Recenzii recente de SinusPi

Pros: addictive, requires creative thinking. I won't be looking at slipways the same again!

Cons: HORRIBLE interface with no undo or tweaking - one mistake and you're starting that 6-leg roundabout diamond switchback interchange from scratch. Also, random crashes, again making you start from scratch.

A deceptively simple platformer... with a twist. Literally. The main gameplay mechanic you'll be using in this little game is twisting the whole level clockwise and back, or just parts of it, or... You'll see. The graphics are mainly procedural - or at least they look like it - so, combined with a spacey, synthetic soundtrack the whole thing feels like a playable oldschool demoscene intro. To an '80s kid, that's a big plus - especially since there's a cute surprise at the very last level. Definitely worth spending one evening on.

First and foremost: this is NOT a Blair Witch story. Plain and simple. There's a creepy forest, there are flickering flashlights and things lurking in the shadows, there are broken cameras and tapes, and of course there are stick effigies and a character refers to "her" - but these are just visuals, ultimately having no real bearing on the plot. It's clear from the first few minutes of the game (so not much of a spoiler) that the protagonist is a disturbed war veteran with a history of delusions and heavy PTSD, so any and all "supernatural events" are immediately classified as products of his damaged mind. So instead of delving into the secrets of the forest, discovering ways to overcome "magical" obstacles in clever ways, the player is sent into several hours of post-traumatic hallucinations, complete with firefights in middle-Eastern ruins, running from bombs and collecting dog tags. And worst of all, it doesn't properly escalate from mildly creepy through disturbing into downright scary - it pretty much starts at "deranged" and just stays there. The addition of the signature Blair Witch stickmen makes no sense plot-wise, either - they're just there for the player to destroy (or to leave them alone, but the reason for that is never really explained).

Then there are the endings. On the first playthrough you're pretty much guaranteed to get the "bad" ending, because... you're playing a mystery game which involves picking up items, and the only way to get the "good" ending is to NOT pick up certain things, again without any explanation. And no, you can't put them back, so one misclick and you're locked into the bad ending.

To top it off, the "camera shake" effect is way, way, way abused. I know it's supposed to be part of the "Blair Witch franchise", but wandering around for minutes with a permanently shaky screen is guaranteed to induce nausea instead of fear.

All in all - if you're into creepy forests, play "Through the Woods" or "Hellblade". If you're into PTSD issues, play "Spec Ops: The Line". As for "Blair Witch"-iness, even the old "Rustin Parr" flop of a game had more witch in it.

Although vastly superior to SpaceChem and Shenzhen I/O in terms of graphical appeal, and quite fun to explore in the first levels, this Zachlike starts falling short the further it goes. The playing field is unlimited and there's no restriction on cycles or costs, so you could build machines as crude and bruteforcing as possible, and still pass the levels. Where SpaceChem and Shenzhen both ultimately had some interactive elements to spice up the gameplay - boss fights or gamepad-like input - Opus has only the fairly simple production puzzles. And then there's the story, which - compared to the sci-fi thriller of SpaceChem, or the tongue-in-cheek corporate dystopia of Shenzhen - wraps up in a few hardly inspiring dialogue scenes, failing to build up in any way.

Thumbs up for the concept and the overall playability, but not so much in terms of difficulty, variety or story.

Nutshell: If you're into adventures of magical or mythical animals, look elsewhere. Way elsewhere. "Ori and the Blind Forest" or "Seasons of the Fall" or perhaps the upcoming "Spirit of the North" will be your thing. If you're into "metaphor simulators", in which your gameplay only mirrors actual events and the further you play, the more sense it will make, go play "Vanishing of Ethan Carter" or "Dreaming Sarah".

This game is about two hours of simply running vast distances around needlessly large levels, collecting "stars" spread far and wide, while listening to a voiceover commentary about some guy's childhood and sad family issues. The fox you play has pretty much no story of her own, aside from looking for her missing cubs. There are no multiple layers to the story, there are no plot twists, there aren't any clever links between the fox's adventures and the voiceover man's life, unless you count passing or digging up items on which the voiceover guy may or may not comment. The game doesn't even try to "show, not tell" - the very first lines of the game sell its premise, having the man's wife wonder if his foxy dream may be related to what he's going through (how exactly does searching for missing cubs relate to reminiscing a childhood and estranged father issues?).

Beautiful screenshots accompanied by atmospheric music is just about the only redeeming quality of the game. Other than that, it's a short and poorly voiced audiobook accompanied by a pretty but tedious four-pawed walking simulator. The overall feeling is that the author made a game as a way of coping with some personal emotional issues, and that's fine for expressing grief or something, but not an excuse for marketing it as a product.

