Recent reviews by NickelSandwich

An action game with some heavy RNG elements. Risk of Rain scratches the same "I don't feel like thinking too hard" itch that made us all fall in love with The Binding of Isaac. However, while Isaac had you constantly running the risk of encountering a room that would cost you health, this game employs a novel but mostly simple difficulty scale that increases with time and a slightly more involved combat system that falls somewhere between Diablo 3 and Awesomenauts. Each character has a couple of useful combat techniques and patterns you can learn to bring them to optimal efficiency, and while they all feel pretty fun to play they're mostly all one-trick ponies and a few of them just fall flat. Items don't generally change how you play the game, and usually just passively increase your survivability, damage, or mobility in one of a myriad of ways.

Far from the level of complexity in a true roguelike, this game has you carefully gamble your time and money against the probability of finishing an item set that will make your character strong enough to take on the hardest difficulty rank. Because of the ways RNG effects this game, skill alone won't make you win or lose a specific run; it will only allow you to increase your chances of winning. With some better combat and some more ways to control the difficulty ranking, drop rates, item builds, and level progression, this game could have given the player an opportunity to really fine-tune his methods and consequently been a much longer and harder game. But let's not dwell too much on what might've been, otherwise we'll never enjoy anything. As it stands, Risk of Rain is an exciting little diversion. In spite of its simplicity, awkward difficulty progression, and occasional glitchiness, it kept me interested long enough to unlock most of the item drops and all of the characters, which is a very respectable amount of time.

Divekick is how people solve legal disputes in the dystopian future.

It's also a loving satire of the fighting game community. And as much as Divekick hilariously parodies fighting games, it does more with its stripped-down mechanics than some full-fledged competitive fighters do with theirs. Divekick isn't the game to abandon the classics of the genre for; rather, its simplified mechanics remind us why we loved them, and how to continue to love them. We didn't start playing fighters for 500-hit 0-death air combos and irritating comeback mechanics. We came for decisive action, heated mindgames, and a healthy dose of hype.

Divekick, along with the more traditional but equally solid Skullgirls, provides tight mechanics, clear design, and a unique and imaginative experience to be treasured by fighting game veterans and newcomers alike.

This game is a simulation of trying to leave the house when you're minutes late for an event you don't want to attend, and realizing after you locked the front door that you've left something important inside. If you like that feeling, you'll like this game.

This game says a few things about the Final Form devs. For one thing, it says they are part of the western indie scene. The game trips over its absurd structure in the name of accessibility, and as a result the overall difficulty progression suffers and the game’s challenge is rendered a homogenous lump. But beyond the amateurish mechanics and almost-but-not-quite aesthetics there’s a clear notion that Final Form is taking notes from the right teachers and applying what they’ve learned with a pure and honest energy. I’ve seen ♥♥♥♥ go pretty awry with indie developers I invested faith in, but for now, I’d like to present Jamestown as a sign that, in time (and with luck), we can expect a lot from these guys.

This game was basically made for 9-13 year old boys, and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. The basic, low-risk design of a 3D Zelda game is here combined with cartoony "blood and guts" violence and character design that probably wouldn't offend my own mother.

Hack-and-slash combat is equally simple, but does have its moments and certainly allows some personalization as the game goes on. I could call this the Western Dev's weak attempt at Bayonetta, but I could also call it Banjo-Kazooie 2010. It's all perspective.