Recent reviews by thirtysmooth

Mini Motorways is the kind of game that asks, "Do you want to experience the stress of rush hour, but with the soothing ambiance of soft music and pastel colours?" Spoiler alert: the answer is yes, you do. It’s like SimCity, but instead of building a whole town, you’re just trying to prevent your little pixelated citizens from experiencing the joy of endless traffic jams. Which, by the way, you will fail at—and it will be glorious.

The game starts innocently enough. A couple of houses here, a store there. You draw a nice little road, connect the dots, and feel like an urban planning genius. “Look at me,” you think. “I’ve got this. I should be in charge of real cities!” And then, suddenly, bam—out of nowhere, a red house pops up across the river, and now your perfect little road network has become a nightmare spaghetti bowl of highways, bridges, and panic.

The basic gameplay consists of dragging roads between coloured houses and their corresponding businesses, but things get tricky faster than you can say “gridlock.” At first, it feels like you’re solving a simple puzzle. By minute ten, it's more like you’re playing Twister with roads, desperately trying to keep the flow of cars going while your brain quietly melts. But hey, at least the game is kind enough to remind you of your failures with a calm, "Oh no, traffic has gotten out of control!"—as if it wasn’t your fault that you thought a single-lane road could handle 50 cars.

Ah, and let’s talk about roundabouts. In real life, they’re meant to help with traffic flow. In Mini Motorways, they’re more like tiny, circular hubs of disaster. You drop one down with the hope of easing congestion, only to realise you've accidentally created a vortex of eternal gridlock, where cars endlessly orbit like confused bees around a flower. It’s a beautiful mess.

Don’t even get me started on traffic lights. You’d think these would bring order to the chaos, right? Wrong. All they do is create little car parking lots at every intersection while you sit there, watching helplessly as your entire city backs up for miles. Fun fact: in Mini Motorways, the only thing traffic lights do reliably is test your patience.

The real joy of the game comes from the moments where you think you’ve finally cracked it. You’ll place a highway, confident that it’ll solve all your problems. "This is it," you say, admiring your work. "I've built the perfect city." But, as soon as you breathe that sigh of relief, a green house spawns on the opposite side of the map, and suddenly, you’re sending cars on a cross-country road trip just to get milk from the store.

In conclusion, Mini Motorways is an adorable and deceptively stressful puzzle game that will make you question everything you thought you knew about urban planning. It lures you in with its charming simplicity and then turns your brain into a traffic control centre on the verge of collapse. But don’t worry—when your entire city comes to a standstill and your roads look like they were designed by a particularly vengeful toddler, you can always start over and pretend it never happened.

If you've ever thought, "I love the idea of saving the world, but I want to do it while getting absolutely wrecked by alien bugs the size of skyscrapers," then Into the Breach is the game for you. It’s like playing chess, if your chess pieces were tiny mechs and the opposing side was an army of bugs hell-bent on turning Earth into an all-you-can-eat buffet. And spoiler alert: you're playing on hard mode.

The premise sounds simple enough: travel back in time, fight giant bugs (aka Vek), and save humanity from destruction. But don’t let the cute little pixel art fool you—this game is less “heroic mech pilot” and more “time-traveling exterminator with a severe bug problem.” Every level feels like you’re one step away from starring in your own sci-fi disaster movie, but with way more panic and a lot fewer cool catchphrases.

The turn-based combat is a work of evil genius. Each battle is like solving a Rubik’s cube while your house is on fire—every turn you have to think five steps ahead to avoid having your precious power grid obliterated. And spoiler: it will be obliterated, because you miscalculated one bug’s movement, and now that skyscraper you were supposed to save? Yeah, it's Vek chow.

The time travel element adds a nice touch. When (not if) you inevitably fail, you can send one of your pilots back in time to try again in a new timeline. The catch? They have to leave behind their teammates and all their cool upgrades. It’s basically the video game equivalent of hitting "restart" on a test you know you’re going to fail, but you’re like, "Maybe this time it'll be different!" It won’t be.

