Recent reviews by Old Sea Captain

Growing up my local comic book shop always had informal meet ups for Magic the Gathering on Saturdays. It was the place to be if you were into MtG as there was always someone ready to play and make new friends. It was a fun experience until THEY would arrive.

THEY were a group of five men in their thirties who would come into the store like they owned the place. Each one carrying bloated binders and boxes full of cards, slamming them on the counter top, and nudging everyone out of the way without so much as a "excuse me." THEY usually spent their time bragging about how much money they've spent on cards and yelling at the elementary kids over stupid game infractions.

One of THEY was a guy I'll call "Greg." Greg was an overweight guy with greasy stubble and wore shirts a size too small for him. He worked as a security guard and often bragged about holds and disarming techniques he knew. Despite the fact he was often out of breath lugging his card collection around, no one challenged him on this.

Greg also had this habit of flicking out his pocket knife and showing off his skills with it. Not one of those practical Old Timer pocket knives your granddad carries for the odd occurrence; it was one of those garish and overly large pocket knives you find at gun shows. And by "skills" I mean the bloated fool kept it on a leather cord and would swinging around his back with the blade out like Bruce Lee with his nunchucks. He never manage to nick himself or, thankfully, anyone else.

I think everyone has a "Greg" in their lives. An insecure and socially stunted person who's only way of relating to people is to appear cool and dangerous. Someone who never learned how to play well with others. And if you can't think of anyone who is a "Greg," you may be 'Greg."

What's this go to do with Hatred?

Hatred is the kind of game Greg would love. Desperate edginess, Not Important's sneering contempt, the unbridled carnage... it can be a fun experience for a while. Hatred is like those moments on GTA when you're tired of running missions and just want to inflict mindless mayhem for a while. But while GTA has something to come back to, Hatred doesn't and eventually becomes something of a dull grind.

Not to say I didn't enjoy playing Hatred, it just became repetitive after only a few hours. I see myself coming back to Hatred for another few hours of brainless destruction and murder eventually, but only if I'm in the mood for it.

Despite my love of Bud Spencer & Terence Hill movies, I can't recommend this game.

"Slaps and Beans" is a poorly executed side-scrolling beat-'em-up. You should expect it to be a recreation of the frantic, slapstick fight scenes seen in the movies. What you get are monotonous scrimmages.

Enemies are encountered in homogeneous clumps that swarm over to you as the fights begin; seemingly possessing a hive intelligence that leads to each bad guy to act the exact same way. Instead of being methodical or positioning myself for the fights, it was often easier to just wade into the mob and button mash myself to victory. The bad guys behavior makes any other option frustrating and pointless not out of difficulty but bad design. Destructible items that you would expect to use to club someone over the head make no difference as it doesn't increase your reach or seem to cause any more damage than your fists.

And speaking of reach, both Bud and Terence have stubby arms. With the enemies' swarming and limited behavior and the terrible reach of your characters, you're often in danger of being overwhelmed and taking heaps of damage. The enemies overlap each other and become hostile blobs and it's hard to tell if you're hitting anyone. Not that taking damage is ever a cause for concern as each fight and each stage have plentiful health items -mugs of beer and pans of beans- that always restore your health bar to full, even on the hard setting.

If you like games like "Double Dragon" or "Streets of Rage," you're not going to like this as it lacks the polish and even the conventions of those games. If you're a fan of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, your money is better spent on their movies.

I re-installed TF2 two months ago after being absent for a few years. I'm not going to waste time with a review but share what I found server hopping.

On one server, I found some kids role-playing as the classes. The voice chat was a cacophony of pre-pubescent squeaks and nasally teenagers acting out their class of choice. While I was there a red Heavy with a terrible Russian accent was trying to get a "sandvich" out of a blue Engie's dispenser without much luck and was destroying it out of frustration.

On another server, this one owned by a popular Youtuber, the players were talking over each other repeating and shouting memes or making desperate, unfunny jokes. Each one seemed convinced they were the star of their own personal stream and everyone there was their audience. This became exhausting quickly.

Found a nice server community where everyone had been playing with each other for years. The light-hearted ribbing and personal anecdotes shared were enjoyable and everyone was welcoming to a pubbie newcomer to their group. A pleasing experience compared to the first two and I found myself enjoying the game again.

I decided to try some of the custom map servers not long after. Zombie Run was interesting at first but got boring very quickly.

I found a deathrun server that had a Garfield-themed map that was an assault to the eyes and basic human taste Made it a favorite right away.

Rediscovered the Weeaboutique micspam server and surprised to see it not just still around but thriving as well.

But after several weeks I grew bored. I felt like I've experience everything this game could offer and some of the more recent additions didn't warrant much interest from me. While the art design of the game has been abandoned for gaudy cosmetics (I'm looking at you festive weapons), it remains a great game; just one I'm overly familiar with and mildly embarrassed with the number of hours I've spent on it.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

This game is as funny and imaginative as you would expect a Double Fine game to be. It's a adventure game disguised as a platformer. The game requires replays and that's where things fall apart. With the exception of the character-specific levels, the game repeats itself. Despite how clever and funny the dialogue, it can't cover up the fact you're doing a lot of tedious jumping and item placement all the while switching between three characters you have to navigate individually. And you'll have to play through the game at least three times (six if you don't save before getting the bad endings) just to unlock all the character's cave paintings and see both endings.

This game is very short. You'll finish it in two hours. With three more chapters to come, it's wiser just to wait for them all to be released and eventually bundled at a discount price through Steam.

The game is a competent point-and-click adventure game. It's whimsical solutions are enjoyable although the puzzles aren't challenging. The dialogue is grating and some of the voice acting sounds stiff. The main characters are done well but other characters just come off flat and uninteresting. In fact, one of the character''s voice sounds like it was recorded through a phone.

Unless you're some diehard adventure game fan who has to have every title out there, you're not missing much.