Recent reviews by WHAM

In under an hour of gameplay I encountered several immersion and game breaking bugs and issues. To top that off it seems the developers have turned to AI generated content rather than human generated content. As such I can only recommend people avoid this product. Had I known, I wouldn't have purchased the game to begin with.

"Many barrels! Many new friends!"

I guess I'm not the only person who thought Blood was a pretty neat old-timey shooter. Cultic takes a ton of cues from the Build engine classic, thought we have to make do without cheesy one liners this time around, as our protagonist is quite silent.

While I'll obviously recommend Cultic, since I quite enjoyed my time with it, I'll have to provide a warning to start off: at the time of writing the game isn't quite completed. Cultic appears to be the first episode, with at least one more coming later down the line, paid for separately. In the time of Early Access games this can feel a bit shady, but for this project I felt the risk worth taking and the price worth paying, even if I can't know what the 'full' game will be like.

Oh, and it's a solo developer project, which will always earn an extra point from me!

The game takes place in a remote community haunted by missing persons cases. A shady cult has taken root and it is up to you to go in and figure things out. The start of your journey might be rough, but rising from a cold grave is par for the course in these games!

The first things to catch the eye in Cultic is the visual style. The game merges old with new, using limited colour palettes and chunky 3D assets together with voxels and 2D sprites to create a look that's just modern enough to function on a technical and gameplay level while retaining the charm of retro games. Cultists, zombies, skeletons and even a damn tank will try to prevent your progress, but copious use of explosives, molotov cocktails and a nice little assortment of classic video game firearms should see you through.

The game doesn't do anything groundbreaking with its design, though. Puzzles are simple affairs, exploration and navigation are straightforward enough to ensure you're not getting stuck and enemy encounters come at a steady pace, keeping the player on their toes and providing ample opportunity for blood, gore and guts to spill.

All the while the game serves up a buffet of meaty weapon and impact sounds and a nice soundtrack to boot, building tension and promoting the sense of action as appropriate. I do have to point out, though, that Blood cultists had a much better scream when lit on fire, so I'm ducking a point out of the audio score for that.


All in all, Cultic is a solid six-hour romp of nostalgia, violence, horror and gore. If you enjoyed Blood back in its day or just want something that looks retro but playes really well, Cultic is a fine purchase to make!


Playtime: 6+ hours (Full playthrough)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 9
Audio: 7
Story: 5
Gameplay: 8
Overall: 8
Posted 28 July.

"This might be the first time a game made me actually FEEL seasick..."

I kept an eye on Barotrauma for a couple reasons. For one it was a Finnish game, which earns bonus points from me, but it was also a game about submarines, underwater perils and management of a ship, all of which sound GREAT to me!

But, as you might have noticed, the review I'm giving out with less than an hour spent playing the game is a negative one, and there are a few good reasons for that.

First and foremost: this is not really a game suited for single player. It is designed around the learning and mastery of complex systems and communicating with your crewmates on how to manage all of that together. Since one of the key systems to master is the physics-based movement of your character, efficient movement and communication feel key to success. However, the AI crewmates are immensely efficient and quick to act, making the players actions and input feel almost pointless, at least early on.

That movement, along with the camera motion accompanying it, is why I gave up rather quickly. Movement and animation are based on physics, which is a neat idea and might allow for complex, unexpected interactions. All it did for me was send my character bumping into doors, ragdolling inside hatches I accidentally closed on myself and just generally acting sluggish and unresponsive. Add to this the fact that the camera lurches around quickly to track mouse movements and I found the game gave me a headache after just 15 minutes of play, unless I sat still and stared at the captain's screen, which wasn't much fun alone.

I feel Barotrauma borrows a lot of its ideas from Space Station 13, a complex game of varying roles for players to learn and adopt. But unlike SS13, Barotrauma cannot hide its complexities behind simplified visuals and instead tries to show and simulate a bit too much, easily overwhelming new players. It's quite telling that one of the first things the game offers you is a link to a wiki. A sign that the game simply lacks the tools with which to teach you all the mechanics you'll need to understand to play.

