Humble Overwhelmingly Positive Bundle 2
Feb. 13th, 2019 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSIMULACRA - A while ago, there was a discussion I read about what the video game equivalent of a “found footage” movie was. I think this is the closest thing to the answer: You find a stranger’s phone and try to reconstruct what happened to them via their emails, text contacts and social media. In this case, you’re trying to figure out what happened to Anna, by snooping through her emails, texting with her ex-boyfriend, reading her Jabbr (Tumblr) and figuring out who she met through Spark (Tinder). This is a creepy-ass horror game with sci-fi elements, in case that isn’t clear, but as a mostly text-based puzzle game it’s pretty fun. I think my only complaint is that 3+ hours is awfully long to replay to try to get the additional endings, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to speed up the text.
Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight - A fun, creepy little metroidvania starring a traveling priestess who fights monsters with a magical leaf. She’s come searching for the cause of the darkness spreading through the land, and she finds it in the form of giant witch-monsters. No real rpg elements, but there are a few equipment and life upgrades. You can apparently unlock all sorts of magic by beating bosses without getting hit at all, which I suppose is appealing to players other than me (I found it a terrible mechanic). I appreciated that the Easy mode just equips you with a regeneration accessory and better armor and otherwise leaves the game unchanged; but despite that I died dozens of times, mostly to instant-kill spikes. (My listed play time was three hours; my actual play time was about four and a half.) I’m happy they made accomodations for us less-hardcore players, but the true audience is clearly people who think “beat the game without killing a single enemy or dying once” is a reasonable challenge run.
Subsurface Circular - Detective robot rides a train and investigates three-laws violations via conversation trees. More of a visual novel than anything else, this has a weird shaky-cam effect when you move the mouse despite there being nothing to see at any of the slightly-different angles. Neither the story nor the presentation really won me.
Opus Magnum – While the theme is ostensibly about alchemy (and includes cutscenes of a court alchemist bitching about his employers), this is a mechanical puzzle game, where you arrange various mechanical arms and dispensers so that they maneuver products (according to directions you provide) into various combinations. You need to get yourself thinking in the right manner to play it, because if you’re not looking at the problems right, it can get very frustrating. I enjoyed the tutorial levels because I think it’s a cool concept, but my brain didn’t actually grok the playstyle in a way that made extended play interesting.
LISA – “You’re tearing me apart.” A side-scrolling classic rpg (you can barely jump, and falling is a major cause of death) in a crapsack world where a drug addicted, badly-abused man tries to get his adopted daughter (possible one of the only women left alive) back from a gang of kidnappers. It’s a lot like Earthbound in terms of visuals and concept, but without the whimsy—it starts heavy and stays heavy. I give them credit for trying to be creative with the characters having different combat styles, but I found the plot a misery parade.
Wuppo - A metroidvania featuring a gooball-shooting blob in an art style reminiscent of Yoshi’s Island. I suspect that the fact I never really liked Yoshi’s Island is playing a role in my opinions here, but I didn’t really like this. I found it hard to differentiate background from interact-able foreground, I didn’t dig the control scheme, and while the story of a lazy wum trying to break back into the hotel he lives in was whimsical, it was also kinda dumb.
I opted not to try SOMA, which was apparently made by the team that did Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It’s a horror exploration game in which you wander around, getting freaked out, and then must dodge monsters and hide while solving puzzles. In a first-person view. Nope!
This also included Nuclear Throne, which I played some time ago.
I had previously purchased Momodora and have an extra Steam key, if anyone wants it.
Overall: Pretty much everything here, I can understand why the reviews would be very positive. In many cases, the game wasn’t so much for me, but that usually wasn’t because it was a bad game. You might like it even though I didn’t.
Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight - A fun, creepy little metroidvania starring a traveling priestess who fights monsters with a magical leaf. She’s come searching for the cause of the darkness spreading through the land, and she finds it in the form of giant witch-monsters. No real rpg elements, but there are a few equipment and life upgrades. You can apparently unlock all sorts of magic by beating bosses without getting hit at all, which I suppose is appealing to players other than me (I found it a terrible mechanic). I appreciated that the Easy mode just equips you with a regeneration accessory and better armor and otherwise leaves the game unchanged; but despite that I died dozens of times, mostly to instant-kill spikes. (My listed play time was three hours; my actual play time was about four and a half.) I’m happy they made accomodations for us less-hardcore players, but the true audience is clearly people who think “beat the game without killing a single enemy or dying once” is a reasonable challenge run.
Subsurface Circular - Detective robot rides a train and investigates three-laws violations via conversation trees. More of a visual novel than anything else, this has a weird shaky-cam effect when you move the mouse despite there being nothing to see at any of the slightly-different angles. Neither the story nor the presentation really won me.
Opus Magnum – While the theme is ostensibly about alchemy (and includes cutscenes of a court alchemist bitching about his employers), this is a mechanical puzzle game, where you arrange various mechanical arms and dispensers so that they maneuver products (according to directions you provide) into various combinations. You need to get yourself thinking in the right manner to play it, because if you’re not looking at the problems right, it can get very frustrating. I enjoyed the tutorial levels because I think it’s a cool concept, but my brain didn’t actually grok the playstyle in a way that made extended play interesting.
LISA – “You’re tearing me apart.” A side-scrolling classic rpg (you can barely jump, and falling is a major cause of death) in a crapsack world where a drug addicted, badly-abused man tries to get his adopted daughter (possible one of the only women left alive) back from a gang of kidnappers. It’s a lot like Earthbound in terms of visuals and concept, but without the whimsy—it starts heavy and stays heavy. I give them credit for trying to be creative with the characters having different combat styles, but I found the plot a misery parade.
Wuppo - A metroidvania featuring a gooball-shooting blob in an art style reminiscent of Yoshi’s Island. I suspect that the fact I never really liked Yoshi’s Island is playing a role in my opinions here, but I didn’t really like this. I found it hard to differentiate background from interact-able foreground, I didn’t dig the control scheme, and while the story of a lazy wum trying to break back into the hotel he lives in was whimsical, it was also kinda dumb.
I opted not to try SOMA, which was apparently made by the team that did Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It’s a horror exploration game in which you wander around, getting freaked out, and then must dodge monsters and hide while solving puzzles. In a first-person view. Nope!
This also included Nuclear Throne, which I played some time ago.
I had previously purchased Momodora and have an extra Steam key, if anyone wants it.
Overall: Pretty much everything here, I can understand why the reviews would be very positive. In many cases, the game wasn’t so much for me, but that usually wasn’t because it was a bad game. You might like it even though I didn’t.
