Nylige anmeldelser av Mankybus

I played this on my Xbox 360 a couple of months ago and it's one my most recent gaming darlings, so much so I'd say this game is probably up there in my all time favourites. Even today since its original release on the Xbox 360 and PS3 there has been nothing like El Shaddai and that's a crying shame when this deserved so much better. El Shaddai had some big balls for a AAA/middle shelf game by being an utterly gorgeous interactive gallery of abstract art, which is something not even most indie games have tried to pull off all the while being a very enjoyable platformer and a rock solid hack n' slash melee combat game at the same time. It's utterly weird, bizarre and incredibly unique and that's why it captured my heart and imagination. I mean what other games lets you share the love of God by beating the living hell out of all the dodgy blokes that are made from Smarties cake mix?

Pros:
- Absolutely gorgeous abstract art direction
- Lots of different styles and variety in every level
- Great hack n' slash gameplay with plenty of combos, blocks, parries, dashes and the awesome boost mode
- Subtle but plenty of variety with platforming, puzzle solving and boss fights without straying too far from the core gameplay - apart from a certain bit that's amazingly dumb and silly
- Interesting story with a small bit of cheeky fourth wall breaking goodness
- Excellent English voice acting, Jason Isaacs especially did a fantastic job as Lucifel
- A varied, eclectic and well composed soundtrack
- Simple 4 button control scheme making it very accessible for just about anyone
- Quite zen-like for these types of games and is easier than most but it can really bring the challenge at times, especially during the boss fights
- Immersive HUDless game design with everything expressed clearly via the game's visuals and audio
- A good 8-10 hour length with plenty of replay value to find hidden secrets and to challenge higher difficulties
- The nephilim are adorable silly sausage men and they don't deserve the pain they live with

Cons:
- PC port leaves a lot to desired in terms of adjustable features
- Graphical inaccuracies to the original console releases with too much bloom obscuring scenes, textures being lower res and a total lack of in-game anti-aliasing
- No keyboard and mouse support if that's your thing
- Enemy visual designs are disappointing with mostly variations on oddly dressed humanoids
- Combat is not as deep as most games of this genre
- Boost Mode gauge not clearly conveyed during gameplay
- Platforming physics can be a little dodgy at times
- A little too cutscene heavy and has those dreaded walking sections in some parts of the game
- A little too linear with not enough room for exploration

There is so much to love about this game and the cons I listed are very minor. If you're like me in that you adore a unique, interesting visual experience that doesn't look like any other game you see on the market then El Shaddai is absolutely worth the £20 asking price. The combat is great fun, the music is very cool, the story is intriguing and it is a visual treat to boot. If you can deal with a very bare bones PC port then this is one of my highest recommendations yet!

Probably one of the most creative platformers I've ever played that thoroughly expands on what the genre is capable of with an utterly adorable and charming aesthetic with cute octopuses and a pretty excellent soundtrack.

However everything this game gets so very, very right is completely shot down by the actual gameplay itself. I have no problems with hard games: dying, losing and retrying is a huge part of the fun for me when I play them but from my experience this is the wrong kind of hard. Early on the game is quite fun and you can easily get to grips with the gameplay but it progresses in difficulty extremely quickly; this is mainly due to the controls being incredibly slippery thanks to your octopus' momentum so you're constantly sliding into hazards. The game's physics are also shoddy, sometimes the game reacts the way you expect it to but if you're on a moving or spinning platform then I hope RNG is on your side because sometimes when you jump you will just get flung into a hazard or out of the stage with zero warning thus causing you to suffer a cheap death. It's a precision platformer yet the controls and physics lack precision, which isn't good.

