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5 days ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
I play a wholly unnecessary amount of League of Legends, a game that on its best days can still manage to get under your skin and stress you out. It is therefore something of a relief that my job, which I’m incredibly lucky to have, drops the occasional relaxation-focused game on my desk.
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1 week ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
The Siege and the Sandfox is a Metroidvania that puts a unique emphasis on stealth, passing on the usual beat-em-up style the genre is known for and instead playing something closer to Thief in pixelated form. Beautifully designed with incredible hand-drawn pixel art, the aesthetics, visuals, and sounds of this game are sure to win you over with minimal effort.
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1 week ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
Survive the Fall is an interesting take on post-apocalyptic survival games, combining open-world exploration with colony-sim-style base building and management to create something that wants to exist between RimWorld and DayZ. While there are certainly aspects of the game that work, others really need improvement, leaving the game feeling more like an early access playtest than a full release.
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1 week ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
It’s unfortunate that I have other reviews to complete because all I really want to do right now is play Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is an open-world RPG heavily inspired by classic Elder Scrolls games. It features a unique spin on Arthurian legends and a twist on old-school mechanics that manages to update systems I thought were too outdated to ever shine again.
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1 week ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
We’re living in an age of gaming where the need to do your own thing is becoming increasingly important. As game creation becomes more accessible to indie developers, there are certain titles that have begun to bloat as players-turned-gamemakers recreate the mechanics they loved to play themselves. While I don’t exactly hate this phenomenon, it can lead to a lot of games feeling pretty similar.
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2 weeks ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
Unique among crime noir games, The Precinct is a game that is sure to stand out and entertain fans of 80s cop films, and all of the shootouts and car crashes that come with them. However, I found the title to be a bit repetitive, a little buggy, and not fully capitalizing on its strong themes and setting. While the game will certainly have an audience, many may find the game, as I did, fun, but feeling a bit unfinished, promising a little more than the title delivers on.
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2 weeks ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
Early Access reviews are always a bit difficult to write. When criticizing a game in Early Access, it is important to specify to the reader that it is, in fact, in an experimental, unfinished state. Reminding a reader that a game is likely—almost guaranteed—to change from its current state throughout an Early Access period is critical if you’re going to point out a problem that very well could be removed by the time the reader has gotten the chance to read your review.
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2 weeks ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
Blades of Fire is an interesting fantasy action RPG with a focus on forging your own weapons. Smithing is not just an important mechanic, but the crux of the game’s identity as you unlock patterns and forge new weapons on a quest to overthrow a corrupt queen and her armies of cronies. Though decidedly special, I found that Blades of Fire’s approach to the genre took quite some time to get used to, and some aspects that are core to the game’s experience can become a bit tedious over time.
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2 weeks ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
RoadCraft is a simulator all about running your own construction company, specializing in cleaning up sites of natural disasters and rebuilding infrastructure with a fleet of heavy-duty construction machinery. Unique in its premise and with a strong focus on realistic construction physics, RoadCraft is certain to be a game that appeals to anyone who grew up playing with tractors or staring in awe at heavy machinery.
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3 weeks ago | 
tryhardguides.com | Erik Hodges
Revenge of the Savage Planet has, so far, been my biggest surprise of the year. What I was expecting was some kind of platforming game set in space. What I wasn’t expecting, due largely to the fact that I’ve never heard of the first game this is apparently a sequel to, was the game’s offbeat, absurdist sense of humor, nor the fact that it would work so incredibly well and stay consistently funny throughout.
