Tier Three – Page 9 – Please Insert CD

SquareCells

While this puzzle game is interesting (and includes some mechanics I wasn’t expecting), I’m just not sure it’s worth my time. My only complaint is the scoring system – there’s no way to just try a possible solution without being immediately told it is incorrect. If it were a mobile game for those five minutes of down time, I could almost see playing it some time. So while it certainly isn’t a bad game and I don’t think I wasted my money (I mean, it was less than a dollar), I also don’t particularly see myself trying to beat it.

Steam link

Prince of Persia

by LepcisMagna

I thought Ubisoft had only been making the same game for 10 years. It turns out it is closer to 15. Originally, I gave a pass to the original Assassin’s Creed because it was a novel concept – a freerunning game set in an open world with climbing puzzles. It was pretty neat. The sequels were terrible since as Chezni just mentioned, they haven’t changed the game in years – just better graphics and a different story. It turns out I was mistaken for even giving the original a pass, since the mechanics were already present in another game series by Ubisoft: Prince of Persia.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

As I played my hour, I started giggling. Then laughing. Then crying a bit, because this is just Assassin’s Creed in a more primitive engine. Since this game, Ubisoft has just remade this exact game over and over again. It has freerunning. It has the exact same buggy “no, I didn’t want to run up that wall, I wanted to run through the door” problems that haven’t been fixed in any of the AC games. It has the exact same weird bars you swing around on. It has the exact same horrible, horrible action camera. It has the exact same dagger stun locks. The only improvement brought by the original Assassin’s Creed was the open world (which, granted, is fairly significant), but at the cost of wallrunning and reversing time (which was actually fun). This game is forever tainted because of my experience with Assassin’s Creed, which affects my tiering. I can’t play it because it just reminds me of all the things I hate about Assassin’s Creed and what that series stands for. I could almost see myself playing it at some point because the time reversal seems fun and the characters/story interesting – though the dramatic cutscenes every time you sheath your sword or drink water (no, I’m not kidding) is more hilariously bad than fun. To Tier Three it goes – play Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider Legend or Anniversary instead.

Steam link

Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

See above, only the composer played Doom in between. Add heavy metal, angst, sexism, and a worse camera…somehow.

Steam link

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

Though the camera is still terrible, it’s less terrible than the previous two. The combat is more fluid, and the angst seems to be gone from the previous game. This one goes to Tier Two for me – I’m not sure I’ll play it soon, but it’s probably worth picking up at some point.

Steam link

Prince of Persia

Ah, of course. The eighth game of the Prince of Persia series: Prince of Persia. Naming conventions are apparently no longer in vogue in the gaming industry. Ah well. At least it’s a fun game. The combat is a little simplistic and honestly a bit frustrating at times – they could really have used some sort of stamina mechanic – but overall the freerunning and attacking does feel more fluid. There does seem to be a bit of “collect all these things” leaking in, but the chemistry between the main characters keeps up a good level of patter. I can definitely see myself playing more of this – Tier One (Two Thrones might squeak in as well, now that I’m thinking about it).

Steam link

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

This goes into my “Technical Issues” category because it would require that I install Uplay. I refuse. I’m a bit disappointed since not a single one of these games actually let me take screenshots and I had hopes for the most recent one. But Uplay isn’t worth the sacrifice.

Steam link

Ubisoft

Ubisoft is a Tier Four developer. Between their ridiculous DRM, Uplay launcher, and rehashing of the exact same game over and over again, I have sworn off buying any of their future games (and playing any of their Uplay games). The soul of the company was slowly drained ever since the Sands of Time. I have considered doing an Assassin’s Creed series review, but there is too much pain (and the Uplay launcher, which is kinda the same thing) down that path. I have learned my lesson the hard way – they just don’t make good games any more.

Two Worlds II Castle Defense

by Chezni

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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Assassin’s Creed Revelations

by Chezni

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

by Chezni

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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imprint-X

by LepcisMagna

Made by the same people as RymdResa, imprint-X is a puzzle game. When they said this was a game about pushing 700 buttons, I thought they were being whimsical. But no. After a very long cutscene intro about aliens destroying an asteroid base and enslaving the population or something (which sounds way cooler than it was), you are asked to push buttons in a specific order. The camera moves about even though the entire puzzle fits in the screen, and the girl/android in the bottom right makes squeaking noises every time you push a button – which isn’t annoying at all. Tier Three.

