Recent reviews by HevyD

This is one of the best RPGMaker games I've ever played. Truly, Edmund's journey is a bizarre but engaging one that kept me interested and engaged throughout the entire playthrough.

Gnog was just delightful.

I played entirely in VR using my Vive. For a game that wasn't originally built for just VR, it plays very well. There are a few issues though. Primarily, because it wasn't built for VR originally there's some wonkyness with the controls. Some objects you want to grab and twist because you're in VR but it was originally built for a touchscreen or mouse so what you actually need to do is drag left or right. If the game loses focus on your PC, it stops working in VR. There are also a few objects that are flat that you might have trouble with using your VIve paddles. You approach the item in a 3D space and it has a very thin layer that's interactive.

Outside of those small issues, and they are small issues, Gnog was a very enjoyable experience. A puzzle game that allows you to interact with many things and the puzzle slowly unravels for the player as they play with the level itself. Truly, a feast for the eyes in VR. Everything in Gnog is just beautiful and the style really worked for me. While not a very long experience, I managed to beat the game in a single sitting, it really features enjoyable an enjoyable VR puzzle experience.

I really recommend this game. The price is right at $10.

There are a few key things wrong with Monster Slayers. Primarily, the RNG struggles to hit anywhere close to where it should. Some battles I just completely rock enemies and other battles it feels like I can't get my footing. I very seldom feel like a battle is close or evenly matched.

I don't mind the abundance of useless cards. You're meant to upgrade them and it being rogue-lite means you're supposed to die to make later runs easier. Primarily the problem is that when you DO die, you don't feel like there was anything you could do about it. People often hail Dark Souls because when you die you feel like it was your fault and not the game's. Monster Slayers has the opposite problem where you don't feel gratification or understanding from your loss, it just sort of happens.

I also hate that I can't play with the sound on. Some of the fun attack noises are enjoyable but almost every other attack your character screams. The levels are correct and it's not much noisier than the other sounds, it's just annoying. This loud angry LONG grunting noise that hardly makes any sense given what's happening on screen. My character isn't spinning in circles preparing to lob a giant boulder at the enemy, he's floating in the air, casually shooting his bow. The sound isn't just annoying, it doesn't match up with what's happening on screen.

Overall the game seems somewhat sloppily put together. The class selection screen is merely a 30% of the screen covered in icons with text directly below them and black everywhere else. The trophy/upgrade screen is a mess, used entirely with greyed out emblems (until you unlock them of course) with no titles shown or any attempt to help the player understand categories.

I like playing Monster Slayers but I don't like playing it enough to recommend it to others.

Bustories is very enjoyable and relaxing but I have some qualms about it's design.

Primarily, the eating/drinking/pooping mechanic seems out of place. I assume it's made to break up the monotony of just listening to people's stories on a bus but it was really just there and served no purpose. I would have preferred to have my character maybe reflect on the story having been told or have that affect what was in the stores. It just seemd... disconnected.

Another big issue was the way the game was translated. Often it felt like the game was simply run through Google Translate instead of given any consideration for context or grammar. There were many instances where the sentence structure and grammar were too disjointed to make any sense. Almost every line had grammatical issues.

Otherwise, the stories were very interesting and I appreciated meeting all of the people in the game. I almost hated the game at first but once I realized the game was simply expecting me to relax and enjoy a few very short stories it clicked into place. I enjoyed this game very much.

This is one of those games that feels like it had a strong concept at the beginning and just kind of watered down over time.

Pros -

- Art is surprisingly well done considering it's fidelity
- If you allow yourself to fall into the game and understand the concept, it will be enjoyable.
- Music was very good.
- Strong concept for a first timer.

Cons -

- Short, almost to the point of rushed
- Very little actual music during the game
- Story felt watered down
- Obvious amateur effort

My biggest issue with Katie is that the majority of what needed to be said was said in the post-game credits. Katie, the character, is moderately compelling in how she is written but it ends there. This is very clearly a personal story to the writer and after reading the credits I felt like I was an intruder here. Which might be okay for film but when I'm supposed to be the person ushering Katie through that gate and the credits roll, I shouldn't feel like an outsider.

