Recent reviews by Freedomtacos

Reminds me of when I emulated Japanese RPG games when I was a kid, still decent but would've been way better in English.

This game is deceptively good. Fantastic even. I thought it was just going to be some ridiculous unbalanced gimmick game that I might have fun at how absurd the concept is but it's surprisingly well thought out and very balanced around the unique card system that gives your shotgunning king the ability to toss grenades, throw chess pieces and use soul cards to move around the board.

At this price point I'd recommend it to anyone looking to test your double barrel skills.

Fallen Angel is a platformer/action RPG game that has you playing as Lucifer, if he was an edgy science experiment gone wrong and dresses like Deadpool found little Red Riding Hood’s wardrobe. Deadpool Lucifer takes on the Archangels in his war against God in this completely factual retelling of the famous bible story.

The game starts you off on a stranded beach where the sky is coated in red and the air is so hot and dry causing the trees to shake in pain. One can guess that you are in purgatory on the edge of the gates of Hell where only Lucifer can handle the stress of the environment with no ill effects. The game soon teaches you the controls which give you a basic attack, jump, and dash. The pixel art, UI, and combat all feel very reminiscent of Hyper Light Drifter where you start as a fairly weak protagonist with few abilities but quickly grow to Godhood levels. Lucifer gets a huge arsenal of weapons and abilities that are found scattered about in each section, with prayer tablets giving you the choice of multiple abilities to gain new skills that drastically change your combat skills.

It’s these upgrades and weapons that elevate the game from starting as a simple button masher to chaining together huge aerial combos similar to Devil May Cry. I’m surprised they didn’t add a style rating letting you know how badass you are and I personally feel it would have been a welcome addition to go along with the combat.


Fallen Angel is completely open world with no gated sections allowing you the freedom to explore in any direction you so choose. It’s an interesting choice since some areas clearly have enemies that are clearly more difficult to face having magical shields that block your attacks and stun lock you with ease. This freedom can be a bit overwhelming as there is no wrong answer here, nobody is here to guide you, not even a little skelly hinting where to go a la Dark Souls. This is also compounded by the level design which can be a little jarring to navigate at times as you mainly go through huge vast open fields with very little obstacles that typically tend to subtly guide you to go where you’re needed to go.

Luckily, unlike Dark Souls, your dash ability is easy to abuse and very spammable which I will happily oblige to doing so since dashing is my favourite ability. And once you gain skills that allow your dash to do damage along with an item that leaves a trail of flames in the direction you dash, you will quickly become the Beyblade harbinger of doom, bringing spinning death to all who stand in your way.


Fallen Angel is light on lore, giving you very small tidbits of it through flavour text by examining items and through direct dialogue choices when facing archangel bosses at the end of each area. I found myself wanting to learn more about the universe and how these specific worlds each archangel resides in work and why they chose to live there, such as why Raphael lives in a night club hosting daily parties and how Lucifer stole Deadpool’s outfit without anyone noticing.

The boss designs are unique and extremely detailed, if not somewhat hilarious in the context of being archangels from the bible. Archangel Akraisel is a Mexican robot bounty hunter, outfitted with a cyberpunk Colt Action revolver and a samurai sword of all things. God knows why an archangel happens to shadow as a bounty hunter in his spare time but it sure makes for more interesting gospel verses. Each boss design is heavily influenced by the areas they reside in, which helps create a theme but it’s hard to find a real cohesive connection of why each area is so drastically different with the little lore given in game.

All in all, Fallen Angel has wicked pixel art designs and fun, if somewhat unbalanced combat where you will be decimating enemies with ease with your plethora of guns and devil abilities. The game is hampered by its level design and lack of in game lore to explain why most of God’s angels are as cyberpunk as they are and how all of these worlds are connected by design. If you can look past this, Fallen Angel is a fun albeit short romp that will have you setting aerial records that even Jigglypuff mains would be jealous of.

Gunplay and SFX is just so much more satisfying compared to Enter the Gungeon.

game sux

Absolutely brilliant in pretty much every way.

TL;DR
Layers of Fear is a psychedelic horror story where you play as a deranged artist who can't quite seem to remember the layout of his house.

