Games I Love: Middle-Earth Shadow of War

As a big fan of the original how could I not love it's sequel which seems to dial everything up to eleven. I initially avoided it due to it's use of micro-transactions, which in a game as pricey as Shadow of War was more than a little dubious to me so I waited for the so called definitive edition and got it will all it's DLC's so, patience can indeed be a virtue! I'll apologise in advance for the screenshots, not many good action shots I'm afraid nor even shots of the interface.

I will do my best to avoid any story spoilers where possible but there may be one or two that creep in that I can't avoid. So, what is Middle-Earth: Shadow of War? It's an action game with RPG elements set in Tolkien's fabled Lord of the Rings setting. You take on the role of Talion, a ranger from Gondor stuck between the world of the living and the dead, as for why well, spoilers I don't want to give for those whom haven't played the first game. Personally I love the interpretation these games have on the setting so I found the story compelling enough to keep wanting to see what happened next but no spoilers!

Obligatory epic shot!

If you have played Assassins Creed or any of the Batman games you will feel pretty at home with the combat system here. There's just a lot more to it given the extra abilities Talion has access to this time around. There is something very satisfying about the combat system when you start getting access to more abilities and evading an Olog's club only to drop into slow motion and head-shot that archer before countering the dual wielding savage with a swift knee to the gut before using chain-drain to recover all your health and turn a ten against one into a five on five brawl.

There is even a more RPG like gear system in place now giving you not only different bonuses but sets and their bonuses too. Each piece of gear can also be slotted with one of three colours of gems doing  variety of things such as increasing damage, giving you life-steal or giving orcs you recruit a bit of a level bump. It's basic but I still found it enjoyable to get a nice new sword with a fun special effect or a new piece of armour which stopped me getting stomped on so much.

This was my end game Talion.

Much like a lot of things from the first game the so called Nemesis system makes a return dialed up to eleven as well. The orc captains return as a core feature to fight against or dominate and turn to fight for you, it's this feature which so many people have their own stories to tell about including myself. They can ambush you out of no-where, cheat death and return whether due to you killing them or them dying in your service, they can betray you, they'll remember if you ran away or burned, poisoned or even cursed them. I had one orc who was I believe a tank but also a spear throwing hunter with one of the nastiest perks imagined called 'no chance'. Basically when you get dropped to zero life you get a chance to fight back if you time your counter attack right. No chance removes that meaning if they drop you to zero you are gone.

Now this orc even followed me to different regions always showing up at the worst times and jamming a cursed spear into uncomfortable places. Not only that he always seemed to cheat death and return despite burning him, poisoning him even cleaving him in half cross-ways, he just returned and returned, more of him replaced by crude orcish metal each time. Of course him killing me kept powering him up. I even sent 3 of my own captains to ambush him and helped them but he ended up killing 2 of them and then taking me out until he was basically a boss fight in his own right.

I find the sieges to be a lot of fun, so much so that I think I must've done nearly two dozen online ones.

The forts and sieges are one of the new features of the sequel which sees you forming your orc captains into assault leaders in order to take over each of the five regions forts. Each fort has an overlord and anywhere up to six warchiefs (and their bodyguards) defending it. The warchiefs maintaining so called siege upgrades making it more challenging to attack so you usually have to do a bit of preparing ahead of time. Be it outright killing the warchiefs, dominating them to your side or infiltrating your own captains and turning their own bodyguards against them. There's nothing quite so satisfying as watching your orcs leading their former warchief into an ambush and pulling his head off. I find attacking to be a little more fun than defending for the most part which is unusual for me, the forts themselves are pretty impressive and have a style based on the overlords tribe.

The overlord fight is for all intents and purposes a boss fight, all your captains save your bodyguard and any turned bodyguards of the overlords remain outside meaning you better be sure you can take him. Ologs (basically war trolls) are a personal nemesis of mine as they need a very different approach to defeat.

After taking a fort you assign warchiefs and an overlord to defend it, purchase your own siege upgrades which you also purchase on attack as well and they all have counters and uses depending on various things. Spiked walls is likely by favourite on defence as it means enemies can't climb over the walls anywhere near as easily.

The pseudo online aspect also returns in the form of vendetta's and conquests. The former is basically you avenging another player who died to a certain captain which gives both some rewards and is back from the first game. The conquests however are new and see you attacking a copy of other players forts which makes the whole capture and upgrading of forts take on a whole new meaning as these are a fantastic way to get gear for yourself and training orders to improve your captains.

