Recent reviews by Stychis

It seems it's finally time. After 5 years Blade kitten has gotten it's episode 2 and conclusion. Was it worth the finish though? One way to find out, isn't there?

Blade kitten is a Platformer developed by Krome studios and released by Atari in 2010. If you're familiar with either, you'd know that Krome Studio's made a previous platformer game on the Gamecube and other consoles called "TY: The Tasmanian Tiger." which is a game that personally I've had a lot of good experiences with when I was younger. Sure, the voice acting was cheesy and some game mechanics were irritating as sin. But it was a fun game. And if you know about Atari, you know they went bankrupt some time ago, but I'll get to that later.

In Blade Kitten, you play as Kit Ballard. Essentially a catgirl with an interesting hair genetic, but realistically she is part of a rare(?) alien race called the Felion's. It looks like "Felines" but is pronounced differently, get it? Anyways, her job is to be a breaker; which is the game's essential equivalent of a Bounty hunter. Hunts targets, get paid. Usual stuff. First person she runs into is her soon to be rival but not main antagonist; Justice. Blonde woman working for an evil-ish military group known as the Sollers.

Gameplay is simple stuff. The game runs entirely on a 2.5D plane. 3D models but the game always sticks to it's camera angle; and the game's entire system runs as a platformer. Kit's attacks focus on a hovering "Breaker Blade" which can be swung at melee range, or sent out at a distance. You can hold RMB to spear people's armor or shields, or just to yank them in. There's also special attacks, like a Q to mount and throw soldiers by the head.

There are a few kinks to work out though, that's unusure if they'll ever get fixed up. First off, Episode 1 was originally designed for consoles. It shows when the "how to play" is just a bunch of symbols with no real display on what you're /supposed/ to press. The only one that does show this is the loading screens, and if you have even remotely decent of a computer it wont be around long enough to read. The Enemy AI can also be seen as unfair at times, countering hits from you are most of the basic enemies 90% of the time.

With Atari closing down in a later year and stopping development of Blade kitten Ep2, there was a pretty long hiatus. But now we have it. Episode 2 has nicer animations, a more consistent 60 FPS and a rather shiny level design! Plus, all the original characters voice actors and new content to boot. It's fun stuff, and was a nice wrap-up for the series.

Pro's
------------
+Decent Level design
+Lovely world-building
+Slipped in references of older games
+Level keeps up with you, allowing the player to go pretty damn fast at times.
+Slippery, almost wild yet usable controls.

Con's
------------
-Some enemies are downright irritating
-Climb command registration can be sometimes odd
-Some map bugs
-Enemy's can be expoited using Wild controls, making bosses rather easy.

Verdict: Buy it if it interests you. There /is/ a demo, so try that first.

Thanks for the efforts Krome Studios, I'm glad you didn't leave the game for dead.

EDIT: The game is now free on Dischan's site, due to their shutdown. If you want to play the game but don't have the money, you can get it there.

Oh Dysfunctional Systems. I love it so. I'm kind of surprised I find myself writing a review for a VN, but this isn't your usual Ecchi bait ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that comes with friends who idle in it for 1000+ Hours YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. But I feel it deserves this in light of recent events, so lets get down to it.

Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to manage chaos (Or DysSys) is a Visual novel that focuses around a young Heroine named Winter Harrison, a "Mediator" in training. Mediators are effectively humans from an advanced world of technology, who utilize a codex bracelet and other variety of technology to cross into alternate worlds and dimensions. The goal of this? To act as a mediator. Their job is to find the main problem that causes the realm issue, and fix it. In any real means. In a way they are playing god, without really playing god.

LtMC is effectively a prologue, and a bit EP 1 as well. In this you are currently in an otherwise dystopian modern-esque world with your mentor that you're shadowing named Cyrus. Who, for lack of a better word; is a bit of an ass. Also a bit brash, and doesn't really have a moral standing at all. This naturally causes him to conflict a few times in the prologue with Winter - There is even a series of achievements you unlock depending on the outcome of a multi-choice argument.

One way or another, things go wrong and Winter pays the price. I can't really say more as is; cause I care too much to mention spoilers. But here is one I will mention.

The game's funding is out the window.

