Recent reviews by CoupleK

This is a good game! I first started playing it with 3 friends in front of a TV. That was a blast. The driving controls are arcade-y and fun, and feel familiar. However, actually trying to drive your car around a giant ball to hit in the direction you want is REALLY HARD, especially at first. The combination of the controls feeling good and yet the gameplay being so unwieldy made for a great party game. We spent hours just messing around and failing terribly, basically playing the worst game of soccar ever despite trying our best.

Then, you start getting better at the gameplay part - actually able to hit the ball where you want it to go... and that's when the whole crazy-high skill ceiling comes in to play. There are just so many advanced techniques and arials are so fun to pull off! I mostly play by myself matching up with randoms online now, working on improving, and I'm still having lots of fun with it, 350 hours in.

Crypt of the NecroDancer is a rhythm game where you must navigate many levels of a gridded dungeon. Every level has its own soundtrack and you can only move to another square on the beat of the song. You attack enemies by moving into their square and they attack you in the same way. The gameplay revolves around learning the various enemies’ patterns and striking at the right moment in their “dance.”

I thoroughly enjoy this game. The premise is hilarious, and seeing all of the zombies and skeletons shimmy and dance around to the beat still makes me laugh. The randomly generated dungeon and weapons are a good fit for this game and they add to the replay value significantly. (i.e. it is a “roguelike” game)

I find it quite interesting that is solidly in the roguelike genre, and also definitely a rhythm game, but to the best of my knowledge the gameplay is totally unique, I don’t know of any other game like it.

The soundtrack is written by DannyB who made the soundtrack for Super Meat Boy; seeing his name in the credits is actually what made me buy the game and I have no regrets. The tracks are groovy and super catchy - I especially enjoy the songs for the fire/ice world where the music style changes dynamically based on whether you are in a fiery zone (heavy metal) or a cold zone (disco-esque.)

This game is filled with creativity and charm. It is quite difficult to get the hang of since it doesn’t play like any other game, but once you get the basics down the difficulty curve becomes more gentle. I highly recommend giving it a shot!

It should be noted that I’m writing this review while the game is still in Early Access. In my opinion there’s enough content already to justify the purchase price, but the game is still missing some important parts, including a final boss battle. I also hope that in the future different beat patterns will play a larger role in the gameplay.

Guacamelee is a well rounded game with challenging platforming and a satisfying combat system. The soundtrack, artwork, and in particular the animation are all pleasant and cohesive.

Combat is intuitive and flowing, and Guacamelee does a good job of forcing you to use your full range of powers by the variety of enemies and their weaknesses. The abilities you acquire find use both in combat and in platforming/exploration, so you end up really looking forward to discovering the next powerup.

The local co-op mode works well during the fighting sections; flinging a hapless enemy across the screen to your partner who then slams them into the ground doesn’t get old. Unfortunately, the co-op platforming is a mess. The sections that use the environment-shifting mechanic are great fun in single player, but in co-op it's impossible not to get in each others' way. On top of that, the camera essentially only follows one player, which means it is inevitably more efficient to just let one player attempt the jumps while the other player watches.

Guacamelee’s smooth animations, upbeat soundtrack, colourful backgrounds and enjoyable Luchador theme all contribute to a polished feel. Other than the weak co-op I don’t have any major complaints. I wasn't blown away but I definitely enjoyed my time with it. Recommended for fans of metroidvania games, worth a look for everyone else.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed excels in almost every aspect of the kart racing genre. The drifting feels natural, the tracks are varied, the weapons are interesting and fair, and the boosting mechanics are great fun to exploit. Where it suffers somewhat is in the character selection - Sonic and company are great, but the rest of the roster is padded with significantly less recognizable entries. Overall a well polished kart racer.

The games’ mechanics are well thought-out. Everything works well together:
* Boosts can be gained from drifting, boost pads, and doing tricks while in mid air. You are rewarded for chaining different types of boosts together, which makes you always on the lookout for trick/drift opportunities.
* Weapons are powerful, but they always leave the targeted player with some recourse to deal with them. All automatically tracking weapons can be boosted away from if timed correctly, and nearly all other weapons can be dodged in some way.
* Tracks are dynamic and sometimes will change from lap to lap. Tracks generally will have different paths to choose from, each offering either extra boosts, extra trick jumps/drifts, or extra weapon pickups.

Kart racing games are often a party game, and this is where Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed might fall short for you. The fact is most people are familiar with Mario Kart. Plumbers, princesses and shells are recognizable to the casual gamer and that familiarity can make a game much easier to get in to. Sonic Racing's monkeys, fireworks and pufferfish aren't as familiar to people, and until a player gets a feel for how the world and the weapons work the well-crafted mechanics will be lost on them.

Still, the bottom line is that it feels good to drive your boat/plane/car around; flipping, drifting, boosting and shooting your way to victory. Recommended.

In Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons you simultaneously control two brothers on a quest to acquire some magical medicine to heal their ailing father. Their journey is visually stunning with detailed environments and well-executed set pieces. It is also rather brief, taking about 3-4 hours to complete.

