Recent reviews by rex

I was pretty disappointed by this game. I really liked Eden so was excited to try out Shooter. At first I really enjoyed it. I liked the graphical style, the overall gameplay, and the fluid mechanics and interactions are super cool. But then tedium set in. None of the levels are difficult. I probably died like 20 times in the entire run through, and most of those were to bosses or me just being lazy. It's also pretty much the same thing over and over with slight variations, and I don't really like the necessary compulsion to collect jewels in order to progress through levels. That requirement seems like it's there solely to make a short game longer. It doesn't add anything to the experience. The combat is also pretty repetitive. It never presents a challenge and the enemies pretty much just exist to give you something to do other than collect jewels and scientists and avoid environmental hazards.

Also, the music just doesn't make any sense. It feels like it was made for another game and accidentally inserted into Shooter. It's out of context.

And then there's the fact that this game came out for PS3 in 2009 and is selling for $9 (the Steam release date is Nov 11, 2013). There's even a sequel that came out in 2011. I didn't realize that and I guess that's my fault, but come on.

The game isn't terrible, but it's not particularly good either. You might enjoy it if you want a casual, easy, pick up and play type of game and like the graphical style. As I said, the fluid physics and interactions were really inventive and used well. I would have like PJ to have harnessed that a bit better to make this a deeper game. All in all I can't recommend it generally.

What makes this platformer/puzzler stand out and worth your time is the novel and interesting story which drives the experience. The game somehow manages to get you to develop sympathy and scorn for the otherwise-generic blocks you control. Other strong points are the music, voice acting, visual aesthetic, and varied jumping mechanics and player-character properties. I think a weak point is the difficulty level--it's pretty low. Not once did I have to think for more than 5 seconds before figuring out the puzzles. So eventually the levels became rituals of moving the blocks around so I could get to the next level and move the story along.

What made me buy this game ultimately was that Kotaku said "The jump in Thomas Was Alone might be amongst the best ever programmed." So, as a platformer junky, I couldn't pass it up. The jumps are indeed very good. You're quite firmly in control of the little blocks, although sometimes I felt like the acceleration late in the jump was a little too high, but that's a personal preference. My jump mechanic award goes to Super Meat Boy and Spelunky, but whatever.

All in all, this game delivers a good platform/puzzle experience with a unique and compelling story, which is very rare in this genre.

This isn't an easy "game" to review. This game is probably a good bet if you:
- are comfortable with unreliable narrators
- are comfortable with your decisions influencing how the story plays out
- can tolerate an unresolved story
- like heavily pixellated art
- like games that are psychological
- understand the difference between a "game" and an "interactive experience"
- don't like spending a lot of money :)

I did enjoy this game. I thought it was interesting to be put in the position of a main character dealing with some kind of psychosis. I also liked that the game tried to get me to reflect on why I had made the choices I made for the main character. The atmosphere and especially the sound of the game were compelling. The pixel art was a little too rough. Take the game's advice and play it in the dark with headphones on if you can. I'm sure others have said this but there's an obvious similarity between this game and Lone Survivor. For my part, I enjoyed LS more. But they are different games and both have merit.

All in all, an interesting experience and for me, worth the $3.

I really liked the idea of this game when I started playing it: you're responsible for building a public transportation system for a metropolis that'd already created for you (cool-looking cities too). There's an incredible amount of detail for the obsessive and careful, but something as basic and essential as building a bus line is cumbersome, and building a functioning fixed track transport like tram lines is frustrating and overly complicated. I simply gave up after spending an hour trying to set up one tram line. The track was always in the wrong place, you can't really drag the cursor to set up a long track line, meaning you have to build them piece by piece. And then track connections are unreliable, particularly at intersections. I take for granted in games like this that there's a learning curve and there's tricks you need to learn by trial and error to figure out how to do things, but considering the entire game is building a public transportation system, it should have been made easier. Not less complex, but easier to execute.

A challenging but inventive platformer that essentially allows you to flip which way is up. Some parts of it are just downright cruel, but all in all it's a fair challenge. Took me just over 2 hours to beat from start to finish. Graphics are intentionally crude but some might be turned off by that. Would recommend to people who like difficult retro platformers and are up for the challenge.

Intensely psychological and ultra-violent. It puts you in the morally uncomfortable position of controlling a psychopath who kills Russian gangsters for unknown reasons, and who is deeply, deeply disturbed. You never know what is real, and the top-down perspective adds to the detachment between your character and his violent actions. The art style and psychosis of the main character reminded me of Lone Survivor (the creator of which did some music for this game).

Quite a beautiful platformer, visually and aurally. This is the first platformer I've played to completely follow through on the claim that it's rhythmic. Your movements and the movement of the world objects are perfectly in step with the music, and the music deepends and evolves as you progress through each stage of a world. When I saw the trailer I thought you had to switch between the different shapes (circle, triangle, square) but that's actually done automatically as you move, thankfully. The main game (3 "worlds") is short. Probably only take 1-2 hours to complete. But there's 3 mirror/shadow worlds that are much harder that aren't factored into the 1-2 hour completion stat. Overall, it's a wonderful little platformer. Was made by one of the Limbo guys btw.

I never knew games could be so informative. I have to say that I like this form of edutainment. But if you don't take the time to read the little history vignettes then this game isn't worthwhile. So it depends on your interests.

Very peaceful experience. I like to play this at the end of the night. You just wander around and take everything in. It's the nightcap before bed.

This game is pretty awful. It's a good concept but the execution is poor. The controls are horribly wonky and the game mechanics are unpolished. Do not recommend it. As a mod it was probably great but as a purchasable game it doesn't stand on its own merit.