Mara 🐿 最近的评测

I played the original Borderlands on consoles, and was somewhat disappointed there. A sci-fi shooter with unlimited guns and deep RPG mechanics? It sounded awesome, but it all felt very samey.

Borderlands 2 addresses a LOT of the issues I had, the plot is better, the characters are more interesting and the world feels more alive (despite still all taking place on the desert planet of Pandora).
But... it's still not quite there. Finding a new gun is less like adding a new tool to your arsenal, and more like finding loot in an Action RPG like Diablo or Torchlight, you quickly check if your numbers go up, then put it in your inventory to sell it later. I guess this IS a staple of RPGs, but it's not something I would find to be a positive.
The game still feels balanced to work best with multiple players (which I didn't consistently have), still has obligatory vehicle sections that don't really work and still don't give you anything nice when opening a vault... that last one was a spoiler, I guess. Sorry about that.

If you enjoyed the first Borderlands and want more of that then this will definitely scratch that itch.
If you want a fun shooter romp with friends that offers some character variety and customization, also get this.
But rated as an RPG, judged by its story and the complexity of its systems... well, it's not really hitting that target.

But, I'm still recommending it. I had fun with this game, and can see myself loading it back up again every now and then to tackle a piece of its nearly unlimited DLC packages.
I'm just not rushing out to get the oddly named Pre-Sequel any time soon.

I had played the demo of this a while ago, and felt then that it had decent, if generic, third person cover-based shooter gameplay and a weird voice-activated squad command system that I didn't expect to use.

Turns out that that was a completely correct assessment that nevertheless managed to completely miss the point.

Binary Domain tells the story of a covert task force sent into Japan to investigate the source of Hollow Children, robots indistinguishable from humans that actually believe that they are human until they are activated. The perfect sleeper agents, who have been popping up across the world recently.
All clues point to a mysterious robotics company, led by a director that hasn't been seen in public in decades.

If that feels generic then you would be correct, the game hits a bunch of tropes over the course of its ~15 hour campaign.
In much the same vein your team doesn't consist of international characters, but rather of international stereotypes.

The arrogant American, the bro-tastic African American, the sarcastic Brit, the smooth French one, the stoic Chinese one.
Players are unfortunately locked in as the arrogant American, but are free to choose which characters they bring on missions (up to two, only ones they've already encountered) which covers roles of the team that you don't want to take care of yourself.
Don't feel like sniping? Bring the sniper. Prefer sniping instead? Leave her home and bring an assault character instead that will draw fire as you pick off enemy robots from a distance.

Yep, robots. All opposition you'll face, except for some very few exceptions, will be robotic creations of the robotics conglomerate. This might sound boring, but it allows for some very nice destruction systems where you can disable parts of your opponents, changing their behaviours. The generic humanoid variants will crawl around if you shoot off their legs and will start shooting their allies instead of you if you manage to shoot their heads off.

Your squad mates will comment on everything you do, from yelling out requests for assistance to compliments on successful takedowns to talking about recent plot developments. You are able to respond to these, theoretically by using voice commands but for the people that couldn't be bothered (like me) there are also keyboard / controller responses available. They way you interact with your squad mates will raise or lower their opinion of you which does... something.

I've only completed one playthrough, so I'm not quite sure what things could all have gone differently, but I feel that some squad members coming to my rescue and a romance subplot were optional things that I managed to trigger by which squad members I favoured.
This means that my opinion of the ending that I got might be completely irrelevant to your potential playthrough, but I REALLY liked the ending.

In fact, my opinion of the game almost consistently got higher and higher from its slightly shaky start.
Everything slowly ramps up until an admittedly very... classic, quite predictable final boss fight that I felt was very satisfying (and, as it should be, it is definitely the hardest fight in the game, at least it was for me).

If you feel like playing a fun, highly playable action game with some clever twists and turns that gets better if you stick with it, definitely give Binary Domain a try.

15 minutes and you're done (not counting grinding for cards and the second ending)... but does that mean it's a bad game?
I don't think so, I feel the game set out to tell you one simple thing and it succeeds in this very well.

