This game is extremely polished, both in gameplay and artistic vision. It looks and feels like one of Akira Kurosawa's old movies, and a very well-directed one to booth - the feel of the villages, the fire, the rain, the voice acting, there are lots of things that will make you just stop playing and admire the work put into the game. It would be one of the darkest movies of the period, though -- none of Yojimbo's dark humor, everything is grim, intense and serious. You have to go with it; it's a revenge story, and there is a lot to be vengeful about! Gameplay is straightforward and very smooth. Mostly brutal, quick swordfights -- miss a bit and you're down. You gain a ton of new combos, and a few ranged weapons that save you here and there but mostly get in the way. I played in hard mode ("Ronin") and found it challenging but fun; individual enemies are easy, but when they gang up on you combining different types you need to move fast. Blocking is very intuitive. Difficulty: I played in hard and died a lot, but savepoints are close by, normally you have to survive two clumps or waves or enemies and get to the next. Bosses are challenging; they'll take you down in two seconds the first time you meet them, but once you get their timing down they get manageable (not easy, you still have to be quick!). It's not about getting more powerful but about getting better, which I count as good game design. What I can't figure out is why so few people finish it (about 12% counting by trophies!). It can't be the difficulty, so I wonder if they are looking for a different kind of game. If you're not sure I would say play it in Normal; it's not very long and it's quite a unique experience!
Three things you need to know about this game. 1) Gameplay is children level; there is nothing challenging about it, but the magic effects are nice. It's more of an interactive story. 2) It is a sad story. It is not the story of a plucky heroine, but of a girl working through stages of grief, through her storytelling and journaling. It may not be for everyone. I would recommend that you play it before giving it to your kids, or play with them. 3) The beginning chapters seem like something written by a kid, with a heroine a bit annoying and full of herself. This is not bad writing, but intentional. The character grows as the writer matures. It soon becomes deep and satisfying for all ages, it will leave you with a happy/sad feeling. I'm not a fan of sad stories, but this one got to me! =) For a bit more detail, the story jumps between the writer-girl journaling, and writing a story. During journal segments you learn of her real life, while the challenges the story character encounters reflect the writer's working through her life issues. It is very well-written - the writer is Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Terry!; the visuals are intertwined with words and artwork in clever ways; and the voice acting -- particularly of the young protagonist -- is some of the best I've heard, able to convey a world of feeling with just a pause or an inflection. The cover art doesn't look like much, but the in-game art is also beautiful, and the music, while not memorable, punctuates every emotional moment perfectly. The game glitched once or twice, but if you go to the menu and start again it begins right were you left. It took me under 6 hours, and I'm very happy that I played it, it was a delightful experience. It is also very inspiring for young would-be writers, especially girls, so if your kid likes to write or draw fantasy stories I'd say give it a try!
I'm about 25% in, and every element in this game is fantastically polished. The story is fantastic - as you are a Reaper, you find characters having to deal with their immortality, souls that can't find their way through, villains that are not super evil, but make evil choices to avoid death, that kind of thing. The world creation is fantastic (though a completely different game, it reminds me of Grim Fandango). The characters are something you'd see in a Ghibli movie. But above all that, the game is so much fun! The combat is very similar to Tunic (expect instead of shield you can use range weapons), super smooth and responsive -- you can get away without upgrading, because the game does not rely on getting better weapons, but on a sharp combination of close and ranged attacs. It has a very clever mechanic: to recharge your ranged attacks you need to get in some meelee hits, which forces you to change tactics constantly, and risks pay off if you time them well. Often bosses are supported by teleporting minions with differing attack styles, so that what could be a short fight becomes absolutely frantic mayhem! Terrific art direction, and the music is just superb, the kind that makes you delay a couple seconds just listening to it before going to the next place. So good!
Usually hand-drawn games are just okay-games, and you play them for the art, which after a while gets old. None of that here! First, the art itself is ASTOUNDING. Room after room, there is something neat to discover in the backgrounds, and the animations are super cute; it's a pleasure just to zoom in and inspect the little details. But as a puzzle platformer, Creaks is also very fun and very polished. The different elements are introduced in an easy puzzle, then get combined and complicated into satisfying head-scratchers, so that you set up to play a couple levels and before you know it you've gone for 2 or 3 hours. There is a very neat story, told almost wordlessly through little animated cutscenes. Despite the name, though, the game is not creepy, but humorous in a very original way. Just the way the characters look and act, and the weird collectibles you find along the way made me smile constantly and sometimes laugh out loud. Also worth mentioning is the music, a breezy, jazzy score that, instead of emphasizing the danger, kicks up when you solve a puzzle: it feels as if the band is celebrating with you! All in all one of the most delightful games I've played this past year. I'd like to do a pro-con, but I literally can find no negatives, it's just a work of love, a little gem through and through.
