EpicallyFail 最近的评测

Now, what you have to understand about this game is that it takes a generally accepted gaming genre and scenario and flips it on its head in a way you dont expect. The early level layout is something that someone like Alucard would probably be able to moonwalk his way through in its entirety in around five minutes with his only concern is having to convince the maid to work late that evening to help clean the blood of his victims off of his fancy shirt. But instead of a glorious example of stunning manhood, you get to control Dave from the mailroom. You know, Dave, that guy who probably worked out a few times a week in his thirties but now is spending his days eating reheated KFC from yesterdays dinner, head down trying to keep out of the way of HR for the last few months before his retirement? Now imagine that guy, thrown into a strange dark labrynth (that doesnt have any filing cabinets), and then hand him a three foot long pointy metal bit, and see how long he goes before he ends up split in half by a flying axe. Or lit on fire by a fireball. Or impaled by a poleaxe. Or, well, you get the idea.


The entire idea behind this, I think, is the vast crushing weight of putting an average-ish man in a hopeless situation and see how long it takes before the crazy comes home to roost. I could talk about the philosophy and reference people and things, but thats not really what this review is about, so Ill skip the academics here, and instead focus on the gameplay. Now youll see a lot of reviews saying that the controls in this game are ♥♥♥♥. Well its not really that the controls are ♥♥♥♥, its more that these controls remind people playing that there is no possible way they could swing a heavy sword over and over and not get tired. What the controls are is predictable. Dave swings his sword slower than a diabetic puts down a candybar, but the timing is consistent. The game rewards patience and accuracy, with a particular emphasis on understanding how enemies move and timing your plodding strikes to just squeak inbetween their swings. Not something typical in a Metrodvania, but its an atypical piece I rather enjoy.


That doesn't mean its not infuriating, however. Even with unlimited respawning, dying over an over in the same hallways to the same axe swinging armored tosser will become almost painful, and the fact that just behind that particular tosser is likely another tosser with a slightly different attack patter that youll likely die to just makes the experience more hopeless. Add to that the fact that all the enemies respan when you do, and its a recipe for your own personal hell.


All in all, I highly recommend this game, but that being said I am a bit massochistic, so read into that what you will. I think this one will be a solid example of an interesting way to remake Nintendo Hard for the new Indie generation, and I congratulate Pathless Games for paving a new road to hopelessness for many many gamers.


Recommendation: Buy. Also perhaps buy some antidepressants.

TL;DR: Not sure why everyone is having so many technical issues, but wireless, steam controller, and 720p seems to work super well. I love it!

Purchased one of these while they were on sale, and so far havent had any serious issues with it. Currently connected to a Alienware Steambox (one of the i5 versions, so not even the highest end) using a wireless connection, and so far have had nearly zero issues with it, which seems to be the exception rather than the norm for some reason after reading the reviews. Setup was fairly simple, plugging it into wireless, getting a steam controller working, and downloading a bunch of updates for both (I did have an issue with the steam controller firmware update over the link, ended up just going down to the steambox to get it updated, but that was an easy enough one time thing). Once I got it setup, and configured the graphics settings to balance, running pretty much any game I usually play worked awesome with a minimum of lag on the controller. The menu and system controls work just fine, and (as far as the steam controller goes) everything works exactly as you expect when connected. The only hiccup I noted is that there is no power switch on the Link itself. You are supposed to use the controller to turn it on, but occasionally that has failed me, so having a button to wake the device wouldn't be remiss in a future version

The most important things I can recommend to get this thing working are:

1) stick your in-game resolutions to a bit lower than you would on your main machine (I've kept most of my games around 720p while using the link)

2) Pick a wireless channel that doesnt have a lot of traffic on it to make sure you have a solid connection to the router

3) It seems having a bunch of extra things running on the host desktop can effect performance a bit, so close what you dont need when the computer isnt being used directly


Have fun!

