Recent reviews by Anterk

Neon Chrome gets tedious. Same songs played too often, the bosses aren't particularly interesting, the antagonist likes to monologue. and you've basically seen all there is after a few hours. There's no quickdodge-like mechanic, so combat is a fairly basic experience of walking around shooting and trying not to get shot. There are moments when there's no way to avoid damage, and combat is punishing enough that I found myself favoring a specific style. Alot of the upgrades I found early on didn't support this style or were the most predictable health, speed, healing, and melee upgrades you could imagine.

The game is fine, the story doesn't matter, and the experience is probably worth the most on sale.

Cat Quest is a banal RPG, an overly large world you'll have gotten the gist of in 1hr or less and still have many more hours to go.

Character customization comes down to where you spend your gold: Do you roll for random equipment or upgrade your spells? Duplicate equipment leveling up is a perfect touch for a game like this, as you don't really get useless equipment and are free to experiment to find a favorite loadout. However, the combat system is so simplistic you'll likely find a preferred style extremely quickly.

Combat, regardless of whether you use spells or swords, is meme-levels of dodge-rolling as enemies try to smack you with area of effect abilities. Higher level encounters amount to rolling in, dropping a few hits on 1 foe or more, and rolling out. It's easy, and becomes tedious quickly as a result. For as lazy as this game seems to want to be, I found myself wishing for more freedom to just wade into combat and sit like a lump instead of rolling for my life. Rolling keeps the excitement up for some, I suppose.

The questing system is the biggest issue in the game. Cat Quest would be a perfect game for simply running through job boards in each town. The side plots largely don't matter; all that matters is there's a task that can get you to whatever arbitrary level cap is advised for whatever other mission you're aiming for next. However, jobs in each town are structured such that you are rarely able to stay in 1 area and run through the available missions if you want to avoid difficulty spikes and missions significantly outside your level. So, you'll find yourself constantly and pointlessly running back and forth, both for missions and between towns just to find a mission you want to take on. The extra travel doubles the feeling of tedium. Worst of all, you cannot accept multiple missions at once: You have 1 active mission, and that's what you're stuck with until you switch it or complete it.

Cat Quest is a very, very simple game. I'd only recommend it to people who need to turn off their brain and yet still want to play something for some reason.

I think I picked this up for the metroidvania tag; honestly I cannot recall. I loved the Metroid games on GBA, but I despise Castlevania. Tried at least 6 of that series, disliked every one. I also hate most platformers.

Odallus has a solid style, you can control your jump (unlike in several 'vanias), and overall the controls feel good. The problem for me is 4-fold: There's no easy mode, shop prices increase WITH EVERY PURCHASE, there's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lives system like this is Mario, and there's no way to take health items into boss fights.

This game is some hardcore no-lifer's wet dream. I died to the first boss 6 times (being able to afford additional lives 3 times before the price became insane), and I'm done. This game is trash.

Poorly thought out meme game. Annoying lanes lock you into fighting only certain groups of enemies, and enemies are really bad about coming after you. They'd rather wait in whichever lane you're not in, grouping up such that they can strike you if you try to hop over to join them.

This beatemup has blocking for the obvious reason that enemy encounters are designed for mashing. Spacing and orientation are less of a priority than filling up the screen with enemies, many of whom can ignore hits of your attacks or strike outside your range. The first hit of enemy attacks stuns you, for which there's a "counter" button that forces enemies away. The result is a button-mashing experience where it doesn't feel like skill matters much. I personally find beatemups of this type, or that exist only to mash buttons, to be a boring waste of time.

The UI is trash. Specific coloring is used to illustrate some differences between unit types, but the same coloring could mean friend or enemy when applied to different enemies. This is really poor visual communication. In general, the photos feel less like a stylistic choice and more a lazy route as nothing really interesting is done with it. The photos, especially for the cameo characters, are here as a joke and the joke is lazy.

The specials and dashing are easy. That's about it.

This version of Dune: Imperium is easily the best way to play solo. The UI is clear, and the AI can do more than the basic choices afforded by the AI deck included with the physical version. The 2 biggest downsides of this version: The developers seem in no hurry to add the 2nd expansion, which features the needed once-a-game buy-row-clearing token if nothing else, and it's unclear if there'll be a digital version of the remixed base game (the latest physical version with the plastic penis worms).

