Recent reviews by krisko

I have waited two years for this game to come out. I love cinematic platformers and the moment I saw this game on Kickstarter I knew that it had great potential to be one of the best in its genre.

The Way is inspired by games such as Another World and Flashback, and if you have any familiarity with those games then it's hard not to see where the developers took their inspirations from.

The storyline, while incredibly simple, nonetheless manages to tug hard at the heartstrings. Tom is extremely obsessed with bringing his wife back, no matter the cost, and it's hard not to root for him when you see what he has to go through. The universe in general is really a very fascinating place, and I would definitely love to see more games taking place inside it.

While the character animations aren't nearly as complex as the ones featured in its inspirations, The Way still offers a very appealing visual style. The backgrounds are crisp and detailed, and you really get a sense of visiting another world.

This is an old-school experience, one that offers very little hand holding. The only real tutorials occur at the beginning of the game and offer the most basic movement controls. After that, you're on your own to figure everything else out. The first level alone feels like something that would appear in the mid-to-late portion of other games, and it only gets trickier and more intense from there.

The Way is one of the most varied games I've played in recent memory. While it is definitely a platformer, it also utilizes aspects of stealth, puzzle, action, and even shooters during the course of the 10 hour adventure. From solving complex puzzles, to sneaking past robots, the game covers a wide ground of concepts and ideas, and always makes sure to keep things fresh throughout the 10 hour adventure.

The thing that really brings this game together is its incredible soundtrack, which is easily my favorite so far this year. The music has a mystical, alien quality, relying heavily on bizarre synthesizer effects, droning melodies, and haunting production. I would definitely love to listen to this outside of the game, something I can say for very few soundtracks.

The Way evokes a real sense of awe and wonder, something that seems to be missing from today's market of fast-paced action and over-marketed games. It represents much that was good about gaming in the early 1990s while making sure to keep the experience moving along for 2016 audiences. In short, it's everything the developers promised it would be.

I'm a fan of first person games that aren't shooters. Specifically, I love first person platformers. I've played many of them including A story About My Uncle, Dying Light, and of course Mirror's Edge, which is always the go-to example for the genre.

Lemma is a game that takes place in a surreal, almost dream-like world built out of cubes. You play as Joan, a woman who has mysteriously found herself stuck in this strange alternate dimension as a result of her friend Mark's experiments. Communicating with Mark over texts, Joan must find a way to escape.

Above all else, Lemma is simply a joy to play. Everything, from the movement of the camera, to the sound design and fluidity of the ontrol "feels" completely and utterly natural.And this is even before you get to Lemma's main innovation - creating your own paths through the levels.

By sliding off a ledge or running off a wall, new blocks appear under Joan's feet. Later on, you also gain the ability to spawn blocks in mid-air, though this is limited in some respects, as there are out-of-bounds areas where you cannot create new blocks. These blocks aren't just for show, as you'll also use them to solve various puzzles throughout the levels. Generally, these will involve routing power through conduits and stepping on switches. The game never holds your hand when it comes to figuring these out, but you eventually do notice patterns.

There are enemies in the environments. These include exploding golden cubes, flying black cubes that sound like bats, and lasers that take big chunks out of the environment. Avoiding these enemies is sometimes frustrating, especially since they follow you around very closely and give you very little chance to shake them.

At first, the levels are very linear, point A-B affairs. About halfway through, however, the game becomes much more open, with "levels" consisting of multiple areas that you'll need to traverse and backtrack through. There will occasionally be some guidance, but for the most part, you're on your own in terms of figuring these out. The final level is a crazy gauntlet consisting of at least 7 multiple diverse environments that you must navigate back and forth. I do wish that there was some sort of map or even just a little more guidance, during these later parts of the game, but I still enjoyed them overall.

Lemma's atmosphere is incredible. The environments have a surreal, psychadelic look and feel. There are times when it's hard not to stop and take a look at where you've been and where you need to go. The use of normal mapped textures on the voxels is very appealing. Things get even more impressive during certain sections of the game, when everything is "collapsing". You'll see pieces of the environment get popped in and pushed out, cube by cube, which is an effect that never gets old. The music is sparse, but when it comes in, it's absolutely beautiful, yet eerie at the same time.

The story is Lemma's weakest aspect. There's almost no voice acting to speak of apart from the grunting and breathing of Joan, so you have to read everything. You end up finding notes scattered around the environment, and the game expects you to piece them all together. Unfortunatley, the narrative is all over-the-place, with different threads expanded upon in different areas of the game. There are four difffferent endings, but I was a bit confused as to what exactly I accomplished as the credits rolled.

In addition to the main campaign, Lemma also supports custom challenge levels, leading to great replayability.

Lemma is proably the most underrated and overlooked game of 2015. There was basically no internet buzz on this one, which is a shame. I hadn't even heard about this game until just before the end of the year. While there is a low-budget feel to the game, and the story falls flat, there's an obvious amount of love poured into every other aspect of Lemma that makes all of this forgivable. It's an experience that I would recommend to everyone. Personally, I actually feel that Lemma surpasses its inspirations, and sets a new standard for first-person platformer games. I just hope other teams making these types of games can keep up with what this one-man effort has achieved.

