Recent reviews by kodabar

I like, what I call, one-handed-games (no, not like that) - games where I can sit back and relax and not have to rely on frantic button pressed. I want to sit back in my chair, play a game with just the mouse and have my other hand free to eat a cake, or chastise a nephew or smoke a cigar. But all too often, one-handed-games (stop it) are too simple, lacking any kind of challenge.

I loved Just Ski. Pleasant, calming and really rather difficult. That Flipping Mountain continues in that vein. It has a very simple mechanic, but with some rather subtle nuances. Ostensibly, you click and drag to select a trajectory for your little man and then let go. But as he sails through the air, you can click the mouse to tuck him in for a tighter roll and release it to slow your rate of rotation. You're aiming to land on your feet, but you also have to consider your momentum - a short hop is easy, but a long hop can mean your momentum on landing will cause you to over-rotate. So even if you land on your feet, you might still land on your face. It's this kind of thought and nuance that makes for an interesting challenge.

I particularly like that it does all take place on one mountain. Every time you think you're getting somewhere, you end your game session and it zooms out to show the whole mountain... with you in the dismal lower reaches. There's a nice counter to tell you of your total jumps compared to your successful ones. Ouch.

It's cheap, it's pretty, it's got lovely music and it'll run on practically anything. At first I was somewhat hesitant, because it looked like a lesser game than Just Ski. The 'flip' mechanic is the whole game and it seemed quite limiting. But the sheer variety of background elements and challenges makes it a deeper game.

I'm about a quarter of the way (if that) up the mountain after two hours of play. I'm not in any hurry to finish either. Rather, this is the kind of game that I will leave installed for a long time and drop in and out of from time to time. It is amazing how you can have 'hot streaks' where you nail every jump... followed a minute later by a spate of clumsiness that would make a circus clown blush. I like it a lot.

Everyone's going to mention that this is by a single developer. Is that really relevant?

Antares is okay. But it's only okay. It's rather small, a little limited, has some poor design choices and very repetitive enemies. It's perfectly fun for what it is and I enjoyed playing it. However, the common refrain is going to be "But it's by one guy! It's amazing for a game by only one dev!". That's not a feature, that's an excuse.

There are upgrades for your weapon, but you won't really notice. It still took two or three shots to the head to kill the basic zombie-type of enemy. After upgrading the weapon multiple times, it still took the same amount of shots. I've seen some suggestion that the difficulty of the enemies scales over time so that might negate the benefit of the upgrades. Then what's the point?

It can be somewhat tricky to find your way around and you'll get lost. Most modern games have some kind of navigation cues in their design. Whether it's lighting guiding you to the right path or sights and sounds, there's usually something to keep you moving. Antares doesn't have this. The only way you'll know you're in a new area is because there are enemies to kill. This isn't terrible, but it can mean you'll do a lot of backtracking just to find your way around.

The enemies are boring. Yeah, they look quite nice, but the animation isn't brilliant and there simply isn't enough variety. You'll get bored of killing the same zombie-types over and over again. The later enemies are pretty good and there's some nice variation in their movement and attacks, but there just isn't much variety overall.

There's an interesting feature in the power shutdowns. Everything gets darker and you need to be quiet for fear of attracting a horde. But this feature isn't linked to what's happening, it's just time-based. You walk round a corner into a big group and pow... powerdown. You can't not shoot them. So I found myself just stopping and waiting for these periods to be over.

This is what Antares is like. I'm very much on the fence with this one. Yes, it's impressive that one guy did this, but that won't make me suddenly enjoy things when I get bored. Take away the 'single dev' aspect and this is a middling space horror-ish game that is frequently dull and often frustrating. It's not so much about what Antares is, but what he'll do next - I look forward to seeing future games that will be better than this. Pick it up for five quid to support and encourage the dev, but otherwise it's just not that good a game.

I'm on the fence about this one. I got to play it for a few days before release and I did enjoy it. But it also frustrated me and eventually bored me. Take a look at my play time compared to other reviewers - I got a fair bit of fun out of this, though I probably won't play any more. This is a mobile port and it's free to play, so you'll probably know what this entails.

Short version: It's a mobile port with numerous obnoxious pop-ups encouraging you to spend money. That aside, it's a fun zombie shooter that is based around completing missions and, later on, constructing a base. There are boss fights and a certain amount of humour to jolly things along. There are some dodgy bits of translation, but nothing that really gets in the way.

