.:Game Reviews:.

As most of you don’t know my gaming tendencies one of my all-time franchises is the Civilization series. I have played every version since it hit the CD-ROM in the early 90s as version 2. Playing through all the new features and differences in looks and play styles was a trip. I hated V for many of the same reasons I’m going to tell you why I HATE what he did with VII…

WTH SID! You have quite possibly the best Civ to date with the last one (VI), and you go back to V style of graphics and gameplay? SCREW YOU SID! I have over 2500 hours into version VI. You expect the next one to build on it!

Let’s go back to Civ V which sucked in every way possible good thing I got it on sale from Stack Social for like eight bucks. So, well into V, I saw how it was (it was the only one I didn’t buy off the bat cuz it looked awful). By looking awful I mean WTH SID again realistic graphics nothing original. Well, he did that in VII! I want something that doesn’t look like Old World meets Ara: History Untold.

What made VI so special was the original graphical content and well everything except the constant crashes in MacOS… Everything was original the characters had this stylized look to them almost cartoonish but not quite.

Civ VII what the HELL! Pardon my language, but I have had such high hopes they would build a bit on VI, but no, they took the gameplay down to V for the lowest common denominator of a gamer… They don’t even offer large maps! Yeah, it looks outstanding, but crap, there’s no real control over how things happen they just sort of do. I even bought the Founders edition (the $130 version)! I put in for a return after 50 min of play.

I think I’ve ranted enough but I had to get it out there how bad 7 was after waiting and playing 6 forever… I’m going to post a few screens in the first two look in the upper right my heat sensors are going off and nothing is happening! It does look beautiful but that doesn’t make a game SID!

Again from a long-time Civ player don’t bother because like I said you can play any number of games from Old World to Humankind to Ara: History Untold… You’ll get all original styles and some unique play styles. Plus the game stops in the 1960’s tech era. NO future tech or zones which means they are gonna nickel and dime the hell out of users with DLC and DLC Characters for who knows how much each over the years it’s in action..

Here are the pics time to go help users on the Crossover Mac forum. I’m on there a lot answering questions it’s more fun than playing Civ VII that’s for sure… I’m gonna get out of this ass parlor…it stinks.

For all my readers out there well the 4-6 of you. One of my all-time video game franchises is a series called Diablo. I’ve been playing it since it hit the scene in the mid 90’s. It took them 10 years from Diablo 3 to develop Diablo 4 which gets very mixed reviews. I am happy with the efforts and the quality of the game.

My main character is a Sorceress named Teela. She’s a FIRE-based sorceress. Meaning she scorches anything in her way. In the pictures below (click to make them larger as they are as dark as the game is). I have a pic of her in the character select screen. My other characters are on the left but you can’t see them. A picture of her and her Cinder Panther (a panther mount that flesh is burning, very befitting)Then a picture of her roasting everything in sight by setting fires.

What I wanted to get to with this article title is that within this game *SPOILERS* they use the character that you create (no matter how you make them look) everything from eye color to tattoos or markings, jewelry, the markings in blood I have on her skin to the blood red slightly bright eyes. all of it shows in the cinema scenes. I’m shocked that they can just create these HIGH-quality cinema scenes on the fly as they do with your character in them.

I have a friend who is a technical animator and he simply said the tech has come so far that it can do amazing things on the fly. Well, look at her disdain toward the character she is talking to up to when she is stabbed in the back. It’s amazing! *SPOILER* She gets the sword ripped out of her back and falls off a bridge into the water where you see her essentially die until she is revived by some old dude in the jungle.

But take a look at these cinematics in full screen if you can.

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So the year 1990 music was at that odd spot between songs like the famed Humpty Dance and Madonna’s Vogue. The world seemed simpler as I remember it as a child the NES was still king and about to be blown over by the SNES and Genesis, however, the actual world was going through massive changes we had Iraq start their wasp nest by invading Kuwait. But in arcades, we were seeing a massive influx in new game technology and 16-bit graphics.

A genre that I remember seeing a lot of was mirrored after games like Final Fight. The side-scrolling “beat-em-ups” genre was all over and you couldn’t walk past 2-3 machines without finding some other thing to pound on. I was the type of kid who looked for the odd games with an interesting story then plop goes my quarter.

