Recent reviews by An Easy Target

The main appeal of Concursion is novelty. The Flash game style is often offputting. It's just kind of an okay to fair:

-Sidescrolling platformer;
-scrolling shoot-em-up;
-and whatever the astronaut thing is supposed to be.

*But*, the style that can be so offputting can in brief moments ring with the undeniable appeal some of those Flash games weren't without. Scoff if you want, but if you actually have Henry Stickman in your wishlist or have outright bought it, you've got no leg to stand on.

And as for the genre switching, say what you will about games doing it too much, but I have yet to see a game actually do it quite like Concursion.

As for the plot and dialogue, it's basic, yet at least has a plot, and the dialogue is interesting with a sense of humor, and can feel rather dark to me even, sometimes.

As a budget-friendly tiptoe into "what if a Flash game were to be made as big as a full length game", I can recommend Concursion. Just go in with low expectations.

At this rate I have no choice *but* to review this. I haven't even so much as gotten past the second of the king's, erm... *bounties*, but I can say there's something about this game that sucks one in for just one more fight.

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If I'm honest, I continue playing this with glazed eyes and mind, disillusioned to whatever joy I thought I was chasing with the impulse buys that led to my overstuffed library. However, even I can see that this world has something to it. It's eclectic, it's vibrant, and the undeniably stereotypical pop culture Western-ish RPG ingredients are mixed in a way that sometimes actually seems interesting, like the blase that comes of their media ubiquity is washed away and it feels new.

For example, there's a zombie you can meet who actually guards graves, or at least has opinions about grave robbers. Actual opinions, like I suddenly felt guilty reading his lament of the graverobbing around him. And one of my personal favorite quests so far, there's a carnivorous plant whose 'children' have been attacking a village. You can do the obvious thing and kill her - the need to kill any and every non-humanoid foe in a fantasy setting has always been a reason I turn away from the genre - but you also have the choice of going to the village, buying a cow, and leading the cow to her, which she takes care of for free fertilizer so as to have fertile ground to grow on.

Now, you can talk to her, and those carnivorous plants you meet early on that are so annoying to deal with? You can recruit them now. It's fantastic. I guess it's too late now, but if I were living an excited gamer life, I'd say more choices-matter-esque games, fantasy and sci-fi alike, ought to allow symbiotic resolutions with non-human witherlings like this.

...Oh, yes, I said 'recruit'.

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This game's combat is its bread and butter, and its approach is unique for an RPG. It's a strategy-lite game, with limited spaces on a board. You have a limited number of players on the board and send them where you want to go. They have basic attacks, special attacks, some stats, yada yada. It's interesting and unique in its own right, but the real catcher for me is that these are not a diagetic party of six. You're instead represented as commanding an army, and each individual troop on the board actually represents that quantity of troop under your care on the battlefield. It's a convenient and impactful way to metaphorically show some big-numbers battles without destroying the hard drive, and I approve.

Moreover, the fact of you needing to recruit troops makes a unique dynamic for empowering your "party members". Imagine playing your classical turn-based RPG of choice with its bog-standard level-up system, but instead of every level increasing their default might to the point you don't have to try any more when you've ground enough, you merely increased the potential of each 'party member' and its up to you to go and actually regularly restock on what's needed to keep their strength up. That's basically what they've done with this game, in the form of what you're buying being the actual troops, and the party members being their single-hex-holding representatives on the battlefield. It's new, it's odd, it's a twist, and I like it.

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In general, what you see on the screen is not diagetic. You won't trek for hours in a land that's as big in gameplay as it's meant to be in universe; you're running around on a map with oversimplified routes and short distances to hint at an in-universe equivalent to make in your mind. If you like filling the gaps with your imagination, you could be right at home; but if you're desperate for a worldbuilding experience where what you see on the screen is *exactly* what you're supposed to believe is there, you might want to shelf this one until further notice.

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This is an impressive piece of work, and the fact of it being from before "2010" and by an international company- in this case a Slavic one- lends a potent luft of a 'lost gem' to wrap up the game's package. It's definitely dated, but I can recommend it readily, at least if you like RPG's and strategy games, or if like me, you're off-again on-again curious about what you missed out on during at time in your life when your greatest interest in gaming was at the same time as your greatest inability to ever get any and your greatest pressure to avoid them.

A genuinely fun FPS to play - even for a non-gamer like me, of all people- thanks largely to the generous jump height and floor-sliding and wall-running features. This fixes a big issue I've had with many FPS's, which is that actual fights themselves rarely seem skill-based or fun. OMFG addresses this. Not very thoroughly, but definitely more than you'd expect for a free indie game.

One namesake, of course, is exactly what the title and store page front promise: A glut of firearms, modifiers, and conditions that make for many possible weapons for you to wind up with. This is actually successfully appealing in my book; I'll let you discover what sorts of modifiers and such are in.

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Recommended if you like FPS's or want to dabble therein.

A superb ironic platforming game. The presentation is fun and imaginative, self original even as it's clear who it's parodying. I recommend it.

I am actually having fun with this. I hadn't expected that.

There's a freestyle physics gimmick to the game's props, namely vases and debris, that doesn't get in the way of the action; in fact, you can use it to your advantage, such as landing on a plank from a broken box to get a slight height advantage. Running and jumping are smooth and while it's "slide-y", it never feels unfair to me.

Weapon use is unexpectedly satisfying. All your weapons (as I've found so far) are ranged; enemies have different vulnerability zones, and if you can land an attack in their head, it does massive damage, often a one-hit-kill, and it feels satisfying. The game gives you what you need to make this happen, too; small ledges let you sometimes get just the boost you need to hit a zombie head-on, and otherwise timing your throw with your jump/fall is doable and surprisingly fun.