It's also a sign for me to move on.

I'd love to see more of the world on offer, to experience more adventures, but as a solo player there really isn't much here. With a group of friends and a lot of time, you might find this game worth your time, though.


Playtime: 1+ hour (Not much at all)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 7
Audio: 7
Story: 3
Gameplay: 4
Overall: 3

With less than 10 hours played I feel like I've already seen all there is to see. The missions repeat themselves, spawning the same roster of enemies with the same seemingly broken spawn points placing newly appeared enemies regularly within a meter or two of a player. Cosmetics are overtly expensive, pointless and extremely limited in what is available. One helmet with a bunch of different textures over it is a very limited selection. As for progression: number go up. That's it. You can get a weapon with a bigger number, and then you can select a mission with a bigger number, and because both numbers go up it plays the same way as before, just with bigger numbers now. Vast majority of players also do not communicate. No voice, no text, just running at the enemy with the mindless purpose of reaching the next bigger number.

I hoped Darktide would stand on its own, be different from Vermintide in tone and gameplay, but in the end it's only different in theme. And while that theme makes for a small handful of very impressive looking levels, that's all there is: a small handful of levels to the point where the random mission selector regularly picks the same mission and map three times in a row.

If you are looking for a gunplay focused 4 player co-op: Left4Dead 2 is far more polished, has far more variety and a far better flow to its missions and gameplay.

If you are looking for vermintide: just play Vermintide.

Grindy, annoying, over-monetized. Playing this for more than a few hours was a mistake.

"Ratbag's Comedy Club - Now Hiring!"

Carrying on from the fairly interesting Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War is much the same, but more. It's more nonsense, more weird fanservice, more clunkiness and more time wasted.

After nearly 20 hours I gave up, feeling it unlikely I'd ever bother to actually finish the game, and so: here's why.

You may have heard of a little book (or a series of movies) called The Lord of the Rings, which revolves around the One Ring of Power. This game steps up to craft the Second Ring of Power, which turns into the pivotal object around which the game revolves. It allows our undead protagonist, Talion, and his ghostly elf-friend Celebrimbor to forge hordes of unreliable orcs into an army to fight for control of Mordor itself.

There in lies the most interesting quirk of the game: encountering, studying, fighting, subjugating and commanding various orc characters with different traits. You essentially become an orc collector, which is a fine idea! Though the game quickly over-uses this fine idea, turning a fun concept into a slow, grindy and repetitive affair that reduces the orcs to short-lived collectables. Originally the game was released with an invasive onlinse store, which likely explains the above issue well: the game was designed to waste time and frustrate the player to coax them into purchasing ways to make the game more fun. Still, the underlying idea is kind of fun!

However, the game is badly let down in almost every other area, from general gameplay to story to even the basic cast of characters. While Talion is a fairly average protagonist, though the game does little to establish his character and leaves it up to the player to play the first game before this one, the other characters feel thing, one-dimensional and dull. Celebrimbor is an annyoing elf-ghost who does nothing but whine and berate. The giant spider Shelob turns into a milf Frodo and Sam would definitely have spent more time with had she appeared to them as she does to Talion. Ratbag the orc returns from the first game to provide some fairly inappropriate comedic relief. None of the characters really click, though, nor provide more than a reason to awkwardly smile sometimes.

Otherwise the gameplay takes most of its cues from the Assassin's Creed series, along with the Batman Arkham games. Stealth exists, but is almost entirely optional as there is no punishment for not using it. Combat against a single opponent feels dull and repetitive, and so the game opts to throw in dozens of enemies at a time to add challenge and spectacle. This idea works in theory, but the game's mechanics and controls fall apart here. You may have your opponent one swing away from death, but the automatic lock-on mechanic might decide you want to target an entirely different enemy in the next county over, and so the attack button sends Talion leaping off into the distance. Climbing and parkour movement also suffer of similar issues where the player simply lacks control over their movements and can end up leaping off in unpredictable ways, or just simply stuck for extended periods of time as Talion refuses to let go of a ledge. I died a few times when trying to evade an enemy by leaping off a rooftop as Talion would step up to the edge, but instead of jumping off she would roll against an invisible barrier while not moving away from the enemy, leading to endless frustration.

