Oh no, Dean forgot to blog yesterday. What ever shall we do? Oh noooooooooo
Anyway, The Shaman Engines starts up with a splash screen featuring bright whitish yellow contrasting against the black background, which is welcomingly similar to that of Dark Souls (wow, Dean is still playing Dark Souls? That game must be really good. Maybe I should support From Software and buy such a wonderful product...okay I'm done with that now).
So I start up the game and immediately, without so much as a "ready, go!" I am assaulted from all sides by giant rocket-slinging robots. I must say that this is one of the few games on this list to ever make me vocalize. It's up to you to decide whether you want to play a game that, in the first few seconds, will make you go "oh Jesus oh man oh God oh ding dang darn it!" Personally, I love this merciless style of opening the game. It's hilarious and effective. Granted, the controls didn't differ very much (read, "at all") from standard FPS controls, but it didn't take me long to learn the most efficient strategies when giant bipedal war bots are constantly throwing explodey stuff in my direction.
If there is beauty to be found in this game, which I think there is, it is to be found in its elegant simplicity. No fancy AI programming to make your enemies hide behind walls or look at fish or whatever. No unnecessary plot or stealth, just pure adrenaline-fueled robot 'sploding action. The game is fairly challenging and damn empowering to play. The sprint makes you rocket forward at the speed of sound, and the jetpack can quickly fling you to the perfect vantage point, but all of these features are well-balanced. The jetpack, for example, will drain your fuel and leave you a sitting duck to tank damage for a few seconds if you're not careful.
The flaws of this game are not flaws that make it any less fun. I already touched upon the AI, which, I'll be honest, is a bag of crystalized stupid. The enemies don't know how to do anything but rush you and shoot at your immediate position. I'm not saying a circle strafe will leave them 100% defenseless, but I will say that they're not much of a match for a seasoned veteran of Goldeneye. It's not really a problem, though, because there are enough enemies on the screen to maintain a challenge and give you enough fun things to shoot at. There also seem to be a few things that were added just for the sake of adding them. For example, the game flirts with a platforming section for about half a second as if just to say "look, I made a platform section." It's worth noting that I quit before I beat level 3, so maybe there's a good explanation for this, but it seemed frivolous to me.
Again, none of these things make the game any less fun to play, so the final verdict is that this one is worth your time. Check it out!
The Ward is what happens when you mix the gameplay of A Flipping Good Time with the narrative style Oniro and glaze it with Primordial's visual aesthetic. Let me break that down for you. The Ward is a platformer that centers around the ever popular gravity manipulation mechanic. Imagine VVVVVV but you're allowed to jump first.
The platforming is decent, but nothing special, and certainly can get frustrating at times. This game needs something to keep the player invested. The developers realized this and threw in narrative in the form of writing on the walls (like in Erebus. Man, I'm batting a thousand with the references today...) I pieced together something about me being dead and wanting to see my girlfriend again, but I ragequit before I could learn any more. See, the game committed the unforgivable sin of killing me because I rubbed up against the side of a spike. That was enough for me.
To review: The Shaman Engines is a shooter that rivals Fight Zone, and you should totally try out, while The Ward probably has a lot of payoff if you're willing to put up with a lot of frustration, which I frankly wasn't. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay dead.
Links
Robot Souls: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18571
Consciousness after Death: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24364
Hi Dean, thanks so much for the positive review. I'm the designer on the Shaman Engines. Our producer, Tommy, sent us this review.
ReplyDeleteIt feels like a lifetime since we made that game. I was really proud of the way the controls ended up feeling, I recall it took quite a bit of tweaking, so I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I remember adding that platform section in to Level 2. It's true that I sort of did it 'just because', but there was a slightly more high-minded reason for it. Did you realize you could jump on top of the buildings in Level 3? Anyway, you're mostly right, I added all that to show off the ability to land on top of arbitrary objects which is a feature we almost didn't have.
Thanks again for the awesome review, I'm sorry Digipen messed up their game archive, it's really not what it used to be over there. Best of luck with whatever comes next.
-Thom