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[thediceman]

I honestly don't get what they were going for with this. It's supposed to be a wrestling game which means grapples and divekicks, which it has, but the bouts typically end up being nothing more than punches and kicks and the entire thing just degenerates into a bad fighting game.

The controls are less than fantastic, sometimes being delay happy, the music is terrible, the announcers need to go die somewhere and only 6 playable characters? No Hogan? No Ultimate Warrior Or Bam Bam Bigalow?

Graphically the game looks fine at least. I was never really a fan of the whole pre-rendered digitized-human phase midway went through, but I know from a development standpoint it was rather efficient to cut down on the animation budget.

That said...only 6 playable charcters, that makes me a sad panda indeed.

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X-Men (Sega Genesis, Mega Drive) Review

I still say Cyclops is a tosser and Gambit is the best x-man ever. Decent graphics for the time, meh sound effects, decent tracks later on, platforming is a tad wonky but otherwise ok.The real killer is that resetting issue, a whole bunch of sega megadrives(or genesis, whatever you call them) models flat out did not have soft reset option properly installed. If you were unlucky enough to have one of these half the game was closed off to you forever due to someones shitty programming.

What do you all think of X-Men for Genesis?

[Deleted]

Hey all,
Me and a few friends are doing Challenge mode gold
on a daily basis and stream that on our twitch channel: www .twitch.tv/sunshade88
We also do give aways gold CM runs in a few dungeons for followers of the channel.
Come have a look when you got time and enjoy it

[thediceman]

So, not gonna lie. I'm a sucker for silly/fast puzzles games, even moreso if they have component of screwing over/ending friendships. Yoshi's Cookie is no exception. While not as good as tetris or puyo puyo(or even bust a move) It's still decent entertainment on long bustrips or whan your sister suddenly thinks Justin Beiber at 120 decibels is a good idea(spoiler it isn't).

What do the rest of you think of Yoshi's Cookie?

[Brutall]

[thediceman]

I don't know wheather to shit myself laughing at how bad this is or actually send an apology to whatever poor shmuck actually green lit this turd.

Firstly, I'm not against making a possum a mascot, rocket knight adventures did it and that character is far more likable. I do however, have an issue with making them absolutely annoying, so much to the point where you just want to set fire to your own home with yourself in it in hopes that the flames will cleanse away the memory of you ever playing it.

The game also commits the sin of stealing sound assets from other sega genesis games, none of which really make the game better.

Floaty controls, bland enemy and level design(its like they tossed the stage in a blender) very poor optimization(yeah, 17 fps is pro right?) repetitive sound and a heavy handed attempt at a pro-enviroment message that would make Captain Planet blush makes for a game that is playable, but only if you are really into video game BDSM.

Only play this thing if you really want to cry yourself to sleep tonight.

[Deleted]

Much videos. This Videos is good and beautiful.

[thediceman]

I don't have too much to say about this game other than it recreates the battleship board game rather faithfully. That said, I do find the graphics to be maybe a bit too simplistic, adding in different death animations for other ships would have been nice and the game really needs a better soundtrack as the only one it has gets kind of annoying rather quickly.

Also Kinda wish It had 2 player mode, though not sure how they would do that. (maybe special 3d glasses that only lets you see your own ships or some other gimmick). Then again, it's far more fun to get humiliated over the baord game than playing the nes.

[Brutall]

[thediceman]

I have to say I don't exactly hate the game, it controls well and the quirky asthetic is hilarious at times. However, mechanically it falls apart.

Combos are much less about stringing hits together and much more about jumping in and abusing the double hits from them. Getting cornered in the game is absolutely lethal because of the double hit from jump in. Another mechanical problem is frame invincibility, some of the selectable fighters have moves which give them essentially a free hit(the ghost guy or bonkers for example) that lets them power trade hits with them coming out on top each time.

Also health in the game goes down far to fast, a single 4-7 hit 'combo' can easily wipe out 90% of your health and while there is no sweep cheesing like in MK 2 there is plenty of invincibility frame cheesing in this game to compensate.

I would also like to note that the game kind of runs like ass. There's significant slowdown in the game overall(super fps loss) meaning even fighters that are supposed to feel fast instead feel like I'm playing zangief all the time.

It's not the worst fighting game, but not even close to any of the street fighter games.

