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5 (4) 4 (20) 3 (16) 2 (9) 1 (5) 3.2 starsAverage score of 54 user reviews
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Obsessive Preparation: The JRPG 1
I flipped to a new page of my notebook and stared at the screen a while. The latest Request from the Cafe wanted a Puni Missile, so I figured it was a good time to replace my current Puni Missile with something better and sell the old one. I had over 1500 materials stashed, so putting the best traits possible onto it should be a snap. Combining enough materials to make Ultimate Destruction and One-Hit KO traits was easy, but the Evil Soul trait proved problematic: it only appeared on one type of...
6 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
Isolation & Collision in Space 5
When I finished Rebel Galaxy, I thought, "I'm not quite sure why I played that for 24 hours. The amount of missions is barebones, all the systems felt the same, and combat was simple & easy. I wish there was more meat on it so I could have an excuse to play more."A day later, I relaunched it and happily played it for 3 more hours.Rebel Galaxy gets away with a lot because it nails the emotions of space. Fights are up-close and visceral, loud country rock punctuated by explosions erupting all ...
12 out of 12 found this review helpful. -
Neo-Buddhism 5
Cradle is a game that starts out as a sci-fi mystery and turns into a Buddhist tale. You begin in a Mongolian yurt a half-mile from an abandoned amusement park and miles away from anything else. You have amnesia, so you start by learning about the world from the clippings scattered around the yurt. An inactive robotic "vase" is your only companion at first, so you eventually reactivate her. Then you begin learning about the people around you: the former human now inhabiting the vase, your friend...
26 out of 26 found this review helpful. -
Obsession, Perfection, and Pleasure 0
"Listen, over the course of making this game, we're gonna make... thousands and thousands of decisions... all we can hope for is that we get 70% of them right... if you get really obsessed about each little thing, you're gonna drive yourself nuts." -Dave Lang, Giant Bombcast 03/18/2014 31:10The Magic Circle is a game about obsession turning from an extension of pleasure into its enemy. Characters are obsessed with getting the game, a sequel to an old text adventure they're fond of, perfect. And ...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
A Muffled Voice 4
"THE HEART OF DRAMA HAS ALWAYS BEEN ROOTED IN CLARITY." -Film HulkFilm Hulk said the above quote while explaining why movies were trading away emotional impact for the appearance of being smart, but it also explains Transistor's biggest problem. The heart of Bastion, Supergiant Games's previous release, was its story. And it was a simple story. There were only 4 major characters, and everything except the true purpose of the Bastion was spelled out about halfway through the game, setting up the ...
10 out of 10 found this review helpful. -
Canada of Legend: Cunning Lumberjacks vs the Devil's Werewolves 0
Folktales twist what is familiar into something beautiful & mysterious, a fantastic story that characterizes a place better than reality. This game is a Canadian folktale. It is a tale of the snowy frontier and the brave lumberjacks who lived there, where the Christian god and native spirits coexist, and the Devil's minions are fought off with cunning, traps, and whiskey. Like the best folk tales, it covers familiar ground, yet is unusual enough to stay lodged in your mind.It plays like the ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Good Upgrade, but Will It Reign? 0
Download Size: ~8.5 GBHours Played: ~40Highest Act Reached: Act 3 out of 4, Nightmare difficulty (2nd tier)What I'd Pay: $70Current Price (5/22/12): $60So, amidst all the debate and flame wars about the always-online requirement, the real-money auction house, and there being too many and/or not enough changes to the Diablo 2 formula, how does the latest in Blizzard's series of dungeon crawlers & treasure looters stack up? Given how much it cribs from Diablo 2, I've divided the review into 2 ...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
A Dark Detective Romance 0
Download Size: 80 MBTime Played: 1 hr 40 minLogs Unlocked: 63%Ending Received: 1st (out of 5)What I'd Pay: $3Steam Price (4/29/12): $10Reading Feudalistic EmailsA colony ship is drifting dead in space, and the only way you can figure out what happened is by going through its text log archives with 2 AIs. What follows is a 2-perspective tale of politics, repression, frustration, and annihilation on a spaceship that's regressed to a medieval Korean culture, told entirely through AIs and text logs....
