Wordsmith's Anvil

Image credit: Jump Over the Age "'More Human than Human' is our motto," Tyrell says with a mixture of matter-of-fact clarification and barely contained pride.     Deckard scoffs at the very idea that one of these replicants could be anything like a human.       Let alone more.     Blade Runner is, and probably always will be, my all-time favorite movie. It combines the raw human emotion I love in films alongside great sci-fi action. I could go on for hours, but we're not here to talk about Ridley Scott's masterpiece. We're here to talk about the one created by Jump Over the Age.     You read that right.     In Citizen Sleeper , you play as a "sleeper" on an almost-forgotten space station in a remote corner of the galaxy. To figure out just what the hell I'm talking about, let me clarify a few things. First off, in this distant future AI has been outlawed entirely. Perhaps not such a bad thing... Either way, it is illegal for an...

  Image Credit: Makee Games & Forever Entertainment S.A. Once in a while a game series comes along that just snaps up your attention and refuses to let go.       This is not one of them.     Rise Eterna tells a familiar tale of woe and ruin. We are first introduced to a hard-nose mercenary who has limits to what he will and will not do. Rob townsfolk? Sure. Let others butcher them in cold blood? Okay, fine. Participate in said butchery? No, ma'am! Absolutely not.     These are the morals that compose Natheal, the man who arguably fills the role of lead protagonist in the original game. His cynical view on the jaded aspects of everyday life changes once he starts to "connect" with Lua. I put connect in quotes because the connection here is minimal, at best. Lua is the stereotypical "I may be small but don't mess with me" female that we see in a lot of these types of games. Her connection to Natheal is that of a daughterly one, we're told i...

Image credit: Owlcat Games Those of you who have already been privy to my thoughts and feelings on Owlcat Games know that this review has been a long time coming. I've already given my thoughts on the incredible work of art that is Rogue Trader , and although I've played Kingmaker before... it's been a little while. I did a replay of Wrath of the Righteous in order to really home in on my feelings for this one.     Once again, Owlcat does not disappoint.     In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous , we start as a wounded individual brought to the middle of a festival in the grand city of Kenabres. After some quick healing from the local dragon, you read that right, we get to participate in a couple activities before the proverbial sh!t hits the fan. Deskari, a demon lord hell-bent on destroying civilization as everyone knows it, shows up to wreck the party and sever a dragon's head in the process. After a timely spell prevents your death, you explore some caves and eme...

  Image credit: Gasket Games Warhammer games are a dime a dozen, and oftentimes that quantity sacrifices some quality. Are they ever going to be the worst games you've ever played? Probably not. But with so many developers doing their own spins out of the universe we're bound to see some garbage in the pile.     Storm Ground takes place in the Age of Sigmar realm of Warhammer lore. It gives you the option to go through three different campaigns with various interactions along the way-no run is going to be exactly like another-to get to a final boss after perhaps a couple hours of playtime. You start in the Celestant campaign, taking down ghostly haunts and ghastly maggotkin of Nurgle on your way to defeat the Lady of Ashes. The Good One of the best parts of this game is the fact that it's set up on a hexagonal grid. Hex grids are pleasant to play on because they allow a little bit more freedom of movement. It doesn't feel so constricted and weird when pursuing an enemy,...

Image courtesy of Complex Games I've definitely gone down a bit of a rabbit hole in the last year or so when it comes to Warhammer 40,000. It started with Owlcat's  Rogue Trader and then continued with Neocore's Inquisitor . Now granted, both of these titles were really more brought to my attention because of the respect that I have for the developers. Owlcat has been my favorite studio since the long-gone glory days of BioWare, and Neocore captured my interest with their spin on King Arthur . Nevertheless, these studios have introduced me to the wide world of 40K and everything it entails, and I've been more than intrigued enough to pursue other titles to delve further into the grim darkness of the future.     Chaos Gate takes Warhammer 40K and puts an XCOM spin on its tactics. We play the newly elevated commander of a ship filled with Space Marines and led by a rigid old commandant, a mouthy tech-priest, and a pushy Inquisitor who will stop at nothing to combat an is...

Image courtesy of Ocean Drive Studio, Inc. When I start these reviews I usually have a certain score already in mind. I have a litany of reasons as to why a game scored in a certain category of mine and therefore why it just fell a little short of whatever tier(s) are above that. For Lost Eidolons , I had intended on giving it a 7/10 originally. That's nothing to scoff at in my book, as I literally even label my 7s as "Great" games. However, as I started to think more about it and the different avenues that Ocean Drive took in Lost Eidolons 's creation... I began to question that 7.     For those who have no idea what kind of game this is, Lost Eidolons is a tactical turn-based RPG in a medieval-fantasy setting. You play as Eden, a mercenary of sorts from a podunk fishing village, who gets swept up into a rebellion after a daring rescue turns into a noble's murder. While the initial actions weren't the most honorable, no one in Eden's crew is really all th...