=== PC Game Review -- Infested Planet - RTS Tower Defense - 10/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
Today I bring you Infested Planet by Rocket Bear Games.

Released: March 6, 2014
Price: $17.49 CAD
Genre: RTS / Tower Defense

This game has a good number of very positive reviews on Steam... and for good reason; I was pleasantly surprised by this title. I don't normally go out looking for games which include the tag "Tower Defense" in them because quite honestly, I usually find them to be incredibly boring and dull; in my opinion, most Tower Defense games get old very quickly usually because there isn't enough to do as the game progresses or because the game eventually comes down to figuring out how to optimally build for the scenario to get the 3 stars available on each level. It's difficult to describe just how nice it is to find a game of this type where that finally isn't such a big problem.

Gameplay:
Infested Planet comes with a nice campaign that introduces all the new mechanics of the game one at a time from new units, to new buildings, to new powers. This picture below shows the campaign progress which branches into different mission types.

Additionally there are some weekly challenges which can be done for a score to get a rank matched up against other players around the world. These challenges also have different mission types such as exterminating the map as quickly as possible for the highest score, or surviving as long as possible.

Much of the gameplay revolves around the squad units available with each mission. From left to right (starting on the right of the building in the picture and going counter-clockwise) you'll see the different unit types: Minigun, Officer, Scout, Flame, Sniper, Shotgun, Rifle. You can imagine by the name what each is capable of doing and what they're likely best at, but they all have their different uses in different situations; I found that many of the missions can be completed with a combination of Officers, Rifles, and Shotguns.

So, at first glace one might wonder how this is a tower defense game if you're using a squad of troops? Well, the gameplay has much to do with capturing and defending resources and bases. As seen below, there are hives which spawn alien creatures which must be defended against, destroyed, and captured. Each base point unlocks more points which can be spent on more marines (Rifles by default) and base defenses. Each marine has an increasing cost as more are hired and each one can have more points spent on equipment packs (such as a shotgun or a flamer) which changes their unit types.

As more points are captured the difficulty tends to increase as well. Yes, more points are unlocked for a more powerful squad or more powerful base defenses, but the other hives across the map may respond by mutating for a different unit type of their own (such as a ranged unit or one that explodes) or may start spawning MORE units to fight back against.

Enemies across the map have defenses of their own either to defend their hives or to defend resource crates which can be brought back to any base location for additional usable points.

Graphics:

The art-style here as you've seen is very familiar to the flash-based games of the past mixed with what I consider to be a hand-painted look. I can confirm it runs quite well and looks very nice on the eyes; nothing is too bright or dark or hard on the eyes and all actions respond very well to the inputs. 

Replayability:

I wouldn't normally think of a tower defense game to be very replayable... only because once you've completed a scenario there isn't much use in playing it again unless there's some type of achievement to be unlocked or a higher score to be achieved. Luckily there are weekly challenges available which give at least a weekly reason to reopen the game and compete against other players.

Also available are a couple DLCs - Trickster's Arsenal and Planetary Campaign. I haven't had the luxury of being able to play either of these myself, but given the opportunity, I would gladly open Infested Planet once again to try out the new content. Planetary Campaign seems to include a new procedural campaign creating a different experience each time. This is super interesting to me and might just be the reason I put more money into Infested Planet by Rocket Bear Games even though it was released a couple years ago.

SUMMARY:

I love RTS games and the real-time strategy portion of Infested Planet is very nicely done along with the Tower Defense aspect of it. I am in fact so happy with how it meshes together that... especially because I'm not normally a fan of tower defense games... I'm happy to give Infested Planet 10/10. This is probably a game I'll be coming back to in the future once I get my hands on the available expansions and you can bet if that happens that you'll see it on my livestream over on Twitch.

~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Dungeon Siege - Action RPG - 7/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
This is a game dear to my heart as one of the older games I got myself into back in my younger years. This game is the original Dungeon Siege developed by Gas Powered Games back in 2002. So keep in mind that I'm reviewing a game from a while ago by how it holds up (in my opinion) by today's standards on today's technology.


Gameplay:
As an action RPG game, you start as a tiny character and build your way up through combat and experience gaining great power and equipment along the way. Dungeon Siege differentiates itself from games like Diablo by having a party system of up to 8 characters. Each character can level up in different skills including Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, and Nature Magic. In this game, the way experience works is that experiences is gained each time an enemy is hit by the character, so in theory... a single character would have tons more experience than a party of 8 due to being the only character hitting all the targets would generate much more experience on one character. Unfortunately other than the spells which I believe have a max scaling to their skill level, melee and ranged attacks seem to be unaffected by the skill level.