[Brutall]

[thediceman]

Project Aura Review

So I started playing this game thinking it may be a civilization kind of game or at the very least a trimmed down version of it. Sadly what I found was a game touted as Beta when the game barely qualifies as an Alpha.

The first black eye comes in the tutorial system, not only is it short(which to some may be a blessing)but also entirely inadequate for teaching you the game. Some people like going in blind, but you game should at least the absolute basics, which it kinda does and doesn't.

Next sucker punch is no rebindable keys or even a listing of what the keys do. I understand it's beta, but that kind of thing takes all of five minutes to do.

Next up is the performance...oh my the perfromance. The game is not high activity, high resulution and could easily pass for a game made between 2005 and 2007. I know optimization is typically the last thing dev teams do, but the fact that a game as bland looking as this tanks a 980 with no problems leaves much to be desired. Also after the review I noticed the game eating up 4.3 GB of ram...I can run 4 mmos at the same time and it doesn't eat up that much(that much ram for basically fuck all going on).

The next problem is everything is missing, aside from the fiddly micromanagement of the colonists and the builtings, there is nothing else to do. Four different systems are missing from the game(Yes I know, Beta is beta) but, it leaves it bare bones and boring. It doesn't qualify as a beta if more than 50% of the games functionality is missing(in this case 75% or more is AWAL).

Lastly, mechanics. Colinists drop jobs randomly without telling you, clicks don't register properly sometimes, stupid corperation system that makes the game feel like I'm playing some shitty cow clicker mobile game. The game also runs at a snails pace early on AND doesn't run in the backround at all(also windowed mode is busted slightly). Top this off with getting the right job roulette at the right time makes the game more a test of your iron patience than skill.

Honestly you can get civ 3 complete for 5$ now or even get civ 4 on steam duringa sale for around 10-15$. As of now the asking price of 15$ is too much for a game that is basically a very bare Alpha.

Maybe when they get some of the other systems working will it be worth taking a look at, but for now there are better things to spend your money on.

[LeyzarGamingViews]

My first impressions (gameplay) on Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons the RTS (PC Game on Steam)



Leyzar

[Asher13]

Hey guys! We are running a contest in which we are giving away a bunch of Steam games and a few other goodies. The list of items, as well as the rules of entry for the contest are at the end of the video. We want to get at least enough people entered in so that we can give everything away. If you like free stuff, go check it out!

[Brutall]

[thediceman]

At first I thought that maybe judging this as a game was the wrong way to go and it turned out after playing all the way through it, that yes, I was going about this the wrong way. To call it a game is kind of a misnomer, games typically have failure states and while a few of the puzzles can be kind of annoying, they are not failure states in themseves(wolves don't eat you for failing them and such).

I think the customer should know what they are getting into. This isn't a game, so much as a visual novel with game like elements in it. That said, it does have some problems. Firstly, the options are limited, while the game really doesn't need AA or shadow effects or anything else ina big video menu, it does lack a resolution option and maybe an audio slider. Keybindings are not an issue since the game is essentially point, click and drag for all of the puzzles you will encounter.

The second issue I have is this visual novel of sorts is very short. For someone thats good at puzzles they can probably go through it in about an hour, 2 hours for those that don't play puzzle games often and maybe 3 hours tops for those that don't play puzzle games at all.

Lastly, the price point; is 1-2 hours of entertainment/zen calm worth 7.49 USD or 10$ if you are buying this after its special? For some maybe not, other probably so. That part all depends on your personal income and expendable cash.

However, should you pick this visual novel up during a steam sale?

Absolutely.

This experience is something you typically do not get out of games. The entire thing is riddled with puzzles, references to the cycles of life and other deep philosiphy things that I will not ruin here. It is also very relaxing with its music, sound and visuals. It is also a game that is entirely child friendly, even young children.

It may not be 'game of the year' or a triple A blockbuster, but for what it was worth it was something entirely different and unexpected. A rare feat to pull off nowadays.

[thediceman]

The Legend Of Zelda Review

I am entirely bemused that this came up on the review roulette for the week. I mean, aside from people in syberia who haven't updated from wooden radios or some guy in southen turkey that has never seen a TV, who hasn't heard of this game?

Anyway, that aside let's talk about Zelda shall we?

