Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Legend of Grimrock 2

So this is one of the few games that I actually pre-ordered. I usually don't do that. I usually wait for a Steam sale, or at least a 50% off discount. This game I couldn't wait for. I occupied a bit of time by playing the ORRR2 mod for the first game.

The gameplay is just what I loved from the first one. Grid based movement and tactics. The enemies are extremely difficult if you play on hard. I was unable to get past the first boss after 10+ attempts. I switched to normal and that felt like enough of a challenge.

If you find a gold key, make sure you don't waste it. If you don't mind some spoilers, you can at least choose what to spend it on by checking this Steam community page

Same for potions. You can spend your ingredients early, or check what they can become by checking this Steam community page

The puzzles are a very good improvement, which is amazing because the first game's puzzles were so good. One of the nice differences, is that you are usually given a glimmer of something that you just need to find a way to get to. A chest hidden behind trees, or in a location you'd have to drop down to, or find a secret door to reach. I really like this because it narrows down the amount of tedious wall checking that was involved in the first one. You'll still check walls, but usually with a purpose.

The graphics and very well done. All of the animations and monster variation from the first were quite enjoyable. They also added a new angle of tactical combat, with some enemies attacking while turning, and others doing a fast side-step and then attacking, or even enemies that can jump and flank you. Lots to learn and enjoy.

The bosses in the game were nice, but one of the bosses in particular I considered to be a bit of a test of patience. The poison gas boss was really annoying if you did not have poison resistance. It also summoned minions if you didn't take out the key points, so you have to prioritize that as soon as possible. I spend easily 30 minutes figuring out a pattern, then another 20 getting it right and getting out before being overrun.

The last boss of the game felt like a huge improvement from the first. Minor spoilers continuing here... Make sure you're geared for lots of normal damage, stock up on potions and healing crystals, and be prepared to dish out lots of damage quickly. Anti-venom potions and speed potions would also be good. He does tons of damage, and spawns minions the entire fight. Beat him down as quickly as possible without being too risky. He tends to hit you back pretty quick. I found the cannon worked decently well for good hits from across the field, but hitting him up close with heavy weapons works really well too. I'm not sure if anything comes after mummies, but I killed him before the mummies...

Overall I would highly recommend this game to anyone that played and enjoyed the first. It's fabulous.

And now for some pictures. Sadly almost all pictures of the game contain spoilers because you can see the gear images.








November 24, 2014

I went back into the game a while back, and kept digging for secrets. I apparently missed a few large areas of the game somehow... I found the last of the shards, an extra few boss fights, and the real ending. It was well worth the effort, and I'm glad they gave us so much with this game. Thanks Almost Human Games!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Anodyne

Anodyne looked really appealing in the pictures, good art style and Zelda like.

The puzzles are good, but if felt a bit lacking in that you don't get that many items, so you end up reusing the same trick quite a few times per dungeon. Also, the same layouts/tricks seem to come up quite often. If you see a lock, and have a key, but there is another path, you have to go down the other path first, because there is a second lock a few rooms past the first lock.

Some of the puzzles were much more abusive than Zelda's puzzles, but you do get checkpoints that you can spawn back at if you die. And you'll die a lot... You also get warp gates quite often, so you don't have to spend a lot of time manually backtracking. This was an awesome feature.

The boss fights were almost usually trivial, because I could just swap hits with the boss until I won because I had more hitpoints. I think only one or two fights I had to actually use tactics. The last fight was one of these.

The characters and dialogue in the game are anywhere from simple and random, to amazingly creepy. Like, wow that's creepy. The ambient sounds usually helped with the creepy factor.

The controls are pretty good if you use a controller, but the Android on screen controls were almost impossible for some of the fighting you have to do in the game.

You will have to collect cards to finish the game. All of them. So don't skip any if you see them. The warp gates light up when you have found all the cards in that particular area.

As far as length, it took about 4.5 hours to beat completely. Some of that was a bit tedious, but overall it was enjoyable.

The good:
Good blend of puzzles and exploration keep you entertained throughout
The visuals are really good when they're good

The bad
The visuals can be really bad in some areas, and this is done on purpose.
It gets very creepy at parts, maybe just from a dark sense of humor?
The twitch jumping and bullet hell rooms were not even remotely enjoyable. They were probably the weakest point of the game. For this alone, I am extremely glad I switched to a controller on Steam instead of attempting to finish this on my Android.

These kinds of screens happen too often...

You find red bugs that give you an extra hit point.


