Category: First Impression

ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal
by Chezni

 

Well, you know what they say, right? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery!

 

ZanZarah is certainly… unique. And then at the same time not. Its setting, characters and overall mood is its own. You play as Amy, some British teen, who finds a magical box in her attic. Upon opening the box, she’s swept away into a fantasy world with goblins, pixies and fairies to name a few. Being accepted as “the chosen one,” it is the hope of the denizens of ZanZarah that Amy will battle the Shadow beings and bring peace to their world, quelling the now fierce body of fairies that attack anything that tries to pass by. You’ll talk to owls, uniquely modeled plant people and discover fantastical creatures that certainly have an interesting look.

 

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Barony
by Chezni

 

Perma-death? Multiplayer? Classes, stats and real-time combat? Oh, and endless piles of cheese found in the mine? All this and more in…

 

Barony is an excellent roguelike. Turn on the game and you’ll be dying within minutes (if not seconds) being eaten alive by rats, skeletons or giant spiders. Something that’s important of any difficult game is a feeling of fairness–the player needs to understand why they died and have a relative understanding of what they could have done to prevent it. RNG should play a role in the game to keep things interesting, but the player generally should not feel as if they are completely at its mercy–player input must matter. This is where many roguelikes shine and others fail. Barony succeeds at both; even the early deaths in the game serve as understandable teaching instruments, generally in the form of “enemies are aggressive and you’ll need to be on guard at all times.” Likewise, RNG feels present, but never ultimately fate-determining.

 

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Octodad: Dadliest Catch
by Chezni

 

Do you want all the fun parts of QWOP without the frustration? Why don’t you try…

 

Octodad is a simple game. Following suit with the wild craze of “reality physics simulators” it takes actions that should be mundane and simple but makes them wildly difficult by requiring the player to input each and every movement. Games like QWOP and then Surgeon Simulator bringing popularity to these titles, Octodad may be the best realization of this genre yet.

 

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Inexistence (Completed)
by Chezni

 

Haha… I just got it. INexistence. Like, you’re IN existence? But it’s also like inexistence? Right? Right? Did you get it? IN-existence!? Right? It’s–

 

Okay, so seriously, Inexistence is a good game. It’s a Castelevania/Metroid/Mario/Zelda clone that splits its content about 80/5/10/5% respectively. So I guess… it’s mostly a Castlevania clone. That being said, it’s short enough to play in one sitting (about 2 hours) but what you get is pretty strong.

 

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The Ship
by Chezni

 

Winston Churchill once said, “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” I think he left out the part about the colostomy bag though.

 

At it’s core, “The Ship” should be good. It should be a right-proper game about pretending to be a well-rounded dapper gentleman (or gentle-lady) enjoying himself on a cruise whilst inwardly walking the line between frantic and psychotic as you both tried to avoid your killer whilst you stalked your prey. It should have been a game that perfectly captured the essence of the board game “Clue” in digital format. It should have been a game about dashing good looks, wild costume changes and a devilish boat-owner. It should have been. It was so close.

 

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Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
by Chezni

 

Was your favorite part of Mount and Blade the combat? Did you want it to just be a little bit… less absolutely terrible? My friend, you should get acquainted with…

*cough* …that’s “Chivalry: Medieval Warfare…” in case you didn’t know. I know it’s super small in the picture.

 

Lepcis has a saying that I’m growing rather fond of. “Dark Souls ruined this game for me.” It shocked me when I realized that Dark Souls as a series has been the exclusive title I’ve played over the last 10 years when it came to desiring a metal-clanking sword swinging frenzy of life or death. Sure there have been a few exceptions (Mount and Blade obviously) but most of those exclusions had some other facet of gameplay driving the ship forward (Mount and Blade’s kajillion other medieval simulations, also obviously). Chivalry seems like a great game but… I found it all to be a bit simple. It’s as if I’ve picked up a childhood toy, fondly fiddled with it for a bit, reminisced about good times but then quickly put it down, desiring to move on to something else.

 

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Pathologic Classic HD
by Chezni

And here I thought I would never play another Horror game that rivaled Silent Hill 2. I guess I don’t have to be sad that Konami’s gone, because at least we have…

 

So. This game is a masterpiece. I can’t even begin to say anything bad about it. Like, I am completely blown away by this title and aside from the brief moment I glanced at it on Steam and decided to buy it, I’ve never even heard of it. What the heck is this game!?

 

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LEGO Batman 2
by Chezni

Yeah, I bought a LEGO game. Yeah it was a Batman game too. Are you really gonna sit here judge me with a straight face and tell me you didn’t wish you were playing with a LEGO Batman set right now?

One day when my wife and I were looking for something to co-op, I suggested the LEGO game series. When I was a kid, I played hours of LEGO Star Wars on my family PS2 with my brothers, and while it wasn’t the most complex of games my memory banks seemed to indicate that I had experienced something called “fun” while playing them. So, jumping on Steam and asking her to pick one out, we chose LEGO Batman 2. Either I cherry-picked my memories about LEGO Star Wars, or I was extremely desperate for something to do when I was a kid. Considering that the town I lived in said “population 59” when we first moved to it might indicate the latter.

 

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Teleglitch: Die More Edition
by Chezni

AHAHAH No. No, you do not get to use a variant of the original Dark Souls expansion title. Do you know why? It’s not even about a contest of comparative difficulty–it’s simply that you can’t have people “Die More” in your game if it’s so bad that no one wants to play it. That’s right, I’m talking to you…

 

Teleglitch is a roguelike that in my eyes, just isn’t very good. It’s not surprising–I’ve played a fair number of poor roguelikes already but it’s always sad to come across one. However, Teleglitch falls firmly, flatly, and squarely into a Tier 3 category of garbage, with its only saving graces being a rare few pieces of barely interesting design. It’s difficult to complain about Teleglitch without comparing it to other roguelikes. You move in real-time, you don’t level up, you don’t have stats, you have a map, you choose what level you want to play and there’s a… boring storyline? Now, it’s not entirely fair to judge a new game by asking it to maintain the same aspects of titles from the same genre, but all of these things are certainly different when it comes to most roguelikes and possibly if these were my only “complaints” (and they would be more opinion than valid) I would be more willing to accept these diversions from what one normally considers when they throw around the word “roguelike.” The problem is that these diversions suck and don’t really create anything good.

 

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Anachronox
by Chezni

 

I just discovered Aidyn Chronicles in space. And it is…

 

All right. I’ll admit it. I’m in love with absolutely terrible RPGs. This is one of them. Full warning–I’m rating this at Tier 1. This is probably not even close to a Tier 1 title for most people. That being said, here we go into the world of Anachronox.

 

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