Recensioni recenti di Singularity

Whoda thought my favorite shader ASMR channel could make a sick game like this?

I don't think this'll be for everyone, but if you're a particular type of laincore emocosine junglecat virtualself dualkaliboot surf_kitsune dokuropilled programmingsocked nerd, Kitten Burst will probably tick all your boxes.

Got to a point where my only options were to kill a whole spaceship of reasonably innocent people, sell them into slavery, or spend a heap of money to…send them somewhere else. Fallout 3 was far from a masterpiece of moral nuance, but at least that game actually let me role-play?

The greatest fighting game ever made. And you can actually play it now! Most of the time anyway

If you like figuring stuff out, this is the VN for you. It gives you everything you need to put it all together, and it's wonderfully internally consistent.

I bought this game at the request of a friend, way back when it came out. He told me of a top-down co-op shooter set on a spaceship, where players fight off hordes of insectoid aliens with flame and bullets. So I picked it up, messed around with it for a bit, and then decided to get into the co-op mode.

As it turns out, he was talking about Alien Swarm. Whoops.

So now that I've established my inability to hear titles properly, let's get down to business. Alien Breed is a top-down co-op shooter set on a spaceship, where players fight off hordes of insectoid aliens with flame and bullets. So...pretty close to Alien Swarm. Except Alien Swarm is free, and supports twice as many players (honestly, it's probably closer to Left 4 Dead, whereas this is closer to Teleglitch). With two comparable games available (one of which is free), does Alien Breed differentiate itself enough to be worth a play?

If the rest of the review is too long, I'll give you the gist right here: No.

In terms of gameplay, Alien Breed is...disappointingly average. There's not much that's outright bad, but there's also nothing that stands out. You shoot aliens, manage ammo, and run from waypoint to waypoint in a fashion reminiscent of driving across Nebraska with a broken GPS. Occasionally, you'll get near a waypoint only to discover that the door separating you from that waypoint is closed for poisonous gas, or fire, or because you need a fuse, or (personal favorite) because you need to shine a flashlight on the wall next to the door to fix the circuit. Naturally, this will spawn another waypoint, usually in the direction you just came from, where you can activate a terminal by holding down your spacebar for a few seconds, and then return to the previous attraction.

Speaking of interacting with terminals, you interact with a lot of terminals in this game, each of which takes somewhere between 3-5 seconds. This doesn't sound like too long, but there's such a massive number of these interactions that you probably spend one or two minutes per mission just interacting with terminals. Searching lockers or bodies also takes a three-count, and most of the bodies have nothing on them, so I just stopped bothering after the first five. One would think that a survival horror-ish game would require more careful combing for resources, but the sheer tedium puts me off. You're never in any sort of danger while you're searching bodies, so why give it an arbitrary time-gate?

The controls are pretty alright, but there's some odd decisions here too. Moving your mouse to the edge of the screen rotates your camera, but because the camera's pretty much top-down anyway, the direction of rotation feels off. You can also rotate with the Q and E (by default) buttons, but these will lock you to 45 degree intervals. The free-swinging mouse rotation reveals that this isn't an accident, as your movement is also locked to 45 degree angles, meaning that using mouse rotation means that you probably will never be walking exactly straight. You can turn off mouse rotation, but not this weird movement lock. Your aim also jitters sometimes for no obvious reason.

Mediocre to Bad

This is a game from 2010, so we'll have to cut it some slack, but Half-Life 2 was released in 2004, so some of the sins here are unforgiveable. The graphics are generally okay, but the graphics settings (aside from resolution and one ominous toggle labeled "Post-Processing Effects") are entirely absent. The art direction during gameplay segments has fallen into the low-contrast trap; the enemies are often hard to distinguish from the floor, as neither are very colorful. The art during the comic-style cutscenes looks pretty nice; it's got a cool monochromatic style going for it.

Uncustomizable and Uninspiring

The sound design is unfortunate as well: none of the weapons have much punch to them, and the enemies have about three sound effects apiece. The music is forgettable (in fact, I've already forgotten it, and it's only been turned ooff for the last 10 minutes). I would love to say more here, but...that's about all there is to say.