In order to achieve something (in this case creating an indie game) you need to work hard on it every day.
This is the only thing separating the succesful from the unsuccesful.

This isn't a deep thing, but it is an important thing.
I see no reason not to recommend this game... just don't expect too much.

Do you feel Pacman is an exploration of eternal damnation? Do you feel Binding of Isaac is?
I'd say that they are, and that Temper Tantrum is right up there with them.

Like in the Binding of Isaac you are cast as a small harmless boy, forced to do the bidding of a barely seen guardian as you are locked into a location against your will and are forced to do whatever you can to escape.
Like in Pacman you are haunted not by this actual authority figure but by ghosts, except these ghosts can phase through walls and won't kill you but merely knock you unconscious, inconveniencing you but not putting too long of a break in your frantic attempt to escape your damnation.

So how do you avoid these ghosts? By convincing your absentee guardian that you shouldn't be here. Starting out in your childhood home you are forced to destroy it, or at least every piece of twistedly sugary furniture in it, in an attempt to be noticed and shipped off to a less haunted place.
If you succeed you have a blissful (offscreen) moment of peace and quiet as you are driven to the baby sitter's house, where you soon find the same ghosts are coming after you again, forcing you to repeat the process.
After the babysitter's house comes grandma's house, paradoxically furnished as lavishly and colourfully as both your own home and that of the babysitter's.

And here comes the genius bit, as soon as you finally manage to get the attention of your hard of hearing grand mother, evading all tormenting spectres on the way, the game loops back around and you are once again in your own home, fully rebuilt in exactly the same way, with more ghosts to come haunt your every waking moment.

Like Prometheus' punishment for stealing fire from the Gods, every day is the same torment for this unnamed infant.
Welcome to hell, young thing, there is no escape, there is no end, there is just the never ending cycle.

But wait, I hear you ask, if this is such an immaculate horror experience then why isn't it more popular? And why, in fact, are you not recommending it?

Ah, good question imagined audience member, this is because this gripping terror is, as far as I can tell completely coincidental.
What the developer had in mind was a fun game where a small boy runs rampant in a colourful environment, destroying everything he can without being caught, much like the far, far better Catlateral Damage.
They could have seen the troubling dark edge that I see so clearly, doubled down and turned this into an intentionally disturbing game... but as it stands it is a poorly thought out, barely controllable, definitely nonsensical (in a bad way) mess of a game that is lacking such basic features as:

• Jumping
  
• In game options
  
• Difficulty settings
  
• Characters
  
• A plot
  
• An ending

This game isn't the hellscape I'm making it out to be.
And it's worse off for it.

Would I object fiercely if this were paid DLC?
Yes, I really would.

I appreciate that this is available, and that people that prefer the English voices don't have to waste space installing this.
More games with multiple languages should embrace this model, and it was a pleasant surprise from a developer / publisher that tends to be rather fond of paid DLC.

People did not like The Phantom Menace much, so this game was already at a disadvantage as it came out.
Combine that with clunky controls that are hard to set up to work halfway intuitively. My play sessions consisted of a single mission, maybe two, at a time and every time I started up the game I rebound the keys ever so slightly to make them slightly better for me.
By the time the final mission rolled around I was finally pleased with how it felt, and the game was entirely enjoyable.

The plot isn't anything special, but it's sufficiently seeped in Star Wars lore that it was entertaining for me. It features a cast of three new characters experiencing the invasion of Naboo and getting caught up in the conflict. Missions are split up about 50/50 between planetary battles and space battles, but you are always in one of the three titular Starfighters. Each character has his/her own ship, which controls slightly differently and has different secondary weapons and looks.

It's not the huge budget movie tie-in you might be used to, but those also tend to be very bad.
If you're patient enough to jump in and out to tweak the controls to work for you and have some fondness for Star Wars that at least somewhat extends to the prequel trilogy this might be a fun title to pick up.

I would like to think I went into this game with low expectations, but I still came away disappointed.

