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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Quick Note: I played the remake as evidenced by the title, but haven’t played the original. So don’t expect any comparisons between the two versions

Panzer Dragoon Remake is a great little arcade game at a reasonable price. While the original game has remained largely constrained to the ill-fated Sega Saturn (and the PS2… kind of). Those who haven’t played it before can now play it on multiple new platforms. In my case, I chose the PC release from GoG with only a faint idea of what the series was about. As dedicated readers of this blog – who don’t exist – will be aware, I’m a sucker for a bargain. At £1, I can safely say that Panzer Dragoon really was a bargain. Not only is it a solid rail-shooter that manages to slightly embarrass Starfox 64 (my previous favourite) with it’s gameplay. But thanks to this remake it looks and sounds great too. Even if it’s a very short experience, it has a couple of tricks up it’s sleeve that combine to form a compelling gameplay experience.

First things first. The Panzer Dragoon remake may only have one weapon that you can use, but there’s an interesting give-and-take at the centre of the gameplay as this weapon has two firing modes. You can just spam shots, as much as you’d like and in a way that’s par-for-the-course for shoot em ups. Where things get a bit more interesting is that you’re able to hold down the fire button for a lock-on effect. With this lock-on being able to stack shots so long as you keep the enemy in your crosshairs. This makes it useful for enemies who are hard to hit, but there’s a catch. You see while enemy projectiles can be dodged, it’s quite difficult to do so. After all, you are moving on rails as it’s a rail-shooter. Fortunately you can shoot down the majority of these enemy projectiles, but only while shooting “normally”. This forces you to shoot your (locked-on) shot, so that you can now shoot down the incoming projectiles. While this might not sound like much, during frantic parts of the game you really have to constantly think about whether it’s worth sacrificing the ability to easily damage multiple enemies that are darting around, so that you can make it easier to avoid taking damage. The game is therefore able to produce a subtle but constant balancing act. Where you need to maximise the damage you deal while minimising the damage you take. Further compounding this, is the fact that while you can dodge there’s generally a limit as to how much you can dodge. Especially because aiming the targetting cursor at enemies, causes you to move in that direction. So if you are trying to dodge incoming shots which will allow you to keep charging your lock-on shot, then you still need to be mindful of where you’re aiming. As otherwise you’ll end up moving back towards the enemy fire you were trying to dodge! I appreciate that this all might seem a tad verbose. Basically you move with the cursor and you only have a limited amount of room to manoeuvrer.

One other thing that the Panzer Dragoon remake does to keep you on your toes, is manage the health system in a slightly unusual way. You see you can’t get more health during each of the game’s 7 stages. And beating a stage only gives you some health back. Therefore unless you are a real expert, you’ll probably struggle to clear the game with one life. Fortunately enough, you can gain more lives (or credits as they’re called here) by shooting down enough enemies. As a consequence, you’re actively encouraged to be more aggressive. If you shoot down 70% of enemies, you’ll only get 1 extra life. Whereas shooting down 90% of the enemies will give you two extra lives. Of course, as mentioned above the more lock-on shots you use the harder it is to deal with incoming enemy fire. So Panzer Dragoon is a game that incentives aggressive play, while also kind of punishing it.

Another twist that Panzer Dragoon offers that other rail-shooters don’t, is that you can rotate your direction of view while moving. Most rail-shooters would only let you shoot targets in front of you. In Panzer Dragoon on the other hand you’ll be shooting to your left, right and even behind you. This mechanic is used to good effect when fighting larger enemies, who you overtake and who overtake you which makes the fights feel larger than they are. It’s also a way to add further challenge to the game. As while you do have a radar that shows all nearby enemies and where they are. You still need to prioritise targets lest you get repeatedly hit by enemy fire from a direction you’re not watching. These enemies themselves are also quite varied. There are a range of both larger and smaller enemies each of which have their own attack patterns. Some attacks can be negated by shooting them down, while others just have to be dodged. Considering how short the game is, the amount of enemy variety is actually pretty impressive. Plus each level obviously has it’s own unique boss. Some of these bosses even have multiple forms, but none of them felt unfair or overly difficult. Instead Panzer Dragoon is a game that manages to deftly handle it’s difficulty curve. So that the late game is a large step up over the early game, without ever being overwhelming.

