Games that focus on DEATH!
Ghostwire: Tokyo
When supernatural entities take over Tokyo, its up to you to save everyone's souls! Despite an average story this one definitely got me hooked, as wandering around the deserted streets is super immersive and exploration and stealth game play is rewarded.
Despite dealing with ghosts and yokai there aren't many scary sections at all which might be a negative but I really enjoyed it. The expansion mode of the Spider's Thread is more roguelike where they do expect you to die a lot though, and becomes repetitive. Way better than the prelude though.
Lost Castle
Speaking of roguelike - this is the entire premise for Lost Castle. You get a randomly generated adventurer to see how far you get into the demon's castle, die, and unlock some mild boons for your next randomly generated adventurer. Got old quick with the below average graphics and the inability to spell "Altar" but at least there was no platforming.
Super Meat Boy Forever
This sequel to the punishing original is just as gory but turned me off right away as a lot of control has been taken away from the player to be an "auto runner" type where your controls are only along the lines of jump, jump twice to attack or duck. You need to hit a "change direction pillow" to go the other way. Clearly designed for a mobile device this button mashing iteration is just not for me.
Showing posts with label Super Meat Boy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Meat Boy. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 March 2024
Ghostwire: Tokyo, Lost Castle and Super Meat Boy Forever
Saturday, 27 July 2019
Celeste
The mountain teaches you about yourself.
At a glance, this certainly isn't the prettiest platformer with blocky sprite graphics - but the music and story are definitely top notch. In it, you play as a girl who has decided to reach the summit of Celeste mountain but is not so secretly undermining her own quest.
There are deaths a plenty (mine got to just under 1700) but the game is always encouraging, and difficulty wise the main story is far easier than Super Meatboy and IWTBTG. If you are aching for punishment though, there are plenty of secret levels that will scratch that itch.
It also comes with an "assist mode" which can help if the game is still too tough, but if you don't like platformers, you aren't going to like this - assist mode or not. If you DO like platformers, then this one is highly recommended. I give it 3 strawberries out of 5.
Insight: Grab and jump with no direction key will let you leap directly up a wall.
At a glance, this certainly isn't the prettiest platformer with blocky sprite graphics - but the music and story are definitely top notch. In it, you play as a girl who has decided to reach the summit of Celeste mountain but is not so secretly undermining her own quest.
There are deaths a plenty (mine got to just under 1700) but the game is always encouraging, and difficulty wise the main story is far easier than Super Meatboy and IWTBTG. If you are aching for punishment though, there are plenty of secret levels that will scratch that itch.
It's a bit of a slog to reach the summit!
It also comes with an "assist mode" which can help if the game is still too tough, but if you don't like platformers, you aren't going to like this - assist mode or not. If you DO like platformers, then this one is highly recommended. I give it 3 strawberries out of 5.
Insight: Grab and jump with no direction key will let you leap directly up a wall.
Friday, 24 August 2018
Ori and the Blind Forest
Decent game, great story.
Made by Microsoft (in Unity) you'd expect big things from this platformer, and it does deliver. The story, music and art are all fantastic. It's in the gameplay where the flaws lie. You play as the titular Ori, a cute little rabbit of light who becomes a soul eating speedster at the conclusion of the prologue.
Combat is a mouse clicky affair in the first half of the game, and while you can out run all the enemies present you probably won't want to as eating their souls gives you XP. Enough XP lets you upgrade Ori to become a more lethal and more agile ninja, and in this game agility is key as you learn when you find the spirit trees (grave markers) of your other bunny kin so that you can eat their souls too.
Unlike Hyperlight Drifter, the secrets here can all be found easily once Ori is upgraded fully. Also unlike Hyperlight Drifter, as you upgrade Ori the game gets significantly easier, which is good because by then you'll be tired of the instadeath traps and all that mouse clicking combat.
