REVIEW: Rogue Aces Deluxe on PC (Steam)

Review By Jon Donnis

Rogue Aces Deluxe is an old school, old fashioned arcade game, this is the kind of game that back in the 90s you would walk into an arcade and spend all your coins on. The basic story is that you have joined a group called the "Rogue Aces" and your job is to the liberate some islands from "The Baron" and his army.

You have 3 planes which are basically your 3 lives for a mission, you take off from an aircraft carrier and have to complete short missions, usually be trying to shoot down enemy aircraft in dog fights, bombing enemy buildings and shooting rockets at tanks and other dangers on ground level. Once you have taken out your enemy you can take over their airfield. When you have taken too much damage, or used up your rockets and bombs, or even running low on fuel you just return to your aircraft carrier or a land base if you have captured one, and get fixed up, refuelled or top up your weapons, and before you know it you are back up in the air and taking out the bad guys.

As you would expect the missions start pretty easy and get progressively harder.

You can control your craft with a mixture of your mouse and the keyboard, or preferably with a controller, I tried both and found that the controller is best, although playing with the keyboard and mouse is perhaps not as hard as you would expect.

Taking off from the aircraft carrier is easy, landing however does take some practice, although there is an auto land option, which I embarrassingly have to admit I started to use as the manual landing does take some practice and skill.

This game has a few nifty tricks up it's sleeve too, for example if your ship explodes you eject and can parachute to the ground, try to avoid the enemy and survive and while falling you can drop grenades too, but also if you eject you can land in an enemy plane and steal it mid-air!

The game also has a multiplayer mode, with up to 4 player local death match modes.

In the death match modes there are some fun options whereby you can fire laser beams, use a flame thrower and so on.

The Good

This is a fun arcade game, that really took me back to my youth, standing in the arcade and spending all of my 10p coins.

Their is enough in the game to keep your playing for a while too.

The Bad

Nothing really that practice doesn't fix. 

Overall

Enjoyable game that ticks all the boxes.

I score this game 9/10

Review by Jon Donnis

REVIEW: Golf With Your Friends on Xbox One

Review by Jon Donnis

Golf With Your Friends is not your usual crazy/mini golf game, this is so much more.

The main attraction to this game is the multiplayer, hence the name of the game, "Golf With Your Friends", you can play with up to 11 friends, meaning 12 players can be playing simultaneously.

Now some of us don't have 11 friends, so I played the single player version, as I do enjoy a good golf game, both your PGA style professional simulation as well as your crazy golf pick up and play fun type of game.

Golf With Your Friends has lots of courses and all have a theme, which makes everything that little bit more fun.

Whether it is your standard mini golf type course, or a course in a haunted house, a pirate course, and even a Worms course.

The game also has powerups, which come into play the most when playing with friends, as you can trap their ball by freezing it, turning it into a cube or leaving it stuck in honey.

There are various game modes too, classic, hoops or hockey goals instead of your normal tee. All give a nice playing experience.

And just when you think that is too much, you even have a level editor which although can be quite time consuming, it is great to play your own courses.

There are a lot more things to the game, and there is plenty to keep you going for a while.

The Good

Bright and colourful graphics, easy to pick up and play, and a lot more than you would usually get with a mini golf type game.

The Bad

Some of the courses seem a bit over complicated and some can be downright devilish to complete, personally I like the challenge so I don't mind, but some could be put off, I found that if you plan where you are going to play the ball, by using the above camera option, you will find yourself less likely to get lost on court. Practice makes perfect. I would also suggest that the controls are a bit tricky at first to get used to.

Overall

This is a fun, easy to play golf game, as a single player game it is fun and you will spend many an hour completing the courses and trying to collect your achievements, but the game really excels in multiplayer mode.

I score this game a solid 7/10

Available now on PS4, Xbox, Switch and Steam.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm will launch December 10 on PC and Mobile.

As the world awaits the results of this week's US election, Indie Development Collective The Dairymen and Nerial - creators of the BAFTA-nominated Reigns series - today announced that their game, George Orwell's Animal Farm, is coming to PC and Mobile on December 10th.

 

August marked seventy-five years since the novel was published in 1945, and still today, Orwell's subtle yet razor-sharp commentary on the corrupting nature of power arguably remains as fresh and relevant as ever.

Animal Farm - which enjoys the full endorsement of the Orwell Estate - will be a narrative, choice-based adventure game that puts the player at the centre of an allegorical revolution. By choosing which of the animals' wishes they follow – and who is ignored or sidelined – gamers will influence the critical events that define the fate of the farm. Players must devise strategies to balance resources, defend the farm, and keep the animal population happy.

Imre Jele, Project Founder:

"I have long wanted to explore how, through video gaming, we could design an experience which immerses the player in Orwell's vision. As the project has come to fruition in 2020 it has felt increasingly vital to bring Orwell's study of inequity, power and control to a new audience. As I watch world events unfold - Brexit, Trump, Putin, Orban, Erdogan - and see numerous leaders use tactics from the populist, nationalist playbook: it sometimes feels like Animal Farm is not fiction, but reality."