Doesn't Do It For Me

There are three different difficulty levels, but the difficulty doesn't vary too much between them. If you have ammo, you're good; otherwise you're dead in the water (unless you're on the lowest difficulty, in which case it doesn't matter either way). Remember what I said about resource collection being tedious? It's also the only way to get through the game while retaining your sanity.

The most unfair thing about Alien Breed is how they tricked me into buying it.

Okay?

I don't even want to play through this once.

No Comment

I started off by saying this game isn't exactly bad, but I've changed my mind. Alien Breed is bad. It's tedious, the missions are uninspired, it's no fun to look at or to play, and there's not just one, but two better games in the same vein you could be playing. The verdict is:

Just Play Teleglitch, Trust Me

Welcome back to actually being on Steam, Alan! Though you were pursued by the great terror of licensing law, you have overcome, and today stand upon the back of the world's largest digital games store once again!

We're about seven years on from the first time Alan Wake and its slightly troubling product placement first hit shelves, and it's generally aged...okay! The gameplay itself is nothing to write home about, but this game's strong suit has always been the atmosphere it conveys, and that works (almost) as well today as it did way back then. Alan Wake, if nothing else, is an interesting game. There's a lot of dos and don'ts of game design wrapped around this small-town thriller.

Alan Wake's selling point is its semi-psychological thriller roots, drawing from cult classics like Twin Peaks to create a thick, oppressive atmosphere. Did it manage that? No. What we get instead is occasionally tonally appropriate, but is mostly hammy exploration of the tropes of the genre that sometimes borders on the parodic. Characters love to reference various horror movies, there's an in-game TV show that is a fairly direct dig on The Twilight Zone, and the shadowy enemies lumber towards you telling you in no uncertain terms where the best restaurant in Bright Falls is. The game even opens with a Stephen King quote. I honestly love it; Alan Wake is a hilarious game. It's a B-movie you can play. Grab a beer, sit back, and play some Alan Wake, and you'll probably have a good time.

The pacing is often pretty slow, unfortunately. The story is paced around a series of episodes, for a bit more of that TV show illusion, but the episodes are long enough that it's hard to sit down for more than one, but short enough that just one isn't very satisfying. Most of them have long stretches of walking through woods, facing off against enemies with little staory consequence, which is odd for such a cinematic-themed game.

Lots of Fun

In comparison with Alan Wake's story, the gameplay is pretty tame. The major conceit of this game's shooting mechanics is that the enemies are all possessed by The Darkness, and you have to hit them with some sort of light source to make them vulnerable. This works pretty well, and leads to some fun encounters where you can beam enemies down with huge floodlights. The problem is that everything else is pretty boring. The shooting mechanics subscribe to the idea that you don't really need to do much aiming, which is probably a good thing when the game doesn't give you a crosshair (in the name of atmosphere), but tension suffers as a result. With the exception of the Flare Gun, which is awesome, there's not much variety to the gunplay. There are a bunch of different weapons, but the only meaningful separation between them is how much damage they deal before you have to reload. There's a segment fairly early on where you lose your revolver and you are relegated to flashlight duty while an AI partner guns everything down for you, but unfortunately, said partner has godawful aim, and routinely tries to shoot enemies that cannot be harmed. Gameplay does pick up after the first couple episodes, and there are some very standout moments, but Alan Wake is mostly a run-through-the-woods simulator.

While a lot of this game's meat was simplified for atmospheric reasons, the developers made one major, atmosphere-killing mistake. You die fairly frequently in Alan Wake, and death sets you back so little that it doesn't work as an element of tension, so every time you die, all the tension just kinda disappears. Ironically, Alan Wake would probably be a more thrilling experience if there was less of a chance of death.

Questionable

I imagine that Alan Wake was at the height of graphics in 2012, but it's not incredibly impressive today. The lighting engine looks pretty nice, and there's nothing wrong with the graphics, but 3D ages fast, and even the most loved games of that era (like Dark Souls) are showing their age. The art trends towards the realistic, which is dangerous for a game you want to last a long time, but makes sense considering Alan Wake's attachment to live-action thrillers. The place the art really shines is in the shdowy figures that make up most of the game's enemies, which have a very pleasing warped effect around them.

