Recent reviews by Maxxim☢

The base game was a passion project that was painstakingly put together over more than a decade. The story, music and gameplay came together to make an amazing classic-JRPG-feeling experience.

This DLC came out hardly a year after the original and is stuffed to the brim with lootbox mechanics (Styles are random drops, shop lottery, equip board ♥♥♥♥, even the dungeon rooms are technically lootboxes since they're random and you can get good or bad ones). The levels are boring since they generate almost the exact same layouts every time, and areas are hardly navigable since the enemy spawns are literal RNG and you can end up with rooms where 20 enemies placed right next to where you enter.

The enemies and bosses are all copy-pasted from the main game (Oh boy, Agni again) and the story sucks. The game loop itself is just a total chore. Go into dungeon, kill stuff for RNG drops, die to RNG, spend RNG drops on small upgrades, repeat. Occasionally you fight a cool boss, but unlike the main game you don't really know or care about what you're fighting. You just want to get to the next RNG'd area to kill RNG monsters for RNG drops. This DLC adds nothing to the main experience and I regret buying it. The developer already got his payday with the main game and this "expansion" is just a rush-job to get himself some icing on the cake he already had.

THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!!! *sob*
THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT

The year 2020 is a messed up place. A corrupt Mayor has taken over the city, the police are either extremely corrupt or heavily armed, and people wearing red shirts are locked in constant violent conflict with people wearing blue shirts. There's also a killer robot hunting people, bombs falling from the sky, cannibals hiding in the parks and zombie outbreaks almost daily. Welcome to Streets of Rogue!

Streets of Rogue is a Top-Down-Action-Rogue-Lite game where you choose from up to 36 character classes; From Cops, Robbers and Firefighters, to Aliens, Robots and Gorillas (with more available through Steam Workshop and the in-game character creator). The goal of the game is to make your way through the city's 5 randomly-generated sectors to reach the Mayor's Villa and set things right. The sectors have 3 levels; In each one you're given a set of random tasks to complete BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY! With support for up to 4 players (both LOCAL and ONLINE), Streets makes for a great party game that doesn't require a lot of hardcore dedication.

THE CHAD:

• LARGE VARIETY OF CLASSES with vastly different play-styles and special abilities. Want to kill everything? There are a few classes that do that. Want to play a pacifist? Completely viable. Seduce anyone? Flex that charisma, bro! There's enough variations that you can have a new experience with each character every time you play. You can also create your own class using a simple in-game editor if you feel like something is missing.
  
  
• PERK-BASED PROGRESSION keeps the game from becoming a number-grind while still conveying an increase in skill and ability.
  
  
• RANDOM LEVEL LAYOUTS WITH STEAM WORKSHOP SUPPORT means no two playthroughs are the same. There are a few oversights I'll cover a bit further down, but there's enough content that the areas never feel same-y or dull.
  
  
• OPEN-ENDED MISSIONS. Neutralize doesn't mean you HAVE to kill someone, just tell them to leave town or knock them unconscious! Retrieving an item can have you kicking down the door guns-blazing, putting sedatives in the air-conditioning unit to knock out everyone inside, or just bribing the guards with beer! Multiple endings also mean you won't be completely done with the game after 1 successful playthrough.
  
  
• INSANE ARSENAL ranging from basic tools and melee weapons, to typical modern firearms, to tasers, hypnotizers and teleportation grenades! No item feels completely useless in utility, worst case is that you sell them for money that can be put towards other objectives. Power-ups come in the form of syringes and pills, and grant random abilities like giant growth, electric touch and acid blood (not the kind that hurts enemies, the kind that boils your insides).
  
  
• MULTIPLAYER is extremely well-implemented with both ONLINE and LOCAL co-op. Couch co-op is so rare in PC games, even with the abundance of console-ports of the modern era. While I was faster playing with mouse + keyboard, the game controls smoothly enough on gamepad that most anybody can pick up the game fairly quickly without having to learn any special techniques.
  
  
• SOUND DESIGN is excellent. Weapons sound like they have weight behind them, explosions are heavy and the soundtrack is pure BANGERS. My personal favorites are 3-3 and 4-2, but the tunes all run together beautifully.

THE BAD:

• THERE ARE NO STREETS?? Some areas have trains or minecarts running in a straight line across them horizontally, but the closest you get to an actual street are the canals running through Downtown. The floor is almost completely dirt/grass/sidewalk. I would assume there are issues with the map generation that made roads too janky to implement, but c'mon, it's in the game title!
  
