Risk of Rain Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

I got Risk of Rain in a Humble Bundle I think, and it’s pretty rad. How rad? You’ll find out right after this gigantic image!

I went into Risk of Rain knowing little about it. It turns out the game is a rougelike action-platformer. Your character is a space marine-type who is aboard a cargo ship full of monsters and special items that is attacked by a dude with a huge sword, causing all the stuff to fall onto the planet below. You then battle through the monsters using a random assortment of the special items in order to activate teleporters that will inevitably lead you to victory.

I played 3 games of Risk of Rain, I didn’t quite hit the hour mark but it’s a roguelike, I know what the deal is. There are multiple different characters to unlock, but you only start with the one so he’s the only one I played as. I found the movement to be quite nice but was slightly dismayed by the shooting. Not being able to shoot up when there are flying enemies who have full 360° movement is annoying; having to run away just to get a good vantage point isn’t something that takes skill, it just takes time and that makes me feel urgh. Aside from that small problem I liked the combat. The different types of gun attack felt nice, the standard attack felt standard, the heavy attack felt nice and meaty, and the combat roll felt cool.

The graphics are gorgeous. They are a minimalist pixel style that look lovely. The design of the monsters is great, they’re the type of thing that would probably look generic if rendered at a proper resolution, but the limited pixels really help to differentiate them from every other game out there. The pixel art explosions are also lovely, I am a huge fan of a good animated explosion. The soundtrack sticks with the retro theme, sounding very chiptune-y but with some actual instrumentation too, and compliments the visuals wonderfully. My ears and eyes were happy.

Am I going to play Risk of Rain again? Yes, I am. I like roguelikes but I feel the genre has become slightly overcrowded recently – I assume due to the success of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac – which has sort of put me off playing some of them as it feels like some developers are trying to cash in on what’s hot right now. Risk of Rain does not make me feel that. It’s been made with the love and care that only someone who truly loves shooting monsters in the face can feel. It’s good.

Risk of Rain Website
Risk of Rain Steam Page

The Novelist Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

A game I got as part of a Humble Bundle, and in the interests of full transparency the first failure of the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime, it’s The Novelist.

I played The Novelist for 18 minutes, I couldn’t finish out the hour. The Novelist is one of the least interesting games I’ve ever played, and I am a huge fan of artsy non-games. In The Novelist you play as a ghost who is observing a family that’s staying in a summer house. The family have incredibly boring issues that you, as a ghost, have to help them with. The father is a novelist with writer’s block. The wife thinks her marriage is failing. The child wants to play with his toys. I don’t care.

I see what The Novelist was trying to do. Maybe if I played it for longer I would have found out they succeeded, however I highly doubt that. It seems like they wanted the game to be about the minutia of life and how the little things are what’s most important. Instead all I saw was the minutia of life and how dull and boring it is.

I don’t want to write any more about this game. It was so, so dull. Urghh. I am never to play it again.

The Novelist Website
The Novelist Steam Page

DeadCore Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

What I love about the Steam Summer Sale is that so many games go on sale for such a cheap price, it’s almost impossible to not look at what the games are. When a game I’ve never heard of is available for £2 it would be insanity not to see what it’s about. And with DeadCore I am so glad I did.

DeadCore is a fast-paced first-person platform game. The official synopsis says it’s for speedrunning and it’s clear the game has been designed for people who can do super impressive trick jumps at high speed. You have double jumps and air dashes at your disposal and your goal is to keep going forward! This is a purely gameplay-focused game, but there are some text logs to pick up that give some context to the abstract world you find yourself in.

The game looks gorgeous. The platforms are all floating in a fog-filled void with some sort of whirlpool-esque thing far below. I love the art design, it hits me right in the cyberpunk. The music is great too, it has the right level of rhythm and oomph to enhance your jumping and make everything feel so cool.

On the whole, the gameplay feels lovely. The player movement is smooth and the level design is such that you never have to slow down, you keep to the rhythm and you keep moving. I ended up finishing the 3rd level during my playtime, and I was slightly annoyed by some of the laser grids you had to dash through. I felt the game was a bit unforgiving with how accurately you must dash through small laser tunnels, there was one checkpoint where I easily died 20 times messing up by dashing into the lasers, and the game doesn’t really give you feedback on whether you were too high or too low. It’s a bit nitpicky because by the end of the level I was getting a feel for the laser tunnel dashes, but I still feel it’s a valid point.

