Firstly, if you use more than 1 monitor, you'll have trouble with BlowOut. The default aim method is tied to the mouse, but BlowOut won't lock your cursor to the game window. Your best bet is to setup your keyboard or use antimicro to set up a controller instead. Aim control itself is kinda strange. It's based on rotating upwards or downwards on the Y axis towards a target Y position or simply flipping your character's facing direction on the X axis. Tying this type of control to the mouse can cause the character to start flipping like crazy between facing left and right at certain positions, which is another reason to prefer keyboard aiming. There's a platforming element based on a jetpack that never runs out of fuel. So, instead of jumping as you would in most platformers, you'll accelerate up to a set hight and hover there for as long as you hold the jump key. This allows you to simply hover over gaps and easily control your decent, though you must still aim for additional platforms to climb upwards. Levels are twisting, vertical mazes with fake walls that can be destroyed, keycards, gate switches, and large number of elevators. The enemies you face throughout the levels are uninspired, and they can be deadly enough to wear you down if you get distracted. Boss fights try to mix things up by having you face a monster in 2.5D. There's nothing here to really get excited about, and I understand why I've seen others give this game 2 stars or less. My higher rating is colored by childhood memories. If anything I've said makes the game sound interesting, though, maybe it's worth your time.
On the surface, Cannon Fodder is a top down shooter where your HP & power = the number of soldiers you control. Each individual soldier can be killed relatively easily, but the more you have the more bullets you can shoot in any given direction. So, until you've lost a few of your soldiers, combat can be pretty easy. The ways you can lose your soldiers are what's bothering me. I should preface this by saying the pathfinding is excruciatingly awful: if you don't take they time to manually steer your troops, they'll run into EVERYTHING. Usually this is fine: let them rub on the trees or try to swim, who cares so long as they get where they're going, right? Well, that's before the quicksand comes in. And explosives, which can take out your whole troop in one shot if placed right. And then there's the behavior I just can't explain. I've had half my platoon disappear for no apparent reason while the group is collectively rubbing against trees in a desperate attempt to move forward. I've had almost my entire group explode for no parent reason and had the game simultaneously call the mission a success when objectives should still be left to do! In one particular level, I won to the sound of every remaining enemy suddenly collectively crying out and dying offscreen! If the mazes that make up Cannon Fodder's levels were more interesting or simple to navigate, I could see myself liking it. However, with all the easy deaths, strange behavior, and finally annoying level design, I just can't recommend it.
Fight'N Rage is a bewbs and brawn beat-em-up in the Streets of Rage style, meaning there's a focus on mobs and balancing spending your health on specials when you need them. Also, there's jiggly ladies everywhere, though personally I wasn't a fan of how they were often used for quick "this guy is bad, watch him murder this girl" moments. Unlike Streets of Rage, you've got an ugly and hard to read "Ready" meter that you can spend once every few seconds on using a special move with no health cost. However, you'll most-likely end up spending health on special moves due to how Fight'N manages difficulty. As you progress through Fight'N, you'll encounter more and more enemies. You'll fight larger and larger groups, and more of the new enemies you face will have huge health pools for you to chip away at. In a better game, these encounters would always be fun to play. However, Fight'N quickly reduces the number of health items you'll have access to in a sequence while throwing in the sort of quarter-eating arcade challenges that seem guaranteed to cost you health. Enemies do alot of damage, and it can be hard to keep track of your character in a large mob. Worse, there are levels where you'll be struggling simply to keep your character from somersaulting to their own demise. The bosses, one and all, are more frustrating than interesting. Fight'N is pretty, and there are moments when fighting and juggling large groups of enemies where the game is actually fun. The resource management is a huge pain, though, and the default difficulty is too much for the average player alone. There's unlocks, but I'm into beatemups and I'm still debating whether it's worth trying to unlock whatever is burried in this knockoff mess. 3 stars is the most I can do.
Fire Warrior starts, runs, and can be closed without errors. That's the most positive thing I can say. Everything else sucks. The guns all feel weak or messed up in some way (the Bolter is so slow and has so little impact both you and the AI can dodge it at will), the enemies soak up shots while running around like idiots, the animations are terrible (the slow and tedious death animations are legendarily bad), you'll hear the same 3 lines of dialogue so often I was already sick of them after playing for only 5 minutes, every level might as well be the same brown corridor for how collectively uninteresting they are. I bought this game believing that, as a 40k fan, I could extract some fun from this mess. I was wrong.
