HammerWatch

This game... is hard. Really hard. Without infinite lives you're unlikely to finish it. Not to mention it's filled to the brim with traps, hidden areas, and maps that are way too big and you can't scan or scroll through. Worse most of the time buttons you press that aren't immediately apparent what they do will say something like 'something happened' or 'a passage opened'. You'll be referring to an FAQ, and going through empty hallways you cleared earlier trying to find the elusive spot that opened or just where you are suppose to go next.

HOWEVER, this is also the closest thing I've probably played that's close to a rogue-like without being turn based. It also heavily seems inspired from gauntlet (including a bonus level where you play a gauntlet styled game from the original 8bit arcade/computer games). The game allows various crutches/hindrances you can play the game a little easier. Double damage and x5 mana regen makes it more of an adventure, while 1 life/1hp or shared pool life (for groups) can add up to very difficult play.

Graphics: Pixel art. Timeless. Has a similar feel to the 8x8 sprites used in NES, while I think it's closer to either 12x12 or 16x16, the art is detailed enough yet simple enough at the same time. Everything has enough texture, and atmosphere.

Sound: Perhaps the weakest on the list. The sound is... sufficient. Grunts when you get hit, explosions, shooting lightning from the sorcerer. it sounds... good enough.

Music: Reminiscent of 90's midi files and music, not the early ones but much later, like adlib. Although the expansion has a more orchestral soundtrack mixed with sine and square waves that make it feel like an SNES title.

Story: The original campaign is lackluster. You get separated from your group and... that's it, you try to climb the tower/escape/defeat the bosses.

Mechanics: Basically Gauntlet, except heavily updated. Not quite Twinstick but could be. You can lock yourself in a direction and strafe, or lock yourself in place and spin in place. This is useful a LOT. You start with two abilities, your default and a special. I haven't played all the classes so I don't know what they fully are. However there's 2 additional abilities you can pick up later that you can activate using Mana. Additional abilities includes for Combo (kills within a short period of time), and a single potion you can carry with you to activate.

Annoyances: The mechanics overall is really simple, it's the levels that really stand out. While there are death traps, they are usually clearly marked in the original campaign. In the expansion, well there's plenty of instant death moments.

In Closing. This game isn't about an adventure and having fun. It's about trying your best not to die. The more hardcore and difficult you set it for, the more you have to be super careful, know everything that's everywhere, and take advantage of your strengths and have another player to compensate for your weaknesses. While not quite as salty and stressful as Spelunky, and not nearly as random, this game will still requires patience, and perseverance to get through it.

Thanks OP for the effort. Wow. Reviews and impressions as they should be :). Very useful!!

Titan Souls

I don't see much of a story in this game. However the objective is to defeat titans, god-like beings using your one arrow...

It's a test of patience, and much like Dark Souls, only far simpler graphically, but quite the difficult Journey.

To be honest I haven't beaten this game. I've beaten the first set of titans, and that's it. I can't seem to get anywhere else.

Graphics: Pixel art. Sufficient, feels quite a bit like Fez. Each boss that I've seen is unique and graphically pleasing overall. It also has a throwback to SNES graphics and sprites, which is always good.

Music: Synthesized orchestral music. Very good, almost epic sounding, tribal, or calming. It is music need to explore more outside of the game to really give a good impression of. Still it might be worth listening to just for the sake of it, before I can give you full thoughts of how it is.

Gameplay: 1 Hitpoint and 1 Arrow. Strafe, shoot, recall your arrow, dodge and sprint. These are all there is that I can tell. Successfully defeating a titan increases how many you've beaten, and works towards opening doors. It doesn't appear to make you stronger, although being able to beat any of them feels good. While otherwise you'll be dying, a lot. The bosses also seem to have only 1 hitpoint, it's a matter of hitting them at the right time, depending on what obstacles there are.

Story: No clue. Doesn't tell you why you're there, or what's going on. A case where the story is thrown out for pure mechanics.

This game is similar to other games. Rogue-likes, Demon/Dark souls, HammerWatch, Super Meat Boy, No time to explain, and many others where it's about patience and actual skill, rather than upgrades or equipment. If you don't have the patience to die a hundred times while playing, don't get this game. But if you enjoy nailing the boss and progressing, or have the mental willpower now to throw the controller when you die for the 10th time in a row, then you might give this game a try.

Drod (1,2,3,4, second sky, RPG).

Drod is a puzzle game. It's fairly simple in principle, turn based, turn left/right to move your sword, move around, kill the roaches. Honestly this game tests my patience and feels like it was programmed for Windows 3.1, with icons or small images pasted in bulk all over the window of a 2D fixed grid with 16x16 icons. If you ever played Castle Of the Winds, you'll know what I mean a bit since the keyboard input quickly is used with autofiring which can be both useful and annoying.

