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Evil West:
~~~~~~~

Your father, William Rentier, created the Rentier Institute, the last port of call for the U.S. Government to rely on when the country is facing a war against supernatural species. This time, the institute faces a horde of vampires and monsters led by the master vampire, Peter, and his terrifying daughter, Felicity D’abano. You and your father’s trusted friend, Edgar Gravenor, are two of the last secret field agents of the institute, and the fate of the U.S. of A is on both of your shoulders. Will you save the country from the D’Abanos and their minions? It’s all up to you in Evil West.

Evil West is a western action-adventure third-person shooter game developed by Flying Wild Hog and published by Focus Entertainment on the 22nd of November 2022 on the Steam platform. The game is also available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4 and PS5.

What an absolute cracker of a game with high octane action. I was entertained from start to finish with this one. So, you can play this game solo or co-op, and you have 4 difficulty levels to choose from (Story, Normal, Hard or Evil). For my first playthrough, I was content with the Normal level of difficulty, which provides a reasonable challenge throughout the 16 well-designed game stages. In addition, you can select the True Death mode, which gives you an extra challenge, but if you die, you’ll have to restart the entire game. Even at the Normal level of difficulty, you’ll probably die a few times. You’ll play Jesse Rentier, a tough cowboy vampire hunter in the solo campaign. If you play with a mate in the Co-Op Multiplayer mode, both of you will be playing Jesse Rentier.

The story is very entertaining and has some fantastic cutscenes a good voice acting. Each of the levels is a combination of small fights and arena gladiators-style of combat, and each level will take around 45 minutes to an hour to complete on the Normal level of difficulty. As you move through the stage, you’ll encounter some sanguiges (infected) and monsters, but these fights will be quite easy to win. However, you will also come across some oval-shaped fields of different sizes. Those fights will give you serious challenges because you’ll be fighting several waves of mixtures of enemies from large to small, and some are seriously tough to eliminate. And if it is a compact (small) oval, the challenge will Skyrocket dramatically, which is what you want. There are collectables to find, such as satchels, for additional information about the story, level, characters and etc. The items not to miss are the sack of gold and wooden boxes with yellow stripes scattered frequently around each of the levels, as well as chests of gold, of which there are not too many in each stage. You’ll need plenty of gold to upgrade Jesse’s weapons and gauntlet. You do have larger chests to find that offer additional perks and weapons upgrades, but these are usually hidden somewhere. There are a few little puzzles here and there, but nothing drastic at all.

Jesse will have several weapons at his disposal during the game as you progress, but at the start of your first mission, it will be hand-to-hand combat until you find one of those big chests. The first level is more or less a splendid tutorial. Chains, ladders and hooks will highlight the pass to follow, and you can’t miss them. Still, make sure to explore every single area for gold and chests. As you progress throughout the game, Jesse will acquire a gun, a rifle, a shotgun, a crossbow, a flamethrower, a Gatling, agent tools and explosives which you can upgrade up to four times. There are 40 perks in total for your tools, but you need to find them first, and it will cost you 1 perk point each time you want to unlock a new one. Make sure to do plenty of combos to gain experience points.

The fighting gameplay is really fluid, and I had so much fun using combos with punches, weapons and the agent tools that you have at your disposal. I also really like the weak spot mechanism, which is a circle that appears for a short time on the enemies, and if you manage to hit the spot just before the enemies launch a projectile at you, you’ll inflict additional damage. There 16 different types of enemies, which I think is just fine, especially as you never really know what to expect when you jump into the fighting arena. Of course, that is not including the bosses’ fights, 4 in total, and they are something else. Expect to die a few times before figuring out their routines.

The gamepedia is also full of content, and the perks and upgrades interface is straightforward. Personally, I didn’t encounter any crashes during my entire gameplay, but I did experience a bit of image scattering every now and there. But the issue was fixed by downloading the latest Nvidia drivers.

Stunning graphics with an entertaining story and great voice acting. Regarding the controls, the game provides full controller support, but I prefer to play these games with my mouse and keyboard. Evil West has been translated into 12 languages and has Steam Cloud.

Positives:
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+ Stunning graphics, soundtrack and voice acting
+ Entertaining story
+ Addictive, fun to play and challenging
+ 4 levels of difficulty, plus true death, can be activated
+ 16 well-designed levels full of action with a good variety of enemies
+ Single-player and Co-op modes
+ Achievements and trading cards

Negatives:
~~~~~~~~

- I experienced a few images scattering here and there

I had such a ball hunting and fighting vampires in this frantic ride in the weird world of Evil West!