I quite like that in the later areas you actually need to keep the enemies alive to progress and that making a save point requires mana, otherwise you are stuck to using the few shrines that dot the impressively large map. All up it is a game I can recommend to those who enjoy platforming. As in really enjoy, as there are some jump puzzles here that are quite tricky (not Super Meat Boy bad though). I give Ori three and a half talking trees out of five.
Blaugust Staying Motivated Week: Reviews are a staple of my blog and for good reason - here's one I prepared earlier! :P
Made by Microsoft (in Unity) you'd expect big things from this platformer, and it does deliver. The story, music and art are all fantastic. It's in the gameplay where the flaws lie. You play as the titular Ori, a cute little rabbit of light who becomes a soul eating speedster at the conclusion of the prologue.
Combat is a mouse clicky affair in the first half of the game, and while you can out run all the enemies present you probably won't want to as eating their souls gives you XP. Enough XP lets you upgrade Ori to become a more lethal and more agile ninja, and in this game agility is key as you learn when you find the spirit trees (grave markers) of your other bunny kin so that you can eat their souls too.
Run little rabbit, run!
Unlike Hyperlight Drifter, the secrets here can all be found easily once Ori is upgraded fully. Also unlike Hyperlight Drifter, as you upgrade Ori the game gets significantly easier, which is good because by then you'll be tired of the instadeath traps and all that mouse clicking combat.
I quite like that in the later areas you actually need to keep the enemies alive to progress and that making a save point requires mana, otherwise you are stuck to using the few shrines that dot the impressively large map. All up it is a game I can recommend to those who enjoy platforming. As in really enjoy, as there are some jump puzzles here that are quite tricky (not Super Meat Boy bad though). I give Ori three and a half talking trees out of five.
Blaugust Staying Motivated Week: Reviews are a staple of my blog and for good reason - here's one I prepared earlier! :P
Saturday, 17 March 2018
Treasure Adventure Game
Enjoyable and fun, until it starts to kill you! :P
While the advertised quest is to simply collect 12 treasures, the story and world in this pixel platformer has some surprising depth and decent game play, featuring a good variety of 8-bit music, puzzles, and boss fights.
Its also quite lengthy thanks to all the parts where you will undoubtedly get stuck and go backtracking. Fortunately, travel methods improve in speed as the game progresses.
Lastly, while not as hard as Super Meat Boy or IWBTG, there is still a fair amount of difficulty in this game, enough for me to wave off anyone who isn't into platformers. For everyone else though, this itself is quite a treasure. I give it 3 bumbling henchmen out of 5.
Note: Treasure Adventure World, the reimagining of this game, has better graphics if the pixel stuff bugs you too much. You can get it on Steam. :)
While the advertised quest is to simply collect 12 treasures, the story and world in this pixel platformer has some surprising depth and decent game play, featuring a good variety of 8-bit music, puzzles, and boss fights.
The talking animals are a cute idea too.
Its also quite lengthy thanks to all the parts where you will undoubtedly get stuck and go backtracking. Fortunately, travel methods improve in speed as the game progresses.
Lastly, while not as hard as Super Meat Boy or IWBTG, there is still a fair amount of difficulty in this game, enough for me to wave off anyone who isn't into platformers. For everyone else though, this itself is quite a treasure. I give it 3 bumbling henchmen out of 5.
Note: Treasure Adventure World, the reimagining of this game, has better graphics if the pixel stuff bugs you too much. You can get it on Steam. :)
Sunday, 27 November 2016
Steam Free for All: Off-peak Escape the Blameless, Disturbed Game
That's a mouthful of a title isn't it?
After trying out some of the free games on Steam I decided to put up mini-reviews to let you know if they're worth playing!