And the stages themselves have a nice amount of variation, both in colour palette and theme. There are sandy dunes, Mediterranean-esque ruins, industrial bases and besieged cities to take in over the course of your mission. Each area looks great and manages to look distinct, without being so distracting that it makes spotting the various enemies difficult. As for the soundtrack, it’s pretty good and suitably high-energy for a game which while short is consistently entertaining for it’s full duration. Finally while there is a story (and the credits even mention three lore experts) it is pretty minimal. You get a surprisingly lengthy opening cutscene which could charitably be described as a bit mad. Then are thrust into the action with only very short cutscenes occasionally appearing between stages. The plot is unsurprisingly quite simple. You are given a dragon by a guy and you need to stop the bad dragon from entertaining some sort of doomsday device. Along the way various fauna, critters and soldiers of some sort of empire will try and stop you for some reason. Don’t worry though, because the main point of the review is that Panzer Dragoon looks good, sounds good and runs at a pretty stable frame-rate. At least in this remake edition.

And that’s about all I have to say about the Panzer Dragoon remake, because as mentioned it’s exceedingly short. To be fair, after playing it from start-to-finish in an hour, I did unlock the “secret menu” which allowed me to: browse an art gallery, watch the credits again and even play through any stage with cheats enabled. While these additional features are cool, they can’t mask the fact that this is a very short game and one without any co-op or multiplayer features. As a consequence while I do think it’s a great game, it’s one I can only earnestly recommend in two circumstances. Either you are a big fan of the original and/or rail-shooters more generally. Or if it’s available at a low price during a sale. As mentioned, I paid £1 for my copy from GoG and I imagine a similar price will be available during the next big GoG sale. At that price anyone should buy it.

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Quick Note: This game is slightly glitchy if you start fannying around with co-op settings. If you get stuck you can always force the game to close by opening the Steam overlay and making it quit the game that way.

The House of the Dead: Remake is a game that came out of nowhere and was quickly snatched up and thrown into my Steam library around the time I first saw it was available, as for whatever reason it’s been the only HotD I haven’t played yet. Much like it’s sequels the game has the campy charm of a low quality release while still offering a variety of fun enemy encounters, a short-enough game length that it’s great for co-op while having enough unlockables and collectibles to still offer a decent amount of playtime. Unfortunately the port job hasn’t been conducted without any issue, as the game’s port by a motley band of developers I literally haven’t heard of has resulted in a Unity port that does little to dispel the negative conception of that particularly ill-fated engine. The two main issues I’ve encountered (and fortunately I haven’t encountered the “bug” where the game just flat out refuses to work) are surprisingly long load times and occasional instances of the game failing to load anything visually aside from the enemies. Fortunately these issues are fairly minor, as the game only fails to load the level briefly at a time and the actual loading of each level while slightly tedious only needs to take place when you’re booting up the game for the first time, or loading the game’s gallery mode. As such the game itself is able to operate on a fairly speed basis, with enemies jumping through windows, falling down from ceilings or clambering across walls and water features without any delay which keeps the pace up. The House of the Dead: Remake is therefore a fast paced game and were it not for the fact that it only includes 4 levels you would be in for a roller-coaster ride of an experience, but alas the game is over almost as quickly as it starts once you’ve figured out how the bosses work.

Which is kind of the game’s jam, for want of a better way of describing it. The House of the Dead: Remake is deliberately designed to be a short but intensive thrill ride which has the player basically unable to take a breather at any stage of the experience, as even when there are no enemies on screen there are hidden paths and collectibles scattered around that need to be shot to be unlocked. While this is great for keeping the pace up and ensuring that any co-op partners will find it hard to come up with an excuse to leave mid-session, it does also mean that the game has to be kept short enough that you’ll want to keep on rolling with the punches. Which means you get 4 levels per playthrough, of which 1 is a glorified boss-rush that barely lasts a few minutes because you should know how to deal with the bosses by now. In fact the bosses actually get easier as the game goes on, with the possible exception of the final boss who’s “weak spot” is hidden during the intro-screen. Fortunately the bosses are still fairly intense as they move quickly and you’ll need to keep hammering away at them to stop them for dealing a ton of damage to you, but they’re really more of a show-piece than an immense challenge – at least on normal difficulty.

