Jolt Country

I will post, once a month, about the Steam games I got.

This month so far:

Slain!
Jet Set Knights
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Kero Blaster
La-Mulana
STASIS
Mitsgungi Kamui Hikae
Cosmic Leap
Shardlight
Layers of Fear

Slain!

Slain! has a black metal soundtrack and features a long-hair dude with a giant sword fucking shit up. Easily the best-looking 16-bit-inspired side scroller I've ever seen. A problem with a lot of these side scrollers is that Shigeru Miyamoto was a genius and Super Mario Bros. was a work of a genius. That was his rare talent. This isn't SMB design, but it's good enough at least early-on.

Haven't had a chance to test it with the Steam controller yet, but I expect good things.

I'm curious about that Stasis game!

I played Stasis for about two hours. The start is marvelous. After about an hour, it turns into a crapfest :-/ The voice "acting" isn't helping either.

OK, more on Statis soon. I tried La-Mulana for two minutes tonight. I know nothing about it. I think La-Mulana was a game for a different system at one point.

I couldn't quite figure out how to proceed. I am not sure how to open the treasure chest. I love these mindless action games, just in the mood for something beefier in what little free time I do have lately.

Kero Blaster is a perfectly fine side scroller. You can shoot up but you can't jump. Music is catchy, the sort of thing I'd dork around with using the Steam Link and controller.

This brings us to Underrail.

I should love Underrail. It has everything you want out of a modern Fallout-inspired game. Love the pixel graphics. There is a discussion, early on, where a guy who is supposed to train you will only do so if you do something for him first. That's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that in negotiation, he will play hardball with you. I can't remember seeing that in dialogue choices at the beginning of a game before.

Why is Underrail soooo close to being awesome and something like Fallout 2 or Crusader: No Regret better? Both of those games are more approachable.

It's clear that Underrail is worth playing and that if I am going to do so, it's going to take a time investment to understand how.

As far as I understand it, La-Mulana is one of those platformers for people FOR WHOM NORMAL PLATFORMERS JUST AREN'T HARD ENOUGH. I also played it for a few minutes before deciding I had enough of it. The joke was on me, though, since I had set it fullscreen and then couldn't find any way to quit it without alt-tabbing out! What crap.

Duck Game is the arcade-style game I've been looking for.



This is a multiplayer-only game that takes place over a series of boards. In each board there are four ducks, or players. In the boards are guns, doors, teleporters, machines and all sorts of crazy shit. You play until the last person is left, then you go onto another board.

In two hours of play I have not seen a repeated board yet.

I think the screenshot up above might do it some justice. Each round is, to the newb, crazy anarchy. For the most part I am dead within seconds. There may be a bit of a problem matching skill levels in this.

But what game I have been able to play of it is so good. I can't believe how much sheer content is in here. It's the sort of thing I would love to play with friends.

You forgot the most awesome feature of this game. It has a dedicated *quack* button.

It does nothing useful other than making your duck quack.

I think this deserved mention.

How's the community? Pretty polite, kind to newcomers, that kinda thing?

pinback wrote:How's the community? Pretty polite, kind to newcomers, that kinda thing?

Yes, though now that I think about it, they tried to call me a nasty name for black people because I wasn't winning more matches. I don't win more matches because I am on the screen for less than two seconds most matches.