Postal Redux is a slightly peculiar game. On the one hand, it’s a fairly simple shooter that uses an isometric perspective. You enter a level, there are a certain amount of enemies, you need to kill 96% of them. The game couldn’t be more straight forward. At the same time, it’s a game that goes out of it’s way to be edgy. Part of this is because the developers had hitherto been working on children’s games. So for them, Postal 1 was a way of letting off steam.

And to their credit, Postal 1 and it’s remaster Postal Redux are certainly as far away from a kid’s game as one can get. You play as the Postal dude, and you go postal across the course of 22 levels. You can shoot yourself, and indeed are encourage to shoot basically everything that moves. Animals, civilians, the police, clowns, it doesn’t matter. Now you can play through levels without killing civilians, but I think that’s missing the point really.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s fairly enjoyable if a little basic. You do get access to a whole host of different weapons, although ammo tends to be limited. You just run around shooting everything that moves. There are some health kits to pick up, and that’s about it. Every level is largely the same, at least in terms of objectives. The whole thing should only take you around 3 to 4 hours to complete. Once you’ve finished all 22 stages, the game is pretty much over. Fortunately you can play through every stage with a friend, if you know any sick puppies.

Regarding the rest of the game, there isn’t much to say. The soundtrack was extremely minimal even if the soundscape is appropriately mad. The graphics are decent and have certainly been touched up since the original release. The performance was alright considering this is an Unreal Engine 4 game. The plot barely exists. One thing to note is that the camera is a bit all over the place, with the perspective changing between levels. Also the train station level is weirdly hard. Oh and the AI bots (the clowns) are beyond useless.

And that’s about all I have to say about Postal Redux. I know it’s a short review, but this is a short game. It’s nothing special, but it is nice to see a remaster/remake that adds some new content for a relatively niche release. The gun-play is fine, nothing special but the weapon variety does help. I do wish that there was a bit more to do, that the bots were better and that the OST wasn’t so minimal. Otherwise what you see is what you get. Namely a isometric shooter for people who want society to EAT LEAD.

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As mentioned last week, Railway Empire is a pretty fun business management game. It’s not perfect, but I found it to be enjoyable. I also mentioned that there is a lot of Railway Empire DLC. So many pieces of DLC in fact, that if you own them all (like me) then you end up with a hefty amount of content. As each DLC adds 1 to 3 scenarios, alongside some achievements and new trains, wrapping the game takes a long time. I’ve put more than 150 hours into the game, and I still haven’t managed to get all the achievements for example. Part of this is because the scenarios can be challenging, especially when aiming for a President rating. Another part is that each DLC requires you to complete a 100 year sandbox game. Which takes a while.

With that out of the way, let’s begin looking at the various DLCs. The first DLC released was the Mexico DLC, which adds 1 scenario and 2 trains. It’s a very modest scenario in terms of content, although it does have two different “paths” that can be completed. Once you’ve done the first few tasks, you can side with one of two quest givers, and that then impacts the rest of the scenario. Generally it’s not too difficult and is moderately entertaining. This DLC also includes a new sandbox map, and the ability to play maps in night mode.

Following the Mexico DLC, we head to the other part of North America that has hitherto been missing. Namely Canada, with “The Great Lakes” DLC. Unfortunately this one kind of sucks, with just 1 scenario that’s a bit of a chore to play. It did add Warehouses to the game via a free update, which are useful and let you store excess goods. Aside from that though, if you pay for the scenario then you’ll encounter the new weather system. Which basically means that in the winter months, your trains move extremely slowly. It’s aboot as fun as it sounds. You do also get a new sandbox map and two new trains.

Almost as a form of making up for the Canada DLC, we have the “Crossing the Andes” pack next. Which contains three scenarios. It also has 2 new trains, a night-mode and a new sandbox map. The scenarios themselves are decent I would say, essentially it’s the same map every time with 3 players. Each scenario has you playing as one of these players, while the other 2 are competitors. The map is cordoned off for a while, so that you can build up your railway. Although you’ll need to complete various objectives of course. These scenarios have a nice build up of challenge, and I found the overall map to be decent.

After mucking around the America’s, the next Railway Empire DLC was for Great Britain and Ireland. This one is pretty good (hence the slightly raised price). Although I found the scenario to be extremely long. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but after Mexico and the Crossing the Andes DLCs I’d rather have more shorter scenarios. Than an extremely long one. As for the rest of the content, there’s a new sandbox map of course, alongside 10 whole trains. I think the sandbox map and fiddling with the trains is arguably where the meat of this one lies.

Following the UK DLC, we got the Germany DLC. This one isn’t bad, with one scenario that re-uses an idea from the Mexico DLC. Namely that the scenario splits into two paths, after a certain point, adding replayability. Unfortunately it adds a new feature, that sucks. This new feature is that the map is split into regions. That need to be unlocked, with fat stacks of Deutschmarks. The mission is both quite easy because your competitors are stuck in one region. Whilst also being a bit sluggish as expansion requires large upfront investments. Alongside the new scenario and sandbox map, there are also 10 new trains.

The next Railway Empire DLC was for France. The France DLC is basically a repeat of the German DLC, with two paths through the scenario. Alongside the same lousy region locking system. Although unlocking regions requires a bit less money. The mission is therefore another fairly easy one, with some replayability. You also get 10 new trains, the new sandbox map and a new piece of music. Which I haven’t mentioned for the others, but every DLC comes with a new menu screen and a new piece of music.

