Recent reviews by Pike ♠

I like Mortal Shell a lot, it is a game with many interesting ideas, some of which work better than others.

When I first tried the game, I had a lot of trouble with the parry timing, especially the windup animation. After a couple of hours with it, everything clicked, and I was laying waste to entire camps of swamp dweller, stealing their booze, trampling their lutes, and instructing the bosses in the ancient ways of roolz of naytcha. What are you doing in my swamp?! Get out of here, all of you!

While this is not a particularly difficult game, the start can be rough. I found the starting shell to be a bit middling, even after unlocking a lot of the abilities. Solomon the Scholar was the first character I fully leveled, and I figure many people will also enjoy Eredrim the Venerable. Fortunately the tutorial sword is a very versatile weapon, and I played the entire game with it.

The animation department of Mortal Shell did excellent work. Whether it's the longsword heavy finisher, the ballista reloading animation, or the Mists enemies trying to pounce you and bouncing off your stone form, it's obvious a lot of effort went into this. Also I feel important to mention that the cat-petting animation is very good.

The art direction is another highlight; at times, it reminds me of Zeno Clash, but with an edgy Black Metal aesthetic. Your base form, as well as the playable shells look distinctive and cool, and some of the weirder NPCs are quite memorable. While you can't unlock alternative armours, you can get cool skins for your shells, such as the TRVE KVLT corpsepaint for Solomon.

At the end of the day, this is an indie soulslike from a very small team. It is not very long, and the enemy variety is somewhat limited. The environments are fairly standard dark fantasy stuff, and the main hub is a damp and murky swamp. The voice acting is surprisingly great, and helps to situate you in this sick sad world.

The developers did their best to inject some novel mechanics into the traditional soulslike formula. I am not sold on the lack of reliable healing, requiring players to scrounge for mushrooms and eat literal garbage: when you first start out, it's a major issue, but later in the game, you're a walking dry goods store. The harden mechanic however is fantastic! It has tons of utility: you can play very aggressively, even if your parry timing sucks. Later in the game, you can unlock the ground pound ability, allowing you to negate fall damage. Harden also makes corpse runs a breeze! Also, when you dodge, you see your character turn to stone for a moment, which is a great iframes visual cue.

As a first game from a new, remote work company, Moral Shell is a lot better than I expected. There are countless indie soulslikes on the market, some better than others. I believe this is one of the good ones; if you can get through the initial rough learning curve, I think you will enjoy it as much as I did. Think of it as playing Demons Souls for the very first time, before anyone knew what to make of this game. Approach it with an open mind, try to learn the mechanics, and you'll have a great 12-15 hours, sending curse knights into bottomless wells with a judicious application of the Dark Messiah kick. Alternatively, if that fails, just give up, join the bandits, and get drunk on second-rate moonshine while strumming your lute, as the world turns to ♥♥♥♥.

Oh and if you play the game, make sure to enable to alternative boss music, from the OG Greek metallers Rotting Christ, in sound options.

Enshrouded really captures the magic and wonder I've experienced as a child, playing early 1990s RPGs, like the Might & Magic series and Wizardry. The crafting/survival formula is fine-tuned in the direction of immersive sims, rather than Minecraft; I am frequently reminded of Bethesda games like Daggerfall and Morrowind, back when they were stupidly ambitious and delightfully weird.

What sets Enshrouded apart from similar games is the vast hand-crafted area. There are secret crypts, mausoleums, dungeons, and entire quest chains that can be easily missed. Nearly every set of ruins have a hidden cellar or a sliding wall with a chest. It's remarkable, and the sense of awe and discovery truly never goes away.

Also, the game is big, very big. Seriously, I can't overstate how big it is: the amount of content in this early access game rivals many traditional MMOs at release. It's astonishing that Keen managed to put so much effort into every aspect of the game, and it's still in early access!

The combat is really enjoyable, and there are many viable playstyles and builds to try. You can always respec your build for a token sum at any waypoint, which is handy whenever you find a really cool legendary weapon that you just have to try! You can upgrade and socket your weapons with gems, which add extra abilities to complement your build.

The game is rather forgiving, and at times relaxing. The standard difficulty feels just right, offering a challenge without feeling overwhelming. Harder difficulties for people looking to bash their heads into a wall, are available, and the game's responsive movement and action would definitely work with more hardcore settings.

I'm normally not a fan of crafting/survival games, with the notable exception of No Man's Sky. I didn't care much for Valheim or V Rising, but I absolutely love Enshrouded. Somehow it manages to have a really solid RPG, while also featuring the most impressive building system I've seen. I frequently refurbish some ruined farmhouse to serve as a staging area for exploration, and the way Enshrouded does voxel magic never ceases to impress me.

