Recent reviews by CueZero

Astral Gunners is a fantastically designed shmup that bleeds with style from its wild and colorful character designs, blossoming bullet patterns of vibrant colors to a blood-pumping metal soundtrack that pushes you through a selection of stages. The western cartoon style shouldn't throw you off-guard here; Astral Gunners is an authentic hori shmup.

Lots of unlockables including new characters with sweet new abilities as well as earnable extra credits to extend your playthroughs keep you playing after each death, as well as a high score system you can continuously push yourself with.

Aside from their stylish comic appearance characters are diverse in their abilities. Each one has a slightly different firing pattern, and very unique special abilities that change the entire dynamic of how each character plays and defends. In multiplayer the synergies of these character specials work together incredibly well, and obviously have had more than a bit of thought put into them.

Despite the non-conforming shoot 'em up presentation here everything about Astral Gunners is authentic in its arcade roots. Bullet patterns are challenging and unpredictable and score chasing is tightly designed, precise and addictive.

It may not be what shmup people are used to visually when it comes to an arcade shoot 'em ups presentation and that just makes it more unique and interesting, but everything else here is pure, palm-sweating, score-chasing action through a plethora of well-designed and interesting stages and a heavy as hell soundtrack that keeps you focused and engaged and feeling like you're back in the noisy and stuffy arcades of the 90's.

Highly recommended for fans of shmups, score chasing, or new takes on badass arcade action. This is one I'll be coming back to beat my past scores on regularly.

For more unique, abstract, arcadey and retro indie game recommendations check out Cue Indie Review, the indie game Cue-rator

Incredibly unique and creative tower defense with farming and fishing and a snappy, colorful presentation. Combine and upgrade matching towers to level up your arsenal to satisfying strength and wipe out lines of enemies. The enemies and setting all bleed with this really cool kind of retrofuture psychedelia of cosmic proportions.

The gains from farming your seeds is always satisfying, and combining your towers to the highest level is addictive. This is a tower defense I recommend trying.

For more unique, abstract, arcadey and retro indie game recommendations check out Cue Indie Review, the indie game Cue-rator

I keep trying to play this but every time I succumb to the melody. It reminds me of Hideaki Kobayashi and an old friend named Hana.

This is an excellent shoot-em-up, it just has an unfortunately worded title.

Blazing Chrome is an absolutely authentic successor to the classic hardcore platforming of Contra 3 in every way. From the slick directional shooting, insanely reflexive platforming and wall grappling, absolutely ludicrous retro difficulty, and especially the blissfully nostalgic presentation everything here is exactly how you remember it from the SNES days.

With just enough interesting new design and level mechanics of its own to make it a fresh new experience even for Contra veterans, and some flashy modern sharpness to its visuals and stylish original character designs, Blazing Chrome is a worthy new entry in a legendary and hard to live up to genre.

A copy of this game was provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes.

A copy of this game was provided by the developer/publisher for review purposes.


The time is finally here. The moment all of us Castlevania diehards at first dreamed of, and then with patiently waited for with bated breath is finally here. The fruition of a legendary partnership come to an end, but spawning new life in the form of an ambitious indie studio with age-old and proven talent. A new generation of creators breathes life into one of the most iconic and revered genres to this day in gaming, the Metroidvania

Now obviously due to legal woes and fallen alliances of great gaming minds of the past, Igarashi and Co. aren't really allowed to really use the Castlevania trademark here, but we all know better and we know what this is in spirit.

Bloodstained was first unveiled to a gaming world starved for a new Castlevania title, nearly 4 years ago, in the form of an obviously viral and instantly famous kickstarter. After such a long wait I can safely say it has been more than worth it.


Right away the player is introduced to a table of Attributes they'll be wielding to study over. Aside from the usual elementals, there's Light and Dark attributes as well as Poison, Stone, and Curse. These work their way into your eventual weapon sets and the customization you'll need to diversify when heading into various areas. Different monsters will have different attribute weaknesses. Already this proves that Bloodstained, as expected, is more on par with Igarashi's later and more complex Nintendo DS Metroidvanias with huge selections of weapon and defense types and tables of elemental weaknesses and strengths to consider.