Steam link

RymdResa

by LepcisMagna

RymdResa is a game about floating in space. That space is mostly empty. I’ve been trying to come up with a blanket term for games that try this – like Sunless Sea, Kentucky Route 0, or Voyageur, and to an extent FTL. These are games where mechanics are usually simple but interact well, the focus is on the exploration of an other-worldly place, there’s typically a lot more text or audio clips than NPCs, and the music (if it exists) is solidly in the “ambient” category. I’ve settled on the term “sublime-like”, but it doesn’t quite have the ring to it that I’d like. In any event, being a sublime-like is a tough mood to pull off. RymdResa tries, but doesn’t quite make it, I think.

At first, RymdResa had potential. You float through mostly empty space looking for a new home – avoiding asteroids and suns. You can explore planets and locations you come across for a chance at resources. This is a solid start, but there just isn’t enough variety in the random generation to make things interesting. Worse, when you die, it’s usually out of your control: when an asteroid comes flying at you ten times faster than you could ever hope to fly, there’s little you can do. What really rubbed me the wrong way was the lack of a real sense of space. Asteroids with WWII-era planes ten times larger than you embedded in them float by right after you flew over a galaxy only twenty times larger than you. But worst of all is that there are immovable walls in space – an unforgivable sin in a space game.

Steam link

Darksiders

by LepcisMagna

In 2010, the question of “How gritty can we make every single voice actor sound?” was answered in the form of Darksiders. And sadly, from this inauspicious beginning, things only go downhill. The combat is horribly dull (though that may partially be the fault of Dark Souls’ existence), the levels are aggressively linear, and the story isn’t particularly compelling. Your first quest is to gather 500 souls. Great. Fantastic. Top score.

You play as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (War, in this case), who has been unjustly blamed for killing humanity and disrupting the all-important Balance. He wants to redeem himself by taking down the being that now rules over earth. In one of the many, many cinematics that played during my first hour, I learned that the Charred Council (who control the Four Horsemen) decided that any one force being too powerful would disrupt the Balance and…bring an end to existence or something. The trouble is, the Charred Council is a too-powerful force – so right off the bat we’re faced with plot holes.

Beyond that, it’s a pretty straightforward hack-n-slash. But there’s absolutely nothing interesting about combat (well, the camera control is certainly… interesting). The boss I encountered was boring and gave no indication if I was actually doing the right thing, and later I was immediately able to cheese all the enemies with a jumping attack. There really isn’t anything to recommend this game. Tier Three.

Steam link

Darksiders II

Apparently someone liked the original Darksiders, because they made a second one. It is far, far better. There’s still a good helping of grittiness in the voice acting, but it’s not in every line. Even better, the plot hook is a whole lot more relatable. They seem to have learned their lesson from the distant intro from the first one: you play as Death in his attempt to redeem his brother from the crimes he is accused of from the first one (which I guess means War didn’t do so well). The cutscenes have been trimmed down and the characters have motivation, passion, and a slight sense of humor.

As far as combat, they removed the cheesing jump attack. Instead, they have a dodge that works – which makes combat interesting and fun. It’s still not terribly difficult (again, ruined by Dark Souls), but it is satisfying. The enemies telegraph nicely without spending a minute winding up; even better, they have health bars!

I waffled on putting this in Tier One, but I think it’s worth my time since it seems like a good winding-down game. As a warning, it sounds like people encounter bugs in this version (according to Steam), but I didn’t run into anything in my hour.

Steam link

Dungeon Siege (Series)

by Chezni

Did you play Darkstone as a kid? Shutup–no. Of course you didn’t. Why? Because get off my lawn and somethin-somethin’ kids these days and Darkstone is an ancient old forgotten piece of art that never got enough appreciation and was probably the best game ever made and… and… oh dear word. It’s on Steam. For a buck. Well if that don’t beat all. Everything’s on Steam these days, including my childhood apparently. *Ahem* Anyway, as I was saying… shutup.

We’re reviewing the Dungeon Siege series today. Sheesh. Stay on topic, will you?

DUNGEON SIEGE

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A Virus Named TOM

by LepcisMagna

I’m afraid I can’t recommend a Virus Named TOM. It feels more like a portable or flash game than a full desktop game. I also don’t have any screenshots, because neither Steam nor Greenshot would take one (and somehow I turned Windows into High Contrast mode while trying). You play as the eponymous TOM, and you are used to infect the inventions of a Dr. X, who has been ousted from his company and wants revenge.

It’s a pipe puzzler, of which there are many on Kongregate and iOS. There isn’t really anything to recommend this one over any of the free ones you could find online, and you could likely find a more intriguing puzzle game like TIS-100 that doesn’t have an annoying time-based element. I am typically biased against time constraints in puzzle games, so perhaps I was doomed to dislike this game.