Like even the greatest of games it is not without it's faults and some of them can be pretty trying at times. Just a few flaws and gripes I ran into whilst playing:

• The movement and targeting system: For the most part movement is more than fine but more than a few times Talion got stuck on a ledge and refused to jump off and took a bit more than an arrow to the knee for it which can be punishing on the harder difficulty settings. Also there's no sure fire way to lock a target so that execute you just saved your might for might miss that captain and just snuff out one of his grunts instead. 
• Difficulty settings are a bit out of whack: This is more a gripe than a flaw, initially I mostly played on Nemesis as I found it the most balanced overall. Gravewalker makes it far too punishing and captains far too spongy to be fun. Brutal is a nice mix of ensuring you and the orcs both do a lot of damage but the rate at which captains can level up and the 1 turn timer on nemesis missions can leave you unable to recruit orcs if you aren't careful.
• Gear system is a bit basic: Again more of a gripe but the gear system could have been fleshed out so much more as it stands you end up scrapping most gear for currency in the end.
• Hands Off Pit Fights: Personally I think it would have been more fun if you got to control your orc captains and overlords when you sent them into pitfights, as it stands its more of a dice roll and even your legendary orc can lose to a lower level regular one if their traits hard counter each other. 

If you loved Shadow of Mordor then Shadow of War is basically that ramped up to crazy levels with lots of extra stuff. Personally I think it's a good game even if the install size made me wince (some 110GB.) I found myself playing at one point just to find the best orc captains to recruit or just roaming through a camp stomping, stabbing and arrow flinging just for the spectacle.

Obligatory shot of Mount Doom.

Games I Love: Space Pirates and Zombies 2!

I was originally going to do this one first as I have put the most time into it since purchasing it last Christmas but figured I'd do them in order, because more content is good! This game was seemingly quite polarising so far as fans of the original went but personally I prefer this one to the first one for reasons of which I will go into more detail later on in this post. In short sandbox space games such as Elite and Freelancer are among my most loved type of sci-fi space game (alongside 4X strategy ones.)

This is the campaign galaxy map, there are others you can use if you go for sandbox mode!

This screen is where you will spend a lot of your time in Space Pirates and Zombies 2, the galaxy map. Here is where you will do everything from assembling your mother-ship, docking at star-bases, hunting down enemies or in a lot of cases at the start fleeing from them. The galaxy map itself actually really does bring across the more living and dynamic galaxy this game possesses, the AI captains can do almost anything that you can do, they roam the galaxy, trading, looting, fighting, upgrading their ships and cursing the void as they sail to the nearest station in an escape pod. It is not just window dressing either, you could literally sit in a corner and watch the galaxy changing around you.

The mother-ship this time around takes a more direct role in the action and is the ship you will likely spend most of your time piloting. Other ships are now called strike-craft and act as your support ships, featuring many of the hulls now rendered in full and colourful 3D, another departure that met with seemingly mixed reactions compared to the original. You issue context orders usually with the 'E' key to your strike-craft and can even fly them yourself if you choose, personally I love capital ships so I always take the helm of the mother-ship. You can fire and even aim all the weapons yourself which is useful for knocking damaged parts off enemy mother-ships or hitting various power-ups that can pop up. However my favourite mode as someone whom loves capital ships is the so called 'battle-wagon' mode, this lets the ships AI auto-target for you prioritising the ship you lock onto but enabling all your other weapons to fire at any other targets when they aren't in your targets firing arc.

It's hard to do the explosions justice in a screenshot!

The battles themselves are pretty spectacular to take part in which is one reason I enjoy the move to 3D over the 2D of the previous game even if it is just a cosmetic one. You fly your ship around on a 2D plane but everything is rendered in full 3D, the explosions in particular are pretty spectacular especially if you take out any of the larger mother-ships and bases later on. The modular nature of the mother-ships means that damaging one part of it more than another can actually break off that part, enemy getting away from you? Just hammer his engines til they fall off. That wing with the twin particle hoses tearing you a new one? Shoot it off! It is also part of what makes the explosions pretty satisfying to watch. Escape pods flying off as explosions ripple along the hull just before the entire ship blasts into three pieces, I may be a game-play over graphics person but I still appreciate a good explosion.