Fans of the exploration side of Metroidvanias have a lot to look forward to with the same sprawling map of secret routes and hidden short-cuts that make up the vast network of stages. A demonic castle holds a plethora of nostalgic imagery as well as elegant and goth-y new set pieces to learn your way around the intricate map layouts of.

Another thing this will fall right into line with for Symphony of the Night fans is how the game controls. Simple directional controls of the platforming genre interspersed with a slick and simple combat formula that has withstood the tests of time. The familiar backdash mechanic of Symphony of the Night is here as well with more brevity and swiftness than before, making for split second dodges from more powerful telegraphed attacks. Different tiers of Kung-Fu Boots also supply additional fighting game styled button combinations to experiment with, giving the player a variety of new movement-based attacks.

There's a Heck of a lot more dialogue and cutscenes here in Bloodstained than in any previous Iga Metroidvania, and it all certainly contains a lot less of that old traditional masculinity. The traditional masculinity is absent, and I absolutely miss it. Gone are the He-Man antics of strong, classic, European men stroming through a series of memorable horror-tropes, and instead we have something that resembles something more of a modern-day high-brow fantasy anime. That's not a bad thing, as those who appreciate a deeper and more complex story will find a lot to follow here.


Everything an Igarashi-era Castlevania fan could possibly hope for is present here in the elegant soundtrack. The enitrety of the compositions seems to be heavily leaning towards orchestral and symphonic sounds this time around, with not as much of the old eerie electronic sound.

Despite this natural trend towards a more organic and symphonic sound, Bloodstained still absolutely carries many nods and references to compositions of past Castlevania titles, and any person who's played Symphony of the Night or any of the other more recent Iga titles will instantly feel a certain nostalgia even for the more original tracks. Everything here absolutely carries that certain dark mood we all fondly remember from its predecessors.


In an age where the onslaught of remakes and revivals generally fall short of its original vision and creativity, Bloodstained does not dissapoint in the least. Building on what Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow fans know, love, and crave and then some.

Bloodstained is the Igavania we all know and love, with just enough of a change in pace and scenery to make it its own thing. An absolute masterpiece for generations new and old, alike.

You are born into this world with the innocence of an Angel, trapped into the weak body of a mortal by a counsel of villainous robed characters. Just as quickly as you came into it the forces of evil tried to suffocate you out of it. Now as a trained Sorcerer Angel its your chance to learn new and powerful magic and earn your revenge. Through floors of increasingly powerful creatures you must slay your way to these dark entities, this ominous counsel of robed cultists, and enact your revenge.

Ritual: Sorcerer Angel is a weirdly unique little single-screen roguelite that plays more like a series of intricately woven fantasy pinball tables, carried by a dark story of sacrifice and grotesquely beautiful art.


There isn't much control here, many looking at this as a standard roguelike may go in feeling a bit disappointed as there is basically no feeling of exploration. However, Ritual is an instant gratification sort of a game, much like a series of rounds in pinball, or pachinko/peggle where your fate comes down to your dexterous decisions.

You start off by selecting a direction to send your mischievous little warrior off towards, but you better make it count. Scattered across each scene of grim fantasy visuals are not only the roaming hordes of monsters but all manner of obstacles to bounce off of. Plan your trajectory accordingly.

As you kill more, more and stronger creatures start to pop out some even out of your level boundaries, forcing the player to carefully consider and plan their attacks so as not to bump into a higher leveled enemy and take damage. Wiping out the smaller ones will level you up accordingly, but there are plenty of skills to negate the damage or protect you from the over-leveled baddies. As soon as you've killed your quota for appearing monsters, a dimensional warp appears and whisks you away to the next area as soon as you collide with it.


There are certainly moments where the game seems to play itself, and it almost becomes like a dark-fantasy ARPG screensaver at points. These moments only really ever come when the player is careless with their Mana and find themselves expending it often, as there isn't much to do when you can't cast a spell other than watch. Luckily the game is gorgeous and there's a lot of creature design variety to ogle at between areas, and also luckily there's a fast-forward function for moments like these when you want to get to the meat of the action and resupply your mana.

There's something seriously magical and addictive about smashing into a group of frozen monsters that you previously locked down with your freezing spells. Every monster you bump into on your trajectory is a slash dealt, but there's an entire bestiary's worth of stats and attributes to each one so they won't go down that easy. Each monster has its own level, and its own unique attributes that make things quite a bit harder than just watching it all go down.

