SR3 is by far the best in the series for me. 2 has a more .. um grounded story .. but overall comes across as a GTA clone. 4 is way out there and almost a completely different type of game. 3 is in the Goldilocks zone. It's grounded enough that things mostly make sense but has lots of fun characters and most importantly crazy action. I came to SR3 for the first time just after giving up on GTA4. by that time GTA had gotten too "realistic" you walked slow, it took hours to even get a single house with a garage and even then GTA garages just let you keep one car till you blow it up. Weapons were boring and overall it felt that the game was doing all it could to keep me from actually having any fun in my city sandbox. Jump into SR3 and it's the complete opposite. There's an array of great weapons and great upgrades, the garage not only stores as many cars as you want you can retrieve them over and over. Great for actually using that fun car and for collecting them. In every way GTA feels like it tries to keep you from having fun SR3 says "why not? have fun, go tear up the town!".
Gat Out of hell is basically SR4 (super powers and all) but stripped down to just a sandbox world with a bunch of the sidequest/deed type things to do. It's not terrible but lacks any real story missions or depth, which is a shame since there are some fun weapons and some cool designs. The pacing is a bit weird , I'm not sure what triggers the main quest segments and i beat the game long before I did most of the activities. All in all it comes across as a pretty weak entry but if you want some Saints Row type action without any of the overhead you can fire this bad-boy up, kill a few hours, and satiate your need for mayhem.
Rebel Galaxy is a pretty good game , if you're looking for a Privateer/Freelamcer kinda experience it's worth a go. The soundtrack is solid, graphics decent. The action is satisfying enough for most of the game. Occasionally the "locked into 2d plane" can be annoying since NPC ships can sometimes fly above or below you in a way that makes them hard to target but overall isn't to huge a detraction. Where the game does suffer is that it stagnates a bit in the late game and lacks variety in areas like weapons. Afetr a while you will settle into a combat pattern where you will fire off your broadsides, blowing away the enemy and battles can feel pretty much the same from one to the next. Also really there are a small number of weapons, while you get upgrades that do a bit more damage in the end it kinda levels out so really just pick one of the categories and stick with it (like beams or one of the projectile weapons)
Overall the game is atmospheric and can be pretty scary but overall i've found that this entire genre is not for me. Like the Amnesia series you get by in Outlast by running and hiding from monstrosities. While it can be exhilarating hiding in a locker watching an abomination go by it can also be annoying especially when you must blindly run around hoping to get away. Overall I've found i prefer games where you can face your fears. and then shoot them in the face. But if you find immersion in a more helpless experience Outlast should scratch that itch for you.
Overall Cuphead is a pretty decent game but it's deeper appeal might only be for a specific type of player. The game is 90% a boss rush, each level is just beating the boss. There are 2 types of battles, "on foot" where you use the normal weapons you bought and a Shmup type where you fly a plane. Generally I preferred the former. The Good: The aesthetic is phenomenal, the bosses are creative, the style is wonderful. The controls are tight the action is fairly difficult. if you want A or S rank everywhere it will take a lot of patience and practice. The Not So Good: Sometimes the graphics hurt the game, sometimes it's hard to tell if something will hit you or not, some bosses get way easier when you realize something can't hurt you. Annoying sound, while often appropriate are a bit over-the-top and some bosses have really annoying sounds, the fight announcer gets old almost immediately. A few times i just played the game with the sound off. No real indication of hurting the boss. some bosses you just can't miss so it becomes just a waiting game. there is no health meter so I can't really tell how much damage I'm doing, bosses don't flinch or react to hits, and no real indicators that I'm close to winning. they don't turn red or anything and at the final attack stage sometimes it just feels like you sit there and dodge until "KOCKOUT" appears. the fight would feel more engaging if i had a real sense of doing damage. a few bosses you pretty much always hit, you could take the weapons away and just have a timer when you win and the fight would feel exactly the same. Some obstacles and attack feel less interesting and more like people sat down and said "what would make this harder without really adding value or interest" Lots of randomness, if you liked challenges like Super Meat Boy you might hate this game since you can't rely on fully consistent execution. sometimes you can get badly snookered without feeling like you did anything wrong or even seeing a way you could have gotten out without taking a hit. Some attacks are vastly easier to dodge than others so which attack the boss pulls out can also hugely impact the fight. often luck feels like more of a component than it should Neutral : not bad per-se but there's no real strength progression. All the weapons are balanced and though you buy upgrades you never really get powerful. The first two upgrades you buy could easily take you through the whole game.
