Well with Mario Wonder out, no more spooky games this October. Well, I guess levels with Boo's could be considered spooky, but I haven't gotten to any of them yet. But I did manage to play a few games that would fit the Halloween theme pretty well before Mario Wonder came out.
Salt and Sanctuary
So this game is basically a 2D Demon/Dark Souls. The gameplay is a complete clone of what you would expect from the Souls games, except in 2D. But hey, it does a pretty good job of being like the game it was clearly inspired by. I had fun for the most part, exploring the world and killing most of the bosses. My biggest problem though some area's of the game have enemies that blend in with the backgrounds too much, as well as traps that are hard to see as well since they also blend in with the background. Like most of my death outside of boss fights are from **** I didn't even notice until it was too late. This is my biggest issue with a lot of indie games in general is they get so obsessed with their ART, and don't seem to realize how hard it is for the rest of us to tell what the **** is even going on in their games at times.
Lost Ruins
Well this is a dark metroidvania staring anime girls. When you first start the game the message even tells you this is going to be a survival experience where every decision matters. So I'm thinking OK, this will also be a Soul-like experience as well, since we all know these indie's love to make everything either a Souls or Rouge-like these days. Well for the 30 minutes, it was kind of like that with my character having limited items to heal, and slower combat that you had to be more careful with.
But then you find equipment you can equip that autofills your HP after taking any damage, which completely destroys whatever survival experience that developers where trying to do. Seriously, it only takes about an hour until you realize just how broken some of the abilities you can equipment can make your character, and the rest of the game is just a joke difficulty wise. Every non-boss enemy I was able to one-shot by the half way point of the game, and even the bosses go down pretty fast once you realize their patterns.
At least it was a short game, takes less then 5 hours to beat. After you beat it it had a new mode that lets you play as different characters, that once again, they also become easy to cheese the game after about an hour as well. At the end of the day it was an overall OK experience, especially since I bought it on sale, but the game completely fails at being this challenging survival experience it literally advertises itself as when they make it super easy to cheese the whole thing.
Iron Crypticle
So this game is pretty much Smash TV, but with a Ghost and Goblin setting. The levels you play on the first floor was actually pretty fun and then the difficulty picks up quite a bit on the second floor but I was still enjoying it. Then you reach the 3rd floor and the game becomes total fucking bullshit. Seriously, if you don't have the right upgrades to your character by then, you're pretty much fucked. Way too many enemies are now onscreen, with projectiles flying everywhere making it almost impossible to even tell what the **** is going on.
Now this wouldn't be a problem if you could upgrade your characters right but all character upgrades are done by RNG. Sometime the shop that sells the upgrades won't even appear depending on the path you take, which means you might as well restart the game since you'll be screwed when you get to the 3rd floor. Of course even if you do get to the shop, the upgrades you can buy are also decided by RNG, which means you might not even be allowed to buy the upgrades you need the most, which once again means you'll be screwed by the time you reach the 3rd floor. Seriously, **** this game, it's nothing but RNG garbage.
Cathedral
So this is pretty much if you made Shovel Knight a metroidvania, but with a more Ghost and Goblins setting as well. I wasn't able to finish this one before Mario Wonder came out, but I'll go back to it after I'm done with Wonder. I played it for over 5 hours and for the most part I'm digging it, but it's got some glaring issues. The biggest is in vertical area's of the game, the screen wont scroll until your right at the top of the screen, which means you will take unavoidable hits from enemies and stage hazards because you literally can't see the damn things. Also has an annoying habit of randomly spawning some enemies right in your path during platforming sections.
Still interested in coming back to this one since overall it reminds me a lot of a Wonder Boy titles so I'd like to finish it.
Topic: Shocktober 4: The Final Chapter (Read 19832 times)