This pretty well sums up how often you'll die. By the end I think I died over 30 times. Sometimes just to get back to a checkpoint faster though...

Friday, August 22, 2014

Savant - Ascent

Picked this up in the Humble Bundle: PC and Android 9

Very solid anime look to it, and animated beautifully.

Music is mostly dubstep, with a few varieties. It works extremely well with the gameplay.

The gameplay is basically an arcade style game, and everything blends perfectly together.

The levels are hard at first, but as you pick up CD pieces, you get a few new abilities. By the time you get 4 abilities, you have enough to finish the game. Each time you finish a level in story mode, it remembers your progress and you can continue from there.

The game is quite short. I finished it in just 25 minutes, but I enjoyed every minute. Highly recommended if you already have this in your library -- as most people that follow the Humble Bundles do.





Saturday, July 5, 2014

Euclid The Game

http://euclidthegame.org/

It's actually quite neat going back to something you learned so long ago. That is, until you get horribly stuck on level 20.

Never before have I had problems falling asleep because of an unsolved Geometry problem...

Borderlands 2

I picked up Borderlands 2 to play during lunches with friends. I got the game of the year option (GOTY), and then bought the other DLCs when they went on sale at 75% off.

I wasn't sure what class to pick, so they described some character classes to me. Sniper... shooter... what-what?! A combination steampunk/necromancer? Done.

The graphics are stylistic, like the first, with much better overall visuals.

The controls similar to the first, meeting all FPS and item collection requirements. I do wish there was an auto-fire on all weapons though. The carpal tunnel is killing me when I have to rapid fire a semi-automatic gun.

The voice acting is excellent for just about everyone. Each character comes alive with the voice over. Handsome Jack really shows you how much of a jerk he is, and Brick uses the word "Slab" in every sentence. Claptrap is claptrap, just pure brilliant stupidity. Loved it.

The animations used while talking could be better. There were times where the gestures were working perfectly with what was being said, and a few other times where it felt like World of Warcraft player emotes playing on a loop.

The gameplay is amazing. It's Diablo-style item grinding, with all the uniqueness of Diablo II unique/runword items. I didn't really see what the point of money was until I checked out YouTube and realized that you can tip Mad Moxxi enough that she'll give you a nice gun. You can also play the slot machines in her place until you get a good gun too. I used these two methods to get a good corrosive automatic weapon for taking out robots.

The story is very well done, with lots of exploration opened as you go, and a main story to pull you through the new zones.



So, I worked my way up to level 17 with friends at work, having tons of fun. We had a gunzerker, psycho, and two mechromancers. A few people swapped around classes a bit too, since we were pretty early in the game.


We completed every quest we found, and duped the amazing orange weapons we found (seen below). I got to try out sniper rifles, sub-machine guns, shotguns, etc. to see how each one worked with my class. I really liked sniping in the beginning, while my robot and friends did the tanking. Later on I used an explosive assault rifle for most of the game.

<There is a large gap of time here, when Blizzard updated Diablo III and the expansion Reaper of Souls hit the high mark. They fixed the horrible, horrible loot system, and added some fun end-game content, and made pimping out your character fun. It took tons of lunch gaming, and a LAN party to get Diablo III out of my system and back to Borderlands 2>

When I got back into Borderlands 2, there wasn't as much desire to go back and finish it. Most of my friends had already beaten it, so they were onto other things. So I went ahead and switched to crit-path mode, so I could finish it up. This little beauty lasted me well into the high 20's.


I actually spent much of the game playing missions that were much higher level than my character. Mostly because I really didn't feel like grinding out side quests, and wanted to finish off Handsome Jack.

Handsome Jack is a horrible, cruel, sadistic, cocky jerk. Never has a villain needed to die as bad as Jack. I also have no idea  why it took me so long to realize that Handsome Jack had a mask on. I blame the cell shading...


Oh, and if you're going to try and crit path the game like I did. I'd highly recommend getting a really good corrosive weapon against robots. Seriously. I ended up beating the game at level 30, but it took quite a few respawns to get through some of the harder fights until I got a good corrosive automatic weapon (thanks Moxxi!)

I bounced between having a really resilient, tough, and powerful robot, and having myself do insane damage. For the end game, I went with insane damage on myself.

All in all, it took just around 27 hours to complete the game. Well worth what I spent on it.

More anarchy please!

This is my character after beating the game.

And here is my new shiny! =D

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition

They were not joking. You will die. A lot. Many, many, many times. It will be gruesome.

