Recent reviews by kschang77

GCU2UE (just GCU2 from here on) is the "gold edition" of GCU2, a racing game "lite" from Eden Games, a company better known for being a developer of licensed properties, but this is their original IP. It is a racing game, with some odd handling choices, but a huge variety of cars and tracks, plus some random content so there's plenty of events to go around, but lacks the innovative factors or the exoticness that made Forza Horizon or even the Crew 2 or similar games interesting. But the low price seem to make up for it, as long as you did not pay full price.

Eden Games does have a racing pedigree, having developed different racing games for other publishers. They did a couple ports for EA for Need for Speed series, as well as did the port for Test Drive Unlimited series and the V-Rally series. GCU2 is their own creation.

In GCU2, you're an unnamed test driver for this down-on-their-luck team owned by Mr. Niels. When their own racing driver did not even show up for a car test, you stepped forth, encouraged by the head mechanic, to step forth and take charge of your destiny. And soon, the team started to win events, and plowed the winnings back into the team to obtain better facilities and cars to participate in ever higher events. The eventual goal is to win the Alpha Cup and help Mr. Niels regain the glory days. Of course, along the way, you'll meet plenty of rivals, from a Russian with a penchant for American muscle cars, to a fair and fierce competitor, to a racer who decided to concentrate on love, instead of the track (but he's still experienced enough to beat you, until you learn to beat him), and more.

The cars are divided into multiple tiers (A, B, C, and D) and within each tier, multiple levels (A1, A2, A3, etc.) start with A1, normal street hatchbacks, to D-tier hypercars such as Koenigsegg and Bugatti and more. Each have multiple upgrades in various areas that cost various amount of money to purchase. To ensure there's a fair competition, each event, (or a cup, series of events) have a "performance index" limit, which you can't go over or under. This ensures you can't "cheese" a competition by entering a street race with a hypercar, but neither can you enter a event with a vehicle that simply cannot perform at the specific level.

Events comes in basically two types: ones that advances the plot, and exhibition / bonuses races that don't. That's why even though you own and race B1 vehicles, you can still buy and race A3 vehicles (which also provides income to be fed into buy B2 and more advanced cars, and so on).

You also need to upgrade your racing team equipment and base. Some upgrade levels are locked behind base module levels, like the "offroad" (rally) setups must be upgraded with the "rally shop" (and rally tires level 6 and 7 locked behind rally shop level 5 upgrade, for example). You start with a lame empty warehouse, but later you can pay to upgrade your base to a slick modern building, a factory, and more. You can even do some limited 3D layout and pay for some props to be placed. But without ability to roam the place in 3D via first or third-person, such ability seems a bit... wasted?

The actual racing is slightly underwhelming, as there's no car damage. Any collision simply results in scrubbing speed, and a hard turn doesn't seem to scrub off speed. For sharp handling cars, a hard turn results in spinning out, while for worse handling cars, a hard turn simply understeer a lot. It's a bit odd for people who are used to Need for Speed Franchise, or more sophisticated modeling like EAWRC / Dirt Rally series. However, the game looks quite pretty even on low-end hardware and maintain very high frame rate even with a dozen cars on screen. I wouldn't compare this to the Grid series, but then it's not really that kind of game.

The usual event types are there... race, elimination (every X seconds last place is eliminated), time trial (race ghost cars only), regular vs "rally" (offroad), and so on. Events are generated all over the map, and makes things competition through the use of aforementioned "performance index" limits. However, you can usually beat the competition by using a car near the top PI rating limit.

One bit of artificial difficulty is "Porsche Cup" where are you given a car for each "season", and if you perform well (say, 2nd quartile, or 26-50%), you get performance upgrade, so you can keep up with the big boys. If you win all four seasons, you get a commemorative 911 for free. However, this means you REALLY need to race well, win with inferior car, as you will start with a PI disadvantage. Fortunately, most "seasons" allow you to at least finish the event and go do something else. I stopped playing the Porsche Cup when I tried the 2nd season a third time, only gotten up to 4th place (you need to beat the leader, get 1st place, to advance the season). And there are other special events, including a LeMan's like Endurance Cup.