A pretty short puzzler, beautiful graphically, but with puzzles of the rather simplistic variety. Some puzzle concepts are blatantly repeated (guide a ball through a small maze with moving parts, rotate view to align shapes, spell word given as clue on tumblers, rotate parts of key to match weird keyhole), and some aren't puzzles at all and just consist of putting a key into a lock. It isn't a bad game, it's just too simple - I prefer puzzles that are more sophisticated and more difficult.

"Scalak" to układanka na spostrzegawczość, z prostymi elementami logicznymi. Oprawa graficzno-dźwiękowa jest bardzo zgrabna, interfejs spójny i intuicyjny, a kolejne zagadki poprawnie stopniowo wprowadzają nowe elementy do rozgrywki, zatem czas spędzony nad grą zdecydowanie będzie przyjemny. Dla weterana gier logicznych o dobrej wyobraźni przestrzennej gra wystarczy jednak na jakieś 2 godziny zabawy, gdyż poziom trudności nie jest specjalnie wysoki i większość zagadek stawia na zauważenie kolejności układania elementów - po wykorzystaniu pierwszego z nich w zasadzie nie można się już pomylić ani zapędzić w ślepą alejkę. Natomiast dla młodszych lub mniej doświadczonych graczy będzie doskonałą rozrywką na jeden lub dwa wieczory.

Cantina Deluxe has nothing on Cafe.

The good old Shufflepuck Cafe, when I played it back in another age on a Mac Classic in my school's computer room, was immensely challenging, with each character taking serious skill to beat. Each had their distinct play style, each responded perfectly to some moves and were susceptible to others, each served in semi-predictable or totally unpredictable ways, and all the opponents were ranked from easiest to impossibly hard, and rightfully so. Maybe there was nothing else to the game, it was pretty simple after all, but the gameplay made up for the simplicity.

Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe introduced 3-D graphics, in VR for those so equipped, and added tons of extras - a multitude of mallets and pucks and "embodiments" to choose from, quests, missions, collectibles, and let's not forget special attacks... Too bad that the core gameplay fell far, far short behind the original's. All the opponents have exactly the same core difficulty level - even the newbies can successfully defend against fast cross-courts and rebounds, and even the boss occasionaly fails to catch a slow shot. They differ only with their serve technique (perfectly predictable after 2 or 3 rounds), special moves (also perfectly predictable, except for Phan-Le's "cannonball", but those turn matches against him into mindless smashfests along one side, until he finally misses). Also the concept of mastering special moves is completely useless, as opponents randomly either defend against lightning fast specials, or hopelessly fail to hit a technique executed by accident and slow as a snail.

Then there's the progression, represented by collecting points, credz and completing quests. Again, however, they're ridiculous in design: "boss" missions, completed to collect spaceship quests, are simple "reach 15 points" matches, of which I have not lost even one as a whole; characters' quests, in turn, often involve winning over a dozen points in "survival" mode against an opponent, which is far more time-consuming (considering opponents being as predictable as described above). And while the easy spaceship missions award game-finishing items, the hard survival matches yield points and rewards ten times smaller than a single match against any high-level opponent. Oh, and the final boss of bosses? He's just as hopeless, his only power is that he switches between styles of all the other characters with each ball played.

But an experienced player should easily complete the game by beating all the opponents, right? Nope. The spaceship parts take credz (cash) to obtain, and those are collected by grinding, that is playing hundreds, thousands even, of boring, repetitive matches against inept opponents.

Bottom line? Avoid this, if you expect a challenge similar to the old Shufflepuck Cafe. This remake is a shameful disgrace, just wrapped in pretty graphics.

This is a very simple platformer, with the girl protagonist visiting various completely oddball locations, connected using ridiculous portals and doorways, often witnessing or causing someone's grisly demise - so, obviously, and as the title says, it represents some sort of dream. However, one would naturally expect it all to somehow make sense in the end - the locations, items and characters either nicely corresponding to some psychological constructs, or resembling objects from the waking world. And this is where this game's premise falls completely flat: it has NO conclusion. Sarah dreams, visits weird locations, gathers silly items... and then just wakes up. The only thing that makes some sort of sense is that one of the locations features a crashed car and Sarah's body next to it, so there is a hint as to why she's unconscious in a hospital. But... that's it. Nothing else in the game has any apparent connection to the protagonist's history at all.

Don't play it in hopes of seeing a "simple platformer with a deep idea". It's just wacky with no clever scheme behind it, sadly.

For a simple, linear indie game it does have a bit of a gothic atmosphere, but the bland voice acting, in-your-face references and "plot twists" visible from a mile away didn't help. However, it only takes an hour to complete - it was worth its €0.70 on a sale, but the price tag of €6.99 is a joke.