murla 最近的评测

The main game loop is the following.

1. You play as a headliner: you decide what gets on the front page of a media outlet. Essentially you're a filter, an influencer. You ban one articles and allow other. The setting is Deus Ex like and thus controversial: humanity embraced genetics modifications and it's complicated now. Ethical, legal, social questions are on the agenda.

2. After your job is done you go home. You see what goes on on the streets and what's on folks' minds. Including their reactions to the articles you've chosen.

3. At home you chat with your family during supper. Your spouse has 1st gen genetics modifications and they have their issues. Your daughter is about to finish the high school and wants to go to a college you can't afford. The child is also rather light-minded due to young years.

That's how the game works. The plot unfolds within a week.

The good:

• short and easy to pick up; requires only a mouse, works on Linux / Mac / Win
  
• setting itself is good and it's not easy to make a choice while filtering articles
  
• dialogues with the family are fine

The bad:

• black screen
  Naturally a user shouldn't be concerned about the technologies used since all he should care about is experience he gets. But a game in NodeJS ... kind of meh. I had a black screen launching it via Steam, but it worked fine if I launched Headliner directly. I didn't bother much with this issue although I've seen the thread on Steam forums and tried a few recommendations from it. They didn't help, I've chosen the path of least resistance (the game is too short to bother).
  Seems to be resolved as of the moment of writing the review. Nice.
  
  
• article reading controls are terrible
  You're expected to click on the article and hold left mouse button all the time while reading it. C'mon, this is just dumb. There are more useful or at least pleasant ways to get RSI. Why couldn't it be clicking once to bring an article to front and clicking one more time to hide it? Holding LMB for a minute+ is awful. Everybody knows static muscle contraction is much more tiresome. Also, what if I play not in a native language and would like to check a word or two? Another reason for better controls.

---

Anyway the game itself feels like a prototype that made its way into a small game. I'd recommend to play it out of curiosity, it's short after all. Otherwise you won't find much here. But Headliner doesn't pretend to be what it isn't, so it's fair. Also nice for the developer to have a finished project in his portfolio. I'll leave a thumb up, although I'm rather neutral.

The game was played on Arch Linux with Ryzen 7 1700 and AMD R9 290 (amdgpu driver) in January 2019.

The review is written for Hidden Linux Gems. This game isn't one though.

Absolutely brilliant in every aspect!

Nominated in 4 awards (Game of the Year (!), Best Score, Games for Impact, Best Independent Game) on The Game Awards 2018:
https://thegameawards.com/awards/ (won 2: Best Indie, Games for Impact)

When a small indie game competes with Red Dead Redemption 2 for the title of the best game of the year - you know it's something outstanding and fantastic.

Take the gear and all your courage. Celeste mountain awaits your climb.

> Possibly game of the year for "Box pushing puzzle games fanatics monthly" Magazine.

Not my creative writing, but just lol

MINDCUBES is a cheap game made with Unity. By cheap I mean not the price only but execution and the way it feels overall. It isn't the worst game out there, for sure, but I can't come up with the reason to play this instead of the other superior puzzle games.

I call puzzle-platformers my favorite genre. This game tends to be more of a puzzle one rather a platformer (I judge by my ~ 1 hour of playtime). Which better alternatives can I recommend you? The closest in terms of game mechanics are And Yet It Moves (2009), VVVVVV (2010) and FEZ (2013). Didn't play the first one and it's the most arguable recommendation in this short list but VVVVVV and FEZ are absolute masterpieces! Go play them instead of MINDCUBES.

The last thing I'd like to say is the number of achievements. **ck you who exploits this ****ty <cheap game + tons of achievements> model. MINDCUBES has 3 achievements per each level resulting in a total of 315. Not thousands of them but still way too many.


P.S. This review is written with SCEditor[www.sceditor.com] - a lightweight open source WYSIWYG[en.wikipedia.org] BBCode & HTML editor.

This "review" is meant to be a blemish of Warner Brothers publisher for what they've released on PC on June 23, 2015. Negative words about the game mean technical state of PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight at the moment of the launch. All the information I refer to can be easily checked on the internet, I give almost no references here.

I'm sure I can not write what happen at the launch of Batman AK on PC. In a nutshell: crashes, stuttering and terrible performance issues overall (even on the best systems, on both AMD and Nvidia setups), 30 FPS cap, texture and visual effects issues and so on. Of course, it was reflected in tons of negative feedback from community and press. Steam Store had superior percentage of negative reviews. The game was pulled from sale on Steam which never ever happened before as far as I know. Users were offered to refund the game and Green Man Gaming (games online store) even started refunds for BAK though they don't do it on regular basis as it's stated in their Terms and Conditions and Refund Policy.

Much sh*t was poured on Rocksteady (BAK developers) and on "external PC development partner" Iron Galaxy Studios (studio that ported the game to PC). It's clear that the first were responsible for the game in general and console versions of it in particular and Rocksteady did its job quite good as far as I'm concerned. IGS is made guilty more often (they were doing PC version of the game, at least), but I refuse to do so. They're experienced[en.wikipedia.org] enough in developing, porting and assisting in porting games for various platforms. They ported Bioshock: Infinite to PC and The Handsome Collection (Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel) to PS4 and XBox One after all. I wouldn't judge them unless I knew the conditions they were set and time they were given to do their job.

