Recent reviews by Yeti

A medium experience that falls short of the grandiose promises in the description. It's a few environments, a few enemies, and a couple maze-like moments capped off with a frustrating conclusion to an otherwise "well it's there" story. The base building and research is ignoreable and not worth the effort unless you intend never to enter The Depths. However, by the time you acquire the scrap to unlock the research / upgrades, you've clearly already delved into The Depths enough to not need any of them anymore.

Overall, it's a fine experience for the ten bucks it cost, but I wish it explored its own ideas more and I wish the description wasn't massively bending the truth to oversell itself so hard.

In an attempt to create an EDF mash-up and present itself in a fun way, World Brothers fails to recognize what makes Sandlot's EDF work and falls flat in every regard. I genuinely cannot find any redeeming qualities. The enemies are passive, the humour is forced, and the classes, while many and varied, are uninteresting and lack usefulness. Technical problems, visuals, and temporary issues aside (including the audio spam), the foundation of World Brothers is flawed. They missed the point, fell short of the mark, and somehow folks still love it. I can only assume some wild paid marketing campaign is running amok and I cannot, for the love of EDF, recommend this atrocity.

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I played a mix of normal and hard difficulties and most missions involving species beta turns into an alleyway bughunt because they refuse to engage. Flying enemies circle the skies but wait their turn to attack like a terrible martial arts film. A few missions have a swarm appear and they charge your position only to stand around and wait to die. I feel no panic or pressure. My allies are stuck on walls, running in place, dashing into nothing, and firing into the air. They do very little damage and take very little damage. I don't know why they're there, but I miss other soldiers and civilians trying to hold their own among the chaos. No wave of reinforcements, no day-saving artillery rolling in, and no grim reapers here to save the day.

A majority of the classes lack a dodge or any mobility while a good portion lack an impactful ultimate. Grinding in World Brothers will involve searching for a tolerable class and re-finding them to unlock your favourite weapon compatibility. At the end of the day, most folks will likely be using the same few classes. The splendor of classes seems to serve as an oversaturating time-kill to elongate the grind. Folks you rescue come with a weapon, but the weapons don't need upgrading. You'll accumulate plenty of armour as you progress, but those wanting to play on the hardest difficulty will need to farm for that as well. Nothing really new there, I suppose, but it would be nice for the grind to involve something more than "I need a useful character. All of these characters are genuinely bad."

EDF has a unique way of passively showing and acknowledging its absurdity, but World Brothers is the type of game to use a red arrow and circle to highlight the joke and hammer away until you laugh. The jokes go on too long and lack subtlety. EDF 4.1 started by acting serious and turning into a laugh. EDF 5 starts a bit ridiculous and slowly becomes serious. World Brothers just feels like a child's game for simple people and it rubs me the wrong way. Iron Rain was like this, too, but was overshadowed by the "realism" and awkwardly contrasted well-enough that it kind of worked.

A bit easy and repetitive in its current state, but it's still pretty fun for the price, and with new updates releasing more levels and with multiplayer being worked on it's definitely something to keep your eye on!

Right now it's basically hit the same house a few times, buy the tools you need, cut wires, ignore cameras, and lay a decoy when you're discovered, but I could see the developer putting in a lot of more situational tools and complicating the levels quite a bit to enforce some more strategy (multiple patrolling NPCs, different floors to a level, EMPs to temporarily disrupt electronics, ear piece to indicate when the owner is coming back, etc) but it's still fun for the price, and I'm looking forward to what it brings in future updates!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xdtuZEjr38

From what I've played, I quite enjoy this! The spells you start with are randomized and are improved in random ways as you progress, but once you die - that's it. Ideally you play well with the random spells, earn mini-achievements, and unlock them to use at the character creation, but some of them will take a pretty long while. I'd wager around five hours of gameplay you'll have unlocked all of the spells and classes to ensure a decent start so you can have an honest go at beating all of the worlds. I might just be really bad (can almost guarantee it) but I found the second world particularly difficult lest I had a specific skillset. Regardless, the challenge is satisfying and I look forward to pressing onward in hopes of unlocking more stuff and things.

Edit: Recently an update was pushed out that added a difficulty modifer. While the game's on "easy" the leaderboards lock but achievements are still attainable. Quite nice for the first couple runs until you get used to the game!

While the game's only $5 USD, I feel there's not much in the way of spells. It'd be really great to see another several spells added to the game to spice it up as now there's only about a dozen total. It might be something for down-the-road as it's only just released not long ago.

My first impressions and beginning attempts at the game can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oFcwZJRS8o

The power mode, first person mode, and the good ending are also uploaded. Feel free to head to my channel or check out the playlist linked below. Obviously it's a bit spoilery, but for those who don't mind here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhu1IU-H0hU1b7HYkhagaIeaq1KKy-E5_

tl;dr: It's beautiful, the voice acting is okay, the levels are neat, and the price is fair.

