Останні рецензії користувача 1uploop

Isn't it just the worst when you expect a game to be good and it isn't?

The original Alan Wake was a game centered on the titular suspense/horror author, as he fought againt the forces of darkness in a sleepy little mountain town, saving his wife and the day in an episodic fashion, to the point that there were credits at the end of each chapter along with "next time" and "last time" intros and outros. It was a neat story, and a neat idea, and the combat was something out of the ordinary. Seems like it wouldn't be hard to follow up, right?

American Nightmare almost seems like a demo for the whole game. The conciet of the plot in this iteration is that our hero is caught in a time loop, but effectively what this translates to is that you go through the same 3 small areas 3 times. There are no "episodes", there is no getting from point A to point B, you simply "win" the particular scene by progressing the story along, and are immediately greeted with a loading screen, taking you straight to the next area. Meanwhile the combat, while interesting in the first game, has not changed at all in this second, and every single enemy can be taken down the exact same way. Shine the light, shoot bullets. A little added variety would have done a bit to save it, but not much.

Additionally, the story itself seems a bit muddied and vague, although given how much space they gave themselves to work with, it's surprising they managed to convey a cohesive story in such a small span of game. The badguy is bad, the good guy is good, he wins, and everything is fine. The credits then tell us that we haven't seen the last of Mr. Wake, but for the audience's sake, I hope Alan has brushed up on his writing skills.


"I found this game shallow and pedantic."
-Peter Griffin

[Unavoidable Spoilers Ahead]

So, what happens when a bunch of Polish developers get together and play Dead Space, and think "MAN! I bet we could make a game WAY better than that one!". Afterfall: InSanity is what happens, and also they were wrong, but maybe not as wrong as you think.

Afterfall is, for the most part, a fairly standard 3rd person Survival Horror game, set in the near-ish future of a high tech bomb shelter in the remains of Poland. You play as Albert Tokaj, a psychiatrist whose designated job is helping the ENTIRE COLONY deal with their problems, the most prevalent of which is the debilitating condition of being stuck underground in a box for years, while also trying not to go crazy himself from being stuck underground in a box for years. In addition to that, there seems to be some sort of weird pathogen flying around the shelter that makes people turn into super aggressive zombie monsters, and our hero is the only one who can stop the outbreak for some reason. (Don't worry, there's a reason.)

The story is interesting enough, if not a bit cliche, and the melee and gunplay is serviceable at the worst, and can even get a bit fun considering the wealth of melee options. The part where Afterfall falls flat AND shines is that it has a bit of a crisis of identity. You will constantly come across puzzles that have very little explanation, and a timer counting down in the background. The plot will take very interesting, unexpected turns, only to completely throw away the thread they were building. I was surprised to enjoy a bit of gameplay where I was suddenly a little repair bot cart, driving through air ducts to reconnect power to the door I was in front of. This then went on for 15 minutes. It's moments like these, and many others, where you get the impression the developers had a lot of really cool ideas, and wanted to make sure they ALL got in the game, regardless of whether they fit.

With resources directed in a different way, I feel like Afterfall could have been a pretty big hit. Instead, you get a big grab bag of game ideas, some of which shine, and some of which are painfully mediocre, basically giving you a steamy pile of average. Still, it's worth it for the going-insane freak out scenes.

Verdict: "It was certainly a video game."

A.R.E.S. is what you get when you mix Megaman, 80's cartoons, and the old DoS game "Abuse", and put them all in a 2.5D blender.

A brief review for a brief game, A.R.E.S. can typically be finished in one sitting, which of course is the point. Weapon purchases and upgrades transfer over with every new game that is started, and there are multiple endings depending on the difficulty one chooses, throwing in a little bit of bullet hell style progression into the mix as well. And for you OCD types, there's also some collection elements, so it's fun to go back and suss out secrets from every corner you can find.

If I had one complaint about this game, it's that you absolutely should be playing with a controller. I realize that isn't much to ask in this day and age, but for those stuck on a mouse and keyboard, unfortunately the programming of the game will only allow you to press two keys at once, so for some of those tricker platforming sections, it gets a little extra hard to navigate properly.

