Developers CrazyBunch and Publishers Assemble Entertainment two years ago did us all a solid by reviving the legendary Leisure Suit Larry point and click adventure games with Wet Dreams Don’t Dry. Be sure to treat yourself and check out our review of Wet Dreams Don’t Dry. A short note, we had a blast. Fast forward to now and we received the opportunity to review the sequel, Wet Dreams Dry Twice. The question we have is, can Larry hit that spot again that’ll have us coming back for more?

Folks, it’s time again to leave your sensitivities at the door, roll with the laughs, and best yet, learn that it’s okay to be offended and laugh even harder at stereotypes. This is our review of the return of the mack himself Mr. Larry Laffer in Leisure Suit Larry, Wet Dreams Dry Twice.

As we stated before, we loved Leisure Suit Larry, Wet Dreams Don’t Dry. It was our first official roll in the sheets with a Leisure Suit Larry game since being young, we weren’t able to play such adult-themed games. Now we are all grown up and we can do what we want.

The Leisure Suit Larry games are point-and-click adventure-type games. The goal Larry usually revolves around getting up close and personal with a particular lust at first sight which is done by completing some task or tasks and helping the Bell in distress. You solve the very clever at time puzzles by finding various items and combining them to get the solution. All these key things are back in Wet Dreams Dry Twice.

Wet Dreams Dry Twice picks up where Wet Dreams Don’t Dry ended on the island of Cancum. If you haven’t played Wet Dreams Don’t Dry, you can get a recap and be caught up by your good friend and soon to be father-in-law El Ray. In preparations for the wedding, you soon find out that your only true love Faith, who became missing, is alive and thanks to your smartphone Pi, has a clue to where she might be. Let the adventure begin!

Coming back to this series was like riding a bike and we were ready to click and find and collect every random item we could. We learned from the first game that just because we couldn’t figure out what an item was for, we will need it sooner or later. Some puzzles required some real thinking outside of the box thinking, but most were fairly straightforward requiring you to just have the correct item.

We are happy to see that some improvements were made on this go-round. A couple of those improvements that we appreciated was our to-do app which kept track of tasks and objectives we needed to accomplish. That was an issue in the first game where we would have a number of tasks to do and we would leave, then when we started the game back up we would say to ourselves, what were we doing again. Another improvement we liked was the ability to highlight all the items that you could interact with. This helps save some time searching randomly for items. Also, there are times when there might be two items closely together, and highlighting would show you both items. Added also this time around is the ability to snap pictures of items too large to carry as well as a blueprint app that allows you to construct various items.

Wet Dreams Dry Twice is still a Leisure Suit Larry game so it is easily not for kids. It is chock full of adult humor, tons of innuendos, and a lot of suggestive imagery. There will be things that you come across that will have you saying whoa and have you looking over your shoulder to see if someone was seeing your screen. You know, things you’d find in a Leisure Suit Larry game.

The game however still also has the crisp beautiful hand-drawn look and the wacky characters are very, very, very interesting to say the least. The dialogue comes across as cheesy at times, which actually fits the scope of the game. The one-liners at times will have you chuckle out loud, but then have you slightly embarrassed that you chuckled at it.

All in all folks, this game knows exactly what it is and totally owns it. It dishes out the eye-rolling humor and offers up some more for seconds. Larry’s heart of gold still shines through and in Wet Dreams Dry Twice it continues to shine brightly.

Wet Dreams Dry Twice is available for PC and Mac and you can get purchase it on GOG as well as on Steam. Confident Gamers was provided a game download key to provide a fair opinion of the game and its components.

]]> https://confidentgamers.com/bartlows-dread-machine-review-pc/ Tue, 29 Sep 2020 17:03:30 +0000 https://confidentgamers.com/bartlows-dread-machine-review-pc/ Save the President from the Anachro-Satanists and unravel the mystery behind the most devious plot.

Name: Bartlow’s Dread Machine
Developers: Beep Games, Inc., Tribetoy
Platforms: Steam & Xbox One
Release Date: September 29th

Bartlow’s Dread Machine takes us back to the simpler times when arcade machines were more mechanical filled with gears, pulleys and levers. This twin stick shooter injects a small dose of style and imagery which we quite welcomed. While not perfect, Bartlow’s Dread Machine does hold our attention long enough, taking us through a story filled with mystery, intrigue and suspense.

