Tried out some more games.
Beyond Contact
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| Can you tell which things are important and which are decoration? |
Three separate metres to keep topped up, nothing looks like anything, and time passes absurdly fast so I was almost dying before I even knew what was happening. And you have to move with WASD but interact with the mouse. A multitude of nuisances in the form of a game.
Borderlands
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| God this art style is ugly. |
The first thing I noticed in this game is that the mouse sensitivity is crazy. I turned it way down and it still felt too fast. The next thing I noticed was the godawful dialogue. Fuck it's bad. Well, that and the hideous faux comic-book art style that was popular for a while. Getting in to the actual gameplay, it's MMORPG style quests in an FPS. Kill 5 of these, go fetch this kill 3 of those, go fetch that. It's like a less competent and more irritating version of RAGE.
Cat Quest
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| If you really like cats and puns that might be enough to make this game worthwhile. |
A simple action RPG where the characters are cartoon cats. Not much to say about it, really. It's not for me.
Ember Knights
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| Fewer cats, fewer puns. |
Smash enemies, get upgrades, smash more enemies. Very similar to Cat Quest, but this one's a roguelike.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
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| I liked it better than Power Wash Simulator |
It's interesting getting used to moving around a 3D environment with no up and down, but once you do I'm not sure there's much more to it. I demolished one space ship, and I think I'm done. It kept my attention and I wasn't bored, but I also wouldn't call it fun. It was more like a job I didn't hate. So it's a very good satire, but I wouldn't call it a good game.
Splice
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| It's got something to do with genetics, I think? |
An odd puzzle game where you sort of have to figure out what you're doing as you go. Which doesn't sound so odd when I put it that way, but you're given very little information. You're not told what you're trying to achieve or how anything works, you just sort of click and drag things and see what happens and gradually get a feel for it; although it was never entirely clear to me, in the little I've played so far, exactly what the rules were, I did find I was able to predict what would work and what wouldn't. Neat.
Wildermyth
The big draw of this game is supposed to be its character-driven stories. Problem is, the characters are as paper-thin as they appear to be. They're procedurally generated so everything is vague and generic. You can meet characters from one (semi-randomised) campaign in the next as NPCs but I can't imagine why you'd care because there's just no depth to them. You can customise their appearance a little bit, and their personalities are supposedly generated from a big list of variables (that you can also customise) but, in practice, there's almost nothing distinguishing one character from another.
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| Rune's Goons. The leader's name is "Rune", you see. |
As far as gameplay goes, it's a turn-based tactical RPG with randomised loot, which I would generally enjoy but this one is just too easy. It's a difficult balance to strike, but I never had to give any thought to anything; I just brute forced my way through the entire first campaign.
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| The combat interface. |
The other aspect of the game is the overworld map, which you have to explore and clear. Theoretically you have to strike a balance between gathering resources, keeping the monsters in check, and not taking too long, but becaue of how easy the game is you can just take your time and do everything. The enemies do get upgrades as time passes but it doesn't make a noticable difference. I honestly didn't even notice a meaningful difference between different enemy types.
Al in all, it's a somewhat cool concept, but just not worth bothering with in execution.
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