Recent reviews by avi

Just an absolutely lovely game, and a great way to hang out with friends!

This game is a blast. It has fun fast paced gameplay with enough depth to keep the combat interesting trough out the whole game.

The story is sparse, but the setting and mood is great.

The graphics are old school but really well executed, combining 2D sprites with 3D environment, even using voxels for some props.

Not very long, but all in all a very good experience from start till end.

Another hidden gem, found while rooting trough my library searching for something to play, while I don't have enough money for Nier.

I have actually been having this game on my radar for years, ever since I saw it on the cover of a danish free gaming magazine. I never really looked into what it was, and was solely interested in it because of the few screenshots/art I saw. I heard about it again when it was ported to PC, and then again when it was in the Bandai Namco Humble Bundle, where I bought it, but I didn't actually play until now. Fun fact: I started playing it because I was playing around with In Home Streaming, and have been playing this game from start to end via that service.

This I feel is this games strongpoint, although I'd say it's not enterly lacking in all other points. Its some years old now, and it defenitly shows, but I really enjoyed the concepts of the world, from how the mechs took on this very mechanical look with giant cogs, to how characters and the environment is designed. If you are interested in post-post-apocalypse this game doesn't do a bad jobof building a nice world, and designing some cool characters and enemies to inhabit it. With that said, I feel like the standard mechs, were a little out of place, looking slightly too round and designed, but that is entirely my opinion.

The giant mech, the leviathan, at the end of the game is very cool. Also loved the design and animation of the guy Trip kills in the very end

The gameplay is pretty decent character action, which I'm normally not fond of, because I suck major balls at it, but combat felt nice and fun, with (mostly) interesting enemies, and a few button combos. If character action is your jam, this game does a good job. Personally I think enemy variation was very sparse, and could have benefitted by doubling the amount of standard enemies, or at least creating varying looks for them.

The end boss was pretty lame, turn valve, shoot stuff, fight adds, shoot more stuff, just kinda boring

Here comes one of the worse points about this game in my opinion. I really liked Monkey's character, though he's the mandatory gruff-guy lead, but he was at least believeable and sensible, also probs to the voice actor he did a great job. Trip on the other hand I found to be a boring onesided stereotypical woman character. As a gameplay element she was cool, but her character was only "shes the weak woman, also shes smart but we just think shes silly". I expected her character to evolve more trough the story but I found she stayed pretty much in the same role.
Now, Pigsy I really didn't like. He was designed to be comical relief, but was just unfunny, and whole thing with him liking Trip and being jelous at Monkey was cringeworthy at best, and just made him come off as creepy. Pigsy died at the end of the game, and that was supposed to be this hero-death, but it felt a little forced, and I found it hard to really care about him.

The story was pretty okay, nothing great, and I certainly dont expect to remeber it as something great I experienced. I'm glad I played trough the game, but if you are in it to experience a great story, then take a pass, I would recommend playing Bioshock or Half Life 2 for something simillar (typical I know).

I saw some people complaining about the end, and I can see where they are coming from, I didn't mind it, but that was only because it was as mediocre as the rest of the story.

I don't remeber the music, which probably means it was merely passable, to say something intlligent about it, I'd need to go back and play again, but I can't be arsed.

I enjoyed the game, it didn't outstay it's welcome, and it defenitly wasn't bad. The gameplay is very competent, and the story is fine, didn't care for the characters much though. If you are looking for cheap-ish character action you wouldn't go wrong with Enslaved. Also if you are looking for cool designs and a nicely designed post-post-apocalyptic world, Enslaved has it for you as well.


TL;DR: Competent Character-Action, bland story, bland characters, buy for gameplay.

If I were to give it a score I'd give it a very solid 6/10.

Let me start by saying that it really pains me to rate this game down, and that if I could I would have given this game a neutral rating. But in the end I have to choose a side, and I’m sorry but I have to go with negative, let me explain why.

Cradle is a first person exploration and adventure game, I would probably describe it as a first person point and click, because the gameplay basically consists of clicking at things, picking things up, using things on other things, and rarely combining items. You have a limited inventory, for brief storage of key items, and it serves its purpose nicely. Going along the story you’ll have to play some minigames, which felt very out of place, and basically consisted of one simple and easy game repeated four times. These minigames were reasonably enjoyable, but felt like they were there merely as filler content in a short game. I feel like the gameplay is one of the games weak sides, of which it has a couple, but it wasn’t bad, just not good.