Bartlow’s Dread Machine, as we stated before, is a twin stick shooter presented in the form of an ole timey mechanical arcade machine from the early 1900s, the dawn of the electric age. You play as a member of the Secret Service thrusted into a mission of extreme importance as President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt is kidnapped. The kidnapping is made even stranger as now you will have to fight through the hordes of otherworldly creatures of the Anarcho-Satanists, which is shrouded in secrecy, in order to rescue the Commander in Chief. The game will take you across six levels spanning from New York, San Francisco, on trains and ships and using weapons common and “futuristic”.

If you are familiar with twin stick shooters, you’ll be at home. One stick controls your character’s movement, while the other stick controls where you shoot. Your movement is limited to different paths on the present board, think like a game like Pac Man. As you clear the objectives from section to section, which might include a puzzle mechanic, the board sometimes flip, open, and rearrange. Some of the stages climax with a boss battle which might change the angle of perspective.

We did want to point out something about the controls which was kind of frustrating as we played. While only having fixed paths of travel, sometimes when the game throws many enemies and bullets at once, being able to quickly switch to another path at an intersection becomes very imprecise. This causes your character to maybe not go in the direction you wanted or worst get stuck on the corner of the intersection. Beyond this, switching weapons, deflecting and using your elixirs or items, worked like a charm.

Leveling up your character is very important as it can be the difference between a smooth challenging stage or a hair pulling couple hit death. You have three lives to start with, as well as be able to be hit a number of times. If you made it to a checkpoint, great, because if you died, you would start at the checkpoint. Once all your three lives have been used up, it’s game over. Everytime you defeat an enemy, they will drop a money bag. Be sure to hurry and collect it, because it will disappear after a couple seconds. At the start and in between games, you will be able to purchase various items such as weapons, hats, coats, pants, and elixirs. Hats, coats, pants and elixirs offer boosts to health, increase damage resistance, give speed boosts, increase the amount of money you can pick up, etc. Mixing and matching can ensure your success so be sure to find the right combo that matches your play style.

Along with leveling up your character,  you’ll be able to find hidden characters that each have special attributes and weapons as default. While you are not able to switch between characters once you start a new game, playing as these hidden characters does offer a bit of replayability once you have completed the game.

The twin stick shooter has been around for awhile, but Tribetoy and Beep Games have presented it in a new stylish package. The details of the moving mechanical gears and parts to the old time amusement park music, Bartlow’s Dread Machine is a refreshing entry in the gaming market place. This game is simple, but also throws you into the gauntlet which puts a smile on your face when you make it out.

Bartlow’s Dread Machine is available for Steam and Xbox One.

As members of the media for Video Games and related news, Confident Gamers was provided with a Review Key in order to provide a fair opinion of the game and it’s components.

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One of my favorite highlights from attending Pax East 2020, other than coming home without contracting COVID19, would be the experience of getting to playing Genshin Impact. While we didn’t get to cover the game as much as we hoped during the event we did get a bit of exposure which really got us excited.

Developed and Published by miHoYo, Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG title that is set to release next month on September 28th for PC, Android, and iOS. This upcoming free-to-play title will allow players to roam the vast lands of an exotic world alone or adventure with friends in cross-platform co-op mode.

Guys this game is absolutely beautiful with a fun and easy to love storyline. And I can promise you hours and hours of gameplay. While the story itself has enough to keep you busy, the side quests and adventures you can go on really add to the experience. The game takes place in a massive fantasy continent called Teyvat, which offers a lively open world, multiple characters, element-based combat and exploration, and an engaging story. And the developers did not hold back, pretty much everything you see can be interacted with or climbed so don’t hesitate to explore to your heart’s content. 

You start the game off as a mysterious “Traveler”, setting off the voyage of finding their lost sibling, and ultimately unravels the mysteries of themselves and the world. Along the way, you will encounter additional characters and add them to your team. Gaining access to their abilities and talents will aid you in your travels to find your lost sibling. 

As a free-to-play online title, Genshin Impact enables players to explore Mondstadt and Liyue Harbor – two of the seven major cities in Teyvat – each with unique cultural ambiance, stories, vast surrounding landscapes full of diverse creatures and enemies, mysteries, and hidden treasures. Furthermore, the game will continue to expand with more cities, following stories, new characters and seasonal events through live-service updates to enrich the gameplay and expedition in the continent of Teyvat.

Genshin Impact offers both the classic single-player mode and the cross-platform co-op mode for up to four players. Pre-registration on Google Play and Apple App Store has opened today, and all players can invite friends to pre-register together via Genshin Impact’s official website at genshin.mihoyo.com to participate the pre-registration campaign to claim a slew of milestone rewards.

