Recent reviews by Scout

Shantae: Risky's Revenge is a platforming, metroidvania style game. It's the sequal to the original Shantae for the Game Boy Color in 2002, and was originally released on the Nintendo DSi in 2010. It's also on the Apple App Store.

The game follows Shantae, a half-genie with belly dancing powers and hair whipping. She has to stop Risky Boots from taking over her home of Scuttle Town by finding magical seals that Risky is after. It's a simple story, dialogue is few and far between, but it still has charming characters, and Shantae herself is a really nice character, being fierce and always on point. The world has lots of nice looking locations, and really captivates me with it's art style. The music blends it in well, despite being on the DS, originally.

The gameplay feels much like an old SNES game, it's pure platforming and exploring to it's core, beginning to end. And that's something that really pleases me: It's incredibly simple, there's not even that big a world to explore, but it still manages to be expansive and really rewards exploration in it's own way. There's lots of hidden goodies and upgrades for the daring explorer, and solving puzzles in dugeons always feel like a good time, testing both your platforming, and puzzle solving skills. The two mains components is what the game has, and excecutes it fabulously, it feels rewarding.

Shantae's main weapon is her hair (Which can be upgraded), but she can also use magical powers she can purchase from the item shop, which requires both gems and magic jam, which are more rare. These powers can be orbiting spikes around her, lightning clouds, or fireballs. There's a power for every kind of situation when hair whipping just won't do. All these powers can be upgraded as well.

If that wasn't enough, Shantae, being a belly-dancer as well, can transform into different animals with her dances, whether that's a monkey, elephant, or otherwise. There's also upgrades to those transformations that let's you backtrack to previous areas, and discover more hidden items. This also let's you fight and platform in more ways than one, if you so desire.

There's a "Magic Mode" which gives Shantae a new outfit that makes her magical items more effective, but she takes double the damage from enemies. Think of it as a "Hard mode" if the game was too easy for you the first time around.

There are some issues with this game though, but keep in mind they're relatively minor.

- PC wise, this is a port of a digital DSi downloaded game, so the game won't look it's best on a big monitor, may look pretty pixilated. Also, it's not widescreen supported with black bars showing up at higher resolutions, and it doesn't appear to really go into full screen. (For me, at least. It still appears windowed.)

- With most metroidvania games, there is backtracking, and going from one place to another can get a little annoying when you're just trying to get from one place to another. Luckily there's these warp stones that lessen the traveling time.

- It's relatively short, clocking in about 3-4 hours for one playthrough. But considering this was a portable, digital game to start off with, I understand that.

Overall, Shantae is a fantastic game that you really should try out. It's a simplistic game that has excecuted it's few elements very nicely, and I think you'll be surprised.

Luftrausers is a 2D Arcade-Style Bullet Hell Shooter. You take control of a single fighter jet, holding off thousand of planes, jets, boats, and submarines until you die. It's essentially achieving the highest score you possibly can. This game isn't easy, it's hard, but mastering is where the game shines.

This game is simple at it's core, but it's filled to the brim with fast paced, non-stop action, sure to get your adrenaline going. You don't fly this thing normally. You can turn it left, right, and accelerate by holding up. This means you can keep your fighter in the air for a good amount of time if you take advantage of the momentum. For enemies, you have your simple planes and boats, but stronger variants pop up, like battleships that have massive HP and fire a barrage of bullets, or aces in the sky with very accurate aim. You need to keep your wits about you, so dodge and shoot your way to victory. Shooting isn't the only way to kill enemies either, you can also ram into enemies for some massive damage, as the expense of losing health quickly. Your health is regenerative, so the way you recover it is to simply not fire your weapon.

However, the best part about this game is the customization. There are literally 125 ways to build your fighter. You can change the weapon, body, and engine, each with their own perks and disadvantages. This makes the game accustomed to have so many different play styles, so you can see which one fits to your choosing. You can have a powerful tank with a cannon and heavy armor, have a super fast engine with a laser beam for quick aiming, or you can have a kamikaze style fighter with massive impact damage and explode spectacularly upon death.