Escape the Game (Intro)
In this platformer you are helping a talkative little square with little eyes named Kevin to Escape the Game. The controls and mechanics are pretty good, as are the humorous lines Kevin says, and it's nowhere as hard as Super Meat Boy which is certainly more inclusive to the player base. Kevin does yap a lot though, which for me takes away from his likeability a little - especially at the beginning. Since it's just "an intro" the game is pretty short - and while it's not as good as Thomas was Alone, it's still a nice little time waster. :)
Blameless
As an architect who gets knocked out in a property under construction, you awake trapped inside and must escape before your assailant returns. This first person puzzle solver plays like a much tamer version of Slender and the majority of your game time will be spent looking for items and spots to use them on. The graphics are really nice though, and I do appreciate that there are multiple ways to get through each area. The game doesn't offer a lot of answers though, probably not helped by it's short run time as you will escape in under 40 minutes I'd suspect. The voice acting is also a bit off level during dialog, and the start intro is almost cringe worthy. It gets much better once you start though. If you like puzzly things, then this is one worth trying.
Disturbed
This choose your own adventure story with uses nice pencil drawings as graphics, sees you in the shoes of a farmer during a time of deadly blight. Thanks to the many, many blind "You died" options, this is the longest of the games in this list. That along with blind pattern guessing and maze mapping (with insta deaths) makes it pretty hard going at the start. Only when you find particular items do you start feeling that you are making progress.
It's amusing that each death is an achievement though, which means you might actually want to seek them out. I also quite like the minimalistic sounds used as it works well with the bleakness. I liked this game. It's the sort of thing I think I could make, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.
Off-Peak
When you find yourself stuck in a psychedelic train station with no means to leave, your only option is to find pieces of a train ticket! Obviously! That is the main "quest" of this game, but it's more like an experience since the ticket pieces aren't really hiding. They're just scattered across the eclectic collections of art, music and people in the train station. Definitely an odd one, but it has the best intro of this lot for me... none! If you feel like something very off beat, then give Off-Peak a try.
After trying out some of the free games on Steam I decided to put up mini-reviews to let you know if they're worth playing!
Escape the Game (Intro)
But you know I will...
In this platformer you are helping a talkative little square with little eyes named Kevin to Escape the Game. The controls and mechanics are pretty good, as are the humorous lines Kevin says, and it's nowhere as hard as Super Meat Boy which is certainly more inclusive to the player base. Kevin does yap a lot though, which for me takes away from his likeability a little - especially at the beginning. Since it's just "an intro" the game is pretty short - and while it's not as good as Thomas was Alone, it's still a nice little time waster. :)
Blameless
As an architect who gets knocked out in a property under construction, you awake trapped inside and must escape before your assailant returns. This first person puzzle solver plays like a much tamer version of Slender and the majority of your game time will be spent looking for items and spots to use them on. The graphics are really nice though, and I do appreciate that there are multiple ways to get through each area. The game doesn't offer a lot of answers though, probably not helped by it's short run time as you will escape in under 40 minutes I'd suspect. The voice acting is also a bit off level during dialog, and the start intro is almost cringe worthy. It gets much better once you start though. If you like puzzly things, then this is one worth trying.
Leave a guy stuck in a room with lots of construction tools... yeah...
Disturbed
I hope you decided "die" because that's whats going to happen... a lot!
This choose your own adventure story with uses nice pencil drawings as graphics, sees you in the shoes of a farmer during a time of deadly blight. Thanks to the many, many blind "You died" options, this is the longest of the games in this list. That along with blind pattern guessing and maze mapping (with insta deaths) makes it pretty hard going at the start. Only when you find particular items do you start feeling that you are making progress.
It's amusing that each death is an achievement though, which means you might actually want to seek them out. I also quite like the minimalistic sounds used as it works well with the bleakness. I liked this game. It's the sort of thing I think I could make, but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.
Off-Peak
When you find yourself stuck in a psychedelic train station with no means to leave, your only option is to find pieces of a train ticket! Obviously! That is the main "quest" of this game, but it's more like an experience since the ticket pieces aren't really hiding. They're just scattered across the eclectic collections of art, music and people in the train station. Definitely an odd one, but it has the best intro of this lot for me... none! If you feel like something very off beat, then give Off-Peak a try.