Not Bad

There is an enormous amount of audio recorded for this game: Character voices, every episode of Night Springs, and Alan's constant narration show that this may be the part of the game that had the most work put into it, and it shows. The voices are pretty good, generally goofy, and they do a lot to make the characters feel more alive. The music is consistently good as well; every episode ends with a well-selected song, and there's one very memorable fight that kicks the tunes into high gear. Alan Wake's sound design works towards their all-consuming atmospheric vision, and manages to capture a lot of that particular thriller feel.

Great

This is mostly a story-focused experience, but there are occasionally difficult moments, mostly involving the player's willingness to comb areas for extra resources. If you miss some of the ammo caches, you'll likely run out of bullets a few times; this doesn't make the game outright unbeatable, but it gets frustrating quickly. The game is usually pretty fair, but enemy spawns get weird sometimes. I had several enemies come out of the bushes and chop me up because I was waiting for the cinematic, slow-mo pan that usually precedes encounters. Other times, the game panned around to look at an enemy that was already too close to avoid.

Generally Good, Sometimes Frustrating

Alan Wake contains an extraordinary number of collectibles, but I'm not sure I like the game enough to go back through it, particularly considering that there are some collectibles that are impossible to get on your first playthrough. There's also an unlockable difficulty level, which might increase the overall challenge, but usually just makes the frustrating segments worse. By the end of Alan Wake, you know the story, and because the main draw is not knowing the story, there's not really any point to a second run.

Good For One Playthrough

I don't exactly love Alan Wake, but I do think it's worth a playthrough. There's a lot of drawbacks, but the few magic moments are worth experiencing, and it's at least an interesting and goofy experience. This is probably the sort of game I'd gladly pay $10 for (of course, it's currently sitting at $15, and I don't think I'd go that high). Get Alan Wake on sale, and try not to take it too seriously.

Worth a Go

I'm going out of my normal alphabetical review order to do this one. As a justification:

- I've already done everything there is to do, with the possible exception of setting a Mustard Party 2 world record, and

- I'm almost certainly not going to do it again, so I might as well write this when I'm fresh.

In any case, it's time for the world's saddest scavenger hunt!

Coming out of Life is Strange, I had quite a high opinion of DONTNOD's storytelling capabilities. Sure, the script didn't always offer the best representation of teenagers, but how high schoolers talk is one of the world's great mysteries anyway; it changes so often that even accurately written characters will be hopelessly outdated by the time the game actually comes out. The actual plot was engaging, and while the main arc was pretty fixed, there was actually a good amount of variance to your actions and their consequences. And then we got Before the Storm, which showed off exactly how important superpowers were to the narrative. The Life is Strange team didn't make Before the Storm, and as a result, it lacks some of the reasons the first one was good. Captain Spirit is a return to form, and it's keeping me hopeful for LiS 2. Let's dive into why!

This is a Telltale-format walking simulator: story is at the forefront. Captain Spirit casts you as Chris, a 9-year-old boy living with his dad in rural Oregon. While the standard Life is Strange experience is somewhat linear with occasional segments of wandering, Captain Spirit is an open-world title, complete with towers you can climb to survey the play area (this is only sort-of a joke). There is a well-defined intro and outro, but more or less everything in between can be completed in any order. Chris has a list of Awesome Things To Do Today, which are pretty much small side-quests that take you on a backstory tour of Life is Strange 2. You don't have to do any of them, but they're pretty much the entire point of the game, so you might as well.

You may have noticed that I'm not really talking about the story as much as you would expect in the segment of the review labeled Story. Unfortunately, pretty much everything I could talk about is a spoiler, and because of how short it is, just talking about one theme would spoil a solid third of the game. I will say that the story is pretty well done; I can't imagine that this is an average day in the life of Captain Spirit (there's not a lot of subtlety to be found here) but it does feel like a small adventure of investigation and discovery, and I quite enjoyed poking around and piecing together the information I could find. It's not a lot, but it works.

