Hauliday Game Reviews?

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Hey, I'm assuming a lot of us probably got a big haul of new video games over the holiday season, I'm wondering if anyone wants to share any golden titles they've picked up.

Because I sure do. I ended up spending probably more than a hundred dollars on games on sales over the last couple of months. It was a bunch of stuff that I've had my eye on all year, thinking, oh, I'll buy that if it ever goes on sale. And now, shit, all of them went on sale at once!!!

I finally got myself King of Fighters XIV. I've wanted it for ages, but fuck if I was gonna get a PS4 for one game. Since they promised a later PC/Steam release, I decided to bide my time and now it's finally paid off! Except I was a little disappointed by it. There's definitely some awkwardness in the shift from sprites to 3D, and they've apparently gone on one of these modern fighting game simplification binges, so a lot of the characters I love just aren't the same person anymore. In some cases, this is positive, there's a few characters I never liked because they were too complicated, and now they're more playable, but it's like I was going to play King of Fighters to visit my familiar friends, and now those friends aren't the friends I fell in friends with.

Most of the games I got fall into the categories of games-like-FTL and games-like-Dwarf-Fortress. Dwarf Fortress actually came out with a new version in November, and I just couldn't bring myself to play it. I used to love that game, but my expectations keep get shattered and I feel like I have to mod it myself to make it into the game I want and I'm tired of keeping up with it. (DF was the inspiration for MineCraft, but it's more like SimCity) The desire for FTL-likes came from my idea to do a space adventure game.

DF-Likes:
Kingdoms & Castles = Pretty cool, you could also think of it as a medieval Sim-City. Unfortunately it's still under development and pretty short, you can quickly reach a point where there's nothing new to experience, but they're still working on it, so that's bound to improve.

Oxygen Not Included = A surprisingly fun game, it looked stupid in the trailers, but finally won me over. The premise is you're a group of "duplicants" who were launched to set up a colony and find themselves inside an asteroid filled with pockets of breathable and unbreathable air. Adding the need to regulate the colonies atmosphere is a cool component. Despite an air of silliness, Oxygen Not Included definitely captures DF's hard as ballz difficulty curve.

Terraria = I know this is one of the famous ones, so I decided to give it a try. I found it boring though. Not bad, just it didn't fill me with joy like a lot of the other games did.

Starbound = Seems to cross the line between FTL-like and DF-like, although really it's a MineCraft-like in space(?). I didn't get very far, so I'm not sure if you ever go to any planets besides the one you crashland on.

A Game of Dwarves = The most unashamed DF-like game out there, this game does a good job of balancing DF's majestry with a more human friendly level of simplicity. There's also some fairly humorous dialog in the story missions. Not really super funny, but in a world where most game devs who try to be funny are tedious and terrible, AGoD's humor is okay.



FTL-Likes:
Interstellaria = This would almost rocket to my favorite game of all time, but there are SO MANY GOD DAMNED BUGS, and apparently the dev team isn't fixing anything. Basically, you have a ship, you fight other ships, you land on planets, you collect resources, you fight things on the planets, you fly back into space to sell the resources you collected, wash, rinse, repeat and maybe while you're at it, try to solve the mystery of vanishing human colonies.

Space Rogue and Galactic Crew = They are very straightforward FTL-clones. Although unlike FTL, you are not fleeing the rebel fleet, so you can explore the galaxy at your leisure. Although when I say leisure, the point is still to die a horrible death in the cold void of outer space.

Space Pirates and Zombies 2 (SPaZ2) = This seems really interesting, although I didn't get very far, being bombarded with all these other games. Seems to have more of an RPG or 4X component to it. I barely got past the bombardment of tutorials, but I have high hopes for this one.

Holy Potatoes! We're in Space! = You play as a pair of space potato sisters, who would be pretty hot if not for that they are potatoes, who are journeying through the galaxy on a mission to reunite with their long lost grandfather who has been captured by ... I forget, let's call them the Rebels, while also being pursued by the rebels themselves. There are other races of space vegetables, like leeks, cucumbers and ginger. Despite the stupid, stupid premise, it's got a really nice production value and some decent strategic gameplay. As with Spaz2, I didn't get very far past the initial tutorials, but it shows promise.

Avorion = An interesting premise, you get to build your own ship out of blocks, kinda like minecraft. You have to balance out crew quarters and engines and weight and stuff like that, and unfortunately, by the time you've got a grasp of what you're doing, you go slamming into an asteroid or the tip of a space station you're trying to dock with and the ship breaks apart, either into a million pieces, or into a damaged state that takes a huge amount of money to repair. So I don't know, this one would probably be more fun if I spent more time to get the hang of it. As is, it gives me that warm fuzzy feeling of building things, but since it's me, I've got a million other things to build in my "job" and I get to keep the warm fuzzy feelings from my job, because my pirate ships and bunga boobed wallabies don't shatter into a million pieces when I try to fly them to the internet forum.



Meanwhile, the game that I have played over and over and over again since I got it is Overture. It's a pretty simple Flash-esque bullet-hell-dungeon-crawler hybrid with an awesome soundtrack, a huge selection of characters and massive difficulty level that keeps me coming back for more. Because ultimately, what I really want from a game is just something that will block out all my drifting thoughts and concerns by grabbing my attention and not letting go. I also like that there's so many particle effects you can't see the ground after clearing a stage.

But this is absolutely the kind of game that gets my motor running and makes me want to make a game just like it. Well, not exactly like Overture, I mean, mine would be way sexier.