Otherwise, Dune: Imperium is a kitchen sink of a boardgame. You've got worker placement all over the board for resources, you've got deckbuilding for your worker placement deck, you've points and alliance tracks everywhere. There's a little combat area where you send soldiers to die. Highest score wins. At the same time, I find the presentation to be fairly friendly, but this might be down to my enthusiasm for the Dune IP. Additionally, while the base game is good, the shipping track added with the first expansion makes everything better.

Easy purchase if you can't play the physical version as often as you'd like, or if you find the physical version's AI deck annoying.

It's been awhile since I've seen such a terrible UI, and I have no idea how to zoom out and see more pieces. There's alot of planning you can do with the physical version that doesn't seem possible here, or the interface is so insane I just can't determine how to do it. The result is actions feeling kinda random in a game without much randomness. Boo.

A collection of poorly playtested curiosities, or at least featuring poor game design. Some don't take the ideas behind them far enough, others are uninspired Metroid clones. I would've enjoyed being able to pick up the exploding barrels in 1 game for example, while another almost interesting puzzle game is dragged down by a sudden difficulty spike and long, long reload times.

Should've just baked each of these long enough to release standalone. As-is, this feels like a collection of games you could play free in a browser.

Spectre is a terrible idea, CounterStrike only you have to lug around a body, that is actually kinda fun in practice. Switching between bodies is easy, there's a variety of locations you can exploit purely through the switching mechanic, and the result can leave you feeling clever when you pull off an ambush or score and immediate revenge.

All of the problems I have come through the implementation:

1-There is no vote to surrender. This is a 3v3 game, but if 1 person leaves that's 2 potentially useful bodies gone from the game. The result can become painful to play exceedingly quickly, as it really does feel like 4v6 instead of 2v3 (imo). I've gone even further and experienced a 1v3 game, and I can easily say I never want to have that experience ever again. There's an option to quit to desktop (for a reputation penalty of course), but if there's no way for me to surrender or otherwise give up without penalty when I'm alone on my team in only the 2nd round of the match (2nd of potentially 12), something is WRONG.

2-The equipment is lame. You get randomized impersonal characters, in stark contrast to what the art might lead you to expect, and the variety comes from a bare handful of loadouts composed of grenades and gadgets. There's simply not as much variety as in a game like Valorant, and though CounterStrike has a similarly limited system the options there feel more consistently impactful. The guns in Valorant and CounterStrike are also more rewarding: You always have to pick 2 in Spectre, but you can only ever mix and match in the ways the game forces you to.

3-Once your double is dead you lose out on half of the map traversal. There are many spots you cannot reach without a double, and the result is often I wouldn't see people use them at all. Maps generally feel far less interesting then they should be as a result.

Personally, I also hate the feel of the shooting, but this may come down to what I consider to be a mistake in the far too long and too annoying tutorial: They say you have to aim down sights to aim accurately. This is wrong, you just have to stop moving, but I still spent 1 hour trying to aim down my sights at things more than I have in any other multiplayer shooter. Playing this way felt like absolute trash in a way I may never forget.

DMC 1 is interesting from a design perspective. You can see the old Resident Evil DNA, but the result is an often clunky experience thanks to a tightly fixed camera, platforming, and enemies that often demand accuracy in execution. There is an easy mode, but it cannot solve the biggest issue for me which is the platforming: I cannot judge platform distances in DMC 1 for some reason, and I've given up on a late game stage featuring hidden platforms and annoying text popups as a result.

Between the over-viability of the boring pistols, and the completely different tone and design, DMC2 is terrible. I wouldn't blame anyone who skips it.

DMC3 is where everything comes together, and is the highlight of this collection. Much of what felt clunky and annoying from DMC1 is refined, nothing from DMC2 is carried over, and the more forgiving camera allows for easier platforming. If you enjoy action games, especially Bayonetta and the like, or if you've already played any of the later DMC titles, you owe it to yourself to try DMC3.

FTP StarCraft 2 (with a little more mobs and design from MOBAs) which fails to solve the biggest issue of multiplayer RTS atm. Namely, that actions per minute is the name of the game. Expect a high overhead to learn and matches that extend over 30 minutes or more, which is not what I'm personally looking for. In fact, with StarCraft 2 still existing and being as good as it is, it's hard to see what this new data-harvesting product adds to the gaming landscape beyond repeating the past with a slight tweak. There's even the argument that the elements borrowed from MOBAs place Stormgate in the same self-destructive wasteland as Dawn of War 3 (just with a focus on MOBA environment instead of MOBA heroes).

Still, Stormgate is "free" (Steam account data, including email address, required), so I don't feel there's any harm in recommending you make up your own mind if it interests you. Just don't go in expecting much new.