Recent reviews by Joecool

Games good

Dark Souls is a fantastic game. It is hard and frustrating at times, and has one hell of a wall to hurdle to get into it but once you do, you never want to leave. This is one of the best designed games out there and is a must for who wants an amazing challenge.

This is both a excellent survival horror game and entry into the Alien franchise. It taps into the first movie very well, down to the themes, visuals and even sounds and music. My one main critique is that the game would of benefited greatly if it was shorter and more condensed; the plot of the story ends up feeling ham stringed. In a shorter game the plot would of been fine but here is feels stretched. Asides from that, the game is fun and tense and totally worth it for fans of the survival horror genre or the original film.

Also go watch Alien if you haven't.

This game is beautiful, the music is great, the voice acting is great and the combat is superb. It seems like a tradition top down action rpg, but you have to option to pause the game and issue out a chain of actions that flow out quickly, allowing you to quickly execute complicated flurries in a stylish and satisfying manner. The move system of this game is quite deep; as you progress you earn more moves (up to 20 or so), and you have up to 4 slots for combat and up to 4 slots for passives. The depth for the moves comes from the fact that each skill/move you learn can be assigned to either one of you your 4 slots, your passive, or as a modifier to another move (up to 2 for each slot) you have assigned to you main slots; I can not stress how much depth this gives and I barely scratched the surface for all the cool combos you can set up in my one play through. This combat system is quite fun, and the game does of great job keeping combat engaging, and the setting is cool and intriguing over it's 6-8 hour play through. This is a must play.

Octodad is a weird game. At its core it is a very bare bones adventure, it would be a stretch to call it's task puzzles; but the joy of this game comes not from clever puzzle like most adventure games, but rather from it's ridiculous physics as you attempt to control Octodad, a octopus hiding in plain sight as typical suburban father. You movement is crazy and makes even simple walking changeling, and picking up objects and throwing them around is just as difficult. Its insane and funny, you are given so much control over the finesse of your limbs and it just makes every task entertaining. Everything about this game in funny and fun and I would recommend spending the two hours it takes to play through it.

Broken Age is a charming and funny game. It's in the same vein as Lucas Arts older adventure games (Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle) and is lead by a lot of the same talent (Tim S. and Double Fine). It covers two different stories of young teens; one of boy on Spaceship that coddles him, and the other of a girl to be sacrificed to a monster. The voice acting and music is top notch, and all the environments are all fantastical and lovely. Right now only the first part of the game has been released, and it can be finished in 2 to 4 hours depending on your pace. I enjoyed the game and it consistently got a chuckle out of me with all it's little touches. If you are looking for something funny and slower this is a great title to pick up now.

Already in love with this game, it's still in beta, and there is more to come and be added to it.

This game is quite fun and the gameplay is solid; my only complaint is that while incorporating many game styles (RTS, turn based conquest, and choose your own adventure dialog) it feels slightly shallow. The RTS aspect of the game is very fun, and the ability of turning into a dragon to lead your armies gives the battles a lot of playablity allowing you to switch constantly between a traditional RTS style or more or of a MOBA style. The RTS mechanics of the game are pretty simple however compared to something like Starcraft with battle being over control nodes for bases, and around 15 units which both the player and AI use; so I don't expect this is a game you could pour hundreds of hours into the multiplier before getting bored. The turn based part of the game plays very much like a game of risk where conquest can be won though a RTS battle, so again it's simple but still effective. Everything else in the game plays out in dialog on your battleship with your generals, advisers and a princess and they all have great personalities (you either love them or hate, but you care) so it keeps the dialog interesting and offers a lot of choices to keep multiple play through fresh. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, and while it has some shortcomings I would definitely recommend trying this game out, it is better then the sum of all it's parts.

Thomas was Alone is short platformer with myriad of mechanics to solve each level. It's not anything ground breaking as far as gameplay goes, but the story that gets told about these blocks of varying colors, shapes and sizes is great and totally worth the ride.

This game is amazing. You are just a border guard stamping papers to either allow or deny people trying to enter Arstotzka (so basically it's a country under the soviet control in the cold war era). I'm not sure where I begin to explain why this game is awesome, wait, actually I do. The music. It is amazing. There is one theme to this game, and it's so bloody effective and perfectly captures the mood of the game; it is bleak, desolate, depressing and oppressive and I love it. The gameplay is deceptively simple and engaging, and considering how mundane the task of what you are doing it is hard to pull away. The game can be quite harsh to the player while asking you to make you to make decisions and the effects are not always clear right away. This game is the perfect marriage of theme and mechanics and is a masterpiece.