Recent reviews by "Bob" the Space Cadet

Big Action Mega Fight is a very simple beat-em-up, but it's still fairly enjoyable, mainly due to the fun cartoony style, cheesy humour, and the classic feel that the music and sound effects bring. Oh, and it works well with an Xbox style controller - I used an 8Bitdo FC-30 Pro in xinput mode.

There's a lot of short stages in Big Action Mega Fight, which start out incredibly easy but slowly get... less easy. Most stages simply have the objective of "kill all the goons" but every now and then you'll get a stage where you have to "kill all the goons within a time limit". I attempted to get a three star rating on every level, but the final level just felt impossible to achieve this, though it's not hard to beat - it's just hard to beat with the high score they expect of you to get three stars.

My major gripes with this game are:
1) No interesting combos to string together, mostly just jab, jab, uppercut, and sometimes maybe you throw something (or someone) at someone (or something).
2) No multiplayer (not even local) with the developer stating there is no intention of ever adding multiplayer.
3) You're randomly given a special attack for each stage you play instead of being able to select it. Honestly the first special attack you get is the best, so why are the others even there?
4) I might have missed something, or blacked out, but I don't recall any boss fights. I get the feeling that there might be something more if I got 3 stars on all levels, but since I saved the guy and got all the achievements, I'm done here.

Despite those gripes I still had a reasonably good time playing Big Action Mega Fight, there's just a lot of room for improvement. Go in expecting a very elementary beat-em-up and you might enjoy yourself too.

5.5 out of 10, would FISTNADO, but only just. Buy it on sale if you do.

I Am Alive kind of makes you feel like you're an urban post-apocalyptic Tomb Raider that can climb almost as well as Lara Croft, but you don't have the stamina or the tight buns to make climbing as enjoyable. In fact climbing can be be stressful because of the stamina mechanic, but it does provide a nice challenge in a game that is more survival oriented than a treasure hunting puzzle solving game. Everything except walking will drain your stamina - climbing, running, executing, walking through dust... Don't worry though, you recover stamina quickly, and if you find yourself in a scenario where you can't stop and rest, just keep drinking soda and you'll find all the energy you'll need to get through.

The idea they used where you can have a stand-off by pointing a gun (even when it's empty) to make people keep their distance, or even make them surrender, is nice, but it almost always plays out so that they will call you chicken and attack you anyway, which is kind of frustrating given that bullets are hard to come by. Also, you'll take a little girl under your care so it's not just yourself you need to worry about, but apart from some story missions about getting her medicine, she doesn't really need anything to keep her alive. You don't have to feed her or give her water, the only problem is that you have to piggy back her around which means you can't run - but you can still jump and climb so whatever, it's better than having a hopeless NPC follow you around and messing up your mission.

I wasn't terribly impressed by the graphics, and a lot of the time you're just in a grainy black and white dust storm which suits the story, but it's a bit overdone. It's still holding up fairly well for a game from 2012, but it's probably getting close to it's best before date.

Works well with an Xbox 360 controller.

7 out of 10. Would drink more soda in a dust storm.

A surprisingly satisfying game about being a robot that digs in a mine inherited from his robot uncle, SteamWorld Dig isn't complicated, but it keeps you wanting to dig further as much to explore as to gather as many resources as you can. It's even pulled along with just enough story that it's a pretty well rounded game for something so simple. Striking a balance like that has the makings of a classic game.

Works well with an Xbox 360 controller.

8 out of 10, glad this game is mine (haha).

Woodle Tree Adventures is a charming 3D platformer ruined by the inability to manually rotate the camera or consistently change the angle of the camera, making platforming at times excruciatingly tedious because you just can't tell exactly where you're going to land.

Woodle doesn't just fall down on the platforming (haha), the sound effects are also incredibly lacking, and the music doesn't seem very fitting. While it might be a cliche, arcadey sound effects and chiptune style music would have been much more appropriate and would have gone a long way to improving the experience. At least it looked nice, though simple, in a Nintendoesque sort of way; it just doesn't have anywhere near the same polish you would find on a Nintendo title.

Even at the low price Woodle has gone on sale for (sometimes even free) I couldn't recommend it. Woodle has something special about it, and I felt compelled to play it all the way through, but whatever redeeming qualities I was hoping to find totally escaped me. Maybe Woodle 2 will have improved upon the areas in which Woodle 1 is so sorely lacking.

3 out of 10. Did not get wood(le).

I didn't enjoy Arkham City as much as Arkham Asylum, but it's still a great game and good continuation of the story. Everything else feels pretty much the same, which is a good thing... plus some new gadgets.

What Arkham Asylum did better: the whole reality breaking psychological tricks were much better in Arkham Asylum

What Arkham City did better: gave the opportunity to perch high and look down on the city, also gave additional playable characters that fit into the story with different gameplay styles

Scarecrow (who didn't make a return in Arkham City) is one of my favourite villains, and I love the reality breaking stuff so it stands to reason that I'd like the first game better, however both games absolutely deliver on what their titles promise: Batman in an asylum and Batman in a city.

Remember Me sent me into an existential crisis that took months for me to come to peace with, and which has taken me a long time to even begin to articulate properly.

Remember Me is a very deep philosophical game, wrapped in basic action game that has a vaguely Ubisoft feel to it, despite being a Capcom game. It works well with an Xbox controller, the graphics and game design are good, and the action sequences are nothing special but customising your own combo strings is an entertaining feature, though it requires DLC to be properly enjoyed which seems a bit rude on Capcom's part.