Minute of Islands is beautifully drawn, and has a very intriguing story; but gameplay is minimal. You go to a location, find your path up and down (there's no enemies or hazards); if you go off the path you mind some "memories" that enrich the story. There's a couple of items, but their use is obvious, there are no challenging puzzles. The story is told slowly, in a reminiscent manner, and every interaction is animated. It's pretty, but it can get on your nerves that every time to take a lift it has to do the whole animation, and every time Mo crawls out of a duct she has to take a few seconds to dust herself off. Still, from an artistic point of view it's very neat, like an animated comic. If what you're craving for is a challenge for your reflexes or your brain, this is not it, though.
While it seems to follow a regular Castlevania formula, the main game is more inventory- than skill-based. What I mean is that you get a TON of different weapons, armor, etc., that can help you easily become overpowered just by choosing the right setup at the right time (nasty snow samurai? just switch to fire-based range weapons), which can make every boss a breeze. This is less fun that it sounds, because (a) the inventory interface is a bit overcrowded, so it becomes a bit tedious (I ended up using mostly the same three items through my whole run) and (b) some items are so powerful that make most of the rest redundant (I only used food at the beginning of the game, and maybe poison for one of the bosses). After you finish the game you get a bunch of alternative modes (magic only, assassin, etc.); among them is the "boss mode" in which you play an additional story switching between three characters with different abilities. I found this much more fun than the original, because it limits the types of items you can use, and each ability is useful in a different situation. For this mode I'm giving the game four instead of three stars.I highly recommend playing this mode, and it gives you an additional ending. Finally one word of advice: listen to what the Stoic says, it's not just a sidequest but a better ending.
The game itself is cute - the art is great - but gameplay is a bit basic. If the game were longer, it would become repetitive. It's basically a platformer in which one of the characters has to move the platforms around, which slows the pace quite a bit. It is worth playing because of the cultural immersion, a retelling of an Iñupiaq fable. The companion story, "Foxtales", plays a bit better and the puzzles are more fun. Regretfully, it has some inexcusable glitches. First, I had to try the game in FOUR computers before being able to play it -- it did not run even in relatively new ones. My advice is install it as soon as you buy it, and if it doesn't work return it! Second, the little videos ("Cultural Insights") just crash the game! How can a video crash a game? I wasn't able to watch any. There was also an early gameplay glitch: when you are chased by a bear, you get cornered and nothing happens. I solve it by switching to coop play, and then the story continued. Great concept, but poor quality testing I think.
Got the game because I really liked the classic, super-slow movie, and even read the novel it was based on, Roadside Picnic. Reviews rave about it, but notice that the "most helpful" are from 2014. Atmosphere is great at first, but at one point gets a bit repetitive - every place look like another. You don't quite get the dread of the movie/novel, as killer anomalies can be seen or detected; they are just spots to walk around. You can roam a lot free-style, but the "random quests" you get are all variations of the same - go there kill someone, pick up item, return -- and many are glitchy so you won't get all of them done. Inventory system is "realistic" (you need to place your items in a grid) but halfway through it becomes cumbersome, forcing you to drop a nice gun to be able to fit some ammo (and all the ammo graphics look more or less the same). Don't save to sell stuff, by the way -- I went the whole game without having to buy a single thing, as you can pick anything you need. As to the shooter experience, it is well done, and it is fun when you get factions shooting each other. But the enemies are mostly all the same - armed humans, and two or three monsters -- and the most fun weapons don't have too much ammo lying around, so near the end I got quite bored. The story, I'm afraid to say, I found it kind of lame. It starts mysterious, but when you get to solve the mystery it pretty much falls apart. You get a couple of different endings, none of them is great, so don't play it for the story.
The visuals are very polished for its time, but other than that this game is quite boring. Almost every puzzle consists of "now that you've done something, go talk to every character to see if something new to do came up." It gets old pretty fast.
With such a great character and background, it's strange that there are so few Indiana Jones 3D adventure games (I'm not talking point-and-click). Infernal Machine, Emperor's Tomb, and one on Wii that I can't remember. While technically inferior to the others, Infernal Machine is the only one that (a) makes you think (with lots of clever physical puzzles) and (b) treats Indiana Jones' character as something more than a running-jumping guy with a few wisecracks. I think this is what's missing in the later games, and what caused people to lose interest in them. You find Indy in an actual archaeological dig, looking for pottery (guess what, that's what archaeologists normally do!), or negotiating with a street urchin for information - little details that make the story much more interesting. One interesting detail, for example: when attacked by beasts - wolves, pumas and the like - he doesn't shoot them -- he shoots up to scare them! (Compare this to its time Lara Croft, who would get pandas extinct if they stood on the way of some stupid gem!) In terms of gameplay, it'll probably feel a bit old - none of the smoothness of Emperor's Tomb, or its intuitive fighting system - but it's a game that asks you to go slowly and figure things out - plenty of deadly traps if you try going too fast, believe me! It's the kind of game I play when I'm in the mood for a tough nut to crack, rather than exhilarating graphics.
