Space Hulk, 1 hour in (sponsored by Mateo):
This is one of the better video game versions of a board game that I've played. I never played the original, as my Warhammer 40K addiction started with the Dawn of War RTS games, moved shortly thereafter into the many Space Marine books published by Games Workshop, and culminated in the outstanding action shooter and THQ/Relic Swan Song Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. So why if my introduction to the universe was action games am I having so much fun with this simple turn-based board game?
There's really not much to the boards - corridors and rooms laid out in squares tiles with doors, some of which you have to bash open. There's not too much to the game pieces - Blood Angel Terminators vs. Tyranid Genestealers. Pretty straightforward game mechanics, too: you got your various Terminator armaments, flamer, bolter, fist, cannon, hammer and shield, you got your few action points to spend each turn, and your claustrophobic corridors where the action takes place mostly face to face vs the Genestealers.
I think what hooked me is that this game could have been a fairly plain 2D affair with cheesy or no sound effects, but developer Full Control went all out with fantastic voiceovers and alien sound effects, and wonderfully crafted and finely animated 3D models, walls and doors that look pretty much exactly what I would imagine miniatures used to play the board game would look. If they were animated. And spoke.
It has a simple charm and makes a great time-waster of a game, since each map can be finished in relatively short order, and they're all self contained.
After 108 minutes, I'm really not sure how much more I'm going to play it exclusively. The straightforward gameplay doesn't push me very far, and it shows no sign of becoming more complex, engaging or challenging. It may get more so, because I've really only scratched the surface if the campaign progress is any indication. I'll probably leave it in my pile and get back to it when I need a hit of Warhammer 40k deliciousness, because the production values in this game, while relatively simple, are top notch.
RE: Euro Truck Simulator 2
doubtingthomas396 wrote:My only complaint with the keyboard setup is how hard it is to make gentle turns with the digital controls. I may try a game pad to see what that feels like, but I'd miss the mouse look.
Just remember that there's two drop down menus where you select 360 Pad support.
They're both on the Options > Controls menu page. The first is at the top where you pick 360 gamepad. The other in is the next section down under Controller subtype. For some reason, it's defaulted to "Wheel". You'll want to change that to Gamepad, joystick.
Otherwise, your steering on the pad will be WAY oversensitive and squirrely has hell.
L/R triggers: break/gas
L/R shoulder: shift down/up
L stick L/R: steer
L stick Up/Down: cruise control/start engine
L stick (press): horn
R stick: free look
R stick (press): change camera
D-pad L/R: turn signals
D-Pad down/up: headlights/high beams
A button: accept/enter
B button: cycle side mirror displays
X button: cycle GPS views
Y button: center view - interior view
Select: wiper blades
Start: F1: Pause
I'm somewhat partial to my setup. It starts similarly, but abandons stuff I use less frequently to the keyboard. Italicized stuff is different from Aaron's.
L trigger (Joy Z Axis, Centered): Brake (set in "Controls")
R trigger (Joy Z Axis, Inverted and Centered): Throttle (set in "Controls")
L shoulder (button 4): Gear Down
R shoulder (button 5): Gear Up
L stick L/R (Joy X Axis): Steer (set in "Controls")
L stick U/D (Joy Y Axis): unused (it's too easy for me to activate this accidentally)
L stick click (button 8): "Light Horn" (flashes brights)
R stick (Joy X/Y Rotation): Free Look (set in "Controls") - I use a relatively high dead zone for this, about 1/3
R stick click (button 9): "Interior Camera" - resets view forward, very handy
D pad L (joy hat switch left): Left Turn Signal
D pad R (joy hat switch right): Right Turn Signal)
D pad U (joy hat switch up): Map
D pad D (joy hat switch down): Cycle View
A (button 0): Cruse Control, Activate (enter) - multiple settings per button works, provided they are used in different contexts
B (button 1): High Beam Toggle
X (button 2): Cycle Lights
Y (button 3): Wipers
Select (button 6): Stop Engine (hitting the throttle starts the engine)
Start (button 7): Menu (Esc)
Tagging for great justice.
Shouldn't we keep track of the games that were reviewed so we don't see the same games over and over?
Tagging for great justice.
Shouldn't we keep track of the games that were reviewed so we don't see the same games over and over?
Isn't everyone going to have different reviews?