  
• THE MECH-PILOT is underwhelming. Part of the DLC pack (which has fun characters otherwise), when I first heard about the class I was hoping the mech would be more grandiose, but it's more remniscent of Iron-man than Mechwarrior. The laser weapon is a flashy pistol at best, and no alt-fire rocket launcher makes the class a gimped soldier.
  
  
• NO COMPETITIVE MULTIPLAYER MODE means once you've perfected the art of teamwork with friends, the game becomes a little too straightforward and routine. A competitive mode such as a race, or missions with conflicting objectives (IE One player has to neutralize, the other player has to escort) would add a whole new dimension to the party formula.
  
  
• NO PLAYABLE DOG, CAT OR JANITOR CLASS okay this is kind of biased but I assume the dev doesn't want people gibbing house pets. But low-skilled workers are still fair game! Also wish the Slum-Dweller had a panhandling ability of some kind, but now I'm nitpicking. The main takeaway here is that while the character creator is easy to use, there are still hard limits to modifying class abilities, big quests, character sprites, etc.

Bad aside, Streets is a great game well worth checking out. With a humble price tag going on sale regularly, a steady stream of bug fixes, code updates and endless potential for expansion, Tinybuild has the foundation for a great franchise set up. The sequel has already been announced and is in development, but until then I would highly recommend trying out the original. And remember kids, if you find a syringe in the street, TAKE IT TO A DOCTOR FIRST so you at least know what you're poking yourself with.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a third-person stealth/action game set in the fictional world of Ashina. It was one of the most anticipated titles of the past year, and I'd have to say the game lives up to the hype. While I was hoping for "Nioh: But with all the Bad Parts fixed", Sekiro is unique enough to stand on it's own alongside Bloodborne and the Souls games. It shares the same animation and hitbox issues as the other titles, and customization is definitely not the focus here, but the goods far outweigh the bads.

In the game, you control the titular character Sekiro (referred to by others as Wolf). Sworn to duty as a bodyguard, you serve a child named Kuro, known also as 'The Divine Heir'. When the boy is kidnapped and you lose your arm, it's up to you to explore Ashina, upgrade your new prosthetic, die a lot, infiltrate the castle and save the Princess. While core gameplay is reminiscent of Dark Souls, the controls have been remapped entirely and health/stamina work completely differently than other FROMsoft games. This results in fresh, faster-paced combat, where the goal is to break your opponent's stamina before they break yours.

PROS:

+ GORGEOUS visuals. Sekiro's graphics are stunning to say the least; Character models are intricately detailed, cloth physics are on point. Colors are vivid and I don't think I've ever seen fire look that good in a video game. Characters don't look like they evolved from TESIV: Oblivion NPCs! The best part? It runs amazingly on my mid-budget-5-year-old PC. I was really getting sick of all the snow by the end, but that's a design opinion.

+ Storytelling improvements. While there aren't as many quest NPCs as it's sibling games, the story is much clearer and simpler to understand. When the game asks you to make a story choice, you won't have to watch a Vaatividya lore essay to clarify the moral implications of your decision.

+ Intense combat. At first you'll probably be worried that there's only one weapon type (Katanas) and a single attack button, but as the game progresses you'll unlock more moves and be amazed at how thrilling and satisfying the swordplay feels. By breaking your opponent's stamina (also known as 'posture' in-game), you can land a deathblow that kills them in a single strike (bosses need 2-3 in most cases though). You can also block and parry most attacks quite reliably without having to synchronize animations with your enemies. This makes you feel powerful and enemies dangerous without serious number crunching like in past games. Animations are fast, damage is heavy, and the movement options are the best there've ever been.

+ Jumping. Jumping, wall-jumping, ledge grabbing, swimming, and grappling hooks are well-implemented and allow the developers more creative freedom when mapping out Ashina. I wish we could have gotten free-aim for the grappling hook, but it still feels good to use as-is.

+ MY ARM MY ARM MY ARM- While there's only 1 sword, Wolf can install and upgrade a variety of secondary weapons into his prosthetic arm. Shuriken launchers, spear heads, axes, and other tools that become useful at various points in the story. The upgrades make big differences to your equipment without going for the basic "+attack, +defense" low-hanging fruit. You can equip up to 3 at a time and switch between them with 1 button, creating some great opportunities for Devil-May-Cry-esque combos with your sword.