Graphically speaking, the game is not exactly the best looking on the nes, but the sprites are more than functional(and even so this game came out in 86, long before the potential of the nes was maxed out) and all the dungeons are fairly sized. The overworld is also gigantic with secrets I haven't found yet, despite playing the game on and off for nearly 20 years.

Sound wise, the music is absolutely stellar for the time and even holds up well today. The controls are also tight and responsive.

Mechanically speaking, the game tore down barriers and opened up a entire new way of game design; let the player find shit on their own. Sadly something Nintendo has drifted away from in recent years(yes I'm looking at you skywards sword, you hand holding SOB).

They toss you into an open world, give you the barest of ideas on what to do and you just go find crap. No narative to really drive you on(or in case of that owl, interrupt you) just you and the rest of the world to explore.

Only gripe I really have is the less than fantastic translation on some of the hints from the random old man that appears randomly through the game. Some of them lead to dead ends or are so mystic in nature that the player can't make any world connections.

Either way, for all of the 2 people on earth that have never played or heard of this game(including that one guy in syberia looking at this review on his nokia ngage), give it a try. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

(For that guy in syberia, theres actually nes emulators for ngage! I know, I didn't know either!)

[thediceman]

Nickelodeon Guts Review

You know, I went into this expecting absolute drek and I got far worse than that. I went through a second time after the video and found that no, I was right the first time. Games like this are the kind of thing that makes me want to abort myself...from time(so I never played this).

Graphically speaking the game looks ok, not exceptional , but ok. The sprites are mostly high quality aside from the backrounds and even breathing animations look decent, albeit a tad exaggerated.

The sound is absolutely monotonous. I understand they ripped quite a bit of it from the game show and just lowered the quality, but honestly the same music over and over is just mute bait. The sound effects are not all that good either, I played one of the female characters off screen and she kept making the male sounds when running into crap(then again all the males in this game are pre-teens so there's that).

Design wise it looks like the company making the game either had a very small budget or were strapped for time. The bungie games are all functionally the same, just with different sprites to cover them up. The timed running stages are poorly designed as well, with jump clipping the ceiling on critical jumps and even shoddy hit detection. Also you can't kill yourself, at least with that option you could save yourself the embarassment of playing it.

However the worst offender is the controls. In the bungie events they make no effort to give you feedback on how to improve and after the jump you basically have zero control. During the running event the screen can't even keep up with your top speed, you have too much momentum and grabbing things is a nightmare, especially the rope climbing.

All in all the game is just a rushed , uninspired mess. The real travesty is the game show, for all the 90's cheese(and there NEVER being a fat kid competing, always you skinny Californians)that the show put out, it was still kind of entertaining, less so than American Gladiators, but up there. The real crime here is the lack of events, had the dev team gotten a budget higher than 2 weeks minimum wage or more time than it takes to cook a pizza(it's called hyperbole kids) then this could have been a decent game.

As it stands, its just another shit licence game worthy of LJN. Now, for that ham sandwich I wanted...

[Destroyed]

H1Z1 - The Adventures of Yipyip and Jamesblunt

[Destroyed]

H1Z1 - The Reunion

[thediceman]

Survivalist Review

Survivalist is a zombie survival game created by "Bob the PR bot", so essentially an independent indie title. It looks like it has a relatively small team judging from the title screen. From the steam page you can see a whole bunch of praise from websites that I have never heard of before. So the real question is, who's bad?

This game is

The first thing I look at is options and while I commend the game for having rebindable keys, it doesn't seem to have the same for the gamepad(I wasn't able to really test this since I do not own an xbox 360 gamepad, it didn't seem to want to play ball with my 3rd party gamepad however.)

Next up is the sound options. Three separate sliders and a music selection that contains less than 10 tracks for the game, most of which run the gauntlet from 'kinda atmosphere building' to 'bad 80's trance music' with most of it trending toward the latter. The lack of options for proper surround sound or stereo options, but it is an indie title so I can kind of forgive that.

Lastly, the graphical options; or lack thereof. You get resolution options and fullscreen on or off. No AA options, no monitor frequency options, shadow softening, colorblind mode; nothing. This options menu is about as bankrupt as Enron. Honestly, I can live with limited option in terms of sound, but the lack of graphical options is a massive pain in the rear(well maybe not really, I'll get to THAT part later).