I have made it a habit of bringing my Steambox into work once a week, and inviting anyone who watches my work feeds for an hour of mandatory gaming break. We usually rotate between games based on the group and the current feel things, but sometimes a game is needed to change the attitude of the players. This is that game. Usually when my group of coworkers pick up controllers to start this, theres a bit of hesitancy. Then, the first two or three rounds are an adjustment period, mostly consisting of 'what just happened?' moments strung along over a three or four minute period. It isnt long after that, however, that things really start picking up. Usually, by the end of the first full game, theres a lot of laughing and playful shoving as people really start picking up on how to score points in the different round types, and then the real fun begins. Suddenly lunch is over, and a bunch of quiet coworkers are jumping up and down in the breakroom yelling at each other and the screen, and everyone else on the floor is looking at us rather oddly.

All in all, a great use of a few spare minutes and a few friends. Or enemies. Either way.

Having given up on the daily review writing game, I have come to realize that this means I can actually take time to play and enjoy games that I really wouldn't have been able to sit down and enjoy had I continued. It's actually surprising now how I can open up one or two of these new games and find myself enjoying playing them far more than I would have if I had a too-short deadline in front of me. I guess this means that when I write new reviews, they will probably be much more authentic.

Hero Siege is no exception to this statement. I opened this up a week or so ago, thinking I would find a fairly simplistic top down bullet hell-ish bore, and i found myself actually surprised. Surprised enough to not realize five hours had passed and I had finished my first playthrough of the base game, and with enough relics to make me effectively unstoppable, and I still didnt really want to put it down. This, to me, is the definition of a truly good game, one that keep s your interest over time, even as you get to the end of it.

Now I will say, that officially I have 'completed' the base game in that five hours, but that doesnt mean I stopped playing. The game is basically an odd combination of bullet hell, tower defense, and binding of isaac roguelike, and for all its entertainment is actually fairly short. What you get by playing a character however is the ability to play the same levels over on harder difficulty levels, though with your massively overpowered character dealing hot death to scores of mindlessly wandering foes. The characters are simple enough to control, use your base attack most of the time then deal massive death with special moves when the cluster of baddies gets to dense for your base attack to be worthwhile. As you progress, your experience grows your levels and base stats, and you also get random powerups which add unique powers in a binding of isaac like fashion, which you lose if you die, meaning you have an increasing sense of protectiveness of your character the more difficult the game becomes. The intent behind this I have to assume is that it keeps you on par with the difficulty level, which unfortunately it didnt seem to have done. I was basically unstoppable until half way through my playthrough on the third difficulty level, whereupon I happened to hit a brick wall in a particular boss that apparently doesnt seem to understand that exponential difficulty increases only work if you go up one exponent at a time. Afterwards, I lost all my relic powerups and quicly realized that my character though quick at reaping destruction before, was apparently not as powerful as i had been led to believe. Curse you Hero Siege for such slanderous lies.

All that being said, do I recommend this game? Basically the answer there would be yes, though I will say that it doesn't have a lot of things that make it unique among the roguelike genre, and if you are already knee deep in things like isaac or Enter the Gungeon, it may be best to give a pass on this one, at least until you get sick of those and want to try something slightly different but still the same.

Date: 3/2/16
Review Number: 33
Game: Dungeon of the Endless
From (Creator Publisher):AMPLITUDE Studios
Played On: Laptop
Steam Price as of Review:$11.99, or $18.99 for the enhanced edition
Total Time played: 60 minutes
Review:

Today’s randomized playtoy is a game that I actually already had on my rather limited laptop before I started this project, Dungeon of the Endless, a game by AMPLITUDE Studios. I call it a game rather than giving it a genre here because really it's a game that doesn’t necessarily belong to any specific genre. The gameplay is basically RPG styled characters moving through floors in a roguelike dungeon with RTS elements defending a Tower with tower defenses. It's one of those games that tries to wear enough hats that you can point them out in a large crowd over the throng and subtly attempt to avoid talking to them lest they start discussing the hidden government radio signals their fillings pick up. The difference between those and this game, though, is that Dungeon of the Endless actually manages to blend them fairly well. Granted, the story isn't much to sneeze at; you begin as a pair of intrepid survivors whose prison ship crashed into some mysterious planet and you have to put aside your (contextually insignificant) differences to carry your ships glowy macguffin up twenty flights of stairs to the surface to do... something macguffiny i expect. I’m not sure because I have yet to get that far. This game is also surprisingly hard. Spending time managing limited resources is hard enough, but add roguelike permadeath of your main characters and you have a recipe for engaging difficulty comparable to the likes of most nethack classics only with less tile-based movement. The game is surprisingly fair, however. The RNG Gods rarely throw a completely hopeless level in your direction, and since opening each door does grant you more resources, you can always fight your way to more equipment if needed.

