Thanks to this game, I’ve learned that I suck at poker. Anyway, it isn’t the poker that has me coming back to this game. It’s the characters. Thanks to the amount of dialog each has, as well as it all being cleverly written, makes it feel almost like you’re playing against people with lives rather than CPUs. They are also unrelenting: either you’re good at poker or you learn to get good. No easing into the game here. But then again, I guessing the assumption was that people buying a poker game would know how to play poker in the first place, so I guess there would be no real reason to teach the game.
Oh...Sir!! The Insult Simulator could’ve been an excellent game, if it weren’t for the fact it contains so little. The litany of insults is sparse. There’s a lack of characters, one of which is locked behind online multiplayer mode, which is emptier than the head of the CPU. The scoring is wonky: supposed “weaknesses” can do less damage than normal insults, and character specific insults almost add no damage (though they’re supposed to be more powerful than normal insults). It’s odd to see the potential greatness of a game just not manifest. It wasn’t meant to be a serious contender in the online multiplayer market, but more attention from its creators and the game could’ve seen a nice little following happen.
Door Kickers is fun, and even more fun with a partner. If you like 2D side scrolling shooters, there’s almost no reason not to get this game, at least when it’s on sale. That being said, this game isn’t without problems. The leveling system: all the characters cap at level 17, which is nowhere enough to max out all the skills for any of them. If you’re used to being able to max out skills, it’s annoying and while you can respec, it feels like it would’ve made more sense to let us level a little more. Zombie Invasion Mode: doesn’t add all that much to the game. It’s the same levels as the main game, just with a few zombies. Oh, and a few portals to close. It makes getting three stars impossible, however, as zombies will break through doors and kill hostages. This is an easy solve, however: just play the regular level. The stars carry over. Secret Donuts: I’m not sure why they added hidden donuts to the game, other than to have extra achievements. It’s like the opposite problem of the leveling system. You can be a completionist, but have nothing to show for it. The minor nitpick that doesn’t hurt the game but annoys me anyway: there’s one star left over after unlocking everything. One. Damn. Star. We can overdo the stars but can’t level up past 17, which is such an odd number to stop on. This will forever annoy me.
This is straight forward game: kill the bad guys and fight the odd big boss. It’s not a game that takes itself too seriously, which both helps and hurts this game. The “Bros” are over-the-top: one moment, you’re Agent J, then Dirty Harry, and then Predator. Every Bro has a basic attack and a special and changes every time you pick up an extra life. This is the first flaw: while every Bro is good for fighting normal enemies, only a handful are any good for bosses. And given you have no choice over what Bro you have, you may have a few runs where you get stuck with terrible Bros and you’ll just end up dying. And given you’ll want extra lives, you may start a boss fight with a good Bro, but may have only one life, forcing you to choose between keeping the Bro you have and hoping you don’t die or picking up the extra life and getting a Bro that isn’t suited for bosses. Pretty much everything is destructible. You can blast your way through the ground and walls to reach or avoid enemies. Normally not a problem, but I ran into a few incidents where too much ground was destroyed and I couldn’t reach the next part of the level, ending my runs, as there’s only three Bros that can jump higher than the others. But the biggest frustration I had was with a few mini-bosses. A few are more or less satanic copies of earlier mini-bosses. A bit of a spoiler: the mini-boss that actually hurt this one for me was two worm-like mini-bosses. They fire what amounts to rapid-fire homing skulls that destroy any cover you may have had (while tracking you almost perfectly). Now, you can knock them out of the sky, but as they come from both sides, you have to jump around, while both these worms keep spitting out these skulls. But this isn’t the only attack: they spit acid that covers half of the field. It’s not impossible, as I beat the game, but I rage quit a few times because of it. Overall, this game is fun, but I’m not sure if I would keep coming back.
This game combines a few of my favorite elements: 2D pixel graphics, zombies, and re-playability. The concept is also very simple: raid maps and don’t die. There’s no special reward for killing zombies save for a few unlockable items, so the mission is raid as fast as you can. Like other rougelite games, there’s a lot of randomness. You have some control of characters, as you direct them where they’re going, and the ability to aim in a general direction, but except for focusing on some big targets, it isn’t all that useful. Like a real zombie apocalypse, you do what you can with what you got. The main “issue” with the game is it’s near impossible to beat. The game ramps the danger quick. It isn’t a gradual increase in danger, but a big jump: danger level 1 becomes 6, 6 becomes 13, and so on. There are ways to decrease the level, but they don’t happen often or reduce the level enough. Level increases often spawn new enemies, some extremely dangerous. I’ve made it to the last level several times, but I’ve never made it past two rooms. Because of the random nature, sometimes you never get the chance to progress far. I’ve had one or two runs where I never encountered the levels I needed to advance to the last stage. Still, I can’t say it’s not fun. I’ve died a lot in this game and I’m still itching to go back.
This game couldn’t be easier to play. Click left or right. Sometimes click fast to win a duel. But that’s it. Your power-ups trigger on their own as they build up. Yet you will lose. More often than you think. Let’s knock the only negative out of the way here: that power-up thing above. They will trigger when you least want them to. Oh, your power-up that wipes all the enemies out on one side? That’ll go off just when there’s only one enemy to kill, which feels wasted. But this isn’t all that bad, as there’s so many unique power-ups. You’ll be mopping the floor with your enemies. The game starts easy. There are only a few baddies and no one is rushing you. But the game has an interesting mechanic: the better you do, the faster the game goes. When there’s few people to deal with, this won’t matter a lot. However, this will change: levels soon have 200-300+ people to beat. Some levels have over 1000. The game also has various game modes. Some limit how far you can see, others how far you can hit, and yet others require you to kill enemies in a certain way. This gets a little limited after you beat the main maps, however, as levels are randomly generated afterwards. But you can always go back to the map if you want to replay certain modes. This isn’t a game you play for hours on end, yet it works. And the simple mechanics means almost anyone can play.