But I know who to blame for sure - Batman Arkham Knight publisher Warner Bros.

• WB made decision to have console versions of the game as primary ones (which is, sadly, a common practice nowadays) and to outsource porting to PC. It didn't happen to previous Batman games made by Rocksteady. Quite likely this decision was made just to save money on PC version because sales on PC are lower comparing to consoles.
  
• WB didn't give much sh*t about testing the game on PC. Anonymous sources say PC version of BAK was tested by 10% of sources (while PC is more complex than consoles) and in 720p. Standard resolution for PC gamers, right?
  
• WB took decision to protect their crap that can't hold even 30 FPS with Denuvo[en.wikipedia.org] anti-tamper technology. No comments.
  
• WB as a publisher is responsible for what they ship to customers. They decide when it's ready for release. They can delay the release (like it happened to GTA V PC or Witcher 3). And they knew the crap they had been releasing on PC. Undoubtedly. But they still did it. Shameless wankers.
  
• WB f*cked up MK X launch as well. And its PC Version was also outsourced. What a coincidence, right?

Warner Bros. made the ultimate slap to all PC gamers' faces and showed their attitude to us. I suggest you to pay them the same coin and blacklist them as a publisher. And you should definitely refund the game (if you haven't done it before). Have done it right after finished writing this.

As P.S. I will leave this TotalBiscuit's video about why you should never pre-order games:
http://youtu.be/mf5Uj4XIT1Y
Thanks for reading my "review". Cheers!

[Sung]
I don't want to sneak and spread gunfire
I just want to beat this fricking Payday
In my heart I have but one desire ...
... the hunter who feels himself as a prey.

I felt gaming hunger, I wanted achieve's
And also to gain some heisting fame.
I thank all the gangsta's, all robbers and thieves
And everyone who played and felt the same.

Believe me
I I don't want to sneak and spread gunfire
I just want to quit this fricking Payday

Now let's add some drama using exaggerations :P

I've lost healthy sleeping, got angry, insane.
I acted like a d*ck - oh, what a shame!
I thank guys from Iceland, and Russia, Ukraine
And warn the others - never play this game.

Forgive me
I no longer want to hear gunfire
I just need a calm and wonderful place

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/I_Don%27t_Want_to_Set_the_World_on_Fire

********************

That was a nice day - 31st of December, New Year's eve. I had just 4 achievements left to finish my self-established challenge - to beat Payday 2 for 100%:
• Become Visious[payday.wikia.com]
• Not Today[payday.wikia.com]
• Fool me Once, Shame on -Shame on you. Fool me - you Can't get Fooled Again[payday.wikia.com]
• Commando[payday.wikia.com]

I was level IV-97 with ~170+ millions on my offshore account. So #1 would be easy - I just need to play several Hoxton Breakout heists on Overkill - and I'm ready to get 5th Infamy. Easy and won't take much time.
For #2 I can ask a friend to help me. He will lure cloaker, I will shoot from GL40 - boom, achievement unlocked. Won't take more than dozens of minutes in the worst case.
#3 and #4 are trickier as I need masks for them. And they can be obtained only from cards[payday.wikia.com] drop. Well, I thought I could go farming them on Ukraininian Job[payday.wikia.com], the heist that can be easily beaten under a minute. I hoped that it took around 2 hours in the worst case. So, it'll take me ~ 3 hours and then I can get involved into the final preparartions to New Year celebration.

It's usually better to start with the hardest tasks, that's how I decided to act. Especially taking into account that I can do #1 and #2 while wearing newly dropped masks.
I've started playing Ukrainian Job and had no luck after ~15-20 attempts. Then I decided to reduce the pool of items that can drop. I've disabled DLCs I don't need and unfollowed Payday 2 to get rid of DLC and Community items drops (smart, right? :3).

I've spent around 4 hours (yes, I can be stubborn as hell) of playing Ukrainian Job, completed over 200 heists and didn't get a single mask I needed, though some items dropped twice and even thrice.
Even after extra farming in 2015 year I'm still "unlucky", here're my actual stats of Ukrainian Job at the moment of writing this review:
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=367104559
Also, my best time was 26 seconds :)
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=367093068
This is something I can't tolerate, that's too much. Payday 1 was a challenging game and challenges completing depended on your and your crew members skills and co-operation, it didn't had achievements like "kill N enemies while wearing using DLC weapon (which, apparently, you have to pay for) while wearing DLC mask you won't get after 300 hours of playing the game". My personal thumbs down for this sh*tty RNG (random number generator) system.

So, let me share my thoughts, especially seeing that many red "Thumbs Down".

"Light" is a tiny indie game made by just a few people according to the game credits.
It's a sneak'n'hack game about an escaped test subject. Controls and gameplay are pretty simple. You sneak using WASD avoiding guards and cameras, can unlock the doors (E), hack (Q), kill guards and civilians (SPACE), hide their bodies (2) and change outfit (3). You will also find and read some documents to understand what happened to you. That's it if I don't miss anything.

