Game Reviews

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October 2017

Release Date:
Early Access July 27th, 2017 (Game is still in Alpha)

Price: $19.99

Foxhole describes itself as a "Persistent War MMO", which is accurate; but does not give the game the justice it deserves. Foxhole is a brilliant combination of RTS, MMO, Top-Down Shooter that is all mixed up together and forms one of the best Alphas I have ever played. The developers are constantly updating the game, and with a public Discord server that gives you direct access to the entirety of the community (Including the devs) you can tell they're still working very hard on this game, unlike some (read: Most) early access games I've stumbled across. If they had released the game in its current state, I would have happily accepted it as a fully released game that is just receiving updates. However, as an Alpha, I can only see bigger and better things for this game in the years to come.

The game takes place in a fictional, World War 2 tech-inspired war between The Colonials and The Wardens. The lore of the game is not on a wiki-forum, instead, the players can travel through the various maps and find various tidbits of information about each faction through small notes. In Foxhole, the players a responsible for everything when it comes to running the war. The players have to work as a team with one group fighting, and another group in the rear with the gear, maintaining the logistics of the war. By that, I mean that the players have to mine scrap, take the scrap and refine it to Basic Materials, and use those materials to make weapons, ammo, vehicles, medical gear, walls, and defenses to keep your side safe and to keep to your soldiers fighting. It's amazing to watch 70 players working as a cohesive unit to drive out the other side.

The battles can last several days, both for in-game time (1 hour = 1 in-game day) and in real life. As the days of the battle going on, the teams upgrade the technology available to them through scrap mining and turning in the special technology pieces into certain buildings. So one day you may drop 7+ hours into a game with nothing more than basic rifles and SMGs, then come back the next day to either the same battle with Carbines, Heavy Machine Guns and Bazookas, or a completely reset map. The Maps reset when one side secures every town hall on the map.

As I've said, I find Foxhole to be extremely entertaining and I easily drop 6+ hours on my days off of work with my friends either mining scrap, running sabotage operations against the enemy logistics, or holding the front lines with a rifle. With the game only in Alpha, and fairly consistent updates and content release, I can only see it going up from its current state to becoming one of the best games of the year. If you're a fan of RTS games or looking for something unique in every way, then this is the game for you.

8/10 *This is an Alpha Rating*

by unknown courier

August 2017

Release Date: Nov. 6th, 2015

Platform: PC & Mobile
Rated: M

PC Price: $9.99

Apple Store: $4.99

Mini Metro is an incredibly simple, incredibly addictive game about getting various shapes to their matching stations. Given the layouts of real cities (such as London, Paris, and New York), you connect the stations with lines as the stations pop up trying to make sure your cars can get from place to place so you can avoid overcrowding. The stations are represented by different shapes, the start for almost every map is a Circle, Square and Triangle, with Circles and Triangles being the most common stations to pop up periodically throughout the game. At each station, smaller shapes appear and the goal is for your cars to pick up those passengers and get them to a matching station. If too many shapes build up on a single station you have a time limit to get the number down, or your metro will close for overcrowding once the time limit is reached. The game's time frame is broken up into weeks, and at the end of every week you are given more assets, such as extra lines, cars, interchanges, tunnels, or carriages to put on the back of your already active cars.

Mini Metro is an extremely soothing game. The soundtrack and the ambient sounds the game makes as you deliver passengers to their stations always sets me at ease. With a quick save system, you can play the game for 10 minutes while you're waiting on something and then turn it off and move on with your day, then later pick it back right where you left off. On the mobile version this is still true, with the ability to move from app to app and the game will pick up right where you left of. Mini Metro is about as close to perfect as you can get.

The main difference between the mobile and PC versions is that I find the mobile version to be slightly harder. However, I believe this is more because of my fat fingers rather than any change in gameplay. There are some connecting stations issues I've run into, because you can't be as precise while building your lines. However, if I'm having a slow night at work, Mini Metro is my first go-to.

Final Score: 9/10

by unknown courier

July 2017

Release Date: May 30th, 2017

Platform: PC
Rated: M

Standard Price: $24.99

Delux Price: $24.99

(Includes four early unlocks, two exclusive items, and the official soundtrack.)

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is a multiplayer-only First Person Shooter set during the Vietnam War. It is a realistic shooter with minimal HUD (head-up display), with a realistic damage output. A continuation of the Red Orchestra/Rising Storm series released by TripWire, you'll see the same style of gameplay that mixes intense close quarters combat with wide open ranges, all on the same map. The Rising Storm/Red Orchestra series has always prided itself on realism, and Rising Storm 2 is no different.

With weapons authentic to the time period, realistic maps, and the ability to customize your own characters, it can feel like you're stepping into the boots of an American GI or NVA soldier. Along with the realistic maps and weapons, there are also realistic sounds in the game. You will hear bullets popping and zipping past you along with the screams of the wounded as the player's screen fades to black after being shot. This game is not for the feint of heart.

The gameplay across all the game modes are team-based. On the larger, 64-player based servers, the teams are divided up into squads that max out at 6 players. At the head of the team, there is the Commander, a special class that can call in Aerial Recon, Fast Deploy the team, or call in various artillery. Each squad is given a Squad Leader that is supposed to assist the Commander. Squad Leaders can mark points for the Commander to call artillery on. For the American side, the Squad Leader also acts as a mobile Spawn Point, on the Vietnamese Side the squad leader can create Squad Tunnels, an extra spawn point. Along with the squads, there are classes for the weapons. Not every player can run around with an M60; instead, there are multiple classes that all have different weapons available to them, along with a Rifleman class that is unlimited. Personally, I've always enjoyed games that have weapon restrictions, though it can be a nuisance.

The game includes three game modes so far:

Territory: One team attacks objectives while the other team defends them.

Supremacy: Both teams constantly attack and defend objectives that are connected to the team's "Home Base" and gain points. This game mode also includes attack and transport helicopters for the American side.

Skirmish: Focuses on 16-player maps that utilizes smaller scale, squad-based game play.

Most servers are 64 players and rotate the Supremacy and Territory game modes which can lead to fun, intense, and hectic battles.Unfortunately, no game is perfect, and Rising Storm 2 does come with its flaws. There is a majorly steep learning curve, and if you haven't played Red Orchestra 2 or the first Rising Storm, you'll find yourself getting killed without knowing what is going on, and it may deter you from continuing with the game. The pace of the game is slow. There is no running around by yourself and getting 20 kills, and there is no taking a whole magazine to the chest and expecting to live. In fact, most kills are generally 1-2 bullets and you're lucky if you get to see the muzzle flash before your character falls to the ground and the screen fades to black.

The bigger, uglier, flaw in the game is actually the community. It can be hard to find an admined server, so you find yourself stuck with mic-spammers. Racism is fairly prevalent over the mic, with players saying racial slurs and doing an overly exaggerated Vietnamese "accent." The players use the lame excuse of "keeping it real with the game." The less ugly, but still annoying, aspect of the community is the new players taking important roles and wasting them. If you decide to play the game, I recommend only using the rifleman class until you're comfortable with the mechanics and see how roles are supposed to be played before venturing onto the new and exciting roles that await you. Along with new players taking the roles, if you have a slow computer or connection, you may find yourself stuck with the rifleman class every time when you finally load in and every role has already been taken anyways.

Overall, I've found Rising Storm 2 to be very enjoyable and fun. While the game does have its issues, I feel these issues are outweighed by the enjoyment I've had during my playing time and the $25 game price.

Final Score: 7/10

by unknown courier