Ya know you want to do more than stare: 2014 in review

As with previous years, this review splits games into four categories. I'm going to proactively not read my earlier YiRs and just assume I remember roughly a year later the system I was using. Maybe I'm not. If I recall correctly, it works like this. This is an entirely subjective, made up of nonsense system, based completely on my experiences. I tend to dislike things that are overhyped because I'm trying to figure out what is so great about it, and like things where people tell me they're bad because I'm always awaiting the game to take a big dump on my face.

Category A: Games that I think everyone should pick up and try if they have any faint interest in them. Games I came out of feeling like I'd really enjoyed myself. Something to branch out and try, and definitely something to pick up if you like the genre they are included in.

Category B: Games that I think, if you're interested in the genre, are definite good times. Not necessarily something to pick up if you're not into it, though, but maybe if you like the look. A bit riskier as propositions go. Most games I finish fall into this category.

Category C: Games that are decent enough if you like this or that sort of game, but not really the sort of game you should go out of you way to try. Games I quit near the end or games I was reluctant to finish tend to fall in here.

Category D: Games I regret play, regret buying or regret existing. I would advise against picking up category D games unless you find your tastes run in stark opposition to my own, which is mind you entirely possible.

To switch it up this here, I'm going to start with the games I don't recommend, and then move up the games I really liked. Whoa. Daring.

I am so bad at this: King of Fighters XIII Steam Edition

No seriously. I don't just mean I am bad at the game, I am bad at playing the game. My left thumb starts to ache up bad from playing. Doing the charged special moves - which have some ridiculous name I can't even remember- starts to cause me pain pretty quickly. I feel like I'm wrestling a porcupine and I'm pretty certain I'm not winning the fight.

And yet man, I really love King of Fighters.

I really don't know a great deal about advanced fighter mechanics; I don't enjoy watching people play fighters, I don't really know much about EVO or salt or being salty or any of those things. I watched a little saltybet, which exemplified the actual Best Of Twitch chat in a weird role reversal of the natural order, but I've never installed Mugen, I haven't played a street fighter game in a decade and I know very little of Capcom's fighters. Divekick makes vague sense to me.

I am the person who is reviewing a fightmans game in the sense of not really knowing a great deal about the art of the fightmans. When I was a kid, I found doing a fireball in SF2 kinda difficult. I was not good at fightmans, and I did not like fightmans. So if you like fightmans, I'm going to sound like a blithering idiot, but if you're a casual like me, this is a review for you.

My Wallet's Heart is the Cards: 99 Levels to Hell

Actually, that is a bit dishonest, since this year Steam handed me like $25 for gems and some TF2 item I'm not even sure as to the reason for existing. But cards make up an even greater pool of my steam wallet, and this game has ... Or had, who knows when anyone will read this ... relatively valuable cards. It actually pooped out a foil, which is nice! I've gotten two foils this month, which is half the foils I've ever gotten after grinding out hundreds of cards.

This is a short one, because there isn't really a ton to 99 Levels to Hell. The game is an odd mix, in that it is both a twin stick shooter and a platformer, with some sort of procedurally generated roguelike nonsense going on as well. I'm not entirely sure on that, it feels like the levels are vaguely different, but who knows. In terms of gameplay, the game really is what it very much sounds like. I don't know that I like the twin stick shooting when applied to a boxy platforming world, it is sort of reminds me how frustrating it could get when taking aim in Terraria. Because platforming is often a very boxy, precise concept and twin stick shooting is messy spray and pray, the game has some weird dissonance going on. You are expected to aim down a lot, which doesn't work all that well. It is actually sort of funny - in the early levels, the scariest thing is a rat in a hole, because while you can just walk on by actually hitting the rat in the hole is brutally difficult.

Visually, the game resembles on at least a spiritual level Hero Siege, which I reviewed a couple months ago and quite liked. There's a lot of shared, happy to be immature, blood everywhere, don't worry about the tone style to this game that helps it get away from the fact the art assets are pretty basic stuff. I would say it is a step down from Hero Siege, but still in the same vein. It doesn't look like pixel artwork so much as just MS paint artwork, which isn't quite as satisfying though that might be nostalgia booting me around.

Enemy design is nothing special. Bats, floating skulls, robots, the like - The bosses are sort of novel looking, but the art frankly isn't the product of much talent, and when they get as big as the bosses do, welp there's your lot. The bosses are pretty cool in actual execution, though. Except the bat boss bugged out and jammed itself into a wall when I fought it...

The game also has traps, which it shares with Hero Siege, but unlike Hero Siege it doesn't seem very consistent. Some of the levels, the traps will kill monsters, other levels they don't and its just kinda wonky. The traps are visually distinct, but the game likes to 'ah-ha!' moment you with them, which is not nearly as amusing as you'd think.

