Category: Tier Three

 

The subtle combinations of technicolor death mixed with upbeat dance music…

 

Haha… I used to play box shooters. I remember when I thought they were amazing. Then I quickly stopped. Because they aren’t. They’re a repeated formula with so little deviation that you’re more likely to lose because you fell asleep while playing, missing the one important projectile that was headed your way, than because you made an actual mistake. I want to like Zombie Party. It’s actually a really good box shooter. I just can’t.

 

Continue reading “Zombie Party” →

 

If it sold well once, repackage it one-thousand different times and sell it again!

 

I’m a huge fan of the original PC release of Medal of Honor. No, not this Medal of Honor, stupid-piece-of-crap-game, I’m talking about Medal of Honor Allied Assault. The game took an honorific if somehow humble look at WWII. It was solemn. The music was inspiring, filled with muted trumpets. The game felt like being in the front-row seat of a series of desperate missions, each with a slimmer chance of success. When I finished levels in MOHAA, it always felt like I had cheated death somehow. Then there’s this piece of garbage that doesn’t even bother with a subtitle. It just claims the entire franchise as its own. “Medal of Honor” distinguishable only by it’s stupid (TM) at the end of its name. And as a side-note, how the heck do you trademark “Medal of Honor?” When a military official receives the Medal of Honor, does the US Army have to pay EA royalties now?

 

Continue reading “Medal Of Honor (TM)” →

And today I presnt to you, Guns of–HOLY CRAP I’M DROWNING IN ADS

 

Guns of Icarus is a good idea that just isn’t any good. It falls prey to lofty ambitions, a far too-strong emphasis on micro-transactions, and a far too-small player base to support it. So, you know, basically nine tenths of the multiplayer games that have come out in the last 15 years. There are only two good things I can say about this game and they are strong “goods.” First, it’s probably the best (if not the only) steampunk airship multiplayer game out there, so if that’s your thing this is your bag. Second, it does mood and visuals decently well to the point where during a few moments it actually felt like I was on a steampunk airship, in the rain, in the middle of the war, being shot at. It was pretty cool.

 

Continue reading “Guns of Icarus Online” →

 

Good bye Kawase-san! Wait… why is she leaving?

 

Time has passed and Kawase-san is now 20, but her childhood days of fish-line grappling and mutant-fish hooking are far from over. We’re in a 3-D environment this time but overall, not much has changed. The controls, tactics and general principles are identical to the original Umihara Kawase. Unfortunately the smoothness of control and animations just don’t quite translate as well to the polygon world. A lot of the charm is lost from the character’s movements and expressions and I can’t help but feel the whole thing is just wrong somehow.

 

Continue reading “Sayonara Umihara Kawase” →

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.

 

Continue reading “LEGO Batman 2” →

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.

 

Continue reading “Teleglitch: Die More Edition” →

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

 

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…

 

Continue reading “Heroes of Might & Magic V (Series)” →

 

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.

 

Continue reading “Fallout 2” →