Going into this game, I knew it was random, I just didn't know quite how random. It was an art experiment of some kind and I'm not quite sure if I 'got' it by the end, but I liked it for the most part. I may have liked it less if I'd paid a lot for it. About as close as I'll get to an achievement spam game. Pretty basic stuff, just click and hope for the physics to do the rest. (They don't always). I liked how the levels were randomised so you couldn't 'learn' a pattern and had to just play each level as it came. There was also a timer to put you under pressure. In all, not a bad short idea, but it could have been expanded on to make a better game I think. That's the thing with a lot of these 'casual' games, they could be a lot better with just a few small improvements. It's to my shame that I've not been able to finish the first Electronic Super Joy game, but I saw this one only had a few levels so installed it and beat it in a few hours. The difficulty is definitely not as bad as the original game but still requires some pretty precise jumping and moving. I needed a good controller masher, and this one scratched the itch for this month. The soundtrack to both games is also great, just pure electronic energy, perfect for the game. My youngest son loves playing co-op games with me and this was a great one for us to play together. He'd set up a gun and sit in it, shooting everything that moved, and I would do the more strategic stuff. Apart from a few achievements for playing on the harder levels, most of it can be done on casual mode, so it also wasn't too difficult for us to do together, and for the harder achievements it was easy to beat on the first level. Taking a look at my hard drive space, I decided I needed to get round to finishing this one, just to free up the 60 gigs it was occupying. I can see why it cost a lot of money, with all those recognizable actors and the whole variable TV show it comes with, but I think they could have done it just as well without the TV show aspect. I loved the plot, and the powers were cool, but it felt a bit like it could have been longer. Still a great game though, and a technical achievement that showcases what can be done with games. The commandos games and their copycats (robin hood and desperados), were some of my all time favourite games growing up, so it's been a dry couple of years with nothing in the genre coming out. I got this when it was in the humble monthly, and played it bit, but wasn't really in the mood. This month with news that they will be rebooting the commandos series, and that a new desperados games is in development, I felt an urge to play this. I still think aspects of the old games were better, the variety of skills, the enemy patterns, the scenarios, but this certainly does well on it's own merits. I love how it even encourages you to save regularly, because that's the way we all used to play those old games. Kill a few enemies, make sure we 'got away with it' and then save.
I also liked the medals in this game that really forced me out of my comfort zone for how I'd normally play a game like this. Time limits? No kills? Are you kidding?!? But as always there were plenty of videos of people doing it so I could just follow their methods.
Anyway, it's a great game and I'm glad that these devs will be handling the desperados reboot and I also look forward to seeing what Kalypso can do with Commandos, even if it's just a remaster of the amazing Commandos 2. Nearly bought a bundle for this game a while ago, but there was nothing else I wanted, so I was glad when humble were giving it away for free. It became my 'one per month' of straightforwared puzzle games. I liked the style, but the puzzles were a bit too easy. Anyway, it served its purpose, so thumbs up! After beating Toy soldiers, I needed another co-op game to play with the son, and dug out this one. It's relatively short, but it's well designed and a lot of fun, especially with 2 people. On the hardest difficulty, it was quite challenging, and I battled with some of the levels, but once you level up your gear a bit and get into the habit of circle strafing it gets a lot easier. The controls were responsive and I can see that my son is getting better at using a controller. No doubt he'll be running circles around his old man before long, but at least for now he's still in awe of my skills. This looked like a cute distraction, so I installed it. I like the idea, kind of a puzzle tower defence, where you have to work out how best to outlast the attacks being launched, but I think it felt a bit limited. There was no real explanations given for how much or what kind of damage the different cats do, so it was often trial and error figuring out what would work. It was probably most difficult in the middle levels, and got quite easy at the end, once you'd unlocked everything, so it definitely needed a difficulty curve balance. Anyway, it was still fun. I bought this on Steam last year as a antidote to my 'incredible machine' urges, after I'd finished contraption maker. It serves the purpose in many ways, but it's also got many 'mobile' game aesthetics which are not always great. Like '3 stars per level' and a small screen size. It was also a lot easier than contraption maker, as generally all of the pieces given would have an obvious place to go and winning just became a case of tweaking slightly until it worked. It would have been nice if they'd let you make bigger levels on the PC version and if they'd integrated the workshop properly, as I think the tools they gave were interesting and could have lead to some great machines with a bit more space. It isn't quite on the same level as incredible machine, but it's worth checking out. I felt like playing a good, classic tower defense game. This was not one. 6 towers, with no real explanations given for what they do. 8 or so different enemies, 3 or 4 different locations spread into 16 levels, and pretty much the same opening pattern on every single level. The obviously felt 'inspired' by fieldrunners, but failed to copy what made fieldrunners actually good. Kingdom rush and Fieldrunners 2 are still the best in this genre, and this was on a par with the copy and paste junk that 'creobit' puts out. Creobit