genoforprez

In terms of how the controls feel mechanically, John's controls feel extremely similar to controlling the characters in Trine. The game is a fun mashup of action and puzzling. Much like a side-scrolling half-life, you're given weaponry with which to attack enemies directly (pkew! pkew!), but you also have a gravity gun, which you use to manipulate objects and solve environmental puzzles. Of course, you can also use the gravity gun to launch objects at enemies and kill them that way. The puzzle element arises when you encounter the rig's forcefields. Blue lets everything pass through except physical objects. Red lets everything pass except bio-matter. Yellow blocks all effects (gunfire, explosions, rays, etc). White blocks everything. In trying to get from A to B, you solve physics puzzles which involve manipulating these forcefields (they can often be turned on/off by removing/swapping batteries) and figuring out how to navigate through them. In the meantime, you'll be shooting lasers at enemies, launch crates and explosives at them with your grav gun, and using the game's physics to perform fun platforming and set up booby traps. For example turning on anti-gravity (shift or capslock) lets you pick up an object, jump, then shoot it down to get a boost to jump height/distance. Booby trips might consist of dropping some crates on a blue forcefiled above a set of enemies, then yanking out the battery so all the crates fall on them. The game gives you a lot of space to take out enemies your own way, and the puzzles are fun without being too annoying or taxing. Supports multiple resolutions, lets you map your own keys, and its gamepad compatible! Although in this case I highly recommend playing with keyboard and mouse.

I'll just cut to the chase. FIRST: I wouldn't recommend this game if you don't have a gamepad. It's possible to play with keyboard and mouse, but unless you're a major PC veteran for whom hotkeys come as easy as breathing, I don't recommend it. You can customize the keybindings, but that's not the end of the problem in this case. But if you've got a gamepad, it might be worth a try. SECOND: Although the combat is in real-time, you're connecting to a server, so the action isn't exactly as tight as a Zelda or a Devil May Cry, so don't expect that level of responsiveness. And if you're connection isn't great, your hits (or enemy hits) may not register or enemies may teleport around the screen a little. Considering those technical issues, the game therefore throws a mob of enemies at you all at once and the combat becomes about chaining together basic and special attacks (doesn't really matter what order) to steamroll through the mob, turn around, steamroll through again, repeat until they're all dead. The moves can be fun to execute and watch, but at the end of the day, the game is mostly centered around steamrolling through mobs. THIRD: If you've played many action-based RPGs before, you may have seen this game's formula before. Each dungeon has X number of maps on it. Each one of the maps consists of playing through several waves of regular enemies, culminating in a boss fight. Once you defeat the boss, you are given a letter grade for your performance (F through SSS) which is based on how varied your combos were, how much damage you took, how many enemies you killed, how many items you had to use, etc. The letter grade effects the end-of-map bonuses. You are asked to draw a random prize out of a hat each time you down a boss. Once you beat a map, you can raise its difficulty to HARD or to VERY HARD, which also increases drop quality/odds, but the sole purpose of this option is to force you to party up and raid with other players. FOURTH: "Free to Play" in this case doesn't just mean paying for silly hats. The game has lots of features that are incredibly useful (e.g, personal storage space), speed up your character growth significantly, or allow for equipment customization that you can't really use without paying. Like so many of these games, the growth rate is structure to be fast and exhilirating (i.e. fun) at first, but it quickly slows to a tedious grind for non-paying customers, making it another case of "Free to Play. Pay To Enjoy". Rusty Hearts can be a fun experience, but if you don't want to be disappointed later, know what you're getting into before you start.

