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I tried out the contents of this bundle interspersed with other games over the course of years, and none of it really won me.
Edge of Space Standard Edition - A side-scrolling, action sim game of gathering resources and building a base on an alien planet. Plenty of ways to die and a bunch of amusing loading messages, but I didn’t find the controls intuitive and thought the systems were overly complicated.
FORCED: Slightly Better Edition - This is a decent top-down, trial-based fighting game—there are multiple weapon styles and upgrades, and it plays a bit like one of the later Gauntlet games but with more thinking involved. I'm just not wild about playing it. Some of that is a dislike of mouse-and-keyboard controls, some of it is just general lack of interest. I don’t want to call it a bad game, I’m just not into it.
Awesomenauts - Nice graphics, good sense of humor, decent side-scroller controls, good variety of characters…but the whole thing is a 3-on-3 arena fighter / capture-the-flag style of game. Which got old very quickly.
Bloodsports.TV - Protect missile silos via top-down melee in a ridiculous reality TV pastiche. It’s a wave-based defender game, entirely mouse-based, and I can see how that might be your thing, but I found the gameplay boring, without enough of the sort of tactics I appreciate to get me particularly interested.
MASSIVE CHALICE - You are the immortal regent to the, um, massive chalice that rules the region. This is a cross between a simulation game and a tactical rpg, in that you marry your heroes to each other and assign them as rulers to each of your keeps, then recruit their children to fight encroaching demons over a 300-year-span while the chalice gathers energies to banish the monsters. Interesting concept, but I thought it dragged.
Reverse Crawl - This is a fairly simple, if not terribly well-explained, casual rpg by the same folks who made Monster Slayers. The king was killed by a usurper, but his daughter the necromancer brought him back and will lead her undead and monster minions to retake their kingdom. You put your waves of minions up against waves of soldiers and heroes in a semi-tactical map. It’s not as addictive as Monster Slayers or Vertical Drop Heroes, but it’s in a similar vein.
Shadowrun Returns - I give them a lot of credit on this, in that they were clearly trying to re-create a tabletop rpg experience, and I think they succeeded on most fronts. The intro adventure has a lot of info-gathering and tactical combat, and on easy mode you don’t get up splattered all over the battlefield when you mis-click an action. They make an effort to have your stats and skills provide options in the dialogue tree actions, even though the story is very clearly on rails. Shadowrun was never my favorite tabletop system for a number of reasons (setting, mechanics, implied playstyle), but this was entertaining for a bit.
I may also try Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut at some point, or not.
This bundle also included a bunch of non-Steam stuff: Neverwinter: Bane of Baphomet Pack (which apparently required an Arc client), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - First Assault Online: Section 9 Starter Crate DLC, and a Gamepedia PRO Quarterly Subscription. I never bothered with those and suspect they’re long-expired.
Overall: This was one of those bundles that took me years to get around to whittling down, because I felt the games required a fair shake and I was rarely in the mood to give it to them.
Edge of Space Standard Edition - A side-scrolling, action sim game of gathering resources and building a base on an alien planet. Plenty of ways to die and a bunch of amusing loading messages, but I didn’t find the controls intuitive and thought the systems were overly complicated.
FORCED: Slightly Better Edition - This is a decent top-down, trial-based fighting game—there are multiple weapon styles and upgrades, and it plays a bit like one of the later Gauntlet games but with more thinking involved. I'm just not wild about playing it. Some of that is a dislike of mouse-and-keyboard controls, some of it is just general lack of interest. I don’t want to call it a bad game, I’m just not into it.
Awesomenauts - Nice graphics, good sense of humor, decent side-scroller controls, good variety of characters…but the whole thing is a 3-on-3 arena fighter / capture-the-flag style of game. Which got old very quickly.
Bloodsports.TV - Protect missile silos via top-down melee in a ridiculous reality TV pastiche. It’s a wave-based defender game, entirely mouse-based, and I can see how that might be your thing, but I found the gameplay boring, without enough of the sort of tactics I appreciate to get me particularly interested.
MASSIVE CHALICE - You are the immortal regent to the, um, massive chalice that rules the region. This is a cross between a simulation game and a tactical rpg, in that you marry your heroes to each other and assign them as rulers to each of your keeps, then recruit their children to fight encroaching demons over a 300-year-span while the chalice gathers energies to banish the monsters. Interesting concept, but I thought it dragged.
Reverse Crawl - This is a fairly simple, if not terribly well-explained, casual rpg by the same folks who made Monster Slayers. The king was killed by a usurper, but his daughter the necromancer brought him back and will lead her undead and monster minions to retake their kingdom. You put your waves of minions up against waves of soldiers and heroes in a semi-tactical map. It’s not as addictive as Monster Slayers or Vertical Drop Heroes, but it’s in a similar vein.
Shadowrun Returns - I give them a lot of credit on this, in that they were clearly trying to re-create a tabletop rpg experience, and I think they succeeded on most fronts. The intro adventure has a lot of info-gathering and tactical combat, and on easy mode you don’t get up splattered all over the battlefield when you mis-click an action. They make an effort to have your stats and skills provide options in the dialogue tree actions, even though the story is very clearly on rails. Shadowrun was never my favorite tabletop system for a number of reasons (setting, mechanics, implied playstyle), but this was entertaining for a bit.
I may also try Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut at some point, or not.
This bundle also included a bunch of non-Steam stuff: Neverwinter: Bane of Baphomet Pack (which apparently required an Arc client), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - First Assault Online: Section 9 Starter Crate DLC, and a Gamepedia PRO Quarterly Subscription. I never bothered with those and suspect they’re long-expired.
Overall: This was one of those bundles that took me years to get around to whittling down, because I felt the games required a fair shake and I was rarely in the mood to give it to them.
