Trifox is a charming little indie 3D adventure game. I really enjoyed the 6 hours I had with this one. The gameplay is a mixture of hack-and-slash and bullet-hell (depending on how you decide to build your character) and is set in a beautiful toy'ish 3D world. The game features a skill tree that spans 3 specialisations: Warrior, Mage and Engineer. You can mix and match these skills in to 4 slots. For instance, you could be a Warrior that focuses on melee damage while mixing some Engineeer skills in - allowing you to deploy gattling turrets, flame throwers and missile batteries as support. The combat is quite simple: hit or shoot the enemies until they fall. Some of the tougher enemies have attack patterns that you must look for and avoid. You have 3 skill slots that you pick from the skill tree to assist in the fights. My personal favourite is the Engineer's electrical stun tower. Boss battles are reminiscent of many 3D action and adventure games - find the weak spot, hit it and avoid the attack patterns that will change over three phases. In each level, there are hidden collectables, some light puzzling, turret sections and platforming - with the platforming components really ramping up in frequency and difficulty towards the end of the game. The only faults that I could really point out are that some of the levels in Act 3 were a bit confusing due to abstract design, and the Engineer's gun would sometimes miss targets. I also think the price tag at launch was a little high, given I beat it in 6 hours. Overall, I found Trifox to be a relaxing adventure game that I had no real difficulty in completing. There's a lot of heart in this title and it's definitely worth checking out if you're after a light-hearted 3D adventure game.
I'm a big fan of the First Encounter, Second Encounter & Serious Sam 2. This installment lacks character & I suspect effort as well. It only partially feels like a Serious Sam game. I'll keep this brief: * The map design is terrible: SS maps have always been somewhat large. Here, they are large & very empty. Areas that you think you might find a secret are just baron. And I mean baron; devoid of life. This is supposed to be earth. Some areas you can clearly see they dropped the framework for an area & forgot the detailing. * The cut scenes & voice acting are garbage. The director didn't know if they wanted Sam to be some wanna-be Call Of Duty tough guy or the crazy Sam we all know. He ends up being terrible at trying to be both. Also, in stark contrast to the early installments: I never laughed once during my playthrough. * The gun play is almost perfect. A lot of the originals are here. They introduced a reload mechanic, which for me, coming from the first 3, I wasn't impressed. The assault rifle only made me miss the tommy gun. * The gadgets are just there. I hardly needed them. They feel tacked on to add "complexity". * The secrets are trash: Ammo or armor. Where are the easter eggs? * The modern interpretations of the classic mobs were cool to see. Enemy design I can't really fault. They're modelled well. * Boss fights are garbage. Again, complexity for the sake of it. I feel TSE's final boss is much harder & yet more enjoyable. * The music is really well written but while playing this, my wife said to me "That doesn't sound like Serious Sam". A lot of it just doesn't suit the game. Something went very wrong with this games development. I walk away from this one feeling very disappointed. I sincerely hope Croteam doesn't keep flogging this horse - it's already dead.
I grabbed Deadlight years ago on Steam. Played a good chunk of it and gave up. Recently got it free on GOG, and decided I was going to finish it, no matter what. There's a good game here, but it has issues. The art, game mechanics and level design are great, but the controls really let it down. And, I mean they really let it down. 9 times out of 10 I was dying due to losing a fight against the controls. Something about them really don't feel right. The voice acting may also be the worst I've ever heard in a game. So bad it should have been text, although it probably still would have made me cringe. There were criticisms of its length when it came out, but honestly, it probably goes on as long as it really needs to. When I hit the end I wasn't craving more, and to be honest, I was a bit baffled by the way the end scene was written. Overall, it's really not bad, but it's also really not great. It's definitely a B-grade game that took me about 3 hours to complete. If you can get it for $5 or less, it's worth a run through if you're in to platformers.
I just finished the game. This turned out to be a real slog to the finish. It plays really well, but lacks environmental variety, and a lot of the fighting takes place in corridors, so I found myself only having to strafe on one axis most of the time. None of the levels really pop; They all kinda blend in together, until you reach a certain point where they take on another theme. Even then, I find the designs underwhelming. To the developers credit, this is probably true to the design of the Descent series. I stopped caring about the story about half way in. It just didn't get its hooks in me, and I didn't care about saving all the survivors or getting all the secrets. Usually I can binge FPS for a few hours at a time, but with Overload I found myself only able to play 1 level at a time, often with large breaks in between. In the end, I think it's a pretty good Descent successor, but I feel it could have evolved a a lot more to make it captivating. Unfortunately, I really did find this boring all the way to the end.