Things start off pretty small with you not having many parts but eventually you can build quite a monster!

The mother-ship is also central to the new ship design system, you construct it using a variety of different building blocks around it's central core. Sub-cores are the first of these they basically for the.. Well, core of your ship they determine the shape of your ship and what ports will be available for things such as wings, noses and engines. All of those have different affects, stat increases and possible weapons attached to them as well as coming in small, medium and large sizes (requiring 1, 2 or 3 relevant open ports in order to be attached to your ship.) You can make nice neat shapes, you can have a mother-ship wider or longer as you prefer. To begin with you generally just bolt on whatever you can salvage or scrounge up but later on you'll be able to buy and even have ship parts delivered to you via a catalogue system if you don't want to fly around to find things yourself. You can also choose the weapons of your strike-craft as well, as before your strike-craft are not just acquired from looting blueprints from wrecks but you also level them up by acquiring more of the blueprints of the same ships. You can even use the tractor beam in combat to re-attach parts of your ship that have fallen off, never really used it too often but it's a nice touch still!

As before you also level up but rather than it being a kind of research system you earn certain unlocks at every level such as more sub-cores for your mother-ship or access to another strike-craft hangar but also a randomly selected perk. These form your stat increases, more health, increased armour to stop ship parts breaking off, faster reloading etc. I will admit this is the one area I think I miss the original game on in making your own build with the research points as it were but it really is just a minor gripe for me.

The living galaxy it creates is fairly compelling.

Now I mentioned near the start there was a living dynamic galaxy so I'll go into more detail about that. Every single one of the 200 or so AI captains that roam the galaxy pretty much can do what you do (with the exception of starting a faction.) They loot resource stockpiles, sell their loot, upgrade their ships, befriend or destroy other captains not unlike you. The various factions expand, grow, wage wars all with or without your interaction. Especially at the start of the game you are a very small ship, bolting on junk-parts and just trying to gather enough resources to survive. Early on most aspiring captains will likely cut their teeth in the various arenas at each star-base to get some XP and resources which early on are hard to come by.

You can join one of the existing factions and help them in their fights and conquests or even make your own faction. It's a fairly simplistic empire building aspect to the game but I still appreciate it being there. You basically build your starbases, upgrade them, defend them and hire other captains to man them for a cut of their loot.

Resources still play a large part in the game, to begin with you'll be scrounging from various slowly regenerating resources piles scattered around the galaxy or later on extorting them from enemies or pillaging star-bases for them. Rez returns as the ever sought after resource that acts as fuel for your mother-ship to traverse the galaxy and feed your crew. The crew or goons maintain your ship, not enough and your mother-ships hull starts to deteriorate too many and your rez supplies will burn up fast. Then there is scrap, the post-apocalypse in space equivalent of money and the resource most people accept as trade. It may not be the deepest or most complex example of a living/dynamic galaxy but I found this aspect to be infinitely compelling.

The zombies of course also return to turn all that is living into twisted hunks of ship and flesh but I'll avoid too many spoilers about them. Suffice to say I found them no less challenging to fight than the first one.

In addition to the story campaign which sees the continuation of the story from the original, the return of some of it's characters and some hilarious voice acting you also have the sandbox mode. This has so many options for tweaking and changing the game and it's set-up. From faction sizes, zombie and bandit strength, several different galaxy maps if or when the zombies even appear and the like.

It is of course far from perfect as with everything:

• Lack of tooltips and mouse-overs: For the most part the UI is alright but when it comes to ship design and the shop interface some mouse-over tool-tips would be massively helpful in figuring out if part a is better than part b.
• Slow Start: At the start you won't find yourself engaging in many battles outside of the arena as even the junk flying bandits will stomp your feeble ship meaning it's a lot of scavenging and scrounging. It does add to the whole post galactic apocalypse feel but still it can be a little slow.
• Threat Level Early On: Whilst later on skill and a good mother-ship and strike-craft set-up you can defeat higher level threats or even multiple aggressors, early on though engaging higher threat level targets is usually just the end of you.

I admit to being biased with this game as I love free-roaming sandbox space games but the sheer amount of ways you can configure the sandbox and the story campaign as well it's hard not to recommend this. It's fun, colourful, compelling and I've gotten a ton of enjoyment out of it myself but then I am biased, I love me my space games! Now if you don't mind I better take the mother-ship out to go stomp a rather uppity fellow whom is trying to slap my star-base around.

