Análises recentes de Snowmind

First of all, let me just say that Sunless Sea is not the typical game I play. Nevertheless, as I was impressed by FTL for a while and seeing the generous free weekend offer by Failbetter Games, I decided to sample this popular story driven title. I'll try and keep this review brief, so here's my personal take on Sunless Sea after about 10hrs of on/off-line gameplay on my laptop over the weekend:

Pros:
+ Compelling story, with many secrets to be discovered; persistent storyline even after loss of the captain (next captain inherits some stats)
+ Great atmosphere, with a touch on the creepy side
+ Randomised zee map, except for a few story driven places; adds to its longevity
+ Some very funny quests and the ability to romance your officers with unexpected results

Cons:
- Story becomes convoluted after a while, perhaps due to all the side quests.
- The atmosphere was great at first but after ~5hrs gameplay, due to repetitiveness, I found myself mostly skimming through the choices without bothering to read them at length when making port. To survive you really need fuel and supplies, so the rest seem unimportant when your only goal (short term at least) is to explore as much as possible and get paid by the Admiralty (only reliant source of income).
- The graphics and effects are passable, making Sunless Sea rise just a step above a textual MUD adventure (feels like old school RPG).
- Some obvious balance problems, especially at the start, adding to the difficulty of the game (grinding enemies became necessary for my initial survival). After a few perma-deaths, I finally and only by luck managed to get a big payday, which in turn helped with upgrades, making Sunless Sea considerably more fun. Quests hardly make you any money (echoes) and trading is non-existent when you lack funds and have a tiny 40 spaces hold, shared with your supplies and fuel (read a few excellent guides along the way from workshop to progress faster).
- The darkness of the top-down gothic design adds to the atmosphere but after a while it all starts to look the same, port after port (I would have liked to see some more distinct vibrancy represented by different cultural and color map changes).

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TL;DR: All in all myself and family quite enjoyed Sunless Sea for what it was, a dark survival exploration adventure with a good story. I would definitely recommend it to all fans of the genre, especially at the heavily discounted price currently going on Steam. In addition a big thumbs up to Failbetter Games for providing us with a free weekend to sample their game and wish more developers would follow suit to their example.

ABZU is a short but beautiful underwater adventure. The casual gameplay and intriguing story, make you feel relaxed going with the flow, following the jet-stream to wherever it takes you, without pressure to explore every nook and cranny to complete it (storyline about 2hrs; all achievements around 10-15hrs).

You play as the diver, a revered since ancient times being, that protects the oceans and all life within from giant technology structures siphoning energy from the waters (story clues pictured on muriel pictograms scattered throughout ABZU).

Pros:
- Beautiful underwater environments teaming with life
- Some amazing cinematic sequences
- Great soundtrack and music throughout
- Easy relaxing gameplay (controller recommended)
- Touching storyline with eco-friendly parallels
- Steam achievements that are not too hard to attain

Cons:
- Occasional frame-rate drops (PC)
- Ambiguous story narrative
- Too short storyline
- Couldn't ride/interact with the polar bear ;-)

TL;DR: I initially thought of ABZU as a distraction from my Subnautica exploits but enjoyed it thoroughly nevertheless and would recommend it on its own right to anyone who enjoys casual adventuring topped with heaps of mystery.

Cry of Fear is a first person horror game which provides some fairly good scares in a mostly deserted scandinavian background. Having played the game for over 20hrs, unfortunately I gave up in the end, as a number of parts leading to the ending made no sense to me, were frustrating and seemingly random (and that's putting it mildly, without giving away any spoilers, a quick example off the top of my head would be jumping across a path leading to two areas and one kills you).

Bottom line, with so many better alternatives, I could not recommend Cry of Fear. I played mostly offline over the holidays and found it to be barely OK, with lots of promise initially but did not enjoy, growing more and more dissapointed the further I played through. Perhaps you'll find it more of your cup of tea and if you are a fan of the genre, it is free to play so give it a go and see what you think for yourself.

