I was very disappointed by this game. As another user as said the game does a poor job of explaining the mechanisms and tools. Which is a shame as those mechanisms are fairly simple once you understand how things are supposed to works. Hence you spend dome time figuring what you are supposed to do instead of solving puzzles. I found the first levels ok, but I quickly get bored afterward, and didn't find any incentive to play it again. I really didn't enjoyed this puzzle game and found it very dry, and don't understand all the hype. Actually I like microelectronics, and it reminded me of microchips design (me than anything related to chemistry), however I find chips design much more interesting and more importantly meaningful and rewarding. Try to find a demo to see if it works for you
The game is playable and I have some fun with it. Speedball 2 was among my favorites games on the Amiga. However there are plenty of issues with this HD port. The Gfx are certainly HD, and not pixelated, but they lost the special feel of the 1990 edition which used a limited colors palette to give a distinctive metallic feel. Additionally the Gfx seems to comes from various edition and lack homogeneity. But the biggest issue is the gameplay, which is exactly the same old gameplay, it feels very aged. 30 fps jerky animations, pathetic AI teamates, the goalkeeper in particular is ridiculous, poor active character selection, and slow shot direction control. Most games are very one sided with scores of 200 to 20 being very commons. Most of the time you'll trash the opponent in regular championship while during the cup it is you that is being crushed. In the end few balanced matchs.
The artworks are nice and atmospheric. Unfortunately the gameplay is rather dull, boring and very directive. First you have to spot tiny items that often have similar colours to the background, and are sometime hard to notice. Then you should also be careful as where the mouse cursor change shape, to indicate a possible action, as again, the changes are sometimes easy to miss. Finally many puzzles are illogical, so you ended up trying every items one after the other and clicking everywhere. frustrating.
I purchased the game when it was released at full price. I did'nt regret it. At a reduced price it is a very good deal if you like tactcal combat. The mix of tactical combat and tense exploration in confined areas works very well. Playing in ironmode with no reload is really exciting and challenging. After each mission you get some loots to upgrade your robots. There are plenty of options to upgrade your bots and make a team that suit your playing style. Most items add +/- to many different stats, and it is sometime a bit tedious to find the best set to equip your team. Although the game does a good job of immediately highlighting the + and - with green and red. The technical execution and gfx are nothing special, but does the job. The main game strength being the tactical gameplay.
Tower Defense and RPG mash up. Instead of towers you setup characters on the maps. Compared to tower defense games(TD), you usually field less characters. You start with only one character (tower) and by the end of the campaign my party had 16 characters. However you can have a larger party if you want. You cannot modify the ennemies paths like in many TD. Overall this make for limited strategies compared to TD. What the game lacks for in strategy it makes it back in the RPG area. Although you have less towers, they are actually full RPG characters that are each able to level up, upgrade and equips in various ways. Which opens for a good level of customization to suit your strategy. In the end you get much more attached to your charachters than to typical towers of TD. A nice feature is the possibility to reassign you characters skill points as the game move forward. this is really useful. Cut scenes between each level unveil the story. They are well done and funny, and really add depth to the charachters and to the campaign. Technically the game isn't impressive, nevertheless the engine and UI does a decent job at supporting the gameplay. Overall, altough the game looks like just another indie casual, it actually delivers and. I really enjoyed it, however this is not the Game Of The Year. Good value if you get a reduced price.