CONS:

- NPC-lite. The NPCs outside the main cast in this game are a little too 2-dimensional. You don't run into many friendly folks beyond slack-jawed-yokel shopkeepers and some guy who forgot he left his airpods in. You certainly won't find many Solaires or Seigmeyers while adventuring in Ashina.

- Re-used mini-bosses. I get it, there are a LOT of mini-bosses in this game, and they're part of the same army story-wise. So the clothing, weapons and moves would all be the same. But couldn't they have made more of an effort to make the shift managers stand out from one another?

- Little potential for customization. Wolf's outfit looks awesome on it's own, but I have to call this out for being a FROMsoft game. One sword, one outfit, etc. While story choices, combat arts and the prosthetic arm give you some options to tune your playstyle, "kill ingeniously" is exaggerating the amount of options you have when dealing with obstacles in the game. There's the "sneak past the guys unless you can't because story" route, and the "kill everyone" route. It's a real bummer, because in my opinion the customization has been what makes FROMsoft games so great over the years, but they've decided that "difficulty" is the primary feature of their games after Dark Souls 1.

- FROMsoft Syndrome. This is the core of FROMsoft games' infamous difficulty. There are 3 symptoms of FROMsoft Syndrome, present in every game made by the company starting with the original Dark Souls.

1.) Enemies that pivot mid-animation, even when doing attacks that should logically not allow them to turn (I.E. A diving grab).

2.) Odd hitboxes that vary between form-fitting-spot-on and Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late.

3.) Huge enemy damage. It makes sense and I'm not saying it's unfair, but it's a part of what makes these games hard.

Once you're able to recognize and avoid these, the games are all pretty easy. It's a great learning curve, but it's so recognizable at this point that it feels samey compared to FROM's other games. This is what causes people to tie the SOULSEKIBORNE games together, even though they are meant to be completely different series. It's like the LEGO games, reskinning and slightly altering the same core gameplay loop. If you've been enjoying FROMsoft's recent games you'll call it a masterpiece, if the other games drove you mad you'll quit and uninstall it after 30 minutes. That aside, if you haven't played any of FROM's titles yet, Sekiro is an excellent start.

Disgaea is an isometric turn-based RPG series that plays similarly to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem. The games are known amongst RPG enthusiasts for their cliche-but-self-aware stories and absurd numerological scale. Disgaea 5 is the latest installment in the series, and in my opinion the best one yet. The graphics got better, the numbers got bigger, and the characters... Okay they didn't improve much, but that's anime for you.

Disgaea 5's story centers around an intergalactic conflict in which the evil, high-leveled, aptly-named Void Dark, attempts to seize control of the netherverse from the demons who reside within it. I liked this level of scale in the story, as past Disgaea games I'd played (1 + 2 on PS2) never really explored the planetary aspect of the netherverse beyond the conflict in Disgaea 1. They mostly stayed confined to their own worlds, but this setting is a perfect opportunity to link them all together.

You play as a wandering fighter named Killia (KILL YA, GET IT? Cut myself bringing you this edgy trivia), who seeks to defeat Void Dark all on his own. Of course as with any JRPG, within minutes of starting his quest the lone ranger is joined (against his will) by a sassy, bouncy, pink-haired market-research experiment named Seraphina. She is the result of a terrible accident in which Etna, Rozalin, and Vulcanus (The female leads in the first 3 games) all attempted to use a teleporter at the same time, causing them to fuse into one of the most annoying THOTs in JRPG history. She will make you want to turn the game off if you play it in English, so be sure to switch to Japanese voices before you start (more on this later). From there you meet several other colorful characters far less annoying than Seraphina, who all share the same goal. They've been wronged, and they want REVENGE!

As you play through the ~80 story missions you'll stack all kinds of loot, recruit various custom characters, and even partake in demonic politics through the Dark Assembly (AKA Congress, but EV-- MORE EVIL!).

PROS:

+ Graphics and special effects are at their peak. Character sprites have great definition, and while the poses are a little limited there are a lot of fun special animations that do a good enough job at hiding it. Weapons sprites are CUH-RAZY and range from "Mall Ninja" to "how do you even hold that". Maps are still pretty flat, but have more detail, and destructible terrain props are always a welcome feature in any game.