To be played again? Yes! There’s a specific part of my brain that loves running crazy fast, jumping in-between rotating death lasers, and being flung through the air by pressure cannons. DeadCore appeals specifically to that part of my brain and it is glorious. Play it!

DeadCore Steam Page

Legend of Grimrock Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

The first game I bought in the Steam Summer Sale 2015, it’s Legend of Grimrock!

Legend of Grimrock is a first-person grid-based dungeon-crawler action-rpg. You command a team of prisoners who are absolved of their crimes by being thrown into Mount Grimrock, a scary mountain full of monsters and traps that nobody has ever escaped from. I wandered around the dungeons murdering things, standing on pressure plates, and opening doors with keys. It has a lovely old-school Dungeon Master feel but without being bogged down by the tedium that older games tend to have.

The game looked very nice, but in the hour I played there wasn’t much variety, the walls and floors were all the same grimy stone. It’s entirely possible – and probable I suppose – that if you descend further the scenery will change, but I can’t comment on what I didn’t see. The lighting effects were very lovely and the monster design was interesting. In my short playtime I fought giant snails, skeleton warriors, two different sorts of weird mushroom monsters, and some horribly flying bat thing.

I found the combat to be a bit slow paced for my liking. Most fights involved me hitting the monster for low damage, then the monster hitting me for low damage, and this repeated for about 30 seconds. It wasn’t difficult to fight enemies, just time consuming. I think if enemies did more damage to me per hit, and I did more damage to enemies per hit, the game would go quicker but wouldn’t change the end result. Also, I didn’t appreciate the game flat out lying to me. “Only the 2 characters in the front can do melee attacks” the game said, and I believed it because why would the game lie to me? And then after 15 minutes of an unused spear in my inventory, I accidentally equipped it to a character in the back and discovered it was a long weapon so could be used to attack. Thanks game!

This mini review came off more negative then I was expecting, but I really liked Legend of Grimrock and I will be playing it again. I had a lovely time killing the giant snails and I felt the game did a great job of capturing the feel of old-school dungeon-crawlers but updating them for modern times. Wonderful!

In the interests of full transparency, I bought the Grimrock bundle that contained the sequel as well, but I’m not going to play it as part of the VSSSP because playing a sequel before finishing the first would be wrong on multiple levels. This technically breaks one of my rules, but they’re my rules so I can break them however I want! Haha!

Legend of Grimrock Website
Legend of Grimrock Steam Page

Jazzpunk Mini Review

This review was originally published on www.veizy.com but that was deleted, so now it's archived here.

Jazzpunk! It fell into my Steam Library via a Humble Bundle, it’s the third game in the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime, but it’s the first where I’ve broken one of the rules. Instead of playing the game for an hour, I instead played it until completion which took about two and a half hours. A short game for sure, but an excellent one!

Jazzpunk is a first-person comedy-art puzzle game. You play as a secret agent operating out of a train station and must undertake missions heavily influenced by the aesthetic of 1960s spy fiction. There are also a large number of references to sci-fi, video games and other alt-pop culture sprinkled throughout. There’s a side quest where you must help a frog cross the road. You throw a jar of spiders in someone’s face. You return rented videos. It’s brilliant. Its short running time is filled with so many ideas that I found genuinely hilarious and I’ve never really encountered before. Perhaps the funniest moment for me is early on when you infiltrate the soviet consulate and get an unexpected camera move. It’s a genius idea that can only be done in video games and I loved that the game was funny in multiple different ways. Even top-tier comedy games like Portal still rely on just excellent writing to be funny, whereas Jazzpunk makes jokes with its gameplay mechanics and that’s amazing. There’s a brilliant YouTube video by Every Frame A Painting about Edgar Wright that explains this better than I can, and although that video is about cinema, the idea that there are multiple styles of comedy and most aren’t being used is true in video games too.

Jazzpunk most reminded me of the excellent work of Blendo Games, specifically Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving. I would highly recommend both of those, Gravity Bone being available for free from the Blendo website. They are first-person spy-comedy games that have a similar aesthetic and I love them both.

I ended my previous two mini reviews with the question of whether or not I would play the game more. Seeing as how I finished Jazzpunk the answer would be no. The game has a lot of side stuff in each level, but I feel that I found the vast majority so there isn’t much replay value for me. I would still highly recommend everyone play it. It’s the best game I’ve played in the Veizy.com Steam Summer Sale Playtime so far, and if you’re the type who gets annoyed if a game is too short then make sure you buy it when it inevitably comes on sale. Do it!

Jazzpunk Website
Jazzpunk Steam Page