Pros
+excellent graphics
+excellent art direction
+excellent sound direction
+excellent atmosphere

Cons
- very short
- shock value wears off in the 2nd half

Layers of Fear starts off with a slow self narrated doublespeak exclaiming a hopelessness in his situation, with only one way to bring it all back...'Finish it' he mutters to himself as you hear rain and lightning droning in the background. Keys clanking onto metal, you hear sounds of a door opening, you are brought to attention from the pitch black screen to a scene of a mansion. You are now in control of the main character, whom you know absolutely nothing about until you explore the depths of the mansion, rummaging through every single drawer and cabinet looking for notes scattered about to give you an inkling of an idea of who the main character may be.

Early on you find out that the character is an artist, or at least was an artist sometime in the 19th century. You have the freedom to explore the mansion and it's room which are heavily Victorian in nature. A creepy piano piece plays in the background, that perfectly captures the mood of the set piece. You're alone in a giant mansion during a thunderstorm, the place feels eerily perfect, not a speck of dust can be found. You come across an easel covered by cloth. As you slowly reveal the unfinished painting, the room subtly changes. A message is sprawled on the exit that wasn't there before, 'GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME'. You go through the door, and suddenly the mansion has transformed itself. A mist of fog rises from the floor, doors lock behind you never to reopen again. The ambient tones of the soundtrack slowly haunting you as you hesitantly move forward through the rooms.

Layers of Fear introduction perfectly encapsulates a mysteriousness that had me paralyzed. Enraptured by the setting and the fear of what was to come next, it all felt vividly real. Especially with how beautiful the set pieces were room to room. On ultra settings, it's very easy to marvel at your surroundings with it's soft shadows reflecting off the dim lighted halls throughout. It's as pretty as a picture, as if it were carefully sculpted by the artist himself. The artist seems to have an obsession with perfection as when you listen to an auditory flashback of when he finds his muse, his proposal comes off eerily strange in retrospect. He wanted to put his name on the most beautiful woman in the world, just like the rest of his paintings . His object of affection was beauty at it's core, but what happens when the beauty fades?

As you find out, one way or another the beauty has faded from his life. And once it does, so does his inspiration for painting. He hits a giant roadblock which is expressed visually within the game. You the player, has to help the painter find just the right items to help him finish his masterpiece. But the house isn't what it once seemed, closed off walls will appear where they were once open hallways. You will go in circles and circles while the game will openly remind you through scrawled writings on the wall. The artist's inner narrative uses his house's walls as the canvas, giving you insight as to how he feels on his deranged journey to reclaiming his lost inspiration. They seem like ramblings of a madman at first but subtly aid you to progress in the game.

The mansion's are like the inner frameworks of his mind, cluttered and confusing. Neverending, yet constantly closing the paths behind you. What was once a simple mansion is now an endless mind palace that transforms at his whims, with his deepest fears manifesting , clouding the golden years where he was once hailed as a genius. The mansion from Layers of Fears strikingly resembles a similar theme from a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. In the novel, the house initially has larger internal measurements than external. Over time, the interior of the house seems to slowly expand until a hallway appears that should lead outside to where the yard is but does not. The interesting aspect is that the book also has an unusual page layout and style, making it visually surrealist in it's own way.

Layers of Fears feels like it's takes this surrealist form one step further and perfects the execution using it's strong visual tricks and audial cues. Walls will shift, hallways will reverse, invert, making each room feel slightly familiar yet alien to both the player and the painter. Misdirection is key here, something Layers of Fears pulls of meticulously. The game will consistently find new ways to surprise you visually with it's metamorphic atmosphere, and this is only accomplished by the player being a witness to the painter's madness.

This is the majority of what you'll be doing all game, exploring dark dreary rooms for notes and items that will help you on your quest to finish a painting. Although it would be categorized as a exploration game, it feels more like an on rails horror set. Once you're finished with a room, you can never go back making you feel like a puppet being dragged from A to B with very little to interact with except a couple drawers or shelves to find notes about past events in no real chronological order. It's mainly up to the player to decide how badly he wants to find out what's really happening in the game by opening 100s of drawers in hopes of finding more notes. You never truly feel like a player in the game interacting with the world, more like another set piece that the artist has created for you to be a witness into his madness. It's when the game does take complete control away from you, does it feel truly unique. Helpless to the panorama of horrors slowly settling closer and closer, claustrophobia settling in to the point helplessness. Your control is truly gone, you are no longer a player but a set piece just as much the painter is and it feels wonderfully surreal.

