lot does depend on luck, but even in a run where you haven't been particularly lucky you still have a chance to pull it off if you fit in a bit of skill.

This is one of the first games I played on Steam, and I didn't really enjoy it at first. I sucked at it, and couldn't even get to the first Mom fight. Eventually though, as I played the game more, I got better and learned how to deal with the various enemies. I learned advantages and disadvantages of picking up certain items, and which items were OP so I could hope for one of those. The wiki really helped a lot at the beginning to help me learn the items, of which there are over 100 each with different effects.

Though I believe it's intentional for some characters to be more difficult to play than others, it's not a feature I can fully appreciate. I like when all the characters in a game are balanced, which could have been very possible in BoI but some characters are still distinctly worse than others.

This game also takes a long while to get the hang of. At first, I played about 2 hours of this game then quit and didn't play again for almost a year. I was then reintroduced to the game, and I started playing it a lot more. It still took me another long time (maybe 40-50 hours) to beat mom for the first time, and then 100 more hours on top of that to beat ??? at the end of the game. It takes practice and patience to finally beat the game, but it's worth every minute of it.

The DLC for this game is definitely required. Wrath of the Lamb adds so much important content and it's not nearly as fun without it. There are significantly fewer items, less end-game content, less enemies, and a lot less fun to be had. Although, with or without the DLC, Binding of Isaac is easily worth the price you pay for it at any time. $8 is nothing compared to the amount of fun you will have playing this game.

Game Dev Tycoon is a game that can be challenging at first, but is extremely satisfying once you get farther. When I started out, I really hated how all my games that I thought would be really cool came out with crappy reviews and awful sales. I didn't like that to the point where I decided to use guides on the internet to try and improve my games. I don't regret doing it, because I really hated playing the game without it, and it helped a lot.

One thing about this game is that it's really hard to get started. It takes a long time to get all the hints and then to know how to use them to the best, and I still haven't unlocked all of them after creating Game Reports after every game. I've still been continuing to use guides, and it's been improving the game for me.

Another thing I don't like is how random the game reviewing system still feels. Sometimes I will follow the hints and guides exactly (and since I'm using the hints too, it's not just the guide being wrong) and the game will still come out with a 6-7 review.

I think it can be challenging to determine what I should be using my research points on, and even more so as I'm getting farther in the game and I need to start having specialists in certain areas. I know this is something you have to learn on your own, but this is a situation similar to getting the topic-genre-gaming device right where it's not worth the effort to look into, and it's a nice thing to know in advance.

The one thing in the game that has bothered me the most, however, is the lack of a reminder to name your game. My biggest issue for a really long time was forgetting to name my games, and I know you aren't reminded to do that because it affects the reviewing process, but I feel like if you got a little reminder to name a game it could go a long way. In my opinion, it doesn't even make sense to let a game called "Game #38" onto the market anyways, it doesn't sound like a game at all. The way I finally got myself to remember to name games is by being in a skype call with my friends and getting them to select from a bunch of options to develop my games, and then getting them to name it to make it more fun. Other than that, more than half my games have been unnamed.

However, this game is still really fun. Where it does have it's downsides, there is still something that keeps me playing. One thing might simply be that I haven't completed the game yet, or that I want to get more achievements, but one of my favourite things is easily how satisfying it is to make a successful game. The income rate is amazing, I love seeing my money increase, and every time I see a "10" on the initial reviews I know I'm in for a treat.

Overall, this game may not be worth a full $10, but if it's ever on sale at a price of less than $5 I easily recommend that you get it. It has some faults, but when you succeed it's easily worth the sadness of previous failures.