RikkiUW

August '19 Play Log II


Hammer 2

Hammer 2

3/10
2 hours playtime
no achievements

Looks like it was made in the mid 90s. Arcade shooter with nothing going for it. You’re OP for the most part, the enemies are weak, until you hid a random very hard level near the end. Clearly ran out of ideas for levels early on, they seem to be the most random things you can think of (destroy X buildings, barrels, cars, boxes, often with no enemies).

Pros:

  • it’s short

Cons:

  • glitchy
  • very easy until one particular level
  • Random objectives, frequently unchallenging and with no enemies
  • graphics look ancient

Verdict: 3/10

Old crappy SG win. Probably an asset flip, not sure why it has decent reviews.


Action Henk

Action Henk

7/10
3 hours playtime

If you’re into runners this is definitely a good game to try out. Not for people (like me) with poor reflexes though. It’s tough.

Pros:

  • Cute animations and backgrounds
  • Good music
  • Good track variety keeps things interesting

Cons:

  • The later levels get quite tough, so if you have poor reflexes you’ll struggle a lot

Verdict: 7/10

Another SG win I probably shouldn’t have entered. It looks good, and if you like runners I’m sure you’d enjoy it, but I don’t have the reflexes for this sort of game. It was selected for Play or Pay, but it’s not worth the frustration to try and finish it.


Karaski: What Goes Up...

Karaski: What Goes Up...

5/10
4 hours playtime

Mediocre, but it could use some polish. IMO not worth the full price. It’s not bad, just not good enough to be worth spending time and money on.

Pros:

  • Music isn’t bad
  • The idea of being able to make your own story is good

Cons:

  • ‘Making your own story’ is largely irrelevant to the game
  • I never felt that invested in the story, and it felt like it lacked depth
  • The ‘sneaking’ mechanic wasn’t done that well
  • There’s no way to gain all tools in a single playthrough, so there will always be areas you can’t get to
  • WARNING: achievements are broken. Multiple posts on forum about it, dev responded but has never fixed it

Verdict: 5/10

This is from my wishlist unplayed and ABC lists. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be as good as I’d hoped, and the achievements are broken.


Henry The Hamster Handler VR

Henry The Hamster Handler VR

6/10
3 hours playtime

Given the price this is a decent game, but there are much better VR games out there. If you have good reflexes you’ll likely do well at this game. If your reflexes are as bad as mine you likely won’t have the patience to get anywhere near beating it.

Pros:

  • Cute with entertaining speech bubbles and sound effects
  • Challenging, and gives your arm a workout
  • Can be quite funny and entertaining (though unfortunately not for long)

Cons:

  • Apparently hamsters burst when they drown?
  • Most of the traps are introduced very quickly. After the first 3 or so stages I don’t think there’s anything new. Levels are just more elaborate and the hamsters move faster. Consequently it gets old quickly.
  • Gets very hard very fast. There are 30 stages with 5 levels each. I gave up after completing the 7th stage. I could have done more, but every single level required many attempts until my movements were trained enough to do things in the right order fast enough.
  • Related to above, you only have one hand. Your other ‘hand’ has a hook that (apart from killing hamsters) does nothing. I think it would help the difficulty if it could at least push buttons and perhaps help with some of the other simple traps.

Verdict: 6/10

SG win. It’s decent but gets too hard too fast and then doesn’t introduce anything new. I enjoyed it but it got too difficult. I dislike putting enjoyable games in my Won’t Play list, but given that I’m only on level 8 of 30 (each of which have 5 sublevels) there’s no way I can finish it.


Unheard

Unheard

9/10
7 hours playtime

I unique game that is very much worth playing, and IMO worth the full price.

Pros:

  • Unique concept that works extremely well
  • The individual cases get harder as the game goes on, but are never too difficult to the point of being frustrating
  • There is something of a story connecting the individual cases together that makes things very interesting
  • The ending is extremely well done

Cons:

  • I occasionally had issues hearing people due to there being multiple conversations in the room. Repositioning myself was somewhat helpful but there are times it would have been nice if other conversations could be quieter, or if you could ‘focus’ on nearby conversations to quiet others.
  • The voice acting seemed amateurishly done at times. It seems like it was meant to be over the top, but even taking that into account there were some lines that felt awkward and/or poorly delivered
  • It would be nice to be able to rewind/fast forward when paused

Verdict: 9/10

Got this during the summer sale and absolutely loved it. I highly recommend it. Unfortunately the free DLC isn’t as good.


That’s it for this month. I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky in VR as well, I’m 11 hours in and thoroughly enjoying it.