It is certainly possible that one could beat the game as a single character without a party... though I'd think that would be quite the challenge even for the seasoned veteran of these types of games. I personally enjoy doing fun challenges in games, but even I think that would be an insane thing to try to do.

The game can be paused and unpaused at any time and commands can be issued in either state. Most of the commands required outside of having the right weapon or spell equipped is only to move the characters around to avoid damage rather than standing and fighting strong monsters or getting hit by projectiles. This starts off pretty nice, but I found it started to get rather tedious as the game went on with 8 characters in the party.


Graphics:
As you can see, the graphics are a little older and boxy. Seeing as the game came out in 2002, I would say the boxy 3D models with the ability to turn the camera 360° at any time... that's completely reasonable compared to the iconic Diablo II (2000).

I will however say that some of the enemies are difficult to see through all the vegetation and some of the effects can be difficult to catch as well with all that's going on. For the most part I'm quite happy with the look of the game all things considered.


Sound:
I have no complaints about the sound design of Dungeon Siege. There's good feedback on actions being taken and nothing seems very out of place. The only complaint I have is that sometimes that sound bugs out a bit with repeating of earlier played sounds when going back along the path you came for some... unknown reason.


Replayability:
Would I call this game replayable? Sure... if you wanted to try different compositions of groups, whether that be in numbers or types, then yes I would say this game is replayable to some degree. For most people however, this game is a play once and you're done sort of thing.


SUMMARY:
Dungeon Siege seems to run just fine on Windows 10 and is still a fun experience to play through as it was so many years ago. Compared to the newer games out there these days, it's getting a little bit older and is certainly showing its age, but other than that, it's still a pretty good experience and for the low price of only $7.79, it's really not a bad buy to keep a person entertained for many hours of gameplay.

My score for Dungeon Siege at this point of it's life will be 7/10 as it was a well-made game and is still good to this day.

~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Rogue's Tale - Turn-Based Dungeon Crawler - 2/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
Now I do like RPG and rogue-like games, and I also like when games are difficult and don't hold your hand, so today we're going to review Rogue's Tale. This is another game that I really tried to like because I do enjoy these types of games, though you'll soon see just how frustrating a game like this could really be.

Released March 28, 2014 and currently available in on Steam for $5.69 CAD, Rogue's Tale is a turn-based dungeon crawler which is meant to give you the experience of playing one of those good old RPG games which used to use the ASCII graphics and more often than not killed you before you got anywhere interesting; that's the same experience when playing this game.

As seen above you get to create your character each time you play and can even start with bonuses IF YOU'VE UNLOCKED THEM though grueling play after dying and dying and dying again.

Of course there is an easy mode where things hurt less and you can sell items without identifying them first, but you aren't able to unlock some things... and why would I want to play easy mode anyways?

Gameplay:
So the idea behind the game is that you're thrown into a randomized dungeon to explore for items and experience until you reach the bottom at which point you can leave and "reset" the dungeon which creates a new one to explore. There are various creatures throughout the dungeon, some of which are happy to live their own lives and some of which will attack on sight. There are also other adventurers and traps which you'll come across and more often than not you'll see one of the following screens:

There really isn't much to say about the gameplay of Rogue's Tale because you just can't get very far into it unless you get lucky and find all the right things for a successful run to get further than the first dungeon. In the time I've put into Rogue's Tale so far, I've only had one run which has been able to make it past the first dungeon... at which point I almost immediately died in the next dungeon.

I actually can't believe it, but I have less to say about Rogue's Tale than I had to say about Mall Empire. Even though it was a buggy game, there was at least some gameplay to get through.

Graphics:
I find the artwork and aesthetics of Rogue's Tale to be very nice. I do like the design and detail that has been put into the things that are seen, though I do find the information presented to be somewhat clunky. There's a lot of stats on the screen and not much to tell you what exactly does what... or why?

Replayability:
As much as I love being destroyed again and again in a game, I at least like to see some progress. Let me give you an idea of just how much progress I achieved throughout playing this game: 0 / 148 achievements. The top achievement is for reaching level 7; only 37.4% of players have ever reached level 7.

So while I would absolutely say the replayability of this game is HUGE, seeing at you enter a different dungeon every time you play and everything is different every time... I think it's the type of replayability that's actually... bad. Of course you want your game to be replayable to keep players wanting to come back and play it more, but we again come to the problem where if there's not progress into the game, then playing it again and again isn't fun anymore, it's just tiresome.

SUMMARY:
While Rogue's Tale isn't an expensive game, I still expect it to be a game worth playing in exchange for my money. I can't talk enough about how the gameplay is lacking for me. I'm sure there are others out there who love this sort of thing (hence why there are quite a few games of this type), but there are certainly better options than Rogue's Tale.

