Hexogin
Seems like a nice little game, though I ran into a bug on Mission 9 that meant I couldn’t complete the mission and continue the campaign. I used Cheat Engine to force the Events::IsTriggered check to always be true and that caused the mission to immediately fail and complete instantly allowing me to continue however.
– Real player with 109.6 hrs in game
A wonderful little strategy game.
At first, it seems a bit simplistic, but with each advancing level you need to change your tactics to adjust for the defenses established on the map.
I will not say it is terribly difficult, but it is a pleasant challenge until you figure out your own personal strategy.
– Real player with 26.9 hrs in game
Russian Roads
TL:DR: Terrible but hilarious and kind of fun to play.
Cons:
Absurd physics
Mediocre sound
Terrible checkpoints around the corner so you don’t know which way you’re going,
The other npc vehicles are faster even after you’ve applied the 3 torque upgrades
Pros
Funny AF
Achievements
Trading cards
Computer AI so dumb it’s hilarious
Hasn’t crashed or bugged out
Worth the sale price because I’m enjoying it and want to complete it.
– Real player with 6.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Artificial Intelligence Memes Games.
Russian Roads is a 3D third person road racing game made out of a series of Unity Asset flips. It’s designed as a mostly joke game to lambast the state of roads in Russia, as the tracks have a series of potholes and other aspects of disrepair that act as obstacles to the driver.
Despite some effort around assembling a game from a racing template and some low quality/asset flipped vehicles and environments, the end product is still obviously asset flip tier and of such poor quality that I can’t recommend it. The joke premise is mildly amusing for around 2 minutes. Laush Studio has a long history of these kinds of frankenstein asset flips, and this is no exception to their record of poor quality bundle fillers.
– Real player with 5.8 hrs in game
h8machine
h8machine is a cardgame set in a dystopian future in which Artificial Intelligence 🤖🤖🤖 has completely overtaken the online world 🌐🌐🌐 but the worst part is - it learned to behave just like us…
but the AI is not just in the story! an in-game neural network allows you to customize and randomize 2D art in real time! with this TECHNOLOGY, you can fully immerse yourself in the world of anime profile pics posting complete garbage. it’s just like real life social media!
no one uses realtime-with-pause in cardgames, probably for some good reason. but screw it, I like RTWP so I just put it in!
you will strategize around the use of timers as the flow of time is your main resource! there is no turns and all cards time out, resulting in a gameplay like you haven’t seen before. will you get lost in the hectic chaos of ticking timers, or will you optimize every fraction of a second at your disposal? remember: the active pause system allows you to play any card you want while the time stops. use it to make your decisions and execute powerful combos!
are you tired of collecting cards one by one and having to remove the crap ones from your deck as a deckbuilder game goes on? in h8machine, instead of trying to collect a deck card by card, you grab packets of cards with their own “personalities” - internet stereotypes and whatnot. each of these personalities contributes 1/3 of your deck, and you can mix&match them to easily form decks with a pre-constructed feel
Bot War
Played a couple rounds, it’s a fun game, maybe a bit pricey for where it’s at right now. I’d love to see it refined, be able to be less laggy perhaps become available in multiplayer (3 players 3 teams or 3 players on a team even). I’m not a game designer and have no idea how, but some ideas I would offer is being able to pick spawn points, spawn in different places around the points (so players don’t get killed immediately from enemies firing at other teammates respawning) and perhaps a bit of delay when teams switch so players don’t get killed immediately.
– Real player with 8.4 hrs in game
Hello! This game is actually a hell of a lot of fun. I just wish the controls werent strange and the guns actually looked like guns. The Physics could also use some help but, not at all a bag game! i love it
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Counter Terrorist Agency
This is my revised and final review now that I’ve had a fair bit more time with it.
CTA is a game I’ve wanted for a long time, which is why it comes as such a disappointment that so little thought was put into its design. I love the idea of tracking terrorist groups, deciding how and when to strike, collecting intelligence, and ultimately trying to prevent attacks. Unfortunately, it’s let down by shallow and often unclear mechanics. The devs were active in the beginning, responding to criticism and quickly putting out an update that greatly increased the quantity of scenarios in the game, and more have been added since. However, they seem to have been silent for just over a month now, and the Steam forums have been completely dead for over a week. They claim to be working on a pair of updates that would add a sort of “free mode”, as well as a much-requested re-work of the case file system. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced these will be enough to solve the fundamental problems this game suffers from.
