AMID EVIL goes on the list of games that I either pre-ordered or supported early on before an official final release, and I’m happy to say I finished it with flying colors, as in colorful weapons killing monsters left and right.
We’ve seen Doom inspire many shooters over these last couple decades (and even re-imagine itself), but when it came to successors to games like Hexen or Heretic that seemed to be a niche no one ever really thought to fill. I’m not sure why other than maybe the lack of guns… but who needs guns when you have a trident that strikes lightning upon your enemies? Or an ice wand that shoves icy dildos into your opponents torso? How about a really fabulous weapons that looks like purple ribbons, but is actually one of the most chaotic weapons in the entire fucking game?
On top of the amazing weapon selection there is also the level design. Some levels had you jump from floating giant droplets of water, to floors appearing under your feet as you walk.There are also tons of secrets throughout these worlds, meaning it gives me some replay value. This is one of those games I’ve played quite a bit between home and work, it feels just right on the Steam Controller.
This game was a delight from start to finish. I would love to see workshop support, and maybe even a sequel. 24/10 will probably play over and over again.
I obtained this as a freebie awhile back, and like many I collect freebies for my own amusement. I remember watching some YouTubers play this game, and it looked like a lot of fun but I could never to look for it on Steam when I found the time, not that it matters now… it was free!
It all starts out with the protagonist telling his child a bedtime story inside a black void. He tells her about his own childhood adventure about the search to find his Uncle Fred who loved to travel to infinity and beyond:
No, really.
Even in the beginning of the game there are all kinds of details scattered around in the form of notes and books, some giving you a heads up on the narration, and even some deep meta:
You can’t see much of it, but there are some pages that even detail information for the player to follow. I like little touches like these in games, it gives you something extra to look for.
Salamander Elsa
The search for your Uncle leads you to a village in what looks like a cavernous alien world with a decent amount of glowing plants, floating rocks and strange glowing writings on the walls that your Salamander Elsa friend (her name is Maddie, but I’ve decided she’s Elsa of the Salamanders) helps you decode along on your journey. She is one of the many salamander people who happen to know your uncle, but alas even they have no idea where he is either. You are at least pointed in a dark and scary direction, of which you’ll most likely find your uncle if you can traverse these dark caverns in your new found suit of course.
Checkpoint
You are armed only what is called an adventure suit, which you obtained back at your Uncle’s house. The Adventure Suit gives you the ability to power jump and grapple your way from point to point. You obtain crystals or “power cores” along your journey, and for each one you obtain you can throw an extra grapple before touching the ground. I can currently grapple three times before having to land on the ground to recharge for example.
I accidentally glitched an area of the cave where you meet a one eyed purple people eating worm, and whenever it has its eye open you have to stand perfectly still until it goes back to sleep. I decided to drop off at this point last night, and upon returning to it today the purple cockworm was stuck asleep.
Lazy Bastard
Oops? At least I made it through the cave, and the worm managed to get a good night’s sleep.
Each world seems to be more abstract than the last. You go from caves, to a skyworld, and currently I’m making my way through some icy mountain caves.
Foxy Boxes
I’m not entirely sure how far I’m into the game, but so far I really like it. You might consider it if you’re into first person platformers, the level design is really something else.
It seems Cyan is wanting to start another project:
The video doesn’t seem to show much other than it’s a puzzle type game (Cyan’s specialty) with some nice looking graphics and a creepy voice. Of course unlike their last games Cyan wants to make this a VR exclusive title because so many people play VR… That’s the reason, right? Obviously there are waaaaaaaay more VR gamers than those zombies that stare at their multimonitor setups with drool rolling down their faces.
The team has developed what Miller called a working “experience,” similar to a demo, that will be shown later this month at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in an attempt to garner interest and financial backing. It features the Mead-based company’s signature puzzle-solving gameplay, he said, in a world built from the ground up to be experienced through a virtual reality headset.
Well, that leaves me out. There aren’t enough games out to justify me getting into VR, plus I’m still pretty miffed about Obduction’s poor optimization for AMD GPU’s as well as overall optimization (broken LOD’s). Plus if I take into consideration how the last Kickstarter took place, and some of the more dramatic moments I’d rather not mention during their update posts, I really am reminded that I should play other games instead. Heck, I’ve been playing Quite a bit of The Phantom Pain lately, and that’s an NVidia Gumworks title.
That said I wish them no ill will. I would like for them to succeed and return to their former glory, but it seems unnecessary to leave people out if they can’t afford VR. Plus I would think they would make money if they developed a non VR version of their game. As it is Cyan’s core fanbase consists of about 7 people who still have use to run a Pentium III setup. :v:
The Steam Winter Sale is in full swing, and I’ve already been playing one of the games I’ve purchased from it so far.
Aragami is a stealth indie game developed on the Unity Engine. You’re an Aragami, a being made of shadows. You have been summoned to save a girl named Yamiko. She is being held prisoner by the army of light or the “Kaiho”. She talks to you via projected hologram.
Yamiko guides you through the game and teaches you how to traverse the shadows, you can leap from shadow to shadow using Shadow Essence, as well as unlock other skills by finding and spending scrolls on them, which I haven’t done yet (but I have TWO SCROLLS). Light makes you weaker, the shadows keep you strong. Don’t go towards the light! Offhandedly, Yamiko tells you that when the sun rises it will kill you. Fortunately this game doesn’t have a day/night cycle. 😛
Aragami runs on Windows, Linux, PS4 and Mac. This is probably one of the more smooth Unity Engine games I’ve played, though the graphics are rather simple but work well with the art style. Reviews for the game on Steam are “Very Positive”, Metacritic gives it an overall average rating of 70/100 on PC, and 71/100 on PS4. I’ve only played an hour of it thus far, and so far it’s been really nice. 🙂 I might install this on my laptop and put together a Steam Controller config (unless someone else has already, which is highly possible).
I’m going to try something new and talk about games that I play during my lunch breaks at work. On long days I always bring my gaming laptop along to kill my hour lunch. Usually with swords or guns of some kind. 😛
Today I played a hack n slash platformer called Abyss Odyssey. It’s an indie title by ACE Team, the creators of the Zeno Clash games.
It’s a very beautiful game. The music and scenery are calming while you wander around in the abyss. Which is like a giant labyrinth of death with the occasional wise skeleton who imparts his wisdom on you if you pay him 100 gold. 😛
The goal of the game is to get to the bottom of the abyss to kill the sleeping warlock. His dreams become living things, and you are one of the products of his imagination! That would be like if my dreams became reality while I was sleeping… we would all be sooooooo screwed.
Then when I got tired of that I still had a few minutes to kill before heading back. So I started up one of my latest favorite wastes of time:
Made by Dejobaan Games, the same company who made Drunken Robot Pornography, AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is what I would call a falling simulator. You collect hugs and kisses, points (which are called teeth) by crashing into certain things and surviving your falls etc etc. It’s a very twisted game. When you don’t feel like falling you can even unlock different forms of meditation among other things…
Regular meditation:
Not so regular meditation:
So, in retrospect I guess I can say that I had a very indie lunch today. 😛 Oh, also I ate actual food. Can’t game on an empty stomach…
