Still playing through the games I own on Steam but don't know anything about. I've been limiting myself to the ones with full controller support and going alphabetically, so today I'm up to the M-S section. It may seem like I'm getting through them at a air rate, but that's just because most of them don't have full controller support so they're getting skipped. I'll get to those eventually. Probably.
Monaco
Some kind of stealth co-op game. Seems you can play it single player so it's not an instant fail, but it looks terrible. I can't tell what anything is and I only completed the tutorial by following the arrows. I'd have had no hope if I just had to recognise objects based on how they look - which also makes it pretty difficult to care about whatever's supposed to be happening.
Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas
The monster's name is "Oceanhorn". That's what the title means. I found that a bit difficult to parse. The game itself is a generic RPG (with respawning enemies so you know it's going to get grindy). Based on the look of it I was expecting something more like a 3D platformer but alas. I played through the tutorial and the gameplay seems extremely boring and the story even more so. Also the graphics were stuck on 1280x1024.
ORION: Prelude
First up: I had no idea what this game was before trying it (I don't bother even looking at the store page) but it said it supported controller. And technically it does. It's just that no sane person would ever play it that way because it's a FPS. Also, it says it has single-player and, again, technically it does. But it's just multiplayer with bots. Anyway, it's humans vs. dinosaurs multiplayer survival, deathmatch, KotH, CTF, etc. It's a fine concept, but I'll stick with Unreal Tournament.
Renegade Ops
This game is bad. For a start, the gameplay is just not for me. You've got to drive a vehicle and aim a gun at the same time and I don't like that. I just run into things. But that's just a personal thing. The real issue is the story: a terrorist nukes a city and while the weak, useless, authorities decide to try negotiating with him, you, the big tough army man who doesn't play by the rules but dammit he gets results decide to put together your own team of rule-breakers who know that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is unlimited firepower. Or to put it another way, it's fascist propaganda.
Roundabout
Sort of a puzzle game? You've got a constantly spinning object that you have to navigate through narrow spaces while avoiding obstacles. The object is a limousine, but that's really not important. I don't hate it, but I don't see myself playing any more of it. I might watch a let's play of it though, because the (FMV) cutscenes and dialogue seem like a TV show I'd watch.
Serial Cleaner
Seems like it could be fun if the graphics weren't so incredibly shitty. Basic stealth game where you have to collect objects and avoid guards, except I absolutely cannot tell what's a solid obstacle and what's open ground or see-through. Took me about a dozen tries to beat the first level because I kept thinking I was hidden when I wasn't at all. They were obviously going for a particular aesthetic, but their colour choice just makes the game unplayable. Also, the name sounds like some dodgy Windows 95 app to make your computer run faster. Or is that just me?
Shank
Side-scrolling 2D beat-em-up. Not a genre I'm particularly into and I died very quickly. Also, the tutorial popups don't actually say which button to press, just show an icon indicating the action that button is bound to so you still have to open up the menu and look at the control settings. My controller doesn't have a fucking "stab" button, just tell me to press X!
A Story About My Uncle
Starts off with an extremely slow and dull framing story before actually letting you do anything fun, and then introduces you to the core mechanics very slowly as well. And even once you get into it, it feels extremely directionless and, yes, slow. There's a decent concept here but the execution is just not good.
Basically, you're exploring this land of floating rocks using a suit that lets you jump super high/fast and grapple onto things. You should feel like you're Spider-Man, but you don't, because everything you do has to be planned. There's no freeform jumping and swinging because, for a start, you can only grapple once before touching the ground again, so you can't just fly around freely, and the safe landing zones are surrounded by instant-death pits.
Second, you have no specific goal. You're looking for your uncle, Fred, but you're just following a trail of markers so you never have any idea of where you're headed to. Third, the field of view is extremely limited - first-person platforming almost never works well and this is no exception. I constantly felt the desire to look over and around things, and like my peripheral vision was being cut off by blinders. And all the while the bored-sounding narrator bores you with meaningless exposition. It's almost like they don't want me to play this.
The Sun at Night
You know how, back in the olden days, some games would tie their speed to your computer's processor so if you tried to play them on a computer that was too good they'd run too fast? This game feels like that. Like it's running too fast. Also it seems to be some kind of horrible hybrid of puzzle platformer and RPG with crafting. No thank you.
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