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I expected this to be another mod that copies existing assets from the Half Life series and compiles them into something else, but this is a bit more. The gameplay, as others have noted, is pretty difficult. Running-and-gunning isn't really an option here and you'll need to take advantage of explosive barrels, carrying obstacles as cover, and simple hauling ass to get through. As such, there's a heavy weight on the level design which is often missed by indie developers, but he's done a pretty good job here.

Unfortunately, there's usually just one "good" way to handle a room full of dudes and only a couple ways to do it poorly. I can't imagine anyone getting through an area and thinking "I wonder if it could have been done -this- way." Small gripe, I know, but felt like it should be mentioned. The levels as-is are pretty solid, especially when compared to Half Life's.

Graphically it looks fantastic. The higher-resolution textures really shine through and isn't a huge encumberance on my hardware. Since it's technically (on the hardware level) a re-skin of Half Life 2, SLI support is already in though I had an issue getting VSync to actually stick. I had to force the frame rate to be less than 60 through NVidia Inspector. Can't say for ATI GPUs, though. My only complaint on the visuals is some odd colouring that takes place here and there but it's minor and ends soon.

Audio-wise I can't complain. Custom indie voice-over is usually a guaranteed cringe for me but this isn't that bad. The music is pretty intense during the tougher action areas and really fits the game well. Remembering back to Half Life 2, you'd get that nice pumping music infrequently and when it started, you knew you were in for a rough time. This does it the very same. Not too much music, but when it's there it's good!

Overall, I highly recommend it! For ten bucks you're getting a really unique story in the Half Life world and it's just different enough to make it feel completely new. Definitely can't complain too much here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXqZHW9fXSw

tl;dr: Very early in development, but the sandbox mode is great fun. It'll be amazing when more is added, but the story mode seems like a one-time thing. Once you beat it, why play it more? Just get it for sandbox, probably. 20 minutes of gameplay link at end of review (with no facecam!).

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As you can tell by the average playtime (~60 minutes) there's not a whole lot of game to go off of right now as it's still in development. As such, I'm reviewing not what's currently in-game but what the potential is. Currently, it's just a sandbox to kill an hour with.

The story mode is not yet implemented, but sounds pretty straight-forward. I fear that once you beat the story once there's no reason to ever go back into it unless there's randomization to the actors, building locations, and a pool of solutions from which one is chosen. Replayability is out the window without sandbox.

The sandbox mode a terrific fun. First off, the game uses Unreal Engine so the majority of what's being interacted with is physics-based using PhysX. While it's all very simple right now, with some polishing further in development crashing a car through fences and trees has the potential to be different every time. Blowing up a building, destroying a wall, bashing down a door, etc will always good fun and this leads to sandbox being a fantastic thing to jump into and mess around to kill some time.

Artistically, the game's... unique. I don't quite know what it reminds me of, but I get a serious toy-town vibe from it. Everything's so smooth it's like I'm in a plastic world. At first I hated it, but it really started to grow on me. If the bloom stays on its leash it's really quite pretty. Another review had complaints on the game not running well, but personally I had no issues. System resources being used were minimal until I flipped a lightswitch, and only then did the framerate drop. This is a pretty minor complaint, though - this early in development it's a wonder I hit 60fps at all. For that reason I'm leaving out the fact the game crashes fairly consistently after several minutes as that'll no doubt be smoothed out further in development.

The slow motion is a really neat feature that I think a lot of people are ignoring. I can't put into words how fun it was doing certain maneuvers to kill several cops within seconds during slow-motion, let alone doing donuts with the car. If the physics gets to the point where we can smash a car through the bank and watch the bricks fly, it'll be a fine cinematic experience.

$15 USD might seem a bit high, but at least put the game on the wish list so you don't forget about it. I get the feeling this is one of those games certain YouTubers will pick up and mess around with and folks'll think "Wow, this looks like a lot of fun," and that's because it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEOpQSSjbA0

tl;dr: Absolute tons of potential and a simple design for a very nice price. Right this second, it's still worth the price tag to kill a boring afternoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDWWibyUrI

It's difficult to review Endorlight when its so early in development, but I feel like this is a game people should really take a look at - especially for the price. It's too simple to complain about anything, and since this is "pre-alpha" and it's hard telling when this review's being read, I'll try to just touch on the current foundation that's laid and speculate on the potential of what the game could be. On the tin it looks like another indie platformer with permadeath but that's not accurate at all.

