Recenzii recente de Snowmind

Toren is one of these indie games that once you finish it, three things pop into your mind all at the same time. One, wow but was that it? Two, what was that all about?? And finally, no way I'm playing this again, even though it was kinda touching and impressive overall (frustration over).

Toren is one of these games, that you have to try it out and either you love it or hate it! A visual novel with action or perhaps a short adventure with a visual story. Emphasis on visual, cause this experience felt like a walk through a psychedelic dream or better someone's nightmare. Definitely someone somewhere was on drugs when envision Toren, as it felt like one of these trips when you are high.

The game itself is just under 2hrs long, which is good cause besides the compelling short story, it is at times frustrating having to repeat whole sections (checkpoint system) to figure out a puzzle (not that hard, except the infuriating salt tracing in the dark with lighting illuminating every 30sec). In addition, the seemingly disjointed story jumping, is followed by frequent wtf exclamations.... same as when you die and go to wise-cracking gramps heaven for one of his many motivational quotes: "Death is certain. Truth is not. Embrace the uncertainty of life".

Despite all that, big thumbs up to the Brazilian indie studio Swordtales for the unexpected experience. Would I recommend it? Yes, I would but like marmite, you'll either love it or hate it (with passion). Try it out and find out; I'm still making my mind up.... (I have two card drops left)

ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West is an action adventure game that caught me by surprise. Purchased on sale sometime ago, it stayed in my backlog while my expectations of it were quite low and had completely forgotten about it. Trying it out today for the first time, I have to say it blew my mind away in such a way that Resident Evil 4 did 10 years ago on the Wii and its introduction of motion controls.

Being a console port of course the usual gripes follow it, such as no screen/gpu options to fine-tune, bearable keyboard/mouse controls, fixed fps, some awkward camera views etc. I found that my modest/dated laptop (nVidia GTX860m) managed to deliver the 60fps @ 1080p resolution with just few and afar fps drops when there was a lot of action going on (xsplit indicated drops to 45fps). To add to that, initially playing with the keyboard/mouse combo it was unsatisfying and switching to DS4 gamepad it made a noticeable difference.

Despite the above, I thoroughly enjoyed ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West. The scripted action was well placed, with a number of almost "on the rails" events that unfold to tell the story and the graphics galore sequences that accompany each step, were a pleasure to watch. Not to forget the enemy finishing moves (takedowns) which were great fun when the timing would trigger them!! On normal difficulty I found Enslaved relative easy, with over 2.5hrs non-stop immersion gaming till the first death and only a couple sticky points to require multiple re-runs (village top & leviathan power couples). Part of the game's charm for me was the amazing motion and voice acting of Monkey by Andy Serkis (Gollum?) along with Lindsay Shaw (Tripitaka), which brought the story of Wu Cheng'en's excellent novel, Journey to the West, into it's futuristic re-imagination. Having read the original, I was pleasantly surprised remembering all the references, roles and parallels of the original story.

Not a game for everyone but highly recommended nevertheless.

I've come back to Torchlight (steam) having completed it already when it first came out. And even after so many years, it's still fun to play. With the "Ultimate Torchlight Mod-Pack" installed, it's like a fresh new game with some excellent custom classes to mess around with (Jedi Knight and Santa Claus my current favourites). And lets not forget, the integration of steam cloud saving, means that if you get bored again you can always pick it up down the line without having to grind everything from start. Brilliant!

ORION: Prelude is an excellent FPS man vs beast filler. An easy to pick up game, with hoots of fun to be had if you happen to tag along with friends or a good co-op team. Nothing beats taking down a T-Rex with a light saber or mowing a horde of little compsognathus's in slow motion from an "atlantis aktirak" inspired single seater! The game does have its problems, e.g. occasional clipping at spawn places but these can be overlooked for the fun and silliness it provides. It's free, so get it and join in the fun.

A very short but OK visual novel, with limited but OK art, under-developed but OK characters and luck-luster ending. Written in the Sky is free and it does come with a short scene of adult material but that alone is not enough to lift it for a recommendation, perhaps just a good initial effort mention.

Medusa's Labyrinth is a demonstrator of what could be/have been a great FPS/Horror/Adventure/"Other tags here" game. Starting at a slow but atmospheric pace, the story is unravelled in the form of notes left about the environment. A couple glaring problems encountered which took away the shine from the game for me.

Firstly there was no obvious path (expected of a demo) on where the notes were laid out (no logical placement). Searching every inch in a game which you know won't be attached to, subtracted rather than adding to the story (after a while I gave up looking for the rest of the notes). Secondly, as others mentioned, the impossible foes and the flimsy and of little use bow. And lastly, the optimisation or rather lack of, as for a pretty empty and static scenery, it really demands quite a bit of "oomph" to render.

Still, I enjoyed Medusa's Labyrinth for what it was and looking forward to see what comes next...

After having played a number of different choice paths, mainly for the achievements, I can say that Elisa: The Innkeeper - Prequel is an interesting and quite a bit of light fun for a visual novel. There is a lot more to this game depending on the binary choices you make. And this is my chief complaint. A lot of the material is wasted unless you play multiple times and take different paths, as the choice points are way too far apart.

All in all, I enjoyed reading through a number of paths in regarding the "kind Price", the "tempered Prince" and the "naughty Prince" storyline paths. Strangely enough, to put the novel's opening argument at rest, Elisa is not the protagonist in this prequel!

Will keep an eye for the finished product.

Brilliant little platform adventure gem from a small indie team. It is free but certainly well worth money for the experience (needs a donation option).

With responsive controls, excellent map design (bug free which is rare these days), a mysterious atmosphere and serene background music, it was a pleasure playing as the little totem gathering relics and tibetan mantras.

My only complain would be that it was too short (about an 1hr for all achievements) and felt like the first level of a bigger game, which left me wanting more. Highly recommended.

Terraria is a by now a classic sandbox 2D adventure game, which demonstrates after all these years that a good game doesn't have to be reliant on fancy graphics to succeed. It has paved the way to so many other copycat games and provided countless hours of fun to many. But the most amazing fact is that it gets content updates from Re-Logic still todate!! That long term support alone deserves the full asking price, which isn't much anyways. Highly recommended.

A java based survival game, which currently Subnautica has completely outshined in every aspect possible. And despite the fact that there are some minor problems (window mode text clipping, some sounds out of place etc), I would still recommend it, cause it has in a way paved the way for other survival titles. The downside is that it's just too short and so much potential seems to have been missed out, as development on FarSky has stopped a long time ago. If it's on sale, grab it as a quick filler.