I wanted to sample The Expendabros to fill in the void left behind by BroForce. It provides the same simple unadulterated non-stop pixelated fun (best enjoyed with a controller) with each level lasting 2-3mins filled with explosions and bad guys in a highly destructible environment! Great to relieve the stress at the end of the day, with some hilarious action topped up by special moves and occasional muscle flexing!! Only negative I can think of is that it does get a little repetitive but this can be easily overlooked on a free game serving so much entertainment. 09/10

Hook is a short but brilliant indie puzzle game, which utilises logic to solve increasingly difficult puzzles in a minimalist approach environment. The design of each level (50 levels in total) is used to progressively teach you how to solve more complex circuit like logic structures. Hook self-cleans after itself of all the "sub-parts" of the puzzle which are finished on the level you are working on, making it clearer and easier to understand and solve even the most complex of puzzles. That alone gives you a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with each level you complete. The only negative about Hook is just how short it is, which perhaps future DLC(s) could fix.

At a very reasonable price for a couple hours of fun, Hook is highly recommended.

I purchased GRID recently on steam to race with friends and relive some of the great racing moments we had when it was first released. Unfortunately, we found out that GRID is showing its age, requiring a lot of manual tweaking just to run under a modern PC (x64 win10). And even then, the handling felt loose and lagging on a wheel config and the force feedback so linear was better off (G27), with the occasional FPS dips here and there (1080p @ 60fps). So in all honesty, it would be hard to recommend an aging GRID game, if you don't already have it, with so many other newer racing titles offering the same or superior experience for a similar price (see from the same franchise e.g. Grid Autosport & Grid 2). Nevertheless, I will give it the thumbs up, cause it has given me countless hours of online racing mayhem when it used to be current.

Baseball is one of my favourite sports; correction, holding the top up there with racing that I love. Yet, I could not find any baseball games, which would provide the gameplay satisfaction I experience when I play the sport out in the field with my mates. I've tried out most baseball titles I could get my hands on, such as Out of the Park, Hardball, RBI, MLB, MVP, High Heat etc etc

As such, I was reluctant getting Super Mega Baseball: Extra Innings but based on feedback I decided to do so. And it didn't disappoint. Despite it's cartoony demeanour, it is fun to play. SMB has customisation of players & teams through a team editor, a good tutorial, adjustable difficulty levels, exhibition and season modes, with local co-op (handicapped). well most of everything that one would expect from a decent baseball game.

On the other hand, it doesn't come with real rosters (huge effort changing every player manually) or leagues (blame MLB licensee Sony?), which is acceptable for an arcade style casual session. In addition, it has no online or any type of multiplayer modes (besides local coop), which could have been the stepping stone to make SMB a great game.

Despite its few short-comings, Super Mage Baseball: Extra Innings is a good game to enjoy, in short bursts, baseball fan or not.

I am an avid sandbox, open world/building/crafting, survival/adventure/rpg player. I've tried every title out there and supported almost every early access I thought it had potential. Off the top of my head some that I sunk many hours into, were Rust (frustrating), Planet Explorers (many bugs), Space Engineers (no content), Subnautica (pretty good) etc etc

And then there is Empyrion. Admittedly the only one that I keep coming back to, again and again. In a short time it's been in early access, it has surpassed all of the above. Stable enough to be enjoyable in long stints, with deep survival gameplay elements which are actually fun, building/crafting in reasonable time which you can enjoy, it ticks most of the boxes. Unlike SE, PEs etc its not frustrating to play and that is in opinion what sets Empyrion apart.

Some of the pros are, the POIs (points of interest) on planets, the crafting/building, the great steam workshop integration and its replayablility. As an early release it does have its bugs but nothing really game stopping.

Bottom line, Empyrion is a lot of fun and highly recommended. 7/10

As a passionate early adopter of survival, sandbox games, I was quite excited when I first got Planet Explorers. Having play-tested the game all the way through it's early alpha and beta phases, on release I decided to start from scratch and complete the story mode without prejudice.

