Recent reviews by Vain Vair

Receiver can be classified as a first-person roguelike-like, or as a better name, a procedural death labyrinth. In Receiver you play as... well a Receiver, who is someone who has survived what is known as the "Mind Kill" and must collect eleven tapes hidden in the world armed only with a pistol and some bullets.

The game is procedurally generated, almost fully it seems, the world, what pistol and how much ammo you start with, what is placed where, is all generated on the fly, the layout of levels seem to be the same but not the placement, sort of like the game takes these block shaped rooms and places them in whatever order it feels like.

The core concept of this game is simple, you start with a random gun picked out of a pool of three types, there are two kinds of robots, turrets and drones, you die in one shot, you must collect eleven tapes, as you gain more tapes, the rooms get harder as there will be more and more robots.

Where the unique part of this game comes in is the weapon mechanics, this is not a normal first-person shooter, you can't just aim the gun and expect it to fire, the game simulates to some degree actual pistol mechanics using keyboard shortcuts, so to fire your gun you need to make sure you have bullets in the magazine, make sure the safety is off, pull back the hammer, and so on and so forth.

Each action is done rather easily as the controls are very natural and intuitive as well as customizable, once you start playing more and remember the controls you can actually reload and fire faster, much like in real life where speed could be everything, all the guns have a real tactile feel to them, and there is nothing more satisfying then dropping a magazine onto the floor and slamming in a new one that you hand loaded before, pulling back the slide and taking down a robot as it flies toward you.

Overall I love this game, despite how simple it is the gameplay is incredibly fun and replayable and is challenging but never seems to be frustrating, having very snappy gameplay and tight controls.

To the Moon is a indie adventure game designed and built in RPG Maker, though it is not actually an RPG in the traditional sense it looks as if it is, though there is no combat (Except as a joke in one spot) and very little actual gameplay outside of the usual adventure game mechanics of talking to everyone and finding things in the environment.

In To the Moon you play as two doctors who are employed by the Sigmund Corporation under a new wish fulfillment service that people may use as they are dying, it lets the doctors alter memories to help someone believe they fulfilled their life long dream, and as such they are called to the house of Johnny Wyles who's dying wish is to go to the moon, but he does not know why, so as the two doctors you must go through Johnny's memories and figure out why while also building things up for Johnny to become an astronaut.

Now... I am leaving out key parts to the story here because I do not wish to spoil it but suffice it to say To the Moon may have one of the best stories I have ever come into contact with in a video game, it is beautifully written to the point that I was in tears multiple times while playing it, despite how it looks graphically the writing shines through and delivers powerful emotions that tug at your heartstrings.

Although it may seem a bit short, clocking in at about four to five hours long, less if you know exactly what to do, it is well worth it, an amazing experience from top to bottom, polished with very little flaws outside of repeating the same sliding puzzle every time you jump memories.

And on a side note the soundtrack is totally worth it, the musical score is memorable to the point that after you finish the game, even just the music will bring back memories of the story, all in all a must play for anyone who cares about an amazing story in a video game.

Eversion is a 2D side scrolling indie platformer where you play as a Zee Tee, a walking flower, who must save the princess of the Flower Kingdom from the evil Ghulibas, at the start the game is cheery and bright, but if you caught from starting up the game the H.P. Lovecraft quote, the game soon becomes much darker.

The core mechanic of Eversion is your ability to swap between layers, or words, and the deeper you go the stranger and darker the the world around you becomes, the actual gameplay is fairly simple and though it does get challenging later on, it never gets to Super Meat Boy levels of frustration.

To give a bit of insight this game has eight levels, you can get every ending and achievement in this game in about two hours, however despite what little there is here, it has charm to it, with the unsettling level and enemy design and tight controls it is fun for how long it lasts, after you complete the game a Time Attack mode opens as well, giving you a bit more replay value.

Note that Eversion is free to download on the creators website, the version you pay for here has more detailed artwork and the aforementioned Time Attack, if you are interested in the game and want to check it out I encourage you to try the free version, but either way this game is well worth paying for, even just to show friends and watch them freak out as the game grows darker.

Lets get one thing out of the way first, this is not a game, now lets get something else out of the way, this is not art, so what is this? Boring.

In Dinner Date you play as a lonely white English man who is stood up by a girl on a date, you listen to said english man ramble on for twenty five minutes (Yes that is how long this whole thing lasts) about how he is forever alone and should just give up, all the while you can do actions, like rub the back of your neck and stretch, or eat bread, when you finally get to the soup you have so many choices with the bread, you can dip it in the red, badly textured sauce, or you can dip it in the soup, AND you can double dip, wow... and not a single thing you do effects the story at all, the only things that move it along are points where you drink wine and the game moves on to the next scene.

There is no story here, that is the sad part, it's just some guy whining, there isn't anything artful about that, even the graphics are bad, poorly textured 3D world that no matter what graphics settings you put it on still somehow runs agonizingly slow and hitches.

This game... is perhaps the most pretentious game I have ever come in contact with, there is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING that happens of any worth in this game, it's not even a game, it's like a really bad podcast set to boring music where you can press keys on your keyboard to eat soup.

In the world of video games, if there is a hell it is filled with match three puzzle games.

Now I will preface this review saying I am not the biggest fan of match three games in the first place, but even with saying that, 3SwitcheD is not a good game.

Now I am going to go on and skip explaining what you do in a match three game and focus on what is 'new' here, there are six game modes, 'Snazzy Swap' being your standard game mode that plays like a poorly optimized version of Bejeweled with a combo clock that makes a man/woman's voice go higher and higher as you gain combos till it sounds like he/she is having a real good time from your abilities to match three (And really who wouldn't?)

Outside of the main mode all the other modes of the game... rather suck, 'Falling Stars' is somewhat alright where you start with a blank board and they drop jewels from the top for you to match like a proverbial rat in a cage, but outside of that one the rest are about matching jewels in odd ways such as making shapes or effecting gravity.

The game reports to using "Face-Tracking Technology" which is a fancy word for saying you can turn on your webcam and look around the 3D play-field... but you will never do that because there is absolutely no reason to, the graphics, animations, and environment hold nothing special at all and look mediocre at best with poor optimization, and when you play a match three puzzle game, you are not going to be moving your head to get a better angle, this all doesn't matter anyway because none of it works... seriously, it works for like a few seconds then pops back to normal.

And finally to top it all off it has third-party DRM, you must activate the game using a CD-key on TopWare's servers, so not only is it a bad game, if the servers are down (Like they usually seem to be) you can't even play it, though maybe that is a good thing overall.