The only real bad side to the visuals, if you don't mind looking at them, is the game's lighting issues are a little weird. The game is supposed to be dark, since you're digging your way to Hell, but it ends up feeling a bit too dark and some stuff is very hard to make out. Especially egregious are power-ups, assuming you can see them, it is hard to figure out if you actually want a power-up since you only have a weapon slot, an upgrade slot and an on-use slot.

As an odd treat, 99 Levels has surprisingly solid audio direction. I don't know if its the product of a kit no one else on the planet thinks to use or the guy behind it just knowing how to make properly matching audio, but it has a good solid snappy style to it. There is some amount of music, which goes loud angry guitar when things get intense, but mostly it relies on ambient noise to make it creepy. It works, and well, which really kinda contradicting the visuals.

Anyway, is 99 Levels to Hell any good? It comes off as fine, but it feels like a low budget title through and through, and the gameplay actually does manage to get pretty irritating in parts. The platforming isn't snappy or precise, and the whole twin stick aiming thing is actually rather annoying when paired with the boxy levels. The levels honestly feel a bit too small and a bit too dull for the shooting and platforming, it feels like they would have done well to be larger and had a bit more panache. Maybe some minibosses, or some less passive floaty goofballs enemies?

Basically I'd say this one is category pass, but if you see it in a bundle (which is where I got it), it's not a bad one to install for an hour or so of goofing around. I had fun with it, but much like Hero Siege, you get to a point where re-starting just feels like too much effort.

Monochrome slider: Betrayer

I don't know if Betrayer had a troubled development cycle or overly much about the game; I do know that it was made by 'at least some dudes' from the sweet team that made FEAR. While FEAR had a pretty iffy story that essentially did whatever it wanted and left you to pay the bill, it was a really enjoyable shooter with a really bad sequel.

You really hope that when they say "the guys who worked on FEAR" they like, left after the first FEAR and watched in horror as the second was made. Not the other option, that they worked on FEAR 2 and just left the digit out. You could say it makes too much of a difference!

(Snakefist)

don't want no skeletons on the lawn

Anyway the thing Betrayer is known for is its original prerelease materials depicted it with a very stark color palette of red on black, giving the game a weird perhaps even noir feeling to it. This may have done a lot to actually hurt the sales of the game, since lots of people went 'oh god my eyes they bleed red on black' and then wrote the whole production off. As it turns out, and the screenshots posted about here will display, Betrayer is on a rather unique slider system that allows you to set the contrast and intensity however you like. While I admit I didn't find I disliked the original artistic design, I do really appreciate actually getting to see some green in my gaming that isn't my wallet being devoured by steam sales so I flipped those sliders to see some glorious leaves. Such glorious leaves.

Also just kidding Canadian money is like blue and plastic now. I haven't seen green money since 2010!

My Wallet's heart is the Cards: Freedom Fall

I don't know when or where I set out to buy Freedom Fall; I think I remember this game being reviewed on like ... I have absolutely no idea where I originally got the idea in my head that I wanted to buy Freedom Fall. Like an alcoholic, I seem to yearn for the self abuse inherent to my play experience vis-a-vis torture platformers. I am not good at torture platformers and I do not generally enjoy them. But I look back fondly on like, They Bleed Pixels or Rush Bros in spite of being terrible at them. Admittedly, I did find Gianna Sisters Twisted whatever to be like nails jammed into my eyelids, but I've been told by people who actually like torture platformers that game is unfun.

But I did, some point in the past, want Freedom Fall. I remember thinking it looked good to me, for reasons I can't articulate simply because I may have dreamed the entire thing up. Or, one supposes, the game could be a clone of another game I wanted. This has happened before.

So basic run down: Freedom Fall is a sharp and clear SNES looking platformer primarily about going down, although many of the later levels also go up, around, sideways and rapidly lose the whole going down thing. I actually do take this as something of a mark against the game, since the first few levels are really neat for how it almost feels like a combination of like ... Actually it just feels like that one section in Megaman 2. Or Tetris. As you can see from above, the game is pretty short, unless I missed some option to turn on half the levels or something.

Which would be dumb. Regardless; short game, short review.

Like I said, the game is sharp and clear looking. The art assets are good, animations are very SNES in their simplicity. Beyond the subdued in comparison to other torture platformers gore, the game is generally a cheerful looking set up, with the protagonist quite the dashing looking young rogue and the terrain reminding me a little of mario or sonic in the right ways. The music is good, the sounds are limited but good, its a fine platformer that doesn't ... over-spray like say Gianna Sisters, which wraps back around to eye torture.

Platformerwise the controls are pretty good. I wouldn't say pixel perfect, and the ledge grab thing feels really finicky, but I had very few deaths I thought were bullshit. The level design is good, but this kinda leads into my problem with the game.