Be prepared for some strange stuff!
Saturday, 16 July 2016
Limbo
Appropriately named for the wrong reason.
This is stylistic/minimalistic(?) black and white puzzle platformer is pretty nifty and despite being on the short side of things has some good head scratching sections, especially if you are aiming to get all the extra easter eggs. For something that doesn't use any text or speech, it starts out pretty decent at teaching the player of their limitations and what things are fatal to your character: pretty much everything. :P
It also does a great job of imbuing dread and fear in the earlier stages, something that is unfortunately lost as you progress where things begin relying more on either prior knowledge or excellent gamer ability. The achievement of making it through with less than five deaths is almost certainly unattainable for a first time player as that method of teaching then practice quickly evaporates later on.
I feel that the best bits of it are at the beginning. For some reason it seems to have the most care taken design wise. Towards the end when you are avoiding laser guided bullets and playing with gravity altering buttons it feels more and more like a slower Super Meat Boy experience. Doesn't help that the final bit required me to switch to windowed mode to avoid a game breaking crash and that the actual end is quite sudden. I guess much like the title, it's own spirit was lost in Limbo. Still a fun game but not a great game in my book, and it easily could have been. I give it three terrifying giant spiders out of five.
This is stylistic/minimalistic(?) black and white puzzle platformer is pretty nifty and despite being on the short side of things has some good head scratching sections, especially if you are aiming to get all the extra easter eggs. For something that doesn't use any text or speech, it starts out pretty decent at teaching the player of their limitations and what things are fatal to your character: pretty much everything. :P
It also does a great job of imbuing dread and fear in the earlier stages, something that is unfortunately lost as you progress where things begin relying more on either prior knowledge or excellent gamer ability. The achievement of making it through with less than five deaths is almost certainly unattainable for a first time player as that method of teaching then practice quickly evaporates later on.
Pretty cool for something just in shades of gray.
I feel that the best bits of it are at the beginning. For some reason it seems to have the most care taken design wise. Towards the end when you are avoiding laser guided bullets and playing with gravity altering buttons it feels more and more like a slower Super Meat Boy experience. Doesn't help that the final bit required me to switch to windowed mode to avoid a game breaking crash and that the actual end is quite sudden. I guess much like the title, it's own spirit was lost in Limbo. Still a fun game but not a great game in my book, and it easily could have been. I give it three terrifying giant spiders out of five.
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Highlander: Endgame
[Post #18 of the Blaugust Challenge!]
One problem the Highlander franchise has is with continuity on a few (but important) aspects of the overall story so for the benefit of this review I'm going to pretend none of the earlier films, series or cartoons exist and just base it on what I saw here. The story focuses on a bunch of immortals, aka people who have "a hard time dying" if they don't get beheaded, one of whom has a huge grudge to another that he has held for centuries, literally. Unfortunately the grudge bearer and main villain happens to also be stronger, so the two heroes of clan MacLeod have to combine their powers to stop him.
Throughout the movie there are various flashbacks to whatever time eras are called for. This is both cool and annoying. Cool in that the sets and costumes department did their job well. Annoying in that the characters speak with different accents (often humorous) within them, and that there are SO MANY of them sometimes strung one after another. Oh, did I mention that they have multiple flashbacks of things that happened earlier in the SAME movie? Well they do! It's like the director thought you would have forgotten at that point. Gahhh.
There's also a redundancy in characters. The entire bad guy group could have been reduced to main bad guy and main female. More importantly Donnie Yen's character could have easily replaced Bruce Payne's slightly overacted and much less skilled martial arts (actor wise) main villain. Well, the grudge would have been slightly shorter but it would have still worked. In truth the best part are the fights, especially with Donnie versus Duncan (Adrian Paul). I wasn't surprised to see Donnie acting as the combat choreographer in the credits.
