Recent reviews by Mocker

Pretty good game.

If you’re a normal person, like me, you've probably spent a good deal of time wondering what it might be like to live the life of a wombat. Well, friends, I am pleased to inform you that your time is at hand. For the low one-time price of $8.99, you too can now experience life as a member of the esteemed family of Marsupialia Diprotodontia Vombatidae.

Slowly plodding through the forest, foraging for tasty grasses and flowers, Paperbark lets you immerse yourself in the idyllic existence of this majestic creature. You’ll instantly get caught up in the excitement as your wombat slowly emerges from his burrow and sets off through the forest at a leisurely pace. Snuffling about for food, the thrill of adventure is thick as Mutton Broth Soup as you encounter various insects and birds on your journey. There are even occasions where you must summon all of your ferocity to claw your way through small piles of sticks and other challenging obstacles, highlighting the dangers these valiant warriors face as they fight for survival in the harsh Australian wilderness.

While Paperbark presents a fairly realistic look at the life of a wombat, notably absent are the distinctive cube-shaped poops that wombats are famous for. As I’m sure you’re already aware, the typical wombat produces roughly 80 to 100 cubes of poop each night and stacks them in piles to communicate with other wombats and attract mates. Wombats are in fact the only creature in the animal kingdom to produce fecal matter in this unique cube shape, so the failure to include this distinctive characteristic seems like a massive oversight on the part of the developers at Paper House. It’s almost enough to make one wonder if they’ve ever even seen a real live wombat!

Endgame content is also somewhat lacking, would be nice if they added an arena mode where you could fight other wombats or something….

Still, this is a fairly competent wombat simulator overall, held back only by the lack of poop cubes and meaningful endgame content. Highly recommended for other normal people (like me).

This seems like a fairly simple game on the surface, blending a first-person bus-driving simulation with classic Snake gameplay. You drive your bus around, sucking up screaming passengers and dropping them off at various destinations, weaving through increasingly tight spaces until you crash or run out of room to keep moving. It's all fairly ridiculous.

Beneath this deceptively silly veneer, however, the game speaks to the soul-crushing plight of the modern worker. You are compelled to keep driving forward in the endless quest for productivity, your very survival at stake, your mission growing more futile and insurmountable with each passing moment, the burden of responsibility weighing heavier, all remaining paths to success shrinking into nothingness, until the pace is no longer even remotely sustainable and it all comes crashing down in a massive avalanche of liability lawsuits, hospital bills, and death.

Highly recommended.

Fun enough, though it's basically the same game as Race The Sun with less abstract graphics plus some tweaks to progression and power-ups.

Most rhythm games tend to be fairly bright and friendly, often leveraging colorful and relatively simple designs. The action might get a little frantic at times but the games in this genre usually aren’t actively trying to induce heart attacks in their players.

And then there’s Thumper, a nightmarish rollercoaster through a psychedelic hellscape. This game hates you and it isn’t trying to hide it. The graphics are steeped in bloody reds, the action crunches and screeches violently, and the music radiates intensity as you race headlong into sudden doom.

Gameplay uses up/down/left/right movement plus a single button which can be tapped or held for a few different effects in various situations. Each level ramps up the difficulty through several rounds and then hits you with a couple of malevolent bosses towering over increasingly fiendish tracks. It isn’t overly complicated but it’s plenty challenging.

Everything looks and sounds amazing, and the game has a pretty cool feel once you get the hang of it. Just be prepared for an experience that combines all the best qualities of a car accident and a heart attack.

This is a great little train routing game. Mellow, minimalist, and just sort of perfect for late at night when you're too tired to play anything particularly involved. There's pleasant music humming and the map slowly expands outward with new stops popping out at gradual intervals. It's almost a little zen.

Extra thanks to the developers at Dinosaur Polo Club for continuing to release new maps in little bunches free of charge. No DLCs or expansions, no microtransactions, just some cool new maps made freely available for everybody who owns the game. These guys are pretty damn righteous.

