Game Review: Watch_Dogs

A triple-A game like Watch_Dogs has gotten lots of attention. You can read more about it at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for example. There's not much I can add to the great many voices that have already spoken about it. I don't need to describe it as an open-world, pseudo-hacker romp set in a Chicago where the government has achieved Big Brother status. There's no call to bring up the solid recon, cover, and sneaking mechanics that make navigating a setpiece such fun, or the highway hacking that lets you glory in wrecking enemy cars at just the last minute. It also means I shouldn't bother describing how easy it is to mess up infiltrations, either because the controls let you down or because something unpredictable happened, and how if you can't salvage the mission you have to start over. Why should I bring up how starting over means having to restart the recon, a slow process that feels rewarding and clever the first time but like drudge work every time thereafter? Or how the many vehicular takedown missions make cars so durable that practically the only way to take them out is through the quick time events that you have to trigger; even ramming into the target from the side at full speed doesn't usually put it out of commission.

And no one wants to hear about the joy I felt, after three times failing a mission to get away from the police, where I drove full-speed up a set of stairs and launched myself into an open parking garage that gave me cover from the helicopter and let me evade capture. Or the rage I felt when, leaving the garage afterward, hitting the wrong key brought out a firearm in front of a cop and started the hunt all over again.

It's a fun game that I put more than fifty hours into, and after buying it on sale from Steam, that's a pretty good deal. I think if the gameplay had been smoother, and with fewer frustrating start-overs, it would've been the same amount of fun packed into thirty to thirty-five hours. And I would've preferred that.

Not to mention the bullshit over having to install Uplay. I hate that thing.

Game Review: Rogue Legacy

Rogue Legacy is a quality hack 'n' slash game starring not one knight, but scores of them, attempting to unveil the secrets of a mysterious, rearranging castle. Each is a descendant of the previous character, and now you know the source of the game's name: from rogue-like for the procedural assembly of the castle, and from the legacy passed down from generation to generation. Picking your new knight when the old one dies is fun. You pick from three characters  randomly-generated from a mix of characteristics including name, gender, class, and magic spell known, but also genetic traits. The traits range from goofy (excessive cussing) to useful (higher speed) to eclectic (replacing the castle tileset with a hacker-styled one).

The characters, and especially the traits, are a mixed bag. You never know what you might get, and some of them provide decided advantages for your run. My particular top pick was hypergonadism, the trait that gives your swings greater knockback on enemies. That kind of bonus provides a lot of breathing room when trying to dodge attacks left and right.

My greatest disappointment is that the system of genetic traits is not hereditary, at least not in any way I could divine. Since the continued lineage makes it obvious that your knights are having children, I hoped that I could breed my lineage through selective knighting. Sadly, I never found any evidence that it worked that way.

After picking your new knight, you spend any money your last knight picked up in the castle from killing monsters and destroying the bits and pieces of furniture. Furniture also drops potions that restore magic and turkey legs that restore health. The game itself calls this out as bizarre and theorizes that it's part of the castle's magical nature. It's also not worth asking how you can spend funds collected by someone who died in a castle you can never leave. Just don't.

You spend this money on permanent buffs, upgrades to classes, unlocking new classes, or unlocking new equipment discovered in the castle. (They are also mailed out to your descendants by magic.) The power curve and learning curve blend together. I died quickly the first several times, but after a while both my character's inherent power and my learned skill grew, and I began surviving long enough to discover more interesting things about the castle. There are multiple regions, each with a boss that you must beat to reach the final antagonist and solve the mystery of the castle. The enemies scale up in difficulty as you go, both in attack patterns and in raw damage and hit points.

After beating the game, you can continue with Game+, which introduces harder monsters. I beat it again and went to Game+2, but I think that's as far as I go. They're eating me alive out there, and I don't see the need to go back into the castle.

Rogue Legacy is a fun hack 'n' slash and is available on Steam for $15. I bought it on sale for under $5 and got almost 25 hours of play out of it. I call that a damn good investment.

Just a note: The game definitely plays better with a controller. As a primarily PC gamer, I didn't even consider this until I'd played for at least ten hours.

Game Review: Roguelight

A lone woman with a bow and a few arrows, you drop into a mysterious, dangerous, and primarily dark dungeon. Darkness is all around you, and light is rare and precious. Unable to see all its creeping enemies, spikes, and treasure, you die quickly; your survival depends on your arrows, which slay the dungeon's monsters and burn like torches for a short while before burning out. All this explains the game's name: frequent death feels like a nod to rogue-likes, and light is central to the gameplay. The game rewards the player for frequent death by making it necessary. Each time you die, you wind up in a shop where you spend the earnings from your last attempt. This makes it likely you'll make it deeper into the dungeon, earn more coin, and be able to afford more expensive things when you inevitably die and wake up at the store.

