Recent reviews by F😈CK HOPE

I've heard this game compared to Hotline Miami, but to me it's much less twitchy and re-playing-based than that game. I would compare it to Max Payne in Left 4 Dead from a top down perspective. So it's fun and it's also got cool cut scenes and themeing.

Everything you want in a twin stick shooter

• Difficult. It's not easy, especially when you don't have flares yet. To be honest I had to bump it down to easy mode and still died now and then. But it's better to be challenged than to be bored, in my book.
  
• Style. This game is very stylish and I love that.
  
• Humor. It's not wackyrandom or jokey but dark narration and tone really bring a grin to your face, especially when the protagonist gets worked up.
  
• Action. So much blood. Blood everywhere. So much shooting. So much destructible items. So much explosions.
  
• Multiplayer. Local co-op, or local versus. Online leader boards for everything.
  
• Arcade mode. Twin stick shooters are arcade games, really, so I always hope to see arcade mode.
  
• Controller support. I use a Steam controller and it works great. Although I did find the community profile to work better than the default, for aiming.
  
• Production values. Voice acted throughout, this doesn't look like a AAA game but it doesn't have the cut corners you see on many indie top down games.

TLDR: it's a good one and a good price. Install it if you own it and give it a spin!

I don't like Double Fine, I think they're a cut-corners type of shop. I also don't like Tim Schafer, I think he's a over-appreciated wanker.

I love turn based combat and strategic games, though. You can check my hours played in Crusader Kings 2 and you will know that this game about building dynasties across the realm is right up my alley. If it had come from another studio I probably would have bought it much sooner.

I won this game in a give-away and I was very excited to actually get to give it a shot. I refuse to spend any more money on DF products (I bought DF9 and backed Broken Age, blech) but a Fire Emblem knock off should be fun and engaging even if it's made by a substance over style group.

So, anyway, enough about my experiences and feelings, what about

• It's ugly. The "style" is very low-fi and legitimately looks like the shaders and textures didn't all load. It's not consistent, some random objects look way out of place and the particle effects are either missing or awful.
  
• It sounds bad. I can't think of another game where the tutorial narration drew complaints from other people in my apartment but the voices in this game are honestly super annoying and also sound like every single one was done on the first take and never polished.
  
• It's boring. It's a "grand epic time scale" but that just boils down to watching time scroll by on fast forward, which is still super slow. I would say roughly a third of my playtime was just watching numbers scroll on the world map.
  
• It's opaque. The game wants you to Make Big Decisions, but you never know what is at stake, and you only have a tiny handful of choices AND you never find out what the results are for ages or maybe ever.
  
• It's simple. I don't mean in a stream lined "dive in and play" kind of way, I mean 3 classes and enemy AI that is nothing more than rushing straight at the nearest hero every time. It's just simplistic.

I wanted to like this game. I promise I did. Nothing would have made me happier than for this to have been engaging and deep and interesting and complex. I would have loved to be wrong and I would have written a long review about how it was so much more than I was worried it would be. But the truth is it's not a good game.

TLDR: it's bad in every way and not really worth free

I backed Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter and I got UnderRail in a greenlight bundle or some such. Even though I paid 10x the price for Wasteland 2, this is 10x the game.

Single character, means no annoying switching to someone else to pass a skill check.

Tight writing, because the game itself is interested and doesn't need to hide behind a mountain of empty fluff prose.

Combat encounters that are hard because the world is dangerous, not because your character is pathetic.

Abilities that let you specialize and play differently, not just check needed boxes to pass pointless skill checks.

Its really a great, oldschool game. Tons of great touches and tons of attention in tons of places. Just remember to quick save tons and try many things.

The poish level, at this point, is high.

The Settlers of Cattan meets Magic the Gathering sounds good.

It's not a Bad Game.

But I really don't like it.

Turns are fairly quick but it seems like an entire 20 minute match only has two decisive moves the entire time. Two thirds of a match are build up to the actual important things begining and unraveling your opponant takes a few rounds no matter what, so even if you are dominating the board start to finish you won't be able to do much to speed things along.

The whole entire game feels like downtime, steamrolling an opponant or barely edging out a victory both take roughly the same number of turns and feel exactly the same. Progress seems slow even at the begining, and without spending real world money getting out of the newbie starter cards area won't be very quick even if those low level cards are boring you to tears.

The game is free-to-play, now, so there is no reason you shouldn't try it out yourself if you like. Personally though I uninstalled it.

Sort of a sideways thumb review, but I do like this game.

It's less of a clicker game and more of a desktop companion app. You never once compulsively click on things, you just leave the small window open and click on special moves as the cooldown timers wear off. Or you don't, and you just accrue money (ki) with the game minimized or closed.

Personally, I like this approach. You ignore it until you want to check it, then you get stuff and get better.

The main sell of the game is the art style. It's great to have your character be a late 80s early 90s pulp manga hero type. It's great that the moves are all so memorable from shows and comics and that the reset mode is literal death and reincarnation. Dragon balls are the premium currency for crying out loud.

The gameplay itself is very slow paced. If you don't put cash into the game (I haven't) your progress will be slow. If you see the amount of time I have left this game open while at work or otherwise not around, I will tell you I do not have nearly as many cool things unlocked as the screenshots above. But I am slowly building up my super manga dragon ball collector, and that's fine, for me.

