Dust: An Elysian Tail

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Imagine if Disney joined forces with Rankin/Bass (producers of 1977’s The Hobbit , 1982’s The Last Unicorn and various cartoons like ThunderCats and SilverHawks ) and made a beat ‘em up RPG. Now imagine that instead of all that, one guy made a game that pretty much equals what you’d get otherwise. He didn’t have the relentless marketing or the massive capital of Disney, etc., yet he still sold 1 mil plus copies of Dust, and why? ‘Cause it ain’t bad, ain’t bad at all.

Real player with 81.5 hrs in game


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A furry artist learns that hand-drawing an animated movie is really hard, so he switches gears and makes a game instead. The result became one of the original poster children for indie gaming!

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a hack-and-slash Metroidvania with a few RPG elements. You play as Dust, a furry Samurai who wakes up with amnesia and is promptly ambushed by a talking sword named Ahrah and a flying rodent named Fidget (who, while slightly cuter than Navi, is roughly just as annoying). What follows is a 10-hour saga of Dust constantly being emo about not knowing who he is, taking occasional breaks to bicker with Fidget, and stopping to run sidequests for NPCs. Through it all, his talking sword urges him to keep moving forward – while annoyingly not telling him what kind of a quest he’s on, and forcing him to make his own judgements about all the moral dilemmas he encounters. The story has something to do with a war between the furry “warmbloods” and scaley “moonbloods”. Now, I must give the game some credit: I did not see where this story was going until near the very end! Dust’s character concept is pretty awesome and unexpected, and the game will keep you guessing about his true nature until it’s ready to show you.

Real player with 27.7 hrs in game

Dust: An Elysian Tail on Steam

Spark the Electric Jester

Spark the Electric Jester

Spark the Electrical Jester. A package of everything that Lakefeperd has done up to this point.

I can see the influences of all of the Sonic fangames he created rolled into this game. From Sonic: Before the Sequel to Sonic Chrono Adventure, you get a taste of everything he’s created all into one amazing package. For this review I will be keeping spoilers to a minimum, but I will be talking about each mode. This review is designed to be fair and informative.


Spark’s Story:

So to start things off, the story is kept very minimal at the start of the game. You have a very basic plot of Spark’s mission to get his job back. Spark is an Electrical Jester and his job was taken by a robotic duplicate of himself that he calls Fark. Now at first glance you might get see a comparison for Sonic and Metal Sonic and that might be what was intended.

Real player with 105.7 hrs in game


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*Note that this review has been done from scratch with much depth to it put in.

Same thing from Spark 2 review applies to here and so on.

Spark the Electric is the game that started my passionate love for the series.

Without this game. Spark would’ve never been a thing.

But this game like it’s sequel and other games is not perfect since it does have flaws holding it back but also things that make up for it. This game is good and comparing it to Freedom Planet was a dumb idea in the first draft of the review so I’m not gonna do that.

Real player with 51.1 hrs in game

Spark the Electric Jester on Steam

MURI

MURI

MURI Review - Raymond KT

This old-style game has you trying to find out why Mars has disappeared, and as you run and gun across the four episodes you discover the answers via cut scenes.As a platform/shooter (with its slower pace) it is like playing the DOS games of old and with about 2 hours worth of play, the game is a short one, but it has lots of secret areas to be found. The lack of a save point can be annoying to some modern players and the game could of benefited with some music to add a little more atmosphere, but overall this is a little great game

Real player with 6.9 hrs in game


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If you’ve played the early Duke Nukems and Commander Keens you’ll immediately feel at home in this game. So far I’ve finished the first four episodes and they’ve all been a blast to play. The game not only pays homage to Apogee-style DOS platformers but develops them a bit further. The result is a more rounded game with a lot of secrets and some exciting boss encounters.

Sound

Instead of the PC speaker beepiness (which, admittedly, is faithful to the source material) I’d have preferred an AdLib-type soundtrack.

Real player with 5.7 hrs in game

MURI on Steam

Mega Man 11

Mega Man 11

After 8 years later we finall have another classic megaman game. And man it doesn’t dissapoint.

