Thursday, August 22, 2013

Thomas Was Alone

This was highly recommended by my friend Austin, so I had to give it a try.

It started out simple, then adds complexity to show interdependence between characters.

Characters are represented by basic shapes (rectangle, square, taller rectangle, large square, etc.). They start to add more interesting mechanics as the game goes on, but nothing too crazy.

I completely agree with Austin's opinion on the voice narration, it's well done and helps draw you through the story. The game would not be the same without it.

I will say that it gets a bit tedious for my taste at times. I know that it's showing the interdependence between characters, but having to climb each stair with character switching is too much at times. Fortunately these are not the norm, but it does occur enough in the levels overall that it's worth mentioning.

My last complaint about the game is... why the hell are the save files in the registry. This makes no sense! Please use actual save file(s) like every other developer in existence.

That said, it was very enjoyable. Just about 3 hours and the game was done. I never got stuck, there were a few awesome moments, and good pacing overall.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Aquaria (~July 2010)

I picked up Aquaria in one of the early Humble Indie Bundles and amazingly played it almost immediately.

It's been a while since I played this, so apologies in advance if I'm forgetting anything!

The controls are simple. WASD to move, and left click a spot to do a small dash toward the spot.

The gameplay is very much a metroidvania style of game. Instead of weapons you get forms. You can play a sequence of notes to shift forms, or just press the number keys. I didn't realize this for quite some time, and had to sing-shift my way into various forms in the middle of boss fights. Just a small note, your third or fourth form is the faster moving one, so don't quit too early because getting around is slow. Also, until you get that form, you can go quite fast by wall hopping repeatedly.

The audio is extremely good with a very good musical tone to just about everything. What I remember of the voice acting was simple but good. The music and ambient audio is really what shines.

The graphics were very stylized and great looking. The animation was a bit blocky during cutscenes, but great during normal gameplay.

The boss battles were tough but good, I distinctly remember killing my wrist by repeatedly clicking the right mouse button to shoot the enemy for optimal damage. You can also charge your attacks to shoot more powerful homing shots, but spam clicking is more damaging to both your wrist and enemies than charged shots. You can also eat food that doubles your normal shooting damage. So that's highly recommended for boss fights.

There are a few items you can get in the game. I think it's just helmets, but they can be quite helpful. They're also quite well hidden. I really liked the exploration of the game, to find the rare items.

Oh, you can also get pets, which are always nice!

I have installed it on my Ouya from the Humble Bundle app, but I don't know how playable it is. I also know its out for iPad which sounds neat, but I'm not sure about the controls. I played it on PC with keyboard and mouse, and that was perfect for me. I did try using a controller on PC, which was easier for shooting but harder to move around faster and shift forms.

If you haven't played it yet, I very highly recommend it. It's a shame BitBlot is not making any more games.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Mass Effect 3: DLCs - All of Them

Leviathan

I have to say I'm impressed. Instead of just adding more cover-filled levels filled with things to shoot, there's some clever investigation, awesome story development, amazing visuals, and then the levels with cover for shooting enemies.

The story really was top notch, as well as the locations, and new gameplay. It reminded me of what I played Lair of the Shadow Broker back on Mass Effect 2.


Omega

Omega was good, with an extremely heavy focus on tough combat. You get to hear the backstory of Omega, and join in another fight to taking it back.

I'm really glad I picked Infiltrator, and was almost level capped, because that helped making killing guys that much easier. Also, since you get to put points into Aria, it helped starting her with 88 points to spend!

At the end, you get a few new moves, similar to the moves they added to Multiplayer with the new characters I believe.

Citadel

Very good story. Lots of dialog and backstory at the start, then some nice combat with the usual reminder I had the game set to hard difficulty again, and hard means hard. Then some nice non-combat things to do.

All wrapped up with a good final battle, and some awesome back story and conversations to listen in on.

Oh, they added a battle arena. This DLC has just become the best one ever.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

So my friend Matt picked up this game for me. Thanks a ton, because this game was awesome!

The graphics were very good. Enough detail to see what's going on, and a great tactical view for planning out your movement.

 The voice acting was excellent, and tailored perfectly to the character rolls.

The controls are great, with just about every action bound to a hotkey for quick turns.

The gameplay was rock solid. Build a base to make better stuff, to give to soldiers, to kill aliens with, to make money and level up, and build more base. The tactics of combat were well balanced, with enemy AI playing a major role in bringing it all together.



What I would have changed

* Make it so that heavies and snipers can be equiped from dropped alien weapons in the early to mid-game. I ended up using support and assault classes for most of the game.
* Equipment management could have been a bit easier/less tedious in a few screens. The barracks screen was pretty solid
* Body armor felt like a waste of money until the end game. As a matter of fact, I didn't buy body armor until a few missions from the end of the game.


* Add a quick load key in combat that loads you to the start of last round, which can be used mid-alien turn. This would account for 99.999% of the loading I needed to do in combat. Alternatively, allow loading a save mid-alien turn

* Add camera orientation information to save files. This will help avoid disorienting the user on combat save file loading




What I loved
* Pacing of the game was good. Just the right amount of chaos happening at any given time.
* Classes were uniquely defined and well spaced in terms of abilities
* Base building required planning, but wasn't overly complex
* Random events are mostly random. So if you get a bad "random event", you can just repeatedly reload the save before the event occurs until you get a better one. It does seem to draw from a small pool, so you might need to settle for the best of the next 5-6 loads.
* Save files were small (I have well over 100 saves). Combat saves around right under 1MB, and non-combat saves are ~130KB

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It was lots of fun, and a great experience. It took me just around 25 hours to complete the game.

Monday, August 12, 2013

Trine 2

So I finally finished Trine 2 with my friend Owen. I have to say that it was a lot of fun playing a coop game with a friend that was extremely like-minded in terms of collecting every orb while simultaneously trying to break the game's physics.

Let me start by saying the graphics are amazing. A great improvement from the first, and absolutely stunning overall. The animations are a bit rigid, and the physics can be a bit off, but it didn't really detract from anything.

We didn't pick up the DLC "The Complete Story", and yet it wrapped itself up nicely at the end. It's only $5 more, and we might do this later on, but for now, we'll consider this game beaten.

The controls are great, with mouse and keyboard working seamlessly well together. The keyboard is for movement, and the mouse controls your abilities and targeting.

The game play was greatly improved from the first by adding multiplayer, and by removing your magic meter entirely from the game. No longer do you need to keep going back to checkpoints or killing enemies for mana, rejoice! This made the game so much more enjoyable, and avoided many of the slowdowns that occurred in the first. Sadly, they also removed the equipment, which would give you nice effects in the first. The secret chests now contain concept artwork, or poems, so that's... nice?

The AI was also more varied than the first, and enemies had a much larger diversity. I would say that some of the boss fights were a little silly, because they would kill you in a single hit. So it became an evade-the-hit-or-die kind of thing, which doesn't feel like a good boss fight mechanic to me.


The voice acting is on par for the first one. The narrator is good, and the characters are alright.

The puzzles also got a huge improvement from the first, with a large leaning toward cooperative play. I would have to say that it's probably a better two player game than a three player game, because with two people, you get to switch to the off character, which means that the person playing Amadeus can switch to Pontius or Zoya. For reference, I played Amadeus almost entirely, and Pontius in fights, and Owen played Zoya almost exclusively. This worked out extremely well.


I highly recommend picking it up if you're in the mood for an amazing puzzle/coop game. It's fantastic.

To put a value on it, which I try to avoid doing, I would have paid $15-20 for this game in perfect hindsight. Great coop game with easily 8 hours of gameplay.