The second and final act of the game delves heavily into psychedelic hallucinatory levels, where set pieces transform before you into sublimely grotesque imaginations of the painter. The problem is that the shock value of the similar jump scares have worn off at this point, and that I have absolutely nothing to fear. The first time I encounter a monster roaming the hallways, I'm terrified by the games brilliant usage of the lighting system. But you soon quickly realize that there's nothing to be done about them. The hallways are always narrow and small and the doors lock behind you so you have no choice but to either wait and see or just walk towards them and brave the brunt of their psychological attack. Once you realize that it almost feels like your 'death' is a plot progressor. This removes probably the most vital 'layer of fear' within the game. Once the element of fear is taken away, and replaced with plot progress you're no longer traumatized by their appearance but considering a quick death to move on. While you continue to march forward to find the final piece of puzzle to put the story all together, the ambiguous and surrealist nature never quite grants you that clear resolution rather leaving it up to the player's interpretation by how many notes he found throughout the short three hour game.

Overall Layers of Fear is a technical marvel that is both hauntingly beautiful and surreptitiously ambiguous in nature. While the ambiguity drives the narrative forward through the character's interpretation of the artist's evocative imaginings of his mansion, the game slowly loses it's pulse of mysteriousness through the over use of jump scare tropes and identical monster encounters but never it's beauty. I recommend Layers of Fear to players who want an exploration based game who don't mind letting their imagination run wild and want to enjoy a fresh surrealist take on the genre.

TL;DR
Gravity Ghost is a beautiful tale about a girl and her pet fox journeying through the galaxy, collecting stars and terraforming planets along the way.

Pros

+beautiful art style
+great music
+unique gameplay
+good story

Cons

- no real options menu

Gravity Ghost starts with an intro scene that looks straight out of a children's book. Colourful and vibrant, drawn with what looks like a mixture of pastel and crayons, the artstyle immediately stands out. You're greeted by a young girl and her fox companion resting on top of a planet before the fox slowly disappears into the cosmos while the girl beckons for him. You play as Iona, who realizes that a black hole has appeared in the center of her universe where she can see her friends and family back on earth.

At its core, Gravity Ghost is a tale of innocence. How children have boundless freedom without the constraints of consequences weighing on their minds. Iona was a rambunctious child, who befriended a wild fox, takes long journeys in the middle of the nights with no regard for her sister Hickory, who gave up her future to take care of the family after the tragic death of their parents. Iona throws blames to those who care for her, desperately trying to hide her pain, acting out in ways that hurt her loved ones. As you watch through the wonderfully drawn cutscenes, it conveys to you memories that all adults can relate to through their childhood. Newfound emotions and how much they can impact a child for the rest of their life. Gravity Ghost does this with such relative ease that it can make you forget that Iona is just a drawing on a screen, as well drawn as it may be.

Gameplay consists of physics based puzzle platforming where you control Iona flying through space and navigating past all different kinds of planets that affect the push and pulls of gravity while dancing back and forth like clockwork. Each level has a star piece that lets you complete the level, how you decide to grab the star piece is all up to you. This is where the game holds most of it's charm as you fly around in limbo, there are no deaths to be had here, no frustrating moments, just a zenlike experience that's as relaxing as it is soothing with it's wonderfully crafted soundtrack reminiscent of the composer's work on FTL crossed with the childlike joy of Yann Tiersen's earlier work.

As you travel through star systems, through the overview of the map the game uses it's artstyle with small markers to clue you in on levels that will progress the storyline or add to the mechanics that Iona can use to alter gravity. Iona can find spirit animals scattered throughout the galaxy and it's only with her help that they can return to their bodies and find the peace to move on. Anytime you help an animal move on to the afterlife, a cutscene is shown depicting life when Iona was still on earth with her family. These cutscenes slowly reveal the circumstances that lead to Iona becoming a ghostly spirit alone in space. Iona contemplates these unlocked memories and laments over past actions and words that she now regrets. It's the Guardian Spirits who guide her forward, each spirit being a representation of a loved one in her past life.