One of the game’s defining features is the sheer sadism of its difficulty. Think you’re doing well because you’ve protected a city for a couple of turns? Surprise! Here’s a new Vek with an ability you definitely weren’t prepared for, and oh, look at that—your mechs are now stuck in a swamp. Good luck punching your way out of that, champ. Every victory feels earned, but also kind of like you accidentally pulled it off, and you're just waiting for the game to take it back.

Each squad of mechs comes with its own fun flavor of frustration. There’s the fire squad, where everything’s on fire (including, sometimes, your own team). The electric squad, where you’ll constantly electrocute your mechs by accident. And of course, the classic punch squad, because nothing says “I’ve got this under control” like a giant robot throwing hands with a 50-foot bug.

The real MVP of Into the Breach is the power grid, the fragile little meter that represents how close you are to total annihilation. Each time a building gets crushed, you lose a chunk of grid, and trust me, you will learn to love that grid like it’s your own child. Protecting the grid becomes your life’s mission, even though it’s constantly being chipped away by bugs, environmental hazards, and your own bad decisions.

In conclusion, Into the Breach is a masterclass in strategy, frustration, and time-travel-induced headaches. It’s the kind of game that makes you feel like a tactical genius one second and a complete idiot the next, all while giant bugs are laughing at your demise. If you enjoy calculated risks, giant robots, and the feeling of barely scraping by in the face of overwhelming odds, then welcome to your new obsession.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I’d love to clean up after a bunch of fictional criminals instead of catching them,” then congratulations! Crime Scene Cleaner is the game for you. Ever wondered what it’s like to be the unsung hero scrubbing bloodstains off the floor of a dingy apartment after a high-speed car chase? No? Well, too bad, because now you will!

From the moment you put on your virtual hazmat suit and grab your trusty mop, you’ll feel like the true backbone of the criminal justice system. Forget detectives, forensics teams, or the police—you're the real MVP, sweeping up broken glass, removing suspicious red stains, and somehow making a murder scene look like a model home in under 30 minutes. Who knew crime could be so sparkly?

The gameplay? It’s essentially a cross between House Flipper and a crime documentary, but with more questionable liquids. Each level presents a new challenge—some scenes involve simple tasks like scrubbing blood off the walls (because that’s totally normal), while others require you to dispose of "evidence" (don’t ask what kind of evidence… just toss it in the biohazard bag and pretend you didn’t see anything).

My favorite part has to be the game’s incredibly realistic cleaning physics. Sure, you can wipe down a coffee table with a sponge in one swift motion, but trying to get blood out of shag carpet? Good luck, buddy. You'll be on your knees with a scrubbing brush, wondering what life choices led you to this point.

The sound design is also worth mentioning. The eerie silence of an abandoned crime scene is only interrupted by the soothing swish swish of your mop or the subtle plop of… well, something sticky hitting the trash bin. It’s the kind of ASMR experience you didn’t know you needed.

In conclusion, Crime Scene Cleaner is an oddly satisfying game that lets you live out the dream of being a professional cleaner—if your clients were all involved in suspicious "accidents." It’s weirdly therapeutic to turn a chaotic crime scene into a spotless sanctuary, all while ignoring the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, you're in the wrong line of work. But hey, at least it’s cleaner than real crime.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I’ve got a chalk outline to mop up.

Playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage feels like getting dropped into a history class taught by a parkour instructor. Imagine being at the peak of a minaret, gazing at the sprawling city of Baghdad, only to miss your jump and land directly in a pile of angry guards. Classic me.

The game's setting? Gorgeous. It's like walking into a postcard of ancient Baghdad—if postcards had hidden blades and rooftop chases. Seriously, every time I climb a tower, I half expect someone to sell me magic carpets or falafel (though I’d settle for some decent fast travel).