Once nice thing is the car customization. As each car is enhanced, you usually see some visual improvements, but you can also spend money in the body-shop for cosmetic upgrades, as well as the graphics shop to apply custom decals (and spend in-game currency to unlock more decal packs). If you want to tweak how the car looks, (though some cars have locked liveries) you can easily spend a lot of time here. Unfortunately, there is no "team livery" option, where you can apply a pretty uniform look for all of your cars, nor are there any sponsors for those sponsor stick blocks look.

All in all, GCU2 offers a ton of variety, but the selection and handling feels a bit... artificial, so it feels a bit underwhelming despite a dizzying array of options. Still, if you find it cheap, it's worth some time, even if it lacks a certain schtick (like Split/Second), a certain polish (like Need for Speed), or a certain consistency (like Forza Horizon series) to become a classic.

CMO, the latest revision of CMANO (Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations), should be thought of as a modern evolution of the classic "Harpoon" wargame, with a whole ton of official DLCs that simulates everything post WW2 to near future, as well as community scenario packs (approaching 600 scenarios!) Database of ships, weapons, capabilities, and so on are continually being updated, and a built-in editor allow you to customize existing missions, or start with anywhere in the world and create your own scenarios from scratch.

As this is a wargame, there isn't much 3D in the game. You *can* get 3D window if you also own Tacview, but that's a 3rd party product that was primarily designed to do post-mission analysis in flight sims. It does work in CMO though.

And the mission possibilities are mind-boggling, as you can simulate a full war from aircraft and drones down to sea mines, sonar, and torpedoes, and EVERYTHING in between... tanks, APCs, IFVs, radars, airports, cruise missiles, SAMs, MANPADs... EVERYTHING, every variant over the years, everything available via OSINT (open-sourced intelligence), even some hypotheticals (best guesses) of top-secret stuff. Oh, and plenty of civilian stuff. Airports with individual buildings, avgas tanks, aprons, hangars, terminals... civilian ships, air traffic, and more. True terrain based on actual maps and satellite info... and ability to calculate line of sight for radar, eyeball, IR, and so on. For combat, even illumination rounds can be calculated...

And no doubt, I've barely scratched the surface of what's possible.

The "problem"... the base game is often on sale, but if you want the full package... it can be quite expensive.

But this is one of those games that you will play "for a lifetime".

WH40K Inquisitor Martyr is an action RPG in the style of Diablo / Grim Dawn / Titan Quest / Van Helsing where you are facing a horde of enemies of darkness by yourself, where you move around the map killing bad things, facing traps, enemies, minibosses, and bosses. Of course, here you're in the middle of WH40K lore, where you're an inquisitor of the Imperium of Man, an autonomous entity ready to mete out justice in the name of the Emperor against traitor legions, hostile Xenos, rebels, and so on. And for those who are well versed in the lore, it is a lot of fun spotting the references. However, for those looking for a fun game, the higher levels turns into a bit of a rinse-and-repeat, as the procedurally generated levels and standard lines starts to repeat and gets boring. Still, with a wide variety of enemy factions to fight, large variety of maps, plenty of mission types, challenges, guilds (called cabals in the game), plus plenty of playable classses (crusader, assassin, psyker, tech-adept, and more) with some paid DLCs and some DLCs can can be bought with currency you can earn IN-GAME (instead of real money), this game rewards repeat-play (albeit, a bit tediously).

The game's best played on a dual-stick gamepad, with one stick controlling movement and the other controlling viewpoint and zoom level. Trigger and shoulder buttons, as well as the 4 major buttons controls available attacks. Most weapons have at least 2 attacks, while 2-handed weapons and dual-wield single-hand weapons have 4 different attacks. Call upon reinforcements, and other abilities via the d-pad.

The game starts with 4 classes, Crusader (tank), Assassin (rogue), Psyker (mage), and Tech-Adept (cleric), but each classes has 3 variations. Later DLCs added Sororitas (sisters of battle), and soon a new class, the Heliophant, will be added as well. All with very different play-styles, and all have different viable builds.

