Hypocrite's Haunt

First posted on Medium in 2024 In the oversaturated field of live-service games, it’s rare to find something worth playing. Having dedicated over 500 hours of my life to trekking through the damp, muddy swamps of Louisiana in Hunt: Showdown , I knew it would be difficult to stumble on a game of such quality. At the same time, my friends and I had had quite enough of its unforgiving combat, punishing difficulty, and its sewage-water colored color palette. Hunt was simultaneously intensely cerebral, yet also incredibly frustrating when you get shot in the head from half a kilometer away 20 minutes into a map. We wanted to play something where we would be guaranteed at least a half-decent gunfight within the first five minutes of joining a game. Luckily for us, a new squad-based PVP shooter was just coming onto the market: The Finals . Based on the premise that players were participating in a virtual combat arena to compete for money and glory, The Finals sets teams of players against ...

"Demonschool," developed by Necrosoft Games, looks like old-school Persona but plays differently from almost everything I've ever seen. But however refreshing Demonschool's presentation and interactions may be, its strengths wear thin as its repetitive nature and threadbare narrative loses steam. Demonschool does not hold back its punches. The main character, Faye, is already talking about demons and the end of the world within her first lines of dialogue - and her freshman year at university takes a supernatural turn soon after. Its just a few minutes later that you are smacking gangsters and demons around in a turn-based, puzzle-like format. It's definitely fun - there's no pussy-footing around the weird stuff happening at Hemsk Island, and so you and your pals are launched straight into a plot with murdered students, possessed gangs, and cult rituals.  To deal with all these strange happenings, you maneuver your characters around in a grid to kick, punch, a...