While I didn't enjoy the gameplay of Rogue's Tale, it is a working game that doesn't seem to be filled with bugs making an unplayable game. I'm giving Rogue's Tale 2/10 because I just can't stand bashing my brains against the same thing over and over hoping something different will happen; but it works and there IS a deeper game to be found in here... somewhere.

~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Mall Empire - Indie / Casual - 1/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?

Today I bring you a review of the PC game Mall Empire. Now... the first thing I want to say is that by no means am I PURPOSELY looking for awful games to review. I'm just looking to pay some games and give my thoughts on them. Honestly I really want to like games I play and do give them the best chance possible to show me everything they have. I really REALLY tried to give Mall Empire a chance, but it just... isn't... good.

This game was released February 16th, 2017 on Steam. It is currently not in early access, and I'm sure that I must have gotten this game on sale, because there's no way this is worth $4.49 CAD. As you can see by the art-style, Mall Empire is not a premium game, it's definitely a casual / indie designed game from a small team.

Gameplay:

The goal of Mall Empire is to design a mall in which many customer want to visit and spend their money, allowing the player to make money, buy more things, make a bigger mall, and make more money.

The first thing you'll need to start your "empire" is to spend hearts to unlock shops. Hearts are earned by having an open mall and having customers visit the mall. Every once in a while you get a heart just by having customers coming and going throughout the day.

After you've unlocked shops by spending hearts, you have to spend money to build those shops in your mall. Each shop has a different starting amount of stock and makes a different amount of money for their product. As each shop sells product, it gains experience and eventually levels up which allows the player to put points into either more stock which allows you to sell more during each day, or more quality which allows each stock item to sell for more money.

There is a day/night cycle in this game which really doesn't serve too much of a purpose other than to reset the stock levels of the shops and give a break in the customers coming to the mall.

Other things the player is able to do with their money includes investing in advertising (which brings more customers to the mall), residential (which brings more customers to the mall), or Office (Which can affect some maintenance costs... or bring more customers to the mall).

If you reach some set requirements such as making so much money or having so many customer visit, the player can then level up their mall to gain access to more shops, more investments and more combinations of shops to make more money with when arranged in set patterns.

Graphics:

The graphics of this game are, well... it's a functioning game. Graphics aren't the most important thing on my list of stuff to care about when playing a game, though it is nice to have something pretty too look at from time to time. Considering the price tag of this game, I wasn't expecting much and I was probably able to get Mall Empire on sale for somewhere between $1-$2 if memory serves me right. So I didn't take the design of the graphics too harshly when deciding how I felt about the game.

Now I did find that there are quite a few spelling errors and issues with translation. English was not the first language of the design of Mall Empire and that's okay. In fact, even though there were many spelling errors and issues with translation, I still had a little bit of fun with it right up until the end.

Sound:

For the game sounds there isn't much to talk about. It's not that the game sounds aren't great... there just aren't any. Not even basic sounds for building or clicking on buttons or collecting income. Nothing.

Though there aren't any game sounds, the designers were at least nice enough to put in some music. The music is actually quite nice to listen to and in my opinion doesn't get annoying at all. The issue I have with the music is that it doesn't really seem to fit the gameplay. The way I would describe the music is some sort of endless arcade kind of thing... but more like something I would expect from an endless arcade shooter or a bullet hell, not a management game.

Replayability:

I really don't think Mall Empire is very replayable at all. I mean, I played it one time and quickly found that the gameplay formula got very old VERY quickly. Maybe it's just because I'm a strategy gamer, but I didn't find purchasing shops, building shops, and annoyingly clicking on each shop and then another following button just to collect income to be a very fun thing to do without any change other than what is available to construct for little pixel guys to walk past.

Even with that in mind, I still managed to keep myself playing all because the music was enjoyable enough to give it ago... right up until this:

Now you may wonder... what? If you look at the top-most construction in each picture, you'll see what I'm talking about. I was pretty alright with Mall Empire until I ran into this issue where I couldn't build an elevator on that second-level space. No matter how hard I tried, I could build anything BUT an elevator.

Well sure (you might say), why not just build it somewhere else? Simple: I don't want to; that wasn't part of my design. I didn't PLAN to not be able to build something because of a glitch in the system. Most times glitches exist in games I don't care; they're usually rather funny, but when a glitch seriously demolishes the entire point to the same so badly that what is supposed to be done CANNOT be done... it's a problem.

SUMMARY:

Though I was able to endure the many issues in the game from translation to lack of sounds, the gameplay just was not engaging enough at all. I could have put up with it all if not for the terrible glitches which make the game unplayable in the way it was meant to be played.

