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(This is copied from my Steam review.)
20XX is an excellent take on both the "roguelite" genre and the Mega Man series, It's more or less structured like a Mega Man game: eight platforming levels full of enemies, pitfalls, and traps, with a boss at the end of each carrying a new weapon for your character, followed by a final set of levels - two, in this game - ending in fights against the real villains of the game. Likewise, it plays like a "roguelite," featuring fairly short (~45 minutes) runs through procedurally generated levels full of randomly selected powerups, forcing you to adapt your playstyle to the abilities you are given in your current run.
Compared to a normal Mega Man game, it's significantly easier in some senses, with early bosses falling very quickly to basic attacks and no instakill traps (spikes just hurt, pitfalls send you to the last solid ground you were on), but this makes sense given that it's a "roguelite," with death ending your run. The levels are also procedurally generated, rather than hand-crafted, which adds to the replay value significantly but, unfortunately, provides one of the few points of frustration I have with 20XX: some layouts are absolutely obnoxious without a "proper" set of mobility abilities, and can't be forced through at the cost of health due to either falling down during a climbing section or being sent back a good distance by a pitfall, leading to the very few unfair-feeling losses I've had.
Compared to a normal "roguelite," it's a fairly standard setup with persistent unlocks between levels, both in the form of a limited set of permanent upgrades, and new random items you can make available for your future runs. (You can also spend the persistent-unlock currency on a small selection of bonuses for your next run only, so it never stops being useful.) It's also on the more merciful side, with a low difficulty mode which offers you three lives before your run ends and the ability to save a singleplayer session between any two stages, though it also features quite a few extreme difficulty options for players who want to rise to the challenge, through a customizable challenge mode system, as well as fixed-layout daily and weekly levels with leaderboards, both in normal difficulty and challenge-mode difficulty.
Mentioning "a singleplayer session" hits on my favorite thing about 20XX, though: it has two-player cooperative multiplayer, both local and over the internet, and it's amazing. Despite the "loading some sketchy netcode" loading screen, by the end of Early Access the netcode for 20XX has actually been quite stable, though with occasional glitches, and multiplayer Mega Man is one of those things I never knew I needed until I had it.
All in all, 20XX is a good entry in the indie "roguelite" category, and a very good Mega Man-like game. It comes in highly recommended for any "roguelite" fans, and recommended for fans of Mega Man if they're not opposed to a version focused on replay value rather than polished, hand-crafted level design. Even if you're not particularly into either of those, it's a fairly solid action platformer - probably a bit harder than average, but significantly easier than Super Meat Boy or something, and I would still recommend it even at full price. (Which isn't that high: only $15.)
20XX is an excellent take on both the "roguelite" genre and the Mega Man series, It's more or less structured like a Mega Man game: eight platforming levels full of enemies, pitfalls, and traps, with a boss at the end of each carrying a new weapon for your character, followed by a final set of levels - two, in this game - ending in fights against the real villains of the game. Likewise, it plays like a "roguelite," featuring fairly short (~45 minutes) runs through procedurally generated levels full of randomly selected powerups, forcing you to adapt your playstyle to the abilities you are given in your current run.
Compared to a normal Mega Man game, it's significantly easier in some senses, with early bosses falling very quickly to basic attacks and no instakill traps (spikes just hurt, pitfalls send you to the last solid ground you were on), but this makes sense given that it's a "roguelite," with death ending your run. The levels are also procedurally generated, rather than hand-crafted, which adds to the replay value significantly but, unfortunately, provides one of the few points of frustration I have with 20XX: some layouts are absolutely obnoxious without a "proper" set of mobility abilities, and can't be forced through at the cost of health due to either falling down during a climbing section or being sent back a good distance by a pitfall, leading to the very few unfair-feeling losses I've had.
Compared to a normal "roguelite," it's a fairly standard setup with persistent unlocks between levels, both in the form of a limited set of permanent upgrades, and new random items you can make available for your future runs. (You can also spend the persistent-unlock currency on a small selection of bonuses for your next run only, so it never stops being useful.) It's also on the more merciful side, with a low difficulty mode which offers you three lives before your run ends and the ability to save a singleplayer session between any two stages, though it also features quite a few extreme difficulty options for players who want to rise to the challenge, through a customizable challenge mode system, as well as fixed-layout daily and weekly levels with leaderboards, both in normal difficulty and challenge-mode difficulty.
Mentioning "a singleplayer session" hits on my favorite thing about 20XX, though: it has two-player cooperative multiplayer, both local and over the internet, and it's amazing. Despite the "loading some sketchy netcode" loading screen, by the end of Early Access the netcode for 20XX has actually been quite stable, though with occasional glitches, and multiplayer Mega Man is one of those things I never knew I needed until I had it.