I don't see what all the hype is about with this game. The art style deserves points for being unique, but it's unfortunately also rather bland. Gameplay is extremely simple. You can walk left or right, jump, and rotate the direction of gravity (left, right, or 180). The ability to control gravity is not exactly innovate (just for one example, see Yoshi's Universal Gravitation from Nintendo, which came out years ago). The only innovation to the "control gravity" gameplay is that the camera rotates and fall damage is turned on, making the game a slightly dizzying physics puzzle. In addition to not feeling like anything particularly special, the gameplay just feels clunky and annoying. The player character walks like its trudging through a tar pit and the gravity control is just frustrating (not in a "this game is challenging but rewarding" kind of way, but in a "this game often feels like a practical joke on the player" sort of way). I kept playing it because I wanted to know if it got better, but the game eventually reached a point where I would rather stab myself in the eye with a sharpened pencil than play with its gravity gimmick for another minute. This is not on the list of the worst games I have ever played, by any means, but I do think it's a fairly mediocre game and not very deserving of most of the hype it got. I love indie games and want them to succeed as much as the next person, and I know indies gotta eat, but a spade is still a spade. Not a game I would recommend.

The game wasn't even on my radar before I picked it up in the Humble Indie Bundle, and when I loaded it up and played the first level, I was immediately excited. The visual design of the game, as well as bouncy platform that synced up nicely with bouncy, happy 8-bit inspired beats instantly warmed my heart. However, the game did not waste its time becoming a frustrating experience. I didn't even get out of the first zone before I turned the game off with a sigh. Imagine playing a rhythm game like guitar hero, but every time you missed a note, you had to start the entire song over again. If they were to take another stab at this idea, but fix a couple of the more frustrating set pieces (e.g., stairs are a HUGE pain) and perhaps add a rewind mechanic so that the cost of mistakes was not so high, then the fun would not be quite so outweighed by the frustration. I have continued to play this game, but I play it in short bursts, usually quitting when my teeth start to grind.

I bought this game on a whim, and I can say up front that I am extremely happy that I did. It is an interesting and certainly novel gameplay experience. PROS: The game starts you off with simple hacks that involve logging into low-security systems and either deleting or stealing files. As you complete more hacks from the Uplink bulletin board, you are offered more interesting but (naturally) more precarious jobs: changing government records, stealing research data, falsifying documents, and so on. Each successful hack earns you cash that you can use to upgrade your hardware and software, which allows you to pull off more difficult jobs and makes the hacks youâ

A lot of people have tried action/towerdefense or shooter/towerdefense hybrids, but the results are often a little on the shoddy end. I am so often disappointed by these hybrids, since they tend to do one of those two elements well and render the other element useless or boring. Orcs Must Die not only breaks away from that trend, it pretty much puts all past attempts at this kind of hybrid to shame. The controls/gameplay/UI are all simple and intuitive. The tower defense elements are fun for all the reasons tower defense games are fun. The action elements are both fun and extremely useful. Orcs Must Die successfully makes you enjoy using both of these aspects of the gameplay and balancing the level design and difficulty so that it would be difficult to win without making use of both. I could not recommend OMD more. FINALLY, someone has done this hybrid well! Huge props to the devs!

Picked it up from the latest HIB pack. This game has the potential to be great, but at the moment it seems pretty bland. The shooting gets boring after about two minutes, the platforming vacillates between boring and merciless, enemies materialize right underneath you dealing you annoying damage, and the game only draws a portion of the map, so you're constantly having to shoot at enemies (and get shot be enemies) that are located somewhere in the unnecessary black void. It's especially annoying with the fast-moving enemies or the swarms because it makes it difficult to track the action. You can literally back right into an enemy just because the inexcusably short draw distance sometimes makes it impossible to see two inches in front of you. The game's redeeming feature is its level building and customization, but I have no interest in building content for gameplay that's simultaneously frustrating and mind-numblingly dull. I pray that the *official* release sees significant improvements.

A great idea for a defense game, but I would enjoy it more if--like other defense games---you were able to actually select your units. You have no control over which units you are allowed to use in an encounter, and when you have thirty seconds to kill 10,000 zombies using only a cement wall, a stick of dynamite, and a mortar that takes a half an hour to reload, the game gets more frustrating than fun in a hurry. Maybe I just don't get it yet, but despite its stellar presentation, every time I play it I just feel like it's repetition is boring and its capricious randomization is frustrating. Glad I got it in Humble Bundle instead of buying. It's interesting and quirky, but I definitely would have been angry had I paid $10 for it.

