It's a maze without a map. What else do you need to know ? Not even a seamless maze. Lots and lots of tiny bits and bits with constant transitions. Cool concept is severely damaged.
Banal low poly art and banal piano tune for 3D platforming. No control over the camera, it changes angle and zoom constantly. It's infuriating. It hides things instead of showing them. It hurts the platforming. The camera could hardly be worse.
Hack n' Slash with some puzzles, looking as good as most of these games do, entertaining enough, but not particularly exciting or addicting. I never felt the urge to come back to it. I was never bored playing it.
If you ever wanted to be Magneto, the famous martial artist grandpa, punching and kicking through metal crates with his bare hands to collect crap while an AI has all the fun fighting goons in the next room, then this game is for you.
Worse than a walking simulator, it's a WS that makes you listen to 2 wimps speaking through their noses, one of them incapable of shutting his annoying trap for 2 seconds. But that's not all. We also get the worst flaws of odern "adventure" games all at once: - Timed dialogs. Options gone after 1 second. Game decides for player. Game doesn't know it's damn role. - Said dialog options written outside screen limits. For real. - No save menu. No way to fix the dialog debacle. - No text speed slider in the Options. - No sound options. Rotten gameplay with rotten interface.
Very pretty. Horrendous interface. Inconsistent controls and mechanics. Unreliable cursor changing over certains interactive objects but not others. Game wanting you to click everywhere randomly. Useless help showing you actions you've already performed. Acquisition click replaced by a drag. No feedback on clicks whatsoever. Etc.
An improvement over its predecessor, mostly because the walls of text are easier to read. Still looks terrible, but the writing has improved too; at least the introduction is more interesting and better told. Not much to guarantee you'll want to finish it though. No rich RPG mechanics. Let's face it, in fact, its relative appeal is probably due to its faster pace, its casual feel, more hack n' slash-like, despite being turn-based.
Platformers are so old and simple a genre that they must be visually distinct and attractive to sell. Nihilumbra succeeds there. But it commits 2 capital sins: It forces you to use both keyboard and mouse at the same time. Which means it's meant for gamepads. It doesn't support gamepads. Also, the game doesn't show the terrain when it should. Usually the scrolling occurs when you get very close to the screen edge; way too late. Worse yet, when on the clock, when chased by instant death, the scrolling occurs on said clock. When you are at the edge, you can't see the traps. You have to wait while being chased. This is too stupid to even bother.
Dungeon crawler with interesting mechanics, recognisable good looks, and rather good writing as well. What greatly reduces the enjoyment of this is the atrocious music, coupled with an absence of sound options, the way deaf game maker usually roll. Game must be either a torture or played muted. A lesser but still annoying flaw is a bug in the controls remapping: You still must use mouse clicks for certain things, even when you use a gamepad. Not coded by the brightest.
Your average Hack n' Slash, posing as an RPG, with crafting added to bore you more. Not exciting, not good-looking enough to justify finishing it. My rating is actually lower than average because the interface, while not too shabby, is a bit lacking in comfort and, more importantly, is buggy.
Beware, this is no RPG, it's a Hack n' Slash, an arcade genre without much to offer outside of good looks. Except this one doesn't have good looks. Not only does it have a poor graphic engine for its time, it's also disharmonious, visually unpleasant. Additionally, it does not provide the entertaining ability to save progress. Which means its entertainment value is a big fat ZERO.
2014 and the clowns at Basilisk Games can be officially invited to a Dinner's Game. This has to be the worst CRPG trilogy in history: - 2006, they try a very late ride on the Infinity Engine's coattails, but all they can manage is a **** interface in a 1990 graphic engine. Their game ****. - 2010, one more brain fart and they manage to make their sequel even less practical, less fun, less playable. More micro-managed. - With that level of brain power, it then takes them 4 more years to breed another laughable entry, with the exact same code. All flaws included. Not one single improvement. Not even the miserable visuals.
2010 and the buffoons at Basilisk Games still haven't figured out the basics **** interface. They reuse their **** movement scheme and wasted feedback. Actually, they managed to make their bad engine worse by adding hunger and thirst. They added micro-management instead of removing some. They spent years unstreamlining. A phenomenal level of stupid. Meanwhile, their graphic engine still ****.
Many years after the Infinity Engine success, this knock-off has learnt nothing, and regresses into interface ****. Worst example is the movement scheme, and the fact that the game maker would rather waste time and resources implementing feedback warning you that you are too far away to interact with something, rather than getting you close to that something when you click on it. Other niceties include the inferior visuals filling only a quarter of the screen. Or the complete uselessness of my rogue skills, a.k.a. the complete waste that was character creation.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. And so low a sense of empathy that this game maker would be more skilled at stealing wheelchairs than at assisting anyone. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero.
Game not very engaging. Visuals lack visibility, when pits look like walls and walls look like dark nothingness and dark nothingness is actual gates that keep opening randomly. This is a problem of world building as much as of signaling. Then the tests are series of arbitrary traps and buttons that kill you until you memorise them. This game has already been made a million times before, and better.
Nonsensical, impractical, counter-intuitive and outright undecipherable controls to play a video game (inside this motion sickness inducing video game) on a tiny virtual monitor with timed re-locking doors. That's way too many design flaws for a single game. When I get stuck in a tutorial, it's instant refund.
Ugly, boring, clunky... The more mechanics are introduced, the worst the controls get. Then, in the middle of building your carpal tunnel syndrome, you get permanently stuck in the terrain for no apparent reason.
Does not provide the entertaining ability to save progress. Which means its entertainment value is a big fat ZERO. Uses the survival lame argument as an excuse. I don't understand how these lame companies making lame games survive the market. Additionally, game is text-heavy, yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero. At least incompetence of game maker is consistent here. Double zero.