– Real player with 18.8 hrs in game
Overview
Counter Terrorist Agency is what the old game Covert Action would have been if the player were in a higher-up position, not every troublemaker had a name of a Spanish or Arabic origin, and relations and resources of nations were an issue. Things usually start out with suspicious behavior making the news, threats made to reporters, or just an intercepted phone call in which two people may say something suspicious, and from there, the player orders agents to go to work by having a suspect’s phone tapped and their social media accounts hacked, then waiting for more conversations in which the suspect’s role within an organization can be verified depending on the contents of the conversation. (The player may be able to guess at the role of the person they’re speaking to if that person infers they have any authority over the person the player tapped/hacked.) Once enough suspects have been identified, it’s time to stop the terrorists from acting by either arresting or killing (preferably) confirmed members. Arrested terrorists can possibly be interrogated revealing more people involved in their plot. (Interrogation can possibly even reveal a leader’s identity.)
– Real player with 9.1 hrs in game
Per Aspera
It’s rare for a city builder / logistics game to have a good story, but this one sure does. Through monologue and dialogue options we follow the self-discovery and existential ruminations of the player character, an AI tasked with terraforming Mars. The planet visuals are beautiful. It’s incredible to zoom in and look at the contoured terrain and watch it change as it fills in with water and plant life.
Gameplay is less elaborate than most city builders and the logistics are not even close to the level of complexity of something like a Factorio style game. Managing the interconnected temperature and atmospheric composition is interesting. The end result is a casual, relaxing builder with a memorable story.
– Real player with 95.2 hrs in game
===SUMMARY===
This is my favorite game of 2021. I like simulation games as a group, and this is a beautiful installment of this growing genera. I love what simulations teach me, being spoon fed facts off a list. I love that (having played Per Aspera) I know the landscape of Mars better. I know some of the names, sure, but grokking the SCALE, the oddness, sparking my curiosity about Noctis Labyrinthus, just from working on the planet is priceless. I became familiar with Mars in a way that Surviving Mars never did (though I played that a lot too).
– Real player with 68.7 hrs in game
Close Combat: The Bloody First
Do I recommend this game? Yes, If your looking for a classic close combat game.
However, I still have to bring up the fact that this game still feels pretty bare bones. After playing through the entire campaign with the US, I tried to play a campaign as the Germans. And, well, I know its a game about the American division and the fighting it encountered, but if you’re going to include the ability to play a German Campaign then you should be at least pretending that the same unit was fighting the whole time.
– Real player with 146.7 hrs in game
I really wanted to like this game, i may in the future if the game breaking issues are fixed but for now I would Stay away from this game. I ignored the fact that the graphics look terrible for 2019-2020 thinking i was going to get the classic feel of cc with the detailed platoon and company creation and in depth map navigation giving it a realistic feel during combat and in some cases they did do well with keeping those aspects in the game but the game itself is so bugged and poorly optimized that its design ruins almost all of my game attempts, i was able to complete the grand campaign with few bugs that caused me to restart the game but when going back through and playing the Italian campaign and again on the African campaign I ran into such terrible problems that I felt I had to say something, for one the AI is terrible, LOS fails to spot enemy literally 3 feet away, troops fail to load or fire at all when given fire orders, or will just wander out into the open and get shot, or fail to find cover when ordered to do so, troops will run up to enemy tanks when they get close and throw grenades at point blank range killing themselves without orders. The bazookas, mortars, all artillery, and air support accuracy is a complete joke and honestly feels like a complete roll of the dice when using them. Enemy tanks can glitch into each other creating impervious bunkers that your troops just fail to comprehend when it happens and kills almost anyone who gets near them, HQ teams do not feel like they give any kind of bonus, vehicles and troops navigate terrain terribly and cause you to click on multiple locations before they stop saying, “no clear path”. Some missions would end with me taking all objectives and breaking enemy morale and even though that should progress you to the next mission I ended up being forced to repeat them. Also, after experiencing these issues, if you choose to quit a game you will be greeted by chicken sounds, I guess the devs thought that would be funny but with the experiences I had with this game that little addition just makes me dislike this unfinished product even more. This game was never worth 40 bucks, it feels like an upgraded version of sudden strike 3 and i cant even remember how old that game is… I would say $20 is even too much for this game in its current state, that said, i still hope the devs stick with it and fix its issues because it is a game that has great potential but as a consumer I just dont advise others to buy this game right now but would say to check back some time later.
– Real player with 131.9 hrs in game