Friday 24 March 2023

Waiting for Duviri: The First Failures

Taking a Warframe break before Duviri has given my time to catch up on some other free games I've been collecting in the background. Alas, this set just didn't do it for me from the outset.

Drone Racing League Simulator

This game should really say you need a controller. Using a keyboard takes any move TO THE MAX which makes it hard to follow a three dimensional race course. To its credit there was some one setting up a public game while I was crashing into everything during the tutorial so at least it isn't a "dead" game.

Chenso Club

In this side scrolling platform brawler, you need to stop an alien invasion with violent and gory means. Usually that works well for me, but the disparity between the gore and cuteness is really strange, there's no method to skip comic cutscenes, you lose a life for trying to leave a room with enemies (not just through falling, exiting left or right as well) and what really irked me is that the game basically froze in the tutorial because I wasn't fast enough to kill something. Sorry devs, if you make a possible path a player can take - ensure it goes somewhere, even just a game over screen. This alone was enough for me to confirm this game is shit.

Bloons TD

Or in layman's terms: Balloon Tower Defense. Yep, you are being invaded by balloons and must place monkeys who throw darts, shoot bows and other defenses to stop them and said monkeys can gain XP and get upgraded etc. It looks well polished but I'm not sure who the target market was here as the concept is stupid, even for children. The cringey voice acting doesn't help either. But hey, maybe there are too many "serious" tower defense games out there and this one is the only ridiculous one right?

Wild Cat Gun Machine

Empty is what this game feels like as your chibi sprite runs from room to room avoiding bullets and killing the baddies that teleport in amidst the spartan decoration in each identical chamber. Save points act as shops and there's very little in the way of story and theme. If you want a similar game that does everything better, play Hades.

Runbow

A party platform racer where the constantly changing background color determines what floors and walls you can step on or move through. Other than the "party" segment there are other platformers that better make use of the same mechanic. Also didn't like that again, it's designed for controllers and there's no easy intuitive way to find out that "jump" (default F on keyboard) is what you need to press to start a game.

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