The game doesn't prompt input commands and you get stuck in limbo since the training stage. Also tried to contact both developers AND publisher, no response ever in months. Absolutely irresponsible to dump the game on the store in such a state. I hope either the devs/publisher fix this (most preferred solution) or gog themselves issue refunds, because this game just doesn't work !
A great arcade racer that some may call "The Spiritual Successor of Rollcage", but is more appropriate to define as a different take on it. You drive what could be described as "powerful supersonic tanks" that can travel on any surface and at any degree angle while shooting eachother with an arsenal of missiles and other weapons. The game features different game modes like the standard vanilla race and campaign with preset events, or the "speed demon" race with only booster powerups to name a few, and if you ever feel like spicing things up, there are "modificators" such as "insta-kill" or "hyperdrive" as well to create your own custom races and events. The tracks are divided in four main themes that could be summarized as: Desert, Snow, Artificial, and Seaside Woods. While it might look like there is a lack of variety, the tracks themselves all have a different take on the formula, sometimes being on a "plain" field, sometimes twisting and spinning around with loops and upside-down paths, and sometimes even shifting from a snowy road to the inside of a volcano, or from a seaside to an underwater tunnel. The only two issues with the game are the janky physics and cheatsy AI. To put it simple, the physics in this game are unpredictable, the kind that you can hit a barrel and have a chance to either send it to the moon or have your car trip over it (I'm not kidding). As for the AI, raising the difficulty turns the races from a 10 Vs 10 into a 1 Vs 10, because the opponent cars will all focus their attacks on you regardless of how many other racers might be on their sight. Overall, this is one of the most fun Sci-Fi racers out there. The races are intense, the tracks are fun to drive thorough, the vehicles are powerful monsters, and hitting enemies with missiles always feels great.
After "Ace-ing" the game, one part of me loves it but the other part hates it. The Love: -Simple and solid flight mechanic, you can go anywhere on the screen and perform stunts and tricks that defy any logic or physics. -The designs, a very simple and beautyful post-modern style even in the chaos of an air battle. -A wide variety of weapons and upgrades, from the standard jet boosters and homing missiles up to gun modules and railguns. -The soundtrack, top notch and perfectly fitting the "aerial combat" theme of the game. -The arcade mode, a roguelite endless with the simple goal of shooting down as many enemies you can, and considering the massive disappointment of Luftrausers being "broken" I'm glad to announce that game is now officially dead (I wish I could talk more in detail about this gamemode, is so good). -How it implements the story with gameplay elements. If you don't know about "Zeroranger", the negative reviews on Steam all mention one particular element, and Jet Lancer "does it right" ! The Hate: -The scoring system. If you are going for high scores the game will artificially force you in a very specific playstyle consisting in a very specific weapons loadout, and rely on an AI that "doesn't know what to do" in order to activate bonuses and buffs that you NEED to get a high score. Enemy planes randomly fly around, ignore the player, sometimes even crash on the ground, and attack whenever they feel like by shooting in your general direction without actually aiming even when you stay still, all while on a time constraint. Basically if you are going for completion "you cannot get a max rank until the game decides to behave in a certain way", and this also includes enemies and objectives spawns as well. Is the game good ? Yes, is definitely a good, fun, solid, and addicting shooter with both campaign and endless-roguelite arcade mode. However, bare in mind that going for completion is a truly maddening experience, "hard for the wrong reasons" so to say.
This is a "console game ported on PC", which wouldn't be bad on it's own if done propely, but sadly this is not the case. The game itself is not bad, is a classic top-down roguelite shooter with a twist: the stages are "planets" you walk onto, so while there are physical barriers like walls and pits, there are no real "boundaries", and you can keep moving all around without hitting the end of the scenery, and that's interesting to see. However, being the PC port of a console game there are some tecnical aspects that combined together make the experience unbareable, unless you have a lot of freetime on your hands. To begin with, there is no windowed mode, the game only runs on fullscreen. Secondly, changing the resolution barely does anything, and the graphics options menu itself freezes for several seconds whenever you change the resolution, sometimes even forgetting to apply the changes. Honestly, these tecnicalities wouldn't be too bad if the game would at least be relatively short or if you can stop and continue later, but is a long game that doesn't ever let you stop and continue later, so the moment you start it up, you better make sure to have nothing else to do for AT LEAST 30 minutes. Now, combine all of this together and you have console game that would addmitedly work well "where it is originally made for", but on PC demands all of your attention forcing itself on the entirety of your screen nonstop for as long as you plan to play it. I'd give this game a 3 stars because it's an alright top-down roguelite shooter on it's own, but I'm personally out of patience for badly ported console games, so I'm gonna give it a 2 and say "get it on discount" if you REALLY want it.