This is pretty much a perfect game, or about as close as one could reasonably hope for... The Talos Principle absolutely nails everything it sets out to do, delivering clever puzzles supported by rich environments, solid voice acting, and a compelling plot layered with interesting history and thought-provoking philosophy.

Every aspect of the game is exceedingly well polished and the end result is supremely satisfying. It ranks among the very best in the genre, worthy of standing alongside the Portal series. Many years from now, college courses will be taught on the game, fringe subcultures will explore its core concepts, and people will reflect upon the diverse elements which combined to allow for the creation of such a uniquely perfect game.

This unique isometric RPG opens with a quote from Glen Cook’s The Black Company, and fans of Cook’s dark military fantasy novels will feel right at home in this gritty and grimy setting. The Age of Decadence drops you into a crumbling empire teetering on the brink of chaos, with several major guilds and noble houses vying for power while the general populace struggles to survive amidst gangs of thugs, mercenaries, and religious fanatics. It’s a harsh and brutal world with very little magic outside basic alchemy and very few monsters, though your fellow humans fill the latter role quite admirably.

Unlike most RPGs, The Age of Decadence emphasizes story and character interaction over combat as the player gets caught up in various schemes and power struggles. In many events throughout the game, the player is confronted with meaningful choices which alter the direction of the story in meaningful ways, opening new possibilities while closing off others. There are multiple paths through the story and the player can choose between allying with the Commercium (merchants guild), the Imperial Guards, the Boatmen of Styx (assassins guild), and several other factions. Each path provides a different perspective on the overarching story while the player’s decisions and actions help shift the balance of power between the various factions. This lends the game excellent replay value as each playthrough with a different character type creates a distinctly different experience.

Skills are split between Combat Skills (e.g., Swords, Bows, Dodge, Block, etc.) and General Skills (e.g., Sneak, Streetwise, Crafting, Lore, etc.). Building different skills unlocks different options throughout the game, allowing the story to progress in different directions. Of course there are never quite enough skill points to go around, so you’ll need to make some choices in terms of what to focus on, and those choices will impact which options or paths are available as you work through the story.

While combat isn’t the primary focus of the game, the turn-based combat system makes for some challenging conflicts. There’s a good variety of weapon types with poison, potions, and other items like nets and bolas supplementing your character’s abilities. Fans of traditional RPGs should be advised that The Age of Decadence takes a slightly more realistic approach to combat; you’re not likely to become an unstoppable killing machine but focusing on combat skills will allow your character to progress quite a bit. Or you can focus more on non-combat skills, leveraging skill-based alternative options which allow you to progress through the game with minimal combat.

The game’s fairly heavy on text, drawing inspiration from Cook’s noir-flavored narratives to build a broken and decaying society filled with shady characters. The world design follows suit with lots of yellows and browns, crumbling ruins and scrabbly flora. All together, it builds a cohesive world with a very distinctive feel.

Bear in mind that it isn’t an open world RPG, each area is broken up into zones and the paths to navigate those zones are somewhat limited, so you don’t get the kind of free range exploration found in open world RPGs. It also isn’t a terribly long game, though what’s there is plenty substantial enough to be satisfying, and the variations when playing through it with different characters lends it a lot more life.

Despite those limitations in scope, The Age of Decadence accomplishes what it sets out to do extremely well, delivering a unique and challenging RPG experience in a dangerous world echoing the spirit and tone of Glen Cook’s landmark military fantasy series. Just as Cook challenged and subverted the fantasy genre’s conventions in the 80s and 90s, The Age of Decadence flips around many of the conventions common to modern RPGs, offering meaningful choices and branching story paths while focusing on street-level characters with limited abilities rather than gods and kings.

Highly recommended for fans of isometric RPGs who'd like a change of pace emphasizing story and meaningful choices over endless combat.

