Recent reviews by Syntax Error

Ole BJ Blazkowicz is at it again, killing Nazis and not bothering to take down names because that'd take too long. Seriously, I checked my stats and I killed 2,045 Nazis, Nazi robots, Nazi dogs, Nazi robot dogs and one alligator who probably wasn't affiliated with National Socialism in any way. The New Colossus picks up with a slight retcon of the previous game's ending and has you taking the fight to American shores.

Most of the criticism leveled at the game is overwrought or exaggerated. The main story may be 9-10 hours if you rush through it but I had over 30 hours of Nazi killing enjoyment, taking the story at a more normal pace and completing the numerous side missions where you assassinate Ubercommanders to weaken the Reich's grasp on the US. The story is often B-grade but suitable for a game that revolves around how many letters of condolence Hitler has to rubber stamp. The nonsense about leftist agendas, etc is just that but if you're upset about the idea of killing Nazis and the occasional Nazi-allied Klansman then, sure, avoid this game because it'll give you the vapors.

Gameplay, TNC is very similar to TNO/TOB although weapons have new upgrades and the perk system was redesigned where you learn by doing -- kill enough guys with hatchets and you get to carry more hatchets. And hatchets are fun so you'll want to carry more. There's no real surprises or innovations here. Boss style fights are minimal which was fine for me (I'm not a big fan of the whole "hide and shoot when the magic moment happens" thing) but if boss fights are important to you then maybe you'll be disappointed. You can mix and match weapons now, carrying a shotgun in one hand and a rifle in the other, or pistol & laser gun, etc. Or two of the same: Some days just call for dual-wielded shotguns.

The game ran smooth on my system. I consistently had 65-75+ fps at 1080/Ultra on my old i7-860 @ 3.6GHz, R9 290X 4GB, 12GB system. All told, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus was a fun and satisfying time. It didn't heal the sick and raise the dead but it did provide me with thirty hours of fun shooting.

The follow-up to the original Audiosurf, Audiosurf 2 pretty much does everything right.

Audiosurf has a pretty simple concept: use your favorite tunes to generate a track and bumps and dives along to the music and ride it as you collect colored blocks to fill a grid and earn points. It's simple enough that anyone who played the original might wonder what makes AS2 different and, in many ways, it's not different so much as improved. New graphics, the ability to stream music direct from YouTube, some new game modes including puzzles & wakeboarding and easy mod/skin support. The track generation seems better than before and its integration with the placement of the blocks and obstacles was subtle enough that I originally was going to criticize its lack but, after a few hours, realized just how tightly intertwined they were. Blocks appear to the music while crystal barriers pulse like equalizers and form walls during long notes or extended vocals.

The improved graphics are great. My favorite by far is the "Stadium" mode where mercury-like globlets pulse and bounce to the music but there is also a bright pastel "Mystic" mode, 80s inspired neon and a "Dusk" mode that feels like Atari's old "Night Driver" game on acid. If those aren't enough, player-created skins abound adding starscapes, snow and more to the scenery.

Audiosurf is a rather *ahem* one-note game so it's likely not something you'll be playing for hours at a stretch. But for short periods its captivating and a strong game for short periods. If you enjoyed the original or if the idea of racing along to your music sounds good, Audiosurf 2 is going to please.

A follow-up to the excellent Nation Red is a tricky thing. Sometimes a bowl of deliciously simple ice cream isn't improved upon by adding a pile of whipped cream, sprinkles and other toppings. And Versus Squad doesn't quite find the right balance but you still wind up with a pretty good dessert.

The premise is simple: A twin-stick shooter where you mow down waves of zombies in a never-ending endurance fight. Weapons and power-ups abound and you gain selectable perks as you progress. Versus Squad adds a defense element by allowing the player to purchase and place walls, fences, sentry turrets, explosives and other items to protect themselves and funnel the zombie hordes. Unfortunately, the defense part didn't always seem to make the game better. In my first game, it bugged out and locked up the game (that hasn't happened since). In other games, no one had enough coins to do much between waves. The UI is clunky which just adds to disrupting the flow of the game. There's also a survival mode where you place items once and then fight continuously without wave breaks.

