Recent reviews by -SambaL-

No bla bla bla. No, just no.

The fighting in first person was interesting, a bit of a hit & miss, but man this is some weird stuff. A bit too weird for me.
But if you are in to nightmarisch fantasy stuff than you'll probably enjoy this.

One of the best, if not the best. 2D Stealth Platformer out there. Not only is it possible to approach obstacles and situations how you see fit, it also rewards to do so as 'ninja' as you can to achieve a higher score, which definitely bumps up the replay value. To give an example: In my playthrough of the first mission where you get introduced with the controls i was zipping around with my grappling hook breaking lights to distract guards and eventually sneak up on them to stealh kill them and hide their bodies. This gave me quite a few points. But when i finished up the mission and i got my score, which wasn't bad, i saw that i could get a much higher score by not killing enemies. So i replayed the mission to try and go for a stealthier approach and get a higher score, plus i enjoyed the gameplay so i didn't mind redoing it at all. Not killing my enemies this time around actually made me have to rethink a lot of situations and find a different way to tackle them without being detected. Not only was it more challenging, it also made me experience the level in a new way and that is quite admirable for a 2D platformer.

As far as visuals and gameplay go it's all very well done. The controls feel intuitive and responsive, which is important because while being stealthy you also need to be quick and resourceful, while not being too difficult to master.
The storyline is pretty basic as far as stories go but who cares, you get to be a bad-ass ninja and the whole ninja athmosphere seems to hit the right note. And don't be fooled by the cartoony look because just like Shack there is plenty of blood splashing around.

Mark of the Ninja is nothing short of a master piece and makes for a very injoyable game with replay value to boot.
The asking price might seem a bit steep but i will say it's worth it. Of course you could also wait for it to come by on sale, which it occasionally does, and pick it up for 60 or 70%. I would also recommend to get the Special Edition to extend fun with extra challenges and tools.

There is a lot of fun to be had here once you get the hang of things and start to understand the few maps the game has. You do need the right team-mates however when playing online because team-play only enhances and prolongs the fun while running off by yourself will only make things harder.

There is enough variation in the gameplay with different classes who each have their own strengths, abilities and (unlockable) weapons. As well as the levels that you go through that all have their own objectives that you need to accomplish before you can move on. It keeps things fresh and interesting for a little while, though that replay value could have been longer if the campaign wasn't as short as it is.
Luckily there is always the modding community you can trust on to provide you with tons of new maps you only need to do a bit of work for it because there is no Workshop support as of yet.

Best thing of all though.... it's completely free!

The backround story of Half-Life 2 lends itself perfectly for a strategy game, and for taking on that task i can only praise Vortal Storm.

Unfortunately as soon as i started playing the first flaws this title has started to dawn on me. There are quite a few strange design choices made here and there and not a lot is explained about them. Giant bottles of beer that blur your vision when touched? Doesn't match up all that well with the franchise now does it? It clearly shows the fine line of where the content from the Half-Life universe ends and the ideas of the developer begin.

Next to that there are still a lot of little problems and glitches plaguing Lamda Wars. Enemies and allies alike getting stuck behind corners and obstacles, units going straight through instead of around placed barricades and having a tough time doing so often getting stuck behind them, getting soldiers in to cover can be a pain as well , medics and engineers who are placed in the back well behind barricades and turrets to support the soldiers and structures placed there often run straight passed them in to incoming enemies and die, and the list goes on. Al these little things together can be frustrating and it makes me curse at my little army of idiots out of annoyance.

Don't get me wrong, there is definitely something here but it needs a lot more work and fine-tuning before i can fully recommend it to anyone. Big fans of the franchise might not care because that part of the game is pretty solid, it has been since 2004 and it still is. But people that are purely looking for a solid RTS might be disappointed.
On the other hand it is free so there is no harm in giving it a try yourself.


[ I am aware of the fact that this mod is still in Beta so i will come back to this later for another look and hopefully by then i can honestly recommend it to others. ]

One in a dozen puzzle platformer with some fun ideas that work. Don't do it for the story or characters though, this is all quite forgetable. If you really have nothing else to play you can pick this up to fill your time with, don't expect anything brilliant though.

I like my zombie apocalypses, though i can be a bit particular about it. Non of that 28 Days Later stuff for me, i want to see the classic slow walking stumbling rotting corpses kind of zombie world, and Deadlight captures that world perfectly and does so in 2D as well!