But not only that, your hitbox feels surprisingly massive as there are far too many times where I should be safe only to get killed or where I clearly jumped over an obstacle but it somehow counted as a death anyway. The game also has a bad habit of introducing new mechanics and level design without that "safety net" most other platformers use to quickly ease you in, so you're expected to know exactly what to do right away otherwise you die yet another cheap death. More often than not it's something ridiculous like having to fling yourself a great distance from a body of water or a platform that rockets you up into the ceiling and you have to tilt it right otherwise, you guessed it, you die. Those sound great on paper and they should be in practice but in actuality they are infuriatingly hard and stupendously inconsistent to the point I lost my temper in world 4.

While I don't play many platformers, I actually like them quite a bit but Airscape just felt horribly sloppy to play, it's like the developer tried aiming for Super Meat Boy difficulty without the incredibly tight and responsive controls and a much greater overuse of poorly placed hazards. I feel It's the kind of hard game where the thought process was to make a hard game that people will die on all the time which is unlike most good hard game which are made to be challenging, exhilarating and making you feel like a champ when you overcome those trials; I never once felt that during my time in Airscape - I just felt like the game was simply wasting my time with BS artificial difficulty.

I honestly don't understand why Airscape is so highly rated, for me it became an absolute chore after a single hour and I REALLY wanted to like this game because I adore its style, aesthetic, the cute octopuses and its amazingly creative approach to platforming but I just felt I was constantly kicked in the shins and I really don't want to play anymore of it. I feel if this game took a more chilled out, relaxed and zen approach to its gameplay with a greater emphasis on the puzzle aspects to perfectly fit its aesthetic then I would love Airscape with a burning passion. But as it stands, unless you want to torment yourself with a needlessly hard game that feels almost trial and error, I have to give this a firm thumbs down.

This is game developed completely developed by a single person and I don't mean your stock Unity asset flip, no sir/madam this game was developed COMPLETELY by a single person: models, textures, animations, sound effects, music, programming and even the entire engine the whole thing is running on. Star Explorers is an incredibly impressive game considering the circumstances and it is still being updated bit by bit even to this day. As far as No Man's Sky clones go, even though it's a bit limited, it's still pretty damn good. It's not perfect and it severely lacks in variety but for such a cheap price with so much game to explore and enjoy, I'd say this is well worth picking up if you can handle its flaws and a potential early game grind depending on RNG.

Pros:
- Very chill and zen experience
- Strong focus on exploration, resource gathering and relaxation with almost no focus on combat is where the game shines
- Massive randomly generated galaxy with tons of different worlds to discover
- Plenty of gear to loot and craft
- Relaxing if somewhat repetitive music
- Lo-fi aesthetic giving it a unique look
- Incredibly cheap at full price

Cons:
- The main hub with tons of vendors are locked off until you complete the first mission
- RNG can make the planet you're meant to explore for your first mission so treacherous that it can cause you to ground hours before you can complete that objective
- Caves are incredibly dull and samey yet are required for progression
- Ancient ruins and alien spacecrafts to explore are few and far between, they also suffer the same issue as the caves
- Alien tech drops are so rare, I haven't even found items such as the alien injectors in my 25 hours of play
- Randomised aliens are so samey in visuals and function and only one type shows up on each planet
- Some systems are poorly explained to the player even with the in-game tutorial
- Navigation to find stars and planets in space can be a total nuisance
- Ship controls to manually fly around a solar system are slow and not very responsive
- Canned animations for initiating and cancelling planet orbiting is needlessly slow and cumbersome
- Combat is terrible with only 4 guns to use and enemy hitboxes are awful with shots often passing through enemies
- Dialogue with NPCs is basically non-existent and they only give fetch quests
- Can be very buggy
- Some achievements like exploring planets won't pop up
- Performance in areas such as the mothership, alien cities and highly decorated planets leaves a lot to be desired

I may have listed a fairly huge amount of cons compared to pros but most of those cons you can easily get used to within time and those pros are extremely strong pros if you're looking for a zen gaming experience. It's very much a game where you just sit back and chill to while forgetting the world around you, exploring some often quiet and interesting alien planets to gather resources to discover even more interesting far out worlds as you find a new Earth for humanity.

