Review Solstice: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a space-ship shooter set in a world not too unfamiliar from Metroid. The game flaunts some absolutely stunning visuals and features a world of twists and turns with a massive map that may require some back tracking.

Shadow Planet is a wondrous game that features some deep exploration and some brilliantly polished mechanics that make it a joy to play. Destructible environments, enjoyable physics that allow you to lift and throw boulders, and some absolutely insane boss fights.

Review Solstice: Magicka

Magicka is an isometric action game featuring a magic system that utilizes the combination of elements and let’s you choose how you use the result.

Magicka is definitely a unique game – its magic system stands on its own head and the campaigns have a lot of comedy. By far the most stand out feature of the game is the online multi-player.

Meteors can hit allies.

Review Solstice: Sine Mora

Sine Mora is a beautiful 2D-shooter developed by Digital Reality that’s made in the vein of older shooters Gradius and R-Type (a personal favorite). It blends classic shoot ’em up mechanics with a contemporary presentation.

Sine Mora throws the player into a steam punk world where WW2 aircrafts never went out of style and they’re piloted by animals. Let’s take a quick look at this impressive title.

Review Solstice: Cave Story+

To be completely clear this is a review I’ve been wanting to write because this is one of my favorite games I’ve played this year. This game was already originally released in 2004 as ‘Cave Story’ and I’ll be reviewing ‘Cave Story+’ which was released some time after on Steam as an enhanced edition. If I spoil anything of the first few hours of gameplay for you I am not sorry – take it as judgement for not playing this undercover wonder.

Review Solstice: Awesomenauts

Where do I even begin with this game – it’s got so many miniature genres and mechanics shoved into such a tightly bound package I’d be doing the English language a disservice to try and put it all in one sentence. Actually that was pretty bad on its own. I already wrote a small piece on one of the characters in the game that really caught my eye, but after spending more time with it I feel it’s deserving of a properly written review; the word ‘properly’ being used loosely.

Review Solstice: Saints Row the Third

There should be no doubt that this review will in no way cover the entirety of what is Saints Row: the Third. Here we go anyways with my second Review Solstice post for the latest installment in the Saints Row series.

Review Solstice: Legend of Grimrock

The first review in my ‘Review Solstice’ is of Legend of Grimrock. The game attempts to bring back the text-adventure genre from the times when Zork was king, some 15-20 years ago. It takes Zork’s adventuring and places it into a Dungeons and Dragons system with Skyrim graphics – a match made in heaven.

The Review (Winter) Solstice Introduction

I’ve been taking time lately to decide what to do about this little opinionated blog I have here. There’s no doubt that what not everyone agrees with anything I have to say, so I figure I my as well try giving those people an opinion that they don’t quite have yet.

For the month of December and possibly the rest of the winter season I’ll be doing game reviews of all the renegade games I haven’t played in my Steam library. Although I may not be able to beat every game in my library I’ll at least play them to the extent that I’ll know enough about the game to review it. If I happen to beat them then that’s just a bonus.

First game to be reviewed: Legend of Grimrock

Awesomenauts and its Unique Take on Character Design

Apologies to anyone who hasn’t tried out this game yet – it’s a great title and it deserves a bigger audience that it has at the moment. I highly recommend playing it. I’ll outline two builds for a single character in the game that might give you some idea of the mechanics and variety this game offers.

Find it here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/204300/

Awesomenauts is an attempt by Ronimo Games to capture the aggressive nature of the MOBA genre (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) which already stars games such as DotA (Defense of the Ancients) and LoL (League of Legends). It’s a 2-dimensional platformer that applies itself to the MOBA game in the most obvious, basic way possible – minions and towers. It pits you against another team of the same size as yours (three players), with minions and towers which you need to destroy in order to win the match.

Compulsion Loops in Social Games – Devil’s Advocate?

Before you jump the gun and assume I’ll answer the question above with ‘yes’ give it a rest; the answer’s not so simple.

Yes, like a lot of other lovers of AAA titles (big budget console and PC games) I initially saw compulsion loops and thought they were junior-rodeo mechanics, things that were meant to please the lemming-like masses. However, also no because I was completely wrong. Compulsion loops as social game mechanics are stripped down versions of any mechanics you can find in any AAA title.