After the France DLC, we got the Northern Europe DLC. This one has a single scenario, that kind of sucks. Much like Canada you have the thrilling weather system that just makes the trains go slow in winter. As a bonus, the scenario also starts to veer into the tediously long area. The thrilling regions system also returns again. Oh and you only get 3 new trains this time. In conclusion then, the scenario isn’t good and it combines two of the worst DLC mechanics.

We then suddenly got sent to Australia for the Down Under DLC. This one doesn’t have the same lousy mechanics. Yet it adds a new mechanic that I personally don’t care for. So it’s swings and roundabouts. Essentially you can “choose” what settlements to grow. To do this, you need to ship a certain amount of basic materials to each settlement. These settlements then become normal towns. Various resources are only unlocked if there’s a town nearby though. In theory this lets you “grow” your rail network, as your needs change. The reality is that everything just takes a long time, in an already long scenario. With the cherry on top being a busted rating system for this mission. If you want the best rating, you need to disable the pause mode otherwise it’s literally impossible. Finally there’s a new sandbox map and 3 new trains.

Rounding out the Railway Empire DLC is the Japan DLC pack. This one has two scenarios, and is actually fun. The gimmick this time is that you can adjust passenger routes. Essentially each route gets a passenger satisfaction score. You can tweak this score by changing the train, staff, ticket price and building some new buildings in each town. Such as hotels that increase passenger satisfaction for trains stopping in that town. The scenarios themselves are decently enjoyable, if a bit easy. Even though the region locking mechanic returns. You also get 8 new trains and 3 maps (one is just a combination of the other two).

In conclusion then, most of the Railway Empire DLC is decent. I’d say the Great Lakes and Northern Europe packs are the weakest of the two. Most of the rest are pretty fun, with the Japan and Crossing the Andes packs offering the most content. The rest are somewhere in the middle, I think Mexico and France are stronger than Germany. With Germany being better than the UK and both being less tedious than the Australian one. Ultimately most of them are fairly basic with a scenario, new map and offer a couple hours of content. With 9 different packs though there’s a lot of combined content. Especially for the completionists. None of them are as good as the base game, but if you enjoyed the base game then this is a nice way to get something new to do.

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Railway Empire has ended up as one of my most played games on Steam, largely due to it’s prolific amount of DLC. Yet in spite of the excessive amount of playtime the DLC has added, the base game itself is certainly no slouch. Not only is there a full campaign with multiple missions that serves as a glorified tutorial of the game’s systems, but there are also more than a dozen scenarios. These scenarios are quite similar to the campaign missions. While they have a bit less polish, they add a good bit of extra challenge.

As for the game itself, Railway Empire is a fun little railroad management business simulator. Par for the course, it revolves around connecting cities and businesses. You take the goods that towns and factories need, then ship them into towns. Once the towns are stocked, they’ll gradually grow and develop businesses. These businesses then produce products that other towns will need. At the same time, you’re connecting the cities up and so you can start to transport larger and larger amounts of goods. Of course as you make a profit on every train-car of cargo (or passengers) shipped, your business grows. Which funds the placement of new tracks, the purchasing of new trains and thus the creation of new routes.

The twist with the gameplay mentioned above, is that you’ll need to achieve certain objectives. So you might need to grow a city to a certain size, by a certain date. Or ship so many of a certain good, to a certain destination. This sounds straightforward, but because you’ll have multiple goals at the same time, budget limitations play a role. As such you can often find yourself struggling to achieve these objectives. Especially as the game punishes you, if you aren’t able to achieve them in half the time. This punishment occurs through a reduction of the final score.

Once you’ve got through all of those objectives across the campaign and scenarios, you can enjoy the sandbox mode. Which lets you play through any of the maps from the previous modes, during any time period from 1830 through to 1930 that you choose. Each time period has it’s own trains and some technologies, although these technologies are largely the same. This is because the technologies add +5% engine power, or +8% more passengers waiting in stations and so on.

As for the other aspects of Railway Empire, they’re also pretty good. You can ride along any train in “real-time”, and even blow the horn. The graphics are pretty good, although I’d recommend limiting the frame-rate in the options. Otherwise my PC tended to try and throttle itself aiming for hundreds of frames per second. The music is also period appropriate and fine, although it does repeat itself a bit much. Finally there are some other things to manage. You can buy businesses, construct factories and hire staff. These are good ways to make a bit of extra money once you know what you’re doing.

With all that being said, there are some quirks and niggles in Railway Empire. Firstly, the AI opponents are extremely annoying. You can’t share tracks unlike some other games, so you’ll need to construct tunnels and bridges galore to compete with them. They field an insane number of trains, while also obnoxiously over-bidding. They’re bad at growing towns, and irritating to deal with at the higher levels as they cheat. As for the trains, mass upgrades are tedious to perform especially as you keep researching new trains. The track-laying tool is good, although it can be unforgiving with angles. Plus it loves to create expensive routes, that with a modicum of tweaking become much cheaper. Finally I found that too many of the scenarios ended with me sitting on the bonds screen, trying to buyout my competitors. A lengthy process, even if your business is clearly more successful than theirs.

In conclusion then, Railroad Empire is a pretty fun little railroad management game that has a lot of content. It’s not perfect, but with good visuals and lots of tweaks to make it is an engrossing game. The rating system also gives it so much needed challenge, while aiming for the achievements will take you a while. Ultimately I’d consider it a solid game, even if I think that some maps can just take a bit too long. As such I’d recommend it to any fans of this mini-genre, although I think Sid Meier’s Railroads is a better starting point for those who are unsure.