Graphics: Looks like icons/sprites, and feels like it too. Later lighting, new characters, and more do mix it up a bit, but at no point does it really feel any different. The UI and graphics feels like it was done for Windows 3.1. (although looking back at CotW screenshots, I Drod isn't as contrasting as Win 3.1, it just feels like it)

Music: Forgettable, simple, thankfully not raw midi with the old grating built in soundfonts of the 90's. But I didn't really enjoy the music much.

Sounds: Blarg, hitting, swiping. It's a little grating actually.

Voice Acting: What I've heard is sufficient, although seems some of them are done on a cheap microphone with no cleanup on the audio. At least they have the same general volume. The later games (RPG and 4th game) seems to have some type of story and attitude to go with the voice acting.

Gameplay/Mechanics: Swing your sword left/right with QW, and move with the numpad directions. The AI are basically just going to move towards you no matter where you are on the screen, so you can direct them, so there's no real intelligence. Although often obstacles are placed to force deviation. There's also orbs, pressure plates, force/directional arrows, and or other things that change how walls/doors are opened/closed. Later games also include breakable walls, tunnels, etc.

Almost every room is a puzzle of some kind. I quickly got bored with the puzzles. Were I in my young teens or 10 or so, I'd have probably really enjoyed this. But at my present age? I can't say it's complex or interesting enough to keep me playing.

RPG: The RPG is a little different, you have Hitpoints which are restored with blue potions, and you attack and get attacked. Dying generally involves you getting hit more. You collect keys color coded to open doors, and no longer have to clear every monster in every dungeon. The Stalward knight's witty lines are fun, but not enough to keep me engaged sadly. Curiously the graphics felt more like a mini-game for a slot machine, and barely an upgrade to the rest of the games.

Story: Not sure. Ended up skipping past any story to test if the mechanics/puzzles changed much. The first game comes down to 'kill all the roaches', while other games involves trying to navigate with your nephew, retelling tales of a cousin, or trying to get into a city and handing out names to strangers. However the main gameplay doesn't change much among any of the games.

Graphics: 2/5
Music: 2/5
Sound: 2/5
VO: 3/5
Mechanics: 2/5
Story: 3/5

Total: 14/25 or 5.6/10 or 2.8/5

I recommend only get these games on sale, but don't expect much to really keep you playing. Although it can take hours and hours to beat the games, they aren't high quality entertainment. I'd play them if there was nothing better to do, although I'd probably play minesweeper and solitaire first.

Super Hexagon

This game is a game I play for the music and nothing else (much like Xixit). Well, and when my brain turns off and I just veg out because I get into the zone. And getting into the zone takes a little while.

The game is really about reaction and memorizing patterns. Well, the patterns are randomized in a type of order, but there's obvious patterns you can learn. It builds up to some pretty difficult stuff. Everything is solvable, maybe just not by a human. You will lose eventually, but that's like rolling a d20, you'll get a 1 eventually, just don't know how long til you do. The game is so fast to play, and get back into when you lose that it will be difficult to put it down. Better yet when you get used to the patterns, and get into the zone, it's trippy.

Truthfully, it's unlikely you'll master this game fully. However if you can get past the first difficulty, then you are skilled enough to judge it. However the other difficulties are quite a bit faster, with their own soundtracks.


Graphics: Simple, it's shapes, although generally between a square and a hexagon. I suppose that's not entirely correct. There's a number of sides and those sides may be filled in. But of course you aren't suppose to run into them. Although the game does get trippy at harder difficulty levels, and the angle changes constantly with the spinning. Thankfully there's so little with the graphics you can't grasp a 3D visual orientation so it shouldn't get you dizzy like in 3D games.

Music: Phenominal 8bit music. Upbeat, trance, motivating and empowering. You should look it up and listen to it.

Sound: Minimal... Mostly UI stuff and when you hit a wall.

Voice: Praising you every so often, and telling you when you change in difficulty (point, line, triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon).

Gameplay/Mechanics: The mechanics are simple, move left/right from a fixed point around the center. Every 10 seconds the difficulty ramps up. If you get to 60 seconds, you've effectively beaten the level. Other levels will unlock.

Graphics: N/A
Music: 4/5
Sound: N/A
VO: N/A
Mechanics: 3/5

Total: 7/10 or 3.5/5

WARNING: MAY CAUSE EPILEPSY! IF YOU YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO FLASHING LIGHTS OR EASILY GET DISORIENTED YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY THIS GAME!

