Recent reviews by Blockhead

In my preview last year, The Alters felt handcrafted for a cinematic experience exploring the relationships between you and the alters. The cinematic elements are not that prominent, but I was not ready for how much work these relationships would be to maintain while the planet’s sun was about to fry us all alive. Sure, we’re always on the verge of collapse from radiation storms and just hoping to make it through the day alive, but have you considered that you hurt this alter’s fee-fees today?

11 bit studios developers know how to put the player through the meat grinder of constant frustration and bare survival. But the people you depend on to survive in this game are also the ones you sometimes want to strangle, just like real family. If you are the type who tries to make everybody happy, you will probably go insane in The Alters. No matter what you do for them, you will not make them happy.

If that is not enough to discourage you, the survival gameplay will keep you racing against time through a torrent of challenges and busywork, evading weird gelatinous anomalies, and trying to find the specific spots for mining structures. All so you can mine the Rapidium required to create more needy alters who will ask for more things while talking about their feelings. And here I thought rolling through a hostile planet would be hard, but playing shrink for a crew of therapy bros is a reimagining of hell.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

Well done, Warhorse: you’ve created the world’s most intricate, most realistic and overwrought medieval mutt petting simulator.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

I had a lot of patience with F4 over the last ten years, but I will never recommend this game. Avoid, even at 90%+ discount. You will never recover the hours you will waste on this bloated, soulless sequel. Go back to New Vegas instead.

This piece of crap will crash or freeze randomly at any point no matter what you do. I haven't had many issues with other F4 DLC, but Nuka World made me uninstall the game and I swear I'll never play this abomination ever again.

This War of Mine was one of the earliest indie games in the 2010s to break into the mainstream with a more elevated idea of what games could do, alongside a few other classics such as Papers, Please and Journey. Over the last decade, there were several DLC expansions, some of which were made for charity. This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations is both a 10th anniversary and a charity DLC. This is a game that keeps on giving and giving, never to be relegated to the dustbin of gaming history.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

We need more AA games with distinctive settings and immersive storytelling grounded in classics, if not direct adaptations of neglected science fiction authors such as Stanisław Lem, who broke into the mainstream for the first time in 1972 with Tarkovsky’s Solaris. The Invincible will not reach the same cultural status, but it’s a worthy beginning for the medium.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

Frostpunk was probably the most tense survival game I have ever reviewed under time constraints. It was for a small website, and we had to hit embargo. I needed all the cold blood I could muster to make it through to the ending, even on the easiest difficulty. It was no different with my review of Frostpunk 2, which I started playing just four days ago. I completed the main storyline in about 18 hours, and I am now deep into the Utopia Builder mode while planning a harder run of the Story mode.

I’m usually skeptical of sequels for strategy games; they tend to only vaguely improve on the game mechanics, or to make them virtually the same game with maybe better graphics and a few more bells and whistles. Frostpunk 2 feels instead like a complete remake of the game mechanics and an expansion of its worldbuilding, though not without some rough spots in terms of user experience and a cluttered UI scheme.

The symmetrical circular design of Frostpunk has been retired for a sprawling, dynamic, free-form hex city-builder. This will be a welcome innovation to those who, like me, tend to get hung up on symmetrical buildings and schemes, even when it gets in the way of more effective gameplay. Frostpunk 2 embraces the disorderly, the sprawling and spreading of settlements, ideologies, and the clashes of factions.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

This 3D remake does not make the puzzle gameplay much easier, but the navigation between levels is fluid, and the level design is often astonishing.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

I look forward to the day when Russian nuns can be more emblematic of adventure puzzle-platformers than Italian plumbers. Down with Nintendo and Mario; in with Odd Meter and INDIKA.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]

Inkulinati will appeal to fans of turn-based tactics looking for a fun roguelite. Those looking for challenge will have plenty, but not as much as they would with a more rigorously difficult roguelike. If you take the time to think before each move and calculate its repercussions, you will definitely find Inkulinati engaging: like a layered, vertical chess. Except that your pawns like to fart at their adversaries.

Full Review[blockhead.cc]