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.”

Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed Revelations” →

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.

 

 

Continue reading “BIT.TRIP Presents… Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien” →

Divinity – Series
by Chezni

 

Some days I wonder if RPGs are dead. Sometimes I worry the future of RPGs are relegated to only ones with the words “Bioware” appearing on the screen as I turn them on. Apparently I just need to try more games, because either I’m an idiot, or the Divinity series is freaking awesome.

 

Continue reading “Divinity – Series” →

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

Daikatana
by Chezni

 

I’ve been looking forward to this one. In circles of fans of Deus Ex, E.Y.E. and similar titles I’ve always heard whispers of a game called…

 

Daikatana is another fast-paced FPS wrought in what some might consider the golden age of FPS’s. Quake, Unreal, Goldeneye, Heretic, Hexen, DOOM, Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior–it was a time of exciting level design, frantic gunfights and weapons that ranged from realistic to ridiculous. Daikatana fits right in with this and potentially on a more brutal level. Daikatana is brutal. Expecting it to be about on par difficulty-wise with the aforementioned FPS’s, (and having beaten most of the aforementioned FPS’s) I didn’t anticipate much resistance from the game. I was wrong. After dying a few times on the second section of level 1, I decided I should probably start trying. So I did. And I kept dying. So I decided to try harder. I still kept dying. I decided to give the game my full attention, using every piece of information available to me in order to achieve success. I did not beat level 1.

 

Continue reading “Daikatana” →

Sid Meier’s Pirates!
by Chezni

Maxis/Fraxis… is there nothing you won’t simulate? Are you not even limited by…

 

Okay, Civilization/Alpha Centauri games notwithstanding, Sid Meier’s other titles have been pretty… lackluster. True you could spend your day running over cows in Sim Farm, but Ace Patrol was overtly simplistic and strategically unfulfilling, Railroads! was a lesson in making a completely unbearable concept even more unbearable, and Colonization was training on how to be the world’s biggest racist prick. Without surprise, I had very little confidence going into Pirates!.

 

Continue reading “Sid Meier’s Pirates!” →

Date Warp
by Chezni

 

What? I dated a demon prince while attending a would-be Hogwarts school. Do your really think that I’m beneath playing…

 

Hakato Games have always made games with a general amount of heart with interesting concepts. What they lacked in polish they usual made up for with compelling design. Science Girls, Magical Diary and, easily the strongest of the bunch, Long Live the Queen, are all games they’ve produced that were at least interesting enough to me to finish once or twice. When I found that the studio had made a dating sim involving time travel, I had to try Date Warp.

 

Continue reading “Date Warp” →

Stardew Valley
by LepcisMagna

Stardew Valley seems to be a very slow paced game.  Your character, fed up with working in a cubicle farm, heads out to renovate the farm your grandfather left you and make a new life in the country.  At first, I thought it was just going to be Farmville.  Happily, farming is just a single option – there’s also adventuring, mining, and more.  From what I’ve heard, this game has crazy amounts of depth – on the level of Terraria, they claim – and it was made by a single person.  It seems like a very relaxing slice-of-somebody-else’s-life game, though it does look like grinding is probably going to factor in heavily as you spend more time playing.

So why I am I putting this into Tier Two?  Quite honestly because it seems like it will take too much time.  I could spend a bunch of time playing this game, or I could beat Dark Souls III.  Granted, Dark Souls III isn’t going to be nearly as relaxing.  But Tier Two is for games that I might pick up at some point after polishing off my Tier One.  And I think that’s where Stardew Valley falls for me.  If you think you’d like a game similar to Animal Crossing with a SNES art style, I’d recommend you give Stardew Valley a shot.

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