The premise of Liberated is great and I really want to love that game. However, the clunky controls, some frustrating scenes and save points and the weird level design makes it hard to recommend. The best part of the game certainly is the story. It revolves around a totalitarian state and how some people try to start a revolution against it. The great comic-styled cut scenes feel a lot like "V for Vendetta". I must admit that I didn't see some plot twists coming and I enjoyed the story. It took me about 4h to finish the game and another 30mins for the DLCs. Moreover, I really liked the art style and the comic atmosphere. Most of the time, the gameplay elements blend well into the comic frames. However, sometimes the animated scenes felt a bit off (especially in Issue/chapter 3) but that might just be my personal taste. The gameplay is the weakest spot of the game. I was expecting some kind of stealth game like "Mark of the Ninja". However, you should expect an action game more similar to "Deadlight". That is not a bad thing, and I did enjoy the gunplay after I got used to it. But do not buy this game if you want to play a stealth game. The stealth mechanic is inherently flawed and no fun at all. Shooting enemies in the head, in turn, is very satisfactory in a weird way. Lastly, the level design, which aims to be a bit like Limbo. And in many ways it succeeds. Often times the backgrounds are gorgeous and very fitting. Nevertheless, some design decisions simply didn't make sense, like when you climb from the basement to the first floor, which is completely flooded. Then you climb around and flood it a bit more until you finally reach a door that lets you go back down to a perfectly dry basement. For some reasons it really put me off to see such an inconsistent building design. All in all, you only play this for the story and the art. If you like the premise and the style and don't mind the gameplay, give it a try. Everyone else better waits for a sale.
In its core, Filament is a puzzler where you have to connect pillars with a glowing string in order to open a door that lets you exit the level. As simple as this mechanic sounds at first, the puzzles are just downright fantastic. The first few puzzles will explain the gameplay mechanic but they are getting challenging fast. I easily spent half an hour on some levels and simply couldn't figure out how to solve it. But then it just clicked and I felt like the smartest person in the room. Although all puzzles are based around the string mechanics, it never gets boring or repetitive as you will encounter different kinds of pillars to activate. Sometimes you have to match colours, sometimes you cannot touch certain elements, sometimes you have to touch pillars multiple times or deactivate barriers. So if you are a little bit into puzzle games and if you enjoy being challenged by a game, stop reading and buy this game. The puzzles alone would justify the price of that game. However, the game also features a nice backstory. You can pretty much roam freely through the ship from the beginning. You will find little clues and information about what happened to the crew and with every solved set of puzzles you gain access to some emails of a crew member. That also mean that you don't have to solve the puzzles in a given order. Instead, you can just do another one if you are stuck. Or you just relax and explore the ship. I also like the art style and the soundtrack is incredibly soothing and doesn't distract you at all. The voice-overs and comments from Juniper are also very entertaining. All in all, this will be my puzzle game of the year and I can't emphasise enough that it is highly recommend.
This game is a mix between Big Pharma and Zach-like games like Spacechem and Infinifactory. If you enjoyed these games, Automachef is well worth its price. It has the same addictive self-optimisation mechanics that constantly makes you want to improve your score (here measured in efficacy) even though you completed the level already. So far, I played the campaign and the contract mode but there is also a sandbox mode and you can even create your own scenarios. The campaign is certainly the main playing mode, where you learn the fundamentals of the machines you are using and how to optimise your solutions. I think the game has a decent learning curve, especially when you played games like this before. I also liked the humour of your almost perfectly human robot advisor. In contract mode, you "manage" your company by taking contracts and solve the puzzles as cheap as possible to earn more money. With your profit, you can then buy new machines to become more efficient. However, do not expect a management part as in Big Pharma or real simulations. All you do is taking increasingly difficult contracts and upgrade your machines. Although contract mode feels more generic, it is a nice addition to the campain. The graphics are nice and not distracting. The background music is okay but I turned it off after a while since it got a bit repetitive. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to change the language settings. That means, you have to play the game in the language of your Windows installation. It is not really a big deal but still a weird design decision (that could be fixed easily with the next patch). Also I didn`t encounter any bugs so far. All in all, I would definitely recommend Automachef to anyone who likes these kind of optimisation games.
This is a funny, completely ridiculous, over-the-top arcade game. If you liked the early madden games you might enjoy this one as well. In contrast to another reviewer I actually also enjoyed the comments of the moderators. They are absolutely nuts, of course, and some really made me smile. They might get repetitive after a while but this is also true for all the Madden NFL games. So far, I only played the dynasty mode as single player and I like that the team management is suprisingly easy and doesn't stand in your way if you don't really know what each position means. This makes it rather easy to start with even if you are not too familiar with all the details of american football, There is even a small tutorial which explains the most basic rules of the game but I guess it isn't enough if you are completely new to the sport. For people who played other football games before, it might be a little confusing at first when your players die on the field after a lightning strike and all the players attack each other after the play, but after you understand the mechanics it really is hilarious and fun. The graphics and animations are good, although not as polished as other modern sport games. I played with keyboard and gamepad and both controls worked. It is certainly easier with gamepad but it also works fine without it. All in all, if you are a little bit into sport games and don't mind gore and some juvenile and silly humour, this game is a nice arcade game to kill some time.
The idea of Frostpunk is quite similar to Banished. You have very limited resources and manpower and must carefully balance these resources. If you keep your generator at full power the whole time without having a good coal supply your people will freeze to death quickly. You can also sign different laws to improve you resource output, like child labour or extended work-shifts. Since you can't reject the laws, you have to think twice whether or not you really need it. In contrast to Banished and in addition to the survival and city building part, Frostpunk has three scenarios (so far), each with its own story and some tough decisions. This gives the game an additional layer I really like a lot. However, this also means that the whole campaign is heavily scripted which might influence the replay value. So far, there is no sandbox mode. For me this is not a big issue and it took me about 4-5 hours to finish the first scenario. The second scenario is somewhat shorter, though (maybe 2-3h). The tough decisions and the constant lack of basic supplies also reminds a bit of This war of mine, which I highly recommend as well. However, all in all Frostpunk is less depressing and feels more like a game. Gameplay-wise it is similar to most city-builder games. You basically play with the mouse and place the building on a radial grid around the generator. A really nice feature is that you upgrade your existing building by simply build the better building on top of the existent one. This way you don't need to demolish the old building first. All in all, I can't recommend this game enough! If you are into survival and city-building games and if you liked Banished (but got bored after everything was running just fine) you should give Frostpunk a try.