Even fleshy zombie ships explode quite nicely!

Games I Love: Homeworld Remastered Collection

If you read my last blog post this one will likely not be a surprise, the Homeworld games took my love of sci-fi space battles and dialed it up to eleven. I played both the original Homeworld and Homeworld 2 to death way back in the day so when a remastered collection was announced it will surprise no-one that I bought it and didn't regret it. Seeing those battles with shinier graphics was always going to be a plus and not having to spend ages tinkering with resolutions and trying to get the older versions working on modern systems ensured this was a no-brainer for me. I'll do my best to avoid any spoilers given how epic I think the Homeworld story is so without further ado, here we go!

The remaster makes this particular shot I first remember the game for that much more epic!

Rather than looking at each game separately I'll just look at the collection as a whole given they use the same engine (or so it appears to me at least.) Now the Homeworld games for me always sat alongside RTS giants like Total Annihilation and Age of Empires.

It was also the first space strategy game I know of to make full use of fully 3D movement, you could approach enemies from above and below, as most space games of the time even if they were 3D were often locked to a single-plane.

Rather than a base as in most RTS games, you start off with a mothership which takes on the role of a base but you aren't bogged down by having to place buildings. Anything you have unlocked via the research ship can be produced from the mothership itself, everything from the tiniest of fighter craft to massive capital ships and everything in between. The economy of the game is fairly simple, you sent out resource collectors to harvest dust clouds, asteroids or wreckage for RU's or resource units and spend those for research and construction.

Some amazing vista's really show off the improved graphics.

From there on your usual objectives are to find and defeat the enemy which is where the real meat of the game lies, in it's combat. Each ship has its role to play from bombers unleashing their payloads against larger capital ships to interceptors who shoot down those bombers, to see a huge battle in motion is a sight to behold. The improved graphics certainly help in that regard, larger capital ships slowly moving into position as shells and ion beams slice through space, fighters and corvettes buzzing all around it's hard to sell how epic it can look in some screenshots, one of those games that just looks far better in motion.

Personally I think the story of the Homeworld games is amazing and was a large reason the game stuck with me so long though I am loathe to spoil any of the games story. It is that story which keeps the campaign mode ticking along, the cut-scenes whilst short usually do enough to keep you invested in the story and wondering what might happen next.

There is no veterancy system in place for units as there is in Deserts of Kharak but you are still encouraged not to mindlessly throw away your units. Your fleet is persistent from mission to mission and the resources you gather are finite, so your ships have more value simply based on that, losing a destroyer or heavy cruiser can be crushing. You can also capture enemy ships using Salvage Corvettes in the first game or Marine Frigates in the second (not everything can be captured but it can add another element to your engagements.) This can enable you to supplement your fleet if you are skilled enough to pull off such captures or even just a way of acquiring more resources if you retire those units.

The battles can get pretty epic, this I would say is a mid sized battle in a skirmish match!

Is the remastered collection perfect? No, it certainly has it's flaws and quirks though they are few and far between and in some cases for me they are more gripes than flaws:

• Lack of statistics or information in game relating to certain things: Mainly aimed at the first Homeworld but no numbers are given on how things change or improve between the various stances. For example aggressive stance makes your ships do more damage but move more slowly though it doesn't state by how much. The behavior's such as passive, aggressive and defensive are also likewise not really clearly explained, nor are the benefits of formations.
• Removal of the fuel mechanic in the original Homeworld: This is more of a gripe for me than an actual flaw. In the original Homeworld fighters and corvettes had fuel so they would need to dock with a support ship to refuel but it does make things overall easier to get into so as I said, more of a gripe than a flaw.
• Enemy Scaling in Homeworld 1: Whilst I am fairly certain that in Homeworld 2 the numbers of enemies tended to scale based on your fleet from the get go I am pretty sure it wasn't in the original. This can lead to some tricky spots in the campaign, as I found out to my cost on two or three occasions.

In the end thanks to having both campaigns and a robust skirmish mode it's hard not to recommend this to anyone looking for a space combat RTS. It has more than enough to do in it to keep you busy for a while. Also given the current lack of many new RTS games even coming out these days much less anything like Homeworld it just makes it all the more worthwhile to check out.