Developed and published by miHoYo, Genshin Impact will be available September 28th on Apple’s App Store, Google Play Store and Genshin Impact’s official website. Genshin Impact has been rated T for Teen for PC by ESRB, 9+ on iOS and 12+ on Google Play. The game is also coming to PlayStation®4 this fall, and the release date will be revealed later.

For more information and updates, please visit Genshin Impact’s official website (genshin.mihoyo.com) or follow @GenshinImpact on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Our approximately thirty-five plus minutes playing the Eternal Hope demo left us with this thought, thanks for the demo, now we want the whole game!

Eternal Hope is a hauntingly beautiful story of love and loss and the distance and sacrifices one would get to be with the One Love of their life. You will play as Ti’bi who has finally found his one True Love only for that love to be unexpectedly killed. At his lowest point, he is given the opportunity to be reunited with his Love but in order to do that he would need to venture into the Shadow World which is a sort of purgatory-like realm.

Eternal Hope can be best described as a puzzle-platformer and has a style like that of Studio Ghibli. If you have also played games like Limbo, then you will know what you will be getting yourself into. Puzzles from our demo play ranged from very simple, to a hint of complexity. One puzzle solution had us jumping from platform to platform while switching between the real world and the Shadow Realm. Death in Eternal Hope can come swiftly! Death from a high enough fall to drowning will happen. We died a number of times! Death was not a frustration point, but instead a road to the solution.

Well-timed and precise jumps and actions are needed which is why we love the control feel of the character Ti’bi. In the demo we played, we noticed that the controls were not overly complicated. You have your L stick to move, a jump button, a hold button, and a button to switch between worlds.

Our demo ended on a cliff hanger with the introduction of a troll and this just made our excitement raise!

Eternal Hope is set for release on August 6th for PC and on the Xbox One late 2020.

Check out our full demo playthrough right here:

]]> https://confidentgamers.com/genshin-impact/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:22:47 +0000 https://confidentgamers.com/genshin-impact/ Developed and published by miHoYo, Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG title set in the expansive fantasy world of Teyvat. The Final Closed Beta will begin on July 2 on PlayStation®4, PC, and mobile.

One of my favorite highlights from attending Pax East 2020, other than coming home without contract COVID19, would be the experience of playing Genshin Impact. We didn’t get to cover the game as much as we hoped during the event but a bit of exposure we did have really got us excited. 

Developed and published by miHoYo, Genshin Impact is an open-world action RPG title set in the expansive fantasy world of Teyvat. It offers a lively open world, a variety of characters, element-based combat and exploration, and an engaging story. Players take on the role of the mysterious “Traveler,” who sets off on a journey to find their lost sibling and ultimately unravels the many mysteries of Teyvat in addition to their own.

During the beta, players will be able to explore Mondstadt and Liyue — two of the seven major cities in Teyvat — as well as the vast surrounding landscape full of creatures to encounter, enemies to fight, mysteries to solve, and hidden treasures to find. Players can build their four-person party from a wide range of playable characters, using their varying combat styles and elemental abilities to overcome different obstacles in the world. By switching characters in combat, players can experiment with elemental combos and master the art of striking down enemies with powerful chain reactions.

I am excited to get to take the gaming experience out of Pax East and home to my couch but can’t wait for the full game release. A detail I recall from my hands-on experience is that there are many characters to choose from, all of which have their own unique abilities and attributes. And not only do you get to enhance and master each of their skills but you also get to know the characters and their own unique backgrounds and storylines. 

The Final Closed Beta will see Genshin Impact arrive on PlayStation®4 for the first time. In co-op mode, teams of up to four players from across PlayStation®4, PC, and mobile will be able to hunt down monsters and delve into dungeons together, employing strategic combinations of skills and elements in battle.

The Final Closed Beta will begin on July 2 on PlayStation®4, PC, and mobile. For more information and updates, please visit Genshin Impact’s official website (genshin.mihoyo.com) or follow @GenshinImpact on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

New to this beta is a cross-platform co-op mode, which allows players to team up with friends from across PlayStation®4, PC, and mobile for a more diverse range of adventures.

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The rouge-like survival horror game The Persistence will look for its PC and console digital release this early summer.