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Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a game by a different developer, that manages to feel exactly the same as Borderlands 2. There are some differences like new characters and so new skill trees. Generally speaking though this game hasn’t innovated, which is fine if you liked Borderlands 2. If you thought Borderlands 2 was pretty boring, then you are in trouble. Which means that I am in trouble. Of course there’s the entirely fair question, as to why I bought this game. The honest answer to that question is that my friend has a lousy PC. So in the search for co-op games we ended up on this one. Is it fun? Nope.

I’ll skim through the rationale for why I didn’t care for the game. Which should be fairly obvious between my last reviews and the TL;DR at the top. Essentially Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a looter shooter with bad loot and bad shooting. The cherries on top are of course; the weird vehicle controls, the annoying dialogue, the poor quest design and the generally tedious nature of the game’s level scaling system. There are some bright spots, like decent variety and the fact that the whole thing works in co-op, but generally speaking this game is a game for idiots. Combat is basic, the jokes fall flat, the game manages to feel extremely repetitive, most of the content is bland, it’s just a mess. Why this series became the series for co-op players is beyond me.

As for what this game adds to the series, well it has some background for the perennial favourite character of Handsome Jack. Who isn’t particularly interesting here, and is basically trying to be a hero but becomes a villain. The way this happens occurs slowly across missions, but essentially he goes from normal person to paranoid dictator in a gradual fashion. Yet it’s not handled very well, and it’s hard not to get the impression that our characters shouldn’t have sided with him once he started randomly executing civilians for the lols. The story also involves the vault hunters from previous games spoiling his plans to take control of the world, but they don’t do much. Honestly if you were a big Borderlands fan then I imagine you’ll find this game to be lacklustre in terms of exploring the characters.

Especially as the game otherwise doesn’t add that much. There are one or two new vehicles you get to use a handful of times. Plus the O2 mechanic, wherein you need oxygen to breathe but can also use this oxygen as a impromptu jetpack. Otherwise I can’t really think of anything outside of the new character classes. These are fine but I’m not playing through the game to max level 6 times. So the only thing I really noticed is that you can play as Claptrap. Which is about as much as fun as you’d expect.

With those new additions out of the way, I’ll just reiterate that Borderlands: The Pre-sequel really is more of the same. Just with Australian accents. The combat is the same, the weapon looting system is the same, the UI is the same, most of the enemies are the same, the mission is the same, the dialogue is of the same quality and so on. There really isn’t a lot that’s new. To the point that the O2 system which is arguably one of the biggest additions doesn’t do much. It gives you a new character item slot and it introduces some risk/reward to the game. As you need to breathe (albeit not if you play as Claptrap), you need O2. You can spend it to jump slightly further or revive your companions faster however. Outside of this though, it just makes the outdoor areas a bit tedious. As you need to camp near the O2 stations every now and then. The game does at least still have an appealing art-style. Outside of that though I can’t think of anything it does particularly well.

I mean for goodness sake, this game has missions where you need to hunt for audio logs that are hidden in an office, and then have to listen to them. There are missions where you need to guard a box as it slowly trundles along a conveyor belt while it’s under attack. Even finding these stupid missions can be a pest as they’re scattered around the world, and once you are a few levels above them they give you no XP. So if you need to keep up with the game’s level curve (lest you be punished by health sponge enemies), then you’ll need to quick travel to an area. Then possibly go to a new area from there. Then run to a bulletin board. So that you can pick up a quest that sucks. It’s just not a very well paced game, and even for a mindless shooter there’s so much downtime.

There are some design decisions that are questionable, like co-op making the game harder but these can be hand-waved away or at least justified. Yet the moment to moment gameplay feels at odds with itself. You want to shoot the dudes, but then you need to loot the dudes. So you need to open the inventory screen and faff around there. Then you need to slowly trundle towards the next objective. So that the game can give you another objective. Then another one. So that you can complete a quest that doesn’t give you enough XP. Meaning you need to run to a fast travel station and then fast travel to somewhere near another quest. That will involve shooting dudes, and looting the dudes, and looking at your inventory… and so on. It’s just a tedious game and I have to give credit to Borderlands 3 for improving on it.

In conclusion, I’ve run out of things to say and ways to re-iterate the main point. Namely the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel is a pretty boring game. It doesn’t change much, and essentially feels like Borderlands 2 again. Which will be great for some people. I shudder to imagine who those people are, but they must exist. As for everyone else, if you want a co-op game look elsewhere. At the very least grab Borderlands 3 or Tiny Tina’s D&D styled mini-campaign before picking up Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

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Rome Total War: Alexander will probably be one of the shortest reviews I’ve written on this fine repository for inane gaming takes. Solely because there really isn’t much here to discuss. If you’ve played Rome Total War, then this is basically the same game but considerably slimmed down. The first and most obvious reason for this is because we don’t have Rome, or indeed most of Europe in this version. Instead we have the Macedonians who mainly use Greek units. The Persians who use Eastern units and then a handful of weak barbarian civilizations. They use Barbarian units (as expected), but mostly only last for a few turns until they get destroyed. That’s about it, as far as the faction roster goes. You can play as the Indians, but they’re not in the campaign so… they’re only available for the multiplayer mode. As for the units themselves, while the faction roster is limited this expansion does feature around 25 new units. Mostly for the Macedonians. While some of them are fairly commonly used, a lot of them are still quite similar to existing units. Which meant that in my experience I was mainly Phalanx-maxing. To be fair to the game, the new units are nice. Even if most of them are very similar to existing units, you can already use as Greece. There are a few new cavalry units for example, but they function just like cavalry normally does. As for the rest of the rest of the new content, well… There is a new campaign, six new historical missions and that’s it. If you wanted to play as anyone other than the Greeks, then that’s not an option. At least outside of skirmishes and the multiplayer mode.

