Category: Review

What do you get if you combine classic Diablo with Vampire Survivors? Well one developer decided to show you with an unholy combination in Halls of Torment.

There shouldn’t be any arguments when I claim that the original Diablo was a masterpiece. Launched in the 90’s, it defined a new genre of dungeon crawling, successfully mixing traditional Rogue/Nethack elements with beautiful visuals, real-time combat, class selection, an innovative loot system, and haunting music. Let’s look at the series as a whole, and the genre it largely created.

If you enjoy first-person puzzlers like Portal and The Talos Principle then you'll likely feel right at home with Re:Touring.

Recently I was sent over a package with the Nreal Air, so I've spent a fair bit of time testing out these AR glasses with the Steam Deck to see what all the fuss is about.

Continuing my quest to have no free time ever, I have been checking out Soul Survivors that's now available in Early Access. It may be yet another Vampire Survivor-like but that's not a bad thing at all.

It has been over four years since X4: Foundations was released. With the new fourth DLC Kingdom End, Egosoft has now brought the last of the original races back into the game, namely the peaceful and scientifically highly motivated Borons.

Here we go again! Just like The Last of Us Part I (and so many other games recently), another major game released too early. STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor is a hot mess.

The Fifth Element and Crazy Taxi are both classics, so one developer decided to try and combine them together into a game.

Marble Blast was first released in 2002, before being updated to Marble Blast Gold in 2003. The demo can be obnoxious, with it showing a begging screen imploring you to buy the full game after completing each and every level. Considering the state of the registered version as it exists now, this can feel more than a bit galling.

Back when I first played through Quake: The Offering I found that I enjoyed the two mission packs even more than I did the original Quake campaign, and while these were the only official addons sold for Quake, several third party expansions and total conversions exist that also had retail releases. Two of these, Shrak and Malice, were published on CD-ROM in 1997 by Quantum Axcess. 

If you look at the commercial Linux gaming catalogue at the turn of the millennium, in amongst all of the 3D shooters and strategic simulations being released, one glaring omission seems to have been the lack of any racing games. Loki Software never ported any to Linux, nor did any of the other porting houses. This left a void for the free gaming community to fill.

Tango Gameworks, developer of The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo, along with publisher Bethesda just stealth released their latest game called Hi-Fi RUSH.

Some of my first real experiences of using Linux as a child came through the use of Knoppix, one of the first distributions to popularize the use of Live CDs. This allowed me to explore a wide swath of Linux applications. One of these was a role playing game which I recall I never got to work well, but lingered on in my imagination regardless.

It's been close to a year since the Steam Deck launched, so here's where things currently stand and my thoughts on it.

While their foray into interactive storybooks did fail to impress, it did help remind me of BlackHoleSun Software, one of the earliest Indie developers to create games with Linux in mind. Their most famous game Bunnies was released as shareware in 2001, providing a demo version you could later update through use of a retail key. Thankfully, the story does not have to end there.

Sold as interactive storybooks, these took the form of narrated picture books which went over the story from the film while allowing for a certain degree of user agency, typically by allowing a selection of quirky animations to play by clicking around with the mouse. UAV must have wanted in on this craze as well, and so Atlantis: The Underwater City - Interactive Storybook was born.

Given the the company's current focus, the name Hyperion Entertainment seems an odd fit for the modern maintainer of AmigaOS, betraying its earlier status as an Amiga focused video game porting house. One of their ports, that of SiN, to this day remains from them an elusive Linux exclusive.

I am rarely this enthusiastic about games, especially retro-styled games because so many miss the mark in numerous ways but thankfully Chained Echoes is just brilliant.

After releasing the Launch and the Launch Lite, System76 is back with the Launch Heavy keyboard which includes a NumPad. They sent over a unit and here’s my review.

After having and playing with the official Steam Deck Docking Station, here's some thoughts on the experience.