So it's a 2D platformer. You're character starts out being cut of from his friends and needs to find a way out of the building he is in which is being swarmed by zombies and find a way to reunite with your fellow survivors. By climbing up ledges, jumping over gaps from platform to platform to rooftop, dragging crates and throwing switches to activate traps and open up passage ways you make your way through a very convincing post apocalyptic scenery thanks to some nifty looking graphics and a gloomy atmosphere. And a honorable mention for the stylefully done comic cutscenes by the way. You are far from invincible so you will have to rely on your wits by staying high of the ground and luring any potentially dangerous zombies in to traps. You do get a melee weapon and a gun, but as with most zombie survivors ammo is scarce and you can only swim a fire-axe so many times.

On the gameplay side everything is pretty solid. I did here some complaints here and there that the controls aren't all that great or responsive and it makes you miss a jump and fall to your death, but i have to say i haven't had any problems with that really. I might have messed up a couple of times here and there but checkpoints are never far away so repeating your action isn't all that big of a deal.

Is the game perfect? Well i wouldn't say that. It's good and i've enjoyed it but as many have mentioned it is a bit on the short side. You'll be through it in between 4 to 5 hours, depending on the collectibles like diary pages and id-cards you went out of your way looking for. You can however unlock some extra like artwork and making of videos so that is a nice extra for those who really liked the game. Next to that i have relatively some minor complaints that didn't let me enjoy the experience completely. Now the story isn't anything to write home about, it's fairly straight forward, but that's fine. I've even enjoyed reading some of the diary pages which i found were quite well written. But when your character starts talking it just changes things. The voice acting is overdone and makes him sound like a cheesy action hero, not at all fitting to the writing. I even think that all the writing of the diary pages and the collectables like post cards have been done by a completely different team then the dialogue writers.

But as i said, minor gripes on a otherwise good title. Definitly recommend it. Although i will say that i find the full price a bit steep so i suggest to wait until it comes by on sale. I've scene it pop up for $3 or so on occasion.

Dark Matter starts out promising, a 2.5D Metroid like platformer with good looking visuals and a Dead Space kind of story and athmosphere. Unfortunatly not long after you start to make your way towards freedom and escape the horrors on the space ship the cracks start to show.

Though the visuals do look good with some really nice lighting effects there are some ugly bugs that pop up here and there, and i'm not talking about the purple ones that actually look more cute that terifying , i'm talking the kind where you jump and your character suddenly glitches half way up a few stacked up crates, not to mention falling through elevator floors and down to the bottom of the shaft. Animations also seem to be missing here and there and i don't know what is wrong with my character but she seems to have been roughly cut out of a magazine with blunt scissors.

The story is alright, as far as trapped-on-a-alien-infested-spaceship stories go, but there have been numerous times where i found the ship's AI dialogue to be un-computer-like and even annoying. He quickly begins to sound whiny and needy and you just want him to shut up. Maybe i'm missing some big twist about the AI actually being human or something but i don't think so, i just think it's "méh'' writing.

But when it comes to gameplay and controls that is what finally just made me lose my will to play on and put down my controller to move on to something else. I will give credit to the idea of when to use the flashlight and when not to use it, but this feature doesn't feel as fleshed out and interesting as it could have been, and that actually goes for the whole game. The controls couldn't have saved it even if they worked properly. They feel slightly awkward and unpolished and even broken at times, to the point where i have to use my mouse to be able to click on a elevator button because my character isn't able to reach it when i use a controller for some reason. Perhaps the game plays better with mouse and keyboard, the options menu and inventory screen certainly seemed to think so, but i have lost all interest to even care by this point and i have already moved on to enjoy Deadlight, another 2.5D platformer that does most, if not all, things mentioned above right.

But if after watching Alien or playing Dead Space you still feel the need on surviving on a hostile spaceship and the new Alien: Isolation is above your budget then by all means, give Dark Matter a go, just be sure to play it with keyboard + mouse and to get it while it's on sale.



There is one other thing, that i can't really complain about for i haven't finished the game, but i've heard people complain about the game not being finished or just suddenly ending. Now i don't know what the truth about this is but the developer has said that there might be more Dark Matter to come in the future that will continue the story, in other words they are saying it's episodic. That is all fine and dandy but have failed to see that mentioned anywhere on the game's store page. Frankly i think the developer has realized that his product isn't finished and is using the episodic idea as damage control. But hey, that's just what i think, someone who sadly didn't enjoy the game as much as i wanted to and didn't even care enough anymore to finish it. I just hope that the people that did manage to enjoy it get a proper and honest end to this game's story.