Well done reviews... GOG should consider hiring you to redo the review system or something. Easier to read and more actual review-quality than what constitutes a review in the actual GOG review system. :)

Triple Town

This game looks, feels, and plays like a mobile game. It has a cutesie aesthetic where you can spend short 10 minutes or so building up a town as far as it can go before cashing out when you can no longer expand.

Graphics: Looks like a mobile game. Large icons, animated, little people walking around talking about whatever topic comes to mind unless a bear comes out to scare them away. Real enjoyable, and simple at the same time.

Sound: Simple. Placements, upgrades, rawr from the bears, completion of a town. Little else to add.

Music: None

Story: None (that I have noticed)

Mechanics: it's a place and match 3. While that sounds simple, often the game throws a curve ball at you. Sometimes you'll be placing grass, the next moment you're placing trees and houses. And f*** the god damn bears! Ninja bears especially. They constantly get in your way. Although they can become a church when there's no room to do anything else, it's still annoying when they are in your way and you have to use your resources elsewhere.

The game also shows it's mobile heritage (or planned direction?) with a shop; Although you only spend in-game currency from matching items of 4 or more, or as completion of towns and villages. Still that you can purchase what you need at a given notice wouldn't be hard to think this could have (or is?) a Free 2 Play somewhere else in the world.

Between missions you have a plot of land you can put special items down in order to... get more special resources which you collect from scores from playing the game. (early on, collect 40k points, and you can harvest from a wheat field).



In short, as a short distraction, a FaceBook game replacement, or a small cheap game to keep your children occupied; Toddlers could use the game to learn to pattern matching and basic gameplay mechanics; If played in short bursts is where it shines. You can play Triple Town any time you would play Mine Sweeper, Solitaire, a mini game, or *shudders* FarmVille...

Torchlight

To say this is a diablo clone is a little shy of it's heritage. However it is built to emulate Diablo in everything except in name. At the surface and mechanics it appears to do the job very well. But replaying it after a few years I see a few more of it's flaws.

Torchlight captures a lot of elements correctly. The music, the basic mechanics, the exploring, the loot, and a bunch of things that keep you from having to quit or take extra time like automatically collecting nearby money. Torchlight does a very good job at invoking a good feeling from Diablo 1 and 2. However, Torchlight does fail in a few areas of it's own.

Graphics: 3D, while well done if you look closely they don't really evoke many if any emotions. In a few cutscenes I'm reminded far more of how SoulReaver managed the cutscenes than anything else. Still the models are well done, lighting is good, particle effects are good, and the companion animal is sufficiently cute or adorable depending on the one you choose.

Sound: Good quality, from explosions, to gunshots, to slicing with sword and staff. It's More than decent enough.

Music: Heavily reminiscent of Diablo. It is easy to confuse the two music as it's made by the same artist, although unique it feels like it's more missing tracks not used by Blizzard for their Diablo 1 and 2 titles. If nothing else I'd say listen to the music if you are a fan of Diablo/Diablo 2.

Story: The story is curious, listening to Alric talk of the corruption that is slowly turning him mad as he gets deeper and deeper into Torchlight, as the ember gets stronger, and the evil contained within. It doesn't feel as compelling as Diablo's story, but it's a reason to keep going, and plenty of unique places to visit each with their own hidden areas, monsters, color scheme.

Mechanics: The mechanics are simple enough, active abilities and hotkeys 1-9 letting you assign potions, spells, or other abilities to those slots. You can memorize/use up to 4 spells if you get your hands on them, which anyone can learn, including your pet.

Having a pet is nice, you get an immediate companion who can carry more stuff, better yet you can send him to town and he'll sell everything for you so you don't have to make a trip and spend time in the loading screen. He'll fight for you too, and run away if he's too injured.

The three classes have their own styles of play, like any diablo game. You have a Melee, Magic user, and Ranged user. While I've only played the mage and gunslinger, all characters effectively have 2 styles of play. The gunslinger with her guns and ranged weapons, and setting traps/turrets. The mage is summons, and spellcasting. Not sure about the melee character, haven't done him.

There are other minor things. Imbuing items with magic, maps that take you to unique randomly generated areas, etc. But these aren't part of the main game loop.

Annoyances: Replaying quickly brings forth several annoyances that don't exist in other diablo games. Perhaps because they don't really have 3D models and work with flat planes most of the time. But I'll cover them over.

Long loading screens: Although my computer isn't a gaming machine for intensive work, it takes upwards a minute to load the game, and another 30 seconds between levels/rooms making it break the flow of the game every time I have to change rooms. Perhaps that's due to the mods I'm using (mostly adding more weapon types/drops).

Obscuring Objects: This is generally features of the level. It's very noticeable when huge pillars are in front of the screen not letting you see your enemies, or anything that's going on. This is mostly pillars and walls, which should turn either invisible to let you see, or semi-transparent, or like other games letting you see a clear outline of them.