First things first to add some perspective. As a very ambitious sandbox game from a small indie developer, Planet Explorers has exceeded expectation and delivered what was promised. Of course it is rough around the edges and needs polishing here and there but it is playable from start to finish without any major/game breaking problems.

Pros:
- Good optimization (on a laptop with old-ish GTX860m max settings, a stable 50-60fps; alpha/beta < 30fps)
- Solid tutorial
- Compelling story line unraveling at your own pace
- Adventure mode with some unpredictable/surprising results
- World editor for custom tailored multiplayer games
- Voxel world implementation to par with alternative bigger titles
- Item editor/workshop implementation (easy to use component/parts based design)
- Colony building; finished the game with minimal protection but a proper base (from workshop?) should simplify defense
- Multiplayer co-op/versus games (re-playability and fun)
- Good value for money (40+ hrs to finish story mode, with some workshop experimentation)

Cons:
- UI looks dated and dialog font is ugly; some conversations sound computerised (or badly acted?)
- When a big battle ensues, fps suffers, e.g. base/colony defense (surprisingly turning grass on/off had no impact!)
- Tutorial should be part of the story mode (skippable), as to ease new players into the game (spaceship views of Maria etc)
- Story line is linear and predictable. Near end of game becomes a little grindy. No re-playability value here
- Limited workshop implementation, ugly item icons, fiddly; no in-game steam workshop access
- Item editor is cumbersome when you try to export an item in game (back and forth switching to create required components). A shopping list implementation would made a big difference before completing and exporting a complex item.
- Voxel world works great for extracting resources, not so for filling up holes/terrain etc (box voxels, no smoothing)
- No accurate damage to complex creations (e.g. helicopter 30% damaged costs almost 100% in repairs but it returns 80%+ mats when recycled!! Doh!)
- Atrocious AI pathing!!! The biggest flaw of PE!! Position yourself next to a hill or even better build some quick dirt walls around elite enemies (e.g. robots) and they fumble about left and right while your covered turrets take them down at their liesure ;-(
- Some over-powered editor creations, make mince-meat of elite enemies (I've used skeli helicopter 190kph, M16 etc etc)
- A number of broken quests (burial, fish in the lake, metamateri for some off the top of my head).
- Broken follower commands; stay doesn't work at all, defend often interferes with quests (dismiss to avoid shoot outs)
- VIP colonists with temperament; can't get any proper training in, as often they are busy (doing what exactly?)

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TD;LR: Despite the above short-comings, I would recommend Planet Explorers as a well worth "value for money" experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait for the sequel (?). I believe it should have stayed in beta to the end of 2016 to fix all the bugs still lurking but nevertheless it is what it is. For creative people and custom PE game hosts, it would provide countless hours of fun. 7/10

Over a decade ago, when I first tried out Far Cry, I was astonished about the standards FPS gaming had reached and shocked on how good the enemy AI can be. Unfortunately, didn't manage to finish it, cause the spec requirements at the time were insane. Even at low (medium?) settings my PC would howl and come to a not very comfortable fps level to be able to keep up with the game.

Today, even though my laptop can play Far Cry at max res and fps with ease, I still find it hard to beat that dastardly enemy AI. Reliving Jack's moments at the tropical paradise, I thought I was finally experienced enough to easily handle medium Far Cry difficulty level and I was so wrong. After 6hrs and not even a quorter of the way through the game...

And that is the essence of Far Cry. Even after so many years, it still holds its own and provides a worthy challenge, at par with the likes of Half Life 2, Bioshock, CoD4 etc with great level design, plot that is pacing to your progress and an intelligent AI that plans, adapts and responds to each of the player's actions.

This time around, I will be finishing Far Cry for sure and then perhaps re-try at ta higher difficulty level while trying out some of the numerous mods out there that add hugely to its re-playability. Shame about the shutdown of the multiplayer services but still a highly recommended classic to all fps lovers.