Super Hexagon is an action 2D game for the lack of a better description. Your goal is to move around the central hexagon and evade the falling shapes.
Our best score for the 1st stage.
The game itself is super simple, you move to the left and right in order to get through cracks in the shapes that are coming down on the central hexagon. But in order to increase the difficulty and make it a challenging experience the shapes, colors and rotation will change constantly.
The game is hard and it makes sure you know that upfront as the very starting stage is labeled "hard". The soundtrack for the game perfectly matches the pace and stimulates the urgency of your actions. Despite its difficulty you can get a lot of enjoyment depending on how much you relish challenging yourself. Given its rapid nature is also a great game to boost any local party as the controls are simple and the challenge clear. Dexterity, perception and reaction time, this game will demand you to be your very best, every single second of it!
End of the Mine is an action 2D sidescrolling game in which you need to find out what happened to all your friends after a night of heavy drinking.
Gameplay itself is very simple, you move around and shoot creatures. You have a jet-pack to hoover and dash as you venture down the mine. Through your exploration you will find eight different weapons with slightly unique styles that you can upgrade twice for extra power.
Hidden chest and lots of ammo!
Progression happens as you complete each stage and defeat the boss. Some have a short animation and most drop a gun part, that you will use to unlock new weapons. You will also accumulate five different currencies to upgrade your weapons through defeating enemies and finding hidden chests.
We really like the idea of space mining, we love caves and crystals, but by the end of the game we felt it lacked polishing. There are too many similar guns and too many identical stages. Even the bosses themselves don't have a distinguished gameplay. You can easily shoot them to death with whatever weapon you upgraded the most. Too many currencies and so much ammo laying around for a mining operation. The game has great animation and we really like the art style, but it has bitten more than it could chew.
Update: While trying to reach out for the developers it seems like the studio closed and the website/e-mail addresses no longer exist... Too bad, as we wanted to see more of this. =/
Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the second part of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. In this game your goal is to travel throughout time and change the past, present and future!
The gameplay is just like before, walk around fighting creatures with a real time action bar by choosing between six character roles. Some differences though: You now play as Serah and Noel, the 3rd member of your group is a monster and can be chosen freely, but you can only control Serah or Noel. If the leader "die" in battle control automatically change to the other until the end of battle. The AI is a little better compared to the first game, but still not quite smart. One thing it annoyingly has trouble with is considering the target weaknesses with the attacker attributes, like using magic attacks in a physical build just because the target has magic weakness, thus throwing your carefully made build in the garbage. =/
Monster Crystalarium and "food".
The Crystalarium is back, a little different but essentially the same. The item upgrade system was simplified and merged with the shopping NPC, which makes things less mysterious but not as interesting. On the other hand the Monster System is new and deserves an explanation.
As you defeat creatures you may get their crystal. Once you do you are able to use them as the 3rd member of your party (yes, you can have chocobos fighting for you), and they get their own crystalarium. Unlike your characters though, in order to expand/evolve their crystalarium you need to use what we like to call "monster food", which are items dropped from creatures or purchased on the shop. On top of that each creature can be infused into other creatures, transferring their known skills and passive abilities. This allows you to make extremely powerful allies, if you decide to grind for them.
Monster Infusion.
The equipment system suffered a complete overhaul. Now each gear has "power points" to be equipped and each character has a maximum of 100 points to mix and match. Fortunately the paradigm shifting was made faster and more responsive and the linearity of the game was broken a bit, although walking around the same place up and down delivering quests doesn't really make it any better. They did fix the scaling of the game, so each battle doesn't feel useless anymore, and that is one of our main problems with the first game.
In the end we had a much better experience with Final Fantasy XIII-2 than with the first game. Unfortunately badass Lightning is not a main character (despite being stamped all over the game), but Serah and Noel proves to be enjoyable enough. Even Hope overcomes his whining issues! If you played (or watched) the first game and is looking for some more, Final Fantasy XII-2 do not disappoint.
If you'd like to dive deep into the Monster System, check this guide.
The Stanley Parable is a very simple first person story driven game. Your goal is really a mystery until you actually play the game for a while.
THE decision.
Because the game is based on the story, there is no mechanics but walking and occasionally interacting with a door or object. But in order to give you something let us say this: The game has a narrator describing your actions and things get really interesting when you reach a critical decision making point with two open doors.
The voice over really makes the game shine. The actor was extremely skilled in depicting the intended emotions. It is also very entertaining to do the same thing over and over or just don't do anything in order to hear his satirical lines. Overall it is a short game but definitely a very unique and interesting one.
Final Fantasy XIII is a Japanese RPG in which your goal is to survive the unfortunate sequence of events that led you and your friends to exile.
Paradigm shifting.
The gameplay is very simple, you move your party through a very linear map battling multiple opponents. Like other games from the franchise you have an "action bar" that fills up as time goes by and allows you to queue up battle actions. The special thing about this game battle system is that each character has one of five roles: Commando, Ravager, Sentinel, Synergist, Saboteur and Medic. Each role has exclusive abilities. In order to efficiently fight different enemies proper shift of Paradigms (the defined roles of your party) is essential. The usual goal is staggering an enemy for increased damage. You only control the party leader, the other two members are controlled by the AI, a mediocre one.
Leveling up a weapon to maximum level.
Each battle awards you Crystalarium Points (CP) and occasionally upgrade components. As you accumulate CP you increase basic attributes and learn new combat actions (skills). Components on the other hand are used to upgrade equipment. This components are divided into two categories, organic and synthetic. Organic components give a small amount of experience while providing a bonus multiplier for the next components. Synthetic ones give a big amount of experience while decreasing the bonus provided by organic components. Unfortunately this ends up removing experimentation and constant progression, as the optimal strategy is to always accumulate enough organic components to reach a high level booster and then dump one single type of synthetic component to make full use off all the experience multiplier.
For some reason it was decided that each chapter would give the player increased rewards. Which means that the more battles you pick the longer it will take you to reach the strongest tiers of power. Artificially increasing gameplay time without any real benefit. Overall Final Fantasy XIII is not a bad game, we really like the idea of been able to use creature parts to enhance equipment. But the game becomes very repetitive quickly with nothing really pushing your forward but the plot. In the end you can just watch the whole thing on Youtube without having to spend 50+ hours fighting the same creatures, in different colors, over and over.
