Firewatch is not as much a game as it is an experience. The gameplay mainly consists of walking from point A to point B without possibility of failure. That being said, the journey is nothing short of excellence. So, there's this guy - Henry. Henry is out in the woods as part of a firewatch crew. There's this woman - Delilah, she's Henry's boss and she tells him what to do through a radio. You get the idea. A large part if the game is spent strolling around and talking to your boss, allowing you to take in breathtaking sites portrayed in colorful gradients and flat minimalist colors of various shades. Talking to your boss via radio also provides insight into both characters, making character development feel more direct and organic. The marvelous art and superb voice acting is aided by a vibrant assortment of piano and distant guitar sounds that fit the atmosphere of each scene. I cannot find a bad thing to say about Firewarch. While I could demand a lengthier experience, six hours felt right for what there is to say. While the ending may not have been what everyone wanted, I felt it befitting for what the game was about. It is why the game is as wonderful as it is. How life can hype you up, making your imagination run wild - only to let you realize it's actually much simpler than you hoped. Disappointment. Firewatch is similar to Life is Strange, Gone Home and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, provides a decent metaphorical story and captivating characters drenched a colorful simplistic art style with a befitting soundtrack. It is meant to be experienced.
To sum up SteamWorld Heist is not hard; worms style 2D turn based combat with a little bit of X-Com flair when moving. While at the same time staying its own game and taking only the steam punk esthetic from its predecessor, SteamWorld Dig. So the game plays as follows: fly your ship between checkpoints in space - a map or hub area if you will. These may be space station bars where you get your drink on (what do robots drink anyway?), buy weapons and other equipment or hire other scrappy robots which can be used as units in battle. Other areas, enemy ships, is where you will be spending most of your time, battling it out and collecting loot to use or money to spend. Sometimes you may come across a lonesome space station selling hats at outrageously high prices... So the bulk of the game is spent in battles and the combat system is well polished to make that time fly by. You enter a semi randomly generated map (station) with usually two or three teammates equipped with weapons and accessories of your choosing. Each round gives you a movement and attack phase in which you can either hide for cover or attack (sometimes both). Since step count is limited, it is important to find a location in which you will be hard to hit yet still easy to hit your enemy from. It is a simple design that may lack some depth. I would love to have the ability to have one of my teammates just defend a position and shoot whomever wanders into its line of sight but right now all a defending teammate does is cower behind a barrel and get hit if an enemy chooses show who has the biggest metal sack. Attacking is more engaging and rightfully more fun. An assortment of weapons is available all wealdable by its specific class of character. Your everyday pistols, scoped weapons offer bouncing bullets, high spread shotguns, high rate-of-fire multiple shot rifles, AOE line of sight RPG explosions, arching grenade launcher AOE explosion and metal to brass fists all offer different playstiles and entry points to each situation one may find oneself in. I particularly enjoyed scoped weapons which offere laser sights for their easy of use in bouncing bullets off walls to hit harder to hit enemies. Since headshots provide a higher damage output, these were particularly useful. A good combination of different characters with different weapon sets does the job fine while mixing it up just a little bit as to not get too monotonous while shooting only one tipe of weapon (as if it ever could). The reward for clearing out these outposts is usually more gear to use for the next mission or money to buy yet more gear OR a fancy hat or two. Hats are the money sink that makes the economy work as you will soon have enough money to have all equipment you need. It's an alright system that seems to work fine with most virtual macro economies, here being no different. Each map sector ends with a boss fight in which all your skills will be tested against a fairly stronger enemy. The difficulty of these are nicely tuned and provide ample release of dopamine. Esthetically SteamWorld Heist reminds me of Firefly (Tv Series, 2002) albeit with a cartoony overlay. Space ships looking like the scifi future movies promise swapped for coal powered furnaces and steam turbines. Ships held together by sheet metal and rivets. A world populated by robots wielding guns, wearing fancy hats and everything generally feeling like the wild west in space. The music consolidates this idea of steam punk wild west robots in space. Guitar, banjo, bass, fiddle and a strong vocal presence that tells stories of robots are exactly what one would expect from a world such as this. The Band Steam Powered Giraffe[steampoweredgiraffe.bandcamp.com] are personified as robots and can be found in any bar in the game playing their music. I sometimes visited just for the music. SteamWorld Heist is a great game to relax with and not stress over too much. Core gameplay containing simple tactical turn based gameplay. It clearly defines goals and provides extra rewards for extra work / exploration. A pleasant to look at esthetic and guitar heavy soundtrack with some rather fine folksy vocals. It took me 17 hours to beat the game and I enjoyed every minute of it.