I had the misfortune to play NMS back at v 1.0 Recently I played at 2.0 hearing they had mad a lot of improvements. While i can say the devs have worked a lot to add content the game still fails tor eally hit home. At 2.0 the game was very buggy and not like "it crashed" buggy but more like "that game feature is completely broken" buggy. Everything from certain elements being un-minable to storage containers being unusable or base items not installing properly. Really basic "did you even test this at all before release" kinda stuff. As for the gameplay. it's like they had all these great ideas then do everything they can to make them tedious or boring. at each step you'll find grind instead of gameplay and throughout most of the game the greatest antagonist will be the number of inventory slots you have. Overall at 2.0 + i can say there is more game there than before, and i have to admint NMS does offers a unique experience but the game still feels incomplete and empty. a mishmash of gameplay elements with nothing that feels well fleshed out. still listed at $60 it's insanely over priced. This is a $10-15 game tops.
Risen is a pretty fun RPG, it has some good with some bad a bit of ugly: The good: Open world action, some interesting characters, all fully voice acted. The graphics are decent enough , nothing super great but they aren't distracting . most of the writing is pretty good and it's nice that all the "supposed" antagonists aren't one dimensionally evil The Bad: The game can start a bit slow then very rapidly your power will plateau. Most of my time int he game was spent in chapter 1 and 2. Combat is pretty meh. It seems like it should be nice, you have parrying and side steps and lateral blows. In the end none of the melee really works out that well and while magic is much better it's pretty lack luster. 3 different projectiles. you will beat the game probably < level 30 so you can really only max one or 2 skills. The ugly: Interaction with the landscape is laughably bad. There are tons of places you will get stuck in walls or on rocks in trees or bushes. If you run off a cliff you will "jump" down invisible stairs until you land, taking no damage. if you need to jump up a ledge in a cave *SAVE* sometimes it would take 5-10 restarts before i could get lucky and not literally jump through the ceiling and get stuck. Overall: not a bad RPG, i'd give it a solid "C" nothing too notable but nothing too terrible (other than getting stuck in walls)
I like 'Privateer" type games and am always on the lookout for more of that genre. Windward looks nice but overall falls flat into boredom and has a terrible difficulty curve. You start by generating a random world and picking a faction. factions don't mean much and really just determine a small bonus (like getting a type of ship cheaper) as far as i saw there are only a few types of ship. while there is a decent amount of equipment most is kinda same-ish with better numbers (many have only subtle influence ) At first the game is pretty chill, you sail around, do some simple transport missions, maybe a pirate comes in and you kill it. You have random 'allies' that help you. finally you feel confident to go over a sector to more dangerous waters. First real task is to take over the sector, this means taking all ports from the pirates. And this becomes the dominant task as you move one. once you own a sector running missions is dull so you move forward to take another sector. Unfortunately taking over a sector becomes tedious, by my 3rd sector it was so hard to even get a foothold, Ports will generate a new pirate ship every 30-40 seconds so by the time i killed one ship (of the 4 attacking me) another pops out. even as you slowly take over half the towns you repeatedly have to re-take old towns over and over as well as stationary guns on the shore as you cannot be everywhere and it's easy for a stray pirate to take your town. also towns will not sell you weapons until you clear out the pirates so getting better equipment is harder in the high level sectors. Overall i played a few hours and was bored.
KR0 is kind of a weird "Game" it's not really an adventure game per se , you won't need to solve many puzzles, it's more of an interactive story, it branches some but seems to follow a general inevitable course. The writing is good, descriptive and can feel like going through a visual book. It is however very weird with a lot of fragments of things that really have no impact on "the main story" but do add flavor to the minor characters you pass by in the story. overall it's not bad , and can be quite captivating , however i will reserve a higher score until it's finished. The last act has yet to be released and in it's current state i see no reason to play the game. Depending on how it ends could definitely change my opinion of the game. Overall though if you like "games" like Dear Esther and Gone Home and you like movies like "waking life" ( a collection of conversations, often random but orbiting a central plot) then KR0 is probably right up your alley and worth a read.
Wuppo is a pretty cute game, it has a Paper Mario-esque charm about it. The graphics are simple but work well with what it is. Overall the game is mostly about exploring and going through the adventure. There is some platforming , especially a the very beginning but overall it's not very challenging. Most of the game is devoid of enemies, there's really only a few places you will need your weapon for "regular" enemies. Most of the fighting is bosses. The boss fights are challenging but with the exception of the final fight they are pretty fair and shouldn't give most people any trouble. The controls are definitely geared towards mouse and keyboard. The story gets a little heavy at the end but overall is pretty enjoyable. If you're looking for a lighthearted jaunt with the occasional boss challenge this game is good for you. I'd give it a C+ maybe a B- for creativity.
