Turbo Overkill(Playstation 5) Review

Out of all the "boomer" shooters that have been made, none of even managed to capture the sheer ambition of Turbo Overkill. If you ever wanted to see the feel of Doom Eternal replicated but through a much smaller dev team then you can't go wrong with this game. It's the most ambitious boomer shooter ever created but at the same time it can also come back to haunt it in a lot of ways.

As far as boomer shooters or even just shooters in general, Turbo Overkill is one of the most challenging I ever played. It's not just combat that is a hard time but also the sheer amount of platforming the game has too.

What makes combat so challenging where Doom Eternal has glory kill to replenish health back and chainsaw for ammo. Turbo Overkill at best gives you an upgrade you could by where killing fodder enemy with a chainsaw leg can get you back 1 hp. With ammo you have to find pick ups all over the map.

It does keep Doom Eternal's combat model of being having high HP one minute and then being down to critical the next.

Due to the lack of glory kills and chainsaw, the horde battle are even more intense than before. Every battle is an intense battle for survival. I'll be going through an enemy wave and then mech enemies pop up and I'm like, "damn it" after it kills me.

This is one thing Turbo Overkill does really well. The enemy variety is top notch one you'll be killing mooks with the chainsaw leg one minute, then switch to shotgun or assault rifle to kill the shield enemies, then use rockets to kill the drones, then running and shooting for your life when the mech enemies show up.

The weapon line up while standard like pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and so on. There are some insane alt fires you can have like the sniper having a telefraggins ability, shotgun having shock blasts that can be lined up, the pistol having a charge ability that can level most enemies if line up well. You even get a variation of the Hammer of Dawn from Gears of War here which is always interesting to see in the context of this kind of game.

Level design and platforming also returns from Doom Eternal and they can be quite expansive to how big the space can be. The levels can take so long to complete that it felt like I complete an entire episode of many boomer shooters even though I only did one level. There's levels that take place in wide open cities, traffic, destroyed cities, toxin refinery, factories, a scrapyard and so on. Each one of these levels can take a 30 minutes or an hour to complete. They have lots of platforming then lots of intense horde shootouts, then hunting keys and so on.

It doesn't end there either, there will be levels will you will be riding your car then the maps get bigger and then infiltrate structures while riding the said car, then getting out to progress the level. You'll in a motorcycle chase and then a mech late game. A late game set piece will also happen where an entire army gets wiped out as you are barely trying to survive while platfroming through the level.

In terms of sheer and utter ambition Turbo Overkill almost has no rival.

The sheer scope does come back to haunt the game. For one the upgrade system while interesting, it gives you a tons of perks and options but once you find the one that you are most comfortable with, you never want to try anything new.

Platforming and this might be me playing on a controller can so hard even analog stick can't even keep up like with the grapple hook mechanic, half the time I get past these sections by luck.

By far the biggest issue with the game is how long it is. Remember how I said that one level in TO can be as long as a single episode in many boomer shooters? This is what I'm talking about. The game can especially around Episode 3 can drag on for so long that by the time Maw was defeated I just wanted the game to end already.

It leads to the actual final showdown against Syn and to say this last level was hard would be an understatement. It's so hard that it dampers my experience on a game I really enjoyed. You not only have to defeat multiple challenging waves of enemies but you have to do in a time limit too. You already have to not die but also kill the enemies fast enough too. Then there is a late part where you have to use a sniper where you stand in one place since not all enemies can be telefragged and you could get hit and die here too. Doom Eternal never had this. Then you get to the actual final boss against Syn and it can take a lot of damage before it dies too.

By the time I got to the sniping, I lowered the game to easy and finished the game. I was just getting so worn out by everything that I wanted everything to wrap up. If the game ended with you killing Maw, I would've been fine with that.

Overall, while Turbo Overkill might just be the most ambitious and insane boomer shooter ever, I really just wished the game end earlier so it could be my favorite boomer shooter of all time.

Evil Dead: Regeneration Review

Played Evil Dead Fistful of Boomstick prior to this and didn't get very far since it tried to be a combination of a third person shooter and a survival horror game and didn't commit to either. Evil Dead Regeneration on the hand is Devil May Cry meets Ico. This game was borrowing from the latter before it really started to take off later on with games like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite and so on.

As far as Devil May Cry clones are concerned, Evil Dead Regeneration is easily on of the better ones up there with games like the Van Helsing video game all though the former has ideas that separate from DMC like aforementioned comparison to Ico.

One of the most interesting thing about the game is character of Sam. Where with many games that are escort quests like with Ico or TLOU, you have a case of consantly watching over Yorda and making sure she won't get kidnapped by the shadow monsters. It doesn't help the game has many combat encounters where you are meant to control a character who can't fight. TLOU has a case where the game world won't acknowledge friendly npcs unless if Joel is seen.

Evil Dead Regeneration solves both these issues where Ash controls much like Dante from DMC so the frequent combat encounters are more enjoyable and Sam is immortal so you won't have to worry about getting a game over when dying as him. Sam can also be useful in combat by distracting enemies and you being able to kick him into them as well.

One of the most fun part of Regeneration is when you play as Sam and seeing how many over the top and hilarious death animations Sam has after solving a puzzle as him before controlling Ash again.

There's also a surprising amount of conversations Ash and Sam have during gameplay too which keeps things lively rather than empty.