Which begs the obvious question “how’s the campaign then?”. Well it’s honestly pretty good if a little short. This is partly due the 100 turn limit, although I found I only needed two-thirds of that time to finish it. Basically you need to conquer a set list of provinces, while being at war with literally everyone else. The enemies are all allied with each other, but it will generally descend into you grinding down the Persians until they collapse. This is due to the rest of the factions being weaker barbarians. Who only have a province or two while the Persians control most of the map. As for the rest of the game, the battle AI is a bit better than in the base game so that’s nice. Although I do think it would’ve been interesting to get to play as… well anyone else. As it stands you’ll play through the campaign once, and that’s kind of it as far as the expansion goes. I mean sure there are those 6 historical battles. Plus the skirmish/multiplayer modes, but for me Rome Total War: Alexander feels a bit short. It took me around 10 hours to finish the Greek campaign, and then only a few more to get through the historical battles so it’s a short but sweet experience. The campaign itself doesn’t really have any particular twists, instead playing as a standard game albeit in a new map.

And honestly that’s about it! I’m really struggling to think of anything else that’s really worth mentioning. As I’ve said, there are some extra historical battles which is always nice and there is a new campaign that’s admittedly fairly short. There are some new units but they don’t feel that new. The sieges are the same. The AI has been improved slightly. Uhhh the game is still great like the base game and uhhh…. that’s about it. I guess I could gripe about the game being unstable on Windows 11. Or how the Steam Screenshot function barely works any more, but honestly who cares. This is a game that’s close to twenty years old at the time of writing, and it holds up well.

In conclusion then, Rome Total War: Alexander is an enjoyable if short piece of extra content. If you loved playing as the Greeks, you’ll love this expansion. Ultimately I’d recommend it to anyone who has played the base game. Although it won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already like Rome: Total War.

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Contra: Rogue Corps is a game that’s extremely rough around the edges, yet I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think it was exactly what I was looking for. Not so much in terms of the game itself, but more in what the game represents. For me, gaming is about heading into town with £10 and emerging a few hours later with lunch and a game of questionable pedigree. Sometimes this game will be a “hidden gem”, sometimes it’s just mediocre and sometimes it’s actively terrible. Yet this ordeal in and of itself is why I enjoy buying games. I could pirate everything, but there’s no cardio involved nor is there any skin in the game. As a consequence the bargain bin is what holds the most appeal for me, and Contra: Rogue Corps is definitely a bargain bin game these days. Between middling reviews, a piss-poor PC port and modest sales this is a game that’s easy to overlook. Yet in the finest traditions of the bargain bin haul, I actually thought it was fun – even if it was quite janky at points and had some questionable design decisions. If you can endure the occasional bout of frustration, I can safely say that Contra Rogue Corps is one of the better twin-stick shooters for the 8th console generation.

Which is my seamless segue into discussing what Contra: Rogue Corps actually is. First and foremost it’s barely a Contra game in any sense of the word, and most likely wasn’t one until Konami realised they were in trouble if they didn’t staple a brand to this game. Outside of a handful of modest references, there’s really nothing related to Contra here – especially not the gameplay. Contra: Rogue Corps is not a 2D or overhead shooter, but is instead a 3D twin-stick shooter with a few… additions that arguably suit the game but would alienate any actual Contra fans who bought it. For example, I doubt that Contra fans would enjoy the concepts of their weapons overheating after a few seconds of shooting. Nor would they enjoy a quasi-RPG drop system wherein they can equip 4 augmentations to their characters and multiple augmentations to each weapon. So you’ll end up finishing a mission, getting 20 pieces of loot and then checking if any of them offer something good. Most of the time, you just get thrilling bonuses like “-7.4% damage from Enemy Type D” or “+2metre dodge roll” although equipping all this nonsense does eventually make a difference. Then you’ve got the enemy types which get a bit repetitive and gain more health/attack with each tier of missions, of which there are 7. Finally while the game does have a co-op mode, it’s entirely separate from the campaign and will require decently levelled characters to be beatable.

So on the face of it, Contra: Rogue Corps sounds a bit hopeless. It’s not anything like Contra, and the additions sound pretty boring. Why then am I, your humble bargain bin scout, recommending it? Well for the simple reason that if you aren’t hung up about what a Contra game should be, then you will probably be able to have some fun with this one. While the enemies are a bit repetitive, the game loves to throw them at you in hordes which actually results in some pretty frantic and enjoyable gameplay. There are a few missions later on in the game that are basically horde defence missions, and I had a great time playing them because they really encouraged you to learn the game. You had to know what enemies to prioritise, you had to know the enemy patterns and if you did know these things then they were a tight, punishing but fun experience. After having played so many tedious, sluggish and whiny games over the past few years it was nice to have something that was just an honest-to-God arcade experience. It reminded a bit of Mothergunship, in the sense that this was a high-octane game that no one seems to have cared about (sadly). As for the character customisation and stat systems, while the game does a terrible job of explaining how they actually work – these systems do help a bit. There are a lot of different weapons to develop for starters, which helps the variety up. Then by giving better gear on higher levels and for higher mission completion ranks Contra: Rogue Corps does a good job of encouraging you to just keep trying the higher levels and to reward you (somewhat) for going back to earlier levels and crushing them with ease. Of course as the game is admittedly a bit challenging, there’s some risk reward going on here and sometimes the scale tips a bit too much towards risk as you get nothing except weapon XP should you fail a mission.

