Game #001 - Bleed

Bleed is a frenetic take on 8- and 16-bit era platformers, starring a Lady-Deadpool wannabe named Wryn. Wryn explains to you that she wants to be the best hero ever, and naturally you accept.

For reasons, this is best achieved by wiping out all the heroes of greater renown than herself. What follows is a series of excellent and enjoyable boss battles, strung together by corridors and platforms that can somewhat generously be called levels. Even with a dedicated slo-mo button, control of Wryn tends to feel ever so slightly squirrely, such that barreling down corridors and around obstacles is a specious idea on your best day. This problem is further compounded for gamepad users, for whom aiming is also similarly "off" most of the time.

There's a large enough selection of weapons that one can make do going AROUND some of these issues - and indeed, the combat is well-designed enough to strongly encourage purchase and use of additional weapons. There's also a combo system, but that ends up feeling mostly vestigial, particularly on the lower difficulties where the game's entertaining design outweighs its technical and design foibles.

The game looks nice, with most elements (excepting backgrounds) having a good lot of "pop" and enjoyable use of bright purples and pinks. The game should only take about two hours to finish on Normal, but at $5 most of the replayability here lies in additional upgrades to purchase, higher difficulties to conquer, and larger scores to obtain.

I can get into that as a form of "post game" longevity increase, but in this case I'm not really inclined to keep playing Bleed. It's just enough shades away from fun that it keeps asking me to enjoy it more than I do. In any case, I'd still recommend giving it a try, particularly if you can get comfortable with mouse and keyboard controls.

Recommended purchase price: $2.50

Hey. 'Sup. Video games, right?

As do I, Jeff. I like 'em a lot. I also really, really seem to like the idea of having video games. It would explain why I currently own nine hundred and thirty-five games on Steam. That's a different game, every day... for over two and a half years.

That was actually the first train of thought I followed in trying to figure out what to do with this information. Some sort of game-a-day write-up would be pretty neat! That said, as someone who currently has a 50 hour a week job (and hopes to still have a job in two and a half years) it seems mostly unfeasible.

SO... I'm just going to randomly selecting games from my Steam library, and write at least something about each of them, no matter how bad, after playing them for a while. The write-ups will probably vary greatly in length, complexity, and states of inebration, depending on the game (among other contributory factors.)

I'm calling it "Gathering Steam", because I'm both a hoarder and completely creatively bankrupt. (The name is subject to change.)

I'm hoping for at least one to two per week, and I'm open to requests or suggestions to improve the feature at any time! Just comment or shoot me a PM here on the site, whatever's your pleasure.

I've already selected the first few games as a random seed, and game #1 is... Bleed!

It totally, totally rules.

for points!!!!!
 
Giantbomb's searching isn't terribly accurate, as I've found.