#Review
#Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Sky Gamblers gets by a lot on the sheer appeal of its concept. Let me get this out of the way here–this game is a mess, with plenty of bugs, inconsistent performance, long load times, strange controls and a laughable story. Despite that, I finished it in a single day on the strength of the sheer novelty of engaging in aerial dogfights. None of the planes or weapon options felt meaningfully different, but the there’s no luster lost for the process of tracking down an enemy through the air.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Odallus is definitely the more ambitious of Joymasher’s two retro style games. In contrast to Oniken’s discrete levels and eclectic sci-fi aesthetic, Odallus brings a sprawling map, RPG elements, and a grotesque gothic art direction. The map branches into different paths, and each stage has several passages to take and items that open up new ones. The heavy atmosphere is delightful, but the sprawling approach overreaches and creates an uneven game.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
With so many retro-inspired titles out there, terms like “8-bit” or “NES style” have become muddled. Few of them attempt to match the limitations of the era’s hardware, more often using it as a shorthand for games with pixel art or bad CRT filters. Oniken definitely still has that bad CRT filter, but makes a serious effort to recapture the era’s spirit, in both art direction and combat flow. At the same time its enthusiasm for the hardcore philosophy now associated with the era blinds it to problems that undercut the overall experience.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Life in Desert Child was simple when I started. Spend the day racing, sell the extra power cells I didn’t need to make money and fund repairs, and finish the day off with some ramen. It wasn’t a great life, and if you thought the ramen at those hipster shops here were a rip off, wait until you eat this $15 ramen that doesn’t even fill you up. Still it was easygoing, and there wasn’t much to worry about.
Then I got it in my head that I was gonna make it big on Mars, and enter the Grand Prix. So things got complicated.
By: RJ (@rga_02)
It is always exciting to see a new rhythm game concept and more even more exciting to see those games available on the PC. Sonar Beat is a fresh new take on the rhythm genre, but will it rise above the rest or sink to the murky depths?
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Razed hides a lot behind its difficulty. It’s easy to look past its loop of trial and error platforming with its near instant restarts, or forgive missed jumps as a mistake on your own part. But this hides a simple fact: Razed lacks the visual communication and consistency that you need to make a good platformer.
One of my immediate frustrations with Razed was its energy system. Life is tied to your speed, gaining speed increases energy and slowing down depletes it. Get too low and BOOM, you explode. Problem is, ANY action you do takes a huge chunk of it, including jumping. Ya know, that thing that’s the core of every platformer?
by Amr (@siegarettes)
For my money the war in the Middle East, at least within fiction, is separated by two eras: The Bush and Obama Eras. The first marked by “shock and awe” bombing campaigns and boots-on-the-ground military action, and the latter defined by the increase of drone warfare and escalating tech fetishism. Insurgency: Sandstorm is strictly rooted in that Bush Era, War on Terror understanding of the Middle East, and while it’s not any more morally comfortable, there’s a certain fervor to the era’s perspective that feels anachronistic today. It’s in the very name: the idea of an insurgency feels outdated, and its presentation of the insurgent enemies certainly is.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The island of Pipe Push Paradise has an infrastructure problem. They have a single plumber, and he’s been asleep for about a week. And of course every pipe seems to have come undone since then. That’s where I enter, on a lonely sailboat, coming to fix the plumbing problems of a town that seems almost indifferent to my existence.
Out of sheer indignance and stubbornness I’d like to say that I’ll complete all of Pipe Push Paradise’s puzzles. But sometimes you’ve got admit when you’re over your head, and I am waaaaay over my head with these problems. The flat shaded, Golden Books-esque aesthetic might seem inviting, but it quickly became clear that this island’s plumbing problems are mind bending nightmares.
