Sol Survivor
I am SUPER pleased that I gave this game another chance, because it is now firmly in my Top 3 All Time tower defense games (and I’ve played over 100, far more if you count war3 maps).
I got this game shortly after it first came out way back in 2011 and a bunch of us played it coop. It was fun but it seemed really generic and sloppily designed. A few dozen hours later I uninstalled it and rarely ever brought it back out because I ignorantly thought the single player was the same as the multiplayer.
– Real player with 348.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.
I was introduced to Sol Survivor by someone who’d read my review on Heretic and asked if I’d ever played it using the Doomsday engine. He had an extra copy that he gifted me after we spent a couple hours kicking each other’s asses in some Dukematches.
This is my first “real” Tower-Defense game, and it’s a great way to be introduced to the genre. Before Sol Survivor, my only glimpse into this genre were the UMS “Turret Defense” and “Pylon Defense” user-created maps for Battle.net StarCraft matches (classic, mind you, not II).
– Real player with 206.4 hrs in game
HERO DEFENSE
Personal rating: 7/10
What to expect of Hero Defense - Haunted Island:
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is a tower defense with a different twist on it: you don’t use actual towers, you control them in the form of heroes, while far from being the first in the genre, it is the first time I’ve played a game where you can have control up to five different characters at the same time and are free to move them as you like.
SINGLE-PLAYER EXPERIENCE REVIEW
– Real player with 55.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.
Grind, Grind, Grind…
Let me start by saying that this is not a bad game. Just a ridiculously overpriced game. I mean $30 for a game that still has actual Placeholder text in some places….really devs? Really? Not to mention that the PVP and multiplayer is pretty much dead so put those out of your mind.
The game is a tower defense game, with the twist being your towers are heroes you can, and will have to, move around the map. Each her is effective against certain enemies and has certain effects and atrtibutes. These heropes can also be levelled up with thhe spoils of victory to make them more powerful. Better weapons, better power-ups, better skills/attributes. Of course the savy Tower defense player will realize where this falls apart.
– Real player with 43.6 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Civilization® V
I played as the Iroquis, befriended the Incans, Aztecs, and Shoshone and then destroyed America, Spain, France, and England.
10/10 game the only historical game where I can undo white people crimes
– Real player with 842.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Addictive Strategy Games.
It’s old…but, awesome….been playing this game off and on for well over 10 years…
– Real player with 655.3 hrs in game
Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge
Let’s make this clear. This game is my life. And no, this isn’t satire so grow up a little bit and understand passion when you see it. I have logged over 730+ hours and I intend to log thousands more. Not only do I play this game daily, but I put over 30+ hours a week into it at the minimum. If you can do math like me that puts it at about 4.28571429 hours a day. (no I didn’t use a calculator, I can do math in my head.) Anyone who is just staring out on steam should get this game. It’s cheap and user friendly. Not to mention is is only O N E dollar! That is incredible! I have gifted this game probably 10 times and I’ll do it again. I’m also a moderator in the Bad Rats discord, which I am highly proud of. I worked tirelessly to get that position and I think I’m close to getting admin. Anyways, no matter the type of gamer you are, Bad Rats is for you. Just don’t think you’ll ever be as good as me. Please give this game a chance to change your life like it did to mine.