Long version: I hope you like shooting endless lines of zombies in the head because that's what you'll mostly be doing. There are zombies everywhere and a few scattered survivors, so you're going to be travelling around the wasteland to complete missions that mostly involve shooting zombies. The AI isn't great and the zombies just head straight for you, allowing you to get them in the line and start imparting bullets into heads. That's the core of the game. Sometimes you need to clear an area, sometimes you're collecting an item (fetch-quest style) and sometimes you're defending others or doing a bit of rail-shooting.

It's fine for what it is and the shooting mechanics are decent for a Unity-engine game. There are quite a few weapons, though you can only equip two at a time. This is actually quite handy as there are four main types of ammunition, so if you vary between the types of weapon from time to time, you'll never run out of bullets.

What you will run out of is fuel. You need fuel for your vehicle that you use to move between locations (not that you get to drive) and this is a limited resource that regenerates very slowly indeed. You won't run out for a while, but soon you will and you'll maybe get frustrated when it turns out you need to buy fuel for actual money or not play until it regenerates enough for you to continue. Sometimes the fuel mechanic seems designed to annoy, such that you'll finish a mission only to be sent back to the same location to complete another objective that you could easily have done last time. Grrr.

Later, you get the chance to fight humans and that was refreshing enough for me to continue playing. But even the humans have the same AI and just walk straight towards you, making them not much more of a challenge than the zombies. They do shoot at you, which spices things up a little. Though later zombie variants do have ranged attacks as well, so there is a bit of variation. Some of the boss fights are interesting, but things never felt difficult. Indeed, after seventeen hours of play, I had only found one mission that I failed.

Once you build your own settlement, you'll be able to generate fuel (and ammo to a certain extent) that will extend your playing time. But you'll never quite have enough inventory space or reserves of items to make you completely immune to the game's real-money economy. Indeed, I paid for a day of free fuel and set out to accomplish as many missions as possible in that time, to get the most out of that. They weren't greedy there and I felt I got my money's worth. But some of the other paid-for items feel rather expensive. Forty quid for 6,000 gold coins seems obnoxious - nothing in this game makes it worthwhile spending more than a few pounds/dollars/euros on it in total.

In summary, I'd give this a tentative recommendation. It's a free to play mobile game that has seen no adaptation to the PC or Steam, so you will get endless attempts to get you to part with cash. This is annoying and I'd rather have paid money for the game to avoid these. The shooting is decent and fun for a while, so give it a try and you'll find some enjoyment from that. In terms of long-term appeal, I'm not sure there is any. You might be better off sticking it on your tablet instead.

I love the concept of this game, in much the same way that I loved Recettear (where you run an item shop in an RPG game). It's quite fascinating to be the blacksmith and hammer out swords. What I like less is the implementation.

You grab some metal, stick it in the furnace, hammer away at it, optionally apply magic and damascus patterning and assemble the handle. That's the whole game. You can also mine and smelt ore rather than buy it and you'll sometimes have buyers ask you to assemble their sword rather than want to buy a new one.

The game is a little buggy, but that will improve over time. The problem is that I'm not sure there's really enough game for most players. I know some people are right into this kind of thing and they'll certainly get their money's worth - the price is spot on and it's nice to see a developer who isn't greedy. I don't regret having this game and I would have bought it if I hadn't been given a key, so I'll cautiously recommend it, but it isn't for anyone. It's clunky, there's only so much you can do and most players will be bored fairly quickly. I'll probably play it a few more times, but I'm not exactly addicted.

I can't help but feel that a more experienced developer would have built a better game - if this was a sub-game in The Witcher, I'm sure it would be more complete and polished than this is. Having looked at the other games that Heaven Brotherhood has made, I think this is the best they can do. Ultimately, the concept of this game is what attracts me, rather than the game itself.

Hmm, not bad. Not great, but not bad at all. It's a decent, but not amazing, pinball game. If you're a serious pinball enthusiast (and I'm not), then you might find this a little lacking. But if you just want something fun you can dip in and out of, then it's good for that. The price is reasonable for what it is, but Yakuza 0 is twice the price and a gives you a heck of a lot more game. Getting it on sale means you're unlikely to regret it.

The graphics are good enough, the sound is a little disappointing in places, but overall you soon forget any of that and just enjoy yourself. Pinball games live and die by their table design and the tables here are okay. They're not fantastic and they can feel a little empty compared to some of the greats, but there's clearly some design cues taken from real tables and that makes them good enough.