This is definitely one of the games that works great in co-op, or with a small group. I did play play solo, though: if I had friends, I wouldn't need video games.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everyone knows things are bad. It's a recession. Everyone's out of work, everything is a culture war. Polio is making a comeback, and people on the internet are referencing 1970s satires in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game reviews.

It's like everything is going crazy, there is AI slop in our games and TV shows and ads. We sit on the couch in our comatose state, gripping our cold phablets, and progressively the world we're living in is dying, and all we say is, "please, at least leave us alone in our crammed overpriced rentals. Let me have my Tikflix and my Spotigram, and endless Star Wars sequels, and I won't say anything."

I don't know what to do about the rot economy, and the Elons, and the Altmans. I don't know if AI will take your job, COVID will make a comeback, or Dominos will stops delivering to your address. All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've gotta say: "I'm arguably a human being, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! My life and YouTube watch history have value!"

So I want you to buy this game now. I want you to sit in your sweat-stained gamer chair. I want you to minimize all the weeb stuff, boot up Deadzone Rogue on your RGB monstrosity, start a run, and go:

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Sometimes I feel like this game is part of some weird social experiment.

I deployed, met a player, played flute at them, they thanked me and we parted ways. Then I hear shooting behind me, I rush in with my gun, to see that player dead, and somebody is looting their corpse. I shoot them, and I hear a voice: "Don't shoot, don't shoot! I just started playing. Here, you can loot the body!". I took one item from the corpse, went to call the elevator, and the player joined me: "Thank you, you're my first friend!"

I am not a fan of extraction shooters, but this game is really quite something. Every hour I get an experience like the above.

In a sentence, No Man's Sky is a surprisingly relaxing survival/crafting game. This is as descriptive as calling the NASA Voyager 1 probe an antenna yeeted into space back in the 70s. There is a lot I could say about NMS, but I will try to be brief for the sake of this review.

No Man's Sky is a vast cosmic arena, a sandbox of epic proportions. In fact, there are supposedly more planets in the game than there are grains of sand on Earth. The game offers an endless sense of wonder, and even a hundred of hours into the game, the excitement of discovering a secret planet with a unique biome, finding an S-class item, or stumbling upon a small, particularly cute squeaky animal in the grass, is very real.

NMS space is absolutely full of interesting stuff. The first time you spot a planetary archive in the distance, or rewire a Sentinel ship to accept a human pilot, or fly your brand new custom ship, or understand the rough meaning of an alien character's speech, or start piecing together the fascinating backstory of the mysterious forces of this universe, you feel like an actual explorer, braving the great unknown just because you can.

There are games that do space combat better than NMS, and certainly games that have better building mechanics. The combat is fairly basic, and the survival aspect becomes trivial after the first couple of hours. Nonetheless, all of the game's systems fit together in a very satisfying way, and many of the new features are built upon the same core concepts. Everything is sufficiently familiar to feel intuitive, while also novel enough to be engaging. You will probably re-design your corvette many times before you are satisfied with it, or re-arrange your Multi-Tool modules to optimise the stats, or Feng Shui the heck out of your base.

There is a story to help guide you through the sheer scope of NMS, and introduce new concepts without overwhelming you. Of course, you can ignore it entirely and just wander: the game encourages that. You can lose yourself in building vast space-castles, or cataloguing and naming fauna and flora. You can become a pirate, raid capital ships, and evade the law. You can trade, or delve underwater for salvaged ships and other treasures.

Playing NMS can be a humbling experience, a realisation that a small team of not even 50 people have built a nearly-endless, ever expanding game on top of bespoke, purpose-fit technology, engaging with the community, acting on feedback, and delivering a glorious game that is far more than the sum of its parts. It's been 9 years, but the updates keep on coming, each being worthy of a paid DLC. There are seasonal events with unique rewards. There is even multiplayer, and after being alone in space for so long, it feels genuinely odd to see actual human players, who will very likely give you expensive gifts when they see you.

Anyone who played a modern game had exposure to the vast greed of AAA publishers. NMS has no season passes, expansions, or microtransactions of any kind. All cosmetics are earned in-game, often in cool and unexpected ways. There are only 3 currencies, and it's very clear how to get each of them. Yes, inventory management can get annoying, and sometimes the sheer incredible size of the game can be overwhelming. The fact Hello Games managed to fit all that content in 30 Gb never ceases to impress me.

They that go into space in starships, that do their business in the great unknown, they see the works of Sean Murray's team, and their wonders in the infinite.

No? Was that too pretentious?