Not only that, you will swing your sword like it weights a ton. You will button mash as you see yourself slowly miss, and the enemy's weapon flying true to your face.

You will hear bones crack and crunch as you attempt to dodge attacks while wearing 50 lbs of metal armor.

You will perfectly hit the brick wall right next to you with your sword, while your enemy stabs you directly in the chest with a spear.

You will fight, the same enemies, over, and over again. They will respawn every time you rest at a bonfire, for better or worse.

If you elect to become human in the game, you will be invaded and ganked by the rest of the loving internet world. There is a way to avoid this by joining the Brotherhood of the Sun, but until you do, you will get ganked.

On the plus side...

There are all sorts of weapons, all with their own style of striking.

There are shields and parrying swords you can actually parry with. You can riposte after your parry and do some insane damage. You can kick enemies to stagger them, then hit them while they're defenses are down.

You can attack anyone and anything (watch out for this).

You get a relatively true experience of how sword fighting and weapon mechanics work.

Most bosses are hard, but readable and understandable. A few times I had to just put on more armor and stack poise, and trade hits until I won. It was kinda neat that this worked.

I finally beat this game with tons of help from my friend Luke. A few helpful paths to items and a boss direction will help a ton, as the game is not hand-holdingly linear.

I did not kill all bosses, but I did stray from the crit path quite a bit. It was overall very enjoyable.

I sank 50+ hours into this game, and the only reason I'm not instantly buying the sequel is because I'm debating going straight to the third (out soon) or giving myself a break!

Risk of Rain

So this game is amazing, and a complete jerk at the same time. I would equate this to Spelunky if I had to equate it to anything, except it's harder. It's also less hard than Binding of Isaac. Probably because there are no negative items in this game that make you feel like you screwed up when you get them.

The controls are simple for keyboard or gamepad, but I prefer gamepad. My friend used the keyboard, and his pinky finger got a bit tired holding down Z for the entire game. Maybe allowing for toggling primary shoot button in keyboard settings?

The graphics are reminiscent of Sword and Sworcery, or Out of This World. The character/enemy animations worked great for when the swarming happens, and it will happen...

The gameplay is basically a survival game, with upgrades you purchase or get from boss drops. The tactics you have to employ to survive are all unique to the various characters you can pick.

I really didn't like how items and characters were unlocked, as it really slowed progress in the game. I actually gave up on trying to progress past the 3rd character and just hacked my prefs.ini file to give me all characters and items. It was much more enjoyable after that. Don't get me wrong, I like the point of progressing, and how this is handled as a game mechanic. I just felt like progress was at a stand-still for a while, and I would have quit playing if I didn't hack the save file to give me more options.

They let you play solo, multiplayer on the same screen, or multiplayer over IP (also works for LAN). We played multiplayer over IP in a LAN setting.

The unfortunate part of playing in a LAN setting is that if you die, you have to wait for the next level before you get to play. Sometimes that can take several minutes. There should be some way to revive or respawn after some time to keep the pace of the game up. It was basically a really good time for me to get another drink, take the dog out, read up on some blogs, and check on items for the people that were alive.

Now on to images!


You start by choosing a character. You'll only have one at first, but more can be unlocked by achieving various things during the game (or by hacking your save ini file)




When you die, you'll see a results screen. This will happen. A lot.




To give a more concrete example, I made it to the second level, and stacked banners so I could quickly kill the boss. Yay!




And then on the next level I bought all of these extra items with the money I made. Woo hoo!






And then I died shortly thereafter, with all my wonderful items... Boo...





Here is another playthrough with a friend at a LAN party. I'm doing really well, we're beating the crap out of the mobs and taking names. I was Acrid and he was Bandit. Ranged/Tank seems to work really well. Ok, ranged is just awesome, but I like to be in the thick of things.




For some reason, I completely ignored the fact that I could continue to the last level, and I just keep pressing X and cycling through the game. We did this for a while until we ultimately died... due to server de-sync. Note to others, do not let 100+ mobs stack up and take too long to kill them. It makes the game extremely sad in multiplayer.




We finally beat the game with a team of Hunter (friend) and Miner (me). We owned so many faces it was ridiculous. Stacking tons of damage/leech/AoE is the way to go for the tank, while my friend did the ranged damage/AoE. I sadly didn't get pictures of our progress because we were too busy kicking ass, or running for our lives.




And here is proof that it can be done, and that we did it. Woot!



