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chuckroUniverse Sandbox - Exactly what it says on the tin: A simulation of our universe, in which you can muck with variables to make things happen. There’s an achievement for crashing the Earth into the Sun, for instance. I suspect that someone else might find this endlessly fascinating; I found it briefly amusing but ultimately just a curiosity.
Divekick - A fighting game that boils down 2D fighters into their simplest form: You can only dive (jump) and kick, and occasionally use special moves. The cross key does nothing—you can only move via jumps or kicks. I feel like this game was made as a joke rather than a serious idea for a quality game.
Planetary Annihilation - If you like Starcraft but think the plot gets in the way of destroying your enemies, this is the game for you. Pop down on a planet, mine some minerals, build a ton of units, destroy your enemies. I don’t have the real-time strategy love that some people do, but this seems like a pretty solid example of the genre if you’re in it purely for the strategic combat.
100% Orange Juice - This is a board game, Mario Party style. It’s driven by d6 rolls and, while fast-paced, is so dependent on luck that I couldn’t really enjoy it. The fact that the win conditions weren’t particularly clear didn’t help either, admittedly, but I can play any of the dozen Parcheesi variants we own with my son if I want this experience.
Painkiller: Black Edition - On one hand, this is a very smooth and pleasant FPS experience, and it’s even pretty playable (for me) on the Easy mode. I killed lots of monsters in a graveyard with a buzzsaw-hand, grapple beam and shotgun. That said, it’s still an FPS, and the gameplay seems limited to “kill all the monsters in this area, hunt for secrets, move to new area and repeat” and I’d rather be playing a third-person beat-em-up for that experience.
Rise of the Triad (2013) - Also a good FPS experience; a bit more light-hearted and with better platforming and promises of puzzles, but still not my thing. (If I was going to pick one of them to play through on “god mode”, this would definitely be the one.)
Silence of the Sleep - A side-scrolling horror exploration game with more puzzle elements than most (it definitely straddles the line into the puzzle adventure game genre). After jumping to his likely death, Jacob wakes up in a mysterious motel with fragmented memories and mysterious shadows chasing him. He needs to solve puzzles and dodge the shades to escape from this limbo. I liked the concept, but the monster-dodging part really didn’t appeal to me and the puzzles often went in the “moon logic” direction.
Town of Salem looked cute, as a “figure out who the traitor is” sort of game, but apparently you need to make an account and log into their server to play it, and I’m not going to that trouble for a game more fun to play in person.
Overall: This collection was almost entirely, “these are not bad games, but they’re not the type of games I enjoy playing.” Unlike some of the other bundles, pretty much everything here was well-executed and seemed to accomplish what it was setting out to do. I just didn’t really want that thing.
Divekick - A fighting game that boils down 2D fighters into their simplest form: You can only dive (jump) and kick, and occasionally use special moves. The cross key does nothing—you can only move via jumps or kicks. I feel like this game was made as a joke rather than a serious idea for a quality game.
Planetary Annihilation - If you like Starcraft but think the plot gets in the way of destroying your enemies, this is the game for you. Pop down on a planet, mine some minerals, build a ton of units, destroy your enemies. I don’t have the real-time strategy love that some people do, but this seems like a pretty solid example of the genre if you’re in it purely for the strategic combat.
100% Orange Juice - This is a board game, Mario Party style. It’s driven by d6 rolls and, while fast-paced, is so dependent on luck that I couldn’t really enjoy it. The fact that the win conditions weren’t particularly clear didn’t help either, admittedly, but I can play any of the dozen Parcheesi variants we own with my son if I want this experience.
Painkiller: Black Edition - On one hand, this is a very smooth and pleasant FPS experience, and it’s even pretty playable (for me) on the Easy mode. I killed lots of monsters in a graveyard with a buzzsaw-hand, grapple beam and shotgun. That said, it’s still an FPS, and the gameplay seems limited to “kill all the monsters in this area, hunt for secrets, move to new area and repeat” and I’d rather be playing a third-person beat-em-up for that experience.
Rise of the Triad (2013) - Also a good FPS experience; a bit more light-hearted and with better platforming and promises of puzzles, but still not my thing. (If I was going to pick one of them to play through on “god mode”, this would definitely be the one.)
Silence of the Sleep - A side-scrolling horror exploration game with more puzzle elements than most (it definitely straddles the line into the puzzle adventure game genre). After jumping to his likely death, Jacob wakes up in a mysterious motel with fragmented memories and mysterious shadows chasing him. He needs to solve puzzles and dodge the shades to escape from this limbo. I liked the concept, but the monster-dodging part really didn’t appeal to me and the puzzles often went in the “moon logic” direction.
Town of Salem looked cute, as a “figure out who the traitor is” sort of game, but apparently you need to make an account and log into their server to play it, and I’m not going to that trouble for a game more fun to play in person.
Overall: This collection was almost entirely, “these are not bad games, but they’re not the type of games I enjoy playing.” Unlike some of the other bundles, pretty much everything here was well-executed and seemed to accomplish what it was setting out to do. I just didn’t really want that thing.
