Pretty pixel art, good voice acting and interesting storyline makes this a rather good point and click adventure game that is certainly worth your time if you like Point-n-Click adventures. Personally I'm not that great at PnC games, and had to use a guide a couple of times over the course of the game. It is also very fair about warning you to save when you're in a screen you might die in. And it's got to have the most different lines describing rocks that I've heard. My main gripes with the game are that the screen is non-resizable. It's a windowed game and maximizing or dragging it will not make a difference. And there were a few too many places I got stumped only to find there was something I'd missed was interactable, or that had you use an unexpected verb to progress, though that's pretty much par for the course for many adventure games. Other than that, great little adventure game which is better than most I've played, but doesn't quite reach the greatest tier, in my opinion.
(Note, I'm only about halfway through the game at time of writing) Game looks like a platformer, has a wonderful whimsical feeling to it. But don't be fooled to thinking this is a platformer. Instead it is a fairly easy exploration game in which you don't so much platform, as you spend time trying to build a trail to where you want to go. There are light puzzle elements with which colour to build a trail and how to get to a place you want to go, but not something leaving you scratching your head. If you just want a vibrant, whimsical exploration game where you'll be thinking more about the landscape than how to jump somewhere, you will likely enjoy this game. There are elements that feel very inspired by Super Mario Galaxy in style and colour palette. But unlike the plumber's usual adventures, this is a lot more relaxed affair, for better and worse. I would've liked a bit more challenge, might show up in later levels, and maybe a bit better camera for getting the lay of the land, but other than that, this is a great game to put on when you just want an explosion of colour to relax in without too much challenge.
I was ready to give this 3 stars until the last part of the game. It started out great, fun concept, cute simple puzzles and interesting looking world. Then...more of the simple puzzles, and a lot of doing the same rote thing over and over with slightly different story bits tying them together. I got close to just abandoning the game. In the end though, the last chapters leans heavily into storytelling again and concludes with a heartwarming tale. If you want to play this for gameplay, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you want a story, this might be down your alley. Just, save yourself the trouble and don't go around trying to do everything, you'll get tired of scrounging materials and fixing the same kind of issue over and over. A lot of the game is very much copy pasted. But go for the main objective and you'll find an enjoyable, if very simple story.
The game itself looks nice and colourful in screenshots, but the vibrance loses some of its shine once you start seeing it in action. At its core, it is a twin stick shooter, with the twist that you can mix and match abilities from 3 classes by assigning them to your four distinct attack buttons. Very nifty, right? It would be, if not for the fact that most everything just felt like it had too many hit points, which dragged the entire game down from something that could be a fun romp into something a bit more treacle like. It is kind of foreboding, when you find you need a good second focus fire on a standard crate before it blows up to show the goodies inside. This is with any of the 3 classes' base weapon. Sure you can get more powerful abilities, which require mana to power, and still feel kind of underpowered. Hitting enemies doesn't even provide much in the way of feedback/knockback, so you're not even pushing charging enemies back or anything. Apart from that the game looks fine I guess, but with a lot less personality than I would've liked. There are some nice hidden areas you can go find through jumping puzzles, but again considering the speed of movement, it just becomes a chore quickly. So in all, maybe on Easy mode the game might be fun to play, but on Normal it is a painful experience. And I could imagine the only difference to hard would be to increase everything's hit points. (Also, shout out to the development team which shipped the folder "Trifox_BackUpThisFolder_ButDontShipItWithYourGame" making the game take up 1.2 gb additional space. Maybe they did it to get the file size to scale with the hit points?)
This game feels like a classic Genesis era shooter game. Short run and jump levels which do not carry too much danger, and rather challenging but fun boss encounters with fun quips between you and the bosses. Smooth fun gameplay and great music and graphics that seem to hit the intended style very well. An easy recommend for anyone who likes boss fights in over the top pixel art platformers. If you don't much enjoy boss fights or Genesis style platformers, this probably won't do too much to win you over. The game is a bit short (5x4 stages, each taking 2-6 minutes per stage if you know what you're doing). So if you want a longer challenge, be ready to go for time attack or harder difficulties. Also some of the boss fights end up being a bit of a mess with enemies or projectiles all over the place. You either need to get lucky, or know how to manipulate where the boss will shoot to not end up with a random salad of carnage. Hats off to anyone who can one-shot this on the hardest difficulty.