Higher leveled monsters won't just take a strike from you, and running into one before beefing up first is going to cost you a point of health. As you venture further into the world map the stages you enter will have higher and higher leveled baddies, to the point where you won't be able to break their defenses. Ritual contains a small bit of grinding, as you'll sometimes hit a brick wall in terms of enemy levels and in order to not have a tedious, long round you'll want to level up and grab some more of those skills.


The real draw behind Ritual: Sorcerer Angel is the extensive selection of skills you eventually unlock through experience and levels to wield at your discretion. It's a small grind to get there, and if you like a steady but rewarding progression to get to a position of unrelenting power then this is the weird RPG/Pinball hybrid for you.

There's elemental homing shots with poisoning acid or slowing curses, elemental rays with ice-y attributes that lock roaming enemies into place for easier combos, and all manner of healing or shielding support skills. Of course, this task of bouncing around various dark forests and crypts and dispatching your hideous foes would be far too easy if the player were allowed to fire all of their skills willy-nilly, which is why its kept in check with a tight mana resource system.

Obviously there's going to be some spell builds here that don't really work as well as others, and end up in more tedious rounds. Of course equipping two support type spells, such as a heal and a shield, is going to send your defensive little warriors bouncing uselessly into the level only occasionally slashing and not really delivering any real attack power. This is why a careful consideration needs to be put into how you customize and edit your skill tree before heading into the next much harder area.

This is kept fresh each play-through, because as far as I can tell each time that I started a new game the base skills that I began with were completely different. This gave me a whole new perspective on how to approach each of the early stages, and kept me wanting to experiment in true roguelite fashion.


Ritual's high point is more than likely it's beautiful presentation. With a dark-fantasy style of artwork, mouth-watering picture book worth-y cut-scenes, and painstakingly crafted areas littered with all manner of outstanding set-pieces and stage design, from wriggling grotesque worms to poisonous spores and other natural obstacles that create an overall dark and goth-y audiovisual experience.

Though the game may be light on the mechanics it consistently puts on the appearance to any outside eyes of being an intense and hardcore ARPG by every means. Spells are flying, heals are dispensed accordingly, and roaming hordes of monsters are swiftly dispatched in large satisfying numbers. It's very busy, it's very action-packed, the visual effects carry a lot of weight, and to anyone watching it essentially would look like you're involved in some high-level Diablo-like.

The soundtrack is very befitting of its darker fantasy overtones. Heavy, ominous, and with a bit of devious darkness to its atmosphere just as its story and visuals contain, the soundtrack in Ritual has an almost machine-like industrial feel to its music. Like an oncoming death-march with just a tinge of indie gaming nostalgia and electronics added to its mix


Given the incredibly simple nature of the game's mechanics, the controls can be played any number of ways without a hitch. There is of course controller support, but with only two buttons really needed to cast your spells it isn't really necessary other than for convenient couch play. In fact, the two button nature of the game means you can even play the whole thing with just the left and right clicks of your mouse. Nice and easy!


Ritual is not the top-down action roguelike it may appear to be at first glance. This is a game for people who like unique new metas, and who like the addictive progression of a good fantasy management through the upgrading and usage of a powerful skill tree.

While the lack of gameplay mechanics at first did leave a lot to be desired, ultimately Ritual's knack for an interesting and diverse progressive skill tree made the experience addictive and kept me pushing on to max out my full potential and see the monster bodies fly.

I would absolutely love to see these developers take what they know, and their clear artistic talent, and create a beefier and more interactive roguelike or RPG experience someday. What they've created so far is definitely pleasing to look at, to say the least.

This review made possible through a press key provided by publishers/developers

This review made possible with a press key and through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher. Email electrickeishock@gmail.com for requests & promotions


The beauty, the fidelity, and the realism in handling of a simulation but with the ease of access and explosive style of an arcade/console experience. MotoGP 19 is a pleasant surprise for me, I came onto its specific brand of ultra-realistic motorcycle racing only recently and boy am I glad I did. It takes some getting used to but the pay-off is very rewarding.