Graphically the game is, if not pretty, at the very least functional, and it certainly helps colorize the mood of sunken hopelessness the characters are clearly feeling. The controls are simple enough to learn and characters are easy enough to select and control that you’ll rarely feel the need to use the standard pause think resume standard to make sure you point the right character the right direction. You’ll still use the pause button though, mostly when you pause after your third character death of the session to try and figure out just where you ended up going wrong in life.

All in all, Dungeon of the Endless is the sort of game that different people will enjoy different parts of, but still manages to take each of those pieces into one cohesive whole that everyone will be able to take something from. This is one of those games that I expect will continue to climb in my play hour rankings for a while now.

Game’s Fate: Kept, though it stands to reason that that might not count since I already had it.
Buy/No Buy: This is the sort of game that appeals to a lot of different genre lovers. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it's a definite buy if at least for the experience.

Date: 3/1/16
Review Number: 31
Game: JazzPunk
From (Creator Publisher): Necrophone/Adult Swim Games
Played On: Steambox w/ Controller
Steam Price as of Review: $14.99
Total Time played: 50 minutes
Review:

First, a quick apology for the delay in this release. Unfortunately in the time between playing the game and writing this review I had an unfortunate cooking pot accident which put my left hand out of commission for some twelve hours. Fortunately nothing serious, but I will say that hand burns are freaking terrible. Two reviews today to make up for this unfortunate medical oversight.

Now, with that being said, I feel like it is entirely possible that the reason that I was distracted enough to try to pick up a pan that had just been in an oven for twenty minutes with my bare hands was because I was completely confused by the game chosen by the RNG gods, JazzPunk by Necrophone. The first thing I will say about this game is that it's pretty, like super pretty for a game that is essentially based off the blocky style of animation that is becoming so common in games post the Minecraft Revolution. In some ways, the world and its details is almost unbearably pretty, in the sense that, regardless of the supposed tasks I was being made to perform, I felt more compelled to explore the world around me rather than progress the story along. Now say what you will about the gameplay itself (the actual process of completing the first mission took me around five minutes, yet i spent nearly thirty before that actually exploring the world around the first level, and finding little tidbits) the game certainly manages to suck you in. The characters are engaging, the scenery excellent, and the level layout has all the nice little touches that make the environment the sort of thing that just sucks you in and doesn't quite want to let go, forcing you to follow your own curiosity to click on more little pieces of the environment, only to find that little piece was now a new sidequest or something along those lines. Even the dialog, though the grainy robot audio humor got a bit grating after a while, was engaging and funny while still carrying information. This is the sort of game you really don't want to play when you only have a few minutes though; the levels are so complex that you would be cheating yourself if you just run through them quickly. Sit down and really look through them, because that's where the game shines. All in all, a definite buy from me.

Game’s Fate:Kept for now. I will definitely be going back to this one, if only after a few days break to reorient myself.
Buy/No Buy: It’s trippy, pretty, and the story has certainly kept me interested, even if I have no bloody idea what’s going on. I think this one is worth a buy.

Date: 2/29/16
Review Number: 31
Game: Clicker Heroes
From (Creator Publisher): Playsaurus
Played On: Laptop
Steam Price as of Review: (supposedly) Free
Total Time played: 60 minutes... which is 60 minutes too long
Review:

No. *clickclickclick* just *clickclickclick* no. I have to idea *click* why anyone would want to play this game.