While the levels are currently short and compact, they're randomly generated on every floor. The monsters, traps, crates, chests - everything. In the future this completely random level generation can bring on some really interesting layouts rather than just a sea of magma with platforms to jump across. The character's wall-jump ability makes it seem like we could see some very vertical and challenging levels and boss fights as we go further, and with certain enemies exploding on death and taking out terrain it's possible to dig (or explode via planned bomb weapon) your way through. I imagine this goes for the enemies, too (planned digger enemy). With all the variety, some levels might be a sort of "race to the finish" because of falling platforms (planned feature) and how many enemies there are at the start (a load of baddies led by a digging enemy as the fuse?) while other levels require a bit more finesse and tactical jumping to get through unharmed. While you could just rush toward where you think the exit is (it's not made obvious by the map - probably intentional) you'd be hurting yourself in the long-run with all the missing loot. Enemies don't currently drop anything, but crates and chests are strewn about the levels and give gold upon destruction.

Gold currently has no use, but it's pretty obvious this is intended to be currency for the yet-to-be-introduced shops. I imagine shops will be selling heart containers for more life, potions to heal you, arrows for the bow (surely it's not always infinite ammo?), ammo for the gun (planned weapon), bombs (also planned weapon), etc. Taking your time and saving your gold as you progress can be difficult on some levels due to the layout and enemies, but would be worth it. I'd like to think the shops will be alone on their own level to prevent a player from seeing a shop and THEN wanting to full-clear to afford the wares. While this isn't a major thing, it'd be nice to see some reward / punishment for different playstyles. Hauling it through every level to get deeper may have its benefits (maybe?) but taking your time yields shop goodies, but at the risk of losing your life to the enemies that are everywhere.

The enemies are really simple currently. You standard slime with raptor-like capabilities regarding its jump, the thing that blows up on death, green, uhh... things that aren't really that aggressive, etc. They vary by appearance but the general premise is the same - don't get touched by one. It's dangerous to use your melee weapons so the bow it a great go-to (unless the terrain is really bumpy as you can't aim vertically and there's no arrow drop or "charging" the bow for adjusting trajectory) but at the cost of arrows, which are currently infinite. The melee weapons might double as tools, but right now there's nothing to tool. A gun, hatchet, and bomb are planned weapons so it's hard to tell what the enemies (and bosses) will be like, but it sounds like staying at range is the way to go.

A surprisingly difficult strategy game blending together some micromanagement, resource management, and a bit of luck all together paired with some seriously nice-looking graphics (the water reflection omg). It's difficult to put into words, but I'll give it a go. Worst case, I'll put in a video link to check out.

The tin says every coin can tip the balance, and that's not far from the truth. Some buildings and improvements cost more than others. A bit of ill-timing on assigning an upgrade and you'll have lost a worker and their tools - several coins you'll have to do without the next day. With the enemies getting more numberous and more robust as time goes on, you'll really have to keep a mix of walls and archers at all times while also keeping your workers safe. It's a very simplistic game that can really ramp up in difficulty and require a good deal of future-thinking to succeed.

Playlist showcasing gameplay and sort of reviewing as I go along: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WhbZxzLyCY&list=PLhu1IU-H0hU3lcAFJFJzUwnozNwHT1SWV&index=1

It starts off a bit like Call of Duty singleplayer with jumping from action scene to action scene, but after the first "level" it picks up a bit. The environments get more interesting even if the weapons you use don't right away, and the game's graphics will be enough for even the modern gaming PCs. The audio levels jump around a bit between gameplay and cut-scenes, and a couple of the controls aren't exactly straight-forward, but after an hour or two you'll get the hang of it.

I'm glad the description doesn't mention anything about customization, because there's some bonuses you can pick up that refine your character a bit. Using weapons' ironsights to pull off headshots makes headshots more powerful, but these are really more like challenge rewards than anything.

The gunplay is pretty poor and the animations are really obvious. Shooting enemies in the leg loads a "leg shot" animation and sometimes a generic animation for "I got hit," which is a shame after having played other FPS games where enemies react differently every time. Headshots often feel weak and mowing enemies down with a machine gun is just "meh." Eventually I could see the combat getting really dull, and don't see the current gameplay offering anything new to the genre.

Ultimately, it's an alright game thus far. Knowing how Wolfenstein works, I can see the enemies getting really unique in some pretty wild environments, but the price point sure is high. I'd wait for a fall sale or something on Steam. $40 would be a great price for this.

Gameplay video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDG7iEWVN3w

Imagine Civilzation V with customizable armies and quests. While unit Type A defeats unit Type B in Civilzation, here you create and customize your own army, equipping them with a variety you receive from quests and from production. While Civilization's focus isn't on combat and more on build order and adapting to the environment, Endless Legend keeps in stride with interesting land improvements and incredibly unique races to play as.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Broken Lords. They look pretty sweet, and they grow from dust - the currency like gold you'd normally use to just hurry production. As a result, you don't need to worry about food but instead need to constantly manage dust, which is now used for everything from hurrying production and gaining citizens to healing your troops on the field and improving their gear.

It's a hefty price-tag for something in alpha, but the game is very playable and has yet to crash / glitch on me. I'm honestly having more fun with this than I am in Civilization V.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=780Fu2V_17U