Visually lush, incredibly challenging and very difficult to master but with a curve that hooks you right in, this one is a keeper and though it takes a whole lot of getting used to I'm glad I stuck with it. The only motorcycle racing game I had played before this was Ride3 and this is very similar in every way except that the tracks are all Circuit courses as opposed to street or rally races.


Bikes definitely handle differently than cars (who would have thought!) and if you've been playing as many racing games and driving sims as I have then the transition here is going to be a bit jarring, but its a good and refreshing feeling to learn something from scratch. This is true in the Ride series as well except the aesthetics and style of tracks here are completely different.

This isn't like your average car racing game at all, so don't be fooled like I was. Its easy to get excited and its easy to accelerate way too quick on a motorbike, its also not quite as easy to ease into tight turns and you obviously can't just drift. Ride teaches you how to really feather the gas and slow into curve at just the right speed to keep the pace flowing and constant, not braking and starting up every few sections like when you're starting out.

MotoGP is much more competitive, much more realistic, and has a much bigger learning curve than the other street or rally racing motorbike games. I do somewhat prefer the nature-heavy tracks in the Ride series and particularly in Ride3, but there is something seriously rewarding to go after here in terms of time trials and serious online head to head competition.


I'm having an absolute blast getting into this series with MotoGP19. It feels new and fresh, after over a decade of arcade racing and sim driving enthusiasm its like learning how to ride a bicycle all over again, its a whole new racing mechanic that I'm down and genuinely excited to learn and get good at like I did with rally racing games so many years again.

The style of racing here is much more straightforward, the tracks are much more professional and competitive, but they also lack a certain visual and aesthetic charm that the Ride series has that I prefer. That doesn't mean this isn't the best and tightest Moto racing sim around, it is, but I'll still always prefer the variety of street and rally racing games.

This review has been provided by ReviewExperts curator CueZero.
ReviewExperts falls under the DNB Media brand.

This review made possible with a press key and through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher.


Gritty, intense, Hellish, and diabolically realistic when it comes to the tension and the brutality of warfare.

Hell Let Loose is a WWII-era team-based FPS with a strong military aesthetic. Maps are impressively large, and there's a big emphasis on the use of vehicles such as armored tanks to traverse each one.

A microphone is absolutely necessary but not required, as Hell Let Loose is a heavily team-centric shooter. As mentioned vehicles are a big emphasis of the gameplay here and maps are so large that traversing without one is not only tedious but stupidly dangerous and soft targets are welcoming for enemy fire.

The problem here is that the vehicles are clunky and cumbersome, in an attempt to keep things period-specific and historically accurate, and require the co-ordinated efforts of more than one player to operate.

This sort of strongly encouraged teamwork just makes the battles all the more intense, as each member of a squad struggles to keep up with their designated task whether it be guiding their tank safely to the front lines of a battle or picking off encroaching soft targets with a carefully placed artillery shot.

There's lots of roles to fill for ever type of player from full on assault types to helpful support types. This combined with the massive size of maps and the different points of control makes Hell Let Loose feel a tad similar to the winning formula made famous by the Battlefield series.


High-fidelity realistic wartime settings, absolutely devastating sound design, and lightning-quick skirmishes of blood and fire taking place in a larger unfolding scene of war make Hell Let Loose one of the grittiest and most addictive team-based military shooters currently available, and its freshness means you can always find a full 100 player game to hop into at any time. If you've been looking for your next intense dose of WWII era action, now is the time.

This review made possible with a press key and through the consideration and contribution of the developer/publisher.


Incredible classic SRPG that follows the traditional mechanics of classic Japanese tactics titles.

Take the nostalgic charm and the addictive simplicity yet endless strategy of Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, and give it a wonderfully colorful and artistic Ancient Japanese aesthetic and you have an absolutely worthy revival of a fan-favorite genre.

The same easy to grasp grid-based movement and turn-based attacks, with some spiced up modern mechanics, and all with a plethora of wonderful characters, insane historically appropriate yokai and other beasts, and of course even some cute kimono waifus abound.


I've been playing GOD WARS for about a month on Steam during press pre-release and I'm still firing it up and plowing through missions every day.

GOD WARS is an incredibly beautiful anime-style package of mythological Japanese history, chock-full of interesting scenarios, tales that range from humorous to epic, and intense battles with all form of human and yokai enemies. All tactics enthusiasts owe it to themselves to check out GOD WARS.