Faris_V5 Reviews

You'd be surprise to hear it's a Fromsoftware game, until you are very abruptly reminded that it's a Fromsoftware game. An very early entry in the PS2's life cycle. Cookie & Cream is a cartoon platformer about two cute little bunnies trying to stop the moon from being... evil. It's not entirely clear and all plot is delivered by very sarcastic and snarky chickens. So feel free to treat the story of the game as a prequel to Dyna and Tillo before they ended up in Drangleic. Gameplay wise, it plays essentially like that one Mario Party minigame, Dungeon Duos. Each character has a designated side of the screen and you control both using the left and right analog sticks, with shoulder buttons functioning as interact. You can also play the game in a traditional co-op mode, which is how I played with BlasphemousRoar. The game is definitely designed with the twin-stick gameplay in mind. Many moments have challenge that would immensely increase by requiring one to split ...

  Man they really did put a reference to this in Prey The first game from the legendary Arkane Studios. (RIP) Arx Fatalis is basically like if you took Ultima Underworld....  ... The game is a very classical style dungeon crawl, down to the interface itself. Mouselook is essentially a toggle and you're free to move the cursor around normally to organize inventory or interact with things the same as you would in something like System Shock. Combat is slow and methodical, the maps are mazey and filled with hidden items, details, and secrets, NPCs are sparse with none being immortal, the RPG mechanics are baseline and you barely even get regular levelups as you go. (I finished the game around level 8) The magic system is worth praising in particular. You collect runes that function essentially as 'words' you can construct spells out of, though the actual language is up to the player to discover. Spells are unlocked in your spellbook freely as you get the runes for them, with a...

Faris why are you reviewing a shovelware match 3 Heroes of Hellas 3 is probably one of the most bog standard cheaply made match 3s you could get. Click and drag over three connected tiles or more to create a match. Get coins as a wildcard tiles, a couple of larger bombs and board clears in varying forms, and some powerups to use. Throw in random puzzle minigames or hidden object game modes, as well as a completely superfluous city builder that functions as little more than an extra button to press between levels, and you have a game my mom would buy from the supermarket. However I have been pushed to write a review because it has easily one of the most frustrating, despair inducing, least player friendly mechanics I've encountered in a match 3. One of the board mechanics is a tile locked in place with wings, the idea is to match with this tile to reveal otherwise hidden and unusable areas and expand the board. I mean that sounds simple right? What's wrong with that it's lik...

  We have Sekiro at home, but in this case that's a good thing. An ambitious indie title, Thymesia is easiest described as a carbon-coby of fromsoftwares style of Souls-like. Taking the most influence from Sekiro but as a whole a clear love-letter to their design philosophies and gameplay tropes. Enemies move with the same intent and wind-up as Elden Ring and the dodges and amount of time you're locked into an attack is almost immediately familiar to any Sekiro player. The game is not long, but that's to it's benefit. It's genuinely amazing to me that an Indie team was able to put as much polish and love into a combat system as Fromsoftware has. When you consider how many clones have tried and failed from larger studios, to take nothing but the right lessons from every existing example of the genre and put it together into a game without major flaws or issue? That's a huge boon to the game and genuinely the reason I am going to come out of this review recommendi...

  Throw it back Dredge is an idyllic, calming fishing simulator brought to us by New Zealand devs Black Salt Games, and boy howdy is it a strong first showing. To start off, the core gameplay loop of Dredge is extremely straightforward. Catch fish in small, typical timing minigames or dredge up items from the depths in the same, when your inventory fills you take them to a town to sell or use them to upgrade your boat and complete quests, rinse and repeat. At it's core it has the usual excitement of seeing an odd shadow in the water which usually implies a new fish to catalogue, as well as rare catches, secret fishing spots, and a day night cycle it all takes place in. The catch is that the ocean is both hauntingly beautiful and deadly in equal measures, not helped by a strong level of eldritch horror lurking beneath the surface. At night as your sanity dips lower and lower, you'll encounter all sorts of things that I would not wish to spoil, each of which can pose a threat to ...

  Yeah one of these random editorial article types was coming eventually. I've been playing Arx Fatalis lately, and I've been having a blast. Expect a review of that once I'm done because for all it's jank, it's essentially a successor to Ultima Underworld and similar Classic style dungeon crawls. Complete with endearingly janky combat, oddly extremely detailed and engaging magic system, and all the secrets and non-mouselook interactions with the world you could hope for. Then I reached the major city of the game, Arx, and felt this feeling of dread in my stomach. I spent about 30 minutes hopping around, trying to keep a mental note of locations while I talked to literally every NPC I found. The guard had told me to talk to Carlo, see. But Carlo was in a nondescript door right next to the entrance no more noteworthy than the other 10 locked ones around me. So I ended up finding the king before I found him. Which added another layer of confusion as I picked up at lea...

DIVINE LIGHT SEVERED; YOU ARE A FLESH AUTOMATON CONTROLLED BY NEUROTRANSMITTERS.   Cruelty Squad is, rather infamously, one of the most bizarre pieces of media to come out of 2021. An immersive sim with so little care for common gaming conventions or design that most screenshots and video are incomprehensible at first glance. A world that looks like a half-life troll mod made using MS Paint and gameplay that down to the reload system is utterly bizarre and unnatural to play. And it's fucking fantastic. What we end up with is essentially a piece of outsider art made by someone who is, in fact, very much the opposite of an outsider. With well crafted satire, endless parody, intriguing level design, a relatively solid core movement and gameplay system focused around assassination, while having secrets and hidden unlockables that rival the best of New Bloods boomer shooters. I'm not going to go in depth on the specifics, both because I think this is a game best experienced fresh, a...

  This'll be a good chill game to whittle away at in the eveni- and I beat it in 3 days. A game that I only realized in playing it today was essentially an early example of the modern bridge building subgenre. World of Goo is a physics based puzzler where you connect up little goo balls of varying properties and abilities. Guiding them to a pipe to be sucked away to victory. Score is based on using a minimal number of goo balls while simultaneously avoiding losing any to the hazards of the level. Though the "OCD" challenges being the 100% completion mark often have varying challenges based partially on if the challenge is efficient building, or speed building. It's easy to see why it had it's following, World of Goo is charming, addicting, and extremely user friendly. With very few annoyances or issues to be found on the design or control front. There is some issue in that you don't really get to decide where goo does and does not connect for any given spot. B...

  Go Ninja Go Aragami is brought to us by the now sadly defunct Lince Works. While I cannot speak to the sequels quality as I doubt I will play it, it is a shame because Aragami is exactly the kind of game you see from soon to be major indie groups. Which is sadly the backhanded compliment I somewhat intended it to be. Aragami is a good game, make no mistake. It has a solid grasp of stealth fundamentals, with fun map design, delightful Dishonored Esque powerup and skill system, good theming around shadows with said abilities and a nice straightforward single hit kill system for player and enemies alike. It's a breezy playthrough clocking in at about 3-4 hours for me, with plenty of replay value for those who like to squeeze every inch out of their stealth game maps. Only the 2nd of 3 boss fights and somewhat easily broken challenge curve could be considered true flaws of the game. That and the story just being okay. The thing is, Aragami also has nothing that I can glowingly recomm...