In short, this is quite a flawed movie (I'm skipping a LOT of flaws such as obvious stunt doubles and reusing the same fight footage twice) - one that would probably only appeal to regulars of the franchise like myself. I give it one and a half katanas out of five.
Blaugust Bonus: I think I'm going to use another of Belghast's writing prompts today - "What is your favorite boss encounter in any game and why? What makes that encounter stand out in your mind and what can be learned from it?"
Like any gamer I have a pretty big list to choose from here, but I think I'll stick with the final Queen's Gauntlet match of Guild Wars 2 - a petite necromancer named Liadri. It took 140 attempts before I finally won the match against her, which is almost as bad as some of those Super Meatboy levels. Why is it my favourite? Because it was challenging (for me anyway, I'm not like Wethospu), solo only, and forced me to adapt. Don't know how many trait lines I switched between in all those attempts before I got one that worked.
Most importantly you could watch and cheer on others while doing so. I remember throughout that week meeting new people as we took turns laughing and advicing each other in between getting our asses handed to us in the various matches. Maybe that's why it sticks out most for me - it was the ideal social soloists setup. It was awesome.
One problem the Highlander franchise has is with continuity on a few (but important) aspects of the overall story so for the benefit of this review I'm going to pretend none of the earlier films, series or cartoons exist and just base it on what I saw here. The story focuses on a bunch of immortals, aka people who have "a hard time dying" if they don't get beheaded, one of whom has a huge grudge to another that he has held for centuries, literally. Unfortunately the grudge bearer and main villain happens to also be stronger, so the two heroes of clan MacLeod have to combine their powers to stop him.
Throughout the movie there are various flashbacks to whatever time eras are called for. This is both cool and annoying. Cool in that the sets and costumes department did their job well. Annoying in that the characters speak with different accents (often humorous) within them, and that there are SO MANY of them sometimes strung one after another. Oh, did I mention that they have multiple flashbacks of things that happened earlier in the SAME movie? Well they do! It's like the director thought you would have forgotten at that point. Gahhh.
There's also a redundancy in characters. The entire bad guy group could have been reduced to main bad guy and main female. More importantly Donnie Yen's character could have easily replaced Bruce Payne's slightly overacted and much less skilled martial arts (actor wise) main villain. Well, the grudge would have been slightly shorter but it would have still worked. In truth the best part are the fights, especially with Donnie versus Duncan (Adrian Paul). I wasn't surprised to see Donnie acting as the combat choreographer in the credits.
Best yet most pointless fight in the movie.
In short, this is quite a flawed movie (I'm skipping a LOT of flaws such as obvious stunt doubles and reusing the same fight footage twice) - one that would probably only appeal to regulars of the franchise like myself. I give it one and a half katanas out of five.
Blaugust Bonus: I think I'm going to use another of Belghast's writing prompts today - "What is your favorite boss encounter in any game and why? What makes that encounter stand out in your mind and what can be learned from it?"
Like any gamer I have a pretty big list to choose from here, but I think I'll stick with the final Queen's Gauntlet match of Guild Wars 2 - a petite necromancer named Liadri. It took 140 attempts before I finally won the match against her, which is almost as bad as some of those Super Meatboy levels. Why is it my favourite? Because it was challenging (for me anyway, I'm not like Wethospu), solo only, and forced me to adapt. Don't know how many trait lines I switched between in all those attempts before I got one that worked.
Most importantly you could watch and cheer on others while doing so. I remember throughout that week meeting new people as we took turns laughing and advicing each other in between getting our asses handed to us in the various matches. Maybe that's why it sticks out most for me - it was the ideal social soloists setup. It was awesome.
Thursday, 14 August 2014
Super Meat Boy
[Post #15 of the Blaugust Challenge!]
I know this has been out for awhile but I only recently got my hands on it thanks to one of my guildies gifting it to me. Simply put it is a challenging platformer and muscle memory game in which the player controls a square who is trying to save another square from an evil square. Yes, the graphics are quite on the simplistic side but the animation and humor makes up for it rather nicely. You've probably never seen squares this cute, or monsters so happy (most have a smiley face).