Shared skills: A third of the skills are shared. You have 3 tabs, with 10 skills each, but a third of those are just shared skills. One for your pet, one for general weapons, one for armor, three for spells (offensive, defensive, utility), Adventuring (extending strength of potions). While these would be nice to have as extras, it feels like it cuts into what made more unique characters in Diablo 2, rather than having a bunch of Barbarian skills shoved in.

Fishing: Fishing is a unique added mini-game where you can capture fish, and feed the fish to your pet and turn them into other creatures. While this might be useful, it's 95% a waste of time.

Skills are lack luster: This is more an issue. For the mage, who specializes in summoning, has 3 actual summoning skills. 2 for golems and 1 for small goblinoids. Most skills are about adding passive bonuses rather than being active. Adding 25% damage return, or adding +damage to my weapon for 30 seconds. I asked to be a mage, not a paladin. Perhaps worse is for summons, you aren't told how many you have or how they are doing. More than once I won't be told if they all died, or are hurting, you're only told that data for your one fixed pet.

Inventory: The inventory space is abysmal. You have a shared and private space each giving you, about 30 slots per. This is nowhere near enough space. Space on characters is about 18 slots for you, and 18 for your pet. It quickly fills up, and mostly with junk. With sets and tons of sockets you can use, having a far larger shared inventory would feel better. (Maybe I just played Zy-El too much, with it's infinite inventory. Hmm)

Difficulty: At normal I only once in a while feel like I'm even remotely being threatened, and having to take a potion to heal. In my last playthrough and current one, I had 70+ health/mana potions I collected but never used.

Quests: Other than the main quest, it's lackluster and weak. 'Go kill xxx at lever xxx' or 'get this ember shard' or 'get xyz on level 10'. You're bound to complete them by accident as long as you haven't already skipped past the area.

Limited portal access: Every 5 something levels you'll get access to activate a portal in that area. Although not too bad of a case, the extension endless dungeon after the campaign offers now help. Die without a backup portal set up and you will have to walk through empty floors to get back to where you were. I've done that. died 30+ floors down, and then have to start at floor 1. It's a real fast way to kill the momentum.




While the game invokes the feel of the classic D1 and D2 games, it has it's own set of flaws that it can't escape. While adding in several minor mods allowing you to customize the UI a bit, add more monsters, random level selections, or classes, the game is heavily unstable when modded and has crashed on me several times.

Although a good game, it falls short to what it is directly comparable to. Still I'd say get it and have fun with it, if you can.

Graphics: 3/5
Sound: 4/5
Music: 5/5
Story: 3/5
Mechanics: 3/5
Annoyances: -3
Total: 15/25 or 6/10 or 3/5

Windforge

This little gem is an interesting one. Take steampunk, add inTerraria, heavy grappling and making your own ships and piloting in the sky, add flying whales, and you get WindForge.

First getting into the game you find the behavior of the grappling hood weird, but timing and practice and 15 minutes later you'll almost be a pro! Swinging and climbing between floating islands (within the same screen). In some ways this is like Terraria, you can collect blocks and use them to build things, but your inventory works a little differently, including crafting.

To be honest I've beaten this game 3 times since it came out, including some modding on it adding some ships and custom stuff. Although nothing graphically.

Graphics: A unique style of it's own, 2D with a semi-3D look for ship components/beams and the like. The moving characters have a paper characters feel to them not too unlike flash animations where you have an image/skeleton. Almost everything is highly detailed, however often you'll be zoomed out so you can't usually take it all in very much. The hand drawn whales are by far my favorite part of this, and the backgrounds of course.

Audio: Although no voice acting, everything has it's place. Gunshots sound good, metal grating and being destroyed, explosions, even the grunts of the few characters running around on spikes until they die. All quite good.

Music: Instrumental/classical. The music is probably well done midi with a good synthesizer, however it sounds awesome. From the mellow music while you're hanging out in town, the darker and eerie music when in the temples, to the battle music when you're under attack from another ship and the SOC. I even commented on an unrelated work reminding me of this music. :)

Mechanics:

The Grappling Hook: This has it's own section which practice to get used to, using it wrong and you'll fall to your death many times. However well done and you'll swing up and attach your hook to something else and keep going up. You will be using this a lot, believe me.

Mining: You'll be mining a lot too. Either to open up a route, or get iron, copper and other materials, or even to get through a wall to disarm a turret, a lot of time will be spent here. More in the later game than early on. Early note, stone will be the main thing you pick up. but don't worry there's a use for stone, although it's not worth much you can make things with it that you can sell for a profit.