I think Star Explorers absolutely succeeds at what it sent out to do and I see myself coming back to this through the coming years when I'm looking for that lo-fi space faring cruise to just wash away the annoyances of every day life. I think this is the kind of game that would be perfect on a portable system like the Switch but until then, something like the GPD Win systems are perhaps the best way to play this when laying in bed all warm and cozy.

Star Explorers comes highly recommended if you can get past its many, many flaws!

What Half-Life 2 would be if it was developed in Unity, by a single bloke from Russia, completely in his spare time. And that's okay! It's honestly quite a fun little game and it feels like a real passion project that's fun enough to be worth a play and short enough to not outstay its welcome clocking in between 3-5 hours for a first playthrough. It is quite janky for sure but for it's price, especially on sale, you can't really go wrong here.

Pros:
- Solid gunplay with plenty of kick
- Feels like a Source game/mod
- Plenty of variety in environments which are lovingly crafted
- A good variety of weapons and attachments
- An incredibly fun and hammy villain
- Some surprisingly effective horror sections
- A vehicle section!? You almost never see those even in AAA games!
- Some gorgeous lighting at times
- Vortex X is such a great gun, the game has a full mode dedicated to it after completion
- Unlockables to incentivise replays

Cons:
- Ammo is needlessly scarce and you can only pick up ammo for weapons you're carrying unless you find ammo boxes
- Only 3 enemy types in the entire game
- Enemies are significantly tougher than they should be
- Hip fire is near useless unless someone is right in your face
- Voice acting is atrocious across the board, only the villain is funny bad
- Allied characters all look like famous magicians and have no facial animations at all
- Story and world building is non-existent
- Characters are completely forgettable, except the villain
- Some sections have no enemies when they really should
- While the length was perfect for me, it might be too short for some

This game has sadly gone under most peoples' radars and is often unfairly and negatively compared to Valve's masterpiece Half-Life 2 but I feel those people completely miss the point of Red Alliance. It's a love letter to Valve's classic and that's all it needed to be and it succeeds at that; the dev never once set out to usurp its crown and those expecting it to even be on the same level are only setting themselves up for sheer disappointment.

I honestly wish we had more games in the same vein as Half-Life 2; with the amazing resurgence of absolutely stellar boomer shooters then maybe we'll get more games like this? If it interests you and you're curious to see what a Half-Life clone would be like through the scope of a single Unity developer paying homage to their favourite game then this is well worth a shot if you're in the mood for a little bit of jank! Honestly I'd say the main villain alone is worth the asking price, I love it when voice actors ham up a fun villain.

Honestly this game seems totally up my alley, a first person survival horror roguelite? That sounds like a dream game for me! But it was sadly never finished and was left in an incredibly rough state, so much so I find it unplayable with oversized UI elements and jarring frame drops for no reason as well as some bafflingly infuriating design decisions.

It's a shame really because there could have been an amazing game here but it's sadly a dud.

I love the EDF games. I love the EDF spin-offs also and while I personally think Iron Rain is the best of the spin-off games I would say World Brothers is a very close second place because it is just an excellent game that perfectly captures the essence of the series in a cute voxel shooter full of unique characters with fun abilities. It is still a great EDF game and in general a great shooter despite what the spin-off detractors keep trying to tell you and is a very different flavour that no other EDF game has thus making it very unique in the series.

Pros:
- Classic EDF gameplay
- Cute, bouncy and pretty visuals and aesthetic
- Tons of characters to play as
- Loads of abilities, combined with character switching allows for fun and creative synergies
- Pure EDF fanservice with weapons, enemies and more from past games
- Huge variety of locations from around the world
- Lighthearted story with characters that don't take anything seriously
- Tons of improvements, changes and QOL additions also found in Iron Rain that I wish the mainline series would adopt

Cons:
- Not as child friendly as it may seem as characters frequently use curse words (just a word of warning for the parents out there)
- No creative modes at all, the game looks like it was made for this
- A little too easy for my liking despite some enemies getting notable buffs
- Unskippable special ability animations
- Some enemies deal crazy damage even on normal difficulty, leaving you in a revive loop from time to time
- A bit too pricey with too much DLC

Whether you're an EDF fan and enjoy the fact that these spin offs are different from the mainline games or just a fan of shooters and wants to try something a lot different to what you usually play then World Brothers is a great choice. While I feel the game is a bit too expensive at full price and the complete lack of creative modes is a disappointment; what you have here is a great shooter and a great if somewhat different EDF experience.