Difficulty wise it is more forgiving than I Wanna Be The Guy, at the start anyway, and slowly ramps up as you play through each stage and then through each dark world zone which contains similar maps just harder with more traps and/or in reverse. To unlock dark world zones you have to beat a set time limit on each Light world zone. These range from 3 to 60+ seconds depending on the map. Personally, while I have cleared all the Light world stuff some of the Dark World remains unplayed for me (15% to go according to the stats) and I've not yet completed all the extra warp zones nor collected all the other collectibles in game. The Kid from IWTBTG is actually a playable character too, so you can guess the difficulty level once you reach him.
There are also leader boards which add some reason for re-playability if you like having small numbers next to your name. My best rank was 12,325. What is most impressive for me, after some of the deviously designed stages, is the soundtrack. Each zone has a theme done three ways. Light, Dark, and 8-bit for the warp zones. This is on top of boss fights and cut scenes, and given there is no voice or speech the music carries a fair bit of weight.
Lastly I should mention that the loading screen always highly suggests a controller to play too, though I'm doing just fine on a standard PC keyboard (which is my personal preference anyway). Maybe it's easier with a controller but given the nature of the game... why the hell would you use a controller anyway? All up I give this frustrating yet addictive game four whirling saws of death out of five. Just be sure you have a patient temperament to dying well over 9000 times before getting it.
Blaugust Bonus: One of my favourite foods is spaghetti and I love almost all types of it as long as they avoid seafood. Anytime I go into a new restaurant it's one of the first things I look for to order then judge the entire establishment based on that. I think it's one of the easiest things to cook, so if they can't get that right then there's no point in coming back to order anything else. It's just one of those things I can eat all the time. I'd just get fat(ter). :P
I know this has been out for awhile but I only recently got my hands on it thanks to one of my guildies gifting it to me. Simply put it is a challenging platformer and muscle memory game in which the player controls a square who is trying to save another square from an evil square. Yes, the graphics are quite on the simplistic side but the animation and humor makes up for it rather nicely. You've probably never seen squares this cute, or monsters so happy (most have a smiley face).
This poor cube dies a lot. :P
Difficulty wise it is more forgiving than I Wanna Be The Guy, at the start anyway, and slowly ramps up as you play through each stage and then through each dark world zone which contains similar maps just harder with more traps and/or in reverse. To unlock dark world zones you have to beat a set time limit on each Light world zone. These range from 3 to 60+ seconds depending on the map. Personally, while I have cleared all the Light world stuff some of the Dark World remains unplayed for me (15% to go according to the stats) and I've not yet completed all the extra warp zones nor collected all the other collectibles in game. The Kid from IWTBTG is actually a playable character too, so you can guess the difficulty level once you reach him.
There are also leader boards which add some reason for re-playability if you like having small numbers next to your name. My best rank was 12,325. What is most impressive for me, after some of the deviously designed stages, is the soundtrack. Each zone has a theme done three ways. Light, Dark, and 8-bit for the warp zones. This is on top of boss fights and cut scenes, and given there is no voice or speech the music carries a fair bit of weight.
Lastly I should mention that the loading screen always highly suggests a controller to play too, though I'm doing just fine on a standard PC keyboard (which is my personal preference anyway). Maybe it's easier with a controller but given the nature of the game... why the hell would you use a controller anyway? All up I give this frustrating yet addictive game four whirling saws of death out of five. Just be sure you have a patient temperament to dying well over 9000 times before getting it.
Blaugust Bonus: One of my favourite foods is spaghetti and I love almost all types of it as long as they avoid seafood. Anytime I go into a new restaurant it's one of the first things I look for to order then judge the entire establishment based on that. I think it's one of the easiest things to cook, so if they can't get that right then there's no point in coming back to order anything else. It's just one of those things I can eat all the time. I'd just get fat(ter). :P
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)