Great thread! It's a really good idea that gives a little push to fire up those games. I've enjoyed reading each review thus far. They're intriguing because these games may not have otherwise ever been experienced by the gift recipient, either through a perceived lack of interest in the genre, or a simple oversight if not a case of 'too many games'. Awesome.
Tagging because why not?
PRG013 wrote:Tagging for great justice.
Shouldn't we keep track of the games that were reviewed so we don't see the same games over and over?
Isn't everyone going to have different reviews?
Point taken.
1 hour review of bad rats.
Don't. Just Don't.
Infested Planet, one hour in...
Why is this game as good as it is? On the surface, it's a generic-looking RTS game that I would have completely passed over if not for the occasionally-right Tom Chick in his Games of 2014 So Far article (found here). While I think he's crazy some of the time, when he says something is worth a look, I believe him.
The premise is simple: you have five marines tasked with pushing back the ever-encroaching alien hoard. Think Starship Troopers, but with fewer good guys. You have an array of upgrades to give your troops, buildings to build, and research to enhance your force projection. It's a relatively healthy campaign that actually works for a single-player RTS, and has kept me hooked for two hours so far.
I'll try to add more when I'm back from the beach - writing on my phone is harder than anticipated. In the meantime, go buy this game!
PRG013 wrote:Tagging for great justice.
Shouldn't we keep track of the games that were reviewed so we don't see the same games over and over?
Isn't everyone going to have different reviews?
It'd be awesome, however, if the first post has links to the review posts, though.
This thread is a brilliant idea. I just need to muster an hour to write my 1 hour in review!
Indeed, the only complaint I can really level against FTL is that I want to take it with me to play in the bathroom. [...] Fortunately they make an iPad version, which if I had an iPad would be awesome.
Yeah, but then you realize it's been 2 hours, your legs have fallen asleep, and your loved ones think you've pulled an Elvis...
1 hour review of bad rats.
Don't. Just Don't.
You played Bad Rats for a whole hour?!
doubtingthomas396 wrote:Indeed, the only complaint I can really level against FTL is that I want to take it with me to play in the bathroom. [...] Fortunately they make an iPad version, which if I had an iPad would be awesome.
Yeah, but then you realize it's been 2 hours, your legs have fallen asleep, and your loved ones think you've pulled an Elvis...
HA!
I was a KS backer for FTL, and I bought the Kestrel t-shirt from the dev's official store to further show my financial support, since they released the awesome Advanced Edition expansion for free. If they release an Android version, I would happily but it as well.
I had some spare time on my hands, so here you go. All the reviews so far, newest first.
Secret of Magic Crystals
Infested Planet
FTL
Space Hulk
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Ticket to Ride
Call of Juarez Gunslinger
They Bleed Pixels
Secret of the Magic Crystals
Cloudbuilt
Rogue Warrior
Marlo Briggs and the Mask of Death
Wow, thanks for that, Taharka!! Although maybe we should add the author? For example, we have two (two?) reviews for Sparkle Ponies!!
Divinity: Original Sin
Funded by: Me
Short and Long Review:
Buy. This. Game.
Longer Review:
OK, I'll come clean. Upon writing this review, I have more than 1 hour sunk into the game, however I can say, without question, that I was sold on D:OS well within one hour.
It's an old-school RPG, the kind that doesn't hold you hand, doesn't take any prisoners in combat, and tries to flog you at every turn... yet you come back anyway (Stockholm Syndrome?)
The game plays out somewhat like a Terry Pratchet novel: not too serious, lots of funny moments (perhaps not LOL, but grinning). The quests are many, varied, and don't offer you any help in terms of navigation or what to do next. The combat is brutal, even on normal, and will kill you if you position yourself badly.
There are also many ways to complete most of the quests. There are many ways to fight in combat. Many combinations and synergies.
This is a well thought out, well executed game.
And it's early access.
After playing it for an hour, my thought was, "Why is this still early access? It's a finished, AAA game. It's GOTY material."
Seriously, it's hard to describe the feeling of playing an old-school RPG, but exciting is a good word for now.
If you like RPGs, you'll love D:OS.
And if you need selling, check out the GWJ Thread.
Easy Link for Reviews List: Divinity: Original Sin (Taharka)
Stylez wrote:1 hour review of bad rats.
Don't. Just Don't.