That aside, the game runs smoothly, looks nice, has a bit of a cartoonish feel to the plot, and is mostly just an excuse to run around and cause robots to explode. And at the end of the day, isn't that all we all really want?

Finally, a game for luddites! (How they'd play it, I'm not sure.) Created by a mad scientist, you play the titular virus, going around and generally making the future an awful place to live by destroying all of their convenient little machines by way of solving puzzles in a fashion that is equal parts Pipe Dream, Frogger, and a little Pac-Man thrown in for good measure. The concept works well on paper, but unfortunately the controls are a bit too loose.

Tom tends to fly about the playing field, which is great if you're trying to get away from an enemy, but you will likely find yourself losing a great many unintentional games of chicken. This, coupled with a very large difficulty spike (although granted, the game DOES only have five "worlds") makes this one of those titles that you should only attempt if you have a great deal of patience. Rage quitters need not apply.

Do you enjoy games about Russian history? If so, I might recommend something like S.T.A.L.K.E.R or the Metro series before giving 1953 here a shot. Let me tell you a bit about KGB Unleashed.

First things first. I got this game in a bundle, can't recall which, and as such I feel no moral responsibility for owning it. That said, this game was apparently stolen (boosted code, rival developers, whatnot) from the original Russian developers and then put up on Steam, so if you can avoid puchasing it, all the better. If you still feel compelled to play, there are a couple of caveats one should keep in mind.

This is largely your standard point and click adventure game, with the unique part being that everything is viewed from a first person perspective. Everything is put together like those weird panorama view pictures everybody thought was so cool in the early 2000's, which to be fair is a neat effect, if not for the fact that nothing stands out. As a result, that boils the game down a glorified pixel hunt. The only way you actually know if something can be interacted with is this little light in your cursor that glows when you hover over something useable. Unfortunately, it doesn't differentiate between things that can be picked up, things that can be looked at, and things that need items, once again causing the general "flatness" to be a bit of a hindrance.

The overall narrative also seems to be that of suspense and mild, non-supernatural horror, but (and this may just be me) it seems REALLY hard to get invested in the game when it seems like somebody is following me around with four curtains and pressing them up against my face. Atmosphere is tricky to get across in a box.

No stars. (I lied. 1 star, for visual style. It may be bad for gameplay, but it at least looks cool.)

What can be said about 1000 Amps that hasn't been said already? Well, for one, our protagonist Plug is adorable. He doesn't have much of a personality, but then, all he's doing is returning power to rooms, so he doesn't really need one. Is a robot? Is he an electron? A computer ghost? Who knows.

1000 Amps is a quick little Metroidvania style adventure with all the usual trimmings. Power upgrades, blocked paths, backtracking, you know the deal. If I had one complaint, it would oddly NOT be the map as many others have said, although it IS just a touch too tiny for my tastes. I find it odd, for a game released in 2012, that there is no option for HD visuals. I realize this game doesn't really need it that bad, it's just very strange to be playing something at this stage of the game in such a tiny window.

All in all though, it's a nice, quick bite to eat.

As the space genre sees a resurgence, of which I am very pleased, Star Conflict fills very welcome niche against the many other games that have cropped up so far.

At it's core, SC is basically an arcade style dogfighting game. You get the standard multiplayer gametypes, with a few interesting variations. The best of them, in my opinion, is Captains mode, where one player is randomly elected "Captain". As long as this player survives, respawns are unlimited, but as soon as they get blown to space bits, it becomes a deadly game of survival, hoping to take out the opposing teams Captain before all forces are lost.

As far as the free-to-play aspect of this game goes, it is by far one of the better examples of the genre. Effectively all you can buy with money is a lowered grind, and fancy looking ships. Generally there are always ships you can get in-game that are as powerful as the premium ships, and in some cases they're actually better. Really the only problem I have is charging to convert ship synergy (this games "XP") into free synergy, which is usable by all ships, effectively forcing you to use your new, weak ship to level itself up, thereby defeating the purpose of having excess free synergy to begin with.

Maybe it's the best space game. Maybe it'll only tide us all over till Star Citizen comes out. Either way, it's fun, and a worthwhile way to waste an afternoon.