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Silent Hill's Scarier when Starving 0
Download Size: 105 MBTime Played: 3.7 hrs.Ending: GreenFinal Grade: C-What I'd Pay: $10Steam Price (4/25/12): $10Day 13. I woke up and turned on the radio. It spat and hiss, then I heard something say in a raspy voice, "We're... waiting... for you..." No idea who, or what. Went to the kitchen, cooked some beans to eat over a gas stove (no electricity), then checked my supplies: 2 flashlight batteries, 1 clip of ammo, 1 emergency flare, some sleeping pills, an old squid-on-a-stick and a jar of pi...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Logic Meets Absurdity 0
Download Size: 220 MBDifficulty Level: EasyTime Played: 3 hoursWhat I'd Pay: $10Steam Price (4/24/12): $10This game gets points just for throwing time travel at Sherlock Holmes without him batting an eye. Fantastic beasts, Satanic rituals, freeing ghosts... "There's a logical explanation for everything." I imagine Cthulhu himself could burst from the oceans and Holmes would go, "Hmm, that is fascinating. What do you make of it, Watson?" In fact, the whole appeal of this game rides on the sublime...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Gunstar Ninjas 0
Download Size: 13 MBTime Played: 70 min.Average Stage Grade: CWhat I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/23/12): $5Well, that was a pleasant retro kick. Noitu Love 2 reminded me of playing Gunstar Heroes or Metal Slug, except the hero's a ninja instead of a gunslinger. You've got colorful sprites, tons of enemies exploding majestically, and some of the strangest bosses I've seen in a while. Although it was short, I had fun the whole way, and it has a combo & rating system for people who want to master i...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Long, Mundane Puzzler Saved by Writing 0
Download Size: 340 MBTime Played: 4 hours 20 minGame Completed: 46%Manual Dexterity Required: NoneWhat I'd Pay: $7Steam Price (4/22/12): $5MacGuffin's Curse has too much of a decent thing (puzzles), which gets in the way of enjoying the good stuff it has (writing). While the box-moving puzzles have a bit of a twist to them, the sheer number of them (150+) makes them feel monotonous. Meanwhile, I'm wishing I had to complete less of them to advance the story, which is a bit intriguing for a cheap ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
A Slower-Paced MOBA in Space 0
Download Size: 1.2GBHours Played: 3Matches Played: 6Unable to Connect: Half of the timeWhat I'd Pay: $7Steam Price (4/19/12): $10I wasn't expecting a MOBA-variant when I bought this game, else I might have declined to review it entirely. I've been playing League of Legends for a year and I'm still learning about the game; how could I do a MOBA game justice in a week? Especially when the servers keep seizing up? Luckily, I've got some LoL experience under my belt, so perhaps the best I can do is ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Fantasy Survival Horror 0
I curled up in the corner of the room and tried to get some sleep. A charging ogre had surprised me while I was refilling my antivenom stores after a spider ambush. The gate I entered through had slammed shut, so I ran for the nearest open gate I saw. I turned the corner just as he smashed into the wall behind me; I promptly whipped around and pulled a chain, shutting the gate. He paced back and forth outside, waiting for me to pop out. I heard slithering behind me. Was it some new enemy? Oozes,...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Refreshed Style, Classic Substance 0
Download Size: 160MBTime Played: 12 hoursGame Completed: ~25-33%Estimated Time to Complete: 40-50 hrs.What I'd Pay: $30Steam Price (4/15/12): $10I first played this game 15 years ago, back when it was originally released as Exile. In the time of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, back before Baldur's Gate revitalized the western RPG market, it was a shareware throwback to the early Ultima days: a 6-member party, turn-based combat on a grid, and a giant underground world to explore. It rarely fo...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Long Boring Stretches, Moments of Panic & Frustration 0
Download Size: 900MBTime Played: 2 hrs.Map Reached: 2nd of 3What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/15/12): $10You'll see this a lot.I overshot the landing pad, sending my module careening out of control into the lunar dirt. Again. *BOOM* Another 4 minutes of careful maneuvering and delicate course correction down the drain. I hit the Reset button. The game deducted another $3500 from my account for the crash, putting me $7000 in the hole. I groaned and brought up the next mission: $5000 for a cargo run....