Well worth it.

I decided to start playing through a ton of my RPG games that have been in my backlog for years and this is the first game I decided to try. I have to be honest with you, this is quite possibly one of the worst games I have ever played in my life.

Numen is basically a WoW clone MMORPG that is purely singleplayer. Sounds great for people who enjoy that tab-targeting style of combat and while I personally don't I decided to give it a shot regardless just to try something new and different. At first I found it to be charming, I love ancient Greek mythology and this game has a lot of cool stuff in it. The starting island is slow, honestly it's too slow but it's a nice introduction to the game regardless, going for a similar setup to Fable where you start your adventuring life out as a child and eventually grow up into a champion of your chosen deity. It sounds good doesn't it? And on paper it's a great idea for an RPG.

There's a lot of cool and interesting systems here - choosing your god, how the game governs your class when you reach adulthood, the chance to participate in arena matches, etc. There IS a good game in here and has tons of things I reckon RPG players will definitely enjoy.

However everything about this game is completely undone by it's truly abysmal and atrocious combat. While I am biased for disliking tab-targeting, I understand why people can enjoy it because I was having a bit of fun to begin with - however even I know this is a horrible example of tab-targeting combat. This is one of those games where every enemy is way more powerful than you, way faster than you, will happily gang up on you and you will get killed over and over and over again.

I have no issue with difficulty, in fact I enjoy hard games when they're fair and exciting or at least thoroughly entertaining but this game's difficulty simply comes down to its RPG mechanics being downright unfair. You can wail on an enemy using up tons of your mana and you will constantly see a message that says "resisted" despite the fact you hit the enemy, blood is clearly being drawn and you sometimes even stagger your opponent but just because of bad RNG you will not deal any damage. This happens often.

And to make things even worse, once you reach adulthood you NEVER resist damage, you almost never parry or dodge because you will simply take hit after hit. Enemies have a shockingly high chance of dealing critical damage, they will frequently stun you over and over, you will get staggered so often you struggle getting a hit in and to top it all off enemies that are around your level are always significantly stronger than you so they're also insanely tough with so much health thus making combat a tedious slog. You cannot fight more than one enemy, it's basically impossible and when you run away enemies will leash with a message saying "evade" and you watch them magically refill their health instantly. While you have to wait a minute before yours comes back.

Melee enemies however are mostly fine and are easy to kite, their attacks can be avoided and they are honestly quite fun, especially with a mage or hunter build but ranged enemies are an absolute shambles. Their attacks will ALWAYS hit you. No matter how much you manoeuvre out the way or use the environment as cover, it never ever works. Their projectiles will always hit you no matter what and to top that off enemies have absurdly long ranges and will happily spam attacks through walls where you can't see them while your ranged attacks are extremely limited and you cannot attack through solid surfaces as the game warns you enemies are out of your line of sight. Just don't even bother dealing with spellcaster enemies, the amount of damage they deal in a single hit is just flabbergasting.

After a while I noticed this game's pattern of bombarding the player with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ difficulty in a vein attempt to add difficulty when in reality the game is just an unfair slog that made me drop it and when it's not hard the enemies are still needlessly tough - banging your head against a difficulty wall or slashing away at boring spongy enemies, either way it's tedium embodied.