Presentation:

The graphics are colorful and nice. I am not one of those people who hate the idea of this game being 8 bit or modern graphics. To me the 8 bit sprties will always look great and age better in the end but that being said this game looks really good. They also took advantage of the higher quality graphics by making stages have a lot of unique nods. I love Blast man’s stage for example thanks to all those billboards in the background.

Real player with 60.8 hrs in game

Very good game.

The greatest thing about this game is how gameplay feels.

It plays just as tight and as responsive as classic 8-bit MM games, but while having very fluid and great looking animations at the same time. It shows that a lot of work went into this to get the best of both world.

They learnt from the past not to repeat the same mistakes: in MM8 they added more frames to all anims just because they could, the result felt sluggish. In MM7 the low FOV made everything worse than it should be, but here with a widescreen ratio we end up with good looking characters and enemies of a reasonable size without hindering gameplay.

Real player with 55.4 hrs in game

Mega Man 11 on Steam

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX

Alright, so of course I’m going to be biased with this review, because I am a GIGANTIC fan of the Gunvolt franchise. I own the Japan-exclusive Drama CDs, artbook, and I’ve read all of the Dengeki Nintendo Profiles. I’ve S+‘ed both Gunvolt games to completion on my 3DS and Switch, and I’ve accumulated 200+ hours into Gunvolt 2 ALONE.

Copen and Lola are some of my favourite characters in all of video games, or in fiction really, and I can never get enough of them.

It won’t be any surprise that Luminous Avenger iX was my most anticipated game of the year, and it’ll be less of a shock that I absolutely adored it.

Real player with 81.9 hrs in game

Now, as a fan of the Gunvolt series, I have high expectations for this game. From what it seems, it’s a spin-off of the Gunvolt series and it delivers a massive pack of actions as well as engaging storyline and gameplay. Although it’s more or less similar to the Mega Man X series, yet it has its own distinguishable captivating appeal and that what makes it interesting. So, let’s check it out in details!

The Gameplay

For those of you that have played Gunvolt before, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the game controls mechanic and how the gameplay works. But, if you’re new to this, fret not. As most 2D side-scrolling platformer action games, the protagonist require to jump, run and for this one, need to dash too, both on air and ground. Aside that, you need to shoot down the enemies, using normal shooting from far away, or perhaps the stylish lockdown targets, in which is very effective, if you ask me. And so, there you have it, the basics of movements and how to destroy enemies. Oh, what if when it comes to sub bosses and bosses fight? Right, using the control mechanism, you evade and dodge by running and dashing while shooting when have the chance. It’s that simple. But if you’re still struggling, worry not as the first level is more like a tutorial, so everything is peachy and you can take your time to get familiar with the controls and everything. Once you become the master of it, just replay for the highest rank.

Real player with 23.7 hrs in game

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX on Steam

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2

This review won’t deal about the games themselves and only talk about the Collection itself, its technical aspects and the new things it offers.

Pros:

-All 4 games play accurately without any noticeable input lag, except maybe a little bit in MM8.

  • I honestly can’t tell if 9 and 10 are emulated or actual ports.

-The aspect ratio is respected and the games aren’t stretched to TV format like it was the case in the first Legacy Collection. Beatiful 1:1 sharp pixels are available. If your screen’s native res isn’t 1920*1080, things might be different though, as it seems it’s the native res of the game and anything below is downscaling.

Real player with 116.0 hrs in game

Holy crap, they fixed Mega Man Legacy Collection’s technical hick ups… No problems with these versions of the games besides such minor complaints that wouldn’t even effect the score.

Megaman 7 Has never sounded or looked so good. Hell plays better than any emulator I have used and feels right. Doesn’t lag or feel squishy. It’s a quality version considering the responses is perfect, graphics excellent, no cutting content besides dialogue being changed to “darn”, but originally was “damn”, but considering that was one line out of alll the rest. I wished I could make it like the original, but Mega Man games aren’t known for story so I guess I can’t complain considering it feels great. Great levels, great graphics, and has challange mode which plays great.

Real player with 63.0 hrs in game

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 on Steam

RITE

RITE

OVERALL: 7/10

Having spent 42 hours in the game I can say this game was one of the hardest platformers I played. I got this game on sale and thought I could beat it pretty quickly. I saw the number of hours other reviewers had before completing the game it was usually around 7-8 hours with someone exceptional having only 4. I think they are not human.