There are also some good mods out there even if a few of my favourites haven't made the transition yet so far as I know (Star Wars Warlords, The Point Defence Systems mods etc.) Which is one of the big pluses of being a PC gamer!

In my opinion though this is one of the better remasters out there, now if you'll excuse me an enemy fleet decided to pop over for a spot of tea and ion cannons!

And I got lucky timing that screenshot!

Games I Love: Homeworld Deserts of Kharak

The Homeworld series in general has long been a favourite of mine so it won't come as any surprise to find the prequel popping up on my blog. The RTS has become something of a rarity in this day and age which is a shame as it was for a long-time my favourite genre. I will do my level best to avoid giving any story spoilers, just in case. So whilst I plan out my written let's plays I figured I'd kill two proverbial birds with one stone, tackling my backlog and making blog posts about the games I play doing so!

The cut-scenes have a fairly unique art style

Unlike the original Homeworld titles which were set and played in space and allowed full 3D movement for units, Deserts of Kharak is as you might expect a lot more grounded. The whole game was built around a single line from the opening of the original Homeworld, which is kind of impressive.

The first two things that jumped out at me when I played this game were the amazing soundtrack (not surprising for a Homeworld game) and the art style of the cut-scene's you can see above. The Homeworld games have always had a pretty suitably epic soundtrack so I was more than pleased this one follows suit.

It plays pretty much like you'd expect a real-time strategy game with a few unique aspects that make it interesting, however. The first of which is your base which is actually a fully mobile carrier only rather than sailing the oceans or flying through space this one is based firmly on the ground. The second of which has been a feature of the campaign of Homeworld games since the first one, persistent resources and units between missions.

The carrier is the heart of your campaign, responsible for unit production and research.

The carrier itself acts as your unit production and research facility as well as what you'd expect any aircraft you might possess. Losing the carrier pretty much means game over but fortunately the carrier is more than able to defend itself due to the power management system it has to shunt power between various systems. You can pump up it's armour and repair beams to make it and surrounding forces more durable or you can opt to increase power to it's missile launchers and turrets turning it into a slightly terrifying mobile weapons platform.

The persistent units and resources adds another level of thinking to the game as rather than simply throwing masses of units at the enemy til you win, preserving your units is often smarter and more well rewarded. The most obvious benefit is due to the unit veterancy system, the higher rank a unit goes the better it gets, usually things like increased armour and hit-points or even higher weapon damage and range, depending on the unit in question. The other benefit is due to the fact that resources are limited, there is only a finite amount on each map and both resources are used not only for unit production but conducting research to unlock and improve new units. So losing a lot of units throughout the campaign can come back to bite you later on.

The resource system whilst fairly basic overall, featuring a common resource and a slighter rarer resource does have it's own unique quirk likely from it's original pre-Homeworld development origins. Typically to gain more resources and other objects that provide buffs called artifacts you break apart wrecks with explosives from your salvagers to get at the materials within.

This is only a small battle but it looks far better in motion than any picture could attest to.

The battles themselves can be pretty spectacular to watch thanks to the graphics on show, lighter vehicles circling isolated units, railguns firing from ridge lines with missiles and tracer fire going all over the place. Fighters zipping overhead and gunships showering down a hail of fire from above certainly helps showcase some fairly cinematic battles.

There is an element of the rock-paper-scissor when it comes to units, lighter faster units typically take out units like railguns, railguns take out more heavily armoured units and those heavily armoured units take out the light fast moving units. Though when you throw in larger units like the cruisers and factor in aircraft it starts to get a lot more interesting if you ask me!

The game is far from flawless however and whilst I do love it, Deserts of Kharak could have been so much more than it was, though I feel a lot of that was due to it's slightly troubled development.

• Lack of terrain variety: there is definitely some variety there due to various times of day and terrain features but for the most part you will perhaps unsurprisingly be fighting in desert for most of the game. More use of things like sandstorms or other unique terrain features would have helped a lot.
• Campaign Feels Short: I do genuinely feel the campaign could have likely been six or seven missions longer than it is. Wouldn't be so bad if there were other modes to play but it only has skirmish and multiplayer.
• Not much difference between factions: The differences are certainly there but they are usually minor which I imagine is for balance reasons though this is likely more of a gripe than a genuine flaw. 

Overall, short as it is, I still love the game and it's expanding of the Homeworld universe and enjoy it for what it is. There are definitely better real-time strategy games out there but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy Homeworld Deserts of Kharak and the story is tells which at least fills in some of the questions raised by the first game in terms of the lore.