This game is an extremely good romp as an arcade shooter. I enjoy it well enough playing with keyboard and mouse, but I absolutely love it with the 360 gamepad. It's not really a complex game. You just control a little ship that can rotate 360 degrees. You have infinite ammo but finite life. Shoot things until they explode, dodge bullets, and don't die! The game deserves to be knocked down a few points, however, due to its rampant bugs. This is somewhat alleviated by the fact that it is sold at a very cheap asking price, but that does not change the fact that a commercially sold game should not sometimes start up with a black screen, shift half of the display offscreen during an in-game graphics change, suddenly lose textures, or just plain crash. For a commercial game, it still feels VERY beta. Hopefully they can get these issues worked out.

First and most importantly, I would not recommend this game if you do not have a gamepad. The keyboard controls (as so many others have rightly said) are NOT friendly and will just make you want to beat your head against a wall. However, if you have a gamepad, the controls are simple and light. Of second importance, you must know that this game is NOT ANYTHING LIKE RECETTEAR. If you are hoping that Chantelise will be another creative twist on the RPG genre, as Recettear was, then you will be disappointed. Chantelise is for the most part an extremely basic hack and slash game. (Note, for example, that your character does not have levels or stats but only gets stronger through finding or purchasing new items and equipment.) Now the interesting things about Chantelise that would serve as an appropriate reason to purchase are the following. 1) Quest structure. Each chapter of the game's quest is set at a particular map location, and each location is divided into areas. In order to complete a chapter of the quest and advance the story, you must blaze through the entire dungeon without being defeated. However, you are free to practice any area of the dungeon in a sort of "time trial" mode until you discover all the strategies--and possibly valuable equips--you will need to blaze through. (The boss battles in particular can be extremely difficult. Many have been frustrated at the high level of difficulty of even the very first boss.) Forcing you to blaze through fairly challenging dungeons (and very challenging bosses) in a single run without save points, and forcing you to start over completely if you die, adds a certain level of tension that other RPGs lack and makes you feel much more accomplished for completing a dungeon. 2) The spell mechanic is interesting. Rather than having a set list of spells that charge you mana to cast, enemies drop colored gems when you beat on them. These gems can then be picked up and used to cast spells corresponding to the elemental color of the gem (red = fire, blue = water, etc). You can even combine gems to create new, more powerful spells. At first this feels awkward as a magic system, because it slightly randomizes your spells, but it becomes fun once you start to experience it more like "punch enemies until their pieces fall out, pick up pieces, throw them back for damage." This is especially interesting in larger battles where you have to beat the gems out of smaller enemies in order to throw them at large enemies that are dangerous to get close to. 3) Each area of every dungeon has a hidden treasure that requires you to solve its mystery before it will appear. In one area, you might have to destroy every torch on the map before it will appear. In another area, you might have to race past all the enemies on the map and kill the very last enemy first before it will appear. Some of these are extremely difficult to figure out, but a lot of them can be easily discovered if you have good intuition. So if you're looking for an extremely basic hack and slash with 1) interesting quest structure, 2) quirky spell mechanic, and 3) secret treasure chests, then this might be a good game for you. If you want another Recettear, this is not what you're looking for.

This game, in a nutshell, involves controlling a character through a set of interlocked, randomly generated rooms, each of which is full of enemies and blocks in the style of an old school Zelda dungeon (aside from the fact that every room is the exact same size and shape). As you explore these interlocked rooms, you control your character with WASD and fire with the arrows. You can pick up various drops: coins, health, power up items, and equipment upgrades. As you progress, you encounter new enemies, bosses, and random mini-bosses. But that's about the extent of it. There's really not a lot going on here. There is no reason to call this a bad game. It is good at what it does, but it is an extremely minimal game. Some would praise the twisted story and artwork, whereas I am constantly torn between what I see as a hint of a twisted vision (i.e., art) and just a bunch of poop and gore in an experience that is barely a game. I am not surprised to find that the binding of isaac has good scores here, since like I said it's definitely not bad. But I am surprised that the vast majority of people consider this an 8 to 10 range game. It's a good game, but I don't think it is worth even $5. I can play more interesting games than this for free in my browser, and I wouldn't even lose much in quality. In short, this game certainly has style, but as a game, it is more of a Newgrounds sort **** than a commercial game. Definitely try the demo before buying.

