Phoenix 最近的评测

The level design is well done, with lots of little nooks and crannies to explore and interesting things things to find. Levels are also easy to navigate while still being decent sized, and I never felt overwhelmed or lost.

The core gimmick, the grappling arm, is also fun to use (at least when upgraded a couple times). Once I got used to it I pretty much swung my entire way through the levels. There are a few challenges too if you really want to test your skills with it.

To be blunt: The game is ugly. All of the characters in the game are these weird lumpy naked people that are deeply unappealing. The first two levels have this weird pastel green and purple color scheme. The setting appears to be sci-fi, but has this Sludge Life-ish humor that doesn't fit. And because of all this scenes or characters that are meant to be charming just... aren't.

Ultimately, I'm only recommending Completely Stretchy because you can very easily check the look of the game before buying. If the screenshots are a turn off to you, I promise you the gameplay isn't going to save it. But if you like (or tolerate) the look, you'll have a good time zipping around and checking things out.

Heavily inspired by WarioWare, Dreams of Aether is a solid collection of mini-games that does a good capturing the same chaotic energy and quirkiness of its inspiration. It also brings a few ideas of its own, and is willing to have games that would probably be too complicated for the mainstream WarioWare.

The gimmick of the final level, where you play two random mini-games at once, is also very cool and a fitting climax for the game.

The game has a lot less content than WarioWare, and WarioWare was not a terribly long game to begin with. You can beat the game in a bit over an hour, and with my remaining playtime I was able to 3-star most of the levels and get all of the achievements.

Also a few mini-games will take a couple tries until you figure them out.

Dreams of Aether is a great way to kill a couple hours, and a game definitely worth your time. Is it worth your money? Eh, there are worse uses of $3. Ultimately I had a fun time with this frantic little collection of mini-games.

Mechanically, the game plays great. While clearly very Hades inspired, the dodging and weaving while stringing together attacks just feels good and the added steam meter gives you a reason to mix things up. The enemy's attacks patterns feel hellish at first but are entirely possible to master. The power-ups on offer have some cool synergies and on full length runs feel very rewarding.

The game also just oozes style. The world and the UI have this great brightly colored graffiti aesthetic, and the neo-renaissance setting is amazingly unique. The characters are good too, though the dialogue can be hit-or-miss at times.

The weapon variety is very limited. You can't change your primary attack at all, and none of the secondary attacks feel very different from each other. The power-up selection fairs a little bit better, but on a full length run you can pretty much pick up every worthwhile power leading to every run being more or less the same. Even the meta-progression is pretty static, with some options being more or less required.

Reignbreaker also inherits Hades problem where the screen can just be a chaotic mess sometimes, and it feels like no matter what you do you're going to get hit.

Reignbreaker is one of those roguelikes where once you beat the final boss you're never going to play it again. It's a great experience up until then, one I recommend, but once you've seen everything the game has to offer you're not going to hesitate to move onto something else. But for $10 it's hard to go wrong. It's a bite-sized experience that's worth trying.

Path of Achra is a game all about creating the best and coolest character builds you can, and it executes on that concept flawlessly. You have hundreds of different options to pick from, including dozens of starting parameters, skills, and prestige classes, each with their own little nuances and different ways of interacting with other options. There are no default builds; I always wanted to be able select more skills because so many are valid for any given concept. And when a build fails, it's feels great to back to the drawing board and try to figure out just how to multiply your damage or shore up your weaknesses.

As for playing the game, Path of Achra does a great job removing all the grind and tedium so many other similar games have. You just hold tab or space (depending on the build) and watch as your character flies through slaughtering enemies left and right (or dies trying). It's so great to be able to finish a run in an hour and go make a new character. And if that sounds too easy, don't worry at higher difficulties you will want to learn when to take control of your character manually because there are certain enemies you will absolutely want to deal with strategically.

The way items are handled is... weird. In most roguelikes you see a small portion of the total pool of items on any given run, leading to runs feeling very different and allowing you to occasionally end up with the perfect god run. In Path of Achra however you see almost every item on any given run. This is good because your build's pretty much locked-in as soon as you start, and some builds need certain items. But you also don't see EVERY item on a run, so sometimes you just lose because you never saw what you needed and there was nothing you could do.

Also at higher difficulties enemy abilities really start mattering, but it can be a pain to check/remember them.

If you love theorycrafting, Path of Achra is the game for you. It is a sandbox of options with runs short enough that you can constantly experiment and try out things. And while the gameplay is more akin to an auto-battler than anything else, it's rewarding to watch your build fill the level with summons or stack repulsion on themselves a thousand times. The design of Path of Achra is incredible, and I really can't recommend it enough.

Anthology Of The Killer is simultaneously surreal, funny, and insightful. The game can be quite deep at times, offering some genuinely good commentary on the world, but it never takes itself too seriously. The levels are weird and evocative, and even with the simple graphics they do a great job at capturing the emotions they want to. The characters are great, perfectly the fitting the sort of upside-down world they live; people who take themselves seriously, but in a way that makes them hilarious to interact with while not undercutting anything else in the game.

The protagonist narrates every scene with a text box, and hoo boy it gets a bit much at times. Some scenes she'll just be describing things and telling you how she feels and - I can see everything in the scene! Let me feel how the scene makes me feel, don't add a paragraph of description to this. She'll even converse with the killers during chase scenes, and while mechanically not an issue, it's definitely a lot to read multiple paragraphs, run, and appreciate the level. The game's consistent verboseness does not help.

Also be aware the first chapter is the weakest.