Combat itself is very similar to DMC. Ash has projectiles with unlimited ammo and one of the most fun things about the game is shotgun juggling with the ragdoll physics the game has. Enemies also can't die from just hitting them so you need to scripted finishing moves to actually kill them and they are a lot of fun to watch. Similar to the melee takedowns from God of War minus the QTEs. An aspect neither in DMC or GOW like being able to hit enemies while they are down.

There's even a rage mode Ash gets which is similar to Rage of the Gods but is obvious riff on Devil Trigger and it's just fun to watch Ash tear things up in this form. Bosses can beaten in short work depending on how efficiently you use this mechanic.

A big critcism is that I didn't even know Ash had a move list until you get to The Woods level. Trying to do the guard break on enemies can feel very awkward to pull off too. You also don't get many of the weapons until good while into the game. It starts to open up more and more when you get the harpoon gun when you are in the Mines level. Unfortunately you don't get all of your weapons until Port Turnham Shipyard level and by that point there's only two major levels in the game left.

Two of the biggest problems are how many times the game reuses the "escort Sam 3 times to open a door to the boss level" objective throughout the whole game. It can be very annoying since while Sam is immortal, but if he "dies" while getting charged up a by spirit, you have to do it again which can be very tedious and the game does become the babysitting escort quest that games like this or feature it can become. Save points are plentiful but most of the challenge comes from these sections. 

The biggest issue however is the story or should I say, it's a pilot episode of a TV show. The entire game is Ash breaking out of the Asylum, trying to rescue Sally and stop Dr. Reinhard. The game is well acted and entertaining enough that it's not completely insufferable but at the same time, barely much of anything happens in this whole story. Almost to the point where it feels like a side story. No big twists, no moments of character development, it's just Ash and Sam getting to Dr. Reinhard, they stop him, save Sally game ends. That's it.

This is where unfortunately where the game gets let down. Outside of being an Evil Dead fan, there isn't much of anything here that you want to come to game to. In 2005, there were your obvious heavy hitters like Devil May Cry 3 and God of War but there was also Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, Hulk Ultimate Destruction and Genji Dawn of the Samurai as well.

Overall, while Evil Dead Regeneration is a solid licensed game, I just wished there was meat to it's bones like a story with more going on and a more evenly paced campaign. Still it's worth checking out if you are mildly curious.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy Review(Playstation 5)

This was an interesting effort especially for a genre that has seen fewer and fewer releases as the decade has gone by and not even by a big budget studio at that. It is easy to rag on how underdeveloped the game can feel but at the same time due to the above mentioned reasons I'm a lot softer on it. After dropping Styx Blades of Greed a day prior to the game's port to PS5, it just gives me even more reasons to be softer on Ereban. Just for the fact that it's just a "linear" stealth affair and no bizarre and awkward attempts at an open world.

It's easy to draw comparisons between this game and the Aragami series. The visuals, the looks of the player character, the shadows motif, the various upgrades, and the fact that there is no combat option. Getting caught once means that it could lead to a game over.

What really surprised that it had much more in common with the Splatoon games than I thought it would. Shadows in Ereban is like the Inkling's ability to travel through ink in that series. You can even attach yourself to walls and surfaces that have shadows on them much like the aforementioned character with ink. The main differences are is that you can't plaster ink to create more surfaces to travel only the shadows is already cast on the level geometry and you can hide under shadows for a certain amount of time.

With that said, as novel as a concept this might be. It can feel more so like a underdeveloped gimmick much of the time. It's often easy to bypass many of the enemies due to how slow they can move and how fast you are when travelling under the shadows.

It's often easy to just knock out a robot, have another robot spot the unconcious body, hide and travel under the shadows and then knock out the suspecting guard.

There are human enemies too and the game does try to incoportate a morality system by having you avoid killing them but they don't behave that differently from the robots.

Different attempts at gadgets are also in here but I didn't really use them that much or as much as the game would want me to due to how OP the base shadow travel ability is. I did you the decoy ability from time to time with that said.

Platforming can also feel stiff and awkward here too especially the base movement ability since your character can't mantle up waist high obstructions as gracefully as I would like. It can also feel unresponsive and awkward trying to from one shadowy surface to another during occasional mandatory platforming section with it. There's also a puzzle section late game that can feel out of place considering there weren't any puzzles before that.

The hardest parts of the game is when you have to deal with key or level progressing item that can't be phased along with you so you have to find a way to travel through the level where you can physically bring the item to the terminal to progress the next level. I did wish the game had more shake ups like this. That or have more enemy can directly influence the environment.

After all that criticism, it should sound like I shouldn't really like it that much, I can say I do at least like it. The level design is at least designed in the "get from point A to B" sqaure and rectectangle design. It's hard to get lost meaning the levels move at a fast and steady pace. The game also checkpoints quite often too so it's never too much progress lost upon death. There's also a really cool and interesting open level at around Chapter 3 that encourages you to explore. The whole game isn't like this and it's a decent way at shaking up the level design. Chaining multiple kills while hiding and travelling in the shadows does feel satisfying to pull off in the moment.

The story while nothing special never gets in the way. Main character can get a little chatty but nothing that gets in the way.

Overall, while the game can feel underdeveloped, I can say as a stealth game it does get the basics right and while I wish there were more higher quality new releases in the genre, I'm happy to say I atleast enjoyed this one.