– Real player with 1159.7 hrs in game
Bad Rats is a revolutionary first person shooter that sets a new standard for this era of gaming. This is game published by Electronic Arts and is developed by Dice on the new Frostbite 4 engine to provide a superior graphic fidelity compared to other marvellous titles including Crisis 3. The story of the game takes place in the year 2035 when North Korea officially ends the cease fire for the Korean War and launches a series of surprise attacks on the United States of America and South Korea. North Korea launches an overwhelming amount of long range ballistic missiles towards major metropolitan areas in the United States which devastates the population and cripples the infrastructure of the government to be able to function properly to contain control of the United States. North Korea launches a full scale aerial campaign on Seoul with a relentless wave of troops pouring across the DMZ of North Korea and South Korea. China and the rebuilt Soviet Union organized by Vladimir Putin has been supplying North Korea with highly advanced military technology and expertise has secretly been supporting North Korea for a war since 2006! You play as a squad in the Navy Seals for the United States called “Bad Rats” Your objective is to assassinate all cats in the region of Asia to cut off all food supplies from the North Koreans and collapse the regime of Kim Jong Un. Using the destructible environments from the Frostbite 4 engine you must use the environment for a tactical advantage to exterminate all cats from Asia. Fan favourite maps return including Seige of Shainghai where you must collapse a skyscraper to kill all cats in the building. Facial scanning technology from LA Noire returns to add an extra layer of realism with realistic facial animation movements to add more emotion to the already immersive world. This is a highly addicting shooter that takes place in locations across the world from nuclear wasteland America to the glorious lands of North Korea. You have a massive arsenal of over 500 weapons to use with thousands of gadgets and gun camouflages. Bad Rats is integrated with the Steam Workshop which has created thousands of community maps and gun skins to be submitted into the game for future free DLCs called “Operations”. Each operation adds an extra layer of immersion into the game with a huge variety of community maps and skins to be added to expand the already masterpiece of a game. Bad rats is a very skill based shooter and requires extensive training to truly shine in multiplier. Bad Rats is the only first person shooter on the market to add a innovative competitive mode with ranks to determine your skill level. In multiplayer there are 2 teams. Counter Cats and Cats. The counter cats must plant a bomb on one of the two locations on the map to kill the population of cats in the area. The cats must prevent the counter cats or the “bad rats” from planting the bomb by either killing all the Counter Cats or defusing the bomb to save the population of cats in the premise.Bad Rats is a highly addicting shooter that any seasonal gamer should try out but I assume you already have! Bad Rats global sales have exceeded 1 billion on the first day outselling the Call of Duty franchise. It is very rare to see game a game this flawless since the release of Half Life 2. If you like first person shooter games you already own bad rats, if you don’t you are missing out on one of the most brilliant game of this century.
– Real player with 404.5 hrs in game
ZAMB! Endless Extermination
I have not played the 2014 release of this game, so I will review this version by itself. ZAMB! is a twin-stick shooter where you have to defend power nodes by building turrets, placing different types of traps, and using other offensive abilities. We played the co-op for a few hours and the game managed to give as a challenge by exposing our lack of teamwork ;). ZAMB has 2 playable characters, one of them places the turrets, and the other dude is more like a crowd-control spammer. However, both characters can pick up and carry turrets around which is really cool. There are a few different areas with multiple stages, each ending with a boss fight. The game even has an endless mode, control binding and lots of upgrades - more than I can say for some similar games. I would recommend playing it with someone, but it has the same content for single player as well (15 stages, 3 boss fights, and several endless maps)
– Real player with 41.4 hrs in game
Fun mix between a tower defense and a shooter. You can be either melee or range
Finish it in solo and coop. It also has an infinite mode
Difficulty pretty well balanced, with good powers and towers to unlock.
And even if it could be quite messy sometimes to see what’s going on with all the fx displayed, it’s definitely worth the price for a decent couple of hours
– Real player with 23.0 hrs in game
Nation Red
Nation Red is a top down Zombie Shooter. And a good one!
In several different Game Modes like Barricade (you need to hold a point, have some support from Sentry Guns or Soldiers) Survival (show them how long you can keep going) or the Classic endless mode. Every Game Mode offers you a different Challenge.
On top of that, there are tons of different power ups you can pick up, that will drop randomly from your enemies. While you’re playing you gain Experience and Level up, with every Level up, you get access to a wide Range of skills you can choose from, to optimize your Character in a way you want to play the level/game. Through that, the game offers a wide range of variations to try out and experiment with. The game also offers a variety of boss monsters you encounter randomly throughout your current play trough. Which all have their own strength and weaknesses. You can change the difficulty at any given time. As stronger as you make your enemies, the more experience you will get from them.
– Real player with 195.7 hrs in game
Definitely very good game, Top-Down it’s not maybe my prefered genre, but I really enjoyed this game. I have just done 100% achievements! It was fun :)
As achievement hunter I can recommend this game too, ‘cheevos were challenging and innovative (achievements in this game = ideas of people who play it - you can suggest in steam discussion), but nothing what you wouldn’t be able to do, especially when you have some hours behind you. I have finished all achievements in around ~50 hours, all without 3 cows, which means killing 500k, 750k & 1kk zombies and generally it was the most boring part of this game when I have finished everything else (killed ~330 000 when I was done with rest achievs.). Unfortunately Multiplayer will be dead till the end of this year, I had problems now with finding players, sometimes was lucky, mostly weekends evenings.
