Indie

Necropolis Review for PC

Necropolis is a third person roguelike game developed by Harebrained Schemes, and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, releasing on PC, PS4 and Xbox One in July 2016. Harebrained schemes have a fairly well-known repository of games in their history with the le Shadowrun series of games being their most notable. Necropolis is set in a procedurally generated dungeon that changes shape each time you play.

First of all the art style on the show for this game really peaked my interest upon seeing it on the store page. It has a cartoony look to it that also has very dark and mysterious undertones. It completely grabbed me as one of the game’s stronger aspects after playing. Whilst the game’s world and environment are fairly low quality in terms of texturing and design, it still passes the mark due to the very stylized look and feels. Character and enemy models are again very basic, but due to the style, you can overlook the lack of serious detail. The game does have minimal sound effects; none that really stick in your mind, and the same can be said for the rather bland soundtrack too. We get a cheap-out way of avoiding voice acting by just having some monster mumbling over the top of any text you see on screen; this does come across as very boring and lackluster as it was quite clearly done to avoid having to include proper voice acting for the narrator.

Roguelikes and rogue-lite games are usually right up there with my favorite genre of video games. Thus I was super hyped to try out Necropolis, not only was I was drawn in by the game’s art style, but the thought of having a fleshed out roguelike that had a premium price tag also garnered my interest. Most roguelike games we see released nowadays are in the $10-$20 range so given that Necropolis is way above that I had extremely high expectations. Unfortunately with high expectations comes large amounts of disappointment. The game has a similar gameplay to that of Dark Souls in that it is slow paced and takes on the harder difficulty levels. Having hard game play is not the problem here; it’s the fact that the slow gameplay locks you into doing any sort of action until it has completely played out the animation which will more than likely leave you being smashed on by hoards of enemies in the meantime.

The game also lacks any proper progression system, roguelikes are meant to be played over and over again, each time you will get a little bit further than the last due to having a constant improvement in between runs. You do get some sort of bonus at the end of a run, but this only enables you to purchase very boring and unexciting passive abilities in the form of tomes, these passive benefits can be things such as reduced stamina usage when attacking, and a 5% health regeneration between fights. I would really like to see action abilities, or equipment improvements and definitely more interesting passive abilities that you exciting to be getting an upgrade.

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Crush Your Enemies Review for PC

This game was reviewed using a code sent by the developer/publisher but this did not effect my opinion on the game.

Crush Your Enemies is a real time strategy game, developed by Vile Monarch, and published by Gambitious Digital Entertainment, releasing on PC, Android and iOS in July 2016. The game has a humorous take on the real time strategy genre, the same developers who brought us This War of Mine invites you to a magical world of Generia.

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Whilst Crush Your Enemies is part of the RTS genre, it feels a little like a tower defense style game as well, I think this was because of the UI and some of the game mechanics which are on show though. The game is split across numerous levels which have three different objectives. The game has it’s own gating mechanism, meaning in order to progress further in the story you’ll need to complete a specific amount of objectives, which gives you good reason to replay previously completed levels, just to beat the extra objectives on offer. The objectives in each level will vary from straight up wiping your opponent off the map, to defending a building for an amount of time, or even something as simple as making sure you end the level with a certain number of units left.

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The actual gameplay from CYE is square unit based; you have a select amount of units to begin the mission with, and you can turn them into different styles of units, simply by entering buildings, units can be guards, armored warriors, archers, or builders. These units count as your resources for building more units. You’ll need to have a constant churn of units being built in order to combat your opponent’s forces. It takes a little bit of skill to finely tune the amount of units for each task but it is very satisfying once you figure out the perfect balance. The game has a very well done tutorial that doesn’t hand hold you throughout, but gives you plenty of helpful hints along the way when you encounter new mechanics. You learn as you play which is the best way of working these games.

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On top of resource management for your units, you’ll also get a number of consumables which can be used throughout a mission too, such as potions that ramp up units strengths, quick tents that allow you to build more units if you are in a little bit of a bind, and many more. These do become a little bit of a forgotten part of the gameplay for me though, as the UI has them hidden away in the top corner where you don’t really see them unless you are specifically looking. I thought they could have been displayed a little clearer in the regular UI to allow players to take full advantage of them, rather than realizing at the end of the mission they just struggled on, that it could’ve been much easier with the use of the extra powers.

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Goat Simulator Review for PC

So I was deciding whether to do a serious review on Goat Simulator because I haven’t seen one on Steam; so rather than join the bandwagon of unfunny jokey reviews for the game, I’ll stick to my guns…

Goat Simulator does exactly what it says on the tin; you play as a Goat, You cause havoc wherever you go; trashing, bashing, causing explosions, destroying houses, jumping on trampolines, basically anything you want. With plenty of interactive objects in the game, you can spend plenty of time wandering around never finding a dull moment.

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The graphics in goat simulator are really nice. They aren’t on the levels of Evolve or something, but for this type of game, you aren’t really going to be playing for the top of the range graphics. The music and audio are exactly what you would expect here; derpy music in the background as you potter about the city, along with cries of fear from the civilians as the demon goat runs rampant.

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There are three different areas in Goat Simulator; each zone is huge, ranging from theme parks, to crop fields, every building has something to do in it, every room has something to interact with or destroy. I honestly don’t think there is anything wrong with either of the levels included here. There is nothing difficult in the game to do here at all. There are no real objectives, just an open world sandbox game where you do whatever you want, whenever you want.

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I have managed to put about twenty hours into Goat Simulator; most of this time was playing on local screen co-op with my girlfriend, and then a couple more hours’ achievement hunting, and boy there is some pretty ridiculous achievements to do. Other than the developers openly coming out stating that they would not be fixing any bugs in the game, I had no real game breaking bugs, apart from sometimes falling through the world; however this was fixed easily by just respawning again.

If you want a game that is just purely for messing around in with no real aim and wanting some real stupidity, then Goat Simulator will give you plenty of fun; granted this type of game is not for everyone, I enjoyed it though.

Tom’s Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play

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