Rogue Legacy - Steam

So it begins, a legacy of dead characters.

The king was murdered; the betrayer stands within the castle and rules in his place, he is your ancestor. Something it keeping him alive and while he lives, the injustice remains rife. You attempt to right the wrongs that have been made to set order and balance back on the path of righteousness. The loss is more personal, your father went into the castle to resolve this issue and was never seen again, now it’s your turn as you leave your children behind and head to the traitor’s keep. Charon, agent of death stands before you and relieves you of your worldly possessions as you enter with but your armour and weapons and inside you step to continue the Rogue Legacy.

The only stable room in the set up

This is the gist of the game without giving too much away at first. It’s a platformer rogue-like and the rogue-like element here is that the cast you enter changes its layout each time (unless... you unlock the ability to keep it), and each entry into the castle will cost you your remaining cash but all cash found in the castle is kept for buying upgrades, armours, runes (empowering modifications) and the such. Within the castle lies a wealth of traps, monsters, mini-bosses, 4 main bosses and then finally (if you get this far) the last boss and a definitely final boss if we’re talking tropes at this point.

Select your sprog to go and die for your cause.

Much like games like Infinity Blade, we’re talking about generational progression. Your character, of whichever background (more about that in a moment) will be killed and stored in the gallery for all time. When you start hitting around the 40 lives lost mark, you begin to realise there’s quite an enormity behind losing. Not unlike the original Cannon Fodder which had tombstones for every single person lost in combat that would soon litter the level select screen.

Looks a bit crap, but later the castle will be quite a size with all unlocked items accessible

Each time you begin an attempt on the castle, you get to pick from one of three offspring of the previous attempt. Or basically a randomly generated set of characters which includes their classification, perks and demerits. Ranging from having Barbarians that have slim builds and more likely to be knocked back on a hit, to ninjas that don’t activate spikes because they lack a pulse in their limbs (it makes sense in context) to Paladins that are colour-blind, or longsighted (around you is blurring) short-sighted (around you is NOT blurry) to not being able to see incoming projectiles from off-screen and so on. It gives a very large pool of variation which can include being gay (a fan of the man/woman depending upon your gender and then makes one wonder how there’s a next generation... but I digress). This also includes the spell you will be taking with you ranging from throwing axes, knives, fireball walls, bouncing balls, homing attacks and more.

You died. And there's all the people you killed. Also, this one suffered coprolalia

As said, it’s a platform game, levels are randomly generated and each castle layout has the objective of killing 4 bosses and then the final boss to beat the castle before New Game+ is activated. The problem is you will die, a lot, and as a rogue-like you need to accept that fact and realise it is part of the game mechanic. Dying will return you to the HQ where you keep your cash from that run and can spend it on upgrades to stats, abilities, classes of characters, how much money Charon takes from you, unlocking new helpers that will give you new abilities and improving battle %’s for things like critical hits (if your particular class CAN do critical hits... Hokage, looking at you).

New equipment? Costs money. New runes? Costs money. Pattern much? Costs Money...

Graphically, the game is a strong call back to less serious looking platformers with plenty of cartoony styled graphics and animations (seriously, I love the hero’s running animation), monsters are sufficiently detailed with bosses really taking the biscuit on account of their size while scenery and backgrounds are lavished with those cute little nods and tips of detail that really bring the whole package together.

Spikes, Skeletons and monsters, oh my!

The music is select of a nice set of compositions, depending upon which area of the castle you’re in or if you find a juke box, there’s nothing overbearing or underwhelming and everything plods along at an agreeable pace while stopping short of becoming that ear-tick where you end up humming the same few bars over and over. It’s sufficient and fits the bill with some interesting use of instrumentals within the pieces themselves. The sound effects are diverse enough with your character having multiple sounds for being injured; spells and attacks use diverse effects to accompany their use.

Some of the locations are rather otherworldly, that's a huge moon too.

