Monthly Archives: February 2023

Stalk’s Videogame Corner: Dead Island

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Game: Dead Island
Developer: Techland
Genre: Action Role-Playing Game, Survival Horror
Releases: 2011 (Playstation 3, Windows, Xbox 360), 2016 (Playstation 4, Xbox One)
Stalk’s Rating: 5/10

The never-ending quest of our Discord group to search for multiplayer games to dive into certainly took a dark turn this time. “Dead Island”, the genre mix of survival horror and an action role-playing game ended up on our computers after one in our jolly round of gamers suggested the title. The game went on sale soon after the suggestion was uttered, so there was really not that much to say against the proposition of killing hordes of zombies on a holiday island somewhere near Papua New Guinea. I knew next to nothing about the title; or so I thought since I remembered reading about the various controversies after seeing them hinted at in the Wikipedia article for the game. But with the characters gaining levels for skills and the gameplay mechanic of collecting money for upgrades, this seemed like the standard role-playing fair and therefore a good fit for some evenings of multiplayer fun. So, allow me to give you my impressions of “Dead Island” in the following article.

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Stalk’s Videogame Corner: Othercide

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Game: Othercide
Developer: Lightbulb Crew
Genre: Strategy Role-Playing Game
Releases: 2020 (Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Windows, Xbox One)
Stalk’s Rating: 6/10

Yet another round of Blaugustian community reviews comes with Humble Choice in February 2023. Another set of games for an affordable price with many titles probably being unknown to most players; not for quality reasons, but rather because there are so many games on the market that you cannot keep up with every release. For the February round, I decided to pick “Othercide” as my contribution to the review series, which I had no prior knowledge about but which managed to gain my attention with its presentation. Of course, I am not the only one writing about the Humble Choice games; and it only seems right to give you an overview of what else is in store review-wise. So, here is the list:

Feel free to check out the other people’s reviews, they do some amazing work, and also manage to keep things shorter than I do. However, I also have a game to review so let us take a look at “Othercide”:

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Budget Deckbuilding: Dimir Intrigues

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From Aggro to Mill, we do a 180 and change strategies completely; just because Ravnica, City of Guilds works just like that. Not that I mind that at all. The Blue-Black Guild, Dimir, does not take a direct approach to winning the game, and rather focusses on milling the opponent, while using various Control effects to keep the opponent at bay. While it was not the most powerful guild to play back in the day, the Dimir still had some crazy good cards to work with like the infamous “Glimpse the Unthinkable” or the various “Transmute” cards to fetch whatever you need from your toolbox as long as it shares the same converted mana cost. So, let us take a look at what their theme deck “Dimir Intrigues” has to offer.

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Stalk’s Videogame Corner: Bio-Prototype

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Game: Bio-Prototype
Developer: Emprom Game
Genre: Shoot-em-up/Rogue-like
Releases: 2022 (Windows)
Stalk’s Rating: 8/10

I happily admit that I am one of many players that were hooked by “Vampire Survivors”. The gameplay loop of collecting colored crystals to fire ridiculous amounts of projectiles absolutely worked for me. So much in fact that I not only completed “Vampire Survivors” with a 100% achievement rate but also played many other games of the newfound genre. With titles such as “Rogue: Genesia” or “Soulstone Survivors”, there are worthy contenders for the throne of the genre and they are all good fun. Well, I might have found (or rather: was told about) one more game that could potentially join the ranks of the shoot-em-up, rogue-like, bullet-heaven “Survivors” games genre: “Bio-Prototype”. Sure, it looks somewhat primitive, but while it lacks polish in some areas, it does nail the gameplay in my opinion. Enough for me to present it to my readers in form of this review.

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Stalk’s Videogame Corner: The Claws of Blood

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Game: The Claws of Blood (Kyouki to Senketsu no Tsume)
Developer: Circle J
Genre: Erotica, Role-Playing game
Releases: 2022 (Windows)
Stalk’s Rating: 2/10

“The Claws of Blood” was a title I found in the “to be released”-list on Metacritic one day while browsing what new titles come out in the next few days; and while the header picture shows exactly what you can expect from the game, at least if you have played a hentai game before, I was rather interested in the complete lack of information about it on the internet. I mean, this is a title that was even released through Steam. In fact, I was interested enough to play just for that reason alone; and I can wholeheartly tell anyone to not follow my example since what I encountered was very much below par. But more about that in the article below.

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Stalk’s Videogame Corner: Grounded

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Game: Grounded
Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Genre: Survival game
Releases: 2022 (Windows, Xbox One, Xbox X/S)
Stalk’s Rating: 7/10

Sometimes, I simply fail to understand the trends in the game industry. After the major success of “Valheim” with its co-op survival gameplay loop of farming stuff to get better gear to farm more stuff, here is another title with a similar approach; and equally positive public reception. “Grounded” takes the survival game formula but tackles the setting with the idea of the 1989 movie “Honey, I shrunk the kids”. With four teens being reduced to the size of an ant (literally), they need to cooperate to find a way back to their normal height; and the bugs that seem so harmless when you are above one meter of height certainly get a lot more dangerous when they match you in size. This was one of the titles our Discord group played for our multiplayer session, so we ventured into the garden of Wendall Tully as a team of four. And as you might have guessed from what I have written so far my verdict is not strictly positive; but let me go into further detail down below.

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Yugioh Deck Review: Starter Deck: Jaden Yuki

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Here is the deck that officially told Yugi and his crew that it is time to step aside since there are new players on the block: The “Starter Deck: Jaden Yuki” takes the “Elemental HERO” strategy of “Yugioh GX’s” protagonist Jaden and allows you to “get your game on!” The idea is pretty cool: While the first few Starter Decks were a loose combination of some of the cards the characters played during the anime with random stuff, we here have the opportunity to make an archetype-focussed deck around one of the rogue-tier powerhouses to be since the “HERO” conglomate still goes strong to this day. Sure, I have to manage my expectations since a lot of the really good “HERO” cards were not out by the time this deck was released, but following a set strategy rather than just playing monsters and shoving them into each other until one player loses sounds like progress in the right direction. So, without further ado, let us see what this set of cards has in store for us.

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