Excellent! I purchased and played the original Zombie Shooter and loved every minute of it. This game keeps the core elements of the original ZS while giving the whole thing a drastic overhaul. Mission maps are now much larger, more diverse, and have drastically improved lighting and textures. This sequel even throws in some variation in the gameplay by allowing you to occasionally drive different vehicles. The character creation and level-up system has been greatly improved, allowing much more customization than before. Tons of weapons and new items have been added as well as a grid-style inventory (compare: Resident Evil 4). The new guns/weapons/inventory, of course, make looting and exploration an even more enjoyable experience than before. ZS2 even builds a lot more secret areas and hidden caches into the levels and varies the ways they are hidden (no longer as simple as just lobbing grenades at walls until you find one). And, of course, mowing down wave after wave of zombies with high-powered guns is just as satisfying as ever. The game only has a few demerits worth mentioning: 1) The loading screen before new missions can take surprisingly long for a simple top-down shooter; 2) the player characters have lot of peculiar hiccups in their animations (e.g.,momentarily failing to adjust walking animation when changing direction, etc); and 3) the same issue with walls that the original Zombie Shooter had. You will get stuck on them and your enemy zombies will get stuck on them. It's simple to unstick yourself and fun to shoot the vulnerable zombies, so it doesn't ruin the game, but it's still surprising that it is not a problem that was fixed. The interface on the menu screen sometimes behaves strangely as well (e.g., when clicking the "close" button on a weapon's info window, it will often close that window, change menu tabs, and then open the info window for a different item. My solution is to not click on the "close" button, since I discovered that info windows will auto-close after a moment if you drag your mouse outside them. Similarly, resting your mouse on an item in the store will sometimes cause its info window to auto-open. All of this is a bit strange.) If you can get past some very minor animation hiccups, some slightly sticky walls, and the info panels that occasionally have a mind of their own, then you've still got a super fun, Diablo-inspired, running and gunning, stealing and looting, monster-exploding little top-down shooter. AND IT IS INCREDIBLY CHEAP. It is a great deal for its price.

I purchased the game on sale from Steam for $1.24 (normally priced $5). I have to say that I am actually pleasantly surprised by the game and could not be more happy with the purchase. In a nutshell, the game is a combination dungeon crawler and top down shooter. You crawl through maps, shooting down enemies and shooting open crates to earn XP, weapons, cash, and other pickups. Between each map, you can allocate skill points to one of four skills and use money to purchase weapons/ammo or to upgrade your weapons for more power. (If not purchased, some weapons can be found by exploring.) The game is extremely easy at first, as the zombies just stumble around slowly in small numbers. But the more you progress, you start to encounter mega-zombies with laser guns and rocket launchers, not to mention that the zombie numbers increase drastically. If you're not careful or properly equipped, it soon becomes easy to get yourself into a zombie **** situation. Fortunately, there are several different ways to save yourself from the game over screen. I am rating the game down a point because it's true that the enemies are not particularly interesting in their behavior. In fact, they are often glitchy, getting stuck on walls (as will you), standing in one place and spinning in a circle, sudden bursts of incredible speed for no apparent reason, etc. But despite those glitches, I don't feel like my game experience was much less fun as a result. If you're looking for a complex action game or deep gunplay, then you will possibly be disappointed in Zombie Shooter. If you are looking for a simple dungeon crawler where you control your character with WASD, shoot zombies by pointing your mouse at them, and pick up lots of loot and XP, then Zombie Shooter might just give you a thrill. If like me you get a special thrill out of old school graphics, then the thrills are even more likely. If you have a destructive personality and like a game where almost everything explodes or breaks when shot and where enemies burst open and spew their blood and guts all over the floor, wall, and surrounding objects, then there are even more thrills to be had! I personally think it's not a bad game for $5. But if you catch it on sale for any less than that, there is no excuse not to pick it up. Also note that there is a demo if you want to give it a try before you buy.