On a technical level the game may have been passable back when it came out, but it hasn't aged all that well. Many visuals were lackluster back in the day, seemingly not having evolved at all from the first game, and now, years later, the game comes off as downright ugly from time to time. Music feel forgettable, while trying to invoke some of the Lord of the Rings movie soudntrack sensations, but it's use is misguided (I hated the comedy music that plays out whenever Ratbag shows up) and it usually ends up drowned out by all the shouting going on.

With broken mechanics, frustrating grinding, endless repetition and a story premise best left to some third-rate Tolkien fanboy's fanfic collection, Shadow of War is impossible to recommend.



Playtime: 19+ hours (Partial playthrough)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 7
Audio: 7
Story: 4
Gameplay: 5
Overall: 5

"Needs more Polish"

Cyberpunk horror from Poland? That's not a combination you see every day!

Having finished the game now, though, that might be for the better. The Observer puts you in the boots of a mind-jacking future police in 2083 Poland, a country ravaged by cyber-plague, crime and megacorporations controlling all aspects of life. Standard cyberpunk affair, then, and the protagonists ability to invade minds to aid his investigations gives a lot of potential for interesting narratives, horror and visuals.

The game does make the most of its engine and art style, catering plenty of imaginative visuals both in the real world and the various minds you explore. Flashing lights, holograms, glitches and more are everpresent, often to the point of overwhelming and inducing headache in the player. The world-building and art style both strive for excess, which can be hard to process.

In the realm of audio the game doesn't fare nearly as well as in the visuals. Most of the voice acting is delivered in a laboured and stiff manner with many of the voice actors seemingly unconnected, unaware of how their counterparts delivered their parts. There are also several child characters who's voices are delivered so clearly by adults that it just starts to feel weird with how many child voices the game decides to have. As seems to be customary with Polish games the protagonist is also written as a deeply unpleasant person for the most part, with a personality swinging to and fro, often taking time to engage people in conversations just to annoy and anger them for no gain or reason.

When it comes to the meat and bones of The Observer, the game itself, there isn't much to see. The vast majority of playtime for me was spent walking around, looking at things and exhausting pointless dialogue trees with characters I could not even see. The rest of the game consists of entering codes to open doors, scanning things for bits of information (looking at them, but while pressing a button), plugging cables into sockets and reading. Puzzle solving is relegated to a tiny sliver of game-play barely even worth mentioning. The game implies there are further mechanics available, such as a drug the protagonist must collect and use to stay sane and grounded in reality, but based on experimentation with this mechanic it doesn't actually seem to exist beyond a few visual quirks and a really annoying message the game blares at you if you fail to take your medicine in time.

Lastly there is the horror. This is a horror game, right? Sort of? Well, at least according to Steam, but I didn't experience much horror here. For the most part The Observer just likes to play loud noises at you and flash jumpscare visuals in your face over and over again. Sudden changes in the environment, bright lights, sudden darkness, at least three occasions where a pidgeon flies into your face... it's all the cheapest scares you could put in your game that, for me at least, didn't do much. The only moment I felt something was truly horrifying and scary in the game came in just minutes before the end of the game, and the experience was swiftly nullified by the flat, ambiguous ending the game dropped on me.

Beyond the main story the game offers an array of side quests, though with these I feel I must warn any potential player. The side quests all seem to end without any impact on anything. In fact I feel like none of the side stories actually resolved in any way, rather ending with the protagonist deeming they had seen all they neede to see, shrugging and walking away. Case closed.


Playtime: 7+ hours (A single playthrough)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 8
Audio: 7
Story: 3
Gameplay: 3
Overall: 4

"ACHTUNG - ACHTUNG - ACHTUNG"

At first glance I was a bit conflicted with Signalis. I'm usually not a fan of the look games get when they merge 3D models and a faux pixellated look, but the more I saw of the game the more I became intrigued and positive about it, until I finally took the plunge. As I ventured into the game I found it to be a highly atmospheric and fun take on the traditional survival horror formula, strongly reminding me of the old Resident Evil games, with a few neat and unique twists added on top.