All in all, 20XX is a good entry in the indie "roguelite" category, and a very good Mega Man-like game. It comes in highly recommended for any "roguelite" fans, and recommended for fans of Mega Man if they're not opposed to a version focused on replay value rather than polished, hand-crafted level design. Even if you're not particularly into either of those, it's a fairly solid action platformer - probably a bit harder than average, but significantly easier than Super Meat Boy or something, and I would still recommend it even at full price. (Which isn't that high: only $15.)
«Blew my mind»
«Can’t stop playing»
(This is copied from my Steam review.)
Startide is a strangely boring shoot-'em-up, strongly reminiscent of the 2003 freeware title Warning Forever mechanically but much slower-paced, to its detriment. Essentially the entire game is fighting bosses by destroying them part-by-part from the extremities inward, since only the outermost parts on a limb take any damage, with the scaling falling off such that hitting any part other than the two outermost is almost worthless.
So, it's all about slowly circling enemies, minimizing the amount of hits you take, and slowly wearing them down. Of course, with a system where you both regenerate health and destroy the boss's weapons as you fight, this means that essentially all stages get easier as they go on, which contributes to the tedious feeling. Likewise, there's not all that much difference between stages - some will have time limits, and some will have breaks for asteroid fields (which are to your advantage, since you regenerate health and super bar during this time), and as you go on you fight five different alien races, three of which have their own gimmicks, two of which matter - except for stages where you are attacking supply trains, which are similar (you still destroy armed parts coming off the train, from the outside in, then destroy the "core" that contains the supplies) but involve different enough mechanics that they at least feel like something different.
Startide is also not free of minor issues that I felt dragged the game down. The biggest one is that I felt the 4th alien race was the hardest to fight by far, which made the entire end of the game where you fought the 5th race feel very anticlimactic. Another is that, instead of getting notably harder (except when you fight the 4th race) or more interesting, stages just require you to fight more bosses in a row, which increases both the likelihood that you'll mess up and die sometime during them, and makes you have to replay even more when you die. The least and silliest gripe is that the game gave me a giant laser cannon with only one fight left before the rest of the game was fighting the 5th race, and due to how the mechanics interact, the giant laser cannon is useless against the 5th and final race of aliens.
Ultimately, I don't think I was expecting tedium from a shoot-'em-up. It's a genre with quite a few bad entries, but few boring ones, but Startide somehow managed to be. Check out Warning Forever instead, it's a significantly more fun freeware take on many of the same ideas.
(Postscript: Startide has a workshop functionality, but I felt it was somewhat limited in terms of being able to create interesting things due to fairly low "cost" limits, hopelessly degenerate designs like my Invincible are quite possible, and there's no real ship design community for the game. It's at least fairly easy to use, but I didn't think it was notable in any way.)
Startide is a strangely boring shoot-'em-up, strongly reminiscent of the 2003 freeware title Warning Forever mechanically but much slower-paced, to its detriment. Essentially the entire game is fighting bosses by destroying them part-by-part from the extremities inward, since only the outermost parts on a limb take any damage, with the scaling falling off such that hitting any part other than the two outermost is almost worthless.
So, it's all about slowly circling enemies, minimizing the amount of hits you take, and slowly wearing them down. Of course, with a system where you both regenerate health and destroy the boss's weapons as you fight, this means that essentially all stages get easier as they go on, which contributes to the tedious feeling. Likewise, there's not all that much difference between stages - some will have time limits, and some will have breaks for asteroid fields (which are to your advantage, since you regenerate health and super bar during this time), and as you go on you fight five different alien races, three of which have their own gimmicks, two of which matter - except for stages where you are attacking supply trains, which are similar (you still destroy armed parts coming off the train, from the outside in, then destroy the "core" that contains the supplies) but involve different enough mechanics that they at least feel like something different.
Startide is also not free of minor issues that I felt dragged the game down. The biggest one is that I felt the 4th alien race was the hardest to fight by far, which made the entire end of the game where you fought the 5th race feel very anticlimactic. Another is that, instead of getting notably harder (except when you fight the 4th race) or more interesting, stages just require you to fight more bosses in a row, which increases both the likelihood that you'll mess up and die sometime during them, and makes you have to replay even more when you die. The least and silliest gripe is that the game gave me a giant laser cannon with only one fight left before the rest of the game was fighting the 5th race, and due to how the mechanics interact, the giant laser cannon is useless against the 5th and final race of aliens.
