Shadow Warrior

Shadow Warrior

Story of a demonic incestuous affair that is uncovered by her older brothers and you can kinda guess the rest.

🔸Shadow Warrior’s story is well-written for a AA game. You are in control of Lo Wang, an assassin who is hired by a powerful Japanese magnate to buy an ancient katana -Nobitsura Kage- from a collector for 2 million dollars. However as you may expect, things don’t go as planned and Wang tries to take the katana by force, then he finds out Mr. Mizayaki -The collector- is in contact with a demon named Hoji.

– Real player with 50.2 hrs in game


Read More: Best FPS Gore Games.


For some reason I decided to go for all achievements in this game, so I had to complete it both on insane and heroic difficulties. Was it worth it? No. Was it fun? No. Was it entertaining? Sort of. But let’s take one thing at a time.

Shadow Warrior 2013 is a remake of a semi-popular old school shooter of the same title. Though I cannot really call this game a remake, because remake usually means a piece that is largely refined to fit modern standards and audience but keeps its original nature. I cannot say that this game doesn’t have anything in common with the original but it also stepped quite far from it. First things first, the gameplay was changed to fit modern shooter standards: most of creative things like using enemy’s head as a major weapon, nuclear rockets, demon heart that creates a copy of you, etc were discarded. They were changed with mainstream pistol, uzi, shotgun, crossbow, and demon heart now just acts as instant-kill bomb, enemy head became an optional thing, which is mostly useless. The shooting itself is very odd: you do not really feel any impact, there is a regular lack of ammo and some weapons are too OP over the others. However, the developers tried to expand the gameplay by adding magic and sword fights. I cannot say that these are bad but they are also far from perfect. Sword acts more like a bat that you have to punch enemies with rather than a blade that slices through them, on earlier levels you tend to run out of ammo and have to poke foes for ages with it, sword techniques are interesting but there is too few of them for the whole game. As for the magic spells, it adds some variety to the gameplay but, just like with sword skills, there are too few of them. Only 2 combat spells, which basically do the same thing – stun enemies – healing, and protection, which you will unlikely use at all if you play casually. The game is also very overloaded with upgrades. Instead of a tree or gradually opening skills you are instantly given 9 different progression screens for the character + 1 for each acquired weapon. Should I say that nobody’s gonna spend 20 min of just reading each and every description? Because of this, I personally missed a useful skill of resurrection just because I skipped reading another bunch of text. If those screens were introduced in the first 3-4 levels instead of the very first one it wouldn’t hurt the gameplay at all but made the introduction to the upgrades much smoother.

– Real player with 44.4 hrs in game

Shadow Warrior on Steam

The Cerberus Project: Horde Arena FPS

The Cerberus Project: Horde Arena FPS

I don’t know what I played….

Oh and melee mode sucks.

6/10

– Real player with 7.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best FPS Arena Shooter Games.


drugs

other than that the game is fun.

– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game

The Cerberus Project: Horde Arena FPS on Steam

ELDERBORN

ELDERBORN

SUMMARY: Although ELDERBORN bills itself as a “Souls-like FPS”, a lot of the videos show the player frantically slashing and smashing; this might give the impression of a more straightforward heavy metal “Doom with Swords” experience (with all of the high-ledge kicking action of a Dark Messiah of Might and Magic). In reality, what I got was a fairly thoughtful and measured experience consisting of dodging, parrying, blocking, and outmaneuvering dangerous enemies; survival, particularly at higher difficulties, was about fighting intelligently and limiting the number of opponents who could bash your head in at any given time. And to be honest, I think I like it more than the game I imagined I was getting in the trailers. An easy recommendation for anybody who has a craving for some FPS-melee action.

– Real player with 14.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best FPS Souls-like Games.


Elderborn is a great murder simulator. The combat is challenging and satisfying, but usually not so hard that it made me frustrated (Except on the hardest difficulty that can be pretty frustrating.). The visuals are kind of whatever, nothing particularly great, but nothing that bothered me either, and the variety of enemies, environments and murdertools is more than passable.

The combat is incredibly fun and satisfying, and you have lots of tools and abilities to work with. You have 10 (I think, I feel like I may be forgetting one

! , and no the power mace doesn’t count) weapons that you collect throughout the short ~5 hour campaign and a couple of other special abilities that you can unlock through a skill tree, the most notable ones being deflect, where you reflect a projectile back at an enemy, and a charge move, which sends you flying in one direction and knocks down whatever you hit. You are often fighting several enemies at once, making you dodge all around the nice environments and your reflexes will be pushed quite hard.

– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game

ELDERBORN on Steam

The End of Dyeus

The End of Dyeus

It’s a quaint little game. No handholding, no restrictions save for what you can accomplish with the gear and upgrades you find. Simple, but not entirely straighforward. Graphics/animations are a big seller for me as I’m a sucker for this style. The combat is.. Adequate. Melee consists of blocking and attacking, learning your opponents' moves, and making sure the shield you have blocks more damage than your adversary dishes out. Simple and generally not rewarding. Same goes for the bow; keep a good stock of arrows and kite. The crossbow allows for a shield, but it’s the same taste as both; kite, block if your foe gets too close, then shoot. Locations are lackluster, and the land is a bore between areas minus the ever-weakening mobs you encounter thanks to your gear. There are shops, but they’re rather redundant save for artifacts that I won’t spoil abilities/tweaks for. The story is sort of clĂ­ched, but semi-original. Still, most of it is learned through books ala Dark Souls. Oh, and keys are rebindable. Though, as much as I’m loathe to say this, Dyeus could have benefited greatly from mod support, though for nearly being out a month with hardly any Community Hub activity, I doubt that could have taken the game to greater heights.

– Real player with 26.3 hrs in game

Overall it was a pretty nice experience, it was fun having to figure out where to go next and getting brutally murdered because I went somewhere that was way over my head.

Figuring out which weapons work best for each enemy, which ones to engage in melee or ranged was also nice.

The melee was usually fine but there were some particular enemies that were a patience game, where you are both attacking and blocking and it takes quite a while to actually get a hit on them.

If you’re like me and struggled at the end one bit of advice:

– Real player with 20.2 hrs in game

The End of Dyeus on Steam

Arthurian Legends

Arthurian Legends

The Greatest Medieval Retro FPS to date…

Okay, so listen, son! This is the most fun, most historically inaccurate, bonkers, no-nonsense, Arthurian slaughter-fest you can ever imagine in videogame format. It’s like if it was made in 1996, before it was lost and forgotten for ages until a young and brave archeologist dug it out from some old crypt in Ireland.

It is highly addicting and rewarding with full of opportunities created by the wide variety of weapons, spells, and items. It’s almost like an immersive sim in terms of how many different ways you can approach an encounter or problem. It is hard but fair, very reminiscent of Blood where you need to adapt quickly to tense situations yet always thread very carefully to succeed.

– Real player with 27.5 hrs in game

This is an excellent game for fans of classic melee FPS games like, yes, Witchaven I & II. It’s absolutely a hoot to play, the secrets are very well hidden, and there’s a real attempt at atmosphere going on. I almost wish it was more like an immersive sim (or at least a step or two towards Hedon) in including notes to read along the way, just because the environments LOOK like they’d have little stories to tell. Excellent work, there.

So, all of that said, let me focus on what needs improvement, starting with one issue/disclaimer.

– Real player with 26.4 hrs in game

Arthurian Legends on Steam

City of Brass

City of Brass

I thought long and hard on whether I should recommend City of Brass or not and ultimately decide to recommend it despite all its flaws. Make sure you pick it up during a sale because the game has certain features that you will either love or hate.

The Good

Lets start with what City of Brass gets right. It’s a good looking game that runs well on low spec computers. I could consistently get 60 fps on my PC which is older than the earth itself. During my 17 or so hours with the game I’ve only encountered one bug which was more comedic than annoying.

– Real player with 31.0 hrs in game

I don’t like to use the word “promising” very much. Plenty of Early Access-titles can be described as “promising”, as in “The concept is solid, but plenty of things are missing, and when / if those things are put in, it might be fun”.

This game, however, is different. You can tell a lot of content is missing, yes, but what’s already in the game feels really rewarding. The artstyle is charming, the gameplay is solid and already feels really satisfying.

The gameplay can be summed up rather quickly. You’re an adventurer raiding a mythical city brimming with treasures and the undead citizens and guards that used to populate the place. Because things can never be as simple as “A couple of skeletons chase you”, however, the nice people that lived in the titular City of Brass have kindly left enough traps to make Jigsaw jealous.

– Real player with 26.3 hrs in game

City of Brass on Steam

Paladin Duty - Knights and Blades

Paladin Duty - Knights and Blades

It’s alright, can’t complain much since I got this for .59 cents but definitely not worth the full price atm.

Game length is only about 30 mins complete (10 levels) and to get 4 out of the 5 achievements. The fifth one requires only to be in game for an hour, best to just afk that one.

It’s a bit bland atm, it functions more like a tutorial than a game. A screen keeps popping up telling you what you need to do. When I got to level 10 things were just starting to get interesting and bam after completing it the game was over (I had no idea that I was in level 10 at that time). The only odjective is to kill everything.

– Real player with 2.5 hrs in game

I was really looking forward to playing this. After having completed it, ehhh…I did kind of enjoy my time with it but am sure I’ll never touch it again. Teensy bit too rage inducing.

The trailer doesn’t really show what kind of game this is, expect to re-play several levels multiple times to learn enemy locations as well as spawn points that trigger on a timer from when you start each level as well as after killing certain enemies. If you like this style of trial and error gameplay it’s decent, and the levels look nice for an older Unity game.

– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game

Paladin Duty - Knights and Blades on Steam

Shadow Warrior 2

Shadow Warrior 2

After 3 years since the remake of Shadow Warrior the developers released a second title that continues the story. Though it is not a large span of time, it is big enough to fix the problems of the original and improve its weak points to create a true full-fledged sequel. However, instead of this obvious option, the developers decided to totally change the games mechanics and gameplay, going away from classical single player shooter to some multiplayer-ish looter shooter aka progression for the sake of progression. Did they succeed? Well, sort of.

– Real player with 62.3 hrs in game

“Who… wants… some… WAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNG?!” – Lo wang

Doom slayer with katana be like.

Pros

  • Gameplay

  • Graphics

  • Coop

  • Upgrades

  • Weapons

  • Weapon animations

  • Cutscenes

  • Lo Wang quotes and oneliners

  • Soundtrack

Not great, not terrible

+- Story

Cons

  • Grind

  • Repetitiveness

  • Too many upgrades/weapons

Summary

Shadow Warrior 2 is a classic FPS quake/doom style shooter, with a twist.

The gameplay overall is great, but most of the time it feels like you are just dashing all over the map.

– Real player with 59.4 hrs in game

Shadow Warrior 2 on Steam

Shoppe Keep 2

Shoppe Keep 2

TL;DR: Don’t buy this product. Instead, go buy yourself a cheeseburger because at least it will leave you feeling more full than any amount of time with this unfinished husk would.

Now, with that put aside here is a gloomy review thrown together because I’m bored and have nothing better to do.

My first encounter with the Shop Keep series was when I was granted a Keymailer key for the first one. I reviewed it, it was honestly a pretty good game but of course as anyone remembers, it was very limited.

– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game

I have played since release. Here are my views so far.

PROBLEMS:

Few problems so far. Things I’ve ran into are:

• Textures did not make the shop look different (fixed by re-logging)

• I moved 5k of water into a chest, and it all dissapeared. Maybe the count was too high? If so the game should say so. That was 15k of money down the drain for me

• For the farm, the client cannot ready the plots or plant seeds or see the plants grow. Only the host can for some reason (fixed this by re-logging)

– Real player with 28.6 hrs in game

Shoppe Keep 2 on Steam

STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy™

STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy™

Probably one of the best Star Wars games out there, in between Republic Commando and Battlefront II of course. This was from a long forgotten era of games where the developers cared about what they were doing, and greed wasn’t as prominent as it is today.

Made by Raven Softworks, Jedi Academy is the 4th installment of the Jedi series of games, and the last in the series. At the time this game was considered more or less an expansion to Jedi Outcasts rather than its own game. Because of this the initial sales for the game on release weren’t amazing, and critics were pretty harsh on it, but like a lot of old movies and games it has managed to build up a cult following surrounding it years later.

– Real player with 53.4 hrs in game

you know, i have to say. i own this game and Jedi Outcast on cd, and have put 1000’s of hours into both of them. they are amongst my favorite starwars games, ever made. get them, and play them, and don’t forget to use dismemberment cheats in outcast, and a dismemberment mod for academy, (also rebind force pull to mouse wheel down, and force push to mouse wheel up.) What enabling dismemberment in these games does, is remove the hitbox during saber swings, and instead, have the samer constantly do near insta kill damage to anything it hits. therfore, you keep the animations from swings, but they become more diverse, allowing you to use the animations in unique ways to hit enemies all around you. it also affects enemy jedi the same way, making saber duels much like the movies, first one to get hit, loses something. add in a plethera of fun cheats, and the game never gets old. Never before have you felt like such a legitimate jedi. with all the powers available to you, there is so much that you can do, you’ll never want to stop playing. Imagine being able to ligning a room full of baddies into a corner, or backflip shop a guys head clean off, or force push a rocket back into someones face. well you can. but you can do more than that. Try force choking a tough enemy, jumping 3 stories into the air, and force pushing them upwards so high, that the fall kills them shortly after you land. Try slowing down time with force speed, and running around with a rocket launcher, firing one shot at everyone in a room, then speeding up time again to watch them all die at once. Try dueling an enemy jedi with dismemberment on. try turning off enemy targeting in the console, along with noclipping, and setting up unique encounters with enemies in levels you’ve allready played. you can even set up boss fights as you play through the game over, and over again. try spawining in a bunch of enemy sith in the next area, then going back where you were, and spawing in a ton of friendly jedi. then you adventure into the craziest battles you’ve ever seen, and i cant stress this enough, with dismemberment, these fights are thrilling and nuts. try accidently cutting off your allies head, or watching a sith do the same. try force choke, into backflip insta kill. try everything.

– Real player with 46.0 hrs in game

STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy™ on Steam