In Signalis you adopt the role of an artificial humanoid, awakening aboard a crashed spaceship on a strange planet with your only crewmate missing. Strange discoveries lead you through military installations and mines, living spaces and some truly strange, twisted and nightmarish places that are difficult to describe, all in search of... someone. The story of the game ends up rather unclear and convoluted, with names and identities mixing up as the very fabric of time and space distorts around the player.

With brief periods of first person exploration to help convey key story points and moments, most of the game is played in a semi top-down view, exploring claustrophobic rooms and hallways, often with terrifying fleshy horrors hot on your heels. With a tight limit on inventory space, the familiar idea of safe rooms and storing items in them becomes key to surviving and making progress, though this also serves to frustrate, mostly due to the downright silly reason for the limit. Yet the combat manages to feel tense and exciting, and the weapons feel punchy and fun to use. The puzzles managed a fine balance for me, challenging and raising questions, while not getting too frustrating or confusing.

As the name of the game implies, signals also play a key role in the game. Early in the game you gain a radio which allows you to scan frequencies and receive signals and data over the airwaves, enabling you to interact with some puzzles and even enemies in interesting ways. The strange broadcasts and signals serve to add intrigue and mystery, but also feels somewhat underutilized.

With great visuals and audio, solid thrills and fine puzzles to challenge the player, I felt I'd recommend this game. However, after finishing Signalis I feel I cannot recommend it after all. Mostly the game falls flat with its story and cohesion, which feels like an intentional move by the developers to create a narrative that leaves quite a bit open to interpretation and discovery. And yet I came out of the experience feeling deflated and disappointed. So much left unexplained, so many questions unanswered, so many characters lost to limbo. All my effort in reading up on the story, trying to understand the events and characters and timeline, it all felt wasted.

I felt sad in the end, but I don't think I felt so in a way the developers intended.


Playtime: 11+ hours (Partial playthrough, game not finished)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 9
Audio: 9
Story: 3
Gameplay: 6
Overall: 6

"Oh, it's just a glorified hidden object game?"

The Eyes of Ara is a game I came across on a list of recommended puzzle games that might remind one of the classics like Myst, Riven, The Witness and Quern. Perhaps that led me to starting the game off on the wrong foot?

Whatever the case, the game puts you in the boots of some sort of signal technician on a boat to an improbable castle on an island from which a mysterious signal is emanating. Your job is to find the signal source and make it go away. The old coot who lived here disappeared years ago and apparently local kids sometimes dare each other to enter, so the place should be calm and quiet and covered in cobwebs. But you are not quite alone, as the eponymous Eyes of Ara are always watching...

Early on the game reveals its cards, however. While there are puzzles to solve, the majority content of the game is an item hunt. More specifically: the Eyes of Ara is, first and foremost, a hidden object game. Not only do a large number of puzzles revolve around the idea of "find X hidden objects in this room to proceed", it blatantly reuses the same puzzles several times, sometimes even in the same room. The map design is often nonsensical, using a table with several feet of clear space around it as an impassable obstacle requiring you to find hidden passages to get around it, or making an optional puzzle highly prominent and hiding its solution across multiple maps, only to reward the player with a few meaningless collectibles and zero actual game progress.

Where I quit was a particular variation of a slide puzzle, aligning pieces of an image while constantly bombarded by ear-grating noises. Some of the late game puzzles had already sent me to a walkthrough for I was not intelligent enough to fathom some of the more obscure clues, nor find several of the hidden-in-plain-sight objects that are absolutely required to beat the game.

The game reuses much more than just puzzles. You will see the same 3D assets over and over. The same photographs, chairs, clocks, books. The same puzzle elements and symbols. While there are a solid amount of nice and unique objects in the game, it all feels stretched out, like the developers had very few ideas and fewer objects, but had to copy them around to make the game long enough to qualify for some minimum length criteria.