DysSys was planned to have an Episode 0 - acting as a sort of prologue to the start of the whole plot and its own prologue to explain winter - as well as an EP 2 or 3, but a game selling at $5 each doesn't exactly go over well. They had a kickstarter, it got overfunded; we were all happy to receive. Unfortunately, improper management of money on Dischan's part sort of caused the project to fall onto it's face. This doesn't mean the game isn't gonna get its sequels, but it means its gonna be done on Voluntary time. Expect a few months, maybe late 2015 at this rate. Dischan has closed it's doors, so all production has ceased.

Does that mean you should buy the game? Sure. Why not? If you have $5 to spend and there isn't anything else you could possibly spend it on, then go for it. If it's on sale though, I'd say shoot for it period. It has good art, good characters, fun dialogue, and the music is phenominal.

I was never good with rating numbers, so I'll just leave it at the fact is: I liked it. That's really all I have to say on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SY2UdX9eKk

This game is still early access, so this review is subject to change/additions

Damned is basically what it says on the Tin. A survival horror game for 5 players (Maximum) where four play scavenger hunt Point A to point D item findings, and one player plays one of (Currently 3) monsters to murder your friends. Fun for everyone, especially if you have friends who enjoy screaming very loudly at your music-cue arrival. Lets get down to it.

Gamplay involves item-based problem solving. Simple stuff. Find key, key goes to Locker, locker goes to safe, safe goes to kitchen, kitchen goes to crowbar, crowbar goes to wood over door, escape through door. Not always that simple, but basically always that formula. You have to find keys, unlock doors and safes, and escape out of the final door while eluding the monster player. Not always so easy.

The Monster player has 3 monsters to choose from (At the time of this review) being Lurker, Phantom, and Mary. Lurker is your tall and gruesome skinless hulkbeast who spends a majority of the game in "Phase mode" which is where the player will move around quickly, phasing through doors (Cause you cant see them) and players (Who you also cant see) and setting traps. Since you can't see players, you need to use the traps to figure out their locations. Once they set one off, and it lets you phase in, you pop in and slice them to ribbons.

The phantom is like a satanic stevie wonder. A floating torso who is completely blind to anyone unless they make a lot of sound. This means running, and clicking your flashlight. And getting too close. Make too much noise, and you'll show up in his vision as a white life-form that he can go maul. It's a fairly simple system, and I've nearly had it gotten around when I played him.

Mary is your near-typical japanese-horror esque girl. Similar in design to popular ones like the Ring, or grudge. For a majority of the game she moves slower than a 95 year old man walking through hot tar. She also randomly teleports as a way to balance and make your life easier. You might teleport in the same room as the players, might not. You can also manually teleport, but we'll get to that in a second.

Mary has the ability to enter a /frenzy/ mode when her meter (Which you dont see) fills. Stare at the players enough, and you can activate frenzy mode. a 10-15 second burst of quadrupled speed in which she screams violently, goes all scary faced and comes bullrushing you. You can also exchange a bit of the frenzy meter for another teleport, if you dont wanna wait for the freebie random one.

There are about 12+ stages right now, with the most recent (At the time of this review) being a forest/camping area. The game does have some flaws, like optimization issues, data leaks, and minor coding bugs. Updates are also somewhat slow, but when they come around they are very nice. Running on my toaster I get about 25-30 frames in a map. Apparently a high-end gets about the same, due to optimization issues. It happens.

I can't really rate it with a number right now, but I am giving it a yes. It's a nice game, for a beta.

Fun ♥♥♥♥ yo

Oh Tower of guns, lets ramble on about you cause I haven't yet written a review. No real reason to, I just feel like it.


Tower of Guns is a Room-based RNG FPS, built upon the Unreal Engine and published by Blankslatejoe and his Bad posture games. The game is similar to that of binding of Isaac. You enter a randomly generated room, fight the enemies assigned and move onto the next room, sometimes the enemies might be specials, sometimes they might drop items, sometimes there are pickups like coins and ♥♥♥♥ to buy useful things like stat boosts and upgrades, or use items.

There are 8 guns in total, which you start with two and unlock the next six via various methods. Clearing the game, dying 8-10 times, getting X thing, ecetera. Along with that, there are roughly 10+ guns you can only obtain as rare drops/bought from the level's coin machine at the chance. These guns range from totally useless to so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ OP it kills bosses in roughly two-three shots.

Speaking of OP, use items range in the same way. Items you slot as action items can be used to do various things. There are useless ones like the "Thread Derailer" which summons cat pictures with meowing affects; but no damage. Then there are super OP items like the Blue shell, which is a single large rotating sawblade that can wipe even the final boss in a matter of seconds. Only suitable, given the name.