Recommended.

Gameplaywise, a very simple game. You platform in a 2D space, 'walking', jumping, and pressing the E button to call lifts, and activate statues.

The main appeal is presentation. I honestly strongly like the giant environmental view; the protagonist is an isolated moving stone statue's head, like in sight to a New Years' Dragon; and the geist, made by the foreboding, soulful OST and the quality-over-quantity hue pool, makes for a lonely eeriness cut from an ungelike cloth to that of an outright horror game.

There are even statues that recite short limericks that hint at a possible lore, maybe even your own stone being's tale to tell.

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I recommend giving this a go if only for the presentation. It swifs cleanly, the sights are amazing, and the layout is undrestand-lich and awe-striking.

A simple platformer with some frustrations, sure, but satisfaction for when you can nail something you need to do.

You run, jump, and have arolling feature. It's not much like Sonic's Adventures 1 and 2 spindash, but its enough that you can vaguely tap into any memory of that you may have to use it to good effect. However, with the slower pace and higher emphasis on jumping at lower speeds, I'd argue this looks like it was made more with Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 players in mind.

I recommend, especially for free.

An impressively simple puzzle game with a cohesive premise. There are lines that need to be completed on some blocks, causing them to light up, and when all the pieces are lit up, you've won the puzzle and loft off to the next one.

It gets more complex as the game goes forward. Soon you're introduced to '3-D' shapes, and then black tiles that must be made non-contiguous to any other black tiles in order to become dots of light, a likewise condition for ongoing to the next puzzle.

The presentation brings what would be bearable, into the fun. The colors are simple yet clear, soft yet bold; the lighting effects have a satisfying bloom to them, and when you solve a puzzle, a bloom softer comes over the screen and a slow camera zoom asserts your success.

This game's proof that sometimes you don't need a hard-hitting, complex game with a big story or power fantasy to have fun. Sometimes a good puzzle with great presentation is what hits the spot. Recommend, especially for the price; if you're conscientious, wait for a sale for about $1.

A successfully intense, high skill-ceiling platformer game. Responsive, high skill ceiling, and the minimalistic graphics lend themselves well to invoking a sense of running for your rights, as ridiculous as that may be, a la the psychology behind simple colors and shapes used in social rallying imagery.

It helps that this is a free speech game, which I agree with. They even have a quote from my favorite president on my lifetime so far, which undeniably appeals to my bias.

I will say that this is hell to play with a laptop, and even a standard mouse isn't quite made for the fast reactions this asks for. Consider springing for a controller.

Well, I haven't beaten the game yet, but I've played enough to know that I am taken.

I remember in the heat of my mostly-blind splurge on Steam sales that one of the few long-suppressed wants I've had for computer games was for games that allow us to play as non-anthropomorphic (no hard feelings, Sonic) non-human animals.

Now, I know that now some games are catching on that allow this, like "Stray" and "The Isle". However, in the throes of the mid-2010's you couldn't make a website catalogue with the total games in existence that fit this bill.

Enter "Shelter". And not only do you get to play as a non-anthropomorphic non-human- in this case, a badger- but you also get to play a mother, with actual babies, and survive in nature.

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Well, kind of. This is not an in-depth sim, the like of which I definitely recommend if you were ever as desperate for a timesink of an animal game like I was. Rather, this is a simplified adventure game where you work to walk from one side of a level to the next, feeding your babies- and, later, protecting them from predators- along the way. The art style is not photorealistic, nor does it try to claim itself to be. Rather, it has a paper mache look that, but for cell-shading, gives the perfect impression that this badger and Amaterasu from Okami could briefly sniff each other's snouts before going their separate ways (Assuming the badger and her babies wound up in Japan or Ameterasu wound up shipwrecked in North America, Eruba, or the British Isles).

The game's premise is indeed simple, and so too are the controls; and yet it goes for creative use of the relatively simple kit at your disposal. The same button can be used to bark, dig, pick something up, or drop it, and the same button that lets you slow-walk to sneak up on prey animals also lets you crouch down inside tall grass or flowers to hide from predators. Likewise, the sprint button, useful in this game like every other game sprinting is in for covering ground faster, also lets you ram trees to knock down fruit for your kiddo's. Not realistic, but not incapable of satisfying, especially if one of your kids was turning grey.

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Cons include that in some maths your ability to sprint is disabled- and it's not made clear why it should be in these areas. This goes double for a walk out of a riverbed at nighttime, when you could really use that sprint button to make it to safety as soon as possible and the devs don't give a lot of cover.

Another is that the bark/bite button can get stuck sometimes, and/or mixed up with the left mouse button. This can break the flow of the game and deny you a crucial skill you need as the backbone of your kit.

One more thing I'm tempted to call a con, but maybe should be thought of as more of a buyer-beware condition, is that, in a nod to the immersion as an animal with no access to human tools, there is no minimap or compass. You have to memorize the undeniably redundant environment as you walk around and figure how to get around yourself. This broke my streak in the fire level, where I had to quit after getting turned around so much.

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If you're really eager for a computer game where you play as a non-anthropomorphic non-human animal living in nature, Shelter 1 is here for you. However, its simplicity, the control mixups, and the obvious lack of replay value make the $15 price tag a mismatch unless you expressly want to support the devs and publisher for the outright sake of doing so. Wait for a sale wherein Shelter is available for about $5 and it's worth the try.