With that being said, I actually found the game to be finely balanced most of the time. Some other reviews have cried many tears over how hard the freaking is man :'(( but I’m not sure what they were doing. You need to learn the enemy patterns, dodge attacks A LOT and then you should be fine. There are a few really annoying enemy types, like the turrets that lock-on to you and one of the bosses – but most enemies are if anything a bit easy. Plus you don’t need to complete all the levels to progress, so you can leave some for later if you are getting filtered. Generally the game is fun and lets you progress to the disappointing final boss without too much trouble. There are a few things I wanted to mention though, because as mentioned at the start of this review Contra: Rogue Corps is a bargain bin game. Which is to say, that it’s a diamond in the rough at best. So you should be aware that you can’t pause, even when playing in Single Player… for some reason. You should be aware that the graphics aren’t amazing and neither is the soundtrack. You should be aware that while you do get some invincibility frames after getting hit, these won’t save you from any other damage that happens before you hit the ground. There are just a few niggles like this that make the game feel a bit janky. Especially when we consider how many stages just repeat the same bosses (but now as mini-bosses yay) or how often you’ll go from full health to no health on some of the later campaign stages. As I said, it’s finely balanced most of the time but is sometimes a pain in the backside.

At this stage I should probably mention that there is a multiplayer mode, and some people have said it’s fun. You’ll need to faff around with it for all the CHEEVOS as well. Unfortunately for me and by extension you dear reader, I don’t have an Xbox Live Gold subscription so… I can’t tell you what it’s like. I can tell you that Contra: Rogue Corps has plenty of single player content though, including 41 campaign missions and a further 9 missions split between co-op and the HARDCORE mode. So there’s plenty of content for what is a fairly cheap game, just be aware that I would recommend the console version (hence my purchase of it on the Mighty Xbone due to the PC Port being hopeless). One last thing to mention, finding information about this game online is a nightmare so… I hope you speak Spanish, to access the one comprehensive guide that some kind soul has uploaded via Google Sheets.

In conclusion then, Contra: Rogue Corps is barely a Contra game. It’s also an exceedingly rough around the edges game, with poor reviews and a terrible PC port. Yet if you can deal with some weird quirks, it’s actually a pretty fun arcade twin-stick shooter extravaganza and one that I would actually recommend… to the right sort of person. Ask yourself whether you want a fast paced if slightly janky twin-stick shooter, because you are oh-so-tired of lousy modern FPS/Action-Adventure bollocks. If the answer is Yes then go grab the game for cheap. If the answer is No, because you love games like Uncharted 3 and whatever the latest flavour of the month game with crafting in it is, then you’ll probably be repelled by Contra: Rogue Corps. For me, it’s what gaming is all about. For you, it’s either a fun little throwaway purchase or a nightmare.

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Oh Evil Genius 2, you had such high hopes before your release but seem to be yet another middling Rebellion brand release. I’m not sure how they do it, I mean the concept’s are always solid and the games are never bad but they always manage to feel a tad… tedious. Unfortunately Evil Genius 2 is no exception, whether it be the inclusion of Denuvo (for some reason) or the weird battle-pass monetisation attempt. Even the core gameplay while perfectly serviceable can’t compete with Evil Genius 1, which while occasionally frustrating was a really enjoyable and unique experience. Of course a sequel would struggle to be as unique, but it could at least be more enjoyable. Alas Evil Genius 2 is not better to play than it’s predecessor, and while is visually more impressive contains a laundry list of caveats.

So I better get right into it. On the one hand, you have more Evil Geniuses and Henchmen to choose from – which is good. But at the same time, the process of taking over the world is less engaging – which is bad. There are more maps to choose from – which is good. But these newer, larger maps with multiple stories are hamstrung by a tight 300 minion limit that can’t removed – which is bad. There are some nice Quality of Life improvements, like guards automatically carrying their weapons around without the base being on high alert – which is good. At the same time the technology unlock system feels excruciating slow at times and often bottlenecks progression – which is bad. The world map where you conduct your schemes is easier to manage and far less prone to randomly killing a team of your minions – which is good. But this also means that you can basically negate any risk of base invasion with relative ease and thus make the game incredibly easy – which is bad. The graphics are prettier – which is good. But the general tone and visual design has taken a bit of knock in my opinion – which is bad. The soundtrack is still good – yes, that’s good. While the narrative railroading of the game with relatively low effort quasi-cutscenes makes the whole thing cheap – which is bad. Overall Evil Genius 2 is really a mixed bag and while it’s certainly not a bad game, this feels like a case of one step forward one step back. Maybe I’m just biased because the first game came almost out of nowhere and was excellent, but this feels like a wasted opportunity on Rebellion’s behalf.