I eventually thought to myself, okay maybe this game takes elements from MMOs quite literally so maybe I have to grind. Well yes in order to use the better stuff I do have to grind but despite getting level after level against a camp of tribal desert men, I was not getting any stronger at all. No matter how many levels I gained and no matter how much higher my level was than the enemy, I was still getting absolutely wrecked. Eventually I thought maybe it's equipment based and that sounds like a sensible answer but you get so much gear that your class cannot use, gear that requires more grinding to use and even shop items are so expensive and making money is so slow and boring and my god do you feel the tedium yet? Not only that but loot is just insanely dull and you will never get anything interesting beyond tiny stat boosts.

Getting a new weapon doesn't help because the auto attack absolutely sucks and makes combat even more of a slog than it already is and your skills, your main damage dealing attacks, don't level up or grow more powerful with you. Not only that, elemental attacks don't matter neither - you'd think ice would be useful on desert enemies right? Nope! Same damage as fire. You'd think fire would be great on enemies that reside within ice caverns but NOPE same damage as ice. And not only that, some skills can attack other enemies you don't intent to attack from quite a distance away meaning you aggro more enemies around you and yep you guessed it, you get ganked and killed in seconds.

I wouldn't mind too much about ♥♥♥♥♥♥ combat in an RPG if there was some fun quests, stories, characters and all sorts of things to do and you may have guess this already from all of my complaints so far but NOPE THERE IS NONE. ZERO. IN AN RPG! A ROLEPLAYING GAME! A RUPGUH! THERE IS NONE OF THIS STUFF TO KEEP ME ENGAGED! MMOs and even RPGs from the 80s added quests to get rewards like experience, good loot, fun stories and just some bloody motivation to help break the tedium a bit with some fun writing and characters but this game doesn't have any of that. The only way to level up and get stuff is to just grind the same disgustingly overpowered mobs over and over and my lord I am so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick of it. It's just grind grind grind kill kill kill with nothing interesting in between. Even the arena combatants are insanely boring and tedious to fight because of their massive damage output and insanely tough defense and they frequently spawn with lowered health bars.

That's all this game is, nothing but combat and fighting the same mobs, dealing with all the same bs, getting constant resists while your enemies crit you over and over again. And that combat isn't even good in the slightest! It's just mashing the number keys to use the same skills over and over getting nowhere fast. Your character doesn't resume auto attacking when you run out of mana, you have to do that manually. Your character doesn't auto retaliate when an enemy attacks you, making you click on them to auto attack manually. And even when you click to attack an enemy or just to simply loot a corpse or treasure chest, your character goes into auto pilot to do what you tell him/her to do except nope they constantly go in directions you do NOT want them to go meaning they'll take the slow path or constantly get stuck on geometry or even worse running up to random enemies you didn't want to aggro meaning you suffer another unfair death.

That said death is thankfully not a huge setback, it just takes you back to the nearest resting place and respawns enemies. As far as I can tell you don't lose any experience or favour with your god, it's a small bit of sympathy for the player but ultimately does nothing to combat this game's overwhelming love for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and awful game design.

Stay FAR away from this ♥♥♥♥!

Before Bioshock and Deus Ex we had System Shock: still an absolute classic to this very day. It's not Doom so don't expect that going into it but rather you should expect the birth of the immersive sim. A slow paced, difficult, tactical horror FPS and one of the earliest story-focused shooters ever made. It gets SO many things right that most modern shooters fail miserably when it comes to storytelling and world building. And the best part is by far the villain; the one and only Shodan. As usual in my reviews I break things down:

Pros
- Challenging but satisfying tactical combat
- Massive and highly explorable space station with excellent level design
- No hand holding, it's up to you to figure it all out and rewards players who pay attention
- A unique interface and control scheme that sets it apart from other shooters even for its time
- Highly adjustable difficulty settings for individual gameplay elements
- Lots of weapons, ammo types, grenades, upgrades and consumables to allow for many styles of play
- Lots of horror and spooks
- Excellent soundtrack
- Great art style with some gorgeous and grotesque enemies and environments for its time
- Amazing storytelling focused on audio logs and environmental scenery
- Shodan is a scary waifu

