I recently came across this free game on Steam called Archeblade, which, as the creators say, is a fighting style multiplayer battle game that focuses more on basic combat controls from games like Street Fighter than the common pressing of buttons on a HUD to do basic combos like in most RPG's. The game plays out as a third person brawler, where you have two teams fighting to capture crystal nodes to earn points, or just duke it out depending on the map and gamemode. The roster consists of (Big shock) mostly females, but that doesn't mean it's all female based. The roster is balanced out with almost as many good male characters. There are three (from what I've played so far) types of fighting styles within these characters: Close combat, which are fast hitters and pick off a foe at a time. Tankers, who are meant to be the heavy artillery, and sharpshooters. Only one of these sharpshooter characters has a Sniper weapon, which is decently powerful but not game breaking as well.

I've gotta say that for a Free to play game currently in beta, it's not bad. It's not necessarily the best free game on the list, but the game certainly does a good job in keeping you playing. The game does look a bit pixelated, but based on the gameplay I have watched, it is likely a problem on my end, so I won't give any negatives for it.

Of course, as is the standard of F2P games, there is premium content. Honestly, I don't think premium is worth the pay, assuming there is one; from what I've seen, all you get from premium is access to bonus costumes. You don't need a third party account to play, and servers are available for free as well. Unless there is an effect included with the costumes, it ain't worth premium.

Overall, the graphics are good, the gameplay is very decent, and you don't really need to get premium to get the full experience. Seeing as this game is still in beta, I'm not gonna give this game a grade, but if it were the full game as it is, I'd give it a good 7\10. I may increase or decrease my score on it when the full game is complete, but for now that's just what I feel about it

Now for another game I've been wanting to review for a while: Bloons Super Monkey 2

The Super monkey is a popular tower brand from the Bloons tower defense franchise. It became so popular that he got his own spinoff game called Bloons Super Monkey. The game played in a style similar to a top-down aerial shooter, where you use the mouse to control Super monkey around the screen to pop as many bloons as possible within the level. You were required to reach a target number of bloons to advance...

And CHEESE AND RICE was it difficult!

The first levels are fairly easy if you know what your doing, but stage 3 and beyond is just AGGREVATING. Bloons will just fly everywhere in formations that are nearly impossible to hit. Unless you know the order that they come in, you will fail. And the worst thing was that if you failed any stage, you start all the way back!

But...I'm glad to say that Super Monkey 2 (I will be referring to it as SM2 from now on) is a bigger improvement.

The levels are still difficult, but the game does cut you some slack by allowing the option of replaying the stage. It even saves your progress so that you can get back to where you left off after quitting.

The blops from the first game do return. Blops were the currency that you collected from popped bloons to upgrade weapons and abilities. Instead of getting one currency from every blop, however, you need to collect a specific amount to get a monkey dollar from them, which is used in the upgrade shop (don't worry, you only need to collect under 10 blops per monkey dollar, which is good since the prices for upgrades in the first game went up to near $100,000).

The upgrade station was improved too. You can now upgrade weapons on either the left or right arm, as well as a core attack. The downside of it is that you have to pay double the money to gain the same upgrade on both arms, but you can experiment with different combinations. This is where I mention my one major problem. In the first game, all the upgrades you gained would be on your Super monkey all the time. In this one, you can only equip an upgrade from one tier in your list. I know it sounds like knitpicking, but I honestly didn't like this.

Overall, this game is a vast improvement from the first game. The only complaint I have, which is minor, is that you have to have a Ninjakiwi account to play the game. Getting one is easy, though, and it is worth it, especially because now I can save my progress and maintain my rank on BTD5

I give this game an 9\10. Improved graphics and controls, new upgrades, gimmicks and decreased difficulty make this game superior to the first