The weapons are all from WH40K lore and are quite variable, and have different grades, in the order of exoticness: common, mastercrafted, rare, relic, archaeotech, ancient relic. The more exotic the grade, the more bonus power (enchantment) it has. You also have armor and gear which also has grades. Different classes differ on what sort of weapons and gear each can wield (many are class-restricted). Weapons, armor, and gear, can be modified by the tech priest, and can have ancient power shards and psalms added to them to enhance their powers. (some psalms can be combined to form doctrines, which gives even more powers).

As you gain levels and gain attributes, they can be distributed RPG style to power up specific bonuses, and points can be added to RPG skill trees to trigger more bonuses.

There are variety of missions types, as stated before, but even the way you get missions are varied. There's the main campaign, the campaign side missions, warzone, priority assignment, inquisitor ordos specials, special missions, and just plain random missions. The overall idea is to pacify the entire Caligari sector, but there are dozens of planets to pacify... it all gets... messy. :)

All in all, the graphics are good and tunable so you can have decent performance even on slightly older systems. Sound is quite satisfying if a bit bass-y. The voiceovers gets a bit repetitive if you've been playing a lot as you probably heard it bajillion times, but are competently delivered. It's a fun ARPG, if a bit grind-y. Find some friends, form a cabal (or join one), and play together... more fun that way. If you like WH40K, it's worth a try, at least until you got bored, but then it's time to try a different class, and experience the game in a new way. And with soon a 6th class to try, you shouldn't be bored for a while.

Crash Time Undercover (CTU from now on) is a driving game that features a fully simulated fictional German city and features both onroad and offroad racing courses as well as checkpoint races, missions, car chases, and car war using weapons similar to NFS: Hot Pursuit (remastered). The career mode has you playing either of the main characters taking down 8 crime organizations and their bosses, but you can also setup single races, as well as play multiplayer. The graphics are decent, though slightly old (yet VERY high frame rate). Sounds are okay. Driving model feels okay once you learn it. It is quite a bit of fun, with a lot of variety of activities.

The most impressive is the seamless world you drive in. Do a free drive, and you can go in any direction (as long as you stay on the road). The world has snowy peaks and mountain tunnels, down to rivers and lakes and beaches (including an u-boat on display!) with plenty of highways and bridges, but also smaller mountain roads, switchbacks, and so on. There are even occasional shortcuts. There are stop signs, signal lights, and more. Traffic ranges from cars to vans to buses and tractor-trailers, and they will pull to the side if you are the police and activate both lights and sirens. There are also plenty of scenery, from hotels to gas stations, windmills, bridges (including a drawbridge that you can jump across!), resorts, roadside cafes, bus shelters, and so on that you drive past. There's a hydroelectric dam with hidden parking and alternate path. There's a ski resort up near the peak, including a ski jump ramp. Keep in mind that this game actually came out in Europe back in 2012...

There are a LOT of cars, and most will come in 3 versions: regular civilian, police, and "elite". Though the difference seems to be just skin deep. However, different cars do handle differently. Most cars feel very floaty at top speeds and spin out if you don't countersteer properly. You MUST use brakes to take a corner properly, or you'll simply understeer and bounce off the wall / barrier. In top-heavy vehicles such as the Bullet (Humvee), you may even roll the vehicle sideways if you turn too sharply, unless the tires slip first (then you spin out). Sports cars can go faster, but are usually weaker. Onroad cars would feel very slippery offroad and easily spin out. And there are special vehicles, such as armored truck / transport.

Sometimes the cars can be equipped with nitro, which gives a burst of acceleration, but does not increase top speed (except by a few kph). They are not active in the circuit races.

Some races and missions gives you weapons / countermeasures

Shield -- blocks all attacks, including ramming attacks, for a few seconds

EMP -- when active, and enemy in range, crosshair will appear and when it turns red, it has locked on. Shoot to disable other car for X seconds (unless it has shield active)

Grappling hook -- shoot it at other car once it locked on. You can use it to accelerate yourself to slingshot past the other vehicle, use it to help you do a ramming attack, or just hit brakes to bring the other vehicle to a halt.

Roadblock (police only) -- activate it to bring up roadmap, use right-stick to move the roadblock position, not too far, not too close, click right-stick to place roadblock of 4 police cars in a double V formation. Normally these cannot stop AI car, just slow it down. You can bypass such by either going through the middle (it's tight), and usually there are gaps to the left or right.