As for the gameplay itself it’s an on-rails light-gun shooter where your character moves at their own pace through a variety of shooting galleries, with monsters appearing from all sides often with minimal notice. There’s a decent amount of enemy variety considering there are only really 3 stages, but on subsequent playthroughs there isn’t much in the way of variation unless you take the alternative paths. With these paths often being fairly well hidden, or at least requiring some intuition. Your character’s glance might quickly switch to a button for example, which you can shoot within the 2 seconds given to cause an elevator to appear or for a locked door to be shot down. Otherwise your character quickly moves on to the next series of targets. That’s about it for the gameplay, as outside of researchers occasionally getting in the way there isn’t much to it. These researchers are essentially civilians who you can shoot, but you shouldn’t as they give you extra points and sometimes healing items. In addition if you’re able to save all of them then you get a “secret” bonus room during the final stage. The House of the Dead: Remake also comes with an optional horde mode, which I had initially assumed was some sort of last-stand or defensive side activity, but which is instead just the same levels as the base campaign but with considerably more enemies on screen at any point.

With all that being said there isn’t too much to discuss about this House of the Dead remake, as while the graphics are perfectly acceptable they’re not worthy of extensive coverage. There’s a new soundtrack due to licensing issues with the original, which sounds fine to me but which can be replaced with the original’s via modding (on PC) for those who dislike it. The gameplay is enjoyable, faithful and frantic even if it’s fairly straight forward. There isn’t a huge amount of content but there is some replayability via the 3 different endings, different stage routes, achievement hunting (which unlocks additional weapons and even cheat codes) and the optional horde mode which provides a challenge for more hardcore gamers. It’s therefore a serviceable port of the original which features a handful of extra features, but which is sadly let down by the lack of online multiplayer and the lack of alternative game modes. So it’s short and sweet, but not particularly filling unless you are the sort of person who cares about 100% completion. One last thing to mention again is that you can unlock multiple different weapons and cheat codes which are fun to mess around with, but of course you can only play through the 4 included stages so many times before they begin to get a bit tiresome. Horde mode alleviates this slightly by mixing up the enemy spawns, but changing the difficulty doesn’t seem to have much of an impact.

In conclusion then The House of the Dead: Remake is an enjoyable co-op game and a decent enough single player experience, albeit one that most players won’t spend too much time with. While I’m glad that the game has been successful and that a sequel is in development, I am hoping that the House of the Dead 2 remake gets a bit more extra content to help add some meat to the base game’s bones. Unfortunately while The House of the Dead: Remake is a good remake, it does have some weird quirks like the lack of online co-op and some graphical bugs which haven’t been patched by the developers. As for whether I recommend it? Well yeah I do, I think it’s a fun little game and it’s not particularly expensive – plus having a local co-op game that’s not lengthy or overtly complicated is always a good thing. I do just wish it more content however, as playing through the campaign takes under an hour and once you’ve done that you’re just replaying through largely the same handful of stages with the same bosses, even if the alternative routes offer a sliver of much needed variety. The unlockable guns are great, the gallery is cute, the voice acting is still appropriately bad and the visual upgrades are nice, but it’s just oh so short and it’s replayability is near solely dependent on whether you can convince someone to come to your house and give it a go.

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Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog came out of nowhere earlier this year as a free download on Steam with minimal fanfare, yet it was quickly able to gain a popular following due to the fact that it’s just brimming with charm. In the Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog you get to play as a random train employee who is assisting the cast from the Sonic series in hosting their own little murder mystery shindig to celebrate Amy’s birthday. This plot device essentially justifies almost the entire game, as you’ll be wandering around with Tails and engaging in some light Visual Novel (VN) gameplay with a detective theme. As you’ve probably figured out, this is a light-hearted point and click adventure where you’re tasked with helping figure out the mystery of who “killed” Sonic. Due to the fact that everyone is a suspect aside from Tails and Amy (due to the roles they’ve been assigned), you’ll go through the train grilling everyone as to their whereabouts before finally figuring out the “murderer” in your midst is. This plays a bit like the Phoenix Wright series, in that you have an inventory with a handful of items and you’ll occasionally be called on to show which item proves the latest suspect is a dirty liar. Unlike most detective games however, there is no penalty to guessing the wrong one and your inventory never has that many items in it at a time. As such this is a pretty straightforward “case” to work through, although getting it wrong will cause various characters to call you a dummy.