I still long for the day when we actually get a Homeworld 3 but until then this and the remastered versions of the originals will have to do!

A battle in full swing!

Games I Love: War for the Overworld

To anyone whom has read my blog up to this point likely will not be the least bit surprised to see War for the Overworld pop up on it. My love of games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius make it an almost foregone conclusion I had my eye on the game since I heard about it but didn't get it until last year. In general I usually wait before purchasing a game for several reasons, usually price related but also I like to get 'complete' editions with all DLC's. That said it was worth the wait by far and certainly stands up as a very good spiritual successor to the venerable Dungeon Keeper series.

The beginnings of any Underlords domain.

Much like the Dungeon Keeper games you start off with your dungeon heart, a handful of loyal worker imps and enough gold to get you started. From there you dig out tiles to make space for rooms, those rooms not only serve functions like feeding your minions or letting them rest but also each room generally attracts certain kinds of minions. So far so Dungeon Keeper however this to me feels like it is dialed up to eleven as there are a lot of new features and additions which make it just as good as it's older inspiration if not better in some cases.

The veins of evil, the talents of dungeon management!

From there you expand your reach to find gold and artifacts, research new spells, items and traps thanks to the new talent tree style veins of evil all to bring your nefarious objectives to fruition. The veins of evil deserves a special mention I think, as you spend your sins to unlock everything from new rooms to traps, summons and more.

Usually the objective is defeating an enemy in some way for the most part but the missions have a lot of variety and some of them can be particularly challenging to pull off on your first attempt. Some missions have you commanding a limited number of minions with no dungeon or reinforcements to support you. Others see you facing off against multiple opponents keeping you constantly on your toes as you attempt to defeat multiple attacks from different directions.

You also cast spells and use constructs and rally flags to give you more control over your minions and any battles that will eventually erupt. The battles can also get quite crazy in their scale at times which is both a good and a bad point but I'll get to that later.

Battles are fun to watch but can be a little chaotic when trying to target specific units with spells at times.

The sheer variety of creatures, spells and traps on offer took me a little by surprise to begin with. As they even opted to include the more beast like minions of the original Dungeon Keeper

Also props to the developers for calling on the vocal talents of Richard Ridings to voice Mendechaus (who acts as mentor and tormentor in equal part!) Which only makes any former Dungeon Keepers feel right at home in this game or at least it did for me.

A dungeon in all it's gold filled monster guarded glory!

Some tips for anyone starting out as a fledgling underlord would be these:

• Do not rush to expand as you may make it harder to defend yourself or starve yourself of gold before you find more.
• Use the prophecy spell early and often to help you plan out your dungeon as well as find any useful shrines, secrets, neutral rooms and creatures etc.
• Don't splash out on big rooms too early (by big I mean 5x5 or bigger.)
• Some rooms don't need to be perfectly square or rectangular to function such as the lair and beast den.
• Space is a key resource, only at certain sizes do you get more usable objects in a room such as training dummies, some rooms benefit from having fortified walls as well so keep that in mind when planning.
• Try to keep your workers alive, high level workers are massively useful.
• Need to get rid of some annoying enemy trap that your minions can't seem to reach no matter where you place the rally flag. Use possession on a ranged or flying minion and take matters into your own hands (or claws/tentacles.)

The game isn't without it's flaws but in the grand scheme of things they are relatively minor:

• Large battles can be frustratingly chaotic, if you are trying to cast spells into the fray or possess that one minion it can be hard to even find them in a pile of explosions and flailing limbs.
• Some maps can feel very cramped, more of a gripe than an actual flaw but I feel some bigger maps and time to build up in certain missions would have made them less frustrating without affecting the challenge.
• Campaign pacing feels a little off at the start at least compared to Dungeon Keeper 2, just my opinion as I do love the campaign all the same the start just feels a bit 'fast' to me.

Overall this is a worthy modern version of Dungeon Keeper and has more than enough shiny new things to be a damned good game in it's own right. It has quite a selection of additional game modes if you invest in any of the DLC, everything from the return of 'My Pet Dungeon' to skirmishes and campaigns meaning you won't run out of things to do all that quickly. So this game gets a solid recommendation from me especially if you like myself loved Dungeon Keeper.

Now if you don't mind, I have an empire to conquer!

