Seneste anmeldelser af - ̗̀ OWLS! ̖́-

I remember looking at Mutant Storm when it first came out and being absolutely blown away by how it looked, how things moved in it. It was a genuine and very real inspiration for me thinking "one day, I want to do something like that" and well, I do now.

It wasn't just the game, it was that there was this really small team making arcade games at a point where it's generally accepted that the arcade is dead. Well, that's fairly good right?

And sure, looks wise even despite a couple of makeovers it looks sort of less inspirational now than it did in the early 2000's and we're in a post Geometry Wars world where everything subscribes to a similar sort of neon-particle explosion sort of thing and I like that, I really really like that but Mutant Storm looks like Mutant Storm and nothing else. It's clearly got Minter-spirations but it's very very "looks like a Pompom game" and that's the kind of thing we can all aspire to. Not necessarily looking like Pompom but making a game that's ours and unmistakably ours too.

The gameplay seems, now, rather tame considering. It's not easy but there's a rigidity to the waves and patterns that compared to a lot of what we see now is very much more considered. And that's fine, absolutely fine because it still remains a very good little game of shooting things. And what's a game like this if not about shooting things, right? Right.

So yeah, Mutant Storm. A classic and an inspiration to me. Still, after all these years. An essential, no doubt.

You know, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd hoped would be able to sneak through onto Steam in time so I'm very, very glad that we're in a place where this -can- be on Steam and out there.

It's a weirdy little vignette that throws videogames, forteana and drugs into the mix over the course of around 20 minutes playtime. Unpacking it and trying to make sense of it all is likely a fools errand and then some but that doesn't matter. It's not often you get a videogame with this sort of conviction to being obtuse and veering this far into the leftfield.

It's an interesting curio, perhaps not one that you'd come back to, perhaps not even satisfying in itself but worth an idle look and some of your time? Yeah, definitely.

Gridrunner Rev is the oft overlooked Llamasoft game. I sorta get why, it's not the most approachable despite being clearly designed -to be- the most approachable.

That said, it's a little hard to grasp as it exists in its own world and with its own language. Exploding suns, flowers, pretty colours yet really, it's a fairly straightforward game to play with a strong scoring mechanic. Essentially, the prettier a pattern you make on screen with your bullets, the higher you score. If nothing else, that's different, right?

If I had to pull it on anything it's that it locks the best part of the game behind an awful unlock system. You have to wade through a slow and slightly uninteresting group of stages before the high score mayhem can begin in earnest. Again, a clear attempt to draw people in but let's be realistic here, Gridrunner Rev is -for- the kind of people who really enjoy score chasing.

And y'know, when the whole screen explodes around you with the Neon effects in the background it's quite the sight to behold.

So yeah, a bit janky round the edges, attempts at accessibility that fall a little flat but a great underloved gem that given some time to gel makes for a good companion piece to Space Giraffe.

I'm kinda hoping that a fisticle isn't something else really. Maybe it's a listicle but fisty? I don't know, the alternatives are a bit too terrifying to contemplate and like "why would you want an iron one of those?" BUT what about the game?

Well, it's a twin stick shooter with a bit of a nod to the recent procedural generation thing that goes on. I dunno, it's sort of an Amiga game meets Hunt-The-Wumpus style mapping meets Bezerk random mazes meets Ghosts n Goblins because why not. It's a little bit slower paced than most other twin stickers out there and the restriction of the weapons to a set number of directions instead of the full 360 can throw you off at first but all in all, it's a really enjoyable and chilled little game.

Due to the ever increasing amount of stats you'll be improving as you play it does have the slightly weird thing where it gets easier and easier as you progress and doesn't seem to adjust the game drastically to compensate it's still a game about hitting zombies in the face with an axe and then exploding a spider because who doesn't want to explode spiders.

I enjoyed it a lot and I guess that's all that matters in the end. It's a game that's happy to be and it does what it does tremendously well. That, really, is all it needs to be.

I've never quite worked out what to make of Max Payne 3. It's a really curious game. Almost like, I dunno, it's showing off how good R* are at world building first and then there's some Max Payne stuff chucked in there later around that.

The thing is, when it works, it's absolutely riveting and tremendous. Both the game and the story get off to a really slow and shaky start. You spend more time watching Max Payne 3 than you do playing it for way, way too long. Short firefights punctuated by lots of story punctuated by short firefights punctuated by lots of story. It can be really, really frustrating too. But at some point, it kinda settles into a happier (OK, happy is not a word I should really use when it comes to Max Payne) groove.