Although I didn't think the defense aspects were entirely ready for prime time, the game itself remains solid and the other improvements are nice: you can earn points to buy permanent perks, the graphics are much improved and the game still feels solid. It's not a bad game by any stretch; it's a pretty good one. But the new elements need some more tweaking to match the simple beauty of Nation Red. Fortunately the developers remain involved in updating the game and I expect good things for it.

Max's Birthday is a short (~1 hr) DLC revisiting Max and his family. It's Max's 11th birthday and he's excited to have his party and get presents. Who doesn't like birthdays? Approximately half the DLC is in the form of a dream Max has about conquering a castle with his siblings and is in the same RPG-model combat as the base game. The other half is more narrative and simply time spent with Max, his family and friends. There isn't much in the way of "educational opportunities" here although Max's anxiety and habits will be familiar after playing the base game.

Assuming you enjoyed "Max, an Autistic Journey" (and why would you be considering DLC otherwise?) you'll likely find Max's Birthday to be a pleasant diversion for a buck. It's short and sweet and there's worse ways to spend a brief hour.

Within the opening thirty minutes of "Max: An Autistic Journey", the titular character failed to understand a simple knock-knock joke, had a melt down over which bathroom to use and repeated a verbal tic a dozen times. As the father of a child with ASD, it felt immediately familiar albeit from a different perspective. "Max" tries to carry the player though a day in the life of a ten year old high-functioning autistic child and help you see things from his side. Along the way, the game is carried by fairly simple RPG elements where, through Max's imagination, the player does battle with obstacles as varied as houseplants, zombie ants, dinosaurs and manifestations of anger. The game uses pictographs at each stage of Max's day to help explain Max's particular challenges and how he has learned to cope with them the best he can. Despite being the protagonist of the story, Max isn't above reproach, sometimes making a joke about a fellow student's disability or causing a scene. By its broad strokes, Max's story seems true to life: he's not a Hollywood-style autistic savant nor is he sainted because of his disability, he's just a kid with his own unique struggles.

As a game, "Max" sometimes falters. There is a tricky line to walk between making a game challenging for the player and having a ten year old boy lose an imaginary fight with a toy dinosaur and "Max" tends to play it safe which means that combat soon becomes rote. Likewise, the minigames are designed more around evoking a sense of imagination or whimsy than compelling game play. I understand that they wanted some "game" in their game rather than a walking simulator PSA but it could benefit from some reworking.

Ultimately though, I felt that "Max" was successful in what it sets out to accomplish: giving the player an alternate perspective into the challenges of an ASD child without being overly preachy. I don't know if it holds up on its own as a gaming experience but I did feel like it had something honest to share.

Darkest Dungeon is an atmospheric and enjoyable dungeon crawler that manages to mask its grindy mechanics with fun game play, attractive art and a perfectly toned narrator. The premise is simple enough: You, the player, are summoned by a family member known only as The Ancestor to put right what he destroyed in the family estate and surrounding town through his pursuit of forbidden eldritch knowledge. You're not going to delve into those dangerous places yourself, of course. Instead you assemble teams of heroes who flow into town in a steady fashion and send them down into the tunnels to return with gold and materials to rebuild the town and strengthen your warriors. In time, you will have a team powerful enough to dare go beneath the accursed estate itself.

Game play is primarily controlling your team as they go about their missions. Controls are very simple -- movement & combat are 2D and turn-based. Each hero or monster gets a move each turn, the order determined by their Speed stat and you'll choose from four different moves you prepared for the occasion. Each move can only be performed from select positions in the party and can only hit select positions in the enemy's ranks and the entire effect has an underlying complexity that you learn to appreciate as you fight harder battles: have your occultist summon a monstrous tentacle to pull an archer up front where your crusader can chop him, but be sure your crusader has skills usable from the rear or else he'll be rendered impotent by a push himself. Your fighters will not only shed blood in combat; they will also become stressed by events and, although it seems minor in comparison to losing 15 hit points, enough stress will cause your hero to act irrationally. Worse yet, stress remains even after existing the dungeon and you will have to expend gold to place them in the town's abbey or tavern to relax once more.