It's at that point that I realize the gameplay itself is just terrible. If it was at least playable, it wouldn't be on the bottom of the lists. Unfortunately I cannot even recommend this game while it is on sale. I'm giving Mall Empire 1/10 because of all of this.

As a sidenote: this really seems like a game for people who are obsessed with getting achievements. Because this game was so terrible, I didn't spend much time playing it... and still somehow managed to get 122/400 achievements.


~ DaemonVirus

=== PC Game Review -- Human-Powered Spacecraft - Story Clicker - 8 / 10 ===

Human-Powered Spacecraft is a game I got on sale on Steam for $0.59. In my never-ending quest to play through all the games I've acquired over the years (or at least try), I sometimes find new ones that are on such a good Steam Sale, that I just can't refuse them.

I'm honestly really not usually a fan of clicker games. I've wasted so much time trying to kill time on my phone with clicker and other idle games that it's really hard to come up with good reasons to get new ones; especially ones you have to pay for. While browsing through Steam, I came across this little game on sale and thought I'd go ahead and give it a try because I really liked the art-style and it looked like something a little bit different than what I had experienced before.

There are multiple different "levels" in this game where more and more upgrade options are unlocked at each stage with a different "goal" of progressing to the next stage. It isn't really anything huge to talk about; click, make money, upgrade, click, make money, purchase whatever the game wants you to purchase to start the next stage.

You end up having a couple ship problems including a fire, asteroids, and aliens sucking energy from the ship, finally concluding with a rogue computer trying to enslave you into forever powering the ship by peddling to generate electricity. The only real challenge to the game comes at the end when you have to figure out how to use the electricity-sucking alien to help you fight back against the rogue computer system.

That's... really the whole game. I have nothing else to tell about it. It's not an endless clicker where the game keeps on going forever and ever, there's a bit of a story to it. It's just a nice and short experience. I would love to be able to say this game is a good value, and at a sale of $0.59, it's very hard for me to say that it isn't, but when I seriously think about how much this game cost vs how long it entertained me, the $:hour ratio actually isn't that great. The total gameplay time for me was maybe an hour at most.

Verdict

Gameplay: As you may expect from a clicker game... you click and upgrade.

Sound: The music and sound design is very nice, I don't have any complaints about it at all. Right from the get-go I was sucked in by the great music rather than being driven away by annoying sounds and awful music.

Art: I like pixel art as a graphic style. I imagine pixel art must take quite a bit of time to design and draw and I think it has a lot of character that's simple, yet pleasing.

Replayability: You can't. Really... once you've beaten the game once (which took maybe an hour of gameplay at most), I don't know why anybody would want to subject themselves to that sort of pain and tedium again. It was fun to play once, but I have absolutely no desire to do so again.

SCORE: I really wanted to give this game 5/5 because I did find it more enjoyable than all the other FREE clicker games out there, but unfortunately it was too short for me to be happy with the end result. 8 / 10 will be my final score for Human-Powered Spacecraft.

~ DaemonVirus

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=== Games With The Wife To Be ===

     Recently I've been playing games with the wife to be. We've always enjoyed playing board games together and sometimes things like Mario and State of Decay because who doesn't love Mario and zombies? The unfortunate part is that we've always found it quite difficult to find two-player games that we both enjoy. In comes Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on the Play Station 2. I've known for a while now that Carley has been interested in Dungeons & Dragons, but we just haven't had the time to run an adventure together. So one night I decided to suggest playing a new game and the next thing I know... she's asking to play "just until the next save point."

     Something I learned from this experience is that it's good to ask to try new things with your partner. You may be surprised to find that they enjoy doing some of these new things, or they may in fact be quite interested in something you like which even they never new about! I've also learned to be much more patient with my partner and that I also need to give new things a try... not just her. I've always been set in my ways where I like to do the same sort of thing every time; I even tend to order the same thing at each restaurant I go to. Now I'm trying to do things that are a little bit out of my comfort zone. We started spending time outside together recently building a snow fort! But that's a story for another time.

     So now we're looking for a new two-player game to play because we've beaten Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and I don't have the second game currently. Amazingly there don't seem to be a lot of great games like this on consoles these days. I'm sure if we keep looking we'll find something somewhere... or maybe I'll just finally get her to join me in playing some games on the PC. ;)

     I've always been a PC person because I enjoy the wide breadth of games available and I much prefer the accuracy of a mouse and keyboard vs a controller. I pretty much can't find a comfortable control scheme when using a controller in pretty much any case ever. The worst part about this... is that pretty much everybody I've ever known has been way more into consoles than PC. As unfortunate as that is, I will remain primarily a PC user searching throughout the land for some people of the same mind as myself to join me.

~ Kyle Welykholowa