Summary: Good, but not great, pinball game that will likely give you enough amusement to while away some time.

There's some potential here. The idea of driving heavy vehicles is a good one, but the game is barely functional and nowhere near ready for anyone to actually play. I'll have another look if this is ever turned into a full, working game.

Right now, this feels like the level editor for a game they haven't made. You're arranging assets, not creating things from scratch. But it's early days, so it may be much improved over time.

I was curious and I had spare Steam credit, so when the controller was on sale, I picked it up along with the carrying case. The quoted 4-8 days delivery was untrue - it was 10 days before they even posted it. That's something to bear in mind if you're in a hurry.

So I stuck the batteries in it, plugged in the receiver and powered it up. Annoyingly, it forces you into Big Picture mode in order to make any changes to the set up. That might not annoy you however.

The first game I decided to try was Flatout Ultimate Carnage. When playing games with the controller, you can either use a developer created setup, a user one or your own. For Flatout, there were none of those. I mapped the controller and started playing. Blimey, the D-pad is loud. Every click of the D-pad is louder than even a mechanical keyboard. By the time of my second race, I'd put the controller down and changed back to the keyboard. I just wasn't able to make the fine steering inputs I rely on for Flatout as easily on the controller as on the keyboard.

The second game I went with was Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. It's an RTS so would be a good test of the controller's ability to stand in for the mouse. It worked surprisingly well. I was able to do everything I could with the keyboard and mouse. But... after half an hour I'd gone back to the keyboard and mouse. I use groups a lot in the game and it was a pain in the backside to try to set up the controller to manage groups. Ah.

So I thought I'd try something really unsuitable next: ArmA 3. For playing a serious session of ArmA with a clan, it's completely unsuitable. You'll spend so much time trying to shoehorn ArmA's billion controls onto the controller. But for playing Ravage and DayZ, it was pretty good. I was able to play 95% of the time just using the controller. But for fine control over shooting, it just wasn't as good as the mouse. It did surprisingly well on a game that I thought would be completely unsuitable.

I tried a few other games that were perhaps better suited to a controller and found it pretty good. For playing with friends in a relaxed manner on arcade games, the controller is at its best. And that's about all there is to say. I found the build quality to be good, the controls comfortable and it works pretty well in most games. But it's not a replacement for the mouse and keyboard. It does its best and it's better than an XBox controller, but it's not as well supported. So if you're in any doubt about whether to get a Steam Controller or an XBox one, consider what games you'll want to use it for.

Oh and a quick word about the carrying case (Steam won't allow you to leave reviews for it). It's nicely made, solid and holds the controller and all its accessories in nicely designed spaces. The patch on the back of the Steam logo was hanging off mine and I had to glue it back into place. What is odd about the case is how loosely it holds the controller. With the controller in the case, if you shake it, you'll hear (and feel) the controller bouncing around inside. I'd have expected a tighter fit. I may even add a layer of foam to the lid of the case to hold everything better.

TLDR: It's no replacement for a mouse and keyboard, but it does a fairly good job. If you want to play games suitable for a controller, it's really good. But if you stray off that path, you might have a lot of hassle making setups and then finding it's just not as good as a mouse and keyboard are. I don't regret buying it, but I wonder just how often I'll use it.

Note: This review is for the beta (pre-release) version.

The first thing that grabbed me about Zombie City Defense 2 is the way it looks. It's a very good looking game - it doesn't have the most sophisticated graphics card-killing effects, but it looks beautiful. It reminds me of Defcon a bit. The next thing I liked is that it's a one-handed game - you can play the entire game from the mouse.

The game itself is a mixture of RTS and tower defence. You create and control a bunch of units whose job it is to scavenge and secure the landscape. There's a nice balance to the game in that your strategy has to be measured. You can expand into the surrounding buildings quickly in order to grab resources and place units in strategic locations. But too much of this approach can leave your lines over-extended and vulnerable to attack. Or you can hunker down and defend what you have, meaning you'll gather less resources and risk being overwhelmed by later waves.

You can choose which difficulty to use on each level, which affects the amount of upgrade points you can gain. Those points can be used to unlock new units, etc. Choosing upgrades and perks can make a big difference to the game - getting artillery and vehicles alters your strategic approach.

