CRYPTARK

Cryptark is a great game at its core, but it needs a touch more heart and charm. A lot of the enemies, boss 'modules' and procedurally generated dungeons were designed with more detail than the player's own avatar, weapons and abilities. The gist of this game is... - Start a new campaign in a save slot. - Choose a robotic exoskeleton. - Move through multiple 'phases' of your campaign, each phase you are clearing a salvage-ship dungeon buy defeating its 'brain core' (the salvage-ships have autonomous AI systems). - You get a choice of four salvage-ship dungeons to excavate in each phase. Once you choose the ship you want to tackle, there's a pre-planning phase where you can test out weapons, add / remove weapons and generally plan out your salvage mission with a map using a singular waypoint. - Salvage ships have multiple supportive systems that will shield, spawn enemies, control stationary turrets around the ship, etc. - At the end of these phases you get to the endphase, the 'Cryp...

Not a bad game, but it really makes you feel like giving up a campaign after failing - you lose money and have less money to equip up for the next mission, which increases the chance that you'll fail again. If you decide to quit mid mission and reload the campaign, you'll auto fail it. I once got stuck inside an enemy shield that I couldn't get off/through while a missile exploded and went nuclear, which killed me. That is fcking bullsht One of the artifacts, that you're supposed to gather to unlock other characters, requires you to head into the ship with only 45k in loadout. The default loadout is 110k, of which your health (10) is responsible for 50k. That should give you an idea of how sadistic the game is.

Love the game mechanics, easy on performance, engaging, peak voice acting,pretty good overall. 8/10, wish the game was a little longer and had a bigger campaign.