Be Excellent To Each Other

Lately it's been harder and harder to find games that i truly enjoy after a few minutes. I get bored really fast and lose interest. So, i got to try some games in my steam collections that have been forgotten under piles of steam sales and charity bundles.

Dead Rising 2 - I was hoping for some mindless zombie crushing, but the game started to bore me 5 minutes in. What's with all these stupid cut scenes and another story of a father protecting his child? Not only that but the character feels slow and unresponsive. Does this ever gets any good?

Hack Slash Loot - A very barebones roguelike. So barebones that there's not one bit of tactics involved. A completely worthless game.

They Bleed Pixels - I like the presentation of this one, but the gameplay is too much Super Meat Boy-influenced for my tastes. Even to the fact of forcing you to play with the analogue stick on a game that requires such precise controls.

La Mulana - Looks interesting at first, but very soon starts to get very frustrating. It kinda reminds me of a dark souls since you die a lot while learning the environments. But unlike Dark Souls, it's not clear at all where do you need to go and you don't get to earn anything each time you die. So it's lots of lost time for almost nothing.

Shank 2 - This was a good surprise. Seems like a cross between Comix Zone, Viewtiful Joe and Metal Slug, but it's not unfair and frustrating as any of those games. It's a game that does one thing but does it extremely well. Great animation and art style.

Risen 2 - Some years ago i would be all over this. Risen 1 was one of the best and most underrated RPGs of the last few years. Piranha Bytes really knows how to create great and believable worlds. After playing their games, Bethesda games always feel too gamey and fake. The pirate theme works extremely well. It's a game to play through when I have more patience.

I have not played the Steam version but did play this a lot on the 360 and i guess a lot of your enjoyment is going to depend on your memories of DR1

When it was free on XBL I wrote this : viewtopic.php?p=780658#p780658 which is just some basic info and guidance in general but for your comments

Yes the story is a bit silly and it goes on for the whole game , however your free to just ignore all the story stuff and just go kill Zombies.

Yes the main character starts out slow and underpowered but as you level up you gain speed , health , carrying capacity and unlock a number of melee attacks which make negotiating the hoards much easier , and that carries across from game to game so if you begin as normal - play for a few hours and 'die' then restart the clock is reset on all the timed actions but your level and XP remain.

On the whole I preferred DR1 just because it was shiny and new at the start of this console generation , DR2 is 'okay' but unless you were a fan of the first game I dont see it doing enough to capture new players.

I never played the first dead rising so I don't have any sort of nostalgic connection. But I will give the game another try but I'll probably ignore the story anyway.

I've just finished the normal difficulty campaign in shank 2.this game should have had more hype. One thing that struck me by the end was how well designed most boss fights were which is something not many games do right.

I seem to remember (but could be wrong as I never tried) that DR2 was less forgiving of ignoring the story due to game over on child neglect.

Generally prefered DR1,Otis aside.

Pretty sure it didnt give a game over just a long group of 'mission failed' type alerts of things when you lost track of the main story thread but nothing stopped you just faffing about with killing zombies beyond that point ?

I'm enjoying more of the game now. I guess my problem was starting playing like if it was some sort of devil may cry style of game.

Does the whole "restart the game with your current level"mandatory? Is it feasible to complete in one sitting?

No. It's possible, but you'll really struggle.

Pretty much as Grim... said unless you've experience of the first one.

I think I went through 2 in a single 'save' but the game is designed to be played multiple times I would say just dabble in things and know at some point you'll probably die then go back through again with more of a focus on the story - and then if your still up for it a third time while you try to max out some of the side missions.

The game is basically a large sandbox with a single running thread for the story , maybe around 20 story specific missions and tasks and it then has around another 50 or so side missions / tasks - many of these are announced to you via the radio but there are also others that will happen randomly or only happen when certain other criteria are met.

I liked DR1 but put down DR2 after one 'mission' because of all the cutscenes and children. I don't want cutscenes and children, I want zombies and lawnmowers.

So are you all GUARANTEEING that I can just ignore the innocent civilians? Do I have to 'do story' in order to 'unlock' stuff?

I think you have to do a few missions before it lets you have true free reign of the place. Mind you, I might be right in saying you can enter a fail state early on but still just go wandering until your hearts content.

Also, on a separate note, when did gamers get so goddamn wussy about a challenge?

When we all lost our atten

This probably sounds silly do the most you, but I've been enjoying the game more since i traded the gamepad for keyboard and mouse controls.

I just can't cope with controlling the camera in 3d games with a stick. I was always being attacked from behind. It's also much easier to throw stuff and use handguns.

The same happened to me in Dark Souls. The game improved a lot for me with mouse and keyboard.

I will try it and see but from memory you have to :

Start in the Arena which leads to the Zombie outbreak
Get 1 dose of Zombrex for Katie (the very first mission basically)

Then the story opens up and most things are available to you so unlocks on skills and equipment are fine - when you fail the next story mission it should then give you a long set of 'failed' prompts for everything else thats gone wrong and you have the option to restart but i'm pretty sure you can then ignore it and do what you want.

If you do go down this route you need to be aware that some areas within the game will remain closed off to you (bank / subway tunnels / hotel roof / etc) as they only open as you progress the story (and one whole casino will be without power as you'll not get the chance to turn it on)

Again from Memory Dead Rising 2 "Off the Record" (when you play as Frank) has a mode which is *just* sandbox so there is no story at all there and you can just faff around killing zombies if thats what you want

I'm done with dead rising. It was fun for a while but now it's getting repetitive and the boss fights are awfully designed. I'm probably going to try another game in my steam backlog. Either Mark of the ninja, deadlight or fez.

I'd recommend mark of the ninja the most from that list.

Others may not.

Unlike Shank and Shank2 (which were terrible), Mark of the Ninja is very good.

I actually enjoyed shank 2 a lot, but since the art style is similar, I'm probably going to try another game first.

I'm just starting Mark of the Nina from my own Steam backlog and thoroughly enjoying it.

Deadlight is short and not very challenging but if you're in the mood for something you can just blast through it's pretty fun. Fez just got on my tits due to it being very difficult to work out how to navigate between the areas you'd already visited so even when you knew where you wanted to go you'd end up just wandering around trying doors almost at random until you hit the one you wanted. I probably would've persevered but a save bug on the Xbox killed me game entirely anyway and I couldn't be arsed replaying it.

Fez is amazing. I loved it so much I played through the NG+.

According to this lengthy string of letters, numbers and symbols, I thought Deadlight was "spiffy". Apparently , according to me, you can finish it in under two hours so I'd give that a pop.

viewtopic.php?style=19&f=3&t=8595&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Deadlight&start=30

I ended up installing dead light. I've been enjoying it so far but I usually like this kind of "Another World"kind of games like Limbo, provided that they're not too long.

Other micro reviews that I forgot to post.

Rogue Legacy - probably my favourite game of the year thus far. A cracking mix between Castlevania and Spelunky. Very tight controls and incredibly addicting.

Cave Story + - So I wanted to see what the fuss was all about and didn't like it one bit. Unlike rogue legacy this controls like rubbish and the game makes us wander back and forth way too much. Also, unlike rogue legacy it has shit bosses.

sacred 2 - horrible horrible game. All these pinata simulators are the same so why not play one of the better ones instead? The game also looks terrible and is very badly optimized.