Upon returning to town, you can put your plundered materials to use in rebuilding the town. This will make stress recovery cheaper, allow more heroes to arrive on the coach, repair the blacksmith for armor upgrades, etc. Heroes can unlock new skills as the guild house is repaired but all the available skills can be unlocked early on and upgrades are just small stat increases: extra damage or accuracy. If there's a criticism here, it's that there's little true feeling of advancement and no moments where you'll learn a great new skill or stunning new weapon.

Within a few dungeons, you'll be faced with another game aspect: permadeath. Do not get too attached to your heroes as they will drop off over time, victims to skeletons or pig-men or claw-armed cultists. As they perish, you will recruit new heroes from the stagecoach -- thankfully, new heroes come fully armed for their level. It's hard not to get attached and losing a favored hero with nice quirks (minor +/- traits you'll acquire) hurts, at some point resource management wins the day. Likewise, a broken and stressed hero may be sent away to open a roster slot for a more capable explorer.

On paper, Darkest Dungeon shouldn't have been a game I'd spend much time with; I'm no fan of long grinds or permadeath. But its presentation and the fun of tinkering with hero & skill combinations kept me interested throughout.

Aliens: Colonial Marines takes a popular IP and converts it into a soulless and dull shooter that continually mugs for the camera but lacks anything that made the movie great. On a technical level, the game is plagued by graphics that looked dated on release, lazy and reused maps which include warping to the next location when the developers apparently gave up on adding hallways, guns that are no fun to use and the lamest fire/explosion effects I've seen in a game in a long while. Beyond that, the plot is dull and often asinine, the NPCs you'll be saddled with the whole game do nothing to endear themselves and the bullet-sponge enemies make the combat a dull plod rather than the tight action you saw when the Colonial Marines first delved into the underbelly of Hadley's Hope in Aliens. Oh, that's when you're actually fighting xenomorphs since you'll spend at least equal time shooting Weyland-Yutani mooks who are as impervious to bullets as the aliens. Throughout you'll see locations from the Aliens film, find 'legendary' weapons named after characters (that are worse than your stock weapons), see film characters as NPCs and discover Easter eggs but all of it feels like "Eh? EH? See how this is an Aliens game? See??" rather than immersing you in it.

There really isn't anything to recommend about this game. There's better shooters and better games for capturing the Aliens experience. This probably won't be the worst game you've ever played but rather one of the more disappointing.

Although billing itself as a "game about love, sex, and the internet", Cibele is more of an interactive short story. To even call it "interactive" is somewhat misleading since your interactions are limited to clicking on chat messages, photos and computer files to trigger the next dialogue bite. It's the story of a college-aged girl in 2008 who falls for a guy in an MMORPG. They chat and it follows a predictable path from there.

To re-state, there is no game play here. Even the MMORPG sections consist of you clicking on a monster and your avatar auto-attacks it as you listen to awkward dialogue between you and your object of affection. That would be fine except that nothing about the story is especially engaging either. There's piles of stuff to read through: emails, chat logs, poems, but none of it makes you feel interested in Cibele or concerned about the trajectory of her budding relationship. The dialogue is voiced in a convincing enough manner but only in that it legitimately sounds like the tedious "I'm ugly ... No, you're hot ... Oh my god, no, you're hot ... You really think I'm hot?" nonsense that goes on between two socially immature young adults awkwardly entering a relationship. It's realistic enough but it's nothing you'll be glad to be part of.

There really isn't much to recommend here. There is no game and the story isn't engaging or original. Nothing about the characters will likely draw your interest. At the end, it's an hour spent with little to show for it.

Genital Jousting is a fun party game but you'll need to provide your own party.

