We review Sandbag, a trick-taking card game published by Bezier Games. Sandbag is a great trick-taking card game with a steep learning curve. But well worth it!
23.04.2024 - 06:13 / thesixthaxis.com / John Macenroe
After a thirteen year hiatus, the TopSpin series is back with TopSpin 2K25, and with the weighty moment-to-moment gameplay still at its core, it’s a tennis game revival that doesn’t disappoint.
TopSpin’s gameplay has always stood out among the bevy of tennis games available, with its weighty movement and ball smacking mechanics that just get better the more you practise – something I absolutely needed after not playing a tennis game since the early 2010s. To help players get back into the swing of things, TopSpin 2K25 comes with an excellent Academy mode.
Tennis Legend, John McEnroe guides you through the basics, starting you off slow and eventually building you up to the heavier stuff. Academy mode recognises that the games mechanics aren’t going to be easy to get to grips with and shows a lot of patience in the structure with McEnroe coaching you – famously not a patient player, but a much calmer influence here. Mistakes will be made, I was told a lot, but learning takes time.
Even when I hit the courts to face other players, it took me a while to become good at the game, showing that perseverance pays off. At a certain point, it just clicked and all of a sudden I was smashing perfect balls past my opponent who only just made my last ball.
Serving comes in three flavours, with your basic tap to serve being the go to for beginners, before moving onto the meatier power serve. This is done by holding down one of the four shot buttons which then displays two subtle meters for power and timing. That’s generally fine, but what really requires mastery is using the left stick to aim, which I struggled to do as the UI was split between two parts of the screen, making keeping an eye on both difficult. You can’t just hold ‘up right’ and hope for the best, as it will just send the ball at max power outside the court. It becomes instinctive with enough play, but it took me a fair chunk of time before this happened. It might be quicker for others, but I still think the power bar could be a little closer to the aiming target.
The third type of serve, the advanced serve, does not care about this. This uses the right stick exclusively, flicking it down to throw the ball up, then flicking up and in a direction to perform your desired serve type. This is probably the better option for accuracy, but I prefer being able to see and control the power of the shot, and I wasn’t sure how much control I had over the power with the advanced serve.
By default the timing and power meters stay visible through a rally and are a great help to let you see where you can improve your timing – you can turn them off if you want, though. Mistiming hits really matter. There’s a stark difference with catching an opponent’s return shot on point
We review Sandbag, a trick-taking card game published by Bezier Games. Sandbag is a great trick-taking card game with a steep learning curve. But well worth it!
Helldivers 2 is about to actually start enforcing its previously stated requirement for players on Steam to sign in with a PlayStation account, and to put it mildly, the community isn't taking it well. After 20,000 negative reviews in less than 24 hours, the game's developers say they get why players are upset.
Tennis games have been around for forever. Atari’s table tennis game Pong, for example, dates back all the way to the first video games of all time in the 70s. But we’ve come a long way since then. In fact, we’ve come a long way with the TopSpin franchise, too. Twenty years later, the title (which started out on the first Xbox consoles) is back on the next-gen consoles. And, oh boy, it’s a huge, positive leap forward. Tennis simulation has never felt so real as it does with Hangar 13’s TopSpin 2k25.
The recently released TopSpin 2K25 is a fantastic tennis title, but the game's currently being blasted for its always online requirement. Yep, this is one of those games where you need a connection to the servers before you can actually play it — even if you just want to grind through career mode or enjoy a local match.
TopSpin 2K25 fans are lashing out at 2K following widespread server issues that have impacted the game's single-player mode. Players are rallying against the game's always-online requirement, a common complaint made against a plethora of modern-day video games and one that is heavily affecting TopSpin 2K25.
We review HeroQuest, the updated version of this classic dungeon crawling classic. Published by Hasbro, this new version of HeroQuest reprints this long sought after grail game.
We review Casting Shadows, a family friendly dueling game published by Unstable Games. Casting Shadows features easy to learn rules and cute artwork, but doesn't quite hit the mark.
As we come to the end of another cold and grey week, I’m heading into London to see what’s what at WASD. Before getting to that, though, I’ve had a few different games on the go this past week, with the remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door in my Switch and the puzzle-sniper action of Children of the Sun on my PC. I did also squeeze in one solitary mission in Helldivers 2 – every little bit helps when spreading Managed Democracy!
You’ve heard of the Lands Between, but have you ever considered the Sands Between? That’s not a joke, that’s a genuine area in Another Crab’s Treasure, and I don’t think anything sums up the exact vibe that this game is going for better than the name of that one area. This is a love letter to and a sendup of so much of what FromSoftware has done, all wrapped up in a very cute crab protagonist just trying to get their home back, and a deeply unsettling message about pollution that we all already know, but don’t often get to play through.
Another Crab's Treasure might not look like a soulslike action RPG, but it is one. Take out the dark, oppressive nature of FromSoftware's output and replace it with SpongeBob, and you're more or less there. Purposely juxtaposing the established tropes of the genre, this title offers a fresh, more lighthearted experience without sacrificing the level of challenge you'd expect.
It’s wonderfully ironic that the biggest breath of fresh air the soulslike genre has received in years comes from an adventure that takes place entirely underwater. Where most dodge-rolling action games are drab, bloody, and edgelordian, Another Crab’s Treasure is bursting with bright colors, cartoonish sea creatures, and silly humor. That extreme departure from serious and spooky vibes makes it standout in an increasingly crowded space, even when it follows the formula extremely closely in every other regard. It suffers from overly simplistic combat, a general lack of challenge, and some bugs and camera wonkiness now and again – but with memorable characters, an extremely enjoyable story, and lots of original ideas, Another Crab’s Treasure had me grinning all throughout my 20-hour tour of the ocean floor.
is celebrating its 20th anniversary with three epic expansions which will tie together to form, the first of which is coming later this year with the release of the expansion. While the overarching narrative will be one that looks at the greater picture of with Azeroth's history, Titans, and what is going on with the Sword of Sargeras, will have a more enclosed story going on in a new area.