The gameplay is unique; you use two separate analog sticks to control the two brothers from a roughly overhead perspective. The games’ puzzles generally involve the brothers needing to use their individual strengths in a complementary way and cooperating to overcome an obstacle. For instance, the bigger brother will hoist the little brother up a ledge, and the little brother will then lower a rope.

Despite its originality, the gameplay leaves something to be desired. The difficulty of both the puzzles and the controls plateaus early on, and instead of pushing the boundaries of controlling two characters, Brothers is content to just scratch the surface.

The plot is very simple, even for such a sort game. The characters speak in a fictional language with no subtitles, so the content of in-game dialogues are left for you to extrapolate based on the characters’ gestures and tone of voice. I found myself growing a little weary of the gibberish words after a while, but it was a good stylistic choice for this game.

Brothers’ achievement is storytelling. Every aspect of the game (the art, gameplay, music, pacing, etc.) is in support of a central theme to which it is very committed. The plot may simple and the puzzles are same-y, but in a way Brothers uses those flaws as a strength; it leaves more of your attention open to play around, to observe the character development and the brothers’ personality differences, and to admire the scenery.

Overall a truly wonderful experience which I keep thinking about even weeks after completion. Highly recommended for those interested in storytelling through video games!

Super Hexagon is about as simple as they come; you move clockwise and anti-clockwise around a hexagon to avoid the incoming obstacles. It's fast-paced and brutally hard.

I'm a little surprised that a game with such little substance sucked me in and kept me entertained for 20 hours as I fought through the 6 gruelling levels. At first it was the soundtrack that kept me going; the sweet thumping chiptunes got me hungry to clear at least one lousy level.

After a while though, you start to see progress in your own reflexes and pattern recognition, and that's the real fun of Super Hexagon; getting better. You just keep getting better and better at this game until you reach a point where what you are supposed to do seems impossible but somehow you are succeeding in spite of that so you end up feeling like you're some kind of freak with superhuman reflexes.

I love Morrowind. I've played probably around 300 hours of it and there's still lots of unique quests to explore. That being said, if I take off my nostalgia glasses, there are some pretty major flaws that I feel anyone playing it for the first time today should be aware of. Breaking it down:

Cons:
* Combat of all types is boring. Magic/Stealth/Archery/Melee are all essentially reduced to keep-clicking-until-it-dies. On the magic side of things, the spell creation system is fun and there are lots of neat base spells to choose from, but in essence the combat itself is overly simple.
* The leveling system functions fine if you just don't pay attention to it, but optimal leveling is a tedious chore. If you are the type who just can't pass up an opportunity for maximum stat gains, this might be a big detractor.
* The dialogue is text based and most NPCs are just walking lore encyclopedias. The persuasion and bartering systems are laughably simple, and again, boring.
* The graphics haven't aged well, though it does have a strong artistic concept at its core.
* The menu interface is sub-par, but gets the job done.

Pros:
* Exploration is really well rewarded. Everywhere you look there's some small detail that hints at a story, or a unique artifact with interesting properties. Many of the ruins have secret entrances and places that you could easily miss.
* Morrowind does a good job of making you feel like your actions have impact. It could be better, but it is satisfying when factions will hate or love you depending on what you've done, and there are many unique dialog lines based on how famous you are.
* The quests are unique. Sure some of them blend together a little bit, but overall they are NOT just cookie-cutter quests. Most of them give you some insight into the world and how it works, or have some neat little twist.
* You can fly. It seems so trivial but I keep coming back to this as an example of the game's overwhelming freedom. It's fun scrounging around in the early game for limited-use levitation spells or the infamous Scrolls of Icarian Flight which make you jump so high you'll certainly die on your way back down. You start out so weak but there are powerful scrolls and spells to exploit that can change the entire game... the wild variance in the power of the enemies and items you encounter is one of Morrowind's stronger points.
* A final important pro is the modding community. If there are things you don't like about this game, chances are high there's a mod that can change it. In particular, I have a had good luck with graphics mod compilations and just general expansion packs. Of course, modding is not necessarily everyone's cup of tea.

In summary, this game has many great features and in some ways the sense of depth and scale you get when immersed in it is unrivaled by any game since. However, it requires a certain type of gamer, (or a certain amount of modding,) to get past its unpalatable quirks and into the wonderful world beneath.



EDIT: Just going to address a couple points that have come up in the comments.
* Discrepancy in my playtime listed vs what I have on record with Steam. I played Morrowind in 2004 just after the GOTY edition came out, which was before it was on Steam. I later purchased it on Steam because I had lost my physical copy.
* I love Morrowind yet gave it a non-recommendation. I wrote this review for the general gaming public in 2013 and I did not think it would be a good experience for the average 2013 Steam gamer because of the points listed above, hence my non-recommendation.

Bastion is a fun little top-down view dungeon crawler where you smash stuff and upgrade your weapons. The gameplay is good enough to hold your attention but nothing special. The real charm is the Narrator who describes everything you do and expounds upon the storyline. Add to this the excellent soundtrack and the beautiful art and you are left with an all around enjoyable experience.

Bastion's greatest strength is the cohesive art direction that runs through the story, visuals, and sound design.