As for the story, I was pretty disappointed. The game takes place in a very well built world, but doesn’t utilize much of it, and delivers a story which was short and ended abruptly, without giving answers to many of the questions asked. I mean it literally ended with the sentence “I will explain everything” *credits roll*.
At first it start out with a classic trope: you play a guy that has lost his memories, ‘who am I?’ But it slowly changes direction into something about terrorism, but not, and then it turns into ‘who is this girl I have sitting on my counter’.
I felt like the story went all over the place, without really explaining anything. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy stories where you have to think for yourself, but this felt like the developers started a story they couldn’t quite finish, and therefore ended it prematurely.

Technically the game wasn’t good either, as it didn’t run well on my pc (you can check my specs on my profile, but I use a GTX 780), I did have the graphical settings maxed out though, but even then the game didn’t look fantastic, with subpar texture and model quality, and a problem with aliasing. The game was definitely playable, but the framerate would often drop to 30 FPS. On the other hand the whole gameworld was handled in a single world, and therefore there was no loading screens when moving from area to area, there would however be loading screens when starting a minigame, or going to a new chapter, and the loading time wasn’t brilliant.

I liked the sound design, and the soundtrack is good. I am listening to it as I am writing this. Cradle does feature voice acting, but the main characters acting is wooden, and not great. Ida’s voices are pretty good, and Tabaha’s are not as good, but good enough.

Now, the art is this games absolute strong point, and definitely what sold me the game in the first place. I have actually followed this game for years, because the art intrigued from the first moment. And I must say, the best reason to buy this game, would be as a piece of art, because boy is the designs beautiful. Set in a futuristic Mongolian wasteland, the interesting stuff is pretty sparse, but the designs more than makes up for it. The little yurt where you start the game, uses very beautiful Mongolian designs, and I am particularly a fan of the boots you’ll find in a chest later in the game. When venturing out of the yurt, you will come find a giant dome, which apparently is an entertainment park. This dome is more futuristic, but at the same time run down and overgrown. I will put some screenshots on my profile.

Overall I decided that I can’t recommend the game to the price, as it simply falls short as a game. You might be interested in it though as first person exploration games aren’t particularly common. If you are interested in the art however, this has some of the best I have seen in a long time, and I might play through the game once more just to look at stuff again. I bought the deluxe edition, but the art book isn’t worth the extra, so only get the deluxe if you want the soundtrack, which incidentally is pretty good.

TLDR; this game is a piece of art, don’t buy it if you are looking for interesting gameplay or a good story, you will be disappointed. If I could frame this game and hang it on the wall, that would be the perfect use for this game, and as a piece of art, it is worth it in my opinion.

QUBE is obviously a game inspired by the Portal series, and therefore you would naturally compare QUBE with Portal and Portal 2, which makes this game look pretty bad. Compared to Portal, this game has no interesting story, the visual theme is lame and it is very short. So compared to Portal this game doesn't hold up.

But on it's own it's pretty good. I like the mechanics, and the puzzles are varied and difficult. Even when it isn't compared to Portal, I'd say the story/aesthetic part is very passable. QUBE has no story to speak of, you just start and then it ends, no explanations, and this is okay, but I find it annoying that it has lengthy cutscenes that takes away control form the player, it's a minor problem, but I find it annoying. The visuals are okay, the graphics look objectively good, but not great, also the visual theme in the game itself isn't anything interesting, as it is just a bunch of cubes in solid colours.

I didn't check the extra/dlc section of the game, as I am not really interested to continue, but for the price I'd say the main game is too short. Therefore I don't really know if I'd recommend it or not. I will give it a thumb up, but I'd say it is a game for people who has already played Portal and Portal 2, and wants more first person puzzles.
If you get it for a reduced price or in a bundle, it is worth your time to play it through.

