by LepcisMagna Sadly, I think I missed the train for these games (Unreal and Unreal II). They’re just a tad too out-of-date to make it to Tier One, given the sheer quantity of other games to play. It’s particularly sad since they seem like excellent FPSs. Perhaps someday I’ll make it to them.
by Chezni Momodora was in no way a bad game. It maintained its extremely high level of sprite detail throughout the entire game. The mood and setting never let up and there was a plethora of minor details in the background and gameplay that hinted at a deeper lore. Broken shrines, untended graves, haunting pictures–even the NPCs have several little nuances that imply or even present a darker image of death and possibly in one case, suicide. And yes… you can turn into a cat.
Continue reading “Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Completed)”
by LepcisMagna 
Firewatch had potential. But, maybe because I actually wanted to play a fire lookout game, I didn’t find it enjoyable. It just doesn’t truly succeed at anything it tries. Story wise, you are a man in his late 30s trying to escape life by taking a job as a fire lookout in Wyoming. You start talking with the supervisor of the fire watch posts, Delilah, and develop a rapport. There are hints of a conspiracy and a love triangle, and the dialogue is quite well written.
Spoilers past the break!
by LepcisMagna In stark contrast to Valley, The Solus Project has a painfully slow walking speed (or I just shouldn’t have gone from Valley straight to The Solus Project). In the Solus Project, a sole survivor of a exploratory probe has crash landed on an unknown world. There’s a dead civilization and a not-so-dead one to explore, all the while trying to stay alive, stay warm (but not too warm), and get a message back to the colony ships. It’s very pretty, and there are a lot of things to like. Unfortunately, the tasks of staying alive become mere annoyances during a slow, ponderous walk to find seventeen parts for a communications array. I very much wanted to like this game, but in the end it is no more than a fetch quest.
by LepcisMagna FarSky is a good game, but a short and flawed one. I can’t quite put it into Tier One because there’s just a few too many complaints.
You were on board your submarine when, for reasons unknown, it cracks apart into nine pieces and deposits you on the ocean floor near an abandoned research outpost. Your quest is to survive, find those nine pieces, and pilot your submarine back up to the surface.
Unfortunately, this is where the problems start. First, you’re 100m below the surface in a diving suit. You could just…swim (except there’s no swimming in this underwater game). You might argue that that wouldn’t help, since you’d still be stuck in the middle of the ocean. You be right, except that brings us to: second, you’re in radio contact with someone standing by to rescue you. When the premise of your game has this many holes, it’s hard to suspend disbelief.
But fine, let’s ignore the plot and just play the game – we’re supposed to be having fun, after all. And, on the whole, the game is fun. You mine for materials, craft upgrades and base expansions, and eventually you can set up automatic mining facilities (which is very, very nice). My only real complaints as far as game-play are the remarkably aggressive sea life (shark attacks don’t happen that often) and the length. All told, it took me two hours to complete everything. I had no particular motivation to start a new game or start survival mode, since there wasn’t much more to do. And sadly, I barely used the top tier gear before I was done.
But it was a fun two hours, so I put it into Tier Two.
by LepcisMagna 
My favorite professors were the ones who assigned papers that “are as long as they need to be to get your point across.” Or, in the words of Winston Churchill: “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
by LepcisMagna 
Though it looks like it’ll be on the short side, Semispheres is a fun little puzzle game based around two versions of the same map with different item and enemy placements. The brilliance is that each side can interact with the other, allowing for a back and forth that makes you think about each side simultaneously. It’s a fun game, and I’ll likely come back to it eventually – Tier Two.
by LepcisMagna 
I’ve loved space games ever since Homeworld. Unfortunately, Homeworld is pretty much the only good 3D RTS space game (I could never get into Nexus: The Jupiter Incident). Don’t even try with Sins of a Solar Empire – if ships fly around in a plane, the game is space themed, not a space game. Star Wolves is somewhat in the middle – there is no definite, flat play area, but the levels seem to be designed without thinking in three dimensions. Homeworld had a bit of the same problem, so we’ll see if Star Wolves can hold up to the original 3D RTS in other ways.
by LepcisMagna Did you know there are free games on Steam that don’t have Steam pages? In fact, the only way to get them is to enter the install links into your browser directly. So here’s a special 5-for-0 deal on hidden Steam games. First up:
by Chezni
In Soviet Russia, walking simulates you! Ahaha… wait,no, hang on. In S-soviet Russia, uh… You scare ghosts! Argh, no wait uh… i-in Soviet R-russia…
I had no idea what Kholat was when I turned it on. After an opening cinematic that seemed to last forever that went along the lines of “something-something dead bodies are turning up in the USSR,” you are dropped into an abandoned town surrounded by endless snow. At first, I was completely confused. Did I miss something? Did I have an objective? What was I supposed to be doing here? I walked around for about ten minutes before finally getting frustrated and looking at some of the comments on Steam. When I got to one that read “No tutorial […] No direction No guide” I understood that wandering around clueless was exactly what I was supposed to be doing and once you know that you aren’t supposed to know it’s not a bad game.