Good, if Heavy-Handed

The gameplay in Captain Spirit is light, as is to be expected from a walking simulator. You'll be doing a lot of walking around, looking at objects, and interacting with/listening to Chris's opinion on them. Occasionally, you'll be given the opportunity to use a Power Action, where Chris uses his latent psychic ability to turn on the TV with his brain; it's fun, but I have to assume that this is being introduced in Captain Spirit just so that we're all familiar with it in time for Life is Strange 2. The controls have slightly improved from LiS, though I don't like the use of the scroll wheel for action selection. I've also heard that some people are having trouble selecting Power Actions on certain controllers; I didn't personally have that problem, but it's worth a note.

Sparse

Dang, this game is pretty. We aren't exactly stretching the limits of Unreal 4 here, but the very capable engine is complemented beautifully by the subdued wintery tones that are splashed all over this game. The models haven't improved significantly from Life is Strange, but LiS looked pretty nice as well, and the color choice is wonderfully atmospheric. That said, there are some clipping issues, and the animations aren't always very convincing.

Great


Have you listened to Death With Dignity by Sufjan Stevens? If you haven't, you're about to. I imagine DONTNOD couldn't justify budgeting for more than three licensed songs (which makes sense, for a free game that isn't just a demo made by slurping off the first ten minutes of a paid product). As a result, Death With Dignity gets broken into its three verses and some filler, which are then dispersed in six thematically-appropriate places. There are two other songs, which are each only played once. Honestly, I don't mind this much; it sets a strong theme, and I do enjoy some Sufjan. There are a few moments where the sound design gets pretty sweet; other than that, it's standard but effective. The voice acting is...okay.

Good

While you wouldn't expect this category to fit into a review of a primarily story-related experience, there is one puzzle that was pretty ridiculous. I tried just about everything I could think of, gave up, and looked up the answer. I don't know if I missed something incredibly obvious, but don't feel bad if you can't figure out the cell-phone unlock. The answer is dumb. Other than that, the puzzles are pretty quick and easy; I solved one of them completely by accident, and then had a good laugh when I discovered how I should've found the answer.

PHONE

You can complete everything in Captain Spirit in around 90 minutes, and there is really only one way to significantly alter one of the ending sequences, so that's about it. Apparently, your decisions in this game will have some impact on Life is Strange 2, so I could see myself playing it again if those changes are big enough, but other than that, it's not something I plan to come back to.

Very Short

If you need a solid case of the sads to tide you over until Life is Strange 2, I highly recommend Captain Spirit. It won't be for everyone, but it does feel like something more than an advertisement, and it's a good exploration of characters that we'll be seeing again pretty soon.
Better Than Your Average Demo

Everybody remembers the best day in elementary/middle school: the last day. But the second best was always the Scholastic Book Fair, and it was there, back in 2005, that I bought the first game I ever bought, at the heavy (for a middle schooler) price of $25. I went home and installed it on every computer my brother and I could get our hands on, and from that day right up until we found Team Fortress 2, we loved nothing more than sitting down and knocking out a round of Age of Mythology. Vinlandsaga was a personal favorite, but really, we’d play anything. It just felt so cool to lead armies of wolves into battle, only to be driven back by Ajax, Chiron, and a small force of spearmen loyal only to Zeus. But that was almost 15 years ago; how does Age of Mythology hold up today?

Age of Mythology is a sort of spinoff of the classic Age of Empires series of Real Time Strategy games. While Age of Empires has a large selection of civilizations with limited differences, Age of Mythology started out with 3 (now 5) civilizations with major differences between them. Additionally, each civ can select between 3 Major Gods, allowing you to change up your playstyle a bit while largely having the same units available to you. Your choices of gods (major and minor) allow you some unique upgrades and units, and each also has a God Power, many of which are real gamechangers. The competitive scene for this game never took off in the same way that AoE2 did, but there’s still a reasonable following.

