MaxBedlam
Half-Life 2

Darksiders Genesis

26.3 hours
22 of 30 achievements

A top-down hack&slash or shooter depending on which of the two characters you're using prequel to the series.

I quite enjoyed the game. Looks decent, plays pretty well, the story was amusing and the voice acting was good. Exploring the levels was fun as well for the most part. Wouldn't call it a masterpiece but there's not much for me to complain about either. So I'd definitely recommend this game.

Half-Life 2

Hero Siege

129.9 hours
41 of 51 achievements

Bought the game during steam's Summer sale and got really hooked. Ended up playing around 10 hours every day and clocked a lot of hours in a relatively short period.

Hero Siege started as a simple wave-killing roguelike when it launched, but it evolved over the years and it's now a hack & slash RPG much like Diablo, Path of Exile and the like. It has offline play as well as online servers where you can team up and trade with other players. When I joined the game during the 12th season (I joined about 2 weeks before the season end) it was really a blast.

Then came the 13th season and along with it a huge rebalance of the game. Stats across all equippable items were nerfed, enemies on the other hand were buffed. The game went from a fast paced fantasy slaughter simulator to relatively slow paced, unfun and bug-ridden piece of shit. So I doubt I'll play more of it, but I got a lot of fun out of it before things went to shit so I don't regret buying it.

Half-Life 2

Project Warlock

15.7 hours
20 of 20 achievements

This game is fantastic! A proper retro shooter. It has a good selection of weapons with each of them having two different upgrades you can choose between. Weapons themselves are for the most part well done so I've actually found myself switching between several of them and enjoying the feel of each. There are also spells but I haven't really used any, aside from one that converts your mana into ammo.

There are supposedly 60 levels (didn't count myself) spread across 5 different chapters. Each chapter will have different theme(s), enemies and even picks-up have their sprites changed for each chapter so they fit the theme.

Gameplay and gunplay are both very fun. Environment is pretty well varied, you'll go through caves, castles, cellars, graveyards, sci-fi labs, towns and what not and in the end you'll go through hell itself.

There's a decent amount of secrets to find, throughout the game which will reward you with lots of goodies such as ammo, life-up, upgrade points and sometimes even a new weapon.

Difficulty wise the game felt just right on the highest one. I'd recommend either Hard or Hardcore for the veteran players of this type of shooters. Both are same in difficulty, but you get 3 lives and can find more throughout the game on hard while on hardcore you only get one life and can't get more. I personally beat it on hardcore right away on my first playthrough. Achievements are reasonable and it's easy to 100%
as long as you're able to beat the game on hardcore.

Q09066930

Hm, interesting. So, basically, Hero Siege was a fun game and then updates ruined it? That’s weird. Project Warlock seems like a cool game, and it is good to know that cheevos are reasonable. I have it on my wishlist for some time now. Thanks for your reviews.

MaxBedlam

Yeah, Hero Siege used to be really fast paced and you could progress fast as well being able to reach end-game in only a couple of hours. Developers wanted to slow the game down (which is an idea I have no problem with), but they have overdone it big time in my opinion. They have a history of making drastic changes to the game, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. This time it was for the worse.

If you like old-school shooters I can’t recommend Project Warlock enough. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s actually having a 70% discount on steam right now, or since it was bundled before you could pick it up for even less on grey sites or trade for it.

Q09066930

Yup, I know about discounts and all (it’s on my wishlist, so I get updates), but I have a policy of buying games only if I really want to play them, like right now and there. You know how it goes. I have bought Kingdom Come recently because of the sweet price, and now I look at Fallout 4, but maaan those games are huge and I will probably not play them at all, so it’s a waste of money and morale. FPS is not my favorite genre, and I still have Doom (2016) to play, so Project Warlock has to wait. If you liked Project Warlock so much, what would you say about Prodeus? It’s on my wishlist too.

MaxBedlam

Prodeus looks pretty good, it’s on my wishlist. I noticed it’s published by Humble so part of me is thinking I should just wait for it to get bundled lol.

However since the game has built-in level editor and map browser to download maps from other players, if it’s going to have active community when it comes to making new levels that would add huge value to the game and probably get me tempted to just buy it instead.

Gonna see how things go after it’s out of early access.