Dragon Age: Veilguard feels like two completely different games in one. On one hand, it's a fantastic ARPG, on the other hand it's narrative-driven game with some truly horrendous writing. I really wish that writing these inane dialogues hurt nearly as much as it hurts reading them.

The game has the ambition to tackle complicated subjects like parenthood, gender identity, racism, and mental health, but the treatment often feels ham-fisted and lacks nuance. This is strange, considering the same writing team worked on KotOR and the previous Dragon Age titles. The game was written by industry veterans, rather than idealistic teens, though it may often appear that way.

Despite the different dialogue choices, most of them come off as incredibly American, for lack of a better term. The top-most response will be a variation on 'I don't actually know what we're doing, but let's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do it!' The options that read as 'seriously ♥♥♥♥ off' will invariably end up being 'that's a fantastic point, but let's talk about this other thing instead, you wonderful ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥', delivered with a huge grin. There is also the occasional Canadian response, something along the lines of 'I don't really know what I did, but I am really, really sorry about it'. At least those BioWare hosers have not forgotten their Edmonton roots, eh.

Meanwhile, the gameplay is great! The flow of combat is something to be experienced. The core mechanics are quite well done, although the parry window can feel wonky sometimes. The skill tree wears its Path of Exile influence with pride, and the unlimited free respecs give much room for experimentation. The gear system, while a little unusual, helps with crafting some really cool builds. Most sub-classes are immensely satisfying to play, with their own unique gimmicks that can be further improved by thematically-appropriate gear, assuming you did not miss the chests in some areas you won't be able to return to.

The large, gorgeously-lit maps are bursting with crafting materials, shortcuts, and secret chests. Exploration feels more meaningful than that of Ubisoft games, because of fairly good level design, and the upgrades are worth the trouble. It's true that you will revisit the maps many times, unlocking new pathways and areas, but it's far less annoying than it sounds. Also the animations are fantastic, and it's worth petting the adorable dopey griffon just to see the different reactions.

Dragon Age: Veilguard is difficult to recommend. The story and gameplay are often at odds. 'Let's be very careful,' says a character as you're about to run headlong into an Elven ruin to loot the ♥♥♥♥ out of it. Antagonists will loom menacingly, clad in plot armour, yet somehow the same hand-wavy reasons do not apply to the nearby hordes of recycled enemies you need to murderate in order to finish the quests. What is frustrating is the fact that there is a genuinely good game, buried among the hyperventilating Pixar characters, and the narrative implying your actions will have some sort of meaningful consequences, when they most likely won't. Make of this what you will. At least this isn't a live service game, because I don't know how much of monthly Bellara story content updates I could endure. I'll take Dragon Teenage over Whaleguard.

When Paradox acquired Triumph, I had my reservations. Turns out, this was a blessing in disguise. The Crusader Kings-style improvements to diplomacy and other social aspects of the game make Age of Wonders 4 the best title in the series! I would even dare to suggest this is superior to Shadow Magic, which I know is a bold claim! A week after getting AoW4, I had to force myself to uninstall it, as I was spending far too much time playing, tinkering with my custom factions, and acquiring the DLC. Help! I am trapped in a video game!

I will most likely revisit this review after the game is out of early access, but right now, I just don't find it enjoyable. The gameplay feels rough and clunky, with some characters being a lot harder to build and equip than others. I admit, I had high expectations after playing Path of Exile 1 for years, but I don't think the sequel is currently ready for general consumption. 'Currently' is the operative word here, as I am absolutely certain that sooner than later, this will be the absolute best ARPG on the market. The question is not 'if' but 'when'.

In the overly saturated market of service games, The Finals stands alone, as there is absolutely nothing that comes close. Sure there are occasional bugs, balance issues, and other quirks, but in terms of skill-based shooters, this is as good as it gets. It's not the easiest game to pick up, and it can get sweaty, even on casual modes. Nonetheless, in terms of sheer joy of shooting people in the face, and delightful chaos ensuing from emergent gameplay, this is pretty unbeatable.

I fully expected a cynical Overwatch clone from a primarily mobile game developer. Instead, what we have is an accessible and fun team brawler, which reminds me of the early days of Overwatch 1. The community is friendly, and you get shamed for being a ♥♥♥♥. Playing tank or healer is a fantastic experience, and you will most likely be thanked for it. This game is a labour of love, with a unique art direction, and it's drop-dead gorgeous: just look at the butterflies on Psylocke's cape! Also, the generosity of the dev team never stops to surprise me: all current and future heroes are free, the 5 bucks battle passes never expire, and you get showered in gifts from just playing the game. Some of the default skins in the game look like $30 super-duper-limited-exclusive offerings from other games. Blizzard must be losing sleep over this.