Recent reviews by Venachar

The best space opera game out there, play out your scifi dreams!

I dropped the game during warmind year 1. It was way, way to skewed towards grind and overall monetization. It sucked a lot of fun out of the game as many of the QOL upgrades D1 got was missing!

That said, taking time to fix things in earlier expansions, get away from Activision and doing their own thing have made things better. Shadowkeeper is much, much better than game was way back when and brough new hype to my tired soul. If you are a returning player I would say it is worth the price of entry. But if you are new you might want to wait for a sale!

This game is an asymmetrical multiplayer game where one team of specialised hunters with abilities, weapons and skills face of, hunt and try to kill a monster to try and save the planet they are on. A game where you are hunting, sneaking, killing, feeding and overall simulating hunters after a strong, deadly prey.

In the new free version of the game the only real mode that you can matchmake into is the hunt one, the titular mode where you actually fight as the game was envisioned in an attempt to focus the playerbase into one focused groupe to make matchmaking more streamlined, fast and populated with one normal and one ranked mood.

The game is patched a lot right now, the fundamental changes to the game's mechanics in hunt making it hard to balance properly and in proper games the monster is in a serious disadvantage with pro play seeing 16% win rates. But… Why is everyone saying game is OP in monsters favor?

Overall this game works fairly unfairly, four people in tandem are as good or stronger than the monster. Thus if your hunters do not play properly, do not know what they are doing or do not position themselves properly then it's close to impossible to win. A lot of salty reviews are up where people fail, fail with others that are bad and monsters win every game due to this. I had a similar experience going in where I could never win as hunters at all.

This game is best with a mic, some friends and hunting as a team, there is serious frustration with leavers and people not playing properly in the normal queue right now as people try(or not) to learn. I would suggest you pick a role, get a premade team of friends together and play for fun. It can only get better it feels like and I will make a new review when the build is out of Beta.

Till then, I hope they just make it better, but one never knows how it will…. Evolve I guess.

Wood Elves are my favorite team in this game, period. So far I have had the most fun with this team as well as the Chaos Dwarfs in Chaos Edition… But even as I recomend it I will give some feedback that is worth considering before you buy them.

Wood Elves is the second fastest team in the game after the Skaven IIRC, it makes your team good at moving the ball for the optimal pass, handoff and rush towards the end goal. They have one of the best if not THE best level one character in the Wedancer and their catchers start with a good amount of skills that is well worth their asking price. They are also the only Elven team that sport a big guy that is also a big guy that is stronger than all other big guys.

So… there is some negatives here. All chars bar the tree have armor value 7 thus making them injury prone and there will be times where teams might implode as their high cost and replacing dying or ruined pieces is hard or impossible goal. All the positions are disgustingly expensive as they are good, so getting new of them is a goal for a season rather than an off hand cash spend. The tree have a 50% chance to not stand up if he is knocked over making him slow and sometimes unreliable but he soak damage for the frail Elves and I feel he is worth it long term but he is not NEEDED.

If you want an Elven team that is fast, agile, good at stealing the ball and can move the ball from one end of the pitch and toss it to other side with EASE then I would recommend these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ as they are the gods of Elve’s ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If you want a team that is different to what is offered in the core experience well these are not it. I would recommend Undead, Necromantic. Lizardmen or the Norse to get teams that stand out more to the core races to be honest but if you want what these guys give, then they are just plain FUN. Painfull when losing half the team at times… but fun!

Also, if you do not play Wood Elves - A prone Wardancer is in need of his head being kicked in, so remember that and make it happen!

Lizardmen are a fairly unique race in the fact that they have one of the best if not THE best big guy, a solid lineup of high strength Saurus to hold the line while the nimble skinks can handle the ball and have speed that many of the speedy races envy. Out of the two original DLC races this one adds the most “new” to the original lineup and is the recommended race I would say for new players that want something different.

If you protect the skink you get a solid bashy team that can run the ball really well, but if you do not protect the skinks? Well… have fun failing at picking up the ball for the rest of the game. I would say this team is medium hard towards the easier side and is one of the better teams in the game overall as well as one of THE nr 1 bashy team on starting team value in my own opinion as of yet.

A fun addition to any player's library.

This is the newest installment of the Games Workshop old and almost cult status board game Blood Bowl and if YOU want a TL;DR version I would say: If you like Blood Bowl this is the DEFINITIVE EDITION for digital media. To learn more, keep reading.