Originally released for the PSVR in 2018, The Persistence will be releasing digitally for the Nintendo Switch, The Xbox One, PS4 and PC on May 21st 2020. Created by independent developers Firesprite Games, The Persistence, a deep space colony spaceship, you as the player face horrific mutant type enemies as you type to survive long enough to make it back to Earth.

“When we made the move to bring The Persistence to new platforms, our key focus was to ensure that the particularly brutal nature of gameplay made the leap to non-VR,. As a result, The Persistence keeps players on edge from beginning to end, and with a procedurally generated environment forming around them, no two playthroughs are ever identical, meaning you will never find safety in the same spot.” – Graeme Ankers, MD and founder of Firesprite Games

The Persistence features: –

• A brutal take on the survival-horror genre that integrates rogue-like design elements to give the action an extra edge

• Procedurally generated stages that change with each playthrough, creating a labyrinth-like experience that adds to the tension

• Live, die, repeat. Play as dozens of different clones on board the ship, each one with the potential to be stronger than the last

• Tailored controls. enhanced environments and post-processing effects for PC, PS4 and Xbox One deliver a heightened fidelity of horror for fans of the genre

• Atmospheric, cutting-edge visuals in docked, handheld or tabletop modes for the Nintendo Switch platform

As stated before, The Persistence was originally released for the PlayStation VR in 2018. For those that purchased the VR full version, will receive the updated version for free via PlayStation updates.

Games Publisher Perp Games will publish physical editions across retail on the three console platforms.  The release will be as near as possible to the digital release taking into account the effect of COVID 19 on global retail.

The Persistence will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on Thursday, May 21st, 2020 for $29.99.

Those who pre-order on Nintendo Switch (between Thursday, April 23rd and Wednesday, May 20th) and Xbox One (between Thursday, April 30th, and Wednesday, May 20th) will receive a 10% discount.

Source: PR

The OG Classic shooter Crysis will be looking to make its appearance this summer as Crytek announces Crysis Remastered.

In Crysis, you as the player will be armed in a state of the art Nanosuit. You will need all the power the suit can give you as you battle a new war against alien invaders. The Nanosuit features speed, strength, armor and cloaking abilities along with a huge selection of weapons to give you incredible control over your playstyle. Want to go in stealthily, go invisible to stalk enemy patrols, or go in all guns blazing by boosting your strength to lay waste to vehicles, and deflect damage to dominate your enemies in this enormous sandbox world.

Known for its graphics and single-player action, Crysis Remastered will feature the original single-player campaign alongside high-quality textures, an HD texture pack, improved art assets, temporal anti-aliasing, SSDO, SVOGI, state-of-the-art depth fields, new light settings, motion blur, parallax occlusion mapping, and particle effects (where applicable). Further additions like volumetric fog and shafts of light, software-based ray tracing, and screen space reflections deliver a major visual upgrade to this classic FPS experience.

“We are excited to be working on the Crysis franchise again, and to bring all the Crysis fans a remaster worthy of their passion for the game. It’s an exciting opportunity to be able to bring Crysis back to PCs and current consoles – even Nintendo Switch – so that a whole new generation of players can experience the thrill of a battle in the Nanosuit!” – Crytek CEO Avni Yerli

Crysis will be releasing for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch Summer 2020. For more information, visit www.crysis.com, www.crytek.com, and www.cryengine.com

Source: PR

Dreamscaper is a surreal, roguelite inspired action RPG with modernized hack’n’slash combat – players battle a nightmarish depression that lives in a young woman’s subconscious.

In Dreamscaper, you play as Cassidy, who every night must fight off her nightmare of deep depression to see a new day. Developed by indie studio Afterburner Studios, it has used the backdrop of focusing on an emotional through-line confronting depression and mental health.

Dreamscaper revolves around the Dreaming world, where you confront Nightmares and Explore the Dreamscape, and the Wake World, where you will Build Relationships, Unlock more of the Story and Increase your Powers. Each time Cassidy falls into the Dream World, she will find a different dungeon that must be unlocked along with new powers.

Features

• An expansive combat system that rewards skilled play – shoot off finger guns, rend the earth below you or whip a yo-yo into enemies with a slew of dream inspired weaponry

• Adventure through six beautiful, haunting dreamscapes to discover powerful artifacts, surreal scenery and a multitude of unique events, challenges and puzzles

• Day / night gameplay – explore the waking and dreaming world to learn Cassidy’s story, your actions in one affect the other

• Deep item progression that creates synergies and new possibilities every run, encouraging experimentation and high replay-ability

• Warp the Dreamscape around you with “Lucid Powers” – surreal dream attacks and abilities that manipulate the elements, warp space, and even control time itself

• Live Cassidy’s waking life and forge friendships with the people around her. Empower Cassidy with their hopes and memories to dispel the darkness of her nightmares

• A beautiful, dynamic soundtrack composed by Dale North that adapts to player experience

Dreamscapers: Prologue will be released on Steam on April 8th. Be sure to add it to your wishlist.

