2021 has been an incredible year for the PlayStation 2 modding scene. The PS2 may be over twenty years old now, but the community around it is still quite strong. Earlier this year, MechaCon was dumped in full. This allowed […]
Developer: Monolith Productions, Nightdive StudiosPublisher: Nightdive StudiosPlatform: PC – GOG, Steam I first tried to play Blood years ago but failed due to extreme inability on my part. The game seemed way too tough to even survive the first level! […]
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Director: Anthony Hickox Writer: Clive Barker, Peter Atkins Year: 1992 The original Hellraiser left quite an impression on me. Not only was it creepy, but it had a powerful visual aesthetic that stands up today. Years ago I watched the sequel and didn’t […]
Developer: Red Wasp Design
Publisher: Red Wasp Design
Platform: Android, iOS, PC
This post is part of the Indie RPG Bundle review collection
H.P. Lovecraft was a 20th century writer who is desperately loved to this day thanks to his incredibly odd, and sometimes horrific, fiction. He is best known for being the progenitor of the Cthulhu mythos. A handful of games have attempted to make use of said mythology and some have been successful while others floundered. Where does Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land stack up?
You begin as a crew of four men who are engaged in World War I-era firefights. You’re on the side of the British and quickly realize there is something very wrong with the opposing force. Within the first mission there are zombie-like soldiers taking up arms! Thankfully, they are still able to be taken down with normal bullets.
How does the turn-based strategy title play out? On their turn, players can select teammates and tell them to either move, heal, shoot an enemy, or just stand still. Since each character has their own action points, refueled after a passing enemy turn, you have to make each action count. Assigning more action points to an attack can even increase the probability of a successful strike.
After each successful battle, a shop opens up allowing each character to receive upgrades to their stats or to have their loadout tweaked. It might be hard to get to the end of a level though considering most have a second objective that opens up after beating the first one. It’s easy to be caught off guard and end up unprepared for the next objective’s enemies. There are also only nine missions available, but then again, this is a title that began on the smartphone platform.
There are a fair bit of quirks players will have to become accustomed to though. For one, you can only move one teammate at once. This means you also can’t start moving another before the animation of the previous character finishes. There is a fast forward button though. Also, the default zoom for isometric perspective is far too close. Battlefields often have enemies lurking in the corners, outside of the screen completely. Yes, you can look around it manually but it’s annoying the camera couldn’t be pulled back more.
The Wasted Land is not a fantastic turn-based game or even just as a title based off H.P. Lovecraft’s work. However, it is likely much better than a lot of the mobile market offerings. Instead of being a “click/buy to win” game it is something that requires actual strategy! Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land is fun while it lasts as long as you aren’t expecting the next X-COM.
2 out of 5 alpacas
If you’re at all a fan of PC games then you’re probably well aware of the trend of bundling various titles together for a “pay what you want” price point. Some bundles favor quantity over quality, but others, such as Bundle in a Box by Kyttaro Games, have proven themselves to take real-time in choosing the best games for a set. Their latest bundle is The Indie RPG Bundle and ends in just a few days (September 30th).
Buyers can nab eight games for $1.99 or higher. Of course, if you beat the average price then an additional five games are added. But are all (or most) of these games worth it? Kyttaro Games were gracious enough to share a bundle with us and as such we’ve decided to take a crack at reviewing all thirteen titles. With thirteen days of the sale there’s only one question on my mind: Is this even possible to do in time? We’ll see!
After this is all over, a new post will go live collecting all reviewed titles.
Developer: The Chinese Room
Publisher: Frictional Games
Platform: PC – GOG*, Steam
In my opinion, Amnesia: The Dark Descent spurred a resurgence in horror games when it launched in 2010. There had been games where you were weaponless and pursued by monstrous beings before, but this one hit it big. Frictional Games became far more well known than they had been with their entire Penumbra series and we still see the results of Amnesia’s popularity today.
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Game Gear, Genesis (Reviewed), Master System, Sega Saturn
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is a game that many players have held dear for years. Recently, Sega went back and re-envisioned the title to be suitable for modern gaming platforms. Having never played the original before, I decided to give it a go before trying the remake. How does it stand up for someone who doesn’t get nostalgic recalling the title?