Great little point and click adventure game. Not too long or too complex, though there were one or two puzzles that seemed a bit confusing. The big pixels work well to show an idea of what is there, while leaving plenty of dread for your imagination to fill in. The game is split into 4 chapters, neither of which are too long, but each still managing to slowly ratchet up a slight sense of unease before reaching the finale of the chapter. My only real issue with the game is, that the walking pace is slow. It does serve its purpose at times to have you feel that essential sense of dread. But when walking back and forth trying to find something you forgot, it does make the game a bit slower than desired to play. In all, a good game for point and click horror lovers. Even if it is a bit short.
Red Dead Redemption had lots of good character moments where you'd just ride or along and talk. So does this...too bad they never had characters that were interesting or good writing to go with it. But they've got this huge world with lots of small houses and stuff... Too bad there's not really anything interesting to find, and even scavenging parts is just for crafting components you have a low limit on, making any exploration a waste of time. Bikes are cool, yeah? Sure they are, wish the bike felt good or fun to ride. And you'll be doing a lot of it too. Strong story then, right? Weelll...there is one, very very slow and protracted. 27 hours in I decided I didn't care enough about it to stick with the slow travelling back and forth, conversations without anything interesting going on. Repeated missions of "Sneak in here, kill the marauders" or slowly following a trail. That's most of the tedium and bad stuff out of the way. I stuck with the game for 27 hours because honestly, the gunplay feels good. The zombies move unpredictably enough that they're not a pushover. And a huge horde coming your way is genuinely scarey. The world is very pretty too and just nice to look at. The stealth works well enough even if it just feels like Asassins Creed all over again. And there's the rub. If the mechanics were not fun to play with, this would be a 2 star game for me. As it is, it's serviceable. But the pacing and lack of strong characters has just made me run out of being able to care when there's plenty of games which does gameplay as well or better, but with a better setting. Get it, if you want to just have a wander around a pretty world with zombies. Otherwise, your time could be so much better spent elsewhere.
Yahtzee said of Bioshock 1 compared to System Shock 2 that "it just feels like a kick in the balls. A very pretty and exceedingly well executed kick in the balls with the best of intentions. But at the end of the day you're still walking funny" Well that is applicable for Bioshock Infinite compared to Bioshock 1 as well. The game has been simplified even further and is now just a ho-hum FPS game with middling to bad gunplay feel. The setting is nice though, bright and vibrant and still looks quite good. The storyline tries to seem deep but just comes off as random complexity for the sake of being "Deep" And the world is now even more of a straight corridor than Bioshock, leaving few and unrewarding options for exploration. In all the main game would've gotten a 2,5 star review from me. There's so much better you can play out there. The Burial at Sea DLC however saves a lot. Rapture just looks more interesting to visit. The first episode now lets you carry more than 2 weapons and the story moves at a decent clip. The second episode focuses a lot more on stealth and exploration, and was actually fun and challenging to play through. The two DLC tie Infinite fairly well together with Bioshock 1 as well. So in all something that would've been a 2 star score becomes a 3 star score on the back of the DLC. Good save, of a mediocre to bad main game.
Great flow action game which totally feels like how nostalgia wants you to remember arcade machines, drenched in beautiful pixel art and 80s neon aesthetic. When you know what you're doing, the game flows perfectly and you feel like you're an awesome badass cleaning up the seedier parts of town. When you don't know what you're doing, it sometimes feels cheap and slightly infuriating, but thankfully checkpoints are close enough by (on Normal at least), and you're back in the action quickly enough. All bosses have their own personality both in the stage and fight wise. And at least for me, they were no pushover...until you learned their pattern, at which point you could start feeling awesome blowing them away, while their attacks miss. Add multiple difficulty levels. And 3 optional objectives per level and you've got something you could spend a whole lot of time on, if you're the kind to hunt those medals down. I took around 5½ hour to finish the game, leaving much behind to go back and clean up. Overall, great game
Only a bit over 2 hours in at time of writing. But the game is pretty much Cryptark in 3D. Roguelike randomly generated starships populated with several systems, which, when destroyed, will affect the difficulty (Disable turrets, stop spawning of more enemies, remove shielding of a core system etc.) The action is fast and fun, but rush at your own peril, as the enemies can and will blend in with the backgrounds and seem to sneak up on you if you don't move in with a slight bit of care. A large set of weapons and 4 different fire buttons makes some versatility in the builds. And the random spawning of weapons means your runs has incentive to switch up weapons, though you can always buy your favourite between missions if you have the money. My biggest problem at present is, the graphics can be a bit hard to read at time, along with some of the visual effects which make the game kind of hard to read at times. At 2 hours I'm still having fun, but as with most roguelikes, the game could fall into the trap of becoming repetetive and samey too quickly. I know Cryptark got a bit rote, but certainly a good translation to 3D