Cons
- Music can be too loud and energetic for its dark, slow paced horror atmosphere
- Over-reliance on hitscan robot enemies
- Movement mechanics are bizarre, sometimes getting launched or slowed down for no reason
- Control scheme might be too cumbersome for most players
- Too much ammo, robots and cyborg enemy corpses drown you in it
- Cyberspace sections, while rare, they suck despite being cool and impressive in 1994
- Audio logs spoken dialogue is completely different to the written dialogue they come with
- Voice acting is stilted and dull, except for Shodan
- Sound design is a hilariously loud mess, especially in radiation zones
- While the final parts of the game are great especially the visuals for the final boss, the ending cutscene is very abrupt and disappointing

All that said, my gripes are very minor and are well overshadowed by everything System Shock does so very right. Nightdive's work on bringing this classic up to date for modern systems is nothing short of spectacular and its very cheap price point makes it well worth the buy especially if you're looking for a lengthy game where a first playthrough can last up to 15 hours like mine did. If you're put off by the control scheme or any other aspect of the game then rejoice because the System Shock remake is drawing close at the time of writing this review and I'm so excited to step back onto Citadel Station in all its modernised glory.

It has definitely become one of my favourite games and I recommend this janky masterpiece wholeheartedly.

If there was ever a game that I did not expect to resonate with me so much, it would be Hellpoint. When I tried the demo; The Thespian Feast I thought "Meh it's okay I guess", but I decided to take the plunge and bought the full game a couple of days after release to give it a real honest fair shake, and to support a new up and coming developer. And oh my did I fall in love so deeply with this game as it has become one of my all time favourite games ever. Yes it is a Souls-like and yes it is rough around the edges with some balance issues and bugs but it's one of those games I found myself continuously coming back to and loving every run I do because it always felt fresh and different trying out new builds, routes and seeing the game world change around me all the time as I discover new thing.

However it's definitely far from perfect and as usual I break things down:

Pros
- Weighty, challenging and methodic combat
- Beautiful surreal art style with a dark dreamlike quality
- Huge interconnected non-linear world with lots of find and explore
- Loads of secrets
- Lore, lore, lore! There's lots of interesting lore to find
- Tons of build and play style variety and viability
- Excellent soundtrack
- Almost every weapon has unique, interesting abilities
- Enemies are very varied in appearance and fighting styles
- Platforming that works surprisingly well in a Souls-like
- Perhaps the best rendition of teleporting in a Souls-like, forcing you to use precious resources
- Great multiplayer with co-op, PVP and splitscreen play
- The clock mechanic can cause interesting world events
- Daring and Fearful Effigies to change the New Game cycle are excellent additions
- Every time you die the world can change in subtle or overt ways
- A bunch of content, a first run can last 20+ hours
- Insane amounts of replayability with different endings and new things to try out
- Runs incredibly well even on low end hardware
- Heaps of options to get the game looking and feeling just right for you
- Plenty of fun Easter eggs and references hidden throughout the game

Cons
- New Game+ is sorely lacking with no new additions, changes or goals whatsoever - it really needs spicing up
- The clock mechanic isn't dynamic enough, accretion storms and black hole hours could be far more dangerous with more high level spawns and environmental hazards - I'd love to see the world change in far more drastic and challenging ways
- Eliminating cosmic gods doesn't have enough impact on the world, again I wish this could change the world in more varied and interesting ways
- Outer space sections are underused and disappointing
- Can be incredibly buggy at times albeit nothing gamebreaking
- Sound and music frequently cuts off on all machines I played on
- Two incredibly important NPCs are bugged to some degree, one randomly running around while the other randomly returns to the Observatory despite having never spoken to them
- Certain elemental damage types are overpowered while others are underpowered
- A bunch of enemies feel too weak in standard NG, especially the upgraded victims
- Some weapon abilities are near useless
- The Interface boss kinda sucks and is incredibly easy to cheese its AI
- Lack of proper mod support
- No map to any degree; while I know my way around the game, it would be a welcome addition

