Half-Life: Alyx - Final Hours
TL;DR: For anyone interested in Half-Life, Valve or game development in general, this is an insightful and inspiring experience that takes great advantage of a compelling storytelling medium.
In the words of Robin Walker, this is “the story of how we fixed Valve”. The reader is privy to the conversations, considerations and concerns of Valve employees as they attempt to shore up instability and quell the anarchy caused by a company “boss free since ‘96”. This storybook provides information on previously unknown projects including story ideas, concept art, script excerpts and development timelines; brief insights into the backgrounds and work lives of various Valve employees as well as anecdotes and conversations; and a greater understanding of Valve’s shift in focus to developing both hardware and software.
– Real player with 6.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action 3D Games.
Visually it looks good, it’s presented well, and like Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar it’s certainly interesting. But it reflects a flawed product, leaves a ton of stories out (including the flaws), and left me questioning if it justified a pricetag.
Missing pieces:
Reliability issues
There was a push to link the sales of the Valve Index and Half-Life: Alyx but there were a lot of hardware problems, with a critical one being the unreliability of the Index controllers - a problem compounded by poor design choices in Alyx that made playing with one controller far more difficult than it needed to be, along with a badly handled RMA system (and the impact of the pandemic ontop of that bad RMA system). Why would a book on the exact subject of those products leave all of that out, especially if it was written by a journalist?
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Zombotron
I want to recommend this game, but there are a lot of flaws and overall weak levels of polish that make it hard to do so. I will say I really enjoy the art style, the soundtrack, and overall the gameplay.
Major issues:
The bosses. They are easily the worst part of this game due to having really high health and high damage attacks, most that kill instantly. With the limited checkpoint system (only 3 respawns) you only have a limited number of attempts to kill a boss before you have to restart and go through annoying dialogue again. Some bosses can even spawn camp you.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Zombies Games.
I got Zombotron in the Humble Conquer COVID-19 Bundle and my god was it good! It wasn’t a game I could spend hour after hour in, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive or fun. I spent an hour or so at a time, generally until I kept dying around the same point and needed a break before going in with a fresh head.
One of my favourite things about the game was the humour. While it’s pretty simple humour, it’s very effective! The witty banter between the main character, Blaze Rush, his robot companion, Ash, and the other characters they meet along the way is just priceless. They also have some great references to other well known things in their conversations, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2
Demons are running a muck once again and the demon slayer Zangetsu is up to the task. This time around, he’s going to need all the help he can get to defeat this new army of demons and bring peace back to the world. This is Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2.
The Good
Lots of characters to choose from and have fun with.
So, something that I liked from the first that I didn’t note in my review at the time, was the diverse abilities each characters had at their disposal. In the sequel, that trend continues.
– Real player with 37.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Retro Games.
Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 is the follow up sequel to the original 8-bit nostalgia trip we all know and love. It brings more of the same to the table… now with CO-OP!
What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse… Again! AH AH AH!
So here we are again, back in to the 8-bit fray. If you enjoyed the original game, there’s more fun and alternate paths to be had here. The game starts you off being hand glided on to some mysterious floating demon castle and Zangetsu must slash and dash his way through hordes of monsters, golems and other assorted creatures of the night… all with a new support cast, and I must say, some of them are down right broken.
– Real player with 19.7 hrs in game
Contra Anniversary Collection
The BEST Run ‘n’ Gun / Side-scrolling shooters ever made
Contra on PC is like a dream come true!
UPDATE: You can now rebind/remap your keys!
This “bundle” or “collection” includes 5 different games in 10 different skins.
We have 3 different versions of Contra: Arcade, Famicom and the NES versions.
2 versions of Super C. Also known as Super Contra or Contra 2.
2 Versions of Contra 3: Alien Wars, 2 versions of Contra: Hard Corps and we also have
Operation Contra.
Hard Corps is the first Contra game that allows you to choose between four
– Real player with 49.8 hrs in game
I really love this collection of Contra games. You get 16 total Contra games, including the superior Famicom version of the original Contra. You also get the European version of Contra III and Contra: Hard Corps. Some people may complain that this collection has games that repeat, and though it does, each version of the games are different. The one game that really stands out to me is with the original North American version of Contra vs the Japanese version of it on the Famicom. With the Famicom version of this game, there are no framerate issues, you get cut-scenes, an actual story, background animations, better sound, as well as a map of the locations that you visit, among other things. The European versions of Contra III and Contra: Hard Corps offer an option for running them in 60HZ for better compatibility with North American TV sets. The only differences with the European versions of Contra vs the North American versions that I can see is with their titles, origin story, and some character models.
