Recent reviews by Brian

Super adorable game. Easy and fun "puzzles", if you can call them that, which serve as a very simple story driver. It's short, and I would love to play more, but I think it hit the right length.

Game Corp DX is a reasonably vanilla tycoon game based around creating and selling games. It's fun and reasonably well designed. The biggest seller for this game is actually building your studio. Unfortunately, it also feels like one of the largest faults. The progression in the game is well paced, though doesn't take very long to simply crush through and doesn't have a huge amount of variety. The art and interface is pleasant but nothing terribly unique.

Overall, Game Corp DX is a solid B. Worth playing once or twice, but it's hard to know if I'll really feel driven to boot it up more than that.

The biggest innovation of sorts for Game Corp DX is actively building your entire studio. Placing and maneuvering where your workers are as well as decorating the office end up taking up a substantial amount of your focus and, consequently, has one of the few direct influences on how well your games perform.

Because of the importance of building, and the lack of variation of employee selection, fine tuning your studio becomes of utmost importance. This simply means placing your employees close to break areas (water and food) and increasing the pleasantness of the environment (a plant or a statue). There's a huge focus on making an efficient and enjoyable office, yet there are only a small handful of actual objects to build.

Moving through the game is fairly logical. Starting with a small studio and small games, you work to earn some cash to get more employees and make more games. You can make your studio larger, and then repeat. Earn more cash, get more employees. This progression is pretty typical, and it does move quick enough. But with only a few different places to move (which is simply a change in color palette and a slightly larger studio area), it doesn't take too long to essentially finish all the major progression.

After "finishing" the progression, it makes sense to start aiming at some larger goals, but at that point it becomes starkly obvious how little of input you actually have on the success of individual games. Specialization of employees and adjusting their traits using the laughably cheap build options makes every game nearly impossible to under perform.

The flavor and style of Game Corp DX is pleasant. The numerous references in game titles and competing game companies is enjoyable and wonderfully well placed and make for an interesting world. The interface is comfortable and usable with minor quirks (a red X in top right corner? not for closing windows?) and makes for a good experience.

There's really nothing that made me angry or upset about Game Corp DX. It's truly just a matter wanting that little bit more, a small bit extra, and a few new things to build on a decent enough core of a game.

It's getting involved with the Battle Royale fad without having to play Battle Royale.

Truthfully, Battle Royale Tycoon is pretty fun, it's just a bit empty right now. Mechanics are pretty reminiscent of the older Roller Coaster Tycoon games, though significantly fewer options. A small choice of aesthetics to couple with the small number of "attractions" (called "arenas" and "fun" in game) makes a pretty mundane experience in terms of building your park.

The only other things to purchase other than a single type of path and queue's for your attractions are three "Park" buildings, which include a research station to add a sort of progression to your park. It's a bit telling when the entire progression is only 20 or so unlocks, many of which are simply larger forms of the already owned arenas.

It's fun to have customization for essentially every building other than the food and drink stalls, even though it's incredibly hard to gauge if there is any "purpose" to being more creative. More components to the arena change it's layout type (closed, balanced, open) which can match with guests preferences, but there doesn't feel like a lot more depth than that for building.

Personally, my lower end system doesn't keep up the best with Battle Royale Tycoon even with a fairly small park, though only when zoomed all the way out or when increasing the time above the base setting. Hang-ups and low framerate is the norm for my 650 ti, though that's reasonably expected for any current game.

Overall, it's an interesting game. A relatively unique idea, though a bit half baked as it is. As it stands, I would give this game a pass for now, though I would be happy to give it another roll further on.

Let's be honest: Diablo 3 wasn't that great. We all expected so much after Diablo 2 and the many years in between, waiting for the next installment.

Grim Dawn could've been that sequel.

So much of Grim Dawn feels and acts like Diablo. The atmostphere and soundtrack are dark and eerie. The landscape is desolate and flooded with interesting creatures. The loot is wonderful to pilfer and satisfying to upgrade.

The biggest downfall of Grim Dawn is a pretty empty story. There's a lot to be found in lore, and there are tons of things to find and do out in your grim wasteland. But the story itself is hollow. You're just moving from place to place because someone told you to. There's no big threat that's looming, there's no big bad that you're hunting down. It's simply moving from faction to faction, working to earn their trust, then moving on to the next area.

The progression in Grim Dawn, however, is superb. Progressing from an classless Taken to a multiclass horde-wrecker is simply wonderful. There are so few plateaus on your way up the ladder that it's remarkable. New skills are satisfying, and proficiencies increasing existing skills can make even the simplest skills deadly.

Multiplayer is solid, though I haven't personally delved too far into it, having only played locally with a few friends.

Grim Dawn is a pretty amazing take on the ARPG dungeon crawler. With plenty to do in your first playthrough to your fifth and enough end-game content to make maxed out equipment and builds desireable.

Now it's just a matter of waiting for the next expansion.

Gruesome and satisfying.

Gunplay is understandably great. Run and gun is shown at is peak with Doom. Swapping between your robust arsenal is incredibly rewarding and can make you feel unbelievably powerful.

Animations and controls are tight and response, as they should be in a fast paced shooter. Hit detection is a bit lenient, but there's really no fault in that considering the speed of not only your character, but enemies as well.

The story is there and actually pretty interesting. It's not developed all too much, but it at least gives you a reason for slaying hordes of demons. But a reason why isn't the important part of Doom. It's just firing BFGs and mowing down creatures left and right.

Short but sweet, but sort of left wanting.

The exploration, visuals, music, atmosphere, and voice acting are all superb. It truly does pull you in and make you a part of your small slice of the wilderness.

The story is solid, though there are criticisms to be made. The ending is abrupt and pretty unsatisfying. The build to a climax is outstanding, but the twist of there being no twist was an awkward way to end the story

Whole heartedly recommend this short experience to just about anyone.

Overall a very solid game with plenty to do. Art style is very appealing, though fairly unoriginal. Gameplay is pretty interesting with an awesome way of progressing through different gameplay mechanics (tech tree).

It did feel a bit grindy at certain points, but nothing outrageous. Blue points were hard to come by, though that is obviously by design. Utilizing the numerous ways to accumulate certainly mitigated that issue, though it was still tedious at points.

My only major issue was near the end. If you didn't progress through all the story lines in the "right" order (which is fairly unknown), it's pretty likely that you can reach a point where you have everything at your disposal, yet are spending large amounts of time just waiting. It's not horrid, but it's extremely jarring to go from tens of things you can be doing a day, to needing to do one or two things per week.

I certainly recommend this game to just about anyone. I have never played Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon, so this subgenre of RPGs is pretty new to me. But Graveyard Keeper wrapped me in pretty entirely, and I'm very happy to have played it.

Additionally: The developers are ridiculously active with updates. Numerous things have been added in just the two weeks I played this, and it doesn't seem they're done (also they do good patch notes, which is sorely lacking for too many games).