Tag: Release year: 2023

Stasis: Bone Totem – Atlantean Rumble

What do you get if combine meaty body horror, Lovecraft, and Atlantean mythology sprinkled with Blade Runner, The Descent, and Alien? Well, you get Stasis: Bone Totem. This is the Brotherhood’s third game in the Stasis franchise – a point & click horror adventure series that doesn’t shy away from showing the macabre and the gruesome in all its glory. So far, so good, and you can read the thoughts of the developers in an interview I made with them here. However, it saddens me to say, that there are some problems with this title. While it maintains the horror in both atmosphere and story, the game falters and stumbles in the feature most critical to gaming: the gameplay.

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Solasta: Crown of the Magister [DLC] Palace of Ice – Soraks Forever

The evil Soraks are back, and they are meaner and greener than ever! Palace of Ice is another story DLC for Solasta: Crown of the Magister. Unlike Lost Valley, this one is a direct continuation of the original campaign instead of being a standalone adventure. This means that you get the chance to import your old dungeon-crawling crew if you still got the save file laying around. I had to start up an old computer of mine to find the save as it was a long time since I played it. And thank the Lord I found it. The thought of going through the main campaign again just to experience Palace of Ice would have been very demoralizing. Not that the main adventure is all bad, but one take was enough for me. And yes, you are allowed to create a new party, but my weird gaming autism would have prevented me from doing so.

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Star Wars Jedi Survivor – Master of Parkour

In my Quick Impressions of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I wasn’t very impressed by the game, but I went back in and to my surprise, I started to enjoy myself… a bit at least. The things I brought up in that post still stand, though. Actually, things get worse from that point on. It becomes even more “anime” and absurd, with the addition of another problem: a disconnect from story to gameplay, and vice versa. The story and cut-scenes are presented rather realistic within the setting, however, the gameplay turns crazier and crazier the further you get into the story. Hence the disconnect, and to me this is usually immersion shattering, especially when cut-scenes dictate how my character acts. Like when taking a wound, but just moments before I could eat blaster fire all day. The game is filled with issues like this, and this is on top of the things I already mentioned in my quick impressions.

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Dreams in the Witch House – Rat Trouble

Another day, another Lovecraft-inspired game. However, the difference from other games that tries similar things, is that Dreams in the Witch House actually succeeds at what it tries to do. It got nice atmosphere that feels like it could be part of Lovecraft mythos, and it got interesting gameplay to boot – beyond the traditional point & click stuff. I played the demo last year and was impressed with the game then already, so it makes me happy the full title retains the feeling I got from the demo. Atom Brain Games created something truly special here, and now we can only hope that they continue on this track for the future. But enough of that, what about the story, and how does it play?

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SpellForce: Conquest of Eo – First Impressions

Conquest of Eo is a 4X spinoff of the SpellForce series, and initially, my impression was great. But as it turns out, the game seems to have some serious problems in form of difficulty. The first few hours were awesome. It felt like a nice mix between Age of Wonders and Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes. I was happily building up my heroes and doing some general adventuring when something foul and smelly revealed its head. As it turns out, the circle mages, which are powerful opponents, don’t play by the same rules.

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