First chapter, tons of fun. This game is great. The environments are gorgeous, the gameplay is exciting, cool.

Oh, a hobo? Oh, you want to trap me in your underground puzzle complex for an hour? Well this is the worst thing I've played in a long time. Yup, this is unbearable, but surely it's almost done. Oh, five more rooms? Great.

Ok, awesome, I'm out. Let's get back to business. Nope! A helicopter! Let's run away! Forever! Nope nope nope. Guide button, Y, up, A.

What happened, Deadlight? How do you start that strong and then just utterly collapse? Did you only playtest act 1?

Deadlight was my big hope for this SoA. Sad how disappointing it is. I guess the last hope is Dust, but I just don't like the tenor of what I hear about it; it's all about the art style and the story of how the developer made it, not the controls or gameplay.

This may be the first Summer of Arcade that I don't buy anything. That's sad. And last year a Summer of Arcade game was my GOTY.

Hopefully Dust can save Summer of Arcade. That game looks dope.

I played Dust and Deadlight at PAX East and walked away thrilled with both of them. So you can see why I'm now hesitant.

Tony Hawk was the summer of arcade. Kick flipping bums and doing some SSSIIICCCKKK combos.

Oh, man that helicopter part really was a bummer. It was getting close to "fuck this game" territory. I just felt the mechanic's weren't tight enough to handle getting away from that asshole in a decent fashion. Randal would also sometimes "stick" on a fence too long, essentially signing my own death warrant as I eat bullets. There's a part later on in that same chapter I believe where you have to escape from a collapsing building a couple of times. This wasn't very hard in the end but I feel the game didn't convey well enough how much of the building was going to start crapping up and dropping shit on your head and how long this went on. So I died a few times thinking it was over or "made it" and then got crushed by falling debris. I think if Randall just had a dialogue of "the building is falling apart!" or something along those lines I would of avoided some frustration with those parts.

I did enjoy the game and it gave me some classic PoP feel good vibes, but it really did lose steam quickly and early on. The story and dialogue were hit and miss with me as well. I think quite a bit of Randall's narrations are bizarre and unintentionally funny while the times where he just converses with people in the game were fine. It's like he was trying "narrator voice" and then just sounded more natural when talking to an actual person.

His journal is also worth a look if you ever go back to beat the game and bother collecting the lost pages. It treads the line of being interesting and a decent insight into the guy and being laughable. Some of the writing in this game is just straight up weird.

Summer of Arcade seems pretty pathetic compared to Arcade Next, which had Trials Evo and Minecraft.

@Brodehouse said:

This may be the first Summer of Arcade that I don't buy anything.

Yup, same here.

I also didn't renew my XBL Gold subscription.

Bleak times in gaming.

Could not agree more with this thread, although i did complete the game. Also anyone who played I Am Alive will see a ton of similarities in the story. (It goes way off Course).

I loved it. I find it how they tried to take it in an old school direction and it not paying off, pretty interesting. The first act is one of the best things I've played in a long time. I would definitely recommend it to people.

Hmm. A first aid kit. I don't need this right now.

Oh, hey dying friend, hows it going? Wish I could save you.

Hmm. A first aid kit. I don't know why I would take this with me.

Oh, hey dying person-FUCK.

@Brodehouse said:

This may be the first Summer of Arcade that I don't buy anything.

Same here. Hybrid looks interesting, but I'm generally not a fan of these multiplayer-only downloadable shooters just because they typically can't sustain a community. Dust looks well done...but I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetic so I'm going to need to try the gameplay before I'm convinced.

@CptBedlam said:

@Brodehouse said:

This may be the first Summer of Arcade that I don't buy anything.

Yup, same here.

Yeah, this Summer of Arcade has been really disappointing. Well, I guess Dust can still come out of nowhere and be the best thing since sliced bread but I don't have much interest in that game.

Hopefully Dust can save Summer of Arcade. That game looks dope.

@Cloudenvy said:

@CptBedlam said:

@Brodehouse said:

This may be the first Summer of Arcade that I don't buy anything.

Yup, same here.

Yeah, this Summer of Arcade has been really disappointing. Well, I guess Dust can still come out of nowhere and be the best thing since sliced bread but I don't have much interest in that game.

This will be first my Summer drought (lol) as well. Dust has really impressed me with what I've seen so far, though. Is Elysian Tale part of the summer sale any more? If it still is, then this summer bonanza still has little room left to impress.

@Rolyatkcinmai: Honestly, even though this is just an XBLA release, it's one of the bigger upsets for me in 2012. We have a little while to go, but I was really looking forward to a 2-D Platformer focused on survival and I feel that I got shot in the foot. Thankfully I didn't purchase the game after seeing the Quick-look. And that after reading several posts like this, it makes me feel good about my decision.

Yeah, Deadlight seems like a huge disappointment. Everyone is looking forward to Dust saving SOA this year, but I thought that Hybrid was a ton of fun in the beta. I hope it does well because I really like that developer for taking crazy chances with games like Scribblenauts and Hybrid.