Iona gains the ability to terraform planets by finding different elements unlocked through solving labyrinth puzzles. Terraforming planets changes the gravitational pull depending on the element. Fiery gas planets are explosive, pushing you up and away like a volcano and hesitate to pull you in. Water planets allow you to swim within its atmosphere and have a heavy pull making it hard for you to leave it's atmosphere with no momentum. There are seven elements in total, each with it's own unique gameplay element and giving you the opportunity to use any of them as you see fit to complete a level.

Gravity Ghost is refreshing and a breath of fresh air in a medium where killing zombies reigns supreme. In Gravity Ghost, failure isn't a gameplay mechanic, giving you the liberty and freedom to take your time and play with the levels as long as you'd like. It's the signature music that really drives the experience that you are child in awe of your surroundings. Her surroundings are playful and vibrant just like her imagination, allowing you to see through her eyes as if they were your own. Iona's tale is emotional, a cry for help in the endless vastness of space but in the end she finds her place in the cosmos. I highly recommend Gravity Ghost to players of all ages and experience, every purchase nets you two copies for yourself and a friend so you can share and enjoy!

TL;DR
Darkmaus is a heavily inspired tribute to Dark Souls, play as a mouse as he journeys through the scourge of Hazarth in this fantastic little action RPG.

Pros
+weighty combat
+smart AI
+good soundtrack
+unique aesthetic
+mice eat cheese to heal

Cons
– NG+ balancing could use work

DarkMaus is the first entry of hopefully many games for indie developer Daniel Wright. It is no secret that DarkMaus is heavily inspired by Dark Souls, with the developer openly talking about his love for the series itself and how there was nothing quite like its combat which led to him making DarkMaus. While DarkMaus is clearly inspired by it, it has developed an identity of it’s own with it’s minimalistic artstyle and 2D top down combat. You find yourself adrift on a shoreline with a broken raft nearby, dialogue prompts show up along the way explaining the mechanics of the game.

If you’re a Dark Souls player like I am, most of the mechanics will feel very familiar. If you’re not acquainted with the series then there are a couple key points you should know before diving in. DarkMaus has slow, weighty combat, it rewards patience and well planned combat initiations. You cannot button mash or rashly run through a mob of enemies, they will punish you thoroughly and make quick work of you. Healing items come in the form of cheese and are especially scarce so you cannot waste them on the simplest of battles. You want to avoid death at all costs, the reason being is that you lose all your bone marrow upon death. Bone Marrow is used at bonfires which are basically check points that save your progress and allow you to recover all your health and upgrade your stats. DarkMaus is an RPG at it’s core, and while you could finish the game at level 1 with enough skill and patience, levelling up is usually the recommended route for newbies.

You have a level up menu that shows all your weapon skills and attributes. Health affects how much damage you can take, Stamina determines how many attacks or dodges you can do before getting tired, Capacity reduces movement penalty on heavy armour, resilience affects how easily you get stunlocked by attacks and Dexterity affects attack speed. You gain 1 point per level to put in any of those, the only downside is that it requires more bone marrow from enemies the higher the level you are.

Each weapon type has their own moveset, and damage types. You can specialize in many different types of weapons but it’s usually best to specialize in 1 or 2 weapons that cover your weaknesses. There are clones of yourself that you find scattered around the world who have your exact loadout so it’s doubly important to cover your own bases and have a backup weapon that can counter your moveset. All weapons have a minimum spec requirement in their respected skill type with most basic weapons having an average requirement of 2 points, giving you an opportunity to try out most of the weapons and see which playstyle you’re most comfortable with. On my first run I championed a Katana and shield which allowed for a very agile moveset, where I mainly concentrated on flowing in and out of battle with short quick attacks which gave me ample time to dodge out of harm’s way at any given moment.

Like the Souls games, it tends to rely on showing rather than telling. It relies on visual storytelling rather than narrative, allowing the player to interpret what has happened and decide what you should do about it. There are rare moments when you will come across other sane mice in DarkMaus, most of them friendly in nature. If you decide to help them, only then will you learn what exactly is happening in the world of Hazath. An ancient Necromancer named Zarristar has returned, his army of hunters prey on the living, feeding on them for power so in turn he can feed on them and regain the power he has once lost. His constant revival of his enemies for feeding has caused them to go feral, becoming the vicious monsters they are now. Lord Victor went to face Zarristar before the scourge occurred but he has yet to return…Your task, if you choose to accept, is to find him and creating a plan to break Zarristar’s curse once and for all. The beauty of DarkMaus is that you don’t have to play nice, you can kill everyone and the game will play along. It’s up to you whether or not you want to restore peace to the world or become a vessel of Zarristar himself.

