Reseñas recientes de Pistachio Cat

Everything about Spartan Assault is mediocre. Spartan Assault is a tech demo designed to show off touchscreen Windows devices. As a result, the controls feel clunky when using a controller, maps are short and easy, and the game lacks replayability. If it weren’t for the Halo I.P., Spartan Assault would be neglected in favor of indie games like Helldivers or Assault Android Cactus.

Spartan Assault’s biggest sin is its tedium. The game’s missions are short set pieces that feel too long. The actual missions are extraordinarily short. Each mission doesn’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes to complete yet they feel longer. The game lacks variety. You’re usually just defending something (i.e. killing a few waves of enemies while protecting some dopes) or killing groups of enemies which is the same as defending except you only have to worry about yourself dying.

The enemies are standard Halo fare, however they’re a lot less intimidating this time around. Elites seem confused and somewhat stupid. They generally run around aimlessly, shoot and miss, or try to melee you which is the only threat you face. They’re easy to troll. One of the few times I had fun playing this game was when I spent a mission trying to bait Elites into smacking me only so I could dodge and smack them instead. This is what Spartan Assault reduced me to. The other major threat is the spam of Grunts suiciding into you and your squad with plasma grenades. Aiming with a controller is ludicrously hard at times both due to the insensitivity of movement as well as the fact that none of Halo’s weapons work well in a twin stick shooter setting. Melee is the only useful weapon. Even the Elites seemed to have realized that.

Spartan Assault is incredibly easy lest you enable Skulls. Skulls, just like in previous games, are basically mutators that can make enemies harder or remove your H.U.D. Spartan Assault’s Skulls aren’t fun. You don’t have exploding corpses, grenade spam, enemies who all wield heavy weapons, et cetera. Instead 343 bestows only the most obvious of Skulls such as the aforementioned enemy buff. The Skulls add a layer of artificial difficulty without making the game more fun. The worst part is that obtaining the best scores for achievements and the like is impossible without Skulls. I’ve stopped caring.

Oh, and Spartan Assault doesn’t even have co-op. The mass of Spartan Assault’s sales were in hopes of a true Halo F.P.S. port. Do yourselves a favor by buying a better game like Helldivers.

Swords and Soldiers is a goofy 2D real time strategy with simplistic gameplay and dead multiplayer.

You can play as three races: the Aztecs, whose leaders have awesome names like “Fulthrotl” and “Luvsbatl”; the Vikings, who can summon Thor; and the Chinese, whose melee unit, swordsmen, yell “ayyyy chop chop” when spawned. I laugh every time then feel dirty afterward.

The graphics are sprightly and pleasant. The music isn’t annoying—an important consideration when you must listen to the same set of tunes all game—and even catchy at times. The sound is funny—ayyy chop chop, damn it. The gold gathering units are all women whom are referred to as “gold diggers.” I giggled.

I feel as if I’m listing bullet points. I feel as if this stinks of dysphemism, as if I’m hedging my honesty though I’m not. One of the reviewers states that he has nothing negative to say about Swords and Soldiers; this is true for me too, but I also can’t find any salient positives. The game’s aesthetic, especially the humor, is its greatest boon. The gameplay is a bit shallow which betrays its mobile roots. I ENJOYED playing through the campaigns, but I also don’t desire to ever replay the game again.

Swords and Soldiers is simple: you gather gold to purchase units and spells, and units move ever forward until they’re destroyed or demolish the enemy’s base. Spells use mana, which replenishes at a steady rate which can be increased via upgrades, when cast and make up half of the S&S’ complexity. All “skill” in this game culminates in your ability to spawn or spam the rights units while using spells correctly. That’s essentially it; as long as you can spawn units with minimum deference to insuring the units work together (i.e., not spawning ten of the same unit but you know, mixing it up a bit!) and not spamming your spells so that you aren’t left high and dry to an ayyy chop chop invasion, you pretty much win. The campaigns squelch this flaw by hamstringing the player in some way. Objectives are often more than lolsmash the enemy to pieces. The story mode is entertaining because it works against the shallow gameplay.

Hence my conundrum. I enjoyed the handicaps and weird objectives of the single player, but without the constrictions as an impetus, Swords and Soldiers isn’t all that fun. Essentially, it’s the prototypical mobile game: fun in short bursts as the medium requires but without any staying power.

Port of Call’s central conceit is simple to figure out whether or not you’ve ever read Greek mythology. In fact, the trailer essentially spoils the first “mystery” - i.e., what is the boat and why has it lured you in. The second but central question is answered by piecing together a narrative based on conversations with other passengers.

You begin on a small port surrounded by ocean with a lighthouse barely visible in the distance. You encounter a transient woman followed by a ferryman who hires you for an unexplained job. The ferryman himself is lithe, jovial, and snarky all at once. His simple instructions are to retrieve a passenger’s ticket. His simple job has the effect of granting some order to the chaos of the opening scene. It’s a wonderful trick, as it provides guidance and normalcy at a junction in the game where the player doesn’t know anything. The captain’s presence is avuncular and almost calming.

The game’s creepiness in general is offset by its jaunty atmosphere. The graphics consist of clean lines and deep, opaque hues. The color scheme is dark, but the presentation itself isn’t melancholy. The ship is physically small but has a presence that’s difficult to explain. Some games, films, and books burst with detail and eye candy but fail to capture a milieu, or a sense of place. In Port of Call, which can be completed in maybe ten to fifteen minutes, I found myself exploring what little space there was to observe all of the detail. The ship was clearly crafted with care and meticulousness rather than caprice. Thus, it has a presence that balances amiability and angst.

While I believe the first two thirds of the game captures what Poe calls the “unity of effect,” or the interplay of an artwork’s elements contributing to a single effect, the last third is flawed. The last third involves beating the player over the head with shameless exposition. The first two thirds allows the player to stitch the story together without narratorial intrusion. The last third is overt and ruins the fastidiously crafted effect.

However, despite the flawed ending, Port of Call is worth playing for what it achieves. Like other similar titles, such as the magnificent Thirty Flights of Loving and free prequel Gravity Bone, Port of Call opens new possibilities for video games as art.