Gameplay, story, music and minimalistic cyberpunk'ish graphics style are pretty satisfying, I can definitely say I enjoyed them all as well as the game on the whole. Yes, the game is short and won't take much your time to be completed on 100%.

Pros:
+ Simple controls
+ Nice-looking cyberpunk'ish graphics
+ Story (despite it might seem typical)
+ Soundtrack (special thanks to Gavin Harrison !)
+ Short (yeah, it's a + as I don't need to put dozens of hours into a tiny game)
+ Easy to beat for 100% (apparently, a + for anyone who isn't indifferent to achievements)

Cons:
- Short (I doubt anyone would complain if the game were longer)
- Pricey
- Low replay value

I'm literally forced to pay attention to the price. Yes, guys, I agree the game is pricey. I also understand some disappointment and comments and reviews saying "lack of content", "too short" and agree. Store page is a really promissing one and raises your expectations from the game. My thoughts were like "Ouch, it's like a mix of my beloved Monaco (50+ hours played) and Frozen Synapse (well-known and highly acclaimed by critics and players), I should check in out". That's why I've purchased and played "Light".
However, I don't think the fact the game is pretty expensive (for the content it offers) gives the right to leave a "Thumbs Down". I enjoyed this tiny game (I'd especially highlight its music), got a +1 perfect game, learned several new English words (despite it has a Russian localization, I played it in English), didn't invest much time in it and I've also supported indie game developers. I don't regret doing all that and in general cannot say anything bad about "Light", that's why - my "Thumbs Up"!

Some notes/recommendations to developers:
• Add more content and reduce the price. Seriously. Mentioned Monaco offers you a huge amount of multi-level missions, 8 characters, up to 4 players online co-op, story with its charm and humour as well as soundtrack by Austin Wintory[austinwintory.bandcamp.com], Steam-features like leaderboards, cloud, Workshop + level editor but is still priced less. Something is wrong here ...
• Probably, add more achievements (to pass each level unspotted / under some defined or devs' time / to kill all guards on a level etc). At least it will increase players' playtime and will add some challenge. This point completely depends on your attitude to achievements and your fantasy/creativity :)
• Probably, add Steam leaderboards (competition spirit, you know). I doubt it will be worth doing, but still, that's what comes to my mind

P.S. You won't lose anything if you don't play this game, but you will likely enjoy it if you do. And Steam is not the place where you can complain about the price. Even just released games are offered literally tomorrow with a good discount (my example: bought Asteria that was released a bit more than a week ago with a -75% coupon received for badge crafting). Countless bundles popup almost every day. You're warned multiple times about the price and content mismatch, so you are free to buy the game when it's on sale or comes to a bundle. Then you'll be more prone to share some love with "Light".

The game about a human life.
Play it, you won't regret doing it.

P.S. Type your nickname/name (you will understand my tip later).
P.P.S. Achievement hunters will get +1 perfect game in a short time and, hopefully, with pleasure.

Луч света в тёмном царстве!
----------------------------------------
Отличная игра для любителей думать в играх!
Игра напомнила мне Limbo и Braid. Как и в Limbo, тут есть свой черно-белый загадочный и таинственный, но мрачноватый мир (с элементами в духе миров Лавкрафта). А как и в Braid, тут есть своя уникальная игровая механика. Если в Braid - это игра со временем, то тут - это игра со светом. Существует физически только то, что или излучает свет, или освещено. На этом и построены все интересные головоломки Closure. Их сложность идёт по нарастающей в каждом из трёх миров; в целом, все они вполне безподсказокпроходибельные, хотя зачастую застваят вас хорошенько обдумать свои действия далеко не на один шаг вперёд, иначе придётся начинать сначала. По мере прохождения будут появляться новые предметы, с которыми можно взаимодействовать, т.е. скучать не придётся - всё сделано грамотно (хотя игру создало по сути всего три человека). Ну а закончится игры красивым и милым финалом, после которого у вас останутся о Closure только самые приятные впечатления. А ещё откроются комментарии разработчиков, своеобразными стикерами прилепленые на каждом уровне. Довольно интересно почитать, кстати.

Минус у игры один и очень обидно вообще, что он, вообще, существует. Называется он "Fantom Factoria" - это одна из композиций саундтрека игры. Звучит в первом мире, создаёт неприятную и давящую атмосферу, некомфортно становится играть (один мой друг из-за этого даже забросил Closure). Поэтому если почувствуете то же, то просто поставьте свою хорошую музыку и пройдите несколько уровней с ней. После возвращайте всё на место, в остальном саундтрек у игры очень хороший и, с одной стороны, хорошо передаёт атмосферу мира Closure, а с другой, никак при этом не мешает думать над решением головоломок.

Итого 8,5/10 и мои настоятельные рекомендации попробовать Closure.
Хочется восхититься работой такой маленькой группы разработчиков, они потрудились на славу и создали очень хорошую и умную игру, цельную и высокого качества. Всегда бы и все так игры делали!

Одна из моих любимх игр, мультиплеер благодаря нанокостюму и различным перкам шикарен, очень динамичный и драйвовый!