21
Products
reviewed
154
Products
in account

Recent reviews by DevilMcSheep

< 1  2  3 >
Showing 1-10 of 21 entries
4 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
89.6 hrs on record (43.5 hrs at review time)
I love Audiosurf, want to get fit, and have a passionate hatred towards orbs - this is excellent! :D
This feels like swimming through your music, punching evil jellyfishes in bass-fueled FURY, it is wonderful! :D

Like with Audiosurf, to have the most fun, you have to take the time to git gud (that's a good thing), and all the way from starting out at Normal (easy) to becoming 'one with the game', and shredding the craziest patterns on Elite, this is a proper sport! You WILL get soaked in sweat, and you WILL feel ALIVE!
Who knew the best motivator to exercise was video games!? :D
(video on Steam shows 'medium' difficulty by the way, it gets way more intense!)

Important technical tips
Sync
Oddly, "Audioshield (literally) puts YOU (fail) at the point of impact", NOT your shields (win) - this is why some people complain about music sync being 'off' - the game doesn't account for you extending your arms (wtf).
The solution here is very simple: You can effectively adjust the sync by standing ahead or behind the foot markings on the floor.
Standing just behind the marking, with my toes almost touching the marked heels is what works best for me - the orbs become perfectly synced with the moves, awesome! :D

Orb height
Audioshield calibrates to your height just after the level loading screen, or when you pause-unpause! If you get orbs uncomfortably low, it's probably because you leaned down to scratch your leg at the wrong moment - pause-unpause while standing tall to fix it!

Level generation
The orbs may be synced to a different instrument than you expect - adequate(-ly tuned) audio equipment and higher volume will quickly make it obvious. It'll sync to vocals too, which actually works surprisingly well!

Concept & main gameplay: 10/10!
I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ love this game! It is wonderful fun, AND keeps you feeling alive, blood pumping! Never regretted getting out of the chair and putting on the old Vive for this!
The 'supporting elements': 6/10
There is nothing game-breakingly wrong here, however, here's a little wishlist of improvements:
  • Song browser menu SUCKS! (it's the same as Audiosurf 2)
    I have a folder of ~250 songs, and I refuse to add navigational steps by organizing them into folders - a huge alphabetical list works great for me everywhere but here! The song entries are huge, all unnecessarily showing the song's cover art (which lags the game to load), AND there's no scroll handle, so you're stuck scrolling up/down at a pace much slower than what you could do otherwise.
    This is a lot of text for something relatively minor, but man, I HATE UI which cannot keep up with my intentions!
  • Dead time between the action
    Sure, you need a little moment to get into position after clicking 'Start', and the first orbs arriving, but nowhere near as much as the game gives you. After the song ends, too - sure, it's nice to get a little extra moment in-world, rather than jumping to the leaderboard immediately after the last note, but it hangs on just a little too long.
    I understand why some may prefer these timings the way they are, but this should be adjustable in the settings.

    Really it's not too-too bad, and the game does at least load quickly!

    Another way to reduce overall 'dead time' would of course be to improve the song browser, but besides that, I'd love to see these simple additions immediately to the leaderboard section, the following options: 'Play next song in folder', 'Play (randomly selected song)', and 'Re-roll random song'.
    The random selection stuff would help with moments of indecision, too :)
  • Leaderboards
    I'd like to see results from other modes on the leaderboards - I wouldn't mind downgrading difficulty level, or switching to/from fitness mode, if it meant I had someone to play against for an obscure (or new) song, if only there was a way to know!
    Playing obscure music in a relatively obscure game, on kinda obscure hardware, finding people on boards needs all the help it can get! (Still, more-popular music is surprisingly well populated with results!).

    A possible solution would be to show results from all 3 main difficulty levels on one board, but base the order on an extra number - a 'difficulty-adjusted combined score', where you'd get 100k knocked off the score for every level below Elite. This could be an option for all boards, or could be automatically applied to all songs with only a few results total.
    To avoid making things too messy, mode icons could be displayed (optionally instead of avatars), or entry backgrounds/text could be color-coded.

