Análises recentes de Spore

I never got much into the mainline Like a Dragon/Yakuza series due to the over-the-top silliness and distractions the game kept throwing at me, which made Judgment and (less so) Lost Judgment the spin-offs for me. Now, while there's plenty of that in this game as well, I will say that the more grounded and gritty narrative really allows the side questing and collectibles to act more as an in-universe reprieve for the main character rather than feeling like I could just skip them entirely and get the same experience from just playing the main and side stories. I'm still kind of annoyed at the clunky combat, which just seems to get easier with each new skill you get in the game, but it's a Yakuza game. I kind of expected that.

Now, what's new is what really drew me in: slow moving Sleuthing, fast Chase sequences that might actually be the most challenging part of the game for some people, and Drone missions that aren't incredible but are at least another method of delivering visual gags and exposition. Those are great. What is else is great? The incredible ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ narrative.

Buy this game.

This game was in a very rough state when I originally wrote a review for it. I still feel like there are certain issues with stability of the game on older systems, and two of the characters fight incredibly similarly, but otherwise you will find a varied set of characters with a (hopefully) upcoming story mode to accompany them. I think the opportunity for modding isn't quite there yet, which would make this much closer to a perfect game for me, but whether or not that will come to fruition there's a very solid base from which only improvements can come.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I like this game.

Edit: Still not sure why I like this game. The gun handling isn't particularly special, the graphical fidelity is contextual and dependent on the maps you choose, and overall a lot of the squad actions and extra mods are really only able to flesh out the game so much. I guess this scratches the itch that the original Battlefront 2 used to. Hop in, choose your loadout, die a few times, and get a lucky run where you manage to tip the scales.

Here's a TL;DR for those not willing to read: ♥♥♥♥ off.

Artstyle/Animation

I'm sure Will's 3rd grade Digital Art teacher is very proud of the work done here.

UI

UI is nonexistant. I suppose the closest things to indicators for anything would be three things: The Night-and-Day cycle, the Score, and whether or not the person at the computer is asleep. You gain achievements for playing until an in-game week has passed and if your character falls asleep at the desk. Basically, your character falls asleep at his desk after a while if you don't type constantly (Or just use a macro like I did).

Story

Well, this is awkward.

Music







Gameplay

The basic gameplay loop is as follows:

- You type. However, there is a limit to how quickly you can type, seemingly about 3-5 keys per second. When you type, you get points. Why do you want points? Because it's all this game gives you besides ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pixel art and a 3-second loop that the dev tries to pass off as music. However, with how painfully slow you gain points it is much more likely that you will just open Cheat Engine, look up the value for your points, and then modify it to get all of the achievements because that's what I did since the game is so simplistic that only one value came up when looking it up.

This game is bad and a waste of time. It doesn't matter how self-aware Will is because Will released it for the general public. It doesn't matter that the whole point of it was to be pointless because pointless things shouldn't cost consumers money. This ♥♥♥♥ is evidence as to how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up Steam's Storefront is currently. I won't support it and neither should you.

TL;DR: Refunding. ♥♥♥♥ off.

This is the best version of Borderlands I've ever played. (In all seriousness, this game is great. I'm going to write a full review at some point if I remember, but for now I'm just going to leave this here for the Steam Award for my write-in "Best version of Borderlands".)

This game unfortunately isn't what I hoped it would be, which sucks. I hate this fact because typing games are so rarely done well enough to be notable.


Pros
- For the most part the artstyle looks good. There is a decent amount of different artworks in the game for enemies.

Cons
- While the artstyle is good, the UI restricts how well you can appreciate it. I'll speak of this more in the next section.
- Animation consists of characters just kind of sliding up toward the enemy and while the animations for the attacks are colorful, the UI (Again) restricts how well the player can appreciate them.
- The same artwork for enemies are used for bosses as well, making them really underwhelming.
- A lot of artworks for enemies are reused with the colors changed for different types.


There is a chart in the top right with the types of attacks and what they're effective against/weak to, a Stage counter in the top left with the name and type of the character, and a health bar above the enemy in red. On the bottom there are three to four different characters with their faces in portraits next to speech bubbles with words the player must type to attack. While typing a word the character's full artwork appears above the speech bubble corresponding to it and the typed letters so far are turned from black to red. There is a health bar for the party in green below the first and second portrait on the bottom with another meter for the 4th character that fills up with a pink color to the right of the health bar.

Cons - You'll notice I didn't put a Pros section.
- The way in which the words and character portraits are placed cause you to focus more on them rather on the enemy and full character artworks. This is more of a nitpick, but the simplicity and how much the cartoonish speech bubbles stick out really annoys me. This is because unlike other typing games you're forced to ignore the world around you as opposed to using those words to gain a better foothold on what's happening and instead focus on just hitting keys really quickly, which is basically what this game is because...

Story - You have two very forgettable slides of information as story in the beginning. Because I decided I was done with the game at Stage 150 I have no idea if there's any other story to be told by the game. However, there is an achievement for reaching Stage 200, so if someone receives this game for less than the current price of $7.99(Original price $9.99) it might be worth checking out.