Overall it’s a fun game with a lot of replay factor though the random number generator can really stitch you up if you’re unlucky and have to play through multiple, horribly and awkwardly laid-out rooms. Sometimes you’ll die in the first few levels, other times you’ll die after a few bosses are beaten, but the random generation and the upgrading mechanic will keep players playing this for a long time. But not as long as it could have been, eventually there will be a point where insufficient progression will be made, where it’s impossible to continue on with the game and there’s nothing left to attain or unlock and then it’ll wither away because everything’s been done and there’s too much focused direction for the player to hold onto, the game being more rogue-like than rogue leaves it satisfying for a while but eventually unfulfilling.

FTL: Faster Than Light - Steam

Faster Than Light: Failing To Live.

When my cousin suggested I play this game, and when I'd heard about it originally, I wasn't that impressed by the idea and scope, and if this is a lesson to go by, it's that I really should play more new ideas and new games coming up. Once someone mentioned Rogue-like however, I became intrigued by the game that is FTL: Faster Than Light.

Ah the good ship S.S Dickslap, may she carry us far on our mission!

The scope is simple enough, you get to pick a ship that's outfitted with various components and various crew members and you set sail through the cosmos in a race against time from the Rebel Fleet that is chasing you, while you're trying to get back to your home base and fight off the advancing war. In the meantime, because you're on the run and likely will NOT have enough fuel, you'll have to fight, kill, barter, trade, con and use various other means to navigate your way through the interstellar space zones, gathering resources and finally getting to the last destination, a huge war.

Where to go next? There's plenty of choice and option but each one could be dangerous

As once might guess, this sounds virtually impossible, and in true rogue like fashion, it is. In what feels a little more like Oregon Trail in Space than an actual Rogue-like, you'll be navigating through the stars and hopping from beacon to beacon using up fuel as you go. Run out of fuel and you'll have to put on your distress signal and wait a few turns, in which the Rebel Fleet can catch up to you. However you could also end up being picked off by pirates, other aliens or opportunist space faring people.

Fight time, see their ship, see your own, plan quickly an attack strategy and try to win.

To go with this, you also have to micro manage your ammo if you're using rockets (not so with lasers, that just requires power), your extra systems such as Oxygen (though not ALWAYS important if you're ONE species of space creature...), Cameras to scan your ship and others, engines to escape and evade attacks, shields to ... shield from attacks (though rockets go through most shields), your weapons systems to ensure you can counter-attack and various optional ones ranging from medibays, cloning vats, mind controllers (great for fucking up the enemy's crew), drones, hacking tools and more.

To the victor go the spoils.

While you start with very little, a bit of exploration later and you'll gather some scrap from various places and can use that to trade, buy new crew members that each have their own positives and negatives with them, new weapons, new systems and bonuses such as enhanced shields and such. In many places you may find distress calls which can be someone in need of help, or a trap set by pirates that will involve being engaged in a fight.

Are they refugees? Or are they in disguise? Choose carefully.

The events are staggering, ranging from helping out planets with infections, to losing your own crew to a virus that later reconstitutes itself as your former crew member with maxed out stats and wants to help (assuming you didn't kill the virus), meeting mad crews and having to duel them, being boarded by other crews and having to fight them off in hand to hand combat on your own ship WHILE fighting back with your weapons, even going so far as to board THEIR ship and wipe them out if you can. In some cases, your opponent may offer a surrender and you can either take it and their offer of resources with it, or wipe them out and take it all (if anything is left after the explosion). Other events include being too close to stars and having to contend with solar flares that set parts of your ship on fire.

Plan your route carefully, some zones are more treacherous than others.

There is a LOT of game beneath the surface but we're still faced with the Oregon Trail/Rogue like problem, in that you WILL die, a lot. For some this is a problem, for those brought up on the arcade days where you play and play and get a little better each time or try something new, they'll get the most from this kind of game. I'll openly confess that I've never beaten the original Rogue and have no idea if it's even possible, though THIS game can be beaten if you manage to get to the 8th zone and defeat the flag ship. Take into account that it's very unlikely that you will, if ever. But that doesn't mean the game is unenjoyable, it's just a sidestep away from those games that let players beat the game if they continue to plug away at the game and end up with a lovely plot based ending. This game will make you earn it.