9/10

Key provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!

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The Valiant:
~~~~~~~~~

15 years have passed since Theoderich and his former crusader knight Ulrich stumbled across one of the three pieces of the Rod of Aaron artifact deep in the holy land. While Ulrich becomes consumed with finding the two other pieces of the Rod of Aaron, Theodorich decides to let down his weapons and step back from his soldier's life. That is until one night when he receives the visit of a monk explaining to him that the Rod of Aaron shouldn't be reassembled due to its incredible power and that Ulrich must be stopped before he acquires the other two pieces. So, Theoderich, with the help of a few trusted friends, will embark on a dangerous journey that will see them travelling across Medieval Europe to the Middle East in the Valiant!

The Valiant is a squat-based real-time strategy game developed by KITE Games and Published by THQ Nordic on the 20th of October 2022 on the Steam platform.

The game consists of a superb campaign of 16 missions and two online game modes: PVP Battles with up to four players and The Last Man Standing, which is self-explanatory.

After 20 hours of gameplay and falling just short of beating the game's last boss on the normal level of difficulty, let me tell you, this game is fabulous in all aspects. First, the story is well-structured, with excellent voice-over and cinematic book narration between the missions that will grab you from start to finish, making you feel part of the 13th-century atmosphere. The graphics are breathtaking, and the gameplay is challenging and highly addictive.

As you start the campaign, you'll have a couple of heroes for selection, and of course, as you play Theoderic, he is always automatically selected. But as you make your way through the missions, you'll come across new characters who will join your party and will give you new units to select from before launching the next mission. In most missions, you'll control 5 or 6 units, including heroes, but on a few occasions, you'll be fighting your enemies with up to 10 units. Each mission will have tasks, such as taking over an enemy base, moving to a location or fending off an enemy attack. Early on in the campaign, you'll have a few tasks per mission, and the length of these missions will be around 30 to 45 minutes, but as you progress in the campaign, you'll get more tasks, and the length of the mission will grow to between 1 hour to 2 hours. You'll also have items to collect, which you can find around each map or when you defeat an enemy. Some enemies will drop an axe or a flask of Greek fire (fire bomb) that some of your units can pick up and use as an extra perk. At the end of each mission, your heroes will accumulate experience points and will be awarded a skill point each time they level up. And before the next mission, you can distribute these points on their respective skill trees, which are Defence, Offence And Utility. You can also equip your heroes with the new items that you found in the previous mission.

As you know, the 13th Century warfare was somehow, shall we say, limited in terms of units. It was pretty much knights, swordsmen, spearmen, archers, crossbows and a couple of siege constructions such as trebuchets and catapults. Yes, you'll be using trebuchets and catapults during the campaign at some stage, but mostly it will be hand-to-hand fighting with archers or crossbows for support. Each unit, including heroes, will have three bars on its unit icon: fortitude, vigour and how many men for that specific unit. Fortitude is a unit's defensive strength and will be the first bar to decrease. The Vigour is the attack strength of a unit, and it will diminish fairly quickly if the unit is constantly in battle. It can be quite a struggle if you haven't acquired an enemy tent to regenerate your unit’s health or buy new units to compensate for the ones that have fallen in battle. The only unit you can revive is the heroes if they have fallen, but only another of your heroes can revive them. If all your heroes are down, it will be game over. It's a good game!

In terms of replayability, you can definitely increase the difficulty to Hard in the campaign, and you'll feel the difference. But ultimately, the Multiplayer modes are probably your best bet. You can set your own game against the AI to get training before facing someone else online. I find the AI very decent and not easy to beat.

Great graphics with a good soundtrack, voice-over and sound effects. I thoroughly enjoyed playing The Valiant, even though it was occasionally slow.

Positives:
~~~~~~~

+ Great graphics
+ Singleplayer campaign with 16 missions to complete
+ Great story with beautiful cinematic book narration and great voice over
+ A couple of online modes which give great replayability
+ Challenging and highly addictive gameplay
+ Achievements and trading cards

Negatives:
~~~~~~~~

- The campaign is a bit slow here and there

Help Theodorich to recover all three fragments of the Rod of Aaron artifact before his old brother-in-arms templar, Ulrich. The Valiant is an RTS not to miss.

8/10

Key provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes. Any opinions expressed are entirely my own!

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