Continuing my last post, here’s more “reviews” of games in my Steam collection that I’ve been trying lately…
Before I start, though, I have to say that there’s a awesome thing about most games I’ve tried so far: they startup quickly and I can quick at any time with minimal progress loss… As an adult, this is very important for me, since when I was playing Assassin’s Creed III, I’d leave the console turned on for hours at a time without playing, just because I didn’t want to wait ages for the game to startup and be playing…
But, one complaint (to everyone… indie and AAA): please add a “Save and Exit” option… even if your Exit option always saves, I feel uncomfortable leaving without saving… don’t hide my saves from me, let me know when you’re saving, that way I know how much progress I’ll lose if I quit the game at any one point.
Anyway, on with the “reviews”:
If you like platformers, go no further… this one is an excellent one, although very hard to play without a gamepad (which I don’t have on my PC). Hard platforming, with some silly storyline and excellent level design!
Although I’ve followed Cliff Harris’ blog for ages now, I only played his game now (picked it up on a Humble Bundle sometime ago)… The game is what I expected: you choose your forces up until a certain amount of “points”, position them in the “starting line”, setup tactics, etc, and press go… then you see a battle being played out in front of your eyes, with no intervention from you… While I understand the point of this, I’m not a big fan of the concept, but I admit that it looks gorgeous! Most of the time, I’d just think that I wanted in on that fight… Would totally buy it as a screensaver, though! For more tactical amongst you, it’s a must have in my opinion… It runs as you’d expect, the AI is very good, and your orders pre-battle are decisive to the outcome (so you don’t feel that victory or defeat was just random events). As far as I know, there’s extensive modding support (and lots of people doing it), so it’s awesome value for money!
Pew, pew, pew, kaboom! It’s a schmup, very well executed, very atmospheric and with a good effort done on the story presentation… Not my cup of tea, but if you like shoot’em ups, this is one of the best I’ve seen in the last years!
One of the best of the lot so far, I played this until I finished it (in about 6 hours or so)… Imagine “Shadow Complex” or “Deadlight”, but with a lighter tone and with a gravity-manipulation mechanic. We explore an environment (not so open as “Shadow Complex”) in a typical side-scrolling platformer fashion (with good looking 3d graphics, though), and you can use a weapon to pickup objects and throw them… You can also influence the strength of the gravity in the room you’re in, which is part of many of the puzzles… The game as a bigger focus on “escape-type” puzzles than on enemy confrontation, which I enjoy tremendously – games with focus on action with an extra mechanic besides shooting tend to get themselves lost in between those two worlds, so it’s good to see a game that balances it perfectly!
It’s awesome fun, well presented, interesting (albeit cliché) story and just about the right length…
Seriously, get this one… Now! It’s that good… Don’t know how this one got below my radar, but I never heard about it until I bought it as part of a Indie Humble Bundle (one more reason why these bundles are awesome)… Can’t wait for a sequel!
More to come!