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Sonic Lost World

6 hours, 12 of 100 achievements

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So yet another Sonic game from the Sonic bundle beaten. Super Sonic Galaxy was SEGA's attempt to imitate Super Mario Galaxy, and it had some mixed success. It's clear that Sonic team lacked the expertise and resources of Nintendo, as this game is a lot less polished than Super Mario Galaxy, with jumps and enemy placement that does not quite feel right.

Overall, Sonic Lost World is a rather so-so game. There's nothing really wrong with it, but neither is it anything special. Some of the levels do make good use of the gravity mechanic, but most of the time it just feels like a gimmick that adds little to the game. Sonic also feels surprisingly slow in this game, which kind of runs counter to the whole idea of Sonic.
This game spends far more time than it should on the story. While some of the encounters with Eggman were genuinely funny, most of the story segments are cringe-worthy, and out of the new bad guys, only one actually felt like a good villain. The rest were simple stereotypes, like one was violent, one was fat, one was a woman (yes, the game goes there…), one was old… While you would not expect a deep story from a Sonic game, this is really bad, and the game spends far more time than it should on it.
So overall, not a game I would recommend, but it's not the worst Sonic game out there.


Halo Wars: Definitive Edition

7.6 hours, 20 of 75 achievements

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Halo Wars is an RTS that was first released on consoles, and that is really noticeable! The view is really zoomed in, and there are some control oddities with some of the special abilities that makes it clear that they were designed with an analogue stick in mind, not a mouse. Something tells me that unit rotation and preservation was not really something the developers had in mind when they made this, instead you were meant to send in your units in a big clump, and then make use of their special abilities. As someone who's been playing RTSs on PC since Red Alert 1, this felt odd, and I ended up playing the game more like a classic RTS, ignoring the elements that were very console-oriented, and made short work of the campaign this way.
On PC this game is actually very easy. That does not have to be a bad thing, but it feels like the developers thought certain things would be harder than they actually were. This is due to you just having better control of your units on PC.

The campaign has surprisingly high production value, with nice cut scenes before each level, good voice acting and so on. It feels like a game that had a large budget behind it. I'm no expert on the Halo universe, but I did enjoy the cutscenes. The campaign itself was not amazing though. This is the kind of game that's worth buying if it's cheap, but it won't have the lasting appeal of most other RTSs.


Outland

11.5 hours, 4 of 12 achievements

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Outland is basically Ikaruga meets 2D platformers.
The whole gimmick in Outland is, much like in Ikaruga, that you can switch colour, and when you do so, you can absorb bullets with the same colour as you without taking damage, and hurt enemies of the opposite colour. It does take a surprisingly long time for you to get this ability though, which was a bit disappointing, resulting in a weak early game, but once you get your abilities, the game becomes really fun.
I beat this game in co-op with Mskotor, and it was a pretty good co-op game. There are interactions in the game that feels like they were made with co-op in mind, for an example certain platforms become solid when you have a certain colour, and so you can use this to your advantage by letting one player stay that colour, or have one player absorb bullets for the other. This game would likely still be fun in SP, but if you can, play it in co-op.


Zombie Army Trilogy

14.4 hours, 44 of 68 achievements

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Zombie Army Trilogy is another co-op game that I beat with Mskotor this month.
Zombie Army Trilogy offers a slightly updated version of the two first Nazi Zombie Army games, and a brand new episode with new levels, which concludes the series. If you've ever played Sniper Elite V2, you'll have a good idea of how this works, as it uses the same basic mechanics, and the same engine, plus a bunch of assets from that game. Only instead of shooting German soldiers, you're now shooting hordes of German zombie soldiers. And it's far more fun than it should be!
Zombie Army Trilogy is a dumb game, with a really dumb plot, but it all works together to create a rather enjoyable B-movie experience. And the co-op mechanics are pretty good. While you've got no direct interactions with other players (other than the ability to revive them), the fact that you're playing snipers mean that you'll be quite blind to what's going on around you most of the time, so players need to cover each other's blind angles. Some zombies also require a bit of teamwork to take down. So yeah, overall, a really fun game.


stef

I was curious about Sonic: Lost Worlds so I appreciate the well written review! Congrats on your progress!