Hoo boy, this fuckin’ game…there’s a part of me that wants to say something pragmatic and objective, like “Teslagrad is not a bad game, just a bad game for me.” But that’s because I absolutely hated playing it from start to finish. I want to be objective and pragmatic because the graphics are so pretty and the story is told without dialogue. That’s a nifty trick in an age when most games want to spend five minutes in intro cut scenes before letting you play. But the game DEMANDS perfection with every single puzzle. I remember reading early reviews that said, “This isn’t very challenging,” and now I want to scream at those reviewers, “As compared to what? Demon Souls?!”

So, the game starts off with an older man taking a baby to a house before time passes forward, and then an invading army forces the grown child to escape into a tower designed by the electrical equivalent of Rube Goldberg. This is the point at which I have to ask, “Does anyone ever build a tower that will kill them for failing to navigate the trip to their office?” FUUUUCK NOOOO THEY DON’T! The argument can’t even be made that this tower was built to defend some mystical treasure from distant enemies, because as the story plays out, it’s clear the “electromancers” were wiped out by their own allies. As it is, the first item, the polarity gloves, are right inside the tower. That’s some super duper security, mang.

AND YET, this ancient tower also contains automated puppet shows covering the history of these two factions. I’m trying to picture who had time to build that, and WHY they fucking built it. Like, “AAAAAH, OUR ALLIES HAVE BETRAYED US AND THE TOWER BURNS! WE MUST SET UP A SERIES OF ELABORATE PUPPET THEATERS DETAILING OUR HISTORY IN CASE SOMEONE ELSE COMES ALONG AND DOESN’T DIE IN OUR HUNDRED BOOBY TRAPS OF HOT ELECTRICAL DEATH! Continue reading

Hitman Go needed time to grow on me, and for the first two “boxes” I was pretty bored with it. But the game keeps adding new ideas and raising the challenge until it becomes a fun sort of puzzler that crosses chess with assassination.

Even at the start, each level is a visual treat, being designed to look like a board game with little plastic figures representing Agent 47, his marks, random guards, and even occasional bystanders. Each collection of levels is part of a box set, and given how each section is relatively small, I can almost see this game fitting into a real life box.

Given how pretty the designs are, it’s a shame that the game is so stingy about camera control. It is possible to nudge the camera a bit to get a slightly different angle or to zoom out, but that’s about it. This makes it harder to appreciate all the little details going on around the levels, which is a real shame when I wanted to look at some of the background antics. One airport level in particular had humorous depictions of baggage handlers using some…unorthodox packing methods. I wanted to zoom in on that, and it’s a bummer that I couldn’t. Continue reading

Explosionade is a featured game on Steam today, and under it was a bundle of four games from Mommy’s Best Games for 7.99. That many games for one dirt cheap price had me thinking “At least one of them has to be worthy of a review.” And it turns out, all of them are, with three being truly fun diversions. So today, you get FOUR reviews in one post. AREN’T YOU LUCKY!

(Hint: You are!)

So let’s start with Explosionade, which I didn’t quite know what to make of at first, so I closed it and played the others before coming back around for a second attempt. It grew on me after the first few levels.

You play a stereotypical nerd given guard duty while all the “manlier” soldiers in your space army are planning a final assault on an alien base. Getting bored, Private Atticus looks inside the storage bay he’s guarding and finds a prototype mech that’s so sweet, he HAS to take it for a test drive. In the sewers. This leads him to finding a whole bunch of aliens. Let the butt stompening commence! Continue reading

Bionic Commando: Rearmed has been one of those games that I was reluctant to play after suffering through the train wreck that was the 3D “sequel.” But I wondered, “How bad could it be?” Pretty bad, actually.