Once you’ve figured out the correct item to use, the game abruptly changes gear and initiates an auto-runner to represent you thinking through the evidence. While this might sound silly (and it is!) the reason for this is that you’re constantly being told by Tails to think like Sonic would and so it makes sense that Sonic would be running through some isometric stages. Initially these are very easy, but overtime the amount of rings you need to gather continues to increase and the stages begin to contain various hazards such as spikes, ninja stars hurtling you and even platforms which fall away. The difficulty these stages is handled nicely, and the rationale for acting like Sonic would actually pays off in the end. Regardless these primarily serve to break up the gameplay and do provide a modicum of challenge, although let’s face it they’re not particularly challenging. If for whatever reason this little bit of trickiness has caused you to panic, then rejoice! Even in these areas failing has no consequence aside from requiring you to start again.

That’s about it as far as the gameplay goes, as this is a pretty short and easy game to play through without too much depth in terms of gameplay mechanics. Really the main focus of the game is to faff around with the characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and appreciate both the good natured writing and the surprisingly good visual design. I know Sonic has had his up’s and down’s (especially when they had redesign him for the movie), but this is a really good looking game and I wouldn’t be surprised if the positive reception has made some folk at Sega think that this silly idea could have some legs to it. After all, the game got a ton of positive press and if it had been longer and perhaps some sort of fail state, then it’s entirely feasible that we could see some sequels pushed out as low cost games. But that’s beside the point, the main point here is that this is a game that looks really good and has a charming stylised art-style with plenty of merit. It’s not cutting edge graphics by any means, but it’s clear that the art team put some serious into this little giveaway game and it really shows. Not only is the character art done well, but the backgrounds are pleasant to look at and each area has it’s own little introductory graphics which give the whole thing a quality feel. Plus, without wishing to spoil there’s some good use of colours and plenty of character expressions on offer.

The musical score is also pleasant to the ears with some light musak vibes, even if it’s fairly restrained and the sound effects are done well, although they’re not anything to rave about. All I can really say is that each piece of the puzzle here goes together nicely, and while the game isn’t a huge standout success or anything it’s still well made and well put together. I did take a look at the 60th Sega Anniversary games earlier and compared to those, this is a big step up and really does feel like it could’ve been expanded into it’s own game. Of course it would need to be expanded significantly, as while there is a cheeky little twist and some fun moments throughout, this is a game that will take you around 90 to 120 minutes (or 2 hours) to beat. It’s a super short experience and while it’s been made with care, if you’d paid money you might be disappointed. Fortunately it’s totally free and still available for download as of time of writing (Mid September 2023, although you won’t be reading this for two whole months as I’m trying to get a bunch of reviews done before I go visit Vietnam and Cambodia).

With that being said, there isn’t much more to say funnily enough. The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is a charming, short and free release that is great for Sonic fans and still enjoyable for those who haven’t played a Sonic game since the Dreamcast was a thing. The characters are all written well with some light-hearted dialogue and plenty of jokes, the visuals are great, the soundtrack is fitting and the gameplay has some nice variation. Once you’ve resolved the “murder” the game has an extra little dollop of content that throws everything together nicely and then you’re free to either replay the game or move on with your life. Either way The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog is perfect for a rainy afternoon or if you’ve got a laptop/Steam Deck, a great way to spend a bit of time at a coffee shop or college library (assuming you’re a student of course). Ultimately I’d recommend this game to everyone as it’s nice to experience a pleasant little game every now and then, which this most certainly is.