Oil spray -- leaves a splotch of oil behind you, makes subsequent cars spin out.

Spike Strip -- drop and it auto deploys. Run over it and you will end up rolling the car unless you are moving quite slowly.

Repair pack. -- restores your vehicle health to 50% or 100% depending on existing damage

Depending on the mission or race your vehicle may have some or them all of them, or none of them. If you have them, use them as you see fit on other vehicles to help you win the race or simply pull away from them.

Missions vary greatly, as it centers upon two policemen in this fictional German city, Nick and Markus, going undercover to take down eight crime bosses in the city, starting from the low-level "Jeff Miller" all the way to boss of bosses "Mario Gandetti". Nick and Markus will alternate, one goes UC while the other act as backup in a police car. Missions may involve going to certain place, escape from police, both at the same time... you get the idea.

Between missions, the undercover guy will do a race with other couriers (we Yanks would call them "wheelmen"), usually using "Bullet" (the game's version of a Humvee except the first few races) at a special racing map that contains both paved and offroad courses. The first few bosses only require you to place in the top 4, but the final boss races you must place first to advance.

You can also setup single races on any of the tracks you unlocked through completing the mission or race, using any of the vehicles you unlocked.

There is multiplayer, but I did not test that.

Most missions let you resume from a checkpoint, but some will force you to restart from the very beginning, which is REALLY annoying, as the missions gets pretty long with the final bosses. The final race will take you OVER ten minutes to complete. The missions generally take a bit less than that, as most have a time limit.

My problem with the game is the difficulty is somewhat uneven. I play on normal, until I got to like the sixth boss, when I ran into a mission I cannot beat unless I turn down the difficulty to easy. Basically, you have to do a checkpoint race with police chasing you in a Bullet (game's version of Humvee). The problem is, police is faster than you, and they will try to spin you. The time limits on normal is so tight if you got spun once, you will not make it to the next checkpoint. There are other missions like that, that I basically lowered difficulty to easy for the final two bosses.

On the other hand, the races are too easy. The AI cars don't take corners optimally, so you can usually cheat a little and just cut the corners. The game later basically cheats and give the AI cars slightly higher acceleration on normal and higher. The AI is also very aggressive and will end up spinning you, accidentally or not. And since they are generally faster, catching up will be nearly impossible, if you start in the back. Easy difficulty basically let you start in pole position, and the end result is the AI cars end up spinning each other, that as long as you don't screw up you're pretty much assured a win.

At least the missions gets interesting later. In one mission, you cannot attack an enemy car directly... As it is carrying a bomb. You need to EMP it first and destroy it while it's zapped. Else, when you destroy the enemy car it'll go kaboom and take a HUGE chunk of your car health. In another mission, you are driving an armored truck with weapons and need to protect yourself from multiple waves of attacks.

Graphics is quite good, considering the age of the game. It's not NFS Heat or Forza Horizon 5, as there is no weather or night, but the frame rate is high, world is large and seamless, and scenery pretty. The menu... is stupid, as the picture accompanying the mission, and the text, just feels like it's describing something else entirely.

Sound is pretty decent, and car selection, once you unlocked everything, is pretty extensive, if you play something OTHER than career.

For $15 MSRP, it's actually pretty fun... It's NOT NFS or Forza, but it's not meant to be. With seemingly every driving game going to open-world, it's nice to get a mission-based driving game (such as NFS: The Run) just for variety.

UBOAT is an interesting mix between a crew management sim and a full uboat WW2 submarine warfare sim (a la Silent Hunter series). However, it feels not quite optimized, runs quite badly on older hardware, crashes at least once per session, and has a lot of strange QoL and UI quirks. However, so far, it is delivering quite an experience that's the next best thing to playing "Das Boot" the movie.

UBOAT is a crew management sim, in that it *does* simulate all the officers plus all the enlisted crewmen. Everybody has a name, and every body has attributes, not all of which you can see. And during each patrol, things will happen. If your sub gets damaged, someone can be wounded. If you are forced to dive by enemy warships, a crew member may crack under pressure, and your officer(s) will be force to deal with that crewman... either by motivational talk... or more physical means. You may get a radio message informing a certain crew developments back home... or a crewman may just fall sick on his own. Things will happen, and you will need to deal with each development, some positive, some negative.