In retrospect, it seems totally obvious. Rocket cars playing soccer. Of course this is a thing. How could it not be? Of course it's ridiculously fun. Who would want to live in a world where it wasn't?

When you get right down to it, there are two kinds of people out there. Those who love soccer and those who hate it. There isn’t a whole lot of middle ground... The amazing thing about Rocket League is that, as a game, it works extremely well for both kinds of people. I think it comes down to the fundamental nature of rocket cars. Because everyone loves rocket cars. And once you add rocket cars to something, no matter what that thing might have been before, no matter how boring or lame it might have been in its previous existence, it sort of becomes a whole new thing. A totally awesome new thing with rocket cars.

So you’ve got all the best elements of sports – the thrilling victories and crushing defeats, camaraderie and loathing, amazing moments that transcend simple competition – and then you throw in a whole bunch of rocket cars zooming around and flying through the air and demolishing each other in huge explosions, and it gets even more awesome. And that's Rocket League.

Lords of Xulima is pretty fantastic if you're a fan of old school CRPGs. It blends Ultima style isometric world exploration with turn-based Might & Magic style combat and delivers over 100 hours worth of adventuring.

Xulima’s designs and art assets are extremely reminiscent of the classic Ultima games with numerous familiar character models and items, to the point where one could question whether it’s more homage or theft. The story also progresses in a manner which is somewhat similar to the Ultimas and some of the NPCs even spout similar catch phrases, so fans of the old Lord British series will feel right at home.

Combat is turn-based and fairly similar to old school Might & Magic and Bard's Tale games (or Paper Sorcerer would be a more recent example). Your party is arranged in front and back rows, with melee up front and only spells, missile weapons, and polearms capable of attacking from the back. Turn order is shown on the right side of the screen, with your Initiative stats and some randomization determining the initial attack sequence and Speed stats determining attack frequency. Each weapon type has a bonus effect, either stuns, bleeds, or wounds, and different spells also leverage those effects plus others like burns. Attack success is determined by a die roll exceeding a target value which is set by comparing the attacker's Attack stat to the attackee's Defense and Evasion stats.

It's actually a pretty cool system that pays homage to classic CRPGs while adding some modern updates, with a bit of extra depth thanks to effect stacking and turn order manipulation, plus an emphasis on resource management for power points, potions, scrolls, etc.

World exploration is also fun, each area has a unique flavor with distinct terrain and other characteristics. Towns tend to be small, often just glorified outposts, but overall the world is fairly interesting and the entire game benefits from being hand crafted to show off the land’s unique features.

Xulima tends to be somewhat challenging compared to many recent RPGs, you can easily gimp your characters by building them incorrectly, and it doesn't provide quest arrows and other modern conveniences. It's not for everyone but the world exploration and combat is fun enough to make it worth the effort.

A few noteworthy negatives… Xulima isn't truly open world, the available paths are far more restrictive than in the classic Ultima games and the world is split up into separate zones instead of being one continuous map. There’s also no monster respawn, once you clear a zone it stays clear, so that prevents the world from feeling as alive and realistic as the old Ultima games and it eventually limits how much you can level your characters. While the game offers a fun mix of classes there are some issues with class balance which tend to marginalize some of the options, and the combat system can be fairly unforgiving if you don't put points in the "correct" stats.

The Talisman of Golot DLC provides an item that you can use to periodically give your party a little boost. It collects energy as you kill things and progress through the game, then you can spend that energy to request assistance from the talisman in the form of money, food, bonus stat points, or bonus skill points. Also, if you're not sure what to do next to advance in the game, the talisman will tell you which objective you should be pursuing (and those little hints don't cost any energy). And that's all there is to it. No extra quests or other content, just a talisman that collects energy which you can occasionally exchange for a little boon (plus it's tied to an achievement or two).

Xulima isn’t a perfect game but it’s a fun homage to some of the classic CRPGs from the 80s and 90s. If you're looking for something that captures the feeling of the old Ultima games, Xulima will have no problem scratching that particular itch.