A great title for its $5 price if you're up for a complex rhythm game mashed up with some extremely light RPG mechanics. The core of the game is essentially a Stepmania clone (i.e., Dance Dance Revolution with the arrow keys). However, sequence makes things more complicated by giving you three screens to cycle between. The red screen is the DEFEND screen, and all beats you miss on this screen are taken as damage. The green screen is the CAST screen, which only throws beats at you when you attempt to cast a spell or effect via hotkeys on the numpad. Missing beats on the CAST screen causes your spell to automatically fail. The blue screen is a MANA recovery screen. There is no penalty for missing beats, but every beat hit recovers a small amount of mana. The action is complex, as you have to punch the arrows to the beat, cycle between the three screens, and cast spells all at once, which gives you quite a lot to watch. The only things I can say to watch out for with this game is that, firstly depending on your monitor, you may have to manually calibrate lag, and while the game makes adjusting the offset extremely easy, it does not provide a very good means of testing your offset compared to other popular rhythm games. As a result, it can take some trial and error to work out lag issues. Secondly, although this is not a complaint per se, I would caution any prospective buyers that the RPG elements in the game are extremely light. There is no exploration, there are three monsters to fight per floor, and you simply choose the monster as you would a song in Stepmania or DDR. You replay the monsters (i.e., songs) for experience or item drops that give you attack or defense perks, and there are some synthesis/item creation mechanics, but this is a rhythm game with some RPG stuff tacked on, not the other way around. Finally, the game has a sense of humor that some people are going to appreciate for its silliness and some people are going to find just dumb. For me, the humor has been hit or miss, floating at about the 50/50 mark. All in all, though, the game is great for a light and breezy casual game that's easy to jump in and out of, especially considering its low asking price.

This is a game that I really, really want to like. It has a very interesting setting, and it does a fairly good job of establishing a feeling of extreme isolation in a long-abandoned facility, buried beneath a frozen and remote corner of the earth. I also really want to like the game for its eerie use of the glowstick/flashlight mechanics, ensuring that you are always just blind enough to be slightly creeped out by the dark. HOWEVER. All of that being said, I did not find this game "scary" in the least. It certainly makes you nervous, but not due to any well-established feeling of horror or the unknown. All of the stress in the game comes from hearing a "monster" (i.e., an ordinary wolf) prowling in the caves and knowing that the combat mechanic is so god awful that if you get spotted you might actually have to use the **** thing. (Seriously. It's pretty bad.) The game is a bit more scary at first, when you're sneaking through the dark, unsure of what might be hiding there. But once you play for a while and realize that it's nothing but wolf, wolf, another wolf, and a wolf again, the fear of the unknown is gone and all you're left with is a series of very clunky memorize-the-patrol-pattern situations. Despite the fact that I did not find the stealth nor the combat fun, and despite the fact that the game did not feel scary to me, I continued to play it, because I enjoyed unlocking the mystery of the setting, and I enjoyed solving the puzzles. But the longer I played, the less intuitive the game became, putting me in situations where I would die repeatedly for failing to identify and solve problems at a frenetic pace. The game is also peppered with bugs and clipping problems. Eventually, tonight, after playing the game for an hour, a hallway inexplicably dropped me through the floor. I didn't/couldn't die, which would have restarted me at the last checkpoint or the door of the current room. All I could do was reload the last manual save at an artefact, which lost all of my progress. I would say give the game a try if you can get it for CHEAP. This game is definitely going to be enjoyable for the right kind of person, looking for a particular atmospheric experience, willing to overlook the game's almost constant imperfections---if not outright brokenness. I am just not one of those people. I can see how it could be fun to someone, but I just did not have fun playing it.

