A Mango's Opinion of Games

Personal Opinions about Games, and an attempt to review them. Let me know what you think, I'd like to hear what others have to say about these games

[m4ng0games]

A Review of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II

In which there is a lot of emptiness and frustration

Isometric adventure games, like this one, Torchlight, and Path of Exile, are my jam. They have all the loot and slaughter I could ever want in a game. But this one is just so...lacking, for a variety of reasons.

Let's get on with the good stuff first. It looks nice, I guess. The steampunk atmosphere and colorful enemy varieties were able to keep me visually interested, and the skill trees were very interesting indeed. Van Helsing (the avatar) has very pretty armor sets, and the three classes from which you can choose from have a variety of ways to crush your foes through aforementioned skill trees. Additionally, the banter between Helsing and his ghostly companion, Katarina, are interesting enough, and you can tell that the developers had a blast adding in a bunch of random nerd culture references. The best thing about it is probably the seemingly random tower defense missions. It might be because I already enjoy tower defense, but I found these sections to be where the game shined the brightest. The steampunk aesthetic lent itself perfectly to the towers design, and they even had little secrets that you could unlock by building certain towers in certain places.

Now for the problems. First of all, the game just sounds and moves....wrong. Guns have a convincing blast, sure, but the rest of the sounds are simply lackluster. Shooting fireballs and calling down lightening strikes sound like they are muted, and swords sound like un-sharppened cutlery attempting to cleave a 2x4 in half. Next, the characters move like they literally have a stick up their but. Katarina moves as a ghost should, but Helsing trundles along like his torso is made out of brick: static and more lifeless than his ghost.

The story is similarly off. After the defeat of the previous enemy, Helsing is suddenly attacked by another adversary, General Harker. The only problem is, we only see Harker in posters during the loading screens and at the very end of the game. He never speaks and we never see him do anything, so he seems like more of a plot point than a villain.

The worst part of the game was the loot, or the lack thereof. I can understand the developers wanting people to play the first game, but starting a character in this game was...difficult, to say the least. You start off with some regular gear, but I was hard pressed to find anything else until several hours into the game. And I don't mean that the items were bad, I mean there weren't any to use. At all. Enemies at the beginning occasionally dropped potions, and rare mobs dropped things every so often, but I was so starved for equipment I found myself nearly dying at every encounter.

All in all, despite having a really cool setting and aesthetic, Helsing was quite a disappointment. I guess having high standards from games like Path of Exile have kind of stunted my expectations for this genre. Basically, get Path or Torchlight II, both games are much better, and one of them is free.

[m4ng0games]

A Review of Typing of the Dead: Overkill

A wonderful romp in a shitty zomb...erm, mutant, movie

Typing of the Dead: Overkill is silly. There is no other word to describe it. It's just silly.

Silly isn't necessarily a bad thing, however. The idea that you are able to type some words to blow off a zombie's face is silly. The fact that you play as a stereotypical foul-mouthed African American cop or an agent who can't figure out his own personality is silly. The fact that no one wants to say the word "zombie" is silly. But silly can be good.

I honestly had a blast playing TotD: O. Like the first Typing of the Dead, it takes a version of House of the Dead, and instead of playing your standard rail shooter (in which you don't actually move as a character, but instead the characters move on a single path once you kill everything in the room), you type words to kill things. I know it sounds strange, but I found myself stifling a chuckle when I had to write "unicorns" to finish off a horde of mutants, not to mention it probably increased my typing speed (maybe).

As for the game itself, the story is set like a bad revenge movie and a zombie flick had a baby. The voice acting and writing is wonderfully corny, the narrator is perfect for the tone of the game, and everything is just over the top enough that it borders corny and hilarious.

While the price is a little steep for the game, if it goes on sale it is totally worth the buy. Add in a few DLCs to make the variety of typing different was a surprisingly good move, but not even remotely necessary to enjoy the game. If you enjoy a great deal of silliness, then I would strongly recommend this game.

[m4ng0games]

A Review of Valdis Story: Abyssal City

Metroidvania in an underwater city that isn't Rapture

There are many good Metroidvania games out there, many of which are wacky creations that can create hours of good times. In my opinion, this is one of those games. Set in a world overrun by angels and demons, the story begins with your ship being destroyed by creatures the likes of whom had never been seen, and your character awakens in a city under the waves. As you progress, you find demons and angels duking it out with some kind of mutated animals, and...well, to say any more would be spoilerific. Gameplay is rather standard for the genre: jump, find things, hit things, get abilities to hit things better or find more things. Simple and effective, with a bit of story to boot. Not too shabby. Also, one must not forget to mention that the 2-d animations are very fluid, the combo system is fairly intuitive to anyone who has played a skill based hack-and-slash like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, and you can level your character up to get passives and increase your survivability. And you'll need all the help you can get, which can come in many forms. As you explore, you can find your lost shipmates and use their abilities to aid you in combat, ranging from a simple boomerang toss to having your frost giant friend axe enemiesin the face. There are also merchants in the towns that are scattered across the city, where you can buy new accessories or upgrade armor or weapons.

