Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers

 

“Remember that? Fun? That thing we used to have before gaming felt like a second job?” Enter the refreshing title of…

 

At its core, a good platformer is about getting to places. Not going to places or being in places, but getting to places. You can make the world pretty, you can make the world big and you can riddle the world with secrets but if getting to any of those things isn’t fun, then your platformer will fail. You see, the collectibles, world and settings were all just excuses for you to use the in-game mechanics in fun ways to get from point A to point B. Tiny and Big: Grandpa’s Leftovers was a breath of fresh air that reminded me of what it felt like to play a game that remembered this.

 

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Two Worlds II Castle Defense

Heheh. Ahaha… Aheheheh…. Ahahahah…. AHAHAH…. AHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHA–

 

Oh we’ve got a winner here friends. A powerful winner. Something so strong that Topware Interactive made sure to protect it not only with a CD key, but with a limited activation via internet, or phone (international calls only please, for your convenience of course).

 

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Sweet Lilly Dreams

 

Ever wanted to be a girl in PJ’s who has a talking dog, sarcastic cat and fights dragons made out of pirate ship flags in her dreams? Ah, then you too must know about…

 

 

Let’s get the dirty out of the way first. Sweet Lilly Dreams is a an RPG Maker game. SLD has custom-made art that sometimes looks like it came out of someone’s colored pencil art book. Yes it has… a talking dog with a flower and sends out red flags for furry po–…. –ocket… book. Sketches. After you accept all these things, it’s not too bad.

 

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Assassin’s Creed Revelations

 

So here’s the funny part. I have this game installed. I have a computer that can run it just fine. I have my controller plugged in. I even know how to deal with Uplay’s/Ubisoft’s bullcrap in order to get the game to run. The thing is? I can’t stomach the thought of running this executable. It literally makes me sick when I think about it. I’ve played this game. I’ve played this game 3 damn times already. How do I know that? 5 years ago, I bought this game to play with my wife. She was excited that the multiplayer allowed you to play as a female assassin. So for two hours, we ran, jumped and stabbed our way through several multiplayer games until we got bored and never turned on the game again since… 07/13/2012 apparently.

The novelty of being a female assassin quickly wore off for my wife and she lost interest. “Hey, it’s cool that they’re letting be a female assassin, but we’re just kind of doing the same thing over and over.” Similarly, from the moment I turned on Revelations and we began to play (at this point in my life, having only played the original Assassin’s Creed) I thought to myself, “Hey, it’s cool that the controls and gameplay are so similar to the original that I know exactly how to do everything.” Then I stopped and in a dead-pan mental voice said, “Oh my word. The controls and gameplay are so similar to the original that I know exactly how to do everything.”

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BIT.TRIP Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien

 

Okay, so I’m going to cheat on this one a bit. To start off, Lepcis sort of already nailed this one in a fantastic article about the first BIT.TRIP runner game found here. Secondly, I’ve watched my wife play and beat BIT.TRIP Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (hereon referred to in this article as BT2 because that title is ridiculously long even in acronym form). Add to this that I myself have beaten the original BT, I feel fairly justified in just giving this a review after a meager 3 minutes of play.

 

 

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Divinity – Series

 

Some days I wonder if RPGs are dead. Sometimes I worry the future of RPGs are relegated to only ones with the words “Bioware” appearing on the screen as I turn them on. Apparently I just need to try more games, because either I’m an idiot, or the Divinity series is freaking awesome.

 

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Daikatana

 

I’ve been looking forward to this one. In circles of fans of Deus Ex, E.Y.E. and similar titles I’ve always heard whispers of a game called…

 

Daikatana is another fast-paced FPS wrought in what some might consider the golden age of FPS’s. Quake, Unreal, Goldeneye, Heretic, Hexen, DOOM, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior–it was a time of exciting level design, frantic gunfights and weapons that ranged from realistic to ridiculous. Daikatana fits right in with this and potentially on a more brutal level. Daikatana is brutal. Expecting it to be about on par difficulty-wise with the aforementioned FPS’s, (and having beaten most of the aforementioned FPS’s) I didn’t anticipate much resistance from the game. I was wrong. After dying a few times on the second section of level 1, I decided I should probably start trying. So I did. And I kept dying. So I decided to try harder. I still kept dying. I decided to give the game my full attention, using every piece of information available to me in order to achieve success. I did not beat level 1.

 

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Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Maxis/Fraxis… is there nothing you won’t simulate? Are you not even limited by…

 

Okay, Civilization/Alpha Centauri games notwithstanding, Sid Meier’s other titles have been pretty… lackluster. True you could spend your day running over cows in Sim Farm, but Ace Patrol was overtly simplistic and strategically unfulfilling, Railroads! was a lesson in making a completely unbearable concept even more unbearable, and Colonization was training on how to be the world’s biggest racist prick. Without surprise, I had very little confidence going into Pirates!.

 

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Date Warp

 

What? I dated a demon prince while attending a would-be Hogwarts school. Do your really think that I’m beneath playing…

 

Hakato Games have always made games with a general amount of heart with interesting concepts. What they lacked in polish they usual made up for with compelling design. Science Girls, Magical Diary and, easily the strongest of the bunch, Long Live the Queen, are all games they’ve produced that were at least interesting enough to me to finish once or twice. When I found that the studio had made a dating sim involving time travel, I had to try Date Warp.

 

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Orion: Prelude

I shot a dinosaur in the face today. What did you do?


 

ORION: Prelude. Wasn’t this that game that was so bad that en mass game purchasers demanded refunds in droves when it was released? And then, apologetically, the developers went into overdrive and fixed up their game to be semi-decent? Apparently I missed all that because according to my Steam purchase history, I bought this game 3 years ago and haven’t played it until today. I also payed $0.81 for it. Mk.

 

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