The red line is where my beam will ruin their day.

The graphics are almost minimalist and yet there's a surprisingly good level of detail to them, the HUD isn't cluttered or confusion (unless you REALLY go overboard with the upgrades) and the layouts of other ships make it nice and clear to see where their shield generators are so you can hammer those then pick out the weapons systems or just laser the crew and set the place on fire. Everything is iconic in nature and contrasts well with the interesting backdrops of space, planets, stars and asteroid fields.

Systems repaired, ready to advance once again into the dark unknown.

As for the audio, FTL brings a rather calm and eclectic mix of music that never becomes overbearing or distracting and is the louder side of ambient to the game enough that you may catch yourself humming the occasional bars of music now and then. Laser blasts, rockets, explosions and beams never take away from the soft experience of the game that makes you rather away that this is more a management game than an action game.

Careful, some alien ships mate this way, you don't want in on it. I'm not joking.

There is a lot of strategy in this game, whether it's how you attack one ship and then how you attack another. Deciding whether to investigate a distress call or pass it by with dwindling fuel and low shields, who to hire and fire to get the most efficient crew that you can and many more different means of trying to fend off death and it's slow, inevitable approach. Failure is always an option and sometimes the only answer and that may put off a lot of players from giving this game a chance, personally, I wish I'd played it sooner.

Goat Simulator - Steam

Welcome to a not-quite-simulation, of a goat.

I thought this was a joke when I first heard about it. I thought that this was someone's poorly photoshopped idea of a game or someone's attempt at modding that went awry or someone messing about with Blender or some other 3D posing tool/animation application, or even something from Gary's Mod.

Quests, options, mods, goats.

However, once the videos started to come out, I began to sit up and take note and recently took the plunge in getting the game for myself and seeing just what it is. Out of the box, it's exactly what it says on the tin, a goat simulator. Thankfully it's not an authentic simulation as I've yet to encounter a goat that can sacrifice people to demons, travel into the Game (Goat) of Thrones and declare itself as reigning sovereign or blow up vehicles and survive.

Large jumps, big air, goats.

It's a silly, sandbox simulation and to be honest, it's a welcome break from serious games. You control your goat with keyboard and mouse as you wander the landscape looking for things to do. Your "quests" involve things from hitting object, kicking objects, jumping on objects and doing various tricks and combos by jumping and rag dolling your way through twists, turns, loops and all other manner of amusing entertainment. It plays like a combination of Tony Hawk's Skater and Mario 64, the only thing you really can't do is grind along surfaces, otherwise you're set for the idea of both games together.

Explosions, trees, unsuspecting public, goats.

Blow up a petrol station, fly with fireworks, sacrifice people (I know I said it earlier, it still amuses me), take on multiple other goats in an arena, earn different powers and weapons from jetpacks to ball-launchers while you assault people and vehicles and try to take down planes and gliders. Travel to other lands and ride rollercoasters, meet DeadMau5 and kick him off a building before spinning some discs for yourself, then throw yourself off a building too or ride the lift down to the ground floor. (No... Not an elevator, it's a lift!)

It is a rather gormless looking thing isn't it. Goats.

The game doesn't take itself seriously and as such we don't get to be bombarded with overly realistic, gritty, browned-out textures. Everything is bright, colourful and just this side of a fictional suburbia to have escaped from Technicolor-land, the bloom effect and lens blur look impressive given the engine anyway but the interesting aspect of the design is that it's almost grounded in reality and looks for the most part like a city or a small suburb and then you'll turn a corner and find a giant bowling lane or break into a laboratory that seems to focus upon high-speed fans for the goat to become weightless in a manner of speaking.

Take a ride, headbutt people, goats.

However, it's not all fun and games. There's only so much you can do within the game and the novelty of the idea quickly wears off. While there's a few updates happening every now and then, it's not exactly enough to tide you over until the next update and when the realisation kicks in that there's little value behind the game beyond throwing yourself off large structures just to prove a point of getting some statues or getting some achievement points, it's ultimately a dull and repetitive game with a very crazy idea at the core. An idea that gets stale about 25minutes into the game and then becomes the family guest that won't go home and gets more and more awkward with every moment that passes.

