The fresh setting, beautiful art direction, strong story and top notch presentation made me love this game despite its short comings as an FPS. I don't remember playing another game that has a setting this unusual and this interesting.
However it does have one or two very big problems. It's got merely passable controls. The enemies frequently move too fast to target and looking down sights is almost always less useful then shooting from the hip. Enemies also take far too much damage before dying. The Big daddies in particular were almost never fun it was more like a chore to take one down and I just ended up ignoring them. I think a big part of the reason is the vita chamber re spawning mechanic that means they can be defeated by whittling their health down between deaths. The Vita chambers ensure every player should be able to finish but take much of the tension out of the fighting. The only time I felt elated after winning a battle was at the very end after defeating Fontaine.
Despite these reservations Its still the best game I've played since Skyward Sword at the start of the year 8.5/10
story line is great, there are a few missions that are frustrating, mainly the RC helicopter ones. Characters are awesome ofc, locations are good although world map is far too small.
Overall a great game, the problems are that there is almost no end game, apart from 100% completion and the rewards aren't really worth it, and the story line is too short.
Picked this up a little while ago for about $3.75 on PSN. It's from the makers of Psychonauts. It's a cute relatively short adventure/rpg game with light turn based battles.
It's a Halloween tale of a kid rescuing their sibling from monsters (that only kids can see - not the grownups). There is a lot of cute humour in the game, most of it that won't make you LOL but will often make you smile. The combat is a bit repetitive, but still fun.
The game should be considered in the proper context. It's not an AAA title. Its a light, downloadable that is probably best used as a break from the more serious and involved AAA games. It's not a challenging game and once you get a hang of the perks you will rarely die. Still, it serves its purpose when you want to play something, be entertained and charmed, and not take it that seriously. So my score should be taken in that context. If comparing it to a more serious game I would give it a lower score.
Another game I got stuck on and ended up finishing after a long lay off. I'm lukewarm on it. It looks and sounds like an AAA title but it has no ideas it hasn't borrowed and a really unlike-able cast of meat-heads engaged in a predictable battle for humanity that felt like a thirteen year old's fan fiction. I can overlook a weak plot if the mechanics are enjoyable enough but that just wasn't the case. The decision to use the one button for nearly every action involving cover meant I found myself doing things I hadn't intended. I also found myself shooting the wall I was hiding behind when the cross hair was clearly on the target from time to time. That's a problem I have found in other third person shooters and its pissed me off in them but when your whole games based on shooting from behind cover its very nearly an unforgivable flaw.
Still when it is working and your popping up from behind a wardrobe to head shot an uglies and the cameras behaving its pretty good fun with a nicely balanced difficulty level. 6/10
the first game i've tackled in what is likely going to be a lifelong task of getting through all the indie games on my steam games list, which will get put on sidetrack when i take some triple-a titles like deus ex:hr, arkham city, darksiders, etc. anywho...
this is not my typical style of game. i'm not a big fan of first person exploring/puzzle type games (that's what I consider this, maybe that's incorrect) and this one is with a dash... okay, not a dash, a very heavy dose of horror. anyways it's not graphically impressive at all, and i don't feel the gameplay of this kind of game to be very engaging at all, which is why i have tough times getting through them.
that being said, very great atmosphere made by the creators. often times i'd be reduced to just charging full on into impending danger because the suspense and terror of the scenario forced me to find some kind of weird coping mechanism. some "scary" games i try to enhance by playing in the dark, sound cranked up alone in my place because they're not really scary. this one wasn't one of them. so if that's your thing, i think amnesia: tdd is right up your alley.
that didn't take long. i feel like i'm actually making progress on the massive backlog of games i have.
i liked LIMBO a lot actually. only took me 3.1 hours per steam to get through. takes a black/white monochromatic graphical scheme and just uses some pretty simple puzzle elements to make an entertaining and short indie game. not very difficult, for a comparison i'd say Braid was a lot harder. not too much else to say as gameplay doesn't offer a big variety and there's zero story to it. fun, worth the few hours it takes to complete.
Just finished this game about 2 minutes ago. I got it through the THQ Humble Bundle, but wouldn't have played it if not for that.
I am a big fan of the God of War series and this game is very similar. I originally had trouble with the PC controls as I've been mainly a console gamer with these types of games.
The game is really fun. It's challenging enough to keep you entertained, but easy enough not to hold you back. There were a few parts of the game that I thought were frustrating and couldn't figure it out, but I guess that is what kept making me come back to the game. Once I started playing I had a hard time stopping. There were also a few monsters that I hated fighting as I knew it was going to take some skill in maneuvering around while trying to avoid getting hit, but looking back on it, it wasn't all that bad.
The one thing I didn't like was that the game kept looping you around to areas that you had previously entered. The scenery and environment wasn't all that engaging as you often felt closed in.