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Pretty Pictures on a Poor Platformer 0
Download Size: 1.2GBTime Played: 3.5 hrs.Levels Finished: 14/21What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/15/12): $10If only Scarygirl's gameplay matched the stylistic prowess shown. The dark, cartoony graphics are the first thing that comes to mind about this game, and they certainly stand out, but everything else in this game falls too short of the mark for the graphics to prop it up.For example, the second thing I remember is how it smacks of a rushed port from Xbox Live. The controls are fixed to certai...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Diablo Platforming with Wicked Humor 0
Download Size: 1 GBHours Played: 4Regions Finished: 6/14 (Normal mode cleared)Favorite Item: Gnoming Missile LauncherWhat I'd Pay: $20Steam Price (4/8/12): $10Shoot Many Robots, like its redneck protagonist, is stupid, goofy, and more fun than it has any right to be. On paper, its premise seems boring: run and jump through a level and shoot many robots to earn nuts to buy better guns & pants to shoot even more robots. However, great graphics & sound, a skewed sense of humor, and some goo...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Difficulty without Depth 0
Download Size: 9 MBTime Played: 4 hoursMonsters Killed: 447Number of Deaths: 15Wins: 0What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/8/12): $7This is possibly the simplest Rogue-like game I've played, yet it still feels as difficult (if not more so) than the likes of Nethack and Dungeons of Dredmor. Unfortunately, this doesn't feel like "dying because you were stupid", but more like "dying because the Random Number Generator hates you". That, plus the lack of consumables, skills, or spare equipment, dropped my ...
4 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
I Spent $10 on THIS?! 0
Download Size: 340 MBTime Played: 10 min.What I'd Pay: $0Steam Price (4/8/12): $10A disappointment. An utter, utter disappointment. From the name, I was expecting some interesting 3D take on a Match-3 puzzler. Instead, I got 6 mundane variants on Match 3 with an annoyingly enthusiastic announcer attached to a tech demo to justify the $10 cost.Let's talk about the tech first, since even the game's title emphasizes that. It, apparently, uses your camera to track your eyes and adjusts your perspect...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Better than the Original 0
Download Size: 1.3 GBTime Played: 7.4 hoursLevels Completed: 3 / 5What I'd Pay: $20Steam Price (4/1/12): $15Over a decade ago, I bought the official Nintendo Power Super NES game guide. One of the games covered in it was Wanderers from Ys. It looked good, I was hungry for an action RPG, and it was available at my local game rental store. I rented it, took it home, popped it in... and quit after about 3 hours. All you could do was swing a sword, many of the enemies moved too fast for the sword, a...
4 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
A Decent Entry in the Hidden Object Genre 0
Download Size: 740 MBTime Played: 4 hrs.What I'd Pay: $10Steam Price (4/1/12): $14The game is afoot!Haunted Houdini combines hidden object pictures and Layton-style puzzles into an adventure game that doesn't strain the brain cells too much, but is still an entertaining way to pass a couple hours. Your paranormal investigator travels from Boston to England to Canada and back again, trying to figure out why Houdini's spirit can't contact his wife's ghost. The plot itself is nothing special, but i...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Grand Idea, Horribly Wasted 0
Download Size: 4.5 GBTime Played: 90 min.Players Online (Sunday evening after release): 8What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/1/12): $10I'd like a wargame set in a alternate steampunk Civil War, but not one this half-baked. Between the janky online play, the stiff (sometimes unworkable) controls, and the vague instructions, it's a struggle to find the fun in this game.Battlefield: The PrequelThe game has a Battlefield setup: first side to run out of tickets loses. You can drain tickets from the enemy ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Cute Fluff 0
Download Size: 400 MBTime Played: 1 hourMissions Completed: 5 / 28What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (4/1/12): $10Space Ark combines weird dual-character controls with sickeningly cute graphics to produce a mediocre game. The solar system has been ravaged, so it's up to the Arkonauts to gather DNA and fruit to terraform the fragments back into something livable.Apparently jetpacks look like farting rainbows.The game plays like an Arkanoid variant: you use a bouncy pad to fling your Arkonaut into the ai...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Search for the Lost Moral 1