Ultimately, I don't think I was expecting tedium from a shoot-'em-up. It's a genre with quite a few bad entries, but few boring ones, but Startide somehow managed to be. Check out Warning Forever instead, it's a significantly more fun freeware take on many of the same ideas.
(Postscript: Startide has a workshop functionality, but I felt it was somewhat limited in terms of being able to create interesting things due to fairly low "cost" limits, hopelessly degenerate designs like my Invincible are quite possible, and there's no real ship design community for the game. It's at least fairly easy to use, but I didn't think it was notable in any way.)
«Boooring»
«Game over at last!»
(This is copied from my Steam review.)
Store screenshot #3 has half of the monsters in the game in it, while store screenshot #5 has 100% of the dialogue. Or, for a different way of putting it, you get an achievement every 2 seconds, and by the time I was convinced I saw everything in the game, I had 295 achievements.
Look, if you want to buy 5000 achievements for $2, you do that, but I'm going to think it's dumb.
Store screenshot #3 has half of the monsters in the game in it, while store screenshot #5 has 100% of the dialogue. Or, for a different way of putting it, you get an achievement every 2 seconds, and by the time I was convinced I saw everything in the game, I had 295 achievements.
Look, if you want to buy 5000 achievements for $2, you do that, but I'm going to think it's dumb.
«Waste of time»
«Ugly as my life»
(This is copied from my Steam review.)
Deep Space Waifu is an easy shoot-'em-up where the stages are giant anime girls that you can shoot the clothes off of. Surprisingly for a $2 fanservice game, it also manages to deliver fairly consistent audio and visual design.
There's not actually all that much else to say - it comes through with its premise, even though the premise is incredibly silly. My only real gripe with the gameplay is that several of the 13 stages feel rather same-y, because there's only three normal bosses which get repeated across 9 of those 13 stages, but it's a fairly short game (under 3 hours even with the expansion) that isn't going to wear out its welcome just because you have to beat some of the bosses multiple times.
I have to give Deep Space Waifu a thumbs-up. I wouldn't reallly recommend going out of your way to pick it up or anything, and despite the aura of incredible sleaze radiating from it, I don't think it would really work as porn? But... look, it's a competently made, if very easy, shooter for $2, and you get to look at naked anime girls while playing it. If that's what you want to buy, it's not going to let you down.
Deep Space Waifu is an easy shoot-'em-up where the stages are giant anime girls that you can shoot the clothes off of. Surprisingly for a $2 fanservice game, it also manages to deliver fairly consistent audio and visual design.
There's not actually all that much else to say - it comes through with its premise, even though the premise is incredibly silly. My only real gripe with the gameplay is that several of the 13 stages feel rather same-y, because there's only three normal bosses which get repeated across 9 of those 13 stages, but it's a fairly short game (under 3 hours even with the expansion) that isn't going to wear out its welcome just because you have to beat some of the bosses multiple times.
I have to give Deep Space Waifu a thumbs-up. I wouldn't reallly recommend going out of your way to pick it up or anything, and despite the aura of incredible sleaze radiating from it, I don't think it would really work as porn? But... look, it's a competently made, if very easy, shooter for $2, and you get to look at naked anime girls while playing it. If that's what you want to buy, it's not going to let you down.
(This is copied from my Steam review.)
A standalone expansion for Deep Space Waifu, Deep Space Waifu: Flat Justice is twelve additional stages, complete with several new bosses which continue the trend from Academy of being significantly harder and more interesting than the ones in the base game. In addition, it continues having surprisingly good audio design and mostly consistent visual design - though I felt some of the girls who make up the backgrounds were poorly-drawn this time around, most notably Pucky - as well as adding new features by having new versions of your main weapon unlocked as you go through the game, giving you spread shots and somewhat strange piercing shots to choose from in addition to your standard focused shot.
As I said about the original game, it comes through with its premise, even though the premise is incredibly silly, and my gripe about the stages feeling samey is significantly alleviated by the better boss design in this expansion. It's an incredibly short game, at under 2 hours, but given that it's a $2 fanservice game, this is probably to be expected.
As with the original, I'm going to give Flat Justice a thumbs-up, and recommend it over the original because it does everything even better. My few caveats - that it's not worth going out of your way for, that it feels incredibly sleazy, and doesn't really work as porn - still apply, but it's still a competently made, if very easy, shooter for $2, complete with naked anime girls. If that sounds like what you want, it's not going to let you down.
EDIT: They patched in a 13th girl as a postgame bonus. I'm pretty sure her boss is reused from one of the previous level sets, but it was a free bonus so I'm not really going to complain.
