Recent reviews by Cosmic

In short, if you like electronic music, particularly the likes of Monstercat, Proximity and/or SuicideSheep on YouTube, you'll absolutely fricking love this game. It's all about super fast dodging various obstacles that go to the blaring beat in the background. Go buy it now! (However if you don't like electronic music, this probably won't be your game).

Note that this game does NOT take your own songs and turn them into levels, there is no 'random generation' like in many other music games. Shapes and Beats has it's own soundtrack and own songs, every single level has a specific song that has been hand crafted to go exactly with the music. It's absolutely brilliant and there's tonnes of different levels, none of which feel alike.

Something I actually didn't expect from it is the really awesome story mode. It's hard to describe how quickly it is to become fond of a blue square and his friends, but the story is fantastic and (particularly on the later levels), you're on the edge of your seat struggling to survive against some great boss fights, it's incredibly exciting and badass! Probably the only thing I could complain about this game however, is the inability to play story mode online with a Steam friend. You can do it locally with controllers but can't online, which is a shame when it's so good! There is however a decent co-op challenge mode that you can do with online friends.

I thought this game looked cool and so bought it, I must have done literally 1 or 2 levels before I decided that this game was absolutely fricking awesome and I loved it. You're doing yourself an injustice if you don't play it.

I absolutely love Total War as a whole, and Total War: Warhammer 2 is no exception to this. In fact, due to the more 'fantasy' setting of it, I think I prefer it. Total War has been getting a bit stagnant for the last few years, combined with the mediocre launch of Rome 2, I was afraid it might soon be the end for the series. However, Warhammer and Warhammer 2 have completely invigorated the entire series and I really love it! Warhammer 3 is also scheduled to come out in the next year or two as well.

While expensive, the game features a very large array of different warhammer fantasy factions - the Empire (humans), Dwarves, Undead, Wood Elves, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Skaven (Ratmen), Chaos... the list goes on. All factions have interesting and unqiue mechanics specific to that faction, Creative Assembly have done a really fantastic job at bringing all these factions to life, they are (for the most part) well balanced and every faction has 20-30 different units from simple spearmen to massive black dragons and everything in between. Most factions also have access to their own spells and abilities, all of which can cause huge damage and powerful buffs or debuffs on the battlefield.

Factions also feel very different to play, giving the game a huge amount of replayability. For example, the Dwarves (my favourite), are very focused on very tough units and big explosive cannons and guns. They have huge ranged firepower and rarely break or run, however they have no cavalry whatsoever and struggle to deal with mobile units. To contrast - the Undead however focus on trying to terrify your opponent from the battlefield, they have very powerful monsters and flying beasts as well as incorporeal ghosts etc but have absolutely no ranged units and therefore struggle against factions with ranged power or that can escape their monsters. There isn't a single faction that you could say is 'extremely similar' to another.

The game is a blast, it's an amazing feeling levelling up your army in the campaign and destroying all those who oppose you. Battles are awesome and I really can't get enough of them. HOWEVER! No game is ever perfect and there's a few minor issues I do have with the game. None of these are to die for and should certainly not stop you buying the game.

1. While the battles are absolutely amazing. Once you've done 50+ of them in a single campaign, it starts to grind a bit. I feel the 'grand campaign' and the 'vortex campaign' are both too long and rarely find myself finishing campaigns. I don't mind playing a 30+ hour campaign sometimes, but I think the game could work just as well with a campaign that's half this length. The game starts out amazing fun, but I can imagine it taking forever to meet some of the end of game win conditions.

2. Although the game looks beautiful, it's very demanding on systems. Just something to be aware of. Make sure you've got good hardware!!

3. As the game(s) have gone on, more factions have been added. However, Creative Assembly have got better and better at making them as they've gone on. This is great but it does mean that the earliest ones that were added, particularly in the first game, are nowhere near as awesome as ones that have been added recently. Factions such as the Beastmen or Chaos could really use some more love.

Other than that, go buy it. It's an expensive game but if you see it in a sale, it should be an instant buy :)

Although I don't recommend this game, this is mostly due to my own personal preferences. The game is very good, it just wasn't really what I was looking for. Most people would probably enjoy this game.

So why didn't I like it?

