Recent reviews by JRodslegend

Just dropping an early review to say this is the only Marble game we have with a functional individual level leaderboard. And that alone is worth buying it. Other games that are similar claim to have them, but either only have friends leaderboards, maybe only show top 5 times and completely ignore all times below it including yours, or have you complete entire sets of levels to get on one. If you play these games because you enjoy hunting and climbing leaderboards, this appears to be your only option. Outside of that, after only playing a few levels, plays like your typical marble game, and thats never a bad thing. We might finally have a replacement for Marble Blast Ultra on PC, cant wait to see full release

BOOMATHON Playthrough stats -

I’ll preface this by saying this is the first negative review I’ve ever given, after 94 retro shooters I’ve reviewed. And it’s merely a price vs product issue. If this game was 1-2 dollars, it could easily pass as a meme and be forgiven, but as it stands, 17$ for a 2 hour long experience full of game breaking bugs should be a crime. Also side note, I counted failed mission objectives as deaths as they still resulted in a complete mission restart. But with that out of the way, let’s talk about the actual game itself…

Operation Pinkeye is a strange combination of Goldeneye and Virtua Cop, and for the most part it works, in theory. Right off the bat you are presented with 2 control schemes, classic (think goldeneye) and normal (modern shooters) And that’s where the issues begin. Classic seems like the preferred way to play, but after dropping the in-game sensitivity to zero, and lowering mouse dpi to 400, it was still completely uncontrollable, and offered nothing but incredibly blocky movement. So normal controls it was, which was better but not by much, as aiming and shooting are two separate instances. If you try to shoot an enemy without aiming, an “auto aim” comes into play, and let’s just say with every weapon aside from the shotgun, “auto aim” will miss 9/10 shots. (I’ve never seen a rocket fire straight up into the air while aiming forward, this game it does) This brought about its own issues I learned to deal with through the rest of the playthrough.

Okay, gameplay! Each mission gives you a set of objectives you must complete within a level before you are allowed to leave, no different from how perfect dark or goldeneye did it. I love this style and am glad to see more and more games are bringing it back. You’d think this would be hard to mess up! Don’t worry, they managed. While this only happens a few times, your objectives are incredibly vague, and while this is also true in the games it imitates, those games have always had an extra screen you could bring up to gather more information about said objective. That does not exist in this game. So when you’re told to “place a tracker on a car,” then lobbed into a sea of 40 different cars with no other information to go off of, frustration sets in quickly. Or when you are told to board a train to end the level, and the specific train you’re supposed to board doesn’t even spawn into the world, it takes on a whole other level of confusion.

Let’s talk about that last sentence now. Bugs! Holy crap this game has more bugs than a Bethesda game at launch. Falling through the world, mission critical objectives not spawning in, a weird bug where you can’t shoot enemies through doors, enemies glitching around the map when at a distance, UNBELIEVABLE lag spikes, soft locks galore causing constant mission restarts, the list goes on and on. And this was not only an every mission occurrence, it was an every MINUTE occurrence, for the entire 2 hour long game. I haven’t even mentioned the AI, which will let you run through entire levels without lifting a finger, and both bosses I fought soft locked themselves allowing me a free kill. I will admit, once I started just accepting what this game was, it became just a laughable experience, which feeds back into this next reiterated point.

I could completely excuse all this and classify it as a “meme” game, just a complete joke on the genre, if it was way less. Even if all the bugs were fixed, it’s still $17 for a 2 hour long game. When you have unbelievable games like Cultic, a 10 hour long, bug free experience for 10$, this pricing just seems like a slap in the face. Especially when Agent 64, a game that embraces the exact same concept, has a free demo that offers more content, and is by all accounts, a flawless experience.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full playthrough found below
https://youtu.be/dHnEWiJfrM4
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]
For more reviews on Classic and Retro shooters alike, dont forget to follow my Curator Page!
Boomathon Curator Page

BOOMATHON Playthrough stats -

Terrorform is a very short but delightful retro shooter, bringing it all the way back to Wolfenstein 3D. Horizontal movement only, no jump, and a very maze like corridor only level design. What this game lacks in length though, it definitely makes up for in charm and aesthetics. While the game may seem like nothing to look at, I found that I grew to love the graphic style they chose to go with, everything was so clean and crisp and a nice change from the normal “doom and gloom” look most retro shooters go for these days.