Basim, the protagonist, has mastered the art of stealth, which in my hands usually means "run at enemies with knives and hope for the best." The man has more tricks up his sleeve than a street magician—throwing knives, smoke bombs, even the ability to blend into crowds with the subtlety of someone who totally wasn’t just seen jumping off a 40-foot wall.

Combat is like a graceful dance of death, but if you, like me, lack grace, it’s more like a clumsy tango of trying to block while screaming at the camera angles. The sound of enemies repeatedly shouting "there he is!" as I get caught for the tenth time is basically the background music of my life now.

Stealth missions? Nail-biting. And by nail-biting, I mean that I inevitably mess up and get caught halfway through, leading to frantic rooftop sprints that make Baghdad look like the set of Mission: Impossible—if Tom Cruise had really, really bad luck.

In conclusion, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is like finding yourself in the middle of an ancient thriller, but with a lot more yelling at guards who somehow see through my perfect hiding spots (a bush totally counts, right?). If you’ve ever wanted to parkour through history and make a lot of people very upset along the way, this is the game for you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a tower to leap from… with style, obviously

If you aren't on Sony's list of countries where you can create a PSN account, you can't play this game.

Bad Sony.

Hold onto your loot, Vault Hunters, because we're diving into the world of Borderlands 2, a game that's so absurdly hilarious it makes even the most hardcore psycho bandit crack a smile!

First, let's talk about the characters. You've got Handsome Jack, a villain so charming you'll almost forget he's trying to kill you. He's like the guy at the office who steals your lunch but does it with such panache that you can't even be mad. Then there's Claptrap, the robot with delusions of grandeur. He's like that one friend who's always volunteering to DJ at parties, despite having the musical taste of a kazoo stuck in a blender.

The game's setting, Pandora, is a delightful wasteland where everything is trying to kill you. Seriously, the local wildlife must've watched a few too many action movies because they come at you like they're auditioning for a role in the next Mad Max film. And don't even get me started on the psychos - they're the kind of folks who probably end their love letters with "Yours psychotically."

But the real stars of the show are the guns. Borderlands 2 has more guns than you have relatives on Facebook. They come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors - from shotguns that shoot fire to sniper rifles that talk back to you. It's like Santa's workshop, but instead of toys, they make instruments of destruction.

And speaking of destruction, the game's humor is more explosive than a barrel of TNT. The writing is sharp, witty, and as absurd as a clown riding a unicycle through a burning circus. You'll find yourself laughing at the darkest, most inappropriate jokes while casually blowing up bandits and robots. It's a bizarre mix of comedy and carnage that somehow works like a charm.

The quests in Borderlands 2 are like a never-ending parade of absurdity. From collecting pizza ingredients for a psychotic robot to hunting down mutant midgets, you'll wonder if the writers were locked in a room with nothing but caffeine and comic books for inspiration.

If you play co-op with friends, it's even better. The game's chaos level is cranked up to 11, and you'll be fighting over loot like kids in a candy store during a Black Friday sale. Plus, who can resist a friendly duel where you can shoot your buddies in the face while yelling, "This is what friendship looks like in Pandora!"

In the end, Borderlands 2 is a glorious, chaotic, and hilarious mess of a game. It's like a party where the pinata is filled with grenades, and the cake is a giant explosion. So grab your friends, load up on guns, and get ready for a rollercoaster ride through a world that's as insane as it is side-splittingly funny. Welcome to Pandora, Vault Hunters – you're in for a wild, wacky ride!

Ladies and gentlemen, survivors and wannabe zombie hunters, gather 'round for the comedic spectacle that is Left 4 Dead 2! This game takes everything you loved about the original and dials it up to eleven, like a juiced-up zombie on a caffeine bender.

First off, the characters are more diverse than a zombie horde at a buffet. You've got Coach, a lovable guy who's built like a tank and probably believes the zombie apocalypse was just a really intense CrossFit class. Rochelle is our witty reporter, Ellis, a man of great stories and questionable taste, and Nick, the smooth-talking gambler who's somehow surviving the end of the world with style. It's like The Breakfast Club meets a chainsaw-wielding horde.