At this stage in the review, I really ought to have explained what the game is actually about for those who haven’t played either of the Evil Genius games. Essentially Evil Genius is a base management simulator loosely inspired by the Dungeon Keeper series, which plays a bit like the various real-time tycoon games that are out there. You’ve got a variety of rooms you can build, items to place within them and then minions that you’ll need to keep everything running. The whole thing functions as a feedback loop of sorts, as you’ll need more rooms and items to get new types of minions that let you run new schemes and research new tech, so that you can unlock new rooms and items. In terms of the gameplay itself, it’s mainly managing and optimising your base to ensure that you have the right amount of minions and access to everything you’ll need to progress the narrative. Alongside some very light “strategy” sections on the world map, where you can send minions off to conduct various schemes. You’ll also need to queue up research, manually set how many of each minion type you want and place those rooms/items. The main threats to your steady growth are waves of hostile NPCs that will occasionally spawn in. Those schemes on the world map generate heat, and the more heat that’s been generated the more likely that enemies will spawn in. Higher amounts of heat correlated to stronger waves of enemies. You can build various traps in the corridors of your base to deal with them, but you’ll want to have a decent amount of security minions that can engage them in combat. Finally you can unlock up to 5 henchmen at a time, that are all strong in combat and have a handful of abilities each. To unlock them you’ll need to finish side missions, which will involve sending various minions to various schemes on the world map.

So with all that being said, Evil Genius 2 is a quasi-business tycoon game that is a mixed bag compared to it’s predecessor. As mentioned the gameplay can be simultaneously too easy and yet too slow, which means that I spent a decent amount of time waiting for research to complete so I could reach the next stage of the game’s main quest-line. It’s fun enough to micromanage your base and the world map schemes have moderately amusing descriptions, but the actual moment-to-moment gameplay can feel a bit one note and monotonous. There are a few twists to keep the pace up like a designated end of game boss fight (of sorts) alongside Super Agents that are powerful versions of the normal agents (one per geographic region). While the boss fight is cool, it’s at it’s best when you ignore the various Super Agent neutralisation missions as otherwise it’s pretty easy much the rest of the game. As for the Super Agents themselves, they’re actually not too much trouble to avoid (as they only activate if they spot you starting a scheme where they are on the world map) and aren’t even too much of an issue to deal with most of the time. As for replayability, it’s fairly minimal. Despite having 5 different Evil Geniuses to choose from, they all play pretty much the same and have the same minions/rooms/items to deploy. It’s also worth noting that these geniuses you choose, all control the same. While they have some different abilities, they’re essentially the same as your henchmen in terms of combat ability. So they’re strong, but you’ll generally not put them on the frontlines once you hit the mid-game as if they die 3 times it’s game over.

Not that you’ll ever encounter a game over unless you are quite frankly angling for it. Instead money is likely to be the only limiting factor to your playthrough, outside of the time it takes to research things. Money is a bit strange, because it’s not hard to earn but at the same time you’re often fairly limited as to how much you can store up. Items to better store your gold are of course, unlocked through the lengthy and time intensive research system. So for most of the early game, you’re kind of just treading water until you can really start stacking up the cash. At this point though I feel like I’ve harangued the game enough for you get the idea. It’s a bit sluggish, it’s a mixed bag, but it’s still enjoyable enough. The soundtrack is good and feels appropriate for the era. If you’re a completionist, then there are tons of side objectives to grind through. The base management aspect is enjoyable enough and rewards the efficient use of space. The visuals are impressive and the traps are varied enough to be enjoyable to use, even if most of them aren’t particularly great.

In conclusion then, Evil Genius 2 is a solid if slightly disappointing game. I don’t regret playing it by any means and have actually played through it twice (once with the post-launch DLC character) and had a decent time with both my playthroughs. At the end of the day, in spite of the good graphics, Quality of Life improvements, pleasant soundtrack and so on it’s just not as easy to recommend as the much cheaper Evil Genius 1. As such I would recommend the first game, over Evil Genius 2 to anyone who is interested. For those who have played the first game, I would say that the second will be bittersweet at best. It’s more of the same, but a bit more lame.

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Railroad Corporation is another one of those games that I don’t remember buying, and can only assume that I got it included as some sort of bundle. Unlike most games with that earn that dubious epithet however, I actually thought Railroad Corporation looked interesting and wasn’t that bad to play. I’d even go so far as to say that I had fun with Railroad Corporation and found it to be a bit addicting. With that being said, it’s a pretty standard railroad business simulation game. You control a railway company, you need to build the tracks between various settlements and then run trains between them. The idea being that you’ll transport various resources between towns, farms and mines to earn a profit and to grow those settlements. As the settlements grow, they demand a broader range of products and these “higher level” products provide higher profits. There are the standard additional add-ons, like the ability to buy businesses, research new types of trains, hire staff for modest bonuses (e.g. cheaper bridges or more profit for transporting grain) and so on. As for the setting, it’s America during the 19th century which is par for the course. Most games in this sub-genre use this setting, down to the time-period and what trains you can research and eventually buy. In terms of the content you get, there are 12 campaign scenarios where you race to achieve various tasks (e.g. deliver 20 shipments of cloth to settlement X) and the ability to play these maps in scenario mode. Honestly so far it’s pretty standard stuff, nothing particularly exciting in terms of the setting, narrative, gameplay mechanics or amount of content.