Go home Dad...

Michael Bay, Explosions (say it with me now...) Goats!

That aside, there's potential behind the game and it could be made into something more entertaining. But with the stagnation already in place, it might be better to retire this game and develop the next stage further down the line as a repackaged item.

VVVVVV - Steam

Simple, short and sweet, the old day return.

Retro. I've spoken about this before in earlier articles and reviews but this is a game that truly qualifies as being Retro by definition that a Retro game is a modern game made to be styled after an earlier/older fashion either in the core of the game or the style in which it modelled after. VVVVVV is certainly a retro game that almost stays TOO close to its roots and harkens from a time when games would bound to tapes and huge (but small in data) diskettes and would invariably take a long time to load. So it was with a great surprise that I'd pick up VVVVVV and find myself whisked back to days long gone of Monty On The Run and the ilk.

Full Level Editor, let the replayability grow!

VVVVVV is a platformer, probably down to its barest possible roots as a platformer and yet is so much more within itself. As a story, VVVVVV begins with the inevitable crashing of a spaceship which leads to our Captain Viridian being our Captain Protagonist (That joke doesn't work so well when the main character is called Captain...). Once evacuation of the ship has taken place via teleportation, it becomes apparent that the other characters are scattered all over the Dimension VVVVVV and that the main plot of the game is to rescue these people and ultimately escape the Dimension before it collapses and traps everyone there.

...Or run past, and leave Vitellary to feel loneliness and solitude.

Unlike a lot of other platformers, VVVVVV has no jump. Instead what it has is the ability to flip gravity at the touch of a button and leave the main character either falling up or downwards. Meaning that at some points (quite a lot of some points actually) you'll be running across the ceiling to escape traps and enemies or flipping back and forth to avoid spike pits (who puts them anywhere though, really?) and using all manner of gravity switching tricks to escape death and continue onwards into the game. As such, there's no way to reverse a flip in mid-air, once you switch gravity you're committed until you land or hit one of the gravity lines found in various parts of some of the levels.

It's in the room but nobody talks about it.

Everything, graphically, stinks of the old C64 days and like a good cheese, it stinks so nicely. For those that grew up and played the old ZX81 and C64 games, you will find a wealth of reminders of the old days of gaming. I cited Monty On the Run as an example earlier with the seemingly randomly themed enemies (Teapots chasing you down...) and the usually psychedelic colouring system for the development of levels and platforms to show the difference between one screen and another while navigating and traversing a level. For younger players, they may find the graphical design either to be interesting from a historical point of view or turned off by the simplistic style compared to many modern games of today. Their loss if they do.

You need to remember this game wraps around.

Controls are about as simplistic as it can get, left and right move you left and right and the spacebar can be used to flip the gravity for Captain Vermillion. In some places you can access teleporters that let you navigate from one part of the game to another and also signify the end of a particular chunk of a level, usually bringing the rescued teammate home or leading to another sub-dimension with more traps and puzzles to solve. Interestingly there is also a dab of escort missions here and there when rescuing other crewmates.

They defy gravity and move quickly, I love the old enemy styles.

The game has a LOT to offer regarding exploration, level dynamics and variation. Each new aspect is steadily introduced and then pushed further and further in use until you're doing some very advanced and mind-bending tasks with the new toys. What can catch some people out is that later, towards the endgame, some of these come back and it can take a moment or two to get to grips again with the concepts that were introduced earlier in the game.

One of the last gauntlet sessions, a vertically scrolling spike trap.

It's a short game is VVVVVV, but having said that, it never overstays itself and is very welcomed in that regard. Nothing is really overused or allowed to overstay its welcome and things change and develop at a very appropriate pace for what essentially could be a very fast game. The regular use of checkpoints prevent a large level of frustration at beating certain puzzles and having to re-do them so any and all progression in the game is recorded and a welcome relief once having solved a particularly difficult situation in platforming.

The plot is there, if you hunt aruond enough for it.

Well worth playing, particularly if you're fan of older games from a bygone era.