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These next two paragraphs are directed to Cradle Games, the developers of Hellpoint: While it goes without saying that I want to see all the issues I mentioned ironed out, I do believe shaking things up completely for New Game+ would make me care about NG+ a lot, perhaps with random elements that change up enemy spawns, item spawns, NPC locations and perhaps a new goal to achieve that's different to the first NG cycle. Making the game clock and cosmic god kills have a far greater impact on the world in interesting ways would also help to make the game so much more dynamic especially for replays. For example a list of potential changes that could happen: more varied enemy spawns, new enemies in previous areas, ghosts spawning across the whole game like the one in the High Ateliers, opening the player up to invasions, gameplay modifiers e.g. mirror mode, enemy buffs, player debuffs, random elements, new gear, new NPCs and sidequests and so much more that could change the game in so many fun ways - even if it's just a separate game mode in the main menu if you'd want to keep the vanilla game intact. All of this would make Hellpoint even more special via forcing the player to adapt to new and different rules in the game world.

I also believe adding proper mod support with the right tools and Steam Workshop to truly change every aspect of the game to whatever the player would ever want with new locations, enemies, gear and so much more created by the community would elevate Hellpoint to even greater heights and would likely keep me constantly playing non-stop. Making said tools as open as possible would allow the community to really fix the issues I mentioned and didn't even think of too. I would also love to see some more content updates and paid DLC too wink wink nudge nudge Cradle Games and TinyBuild bat eyelash bat eyelash.
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As you can tell, I absolutely love and adore Hellpoint on so many levels but I do feel it was released before it was finished as there is still quite a bit of work the developers could do to make this diamond in the rough really shine and be hailed as one of the best Souls-likes out there. So yes, it's definitely not for everyone but if those issues I mentioned are something you can deal with and aren't enough to deter you from this gem then I think you will enjoy Hellpoint a ton. It's a game you can really lose yourself in, I know I often do.

I knew I was going to like this game since it very much captures the essence of Serious Sam but I really wasn't prepared for how much I was going to like it. I enjoy top down twin stick shooters a lot even though I don't play them as much as I would like to and honestly this has kept me hooked to completing it and has me itching to play even more. Be it mods, survival, versus, co-op, replaying the campaign, etc, it's just great fun and really deserves a lot of love.

Pros:
- Excellent gameplay
- Tons of great weapons, old and new
- Loads of enemies on screen at once
- Great and challenging boss fights
- Plenty of mutators to keep replays fresh
- Gorgeous 2D pixel art
- Great soundtrack
- Huge sprawling levels with lots to explore
- Loads of secrets to find
- Tons of content and replay value even in the vanilla game
- Comes with a full game editor; maps, mods, you name it
- Splitscreen/online co-op and versus

Cons:
- Can get caught on things quite easily in tight areas
- Visually busy making it hard to avoid things at times
- Status effects can be a bit of a pain
- Destroying cores that spawn a load of enemies is very tedious
- Instakill spike traps really suck
- Minefields are a pain to deal with
- No quicksaves/manual saving, checkpoints only that are very spread out
- Respawning on death is a pain when you have to run for ages to get back to where you were

It's a shame the game sold so poorly when it's genuinely fantastic especially when it has some crazy creative marketing. I reckon with ports to consoles, Switch or heck even the PS Vita or Android could breathe more life into this game that deserved better.

It's not perfect but as far as hidden little indie gems and Serious Sam games go, it's a fantastic buy even at full price. Not only for Serious Sam fans but even those who just like top down shooters and aren't familiar with Serious Sam will get a good load of fun out of it. I'm excited to try out the editor to see what kind of crazy things I can make as it seems extremely robust as well as try out mods other people have made - I can see myself spend much more time with this for sure. I just hope I can encourage others to give it a try.