For the first little while, the Army Men games were your typical war games: yeah, you’re a plastic army man, but other than being one color and breaking like, well, plastic toys, that was about it in difference. It really started picking up when Sarge became the incarnation he is in this game. Out of all the Army Men games, this is the only one that gave me the sense that I was a little plastic toy. Blades of grass might as well be towering trees, bugs can be a threat, and even other toys have become weaponized. It really feel like little armies fighting for control of a single house. Sometimes, the missions are a little unforgiving. I had a hard time beating some levels the first time through, but finish a game before cheating. It’s possible, don’t worry! But even after I beat the game and cheated, it shocked me how long some levels took. I’d send 25 helicopters to attack a target, and sometimes I’d lose all of them before getting through the defenses. Which is a testament to the strategy you need to play this game. It’s very hard to win on brute force alone. Strategy is more the way to go. Another problem is that if a battle drags on for too long, you will run out of resources. Outside of cheat codes, if there’s no more resources to mine, you can only get more from killing enemies and, even then, you only get some plastic back, and nothing else. It looks like enemy can run out, but I either lost or restarted before figuring it out for sure. And then there are a few levels that aren’t RTS levels at all, but you leading a squad to do something, often escaping. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t as fun or interesting as the other levels.
This game is perhaps the most realistic for zombie games. Because odds are, you’ll have no clue what’s going on and will die within a week. I’ve never played a game quite like this, so I started on easy mode. There’s no goal, just keep going until you die. You get one survivor and look for more, while also making sure your home doesn’t get broken into and you make enough supplies to keep everyone alive. If you think it sounds like a lot for one person, you’re right. If you’re lucky, a survivor will find you, but that won’t always happen. You’ll be stuck by yourself, trying to juggle everything. Even if you find other survivors, don’t expect them to last long. You need to scout out different locations and gather supplies, but you have to leave one person home, otherwise you might not have a home to come to. This makes the game hard, because even with one person securing the house and the other looking for more people to help, they could die along the way, losing anything they might have carried with them. This happens. A lot. Even having more people help doesn’t mean much: I’ve lost multiple survivors in locations that had one or two zombies. And you’re never sure why you lost them. Was it clear? Was it not? Or did they just wander off? As others have pointed out, the zombie hoards can grow big, quick. I did a patrol and found four zombies. Two hours later (in-game), there was 30. And they ate one of my guys. This game is unforgiving. I could have sworn I put more time into this game than I did because of how many new games I’ve started, including one where I did within the first hour because there was an alleged survivor right next door, so my action was to investigate. And I died. I’ve must have done six or seven new games by now, and I’ve only played for a collective 15 minutes at this point. I never live more than a few days. Despite all this, I like the challenge. It’s a little clunky, and it doesn’t hold my attention long, but it’s fun and worth the money.
This game reminded me very much of Planescape: Torment, so I was excited to give it a shot. And I’d love to tell you how my experience went. Except I couldn’t get out of the first room. You’re strapped to a bed, waiting for a machine to rip a baby out of you. I clicked everywhere to escape. I even picked up a scalpel. I waited for the robot thing to walk near me and click on it with the scalpel in hand. Nothing. Nothing was happening. I don’t know how long this went on for, but eventually I died. Tried again. Same thing. Now, I never been one for puzzle games, so maybe there was something I was missing, despite clicking on everything. Maybe there was a certain order I was supposed to go in. Don’t know. There’s no hint what to do, other than escape the bed. Maybe it had something to do with timing? Again, no idea. But dying twice in the same spot didn’t endear this game to me.
This is a bright, colorful “upgrade” game: buy better stuff, level up your spies. The higher their stats, the better they do in mission. There’s four stats your spies have. Those stats correspond to actions during a mission. Enemies will either be weak, resistant, or immune to these stats. Should be simple: use the spy with the best stats. But that isn’t how it always plays out. One mission required the use of Charm, Stealth, and an enemy that had three “X” spots. I chose my spy with high Stealth and Charm and was a level higher than the enemies. The risk assessment? “Extreme Risk.” Made little sense, so I went into the mission. The first enemy was weak against Charm, so my spy gets to Charming and… “It’s not very effective.” Strange. Next enemy. Weak against Stealth. Great. Spy has better Steath than Charm. Goes into battle and… “It’s not very effective.” Two in a row where I used weaknesses against enemies and somehow was the wrong choice. I haven’t failed yet, though. If I can get through the last enemy, I’ll win. This enemy has three “X” spots. Anything should work. Also, everything I’ve ever used against this enemy always came up as “It’s effective!” I don’t think I need to finish the story for you to guess what happened. There’re a few explanations for this. One could be that, despite using their weaknesses, they had higher stats than my spy. Hard to say, as we never see what the enemy stats are, or if they have any. Another could be that all of a spy’s stats contribute to the mission, even if they aren’t using it. Again, hard to say. While the spy had low Fight and Intelligence, nothing is suggested that they’d play a role in the mission. Recruiting your first spy, the game recommends focusing on their strongest stat. A stranger quirk of the game is requiring a class type, such as Fighter, then have none of the enemies have Fighting as a weakness. I think this is a way to force you to use items to boost your spy, but it’s more annoying than fun.
