Py
May the first be with you
And because it’s the first of may, let’s review my Aprils assassinations
- Lore / Story : You're going into a space station to discover why it malfunctioned. The rest is what you see in the game, so not gonna spoil it.
- Difficulty / Length : It's a walking simulator. So really not hard. And this one's also really short (2h30 to complete it with every achievement, needed to stay a bit more for the cards...)
- Conclusion : It's an alright game. The story is decent. But it's really short and the characters being represented by wire-frames really doesn't help with the immersion.
- Lore / Story : A human corporation lands on a new planet and start exploiting it. You're playing the aliens (human eating aliens, mind you), the corporation has all the cliché you can have about evil corporations.
- Game mechanics : Basically, a turn based game, kindda like XCom.
Every level starts with you controlling the matriarch (and only her). You can kill humans, transform them in biomass and create your own grunts.
They can be evolved in 3 different kind of aliens (each with different strengths). - Character progression : After each level, you gain a bit of mutagen. It can be used to improve the different aliens or the matriarch
- Difficulty / Length : It's really short (less than 6h to beat the campaign) and rather easy. There is close to no replay value outside of achievement hunting (because you can't get the one you missed without restarting the campaign anyway)
- Conclusion : It's a nice game if you like the genre, although a bit short. I'd say only get it on sale and if you like the genre.
- Lore / Story : Not much to be said. It's a swat team.
- Game mechanics : On each map you control somewhere between 1 to 8 swat members. The goal may vary a bit, but basically it can always be solved by killing everyone.
The game is in real time with pause. You can program some order to be executed only after a certain trigger is pressed.
There is a weird sneak thing going on, when you kill people with a silencer and aren't seen, criminals don't always realize you're here. - Character progression : Your character gain level over time. And this is mostly useless.
But completing mission / campaign, give you stars that you can use to unlock new classes and new gear! They have a great impact on the way you can play. - Difficulty / Length : The mission difficulty vary by a lot. Some are a walk in the park, others are a real pain in the ass (especially the ones with hostages).
Made all the campaigns + a good third of the stand alone missions in about 20hours. It starts to feel samey after ~15hours and not worthwhile to do all the missions. - Conclusion : It's an alright game, nothing spectacular. Might be worth grabbing on sale if you like this kind of game.
- Game mechanics : Like Unlock the king from the same dev, it's a puzzle game based upon chess pieces.
- Difficulty / Length : It's a bit harder than unlock the king, because some of the pieces you have to move will "kill" the tiles they leave, so back and forth is not always possible.
Still, it's going to be relatively easy (some puzzles are tricky tho) if you know how to move knights. Took me about 3 hours to finish it. - Conclusion : Good puzzle game. Knights are always good to wrack your mind.
So this one is kindda two review in one. One game I finished (bridge portal) and the other ended up in the won’t play list (poly bridge)
- Lore / Story : Bridge construction with or without portal stuff. Portal stuff does include GladOs!
- Game mechanics : Basically, build bridges. With whatever you have at your disposal.
Upside for portal, you only have 3 kind of materials to play around with, so it's more about the conception of the bridges than the materials.
To get every achievement a little twist is added in each game:
For portal you have to let a convoy through (instead of single forklift), which might make you reconsider part of your bridge.
For poly bridges, you have to stay under budget/stress. Which is... not so fun. - The not so fun game play : One of the first thing you learn: triangles are good for bridges.
And you're going to have to use them and recreate them manually in every freaking level. Because why give the player a mean to do that automatically once they understand they need them...
For portal, toward the end of the game, you'll have puzzles that require rather precise positioning of the roads, but won't give any way to either speed up the vehicles or start midway through the puzzle.
Because watching the same first 10/15 seconds of the puzzle 10/15 times in a row to correct the end of the puzzle is such a satisfying game-play. - Difficulty / Length : For portal, the ending puzzles tend to get rather difficult, with you needing some precise bridge placement and a bit of thinking for some convoys. The game progresses at decent pace that lets you feel progress and difficulty increase.
For poly bridges it's incredibly long when you play to be under budget/stress. I did 1/7th of the puzzles in ~6 hours. And that was probably the easiest part. Thank you but no. - Conclusion : I don't think I'll play another bridge puzzle game in forever. It's tedious as hell and not that fun.