With all these parts, also come missions for each individual part. This gives the player the chance to try out new pieces and accomplish a goal while doing so. Think of it as a reward for trying new things, and testing your skils. It extends replay ability as well.

After you've messed around in normal mode long enough, there's another mode called SFMT, which is essentially hard mode. Battleships, Aces, and more enemies spawn right at the beginning, and it's as frantic as you can imagine, and you WILL die quickly. If you've mastered normal mode, try your skills at SFMT, and see how long you can survive Hell.

Overall, Luftrausers is an incredible arcade style game with blood pumping action that never stops with so much customization in one package. This game is definitely worth full price, and you'll have an awesome time if you enjoy a good challenge.

Town of Salem is a Strategic Elimination game that's set the the town of, well, Salem, back when the witch trials were very much alive.

This was a browser game in the past for quite some time, but December 15th is when it's mark on Steam came along. I played the browser version pretty extensively, and it's a very fun game to play because the outcome solely depends on player interaction and decisions.

See, you have these various roles, all with different alliances. Townies try and work together to survive and find out who the bad guys are. The mafia are their own group, trying to eliminate anyone who isn't them. And then the neutrals are people trying to achieve their own goal, neither with townies nor mafia. 15+ roles exist in the game, and they can all have a huge outcome on any game.

What's the catch? You have no idea who is what, so you need to use your smarts and think about whether to trust the people you're with or not. Each day, there's a discussion, then there's voting. If one person is voted to be lynched, they have a chance to defend themselves, then the town decides whether that person is guilty or innocent. The game then transitions to night, where the action happens. People can be stabbed, moved, killed, distracted, just about anything can happen at night, as careful as you may be. The game ends when either the Townies or Mafia wins (Neutrals are rare cases.)

This is why I like this game so much. Like I said, it depends heavily on human interaction, which is what keeps every game fresh and alive. You're always given a random role at the start of a new game. You can pick classic mode where there's a set list of roles, and all 15 players fufill one, or you can do "All Any" where you don't know what roles exist, and that makes it an even bigger mystery.

Overall, Town of Salem is an awesome game to play just for the suspensefulness and the fresh variety with every game, I really recommend this game.

Spec Ops: The Line is a Third Person Shooter that's focused around story rather than gameplay.

This game has a pretty unique blip on my radar, and for good reasons. Simply, all I can say is the story alone is worth purchasing this game. The basic premise is about three Delta operators: Adams, Lugo, and Walker. They were sent out on a mission to rescue any survivors found in the desolated sand-wasteland of Dubai. You play as Walker, leading your squad to carry it out.

Now this doesn't sound like a complex plot, it sounds incredibly simple, even. But the whole undertone of the story is what it's all about. Without giving away too much, Walker has the good intentions of saving all the civillians he can, and eliminating all evil that walk around them. However, it gets very psychological and personal, as Walker, and you, realize that the choices you thought were justified and well, turns out to be the exact opposite of what they are. It mentally breaks Walker down, trying to lead with his mind intact, trying to figure out good from evil, what he's doing right and wrong. The choices you make, sometimes there's never a good choice, it could be a lesser of two evils, but that's not saying much. War is hell, and sometimes, your best isn't enough. This is what the entire game is focused on: this, and the deeper meaning. It's truly an engrossing story that will leave you wanting more. I promise you won't regret it.

The gameplay is less spectacular, it's your standard cover-and-shoot type. It's pretty textbook if you wanna look at it that way, as there isn't much to do besides... Well, cover and shoot, but there is a good amount of different weapons to use. One thing I do like though is that battles take place in lots of locations, the desolate presentation of Dubai is very immersive and nice to look at, so you can be doing close quarters battle in a broken building, fighting on a large battlefield, or snipe from across buildings. The varying locations do mix up gameplay a little bit, but it's still rather basic. It does work however, and it is still fun, just nothing really pops out.

