Category: Tier Two

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes
by Chezni

 

MM:CoH is puzzling… in more ways than one. On the one hand, it is strategy-based game involving mythical creatures, magical beings and so on–par for the course for the MM series. On the other hand… it is also literally a puzzle game, which leaves me sitting here bewilderingly playing a goofy “match 3 colors” game from a franchise that under normal circumstances, I tend to respect as being one of the anchors in PC fantasy gaming history. At a first glance, there is something extremely appealing about this game. I’m not sure if it’s the design, the neatly organized and brightly colored units, or polished UI, but I feel that a gamer would just be naturally compelled to see what this game is all about. That being said, something about this game is… wrong. Terribly wrong. It’s difficult to explain, so let’s take it piece-by-piece.

For starters, the game’s story sucks. It’s basically along the lines of “something-something, big magical world, something-something, giant kingdoms, something–oh yeah, and then demons attack.” It’s lazy, cliche and even without playing more than an hour of the game, I already know what kind of plot I’m in store for: bland and generic heroes fight off demons and win. Riveting. To be fair though, it’s got the same plot as almost every single Fire Emblem game and those games are pretty good–admittedly for numerous reasons outside their plot though. Even so, my biggest problem  when a game opens up like this is that I’m always screaming in my head at the lethargic narrator, describing these supposedly mighty kingdoms, “Why should I care? What does it mean to me? For all I know, these kingdoms deserve to get overrun by demons!” Narrations like this anger me, because the presupposition is that the player will immediately identify the kingdoms as valuable, simply because they are mighty. It presupposes that the player wants these nations to survive, simply because they contain magical creatures and races that are generically appealing to the conformist norms of a fantasy universe. It presupposes that things are simply black and white; that good will always be good and deserve to kill, plunder and pillage as much as they want, as long as it is in the name of their people group. It’s aggravating.

The plot boringly moves along this route and we are exposed to several young heroes whose families are attacked an murdered by demons. It’s not really exciting in the slightest, and just feels like it drags. The characters are generic and lack any kind of personality beyond the shallow stereotypes that they’ve been built around. You take control of a young elf girl and manage her escape and later investigation into the matters of why demons have attacked. I get the feeling that eventually you would get to choose to play as the other heroes and control their race’s units, but even that carrot wasn’t enough to motivate my progression through the game.

However, sometimes plot and setting are merely a vehicle to transport the player to a very fun game–some of the best games out there have crappy stories. I’m not sure  if I can say that this is the case with CoH. The game has a lot of little pieces for you to learn, which is a good part of any healthy game. Combat consists of building armies through units that are available to you, and each unit is noticeably distinct from one another. There’s a lot of little twists and techniques you can use in combat to sway the tide of battle to your favor–you can synchronize your units by “Linking” them, build walls to play defensively, and plan out your moves in a chess-like manner. The problem is, that even though the rules are decent and possess enough strategic options for the player that they feel like they can make a difference in the battle’s outcome, it’s still just a match 3 game. The concept just feels childish in a world that I’m supposed to take (I assume) seriously. Battles have a lot going on in them, but they feel sluggish. It’s impossible to know what an enemy unit does until you meet it, so new units sort of broad-side you until you figure them out. Inherently from a gaming perspective this is not bad, but it is in this kind of game. Because the game plays out in a chess-like manner, it would be akin to your opponent pulling out random made-up pieces in the middle of a chess match and then not telling you what they do. Additionally, the tutorial of the game drags on and on, and is an annoying series of pop-up windows that is about as exciting as reading a pictureless instruction manual.

The best part of the game by far is the art. For the most part, it is clean, bright and very appealing. All of the army units have a slew of animations that are smooth and fun to watch. One that made me laugh was the skeletons–when they attack, they pull off their head and use it as a bludgeoning weapon as they charge. Character portraits have a range of stances and emotions, and they look smooth and appealing. Don’t get me wrong–they aren’t hyper-realistic or ultra-detailed, but they don’t have to be. They’re fun to look at and watch move around.

 

Ultimately though, I can’t personally support the game. It is clear that time and effort were put into the game’s visuals, and even though it is a low-octane puzzle game, the designers did add as many rules as they could to spice up gameplay to the best of their abilities. In the end though, I’m still just matching 3 colors together in a manner that feels off. At times the game feels like a Flash game on Kongregate–or at worst a micro-transaction army-based game on the Android Market. In my mind, it teeters on the edge of T3 and T2, but I do think that this would be a great game for casual gamers looking for a lot of time to waste, and so I submit that this game belongs to Tier 2. For me though, I desire something a bit more challenging.