This game is the equivalent of replacing the usual RPG characters and perks with spaceships and equipments... the result works pretty well ! The Story mode is very solid, not too short, not too long, mostly comedic with some dramatic elements, a bunch of references to other games and medias, and lots of "bonuses" to get and change (a lil bit) the story everytime. The amount of ships and equipments to can choose and combine is staggering, from the traditional fighterjets with laserbeams, to gunships with missiles, up to gladiators with flails, and if you consider the game enemies and allies are randomly generated this also gives an endless number of possible encounters. Aside from the Story there are plenty of other game modes to choose, from the more traditional deathmatch and wave survival, to the less common percint assault and "zombie" survival, up to a MOBA mode. The maps and backgrounds might be a bit repetitive, but it's the "few but good" kind, not much else to say other than each fits the tone and atmosphere of the various gamemodes and Story missions as you play thorough. The game has only two real issues: First, it seems to be optimized to play with a gamepad due to how the "abilities" are triggered, but it feels like it BEGS to be played on mouse and keyboard due to the movement/fire accuracy required by the game speed. Second, the game difficulty is less of a challenge and more of a test of patience. All you do by increasing the difficulty setting is potentially turn the puniest enemy into a massive pushover that can melt your ship no matter the "build". In conclusion, a solid space shooter with RPG elements and lots of content. Increasing the game difficulty might not lead to fun challenge, but there is an ocean of options to make up for it and give you a new experience everytime.
I played and reviewed “Wonder Boy: the Dragon's Trap” before and I'm glad to say they updated the controls, which were a major complain of mine in the previous title. Now your character jumps, runs, and uses abilities effectively enough to be on par with the enemies and hazards in the game, sometimes even better. Not only your character feels great to maneuver, but also has a huge array of abilities and equipments to use, giving the game a lot of variety and customizations. Sadly the gameplay itself turns the many options from pointless to an outright hindering. Not only the unavoidable hazards and problematic hitboxes from the previous title have not been improved, but the game itself for the most part is overly cryptic and extremely picky with it's biggest elements: puzzles and secrets. The game only explains the basic mechanics and then either expects the player to find out everything else by himself without giving any clue (X has effect on Y but no indication it does so), willingly omits important information (use X on Y but no indication Y even exists), or outright changes its own rules for the sake of difficulty (Use X when you see Y, and later you must use X but there is no Y), sometimes even going against the events of it's own story (the character forgets he has X item to solve the situation easily). All of this while leaving no option to tackle anything outside combat with very specific combinations of (upgraded) items and/or abilities. Also, this game got REALLY carried away with fake walls. Overall, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is a big improvement of Wonder Boy: the Dragon's Trap in terms of controls and pacing, but still suffers of the same issues with hitboxes and cheapshots while also failing to give important informations and clues required in order to progress at all. Not really a bad game, but still far from being actually good.
An original take on the Beat'em up formula which adds a time attack, RPG elements, and movement/speed based mechanics into the mix. The characters are all cool and likeable and each with it's own playstyle you can combine and modify with equippable items to make your ideal tag team. Hitting and smashing thorough opponents feels great and satisfying especially when you gain momentum, increasing your damage output and knocking away anything in your path stunning the enemies and turning the props into deadly projectiles. The artstyle and animation are amazing, so much so it makes you feel like this game should have it's own TV show, moreso when the story itself feels like from an old Saturday morning cartoon. The only big issue with the game is the reward system: Randomized rewards that don't seem to improve much with your score, no indication where to get what, and a poultry amount of coins to spend in an item shop that is outrageousely expensive, and for no good reason if you consider that you can get better items for free just by completing the stages themselves. I'm not joking when I say I finished with gold medals without EVER spending a cent in the shop, not because I didn't need it but because of the prices. On a tecnical aspect the game is great and addicting fun to play, is just a bit of a shame the reward system is so bad it can kill off any will to try and unlock everything once you beat the last stage (unless you want some "bragging rights" platinum medals). Still, a fun and addicting game, but you might want to get it on sale. Also, I'd give it a 4/5 if not for the fact some items are missing their icons, giving me the impression this game didn't receive much playtesting before relase.
I only played the game for one night, after which it kept "stalling" everytime on startup, right after the devs/publisher logo, no matter if i run as admin, disable other programs, or turn off and restart the machine as people say on the Steam forums. The game has also some serious controller issues which can be seemingly only be fixed with the "Steam overlay"... but oh, right, there is no Steam overlay on gog. It's almost as if the publishers have dumped this game on gog without bothering to fix it for it beforehand. It's really a shame, from what i experienced before it broke, the game is actually pretty good and fun to play.
When big publishers drop the ball, indie devs come to pick it up. The game features a large amount of tracks that curve, twist, and spin through many different environments ranging from the desert, open space, and many more up to alien planets. Even more, the environments themselves are divided into different settings that can even feature some kind of transition from one to another as you race thorough. There aren't as many racers as in F-Zero or Wipeout, but there are still a good amount, each with its own different stats and designs, which give a unique take on the idea of futuristic racing for eachone. Sometimes even referencing other sci-fi works such as Star Wars, or Wipeout and F-Zero themselves as may be the case. While the racers can use upgrades like speed boosters and harder hulls, it also feels like only two or three of these are really useful, while everything else is either very situational or outright pointless. The racers control good enough for the most, and while this is no Wipeout or F-Zero, it does require some pratice to get used to the game physics, but it sure doesen't feel too hard to learn. The game also has a large (maybe even too large, IMO) Campaign mode, featuring events such as traditional races against opponents or time attack, and special ones like Score, Arena, Speed, and many more. To me, this game only has two real issues. The first being the inconsistent difficulty of the campaign events, which wildly fluctuates between either too easy or too difficult with no in-betweens (this also due to the opponents AI seemingly either too good or too inept). The second, some of the tracks having some really confusing designs, to the point that sometimes is impossible to understand when there is going to be a curve, or worse, a jump (jumps are really bad in this game too). Overall, this is a great game for all the sci-fi racers fans. I gave it a 4 stars, but consider my vote a 4.5, not perfect but nearly so.