This is a brilliant little arcade style game. Incidentaly I picked this up in a Humble Bundle, but already before I start this review I'd say that it is definitly worth full price!
Luftrausers is an oldschool arcade style game, with focus on racking up as many points as possible, while sustaining a multiplier. To do this you gun down hundreds of planes, ships, and various modifications and bosstypes of these.
The game does however feature some progression, in that you will be offered various jobs to complete, and by doing that you will progressively unlock parts to your plane, which comes with more jobs to do. There is also colourschemes to unlock, since the artstyle is uses a simple 4-5 colour pallette.
The unlockable parts gives a whole lot of vararity, and there's a bunch of different playstyles, depending on how you combine your plane. Personally I'm a big fan of the laser+melee body+booster engine combo.
Gameplay continues to be fun, and even after you have completed all jobs and unlocked all parts, there is more to do, a hardcore mode will unlock, which is really hardcore. You will basically die within seconds, and this mode comes with additional jobs to do.
Luftrausers is ultmatively a bunch of fun, with flying mechanics that feel really awesome, and gamplay that keeps on giving. It does however run in some wierd aspect ratio (most likely 4:3) and there is no way to make it wide screen as far as I have seen, but this doesn't really detract from the game in any way.

I would definitly reccomend this game if you are into arcade style games with scores and multipliers. Or if you just want to waste some time shooting thing out of a brown sky.
Go get it!

So like with my last review, I came upon this game when I was browsing my way too big steam library. Incidentally I had seen this before, and put it on my list of one of those interesting looking indie games, with a nice artsyle. The fact that I had gotten it from somewhere had completely gone over my head, until I saw it on my list. I guess I must have gotten it in one of the many bundles I have bought over the time.
Anyway..

Spate is a side-scrolling platformer, and my first impression was that it reminded me a lot of Limbo, wich is a very good thing. This might just be because they are both sidescrolling platformers, with a cool artsyle, but I think the whole feel of the game was very much like Limbo, and not like, for instance Megaman wich is, incidentally also a sidescrolling platformer.
The characters movement was pretty solid, if a little sloppy. I wouldn't say this game has top-notch twitch-action controlls, but they are merely good, and works very well with this game.

The level design wasn't that good, the puzzles wasn't that challenging, and more often than not, the game would have wide distances with nothing going on, other than the narrator filling in a piece of story, or some wierd visuals going on. Personally I don't have a big problem with this, because I'm not the best at platforming, and I'm especially not that patient, so I tend to give up if the puzzles are too hard. The fact that it was pretty easy, and there was these 'empty' sections, gave more space for the story to grow. There was however some points that were pretty fricking frustrating, at one point the game kept on killing me for incorrectly landing on some platforms, meanwhile the jumpy things bugged and died, meaning I had to restart the section to make it work. Another place would be right at the end *SPOILER ALERT* where you have to climb a tower to get to the end of the game, and it uses a mechanic that levitates you upwards, while you have to dodge saws and stuff, if you die at any point while flying you will start back at the bottom, and will have to fly up again, and it takes a long time to fly up.

The story was pretty great. The setting of the game had this whole Zeno Clash style wich I absolutely adore, and the story was a gloomy one about a man with a lot of problems. The whole thing matched nicely into the setting, and even managed to justify the wierd things, in a way that makes the player think for them selves. I think this part of the game, the whole story and setting thing, was by far the best executed thing in this game, and is defenitly the main selling point in my opinion.

The artstyle was pretty cool, as I already mentioned, it uses the wierd Zeno Clash esque style, and combines it with a grimy but colourful pallette (yea both of those things, at the same time, go figure), and often uses wierd camera angles, and effects, in a non-intrusive or gamebraking way, to effectuate the whole drinking thing.

Overall Spate is pretty good, but is also very short. I beat the game in one setting in less than two hours. So with a pricetag of 9.99 eur, I would say you'd probably want to pick it up at a sale, or buy it in a bundle. If you are a stickler for great stories, you might be able to justify the price.

Tl;dr: Great story, great visuals, great setting, very short, a little pricy. Buy on sale!

Right, so I was scrolling up and down on my enormous steam library list, looking for something to play, and I ended up picking random things on my list and installing them, this was one of the things.