Each officer and crewmen can be assigned to posts on the sub, or if left alone, will perform his primary duty automatically (and go to rest automatically as well). But officers are somewhat crosstrained, and some have multiple uses. Captain and chief boatswain are watch officers, but captain can also man the hydrophones, while CB can also do navigation. Radioman is also the primary hydrophone operator, but also the medic, if someone got injured. You usually get two mechanics onboard, one for the diesel engines, the other for the torpedoes, but they are cross trained, and can also maintain electric motors, among other things. Each officer often have alternate skills that can be useful. They may speak a foreign language (Spanish, Portuguese, etc.), they may cook, and more. By assigning them during alarm situations (red alert, basically) to appropriate stations, you gain additional control over certain things. Engineer to controls means you are controlling the depth better even during storms. Engineer to engines means reduced fuel consumption. Some officers at certain positions can have additional crew assign to him, further increasing his efficiency, such as faster reload, reduced fuel consumption, faster repair, increase detection range, and so on.

The game has multiple levels of difficulty. At lowest level, a lot of the complexity is automated and hidden, while at the highest level, you will have to micromanage everything. And as you can see above, there is a lot to cover.

There are multiple ways to do things usually. To assign a certain officer to a position, you can use the semi-3D ship-cutaway view to find the person, then click on the position. You can also use the quick panel, by hitting the TAB key... or you can click on the officer's "first person view" (eyeball icon) and manually walk him (through the sub in full first-person 3D) to the station and click on it to sit down and start working.

At port, you will need to go to the warehouse and use your "currency" to obtain supplies beyond the "free" replacements. Then you will need to talk to personnel for officers and crew, and HQ liaison for assignments. If you have enough reputation, you can use it at headquarters to bargain for better assignments and/or accelerate research upgrades for the submarines (which then becomes available for... "purchase" at the warehouse).

Once you've gotten your assignment, personnel, and supplies sorted, it's time to go out into the North Atlantic and blast some British shipping. Make sure they're British first... If you hit a neutral ship there can be diplomatic consequences. Don't get sunk by aircraft or warships, of course. You'll need to spot the enemies, plot approach, execute attack, with the right officers at the right places and all that.

Yes, it is complicated. But so far, it is delivering a lot of experiential gameplay, and so far, it was definitely worth it.

This game is a "tower defense" game, the "fixed path limited placement" variation. Title is too long to repeat, so I'll just call it PT (Paper Tanks). Graphics are simple, but done deliberately to look as if they are carved out of paper, so a bit charming. You can go pure overhead or zoom down to first person view from the turrets you're placing, and back up again. Other than these, this game pretty much delivers what's expected out of this genre, and nothing more, so this is a "maybe buy if you pay less than $5 USD" recommendation.

PT is a "fixed path, limited placement" tower defense game, where the enemies comes into the play field via an entrance, follow a fixed path, and exit at a certain point. Along the way, there are some spaces for your turrets, You can only drop turrets at those specific spots, nowhere else. WHAT TYPE of turrets to drop, and when to upgrade or replace them, is up to you.

Enemies come in two types: ground vs air. They have different paths through the battlefield. Some of your turrets are specialized against one type or the other, while others are dual purpose. For example, cannon is anti-ground only, flak is anti-air only, but heavy (machine gun) is dual-purpose. Problem with dual-purpose is... there's no way to prioritize targets, like shoot air targets first, then if there are no air targets, then shoot ground targets. Nope. If the turret is busy shooting at all the ground targets, then air targets may slip by, unmolested. So you do need those specialized weapons. They are generally more powerful anyway.

You are generally given 10 "lives"... If 10 enemies made it to their exit(s), you lose. And you generally have 10 waves of enemies coming at you... each kill is worth 1 gold. Each turret costs X to place, then another X to upgrade. Most can be upgraded from level 1 (upgraded) to level 4 (fully upgraded). Selling a turret gives you a SMALL refund out of original purchase and upgrade price, so it's generally a bad idea.