With all that being said I came across Growl. It was a 4 player side-scrolling beat-em-up game (there was also a 2 player cabinet) where you played one of 4 different park rangers. Now I know who wants to play a park ranger or DNR (Michigan term) officer/ranger right? Well, when you see animals in cages and evil smugglers and poachers beating on them you have to join the fight!

Now what got me was 2 of the rangers were spitting images of Indiana Jones and yes there were whips in the game that were AWESOME so I sorta put the whole helping animals concept out of my mind and pretended I was playing as Indiana Jones in some offshoot movie.

The game is set in the early 20th century you set off to beat the ever-loving heck out of poachers in large numbers and gather special weapons along the way i.e. pipes, whips, swords, revolvers, rocker launchers (and even the animals you saved would help you for a bit on the same screen). Each weapon had a special attack that when you’d press both attack and jump would execute. I remember my favorite was the whip it would whip the guy in front of you and behind you and looked hilarious. But that didn’t stop me from pushing through this game. I never did beat it in the arcades and it wasn’t until the emulation scene started supporting arcade games that I was able to sit and beat the game.

On a challenge level, it’s around a 6/7 out of 10 but as a kid in the 90’s it was rather hard. The game had 7 stages or rounds and a bonus game for a total of 8 stages. We moved from an old run-down African town to a moving train, a boat, a jungle and cavern, and finally the poacher’s hideouts. This game didn’t vary much though in the enemy department. Only really giving you 6 types of enemies excluding the final boss that had 2 forms.

Eventually, this game found its way home on the Sega Genesis which I remember was a fairly good port and suffered slow downs. Eventually, it was re-released on the Taito Legends 2 for PSX 2, Xbox, and MS Windows (I have not played this version)

So all in all if you are a fan of the beat-em-up games similar to the more popular Final Fight, X-Men, Turtles, or Simpsons you should enjoy this game the backgrounds are interesting, and like I said it’s easy to think you are Indiana Jones heck just look at the poster!

Please excuse the quality of the images I don’t run emulation anymore so I had to just crawl around and find these. It’s the Arcade game flier, marquee, and info, Sega Genesis Cover front and back, and some arcade and Sega pictures.

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Well well well… I finally get around to giving a brief review of something I’ve been playing for a long time now – The Last Faith. The last article below this one was a review of the Beta. Needless to say, I had this ready for purchase on Xbox Series X in a deluxe version that came with an artbook, soundtrack, and all sorts of goodies. The date kept getting moved back and back and back. So a good thing I didn’t buy it there as I sold my Xbox.

So I picked it up on Steam after all that frustration. Little did I know that wouldn’t be my only source of frustration. THIS GAME IS HARD! I love a good challenge but when controls seem to almost be a bit lumbering in a world where quick reflexes are key it makes for an odd experience. I only have experienced this on the Steam Deck OLED where before I had an Alienware (sold that too). However, a piece of software I’ll be putting up some info on in a future post, Crossover for Mac lets me play just about all my games flawlessly and this is one of them! Here’s my link to how the game performs in Crossover. Just scroll down to “Rating Breakdown” under the stars to see my notes if you are a Mac user and want this to work. I also uploaded all the media for the game.

I will say the controls felt a bit more responsive in a Crossover (WINE-based system) than the Steam Deck. Overall this was EXACTLY what I expected based on the highly playable beta! The story holds up although a bit slow at times still loaded with cool characters. Let me start the next part by saying anyone who knows me knows I don’t like voice acting in video games. However, their voice actors brought emotion and tone to these characters. Sometimes VERY VERY creepy!

Action at times is slow to FAST needing those reflexes that this older gamer just doesn’t have much of anymore, something that would take my son 1 or 2 attempts takes me 15-20. Hey it’s what happens when gamers age.

Let’s talk sound and score. I LOVE this soundtrack it’s dark and at times can enhance the dark nature of the game more than the visuals. Often you’ll hear cries and screaming in the background depending on where you find yourself, immersing you into the world of darkness that is The Last Faith.

I’ve taken a few screenshots from the Steam Deck OLED version. Enjoy and if I were to give this a pass or a buy I’d say buy it and DO NOT CALL IT A METROIDVANIA GAME! That term shouldn’t even exist…

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