– Real player with 110.4 hrs in game
Europa Universalis III Complete
Whee. Europa 3, like its predecessors and its cousins Hearts of Iron and Victoria (Crusader Kings as well, but that isn’t as hard to learn), is an extremely complex game that is notoriously difficult to learn, not helped by crappy tutorials. I had an edge having been playing this series since its first installment, but it still took some time to get used to everything. So right from the start expect a significant time investment on learning how to play the game, and learning to do well at it. War, Diplomacy, Trade, Exploration, and more. It’s all here.
– Real player with 535.5 hrs in game
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game ever - especially in this version with the first two additions to the game.
To a certain extent, it is comparable to the Total War games, if they only included the map mode, which would here be simplified to armies only being able to move from province to province and not within a province. However, you have a more complicated diplomacy and domestic policy to deal with.
Another thing that makes it different, and, for my taste, better than the Total War games, is the greater realism and historical accuracy - in this game you can’t just conquer everything, and it remains challenging for the more than four centuries that its timespan covers.
– Real player with 492.4 hrs in game
Space BloX
Space BloX is a very simple 2D side scrolling retro pixel shoot ‘em up, with a difference. Instead of adding interesting enemies that shoot you, like other shooters do, the developer decided to turn things down a notch and just put blocks in. That’s why I feel like this might not be a regular asset/template flip, because no actual developer would bother making a game template/tutorial this bad.
The quality is bad. Lazy pixel “art” used instead of proper graphics. The developer couldn’t come up with a compelling level/story design so decided to use samey procgen as a substitute for content. Controls and resolution are locked and can’t be changed.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Spacebar mashing simulator! 11/10 would play again!
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Super Bit Blaster XL
Updated review
I absolutely loved the original, a great little arcade game with fantastic gameplay and an amazing soundtrack. Super Bit Blaster XL is similar however adds a number of interesting new gameplay mechanics. I initially had issues with the new control scheme which, while I am sure will be the preferred option for newcomers, was incompatible with my muscle memory from the older game. The developer was great and swiftly added a classic control mode to the beta version which works great.
– Real player with 48.1 hrs in game
Super Bit Blaster XL is the sequel to Bit Blaster XL , which is a game I thoroughly enjoyed. When I got Super Bit Blaster XL for free because I owned the original Bit Blaster XL , I didn’t know what to expect from this sequel. However, I was thoroughly surprised by what Super Bit Blaster XL has to offer. There are new spaceships, new enemies, and a lot of surprises along the way. Moreover, this game also features a co-op mode, which is another great addition. Overall, I’d highly recommend Super Bit Blaster XL, as it is a great sequel to the original Bit Blaster XL .
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Beat Hazard
Before reading: this review is about Beat Hazard Ultra, meaning the basic game + dlc. While I still recommend Beat Hazard on its own, it is more simplistic and lacks online co-op that the Ultra version provides, so I strongly recommend this game to be played with DLC.
Beat Hazard Ultra is a fast paced space shoot’em up with bright colorful graphics. At first sight it does not look like much, however it has several features that have made it one of the most pleasant surprises in my library.
The graphics look amazing at first, they tend to tire out your eyes pretty easily however, so it is not recommended to play for long sessions. There is an option to scale them up (!) or down inside the game menu though.The battle is fluid despite the abundance of color, enemies and the genral chaos that takes place on your screen especially on the higher difficulties. I have even played this on a linux netbook -yes it plays on linux and mac as well- with minimal capabilities and I was honestly surprised at its smoothness. Gameplay is fluid as well, regardless if you are playing with a controller or a mouse and keyboard. In fact, I even find myself preferring the mouse and keyboard mostly because the mouse provides more precise aiming than thumbsticks. The difficulty curve is just right, meaning you can choose from 5 different difficulty settings (easy, normal, hardcore, insane, suicidal) and play in whatever mode you feel comfortable with. This makes the game equally enjoyable for both hardcore shmup players as well as people who are new to the genre, or not particularly skilled. There is also a nice “perk” system implemented, where you can buy upgrades, such as a few special attacks, more multipliers, etc.
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game
I have played Audiosurf for a long time and I was not sure if Beat Hazard was a game that could stand out for me as a music-based game. I finally decided to give Beat Hazard a try after it was available for several years on the market. It feels like a game inspired by the classic game Asteroids, but with songs from your music library playing while you control your spaceship. So the basic premise of the game is you maneuvering a spaceship while avoiding asteroids and many enemy spaceships of varying types and sizes. There are many games of this genre in a crowded market, but Beat Hazard carves out its own identity with its challenging action and allows you to take on numerous enemies and other hazards as you enjoy the rhythm of the songs of your favorite artists and built-in songs.
– Real player with 46.3 hrs in game