You get a "radar" and a timer so you know when the next wave is arriving. You can speed up the action by up to 3X with the cycling toggle (press to switch among 1x, 2x, and 3x). Certain enemies are more armored than others.

You've given a rating at the end of each level to see how many lives you got left, and if you're not challenged enough there's an "expert mode". So there is a little replayability, but not a lot.

Sound is adequate.

So far, the towers are no surprise, and neither are the units. They are simplified somewhat, at least when compared to veterans like Fieldrunners, or even Siege of Centauri, Defense Grid, and so on. Gameplay is exactly what you'd expect out of this genre.

Other than the cute presentation and ability to go into first-person mode at the turret (not the first, Commando Jack did it earlier) the game is otherwise a perfectly competent but average tower defense game with no other standout features. Thus, it gets the "maybe buy if less than $5USD" recommendation.

For those of you who played Combat Wings (which lets you play USAAF), this title should be quite familiar... a mouse-controlled arcade-y flight shooter set in WW2 Battle of Britain. Every plane is a fighter-bomber, and carries rockets and bombs in addition to the gun. It appears the guns have infinite ammo, but can overheat, which is automatically fixed by letting it cool down. With multiple difficulty levels, and missions SOMEWHAT based on reality, you'll be racking up kills in no time, and amass well over 300 kills if you play on easy. You'll also get to play with some of the more prototype planes, such as the Hawker Tornado and the Westland Whirlwind. But again, this is an arcade-y game. Is it worth it? Well, the game came out back in 2006, so in 2024, it's a relic. Don't pay more than $5 for it. Below that is even better. Graphics are decent, sound is below average. All in all, you *can* find better games for the price, but probably not this subject matter.

CWBOB is an improved version of CW, set in Battle of Britain, where you are a new Polish pilot fighting for the Royal Air Force. You start as just a rookie that need to finish flight training. Even as you joined, you had to be lead by veterans. But after many missions, which includes a few turret gunner missions, you'll eventually, at least for the story, given command of a wing of fighters and pilots.

The game will not play the intro movie, but at least it won't crash, unlike its predecessor. it does not support 16:9 monitors, unless you use RoseTheFlower's patch (which is free, and linked at PCGamingWiki's entry on CWBOB) There's one more problem not mentioned if you run multiple monitors, you need some sort of "mouse jail" program to limit your mouse to the current monitor, or you may end up pausing the game unintentionally all the time as your mouse pointer ended up off the main screen.

What most players probably don't realize is you *can* quicksave during the mission. This is recommended in some instances, such as when you are flying the Westland Whirlwind, a twin-engine heavy-fighter. While that has a lot of firepower, it's also quite a bit bigger than other friendly fighters, and thus, has the potential of crashing into your target, esp. if you are trying to play chicken with the enemy fighters or bombers. And as you can imagine, that's an instant-fail and redo-from-start... Unless you can reload from a quicksave. And some of these missions have multiple stages, where you need to finish each one to complete. And if you got kamikazed in the middle, without a quicksave, you restart from the very beginning. This is way before checkpoint saves.

As for "AI"... I honestly can't really say that the enemy planes have any, as it seems every Luftwaffe plane, from the Me-109 fighter all the way up to He-111 twin engine bomber and Ju-88 transport/bomber, perform vertical loops. This may be due to difficulty set to "EASY", but I doubt it. I can believe Me-109 do vertical loop, but Ju-88 (not the 87) and He-111 doing vertical loops? Nah. They're just targets.

The game tries to have some radio chatter, like Germans will try to insult you... unfortunately they do it in German. While you do get subtitle translations, who has time to read those? And your wingman will acknowledge your kills... but due to lack of variations, they VERY quickly turned repetitive and annoying.

The game is also fond of showing you features that you may or may not have. One of the controls available is "boost". Unfortunately, the first plane you're assigned, the Hawker Hurricane, is NOT equipped with boost. However, NOWHERE in the game was this explained. It was not until you get access to Spitfire Mk I which *does* have boost, that you realize this is basically a short duration "emergency power" that gives you a burst of 10% extra speed. Watch the boost gauge, as you don't want it to go into the yellow or red, or you may damage the engine. And it takes time for the boost to dissipate so you can use it again.