Age of Mythology controls like your standard RTS; mice are mandatory and hotkeys are highly recommended. It still plays great today, and there are many improvements over Age of Empires 2 that make it feel more like a modern RTS. Mythology includes an Attack Move button (AoE2 didn’t have one of those until The Forgotten, and it wasn’t very good even after it was added), auto-queuing on unit production buildings, easier waypoint movement, and superior pathfinding...most of the time. Improvements like these allow faster play for mid-level players, and Age of Mythology is just about as speedy as modern offerings like Starcraft 2. There are some balance issues due to the drastic difference between civs, but that doesn’t really matter until you hit the highest level of play, and proper use of less-potent abilities can be the deciding factor in an economic boom strategy, or perhaps a deadly surprise attack. Overall, Age of Mythology still feels great today. The caveat is that online play often lags pretty heavily for the first minute or so of a match, especially when playing with/against a slow computer; I’ve also run into some desynch issues that boot you out of the game, but only against someone who had mods.
Still Great

The Age of Mythology campaign is long, but only about half of the missions are especially interesting (shout-out to Tug of War). It’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff. The expansions are a bit better, but not too much. In general, I’m not a huge fan of RTS campaigns; the Blizzard ones tend to be pretty good, but even then, the multiplayer/skirmish mode is always the major draw in any RTS.
Nothing Special

It’s from 2003, so don’t expect much in terms of polygon count. That said, the art direction is very functional; units have distinct looks, and the colors are bright enough to easily identify units in a pitched battle. It won’t win any beauty contests, but Mythology’s graphics complement the gameplay well.
It Works

There isn’t a great deal of variety in the music, but it’s a fun little selection, and I always get hyped when I’m laying siege to a town and the battle music starts up. Expect to hear a lot of PROSTAGMA
YU I ERR
IERIFERRE
HEES VULLI
METALEFS
FRITOMOS

The game also does a decent job of warning you when your units are being attacked, but I do wish they would save it for when there’s something really important going on, rather than when Villager #31 sees a wolf.
Memorable

On the whole, I'd say Mythology is fairly easy to learn compared to Empires 2; features like auto-queue, infinite farms, and fixed settlement placement do a lot to make the new player experience a better one. At the top level, I'm not sure the game is as balanced as AoE2, but there's still a startling amount of diversity in top player civilization/god choice, so that counts for something. If you're coming in from newer RTS titles like Starcraft 2, Mythology is probably one of the better choices in the series for multiplayer.
Middling to Learn, Impossible to Master

I still love this game as much as I did when I was 10. The netcode is slow, the pathfinding is sometimes questionable, but it's got an undeniable nostalgic charm. I enjoy how different the civs feel to play and to play against, and every time I get bored of one god, I can always shake it up with another. The stuttering in the early game and occasional desynchs are unfortunate, but I can look past that for an overall wonderful and friendly RTS.
Great with Flaws

As far as I can tell, about 20 billion people played only this game throughout their childhood, which would certainly do a lot to explain its enduring popularity. Is it still as good in the modern age? Let's find out!

Unfortunately, I've been informed that I've played far too little to actually have opinions, so we'll see what happens.

Age of Empires 2 could be considered the classic RTS, competing with games like Warcraft 3 and Brood War to bring the genre into the mainstream. All of these games still have a pretty solid following today, which is good because apparently people have forgotten how to make RTSs with any sort of staying power. There's a lot of cool ideas out there these days, but the execution has generally been lacking, so RTSs are selling less and less, and thus fewer big-budget ones are made. It's a vicious cycle, but at least we can go back to the classics!

Unfortunately, these games are often impenetrable for newcomers. Warcraft 3 is probably the easiest one to pick up, and even that is tricky, between the extremely specific dominant strategies and the very involved micro necessary to succeed.

AoE2 has some relics of its time; pathfinding is iffy, gameplay starts slow, the number of units you can have selected is capped, and many quality-of-life features common in more modern RTSs (auto-queues, waypoints, and so forth) are either weirdly integrated or entirely absent. That said, it still plays fairly well, and expansions have slowly been adding some of these features in, so it's probably even better than it was back in the day. Unfortunately, multiplayer tends to have a lot of lag, even on decent internet.

Has Some Hitches

The entire game is sprite-based, so the art has aged pretty well, all things considered. Depending on what color your opponents are, it's sometimes difficult to pick out units on the map, which is problematic in a setting where you need to make quick decisions while managing several things at once. Other than that, it's functional and pretty nice to look at.

Good

I honestly can't really remember anything notable in this category, so I can't say much. Maybe I just haven't played enough.