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Quick Note: As the Sega 60th Anniversary Collection bundle of games were released as part of a promotional effort to celebrate Sega’s 60th Anniversary, the store pages for them have been taken down and so they’re seemingly no longer available. Fortunately there’s a work around (Credit to //ennui_72826 on Steam for this fix) that lets you tell Steam to download them anyway and as they’re free they’ll be added to your library forever more. Just open your browser on a computer where your Steam account is signed in (or open the Windows Run tool) and enter the following command(s);

• Armor of Heroes: steam://install/1368440
• Endless Zone: steam://install/1368450
• Golden Axed: steam://install/1368460
• Streets of Kamurocho: steam://install/1368430
• Bonus related game, 8-Bit Bayonetta: steam://install/1368460

Despite being synonymous with the relatively young videogames industry, Sega much like Nintendo has been around for far longer than you might initially expect. While it’s first true home console might have only hit Western shores in the early 1980’s, Sega itself has been around since 1960 and as a way of celebrating it’s longevity the company released a handful of free promotional games back in 2020. Now these games are far too short to deserve a review each, especially as two of them can be beaten in around 15 minutes! Yet after browsing through my Steam library I remembered that I had received these games years ago and thought that I should give them a try, just to see whether they were of any interest. To my surprise they were each cool in their own way, although unfortunately the one I was most excited about (Golden Axed) is also the shortest one here. So without further ado, I’m going to take a quick look at each game and then briefly conclude with which one was The Best

Golden Axed

Starting off with the one I was most excited to try, Golden Axed is a resurrected proof of concept for a Golden Axe remake that was in development around 2010. There was going to be a couple of remakes in this vein for the 7th generation of consoles, but for better or for worse they were all scrapped and the Australian development studio working on them was closed down. As such Golden Axed is an insight into what could have been, albeit a fairly short one as there really isn’t much going on here. You get to play as the Ax Battler class, with a couple of different attacks that you can use to face off against two enemy types across a single level. The combat itself is fairly faithful to the original games, as you only have a jump, light attack and heavy attack but there is still a surprising amount of depth to the move as various combinations of movements and attacks will unleash multiple different moves. As it’s just a proof of concept demo, there are still some rough edges to this combat including how easy it is to abuse the light attack “combo” (just mash it) to prevent enemies from being able to deal any damage. In spite of the limited amount of content however, the game is still able to demonstrate that there was a concerted effort to make the concept of a remaster work. You can see this in the elements of this demo that illustrate what can be done on modern systems, including the appealing visuals and large amount of enemies to fight on-screen. Plus the game has been able to recreate some of the more amusing elements of it’s predecessors, including the ability to knock enemies off the stage or the prospect of a magic system. As a consequence it’s disappointing that this little teaser as all that was ever seen of this game, as with some time and energy it could have been a decent game. Instead the Golden Axe series has languished since this project was cancelled.

Streets of Kamurocho

The next one I dove into was Streets of Kamurocho as I’ve enjoyed the Streets of Rage games in the past and this is essentially a (sanctioned) knock-off. While that might sound like a criticism, I don’t intend to disparage the game as it’s enjoyable if brief and manages to accurately capture most of what makes the Streets of Rage series enjoyable. You’ve got a similar combat system, with light attacks, heavy attacks, weapons you can pick-up, jump attacks and a constant barrage of enemies with different attack patterns. Even the smaller details such as how health items are picked up, the UI, the number of hits that different enemy types take and so on are almost identical to the Streets of Rage games. This includes the handful of boss fights, which are dangerous but manageable and culminate in a final boss fight that can be pretty tricky as he has goons that respawn multiple times. Unfortunately much like Golden Axed the whole thing is very short indeed, and once you’ve cleared the first stage it loops (unlike Golden Axed which goes straight to the title screen). With that being said, both the soundtrack and visuals are well polished and when combined with the combat provide an enjoyable if brief experience. Once you’ve cleared the only stage on offer, you unlock Kasuga alongside Kiryu and Majima but aside from this modest goal there’s nothing to aim for outside of a higher score. There are online leaderboards available for the game, which is a nice touch but that’s about it.

