Recent reviews by RobC04

Boring. Awkward controls. Attractive levels. Sometimes a pain to see where to go or adjust camera to avoid traffic. I do like games that are challenging, but this wasn't' challenging in a fun way.

I'm not sure which is the bigger draw, the funny writing or the tactical combat with varied and interesting abilities. Played through on the harder difficulty and some missions were still fairly easy, but there were some that I had to try multiple plans before I figured it out. I think if you have experience with tactical combat in games and want a challenge then you want the harder difficulty.

The optional objectives also provide a way to add challenge. I generally tried for them and got a bunch but I moved on if I didn't.

The missions are contained on a single screen so they aren't sprawling - but several can be connected together so they have multiple stages. Definitely a recommend for me.

I wasn't really considering getting the game until Tom Chick at Quarter To Three expressed how much he liked it. I really enjoy story heavy games with a fun set of characters like this - snarky, great delivery of one liners and longer set ups, some physical gags. This is so packed with humor. It takes what should be monsters, and turns them into a lovable bunch.

I loved the Guardians of the Galaxy game for the story and characters, but that game play was on the bland side. I was playing despite the action, not because of it. While I think the action in this is pretty good, for me it isn’t the show stealer, but it definitely doesn’t get in the way. I don’t really get into loot with a lot of attributes / skills, which will probably limit how far I’ll have success - I’m already running into trouble. I just don’t have the patience to sift through comparing stuff and changing my loadout as the situation requires. It’s probably one reason I get bored of games like Diablo so easily.

I didn't run into many technical issues. At one point my AI bot teammates wouldn't revive me at all in missions until I restarted the game. I had one performance slowdown in a mission, but other than that it was fine. I have a GTX 3080.

If you are looking to play a game with good action, a good story, great dialog and set of characters with a lot of humor you might want to give this a shot. I actually played a bit more post story content than I expected to because the action was better than I expected. I only played solo and am probably done playing, but this was still money well spent. I got it on sale for what it's worth.

I don't have experience with the physical board game, so Dune: Imperium is new to me. The tutorials do a nice job explaining the game. There is also a link to the board game manual, so that is nice to have as a reference. It nice because the one drawback of the game is that there are not tool tips for explaining the icons much of the time. That seems like an easy no-brainer to implement. There are times I wanted to see what an icon used as a conflict reward means, or something on a card, and I couldn't just hover the mouse over the icon to get an explanation.

I've completed the tutorial, 1 regular game vs. the AI, and the first challenge mission. I barely won the 2 games (vs normal AI) - down to the wire, which made for an exciting game. There are lots of options each turn, which means I feel like I'm always making some decision that matters. There is also a nice turn log that is helpful for looking back on the opponent turns.

I haven't played multiplayer so I can't comment on that. But, I do recommend the game for single player. Between the different modes of play there should be lots of opportunity for fun.

I haven't played a card battler with a mechanic like the counter system in WildFrost, so it adds a nice twist to differentiate itself. Basically, there are cards (heroes and companions) that activate every 'X' number of turns once they are played onto the battle area. Then to control who your cards attack, who they get attacked by, and which of your cards are the targets of your boon cards, you get to freely move them into different positions on the battle area each turn. There are also 'direct action' cards which have their effect immediately on the target - such as an attack or healing card.

Since the game plays differently than other card battlers it can take some getting used to, but I did win my 4th run so it isn't crazy hard. That is much faster than I won Slay the Spire or Monster Train. If you're having trouble, I recommend sticking with it because it's a pretty fun and different game.

My second favorite game of 2022, just behind Elden Ring. I loved almost everything about this and I'm not even a Marvel fan. The battles were great, along with the deck building. I loved the characters and banter. Some of the dialog was a little corny, but that's OK. I didn't have many technical issues. Early on I did have some crashes, but they were short lived. What I didn't like was having to collect plants on the grounds. I think once they were discovered, they should have just given you a plant income each day. Don't make me waste my time with busywork. I really hope some of the DLC contains a roguelike mode akin to Slay the Spire. I'd love to be able to play this again without wading through the Abbey stuff.

Wow, this game was a surprise! After reading a glowing write up by Tom Chick at Quarter To Three I figured I'd give this a shot and I was not disappointed. It was completely different than most games, at least that I've played. Using the tools to solve the problems was interesting. While the game wasn't very difficult, I had to pay attention to what I was doing and I did initially lose several scenarios.

The atmosphere and story gave these puzzles context and I was interested in seeing how the story progressed. Great game!

I played through the campaign, didn't try the sandbox mode yet. I didn't know I wanted a story in my city / planet builder - but it definitely elevated my experience playing Per Aspera. The game itself is pretty straight forward - mine finite resources, build more complex resources from those and keep expanding to keep the resources flowing. Mix in supporting some colonists to provide research to get access to new / improved buildings and larger projects. An interesting story leads the player through the campaign.

There are some logistical concerns, building workers to ferry resources, or a more advanced method later. It wasn't difficult to balance these things in the campaign playing on normal difficulty, until I got careless on the last step and mistook how many resources I had available. The global numbers include those in all developments, which aren't necessarily connected. Almost burned my main area to the ground, but I recovered with some work. All in all definitely worth a play.

This is a great game to pop in and play for an hour or so. Pretty simple to learn, but the changing objectives each game, along with the automatically changing difficulty level keeps things fresh and challenging. Balancing how to use your dice to meet objectives and keeping enough resources on hand is a fun way to exercise the ol' brain.

Boy this game is beautiful and has so much charm, but I just find the controls awkward and the building tedious. Everything just felt like a chore. I can definitely understand people more creative than myself getting enjoyment from building beautiful zoos, but I'm more of a systems driven player. While there are a lot of systems using them feels like work to me instead of me feeling like I'm solving fun problems.