Download Size: 770 MBTime Played: 1 hr.What I'd Pay: $3Steam Price (3/25/12): $5At first, I thought this was just a cheap adventure puzzler imitating Indiana Jones. An archaeologist unearths an ancient chest showing the paths of four rivers which mark the entrance to the Garden of Eden? I could see Indiana Jones doing that; I'd like to see where this leads. It wasn't until a few puzzles and some exploration later, when I was trying to arrange a Biblical verse in the right order, that it hit me:"...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Utterly Mundane, Utterly Forgettable 0
Download Size: 150 MBTime Played: 30 minutesLevels Completed: 33 out of 89What I'd Pay: $2Steam Price (3/25/12): $5It's a bad sign when you spend your entire time playing a game wishing you were playing other games. Everything in Mutant Storm Reloaded felt so standard, so mindnumbingly boring, I looked at shooters I had labeled "average" with fondness. At least they had some quirk or sense of style that made them stand out. This game feels like a cheap imitation released in the 90s.This, ad naus...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Wave a Light into the Darkness 0
Download Size: 840 MBHours Played: 5.7Levels from End: 4What I'd Pay: $15Steam Price (3/25/12): $7The allure of indie games is that, amidst all the derivative shooter and tower defense games, occasionally one appears with little fanfare that utterly blindsides you. They have a crazy idea worth trying and an execution worth playing. For the cost of a dinner out, they can embed themselves in your brain and suck up your free time better than many AAA titles. I didn't expect Waveform to, but isn't t...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Blockheaded AI Sinks Cubic Tower Skirmisher 0
Download Size: 60 MBTime Played: 30 min.What I'd Pay: $1Steam Price (3/25/12): $5I remember one moment in particular during a Skirmish against the AI. I was advancing my mortarmen into a flanking position against the enemy gunners. One reached his new position, targeted a gunner, and lined up a shot. The shell arced through the air... and crashed harmlessly against the side of the cube he was standing on."...What the-"I watched the mortarman take bad shot after bad shot, the shells exploding use...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
My Very First High Score 0
Download Size: 100 MBTime Played: 1 hr.What I'd Pay: $3Steam Price (3/24/12): $5Bumbledore indoctrinates our youth to the joys of getting a high score by combining crisp graphics with a simple combo system that rewards you to annihilate as many bugs with as few spells as possible. It's devious, and while it isn't my cup of tea, I must tip my hat to them for providing a gateway drug into other score games like Ikaruga.In Bumbledore, you play the apprentice of a bee wizard tasked with protecting t...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Mistaken for Lost NES Classic 0
Download Size: 250 MBTime Played: 3.7 hrs.Number of Stages: 68+Average Number of Lives: 13What I'd Pay: $7Steam Price (3/20/12): $3Here's something fun to do with Wizorb: boot it up and wait for someone to walk by. When they ask what you're playing, say you're playing a rare old game on an NES emulator. See if they can tell that you're BSing them. Not only did the creators nail the NES look & sound (while giving it very responsive mouse controls), but they also made an Arkanoid clone that is...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Insanity and Mundanity Combined 0
Download Size: 1.7 GBTime Played: 5.4 hrs.Favorite Vehicle: Helicopter CarWhat I'd Pay: $10Steam Price (3/20/12): $20Sheer absurdity can do a lot for a game. It won't jump-start a clunker, but it can allow a mediocre game to skate right into "memorable". Cargo's vehicle-construction gimmick wears thin fast, but its story & atmosphere has enough weird in it to keep you playing to the end.Cargo! is the latest game by Ice-Pick Lodge, the creators of Pathologic and The Void, similarly strange ga...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Collapses on Itself 0
Download Size: 2 GBTime Played: 7 hrs.Number of Crashes: 3Length of "3-Minute" Timer in Minotaur Mission: 15-20 minutesUnit Types Available in Campaign: 8Unit Types Needed to Win Campaign: 3 (usually just 1)What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (3/20/12): $15The Majesty series has a history of trying new mechanics and ending up with decent games from them. Majesty 1 & 2 played like RTSes, but only gave you indirect control of your units. Defenders of Ardania plays like a tower defense game, but lets y...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
This Game's Grip is Weak 0