A really great side-scrolling shooter/action game. There are really only two bad things to say about it. 1) It's rather short. 2) The keyboard control scheme is unnecessarily strange and cannot be changed. While it's not a painfully awkward configuration, it is at least awkward enough to make you wonder what their reasoning must have been and make you wish you could change it. The control situation is slightly alleviated by the fact that you can use a 360 controller, if you have that particular setup. But if you don't have a 360 controller setup, you're pretty much SOL in that department. Still, despite these two demerits, it's a great little action game.

THE PROS: My hat is off to this game for its artwork and level design, which are interesting, original, and often adorable. The gameplay also deserves points for its originality. The basic concept of WOG is that there are these tiny goo balls squirming around in every level, and these goo balls can be picked up by the player using the mouse cursor and then dropped near other goo balls to create structures. The objective of most levels is to build a structure (or series of structures) that allows a certain number of goo balls to reach an exit pipe. The more goo balls that reach the exit, the better your score. So the challenge of the game is twofold: 1) Figuring what sort of structure you'll need to build to accomplish the level objective, as it is rarely a straight course, 2) Conquering the laws of physics by building a goo structure that not only accomplishes your goal, but is also structurally sound and unlikely to be destroyed by environmental dangers. The game does a fantastic job of creating fresh scenarios, either by introducing new environmental dangers or by introducing new goo balls with new unique abilities. The game's originality is incredibly refreshing and its character will charm you to no end. THE CONS: Interacting with the goo balls in the game is not always very user friendly, and in some situations it becomes just plain infuriating. In most levels, the goo balls start on a small, pre-built structure. As you build, the goo balls whimsically travel around the tresses of the structure you're putting together. As the game goes on and the challenges become more difficult, this actually starts to become frustrating for a number of different reasons. For example, if there are multiple types of goo balls in a particular stage (let's say regular black goo and balloon goo), you might be trying to pick up a particular kind of goo ball to accomplish a particular task. However, the one goo ball you're trying to pick up is buried beneath 60 other goo balls that you don't want. You can't just move all the unwanted goo balls aside and dig down to the goo ball you want, because all the goo balls are running around like disobedient children. The whistle the game gives you to "call" goo balls is no help, since it seems to only make the goo balls do what they are already doing (i.e., running around chaotically), only faster. The chaotic dog pile of goo balls also proves frustrating in time-sensitive situations, since you'll try to quickly grab a single goo ball from the writing mass of them, but instead you'll accidentally yank out a goo ball that's already been placed, causing your entire structure to collapse. The developers have kindly introduced tiny flies you can click on to flashback to an earlier point in the level, in case you make any huge blunders; however, these flies also prove frustrating since 1) the restore points they choose seem almost random, ranging anywhere from two seconds ago (letting you watch your structure fall in instant replay) to three minutes ago (causing you to rebuild a significant chunk of your structure), and 2) it is too easy to click one of these flies by accident when you don't mean to, effectively deleting GOOD progress you've made. In short, all of the problems and frustrations of world of goo boil down to one essential problem: there is too much crap on the screen at one time. It all piles on top of each other, and it can make your life hell. VERDICT: Definitely buy the game for its originality and charm, but be prepared for some unnecessary frustration.

In a time where "role playing game" seems to mean either Star Wars-esque space RPG or Tolkien-esque knights, wizards, and elves, this game stands alone as a genuinely unique RPG experience. The game is a little opaque at first, since even veteran RPG enthusiasts will find themselves scratching their heads at at skills and classes they've never met before, not to mention becoming accustomed to the bloodpool/feeding system (which is essentially a more complex mana system) and a non-traditional but pleasantly simplified experience system. Nonetheless, RPG enthusiasts who investigate this diamond in the rough are sure to be surprised at how deep and rewarding a game VMB turns out to be. It's full of unique characters as interesting and fully developed as any you'd find in an RPG from Bethesda or Bioware---if not more so! The game also goes above and beyond the RPG call of duty by rising above mere fetch quests and combat, sending you on a variety of interesting missions. Don't be surprised to find yourself playing action one minute, mystery the next, and horror the next. (Not just horror in the sense of "look, there are vampires in this game", but the game has some truly scary situations, ranging from merely creepy to nail-biting.) Finally, even when you're killing time in between quests, the game will charm you with its originality and atmosphere. When you find yourself sitting at your desk in your safehouse, checking your email on your computer while laughing at the hysterical "frickin' chicken" commercial on the radio for the hundredth time, you realize that this dark world is simply a place you like to be. VERDICT: If you're thirsty for a rewarding RPG campaign but are getting tired of swimming in an ocean of Star Wars and Tolkien, you should definitely pick this up. It's worth every penny of it's $20 price tag, but if you see it on sale, you'd be a fool to pass it up.