The second biggest thing you'll mine especially early on is wood, very little work to get a ton of wood. With wood you'll also get a cheap source of healing items until you can make your own or find a better source (like killing a whale). Curiously, dirt there won't be that much of.

Crafting: This is pretty simple, you'll be shown all the recipes you actually know, and if you have sufficient amounts of any of the quantities then you can make something. If your wisdom is high enough a Quality item will be produced (higher damage, worth more, etc). You will often find a lot of recipes, although you can buy them too in towns. A number of recipes allow you to swap ingredients, so if you use bronze for making a dagger, you'll get a bronze dagger, while iron or steel will get you an iron or steel dagger, etc. Crafting is always successful, so no percentage chance of failing.

Fighting: You can do ranged weapons (guns usually, sometimes rocks/daggers/etc), and then there's melee. You'll have plenty of each, as there's actually a few enemies that can't be damaged by ranged weapons (it bounces off). Other than having to keep a little eye on your ammunition, you'll probably get far more than you'll ever actually use. There's quite a variety of weapons, from shotguns and pistols, to knifes, even your jackhammer will suffice.

Flying/Pirating: You will be doing this a lot too. Either from the 2 manned scout ships with almost nothing on it, to super huge whale Hunter ships with 12 men and 8 artillery guns, you can take them over if all the occupants are defeated. Best part is looting the ship, taking everything on it worth value and moving on (which you can then sell or use yourself. It will be your primary income for most of the game! Not to mention good upgrades early on without having to make your own engines.

BTW it doesn't cost anything to repair your ship, so don't worry about that.

Note: Apparently they were planning on having you be able to hire or have a crew, but the stretch goals on Kickstarter weren't met, so instead you fly and shot all the guns at the same time. I'd have liked an auto-repair item to simplify dealing with the ship getting destroyed/damaged.

Attributes: No leveling system here, you instead have your attributes. You can train them at any time in towns, but it gets expensive quick. For every 20 points in any attribute you gain a new perk. Making quality weapons, regeneration, multiple jumps, etc. Everything is valuable, getting 100 in all four will almost make you the ultimate soldier :)

Towns/other locations: The towns and a few select locations are the only things not procedurally generated (although they might be randomly placed on the larger map). Most locations have dug out sections and jars with items/money in it (which can give you a random good piece of loot, like an awesome weapon!). This lets you explore and try to find materials you can use later.

Regardless, towns (and traders on some ships) are the only places you can actually buy and sell goods, or upgrade your attributes.

Ship Building: This is pushed early on, being handed your own turrets but you have to add them. Not to mention placing engines and propellers at the beginning to give you a feel of what you need to do. Mid to late game you'll have replaced most of your ship or started fresh and built something new. Heavy iron, cloudstone, titanium, or other materials to make the bulk of your ship, either big or small, or fire resistant (important in the upper atmosphere), or built with oxygen generators (important for below). There is a fine art to making a ship, including one that can mine for you.

Building a ship generally involves placing planks (that are small, assume 3"x3"x5' in size. You will need to balance between power you generate (engines) the weight (all the blocks and equipment together) and the propulsion. Since you can attach balloons to add buoyancy (remove weight) you can make an effective large ship with very few engines or propellers, but this assumes you can keep your balloons from bursting. Add weapons and/or grinders. Many materials will have things it's good against.

Note: Whale Blubber and Stone make horrible ship components. Stick with iron, wood, driftstone or other materials. You'll understand why if you do later.

Monster Tamer: With a high enough wisdom you can tame monsters. This keeps them from attacking you, will even fight for you, but most importantly you can fly around without a ship (should you get lost, your ship get destroyed, or getting to a higher area would be a total pain without building a ship on the fly). Master tamers can tame whales, which is fun since you can direct them where you want them to go.

Story/Lore: You are sent to investigate and get tablets with unique information from these temples hidden all throughout the land. The objective is to replace the energy source of whales with another energy source that doesn't deplete.

As you go in the story you get pulled into a war, and have to defeat legendary creatures to complete an artifact deemed needed by the king.

Annoyances: With ship building, you can only build so far away (while you can remove items from almost any distance). This means you'll build extra ledges to reach stuff that you'd rather just point and click and build a basic blueprint, then remove them later.

The game is slow. Well not at first, the more you explore in a given sector the slower the game will get; This means multiple times I've fought with framerate while going through a temple (at single digits), save and reload and the problem goes away. From the looks of it, the game is only built to run on one CPU/Core, so this is annoying. Worse the game gets much slower when you go to the lower atmosphere, the poison fog everywhere just makes everything slow as hell and you can't get around that; It's pretty unavoidable.

Early on Falling damage and maneuverability is an annoyance, although getting your agility up deals with that.