As you'd expect stat bonuses stack, and they will stack high ranging from Extra jumps, to jump height bonuses, to speed boosts, to strength boosts. There are also items to lower difficulty (Enemies spawn amount & Damage), Raise difficulty (Opposite of lower), and items to boost the XP rate of your weapons and the fill rate of your use item bar.

Since it's just Joe working on the game, updates are slow; but usually helpful. He aims to fix the game where he can, and the game suffers minimal issues as far as I run into. And being built on the unreal engine, you can bet you can jump and strafe around like you're playing UT2004 again if you get the jump and speed bonuses to match. If you enjoy a bullet-hell twist on the usual BoI formula, feel free to get the game. Especially since it's on sale right now during the summer sale; which is when I wrote this.

Unless you can fix the mass stuttering, this game is not worth buying on steam and I feel bad for the fact that I asked for this from someone without knowing these issues.
I hear the GOG version works wonders, though.

It's an okay game, but not worth it's current price tag. Wait for a sale.

While it has it's ups, Puddle is ultimately a platformer made out of OE cake.

Explore the powers of the mind, Hone the latent psychic abilities of one's own brain, become a Psychonaut!

To be entirely honest, I'm amazed by how much content this game gave. Back in 2005 this game was originally released, and while it looked interesting in magazines and occasionally when it was talking about collecting the scavenger hunt items on G4's "Cheat!" show I never actually payed any attention to it. But when it came upon a sale where the thing was $3 and all the praise it had gotten, I figured what the hell and bought it. Not like I'd spend it on anything else.

And I'm damn glad I didn't. For $3 I got quite the game. There are several stages to go through packed with it's own ends of content that have enemies and puzzles, boss fights with formula's that are difficult but not -too- difficult. And incase it /is/ too difficult you can always wave around a strip of bacon to call up some help to discuss it with you. It's handy like that.

The pro's of this thing is the fact of it's content. It merely has enough to make me realize the difference between then and now in terms of game development. Several stages over the course of several minds, atleast 10+ different maps in total with an equal if not greater (I think) number in bosses. On top of the fact that aside from powers earned from the story, you can do the side stuff for even more powers that come in great use. And in your spare time you can collect arrowheads to buy stuff from the camp store.

The dialogue was also very good. The characters all had personalities, their own witty banter and dialogue actually got a physical laugh out of me sometimes. Something I rarely get nowadays. Not to mention the animation from some of the cutscenes kinda reminded me of the animation in reboot. Which isn't a bad thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaAt-SY2Efw

But that's where I start nitpicking. To be frank, I expected the arrowhead store to be an entirely optional fun thing. It only occured to me later that it certainly wasn't when I went back near the end of the game to buy some dowsing rod to dig up arrowheads for a device that I thought wasn't even required. Turned out it was, when it was being used to block a progression point. It was no big deal I guess, but god I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hated fighting those psychic animals.

Another thing was the fact that these side missions for your Psi rank was also required, as these abilities on the side become main story requirements. Again not a huge deal, when I think about it.

Overall, a fun game. If you haven't picked it up, go right ahead. And if it's on sale, there really isn't any reason why you shouldn't.

Now to get out of my time machine.

(Posted on 7/18/13, during summer sale.)

I remember awhile back playing this game as a demo and loving the general way it worked. It was a fairly new approach to the usual physics-based puzzle genre, and with the price from the sale how could I refuse?

The game has great bits. You play as the main character named Tiny, whom inherited apparently some pants (underwear) from his grandpa. Sadly, his brother/cousin/related person Big had stolen them, and fleed to a desert with something about qualms for it's ancient power.

The game puzzles work entirely off of physics, and as such utilize a device pack that Tiny has. With it, you can cut, grapple, and rocket anything you please to complete puzzles. The music is pretty nice too, with the ability to switch BGM's with N and collect more in the game. There are a multitude of ways to complete a single puzzle usually for the more creative.

LIke a great side though, the game also has a bit of a downside or two. For one, the game is short. 6 stages to be exact (Excluding tutorial level), though fun all the way. The game also has a habit of not notifying you if you messed up a puzzle, for those puzzles that are more of a one-solution rather then a multiple.

If you find it inteesting, download the demo. It gives enough to work with to get a feel for how the laser tools work. Like it? Then buy it, it's only like...6 bucks right now isn't it? Maybe 3?