Then there's the favela which is an incredibly showy-off walking simulator wedged in the middle of an AAA game about shooting people in the head in slow motion whilst muttering about your pills. It's a glimpse into a universe where AAA doesn't rely on shooting people in the face but it's also, again, a guided tour of R*'s DVD collection the way it's pieced together. And that's sort of OK, I guess because it wouldn't -be- R* without that.

And after that, it starts letting you play the game proper. The balance between cut scene and videogame sorts itself out and the little frustrating bits of shooting it let you do before finally transition into longer firefights where it feels absolutely properly tense and urgent.

There's a few missed beats in the story. Sometimes things are a bit too grim and dark and slip into violence for violence's sake to shock you through the face and show you how nasty the people you're up against are but y'know, videogames and the tone is all over the shop. Like someone truly believes it's a sort of Tarantino does film noir but no-one told them that most of the time, Tarantino isn't realllly something to aspire to unless you've got a thing for feet and celebrity.

But then it all comes together in the airport and I'm on the edge of my seat, running through this level, glass shattering everywhere, bullets flying left and right and the game gets the bullet ballet bang on. There's a ACTION BLOCKBUSTER ending to it too and then you're left with that sort of wow, that was actually fantastic sensation for a while until it sinks in that for about 7 hours of the game, you were mainly watching a guided tour of someone's DVD collection and... why couldn't I play more? Why couldn't I step a bit to the left without the game killing me off? But OK, those shader effects are incredible so maybe I can forgive it?

Weird game. I'd absolutely recommend playing it through because if nothing else, only Left4Dead has more muttering about pills in it.

Purrfect

I've been playing Blast 'Em for a while before its Steam release and really enjoying it. It's a simple but deceptive little thing.

So the core is, essentially, you move around a bit and shoot some things. Points are added by coins dropped by the enemies, power ups deduct points so you've got to be careful as a careless run of power ups wipe out your score in no time. Unless you concentrate, you'll lose control of the situation really, really easily. It's a game where death comes quickly the moment you take your eye off the ball.

For a point of reference, it's somewhere between War ♥♥♥♥/Daddy and Terry Cavanagh's Self Destruct but with more screenshake. It has a lot of screenshake.

So yeah, it's simple but it's smart and teeth grittingly good fun trying not to die.

Scoregasm is like an orgasm. But with scores. Hence Scoregasm.

I mean, you might doubt it at first, like "how can a game be like an orgasm? Have you ever even had an orgasm?" and that's fine, they're fair questions to ask but I ask you, have you ever not had an orgasm involve lasers? I did not think so. So throw winning some points on top of a laser powered orgasm and there you go, videogame.

I think that's how it works, anyway. I wasn't really paying attention in class that day.

It's also a bloody good arena shooter with biscuits. I'm not lying about the biscuits.

"If you like biscuits, you'll like this"

I've been playing games for many a year now and many of these games have had lines in them. Many games have had truly great lines in them. Who could forget that one to the left of the web on Tempest? The one that stretches out from the explosion in Minestorm? Ah, the beautiful lines that you crash your bike into in a game of Light Cycles. They were good lines. And as time went past, games got more lines. Then one day we decided that lines weren't enough and we had some triangles and we put the triangles together and we made videogames with triangles instead of dots and instead of lines and oh, what did we lose? But it was OK because then lines came back into fashion around 2006 and they sort of glowed too. Glowy lines! We made games with glowy lines and the lines in those games were great too. I didn't like the green ones so much in Geometry Wars but they were trying y'know?

Years and years of great lines and yet, it took until 2013 for us to get THE BEST LINE. Ladies and everyone else out there, The Adventure Line is the best line in all of videogames. Let us take a moment to let that sink in. The. Adventure. Line.

The Adventure Line is the best line. Sing it from the rooftops because this is -the- Oscar worthy line performances, the BAFTA of road markings, the Laurence Olivier award of yellow. Thank you, Adventure Line. You're amazing. Just great.

A fairly rudimentary port that you could politely describe as "works without falling over most of the time" BUT this is still Pac-Mac CEDX and Pacman CEDX is not only the best Pacman game ever made (which isn't the greatest praise ever) but a sharp as anything, considered and smart game in its own right.

No. Screw this. It's *perfect* as a game.

Wake the sleeping ghosts to get them to conga for you, get chased around the maze by increasing amounts of conga-ing and not-conga-ing ghosts then KILL THEM ALL (can you kill a ghost?) for massive amounts of points. Can you get ALL the points?

Everything here is so considered from the death brushing allowing you to escape from the worst self inflicted situations to how it points you towards the best route at all times but can you actually take that route without dying? It's a glorious thing.

Alongside Battle Royale which can't land on home computers soon enough (December, I think?) this is how you reinvent an old game. It's Pacman but it's not awful like Pacman is.