As mentioned before, all planes, despite being fighters, are armed like fighter bombers with rockets and bombs (and in one exception, torpedo), even though you're only attacking other planes. No need to eject them either.

Oh, and you *do* get to land your plane onto runways, but they made it optional in some missions, while requiring it in some missions. Just find the runway(s), approach slowly, use the shadow as a guesstimate to your altitude, your gear's dropped automatically, and then put her down on the runway and decrease throttle to none.

Most missions in the first 2/3rds are "take off, kill every hostile plane, land if ordered to do so". There was an exception or two where you get to play turret gunner manning an AAA gun emplacement and shoot those incoming Jerry bombers, preferably before they bomb whatever you are supposed to be protecting. In the final 1/3rd you get to do a bit more ground attack. There was a single torpedo attack mission where you need to take the plane, with torpedoes, to hunt down a German cruiser trying to sneak through the English Channel to make it back to German port. And there's a bomber turret gunner mission as well.

The game's graphics was "decent", which means it's actually quite good for a game that came out in 2007. Sound left a bit to be desired, IMHO. And historical accuracy is... meh.

As I said before, there is a bit of arcade-y fun to be had. Don't treat it too seriously, and don't pay more than $5 USD for it.

WRC5, having been released back in 2015, is an official WRC game that matches the 2015 FIA WRC season, and includes WRC, WRC2, and Junior-WRC events. Kylotonn, a French developer, took over from Milestone, whose final WRC game was WRC4 (for 2013 season) and WRC Powerslide, an arcade title that had been unpublished since 2016. WRC5 is a good start to the series, and KT racing would go on to keep the WRC dev rights until 2022, when FIA took the rights back and gave it to the team that developed Dirt Rally series for Electronic Arts. Overall, WRC5 received average review scores, delivering a decent experience, while not standing out in any particular way. And to that I agree.

While the initial impression is quite slick, with sliding panels showing your choices, and cars rotate in 3D as you transition, the actual choices available to you seems to be quite low, and you are constantly nagged to attend "rally school", where you get to watch AI perform some car control lessons, then attempt to recreate it under your own control. The lessons are appropriate for someone who had never driven a rally car, but there's no way to turn it off completely, as you continue in your JWRC career, the easiest career mode to start. You only get a FWD vehicle and low on power, so it's all about technique, but then so is everybody else. the JWRC in 2015 has 7 rallies, each of which is a full 3-day 6 stages total event, with repairs limited to only 45 minutes between days. So car preservation is important overall, no matter what the team philosophy may be.

You can usually choose among a few different teams as you move up the championship tiers (JWRC, WRC2, and WRC) each of which have different morale levels, skill levels, and team philosophy. Some teams may emphasize car preservation above all, while others will tell you to just go as fast as possible, no matter the cost. Yet others ask for a more balanced approach. And how you do in the championship will affect the team morale. If you do particularly well, the mechanics may be able to get more repairs done, for example.

The damages, if left untouched, will carry over into the next day, and they *can* affect handling, acceleration, and so on. So you have to give repair orders strategically... like repair this problem partially, saving the remaining time to repair something more important. Remember, only 45 minutes of repairs between days.

For car tuners, you can only change car settings in WRC and WRC2 championships. JWRC does not allow you to change vehicle settings.

The stages are licensed from FIA and looked right, but doesn't really stand out in one way or another.

The vehicles are also licensed from FIA, with all the appropriate models, liveries, and so on. In fact, you are playing as one of the official teams in that particular championship. The vehicles do look and sound right. As I've never driven any sort of rally car, I can't tell if if they are accurate or not, but they seem to handle quite well, at least in JWRC.

The graphics and sound are an upgrade from WRC4, but that's not saying much.

You can do single stage, a full rally, or a series of rallies to create your championship.

All in all, it's a competent implementation of of WRC game for its time, but nothing really stands out. Unless you are bargain hunting, or want to collect all of those games, it's out of date and not really worth your money. Get something like Dirt 4 or Dirt 3 Complete instead. More cars, more tracks, more event types...