Music - You have four tracks in the game. There is one for the title screeen, one for the two forgettable slices of story in the beginning, one for the common enemies, and one for the boss enemies. While the boss music is pretty cool since it starts with a slow melodic piano tune and turns into a guitar with an accompanying piano and string section, everything else is pretty forgettable. It's all electronic from what I can tell.

And, of course, the most important decider:


The basic gameplay loop is as follows:

- Enemies show up one after another one at a time on each stage.
- Each enemy and attack has a type, that being of Earth, Water, Fire, Light, or Dark. Fire>Earth>Water>Fire and Light>-<Dark. (Both Light and Dark are weak to each other)
- The Player has 3 characters available from the start, whose attacks are used by typing the word associated with that character. There are 6 characters in total, with 5 following the types explained above.
- After using a character's attack the character is switched out for one of the random 5, including itself.
- There is a 6th character who is made available by filling a meter in the bottom right corner. This is done via using the type of attack that is effective against the enemies. This character's attack can be used once and it is effective against all types.
- Your party's power increases over time as you defeat enemies, meaning in later playthroughs you can defeat enemies earlier.
- This is endless. It doesn't end until you die by losing all of your health (The green bar on the bottom) or leave, meaning you have to start over from your current level on stage 1, at which time you can defeat the enemies quicker since your party does more damage in general. I made it to Stage 150 before lettting the enemy attack me to death just to get the next piece of information.
- Enemies are on a time limit. Once that time runs out the enemy attacks you, taking some health off of your health bar. When you defeat bosses (which seem to appear randomly) you regain some of this health.
- As said above bosses seem to appear randomly and have a lot of health. That's about it, really. There are no exclusive artworks for bosses, either, as explained in the artwork section. They have kind of cool music, but, again, that's about it.

TL;DR - Buy Typing of the Dead. It's much better and the extra $12 currently and $10 at regular price are worth it. I'm going to refund this game due to the lackluster UI, the small amount of music tracks available, and the lack of attention to making enemies and story memorable in this game.

Time to complete: 25 minutes
Price: $1.69(15% off) at time of purchase. $1.99 is the original price.

Rot Gut is a Platformer with a Noire-themed aesthetic that is minimalistic in gameplay but contains loads of personality in 25 minutes. The theme is black-and-white/grayscale with red highlights. You play as Unnamed Agent Man in the Prohibition Era of the US. Agent Man sees the murder of a man and follows, finding the body to be disposed of into an incinerator. From here the game is played as a 2D-Platformer with 2 guns available at the start. There are nice little details in this game, like how early on you receive a chest placed pretty clearly to teach you how to better use your Double Jump. Also notable is the cigar in mister Agent's mouth. It glows red and smoke comes up from it. Even if it's a small touch like that, a well-put detail is very much appreciated. There are 3 weapons in total, one of which being unlocked after one of the two(yes, two) boss battles. Enemy variety is pretty small, at about 6 enemy-types seen by the end of the game. The more interesting one includes the dog, which adds a small twitch reaction to the game whenever you think the way is clear. The music is very much of the 20's, being made up of jazzy chiptune pieces meant for looping, and is one of the strongsuits of Rot Gut. I think my favorite song is the theme for the first level, Down at the Docks.

Overall, while the enemy variety is lacking as well as the game being incredibly short, Rot Gut was incredibly fun with catchy music and nice little details like the cigar and the transitions between levels. However, if 25 minutes doesn't sound like a good amount of time to spend with the game, then I wouldn't recommend buying it, as I'm honestly one of the worst Platformer gamers out there and I still finished this game in the stated timeframe. However, the personality and music themselves and some vision of this becoming a speedran game(Hint, hint) win me over and I hope the same will be said for others.

Note: This review was made directly after finishing a first playthrough of Hacknet and lacks information on replayability or side missions, as I believe I missed one while playing.

If you want an entry into the hacking style of game in which you need to infiltrate systems without being traced to your location complete with great music and an intense atmosphere, buy this game now. If you're not interested, get your priorities checked. You're missing out on a genre that has become loved by so many people due to the easy to learn but hard to master type of gameplay.

Pros:
- Great music
- Great visual effects
- Runs at 60FPS almost consistently if your computer doesn't suck like mine
- Amazing introduction to a genre that I was sort of lost in beforehand.
- Difficulty spikes are usually your fault because you forgot the command "porthack" somehow. (POINT AND LAUGH AT THE EXPECTED)

Cons:
- If your computer does suck like mine, you'll have to turn down the resolution a bit and turn off scanlines and the great visuals at later parts in the game.
- I got a bit lost, but it's likely my fault, so you should be fine. (CONTINUE TO POINT AND LAUGH AT THE EXPECTED)


Overall, I loved the game. I finished it in about 6 hours and left the game on as I ate dinner, which shows the 6.5 hours at the time of this review. Why did I mention that? Because sometimes a look behind the scenes can make you realize why Curators have their jobs instead of people like myself.

This game displays all controls for Xbox 360 and does NOT tell you the PC controls. I had to look in a settings file in order to find the controls themselves and couldn't complete the first tutorial because the button "A" is the equivalent of J on the keyboard. This is a huge problem that a lot of games have had for the last half a year now and I think PC optimization is required if you're going to release a game on PC. Thank God for Steam Refund.