Its "adult" nature aside, Genital Jousting is a pretty mechanically sound and fun game that pits a number of male genitals in competition where you must wriggle, squirm, penetrate, wrestle and eat (!) your way to victory over your fellow dongs. It's silly and really fairly innocent aside from the shapes of your players. They could have just as easily been snakes biting one another's tails and no one would blink. But the developers went with genitals and it's okay because, at its core, it's a solid and fun game. Also, wrestling wieners are just funny.

Game play has a traditional mode where you simply enter and be entered for points until the round is over. It's a good way to learn the mechanics but we quickly switched to Party Mode where you get a quick-fire sequence of contests including wrestling, races, herding li'l doggies and a, erm, Splatoon-style "paint the arena" level. Each mini game happens quickly and most are over within 30 seconds to a minute aside from the occasional wrestling stand-off. Although the mini games are technically locked, you can unlock them all in the options which is good since playing the same two over and over would get old fast. After five games, a winner is declared and you start all over. It's pretty simple and there isn't much depth but the controls are good, the game is colorful and fun to look at and everyone stayed amused for 90 minutes and left feeling good about the game.

A few quick points: One, the mini games could stand to be a little longer. I don't want to spend five minutes eating little blue pills with my butt, but some games are over within seconds and that just makes them repeat that much faster. Secondly, it's a little baffling that the developers don't offer a 4-game pack because you'll need to bring your own friends and you really want at least three people in a game (four is better). A 4-game pack instead of trying to convince three friends to buy in seems like an obvious choice. There's not much in the way of public games and engaging in dong-to-dong combat is best among friends.

If you can round up some friends who aren't above the humor and aren't expecting hours of play at a sitting, Genital Jousting is a surprisingly well made game featuring fast-paced play and lots of laughs for an hour or so at a time.

Dead by Daylight is a fun concept and starts out entertaining enough but the many bugs, balancing issues, toxic community and a seemingly oblivious/incompetent development team keep me from recommending it to any new players.

The game's concept is fun enough: Play as one of four young adults desperately trying to repair five generators to open the gates and escape from a murderous stalker taken from slasher film tropes. Or, play as the killer and hunt those kids foolish enough to stumble across your lair. As you gain experience, you can buy perks and gain access to items to help you escape or kill. When you start the game, it's a fun, heady experience. Unfortunately, like a piece of fruit-striped gum, the initial rush is quickly gone.

Technical bugs abound, from minor glitches like non-working scoreboards and graphical glitches to moderate issues like broken perks to major issues like all of your game progress being eliminated (the devs recommend you make your own manual save copies) or "infinite loading screens" where the game locks up. Of course, sometimes it just takes 2-5 minutes to load so you can waste a bit of time on nothing before determining if you're bugged or not. Even if you weren't bugged, a team mate may be and they drop out leaving you down survivors before the game even starts. Other issues exist in development choices: the matchmaking is simply terrible and often sticks your Rank 20 newbie with Rank 1-5 opponents leaving you hopelessly outclassed. Region matching is also terrible where the game can't find matches for you -- I am better off seeking a game in Ontario rather than my home region of Chicago because the game will just hang. Then there are numerous balances issues and exploits that go unresolved.

Frustratingly, through this, the developers appear to be more interested in pushing out paid DLC than fixing bugs -- and for the "Different teams!" excuse camp, if you have critical bugs but lots of DLC makers, then it's time to allocate your hiring resources differently. They also rely heavily on streamers to promote the game and shower their favorite people with gifts to get good press rather than taking care of their product as recent reviews show. Famously, one developer recently said on Twitter that exploiting streamers would not be punished because they rely on them for promotion. When they do try to fix balance issues, they frequently overshoot. There's more survivors than killers so "fixes" tend to be heavy nerfs to killer perks or buffs to survivor abilities in order to quiet the loudest voices.

The game does have promise and is initially rewarding before all the other issues wear away at it. If you can play with friends, it helps a lot just because most things are more fun with friends. But I couldn't, in good conscience, tell anyone to spend $15-$20 on the game (plus another $20 in DLC) in its current state. Right now, I'm not sure if it'll ever get there.