Top down days: Hammerwatch

There is a terrible feeling when I look over my Steam collection.

It isn't the biggest backlog in history or something, but I'm at something like 200 games tried out of 1200 games. That's nice. What isn't nice is realizing I had bought a game I wanted to play, and then forgot to play it for a long time due to it falling into that giant pit of unplayed games. It's an unpleasant abyss.

Hammerwatch is one of those games. I got back in ... It looks like 2014? Yeesh, is that seriously right, that's brutal. Back logs are the most first world problem not involving purse dogs or speculating on ebay sales, but it's still kinda dismal when you flip through the Badge page and realize you've been playing games you're not exactly too impressed with instead of games with Very Positive scores and pretty consistent reviews.

It's also really bad when you go over how many games you've played from six months of the Humble Monthly - which ain't cheap, after six months - and that is seriously at a whooping 1/30 or something. Ok that's worse.

But I did finally manage to play Hammerwatch

Two pack review: an Imp? A Fiend! & Astaral Breakers

I run into this issue from time to time where a game just doesn't have enough meaningful content to discuss in a broad, long review. Having hit on two of these games in a row, and having posted nothing in months, I guess I'll lump these two together.

 An Imp? A Fiend is about the easiest game type in the universe to review. It is a torture platformer, more in line with Super Meat Boy than something like There Was a Caveman, which I enjoyed a heck of a lot more than either of the former. This is a platformer with rotating saw blades, double jump, wall jump and a lot of the usual suspects. Pixel artwork, boilerplate soundtrack, etc.

The game is... Bad sort of in relative terms. There's nothing really distinguishing here, except that your imp is pretty good in a fight, but the game is just a bit of a chore without much pay off. Screens are filled with enemies, which is lame, but the real bummer is when you get to the first town and basically no one says anything. Just screen after screen to waddle through, with NPCs that shouldn't be in the game and extra busywork. For the one town you acquire the key, but you have to thaw the key out, only nothing really implies this... So you just wander around til you find that exact spot and yeah it's pretty not great.

I got about thirty minutes of amusement here. The controls are good, and I like how your little imp doesn't exactly feel like a slouch, but eventually you start smashing your face into screens filled with spikes and saws, and it's just not that exciting. That's all there is to the game, but it's not really quite as quick or nuanced as better versions of the genre. It feels like it could use a bit more polish and a lot more consideration of game flow.

Astral Breakers is a tetris vein puzzle game of ... Oddly limited means. I was fiddling around with the new Genesis Hub thing where I have a copy of Columns, and the game is very reminiscent more of Columns somehow than pure Tetris ... But even then not all that much.

Basically you drop 1 singular colored block at a time, which is unusual. The blocks are completely nonreactive and won't disappear by themselves. At seemingly random points, the game gives you the breaker power up, which you can enable with a keystroke. The power up is added to whatever color you currently have, and it 'breaks' all connected blocks of that color. You can aim the powered up blocks at blocks of another color, they won't break, and this - in theory - sets up the combo system.


As far as I can tell, the game is about that. You can set up combos by having 'breaker' blocks set up to fall on their matching color, but I honestly found this just about never happened, because you're always competing against an opponent and whenever they do a break random crap spews on your screen.

Oh, and the game has an adoreable little intro video with a little star. D'awww.

Frankly, this game is probably a good introduction to puzzle games since it feels very under your control, but it's not a Tetris, not a columns and definitely not a Bejeweled. Maybe if you wanna give a kid a non-violent but simple game, it would work there, but for me there's just not enough to recommend it.


Anyway, I generally wouldn't recommend either of these games. An Imp? is a decent torture platformer, but I'm a poor judge of the genre since I hate these kinds of games. Astral Breakers is just too simple for its own good. It just doesn't grab you, even though it is a quality presentation.

Eight long rolling weeks; SRR: Dragonfall

Welcome to Rolling play game month(s) in which we spend eight weeks playing roles with the grenade that is the computer. Please enjoy your stay as we jack into steam for another exciting romp through fictional worlds with large, elaborate dialogue trees that don't do anything to actually influence conclusions and whatever else we like to pretend makes for roleplaying.

Choices matter. They matter because you make a choice, and then, that's what you did. Deep. Deep like the rolling pin games, on the computer.

Dragonfall is the follow up to Shadowrun Returns, which contained the campaign "Deadman's Switch" or some variation on that string of letters. A lot of people seemed pretty down on DMS, but I thought it was a pretty effective tutorial, which I've said about 75 times or something in the last year. Dragonfall inversely is meant to be more of a standalone adventure more suited to experienced players.

On a basic level this is a RPG with squad based tactical combat set in a cyberpunk world. Dragonfall (as a game) comes off as a fair bit more toward the dystopian than DMS, but not really to the point it feels like the setting isn't being used - more like the setting has more depth to it than the usual RPG nonsense, and different parts of the world feel different. Which is a good thing.

I don't, and I know I've said this, feel much of anything special toward Shadowrun. As earlier RPG systems go, I never really played anything other than D&D. I don't even like D&D though, the only systems I have much of a soft spot for are the White wolf nonsense which is endearing in its completely ridiculous nature and BattleTech which just has the best world-building coupled with a legacy of endless failure. Shadowrun is just "there" for me, it is built out of disparate cyberpunk parts but doesn't really hum with its own energy. So while I think these games are cool, I'm not saying that out of nostalgia.

I kinda like or dislike this game on its own merits, even disregarding it as a sequel, since I barely remember DMS other than how good the story hook was.

You're back I see: 2015 in review

General rules apply for my year in review process. I rate games as A, B, C or D. Note that none of these ratings are recommendations based around whether or not I thought the game was good. Not exactly. Rather, the ratings are recommendations as to whether or not I think you should try the game depending on your personal, subjective take on a given genre.