Emily Short, Writer:

"Animal Farm tends to be remembered for how its powerful characters destroy the truth through gaslighting, hypocrisy, corruption and greed – all distressingly recognisable to people living through the political events of 2020. But the book also says a lot about why altruistic characters support horrible outcomes, and how values like hard work, cooperation, and loyalty can be warped in obedience to unsound goals. Video games are powerful at telling stories about systems and enabling 'what if?' questions. My goal was to capture Orwell's very relevant observations in a form that players can explore."

Key features of George Orwell's Animal Farm video game are:

Pick Your Own Adventure

Cultivate, subvert, or sacrifice the different animals who live on Manor Farm and see their different political strategies play out.

Guide Manor Farm through seven years of Animalism. Can the player avoid its manipulation and the descent into decadence?

Manage the affairs and feelings of Manor Farm's animals as the fortunes of the farm evolve.

Fill your handbook with information about each animal and log events.

Strategically manage the resources and defence of Manor Farm

Rally against the two-legged enemy: human beings.

Prepare for battle by building the Farm's defences and increasing resources production, including building the Windmill.

Idyllic springs, sweet summers, golden autumns and bitter winters must all be navigated in each passing year as Animalism marches on.

Multiple Endings and unlockable achievements

Choose your political machinations: Surveillance, Reeducation or Bloodbaths.

Reach up to 6 destinies and find 8 different endings.

Complete all 48 achievements in the Farm's handbook.

Bring in new creatures to the Republic of Animals, and open up new possibilities for the direction of the Farm.

 

The game will be narrated by Abubakar Salim who amongst other roles played Bayek in Assassin's Creed: Origins. His performance was directed by Kate Saxon, who has worked on a series of high profile video games including Everybody's Gone To The Rapture, Alien: Isolation, The Witcher 2 & 3 and others.

The indie developer collective consists of The Dairymen (Andy Payne founder of Just Flight, AppyNation and Imre Jele founder of Bossa Studios), and Nerial, the creators of the BAFTA-nominated Reigns series, who bring their unrivalled skills in streamlined and powerful storytelling to Animal Farm.

Wishlist on Steam at

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1398100/Orwells_Animal_Farm

DIRT 5 - Launch Trailer | PS4

🎮 DIRT 5 - launching November 6 on PlayStation 4, with a FREE upgrade option to PlayStation 5! Pre-order now - https://amzn.to/3kNwEDq

Conquer stunning global locations. Rise to glory in a star-studded story. Tame seven decades of off-road cars. Share the fun online and offline. Design the racing arena of your dreams.

This is DIRT 5. Time to LET LOOSE.

Check out the official launch trailer for DIRT 5, giving you a taste of the amplified racing action on offer in the biggest, boldest DIRT game ever made – from truck racing through Italian marble mines, to ice racing on New York's East River, to the returning Gymkhana events, and so much more.

The trailer also features the voice of Troy Baker, who features in DIRT 5's Career mode as Alex 'AJ' Janicek.

REVIEW: Hammerting (Early Access) on PC (Steam)

Review by Jon Donnis

"Hammerting is a vertical dwarven mining colony sim with RPG elements."
That is how the game is sold, and it sounds pretty good, you are in charge of a mine, you have control of dwarves, you build, craft and fight. Surely this is Dungeon Keeper for 2020 right? Not quite.

So, the basic story is that there is a war going on overground, dwarves are working underground to help their allies overground, you start with just a few Dwarves but you can then hire more, you upgrade them, and so on. When you click on the door to the mine, you see a map and are able to choose challenge to accept. This all sounds pretty simple doesn't it, and if it was simple, then I would love this game, the problem is, that it is not simple its overly complicated and confusing.

The first hour of gameplay I was literally trying to figure out how to get a dwarf to just do what I wanted it to do, you see you can't actually tell a dwarf to do a specific task, you have to instead queue up tasks and then the dwarves will decide themselves what to do, the problem is half the time they just seem to stand about idle, or do not go where you need them to, and this is not on purpose either. The game is full of bugs, and because you can't physically tell a dwarf to do something, you will soon get massively frustrated by these bugs.

Another problem with this game is that it is a vertical builder, but you mine into the wall you are looking at, so despite you having what should be a 2D area that you are interacting with, you actually end up with 3 layers, which just adds to the confusion. It also doesn't help that the tutorial to help you start is utterly useless. Remember how I mentioned Dungeon Keeper earlier? Remember how each level you would be eased into things, gathering gold, building, mining and so on, this game just kind of throws you in there.

The layout is also poorly designed, for example I knew that I had to access the inventory, but there is no inventory button anywhere on the screen, after giving up a few times and then emailing the PR person promoting the game, I eventually figured out that each room you build has it's own inventory that is a box to the side of the pop up window when you click on it. 

I can moan about this game for ever but I will stop here, the game is still Early Access, and it has lots of potential, the team who are developing it are quick to reply, they are open to listening and trying to improve the game. There is also a free demo you can play, I advise you to check out the demo, and if you like it and want to stick with it and watch it grow, then go for it. But for me, even if this game was perfect, I don't think it is worth £20. This could be a browser game. Dungeon Keeper it is not.

Such a shame as just the description of the game had me so excited. Maybe after a few months when the bugs are all fixed, and they improve the interface, and make the game more playable, then I might come back and give it another go, but even after trying so hard to enjoy this game and putting a solid 6 hours into playing it, it just doesn't work for me.

But don't take my word on it, download the demo, give it a chance, remember this is early access, and hopefully will improve over the coming months.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/760650/Hammerting/