Steam Link

 

Sonic CD (Completed)
by Chezni

When I was little, it took a few weeks of effort to finally crush Sonic CD into the dust. Robotnik defeated, Amy Rose saved, Metal Sonic destroyed–it was a moment of triumph. Put to the wayside, memories of Sonic CD warped and twisted with countless other Sonic titles, to the point where I began to think that my memories of time traveling and racing Metal Sonic were simply a fabrication I had created. When I happened to see “Sonic CD” available on Steam, it finally clicked. This was the Sonic game, my first Sonic game, that I had played 20 years ago. I hadn’t made it up after all. Today, I loaded it up to see just how much my “adult skill” matched up to my 2nd grade form. What took me weeks as a child took me 70 minutes in my living room with an X-Box controller. It was still fun though.


Sonic CD is much like any other game in the series. You run through loops, collect rings, move too fast to know where the heck you are going; the normal stuff. Being no stranger to the 2D Sonic platformers, I think this one is nearer to the top than others. As far as the staple principles of a Sonic platformer, it moves quickly, the levels are relatively interesting and open, and the pace of the game is, well, fast which is good. There are some interesting facets that set it apart though, the biggest of which is time travel. Scattered throughout the levels are signs that point to the future or past. Running by one and picking up enough speed will shoot you through time in the respective direction indicated. This means that each and every level in the game was designed both graphically and mechanically 3 different times, and at many places in the level you can swap between all three (past, present and future). Unfortunately, I’m not sure exactly what my motive for doing so is. Maybe if I was very familiar with the game I would have a preference for which time-period I enjoyed traveling through in a particular level, but because I have no idea what any of the time periods have in store, I just swapped them at random so I could see the different graphics and listen to the changed music.

The music, oddly, is worth mentioning. Sonic has always had pretty decent music, but Sonic CD stands apart in that its music is of a higher quality. Probably having something to do with the fact that it was on a CD and not a cartridge, the music widely ranges from calming to techno to funky. It doesn’t quite have that retro charm that say Sonics 1-3 have, but considering that each of the 3 time periods for each stage have their own music, it’s really interesting to hear how it is remixed to fit the new settings.

Collectively, Sonic CD is a good game and I would recommend it to any Sonic fan. It doesn’t take too long to beat, and even if the game doesn’t click entirely with you, the music is fun to listen to and there are even some nostalgic 90’s Sonic cartoon animations unique to the game that you get to watch. That being said though, the purpose of the time-traveling is a little confusing, and like most Sonic games, if you want the “good” ending, you have to collect the Chaos Emeralds–something that is equally unclear as to how to achieve. While I may not be particularly motivated to uncover all the game’s secrets, I believe the game has merit and belongs in Tier 2.

Steam Link

A Bird Story (Completed)
by Chezni

 

Caw Caw. A Bird Story took me by surprise in that… it is literally a story about a bird. To help you understand, consider this: To the Moon (made by the same guy) was much more than just “going to the moon.” It was a rather emotional ride that made the player face the issue of loss–loss of memories, loss of self, loss of a lifelong love–it was heartbreaking, but it created a real feeling in the player that is not really found or explored that much in the gaming genre. In short, the moon ended up being a much deeper symbol that represented something real. Looking once more back to A Bird Story, it’s a bit of a let down that there was no deeper meaning. You can just take the title at face value–there’s nothing deep or profound here.

The entire story of the game is not completely awful (it helps that the game is only about an hour and a half long) and its told entirely without words, which is interesting. A boy, whose parents are never home lives a lonely sad life–his schoolwork is failing, no one plays with him on the playground–it’s a bit depressing. One day after school, he saves a bird from being attacked by an animal (giant badger?) and nurses it back to health. The bird sort of solves all the boy’s problems–he’s popular on the playground because suddenly he’s “the kid with the bird,” the boy isn’t lonely at home, and he’s motivated in his schoolwork by using the bird as the focus of his studies… but nothing really comes from any of this.

There’s a heavy motif of imagination where you’re not entirely sure if everything you see is real or in the boy’s head. He jumps off a building with an umbrella and floats safely to the ground. He builds a giant paper airplane and sails around the world to floating islands. He’s struck by lightning and crashes. The game never offers the barest hint of an explanation concerning any of these things; you have to make of it what you will through a sheer imagination of your own. I imagined that the bird was a representation of zest for life–a symbol of the boy’s choice to live on in the face of depression in spite of the gloomy circumstances around him. The game deserves non of my theories or explanations though, since it makes no effort on its own to throw any hints or clues to the player.