You played Bad Rats for a whole hour?!
I needed the cards to sell to buy more cs skins to bet at csgolounge. I sort of regret it.
Taharka wrote:The game plays out somewhat like a Terry Pratchet novel:
Sold.
I need to wait for my Mana bar to recharge before I can buy anything new. But I do have the original Divinity in my queue which I haven't played yet.
There's one point in my game where I got a random loot with a description. The description talks about the sword being a gift to (someone) and was made in Japan. It ends with the character remarking, "I have no idea where 'Japan' is. Is it even in this world?"
Made me chuckle.
State of Decay sponsored by Eldon of Azure.
Well... it's a zombie game. Where you and your cohorts beat up zombies. You apparently also collect things so that you can build up defenses and stuff, but I haven't got to that part of the game yet, after 82 minutes. Which I think is a shortcoming - if there's going to be some neat base building stuff, I should at least get a taste of it by the one hour point, no?
Instead I've just been running around investigating things and beating up zombies. First with a stick, which broke pretty quickly, then with a machete, which took a little while longer to break, at which point I had to find another machete. I also have some guns, but precious little ammunition, so I don't know why I would waste it when a couple good whacks takes down the undead.
I've increased some stats, but they don't seem to really be doing that much for me.
I'm kind of disappointed at this point, and I don't know if I can force myself to beat up dozens more zombies to get to the good stuff. Especially at night, when it is REALLY DARK. I mean seriously. You can't see sh*t in the forest at night, which isn't much fun. Some zombies have glow in the dark eyes, though, so I guess that is cool.
I guess what playing this game for an hour did for me was remind me that I'm still really not all that in to zombie games. It was fun beating them up for a while, but after kicking in the head of the 200th pretty much exact same goddamn zombie, I've had enough.
+1 to thinking this thread is a good idea. I actually had the same idea floating around in my head.
Guess I could put one together for Game Dev Story since I spent a 2nd session with it last night.
This one is brought to you by: Budo 99 from out of the blue. It was a non-requested, non-wishlisted game.
I was always mildly interested just to see how the game played. I enjoyed the first couple hours enough to even play it a 2nd session. I think I may be done with the game now, though. Everything is a bit too amorphous for my tastes and the slow drip of the biggest better promises isn't coming fast enough. The whole game seems to boil down to clicking the right check boxes together and a few extra options like whether or not to spend more time training and researching or making games, or the terribly uninvolved contract work options which pays little, and is just a ticker watcher. I guess in some ways it is similar to Candy Box and the like, but this game is starting to grow long in the tooth right about the 4-5 3 hour mark. Ok, I just checked my time on that, and yeah, only 3.4 hours played. It felt like more time for some reason.
This may be a game best served with a small bit of wiki help for those not willing to jump into the deep end of guess what the makers thought was right.
That's disappointing. I haven't fired up SoD yet because I was afraid I wouldn't have time to maintain it and all my people would die. Sounds like I needn't worried much.
I'm still intrigued by this one. Will have to give it some time maybe this weekend.
Oh, I forgot to mention the bugs, too. Like... running up to a wall and then warping through it. Or zombies appearing embedded inside walls so you can't hit them or damage them in any way. Walls in general seem to be problematic.
Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, courtesy of both CatPhoenix and Godzilla Blitz. I figured if two Goodjers were nice enough to try to gift it to me, I had to take it for a spin.
[size=6]Also, I might have thought there were trading cards, and I was mistaken...[/size]
Short Review
Weird. Catchy. Hysterical.
Long Review (WARNING: "Spoilers" aplenty, for whatever passes for spoilers for this game)
I haven't put a full hour into the game, but Steam says 0.9 so that's close enough, and believe me, that's more than enough time to understand what this game is all about. The trailer led me to believe it was a fully randomly-generated adventure, that's only a mode which you unlock after completing the main "adventure mode", which is partially random.
And "random" is an understatement. I think best description of it is a cross between Oregon Trail, scrolling shooters like Galaga/Gradius, twin-stick shooters, and hallucinogenic drugs. The scrolling and twin-stick segments alternate, sometimes you get lucky and don't have to do any twin-stick segments. Other times they can get funky. You'll trip the f*ck out on mushrooms and face your inner demons, fight off a horde of zombies, and try to steal eggs from an island full of pterodactyls and velociraptors.