My main issue with this game was the lack of enemy ingenuity. Each enemy faction has 3 types of enemy: a close range fighter, a harder-to-hit ranged fighter, and a big guy. While each of them are interesting in their own right, having a few more types wouldn't have gone amiss. Also, while the weapons are interesting and varied, most of them don't seem particularly useful. I ended up using only one for the majority of the game. If there was an easier way of switching them up, it would have been interesting to see what kind of combos could have been accomplished. Next, I feel like the allies you found were a somewhat wasted opportunity. I would have liked to learn more about them, as many had intriguing stories. Finally, the sprites did not change when you put different armor on them. Really, I'm just nitpicking. In the 12 hours I spent on this game, I found it quite enjoyable due to its' combat and leveling system, and while it seemed like they were copping out at some points, the story was enjoyable enough. Not bad for a $15 purchase.

[m4ng0games]

A first impression of Deadly 30

In which there is racism and a lot of rage at silly AI

I enjoy sidescroller shooters. I really do. I don't get to play enough of them, which is why I decided to pick up Deadly 30. It looked pretty fun: a sidescrolling shooter with defense elements and multiple characters with upgrades (and believe me when I say i love dem upgrades). The game started well enough: after a short intro, the American character stumbles into a small shack which he must defend from a voracious hoard of green zombies. Kill the zombies, get pieces of junk to make bigger guns, unlock bigger guns by killing zombies and getting experience, survive 30 days...Seemed all good to me. During the day time, you explore the area around you, shooting everything in your path to get aforementioned things. You can even find other survivors, whose dialogue portrays them as silly walking stereotypes of their respective countries. Around this time, I was getting some issues. The AI was decent during the day, as they would randomly take potshots at enemies in front and behind you, but at night during the defensive portions there were some issues. While I was playing the Russian Sniper (who talks obsessively about wrestling bears and borscht), my American army friend decided it was in his best interest to put his gun away and swing aimlessly at enemies from the roof of the shack. I was somewhat perplexed at this, as he had plenty of ammunition and enemies to shoot, so I selected him and tried to figure out what was wrong. In the two seconds that I controlled the American, the zombies had busted through the fences and murdered the crap out of me. I wouldn't be bothered by this so much if the NPC's had only been the death of me once, but for some reason they seem to have a phobia of getting headshots or conserving ammunition, and that was only when they felt like attacking. Granted, I can't hate on this game too much. The daytime walkarounds, while sinfully short, are still enjoyable in a mindless kind of way. There isn't much strategy involved: see zombie, crouch, shoot zombie, move on, repeat until night comes, leg it back to the shack. If the AI was better, then the night time bits would be significantly more enjoyable, or even if there was a command system where I could tell my guys to stay in one place and shoot anything that they see. That would be able to get rid of most of the AI issues This game is still in development though, so I guess we shall see if any improvements are made later.

In short, if you want to play a decent sidescroller shooter, you could get better, although not for this price ($5 on steam in the US). But, the controls are easy to figure out, the animations are decent, the guns sound nice, and it's cheap. If you can take the blatant racism (and if they improve the AI), it may just be a game worth getting.

[m4ng0games]

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion - First impressions

In which the game is ridiculously complicated, but pretty and pretty fun So I had my first real skirmish with a friend of mine the other day, without knowing what to expect. Getting into a game during the third installment is pretty stupid, I know, but I have the other ones and I figured that this would be the one with the newest gameplay improvements and balancing. The reviews were all good, the graphics were pretty, and the UI looked challenging enough to keep me on my toes, so I decided to give it a try. The opening cinematic gave me a little back story to the universe, which I can always appreciate, but seemed originally seemed somewhat pointless given the lack of a story mode. After we got started was a somewhat different story. Each faction had an entire biography about it, describing their game play type, and more importantly, why they fought. I chose the TEC Loyalists (the not-as-racist sounding humans) who primarily focused on defense, and was dropped straight into the game. After about 3 hours of play, we finally figured out what was going on, and only after that did I discover that there was a rather in-depth tutorial that I probably should have played before trying to do anything. You see, this game is...complicated. There are many elements common to recent RTS games, such as resource gathering, unit building, etc, but in this game they decided to take it up a notch. For example, there is a complicated (at least to this n00bs eyes) diplomacy system which I have only looked at and dared not touch until I get a better idea of how anything works, a research system that uses labs a a resource (2 types, a military and a civic, although they have different names from race to race), and a "culture" system that works kind of like morale in other games (for example, your troops will become more experienced and fight better when you are in a place of your culture). However, the tried and true ha-I-found-you-time-to-murder RTS fun still very much exists, despite the initial complications. After spending much time to create several unit types, I found myself with a sizable army with many massive Capital ships, and once I found my enemy, I was in for a treat. This game happens to have a Cinematic mode, in which the player can watch battles take place in an epic manner. I got to watch in awe as my ships tore apart their foes, then lay waste to the planet below. It must be how the Emperor from Star Wars felt when the Death Star started to blow $#!& up. I look forward to playing it again

[m4ng0games]

What this shit's about

This is a private little blog about gaming. I'm pretty much going to be writing personal opinions of games, along with reviews and what have you