As a weird piece of art, I cannot recommend Anthology Of The Killer enough. There are very few games like it out there, and with 9 different chapters it explores a lot of different topics and ideas. The game's wit and weirdness is also great. Just be aware it can be hard to understand what's going on sometimes, and ultimately it's a game with a lot of walking and reading. But it definitely left an impression on me.

Tesla vs Lovecraft feels like a game straight from the XBLA golden age. It's a no frills twin-stick shooter, where you enter a level, shoot all the enemies, and leave. There are different guns, power-ups, and upgrades that all pretty much amount to "shoot things, but harder". But the shooting feels good, and sometimes that's all you need.

The game also keeps you moving which is nice. You won't just be standing in one place but maneuvering to charge your big special, dodge enemies, and move around the obstacles in each level.

The game has daily missions, for some reason? You get enough of the meta-currency from levels that you can ignore them and beat the game, but it's an odd choice especially given the game does not have the replayability to last for weeks on end.

Half the upgrades are pretty worthless.

Even in 2018 the idea of having two real life figures like Tesla and Lovecraft fighting was dated.

Don't expect much complexity from the game. There are no secrets, real strategy, or grand plot. But it's almost nostalgic to play that's so straightforward. The game executes the core "you shoot enemies" pretty much perfectly, and sometimes that's all you need.

Inquisitor makes good use of the Warhammer 40k world. The classes (at least including DLC) are a good representation of the Imperium. The enemies include several different factions. The characters are well written. My first character was a Tech-Adept and I loved his dialogue, his personality was exactly what I wanted. At the same time there's decent variety among the NPCs and they're not all generic representations of their factions.

The game is painfully unexciting. Enemies aren't fun to kill and end up blending together. Levels feel like you're slowly plodding along. Unlike most ARPGs where there's at least a world you're exploring, levels here are unconnected and mostly bland hallways of sheet metal or concrete.

Worse is the way items are handled. Each item can easily have 3 or 4 affixes, and they're always awful. +5% damage to stunned enemies? +3% suppression? I never cared about what dropped. On top of that you get something like 40 items per level, so if you're actually trying to gear your character you'll spend practically half the game comparing affixes.

Skip the game. Even if you love Warhammer 40k there are 40k games with better gameplay out there. And if you're looking for an ARPG, there're *many* better ARPGs. I was really hoping for a game with some simple, visceral, 40k fun but unfortunately this isn't it.

Ballionaire is a game with a unique concept that it explores perfectly. There are ways to ricochet your balls and move them around, there are ways to spawn more balls, there are status effects you can carry around and then combo with for even bigger effects. There's a decent variety too, and while you'll generally pursue certain builds there are good generic options.

The game also has the perfect level of luck. You'll never be guaranteed to activate an exact combo but you'll hit most of it reliably, particularly as the board fills out.

Each drop is a chaotic jumble that resolves way too quickly. You can't really watch as each piece of your combo activates and chains together, you just get some money and then you're done. Worse, the mess makes it hard tell which of your bumpers are actually pulling their weight, so you can't make adjustments as needed.

The balance is also off. Some strategies just don't work at higher difficulties, and the permanent items range from worthless to game defining.

If you haven't played many arcade-y style roguelikes there are better first choices (namely Luck Be a Landlord), but if you're looking for new games to try out Ballionaire is a very solid choice. You probably won't get hundreds of hours out of it but there are no other games where you design the perfect pachinko board.

Much like a proto-Vampire Survivors, Risk of Rain 2 is a game all about the pure fun of just mowing down every enemy you see. Attacking always feels good, and there's a real sense of strength the longer the run goes on. There's a decent variety of characters too.

Also unlike most modern roguelikes, it has a decent amount of exploration and secrets. The worlds are satisfying to move around in and be in in a way that you don't really see in the genre.

The item system is horrifyingly boring. You have no control over what you get, so each run leaves you with a random grab bag of items. There is an unlockable modifier that fixes this, but it reveals just how badly items don't synergize or interact with each other. You can't really have unique builds in this game unless it's "this one item, but 20 times". In addition, a lot of items are just... not great. Looping does alleviate this, but I don't really want a run to last 3 hours.

Combat also becomes chaos when there are a lot of enemies. Dodging attacks ends up feeling more like luck and less like skill. It doesn't help that like a lot of roguelikes your health can go from full to 0 in an instant.

Ultimately, I think there are just other better roguelikes that are worth playing instead. There's too much going on for it to be a "just chill and shoot things game" (and deaths can be very frustrating), while the strategy and replayability that come from build crafting don't really exist either. But even with my complaints, it's hard to deny that I did have fun while playing the game.

In the same vein as a slot machine, Spin Hero is a game that can be hypnotizing to play. Once you get the hang of things you can blitz through runs in 20 minutes, playing the game in a fugue state as you watch the images flicker past and enemies' health drop to 0.

Luckily, with the strategy in the game coming almost entirely from how you build your character, there are a decent variety of builds and ways to put them together. Each build also feels different in how you construct it and how it plays out (even if you're just hitting "Spin").

Unlike Luck Be a Landlord, where removals were rare and the best combos were based off of generating items and consuming them, Spin Hero is way more static. You get 20 slots on your reel and will pretty much never go above 20 items, meaning every turn is near identical.

The enemies also have none of the variety of the Slay the Spire. Even though there's not much you can do on your turn it's disappointing to see how all of them (including bosses) just do damage and deal one of the same few status effects.

While you're better off playing Slay the Spire or Luck Be a Landlord if you haven't already, Spin Hero is not a bad choice if you're looking for a new roguelike to try. Just don't expect a game with a ton of depth and strategy.