Dusting out an antique abandonware to refresh its art is only a good idea if you don't bring back the old flaws with it. Here, every action takes 10 clicks too many before it is achieved. Thirty years of interface progress down the drain. You'll dread having to use anything from your inventory. Worse yet, the gameplay brings back one of the worst design flaws we had to commonly endure back then: the arbitrary instant deaths. They constantly punish you for exploring. They force you to find out and remember, by trial and dumb luck, which random click kills you and which one advances you. Of course, the obsolete interface doesn't reload automatically upon death. In fact, it doesn't even auto-save. And that's not all: you have to micro-manage your torches. They have a life span. They die out. You can't play in a dark room. Really, you will fall and die walking in the dark. I don't remember that the original game was that bad.
Would be nice if it behaved like a game and let us play a little. 5 minutes of cut-scenes, 20 seconds of control, 5 minutes of cut-scenes, rinse and repeat... When I want a movie, I go to the cinema, I don't launch a game that doesn't know its role.
Tired of tutorials that ask you to do things but don't tell you where the buttons to do those things are hidden. Here, you discover on your own that you must move around, open doors, explore rooms, locate and click on every merchant, etc. As a result, the game is 95% pixel hunt. While the clock is ticking.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero. As dumb luck would have it, the game is actually playable in very low resolution, so I was able to have a little look-see at the mechanics before refund. The so-called tutorial doesn't explain anything. I can't say I'm surprised....
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero.
One thing that would be nice is having the tutorial tell you HOW to do the things it says you can do, like HOW to build a farm, WHERE the construction menu is, if there is any, HOW to put your scout on auto-pilot, and so on. When a tutorial is that stupid, I don't expect much from the game itself.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero.
Game is text-heavy, as you would expect. Yet game doesn't offer any means to increase text size until it becomes readable. That basic failure requires so low an intelligence that you would wonder why the game maker even tried to make a strategy game. Anyway, it cannot physically be played, so the intrinsic value of the software is simply zero. Mind you, even the art is too small to be appreciated, with no zoom available. Double zero. Funny thing is, the original version was actually playable, back in the days of low resolutions. In other words, we are supposed to pay for downgrades.
Does not provide the entertaining ability to save progress. Which means its entertainment value is a big fat ZERO. Uses the survival lame argument as an excuse. Additionally, the game main purpose is to try and upset your stomach. Because the 3D and general movement aren't too bad, they keep using tricks like blurring things, shaking things, rotating things, and constantly taking control of the character away from you for short moments, which is very, very irritating; and rude. Additionally, the game is way too dark. The cheapest trope of the cheapest genre, sure to scare more people than spider sprites, but a waste of the word "video" when you can't see a thing, and the best sign that a writer has nothing to show. The trope comes from movies trying to hide their low SFX budget; it makes no sense in a game unless your texture artist is lousy.
They look like puzzles, and they look good. Unfortunately, the game isn't about thinking but about precisely, slowly, timely moving your mouse in a physics-based environment: You wrap a rope around an irregular object, not by handling the rope, but by rotating said object in 3D. With a mouse, a 2D input tool. Which means, the gameplay is about fighting the tool, the supposed help, the controls, nothing else. A test of dexterity and patience. A smart game maker would have used 6 keys from a keyboard; this one didn't, I played just enough to admire the physics of the rope, tension, slips, which are well done indeed.
Does not provide the entertaining ability to save progress. Which means its entertainment value is a big fat ZERO. Additionally, this chores simulator must have the worst control scheme ever set to a gamepad. Does not make a lick of sense. Not designed by the brightest.
Looks like an old-school CRPG, and a stylish, pretty one at that. Only it's dialogue upon dialogue. That's too limited a gameplay to make a great game. The writing and the world-building are quite good though, and I got **** in for a while. Until the protagonist changed again, once too many, breaking the immersion, the player's involvement for good.
It would be a fun, pleasant little game if it didn't force you to beat a clock instead of letting you solve puzzles at your leisure. Doesn't even offer an option to turn off the bloody timers. Not designed by the brightest.
Arcade game based on beating clocks with some platforming. Rather dull. The cheap art is cheaply black and white, because color film was too expensive. And the tutorial hints keep announcing the wrong keys. Not made by the brightest.
Game starts with en endless dialogue instead of letting you play. It thinks it's an American TV program. To the point that it uses video images instead of hand drawn art. The result is hideous. Also uses amateur voice-acting. The result is even more hideous. Finally, an hideous interface will make your mandatory pixel hunt as miserable as possible.
Gameplay is very basic, casual, not engaging, not attractive to me. Tutorial is lacking, but it's all so simple that you'll figure it out anyway. Still, the interface is good and the game is technically sound, apart from a lack of auto-save on exit.
A-Train 9, self-proclaimed next generation simulation, doesn't have next generation readable texts, and no next generation scalable fonts, like that groundbreaking True Type format that someone is going to invent 20 years from now. Embarrassing for a game that looks like a spreadsheet editor half the time. Like for many others, development went focused on the fluff while the player was forgotten. There are barely any in-game options, in fact, only for sound. And they are very useful, by the way, because at least you can turn off the horrendous music. There is also no tutorial, apparently; you are dropped into the spreadsheets without directions or objectives. Of course, to me it makes no difference, nothing to read or something that cannot be read, I've already knocked the points off the rating.
Game boasts an intelligent point n' click interface. It's not intelligent. In fact, it's not even point n' click. Half the hand movements are unnecessary. Also, the voice-acting is atrocious. Game would have been better without any. They kept the flaw of the original game, the player being directionless in an nonexistent narrative. Back then, one could bear it while admiring the openness of the map, the slow realism of interactions... These were quite a feat, and a rarity, if not a novelty. These days though, it's just boring.