Flatout was a paradigm shift when it came out in 2004 because of one very noticeable feature: the ragdoll driver, Let's just say, if you crash, your avatar driver may be ejected, and bounce around as a ragdoll (until you hit reset). And there are a few non-race competitive events that relies on... launching the driver for height, distance, or precision. :)

But ignoring the flashy part, FlatOut is actually an excellent vehicle dynamic sim for its time (and even today). The vehicle slide convincingly on different surfaces, vehicles and objects bounce or break (and let's just say there's a breakage bonus when you do career, but more on that later). And what's more, the track is not flat. There are ramps, ditches, walls, barriers, but also extra obstacles: oil barrels, cones, log piles, dumpsters, cargo container, trees... You get the idea. And you get a refillable nitro boost.

The track design is also quite interesting, in that there is a sort of "flexible" border. In more rigid racing games you get warnings if you go "off track", then you're black marked (DNF). Not in Flatout. You are welcome to crash THROUGH border markers to take a bit of "shortcut". As mentioned before, there's a bit of a damage cash bonus in career mode. However, there are also plenty of HARD obstacles to turn your driver avatar into a ragdoll if you didn't quite master your car control. And let's just say, the other cars are NOT very forgiving. Yet there are risky shortcuts you can take if you can find them on each track...

If you think that's fun, in later events you have to participate in demolition derbies. A small vehicle may be more nimble and accelerate faster and win regular races, but put you at a severe disadvantage in a demolition derby.

In career mode, you're given a budget to buy a junk car, and use the rest to upgrade it in various ways, from tires to body, from clutch to engine, you get the idea. Each improves your vehicle in some noticeable (but just barely) way. Win races and use the winnings for more upgrades, or buy a different car (outfitted differently), unlock a harder race series, win that, unlock another, repeat until you become the Flatout Champion. And do the bonus events (the driver avatar launching ones) for fun and bragging rights.

The graphics are good for its days, but there's a bonus treat for those with NVIDIA RTX cards... There's an RTX Remix config available for Flatout that adds ray tracing to the graphics. You can find it and other RTX Remix via the NVIDIA RTX Remix page, or Google it via "ModDB RTX Remix".

It was sad that ultimately the dev, Bugbear, only get to create one true sequel, Flatout 2, as apparently the series IP stayed with the publisher, who assigned future sequels and ports to other developers. Bugbear eventually came up with a spiritual sequel, called Wreckfest. But the original is still worth playing, IMHO, for some chaotic racing fun.

Algo Bot is a programming game where you help the "helpless duo" of PAL bot and Algo bot trying to save the colony sleeper ship after an unforeseen disaster struck. PAL does all the talking, while Algo is silent. The writing falls into cliche at times, and the programming started with normal tasks, but soon turned into multiple variable cross-calls and code optimization exercises. The graphics are quite nice, with a pleasant UI, if a bit too heavily reliant on the mouse. All in all, it is an entertaining way to spend a dozen or more hours, but zero replay value other than trying to "beat" your own score on each level.

The game basically involves giving Algo Bot commands so it can solve puzzles. Initially the commands are simple: forward, turn left, turn right, turn 180, activate switch, grab, put-down. But soon Algo Bot gain the ability read and write variables (first just one, later increased to 2 and 3) as well as ability to compare variables (if X then...) to solve more complex problems. All commands are just a mouse-click away. There's not even any visual code blocks. There is a main program which is just a row of individual commands, and up to 3 functions named F1, F2, and F3. The main program can save space by putting repeated sections in the functions, but each function can also call other functions (or even itself). And the logic command when one got to it. If this sounds complicated, just watch a level's playthrough video and you should "get it" in no time.

As the puzzles get longer, you realize the "main program" only has limited space and you must make efficient use of the functions to complete the puzzle, and you must look for patterns and optimize your code size by exploiting those patterns of movement.

One minor quibble: the "score" presented at the end of each level was never explained and indeed, it seems the LOWER the score, the better. Yet how this score is derived... is still a mystery.

Still, there are a LOT of levels to go through, and presentation is cute, if a bit childish. This doesn't teach any specific programming language, and seems to be aimed at kids but some of the puzzle is enough to challenge adults. And let's just say, I can't quite figure out what the score was supposed to be, so I can't optimize for it. Still, it was a fun way to spend a dozen or more hours solving puzzles and watch my own failed attempts.