Recent reviews by Nevarn

Mars Horizon takes the traditional space race game - to successfully launch the first manned mission to land on the moon, and return them safely to earth before any other nation - and extends it into a race to land people on the surface of Mars.
You can play as one of 5 different agencies - NASA, ESA, Soviets, China or Japan - which can be customised with various positive and negative traits, and varied starting relations with each of the other agencies. There are also a range of difficulty settings which influence research costs, mission difficulty and rewards, and how competitive the rival agencies are.
The game comes with a well judged tutorial, and gameplay involves managing research, trying to base build efficiently and choosing the best launch vehicles and payloads for missions. Each turn represents one month of game time, and you will frequently get random events which may require a decision from you. These often revolve around choosing between either a support (influences budget income) bonus/penalty, a research bonus/penalty, or better/worse relations with one or more of the other agencies.
Once you have built the rocket stages and payload for a mission, you need to choose a launch date within various available launch windows. Often there a reliability bonuses for delaying the launch by a few months, but you need to balance these with the need to complete milestone missions before the rival agencies get there first.
After the launch - assuming the rocket stages don't explode during ascent - you need to perform various tasks with the payload in order to get a successful mission result. This takes the form of a minigame, where you have a limited number of actions and turns to reach a target number of resources through conversion. These minigames can be fun, but also very significantly increase the time it takes to play through the game. Fortunately, there is an option to autoresolve the minigames, either for request missions or for all missions. The game tells you the % chance of success you will have in advance if you choose to autoresolve.
Overall, Mars Horizon is a very well made turn based strategy game. I didn't notice any bugs or issues, and the only thing I feel it misses is the option of a multiplayer mode. 9.5/10

Gran Turismo meets Circuit Superstars in this homage to top down circuit racing games of old!
The fixed top down view may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it works well here. Some may gripe about not being able to see upcoming corners in time, but none of the circuits are too complicated, and most are based on real world racetracks, so most petrol heads playing this will get into the swing of things quickly and easily.
The are around 200 cars in the game at the time of writing, and all of these are based on real world cars, ranging from the lowly Citroen 2CV right up to 800 BHP racing monsters from Le Mans. The career mode starts you off with just enough cash to buy and tune up your first car, and then you earn money from every race and series you score points in. The physics are just right, making the early cars very easy to handle with either keyboard or a controller. As you progress and unlock the more powerful cars, the challenge increases as one would expect, but the cars are never undriveable and the AI cars are well enough judged to provide some challenge at each stage of the game.
The championships available include street racing, circuit racing, rally stages, hill climbs, endurance races and some single make series. There is also a time trial mode where you can drive any class of car on any of the circuits or stages in the game and test you skills against the fastest recorded online times.
I do have a few criticisms - there is no pit stop functionality in the game - even in the endurance races. The multiplayer appears limited to split screen hot seat only. Also the differences between car classes are not immediately obvious which can make it tricky for a new player to figure out which car to use at times.
Overall though, this is a great game for those who enjoy top down racers, and the career mode, online time trials give it plenty of replay value. 9/10

Old school space trading game with lots of ships to choose from. Different factions you can earn rep with by completing missions. Initially a sublight game limited to a single star system, once you have earned enough $$ to buy a warp capable ship you can access the galaxy map and jump between systems. So yes, it's 2D Elite and very easy to pick up and put down. 9/10

I've been busy the last 8 or so years, so a bit late reviewing this. AoW3 builds on the classic turn based strategy model of AoW1 and 2, but is bigger and better in most respects and has an even better sound track accompanying it. The single player campaigns are detailed, interesting and well balanced. There are also some branching paths for each campaign based on the decisions you make.
Overall it's a great game and very stable, with the only criticism being the front end non steam launcher. 9/10

This is basically a graphically enhanced reboot of the classic MOO 1 and 2 games of the 1990s. The current version of the game has proven stable with no crashes in nearly 300 hours of gameplay. You have a choice of ten races to play in the base game, each with their own traits, strengths and weaknesses. I have discovered through play that the races are not too well balanced - Meklar and Klackon are probably the strongest, with Mrsshan being the weakest - although knowing this can help to make games more interesting by using it as a handicapping system...
Multiplayer also works fairly well, and was stable for the two games I played. Space battles always use the auto-resolve option in multiplayer, presumably to save time since they can be lengthy endeavours. I found myself using auto-resolve in single player games for the battles most of the time anyway, so this wasn't an issue for me.
Ship designs can be modified using the blueprint editor, or even scrapped entirely. Colony management is very similar to the 90s games, with colonists being assigned to either research, farming food or production projects. You can set a per colonist tax rate for your empire, and use the game currency to rush builds in order to complete them in 1 turn. Terraforming projects are the exception, as these cannot be purchased in order to rush complete them.
There are 5 possible paths to victory in each game. The first 4 are Conquest, Technological, Economic, and Diplomatic. The fifth is simply to have the highest score after a set number of turns (default is 500).
Diplomacy with other races is fairly basic but serves it's purpose. You can set up embassies, trade treaties, research treaties, non aggression pacts, alliances and so forth. You can also build a spy centre and then train spies either to sabotage or steal from other players, or for use in counter-espionage to protect yourself from enemy spy activity.
The game also has workshop support. I haven't tried any of the mods yet, but some of them do come highly recommended.
Overall this is definitely a worthwhile purchase for anyone who enjoys 4x space strategy games. 9/10

It's basically Flat Out 2 with improved graphics, so what's not to like?

Steam achievements and trading cards have just been added, so now is a great time to revisit this game if you played it a while ago. 10/10

This game is a boulder statement of the rocky times we live in.

XCOM 2 is set 20 years after Xcom Enemy Unknown, the reboot of the old 1990s classics. The aliens have now taken over Earth, and XCOM has become a shadow organisation, fighting a guerrilla war against the Elders and their Advent minions. This changes the game adding a stealth dynamic which didn't really exist in the previous game.
Throw in the War of the Chosen DLC, and you get 3 powerful generals the Elders plan to use in order to dismantle the remaining resistance forces, including XCOM. You also get 3 additional resistance factions which XCOM must unite in order to have a chance of dealing with the Chosen before it is too late.
Then you also have tons of workshop content, including Long War 2 and Long War of the Chosen which adds almost infinite replayability to a game which is commendably stable these days in spite of this huge amount of content under the hood. And I didn't even mention the zombies....
Overall, this game builds on and adds to XCOM in many ways, and is now undoubtedly a bigger and better game in every way. 9.5/10

I loved the part in "Choo-Choo Charles" where Charles was all like "its charlesing time" and Charlesed all over Eugene. Truly the game ever. 11/10

Actually better than Dirt Rally 2 in some ways.
The graphics are a little crisper with more defined textures. The career mode differs in the way you develop and upgrade the cars and in particular your team, and the physics seem a little more forgiving, particularly with the handling of the RWD cars.
However there is less content here than DR2 ended up with once all it's DLCs were added. DR2 not surprisingly also has more players still competing in the daily, weekly and monthly online events. DR1 does have Pikes Peak though, so probably worth getting just for that. 9.5/10