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game
ACCEL-X
It’s easy to operate and it supports both Japanese and English, but it’s super difficult!
This isn’t even clear for hard gamers!
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
I should refund this, but the dev can keep my 61 cents. At least he tried?
Ok, this game needs so much work. Let’s get right to it.
The keyboard-only control scheme which is not re-bindable is quite difficult to play with. Your fingers will be jammed onto the XZ, NJMK keys. Please try something for me now: Put the fingers of your hands in that configuration on your keyboard now, and ask yourself if you think you’ll enjoy holding your hands like that while you play.
This is some half-baked speed runner but it it so badly made you can’t really employ any kind of skill. It’s so random and not in a good way. Things fly at you so fast there is not a human in the world that can react fast enough, and they fly at you in bad RNG patterns where everything clumps up in ways that remove skill… most of the obstacles are completely unavoidable.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Astrozombies
Very fun and complete classic platform experience, with secret unlockeables and all the nice stuff of the good ol' days!
– Real player with 11.9 hrs in game
10/10 very high risk-high reward platformer with some serious influences on its background that range from old horror films to the most classics of 80’s games like Castlevania
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
Carpet Bombing
WOW ,if you like the look of this game,You will love playing it,,, so enjoyable ,addictive, great with a mouse aswel extra challenging,,, my 1st review ever lol , give this game a go worth every penny ,,, More Games like this PLEASE .
– Real player with 86.3 hrs in game
Its an awesome game.
Can be played only with controller.
Mouse and keyboard is very bad.
– Real player with 33.2 hrs in game
Cat’s Cradle
“Cat’s Cradle” is splendid. The movement is fluid, the levels and bosses are moderately challenging, the soundtrack fits the stylistics, and the visuals are simple, but gorgeous.
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Good game thats satisfying to play the dash is pretty op
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
CODE SHIFTER
Frequently called “ARC’s Smash Bros”, Code Shifter really isn’t, but it manages to be pretty fun as its own thing, if you can get past some bad first-impressions. Let’s get those out of the way first.
Code Shifter’s plot is overall a missed opportunity for fun, as it never lets the many crossover characters it features function as autonomous beings who react to each other’s presence or have any interactions with each other beyond fighting. Instead, they’re rendered just parts of a computer system that our heroine, Stella, must debug. That bookending story and dialog wherein Stella interacts with her coworkers, take up more space in this game than they really need to. The tale is advanced in an isometric office environment with RPG-like interactions, via captions accompanied with Banjo-Kazooie-like gibberish voices, and while nothing is outright unpleasant it doesn’t have much emotional impact either–and again, you’re probably not here for these bookending characters; anyway.
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
“Collect all the characters from the Arc System Works franchises!ヽ(=´▽'=)ﾉ”
[1] Intro
CODE SHIFTER. It is an arcade action game produced by LAND HO! and published by Arc System Works. As you may know, Land Ho! is a Japanese video game development company founded(1999) by the former Sega marketer. Regarding game production, it seems to have been mainly outsourcing or subcontracting. The reason mentioned them first is that knowing the developer’s background can help you understand the game as a whole.
– Real player with 15.0 hrs in game
Crystal sword
Alright, so it’s Pac Man… BUT instead of getting the super pill to eat ghosts you have to power your Crystal Sword with all the Crystal… Dots… to start thrusting it into things. Like enemies. Who are not immune to being stabbed.
Because everything can get stabbed if you try hard enough. It also helps that your health is replenished once you finish charging the sword.
A Boss Fight every 5 levels, with their own way of doing defeating them, though 2 of the bosses are easily cheesed.
Alright so hear me out, this game feels very unpolished but I am going to recommend it for 2 reasons.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
While very short, being only 20 levels long, it’s a charming little project with an interesting concept.
You essentially have two phases for each level. One where you run from enemies and collect crystal shards to restore the power in your sword, and the other where your sword is powered up and you need to kill all the enemies on-screen, then get to a door to continue.
I haven’t seen anything like it before, it’s short and sweet, and the boss theme accompanied by lyrics at the end was really nice and made me really happy to have played.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game