As my title suggest. When you first start up Chaosbane everything feels fresh and fun. Albeit almost everything are borrowed and done better in other ARPGs. However after a couple of hours you start to notice pattern in the game. For once, there are only 4 maps (with the two expansions there are 6 maps) and that is a very bad decision from the developers. Running through the same map for the 10th time is not fun at all. Then comes the next gripe with the game, it is too easy. I played through normal with the tank and on all bosses except the first one, my hp regen was faster than the damage received. So I was just standing there smashing away on the boss, not caring about anything. The final minus I have with the game are the story, both for the game, and the expansions. they feel like they were written by a 10 year old. Nothing new here. You have done everything at least 10 times before in other games. The final verdict is an ok game for Warhammer or ARPG fans.
As I played a lot of Pandemic games when I was younger this was a must try. At first I was impressed by The Saboteur, the black and white graphics when going around town where the Nazis presence is strong was one of the good points in the beginning. The main quests as well as the side quests also felt good, expanding on the world of World War 2 Paris. However, the amount of collectibles and Nazi buildings to be destroyed took the fun out of this game. I am one of the guys who usually wants to find everything on a game, here everything popped up on the world map and the you just had to go around destroyng things. After one game session of about 5 hours, where I spent 0 seconds on quests but just went around destroying Nazi buildings I thought to myself. Is this fun ? - The answer was no. If you like World War 2, and to run around destroying hundreds of outposts and listeningposts this game is for you. But if you feel annoyed when doing repetetive things, this game is pretty lackluster.
I was first reluctant to try out Hard West. I like X-Com and read that the turned based strategy was similar in Hard West. However, as I grew very tired of X-com, and never finished one playthrough I thought that it would be the same with Hard West. However, Hard West have something X-Com doesn't. A good story. Right at the first tutorial level I was introduced to this harsh western world, where the occult have a strong presence. The strategy is ok, you feel the power in the guns you use as well as the different powers you obtain later in the game but the best thing in this game is the story. A story about a boy growing up in a harsh environment and a dad doing everything he can to exact revenge on those that murdered his wife. A lot of the story is told on the overview map, as well as in cut scenes, the blend between the overview map quests and things you do there gives a good complement to the turn based combat. I highly recommend this game for people who wants to experience a good mature story where the nature of human behaviour gets explored to its core.
I first need to say this, if you liked Bastion you would love Transistor. I played Bastion a couple of years ago and I thought it was brilliant. The only downsides were in my opinion the gameplay itself and the story. The combat felt out of date, and I forced myself through it because of the great atmosphere. The same with the story, it was not really believable that a little kid would save the world. But then again, the atmosphere was amazing and the thing that made Bastion one of my top gaming experiences. Fast forward a couple of years to Transistor, take Bastion but take away all the bad stuff from it and you have Transistor. Supergiant games have thought up an interesting story and put in a very cool combat system, which is easy to learn but takes time to master. A lot of strategy is involved in the combat and to combine all of the different functions (moves) and see what happens was one of the games strong points. The atmosphere and music are top notch and the story is interesting. You feel for the characters, Red the heroine and also the talking sword. Who was he ? Can we save him ? Can we get our voice back ? What is happening in the city ? A lot of questions pop ups the first ten minutes and I feel that they were all explained around 6 hours later. The story is brought to the gamer mainly by the swords voice, with some occasional reading on terminals. If you want to dwell deeper into the lore you can read about the different functions and who they were when they were alive. But to do so, you need to equip them in battle. A smart thing from the developers, leading to more experimentation of the different functions. Great graphics, great story, great music, great atmosphere, great combat. Well, this is one of the best games I have played.
Jotun is a very atmospheric game, with wonderful hand drawn graphics and good music and sound effects. I also liked the fact that the dialogue are spoken in Icelandic, giving that extra touch in the atmospheric department. The story is not the best, but quite engaging anyway. You even get to know some of the great old norse mythology as you progress through the game. The gameplay however is not very engaging. Thora, the main protagonist moves as a snail. The two possible attacks are the standard fast and weak, and the slow and strong. The strong one is however very slow. On some puzzles in the game it is needed to use the slow attack on different objects. These puzzles just seems very dull as they take a lot of time to complete due to Thoras movement speed and slow attack. The fighting is sparse and when they do occur feel rather lame. Thora is equipped with the mandatory dodge roll which I found my self spamming to move faster. I do not know if it had any impact or not. I did not find the puzzles or the combat very hard as I only died a couple of times and all of the deaths were on the two final bosses. In the end Jotun is a very atmospheric puzzle game but a rather dull one.