Having played the Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us, I loved the fantasy style of those two combined with the awesome storytelling and great characters. I thought both games were brilliant and was hooked all the way to the ends of both games. Therefore the second I saw the full first season of Life is Strange, I was excited and immediately bought it and started playing.

However, after playing through episodes 1, 2 and 3 quite slowly and then ditching the game entirely, I realised a few things that had put me off:

1. I'd got a bit tired of the same 'TellTale' story genre. This won't be a problem for you if you haven't done Walking Dead/Wolf Among Us/Borderlands Series etc, but this genre as a whole I'm just a bit tired of. Life is Strange didn't really do much to interest me in it again, it felt like exactly the same 'choice' based format as the previous titles I'd done.

2. The more realistic style I wasn't fond of. I like fantasy a lot... Life is Strange starts in a normal school with normal people and yes, there's time travel, big woop... (more on that next). There just doesn't feel the same sense of danger or mystery as the other games I'd played. It seemed to be much more about the relationships the main character has between the other characters rather than an imminent sense of death by zombie or a murderer on the loose. It just wasn't as... exciting.

3. Speaking of time travel... this was what I was really clinging onto as the only 'fantastical' element to the series, but I felt (at least from what I played), underdone and not really a focus. The second it got introduced, I was thinking of all the awesome things she could have done and all the directions the series could have taken, instead it gives a really cliche 'save the dude by rewinding time' bit and then it's not used much after that. I just felt a bit let down and was expecting more from it.

The series as a whole is good, it's just not really my thing. I assumed it would be a lot more 'out there' with the time travel but it doesn't seem anywhere near as much of a focus as I thought it would be. The characters and development are good, but I honestly felt that the ones in Walking Dead were better and I really cared about them due to the constant sense of danger all around.

This game is fricking fantastic. If you've ever heard of Dwarf Fortress then it'll be immediately familiar, but even if you haven't this game will grab you and never let go. I paid full price and am absolutely loving it.

Although the concept sounds fairly unoriginal at first, a 'survival' game where you control a load of dudes... there's just so much more to it than that. You're constantly managing many different systems, trying to maintain enough food for the upcoming winter so you don't all starve, obtaining some decent weapons so you don't murdered by the next bear that decides to go mental or attempting to build a fairly sensible and efficient base so it won't all burn down or get blown up when the next raid comes along.

The game is tricky but it's a good level of 'trickyness', it's enjoyable while not being frustrating. Disasters happen frequently and you have to act quickly or risk your people dying. Each time you mess something up, you learn how to do it better next time, and if all else fails, you can reload at any point. The initial tutorial could have been a little longer I thought but once I got building I hit my stride and haven't really slowed down since, that's really my only complaint honestly.

For those wondering how it compares to DF, obviously it shares a lot of similarities but something I love about RimWorld is how accessible it is. Dwarf Fortress has always been notorius for being hard to get into and even harder to understand what's actually happening half the time. I love DF, but even after watching many tutorial videos on it, I'm still confused about a lot of things. RimWorld takes this and updates it to a modern game with a proper UI, pretty graphics, sensible controls and mod support. There are few minor things that have been changed or removed, the biggest of which is probably the 'levels' system in DF where you could dig down has been removed. Instead, you spend all your time building bases on the surface This turns out to not really be much of a loss at all since the area you start with is so large initially anyway, it also makes your base a heck of a lot easier to see and visualise.

Minor DF annoyances like aquifiers also aren't a thing and the raids aren't quite as prolific either, at least initially. RimWorld slows down the gameplay of DF and instead focuses on smaller skirmishes with people that you really care about. Rather than the 200 odd dwarves that could quickly build up in DF, you'll probably have less than 10 citizens for a large majority of the game, but these people you'll all know by name and be very fond of! The game maintains Dwarf Fortress's complexity but takes the formula and makes it accessible to a wide audience.

RimWorld is amazing, you're really doing yourself a disservice if you don't buy it. Go get it.

Okay so after nearly 10 hours of the game, I feel I can give my thoughts on this game to a good extent. In a nutshell, the game is really good, if you enjoyed theme hospital then you will definitely enjoy this, no questions asked. I'm a bit of a cheapskate so probably wouldn't buy it at full price, a Steam sale would make an excellent pick up.