Another thing that is great about this kind of game is the puzzles. It causes you to think about what you need to do to get to a ledge, where you need to put your portals to get to the next section, and what kind of environmental obstacles you can use to move around.
I always felt like I was able to stay in the fight and hack away and the responsiveness of the controls was pretty much perfect. I did have trouble getting on my horse a few times and then it would make me jump off again. I don't know if that was some kind of bug in the game or if it was just me spamming the button, but it happened enough to be frustrating when you're in the middle of a boss fight and you're getting your head slammed in the ground because you keep jumping off.
Overall, this game is definitely worth a play-through if you already have it and haven't played it yet. Like I said, I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't have it, but because I got it in the THQ bundle, it was worth all of the hours I put into it.
Yeah, I don't think I'd even heard of Darksiders when I saw it was free on PS+ back in the summer. Was pleasantly surprised by by it. Trawling dungeons copies a lot from Zelda (but that's hardly a bad thing) and the combat was fairly enjoyable, if a little button mashy.
Enjoyed it enough that I picked up Darksiders II for £20 at the weekend, only a few hours in but seems more polished, as well as introducing more RPG elements in terms of more stats, loot drops, upgradeable weapons etc.
As a fan of the series since Silent Assassin, have been looking forward to this game for some time and am so glad it did not disappoint.
Absolution is the pinnacle of refinement for the series, the controls finally feel fluid, you feel in control and you feel that the game is working with you and you don't have to worry about the clunkiness of its mechanics thwarting you. Hand to hand combat is greatly improved and the shooting mechanics feel great/tight as well. It's a very good looking game, wonderful job on atmosphere and awesome attention to detail.
My main complaints would be the sometimes annoying gaps of logic in AI (ie one of 40 SWAT team guys can quickly make you in a smoking warehouse even though you're in a full swat suit), on harder difficulties, throwing objects to get guards to wander off so you can isolate them is a pretty exploitable common move that they never adapt to etc. This can be pretty frustrating at times but in general they hit a pretty good balance.
Replay value is decent, playing through again on the harder settings is rewarding as knowing the lay of the land lets you run through more intelligent enemies and experiment with different techniques without all the stumbles you probably made on the first playthrough. Contracts, a mode where you can play player created custom hits, is pretty much worthless, they plunk you in the games main levels and the contracts I played were all pretty horrible, ymmv.
Game feels and looks great, highly recommended if you've liked other games in the series or are into stealth kinda stuff.
fun indie platformer. you play as three characters at the same time, wizard/thief/warrior and can interchangeably move between them as long as they are all alive. wizard can manipulate/create movable objects, thief has a bow and like a grappling hook and can swing from stuff, and warrior just owns with sick dps ldo.
got 5.6 hours out of it, enough levels to keep you interested and the final level is a classic one, fighting against time. it's obviously not very deep, and by the end while the levels are decent they do get a bit repetitive, there could have been a few more dynamic elements to the surroundings to make it a bit harder on the player as the game was quite simple even on hard. overall i liked it. not outside of a sale though.
I liked the sequel, tho it was incredibly short. Great visuals and fun for one playthrough.
The last game I finished was Deadlight. I liked the storyline, but the gameplay got old real quick. It's a sidescrolling puzzle game based in a zombie apocalypse. Wasn't much fun and just got tedious, had to force myself to finish it.
Incredibly immersive game which presents a challenge in a fun RPG setting. The game really punishes mistakes but very rarely feels unfair. Not as "impossible" as people make out.. there are lots of way to make your game easier if you choose.
Online part of the game is also incredibly fun and well worked, which can't be said for a lot of games. Even when you get trolled by a low level invader you can just accept it and move on with a laugh.
Primordia PC
($8.50, %15 off during Holiday sale) - An old school point-and-click adventure game. From the publisher:
Quote:
"What Happened to the Humans?
Set in a post-apocalyptic world strewn with cast-off machines, Primordia tells the story of Horatio Nullbuilt, a stoic robot who values his solitude and independence. Horatio spends his days studying the Book of Man, sparring with his droid companion Crispin, and tinkering with the airship they call home — a peaceful existence that becomes threatened when a rogue robot steals the energy source that the pair needs to survive.
When Horatio and Crispin’s search for energy brings them to the dazzling city of Metropol, the simple quest to recover their stolen power core leads to unexpected discoveries about Horatio’s origins and a new understanding of the legendary humans who walked the earth before him."
The graphics are a little off-putting at first - they're intentionally very low resolution, heavily pixelated screens and animation that wouldn't have looked out of place 15 years ago, but I still found the game to be immersive and aesthetically pleasing. The voice acting and music is good for the most part, though a lot of the characters are heavily post-processed to sound more mechanical and the results can be a bit amateurish at times.