In fact one of the biggest things to note about Railroad Corporation is not what it adds, but what it takes away. Unlike basically every other railway management game, in Railroad Corporation you can’t set signals or otherwise decide what routes your trains will take. Instead everything is managed by the game, on your behalf. You still decide which trains to run, where they go and what items they load or unload, but that’s about it. This makes it both very approachable, and also a tad bizarre. From my own experience, the AI is actually good at managing these train routes. Yet the omission of the ability to customise routes is definitely something that felt surreal even if I actually didn’t miss it too much. Aside from this aspect of the railway management being culled, my only other issue with something lacking was how the game managements owned businesses. As mentioned, you can buy any business in the game via an auction between yourself and all other players (including the AI competitors). The catch is while in other games you would still receive money as per usual for delivering to your own businesses, in Railroad Corporation you… don’t. So if you buy a wheat farm, you don’t have to pay for grain. On the flip-side, if you buy a farm that takes grain to produce meat, then you don’t get paid for delivering grain to a farm you own. Which is fine, but if you own all the stages of a production chain then you end up with multiple trains that are seemingly in the red. Often to staggering sums. You’ll still make a profit overall once the end product is delivered to a city, but when checking whether each train is profitable these trains really stand out for the wrong reasons. Oh and before you ask, no you can’t sort your list of trains by the type of train, profitability etc. Which is another weirdly missing feature, albeit a more minor one.

The real issue I had with the game though, is that the campaign is quite often a bit annoying. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly halfway through the campaign it goes “oopsie woopsie, we’ve reset all your research :3” so you are dumped back on the most basic of trains which is a bit of a kicker. In Railroad Corporation the various research projects are expensive and often take a lot of time, so having them reset halfway through the game is a pain. Fortunately the fact they take a lot of time isn’t an issue in reality, because so do most of the later scenarios. I would spend around 3 hours on a lot of the Act 2 missions and apparently I was about 10 hours ahead of the times on the HowLongToBeat website. This is partly due to them being a staggered series of objectives, most of which are somewhat convoluted (e.g. transport 20 high-tier products to this one place on the opposite side of the map). It’s mainly due to the AI players being a total pain in the backside to deal with. They’re not hugely difficult to overcome, but they are really annoying to deal with. Not only does the game often give them advantages in the form of better resource supplies and thus the potential for better railway connections, but they’re also exempt from various requirements. In addition they operate fairly quickly, don’t need to dabble with research and love to start auctioning off various industries as soon as they are able to. On the other hand, they generally aren’t that difficult to overcome because they are stupid. They’ll always get stuck at a certain point, and while they do grow at a constant rate they seem reluctant to share railway tracks and as such tend to avoid anywhere you’ve already expanded to.

Yet while the AI is easy to overcome in the long-run, the missions are often structured in such a way so that they’re most difficult from the very beginning. I wouldn’t say that the campaign of Railroad Corporation is particularly hard, but the Act 2 missions really stack the cards against you at the start of each one. You’ll often barely have time to complete the first objective or two, and constantly be struggling to balance your overdraft with the hard-coded requirements. Making a single rail-line can often make or break the early stages of a scenario in the later missions. Once you’ve overcome these exceedingly tight requirements though, the missions become much, much easier. To the point that you’ll always have plenty of time to start maxing out your research tree because you’re just waiting for the last objective or two to get wrapped up. It’s a weird issue that hinders the overall enjoyment of the campaign somewhat, because you’ll end up getting stuck in a mission for a few attempts due to one or two early objectives then breeze through the rest of the mission for a couple of hours. As such it can feel pretty inconsistent, and the only time events spiralled out of my control was due to the AI cheating. Well, maybe it’s more fair to say that the scenario cheated on the AI’s behalf, but it was much easier for the AI to reach a certain company valuation before me because it had a much better layout of various resources and towns. Otherwise the missions are either easy (like the first 6 in Act 1) or front-loaded in terms of challenge.

With all that being said, I still that Railroad Corporation is a decent enough game in spite of it’s wonky balancing and missing features. As stated at the top of this review, I had a fun time playing through it despite the occasional set-backs and was able to power it through it without too much trouble. The scenarios themselves provide a pretty solid introduction to the game’s mechanics, and while there isn’t much additional content once you’ve blitzed through them the game does have a bunch of DLC and even some free post-launch scenarios to work through. As for the actual gameplay itself, Railroad Corporation is fairly competent and handles well (albeit with some significant slowdown during track-laying) while still offering some depth. Between the ability to build new businesses, upgrade stations, research new trains and hire staff there’s plenty to do to optimise your company. The basics are all there and work fine, while the additional tweaking and twiddling does let you gain an edge over the AI.

As for the rest of the package, well it’s fine. You’ve got some period appropriate music that’s nice enough even if I felt like the OST is a bit too limited for it’s own good. While the music isn’t bad, most scenarios take a few hours and as such the music tends to loop a bit much. As for the visuals, I think they’re pleasant to look at although you can’t zoom in too much unlike some other games in the genre. Everything looks pretty good and as mentioned outside of track-laying the game performs well on high settings, at least on my current laptop (with a Nvidia 4060 and 12th gen intel i7 12700). There’s therefore not that much to complain about, aside from grousing over one or two missing features and the weird difficulty curve that this game has. Otherwise it’s a good looking, well playing and fairly optimised game albeit nothing particularly special.

In summary then, Railroad Corporation is a perfectly acceptable game in the railway tycoon sub-genre. Nothing about it really stands out as being great, but it doesn’t really have any significant negatives either. Sure there are a few things I could quibble about like occasional performance dips, the way that the game autosaves over it’s last autosave when you’ve loaded it, some wonky balance and a fairly bland setting but there’s nothing major to whine about. It’s just a decent little railroad game, that will take you around 25ish hours to get through. There’s enough content to justify the price, even if it’s hard to recommend this game over it’s competition. After all, this is a space with some stand out games like the Railroad Tycoon series and even for my money Sid Meier’s Railroads. As such I’d say that if you’ve played the rest, then you’ll probably enjoy this one. For everyone else, I wouldn’t recommend Railroad Corporation as your starting point. Not because it’s bad, but just because it’s not the best either.