Well no, that’s not entirely fair. Certainly, many levels remain mostly faithful to the original NES game, although GRIN felt the need to add secret areas to uncover and upped the difficulty in many places. The dialogue of the original game was pretty bad, so I can see why they might decide to make changes to that, but I’m not fond of the “wacky” tone of the new material. This is a game about resurrecting Hitler in a bid to take over the world, after all, so why did someone feel the need to lighten the mood with bad comedy? (And it is bad, with not a single joke being even remotely funny.) Of course, since this is using the same engine that made that 3D turd, there had to be dialogue added to remind you about Rad’s “missing” wife. (Thanks, guys. I’d almost blocked that idiotic memory out.)

There’s other changes that I’m not sure how to feel about. In the original game, killing enemies would make them drop green bullets, and after collecting enough of these, the player would earn one hit point. Now there’s a health meter given right away, and instead of dropping bullets, the enemies drop points for some scoring system that I don’t even know where to look to find it. In the NES game, you could only go into each level with one item, but in the new game, all weapons and items are worn at all times, and you can swap weapons on the fly. Someone decided to add grenades to the game, making it possible to blow up enemies hiding behind obstacles or lurking on the floor below. The barrels that the enemies hide behind can now be picked up and thrown. Oh, and replacing the wiretapping option in each communications station is a hacking mini-game. I don’t hate it, but it’s another arbitrary change that makes me ask “Why?” Continue reading

Sega is giving away some older games on Steam in a bundle, and Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is the only one in the bundle I haven’t played before. As it’s free, this will temper my review somewhat. Man, what a festering bowl of dog snot. I KID! But seriously, this game was very much a mixed bag for me, with lots of stuff to love, and almost as much to hate in equal portions.

Let’s start with the premise. Hell is now run by a dead rabbit, Ash, who has deposed his father for control of the realm. Given how little Ash knows about his own kingdom, and how so few of his subjects seem to respect his authority, I’m going to guess he hasn’t been in power long. But this is just a guess, as the story is ambiguous on that point. In any case, Ash gets caught taking a bath with a rubber duck, and fearing what this might do to his reputation, he sets out to kill every last demon who has seen the pictures online.

So far, so wacky, and the various worlds that make up hell are no less crazy. There’s almost too much going on in the design, although there’s only a few places where it becomes so distracting as to be a problem. In those cases, it’s because the design is in the foreground, hiding Ash, several enemies, and their projectiles. This makes it really hard to know which way to move to dodge, but thankfully, it doesn’t happen very often. Continue reading

Steam is having yet another sale, and Ronin was down to 7 euros, which hubby said was okay for our budget. Ronin has been on my wishlist for a while based on game play trailers, but having completed it with the “happy ending” in a little under fifteen hours, I have to say, I really, really hate this game. I ought to be used to half baked indie games with shit controls, buggy interfaces, and bad level design, but seeing a combination of all of them plus gleeful trolling by the maker knowing nothing in their game works consistently? Oh, that’s enough to raise a super seiyan level hate boner.

You might think I’m exaggerating, but in the “hints” is the comment that the jump arc lies. The arc is a fundamental part of the interface, because when you go into combat the controls go turn-based and you CANNOT move any other way than using the jump with the right stick. Now I want to be fair and say that this control scheme has potential. The problem is that where the end of the arc indicates your landing point is not accurate for 80% of your jumps. Why should it matter? Because it’s the difference between landing on a ledge and landing on a laser or a land mine.

Worse still, the arcing path you think you’ll take is also often inaccurate, which will send your eponymous ronin (who I will name…Ronin) leaping directly into gunfire. Between turns, the enemy line of fire is represented by red lines, so optimally you want to ease your jump arc under those lines. But quite often what seems like the right height will end up a lie, and Ronin takes a face and chest full of bullets. As you die with one shot, this is…aggravating, to say the least. It’s even more annoying because the game isn’t long, nor is it particularly difficult. Had the arc line and landing points been more accurate, I probably could have finished in around 4 to 5 hours, tops. As it is, I didn’t win because I got better at the game. I won through sheer willpower and blind fucking luck. Continue reading