The pacing and logic of the puzzles flowed well, though the design often has you backtracking through places you've been before where new dialogue options or interactions become available after progressing to a certain point, which I've always found to be an annoying mechanic in adventure games. I had to look up hints in a few places, where the solution is something I probably would never have found before giving up the game in frustration, either due to the previously mentioned changes that occur to scenes after certain parts of the game, together with some poorly placed items that are nearly impossible to see due to the dark, low res graphics. If you end up buying the game and getting stuck, check the spoiler below and maybe I can save you some pain.
The dialogue system works well, and there are only two points in the game that I found where you can screw up and be forced to revert to a previous saved game. Instead, you can foul up a conversation and still continue though maybe by having to perform a few extra steps.
I finished the game in about 8 hours, which I would think is a pretty average time for anyone familiar with this style of game who also likes to listen to all the dialogue options. Worth the $11 I paid for it, and I give it a solid recommendation. There's also a demo available on Steam which has the first portion of the game, maybe 1/4-1/5 of the total playtime so you can get a very good feel for the game.
85/100 - Metacritic has it at 72/100, which is pretty unfair IMO.
Hints
Spoiler:
General tips
In general, if you ever get stuck, click on Crispin and he'll usually have some kind of clue as to where you should go next, depending on what screen you're currently on. Particular screens have him giving different advice sometimes, so try visiting all of the locations you can if you're really stuck.
You can also click on Crispin from his portrat in the top left of the screen, and try to have him interact with things in the environment. Several puzzles rely on this.
A lot of puzzles rely on combining things from inside the inventory, sometimes in not entirely obvious ways but never nonsensically.
Left-clicking will attempt to interact with things in the environment, and right-clicking will give a description of the item. Sometimes you have to right-click to figure out what to do, so just get in the habit of doing that to everything.
Puzzle hints
The rag
When you find Goliath, the giant robot stuck in the sand, you'll realize there's something you need to do to get inside. One half of that puzzle involves a rag that you acquire at the UNIIAC ship, but I had to look online to find this. In the room on the ship where the power source was taken, there's a side-room to the right that you can't really see which overlooks the tailwing section you can see from outside. You have to walk the character to the bottom-right of the room for the screen to shift and reveal a new room. Here, if you click on the rag, it flies away and you have to leave the ship and go outside to pick it up. The resolution was so bad though, that I missed the animation of the rag flying away and assumed I the rag had just disappeared until I searched online.
The battery
Once you've constructed the energy finding device, you need to find a battery for use with another item, and Crispin will suggest visiting the junkyard. This part was a huge pain in the ass - basically, you have a tiny portion of the big junk pile to the left of the top of the train that you need to use the power source finder on, then use Crispin on it. This game does not rely on obvious visual cues.
The info terminal in Metropol
Usually every screen will give hints about things to type, either with capitalized words or quoted words. You should be able to figure out what to do without randomly typing things, though there's a lot of background info you can discover by messing around.
Oswald at the bar
This is one of those situations where a scene changes after progressing to a certain point. This time, there's something different about the bar. Don't tell Oswald about Rex until you've found it. I think you can bork the game here by doing it too early. In case you need it spelled out:
Spoiler:
After a certain point, a note will be dropped by the bar arm on the counter, saying Oswald has a drinking problem and to stop him. You need his oil can, which you can't take before this point. Once you get the note, tell him to go find Rex and you can take it, but if you haven't found the note you won't be able to.
Cars in the sewer
There's something different about one of the cars.
Spoiler:
The bottom car left of the ladder has a trunk with items in it.
The courthouse
This one drove me nuts, I knew there was something to be done in here but couldn't find anything to interact with. There's a robot in the very back of the room behind Arbiter's mainframe, which is basically impossible to see at least on my monitor. There's a ledge that runs along the left side of Arbiters little island towards the back of the room, walking there will shift the screen a bit and reaveal the robot, though again depending on your monitor you might not be able to see it.
Finding Factors portion of the citadel code
This puzzle chain has another issue with something changing in a previous scene, together with a complete lack of a visual cue on the thing that needs to be inspected. After you've talked to Oswald about his brother Laurence, and progressed as far as you can, Crispin will say something about trying to find Laurence. His head is one of the skulls near Clarity's crane, which you can now interact with but looks just like the other skulls.
Finding Steeple's portion of the citadel code
This one had me stumped because I had taken a break from the game at this point and forgotten some stuff, mainly that the Humanist robot in the wastes was named Leopoldbuilt, and that Steeple was the council member devoted to Humanism. If you're still stuck
Spoiler:
Give Leopold the Gospel of Man that you should have found in the Underworks.
Opening the door in Calliope Station
Again, another instance of something having changed after a certain point, together with a lack of visible visual cue - apparently Scraper is missing an arm in the previous scene where he confronts you in the Citadel. Need more?