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Before starting this review, I’ll just confess that Quantum Conundrum had been sitting in my backlog for around a decade before I finally got around to playing it. I actually first got it via PlayStation Plus way back in February 2013, where it sat on my PS3 until I moved onto the PS4 around 5 years later. While I don’t have PlayStation Plus any more, I did grab the game in a Steam Sale years ago and for some reason thought Spring 2024 was the time to actually play the damn thing. After doing so, I can kind of see why it was semi-popular at the time of it’s release. Although in all honesty, I found it a bit disappointing at least until I got to Act 3. You see the game is split into three acts, and the first is a bit boring (essentially the tutorial stage) and the second act is honestly a tad tedious. As a consequence, I found the game doesn’t really get going until you’re more than halfway through it. One of the reasons for this is the simple fact that Quantum Conundrum relies on the player manipulating 4 alternative versions of reality (only one can be active at a time) and you don’t get access to all 4 of them until… the last act. Now you might think the second act would be better than the first one, but honestly it just drags because so much of it is dedicating to faffing around with the third element.

I guess at this stage I should explain what the four elements are. You’ve got the ability to make everything low weight, everything very heavy, to make time go really slowly and the ability to reverse the gravity of objects. For the low weight (or the “fluffy” dimension) one, it lets you pick up and throw objects that would otherwise be too heavy. The heavy dimension makes it so that smaller objects can smash through barriers and ensures that all objects can resist lasers (which are surprisingly prevalent). While the last two are fairly self-explanatory. Combining these various abilities together can result in some fun little brain-teasers, although as mentioned you only get all four towards the end of the game. As a result, most of the early puzzles are… pretty straight forward as you want to make objects light to move them and then make them heavy to let you get past barriers, windy areas and the like. Indeed I think it’s fair to say that a surprising amount of the puzzles in Quantum Conundrum revolve around making something light so that you can throw it and then ride the thrown object to where you need to go. This is why I consider it more of a platformer than a puzzle game. There are some more unique puzzles in the game, but the majority revolve around making things light and throwing them, or making things heavy so you can get them in the right spot. In the second act, you then need to slow down time to make sure you can ride/move them properly.

Now to be fair, this isn’t the entire depth of the game. Quantum Conundrum does also require you to think about the momentum of various objects, to ensure that they can move fast enough to achieve your goals. With that being said, because the game has such a focus on momentum and throwing objects, it does also have a surprisingly high demand for precision platforming. Most of the time you die, is because you failed to achieve a jump correctly or switch elements at the exact right time. Failure with the puzzles won’t result in death, it’ll just lead you to stand there going “huh” for a while. I guess it’s worth pointing out that I thought the game wasn’t too challenging, either with the platforming or the puzzles. I think I got stuck two times throughout the whole 8 hour experience, and outside of one or two slightly pedantic platforming sections it generally wasn’t too bad.

In terms of other content, the game has a few collectibles for you to hunt for. There are blueprints that unlock the four abilities mentioned above, but in the general hub world. Then there are a series of collectible doodads that don’t add much to the game really, but hunting for them can add a bit of extra playtime for the more enthusiast players. Some of these require a creative approach to grab, so they’re not just a case of hidden little things tucked away. Which is good. Finally the game has a par-time for each stage, alongside two other ways of tracking whether or not you did a good job. The first is that it tracks whether you were able to complete a stage without dying. The second is that it tracks how many times you activate your abilities, with the aim being to have a number of uses below a set amount. This equivalent to a score tracking system is a good way of adding a bit of extra content for the 100% completionist headbangers, although most casual players probably didn’t care. I certainly know I didn’t!

And that’s about it in terms of what you get in the game, although as this was an indie release I think 8 hours + 100% completion chasing is honestly pretty fair. The game is much longer than Portal 1 was and while I don’t think it was as good, I certainly can’t complain about the amount of content you got for such a cheap little game. In terms of the rest of the production value, it’s actually pretty solid for a low budget 7th console generation game. There’s only one character with any dialogue, but he’s relatively entertaining and while not as aggressively rude as Glados is still a fun addition to the game. The game does make a big deal of how he provides hints for puzzles, but I often found the things he says were either super obvious or relatively cryptic. I guess it depends on whether you’ve figured out or not, but still. As for the visuals they’re decent, nothing that will blow your mind but the game has a slightly cartoonish graphic style that has aged gracefully and is appropriate to the setting. Finally the sound track is alright, again nothing special but the game’s general soundscape is fine.

So in conclusion then, Quantum Conundrum is a perfectly pleasant game albeit one that leans more towards being a platformer with puzzles than a puzzle game with some platforming. Depending on your expectations and preferences, this will either be a good thing or a bad thing. For me it was a bit of a disappointment, as I was hoping for a true competitor to Portal rather than a platforming game with some head-scratching moments. With that being said, I think my verdict is highly subjective and arguably not entirely fair. The game here is pretty solid and has no obvious flaws, it was just staggered too much for my taste. I think if the first Act had introduced all of the abilities and the rest of the game made use of them all, this would’ve been a great game. As it stands it’s an alright experience, but one that I probably wouldn’t recommend willynilly. Instead I think this is a good platformer with a twist, but you shouldn’t go into Quantum Conundrum expecting it to be a great puzzle game.

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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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