There is a story here as well, but it's told through notes people wrote on paper many years ago and left for you to find. A story of interstellar wonders, family matters and the endless curiosity of adult and child alike. It's not badly written, but it doesn't feel very important, either. Much of the text can safely be ignored and the few clues needed to progress are fairly obvious. Well, most of them.

If you are a fan of hidden object games and puzzles, and don't mind repetition, you might still find that you like the Eyes of Ara. As for me, I cannot recommend it.

Playtime: 7+ hours (Partial playthrough, game not finished)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 6
Audio: 6
Story: 4
Gameplay: 3
Overall: 4

"Aww yiss, knucklebones!"

I saw an old trailer for Cult of the Lamb and was immediately fixated on the curious combination of cutesy art style and dark occult subject matter. I expected a management sim where you build up your cult, manage resources, affiliations and more.

What I wasn't prepared for was the hack-and-slash gameplay that felt like bargain bin Binding of Isaac!

So, safe to say, I didn't know what I was getting into with Cult of the Lamb.

You are the lamb, the last of your kind, and about to be sacrificed to ensure a sealed-away entity cannot return to the mortal realm. You escape, however, and begin raising a cult from which to draw power from so you can defeat the bishops who stand in your way, all in service of a dark, bound force that bides its time and awaits for you to release it.

The game is split roughly in half between a passable exploration and combat game where you take on randomly generated maps, fight enemies and collect temporary upgrades, and a cult management sim where you recruit followers and order them to work or worship, generating resources with which you can build up your little cult village of cute animal people.

As the game starts it feels fun and quirky and full of energy and potential! The first occult rituals in which you and your adorable animal followers cheer and chant as blood-red runes throb and stir is a promise of something truly unique ahead. However, in trying to be two games at once, Cult of the Lamb falls flat with both of its halves, and what might have been a march to success turns into a stumbling trot to mediocrity. The combat quickly begins to feel samey and the unpredictable nature of equipment you are provided can make some runs feel tedious and annoying while providing very little in way of rewards. Likewise, the cult management quikcly starts to feel like repetitive busywork. Upgrades somehow feel like they unlock both too slowly, but also too fast, since you can unlock everything worthwhile quite early in the game, leaving you with just minor incremental gains that don't feel worthwhile. The cultists themselves, adorable, colourful and embedded with special character traits, turn out to be very simplistic cardboard cutouts that generate side-quests for the player to deal with, many of which revolve around juvenile humour about eating poop which feels out of place. Like a joke a developed came up with early on and refused to give up no matter how inappropriate it ended up being to the final themes of the game.

Where Cult of the Lamb truly shines is its audiovisual aspects. The quirky music combining vocals and ambient instruments, the wonderfully creative 'voice acting' of some characters, the colourful and cheerful character art and all the gorgeous little animations that really bring to life the variety of characters, especially our protagonist the Lamb. It all just tickles the brain in all the right ways! Time and time again I found myself smiling and bobbing my head to the tunes.

Sadly the audiovisual glory cannot uplift the mediocre gameplay enough for me to really recommend the game. The first few hours I was hooked. Around the 6 hour mark I felt I'd seen all there was to see, and when I finished the game after about 13 hours I was sad to admit I had been right. On top of the underlying issues with the games flow and design, I suffered of a number of bugs that caused the game to get stuck as events did not load or menus did not open, forcing me to return to the main menu or to start the game again. The Twitch integration felt especially broken, and I disabled that around the halfway point of the game.

A special mention has to go to the little dice-based minigame of knucklebones, which was far more entertaining than it has any right to be, and the keepers of the lighthouse and their hilarious chanting I couldn't help but mimic whenever I visited them.

In conclusion, Cult of the Lamb is a wonderfully creative idea that had potential to be two great games, but it ends up stumbling and never reaches the greatness it deserves.

Playtime: 13+ hours (Single playthrough)

Ratings (1-10)
Visual: 9
Audio: 9
Story: 6
Gameplay: 4
Overall: 6