Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 23:49 this Tuesday (GMT):

It's another month of so-cheap-they're-
practically-free games from HumbleChoice. But are any of them worth
getting?

(Due to ongoing technical issues, I'm typing this out on the old PC.
The computer's fine, but it only has one monitor. How do people live
like this? Anyway, given the limited screen space, I'm going to keep
this short. Well, short for me, anyway.)

* Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin
* Nioh 2: The Complete Edition
* Saints Row (2023)
* Citizen Sleeper
* Black Skylands
* Soulstice
* AfterImage
* Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter

Not the greatest selection of games, but not really that bad either. Certainly it seems a more interesting selection than previous months.

The Warhammer game is unexciting; it's a clunky tactical-strategy
game, utilizing the overused Warhammer license (and not the cool one
with the space marines either). It's an imperfect 'Company of Heroes'
clone. "Nioh 2" is a lot more interesting to me; sort of a modernized "Onimusha". I likey! "Saints Row" is... well, as a completionist I'm
happy to have it in my Steam library (although I already owned it
elsewhere).

I know very little about the rest. I like the visual aesthetics of
"Citizen Sleeper" but I've no idea if it's any fun to play. "Black
Skylands" seems to be a bullet-hell (or is that -heaven? I'm not sure)
and looks very Indie, but - again - the anime aesthetic saves it.
"Soulstice" looks to be a fairly generic Souls-clone, but nothing
wrong with that; it won't get high marks but I won't turn my nose up
at it either. "Afterimage" is some platformer/metroidvania type game;
it doesn't excite me too much but looks okay. And while "Destroyer:
The U-Boat Hunter" doesn't have the best reviews, it's been such a
long time since we've had a game of that sort that I'm willing to
forgive it a myriad of sins.

All in all, nothing really stands out as top-grade material, but 8
solidly "B-tier" games for $12USD is still pretty good.

(Honestly, it could have been that much for just "Destroyer". WW2
Naval sims are just so rare these days - outside of multimedia
MTX-fests like "World of Warships" - that I probably would have gotten
the bundle just for that one game.)

But YMMV. Hopefully my PC will get fixed soon so I can actually PLAY
all these new games I'm getting. ;-)

Does seem interesting, but none of them stand out for me.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/5/2024 3:49 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

It's another month of so-cheap-they're-
practically-free games from HumbleChoice. But are any of them worth
getting?

(Due to ongoing technical issues, I'm typing this out on the old PC.
The computer's fine, but it only has one monitor. How do people live
like this? Anyway, given the limited screen space, I'm going to keep
this short. Well, short for me, anyway.)

* Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin

The Warhammer game is unexciting; it's a clunky tactical-strategy
game, utilizing the overused Warhammer license (and not the cool one
with the space marines either). It's an imperfect 'Company of Heroes'
clone.

RTSs are hit or miss for me. I realized I liked a lot of them after
listing the ones I played. With your review, probably not.

* Nioh 2: The Complete Edition

"Nioh 2" is a lot more interesting to me; sort of a modernized
"Onimusha". I likey!

* Saints Row (2023)

Both of these were free on Epic at some point.

I liked Saint's Row, but it's short, extremely so if you don't do all
the side and empire building missions (which I did all of I could
stomach.)

Nioh series is a souls-like and pretty difficult. It seems to be the
most liked of Souls-like games besides Lies of P, and 2 is supposedly
the best of the series. I played 1 a bit, but it's got the same issue I
had with BB, no magic class and got to be hard as nails after a point.
It's one I've been thinking of going back to, but I've still got so many
other things to explore.

* Citizen Sleeper

This was "free" from Prime so I'm sure you have it already. I gave it a
quick try. It felt more like a mobile game with sort of 'energy' or
something so you can only play it a bit. Interesting text dialog though.

* Black Skylands
* Soulstice
* AfterImage
* Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter

Don't know anything about these.

"Black
Skylands" seems to be a bullet-hell (or is that -heaven? I'm not sure)
and looks very Indie, but - again - the anime aesthetic saves it.

Can't tell if it's a heaven or not either. It looks mildly interesting.
Not enough to get the whole bundle or pay the Steam price of $20 though.