Katie does a lot with such a small amount of actual things. There aren't that many assets, there isn't that much music, the art is fairly simple and bare bones. Nobody even has a face in the game. I can say with confidence the developer did this out of necessity to get their message out but it's almost like it was done intentionally for effect. It works really well.

I would have liked more music, original or otherwise. I would have liked a slightly longer experience. I wanted there to be more to this game than I got. I'm not upset about that, I want the developer to keep making games because I think once they spend more time practicing their craft they can create something truly astounding.

Katie is not that. But for the price and the time it takes, I recommend this game. This game that clocked in at 54 minutes and 15 seconds total.

I recommend playing it in a single sitting.

I'm only about 3 hours into the game. The game itself is an interesting one and uses some fun mechanics with gravity but overall, it seems forced.

However, the primary reason I'm leaving this review is to warn you that the PC port is pretty terrible. Within those 3 hours the game has crashed a total of five times. One of those times was a soft system lock requiring a ctrl-alt-delete and use of keyboard only to close the application.

It has controller support. I highly recommend that if you're interested in playing this game, and with a Metacritic score of 63 I'm not sure why you would, you play it on a console.

There are a lot of mediocre tower defense games in general. Most of them are just flash player games, some eventually make it to other platforms in strange ways. Kingdom Rush is actually a flash game turned cell phone game. Brought to steam, Iron Fist Games managed to pack two cell phone games into one and bring it to the PC. What I love most about Kingdom Rush is that it's fun and simple, which is good in a tower defense game. There's plenty of strategy, but it reinforces those two tenets through it's art style and how it plays.

I was initially turned off by how few tower types there were, but the game becomes somewhat deep as you progress through the campaign. Eventually you realize there are certain towers that are more powerful than others, but very few levels can be completed with a single tower. Likewise, the addition of Heroic and Iron versions of each level give an added level of difficulty and strategy that games like Defense Grid have tried so hard to achieve.

I highly recommend Kingdom Rush to scratch that tower defense itch. Not only did I play the game for over 70 hours (and counting,) I managed to get all of the achievements. It's within reach, and it's very fun.

It's hard to argue with the waves of people crying foul to Dead Island's marketing. What was offered though wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't what was in the trailer. It wasn't what was promised. With a rocky launch, accidentally releasing the dev build onto steam, and the marketing debacle Dead Island sits at a comfortable 80 on metacritic. It does so because what Dead Island offers is actually something different in the gaming landscape. While it borrows things from many games, you'd be hard pressed to find another game just like it.

Dead Island offers a melee-centric zombie killing experience like no other. While most zombie focused games have hordes of fast moving zombies and present a multi-player focused experience, Dead Island focuses on a more Night of the Living Dead approach. The zombies are slow moving, and while shots from a gun to the head deal critical damage, you'll mostly want to be slicing or smashing the zombies with a melee weapon. This is something that most games don't offer. While some games focus on melee attacks, only very few offer that in a first-person environment, especially with zombies.

Dead Island's few failings are in the actual story, voice acting, and characters. Each character is an incredible stereotype of an archetype that you might find on a resort island. The voice acting for each character is just as bad as the characterization. Likewise, the story itself comes off as cliched. Spending most of your time finding canned goods for people trapped in houses and looking through beach houses for people's personal possessions. Dead Island's only saving grace in this area is that the quests and story take you to many different places on the island and that's where DI offers an interesting and down-right fun experience.

Atmosphere seems to be favored over story in Dead Island. While you're rooting through beach houses and the dreaded sewer systems of the city, you can't escape the world around you. From the rolling waves on the beaches of Banoi to the indigenous jungles, the sounds and looks of these places are clearly marked with a natural feeling. It's unfortunate that the island is covered in zombies, and you'll hear it too. No matter where you are, you cannot escape the sound of the undead. Some of the scariest parts of this not very scary game happen in the city where no matter where you are, zombies sound like they're all around you.

Dead Island offers something new that while not executed perfectly, definitely provides hours of fun. It's late enough in it's life cycle that you're sure to be able to find it for cheap, and with a co-op aspect you're in for a good time with friends. Though it has some fairly strong failings, I'd say the good outweighs the bad. Get some friends together, load up some new characters, and rip through the horde of zombies that have infected the resort island of Banoi.