A standalone expansion for Deep Space Waifu, Deep Space Waifu: Flat Justice is twelve additional stages, complete with several new bosses which continue the trend from Academy of being significantly harder and more interesting than the ones in the base game. In addition, it continues having surprisingly good audio design and mostly consistent visual design - though I felt some of the girls who make up the backgrounds were poorly-drawn this time around, most notably Pucky - as well as adding new features by having new versions of your main weapon unlocked as you go through the game, giving you spread shots and somewhat strange piercing shots to choose from in addition to your standard focused shot.
As I said about the original game, it comes through with its premise, even though the premise is incredibly silly, and my gripe about the stages feeling samey is significantly alleviated by the better boss design in this expansion. It's an incredibly short game, at under 2 hours, but given that it's a $2 fanservice game, this is probably to be expected.
As with the original, I'm going to give Flat Justice a thumbs-up, and recommend it over the original because it does everything even better. My few caveats - that it's not worth going out of your way for, that it feels incredibly sleazy, and doesn't really work as porn - still apply, but it's still a competently made, if very easy, shooter for $2, complete with naked anime girls. If that sounds like what you want, it's not going to let you down.
EDIT: They patched in a 13th girl as a postgame bonus. I'm pretty sure her boss is reused from one of the previous level sets, but it was a free bonus so I'm not really going to complain.
(Disclaimer: I'm friends with the publisher of this game but I insisted on buying a key because of how much I liked the demo. This review was written based on Early Access version 1.0 and is a repost of my Steam review from that time - the current version as of this repost is 1.3.)
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a side-scrolling boss-rush shoot-'em-up roguelite. Which sounds like it could be a questionable mix of genres, but the roguelite elements are handled quite well, providing a bit of spice to its surprisingly robust shoot-'em-up gameplay by making each run somewhat different, rather than dominating the design.
As a boss-rush game, Void lives or dies by its boss design, so it's reassuring that the 14 bosses in the current version range from excellent to, at worst, somewhat uninspiring, with at least 11 of them being very entertaining to face off against. Likewise, they're almost all very different from each other, with only two feeling too closely related. I hope the developer can keep this up for the final version, with an intended 36 bosses. Likewise, the graphic and sound design is very well-executed, so fighting them also looks and sounds great.
The roguelite elements, as I mentioned, are more of a spice than a main attraction. A lot of the available powerups have fairly minor effects rather than game-changing ones, and (as a shoot-'em-up) it's generally possible to beat every boss without powerups regardless of difficulty. Likewise, while the enemies are randomized, later in the game you are often given a pretty wide choice to fight mostly the enemies you want, so that also mostly acts to vary things up rather than force the player out of their comfort zone. That said, it's not as though the choices are wholly uninteresting - I find the boss Syncron quite difficult still, and some of the major powerups - such as ones that allow you to shoot while charging shots, or give you triple shots - do change my strategy significantly.
About the only major downside for me is that I'd class the game as relatively easy, but I'm fairly good at the genre and, due to the selectable boss difficulty, this also means that it's fairly approachable for players who are new to the genre, or just not very good at it. Later versions claim that they will fix this, however, by adding a third, even harder difficulty mode, and there's still hard challenges in the game's "Quickplay" mode for me to accomplish - the highest scores require you to beat each boss with as close to never getting hit and never ending your combo chain on the boss as possible, which can be fairly hard even against the easier bosses.
In any case, I'd recommend The Void Rains Upon Her Heart to most fans of shoot-'em-ups, and due to the lower and generally player-selectable difficulty, for aspiring fans of shoot-'em-ups as well. The current Early Access version already has a good amount of content and feels like a full game - heck, the demo version also did, and could have come across as a highly-rated free game by itself - and I'm expecting it to only get better as the developer adds more bosses and powerups.
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a side-scrolling boss-rush shoot-'em-up roguelite. Which sounds like it could be a questionable mix of genres, but the roguelite elements are handled quite well, providing a bit of spice to its surprisingly robust shoot-'em-up gameplay by making each run somewhat different, rather than dominating the design.
As a boss-rush game, Void lives or dies by its boss design, so it's reassuring that the 14 bosses in the current version range from excellent to, at worst, somewhat uninspiring, with at least 11 of them being very entertaining to face off against. Likewise, they're almost all very different from each other, with only two feeling too closely related. I hope the developer can keep this up for the final version, with an intended 36 bosses. Likewise, the graphic and sound design is very well-executed, so fighting them also looks and sounds great.