The people at Sega certainly tried hard to make something special with the licensed character of Mickey Mouse. Honestly, it seems like we haven’t seen as many excellent licensed titles since the era of SNES and Genesis. The world is bright and colorful and Mickey looks just as expected. Levels are imaginative and mesh with a Disney aesthetic.
It seems the game shouldn’t be that difficult, but it still ended up being somewhat tough for me. The primary offender was that Mickey has a weirdly heavy jump. He can get up pretty high in the air, but it sometimes felt that he wasn’t responding as accurately as he should have to my button commands. This could be due to the controller or aged game, though. Who can say? I do know the remake suffers its own lag but that was obviously not purposeful.
Aside from that, the platforming is interesting. A mechanic showcased in an early level even allows the map to be flipped upside down/right side up. It seems a bit ghastly, though, considering each flip causes the enemies to fall down and die immediately. Well, they disappear rather than die, but the implication is the same. Mickey himself never dies but instead is given a handful of “tries” before a final game over. Considering this is a game primarily targeted to children why couldn’t there have been infinite tries?
All things considered, Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse is a pretty good platformer. It has all the aspects you expect of one, such as great music and attractive visuals. Still, those controls were problematic. And then aside from some neat concepts, the game doesn’t do much to make it stand out above the rest when it should. After all, this is a Mickey Mouse game!
2 1/2 out of 5 alpacas
Developer: Idea Factory
Publisher: Aksys Games
Platform: PSP
Sweet Fuse is an otome visual novel that has an incredibly weird premise. Your uncle, Keiji Inafune (yes, THAT Keiji Inafune), has built a video game-themed amusement park and you’re invited to its grand opening. Everything is going swell until the evil Count Hogstein takes over the park and all its staff hostage. It’s up to you and six handsome men to brave Hogstein’s seven deadly games, lest he kills all the hostages and blows up your uncle’s beloved park.
There’s still time for love, though! All six guys are romanceable at the very start of the game and have their own routes. There’s also a seventh guy whose route is unlocked when you finish Sweet Fuse at least once. To my surprise, I grew to love every guy over the course of my playthroughs (well, except Meoshi). I say it’s definitely worth it to go through every single route that Sweet Fuse has to offer! Even if the romance aspect in Sweet Fuse is minimal, there’s still enough of it to satisfy anyone that is in search of that ooey-gooey stuff.
Sweet Fuse‘s story is surprisingly serious and deep. As you go through each route, you figure out that Hogstein isn’t the nonsensical villain that he’s first introduced as. There’s actually a reason that he’s decided to have all of you participate in his games! All the guys also have some rather interesting backstories that eventually intertwine. I can’t say too much without spoiling the whole plot, though.
Some of you folks may be concerned that Sweet Fuse is too “girly.” Like I mentioned previously, the romance is kept to a minimum and the game instead relies more on action and drama. It actually feels a lot like Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, if that happens to be a visual novel that you like. Sweet Fuse is an otome game that everyone can enjoy.
I think the only aspects of Sweet Fuse that disappointed me were the rather large amount of typos and the “puzzles.” Before I began the game, I was under the impression that the puzzles advertised would actually be solved by you. Instead, the characters in the game usually come to conclusions for the puzzles themselves (oftentimes bumbling). Sometimes, you’ll get the opportunity to push your group into the right direction by selecting the correct keyword during the “Explosive Insight” phase, but it’s not very exciting.
That stuff is easily pushed aside when compared to everything I love about Sweet Fuse, though. What I believed was going to be a silly little visual novel actually turned out to be a very emotional and entertaining experience. If you own a PSP/Vita and like visual novels, then definitely get your hands on Sweet Fuse.
5 out of 5 alpacas
So early this week we finally saw the 1,000 unique human visitor to our humble site! It’s quite exciting to see that real people have actually found the place. Hopefully, at least a few of you will stick around! Thanks to all of you folks and we hope to provide more fun and unique content in the future.
With that said, we have been working on a few things over the past few weeks… As such, I would like to take the chance to introduce three of these new features today:
Because these pages are so new they don’t all have a nice link on the home page yet. In fact, only the review database link can be found in the “Reviews” menu drop down. In the future the digital distributor directory and game calendar will also find a place to reside. But for now, feel free to check them out from the links on this post.
