Category: First Impression

Just Cause
by Chezni

 

Just ‘cuz. Just. ‘Cuz. If you’re saying “Just Cause,” you’re saying it wrong. Also the title card for this game is crappy, so here’s a guy jumping out of a plane.

 

Now this is my kind of GTA. Whereas GTA tries to take itself so darn seriously, games like Just Cause (and Saint’s Row I’m told) are just all about having fun. Why? Just cuz, that’s why. Suddenly it’s easy to not only believe but be perfectly okay with accepting the fact that my character is more lead than flesh by the time I’m done with a mission. I don’t care that can jump out of a moving vehicle at nearly any speed and be fine. I don’t care that my special power is summoning a parachute out of nowhere at any given time because I feel like it. It all happens just ‘cuz.

 

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Sword of the Stars: The Pit
by Chezni

 

I dream of electric dolphins. What?

 

This game is awesome. I hesitate to call it a roguelite but it’s not quite a roguelike either–something in-between. You’re in space-somewhere and the space-plague has broken out. Now you’re off to find the space-cure before things can get anymore space-pear shaped in the pit of some apace-mountains where no one has ever come back from alive before. Sounds promising.

 

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Owlboy
by LepcisMagna

I’ve been looking forward to this game.  I’ll admit, I am one of the suckers for high quality pixel art graphics, and this game offers that in spades.  You are Otus, a mute Owl-creature-scout-thing.  You fly about your town and scout for pirates, unlocking new areas by making friends and solving puzzles – until pirates attack and you are sent on a mission to save the Owl temple.

I had a lot of fun in my first hour, and the atmosphere is certainly more charming than cliche (which can be a real problem with retro pixel art games).  The music is fantastic, and the few mechanics I did unlock promise variety in combat and fascinating puzzles.  We’ll see if it can hold up through the rest of the game, but for now it is a solid Tier One entry.

Steam link

Poly Bridge
by LepcisMagna

I love bridge building games.  I have yet to find one that properly balances a good challenge and detail of strain with the freedom and ease of use of a video game.  The closest was probably Bridge Construction Set.  Poly Bridge is in that same vein, but also knows that sometimes you are just building something that will launch a car spectacularly.

There’s nothing wrong with Poly Bridge, and it is probably fun enough to pick up at some point.  But it doesn’t seem to have the depth of Bridge Construction Set and errs on the side of a consistent and simple visual style (which I can’t blame).

Steam link

Sproggiwood
by LepcisMagna

Sproggiwood is a roguelite with a home town element.  You can throw yourself against a dungeon an infinite number of times while gaining gold (though losing your levels each time you die).  Once you’ve completed the three level dungeon, you can spend your gold to improve your home.  And I hate to say it, but it’s really boring.  Perhaps if they’d drawn me in with their story, I could’ve found myself playing it more, but it just didn’t click with me.  The endless interruptions explaining the most basic of game mechanics didn’t help either.  Overall, though the graphics have a nice style, there just isn’t anything to sink your teeth into here.

This is the sort of game I wish I didn’t have to put into Tier Three.  I like game developers, and I hate the thought of telling them that they’ve made something that I don’t find interesting in the slightest.  I don’t want to put this into the same Tier as all the games that are just intentional garbage.  I suppose that’s the worst part: it’s not that this game is bad – it’s just that there is nothing new or interesting here.

On a side note: one of the top Steam reviews says “I usually don’t care for roguelikes, but this one being turn-based really did it for me.”  I suppose this day was unavoidable.  People have now used the word roguelike to describe so many things that it no longer has any of its original meaning.

Steam link

Heroes of Might & Magic V (Series)
by Chezni

 

If they make too many more of these games, they’re going to be contenders with Enix for “Fantasy RPG with too many Roman numerals.” I am of course, talking about…

 

The Might & Magic Series is certainly a mixed bag. Wrapped in this somewhat underrepresented franchise are first-person RPGs, take-turn fantasy army raising simulators, puzzle-strategy army simulators, grid-based RPGs and party-based open world RPGs. Say what you will, the franchise has brought many-a-title to the gaming world and have tried many different things. Until…

 

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Fallout 2
by Chezni

 

I mean, it’s more Fallout if that’s you’re thing, right?

 

I appreciate the Fallout games. I really do. I have just never liked them. It may not entirely be the Fallout series’ fault–they come from an era where sandbox~ish role playing games were practically non-existent and so any game (Fallout) that fit the bill, regardless of how obtuse the HUD was or how insanely difficult it was to figure out how to make the plot progress or how simultaneously breakable-yet-balls-hard the combat was, it was usually considered a godsend. It also came off the tail-end of an era of gaming where “difficulty” was more akin to countless hours of trial and error rather than intuitive problem solving. This generally was not a problem since, due to small number of games available for purchase (relative to today’s market) alongside the even smaller availability of solid open world RPGs, gamers were just happy to get their hands on anything.

 

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Recettear: An Item Shop Tale
by Chezni

 

MY FATHER IS DEAD. …better open an item shop!

 

I’ve been looking forward to this one for a couple reasons. Firstly, I’ve played and 100%-ed this game’s… *ahem* “sister” game “Chantelise,” a game that features a young girl Chante and her fairy sister Elise who rent out a room from a woman who runs an item shop. Noticing the pattern? Anyway, reason 2 for my interest in Recettear was that it came highly recommended to me by more than one person. Reason number 3 and perhaps the most exciting, is that this is one of the few times I get to write a review following a review of Lepcis’s. This naturally brings about a certain air of… conflict… and it makes me happy to see that our opinions clash on this one–a feature that helps me both understand myself as a writer and as a game reviewer.

 

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