You start the game and get a very brief dialogue about how you are a hedge fund manager that's been hiding in a bunker for the past year. The next part of the game is basically a tutorial, you load in and you're a very well dressed business man in front of a small bunker entrance. This is where the terrible fires from the screen and attacks your sides, it's so bad that it's hilarious.

Firstly, graphical fidelity. The game uses cel-shaded graphics, kind of like the walking dead story games; but that is where the similarities end. All the character animations in game are whole new levels of bad. All of them walk like they are all either Robocop (freeze criminal scum!) or have something stuck up their backside. The first zombie you come across, you have to fist fight with, hilariously. The swinging animations look like you're trying to steer a car, not fight for your life.

Also, every single zombie you come across is just a palette swap of existing models, they literally just colored the skin grey, swapped out the eyes and called it a day. It's the kind of efficient laziness that could only make the federal government proud(oh, so edgy). During my 8-10 hours of game time I found so many instances of copy-pasta zombies that I lost count. Also, none of the seperate strains of zombie seem to behave any differently than the rest, the only difference is they become more damage sponge-y and require more stamina to shake off.

So, your character walks like robocop, fights like he lost power steering and runs like he's trying to dive at the slip n' slide. Are the textures good? Short answer; No. long answer, FUCK NO. All the textures in game look as if they were made for an IOS device. All the vehicles seem to have the same textures, buildings are just rectagles with no personality and wood looks like it was just a rectagle that they colored brown. None of the textures are even good quality for a decade ago, let alone in 2015.

"Ok Redmage, the graphics are bad, how's the sound?"

Also, pretty dreadful. Firstly, the game has only a handful of tracks that it cycles through, of which only 2 actually fit the game. One uses a guitar riff from that one really bad Shinedown song and the others are something I would expect to play during an exercise video. I almost wanted to get up and do tai-bo on some of the songs, but then remembered I'm 30 something and that kind of workout would probably kill me at this point. So no, the soundtrack is just put in there so you have something to mute and then immediately put something on that isn't terribe (like AC/DC).

"What about the sound assets? Like guns firing and the like?"

I Nope, also bad. All the guns sound as if they had the pitch slightly changed, and have no impact at all. The other small amount of bips and boops are made when looting stuff and don't really add or detract from the game. However, the zombie roaring is just comedy gold. I wonder what kind of voice actor they got for this because they need to stop doing that immediately before someone important hires them. They sound as if they were gurgling water as they were roaring at me. I had my brother (who is a chain smoker) walk into the room and try to do a better zombie voice, what came out was bad, but at least it was a far better try than this non-sense(hell with some clever editing, it would be kinda passable). Even the sound fire makes, is less than 16 bit era quality.

"Ok, so the presentation is bad. How about the gameplay?"

Gameplay is a strong word, this game is much less 'gameplay' and much more 'flailing about angrily'. To the game's credit there is one thing that works decently enough, the town building system. However, each wood plank weighs about 25lbs and all your characters can carry on them early game is 20 lbs (without a backpack, of which there is one early game). Just 20 lbs...I was carrying more than that in 4th grade. Every day. On a 2 mile walk to school each way.

So the town building, while functional, is ass slow early on. The game also has you managing everybodys sleep routines, work routines, food and water consumtion and personal inventory(which isn't too bad, min/maxers will love this). I also kind of like that...except they also straddle you with a severe handicap early on with a type 1 diabetic. Let me tell you, insulin during a zombie apocalypse is freaking expensive. The game runs on a gold economy IE you get little gold ring icons that you trade for goods in some of the surrounding survivor towns.

"Wait, gold? Who the fuck needs gold in a zombie apocalypse?"

I asked myself the same thing, there's even an option for Joe to ask the same question and it makes NO sense whatsoever. Which brings me to why it's in the game;the entire game degrades into a reputation/questing grind. Do quest, get gold, get rep so you can blow MOST of it on insulin for your massive handicap you hope dies horribly by accident later on. Mind you, getting a lot of rep in a town greatly decreases the cost of services after a while, but it turns the entire game into an MMO, except you don't have friends to suffer through it with you.

"How about the AI? Are the zombies challenging?"