In a point of strange conflict, a school teacher and veterinarian try to take the bird away from the boy (presumably to nurse it back to health properly) and the boy escapes from them on a giant paper airplane into a storm, where he is struck down by lightning and the bird disappears. Then, with no substantial tension, the bird just reappears. There’s a bit more, but after that the game sort of ends, teasing at the sequel for To the Moon. It’s almost as if the developer was like “Yeah, sorry, I know this kind of had no point… uh, I’ll make the sequel to To The Moon at… some… point.”

In the end, the game had good music, and even though it was kind of a waste of time, it was pleasant enough to not be a total failure, and so I put it in Tier 2. Is it a game? No, not really. It feels more like it should be one of those shorts at the beginning of a Pixar film. You never really play the game; about 80% of the game is just watching sprite-art cutscenes. However, if you’re someone who is very low-key, and just sort of wants to watch a slightly interactive short-story about a boy and his pet, then go for it–in regards to that criteria, even though it’s a bit bland, it’s certainly well done.

Steam Link


Risen
by LepcisMagna

Risen is an RPG in the style of Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights 2 – moral decisions to make, monsters to fight, places to explore (sadly no character creation, which is a pity).  Of course, there’s a reason I chose those two RPGs to compare it – the graphics are about on par with Morrowind (or maybe my memory is just smoothing out the polygons) and not quite as good as NWN2.  Still, I’m not a stickler for fantastic graphics – in fact, I’d prefer if mechanics and worldbuilding came first more often.  I only mention it because in an open-world RPG, you are quite often looking at the scenery for long periods of time.  Particularly in Risen, when your movement speed isn’t quite as fast as you would like, poor graphics can start to wear you down.  And don’t get me started on whoever modeled the female characters.  I’m surprised they can stand upright.

My real issue with Risen comes from the combat.  Read practically any review of Risen and you’ll see people saying it’s a great RPG hidden behind a terrible combat system.  And they’re probably right – it does seem like there’s quite the branching, fleshed-out world behind the clunky combat.  Extremely clunky combat.  Unreasonably clunky combat.  It’s probably unfair to compare it to Dark Souls, since it was another three years before Dark Souls came out, but that is the most readily available comparison, since Risen features very dangerous combat and a lock-on targeting system – much like Dark Souls.  But where Dark Souls lock-on works wonderfully and allows you to keep or switch targets readily, Risen will automatically lock on to whatever is directly in front of you.  This means that when enemies lunge and you side-step, you lose your lock-on and not get it back for a couple seconds – an eternity in combat time.  I also feel that the dangerous combat is less precise and more luck-based than Dark Souls’, making quicksaves unfortunately mandatory.  This may just be my lack of experience with the system, so take that with a grain of salt.

In the end, this goes into Tier Two because I’m just not having fun with the combat and exploration – two of the three main components (the other being plot/relationships) of an open-world RPG.  Maybe I’ll go play NWN2 again.

Steam Link

Serious Sam – The Other Ones
by LepcisMagna

The Second Encounter

I loaded this up, started out, and thought: “Hmm…this looks suspiciously familiar.  Like, exactly the same as the first game.  Hmm…yep.  Same desert, same oasis.  Though it’s raining this time.  Or maybe I just didn’t notice that the first time.”  Turns out, the Second Encounter was much like a DLC pack for the First Encounter.  And (on Steam at least) if you own both, the First Encounter levels are imported into the Second Encounter game.  Since The Second Encounter is basically more of the same, I’m sticking with my original assessment for this one – Tier One.

That being said, I do have one complaint I didn’t mention in my impression of the First Encounter that has grown to irritate me quite a bit while playing: most enemies teleport in – which means that you’ll frequently be attacked from behind by things that weren’t there five seconds ago.  This feels like a cheap way of increasing difficulty without really making things more challenging.  Having a single type of enemy do this or having it happen on certain levels would make sense.  But when it is the primary method of fighting, it grows tiresome after a while.

The Random Encounter

This is a 2D, turn-based RPG based on Serious Sam.  It’s a parody of Serious Sam, which is itself a parody – and it just doesn’t need to exist.  It isn’t particularly fun.  There are better ways to spend your time.  Don’t play it.  It goes to Tier Three, narrowly escaping Tier Four only because it isn’t aggressively bad all the time.

Serious Sam 2

The First and Second Encounters have a classic charm to them.  Sam makes occasional one-liners that are atrociously bad, but intentionally so – and it’s forgiven because it only happens sometimes.  Somewhat like old Duke Nukem.  There’s real challenge to be found (even ignoring the stupid teleporting monsters).  But in the SS2, there’s an inexplicable return of the lives system which hasn’t made sense since you could save your game.  The art is cartoonish and suffers from what I can only call early-2000s 3D syndrome, where everyone was trying to make things look cool and new, but ended up making games that have aged terribly – worse even than Classic Serious Sam.  This one, too, must be sent to Tier Three – though I may look at it again if I beat all the other games.