The best thing XIII has going for it are its theme and art style. The art is inarguably stylish, and there aren't nerely enough secret agent games imo. The shooting also works. The writing is below that of the Jason Bourne and James Bond movies (I've yet to read the books), and the voice acting is laughably bad. There is no character I can point to as interesting or compelling, and that includes the main character. The gunplay is fun, but suffers from a shortage of health kits and high-damaging enemies in some areas. The shotgun, with its long reload and huge pump-action animation (it takes up literally half the screen), sucks. No gun or explosive really stood out to me as fun, overall. The stealth, even outside of the mandatory boss fights, doesn't hold up well enough to stand on its own. Enemies too often saw me through the backs of thier own heads. I very early learned to give up on the idea of completely stealthing a level unless forced to do so. Finally, the last levels of the game are a complete slog. I remember beating the game once as a kid, and I bought it to replay for nostalgia. I don't think I can stand suffering through to beat it a second time, though, when I already know the reward will be a cliffhanger. Spoiler: This game never got a sequel, so hope you don't mind unresolved plots... I won't lie and claim to've not had fun. I just can't recommend a game as problem-ridden as XII when you can't even save-scum. It's checkpoints-only, and if the checkpoints stick you in an unwinnable position you better hope you have a save for the start of the level!
For the most part, Donut County presents a laid-back puzzle that has more in common with jigsaw puzzles than something like Katamari Damacy or Islanders. In a normal stage, there is no time limit and there is no scoring at all. All you have to do is move your hole back and forth until something falls in. However, there's an odd stage here and there where an actual challenge is presented. The first time I encountered such a stage I found it to be extremely jarring when compared to all of the brainless stages that had come before. There’re even 2 boss fights for some reason. It's clear to me that Donut County could have been more arcade focused, or it could've been completely challenge-less and focused on the story. However, the Donut County we got is split between these 2 directions, and it's not better for it. On the one hand, you have the characters and the story. The story is trying for funny nonsense, and isn't particularly funny or interesting. The characters are strictly 1-note, and the twists are obvious from a mile away. The cutscenes are unskippable. On the other hand, you have gameplay that fails to change much despite a later increase in challenge. In fact, the gameplay changes so little that it becomes dull. This would be fine if the game let you veg-out, but as previously mentioned Donut County will randomly try to challenge your skills just enough to potentially shake you out of whatever stupor you may be trying to fall into. Overall, not worth it.
Hyper Light Drifter is pretty. The art is great, and so is the audio. Everything else about Hyper Light Drifter is awful. The timing of everything is so demanding you'll easily run out of health packs. You can't get more health from foes, so you're inveitably forced into situations where you have to die over and over until you can progress to the next health pack. You will get better, but then there's always something new for the jerk who designed this mess to try and smash your face into. It's exhausting. The main character of Hyper Light Drifter is already more exhausted than you. Every time you die you're forced to watch him pull himself back together through the same miserable respawn animation over and over again. Why would I want to keep playing this supid atrocity when even the main character doesn't appear to have any motivation beyond "my suffering ends if I make it to the end!!!!" It doesn't help that the controls feel terrible. There's so much nonsense in the environment to get caught on, to waste a shot accidentally shooting, to get stuck or thrown behind so you can't even see yourself. Pretty environments are no substitute for competent level design. What a waste.
Shadow Warrior 2 tries to stride the line between RPG and shooter, and the result didn't impress me. When I first started the game, I was overwhelmed by the huge numbers of weapon enhancements you get at every turn and underwhelmed by the number of weapons, spells, and enemy behaviors I encountered. The magic system in Shadow Warrior 2 wasn't what I was playing for, didn't do anything overly impressive (you can't even use the most interesting abilities on bosses), and I quickly abandoned it in favor of just shooting and stabbing. The gunplay is serviceable. To get to the real meat of the weapons you'll have to dive into the enhancement system. However, there are enhancements that are objectively better than others, so you'll constantly be going over your weapons to make sure you've got the best options installed. It was only after a few hours of play that I finally got into it; before then, I was considering dropping the game entirely thanks to repeated deaths. If you want to survive, you have to upgrade. The main story of the game is serviceable, and the characters are fun. However, the side missions are often devoid of much character, and go on for way too long. I quickly game up trying to complete them. Finally, the foes remained fairly dull. Many are bullet sponges, and many just run straight at you. More interesting foes appeared later in the game, and you unlock better tools later in the game to make killing enemies fun. Still, it's the weapons that make this game more than the foes. Shadow Warrior 2 is a decent bargain-bin grab. If you're hurting for a shooter, or you want to swing a sword just like you did in the 2013 Shadow Warrior remake, this game will work.