A big fat negative there as well. The first 2 zombies you come across in game are your typically slow moving cannon fodder zombies; the kind that are only really dangerous in large numbers or your grandma in her walker/wheelchair. However, the 3rd zombie you are up against runs at you at speeds I'm pretty sure they never had in life and then if you get out of the way, power rolls and comes right back at you likes he's fucking Spider Man. So you're thinking "fast 28 days later zombies?" which is actually spot on, except these zombies have no effort put into their makeup. All the zombies do is spot you, run at you as fast as they can, knock you over to eat your face/liver with a side of fava beans.

Early on, all of them are weak. They don't take too much damage to kill and are easy to kick off you. However, may Thor have mercy on your soul if you decide to take a shortcut in the earlier quests. The zombies in game are very basic, they all have the same thinking and attack pattern, but a few white strain zombies are hanging not too far from the first quest hub. Those guys will absolutely murder the ever living crap out of you. Sadly, they have the same AI as every other zombie up to this point. The only difference between these zombies and the one earlier is they are damage sponges and take more stamina to get off you.

Human enemies are much the same way, entirely brain-dead (hey, at least the zombies swill starve right?). They spot you, then open fire. I have yet to see a single one actually actively try and take cover. Even worse is your team AI. Examples: I got into a gunfight with looters, the insulin pit ran off after being shot a few times into open desert. Didn't patch up her bleeding (despite having bandages on her and doing so for other damage previously) and managed to get a good 9 zombies piled ontop of her; which all immediately made her an open buffet (which was oddly satisfying).

Next example, I send the guy with the toolbox (I don't even remember names, more on that in a moment) to go to town and get some planks of wood. His pathing decided to take the longest possible route he could, he also doesn't know how to regulate his running; so he also walks slow as hell too.

"Is the writing good?"

If you like most of it being very binary in nature and about as dry as a microwaved pretzel, then sure. Citizens of different colonies are exceptionally cold to you until you do tasks for them, ranging from fetch me this to kill that. After you complete so many of these tasks the townsfolks warm up to you and will more readily help you. There are very few times I actually came across a situation that was exceptionally morally gray and even the times I did come across them(twice so far), the writing was so dry that I could hang it as drywall(see what I did there? Eh? Eh?).

It's a massive pitfall of writing, you don't make someone care about a character by just TELLING them 'Hey! You should like this character!" Shortly after meeting them. No, they have to earn my tears. The walking dead games by telltale did an excellent job of this, this non-sense attempts it, but in such a poorly executed, comical way that the uncanny valley hits you so hard and you don't care.

Hell I can re-write the part where you have to free captain insulin sponge (they really are 1 dimensional) to make it more dramatic and relatable in less than 5 minutes. Seriously, who the hell wrote this crap? Stephenie Meyer? E. L. James? Mr. Freeze (actually scratch that, Mr. Freeze actually has poetic talent, unlike this grade school drek).

Also...NPC's yelling "pwned" when they kill a zombie or looter is character breaking, especially when multiple 50+ year olds do it. I honestly can't take the writing seriously, it's like watching a bad Saturday morning cartoon.

Maybe I'm reading this the wrong way, maybe all the dialogue is meant to be satirical in nature. An attempt to lampoon the zombie survival genre. Sadly, this doesn't fit either, because if they were really lampooning it (Which I doubt) then they should have cranked the non-sense up to 11. Instead, you get a game that tries to be humorous on occasion, but utterly fails on all fronts(aside from being almost so bad its good with the animations early on).

"Does it control well?"

Yes, I have no complaints about it other than it didn't recognize my (outdated) analog gamepad. I will say that at least the interface is clean-ish for the inventory and circle strafing enemies is easy enough. No rebindable keys on the gamepad is bad , but people can live with that.

The sad part is this actually got 'good' reviews from 'reputable' sources and somehow managed to get greenlit over much better games on steam. All I see is a vast amount of wasted potential, crimes against writing and an absolute mess of a game that will only maybe infatuate minmaxing players (and masochists).

I cannot recommend this game for the 20$ price tag. Hell, it would barely be worth the time at 2.50$.

If you absolutely must play a zombie game, you can get Telltale games 'The Walking Dead' on Steam for like 11$ for both seasons, that's less than the cost of a decent pizza.

As for 'Survivalist', the only survivor here is the player not giving themselves a frontal lobotomy in order to forget they played this garbage. 'Who's bad?' This game is. Avoid like the plague.