To go into it in more detail; the game has you creating a number of different hospitals with an ever expanding toolset. You start with just a few different rooms/treatments and eventually the illnesses build up and you get new ways to deal with them. It's awesome and just as much fun as theme hospital was.

HOWEVER! No game is perfect and of course that applies here too. My only issue really is that I found the game too easy. The whole game feels like it was designed for a more casual gamer than me, or maybe children. It's good fun but just doesn't offer any kind of challenge really. This comes across in several ways:

- Every hospital you start with a ridiculously massive lump of cash, and although not obvious for the first couple of hospitals (since you don't have much to build anyway), the later ones you could literally start, and then just pause the game and build 80% of the entire hospital. I found myself spending the first 10 minutes frantically building rooms, and then another 50-60 minutes just sorta sat around bored... occasionally putting down the odd extra bench here and radiator there. It's just not that fun when you start the game with all the cash.

- Ignoring the cash, the game doesn't ever get difficult at any point. The game initially gives off the feeling of you having limited space, terrible staff, and environmental dangers... but it doesn't take very long to just buy more land and hire the best possible staff including loads of janitors should something go wrong. Then bam, you're all set for the rest of the game.

- The notifications. Ugh... Why do I really have to be told every 2 minutes that I need to upgrade 'x' machine or train 'y' member of staff. It's helpful for the first level or two but I'm not on the 6th hospital and the tutorial guy is still on my case? Really!?

Despite these complaints, the game is very good and probably the best game to re-create a modern theme hospital. It would be a fantastic pickup for children, casual gamers or hardcore gamers... just don't expect it to be very difficult.

Now, before you all get the wrong idea, the game isn't bad at all. I went into this game with the wrong expectations I think and therefore just didn't enjoy it very much, the game is pretty good but maybe it just doesn't resonate with me. For what you get, the price is about right.

So I went into this expecting a lot more than what was actually in it, maybe different types of drills, different types of oil or some kind of oil processing element with some crazy upgrades. I thought there would be more parts to this game. However, what happens is the following:

1. Find Oil using either dude/mole/scanner
2. Put pump above oil and drill down to oil
3. Buy a few horses, direct them to the company with the best price
4. Wait

Then you just do that, again and again and again... Once you've got the initial setup going with 2 or 3 oil pumps, you usually just sit around not doing very much until the game ends. I found myself setting things up and then just holding down the 'x' key for speeding the game up until the year ends. It's fun, for like the first 5 or 6 times you do it, and then there's not really much else and it gets a bit stale.

Also, for me a lot of the upgrades felt a bit 'eh', I bought bigger pipes because that seemed pretty obvious for more cash, but I couldn't even notice any difference to my pipes when I then tested it out. The game introduces rocks to make mining harder too, this however didn't make it more fun or add much to the game, it just meant I then had to burn a load of cash at the shop to ignore the rocks... I then bought better horses to move oil faster, turns out that even though you payed tonnes for the upgrade, you still need to pay a big chunk of money every time you then want to use them.

Meh, the game was alright. It got repetitive pretty quickly and even owning the DLC didn't interest me in playing more of it. Feels like it could be an awesome flash game, but a bit lacking for a full title release.

So Dungeon Fighter is a 2D class based fighter. It has a tonne of classes and you will find a class you want to play. Anything from assassins, paladins and a half knight dragon girl to big guns, massive swords and mages that control anything from time, fire, wind, ice, summoners.... the list goes on and on. This game came out years ago, it's not a new game, but it's still being updated to this day with large amounts of new content. Two new classes only came out last week..... There's an active community and the devs are constantly on the DFO reddit taking feedback from events and updates.

Something I love about DFO in comparison to far too many titles, is how much content is available to the free player. Akin to something like Dota 2, you can play EVERY one of 30 odd classes (to max level) without paying a single dime. In fact, you are physically not allowed to purchase any in game currency before you get a character to level 80 (90 being max). This took me a good probably 60 hours before I was even ALLOWED to have my character buy a few cosmetic items which I liked the look of. While there are a few useful (mostly consumable) items which you can purchase with real cash, any actually decent weapons/armour etc requires real in-game time usually in dungeons and raids. Unlike certain games, I've never once felt I'm being coerced to the in-game store.

