The walls are square, the ceilings square, square gate lattices, and your hosts…. also squares.

Game Name: Legend of Grimrock (2012)
Developer: Almost Human
Platform: Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS (reviewed on PC)
Categories: First Person Party Dungeon Crawler, Old School Design, Real Time Combat, Grid Based Movement, Storyphobic, Secrets, Missables, Role Playing, Stat Driven, Simple & StraightForward, Relatively Short for its Genre

May Appeal To: dungeon rats seeking an old school point of entry, pack mules and inventory jugglers, visionaries melding graphics with classic design, mobile gaming prisoners craving quality, and unconventional advocates wanting a blend of both fresh and familiar.
May Repulse: children birthed this millennia, purists, gaming evolutionists, unchallenged tacticians, repetition haters, and those absolutely unswayed by a handful of well done, overused wall textures illuminated by three types of light sources.

Comparable To: a restricted version of Might & Magic Lite – with no quests, NPCs, or open world areas to bog down the pace. It plays very much like Wizardry: Tale of the Forgotten Land in setting and general navigation of the labyrinth, though precludes the need for backtracking or “safe” havens like the village. It’s also less complex than earlier Wizardry titles, and I hear it’s very much inspired by Eye of the Beholder. Etrian Odyssey entries tend to be more in-depth, deliberate, have more obvious puzzle answers, have harder, drawn-out combat, and take considerably more grinding than Legend of Grimrock. Continue reading →

Please don’t eat me. You’re going to eat me.

Game Name: Axiom Verge (2015)
Developer: Thomas Happ Games (only Axiom Verge, which is sufficient for now)
Platform: PS4, PC, Vita, Wii U, XBONE (reviewed on Vita)
Categories: Quintessential Metroidvania, 2D Platformer, Unlockables, Single Player, 8 Bit, Backtracking, Multi-Difficulty, 2 Endings, Indie, SciFi, a Retro Love Letter, Varied Combat, Visual Puzzles, Brutal Bosses, Exploration/Secrets Centric

May Appeal To: classic platform pornographers, pixel art fanatics, and most anyone with black rimmed glasses and a beard
May Repulse: 8 bit haters, challenge unenthusiasts, hand holders, the easily lost, brosefs, Engrish can’t-standers, and those that didn’t grow up with the soothing bleeps and bloops of OG gaming

Comparable To: more intricate and harder than Guacamelee!, immersive and addictive compared to Rogue Legacy, and is a fusion of innovation with classic inspiration like Braid. *Inhales* Tighter controls and more visual flair than Metroid, improves upon the formula and is mechanically/thematically closest to Super Metroid, faster paced and less claustrophobic than Metroid II: Return of Samus, similarly interesting environs as Castlevania 1, more varied combat and less monotonous than Castlevania 2, thoughtful map design as opposed to Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and as quirky/immersive though less RPG-like when compared to Symphony of the Night.  Continue reading →

Solid Snake ruined exclamation marks for me. You hear it too, right?

Game Name: Rogue Legacy (2014)
Developer: Cellar Door Games (not much else, unless you count “Don’t Shit Your Pants”)
Platform: PS3, PS4, Vita, PC, XBOX ONE (reviewed on Vita)
Categories: Platformer, Rogue “Lite”, Retro, Simple, Repetition, Unlockables, Random Dungeons, MetroidVania, Single Player, Bite Size Gameplay, Multi-Death, Hard

May Appeal To: self flagellators, braggers, the trendy, Indie supporters, Steam collectors, OCD driven perfectionists
May Repulse: depth divers, Indie loathers, the undedicated, the frustrated, seasoned gamers, the hard to please, and I’ve-seen-it-all-beforers

Comparable To: any single level of Castlevania, less charm than Guacamelee!, less adventure/mystery than Spelunky, more claustrophobic than Risk of Rain, harder than Megaman maybe, better graphics than Terraria, less satisfaction than the original Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins, throw in a smidgen of Darkest Dungeon regarding the castle build screen, potentially a little Axiom Verge in the retro-platformer revival movement Continue reading →

Varghulfs, vargheists, and crypt horrors throw the best tailgating parties. Go Sportsball!

Game Name: Total War: Warhammer (2016)
Developer: Creative Assembly (Total War has been *around* son. History-based warfare drips from their very walls…. and Alien: Isolation scurries their ducts.)
Platform: PC (reviewed on PC)
Categories: Multiplayer, Multi-Faction, Campaigns, Turn-Based Strategic Overworld, Pause-able Tactics Orchestration, Massive Battles, Gorefest (with DLC),  Fantasy Horror, Board Game Adaptation

May Appeal To: tabletop gaming titans and miniatures collectors, those looking for an entry into the Warhammer world, eye candy sweet-tooths, Lord of the Rings insatiables, and anyone seeking chaotically organic war mongering.
May Repulse: tactile skirmishers looking for quick satisfaction, proud owners of blunting-edge PC technology, comrades whom fear the DLC onslaught, and those craving granular controls over troop positioning.

Comparable To: Total War in all its shapes and forms – this matches those games with the exception of historically accurate Japanese shoguns and muskets being replaced by magically deified fists slamming into the battlefield as volcanic brimstone peppers your throng of hulking, cannibalistic greenskins invading the Chaos Marches. Scale-wise, this is a string of Forged Alliance battles set on end and the overworld strikes me reminiscent of either ‘Disciples’ or ‘Heroes of Might and Magic’. Let’s throw a comparison to ‘Kingdom Under Fire’ out there as well – it’s pretty close.

Continue reading →