"Soulstice" looks to be a fairly generic Souls-clone, but nothing
wrong with that; it won't get high marks but I won't turn my nose up
at it either.

So far I've found the non-Fromsoft soulslikes just aren't for me.
Spoiled by Fromsoft games I guess. Doesn't look like it has anything
that would put it out ahead of the pack.

"Afterimage" is some platformer/metroidvania type game;

it doesn't excite me too much but looks okay.

Meh.

And while "Destroyer:

The U-Boat Hunter" doesn't have the best reviews, it's been such a
long time since we've had a game of that sort that I'm willing to
forgive it a myriad of sins.

Historically Accurate and Simulation spell boring in my eyes, but I do
fondly remember the old sub arcade games which makes it mildly tempting.

But YMMV. Hopefully my PC will get fixed soon so I can actually PLAY
all these new games I'm getting. ;-)

Yeah computer down = feel like I lost a limb.

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 06/03/2024 15:59, Justisaur wrote:

* Citizen Sleeper

This was "free" from Prime so I'm sure you have it already. I gave it a
quick try.  It felt more like a mobile game with sort of 'energy' or something so you can only play it a bit.  Interesting text dialog though.

It's kinda of an RPG/narrative/resource management affair and I rather
like it. It's certainly one of the games that I think would play better
on my iPad but I'm loathed to class it as a mobile game as it doesn't
have all the negatives generally associated with them.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 3/7/2024 6:54 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Wed, 6 Mar 2024 07:59:40 -0800, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

* Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin

RTSs are hit or miss for me. I realized I liked a lot of them after
listing the ones I played. With your review, probably not.

Yeah, it's probably the least exciting on the list for me. Partly for
its reputed clunkiness, mostly because its Warhammer. I've gotten so
sick of Warhammer these days. GDW really is oversaturating the market.

I was never really into Warhammer. There are bits about it I like, and I happily steal some lore/monsters for D&D like a number of humanoid
monsters being fungus creatures, and adding skaven. But there's just
something that feels off and perhaps too based on wargames for me.

I did really like Dawn of War which was an RTS. I occasionally have a
twinge of hankering to go replay it, but not enough to actually go do it.

* Nioh 2: The Complete Edition
* Saints Row (2023)

Both of these were free on Epic at some point.

AFAIK, it was the first NIOH that was free on Epic, not the second.

Ah, you're right. I saw "Complete Edition" on it and made the mistake
of thinking that included a bunch of Nioh.

I liked Saint's Row, but it's short, extremely so if you don't do all
the side and empire building missions (which I did all of I could
stomach.)

I'm not too excited about "Saints Row", because it really is an
uncharacteric characterless take on the franchise; it just doesn't
stand out, either amongst its predecessors or its competitors. But I'd
much rather have it on Steam than Epic. ;-)

Well I rather thought it had a lot of character with the whole 'Friends'
TV show as a gang, and a good fairly quick empire building. I think
choosing your boss well makes a difference. I chose somewhat randomly
and ended up with a black guy with some afrikan accent which didn't
quite jive right for me, so restarted with an english accent female,
which made the whole thing feel like an exciting caper with a devil may
care attitude.

Also the LARP series of missions was funny as hell and awesome, well
worth playing the game just for that.

The game has a lot of heart, which doesn't really fit well with previous entries, but as it's own thing it's great.

* Citizen Sleeper

This was "free" from Prime so I'm sure you have it already. I gave it a
quick try. It felt more like a mobile game with sort of 'energy' or
something so you can only play it a bit. Interesting text dialog though.

Oddly not. Perhaps it was free on one of their alternate services
(either Legacy or streaming), which I generally ignore.

Oh yeah, I remember playing it on Luna now that you mention it, which is
just another aspect of Prime.

Yeah computer down = feel like I lost a limb.

Fortunately, I have a few spares. ;-)

(PCs, I mean. Not limbs. Get away from me with that bonesaw!!!!)

You may have a spare robot arm in your future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAZSELNrEjU

--
-Justisaur

ø-ø
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
¶¬'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)