Games I Love: Enter the Gungeon

Now when it comes to Rogue-lites I've always had a bit of a thing for them when they are done right, things like Everspace, FTL, Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain to name a few of my favourite ones to date. Enter the Gungeon caught my eye in large part due to it's cartoony and colourful aesthetic as well as it taking the theme of firearms and running with it in every aspect of the game from puns to enemies. Literally everything in this game is a play on that from the enemies bullets with guns and so many I wouldn't want to spoil.

The breach, where you choose your character before a run and do a lot of other things!

As you can see in the screenshot above this is usually the first thing you will see, the so called 'breach' where you select your character and do a lot of other things I won't spoil too much save for one. All four characters have their own passive ability, starting items and default infinite ammo weapon for example the marine is more accurate with all weapons and starts with a point of armour and a single use ammo call-in. The hunter starts with a very useful crossbow and a pet corgi who has a chance of digging up extra items. The convict starts with a sawn-off shotgun, a molotov cocktail and a passive of doing more damage if hit. Finally the pilot, he gets a lockpick item which can be used in place of finding keys to open chests as well as cheaper items from the in-gungeon stores.

Once you have selected your character you get dropped quite literally into the gungeon proper with the task of basically reaching the end. As with many rogue-lites however that is far easier said than done and each death is permanent. I find the combat in this game to be one of it's greatest strengths it is by and large skill based, thanks to the dodge roll mechanics (Dodge Roll is also the name of the dev's.)

The dodge roll itself provides some immunity frames for it's first half which you would know if you played the tutorial (and you should.) It is frankly essential as especially in rooms with lots of enemies it can quite literally turn into bullet hell.

Another thing which helps the game is the variety on offer in a lot of it's aspects, weapon and item variety as well as enemy variety. Enemies all have their own behaviour and AI as well as their own attacks and bullet patterns you need to learn so you don't find yourself thrown back to the breach.

Even after the time I have sunk into it I have yet to see all the weapons (I know the death screen at the end shows 15 runs total but I reset my save a while ago.) There is pretty much everything you can think of and some you likely didn't. AK-47's, UZI's, Tommy Guns, Shotguns of every flavour, bows, crossbows and many more of the 200+ that I just won't spoil. That isn't even getting into the host of passive and active items like health upgrades and molotov cocktails.

Resource management is also a key aspect, from your limited health to your better weapons which have limited ammo and can only be replenished by various ammo boxes (though if you are lucky you can buy some at shops too.)

It's harder than I thought to get good action screenshots in this!

When you get on a good run the game can be insanely fun, when you find the perfect selection of passive items and weapons and plow through the hordes of gundead with ease. The environments and the way they react to battles also keeps the gunplay pretty interesting, fighting in what looks like a library? Then expect there to be books and pages flying about as you and your enemies exchange fire. Whilst luck will always be a big part of rogue-lite games Enter the Gungeon feels genuinely more about skill.

Most all the weapons are at the very least interesting to use and vary in effectiveness from godlike to junk (I am looking at you unfinished gun!)

Boss battles are always interesting and often pretty tense experiences and I haven't seen much less beaten them all yet but as with the enemies there is quite a variety of bosses and even some secret ones as I understand it.

It's not a perfect game by any stretch and the following would best sum up the flaws I think it has:

• Somewhat punishing difficulty level: Whilst this has been improved with the latest content update (Advanced Gungeons & Draguns) it can still stomp all over you but a lot of the difficulty is now centered on the next flaw. 
• The battle against the random: If you don't get a decent weapon on the first floor even beating that first boss can be a grueling affair. Also if you get no ammo drops your better weapons will eventually run dry. Though the latest update did increase the in-run currency drops (brass) so you can sometimes alleviate the RNG with the shop on each floor.
• Wiki syndrome: This isn't the only rogue-lite to fall into this trap and Enter the Gungeon's Ammonomicon (the in game encyclopedia) does explain what most things do. Some mechanics like the way the curse stat works are never explained in game which, genuinely makes little sense to me. Meaning if you want to understand the ins and outs of the game you'll have to search for it outside of the game. 

In conclusion out of the many rogue-lite action games to emerge over the years and the fact this has had two pretty hefty free content updates make this among my favourite games of the last few years. Despite how hard the game can be and the frustration when you get a bad run it is one of the better rogue-lites out there and I see myself getting many more hours out of this.