Yes, I am complaining about a game I got for free.

I enjoyed The Stanley Parable for what it was: a short, but clever and funny deconstruction of the concept of "choice" in games. Given that Dr. Langeskov is from the same creators, I thought it would be equally clever and funny. Turns out that Crows Crows Crows simply cannot capture the same magic a second time.

The whole concept of the game is that the player breaks into a mansion to steal an emerald while avoiding a tiger. You don't actually "do" any of these things during the game, however. Instead, you are "backstage" waiting for your turn to play the game while somebody else is playing, while triggering various aspects of the game that the narrator requests. What this boils down to is walking around a series of rooms pushing a bunch of switches and buttons.

Unlike the Stanley Parable, where the theme was very clear, I have absolutely no idea what Dr. Langeskov is supposed to be getting at. The whole idea of the video game as a stage play is very clever, but the game doesn't actually try to simulate what that would be like, or even how the other player feels. You never get a glimpse of either the player, the tiger, or any of the other elements of the game. A game where you handle backstage duties during a performance might be kind of cool, but this is not that game.

The game tries to do the same "reactive narration" of its predecessor, but neither the writing nor the narrating is up to par. Honestly, I never even cracked a smile.

The best things that I can say are that the game is very short and runs quite well.

Shadowrun Returns is a tactical RPG set in the universe of a pen-and-paper role playing game. Shadowrun is a strange melding of future tech sci-fi and straight-up fantasy that manages to work quite well. in other words, think Deus Ex meets Dragon Age, and you have a sense of what's happening here. This is not the first adaptation of this property: there were console versions in the early 90s, as well as a first-person shooter in 2007. However, this is the first true computer RPG for the license.

The wrinkle behind this particular game is that the developers have created more of a platform for users to tell their own Shadowrun stories. The game comes with an editor that I'm told is quite powerful, and was used to create the game's featured campaign.

Shadowrun Returns comes with a 15 hour campaign called "Dead Man's Switch". The campaign is pretty enjoyable. It is very well written with an engaging, if slightly silly plotline, and some memorable characters. That said, it is, limited in scope. You are herded from one location to the next like you are on a train track, you cannot go back to previously explored areas unless the plot demands it. There is only one optional side mission. There isn't a whole lot to explore, and customization is pretty limited outside of your own character.

Luckily, player customization is actually pretty solid. You are free to build your character however you want, and there are many options to choose from that add replay value to the game. Even if you start out as a mage, you can still learn to shoot a pistol (which is actually more effective for a pretty large portion of the campaign).

Combat is quite fun, though you have to keep in mind that I'm unfamiliar with the style of turn-based tactics that is happening here. Taking cover, using buffs and debuffs, lining up grenades to hit enemies and not you, and protecting someone while they roam around cyberspace create for some really tense and engaging moments. You have to think about every move you make, and every action has tradeoffs. The last few missions are very challenging. Luckily, you can save at any time, even during combat, which makes fights more manageable.

The backgrounds, lighting, and weather effects are goregous and help bring you into this futuristic world, even though the character models are crudely animated at best. The music is also very catchy and reminds me of other cyberpunk themed games such as Deus Ex.

On the downside, the game got kind of buggy towards the end (and for those of you who have played the campaign, no, I don't mean it in a literal sense). There is occasional slowdown during the later battles and at one point I had the enemy stuck on a turn without it advancing back to me. Unfortunately this happened during the final battle, making it sting even harder.

Overall, I have to say I was really impressed with the game. For its relatively low price, the game is enjoyable if you like tactical games or RPGs.

As a hardcore rhythm game aficionado, I find the lack of rhythm games on the PC platform to be very disappointing. Oh sure, every once in a while we'll get an Audiosurf or a Bit.Trip, but for the most part PC is pretty barren when it comes to rhythm games. I keep searching for good rhythm games and I rarely find many good ones. Thankfully, Retro/Grade is here to serve my beat-matching needs - with a twist.

At a quick glance, Retro/Grade may appear to be a typical space shooter, but it is actually a cleverly disguised rhythm game. The idea is that you are catching the bullets that come in on the right while avoiding those that enter on the left, sometimes simultaneously. In a neat twist reminiscent of DJ Hero, you build up a meter that can then be used to rewind time back if you make a mistake. You can either play the game more like a space shooter by moving the ship up and down the lanes, or you can play it more as a rhythm game with a guitar controller.

The game's soundtrack is ... alright. It's essentially chiptunes with hip-hop rhythms and techno melodies. I really enjoyed one or two or the tracks, but felt that the music was a bit too laid back for what should have been a frantic and fast paced experience.

The graphics are goregous. At the highest dificulty, the game explodes with a psychadelic array of colors that are impossible not to look away from.

The downside is a fiarly short game length. With only ten songs, you may find yourself staring at the credits (the real credits) faster than you might think.

As one of the few great rhythm games on PC (believe me, there aren't that many), this is something that I like to come back to from time to time when I just want a groovin' experience to melt my mind.