A lot of pride and care has gone in to this remake of the classic Bionic Commando and it really shows. It's very well done but unfortunately the controls can be somewhat frustrating, and with Rearmed being a unforgiving platformer while platformers are not my strong point to begin with it resulted in with me giving up after a while and moving on to something i felt more in control of.

A shame, but i would still recommend it to players who do like their 2D platformers and especially to anyone who has played and loved the original.

I'll be honest, I don't like unforgiving platformers that often throw you in what seem to be impossible situations. I've moved on from the 90's and i suck at 'em. Yet I don't seem to be able to get enough of Rogue Legacy. I've had numerous "alright, one more go" moments after dying.
So why is it that something that i usually steer clear off mainly because i'm not all that good at it and has me dying 14 times in 30 minutes, doesn't frustrate me as much as it should and instead makes me come back for more?
And then , while upgrading my health and bying a new piece of armor after dying for the 8th or so time, it suddenly hit me, it's because the game gives a positive spin to dying imposed to it being the negative experience it usually is by rewarding you .

But while rewarding you with upgrades after death that make you stronger in the process (which you do have to buy with the money you gathered in your pre-death run) and give you a sense of progression , there are also the rogue-like elements this platformer implements that help a replay from becoming repetative, unlike your typical (classic) platformer. I remember playing the original Super Mario Bros. and making it to world 7 or 8 or so where i had to clear this massive chasm in the ground by jumping over it and using this tiny piece of ground sticking out in the middle of it as a stepping stone of sorts. You had to do a speed run, jump, then land on this little bit of ground and straight away do another jump to reach the other side, and i just couldn't clear it, up til the point i was game-over and i would have to start the whole game over again. This was so utterly frustrating. Not so much because i wasn't able to make the jump, though it didn't help, but more because i now had to go through all those levels again just to reach that one bit where i would probably die again like i already did so many times before and start the whole thing over yet again. It's a vicious cycle i tell ya, and i hate it.
Rogue Legacy doesn't have that. Well it does, but not in the classic 'game-over, start-over' kind of way. By randomly placing and re-using different rooms in the castle your adventure takes place in each playthrough, it will take away a bit of the frustration that comes with character death and at the same time creates a new and different playthrough for your next try. You will come across rooms you've been in before eventually but by that time you will most likely be ready to try it again, or not and you'll just head the other way as soon as you can.
This together with the upgrading system that will make you stronger and give you better abilities each time you die creates a game that makes parts of it progressively easier over time while still giving you a different experience every playthrough. Not to mention that with every playthrough you will play with a different character, a descendant of your former deceased character, who each have their own abilities combined with both good and bad qualities which on a side note often make for very clever and hilarious outcome that also affect the gameplay in either a positive or a negative way, or both.

Does that mean the levelling up system and becoming more powerfull in the process will make the game too easy for the veteran platformers umong us? Well no, because here's the beauty of the whole thing. While everyone will go through the same tough experience at the start of the game, the more experienced players will have less trouble progressing through the game while still on a lower level, where as someone like me who is not all that good at avoiding hits and has the reaction speed of a sleeping baby will have to grind longer and level up a bit more (a lot more) before he'll be able to defeat the first boss without too much of an issue. This works really well and is genius in my opinion. It just opens this type of genre up for a wider audience.

As for the presentation Rogue Legacy does it right as well. The visuals are simple, but it's no 8-bit retro look either. It's just enough to appeal to most modern gamers and pull of a convincing creepy castle atmosphere that with it's sense of humour creates a very enjoyable experience all together.
There are numerous treasure chests to be found scattered throughout the castle(grounds) of which some can only be reached by succesfully completing challenges. There are 4 dungeon bosses to be defeated before you can confront the final boss and as far as completion time, well, as mentioned before that will be entirely up to you and your playstyle. Will you grind up your stats until you're a double jumping ninja tank before you proceed any further in to the castle or will you aim to beat the game by relying entirely on your skills alone and level up as little as you can.


So yes, Rogue Legacy is a pretty solid rogue-like platformer with a well implemented upgrade system that give it a lot of replay value. Definitely worth a buy at it's current $15 price tag and a real steal if it's on Sale.