+ Sense of scale. The Netherverse is a big place, and features like Nether Research and Squads give the game a Mass Effect / Warhammer 40k vibe that I really enjoyed. The stat numbers in this game reach un-ironically epic levels, as you start from a measly level 1 with double-digit characteristics and eventually become a LEVEL 9999 MOB BOSS with stat points reaching the TEN MILLIONS. You will eventually be capable of dealing BILLIONS of damage with a single attack. It's incredibly satisfying.

+ Fun choreography. The atmosphere of the plot is dark, but the moves are just as over-the-top as in past games. Team attacks have great variety, and while being able to skip animations is a convenient feature, some are just genuinely fun to watch.

+ Building an army. In older Disgaea games you would often have your 10 main characters that you always used, then another 10 or so that you never used (either because they were under-leveled or you just thought they looked stupid). Disgaea 5 gives your peanut gallery a purpose by allowing you to send them on research missions, or load them into specific squads to give buffs to your main characters. By the end of the game I had over 90 characters in my party and almost all of them had specific uses in my grind to 9999.

+ The story is cliche, but it could have been worse. If you've watched anime a lot (you probably have if you're considering this game) you'll be able to predict the story pretty easily, but the characters that aren't Seraphina will grow on you over time as you complete it. It does a great job of feeling like a finale for the Disgaea series overall due to it's galactic scale and crossover characters. I don't think it'll actually be the last Disgaea game of course, but I wouldn't be disappointed if it was.

CONS:

- Chara-World. This is a new feature in D5, and honestly one of the worst ones ever. Hey, kind of off-topic question here: Do you like Mario Party? You play it with your friends when you get drunk on weekends, right? Well, what if you could play Mario Party, but single-player only with no mini-games and tedious procedural maps? What do you mean that sounds like torture? You only have to run it 30+ times with each of your characters to reach maximum stats! You'll also need to run it a few dozen more times to farm ability scrolls... Why are you running? Are you still there? Please respond...

- The Sage and Item World. Item world hasn't changed much since past games: You run through procedurally generated maps inside your items in order to level them up and make them stronger. This is good fun; Grindy, but not exactly necessary to finish the game. The problem is that it got pathetically easy once I trained a Sage. Sages can learn a special move that hits literally every enemy on a map, no matter where they are. Of course, this means once you have a Sage with high enough stats, you can finish literally every level of the game within 1-2 turns. While it was nice to have a shortcut to all that grinding, I felt more like it obsoleted the rest of my team. Why bother strategizing at all when you can just deploy the nuke and call it a day?

- The Dark Strategy Assembly. The concept itself has always been novel, but the execution is so impractical. It's essentially a menu of features that you have to spend Mana and items to unlock. In some cases it makes sense having a strategy committee that authorizes new recruits, but given the setting it really shouldn't be playing out like the typical "bribe politicians to make them vote yes" scenario. It's especially tedious in the post-story section, where you have to use it to change character classes (Something that should be easily do-able from the status screen).

- The English voices SUCK. As with most anime subs are better than dubs, but especially so in this game. I had kept the English subs on in Disgaea 1 and 2 because they were more humorous games, so bad voice acting would complement the absurdity. Disgaea 5's English VAs are pretty bad quality, some bad casting picks and shoddy audio mastering (This is especially evident with General Bloodis, the JP VA has the cool reverb filter on his voice while the EN VA pretty much reads his lines raw). Definitely not fitting for the more serious tone of the game.

- Lighten up. The tone of the story is dark, to the point where characters' quirks come off as more annoying rather than humorous. I like cheese as much as any weeb, but there just wasn't enough traditional Disgaea slapstick to make me laugh. The special attacks, the item descriptions, the prinnies, everything gameplay side had the same tone I know and love from the series, but the story was taking itself way too seriously.

If you're a veteran of past Disgaea games, D5 makes for a good finale to the series. If you're considering this game and not familiar with the franchise, I'd recommend starting with the original Disgaea and playing up from there. The amount of features in this game can become overwhelming without patience stats in the 13 million range otherwise.

Thanks, Humble Bundle. Thanks for giving me a chance to fully explore why I disliked this game the first time I tried to play it on consoles. Space Marine looks amazing graphically, but is brought low by a large number of design, flavor, and gameplay misses that will turn off both core fans and those not familiar with the series. It's a fun one-and-done game if you can get it for less than $5 (or free if there's ever another promotion). For it's current listed price though ($29.99 USD as of this review), steer clear.