    It would also be nice to see timestamps of peoples' results! In Audiosurf (1), it is very satisfying to beat long-standing records, and it's great to see recent competition popping up! Would be nice to have that here, too!
  • Height calibration
    This is kinda minor, but I'm not a fan of making sure to stand tall at the right time every time the game loads. An option to permanently set your height would be nice - just add a dedicated 'set height' button to the intro screen/pause menu, and it'll all be great!
    Sure, it's more 'seamless' to have it adjusted without the user knowing at all, but I see this automation causing more trouble than it's worth.
  • Steam features
    Steam achievements are a lot of fun, but the game has none! I'd love some overarching goals besides dominating all the leaderboards!

    Steam Workshop! Audioshield is just as moddable as Audiosurf 2 (very!), and I really don't understand why there's no Steam Workshop support! Personally, I'm not super keen on segmenting the leaderboards with modes even more, but still, I'm sure there are people with very creative gameplay ideas, just no good place to share them!

    I'd also love to see some custom skins for this! The base game has a good selection of them, but I'd love to see more, especially with interesting dynamic elements!
    Coming from Audiosurf, one thing I'm missing here is the sense of environmental exploration - it was very interesting to see what track shapes the game came up with. Dancing in place instead of riding a vehicle, you understandably lose this element, but I'm sure custom skins could bring some of that magic back in one way or another! :)
  • Better fitness mode
    Fitness mode can work great, but only one extra move (ducking) gets repetitive. More interesting stuff could be done!
    Jumping, leaning side-to-side, perhaps something to avoid with your hands (but ok to touch with head). Hell, perhaps move/rotate the fighting position itself and make the user change position entirely - make some use of bigger playspaces!
    Regarding how things currently are, my biggest gripe with fitness mode is how calmer songs can force you to basically sit on the floor for a while. It's just awkward.
In the end
Sure, I talked mostly about what could be improved, and how to make the most of the game, but rest assured, Audioshield is totally AWESOME!
I just cannot come up with more combinations of words to describe the sheer fun of playing this thing! :D

Don't buy it on sale, buy it for full price, the raw entertainment here is absolutely worth it, and the dev deserves it, alongside the encouragement to polish this solid 9/10 game over the edge to 10/10!

By the way, if you're reading this and don't own VR kit, I'd say that this game alone makes it worth getting your hands on! You can get an original Vive (full kit) used for $100-$200 now, and Audioshield runs great even on hardware below minimum VR spec (FX-6300@4.7, Fury X, Windows 7 here).
Posted December 22, 2023.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
12 people found this review helpful
4 people found this review funny
11.5 hrs on record
you can throw fishes
fishes upgrade to exploding fishes
is nice
Posted January 17, 2023.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
4 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
7.1 hrs on record (7.0 hrs at review time)
9/10 too many socks
Posted January 10, 2023.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1 person found this review funny
72.5 hrs on record (7.0 hrs at review time)
Runs on Windows 7 with a very simple fix that you can find on the forums!
If you have even loose interest in trying this, DO IT!

The actual review
I jumped into this straight on Hard mode, and man, I've never had so much fun being stuck on the first level for hours before :D
Figuring out what's what, how the enemies behave, ect, ect... I was making more and more progress until finally beating the game, and though I play almost everything on high/max difficulty, nothing ever felt as satisfying of an accomplishment as getting to the end of this, even if RNG did in fact play it's role in getting me there :D
One successful run is nowhere near the end of the journey though, and I'm genuinely hyped to play more of this once I have more free time :D
  • The gameplay is no less fun than the trailer makes it look.
  • The music is excellent all the way through the game.
  • Being roguelike as opposed to having fixed pre-made maps adds far more to the game than I ever expected.
  • While the game (and it's RNG) can be very harsh indeed, no death in combat ever feels like it wasn't fault of your own.
  • Dodging on beat works REALLY well!
Even if you're a stingy bugger like me, don't wait for a sale, the raw entertainment here is worth far more than full price :D

Tip: The on-screen rhythm indicator is no more than a distraction, turn that off once you have some idea of what the game expects of you, and turn up your volume instead :)
Posted September 26, 2022.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1 person found this review funny
14.9 hrs on record (4.3 hrs at review time)
It's like Spintires with bugs
Posted November 10, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
58.1 hrs on record (33.0 hrs at review time)
It's a good time! You wouldn't regret picking it up on sale, and playing through the story!
(Creeper World experience very much optional-enough)

The soundtrack is great, and the visuals are more pleasing to the eye than the store page implies!