Something about the experience disappointed me. Any time I ran out of arrows, I was not only helpless against monsters, I was helpless against the dark. I think this should have been a pleasant stressor, but I too often found myself with no options. I wanted to have to skirt around the dark areas until I could find more arrows, but that wasn't an option. I had to go through, and often take damage or die.

It didn't feel like there was a learning curve to climb. I knew how to jump, how to shoot, and how to hold the arrows for light. It was exciting when I learned I could light the lanterns with my arrows. But if I was out, there just wasn't enough for me to do but hope for good luck running through the dark.

Roguelight is available for pay-what-you-like at itch.io.

Game Review: hets

I found hets, a minimalist run 'n' gun for the PC, initially very frustrating. The key layout didn't feel natural and I couldn't change it. Ten tries in, I realized it would be brilliant with a gamepad. I wound up loving it anyway as I grew accustomed to the controls. (It is, in fact, great with a gamepad, and probably easier. I'm going to stick with my hard-learned keyboard controls.) A mysterious stranger tells you the statues have made everything bad, gives you a rifle, and tells you to destroy the statues. You proceed to try. That's all the introduction you need, and it brilliantly teaches you the one lesson necessary to play: destroy all three statues to open the door to the next level. Then you're playing a game of 15 procedurally-generated closed levels that go from easy to dangerous to a massacre.

Sketchy illustrations that look like I could scribble them, simple music, and basic sounds feel like the sorts of things I could make, and I am not an artist, musician, or foley artist. They define the game's minimalist theme beautifully. I'd like to get the music on a loop and play it in the background while I work.

The procedurally-generated levels work well. I can count the number of unfinishable levels I found in 600+ games without using my toes, usually the gateway home on a platform out of reach by any path. Monsters vary wildly in difficulty, and as you proceed through the game, the mix and number of monsters increases, as does level size. The game includes great possibility for skill runs. A speed run is a given, but I can imagine trying to beat the game without shooting anything but the three statues on each level (and the boss).

Between levels, you return to the firearm-gifting stranger, who offers you one of three random powerups and then compliments, questions, or denigrates your choice. Some part of me wonders if there was an algorithm basing the statement on the relative value of one powerup to another, but I'm pretty sure it was as random as what powerups you are offered in the first place.

A full, victorious playthrough from start to finish can take upwards of fifteen minutes, but the game is challenging enough that it took me hours to reach the final level and end boss for the first time. hets became my go-to temporary distraction for a while, long enough that I wish it was on Steam so I could see how long I'd played. At a rough estimate, possibly as much as 50 hours. At the end, I could beat the game in five to six minutes, and most of my plays were nearly successful.

hets is currently pay-what-you-want over on itch.io. It definitely deserves reward, so head on over and drop a few bucks in the tip jar on your way out.

Game Review: Evoland

Evoland is an homage to the fantasy adventure games of the 80s and 90s. That's not just its style; it's the game's purpose. It imitates primary inspirations the Legend of Zelda and the Final Fantasy series and, in its central gimmick, Evoland changes the gameplay as you go to carry you through all those eras. Those updates are Evoland's main method of advancement and reward. While playing, the game upgrades you from 8-bit graphics to 16-bit, from grid-locked movement to free movement, and from 2D to isometric to 3D. Moving from area to area changes you from Zelda-style puzzle-and-slash to Final Fantasy-style JRPG.

The first (and so far, only) complete project by young developer Shiro Games, Evoland includes the puzzles and tools that you expect from a puzzle-slasher, the menu-based combat you expect from a JRPG, and the fetch quests and runaround NPC hunt you expect from both. The high point of the game is a series of puzzles solved by "traveling through time," shifting between 2D and 3D to navigate obstacles and unlock the way forward.

Originally built for and winner of LudumDare 24, you can still play the original offering (link seems to be down right now), and it is heartily entertaining.

Overall, the game is amusing, but it falls short of being a fully-realized game. An homage of this sort must also be a successful example of the genre, and while the creators clearly love the sources, they don't capture enough of what made those original games beautiful and fun. You could argue that they didn't have time to do so, focusing on the history and transition of the games instead, and you would probably be right.

But that leaves us here: Once the game stops providing frequent upgrades to the system, you see past the homage to how thin the game is beneath, and Evoland begins to feel like a journeyman project for the developer. It's a three-hour game that I'm satisfied to have bought for three dollars on sale, but I don't think I'd be as happy spending the ten dollars it's going for on Steam.