Gareth Chadwick
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TheSixthAxis Latest Reviews
Darwin’s Paradox! is a surprising game. You play as a cartoon octopus, for one, who finds itself thrust into an alien conspiracy to take over the world. Thankfully, octopi are surprisingly well-suited to infiltrating and destroying alien facilities, so that’s what you do. You stick to walls, avoid aliens, camouflage, sabotage top-secret facilities, shoot ink. You know, octopus stuff.
Dragonkin: The Banished is an action RPG in the vein of Diablo, but this time there’s lots of dragons. Seriously, the dragons here are so bad and evil that their blood has corrupted the world, giving you the singular purpose to hunt them all down and defeat the Dragon Lords. This naturally means there are big monsters to fight, there’s loot to collect, and experience to gain.
Greedfall was an interesting and fairly distinctive RPG that, whilst it had its issues, was able to captured my imagination. From the direction of the cutscenes, through the interesting companion characters, to the surprisingly dark and well thought out world, it was gripped me from the very beginning. Greedfall: The Dying World is a prequel set three years before the first game. This time, rather than playing as one of the colonisers, you’re playing as natives of the island of Teer Fradee who, through the game’s opening act, is taken by said colonisers back to the old world.
When a new game from Suda51 drops, you know that it’s going to both ultraviolent and uniquely weird. Even so, Romeo is a Dead Man might still surprise you with just how strange it is. This is a game where the ‘Game Over’ screen is a melting head, where Romeo’s late grandpa is an animated picture on the back of his jacket, and Romeo himself wears the silliest helmet I think I’ve ever seen. It’s a game so surprising that being set in a multiverse with alternate versions of characters doesn’t even break the top ten of oddest things.
Cairn is a single player, story focused, survival game about climbing a mountain. You won’t be leaping from platform to platform, or swinging round a sledgehammer to propel yourself and your cauldron, though. No, you’ll actually be climbing, moving each of your limbs one at a time to grab handholds and wedge into cracks to scale an entire mountain. It’s not a small one, either, and it’s already populated by the remains of those who have tried and failed to reach the summit before you. It’s a dangerous situation that, somehow, becomes incredibly relaxing and meditative once you get used to it.
Cairn is a single player, story focused, survival game about climbing a mountain. You won’t be leaping from platform to platform, or swinging round a sledgehammer to propel yourself and your cauldron, though. No, you’ll actually be climbing, moving each of your limbs one at a time to grab handholds and wedge into cracks to scale an entire mountain. It’s not a small one, either, and it’s already populated by the remains of those who have tried and failed to reach the summit before you. It’s a dangerous situation that, somehow, becomes incredibly relaxing and meditative once you get used to it.
Dreams of Another is just about the most confounding game I have ever played. There is no creation without destruction, says the game, so you use an assault rifle to shoot the world back together from the clouds of bubbles around you. Meanwhile, you’re following the footsteps of a mole who dies once you get there, picking up random engagement rings or other stuff off the floor to give to a soldier who can’t shoot a gun, who tends to reward you with some grenades. Every detail from every angle in this game is weird. Listen, I’m King Weird – I reviewed and enjoyed Blippo+ in the last few months – but this? This has gone straight through weird and come out the other side – into bad.
Painkiller is a series I’ve certainly heard of, but I couldn’t tell you either way whether or not I’ve played it. I must have at some point, I’m sure, because I played every single thing I could get my hands on, but I can’t actually remember doing so. What I do remember that it’s similar to Doom, including all the hellish monsters and environments. You enter a room, kill a legion of monsters, then move onto the next room, where another legion awaits your bullets. This co-op reboot of this two decade old series gets this right, at least, but it’s a bit uninspired because of this.
Painkiller is a series I’ve certainly heard of, but I couldn’t tell you either way whether or not I’ve played it. I must have at some point, I’m sure, because I played every single thing I could get my hands on, but I can’t actually remember doing so. What I do remember that it’s similar to Doom, including all the hellish monsters and environments. You enter a room, kill a legion of monsters, then move onto the next room, where another legion awaits your bullets. This co-op reboot of this two decade old series gets this right, at least, but it’s a bit uninspired because of this.
Rise of Industry 2 is an industry management game – like if you just zoned your whole city in Cities: Skylines for industry and kicked residential and commercial to the kerb. You’ll be focusing on building infrastructure to harvest, process, and ship resources out and your only real interaction with the nearby town is accepting (or refusing) grants or other support and investing to increase the available workforce. It does all of this very well, and yet it manages to be an underwhelming experience simply because…that’s all there is here.