SUMMARY:

Overall, I think this is a genuinely solid game especially for a first game release on steam. If you are looking for a solid, precise, and unforgiving platformer this is the game. I struggle a lot of with the movement and thought some of the design was questionable but it could just be me.

Real player with 43.0 hrs in game

I usually love tight hard plateformer such as Super meat boy or Celeste just to mention the most famous ones but this one just isn’t enjoyable to complete, first worlds are very much straight forward with no real difficulty and it’s completely fine to get used to the movements of the character and what you are able to do.

The real problem comes when you reach the last third of the game, you are asked to do almost pixel perfect jumps or fall into some small safe places but the movement aren’t helping to do that at all and it begins to become a real pain.

Real player with 17.1 hrs in game

RITE on Steam

Sonic Adventure 2

Sonic Adventure 2

We all know what you’re here for. Adventure Two is a good game, with an interesting story and good, if not a bit buggy controls. But the Chao Garden is the reason to keep coming back. 9.5/10. Needs more slots for chao.

Real player with 74.3 hrs in game

live and learn mfs

not perfect, lots of things got rough with time, but god isnt it just fun and satisfying. except the treasure hunting in later stages everything else is just plain fun, with sonic and shadow levels being so good making me replay them a lot. music slaps, not only does it fit the environment and level, it fits the current ongoing story events (be it green forest and white jungle as the best examples). the story and characters were crafted with such a care, thats absolutely absent in current sonic games.

Real player with 26.1 hrs in game

Sonic Adventure 2 on Steam

Disney’s Hercules

Disney’s Hercules

Having somehow missed this game during my Hercules-obsessed childhood, I was thrilled to discover it recently as an adult. The game is admittedly far too short, and I had a very difficult time getting the controls to work (mainly because I guess spacebars weren’t much of a thing back in the day? not sure).

But overall, I really did enjoy my time with it. The scenery and backdrops are DETAILED. They clearly saw this as a quality over quantity for of title during development. While I definitely wish there had been more to play, I don’t regret this relatively inexpensive purchase. It was worth it just to hunt for the letters in each level… actually that was hands down the best part of the game in my opinion!

Real player with 13.8 hrs in game

Growing up with Hercules - the first film I ever saw in theaters - was awesome! This game does a good job of capturing part of the magic that makes the movie memorable.

The main menu with the Muses shaking the screen in rhythm with the beat draws Hercules fans in - and although the resolution in this version is limited, the heart of the game shines through. A few of the levels contain frustrating gameplay (level 3 is a pain, and a few sections in later levels as well), but on the whole the game is very fun.

Real player with 3.7 hrs in game

Disney's Hercules on Steam

DeadCore

DeadCore

Deadcore a 2013 game released by a French development team called ‘5 bits games’ http://www.deadcore-game.com/team.html as a parkour 3D platformer designed especially for speed running. Plot revolves around you waking up at the bottom of a monolithic alien tower and climbing it’s 5 main story levels in the hopes of reaching the summit (level 6) to discover both its origin and meaning. Then you will discover a potential ‘True Ending’ is waiting for you and can be unlocked if you find all the sparks hidden in the many pathing’s of the previous levels.

Real player with 71.7 hrs in game

This game caught me by surprise and, oh my, how I’ve enjoyed it. Let me tell You. I found this randomly shuffling through games on steam and as soon as I saw the trailer I knew I HAVE TO play it. And I wasn’t wrong, not one bit. DeadCore gave me exactly what I needed.

DeadCore is a combination of First Person Shooter and Puzzle game, but it’s based on Your reflexes instead being like Portal for example. In DeadCore there is often no time to make careful decisions, You have to act, and You have to do it fast. Controls are perfectly responsive which is a BIG deal for a game like this. You’re going to make a split second decisions about where to shoot or where to jump. Some people are talking about badly programmed gravity but it’s not true. You’ll get used to it almost immediately. Be aware tho, this game requires from You at least some skills in precision shooting. If You fail (And trust me You often will) that wasn’t because the stage is designed poorly, but it was Your reaction that was timed badly.

Real player with 57.5 hrs in game

DeadCore on Steam