Dreamscaper will be released for early 2020 for PC/Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Check out our First 19 Minutes of Dreamscaper: Prologue

Name: Stela
Developers: SkyBox Labs
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (Review), Steam, Xbox One, Apple Arcade
Release Date: Available Now

From the first-moment seeing Stela to the moments playing Stela, to the journey’s end of Stela, two words best describe Stela, Simplistically Stunning!

Stela can be best described as a cinematic platformer.

In Stela, you play as an unnamed young woman, awakening in a cave by a mysterious totem. There are no words, instructions or directions. Well, when it comes to directions, just head to the right. One might say, just head East.

Exiting the cave, you set out on a journey that feels that you, the player, as well as the character on the screen, is out searching for the answers. There seem to be no other humans around and the world, the environment, nature, and everything is in a state of destruction and turmoil. Almost everything you face is there to erase your existence.

The look and design of Stela is quite noteworthy. The game looks like a muted oil painting, beautiful. The varying areas with their color palettes are complimentary. One moment you are journeying through a treacherous, shadowy woods, being hunted by strange humanoid creatures only to be then finding your way across a burning wasteland, then face traveling across a snow thick deep tundra, then on to more. All breathtakingly beautiful.

Another aspect that brought Stela to life was the music in the game! The music selections set the mode ever bit of the journey. It gave sense isolation and lost at one moment then it would ramp up speeding up your heart rate as the impending danger was close by.

Stela’s controls encompass its simplistic design, only three buttons, you move with the left stick, you jump, you grab, that’s it. Using this control will take you to the end of your journey, mastering them will determine how few deaths you have. On your first run, you will die. However, death from the many traps and puzzles, we found wasn’t frustrating but instead became a learning experience as to what to do and not do. It also helped that the checkpoints were very generous so death didn’t feel like you would have to travel very far back to where you left off from.

Playing Stela, comparisons with games like Limbo would be easy to do and Stela would rightly fit perfectly among those games. From the start, they drop the player in a place of total darkness, not knowing what to do or where to go or even who you are. Then reveals it slowly as the journey ends. And wow what a journey!

Stela is a game, a journey, a discovery, that offers a breath of fresh air in the gaming ecosystem. A game that at the end, you will want to discuss your thoughts of what you came across in your journey and what the meanings were. Stela, in two words, Simplistically Stunning!

As members of the media for Video Games and related news, Confident Gamers was provided with a Review Key in order to provide a fair opinion of the game and it’s components

Be the G.O.A.T. by Staying at home and help Save some lives with a free game from Raiser Games.

There is no doubt that the spread of COVID-19 has totally disrupted the entire world and all of our daily lives. The pandemic has really hit some places more than others. Locations like Italy and Spain have really felt the devastating effects.

Gamers, and everyone alike, can help the current situation by limiting our contact and staying home as much as we are able. But what do you do while at home? Well, why not play some games!

A new campaign has been growing in support. The Stay Home, Save Lives Campaign.

A publisher has really put its weight behind the campaign by offering free one of its games. The game, GOAT of Duty and the publisher, Raiser Games.

“In Spain and particularly in Italy, lockdowns on public movement in order to slow down to spread of COVID-19 have been in place for some time. It’s a proven method to stem the rise in new cases, as plenty of people may have COVID-19 and be entirely unaware, passing it on to other, more vulnerable people unknowingly while out and about. If having a game to play when people are at home relaxes them at what is a stressful time for everyone, then we’re happy to play out part.”
– Ivano Zanchetta, Goat of Duty’s Game Director

The decision was made based on the experiences of both those at Raiser Games itself – based in Spain –  as well as the game’s Italian developer 34BigThings.

“Giving people something to do while they’re at home – whether to keep their spirits up or to keep them from heading out – is a genuine priority right now, and publishers can and should do their part when it’s financially viable for them to do so.”
–Sergio de Benito, Raiser Game’s Head of Marketing

Goat of Duty is currently available for free for the next two weeks.

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