Now here’s an interest I’ve ignored for over a year. You see, there’s a piece of software out there “creatively” titled Game Collector that serves as an easy to use database for video game collectors. It is not the perfect thing out there, but it is at least better than some other software I’ve found touting the same purpose. This is likely related to the fact that the program hones in on games specifically instead of just being a standard media database.
In any case, the program itself is simple enough to use. So what’s gotten me back into it (especially since I already maintain my collection list elsewhere)? Someone posed the question as to how many games in our collections are rated E, T, M, and the like. What is the answer? It’s not something that is immediately apparent! Considering my collection is pretty large, it would be silly for me to even try to guess.
So, via the use of the program, I can readily see what the answer to the question is. Unfortunately, it requires me to update my database a great deal more. At one point it was perfectly up to date but now there are some 1,000 more games needing entry. With that said, most every game can be found via their existing database which means all you have to enter in is a game name. Less if you have a USB bar code scanner or (more likely) a scanner on your phone.
As of right now I still don’t have everything up to date to answer the question of game ratings, but hopefully it’ll be discovered by next week. When it is, I might do a little vanity post looking over the various statistics. After that, my obsession will probably fall on tweaking the collection info to make it more accurate or fill in missing data.
Developer: Red Barrels
Publisher: Red Barrels
Platform: PC
Having been a long time horror fan, I have long since developed specific tastes and requisites or what I think makes a “good” horror game. Of course, it is worth recognizing that games I do not find scary can still be great, or at least, appreciated by others. A game in the horror genre can be a lot of things, although scary is preferred. It just seems hard to come across one that I’d feel comfortable suggesting is actually terrifying. Is Outlast the game to do it?
If you’ve participated in any conversations about the latest consoles and handhelds, then you’ve likely run into people suggesting that one system has “no games”. If nothing else, these systems in question are nothing but bringing out port after port instead of new titles. But all of these assumptions are reliant upon personal observation. If you don’t really care for the Vita, for example, then you’ll only notice things which agree with your previously held ideas.
But what if someone were to actually look at three of the latest systems right now in a means to either validate or invalidate these common complaints? Well, of course, that’s just what I did. Some may not consider the 3DS, Wii U, or Vita as “next gen” devices, but they will likely be classified as part of that generation broadly alongside PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It’s not about power, but the time frame in which they launch.
With that said, my goal was to create lists of all North American retail game releases between the devices. Then, I went through and looked up each title to determine whether or not it was a port or enhanced port or a brand new game developed for that system. The term “port” is not best used for handheld consoles sometimes when a portable version is a completely different game, but we seem to mostly be beyond that point technologically for it not to be a massive consideration. Basically, by “port” I am suggesting that the game in question is available on multiple systems. I was looking to see how many titles are not exclusive to their systems!
Finally, I decided to also check out Metacritic scores (where available) to see if any system is batting out continuous amounts of excellent titles, shovelware, or are basically average. As it turns out, it seems that most consoles probably fall somewhere in the 60s for scores, but we’ll get to that later.
This has actually been an obsession of mine for a few weeks now. Unfortunately, those who aren’t entirely aware of it are super confused by the concept. So what exactly is Salty Bet?
It’s the name that was given to a continuous livestream of MUGEN fighting game coverage. MUGEN itself is a program where players can bring in their own characters, levels, and basically design everything as they see fit. For the most part, people just rip sprites (sometimes polygons) to inject favorite characters from other games into massive series-spanning battles.
By itself, playing (or just watching) a MUGEN match is a lot of fun. However, Salty Bet isn’t just a stream. They have also fashioned a way to allow viewers to “bet” on each match. Do you think Cloud is better than Terry? Bet away! If you know to always/never vote on DBZ, then make your choice that way. On the official page all that’s required is to log in before betting Salty Bucks.
Here’s where the confusing bit comes in: No real money is ever being transferred by betting. You can run out of your initial Salty Bucks or become a billionaire but it’s purely fictional currency. The main point of betting is just to have fun and make the stream slightly more interactive. I’ve had fun watching copious amounts of ridiculous match-ups and frittering away my fake money.
September 18th, 2013 