The scrolling segments aren't as surreal (except when the game "glitches out" and you go hunting for upside-down buffalo and your M#7*V2^X%9@$ gets jammed), but your wagon is pimped out. You can freaking drive it underwater!
Even so, it's hard in a "fake difficulty" way. If you don't know what's coming, it's easy to think you're home free only to run into another "stage" of the current encounter. Plus, the randomization means that you'll often get the bad breaks when you absolutely can't afford them. That being said, I have found myself getting farther and farther on each playthrough, which makes dying to the f*cking wolves that much more frustrating.
It probably won't take me much longer to crack the code of the main adventure, but with all the unlockables to get, the randomized nature of the adventures and the Shuffle mode, there's lots more Westward fun to be had. Plus the music is pretty catchy.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to drive my wagon through a Civil War battle somewhere on the Great Plains.
One hour into: Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge
Platform: WiiU
Sponsored By: Myself
The Gist: So when this game originally came out it was met with a lot of negative press. Word on the street was that it didn't even have any real blood content, a move that makes no sense considering how key dismemberment was to Ninja Gaiden 2's gameplay. It was also supposedly way too easy, at least to fans of the franchise. Then Razor's Edge came out on WiiU, and overall impressions were that it was better, but not great.
I figured it was worth grabbing for super cheap, so I did, and I've been in the mood for a hacky-slashy and so I dropped it into the WiiU.
Whelp, the difficulty was certainly fixed as I had to knock it down to Easy, just as I did with Ninja Gaiden 2. It's a more satisfying challenge now, though I can understand why some folks might still find it more easy. It seems the inventory has been ditched, as there are no more healing items to pick up. On one hand this makes it a tad more difficult without having a safety net of healing items, but it also means there are more ways to recharge your health via combat.
Which is... well, it certainly feels different from Ninja Gaiden 2. I recall taking the time to try and learn some of the abilities in NG2, but here it doesn't seem as important. Block when you can, slash at enemies, use the X button when one of them has lost a limb to finish immediately. However, while the first level was a bit meh, introducing the bow in the second level actually started to make things more interesting. Timing when to shoot foes from a distance before slashing at the nearby melee enemies helps make things a bit hectic, and also makes you feel a bit more like a bad ass.
What really helped was shutting off the tutorials, which kept on popping up over and over throughout. Just simple messages like "Press this button to see where your objective is", or "hold these buttons to guard and evade". They never went away until I shut them off...
...but that also removed the button notifications for some of the Quick-Timey events during certain fights, which actually made those feel a lot more interactive. There are only a handful of options (jump button, attack button, or evade) and usually what's on screen will clearly indicate what you have to do, but since you're not being given a specific command it feels like it's more about having an instinct. Of reading the situation and acting upon it. I actually really started enjoying those scenes once I had to figure things out rather than being instructed.
TL;DR: Razor's Edge is a challenge and has plenty o' gore, but after going through the first level and then getting the bow with tutorials on, turn them off and rely on your own abilities for the rest of the game. It's not as good as Ninja Gaiden 2, i can tell you that much, but it's still a fun little action game.
Oh yeah, story is dumb. I don't even understand who the villain is or what it is that they're doing. "You guys have seven days to... uh... what'd we want? Disband their governments? Yeah, that sounds menacing I suppose..." Bluh.
Game: Spintires
Platform: PC (Steam)
Sponsored By: my own personal weakness
TL;DR; Short Review:
If you like ETS2, or getting stuck in the mud, you'll probably love this.
Long Review:
I put about 5 hours into this game over the weekend, and I'm in love. Take the basic mechanic of ETS2 - "drive big trucks around and deliver things", and then replace "things" with "lumber" and change "around" to "through the densest mud ever conceived by man". But stick with me on this - it's actually fun. Yeah, you mind spend 5 in-game hours stuck in one spot, slowly rocking yourself back and forth trying to unstick yourself enough to get nearer to a winch point to haul yourself out.
But that's where this whole thing meshes together. If you get stuck, you don't have to give up. There's a few other trucks on the map you can warp to (at least on "casual" mode), and you can drive out to where you got stuck in the first place, and save yourself.
But really, I don't think anything can sum up this game more than this screenshot:
And since this is GWJ, where we compare everything to Dark Souls, this is basically the Dark Souls of driving simulations.
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