The game have a much more robust single player experience in an campaign compared to the competitions of earlier installments. In Chaos Edition you slowly got into better and better leagues and slowly built your team up until you conquered the best of the best. In this installment you can create league play for singleplayer and play that for sure but the main fun for me was the story campaign. It tossed in gimmicks and things that is not part of the normal game and just made it FUN while teaching you the basics of the game so you know what you face online. It was corny, fun and interesting and took a while to get through before you got to the end of it all and I enjoyed it for what it was.

Online is vivid, alive and thriving with a lot of teams spinning in the official endless league and is a good place to try a few teams, crash, burn and climb till you learn the ropes. You can watch cKnoor’s videos and tutorials, read on BBTactics and slowly just try things out here. But be warned, BB was not entirely meant for endless play and some teams like killer build Chaos roam the higher ladders and it's not that fun when you get past 1.6-2k Team Value due to this s***.

The best place to play is probably in the private leagues. Joining a league like the Reddit one, Gman etc is where the fun is and the community, gaming and slow build up is part of the fun. It has less and almost NONE of the issues the endless league have and if nuffle is willing some of these leagues will adapt a way to play that make it fun for new and old players alike down the line.

There are changes to the core gameplay in how some things interact, how some skills work, rebalancing costs on a few chars among other things. If you can look past that issue as well as the fact that there is not the boardgame or the board games many races this is THE version to play online. With the way the developers listen to feedback, change things to that feedback and give away free races for owners so far I would say that joining in on the fun is well worth the money invested.

That said, If you are a player that can not STAND RNG making some games flat out unwinnable at times then well… you will only find rage and salt on this pitch. But hey, You get that luck later as it balance out… if nuffle is willing. It is also not a game that is easy to pick up and just play, it's brutal, hard and unforgiving so I STRONGLY advise that you look up how the game is played before you go too deep into online.

Now lets get into the spirit of the game (clue is in the title)! LETS SEE SOME RANDOM VIOLENCE!

Well… Take that… human scum?

The year after the game was added to steam they release this expansion to the almost modern cult classic Xcom: Enemy Unknown and more or less change nothing, but everything, for the better.

Many Times a lot of the people that played the game went slow forward, taking any strides and was conflicted in rushing forward and risk their men's lives against the aliens, making it so some games where unnaturally slow and some missions just lost the “edge”. Now we got Meld! This substance is used to further upgrade and customise your units and make them much, much more powerful and versatile an addition to your arsenal. The negative? Well… there are canisters of them on mission locations that expire over time so you NEED to get to work faster to secure them!

The new enemy E.X.A.L.T add another layer to the game as fighting them is a good way to get loot in higher difficulty settings such as laser weapons to bridge the gap of money and availability issues some players have getting early to mid game to work. They also play differently compared to the aliens so their infiltration missions, finding their base and new council missions add new and interesting flavor to the game.

There are PLENTY of new council missions by the way, adding this and slingshot to the mix give you several cool new chars to play with as well as opportunity to truly customise your characters. Want a big hulking Mech to go to to to with the Sectopods? How about making your soldiers able to jump high, go invisible or give buffs to others close to them on kills? Only negative in my book is that advanced armor and their cool looks is more or less entirely absent on gene altered soldiers and that kind of sucks. Kind of boring when someone in power armor vanilla looks more badass than say power armor Meld enhanced. That said, the sleeveless look and more sleek design to their armor is pleasing and cool in its own way and it is more a personal preference on my side.

All in all I would say that Enemy Within just flat out makes this game much, much better and if you are a die hard fan to Xcom and turn based strategy in general… then this is a must have!

Xcom is a game about strategy, good tactics and for those who really like a challenge with consequences to their gaming. It’s a reboot of a old franchise in new guise, where it's streamlined and modern without dumbing down on what made the original so good.

You care and feel for the soldiers under your command, and cry as they get killed (by something you did or just bad luck). All while following a storyline that got a distinct feel of old Sci Fi Horror B movies, something i think really work in the game's favor. That said, for those that are not into the “classic” mode and every decision is final and no take backs, there is modes where you can save and play less punishing to your gameplay.

As far as multiplayer goes it is a bit bare bones, if you have friends into it and want to take some turn based action there is some stuff to work with here. Issue is mostly the fact that it is point based, it has little customization value and overall it is kind of weak compared to other titles of this type. I would get it for its single player and then do MP if you feel like friends are up for it or just pretend it is not there.

So, does it hold up to the old game? I think it is better, as I said earlier they streamlined the game to make it more accessible, easy to understand, a clear understandable UI and a good story to go with the attacks. You feel like you are fighting the good fight, you feel like every step could be fatal and you take your time to think through your actions to keep your men and the human race safe.

You owe it to yourself to own this game and have it in your collection, so show the alien filth that this is our planet, and they are getting an eviction.