Spoiler:
Go back to the Courthouse, his plasma cutter arm is in the pile of rubble.
i think it's an improvement over Trine which i reviewed above. still same principle, play as three characters where you are always one of them and can switch interchangeably. also have the option tod o the same with 2 or 3 players online with multiplayer, whereas trine 1 only had coop on the same computer which is pretty meh.
they do away with having a mana bar and instead add a skill tree. the skill tree acts pretty similarly to trine 1 in essence, just maybe looks bit more... diablo2-ish. didn't have the expansion to access some of the other skills but the game was still enjoyable. a few more unique dynamic puzzle elements to this one, however the game is fairly free form in that there are certainly more ways than one to skin a cat when you come to a roadblock -- be in the wizards objects or the thiefs grappling hook or the warriors hammer to break through walls. one of the final puzzles when you're in a cell was head-scratching to me and partner who played through it on multiplayer with.
overall enjoyable although after really playing trine 1/2 back to back i'm quite sick of it now. worth it on sale and funny to play with multiple friends online. worth nothing for an indie game the graphics are quite impressive.
If you like Primordia, the same [small] publisher produced the recent Resonance, as well as Gemini Rue. All the same style and all well-received. There are demos.
That company (Wadjet Eye Games) also made the Blackwell Quadrilogy, which I haven't played yet but look good. Also The Shivah about a rabbi investigating a murder in NYC (I think I reviewed this earlier in the thread or another thread).
after uninstalling Trine 2, scanned my games list and the word "Tiny" stuck out so I figured it'd be a short jaunt in indieland. twas, 3.6 hours.
point & click puzzle game (I think that's what this would classify as, unless my understanding of point & click is incorrect). there's no story to it, just several "worlds" or "levels" with multiple different rooms/screens where you collect puzzle pieces and objects which are used in mid-level puzzles. some challenging, some not, but for a point and click game I quite enjoyed it as it's a style of game I never really enjoy. you then use the puzzles you collect in each world to build a main-page puzzle of the world you're in.
homey artwork and only a few but decent background sound tracks. short and sweet but a nice little refresher from the multitude of platformers that I've been playing recently. the one con I had with it is the ending is pretty meh, it just... ends.
Mass Effect 3 pretty solid ending to the ME series. I was a little late to the party and so I was interested in seeing why there was so much hate for the ending. I was disappointed for how not-dissappointing the ending was. I was all ready to get riled up and in the end I found the presentation interesting and the ending with buzz aldrin voicing the grandfather was a really nice touch. The ending probably could have been better but it definitely didn't deserve the ridiculous amount of hate it got. There is just a massive amount of entitled gamers That have the ability to instantly troll any company that doesn't meet their expectations of a perfect game.
I would say ME2 was probably a better overall game since it had a more defined structure. In ME2 you are collecting team members for a final "death-star run" and it builds really nicely to a scenario where different people die or survive depending on how well you've done up to that point. ME3 is more like skyrim in the way that there are tons of small random mission interspersed between a few main story quest lines. I found that I wasn't quite as invested in the game as most of the quests don't really build from one to another. But on the other hand I think they had to do that so they could fit all the choices that you had made in the first two games and with the unconnected quest structure they can fit in the quests that are appropriate to the story line that you have crafted. ME3 try's to throw everything in and succeeds at being a good game when it could have been a great game.
All in all I think bioware achieved what they set out to do and that is to bring their branching story structure to a trilogy of games. They have provided more meaningful choices into an rpg than Any other game that I know of. It felt like you could create your story and then compare notes with someone who experienced entirely different outcomes.
Bioware changed/added to the ME3 ending. Haven't replayed it since the ending DLC but the original ending was the WOAT.
I enjoyed the original ending and didn't really see the fuss. The thing that irked me was that the three versions were so close to each other and in the end the choices didn't matter so much as we had been led to believe.
Bioware changed/added to the ME3 ending. Haven't replayed it since the ending DLC but the original ending was the WOAT.
I played original ending. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible. It had some editing problems that made what was going on with the Normandy confusing. The three different ending not really being that different was kind of lame but not really something to start an Internet campaign over. I think the thing is that it's hard to place all the iterations into an ending that is going to be unique for each player without having to make a lot of different endings.
I think they definitely were running out of time and went with the more generic method of reusing assets. But there isn't really any games that I know of that have a great ending with multiple distinct variations. Even the walking dead only had one ending. The only one that springs to mind that did it right was the original 2d fallouts. ME3 could have followed that model with a separate epilogue for each of your major choices. It sucks that they didn't but as far as single endings go it was ok.
I think the thing is that it's hard to place all the iterations into an ending that is going to be unique for each player without having to make a lot of different endings.
Yeah, I wasn't outraged about that - given that there really were a ton of spots in the game where earlier decisions made a difference later on - just that it was advertised that the ending would be affected too.