Serious Sam: Double D XXL

Why?  Why does Croteam think licensing Serious Sam out for cross-genre games is a good idea?  This time, it’s a sidescrolling shooter.  It doesn’t work well either – though better than the Random Encounter.  Within five seconds, I’m given two tutorial messages that completely stop gameplay.  I’d like to imagine Serious Sam from The First Encounter punching the robot telling you these things, especially when the robot even admits that it’s something Sam would already know.  It doesn’t make it better just because you’re being self-aware about it.  I know the things can teleport.  They just did.  Right in front of me.  Just let me shoot the things.  Tier Three again, but mostly because it pushed my game-hating buttons.  The actual gameplay might not actually be terrible.  I didn’t care to play long enough to find out.

Serious Sam Classics: Revolution

This is an indie remake of the original Serious Sam First and Second Encounters.  It’s different than the HD remasters.  No, I don’t know why there’s another one – though this one is in Early Access.  Once again, I find myself in a desert with a hidden area at an oasis.  It’s also raining this time.  It’s going into Tier Two because at this point, I’ve played the First and Second encounters enough, and this remake just doesn’t capture the same charm as the original for me.  Or I’m just tired of playing through Egypt.  The HD remasters are what you should play.

Serious Sam 3: BFE

Having played Doom, I was totally wrong in my guesses about what BFE meant, though I honestly couldn’t figure out the E (Egg? Echydna?  Exarch?  Eyes?).  Then I learned it was a prequel – so it stands for Before First Encounter.  That’s less entertaining than I was expecting.  Much like the game itself.  I started up a new game and was greeted by … Call of Duty?  Did I start the wrong game?  Oh.  oh…  On the plus side, after it got rolling, things improved and I was soon bashing and shooting my way through thick waves of classic monsters.  While I’m not sure I agree with the inclusion of such powerful melee attacks (almost prescient to DOOM, even), the early fights were satisfying and sufficiently challenging to pique my interest.

Of course, there’s a problem when they introduce the screaming fellows.  You know the ones.  If you don’t, you’ll soon come to love them (if you play this game).  The problem is, it’s the EXACT same moment as the First Encounter.  I believe Sam has the exact same dialogue.  And that’s really the problem I’ve been noticing with these games.  Croteam made 1.5 good Serious Sam games (since the Second Encounter was expanded DLC) and have just been repeating the same game ever since.  First they made SS2, but went too far afield.  Now, they are trying a return to form, though I’m not sure if it succeeds.  So for now, this too will go into Tier Two – since I think it’s probably worth picking up later, after I finish the HD remasters.

On an entirely unrelated note: Croteam’s later release, The Talos Principle, is worth a shot if you like puzzle games – very different than Serious Sam, but even better in its genre than the First Encounter.

Steam Links

Fallout Tactics
by Chezni

The Fallout series (much to the dismay of my peers) has never been my cup of clam chowder. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the game franchise for what it is and what it provides its players–it’s just that I’ve never really liked the Wasteland setting for my post-apocalyptic games. Maybe the series is just too dry for me–or maybe I don’t like the way that the ever looming presence of the desert, radiation, and a less than plentiful supply of bullets constantly weighs down upon my weary desert-traveling soul. Don’t count my credentials out though–I’ve beaten Fallout 1, and I’ve even beaten its spiritual ancestor “Wasteland” (let me tell you, that was a trip) but at no point did I ever feel the special connection that so many seemed to have with this kind of game. As I loaded up Fallout Tactics, the third in the Fallout series, I expected to be met with the same wall that before had segregated my enjoyment of the series and was surprised to find… that I think I actually like this game.

Just as the other two Fallout games, Fallout Tactics begins with you building your character with the exact same stats, perks and skills as before. What makes this game different, is that instead of being kicked out of your vault with a knife, a pistol and a handful of bullets with the expectation that you survive in the harsh wasteland, you instead are injected into a series of scenarios that you must tackle, each with their own objective. The story goes, that you are in-training for the Brotherhood of Steel, and as a new recruit you are being sent on a series of missions to test your metal. In each mission you’ll get a handful of party members to assist you; thus the tactical portion of Fallout Tactics.