DarkMaus has a beautiful, dark minimalist art style that perfectly embodies the cruel reality of the world you’re exploring. The world surrounding you is bleak, covered in shadows. You can barely see anything past the light of your torch which slowly diminishes the longer you go without finding a bonfire. Every step into the unknown is filled with uncertainty and dread, knowing that your next step could lead to your inevitable demise. You will die, a lot. Levels are filled with all sorts of traps, that will corner you and force you to fight enemies while heavily disadvantaged. Darkmaus introduces a mechanic called Death Echoes to overcome these odds, if you find these trinkets everytime you die, a little ghost ally will follow you around and fight with you for a fraction of your strength. Find enough trinkets and die enough in a specific area and you’ll be roaming around with your own little mouse army. If you’re a roguelike fan, death and repeated frustration is probably your idea of a great time, otherwise stay far, far away.

The soundtrack supplements the atmosphere of the game with slow moving synth pieces, that are ambient and droning, shifting in nature giving the player subtle clues of what’s to come next. This is most apparent when the music becomes clashing and cataclysmic, with only one message warning you “You are Being Hunted.” Every once in a while, you will be invaded by Hunters whose soul purpose is to kill you and feed on your corpse for your bone marrow. The hunters are fast, they are fierce and they are merciless. If you get caught by a hunter while in the middle of clearing other enemies, chances are you will not survive. Your best course of attack is to run far, far way until you can fight him solo and even then it’s still quite the challenge. If you lose and they feed on you, you will respawn with only half your health which slowly goes back to normal over time, while victory rewards you with a massive amount of experience.

My biggest critique of DarkMaus if I were to choose would be the balancing of NG+ and beyond. The combat went from unforgiving to absolutely brutal in the later sections. I believe this is due to the randomized curse you are given which can range from, harder to stun opponents to your dead corpses are reanimated and become enemies. I received the latter curse and I absolutely dreaded the thought of dying at any moment due to how strong my build was, making it impossibly hard to face not only myself in combat but avoiding other enemies and traps at the same time as well. Other than that, I have very few minor qualms about DarkMaus except possibly adding a strafe mode outside of combat to avoid traps adeptly.

Darkmaus is a rare gem that captivated me for hours on end, only breaking the spell once I actually finished the game in a single 6+ hour session. And once I did, the very next day I went straight back to marathoning it until completion in NG+ mode. It’s that good. DarkMaus emulates and captures the atmosphere and gameplay that I loved so much from Dark Souls 1, bringing it's own well done minimalistic approach with adorable mice characters that can go feral at the drop of a hat. I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who wants to scratch that Souls itch or to new players who want a unique experience of patient and rewarding combat that will keep you enthralled for days to come.

The original review can be seen at RogueReviews [theroguereviews.com] with pics, gifs, and captions.

TL;DR
A coop beat 'em up game where you play as a hero trying to break the curse of the forest. Fight through forests, dungeons and a castle to find loot, unlock classes and outfits.

Pros

+fun with friends
+catchy music
+interesting Boss fights
+upgrades are refreshing
+tons of customizable character outfits

Cons

- levels feel a bit too similar
- animations are rough
- story mode feels a bit short

Rampage Knights starts with a short cutscene involving two men sitting around a campfire. These two men are brave heroes back from their latest adventure! They're lost in a forest so they decide to rest until sunrise and set out again but before they can do that, a strange figure arises from the bonfire. It looks like the face of a person who wore the Majora's Mask if it took a toll on your health and sanity and horribly disfigured you. The figure is a Warlock who steals the heroes hard earned treasures and while the heroes try to fight back, the warlock subdues them easily. The heroes later wake up in the middle of a camp and that is where the game begins...