I would highly recommend picking this up to play at a LAN setting or even just to play solo in your free time. Fantastic game.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Legend of Grimrock - One Room Round Robin 2

From a post on the Almost Human blog page, I found out about this mod. I wanted to stay away from semi-completed or amateur mods, as they could become a time sink with little rewards.

This was anything but amateur. It had unique monsters, brilliant and challenging puzzles, new spells, deep stories, crazy complicated maps, and new items.

I don't want to harp on specific puzzles, or complain about other puzzles, so I'll just say that overall it was a great experience. If I had to play it again, I would try a Toorum run. At least I wouldn't have to panic from almost running out of food so close to the end.

The one thing they did an amazing job of is having an awesomely powerful last boss. LoG didn't really have an amazing last boss in terms of fight mechanic, it had other mechanics.

Check it out!

I also did have to check YouTube a few time to help get some solutions. I tried not to rely on it too heavily, and many times it just confirmed that I was done in a particular puzzle, so I could stop searching.

ORRR2 Walkthrough - Part 1

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Saints Row: The Third

I picked this up a while ago in a humble bundle, and a my friend was willing to play through it with me again.

A little bit into the game, we can customize our characters. I pick a female luchador, with a no-nonsense voice, and my friend goes with the silver surfer.

The graphics are a bit dated, but don't detract from the fun at all.

The game systems are solid, the side quests are a-plenty (although we didn't do any of them).

The crit path is an engaging story, with enough of a plot to keep it going, even if the direction is once again, over the top.

The writing is excellent, and the voice actors were great. The voice I picked for my girl was awesome. The voice of random NPC #73 that I almost ran over is also good. The fact that there is also a cheesy movie plot you can do where the voice acting and script writing is terrible was also very enjoyable.

The controls are solid. My friend played for a bit on the 360 controller, but I just stuck with keyboard/mouse so that I could snipe people more easily throughout.

The upgrade system is implemented well, always giving you something to spent your money on that's worth it. Gaining reputation allows you to purchase more upgrades, and you earn rep by doing missions, or just blowing up things in general. We found that taking a tank as the preferred vehicle of choice to get to a far away mission worked extremely well for this.

About half way through the game, we swapped out our characters for a new look. I'm now a Harajuku/hipster, and he's the Joker with a British accent. Hilarity ensues.

When I thought about what I would change on the game if I could, I honestly couldn't think of anything. There were a few bugs I'd like fixed (assuming they weren't intentional). Like not being able to call in a car in certain places on the map.

Needless to say, the game is over the top in every aspect, and was greatly enjoyable from start to end.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Ittl Dew

If you like Zelda games but hate all the time wasted between puzzles. Ittl Dew is the game for you!








It's got pretty good writing that keeps the story going.


And it has signs, where needed.



It's got puzzles galore. Each room is a puzzle. It's got tools you need to solve those puzzles. It has absolutely zero filler. Once you are done with a dungeon, you are done. Don't go back in, nothing to see there. Move on to more puzzles (see above sign)

There are also even more challenging short cuts, which have a posted sign to let you know it's harder than the other room puzzles (with a sign to let you know you're going the hard way)

The combat is a bit off in that enemies are not knocked back, and will walk through your hits to get at you. So you have to hit and run back to avoid getting hit yourself. The enjoyable part is the dynamics between how enemies react with the room puzzles and your tools. It's unbelievable imaginative.



There are even multiple ways to finish the game. You don't need to get all of the items!

I salute you game devs for doing an amazing job, and I apologize for not picking this up earlier  on the OUYA. I ended up getting it on a Humble Bundle sale, and played it on Steam.

If your worried that it will take too long to complete, as I said above, there is no filler to this game. It's all puzzles and progress. I finished it in just over three hours. And I tried to solve every room and puzzle I could. Despite all of that, you can finish the game in under 15 minutes if you know exactly what you're doing. So you have no reason to not beat it!

Anyways, highly, highly recommended. The best Zelda non-Zelda game I've played in a long time.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Borderlands (the first)

So I started this a while back with a few friends at work. It was lot of fun. I started with a soldier, but switched to a berzerker. They were just more fun. I loved the RPG elements they added to guns, also random loot is just sweet!

I stopped playing in August 2011, when my group stopped playing together. I had a level 23 berserker. I picked it up again in December 2013, with my friend Bryan, and we crit path the rest of the game. I think I finished at level 32. Right before the last area, we hacked in a few good weapons to avoid the typical grind of do some damage, die, respawn, repeat. We could have avoided that cycle by leveling and eventually building up to better weapons, but this was faster and less grind-y.