GOOD:

• The graphics and general look of the game are excellent
  
• Guns feel good to use, good variety of ranged weapons
  
• Voice acting is solid, collectable voice logs give some life to an otherwise bland and repetitive warzone
  
• Story is run of the mill 40k- Short, simple, but spectacular
  
• Jump packs are RADICAL
  
• The multiplayer is fun (Co-op with friends, PvP is mostly empty but has periods of activity)
  
• It's not unplayably bad like Fire Warrior was

BAD:

• REPETITIVE ANIMATIONS- Did you watch the trailer on the store page? Welp, that's pretty much all of the execution animations in the game. Every enemy not shown in the trailer only has ONE execution animation. No matter how good the graphics look, this is a serious blow to it's entertainment value.
  
• BAD DIALOGUE. The cinematics are okay, but in-game enemies constantly refer to you as "Space Marine" and "Ultramarine", even though said enemies should have their own vernacular to describe the Emperor's Finest. It gets incredibly annoying.
  
• BAD MELEE COMBAT. The guns feel good but the melee is terrible. X X Y, X X Y, congratulations you're a CQC master. No lock-on abilities is another thorn in the side.
  
• Weak melee weapon variety. Chainsword, Power Axe, Thunder Hammer. That's it.
  
• Frequent Graphic glitches and errors. Execution moves clip through terrain regularly, enemies get caught on terrain and can't move. NPC companions are moved next to you whenever you stray too far from them, very choppy/lazy.
  
• So many critical flavor misses. The lack of iconic Space Marine weapons such as the Power Fist, Flamer, Missile Launcher, and Lightning Claws were a huge disappointment. I'd bet all my thrones they were held back to be used as future DLC. No Terminator armor section? That hurts, Relic.
  
• Linear as Hell- No customization, levels are all corridors with the occasional small battlefield. Enemies are reptitive and predictable. Ammo is spoon-fed to you at regular intervals, making fights very easy.
  
• No vehicle sections. I know I mentioned flavor misses above, but this deserves it's own bullet point due to how much better this game would have been if they had just copied the design of Star Wars: Battlefront, instead of re-skinning Gears of War.
  
  All in all, the game is forgettable. If you're new to the franchise, you won't understand enough of the lingo to take any coherent theme or experience from the game. It doesn't do anything any other shooter's already done better a thousand times. If you're a dedicated 40k fan, you'll be too occupied pointing out things that are missing from the game to care.
  

A solid Dark Souls game. Does some things better than the first entry (Equipment variety, Dual-wielding, fluidity)- But does other things much worse than it's predecessor (Map design, story intrigue, boss design, the ADP stat, the entire Soul level system). Even with the odd twists on the mechanics, it is an overall fun experience and worth picking up during a good sale.

Now, this COULD HAVE BEEN be a positive review. I'd give this game a thumbs up, if not for the fact that FROM Software will PERMANENTLY BAN YOU FROM PLAYING ONLINE just for using a popular graphics mod called DS2FIX. DSFIX was one of the most popular and most downloaded graphic-enhancing mods in Dark Souls 1, used by a large majority of PC players. So when I first picked up the Scholar bundle and saw that DS2FIX was released, it seemed like common sense to pick it up. Everything played fine for a while, but unfortunately with Dark Souls 2, FROM decided to pull up their boot-straps and crack down on anyone using a modified (even harmlessly) client. I attempted to appeal my ban by Email and was told that it would be permanent and irreversible. Just for trying to make the game look and run more smoothly.

A banned account can only Co-op/Invade other banned accounts, so while I could hope to run into an honest DS2FIX user in a similar situation, most of the summons and invasions I had were full-on HACKERS.

And the worst part is watching my friend try the game on his legitimate account- These malicious hackers STILL run rampant and unbanned amongst legitimate players. Invaders with infinite HP/Stam and no recovery animations, butterfly punchers one-shot killing players in the first area (Forest of Fallen Giants), and even players passing out hacked items (to trick other players into getting themselves banned). Great moderator work there, FROM.

TL;DR - The game isn't horrible but FROM's customer service is. FREE DS2FIX!

If you to play this game one hundred times, you may notice a difference in how you feel. If you play this game a thousand times, you will be transformed. And if you play this game a million times, you will become more than human. And you will still not be able to beat it. Play this game as much as you can, play this game as often as you can.