The arsenal in this game isn’t going to win any awards, you start off with a pistol and eventually move down to typical guns like a shotgun and assault rifle, again if you’ve played Wolfenstein 3D you will feel right at home. What this game does to set it apart though, is offer some fun futuristic weapons that are also used in some very light puzzle sections. You get a pseudo grappling hook, and a cool bouncy ball like item you will use to hit switches behind walls. I was excited when these little puzzles appeared, but it seems they existed only to teach you about the weapon, as any use of them afterwards rarely appeared. Also worth noting, as minimalist as this game appears, the guns feel and sound so satisfying to use. Part of this is due to how guns fire. The pistol for example, if you hold down the fire button you are greeted with a nice auto fire, however it is slow. If you mash fire as fast as you can, this will also result in a slower fire. There exists a satisfying timing to firing the pistol to get the fastest speed, and with the delightful “pop” sounds that it makes, almost makes it feel like a minor rhythm game getting the timing right. It was something that I enjoyed thoroughly.

Nevertheless, the game is very short. My strangely exact 2 hour completion time involved beating the game, playing and winning a round of the included roguelike mode, and speedrunning a level to beat a dev time. If you're into speedrunning, the simplicity of it all mixed with pathing each level can drastically increase play time, as the dev times were no joke to beat. The roguelike mode, there wasn't much to it but it's there if you crave more. It involved a quick, randomly generated 5 levels for you to run through, using random weapons given to you throughout. And while this was a good side mode to play, it won't increase your play time too much. Also the lack of a difficulty selection was a strange choice, the game itself is fairly easy, with my only death coming from experimenting with a new weapon and the results were… well deadly. The boss fights, while few and far between, were fun and some offered more than just “strafe to win”, and overall the game was a fun experience and absolutely worth its very small price tag if you feel like a nice change of pace.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full playthrough found below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uolr27_Aw8g
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]
For more reviews on Classic and Retro shooters alike, dont forget to follow my Curator Page!
Boomathon Curator Page

BOOMATHON Playthrough stats -
Cultic blew all my initial impressions out of the water. If you want a TLDR, just buy it.
If you're looking for more in depth, then continue on. Cultic is a Retro FPS in the same vein as games like Doom and Blood. In fact, I will go as far as to say this is the Blood sequel we all deserved. Although the two games are unrelated, you can clearly see many inspirations taken from Blood, from TNT playing a central part of combat, to cultists that have no issue taking pot shots at you the second you break from cover. That being said, Cultic does so much to stand on its own, and should be included in the conversation alongside Dusk and Prodeus as newer games that revitalized this entire genre.

I'll address the elephant in the room first, yes the game is a little on the shorter side, and yes you are correct in reading that it is only Chapter 1. For the price though it is well worth it, and from what I’ve heard the next chapter(s) will be released as separate games or DLC, acting like classic episode changes in older games. Now my completion time reflects only one playthrough, on one difficulty, with close to no secrets found (not a big secret hunter.) There is an in-game survival mode where you earn points and money to buy items to prolong your runs, this is complete with an in-game leaderboard for those who enjoy that, and that alone can offer almost endless replayability. However I did not spend that much time in the mode outside of seeing what it was about.

The levels in this game are varied and keep things entertaining and new throughout, new enemies and weapons are introduced at a good pace, as well as collectable weapon parts scattered around you can use at workbenches to upgrade your slowly growing arsenal. These upgrades are all very similar for each weapon; increased fire power, higher accuracy, and bigger magazine. So don’t expect any of these to completely change the way you use your weapon, but it's nice that it's included. In my playthrough I found enough weapon parts to completely upgrade only 2 weapons, and buy 1 upgrade from a third weapon, leaving a lot of variation for repeated playthroughs. And while your arsenal includes everything from a shotgun, to a flamethrower, I never found that I needed any other weapons than the couple I upgraded. This is actually my only minor complaint about the game, and we will discuss this more later.

Let's talk about the sound and graphics. I will say, it's been a long time since I've played a game with this much CRUNCH to it. The satisfying sound of popping off cultists heads just never got old, very reminiscent of the sounds from Mortal Kombat fatalities, each kill and every shot just sounded absolutely brutal and the sound design gets the highest of praise from me. Graphically the game is beautiful, if not a little dull. And by dull I mean brown, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. However, as different the environments you visit are, the palate will always remain a combination of browns and greens. The variety of the levels you go to keep this from being very noticeable, it was only upon further review it started to stand out to me. The only issue I encountered from the graphics, is enemies can spot and shoot you from what felt like an infinite distance away. This becomes a slight issue with the pixilation they chose to go for, as when an enemy is far enough away, they blend in perfectly with the background. This only really became an issue when they started getting a hold of sniper rifles and caused a few cheap feeling deaths. But being able to quick save whenever you want made this an easy issue to overlook.