*clickclickclick*

Okay so in all seriousness, this game, one that is most unfortunately in my most played list for some reason I am unaware of. This game is, well, not really a game. It's a clicking engine, where you watch a ticker climb ever higher, or smash the mouse button to... watch the number tick by faster. This game is a prime example of how ridiculous concepts combined with the proper combinations of lights and colors can make gaming gold, for no reason whatsoever. This is the sort of game where you open it up and suddenly it's several hours later. Yes you probably got other things done over those few hours, since the game itself really doesn't take up any brain power, but youll never remember what you actually did during those hours, instead all you will remember is the incessant rising of the money counter as it climbs inexorably towards a futile infinity.

Really, that's it. I have nothing else to say about this game, so I am going to go uninstall it now. After one more click.

Game’s Fate: gone. Yep, definitely gone. There is no way I would keep this on my computer. Never. Nope.
Buy/No Buy: The cost to your wallet may be free, but the cost to your soul is incalculable. Unless you can use this game to create a phylactery, don’t buy, instead download some sort of bitcoin generator, and watch that number tick, at least that way you make something in theory.

Date: 2/28/16
Review Number: 30
Game:Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
From (Creator Publisher): Raven Software/Lucasarts
Played On: Steambox w/Controller
Steam Price as of Review: $9.99
Total Time played: 60 minutes
Review:

Little bit of disclosure here, the actual game the wheel of morality picked was Dark Forces 2, Jedi Knight, but after spending fifteen minutes getting it to load properly only to find that the game would consistently crash on me on either of my machines, I gave it up as a bad job and moved to the sequel. and honestly, what a sequel it is, or at least what a sequel I remember it to be, though the actual playtime I had reminded me of exactly how slow the game was to ramp up. Now, I will say without a doubt that as far as first person shooters go, the Jedi Knight series was, and in a way still is, my favorite FPS series (though that title has been somewhat superseded by the bioshock series in recent years), and for many legitimate reasons outside the whole Star Wars fanboy thing. The storylines are in depth and give you a characterization that is lost in so many of the other FPS genre, the character models were ahead of their time (that time being very long ago of course, so that doesn't hold quite as much water now) and the game did what I believe was the first well done implementation of third person perspective with a melee weapon that I had seen. Not to mention all the nice force powers you would get as the game progressed into its later stages. Though in a way, the end of that statement is one of the game’s flaws; because it's far more story oriented than other FPS games, the actual story itself can lend to slower gameplay, which in the FPS world is something that seems out of place now, even Bioshock was fairly quick to ramp up the special abilities and Plasmids, whereas in the 60 minute playtime I got with this game I wasn't even close to getting my lightsaber.

All that being said of course, this is no reason to dislike the game, it has just become one of those games that you want to take more time with, as opposed to the quick and dirty games that I've been reviewing lately. This is a good thing, really, but it just means that I can’t really review this one as thoroughly as I can many other games. But still, on the potential that one hour of playtime has on it's own, this game can certainly stand a cut above most of the other FPS games of it's time, and is a definite buy from me.


Game’s Fate: Uninstalled, but not for the merits of the game itself, just more that I know that Jedi Academy is better, so Ill wait for that to keep
Buy/No Buy: If you haven’t played it, you definitely should. Even if Kyle is no longer canon, It's still a interesting story, and worth the playtime. Buy

Date: 2/27/16
Review Number: 29
Game: ARK: Survival Evolved
From (Creator Publisher): Studio Wildcard
Played On: Steambox w/Controller
Steam Price as of Review: $29.99
Total Time played: 45 minutes
Review:

Now in the course of the first month’s worth of reviews, I have already had a few crafturvivals (get it) come through the queue, but unlike Don't starve and Stranded Deep, this is the first time I've played one for a review when never having played it before. I had heard some mixed reviews from this one, which was sad, but I noticed that it had dinosaurs, which was good. So generally interested but slightly skeptical, I started up the game and jumped into a server both feet first, whereupon I realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with the controls. I spent the first ten minutes of gameplay working things out and just when I was ready to actually do things, the server timeout booted me. So, shoring up my internal defenses, I jumped into a single player game and started wandering about to actually experience the game. What that experience became was twenty minutes of repeated catastrophic failures of the dinosaur kind. The list of dinosaurs I died to were, and this is in order:

