Recent reviews by Pÿthon

Mage's Initiation is a fine tribute to the legendary Quest For Glory series. As a hybrid RPG/adventure game it almost perfectly captures the spirit of the first Quest For Glory game. It's not as humorous as its source of inspiration, but the game is very well balanced and does a couple of things better than its classic counterpart. No repeated spell casting is required to improve your stats. You gain xp points by solving the puzzles and once you cross a threshold, additional points can be assigned to your stats. I quite liked this mechanism.

You can play as one of four classes of mage. Each class adds a little variation to the puzzles throughout the game. Each class also has a class-specific quest which warrants a playthrough per class. Achievement hunters will have a field day with a wide variety of possible play styles: kill all types of monsters, kill no monsters at all, kill 1000 monsters...

The puzzles are decent and never get frustrating. Art is what you'd expect from a pixel-art type of game; although some of the cut scenes look out of place because the drawing style seems quite different than the rest of the game. The quality of the voice acting varies a bit; personally, I don't quite like the main character's voice but other characters really stand out.

All in all, I really enjoyed this one. Just like in Quest For Glory you can save your character for use in a sequel. Unfortunately, the developer has made it clear that a sequel is very unlikely to ever see the light of day. That's a real shame; I would have been a day-one-buyer.

Game of the century!

Apart from a couple of aesthetic extras, this DLC doesn't add anything to the game. It's a nice way to tip the developers though, and that's exactly why I got this DLC. Larian deserves all the support they can get for raising the bar in computer gaming. The only downside is that after playing Baldur's Gate 3, most other games are not worth playing anymore...

Summer Daze is an interactive story set in the world of Quest For Glory and Hero-U (check out my review here). If you're looking for an experience similar to these two games, I have to disappoint you. This is no point-and-click adventure game, nor is it an RPG. Basically, all you do is talk to people and try to convince them to help you with the organization of the Harvest Festival. Of course there are some references to the aforementioned games. The protagonist, Lilly, is the adopted daughter of the healer from Quest For Glory I. Then there's minotaurs, Kattas, a couple of characters from Hero-U... And of course the typical Cole humor is back as well.

The story is rather short, but after two play-throughs, I can only assume there's probably a dozen different endings. It's a shame there are no achievements (yet?) because usually those give you a pretty good idea what to try next. The voice acting is pretty good, though. Zehra Fazal especially, does a great job voicing Tilly.

If you're a big Quest For Glory fan, I'm sure you'll appreciate the story and the humor. But if you're not familiar with either Quest For Glory or Hero-U you'll probably miss half of the fun. Give those a try first and then come back to give Summer Daze a try.

I didn't know what to expect when I got this as part of bundle. I assumed it was just another first person shooter. Luckily it's not, it's something entirely different. Something else that The Walking Dead is not, however, is a game. It's an interactive story at best. Even interactive is giving it too much credit.

As a player, you're very limited in how you can interact with the world. All you have to do is press a button once in a while and select topics of conversation. The Walking Dead lets you think that your decisions have consequences, but really, they don't. The story line is fixed. You're tricked into thinking you could have saved someone's life but in the end, nothing you decide has a significant impact on how the story evolves.

So why give this a thumbs-up then? Well, the story itself is an incredible emotional journey. Even though I realized early on that decisions don't have an impact, I still tend weigh my decisions very carefully. I haven't finished the entire story yet, but I'm already looking forward to Season Two.

Spoilers ahead: there's cake!

Pretty short, but it's free and it's a nice introduction to this excellent series.

It's hard to describe this non-game without spoiling everything. Just go ahead and try it; it's free. If you like this Jam Edition 2015 then you should definitely get the full blown sequel There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. It's more of the same, only better, longer and funnier.

Now stop bleating like a goat, and try it out.

I, Zombie is a fun little puzzle game. Contrary to most zombie games, you're actually the zombie. Your mission is to infect all humans in each level. Most levels are pretty straightforward: try to bite the humans and turn them into zombies. Regular civilians are easy to capture but soldiers will shoot you on sight. So the trick is to either outnumber them or attack them from behind a corner.

The game is presented in a top-down perspective and has funny, cartoonish graphics. The solution to most levels is pretty obvious but the last couple of levels can be tricky. Unlike some reviews that claim it's trial-and-error, there is a logical way of solving each level. There's only 30 levels and the game can be completed in two hours or so. Achievement hunters will need some more time, though. You'll have to finish the levels within a time limit or without losing any of your zombies if you want to 100% this game. It took me about 4 hours to get all achievements; not losing any of your zombies was the hardest one to get.

I got this game for a mere 16 cents on Humble Bundle. So head over there, get this game and infect those pesky humans!

Extensive knowledge of Shetland folklore isn't exactly a topic on my resume, so I had no idea what a Wulver was. Apparently, it's some kind of humanoid wolf creature. But unlike a werewolf, the night sky doesn't need to be lit by a full moon for a Wulver to scare the living daylights out of you. Combining Scottish mythology and Roman history, Wulverblade tells the story of a Caledonian tribe trying to stop the invasion of their land by the Roman Empire's Ninth Legion about two millennia ago.

Wulverblade is a side-scrolling brawler with an incredible attention to historic detail. If history isn't your thing, then you can just ignore this aspect of the game and enjoy some hack-n-slash fun. But if you want to take a breather from chopping off enemies' heads and killing more enemies by throwing those heads at them, you might learn a thing or two by checking out the game's extensive historical background section.

I hadn't played a beat 'em up in years. After trying the game with my keyboard for about five minutes, I quickly went looking for my old gamepad in a box in the attic. I'm absolutely no expert in arcade games but I really enjoyed playing Wulverblade. The cartoonish graphics really appealed to me and I found the gameplay to be really enjoyable. The game consists of eight stages and while some might find that a little short, there are three different characters to choose from and you'll have to finish the game with all three of them if you're an achievement hunter. Besides the main campaign, there's a wave mode with a bunch of arenas you can choose from and once you finish the game, a beast mode unlocks. So even if you find the main campaign on the short side, there's still plenty of fun to be had once you've finished it. It's also possible to play the game in co-op but I haven't tried that yet.

I really enjoyed playing Wulverblade. I even bought a new Xbox controller because of it because my old gamepad turned out to be rather rubbish. I can imagine that a lot of people don't care about the history aspect of the game but I really like it. Scotland is still on my list of holiday destinations and I'm sure that some of the locations mentioned in this game will be part of a future trip to old Caledonia.