Disclaimers: I own this game because I helped trouble shoot/bug fix/proof read an early version of it. I don't own a guitar, I don't really have much experiance with Rock Band or Guitar Master games or types of games. In fact, those games never really apealed to me.

This game is really special and fantastic, though. "Guitar Karaoke" is exactly what you are getting here. Pick a song you like (there will be a song you like because there are tons of songs) and a video pops up showing you how to do each one of the baisic chords in the song. The video is as fully featured as you could ask for, so whenever you are comfortable with all of the chords, you go on to the song. There is no points system at all, instead there is an option for a metronome, and tempo adjustments live on the fly if you are having trouble keeping up. This game is about helping you learn to play guitar, by playing guitar yourself, strumming out tracks everyone knows in about 10 minutes from telling Steam to download it. There are a robust range of tools available, and no gimmicky anything.

TLDR: it's more of a self help learn to play guitar program than a "game," but it's honestly really fantastic. I almost bought a real guitar because I played this game for free, true story.

I like this game a lot. It has the chest tightening thrill of great stealth gameplay and the engaging hooks of randomized content and punishingly quick death. TLDR: classic Hitman + slower paced Hotline Miami.

It's set up like an arcade standalone game, you clear the screen and you unlock the next screen to clear. But you don't clear the screen by jumping on things, or by shooting waves of descending guys, you do it sneaking thru crowds and murder death killing every last person standing.

It's very stylish, very engaging, and really gets your emotions into the action as you flee to avoid notice near the end of a long streak of sneaky success.

I got Sentinels from someone who bought the Humble monthly and didn't want it, so my barrier to entry was low. And that was fitting, because it's structured like a Free-To-Play game and if I had paid money for the base content I would have refunded it.

The game itself is pretty fun, you have a few heros and villains and the card game unfolds nice little comic book battle scenes. It's based on a physical card game I guess, but having the computer to shuffle and deal and track the rules and counters and stuff makes it a lot more fun to just play the game without worrying about keeping track of a million tiny things. The graphics are not amazing and lots of the backgrounds and effects are really cheap looking, but it all keeps you up to date and little touches like the hero appearance changing as they take damage are nice touches.

When you boot up the game for the first time, you will be get a quick explanation of how to play. After the tutorial it will set you off to make your own game and then you will notice right away: you didn't buy the actual game. You bought a F2P basic nothing freebie pack. You have a hand full of heroes unlocked, but there are 3x as many taunting you with giant lock icons and tucked into a million tiny DLCs. Same with villains, same with locations. The promotional weekly encounters are mainly locked as well because you don't even get to play the weekly challenge and try heroes you don't own, you either own every single scrap of content for that match or you go without. Which brings us to

In the eyes of the developer, this is exactly how things ought to be. The "game" is an intro to a DLC sales area, plain and simple. They've already done crowd funding for a second round of expansion DLCs, because this business model is ment to keep the devs working pretty much forever. Which could be great: everyone loves to have their games get more support. But they have no interest in a positive player experience. Multiplayer only works if you both own all the same DLC. So if you want to play with me you either can't use any non-basic cards, or I can't play at all. This kind of splintering of multiplayer community has ruined the playability of many games in the past, too many to list.

Right now (Steam Summer Sale 2016) the base game is priced for only a couple bucks, while the season pack DLC collection is more than 6x the price. That's not a mistake, it's the business model. When I tried to confirm this on the user forums, the dev literally threatened to report my account to Steam (!?!) Even if you really like the sound of this game and really want to play it, don't spend a cent on this product, at least not until you can get a meaningful amount of content included for your money.

"do you think FTL is a good game?"

TLDR: I think it's a fantastic game, FTL is a gold standard.

But since you asked, I'll say why:

The gameplay is great. You really want to start on Easy, and use the pause button very frequently. It's really a turn based game don't try to play it in real time. Then just try stuff, explore solar systems, and have a great time. Normal mode is hard enough that lots of people never beat it, and then they added a hard more that really is tough.

The graphics are very simple but also very clean and clear. There is a lot more variation visually than you might think, but you will always know exactly what is happening at a glance. The music is really, really great. You don't need to be a fan of any specific type of music to appreciate how well the tone is constantly transmitted to you. Personally I wind up turning the music off in any game I play after a while, because you have heard it sooo many times, but with FTL I turn it back on, sometimes.

There is lots of content to see. The different types of ships can change the tactical combat hugely, all kinds of things will have effects on the interactions you will have. Some people get frustrated because they have a hard time beating the final boss of the game, but the truth is that exploring the galaxy in various ways and encountering various things, the basic gameplay itself, is the point. The first time I got to the boss it was an accident and I was disappointed because I didn't get to finish the delivery quest I was working on.

I have over 100 hours logged into Steam, and this game has gotten me through at least one long internet-free vacation on top of that. Most of that was before they added a huge, free expansion pack, too. If tactical turn based rougue like lite whatever space exploration sounds fun to you, at all, you will get some time out of this.

The cherry on top of the FTL sundae is the price, it's been in a few bundles and goes 70-85% off pretty frequently. It's worth it at any price, really.

I like twin stick shooters, and I like silly games with a good sense of humor. I don't like Fistful of Gun. For the same price you could buy Nuclear Throne or Binding of Isaac remaster, or honestly a ton of other, better, twin stick shooters. It's just flat and unsatisfying.