Recent reviews by Maltodextrin

This is a delightful, hilarious game that can legitimately be enjoyed by anyone who has a beating heart.

It's great if you ignore all the racists on the public servers

Nidhogg 2 is a sterling follow-up to the original. More levels, more weapons, but with the core gameplay of fast, frenetic, combat with their tug-of-war mechanic unchanged. While the change up in art style was initially jarring, I soon found myself in love with the colorful, goofy environments.

If you're looking for a fast, fun, local game that's just as fun to watch as it is to play, Nidhogg 2 is your jam.

For every early access game I do a simple test -
Would this game be worth the price if, within 24 hours of purchase, the devs faked their deaths and disappeared to an undersea techno-amish community, never to be seen by the Land-English again, would this game be worth the price?

Well, it's definitely still buggy. However, it passes the test with flying colors for me. PUBG is some of the most fun, most intense multiplayer gameplay I've experienced in ages. It's well worth the $30 price tag.

A zillion diffierent weapons, giant bugs, gianter bugs, even more more gianter bugs, giant robots, and both couch and online co-op. EDF is a straight port of the latest iteration for consoles, and the first time a true EDF game has made it to the PC. It's worth every penny. The EDF games are truly a unique experience. If you've never played one before, you've got to give it a shot. If you have played it before, EDF 4.1 is the current pinnacle of the series.

0rbitalis is a simple little orbital mechanics puzzle game. You shoot a little ball and it's got to stay within the play area for 10 seconds without getting flung into space, or crashing in to an orbital body.

It's not a unique concept, but it's one that's unfortunately not executed well. The biggest issue is that, in addition to the various planets and stars moving, often your launch point is moving too. Many levels require fairly precise timing and aim, and because of the variety of things moving around, you'll normally spend most of a puzzle that you've essentially soved firing off into space, or into planets because you haven't gotten lucky enough to fire at exactly the right time at exactly the right speed. It makes the whole thing feel more like an exercise in luck rather than any actual problem solving.

There are better, free-er games out there on the web. I'd give this one a pass.

So, Ryse: Son of Rome, red-headed stepchild of the X-BOX One debut event. There was a huge amount of consternation over what appeared to be entirely quick time event based content.

Fortunately, Ryse turned out to be a plesant surprise. The story is entertaining, if ridiculous, as though Tom Clancy wrote historical fiction, and the gameplay itself is a pretty tight spectacle fighter, akin to the Arkham series or Shadows of Mordor. Combat is meaty and satisfying, which is good because there's a lot of it. The execution system allows you to gain various resources like health, or bonus damage, and managing what you use your executions for can be the key to success.

Enemy types are varied enough, keeping it varied and challenging through the endgame.

The game isn't spectacular (though not lacking on spectacle), but if you like the genera, and don't mind the fast and loose interpritation of history, it's a solid experience.

From the screenshots, I was expecting some nice arcadey space-shooter goodness. My hope was basically for a Star Fox knockoff with better graphics.

Unfortunately, what I got was a janky, poorly voice acted mess that runs far worse than a game of this grapical fidelity should.

The entire game is played on a flat plane. There is no 3-d movement or action. Ships turn very quickly. So quickly it's difficult to do fine maneuvers. Generally, this means that a dogfight consists of either a series of head-on passess, or flying behind a wiggling enemy fighter. It's incredibly hard to see where your shots are going. There's no sort of lead indicator, and your "Crosshairs" are basically useless. Your bullets are your best indicator, and even then, it's mostly "This is the general flightpath of the enemy ship, maybe he'll run into enough of them to die." I found one of the most effictive dogfighting techniques to be to sit still, and just point your gun at the incoming enemy fighters, as that's the only time they really flight striaght.

The campaign missions are frequently interrupted with poorly written cutscenes which basically consist of your ship hovering near other guy's ship. Then you skip them, and you're thrown against a timed wave of infinite enemy fighters. The voice acting comes in here, as the only things more repetitive than the sound of your guns constantly firing (there's barely any reason not to), and the music, are the death cries of enemy pilots. The frequent "Arghs!" and "Oh No!"s are delivered with the drama and gravitas of realizing you put slightly too much creamer in your coffee.

I was hoping the arrival of capital ships on the playing field would make things more interesting. Unfortunately, rather than doing things like take out individual guns, or subsystems like engines, they're just another life & shield bar. Actually, the ones I fought were easier than the fighters, because they're so much larger and easier to hit.

Finally, the options menus are limited. If you're in a mission they're limited to "Quit" or "Don't quit". Anything you change results in the game restarting. You can use a controller, but you get even less fine control. Sometimes the turn keys just plain didn't work, or your acceleration will get stuck on.

I didn't have high hopes for this game, yet it still managed to dash them. For that, bravo.

It'sa good thing white man came and killed all the buffalo. Those things were dangerous.