Now to wrap things up, I got to talk about my biggest complaint, because despite this game being damn close to perfection, per my needlessly arbitrary review guidelines, I have to complain. Weapon balancing. As I stated before, I never felt a need to use almost any of the weapons outside of couple, the pistol and the lever-action rifle. These two weapons were leagues above the rest of the weapons in the game to me, and made me all but forget about the rest of the weapons outside of my initial trial period with them. Namely the shotgun. As much as I tried, I could never find a use for the shotgun. Enemies needed to be at arms length to die from a single shot, and all you get is 2 before a reload. Very rare are moments you are in confined corridors, AND enemies come at you one at a time. When you compare that to the pistol getting one shot headshots, and after upgrades, 15 rounds in the chamber, there was never a need to use the shotgun. Even on big enemies, I counted 8 shells to put down a chainsaw enemy. Now compare that to 1 molotov taking them down instantly, and despite trying I could never find an actual use for the shotgun. However remember, these two weapons were the ones I upgraded, and im hoping the shotgun gets a major buff after you put some weapon parts into it.

This review has dragged on, and I havent even talked about all the satisfying movement tech, from dashing, to sliding, to jump kicking and building up ridiculous amounts of speed. This game is just an absolute joy to play, and if you are a fan of the genre, you will be doing yourself a disservice to skip this one.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full playthrough found below
https://youtu.be/pZ9IXqibgbo
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]
For more reviews on Classic and Retro shooters alike, dont forget to follow my Curator Page!
Boomathon Curator Page

Force Reboot is a Roguelike, speedrunning FPS. And at $3, its a steal. The game revolves around you clearing rooms as fast as you can to get to the next floor, where you will receive a random buff and debuff you will use on the following floors, things like. "dual wield guns, but enemies have more health" or "No traps, but enemies have sawblades spinning around them. Its a very simple mechanic, but has enough diversity to create unique runs each time, and the inclusion of a leaderboard will keep people coming back for more. As of this review, the Early Access version is limited to 7 floors. Each floor is comprised of 5 individual rooms, that can be completed in as low as a couple seconds, with your only goal being to kill every enemy in the room to open the door to the next. Full version WILL have more floors, as once you reach the seventh floor you are presented with an option to exit and post your time to the leaderboard, or continue on. At this point continuing on is "under construction," but I like that you will have the option to risk a good time and a place on the leaderboard to continue on to deeper floors.

Movement mechanics at first felt very sluggish to me, very reminiscent of controlling a tank or a mech in some of those other games. Your forward speed is very fast and works well, however your strafe speed is a fraction of the pace, and creates a very strange feeling movement. Combine that with a mouselook that also feels a bit off, and you have a game that just doesnt feel quite as CRISP as most of the other games out there. Mouse look feels like there is some hidden mouse smoothing going on behind the scenes that cannot be turned off. However, once you get better and stop playing the game like a typical fps, and learn that really "W" is the only key you need, the movement starts to feel better and more natural. Start combining W with some crouch sliding and dashing, and you'll be breezing through floors in seconds. I will admit I was not a fan of how this game felt to control at all when I first started, but after throwing myself at it repeatedly, it definitely started to grow on me, and while the mouse look issue I never got used to, I look forward to coming back to this game when it hits full release
-----------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full EA playthrough found below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11pZPnPsag
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]

BOOMATHON Playthrough stats -


Old blood is a prequel to New Order. To me it almost felt like it aimed to be a complete remake, or retelling, of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. And it still featured the great gameplay that New Order had. Perk system is still in place, guns still felt amazing to use, It was really just more of the same, which is not a bad thing. But it's hard to deny it felt like just a small DLC to New Order, and to my understanding that's essentially what it was meant to be. The levels aren't quite as diverse as New Order, and the game was quite a bit easier, even on Death Incarnate it offered no real challenge. But this could be due to the overuse of stealth in this game, essentially allowing you to silently kill every enemy in 90% of the encounters. Also my biggest complaint is along the same lines, as the beginning forces this stealth on you for an extremely long and drawn out escape sequence, that grew old extremely quick. But after that It came back to be the good old Wolfenstein you know and love, even with a return of some famous enemies that were missing from New Order

