What Are You Playing (Summer 2013)?

I am 60% through the original Heretic. It's a typical Raven game, don't veer too far off an existing game and keep it enjoyable. They added an inventory system (and alt-fire) to Doom. Circle-strafing the the old school version of 'run out of cover, kill one enemy and then run away to fill your health and repeat'

If you're playing old-ass Doom engine games you should give Strife a try.

I bought Divekick. I played Divekick last night.

Review:

Divekick seems like the kinda thing where I'd say, "oh, I get the joke" the first time I played it and then never pick it up again.

It looks like it's quietly EXTREMELY TECHNICAL, like Joust. I want to get it.

Joust is a great comparison.

The joke part of Divekick is godawful. Enough to make one want badly and hopelessly to dislike the game.

I'd be a lot more into Divekick if not for the 'FGC' in-joke pandering.

It's almost prohibitively bad. Almost.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Diff-chan

Guacamelee! - as a "Metroidvania" it is pretty bad. Level design is rote, upgrades aren't very interesting, and the combat is unsatisfying. But it's really pretty. It just makes me want to play Super Metroid or SOTN again though.

---

I like it, but yeah, outside of the visual and audio style it's not great. There's nothing bad about it but the gameplay is all just kind of there, and the combat lacks a real punch. I think removing the gigantic unnecessary delay from throwing would help a lot, as would doubling the enemy count and taking their ideas further. The swapping back and forth between planes for jumping puzzles is great but is always over too quickly and then ignored for huge stretches, and the enemies on different planes at the same time is a cool idea but feels a little disjointed and unfinished. There's definitely an awesome game hiding in there, but it feels like the developers didn't have the balls to go all-out and just kept restraining themselves to make sure five-year-olds could play through without a problem.

Also, the memes as billboards definitely needs to go. I chuckled at the insanity wolf alcohol but the rest were both bad and too much. And they actually did a "your princess is in another castle" joke? Really?

Really?

Yea, I definitely noticed the throw delay. There are weird delays and lags all over the control that makes the game feel far worse than it should be, for example roll to an uppercut just feels all sorts of wrong. Actually uppercut to anything is off. It's the sort of thing 16-bit developers could do in their sleep.

The color-coded block thing is like my first metroid. These upgrades are supposed to be organic and fit into the world.

Shadow Complex figured all this stuff out and that game is old as shit now.