Distance of items (like ships) aren't well conveyed, so you can easily miss your chance to grapple hook and board another ship, or fall down to the next screen.

Mining is slow, unless you have the right items/perks.

Crafting can be slow. If you want to make 300 of something, you have to press down on the craft and hear the grating sound of 'work' as it does one item, and does something like 12 a second. Converting a few thousand iron into ingots can get on your nerves.

Final Thoughts: While flawed in a few places, the game is actually quite remarkable, and flying around doing your own thing can keep you busy for hours. Rushing through the game isn't entirely an option, although if you're skilled enough you could probably beat it fairly quickly. A good game will probably take 8-30 hours of time, most of it exploring, mining, and otherwise pirating.

Graphics: 4/5
Audio: 4/5
Music: 5/5
Mechanics: 5/5
Story: 3/5
Annoyances: -2.5
Total: 18.5/25, 7.4/10, 3.7/5

140

Entering 140 I can't say I knew what I was getting into. Then again the last time I saw a video or preview of it was probably last year. Regardless, the game is a simple platformer that heavily incorporates music and timing into it's elements. Much like BitTrip Runner (if you've ever played it) failure merely backs you up and the game resumes once it gets back on beat again.

While the game has... puzzles... it's far more timing based on the music than any level of complexity.

Graphics: Simple. Very simple. Squares, circles, and basic geographical shapes. The extreme blocky nature, and the limited palette reminds me of playing a Atari800 game; Although it's at a much higher resolution, it could have in theory been programmed for the 8bit computers and done fine.

Sound: Few, minimalistic. Mostly falling on static and dying, or the little shooter you get when dealing with the first boss, etc. Actually it's more part of the soundtrack than it is separate sounds.

Music: Very synthy, but a high quality type of synth. Sounds like it could have been probably done on the really old 8bit computers almost.

Mechanics: Move left right and jump... The world around you will change with the music changing what happens, namely sliders or elevators, or blocks teleporting or following a steady path, or the static moving. It's all timed so it's a matter of just getting it down.

Length: It's about a 2 hour experience.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows

Well I remember playing this as shareware when I was a kid. It's pretty much as I remember it. Although with the option missing to actually have the music go through my midi synthesizer I played a DOS version of the game.

The game itself is a vertical shooter semi-bullet hell, in the likes of Tyrian, although I'd say harder. You have always equipped weapons (a few guns and front mounted laser) and then selectable missiles, which can be for air, ground, both, an auto aiming gatling gun, etc.

Graphics: Very well done, has a professional arcade feel from the 90's, simple animations conveying landing, blowing up or the ending sequence for a particular sector.

Music: 90's Synth music limitations from built in cards or the like. While feeding the music through a synthesizer it doesn't really raise the quality much, so the built-in music is fine, although the pre-recorded music for Windows is weak. It's upbeat enough, very familiar and repeating base/background while having a semi-rock fore instruments.

Sound: Guns sound like guns, explosions sound like explosions. Although constantly firing quickly drowns out all sense of the music and scene.

Mechanics: Vertical shooter. Arrows to move, control to shoot, space to drop a bomb, and Alt to switch between alternate selectable weapons. While this is enough to do the job there's a bit more than that. You can sell back your shields or extra weapons for cash (sellback is at 50%). But this isn't the whole story, if your shields are low enough and you take a hit, you will start losing your weapons at random. This means you can purchase multiple copies of your favorite weapon to make sure it has a backup in case such a situation arises.

Higher difficulty levels means more enemies, and that's about it. More ships, more bullets, less you can destroy, and although higher chances for money to deck your ship out, it doesn't feel like it's worth it. Best to play it on easy unless you're a hardcore bullet-hell fan.

There's a limit of how many items you can deck your ship with (About 15) so best to sell off weapons you don't need. Although in the first act it's unlikely you'll get decked out much without cheating.

Story: Mega corporations hired you to take out an area and... that's it? A bit weak. Much like DOOM the ending of a section is an image and a short blip of text, not really worthy of note.

Tyrian was filled with humor, upgrade options, graphically a feast, and scaled well. This game doesn't.

Annoyances: The hitboxes are a little messed up. The hitbox of the ship is a full square rather than the ship itself, so you'll get hit in some instances where you might have been able to dodge it.

Also aborting a mission, you'll have lost your weapons and health but don't keep any pickups you did along the way, resetting your score/money to what you had before the mission. This can seriously screw you over.

Length: Unlike Tyrian, the game isn't all that long. Probably an hour or two if you don't die with the slow moving paralax scrolling screen.

Final Thoughts: This game feels like a good attempt and probably sold best when there were few other games fitting this genre. However today it feels like it needed a little more polish, and more fit as a quick attempt to make a game to sell rather than a real good game. In my opinion it's better to pass this game up, unless you absolutely can't stand to avoid it.