The game isn't too long, it could take you about 4-5 hours to finish the campaign. However if you wanna play the story again but with different choices, you can probably clock in another 3 if you skip cutscenes.

Multiplayer is there, but this game has a very low population, I doubt you'll find anyone, so I can't give off my impression there.

There is a Co-Op mode where you can play the campaign with a friend, who plays as either Lugo or Adams. That's very fun and it works pretty well. If you got someone to play with and wanna enjoy the story together, that brings up something fun to do as well.

Overall, Spec Ops is an amazing game with a deep, enriching plot that is sure to leave a lasting impression on you, that's what it's all about, even if the gameplay is pretty textbook stuff, and the short length. However, you won't regret buying this, I recommend it.

Lethal League is like a glorified Pong with a Smash Bros. skin. The basic objective is to knock your opponent(s) out using a ball that you keep knocking back and forth in between each other. Sound simple, yeah? But the catch is the more the ball gets smacked around, the faster it goes. Soon enough it reaches insane speeds to where you can barely keep up with it. The enviornment even changes as the speed gets faster and faster.


The game is played in "Bursts", or rounds, and the ball's speed resets every round. The use of bursts make every round very intense and heart-pounding when the ball reaches the incredible speeds. Dare I say you may even be on the edge of your seat.


The soundtrack is great, too. Definitely fitting for the game, having nice funky tunes with you. Take a listen sometime.

The characters are pretty unique in their own right. They each have a distinct character design and personality that you can easily recognize. I'm sure you'll find someone you like. Also, each of them have special abilities that have different effects on the ball, such as Candyman's ability to make the ball phase through the walls.

In short, Lethal League is a fast paced, blood pumping action fest that you'll surely get a kick out of. I highly recommend it.

Vx6 is a really interesting game. On one hand, it looks like it has Atari-2600 Graphics and one move, which seems overly simplistic and boring. But somehow, it just reaches on a much deeper scale. The gameplay, flipping gravity... So simple with few platforms and obstacles, yet it's... Challenging and addicting. The difficulty is on a fair curve, and the soundtrack is very upbeat 8-bit music. I love the music.

My only problem is, I can't help but wonder how this game would be if the graphics were more on the 8-Bit or 16-Bit level. I know it's meant to resemble very early video games in like, the 70s, but honestly, it's not too pretty to look at, and I just wish there was a bit more vibrance to the game. But I digress.

Quite the fun game, I really recommend it. $5 isn't a bad price.

I'll admit, the amount of time it takes to learn this is hard. Very hard. Maybe it's even a turn off for some of you. But I promise, once you get used to it, you can make true art in the form of Valve games. Wether it's posters, or animations. It's something to give a try. It is free after all.

Despite Episode 1's mediocre execution, Sonic Team actually managed to improve a lot of things from Episode 1 quite a bit to make Episode 2 a much better experience overall... Though it still doesn't come close to the classic entires. At the very least, the gap in quality is far less wide than Episode 1.

Momentum feels much better as Sonic actually gains speed from rolling down slopes, the level designs are much more original and not stolen from previous games, the level gimmicks are fun, and the new tag-team actions Sonic and Tails can perform add a fresh spin to make this game feel more unique. I do think it's at least worth a playthrough, even if Episode 3 will never come out and has lots of wasted potential.

Aside from Crash Team Racing, Sonic Transformed is probably the best kart racer I've played. I even believe it dethrones Mario Kart in some ways. The gimmick of transforming vehicles not only make races feel fresh and adds more skill, but the tracks often transform mid-race when you reach a new lap, so no lap is ever quite the same. Top that off with other skill-based mechanics like manual mid-air tricks to build up a boost to narrowly dodging obstacles in planes, and you get one of the best kart racers on the market with a plethora of content to go through. Even solo players have a lot to do in the form of the Adventure mode.