It's an easy game to get into, but a hard one to master. There's some really nice balance to the gameplay and you can find the tide of a level switching on you rather suddenly. I don't think I'll be playing this one intensely, but I get a feeling that it's the kind of game I'm going to leave installed for a long time and keep coming back to it.

0.63 is out. It's a massive improvement. Compared to 0.62, it's like night and day. That's what people tell me. I've been away from DayZ for a long time, so I dived back in tonight to see what I thought.

I'm not impressed.

A little background. Some of you know me, some of you don't. I've been involved in developing and supporting zombie survival mods in ArmA for a long time. If you played the DaiZy single player mod (or any of its variants) back when DayZ was a mod, then you've encountered my work. I've got a fair idea of what goes into making DayZ. And I'm not impressed with what I saw today.

That's not to say that DayZ is a bad game. It isn't. It's pretty good. But my goodness, it is not a polished game that's a few steps away from a 1.0 release. It very much feels like a 0.63 version.

The graphics are nice. The sound is good. You move around without too much hassle, though there are a few odd things I spotted. Picking up loot is straightforward, equipping it isn't too bad, using it is okay. Zombies mostly work, though I saw plenty of glitches with them. One nice thing is that zombies are a bit more of a threat again. They're not as hard as in the toughest days of the mod, but they're a reasonable threat. I like that. I like games to be difficult.

But there are some areas of difficulty that did not please me. You start off hungry and thirsty. Within about fifteen to twenty minutes, you're going to be dying of thirst. The trouble is that any server that hasn't just been restarted is going to be devoid of food and drink near the starting locations. So if you manage to survive the zombies, your first death is likely to be due to thirst. That's not unreasonable in terms of game design, but it is unreasonable in terms of how the game is actually played. And boy, do you get hungry and thirsty quickly. Despite consuming a zuccini, a potato and a can of Pepsi (I'm not going to use the amusing names), I was in the red again within twenty minutes. Ugh.

So for the best gaming experience, you need a friend already in-game who is quite well-equipped and has adequate supplies of food and drink to come and rescue you from start-induced drought. Hmm.

I also tried the offline mode. As someone who has specialised in offline DayZ, I had good hopes for this. I don't really want to have to produce another offline mod. Luckily, you start off with a more equitable loadout in offline play. But there are no AI units - only zombies and wolves. And there's no save. You can use a mod to save your game, but there isn't any saving built in. Right now, offline is just a glorified tutorial. Hey, Bohemia, I know a ton of people who can fix offline mode for you - give me a shout, eh?

So what do we have? What is DayZ at the moment. It's a technically functional game. The movement, looting and shooting all work, but it's an incomplete game that I see little reason to play. I'd score it five or six out of ten. If offline mode was viable and starting in online was a bit easier, then I'd maybe give it a seven.

I know a lot of people like to forgive DayZ its (many) sins by saying that the devs have had to make a new game engine and that those who criticise know nothing about the realities of game development, but that doesn't fly with me. I do know how to make an ArmA-based zombie survival game. I'm not an expert, but I know what's involved. In my opinion, this is not enough of a game to justify the amount of time spent on developing it.

I can't recommend DayZ right now. Don't get me wrong - I do think it's going to be a complete and competent game. But it's not at that stage today. I do worry that, even when finished, it's not going to be enough of a game for me to want to play. If all they do from now on is to finish up what they've got and add a few bits and pieces, then I'm not going to see any point in playing it. I have the horrible feeling that DayZ doesn't actually have a game design. It's barely any different from the mod. Sure, lots of things have been improved... lots of things. But it doesn't feel as though the object of the game is any different. In fact, right now, I'd say the game is actually more limited in scope than the mod.

The glory days of the mod were when it was first launched. No one knew what to expect. No one knew their way around. An encounter with another player was an uncertain occurrence. Anything could happen. With a group of friends, I was playing every night. Now, player encounters are always about gunplay.

If you're a new player, you're at a tremendous disadvantage. You're going to be coming up against people who have been playing for a long time. They know their way around. They know how to get all the best loot. They already have most of it. And you've got nothing. They are going to kill you again and again and again - unless you've got some experienced friends to help you out. Or you somehow survive long enough to figure out what the best tactics are. That's a heck of a learning curve.

Waaaaay too long - didn't read. DayZ is not a bad game. It's quite good. But it's not great. And it was great once. So I'm not impressed. I'm a little disappointed, but I wouldn't say it was a bad game. It's just not enough of a game. And it's a lot harder to forgive that in DayZ than in a brand new game.