*sabertooth cat thingy
*another sabertooth cat thingy
*giant walky bitey thingy
*tiny spitty thingy
*tiny spitty thingy again
*crawly spiny thingy

Eventually I figured out the best plan to handle the whole dinosaurs out to eat you thing, which of course was spend a few minutes running around in circles spamming the snatch things button until i collected a bunch of things, then run into the woods and punch a tree until I had collected a few more things, then build a pickaxe to defend yourself with, then go hide in a corner and cry for a while.

Now I will say that as sad as that sounds, I really actually enjoyed myself. The graphics and sound are beautiful in nearly every way, the gameplay was honestly fair, seeing as a human on an island with dinosaurs would probably have gotten eaten about as quick as I was, and the crafting system is actually a unique one I haven't seen, where you unlock the ability to craft more things the more experience you get, which, you know, is kind of how things work in real life, notwithstanding the link between experience and crafting needing to be experience with the same item but whatever.

The only problems I did find with the game other than the occasional overlapping destructible thing, was that I couldn't play a lot of it in the 45 minutes I had with it. This I guess is one of those circumstances where the short review really has something missing, however I will say that the 45 minutes I spent with this game did not discourage me from wanting more of it, regardless of the number of times had my flesh rendered in twain. It just means you don't get to hear about it.

Game’s Fate: Kept. I do want to see where this is going, but it's not super high on my replay list.
Buy/No Buy: If you don’t already have one of these, it's totally worth the buy. That being said, is having dinosaurs killing you worth the money if you already have other people, bears, zombies, or whatever else already killing you? eeeeeeh.

Date: 2/26/16
Review Number: 28
Game: FTL: Faster Than Light
From (Creator Publisher): Subset Games
Played On: Laptop
Steam Price as of Review: $9.99
Total Time played: 45 Minutes
Review:

Next game on the randomizer was one on the significantly shorter list of my personal collection of games that I didn't purchase while on deep sale or as part of a bundle. I don't recall now exactly how I had heard of the game in the first place, however I do distinctly recall knowing that this was a game I could totally end up playing long term. And lo and behold that has generally been the case.
Now the premise of Subset Games FTL: Faster Than Light is more or less a typical space opera sort of thing, you are a lone ship, fleeing a great and terrible army in your spaceship towards some sort of base at the end of the map, at which time you give the secret to a military hub only to have them tell you that they don't want it and that it's your job to destroy the enemy’s secret weapon anyway. One would wonder why they didn't just tell you that at the beginning of the map, but regardless you can still take all that time traveling inexorably rightwards to build up your ship with numerous types of weapons and sundry to make the job slightly less impossible when it happens. The game is largely text based, with most of the game's story communicated via dialog boxes, and combat more of a point and click adventure game than a space battle, but the fighting still manages to keep you entertained, not dragging on too long to be annoying, but not so short as to seem to be tacked on at the end. The game is very roguelike, with each star system having the possibility of throwing you a bone with some nice loot, or a pitched battle with a pirate battlecruiser. You definitely can feel the hand of the random number gods all over this game, and in many circumstances you will most certainly find yourself backed into a corner regardless of having done everything right. But the game does take great pains to not make the game seem completely unfair, and even the longest streak of bad luck really just seems more like you didn't do enough to make it work than any sort of random chance.
In the end, as far as roguelike games go, I can safely say this is probably my second favorite, blending strategy and gameplay in a simple game that you can jump right into, get blown apart a few times, then feel like you've learned something, only to get blown apart a few times anyway. Buy.

Game’s Fate: Kept. This game works brilliantly as a quick and easy time waster and a long and drawn out roguelike.
Buy/No Buy: This game will not appeal so some people, for many different reasons. All those people are horrible. Buy.