So if I think back to my favorite platformer of all time, its Sonic 3 and Knuckles. S3&K divides levels into two acts, introducing then refining gimmicks, and you could probably extend the game out with a third act. Freedom Fall is a short game, but it isn't for lack of different gimmicks or ideas. There's lots of stuff the game just doesn't use enough of, lots of art assets they could have pushed into a couple more levels. I find it a little strange, because the game does great in all the hard stuff, and there are lots of things I could have done with seeing a bit more.

Basically, it could have used "another act" in each proverbial section.

I wonder if they just felt like the game's story - as simple as it was - could only carry so much content. While I liked the story graffiti which feels very natural and helps break up the visuals, I don't feel like it was that imperative, so I'm left wondering why the game didn't have a couple more levels. There's still leaderboards and refining your play, and I'm sure hard mode is hard, but I just wonder how much you can justify at the game's offering price point.

In short (heh), I quite liked Freedom Fall, but it is too short and probably not worth even a sale price purchase. If you see it for cheap or in a decent priced bundle, and you like platformers, I would recommend it, but the game disappoints in how its finally a torture platformer I enjoyed (probably because it isn't so hard) but it never really puts up the wall and has none of the usual longevity.

A brief discussion of Groupees and Greenlight bundles

ok wait what is going on here

I'm a pretty big fan of https://groupees.com/ which I believe was originally a website that allowed indie musicians to get their work 'out there' that gradually morphed into a bundle selling site. There is also of course indie gala and a couple others, and then everyone loves humble bundle. Groupes and Indiegala are more the reasonable fringe, or um, a reasonable facsimile ... most of the time...

One thing Groupees seems to have success doing is, under their own terms, is running "Greenlight" bundles, or bundles of indie games which 'promise' they will give you Steam keys to their indie games once the game is greenlit and so forth. Generally speak, I do believe other sites have tried running this sort of thing, but Groupees seems to have the most success with it. (I should put success in quotes, I think) They're currently running their 14th Greenlight bundle, which is over here, if you care. I have absolutely no idea how good any of the game in this bundle are. None whatsoever. So of course, I bought them all.

look at all these sweet sweet nickels and dimes

For a lot of people, a steam key is worth infinitely more than a desura key or DRM free link. Especially if sweet, glorious cards are up for grabs. But this creates an interesting conundrum, how often do you  actually get a key for a game? There are two hoops to jump through here: First, the game actually needs to get greenlit. Second, the key has to somehow make its way back to you. So, as a little discussion, I'm going to look over the Greenlight bundles I've bought and look up how many keys I've gotten vs how many of these games have been greenlit without sending out keys. Note that these bundles are often build your owns, or might always be, ie I selected these games for purchase rather than the bundle's contents being static. So maybe I didn't choose so wisely. Maybe I should have just voted anime.

Oh, and I'll list how much I paid too, just for the fun of realizing how much money I've wasted on this shit when I could have put the same amount of money into just buying Skyrim or something. As a note, I've read sometimes people will give out their keys by going through Desura instead of sending them to groupees. I consider this as fundamentally disingenuous and I'm not checking Desura for Steam keys

Whoops I forgot about Scary games month: Dead Space 2

The scariest thing about scary games month is the way, every year, like a creeping zombie the holiday sales crawl just a little bit further up the month. I fully suspect by the time I pass from this mortal coil that "holiday sale" will follow "back to school" in like, early september, and halloween will be a one day event where they jam candy at a 400% markup then it disappears from the shelves after being priced 'to move' into garbage bags full of candy while they rush out their Christmas cacophony. But we're not allowed to call it Christmas sales, which does actually make sense, since really who cares?

"Dead space" is a good term for a horror game in a lot of ways even beyond being a puntastic little riff. There's a lot of dead space, filled with spooky but pointless noises, in just about every horror game I've ever played. Need to walk down the spooky empty corridor for your spooky surprise! Which is, unspookily enough, more zombies. Or sometimes, just nothing. Spooked you! You get nothing!

in a shocking twist, horror goes surgical

Oh I'm sorry, necromorphs. Which is basically like going through the dictionary and assembling two words which are as close to 'zom - be' as ghoulishly possible. Regardless, while I've always been a huge fan of the title of the game, I have largely mixed feelings about the first game. I really liked the crumbs button, the ship design and the way combat felt just different enough to be different. But horror largely isn't my cup of tea, and horror seems to mean 'colon sounds and raspberry jam' more than trying to build a scary atmosphere.

I feel sometimes like the feeling that violence is all around you gets away from 'horror' and turns more into being 'horrifying' if that makes sense. Dead Space 2 has even less restraint than the first game, it opens up with a reference to hallucinations that slowly unveil themselves in the first game then some totally hyper violent murder. I understand they're sort of going for a 'look at how real this shit has already got' moment, but horror is at its best when the shit is more implicit, less real so I don't even know how to start with this game.