The game is awesome fun and while it can be a bit grindy into later levels, each class has a plethora of awesome looking abilities. Wanna feel like a fricking badass? This game is fast paced and you'll constantly be jumping from room to room, blowing up and slashing countless enemies in quick succession.

Something I would mention, this game isn't really pvp focused and some classes are actually banned from pvp. There's a tonne of pve focused content including raids and dungeons and (at least to me), I think this is great. The game is also very easy up to max level, where there's a very sudden difficulty spike where you reach the endgame dungeons and raids. Expect an easy levelling experience and some really tough endgame content. Would definitely recommend if you've got a good chunk of time to throw at it.... especially since yaknow.... it's free.

Honestly I bought this at half price and went into it expecting something akin to Stardew Valley, which I absolutely loved. While it does have a few things similar, it's quite different in a number of different ways. Effectively, you start out with basic pink slimes, you feed them and they drop things which you sell for cash. You can use this cash to upgrade your farm with better stuff.

Where it differs from something like Stardew, where you generally stay in the same place, instead Slime Rancher has you exploring and discovering new lands, solving basic puzzles etc to find more slimes. You'll start out finding basic rock slimes and cat slimes, but the later slimes are weird and wacky. You're able to combine slime types together, each slime also has a certain food which they prefer so you'll have to find these in the wild and then setup your own upgradeable farms with these resources. You can purchase all sorts of gadgets, gizmos and upgrades from jetpacks to incinerators and teleporters.

There is a lot to this game, a lot more than I expected. The whole game is incredibly cutesy and you can instantly tell a lot of heart has gone into it. It's not a difficult game, but it doesn't need to be. Thoroughly recommend at either full price or on sale, £15 is a fantastic price.

Not typically into platformers but I bought this almost on a whim and have so far really enjoyed it. It's difficult and can get frustrating at times but that seems the story of most platforming games. The world is very weird and wacky, it's also incredibly beautiful, you can tell the massive amounts of work that has been put into the world, characters and dialogue.

In terms of the gameplay, it's very open and this might put some people off, I was unsure at first. After the first 10 or 15 minutes, you're not told where to go or who to kill, the game very much encourages you to just wander and see what you can find. It does quietly guide you as you're unable to progress past certain areas without specific powers but outside of that, the maps/levels are large and it's easy to get lost. You are also not provided with a map, you must find the explorer dude somewhere in the level who then gives you the map, so you can be exploring blindly for a while. This isn't a bad thing, the game really wants you to explore of your own free will and you spend a lot of time doing exactly that.

It also has a Souls esque death system whereby you collect currency and then drop it on death, you must then make it back to your death point to get the money back, if you die again, you loose it all. It can be a bit merciless at times, especially when you're just struggling with a boss while also trying to save up for that new cool looking item, but it definitely adds a certain 'tension' to the game.

Definitely recommend it. If you're into platformers this'll be a real favourite, if not, you'll still enjoy it.

tldr; Beautiful game. Very open and doesn't like holding your hand. Merciless and tricky at times, but tense and rewarding.

There's so many reasons why I'd recommend Dota 2, it's one of the few games that will absolutely devour your free time and refuse to let you play much else. Dota takes a good amount of time to get into it and be prepared to be hated and despised by other players while you learn, this is very standard in MOBA's and you should never let it get to you.

I initially played League of Legends for roughly 600-800 hours before Dota 2 and thoroughly enjoyed that but ultimately decided that Dota 2 is newer, fresher and more enjoyable game. Valve are updating this on a weekly basis and some of the heroes are absolutely fantastic in comparison to many of their League counterparts.

Dota 2 is completely free and although it has microtransactions similar to League, all are purely cosmetic and you can actually unlock all the cosmetics without paying anything should you wish. You've got nothing to loose by giving it a go but I'd recommend doing at least 10 or so games before you make your descision to continue playing or not since the game is so complex and in depth. Choose a hero you like the look of, something like Viper, Axe, Lich or Wraith King are good starting heroes and go from there.

If you need any help or just want someone to play with, add me on Steam and I'll help you out :)