Sadly, no level is difficult enough to properly make you scratch your head, but the gameplay is more than dynamic enough not to become a mindless slog either (unlike CW3 :D).

Of everything, the most painful part about the game is the amount of missed potential!
Despite the rudimentary editor, designing your own ships is great fun, but you must do this at the expense of the game balance, since it's all unrestricted, and there's no encouragement to go for efficient designs/fleets.
A 'Least expensive fleet' leaderboard could've solved this, alongside perhaps-optional fleet value limits, but no, it's just 'do whatever lol'.

The game's also very limited on official content, totaling at 25 missions, instead expecting you to be interested in the automated mission generator, and user-created content, which is very unfortunate, with how much sifting through trash non-curated content tends to necessitate.

Anyway, it's a solid game, and I'm happy to recommend it, especially if you enjoy things themed around destruction! :D
Just a shame that it's 1% of development time away from being 50% more fun...
Posted November 7, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
4 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
22.2 hrs on record
As is foretold by the almighty underground spaghetti monster - your abstinence from the series is to come to an end!
Posted October 28, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
1 person found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
89.3 hrs on record
A fundamental problem with the CW games is that once you gain momentum against the creeper, your eventual victory becomes inevitable, removing much of the tension in the game.

The fun lies in figuring out how to gain this momentum in the first place, and NOT in fighting for an hour on an 'epic' map, to claim the victory that you knew was yours 59 minutes ago.

95% of maps GIVE you generous ground to grow your gorgeous ENERGYCANCER within, guaranteeing great demise of the gel ... eventually.

For sure, this DOES have some exciting levels, but where's the fun in sifting through piles of easy-mode trash to find them?

Fighting for survival is a lot more fun than crawling forward to clear an Atlantic-sized pool of sludge, and the game is unfortunately much more encouraging of the latter, presumably because of NOOBS getting stuck, and loudly complaining about certain levels of the previous games.

Perhaps it was designed for people who refuse to pause the game to queue up actions, and if that's you, then great, have fun!
For me, though- playing 100% realtime just feels totally sloppy.

CW3 can very well be considered an 'indie epic', worthy of much respect, but the 'top-down sandbox with some sludge to kill over there, whenever you feel like it' direction for it, as opposed to 'BUILD WELL OR EVERYTHING DIES' direction of CW1 makes for quite the disappointment.
Posted October 13, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1 person found this review funny
53.2 hrs on record
A much-denser package of exciting challenges than the more-popular CW3, without the unnecessarily large scale, or tiring amount of fiddling about.

Fewer units to keep repositioning, with more-satisfying firepower, too!
Well-placed Mortars in action are an awesome sight in this game! <3

CW1 is not afraid to punish you for failure, and will allow you to claim victory soon after it's clear that you have earned it;
No careful draining of a medium-sized sea necessary to win, once you've figured out how to gain a good foothold on the map!
Posted October 13, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
3 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
31.9 hrs on record
FBRBRBRBRBRBRBR "Stop right there, citizen!!" BRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBR

A reasonably-entertaining helicopter game, or a reasonably-annoying game of trying to find one.

Certainly not without it's moments, and has a good amount of soul!
In some ways, better than JC2, but far more janky/clumsy overall, at least while on the ground! Flying is still very fun!
Far too many 'WTF even killed me??' moments when things get intense.

Makes for an entertaining-enough relaxed grind, if you have podcasts to catch up on! About 30h to 100%.

It's almost too loveable to give a negative rating to, but being completely honest, would I recommend it to someone as a good time?
Not reliably, no! If there was a 'mixed' rating, this would get it!
The smeary 'dirty glasses' postFX (that you can't turn off without making everything look super flat) has aged terribly, and pushes it over the edge to "No".
Posted May 17, 2021.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
< 1  2  3 >
Showing 1-10 of 21 entries