I’ve heard complaints about this game from fans of the others, and I can see why. Gone are the sections of exploration. Gone is the need for extensive role-playing with NPCs or grueling survival through the desert. It’s these absences that are probably the source of many’s complaints about this game–but it is the source of my enjoyment. I no longer feel like I’m wasting my time, wandering from town to town because I didn’t use the right dialogue option on a random NPC. Gone are the hours spent trying to pierce The Glow’s radiation without the proper equipment, or trying to track down a damn water chip. Instead, you focus much more on equipment management and party tactics in combat.

Does it deserve to be a Fallout game? …Probably not. If Fallout lore or role playing isn’t that big of a deal for you and you enjoy mini-scenarios involving strategy and party management then you might find something in this title. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s less frustrating than trying to unearth the next piece of plot in Fallout 1.

 

Steam Link

 

  

Vagante
by LepcisMagna

I struggled with where I should put this game.  From my hour of play, it didn’t seem to be anything special – simply another roguelite set in a Spelunky-esque environment.  I died a few times – sometimes to spikes (an aggravating insta-kill – the only one in the game), sometimes to gigantic monsters, and sometimes due to my own ineptitude.  But while this has the usual trappings of a roguelike – e.g. Permadeath, constant danger, and randomly generated levels -it doesn’t have the same feel as you get from, say, Golden Krone Hotel.  I haven’t played enough to confirm this, but at a glance I would say that Vagante doesn’t have the same meaningful choices a roguelike needs to remain entertaining.  I was ready to put this into Tier Three, since I didn’t feel much motivation to continue to play this game.

Two things stopped me: First, this is an Early Access title.  I read some of the Steam reviews, and one fellow had over 1,000 hours into Vagante, proclaiming it one of the best roguelikes ever.  But near the end of his review, there was a note that it had changed since the time he had put in his time – mellowing it out and taking some of the special-ness from it, but making it more accessible.  That saddens me, but it also means that it’s possible it will improve just as much before it leaves Early Access – so it might be worth waiting.

Secondly, it seems to be a Co-op focused title.  My experiences were below par, but part of that may have been playing solo.  If you have a solo mode, good co-op isn’t an excuse for poor solo play – but it’s enough to make me want to revisit this sometime.

Steam link

Golden Krone Hotel
by LepcisMagna

A roguelike set in a castle filled with vampires, monsters, and humans – and you can play as all three (sometimes in one playthrough!).

What makes this worth playing are the few unusual mechanics:

  • Windows let in sunlight and moonlight, hurting or healing you if you are a vampire or werewolf, respectively.
  • The humans are friendly if you are a human, and the vampires are friendly if you’re a vampire. You can get different bits of story from each.
  • Unidentified potions have three possibilities so you have some control over your risk-taking.
  • If an item you find is better, you equip it and sell the old one. If an item isn’t better, you just sell it – ridding the game of tedious inventory management.
Unfortunately – because it is a roguelike – it is a long and difficult journey. I had a lot of fun playing this for an hour and I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes roguelikes… but there are enough of those on my list that I’m going to have to put this one on the back burner until I clear out more of my Steam inventory. It’s also still in Early Access, so coming back once more polish has been added might not be a terrible idea.
Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal
by LepcisMagna

Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal is one of several sequels to a flash game I played on Kongregate.  It’s a modified Tower Defense game where you battle the “Creeper”: a mindless flood of indeterminate blue goo.  Emitters gradually fill the map with the Creeper (putting out layer after layer that slowly climbs the landscape), and it’s your job to survive long enough to collect the important resources and escape by placing cannons and energy collectors across the map.
I bought this game practically with the mindset of it being a Tier Two game (though we hadn’t come up with that yet): something I wanted to support the developers in because I enjoyed the flash game, but not something I really ever expected to complete.  It has solid core mechanics and dozens – if not hundreds – of levels (not including custom or random maps).  It’s unique enough to be interesting, but I’ve played enough of it to be satisfied (partly I played the flash game).  I’ll return to it when I have time or find myself wanting to play it again.

Steam link

Darkest Dungeon
by LepcisMagna

A side-scrolling/turn-based adventure to clear out your inherited castle with some town upgrade elements thrown in.  It seems a solid game, but it has a gritty grimdark aesthetic which doesn’t quite click for me.
My only real complaints are these:

  • The narrator – who sets a wonderfully insane tone in the introductory cinematic – has a comment about every other action you take, which gets old before the introductory mission is over.
  • Single actions in combat take about 10 seconds to play out – slowing things to a crawl.
  • Due to the art style, buttons and actionable items blend into the environment and make menus seem crammed and unclear.

I may pick this up again in the future – especially if I can find an option to turn off the narrator (to be fair, I didn’t look while playing).  I do enjoy Lovecraftian horror, but the art style and combat pacing are too off-putting.

Steam link