-----------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full playthrough found below
https://youtu.be/e-t_2XXAg8g
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]

Its Runescape, for people who don't want to play Runescape

BOOMATHON Playthrough stats

Wrack was a great game that came out too early. Plain and simple. Doom 2016 didn’t start the resurgence of the genre quite yet, and people didn’t know they wanted it. Wrack is an amazing game, with an incredible soundtrack. Some people may consider it generic by today's standards, but it stuck to a formula that was popular years prior, and it worked. You get tons of guns, to kill tons of bad guys, through a decently sized campaign. The fact that there are zero hitscan enemies is a bonus, and gives the game a slight “bullet hell” feel, especially the boss fights. The final boss being the most prevalent to this, which felt more like an exercise in memorization and chance, and was a strange leap in difficulty compared to the rest of the game.
It’s also worth noting the game DOES have a level creator, and people have made some amazing levels. One in particular was a full remake of the original Doom inside Wrack. There’s a lot to like here. The game does feature a combo system, where the more kills you get, the more it charges a special meter, to use your weapons alternate fire. This is definitely a cool and unique feature, although on hardcore difficulty, the meter drains so fast I was only able to use it a handful of times. All in all, I enjoyed my time with Wrack, mostly in part due to its quick gunplay, and bangin’ soundtrack. And with a well saturated level creator, you can get a lot of mileage out of this charming game
------------------------------------------------------------
Enjoy my full playthrough found below
https://youtu.be/TQQZx3Kiw0A
For a Complete list of all RetroFPS / Boomer Shooters, be sure to visit
BOOMATHON [boomathon.com]
For more reviews on Classic and Retro shooters alike, dont forget to follow my Curator Page!
Boomathon Curator Page

Are you a fan of Doom? Are you a fan of speedrunning? Oh boy do I have the game for you.
Warstride: Challenges is a speedrunning FPS game where you are given multiple short levels to grind away and race for that top spot on the leaderboard. The game is fast, its brutal, and incredibly satisfying watching your rank slowly increase each time you replay a level, and most importantly, Its addicting. Fans of Seum and Cyberhook will feel right at home here.

Tired of sweating over getting that WR? Take a break and go skull hunting! Each level has a hidden skull for you to find that will unlock bonus levels to play. Feeling a little creative? Take a ride in the level editor (Description lists as WIP, but there is enough there to make some very fun and professional feeling levels, and its very stable from the time I've spent in it) Done all the above, well, there is a handful of VERY well hidden Easter Eggs hidden SOMEWHERE within these levels, best of luck!

Despite only being Early Access, I can attest this game has a ton of content for you to grind away for, and it runs phenomenally. I've been working with these devs as a beta tester since August, and it has been one of the best experiences Ive had with a Dev team. They've been receptive to change, quick to fix bugs we've found, and very interactive in the discord. I've never worked with a team who has been this involved with the community, and it gives me incredible hope for the future of this game.

This game has everything I've wanted in a game for so long, and I highly encourage you all to give it a try, especially if you are a fan of the FPS Speedrunning genre.

Already been playing and cant figure out how people are getting such good times? Or want to see a more hands on preview? Check out the speed tech tutorial I made, where I take you through each level of the Demo that was released, while explaining all the movement tech we have discovered so far!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBMW0pU93qE&t=16s

Bulletstorm is an absolute blast of a game. Revolving around finding interesting and new ways to kill enemies to earn points, which is then used to upgrade your arsenal and buy ammo. This sounds amazing in theory, and it is, but the "upgrades" are pretty bland, mostly involving adding a secondary fire to your weapons, and upgrading charges on it. I feel like this could have been way more fleshed out and given us more options to use our points. But the game itself is just incredibly fun to play. The controls feel great (although getting mouse sensitivity to feel remotely playable was an absolute nightmare) but after config files have been altered to your liking, I have to emphasize just how fun the game is. Although, incredibly short in length, a stupid grin never left my face the entire time. I highly encourage everyone to give this game a try, but maybe due to length, wait for a sale. After the main game, a ton of bonus features and more content DOES open up, so there is much more there that meets the eye.