Overall the game is quite fun, so let's end this with a bullet point summary.

Fun things:
* RPG elements throughout
* Playing campaign with coop
* Randomized loot done correctly
* Allowing for different playstyles (classes and their specializations, and guns)

Not fun things:
* Getting stuck in world geometry
* Being underpowered for quests (my own fault)
* Having to compare weapons as find them. It tends to slow the game down quite a bit. This is why hacking a good purple weapon for your level, and then ignoring weapon drops is much better gameplay.

Sadly, I missed the sale for Borderlands 2 by about 20 minutes. So I'll pick it up next time it goes on sale.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Kingdom Rush

I played this on the Android tablet I recently picked up.

Let's start with the good, and end with why I didn't play it into the ground.

The graphics, gameplay, controls, and style are superb. The tower defense genre never gets old, until you realize something is horribly, horribly missing.

Here are the major issues I had with the game, and why I didn't play on past the first major boss.
* You cannot restart any part of the level, it's all or none.
* If you are not a high enough level, you will not be able to beat a level, so you must grind levels.
* You cannot speed up the game speed, so it crawls through each of the rounds (there are upwards of 20 in some levels)

Overall it felt unforgiving and lacking game design polish. They do have purchasable items that you can use to beat the level, but I really don't understand the need to pour gems into beating a level. PvZ2 added the power ups for money, and it always leaves me feeling like a cheater.

To put this into perspective:
* In PvZ2, I'll waste 4-5 minutes before failing a level, and I can always cheap my way through the level with spending money. Most of the time it's a planning failure for why I lost, or pour money into a fix in the last 10 seconds of the last wave.
* In Defense Grid, it's almost always a planning failure for why I lost. I can also speed up time, and back up a few rounds to fix what I messed up
* In Orcs Must Die! 2 you need to learn the rounds, and play against two sides. It's not really fun playing solo, but the failure seems to come faster here at least. So there's less waiting to fail. I also feel very empowered to make a change in the loss that might be coming versus just watching it... slowly... happen...

It's a shame I didn't feel like playing this any more than the first major boss. It had a lot of potential.

StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

I'm really enjoyed this one. The upgrade system is excellent, as it was in Wings of Liberty, but with a nice Zerg twist.

I knew the story would have to slip into some way for you to play the Zerg, and I think they did it rather nicely.

The voice acting and cinematics are flawless, as expected.

The controls are superb, and they recently added (or reminded me) that pressing F2 will select your entire army. This is glorious for Zerg swarming.

There was a day I continually lost connection to Battle.net and then almost immediately reconnected. Very odd. Since I was achievement hunting, and those are disabled while you're disconnected that was also sad. It resolved itself quickly though.

The evolution choice missions are really well done. You get to see and play with both choices in action before deciding on one. I didn't see myself picking the non-lurker upgrade to the Hydralisk, but the mission really helped show how it could be used. Sometimes though the upgrades choices are not really choices -- the baneling mutation was one of those cases where one option was clearly better than the other.

The achievements are a nice touch, and some required a few plays to get right. I finished Heart of the Swarm with 76% of the achievements, whereas I only had 44% of the achievements on Wings of Liberty.

I would have to say this was better than Wings of Liberty, and one of the best RTS experiences I've had.

I'm really not good at competitive play, so I'm going to ignore that part of the game. I'm sure it's superb just like Brood War was...

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Dragon Age: Awakening and a few other DLC

So, what do you do after you play Dragon Age: Origins for an astonishing 120 hours? Yep, you start on Dragon Age: Awakening, and prepare to spend another 5 solid days of your life playing the next chapter.

I started this in February of 2011, and just now finished it in January of 2014.

Sure, I finished Dragon Age 2 already, but I still want to hear the story, and take my super-pimped rogue through whatever bloodbath they throw my way...

I had already finished Lelianna's Song, Darkspawn Chronicles, and Witch Hunt. All of which were excellent. I had started on Golems of Amgarrak, but realized I was quite under-leveled for it, so Awakening here I come!

I went with the standard party of my awesome rogue, a tank, and a damaging/utility mage, and another DPS. Anders does a great job of filling the damaging/utility mage, his dialog is also hilarious. All is forgiven for the DA2 shenanigans...

I found myself breezing past the fights, just picking up the loots and hungering for more dialog and story. My rogue could pretty much slaughter anything, and I was just playing on normal difficulty, so I wasn't really asking the game to give me a challenge.

I'm glad I came back and finished it. It's also odd to know so many names in the credits.