Download Size: 500 MBTime Played: 6 hrs.Favorite Character: Luxo the AlienNumber of Areas: 8What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (3/19/12): $10There's a fine line between a good zombie game and a bad zombie game. All Zombies Must Die! skirts that line without quite crossing it, but reveals some of those key differences just by how close it almost gets it. Let's dig in and make some comparisons.All Zombies Must Die! gives you 4 characters, 8 weapons, and 4 status effects to inflict against 7 types of zomb...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
A Braindead Puzzler 1
Time Played: 2 hrs.Time Spent Chatting on Side: 90 min.Game Overs: 1Manual Dexterity Required: ModerateWhat I'd Pay: $2Steam Price (3/6/12): $5This puzzler was made for zombies: it rewards fast movement and barely acknowledges thoughtful gameplay. The end result? Something that barely registered as a distraction and left me feeling disinterested from beginning to end.Containment follows a group of survivors as they try to flee an infested town. The survivors are conveniently color-coded into Blu...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
-The- Puzzling Shooter 0
Download Size: 55 MBTime Played: 3 hrs.Game Overs: 1Manual Dexterity Required: HighWhat I'd Pay: $12Steam Price (2/5/12): $10This is the type of game that makes me wonder if I missed out by not playing its predecessor. What started as a fun shooter turned into a frantic battle for survival as I pulled out every trick in the book to keep the Chain of Doom from reaching my pyramid.Space Egyptian: The GameLuxor Evolved plays like the mutant child of Bust-a-Move and Centipede. Scarabs constantly pus...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Competent but Forgettable 0
Download Size: 130 MBTime Played: 5 hrs.Missions Completed: 14/22Manual Dexterity Needed: NoneWhat I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (3/6/12): $5If I had to pick an average tower defense game, it'd be this one. Its crisp graphics, good sounds, and competent design (with a few interesting ideas thrown in) show the game's developers were skilled, but it's missing any style or strategy that would really make it stand out in the crowd.The game throws you into the Pacific Front of WW2, pushing back the Japanese...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Trudging Knee-Deep in Hell's Dead 1
Download Size: 3 GBTime Played: 5 hrs.Enemies Killed: ~3000Enemies Stuck Behind Walls: 3 (including final boss)Game Crashes: 1What I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (3/6/12): $10There were 2 bastions of Doom-style FPSes in the early 2000s: Serious Sam and Painkiller. Serious Sam is one of my 3 favorite FPSes of all time (the other 2 are Marathon 2 and UT 2004), but I never got around to playing Painkiller. When I saw this standalone expansion to Painkiller hit Steam, I dived in with high expectations.Upon ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Music Flows Challenging & Beautiful 0
Download Size: 42 MBTime Played: 3 hrs.Stages Unlocked: 13/15Manual Dexterity Needed: NoneWhat I'd Pay: $7Steam Price (3/6/12): $7Making music with colors is tough, even when you can just convert them by moving the colors over the right spot. Sound abstract? It is. Welcome to one of the most challenging, abstract puzzle games I've played in a while.Your goal is to create a symphony by filling up meters on the screen with certain colors. Your only source of colors is a stream of particles that ar...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Do a Barrel Rolllll- Nah, Just Kidding 0
Download Size: 220 MBTime Played: 2 hrs.Last Unlocked Song: Hiding in the Swamp of Freaks with a Toad Named KieranPsychadelic Insanity: Slowly IncreasingWhat I'd Pay: $5Steam Price (2/25/12): $10Shooters need more British narrators. I'm just gonna put that out up front. The deadpan snark of a Brit elaborating on the absurdity on-screen made this game twice as enjoyable. Why is it even off by default?Color Inversion: Bane of Space Pilots Everywhere*ahem* Apologies for such an absurd start to the ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
More than just Picture Hunting 0
Download Size: 600 MBTime Played: 8 hrs.Day I Became Top Seller on Normal: 14th day out of 30Suggested Difficulty: AdvancedWhat I'd Pay: $7Steam Price (2/26/12): $10I was not expecting a picture hunt game to be this engaging. When I think of picture hunts, I think of being stuck on a single screen, trying to find the last item of a list of 20, until I crack and click the Hint button in shame. Kudos to MumboJumbo for completely blowing my expectations out of the water by making the requirements m...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
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