This is a basic defence game where you defend against wave after wave of enemies coming your way. Every 3 or so waves you go to an unexplained shop screen where you can upgrade your character, equipment, spells and stationary defences using the gold you acquired for getting rid of your enemies. Every 10 waves you fight a large boss, culminating into a large final boss at wave 50.

My problem with the game, or main problem I guess, is that it is very unforgiving about how you spend your gold. With only finite amounts available every shopping round, no way to replay waves to grind for gold and no progress carried over between games (you always start from scratch with a fresh character) a misclick spending money on Intelligence even though you were going for a melee run can ruin your run. Or, rather than a misclick, just trying a new approach where you save up for some stationary defences for example. Or finding yourself stuck at a boss because it is out of range of the weapons you invested in.

Combine that with rather vague explanations about what every upgrade does, unimpressive graphics, no real story and weirdly floaty jumping and the game just kind of breaks down to a tedium.
If you plan to go in with low expectations, lower them some more. Or better yet, maybe just don't.

This is a weird game.

You don't really need my review to see this, it is after all a strategy game where all the tanks are at the same time anime girls and the setting completely accepts and incorporates both aspects of this somehow.
I know that these anthropomorphic representations of war vehicles are not unheard of in anime / Japanese media, but for me it took some getting used to.

Don't let the look of the cutscenes fool you though, this isn't really a visual novel, nor will you end up dating your tanks. It's not quite that far out there. This is, first and foremost, a tactical strategy game.

Your troops are deployed (at specific positions of your choice in the landing area) in a hexagonal grid representing the battlefield, and you move them around in a turn based manner. The presentation is very clean and static, with no real detailing on terrain or anything. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but I managed to look past it eventually.

There are various classes of human tank, each fulfilling different roles on the battlefield. From reconnaissance scouts to suicide bombers to artillery installations to the run of the mill tank.
Each of these types can be improved with resources won from battles, allowing you to construct direct upgrades to the original types (usually slightly more expensively than the older one).
There is plenty to unlock, and some of the unlocks even have story tied to them when you manage to get there, but getting everything can be quite the grind.

The story takes place in an alternate-history Japan, where two factions are fighting for control of the land. You are a lieutenant in charge of a recently reinstated branch of the imperial army, and manage your human tanks with the help of your trusted mechanic and a newly assigned advisor / observer sent by high command (both also anime girls, because of course they are). The story takes some twists and turns and was a lot more interesting and entertaining than I expected, basic anime clichés aside, and I was happy with how it was brought to its conclusion.

I got one of, I think, four possible endings and the player is free to start over after they've reached an ending and take their army as-is into a new game. Between missions you are also able to replay any previously cleared mission (and a variety of side missions), which I feel is a nice touch.

I would recommend this game to players looking for a decently long, very Japanese strategy game with a solid focus on story and replayability.
There is a sequel out as well, I have not yet had a chance to try it but this first instalment forms a complete, stand alone story.

It's hard not to start a review for this game with "Civilization V in a fantasy setting" so I decided I won't.
Won't not, that is.

Because this is very, very much like Civilization V except in a fantasy setting, and that is by no means a bad thing.
In case you've never played a Civilization or more generally a 4X game, you're tasking with the survival of a faction and will need to manage cities, armies, diplomacy and the discovery of the world around you.

There were barely any features truly unique to this game, in fact the only thing that appears to be without a direct Civ V parallel would be the magic system.
I would definitely recommend this to people that want to play long campaigns guiding a civilization as it develops in a fantasy setting. The game did exactly what I hoped it would and I had no technical problems or concerns about design choices at all.
Whether you'll ever prefer this to Civ depends on what you want, this being slightly more focussed on combat and less on development, but it's definitely a fun game to play.

This is a weird game for me to review, since it felt like it was over before it had even started.
Describing itself as a "roguelike space exploration game" I suppose that the idea is that you go through a large number of runs, but I didn't really feel inclined to do so.

The game doesn't do anything wrong, but it also doesn't do anything right enough for me to fire it up and go in for another round. The combat is entertaining enough, the ship upgrades reasonably varied, the universe navigation functional.
If you want a quick distraction that won't frustrate you, this might be an excellent choice for you. I wanted something a bit deeper though.