Also it is really worth noting that like ... Maybe one or four games on this list came out this year. This blog is about playing games that have gotten cheap, or that someone gifted me, or come out of a bundle. So the titles in here could be from as far back as 2008 or who even knows. Don't worry, just game.

A rated games are games I think supersede their genre and everyone should give a try if they think they could possibly like the game. If you totally hate platformers, of course, an A rating doesn't mean I think the game will overcome that. If you dislike them or usually find them samey, though, the A rating means I think you'll like this one or at least should give it a try.

It's a discussion more of what I think - based on you, the reader - might find fun. That's the biggest issue with reviewing in general, I think, since there's a thousand subjective factors in play. A rated games are the ones I think somewhat overcome the subjective, at least to some degree. That doesn't mean if you're hostile to the genre it is going to get past it, though.

B rated games are games I think are just good examples of their genre. If you tend to like such a genre, then you'll probably like a B rated game. So if you like shooters, and it is a B rated shooter, you should go check out the review and see if you're into it.

C rated games are, inversely, games that I think you need to like the genre or really want to play an example of the genre to need to play. C is about the point where I tend to start giving up on games midway through playing them, and generally don't think too highly of them. Sometimes I really like a C rated game, but sometimes they're scrapping right along just being trashed.

D rated games are games I would generally avoid. Very few games are truly so bad that you can't squeeze an hour of fun out of them, but some are, and some do. I'd avoid D rated games.

Over the verge; Axiom Verge

Axiom Verge is the product of a single dude, which has long since lost real meaning to me. Thomas Happ be his name, and he made a game about ... Whatever this game is actually about is somewhat hard to describe. I'm going to try to describe the game without spoiling the game, which is actually much more difficult than you'd think, because certain explicit and implicit elements of the gameworld are tampered with as a matter of due course for the story to unveil and then unfold.

At its core, before anything else is layered on, Axiom Verge is a Metroid leaning Metroidvania. There are a lot of reviews and a lot of commentary built from that central point, and a lot of it goes from there to become very hostile and negative. Oh how dare a single gentlemen lovingly craft a passion project in his side hours that builds from his experiences in retro-gaming of the Nintendo-kind! How dare he infringe on that holy space!

Thing is, as I said back in the Super cyborg review, I honestly don't care anymore. We're not in the early generations of gaming here, and the fact that someone who was raised on video games made a video game that feels like video games is like complaining that a major book series feels like a book within its genre. Yeah, it is a Metroidvania that feels like a Metroidvania.

Get over it. The genre is actually pretty narrow, if you actually want it to feel like Metroid, and not something like Strider where the Metroidvania elements feel like a contagion that infected an action game's genome and dragged the entire production down.

To me the real question is whether or not Axiom Verge, in and of itself, by itself, feels like a quality and polished product that I enjoyed playing, and/or, think others should play.

Toward the Verge: Strider

Strider!

Strider is a word used here for ... Like literally ninja. You're a "strider" from a "strider" school which teaches you to strider people to death. It's weird. They also call you "Strider" like it's a name but you are also a strider from that strider school, and they previously sent other striders to bestride the stride-able but they failed in their striding leaving all possible stridering to you.

Or something? In Ninja Gaiden do they just call the main character 'ninja?'

I had actually played Strider on the Genesis slash Mega Drive back when I was a young'un, but I don't have any strong memories of it. Reading wikipedia on the history of the release, it sounds like it was considered very highly as games go and not a metroidvania at all. Strider, here, is a Metroidvania and thereby covered vaguely under the toward the verge sub-banner of games I've played.

I'm going to be honest in that as a genre goes or has gone for me this year, this has not been what I would call a pleasant set of games. Generally speaking what you end up with are a lot of games with dull hallways, mediocre enemy placement, boring gameplay. No sense of exploration, of 'opening up' the game world or progression.

Strider is both the best and worst of the games I played in this regard. I didn't write many reviews, since there are more than a few games I feel like I might go back to in the doldrums between the two great sales, when I'm not trying to grind out many a card. Strider is a mix of a lot of elements that really make me wonder how much better it would have been if it wasn't crippled by being lashed to metroidvania elements.

It is also apparently inspired by Shadow Complex, so man, did that ever make me not want to pick up Shadow Complex.

The coolest thing about this game is that the Strider's scarf changes color when you change plasma options. You won't notice this early on, since you don't get a plasma change for quite a while, but you can actually change it on the fly and it slowly flows out. A lot of the visuals pick up on this sort of subtle element while the rest of the game hesitantly sits down before drooling on itself.

The final carddown: Commander Cool 2

It's not really the final anything, except I've finally got lots of cards sold for sale day. Finally! Cards down!

Commander Cool 2 is likely from one of my many groupees bundles purchases. While I talked about this with some trepidation back in march or so, Greenlight stepping up its game has led to an influx of indie games on my list, and with it a wide variety of titles to get my card on. Or I don't know, maybe it came from some other bundle, but whatever. It doesn't matter. I have this game for cards, and cards I shall seek.

I've been pretty happy with the greenlight into indies experience on Steam. Certainly most of the games aren't good, but it is an interesting way to experience gaming. It's nice to pick up a title, play for ten minutes and just throw it away if I don't care for it.

I'm not exactly certain what the story behind Commander Cool 2 is and I largely don't care. The game stars a dude who is a sarcastic epitome of "Commander Cool, too" and he is doing platforming levels in the stone age. The game is more of a "speed run" platformer in line with something like Volchaos, or maybe Dustforce, which is sort of sad to admit since Dustforce is noted as a good game and Volchaos was bad enough I'm not even sure I bothered to write up a review. Anyway, levels are short and platforming is quick. The game's load times are good, but it does have some weird shifts in design.