But let's not forget the real star of the show: the melee weapons. Sure, guns are cool, but nothing says "I'm taking this zombie thing seriously" like smashing heads with a guitar, slicing through the undead with a katana, or going all Gallagher on 'em with a good old frying pan. It's like a zombie-themed episode of "Iron Chef."

The AI Director from the first game is back, and it's still hell-bent on keeping you on your toes. It's like having an evil puppeteer who finds joy in spawning hordes of zombies right when you think you've got a moment to catch your breath. "You wanted a break? How about 100 zombies instead? You're welcome!"

Now, the zombie cast has had an upgrade, too. New "special infected" include the Spitter (imagine a zombie that coughs up acid like a flu-ridden dragon), the Jockey (a pint-sized psychopath who's keen on rodeo-style zombie wrangling), and the Charger (basically a zombified Kool-Aid Man on steroids). They're here to make your life as a survivor even more hilariously difficult.

The game's levels are like a rollercoaster of chaos. You'll be shooting zombies, rescuing teammates, and running for your life through swamps, amusement parks, and even a plantation mansion. It's like the ultimate survivor's road trip, with zombie snacks along the way.

The real fun kicks in when you play with friends. Co-op mode turns surviving the zombie apocalypse into a comedy of errors. You'll be screaming, laughing, and possibly cursing each other's zombie-attracting tendencies, all while trying to make it to the safe room alive.

In the end, Left 4 Dead 2 is a barrel of laughs, a wave of zombie-slaying shenanigans, and a game where you'll learn that in the zombie apocalypse, there's no such thing as too much mayhem. So grab your favorite melee weapon, call up your buddies, and prepare to laugh your way through the zombie apocalypse. It's a riot, and it's undead-tastic!

Ah, Left 4 Dead – the game that answers the age-old question, "What happens when you mix zombies, a ragtag group of survivors, and a dash of dark humor?" If you haven't played this gem, you're missing out on more fun than a barrel of undead monkeys.

First, let's talk about the characters. You've got Bill, a grizzled war veteran who's been through more apocalypses than you've had hot meals. There's Francis, the guy who hates everything, including zombies. Louis is the team's everyman, which basically means he's the guy who's really good at getting pummeled by the horde. And finally, Zoey. They're like the misfit Avengers of the zombie world.

But the real star of the show is the AI Director. This sneaky overlord controls everything, from the placement of health packs to the timing of the next wave of zombies. It's like having a virtual Dungeon Master who enjoys messing with your head as much as your life expectancy.

The gameplay is as fast-paced as a caffeine-charged cheetah on roller skates. You'll mow down zombies with an assortment of weapons that range from your run-of-the-mill shotguns to rifles that seem more fit for an alien invasion than a zombie apocalypse. Oh, and don't forget the Molotov cocktails – the gift that keeps on burning.

Now, teamwork is key here. If you wander off by yourself, you might as well start auditioning for a zombie reality show. The fun really starts when you're frantically screaming at your friends (or AI teammates) to help you up while being smothered by a Hunter or pounced on by a Smoker. Nothing says "I love you" like saving your buddy from a zombie's clutches.

And speaking of zombies, they come in all shapes and sizes. The regular ones are like slow-motion zombies from a '90s horror flick, but then you've got special infected like the Boomer (who explodes in a shower of bile), the Tank (basically the Hulk with anger issues), and the Witch (a nap-loving zombie who turns into a chainsaw when you wake her up). It's a party, and everyone's invited!

Now, the game's levels are like a maze from your nightmares. You'll spend half your time lost, the other half trying to figure out how to save your friends, and all of it drenched in chaos and zombie mayhem. If you ever wondered what it's like to be stuck in a never-ending zombie parade, this is it.

In conclusion, Left 4 Dead is the gaming equivalent of a zombie-themed carnival ride – fast, funny, and freakin' fantastic. Just remember, when the world goes to heck in a handbasket, grab your buddies, some big guns, and let the zombie-killing hilarity ensue.