The real place that Remember Me shines is the story which act as a vehicle for some very clever philosophy. The main concepts Remember Me explore are what makes up a person's identity; how how fallible people's memories are; and how memories, when interpreted differently, can change how a person will act in the future, and hence, can effectively change a person's identity.

The problem I encountered with Remember Me was that it forced me to take a another look at my interpretation of reality. My conscious existence is really only confirmed by my point in time interpretation of the world around me. I am not the years I have lived, nor am I the years I am yet to live, I exist only here and now. I have memories of existing previously, and I have plans of how I plan to continue living into the future, but since both of these things exist only in my mind, and my mind is fallible, what does my existence mean?

If you're looking for an action game, there are plenty of other games you could try, but if you want some philosophy carried along by a serviceable story with your action, Remember Me is a pretty good choice.

If you enjoy charming action/adventure games with RPG elements and walking into peoples homes and breaking all their pots then you should definitely play ZeldaOceanhorn.

Works well on low-end machines (played on i3 laptop with integrated graphics) and is great with an Xbox 360 controller.

8 out of 10 would break all the pots in a stranger's house again.

Monochroma looked so good on the store page, but once I started playing it I quickly realised just what kind of puzzle platformer it is. The controls feel slow and floaty, and the key to making a precise jump is to press jump before you actually want to go up. I think the thing that bothered me most about this game was that you break your brothers leg and have to carry him around, and you can only put him down in spots that are well lit because you are a nice guy - that part is okay, I guess, but it falls apart when you can only leave him under a street lamp in the rain where you're going to lower a shipping container (which will crush him if you're not quick enough to pick him up after you pull the lever), but you aren't allowed to put him down next to the lever that lowers the container which is not only well lit, but it's also out of the rain and not under threat of being crushed. The puzzle plaforming just doesn't seem well thought out in some spots, which will probably cause me not to bother coming back to this, which is a shame because it looked so interesting.

If you liked Limbo, this is very reminiscent of that. Dark and moody, no voice dialogue, imprecise floaty controls, and many industrial-themed environmental deaths to be had.

4/10 Would not break my brother's leg again. Well, maybe.

RELEASE THE CRACKHEADS!!!

Death Goat is a hard-core wave based twin-stick shooter where you play as a Satanic goat (or maybe someone else if you prefer, like a death metal granny in a wheel chair) shooting down hordes of demons in a wasteland of your choice. It doesn't really matter who you choose though because all the characters seem to function the same - although the tank does seem pretty difficult to monitor the protection aura level.

Death Goat also has a lot going for it music wise. If you like metal, you're going to like this. You can select what you want to listen to, or just go for shuffle track on death which is the best way to go really until you've heard it all and picked your favourite tracks in the game.

In terms of actual game play you move about on a fairly empty wasteland - there aren't any environmental obstacles like mountains; it's just you and tonnes of demons (though being in early access maybe some environmentals will be added later). The worst of all the demons you will encounter is the tiny skull spider, and although they are the easiest thing to kill, there's lots of them, and they move fast. Your character is surrounded by an aura and each time a demon touches it (regardless of its size) the aura degrades a level and that demon dies. Once the aura is gone you're ready to be eaten by the next demon you come into contact with unless you find an aura refill. If you're eaten you lose one of your three lives, and explode killing everything before respawning. I found it not uncommon to run into a couple of small spider skulls at the same time and suddenly lose all my aura. The aura could probably do with having a brief moment of invulnerability when you get touched to make the game a little fairer, but then Death Goat isn't really about being fair. As well as the aura pick-up there's also nuke style pentagrams (of which you can hold three) and various power-ups for your weapon. Weapon power-ups are timer based and do not stack which made me a bit sad when I realised I couldn't combine effects. My favourite power-up so far is what I would describe as a psychic chainsaw, though most attacks are variants on your base projectile style weapon.

Death Goat is made in Unity, and it works pretty well. It automatically detected my ideal resolution, and I haven't found any bugs or anything that makes it difficult to play. My Xbox 360 controller worked really well with Death Goat - you use the analogue sticks and the triggers only, so you never have to shift the position of your fingers. One stick to move, the other stick to shoot in a given direction, one trigger to run, and the other to pentagram (nuke). Death Goat is just pure twitch: dodge and shoot twin stick badassery.

Being in early access Death Goat shows a lot of promise, and the dev seems to be very active in the community, and the current price of $2.99USD is pretty fair. The fact that the game appears to be bug free at this point means that development is going to focus on adding new features as asked for by the community, which is pretty exciting. I'm particularly looking forward to the possibility of multiplayer modes being added.

7 out of 10 would RELEASE MORE CRACKHEADS \m/

I was drawn to Morphopolis for the wonderfully unique art-style and the promise of relaxing music and gameplay. Morphopolis delivers on style and audio, but the gameplay swings between calm, maybe even boring, and on the other end of the scale it can be infuriating. If you like hidden object games I'd definitely recommend this, but to most people I would say give it a miss. I'm personally not keen on hidden object games, but I thought I'd give this one a go anyway for a change of pace. Some some of the puzzles in Morphopolis left me without any clue how to interact with them, and I had to resort to Googling to know how to even grasp some basic controls. The most important thing I could have known going into the game is that clicking/tapping on your own bug is something you can (and should) do, which simply didn't occur to me until I read an introduction on how to play the game after becoming stuck, which kind of seems like the sort of thing the game should be guiding you into doing. The most positive thing about this game was that I was able to draw my wife into playing it with me. It works great on a touch screen so we were both able to tap away at the screen together working on puzzles and looking for hidden bugs and junk. It's not a long game, but at the end of it we were glad it was over.

4 out of 10, would not dig around for bugs again. Purdy though.