Hydrophobia: Prophecy is very short, the game time you see I have played is the time it took me completing this title, and I have no intentions to return to this title anytime soon.
As it starts up my first impressions was that it looked pretty good, although considering it came out in 2010, it is certainly not the best looking title of its time. The most interesting thing in the visual side, is the water, wich looks great and wich is also simulated very nicely, more on that later. The game starts out in the protagonists apartment, showcasing a futuristic but messy home, of an engineer living on some boat-a-majig. There is snippets of lore scattered around the world, but I found it to be largely uniteresting, and uninspired. It seems as if it is set in the futuristic setting everybody and thier mom uses, with white walls and sharp edges. Also the simple colouring, as you might see in titles such as Mirror's edge, is used here. Oh Mirror's Edge, released in 2008; much supirior in terms of visuals.

My first impressions was: "Alright, nothing I haven't seen before, but it seems as if it could be okay".

Aaaand not really. The game is just sub-par in every aspect. It shows interesting gameplay concepts, but fails to utilise them in any way. For example gunplay: I like the idea of the whole one gun thing, where you have a single gun whose primary ammotype is an infinite charge style ammo, wich is cool, big fan of that, but it just feels slow and the gun has no feel to it. The sound design behind the gun is pretty bad, and the enmies are dying in a satisfying way. Mostly they insta-ragdoll, and flops to the ground, and if you play like me, and use the infinite amme thing, they will only be stunned, and get up, needing another shot, before they are dead. In the last act just before the boss, they then introduce a very cool feature, where you can manipulate the water to grab stuff. They use it in one, yes ONE (1) puzzle, and then they throw you at the boss, wich is incredibly easy, you dodge a thing shooting at you, and then when it cools down you shoot it with one of the ammotypes, to stun it, and then you grab a barrel and throw at it. Meanwhile mobs comes at you sometimes (oh yeah, and these are the same enemies you have been fighting the whole game, there is zero enemy vararity). This cycle repeats three times, whereafter the thing explodes, and the bad guy randomly dies.

The story was bland, if nearly non-existing, and very forgetable.

Normaly I wouldn't shy away from recommend short titles, but this thing just doesn't have anything going for it, and you can find much better games, for the same price, and even some of the titles wich it is inspired by, in a sale.

This game is defenitly a no go, even if you got it in a bundle or something, I would say that theres way better things to do, thant to play this game. Play some of the other games from the bundle.

Tl;dr: boring, short, uninspired, don't buy, sorry :(

What a rare gem in the world of gaming. This game encapsulates what makes a game really good, and I mean extraordinarily great. So far this is definitly my game of the year, and one of my favourite games of all time.

I played Bastion back when it came to pc, and back then I liked that game to bits, and that is still on my list of all time favourite games, but this game overtakes Bastion by a quite a fair margin.

First of I'd like to talk about the mechanichs wich was the first thing I got an impression of. As for combat mechanics I'd go as far as to say they are better than Bastions combat system, because there's so much more to do here, and it is still simple to understand and use. I personally don't like games with too many active abilities (wich is also one of the reasons I liked the Borderlands games so much), and this games givbes you four, wich in my oppinion is quite damn near to perfect. Although I'd always end up having one ability I rarely would use. I do feel the combat system might be a bit too fleshed out, in the sense that the game isn't that long, and you only really get to try the different skills for a short while, I'd imagine that your skills carry over in the new game plus mode, but personally I don't have any reason to replay the game. Overall I liked the combat system, and it could even be used or inspired by in other games, that wants to have an isometric top-down game with an amazing combat system.

As for the story, it is really great. I enjoyed every minute of the game, and the narrator who was in Bastion returns in Transistor as 'The Transistor', and provides great commentary troughout the game. The story itself is very good, and strays from the convetional routes and adresses other things such as the fear of change, and the feeling that the whole world is falling apart around you. Go play it, the ending is great, and I were to spoil it you would think I was making up a lie, because it would be out of context, so go play it, it's soo good.

Also: Art = beautiful.
As an hobbyist artist I feel sad that I'm nowhere near as good as Jen Zee (who is amazing, go look her up!).

I couldn't reccomend this game enough, go buy it already. Also if you haven't played Bastion yet, do pick that up aswell, both games are timeless masterpieces that deserve a place amongst the most brillinat pieces of art in the world.