Recent reviews by Thraeg

Clever little micro-roguelike with lots of fun interactions to explore. Well worth checking out!

GotY 2021 by a mile. Such a fun combat system to explore and test yourself against.

Fun and frantic roguelike / deckbuilder / Mega Man Battle Network mashup.

Satisfying combat, compelling loot, stylish aesthetics.

Perfectly nails the fantasy of commanding a team of giant walking tanks. All levels of the design complement each other very well. And the developer is supporting the game admirably.

Excellent action-roguelike with a heist-planning layer -- to succeed you not only need to be effective at fighting the enemy in front of you, but also at situational awareness of the defensive systems and their interplay with one another.

This was a game I had heard nothing about but took a random flyer on it during the recent Steam sale because it looked interesting and was only $1, and it's been a very pleasant surprise. Created by a lone developer, it's stripped down to focus solely on the combat -- a couple paragraphs of story, simple but functional graphics reminiscent of an uprezzed Unreal, no need to unlock moves, no bloated combo lists, no puzzles to solve, no RPG elements, just room after room of different configurations of evil robots to hack to bits.

Fortunately, the combat system stands up to the weight placed on it. You play some sort of robotic samurai, and can use a mix of standard melee slashes, special moves that work well against unshielded enemies, and powered attacks that cut through shields better but drain an energy meter that you also need to use for rocket dashes. The rocket dashes are one of two main defensive options -- they give you a lot of speed and maneuverability, but no invincibility frames so you have to make sure you actually get clear of whatever's attacking you. The other defense is a parry that blocks any melee attack and chains into an EMP blast retaliation that breaks shields and stuns the attacker, but a missed parry leaves you stationary and vulnerable. There's no scoring system, but effective play has a nice satisfying flow to it, and using all the available tools to pick apart varied groups of enemies is quite fun. It's especially nice to feel yourself getting better at the game when a particular encounter has killed you a few times and you go back and wipe it out with ease (I probably had a dozen deaths on the final boss before going unscathed when I finally beat it).

My biggest complaint is the controls not being remappable -- they're functional for the most part, but have some odd choices that took a long time to get used to (lock-on on LT, parry on X, attack on Y). Besides that, some enemy configurations wind up a bit heavy on passively running in circles while waiting for an opening to go on the offensive.

It's a nice, tight 3 hours (for me at least, playing on normal and getting a few game overs during that time), and ends right when it's explored the combat system and before devolving into excessive repetition. A real steal at $1, a bit more of a gamble at the standard $5, but if it clicks for you it'll justify that price. If nothing else, I'd at least recommend putting it on a wishlist for the next sale or watching for it to show up in an indie bundle.

DmC manages a fantastic balancing act between accessibility and depth -- the first time through, weapons, moves, and enemies are introduced at a measured enough pace to make it possible to keep up with them, but there's still a massive scope for building your skills and racking up massive scores with SSS combos in battles that used to be a struggle just to survive, just by mastering the systems and weapons. Different weapons are swapped in instantaneously using the triggers as a modifier, and it results in a really wide toolbox of attacks that can be strung together in very satisfying ways.

The combat is the real reason to play, but this is also a fantastic-looking game, particularly in terms of the imaginative environments, which make heavy use of ripped and distorted versions of real-world locations. And being on PC running 60 fps helps a lot too. The story and dialogue is a bit less successful -- it has enjoyable moments, but is on the heavy-handed side in terms of its satire.

Despite going into this with no expectations or background in the series or genre, I liked it enough to play through the game and the DLC on four consecutive difficulty settings, going up to Dante Must Die, and would name it my Game of the Year for 2013. It also inspired me to seek out more in this genre, which I had mostly ignored previously.