Forgettable

For people like me, who didn't play this way back when and are used to more modern RTSs, this game is hard to get into. There's people who've been consistently playing this for close to 20 years, and the strategies they use have been optimized to an extreme extent. The game is fairly well balanced, and there's a reasonable community dedicated to helping people learn the game, but it's still real tough. Also, if you don't own the expansions and play with people who do, you are limited to a small rotation of civs, so you can't get consistent with one civ even if it's one that you technically "own". I'm really not sure why this is a thing.

Tough But Fair, If You Have The Expansions

This is a tricky one to call. I'd recommend AoE2 with some reservations: you have to be willing to put in a whole lot of learning time, and have some friends who are willing to either do the same or teach you. And even then, it'll be rough.

Recommended With Reservations

You can no longer buy this game even if you want to (and you don't, trust me) but because I'm doing the Whole Library Review challenge that's been trending recently, I'm honor-bound to review this travesty. I'll try to keep it short and brutal.

Like most high schools, my alma mater (I don't know if you can use that term for a high school, but here we are) had a small selection of computer classes. These were introductory programming and applications classes running on budget machines in a large lab with a very hands-off teacher, so we naturally had a lot of time on our hands, and we spent most of that playing games. While we could occasionally get the lab in on a big Halo LAN, most of the time people were more interested in getting some quality Netflix/Facebook in, so I would lead a small but dedicated crew into one of the many Ace of Spades servers cropping up around that time. This was back in 2011-2012ish, around when Ace of Spades 0.7x dropped, and it was glorious. The latest new weapons had just dropped (SMG and Shotgun, though nobody used the latter), and there were theoretically gamemodes that weren't CTF but nobody played them. It was a simpler time.

And then Jagex got their filthy paws on it and the game was immediately changed for the worse.

Here's a concept that Jagex seemed to miss: when you've got a slow-moving, terrain focused game, introducing elements of mobility that completely subvert the terrain (A jetpack? Really?) is a bad move. Jagex went into this remake with the idea that more is always better, and completely missed the point of Ace of Spades while they did it. The original game was simple and fun, with some lag issues, a bit of hacking, and an engine that really doesn't like multiple monitors. And honestly, Jagex could've probably taken the game, fixed these issues, and released it. Instead, they added far too many misguided elements, and (here's the kicker) didn't fix any of the above problems. In fact, this release runs even worse than the beta, despite hardly being a titan of graphical prowess.

I went back and played the original game before I started this review (if you're interested, there's a small community under the name Build and Shoot that still runs 0.75). It's still laggy, still has problems with hackers, and still doesn't work with multiple monitors or different resolutions. And guess what? It's still fun. This is punctuated by there being ~60 active players on Build and Shoot, and a grand total of 6 on Ace of Spades.
A Significant Downgrade

This was also changed for the worse in this release. It looks slightly better to the casual observer, but the original AoS had more thought put into its style. Back in the olden days, AoS had one original map that saw more play than any other: a cliff leading down into a river. Across the river lay the Green Team's base, while at the top of the cliff the Blue Team had theirs. And this worked incredibly well, because the colors were taken into account with the balancing. From Green's perspective, it's difficult to see a Blue at the top of the hill, because it's close to the color of the sky, but this advantage was immediately negated when that Blue started descending the cliff. The same goes in the other direction as well: a Blue, viewing from above, would find it hard to see a Green against the ground, because the ground was also green, but as soon as that Green tried to cross the river, they became much easier to see. The many wacky costumes added to the Jagex version were not only a drastic departure from the game's aesthetic, they messed with balance as well.
Looks Nicer, Plays Worse

The sound design is relatively unchanged, but what caught me off guard the most was the menu music. It's obnoxious, sure, but (at least for me) it only played in my left ear. I have no idea how nobody noticed this, or how this even happened, but it at least says something about the amont of effort put into this release.
Only Slightly Worse

Jagex just didn't care about this one, and for proof, I need only look at the Store Page. They advertise revolutionary features like "Set your lobby to invite only, friends, or open, and also have full control over who joins with the host ‘kick’ function" and "Choose the map you want to play", stuff that's standard for any multiplayer game released...just about ever. The page is also riddled with punctuation errors. Jagex doesn't seem to have learned from Runescape, so I'll spell it out for them simply: If you take an existing agame and make it worse, people are just goint to want the old one back.
Real Bad