Hold onto your lightsabers, folks, because we're about to dive into the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic! Strap on your Jedi robes or Sith attire and prepare for a galactic adventure that's more entertaining than a cantina full of Wookiees trying to sing karaoke.

First things first, character creation. Who knew the Star Wars universe had such a wide range of hairstyles and alien species? Forget about deciding your character's backstory or abilities; the real challenge is choosing the perfect shade of blue for your Twi'lek's lekku. Fashionistas of the galaxy, rejoice!

Now, let's talk about the dialogue choices. Remember those epic moments in the Star Wars movies where characters had intense, emotional conversations? Well, in The Old Republic, you'll find yourself choosing between snarky one-liners, sassy comebacks, and options that make you sound like you graduated from the Jar Jar Binks School of Charm. It's like a galactic game of "Who Wants to Be a Sarcastic Jedi?"

The combat in this game is a sight to behold. Lightsabers clash, blasters pew-pew, and Force powers fly around like confetti at a Death Star celebration. And if you're a Jedi Knight or a Sith Lord, you get to feel like a total badass, leaping through the air and cutting down enemies left and right. It's like being the star of your very own Star Wars action movie, but with slightly less convincing special effects.

Let's not forget about the companions. Oh, the companions! You'll have a ragtag group of quirky characters joining you on your quest, each with their own unique personalities and skills. Want a talking Wookiee as your sidekick? Done. How about a droid who thinks it's a protocol droid but has a penchant for blasters? You got it. They're like the dysfunctional family you never knew you needed, and their banter alone is worth the price of admission.

But wait, there's more! The game also features epic space battles, where you get to pilot your very own starship. It's like being Han Solo, minus the swagger and cool factor. You'll be zipping through asteroid fields and engaging in interstellar dogfights, all while praying that you don't accidentally crash into an Imperial Star Destroyer. Trust me, it's harder than it looks.

In the end, Star Wars: The Old Republic is a hilarious romp through the Star Wars universe, filled with quirky characters, over-the-top dialogue, and enough lightsaber action to make even a Sith Lord crack a smile. So grab your blasters, ready your witty comebacks, and may the Force be with you, because you're about to embark on a journey that's out of this galaxy!

Oh boy, where do I even begin with Spec Ops: The Line? This game takes you on a wild ride through a post-apocalyptic Dubai, where sandstorms are as common as tourists getting lost in the desert.

First things first, let's talk about the protagonist. Captain Walker, the game's main character, is like your typical action hero, except he's got a serious case of "why me?" syndrome. I mean, seriously, every time something goes wrong, he's just like, "Why is this happening to me? Why can't I just have a nice vacation in Dubai?"

Speaking of Dubai, let's not forget the city itself. Sure, it may be buried in sand and chaos, but boy, does it look pretty. The developers really went all out on the sand physics, making you feel like you're playing a game of "The Floor is Lava" except with sand instead. Who knew sinking in sand could be so much fun?

Now, let's move on to the story. Spec Ops: The Line tries to be all deep and philosophical, questioning the nature of war and all that jazz. But let's be honest, most players are just there for the explosions and shooting bad guys. Who has time for introspection when you've got an assault rifle in your hand?

But don't worry, the game has got you covered on the action front. The gunfights are intense, and the enemies just keep coming like they've got an unlimited supply of bad guys hidden in the sand dunes. It's like they took a page out of the "Enemy Respawn for Dummies" playbook.

And let's not forget the moral choices in the game. They're supposed to make you question your own morality and all that, but let's be real, most players just want to see what happens if they choose the most messed-up option available. Sorry, not sorry, virtual civilians of Dubai.

In the end, Spec Ops: The Line is a wild, sand-filled adventure that will leave you questioning your life choices and the nature of war. Or, you know, it'll just be a fun distraction where you get to shoot things and make questionable decisions. Either way, it's a good time in a sandy, post-apocalyptic kind of way.