Are you a fan of games like Out of This World, Flashback, Prince of Persia, or even Limbo? Do you enjoy zombies? If so, then Deadlight is the game for you. A great mix of cinematic platformer and survival horror, Deadlight is one of the most underrated indie games out there.

It has a great sense of style with much of the graphics being shrouded in darkness as a relief against colored backgrounds, and superb sound design to deliver a sense of atmosphere.

Deadlight has three very distinct phases: The first act is a realistically designed, slow-burn survival horror. The second part is filled with traps, puzzle solving, and narrow escapes. The third part features lots of action and shootouts with both zombies and humans. It's the second part that is kind of bizarre.While the first act features realistic and believable level design, the second starts off in a trap-filled maze underneath the sewers built by a man who calls himself the rat. It's like someone accidentally switching channels to Saw while watching World War Z. While it is a clear homage to the cinematic platformers of the past (especially Prince of Persia), it does make for a rather jarring shift in tone. Thankfully, the game rights itself after that and continues in the more realistic mold until the explosive ending.

Probably the biggest knock against the game is that, like its forbears, the game is extremely short. The game is designed more for speedrunners and perfectionists.

Awful game. Please don't waste your money on this one. It's like a rhythmic version of Ecco the Dolphin with terrible cutscenes, boring gameplay and overlong stages. The soundtrack is nice, but that's pretty much all the game has going for it.

I so want to recommend this, but I can't quite do it.

This game is a love letter to classic 8-bit gaming, and more specifically, the Game Boy. While the game plays most similar to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, it also has references to Pokemon and Final Fantasy. Since the Game Boy was one of my first gaming loves, and Link's Awakening my favorite title on the system, the game just hit me hard with its nostalgia hammer.

The story has some very profound, and dare I say it, vaguely religious themes, at least what I played of it so far. The writing is easily the game's strongest aspect. It's full of refernces to classic games, but it also contains a great deal of pathos and questions about death, science vs faith, and the afterlife. The soundtrack is good as well.

But this thing has more bugs than the last two Bethesda games combined, and even compared to the games it tries to emulate, it actually falls short technically. It plays in an extremely tiny window, and pressing the Escape button quits the game entirely instead of pausing it. You have to be very careful when playing this game lest you run into glitches. And that's too bad, because everything about this game shows great promise.

Teslagrad is an intriguing indie puzzle platformer. The use of magnets and electricity as a gameplay device is fun and reminds me of a 2D version of Magrunner, also from last year.

Unlike similar games such as Vessel and The Swapper, Teslagrad is more action and reflex oriented. There are enemies and traps to avoid on practically every screen. The checkpoint system is generous in most places if you die, but the one thing where the reflex oriented gameplay falls short is the bosses. There are five throughout the entire game, with the 2nd and 4th being particularly difficult thanks to the fact that you only have one hit.Teslagrad is not afraid to offer a challenge. It is the Dark Souls of puzzle platformers. You will die. A LOT. You'll also feel a real sense of accomplishment upon completion, eve if you don't get all of the scrolls for the best ending.

The environments are rich and beautiful. Cathedral-like aesthetics rub shoulders with steampunk and Eastern European influences to create a game world that is striking in its look. The game is 2D, but makes occasional use of 3D and advanced lighting effects to add depth. There were times when I felt the sprites could have used a bit more frames of animation, but overall its a very impressive looking game.

Where the game falls a bit flat is in the storytelling. The developers made the decision to tell the story without dialogue, so despite all of the characters having names, you won't really know what's going on unless you look up material outside the game. At its core, the story is about a young boy overthrowing a power-mad dictator.

Teslagrad is worth playing if you enjoy this genre, but if it were a bit more polished, it would be truly top tier.

I FINALLY got around to trying the Mass Effect series after holding off for so long. And the first game wasn't half bad.

The storyline and universe were engaging, and the voice acting, sound design, and score were all very well done. The combat is quite difficult at first, but after learning to use you and your squadmate's abilities effetively, becomes highly enjoyable. It's an interesting blend of shooter gameplay with RPG mechanics. By the end of the game, you really do feel like the badbutt savior of the galaxy.

There are issues, however. The graphics simply didn't impress me, at all, and I ran the game on max settings the entire way through. The art design isn't as colorful or as imaginative as I like, and the game's look is surprisingly dated for what was once hailed as a graphically superior game, especially on consoles.

In addition, the sidequests are underdeveloped. They feel like just that - side quests. They do give you a chance to level up and practice with the combat system, and expand the game's lore, so you'll probably end up doing them. However, they are very cut and paste in their overall design. I am one of the few people who will admit that I liked driving the Mako around the planets. Very fun to zoom into an enemy from afar and pick them off with your blast cannon.

Also, for something that was marketed as "Massive". Mass Effect is a bit short. The storyline is about 20 hours long, give or take, on the first playthrough. Add about 3-5 hours for sidequests, and you have a game that, while definitely lengthy and a more than decent value for the price, doesn't come close to some of the longer RPGs on the market.

Nevertheless, Mass Effect is a very entertaining ride for the most part from start to finish.