Armor of Heroes

Perhaps the most unusual game of the bunch is Armor of Heroes, an ostensibly Company of Heroes themed game that has absolutely nothing to do with the series or indeed the RTS genre. Instead it’s a top-down arcade-y multiplayer game where you control a tank across a variety of game modes and it’s playable with up to 3 other players, 3 AI bots or a mixture of the two. Despite being arcade-y, there are still some sops to realism as the tanks don’t handle particularly well and so you need to slowly rotate your vehicle instead of just being able to turn on a dime. Similarly, the stages are cluttered with debris some of which can be shot through (or driven through) and some of which is more resistant to your efforts. Shots also have a degree of bullet-drop, although you don’t have to worry about shot angle and armour penetration so there are limits to the realism. The game is therefore in a slightly odd position, as it is far too fast paced and liberal with the simulation elements to be considered anything but an arcade experience. Yet it also has some elements that get in the way, for want of a better way of phrasing it. To make matters even more complex, there are a handful of game modes such as Survival, King of the Hill, Deathmatch and so on but there are three variants for each mode which are essentially Arcade, Hardcore and a somewhat balanced middle. The tweaks are mainly related to fog of war and how shots act, alongside tanks being easier to destroy on the non-Arcade difficulties. This is solely a party game however, as there are no progression systems and no single player content (aside from matches against the AI) to speak of. The game does at least have a handful of maps, so there’s enough new content to support around an hour of playtime before it starts to get stale. With that being said, much like the other games this is more of a novelty due to the relatively lack of content even though it supports local multiplayer.

Endless Zone

Last but certainly not least in this collection is Endless Zone, an attempt to emulate the Fantasy Zone series made by the team behind the Endless Space 4X games. Much like Armor of Heroes, this is a pretty abrupt change of pace on the part of the developers but unlike Armor of Heroes, Endless Zone is close to being an entire game! Of course that is a backhanded compliment at it’s core, but I was still surprised by how much depth was packed into what is a throwaway promotional piece of software. Not only are there multiple stages, each with their bosses, but the game also has a full shop interface just like the Fantasy Zone games which provide access to a multitude of different weapons. The caveat is that these weapons have very limited amounts of ammo, so you’ll need to choose wisely and be prepared to return to slumming it with your default blaster before long. Fortunately the upgrades to your bombs and thrusters are permanent, plus you’re able to buy additional lives which always helps! To access the shop, you’ll need to fly into a beacon which appears roughly once per level after you destroy a certain amount of targets and then you’ll be able to buy what you desire. Be careful though, as weapons and lives get progressively more expensive as you buy them and so extra lives will quickly eat up vast amounts of currency. Now this wouldn’t be an issue, but you die in one hit so this is a surprisingly challenging little experience. To win all you need to do is shoot down 10 floating orbs that are spread out across each of the 4 stages, while dodging or shooting down all of the infinitely respawning enemies and then dealing with the boss. That’s easier said than done however, especially as the enemies spawn more and more frequently as the time you’ve spent on a stage increases. Don’t let the difficulty curve get you down though, as each stage has it’s own unique ambiance, visuals, soundtrack and most importantly enemies to deal with! As such this is a great looking shoot em’ up with plenty of depth and a decent amount of challenge, although once you get used to it (and learn to save your money for the missiles upgrade and the thrusters upgrade) it shouldn’t take you too long. Just don’t be surprised if you see the game over screen a few times more than you’d like!

And the Winner is…

So after playing through all of those games, I had to confess that I had inadvertently left the best for last. While Golden Axed was a cool insight into what could have been and Streets of Kamuchoro was probably the most fun I had, the clear winner here is Endless Zone. Not only was it the longest game of the bunch, but it was also the one with the largest amount of challenge and perhaps most important the most strategy involved. It’s hard to lose Golden Axed or Streets of Kamuchoro before they’re over, and honestly I found that Armor of Heroes was entirely random as despite having the same AI the bots were incredibly unpredictable when it came to the final scores. Endless Zone on the other hand is a concise but challenging game that requires you to learn it’s systems to succeed, as it’ll let you keep blasting away at the infinitely respawning enemies or waste money on the wrong upgrades. But once you have an understanding of how everything works, the game itself isn’t too hard and I was able to clear the last few bosses without any real trouble. Then add a great OST and visual presentation, alongside plenty of enemy patterns to learn and the end result is a great little game. That’s not to say that the others aren’t worth a look as I enjoyed them all to varying degrees, with Armor of Heroes being my least favourite but it was still pleasant enough to mess around with. But with that being said Endless Zone is an actually enjoyable free game that you can still add to your Steam library today, and I would highly recommend you give it a try. Then again, you may as well give the others a try at that point as the whole batch will only take you maybe an hour to see everything once you’ve been able to beat Endless Zone.

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