Graphics: 4/5 (Stellar!)
Music: 2/5 - (pre-recorded low bitrate, otherwise 3/5)
Sound: 2/5 - (loud and drowning)
Mechanics: 2/5 - (simple, limited and a little annoying)
Story, Annoyances, Length: -1

Total: 10/20, 5/10, 2.5/5

Little Inferno

This was a little surprise of a game. I don't know why it's compelling. Buy stuff, burn it, get more money than you started with, rinse and repeat. Honestly getting into it I forgot all sense of trying to do a plot and got into the zen experience of just... sitting at a fireplace and burning things.

Graphics: Tomorrow corporation has their own unique style that seems to carry through their games. Very well done, almost a visual novel type of quality, although characters are very cutesie. All the items look and seem like the items they represent, and sometimes even act like them when set on fire (although I wouldn't know for most of it).

Graphically it has a very 1950's feel to everything.

Music: There is music, the video advertisement for the Little Inferno fireplace has a catchy song. In the catalog menu it's a bit jazzy and changes the pace of it all while purchasing more stuff.

Sound: Fitting sounds, be it popcorn, bulbs breaking, a fan, video game or the screams of a toy bus full of school children being burned alive. Explosions and time-slowdown seems very fitting when it is applicable.

Story: You have a a fireplace, and you burn stuff. But it's been snowing for years. You'll get notes from your friendly neighbor who sends you stuff, or from the company letting you know little tidbits. But the story is much like the rest of the game and best explored rather than told.

Mechanics / Main loop: Buy stuff, burn it, get more money, buy more stuff. This probably wouldn't be interesting if it wasn't for every object acts differently. An alarm clock will ring, corncobs will give you tons of popped corn, a moon will change gravity in the area, a sack of spider eggs, etc.

Add to this you can mix and match, there's going to be hints of things that go together, and if you burn them together you'll get stamps (that speedup delivery of items) and more money.

Length: The game will probably be 3-4 hours. After that I had my fill.

Annoyances: Hmm not really much of any. It gives you enough hints to proceed that you won't have issues.

Final thoughts: It's sorta a zen experience I wasn't expecting. Going back and forth and doing what I could to try burning everything, and then discovering even more secret combinations or getting rewarded for proceeding with the main plotpoint, until the very end. Not sure why but it's just fun to watch fire.

Graphics: 5/5
Music: 3/5
Sound: 4/5
Mechanics: 3/5 (simple, but repetitive)
Story: 4/5 (I thought it was good, and compelling)

Total: 21/25, 8.4/10, 4.2/5

Lara Croft GO

While tablet games aren't my usual thing, nor playing it on PC with a mouse, getting into the puzzle aspect of the game was actually quite fun. Much like picking up a chess piece and moving it one square at a time while other pieces make their move.

LCG is very much a turn based puzzle game. While there's some idiosyncrasies to the patterns, it is otherwise very predictable.

Graphics: It looks like a tablet game, which is no surprise. Lara herself looks sorta like she was pulled from one of the first three games. Most beautifully done perhaps is the large serpent/guardian who is chasing you and is otherwise the boss later you have to beat through luring him to attack and using a trap on him in one way or another.

Music: Off hand I don't recall much for music, it was very subtle. Subtle background music that doesn't help nor hinder you, and wasn't annoying.

Audio: Gunshots, ground crackling, the attack of the snake, all basic sounds that do their job.

Mechanics: Fairly simple. Drag to move Lara, and if there's an intractable item you either click/touch it, or touch which direction to move.

One minor thing is order of operations. You move, then traps, then monster's move/attack. This is sorta important in determining how to solve puzzles, as there's a few instances where you have to move into a position that would kill you, except the trap activates moving the floor or killing the monster.

Moving in front of a monster who is facing you gets you killed, while any other spot you will shoot and take over their spot.

For monsters there's actually 3 main ones. Snakes (stationary), Spiders (follow a path back and forth), and lizards (who will chase you starting 2 squares away). Monsters don't seem to affect eachother, although two snakes facing eachother makes it so you can't kill either snake. However if you have a torch you will shoo a monster back one step, and if you have a javelin you can take out a monster from a distance.

Then there's ground and walls that you can step on once safely, and doing so a second time will make you fall.

There's moving pillars and large boulders that you can move/activate or get killed by.

Lastly there's traps. Every trap/activation is color coded so you can tell what activates what; Although it's not always obvious the first time what will do what.

Unrelated to mechanics, there are hidden vases with gems or parts of artifacts for those completionists.