The roguelite elements, as I mentioned, are more of a spice than a main attraction. A lot of the available powerups have fairly minor effects rather than game-changing ones, and (as a shoot-'em-up) it's generally possible to beat every boss without powerups regardless of difficulty. Likewise, while the enemies are randomized, later in the game you are often given a pretty wide choice to fight mostly the enemies you want, so that also mostly acts to vary things up rather than force the player out of their comfort zone. That said, it's not as though the choices are wholly uninteresting - I find the boss Syncron quite difficult still, and some of the major powerups - such as ones that allow you to shoot while charging shots, or give you triple shots - do change my strategy significantly.
About the only major downside for me is that I'd class the game as relatively easy, but I'm fairly good at the genre and, due to the selectable boss difficulty, this also means that it's fairly approachable for players who are new to the genre, or just not very good at it. Later versions claim that they will fix this, however, by adding a third, even harder difficulty mode, and there's still hard challenges in the game's "Quickplay" mode for me to accomplish - the highest scores require you to beat each boss with as close to never getting hit and never ending your combo chain on the boss as possible, which can be fairly hard even against the easier bosses.
In any case, I'd recommend The Void Rains Upon Her Heart to most fans of shoot-'em-ups, and due to the lower and generally player-selectable difficulty, for aspiring fans of shoot-'em-ups as well. The current Early Access version already has a good amount of content and feels like a full game - heck, the demo version also did, and could have come across as a highly-rated free game by itself - and I'm expecting it to only get better as the developer adds more bosses and powerups.
«Can’t stop playing»
«Liked before it became a hit»
Overall, I really enjoyed my time playing Earthlock and it provided me my fix of turn based RPG games which I really missed due to them being viewed as “outdated” or “old”. Earthlock was not brilliant and certainly flawed at times but I still enjoyed the experience it provided and really enjoyed my time playing it. I hope that more developers will follow suit in making turn based RPGs and not describe the genre as “outdated” or “old” because they simply aren’t. We also found out earlier this year with another game “I am Setsuma” which was another great example of the turn based RPG games really excelling.
Mostly a complete shell of SR4 and a buggy mess. Barely any story and just mostly recycled side quests. Shallow. Very Shallow.
«Buggy as hell»
After a couple of persecutions and screamers you grow immune to all of it just because there aren't any more mechanics, and the story doesn't improve either. At all.
«Game over at last!»
From the cinematic to finishing the last raid, my favorite expansion WoW has ever had.
I thought "Pandas and Pokémon" would be lame, just like everyone else, but when it launched, I rolled a Pandaren Monk, and it became my main until Warlords of Draenor made melee DPS completely unusable.
I love the story and the setting. 11/10
I thought "Pandas and Pokémon" would be lame, just like everyone else, but when it launched, I rolled a Pandaren Monk, and it became my main until Warlords of Draenor made melee DPS completely unusable.
I love the story and the setting. 11/10
«Blew my mind»
«Better with friends»
I don’t remember so stupid and unresponsive AI in a while. I can’t make my tanks go in the right direction, they need too many instructions to make everything right so the game become frustrating. Such an awful experience.
It’s a great movie making simulator every creative person will like. The process of creating a movie is very detailed from writing a plot to filming and so on. Besides the artwork, you need to be a clever businessman to run your studio and have money for other films.
The idea that the time will go from the earliest movies of 1920s to the present day and further in the future is brilliant. You can also see the result of your work at an annual ceremony and get rewards for your movies.
Feeling of being a film director has never been so realistic.
This game is balanced awfully. You need to spend probably all your life here to upgrade and be able to fight other players! And even if you do so, you’ll go to hell faster than online - because the game is constantly crashing. It’s totally not funny.
I can’t say it’s awful but the first part was much better. This game lacks in graphics and sound quality and the voice acting (if it could be called so) is very cartoonish.
AI here is average but the game is still amazing! As for me, it the best WW2 themed RTS up to date. I love the graphics and the urban warfare which is very tense and realistic. You really need to think over your every decision to win.
The matchmaking needs to be fixed. Now it’s so horrible that completely ruins everything good I love about this game.
Leave the nostalgia just where it is. I understand that back in years this game was awesome and you want to feel this fun once again but don’t. It will destroy your best memories and that’s all.
This game combines elements that don’t work together. Look: tactical combat from Dragon Age (nothing new but OK), dumb AI to play with and just more and more corridors on every level. It’s not just boring - it’s hard to play and enjoy. While the story itself is interesting and the characters are good, even supported by nice graphics it doesn’t become exceptional and worthy to try.
Great:
Multiplayer mode
Awful:
Difficulty and balance (should the final confrontation be this easy?)
Total:
Jedi Knight Outcast still much much better.