I picked up Hammerfight as part of Humble Indie Bundle 3, having never heard of it before, and my reaction to it is bittersweet, but sadly a little more on the bitter side. The game deserves points for inventing a simple but interesting gameplay mechanic that's extremely satisfying when it works. (Emphasis: when it works.) The idea is that your mouse controls a robot with a weapon hanging from the bottom. By sweeping your mouse in circular motions, you simulate centripetal force, which causes the weapon to whirl around your little robot. Once you get the weapon in motion, you need to bring it crashing into an enemy to deal damage. I can honestly say that it is extremely satisfying to get your weapon whirling at an incredible speed and slam it into an enemy with such force that it sends them crashing into the wall or floor, damaging the environment and leaving the enemy stunned. So what's the problem? There are actually several. The first is that the game tries too hard to be more than what it is. It tries to have characters, an epic story spanning across multiple chapters (which are really just encounters), and challenges. In some games, this isn't a bad idea, but when the core mechanic of your game boils down to sweeping your mouse to smash stuff with a hammer and not much else, the "epic" characters and story feel like they're trying too hard and just end up frustrating you as you click like crazy to skip through them in order to smash more things with a hammer. Honestly, this game would have been one hundred times greater if it was nothing more than you and a friend or AI-opponent trying to smash each other with hammers in stand-alone versus matches or in multi-robot elimination matches. But that's not what happens here. The "challenges" are another issue... Generally, putting challenges in a game is a great idea. But the idea of a challenge is that it is a CHALLENGE that you give the player once they have either mastered or grasped the general principles of your game. Hammerfight gives you one tutorial match (one enemy), then a real match (one enemy), then a battle (multiple enemies plus allies), and then it immediately starts giving you challenges. For example, you are chained to the center of the screen without a weapon and must dodge an enemy with an incredibly powerful weapon for a set period of time. Why am I doing stuff like this already? I barely have the hammer-swinging principles down, and now I'm doing frustrating challenges that have nothing to do with fighting things with hammers. In short, these "challenges" come annoyingly, frustratingly early and make you feel like the real game is lying forgotten in a previous chapter somewhere. Lastly, sadly, the hammer-swinging mechanic, which is such a fun idea and has such potential, just ends up not being used very well. When you start the game, immediately all you want to do is swing heavy objects around and smash things with them. But your enemies spend---literally---half of any battle flying off the screen where you can't reach them. When they are on screen, they move with incredible finesse and maneuver their weapons with precision. Or it at least seems that way, since your robot controls like a brick with a drinking problem. I discovered that controlling the robot is slightly less annoying if you don't let the game automatically calibrate your mouse and instead manually set the mouse sensitivity extremely high, but that unfortunately doesn't fix all the problems. (e.g., the game not informing you that you're not allowed to even *graze* walls or floors without taking damage or that you will still take damage from an enemy's hammer, even if--realistically--it's not moving fast enough to hurt a giant steel robot. But whatever.) So, in short, it's a really brilliant idea, and you're sure to enjoy the game you will no doubt *think* it is going to be, but like me, you'll probably end up disappointed in what the game actually is: a great idea for a mechanic put to poor use, and a casual smash-fest trying too hard to sell itself as an adventure game. For the curious, I would recommend trying it if it's on sale for cheap, but definitely don't pay $10 for it.