Recent reviews by Mr NICK

Campaign: it's ridiculous, beautiful set pieces, constant action. It really feels like embedding you directly into the horrible world of the Imperium of Man in the 41st millennium, where billions of lives are at stake. The voice actors clearly all had a lot of fun leaning into it, and the roughly 8 hours will see you through a number of different environments and experiences - from stomping on Tyranids to ripping apart Chaos marines.

Operations: Once the campaign is over, the PvE online mode is where the game really shines. With a completely separate progression system, you have multiple classes to choose from as you go through the 7 total operations in 5 difficulty modes. It sounds repetitive, but each mission is different as the AI director summons hordes of enemies to throw you down. By the endgame of PvE Operations, you're a veritable angel of death as you effortlessly cleave through dozens of rampaging enemies. No other game has made me feel so powerful, like an absolute bad ass, having earned my rank through blood, sweat, and tears.

Short Version:
It's a visual novel/story game about a fictional town in Bavaria in the Holy Roman Empire. All of the game's activity centers around dialog, and various choices you make in dialog will affect the outcomes of the store. You will ultimately be solving murder mysteries and uncovering the truth of the town, and you will have to make hard choices about how, who, and what you do about it.

If you are into entirely story-driven games about medieval history, this game was made for you.

Long version:
Gameplay is very simple - you walk around the town and talk to people, and occasionally interact with things. You follow a pretty linear storyline, and are ultimately responsible for solving a murder that happens in the town. You won't have enough time or opportunity to track down every single lead and clue, so you'll have to decide how best to approach the problems. Most of the choices you make revolve around dialog options, and who you choose to spend meal times with.

Your actions and choices will have a direct effect on the story and how it plays out, although the overarching plot remains mostly the same (spoiler). There are occasional minigames in various activities, some of which will have a minor effect on the story and dialog depending on how you do (and generate achievements).

You won't be able to 100% the game in a single playthrough - there are some choices that will lock out some others, and everyone in the town will have to live with the choices you make.

Feeling:
This is a game about feeling, really. Immerse yourself in the town, in the people, and the hardness of their lives. They are telling you stories, they are sharing their pain, and understanding their existence lets us draw our own conclusions about today. Thankfully, the game never gets particularly hamfisted about particular moral tale or line of thinking, allowing you to roleplay your character to agree, disagree, or argue with almost every opinion anyone shares in the town.

The game is best when you simply roleplay yourself into it, and play the way you would want. The story is compelling and interesting, and the game is short enough that you generally don't get bored. It comes in around 15-20 hours depending on how much time you spend talking to people.

It's an incredible historical tale and truly a piece of art in and of itself, and I would love to reward game studios for producing small gems like this that set out to do one thing, do it extremely well, and come away with a satisfying and complete experience. I wish more studios would produce high caliber experiences like this.

It's a rogue-lite FPS. If you really liked the movie "Aliens", and wanted to personally experience dying repeatedly in a dark, scary procedurally-generated space ship over and over, this is the game for you.

It's actually less a horror game and more of a memory-based/optimal choices game. While maps are procedurally generated, they are predictable - so your goal is really to figure out the best way to get through it alive. You learn where the danger spots are, what hallways you can cut off, and how to protect yourself adequately.

Over time, you can earn upgrades throughout the weekly campaigns, which offer a never-ending source of fresh procedural content. The upgrades you earn mission to mission actually help you feel more capable and prepared for the levels ahead of you, which get progressively larger and harder and harder to navigate.

Dying is inconvenient, but not the end - you will die again and again, but like the classic "Souls" mantra of game design, each death brings you closer to your goal, because you'll remember what worked and didn't work and you'll try again. And eventually, you'll succeed, and the satisfaction of completing a mission that repeatedly shredded you with fast moving aliens will make it all worth it in the end.

I've only played solo, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I'd recommend for someone looking for a casual fast-paced procedural shooter. A given mission takes maybe 5-10 minutes, less if you make bad choices.

The core gameplay loop, based on the trailers and screenshots, looks pretty straightforward - a roguelike deckbuilder.

In addition to being a savagely good core gameplay mechanic, there's an insidious and far deeper meta to the game that has twists and turns that will surprise you. There are puzzles beyond the basic gameplay that provides a neat story that carefully ties in all aspects of the game, and I found it very entertaining and well done.

The gameplay is fantastic, the hidden story elements that become major plot points offer meaningful surprises as you progress, and a clear devotion and dedication to making a great game all shine through - it's a work of love and worthy of note for almost that alone.

I would 100% recommend this to anyone - go in blind and be pleasantly surprised. Avoid spoilers and embrace the mystery.

It's a solid but challenging strategy game where you will lose, lose again, and lose more. You'll keep losing, but you'll keep learning - you left a part of your base too exposed, and you succumbed to a wayward zombie. You risked your troops too greedily, and you lost your army. You explored too deep too quick and a harpy took out your troops. You spent too much time teching up and didn't prepare your defenses for a horde.

Or you tried your hardest, did what you thought was right, and it turned out your defenses just weren't sufficient to hold off the Final Horde.

Although sometimes it can be frustrating, and you're sometimes at the mercy of a bad map generation for that game, it brings an interesting and challenging strategy to figure out how to get better each time. I really enjoyed going through each of the map types, and then exploring custom maps.

I did find the campaign to be fairly lackluster; the actual skirmish maps are way more entertaining, especially once you figure out a good rhythm and can execute your strategy easily and effectively without struggling.

There isn't much else to say that hasn't already been said. This is the quintessential civilization sandbox. It offers enormous flexibility within a reasonably well-defined framework of rules.

Civilization games still suffer from the same general issues - not all of the rules are clear, and not all of the benefits or impacts of a decision are very visible. In particular, the adjacency bonuses for districts in this game are not well explained nor are they particularly visible, and optimal play requires a lot of careful forethought that many players simply won't have until they discover it later on.

But without a doubt, this is the way to build a civilization to your liking.

It's straightforward. The mechanics are simple. The purpose is clear. There's no confusion as to what you are expected to do and what tools you have to do it.

It's diabolical. The puzzles are sometimes bananas, requiring some pretty twisted logic and lateral thinking. While you strive for a solution, there's a constant nagging feeling that sometimes your solution is just inelegant and you need to do it better.

It's oddly darkly humorous. There's a strange undercurrent of defiance against your alien overlords, from listening to the audio diaries of the project managers who came before you, from resenting the food pellets that drop into your cell when you complete sections of the game.

It's also gorgeous - not so much in graphics, which are perfectly adequate, but in the efficiency of the presentation. No main menu. No weird visual effects cluttering up the screen. No unnecessarily ostentatious setpieces. No splash screen! On load, the game drops you right into where you left, so you can literally load the game and get building. There's a gorgeousness to seeing your machine, your factory do its work, and the satisfaction that comes with it makes the effort all the more worth it.

It's one of the most interesting puzzle games I've ever played, and I'm enjoying it hugely despite not being great at coming up with particularly creative solutions.

Amazing couch co-op game. Really fun.

Very well done survival horror game with tons of atmosphere. It's about a storyline more than exploration, but the scripted encounters are quite well done.