Games I Love: Everspace

Personally I have always loved games set in space almost regardless of their genre (or genres these days!) Everything from space combat games like freespace, real time strategies like Homeworld and grand Strategies like Distant Worlds and Stellaris. So Everspace naturally had my attention helped in large part by the stunning screenshots I was seeing on the way up to it's release also helped by it's unique take on things. It's like Freespace meets FTL with a whole heaping of crafting, resource gathering and exploration thrown in for good measure with some random level generation and permadeath.

Visually stunning areas are the norm in Everspace!

A typical run of Everspace will see you selecting a ship from those you have unlocked so a fresh game would see you with only one (two with the DLC, I can't quite remember.) Spending any credits you earned from previous runs on permanent upgrades like increased loot drops or more weapon slots for particular ships. Then you select your difficulty and boom, you get thrown into one of the most stunning looking space games out there.

The combat and exploration part of the game is the main meat if you will, your goal is to reach the final sector much as in FTL. Within each area there are usually a multitude of things to do most key among them is making sure you have enough fuel to make the jump to the next area to continue your journey. Aside from that there is loot to be found from weapons to improved shields and many more I won't spoil as well as resources and blueprints (which are another permanent progression aspect for your runs.) There are wrecked freighters, bandit bases, hollowed out asteroids and more to poke around in for goodies however there is a catch beyond the outlaws and other enemies you will find. Linger too long in one sector and some mysterious aliens show up to put an end to you meaning you can't take too long in each sector lest you lose precious resources like missiles and the ever important repairing nanobots.

Which brings me onto the combat which just feels very satisfying to me helped in large part by some of the most epic and awesome explosions I have seen in a long time! Each weapon feels like it has it's place and uses, the humble pulse laser is very effective against shields whereas the satisfying gatling enjoys shredding some hulls. You can even apply three upgrades to each weapon should you have the materials and blueprints to do so. Whether you want to make that new beam laser you just found even more adept at stripping shields, fire a bit further or improve it's hull damage to make it more of an all rounder is entirely up to you. Whether it's dodging around an asteroid for cover whilst your shields recharge or finding out you can actually shoot down incoming missiles it's hard not to enjoy the combat in Everspace. Whilst you do have the option of flying in third or first person I personally prefer the extra situational awareness of third person.

See, I told you the explosions were epic!

I think I have only ever fully completed a single run of Everspace but I still have fun with it and often fire it up just to get some epic space action when I don't have time for something more in-depth. My personal favourite ship so far is the gunship simply due to how much firepower it has access to. Sure it loses the regenerating shields of the other ships but when you have that turret firing, a flak cannon thudding away and are spitting missiles out as if they are going out of fashion it makes me so gleeful. When you get that good run going it's just amazing but that brings me to the few flaws the game has, it's fantastic but not perfect.

Not only do you have pilot upgrades but upgrades per ship too!

The first flaw is the lack of an in system map, now I know you can occasionally find a comm array which flags everything in the area for you but still. It would be nice if things were at least tagged in lieu of a map so you could find them again once you have had them in sensor range once.

The second one is a minor issue to me, largely and it's to do with the initial difficulty. Before you have unlocked any of the permanent upgrades it can be hard to progress very far unless you opt as I eventually did to play on easy to get some of them.

Space can be a daunting place...

In light of that any new players who pick this up I have a few tips to potentially help it be less frustrating:

• Play on 'Easy' for your first few runs: Whilst you take a 25% penalty to found credits in general you will usually get further so you'll end up getting more to spend at the start of the next run. This way you will get more unlocks making the higher difficulties more manageable.
• Unlock Pilot Upgrades First: You will just have to trust me on this one, I know it's tempting to open more weapon slots or a new ship but the pilot upgrades apply to all ships. So increased credit loot bonus is best taken early along with improvements to nanobots. More credits means more unlocks, better nanobots means you will get further. 
• Don't hoard consumables and missiles: I know I used to do the same, not using things just in case I need them later. Best to just use them as and when you need them whilst you are learning the ins and outs of the game. 

I need bigger guns for this..

In conclusion Everspace to me is an awesome space combat game and some of the most stunning visuals I have seen, the explosions and nebula effects are especially good. It is one of my more recent favourites and I think I'll be getting many more hours of enjoyment out of it on top of the many I have already gotten from it!