Final thoughts: More or less it's a cute little game and time waster. Story is as simple as it gets, and the puzzles are simple enough. The harder puzzles you can ask for a hint and it will show you how to solve it, so you will never be unable to finish the game. Probably a good 3 hours or so. A second adventure adds another couple hours.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of light

After Lara Croft Go i decided to boot this game up and see how it is, and what it is. I remember trying out Nathan Drake's game with the Uncharted 1 game, and he was an asshole and the pace was wrong and the camera angles were bad and everything about it felt wrong, like it was just a point&click adventure with no deviation and no real choice in the matter. Where Uncharted failed to make me feel fun, this game does the opposite. However i still have my qualms about it.

Also this is far closer to being a Tomb Raider game than the 2013 reboot; Although this game is effectively a twin-stick shooter game with puzzles and is more akin to Dark Alliance or the other console D&D games; That and the game seems to start where the 'Tomb Raiding' ends and the fast paced adventure begins.

Graphics: This looks and feels like a Xbox360 title. Except for a few up close cut scenes everything is from a fixed isometric angle. Graphically everything looks sufficient enough from a distance to look nice while not needing too high of resolution for graphics. All in all it has the right balance of definition and quality while at a larger and broader look from above to see most of everything you need to see. Although I'd have liked it if was zoomed out a hair more.

Music: Good music, however quickly becomes repetitive. Most of the music sounds like they are 1 minute or so sound loops, the Indiana Jones in the temple of doom type of music, the type of music to raise your heartrate yet at the same time fails to make you more anxious than you need to be. Still it's better than silence.

Audio: Everything sounds pretty much how it should. Gunshots, fire, metal against stone when you use the spear, etc.

Voice Acting: All of the main actors, Lara Croft, Xolotl, and Totec have decent voice acting. Doesn't sound too much like it's read from a script and instead there's enough feeling and energy in their acting that it fits. However i can't help but feel that Totec reminds me of Pete (Disney & Goofy franchise).

Mechanics: Shooting, climbing, moving objects to pressure sensitive plates, grappling hook to connect to large rings. The usual mechanics. You start off with the ability to drop little bombs and set them off later (Although i wish you could chain them and do like 3-4 of them rather than 1 at a time).

One of the more interesting new ones is the spear can exist multiple times, so you can throw it against a wall and then use it to climb (although you can't attack while balancing). This can mean you can make your own path, so long as you only need 3 spears to make a staircase.

Dodging is faster than running. And if you have your weapon drawn you move at a crawl's pace.

Monster types are limited and reskinned versions later, traps aren't too frequent although annoying when they change the rules. Challenge areas so far haven't been a challenge at all.

There's also Co-Op or Multiplayer, although i didn't get to do it much, Totec is your second character IF you go that route. As for if both will have the spear after the first couple rooms, i couldn't tell you. Probably.

Plot/Story: Getting the mirror Xolotl escapes and must be caught before dawn or else the world will be destroyed. A little extreme for a story of this level, but then again the original Tomb Raider was at that god level after you got all 3 pieces so it's not beyond it's story. The story feels more crammed in and unnecessary to actually just playing, fighting off waves of enemies or getting into the temple of spiders to proceed the quest of saving the day.

Controls:

Using a controller: (Xbox360) is simple enough, and easy enough to memorize, although dodging will still set off pressure sensitive plates and easy enough to confuse with the jump button at times.

Mouse & Keyboard: the mouse is far superior at aiming. However some of the button selections by default (Caps lock, shift, Alt) are a little off, yet make use of your pinky which is a nice touch. On the other hand you're going to be moving diagonally a lot, and locking how many keys can be pushed at once will quickly be met. I quickly found moving and then trying to drop a bomb while passing by didn't work, i had to fully stop before i could do it.

Annoyances: So far the major annoyances include some pressure plate puzzles where taking a microsecond longer than necessary can get you killed and reset the level (from the last checkpoint). Also minor puzzles that they don't make it obvious how you should finish the puzzle and you usually will die on the first time or dozen until what should be obvious becomes more obvious, mostly due to not being more zoomed out to see more of what's going on.

Lastly for some reason the second and third sections of the game the UI got screwed up and was half hidden, not letting me see my health/ammo/state for a while (for whatever reason) and the pop-up objectives wouldn't show up properly either.

Final Thoughts: Aside from the death traps, the game is above average and good to sink several hours into if you feel like that. After four hours I've had close to my fill.

Unless you're a huge Tomb Raider/Lara Croft fan, this might be better as a Co-Op game, or just to play to change the pace of what you're doing for a while.


Graphics: 4/5
Music: 3/5
Audio: 4/5
VO: 4/5
Mechanics: 4/5
Controls: 3/5
Plot/Story: 3/5
Annoyances: -1
Total: 24/35, 6.8/10, 3.4/5