Once you're in control of the player, you soon realize that you're surrounded by many strangers who seem to have the abilities to help you in some way, except for Tim the Alchemist. He seems pointless with that cauldron of his. This is the central hub for the rest of the game, where you'll practice your moves, change classes, and change outfits. The only way out is through the forest, but the forest is full of monsters and only leads to a nearby castle, presumably where the warlock resides with your treasure.

Classes are unlocked through completing certain achievements during your runs, most likely related to the class in some way. There are 6 different classes to choose from and you only start with the very first class called Adventurer. Adventurer has no unique traits and is considered average in every way. Other classes will have unique abilities or traits such as the Barbarian who has more vitality and wields a Final Fantasy 7-esque longsword that has an insanely long reach but the downside is that a Barbarian cannot wear armour. The Pirate class has a peg leg, starts with a pet parrot that attacks enemies and regains health while drunk. Assassins can one-shot enemies lying on the ground and uses smokescreens to avoid attacks. Warlocks can summon demons and Battlemages can use multiple magic attacks and Teleportation.

Before you can set out, there's a short tutorial section to the left of where you begin. A notebook explains the mechanics of the game on screen in short and simple terms. X is to attack, you can chain combos depending on the way you move your thumbstick and the distance your enemy is before you. If an enemy is extremely close to you, you can push kick them which knocks them back and on to the ground. Once enemies are on the ground you can either pick them up or stomp on them for major damage. You can charge up your weapon for sweeping attacks, sweeps and aerial combos both break shields. There are also four item slots used for magic, throwable weapons, scrolls and potions. That's about all the basics to learn! Now you're armed with the knowledge to kick some monster tail.

Right at the entrance of the forest is a jester with the option of changing the difficulty setting. The default setting is Normal Mode, there are four difficulty settings ranging from Casual to Insane Mode. On Normal, permadeath is activated which means once you die you have to start over completely from the beginning of the game and losing all items and weapons. Casual Mode disables permadeath allowing you to restart at the last level you died if you're afraid of losing your progression. This allows even non roguelike fans to enjoy Rampage Knights as I know some players don't enjoy the aspect of starting over from nothing over and over again.

I feel that Rampage Knights plays best with a friend, while I played solo for a bit, it was when I coop'd online with a friend of mine that I truly felt like I was having a blast. The gameplay consists of moving room to room clearing out enemies that can range from a few skeleton warriors to mobs of demons and giant Orc minibosses. When you play solo, it can be easy to get flanked by hordes of enemies from every direction on higher difficulties. With another player at your side you can spread the aggro into a pincer style battle formation, making it much harder for enemies to get the jump on you. If one of you dies, the player becomes a ghost that can help stun enemies and can be revived by receiving a certain number of souls from killed enemies. Throughout the rooms you will find lots of treasure chests, these chests are unlocked using a minigame very similar to the lockpicking one in Elder Scrolls Oblivion where you push tumblers in a pattern except that if you fail it will do physical damage to your character.

These chests usually contain money which allows you to buy rare items from vendors but chances are they will also drop weapons like a generic battle axe or even the Mjolnir itself which shoots astral hammers. They can also drop rare items that can boost your attributes or give you special abilities. Monsters can also drop loot that may give you demon like powers such as familiars that can shoot giant laser beams or fire breath. This is where the game truly feels at it's best, the weapons you can find have so many different effects. You can find weird weapons that are weak but summon giant pillars that rain death on your enemies or even yourself if you're not careful. There are also Altars which contain magic orbs that will give you abilities that consume mana such as teleportation or chain lightning. Combine this with all the different armour slots and you get a huge variation of abilities and skills during each run that are drastically different. You can get cursed or diseased by drinking potions, making deals with devils, or even altar sacrifices which usually 'reward' you with perks of some kind like double jump, or permanent strength boost but the downside is that you may end up with an ass for a head or worse, every single inanimate object in every room is now an enemy you have to defeat.

Overall Rampage Knights is a fun beat em up game that is best played with a friend. With multiple difficulties it accommodates many different levels of players, even allowing pearmadeath to be disabled. With so many outfits to unlock you'll always be able to slay monsters in style. With so many different weapons and builds to experiment with, it's easy to do multiple runs and lose track of time. I highly recommend this to gamers who want a fun multiplayer or couch coop experience similar to Castle Crashers but with a lot more variety in weapons and loot.