Reseñas recientes de Hamakei

It's...well... it's a poker game. It has plenty of bells and whistles thanks to the idea of featuring popular game and webcomic characters as your opponents to add plenty of flavour and chitchat to the game, but at the heart of it, it's just another poker game.

Not even that, it only plays one type of poker (Texas Hold 'em) with next to no variety. The computer players do put up quite a challenge and the game is fun for a while, but in the end it's just another poker game. Which has some stability issues. It doesn't work on modern Macs and it seems to crash a lot on Windows. Plus Strongbad is really, *really* annoying. I wish you could pick and choose how many opponents and who you play against so I didn't have to listen to his voice grate in my ears.

HOWEVER, I did stick with it long enough to learn how to play Texas Hold'em Poker so the game can't be that bad. Plus it's cheap. Get it if you like poker games and are intrigued by the novelty of playing against Tycho and Max.

I played the first two games when they came out. The second was pretty much identical to the first except for the "loyalty" system and has been largely forgotten but never mind. They were fun games, and whilst they weren't the first to let you be the bad guy, it was somewhat satisfying the way the city seemed to work around you to clear up your mess and try to restore the status quo. Unfortunately however I never actually finished either of them because there didn't seem to be much progression. Yes, you'd get a new map to play on every now and then, and some of the missions could be done in different orders, but there wasn't much personality. The missions were just a means to an end - namely collecting enough cash to move on to the next level.

Ultimately I think they could have been largely forgotten in years to come, save for the "controversy" aspect.

Then this gem came along. Rather than just moving the same games into a 3D environment, the game has been designed entirely from scratch. It might as well have been called something different for all the similarity it has to it's predecessors. Not only do we have full voice acting by many household names which flesh out the characters and add that much needed personality, but the city itself feels far more alive and real than ever before.

Corners are no longer all at 90 degrees, there are literally hundreds of bonuses, secrets and extra missions you can do on the side whenever you want, you can backtrack at any point to visit previous areas of the game and see what's changed (although be careful of straying into the wrong neighbourhood if you've been upsetting people), full radio stations with a good selection of licensed music (and the ability to play your own MP3s on the PC version - nice touch), fully working public transit systems and a fascinating storyline of betrayal, loyalty and trust make this something that has to be played by everybody, no matter what your view on the violence aspect. Come on. Even if you don't want to complete the missions themselves you can spend hours just riding a taxi around town. Yes, this game even managed to make "Crazy Taxi" almost entirely redundant.

Whilst many people could argue (and with good cause) that the later games in the series such as Vice City and 4 are better in nearly every way, for me this will always be my favourite simply because it was such a welcome surprise - were it not for 3 then GTA wouldn't be the multi-million dollar franchise it is today.

Never has a pattern matching game been so satisfying. From the smooth action of the pieces to the chunky sound effects when you make connections, this is a game it's easy to spend hours on. Or, just ten minutes when you want something to play. Not every game has to be a 60-hour epic. Whilst a lot of casual games are trite and only out to rob you via microtransactions, Bejeweled keeps it simple.

There have been many sequels, variants and additions to the series and in fact you don't seem to be able to buy the original direct from PopCap any more. I don't know why; the first is just fine as it is. Why try and improve upon it? It's like trying to improve upon Tetris. Sure, some are enjoyable and you can heap on the fancy graphics and gameplay twists, but it's the core idea which makes it work, not the frills.

I just wish it had a Linux port, that's all...

I would say that you have a choice whether or not to buy this game, but as people who have played it know, choice is merely an illusion... or is it?

There has never been a game quite like this, to my knowledge. A lot of the humour and playability comes from trying to out-think the developers and drop yourself into situations you hope they haven't anticipated and programmed for. You'd almost certainly be wrong, but it's fun finding out. I don't want to say too much for fear of spoiling the surprises, but I will say this:

The Stanley Parable is also (I think) a study into gaming itself as a medium - for example, the most direct path (the "Freedom" ending) where Stanley breaks free from the shackles he's been living in, can only come about if you do exactly what you're told at all times. Wow.

Much as with "Thomas Was Alone", much of the charm comes from the brilliant narration by Kevan Brighting, who has apparently since the game been snowed under with requests and job offers. Good.

Whether or not you have played the full game, the demo is well worth a play as it doesn't [mostly] reuse any scenes or situations from the full game and includes plenty of new narration...

A "Paperwork simulator" sounds like a hard sell, but it's encouraging to see that word-of-mouth is getting people to try this wonderful little game out. It's refreshing to have something different for a change rather than another FPS, platformer or suchlike.

Your job is to give or refuse permission to enter your country to various people who come to your customs booth...... it is a hard sell, isn't it?

Okay then, your job is made more difficult in several ways. First of all, your bureaucratic government implements more and more rules as time goes on which means you have to be quicker and quicker at processing, without letting accuracy fall. Secondly, you have certain moral choices to make - you have to feed and warm your own family and that can only be done by processing people as quickly as possible. Well, unless they bribe you to let them in, or the guards bribe you to detain them or... and of course, there's always the risk of forged documentation [which you are punished for if you miss] or terrorist attack [which curtails the day].

This game is deeply engrossing. It's straightforward to begin with, but the difficulty curve is just right, adding complexity day by day - just as you master the rules something else comes along which you have to keep an eye out for. Added to the fact that there are MANY, MANY different possible endings will lead you to replay this several times in order to see what happens.

Well worth a try!

Oh, yes. A solidly built, utterly captivating 2D platformer.

It's not "8-bit" for the sake of it, it doesn't satirise or parody old platformers (Well, perhaps the "Excuse Plot" does a little), it just does it's job well. The controls are perfectly balanced, the graphics and sound are just right and the game doesn't outstay it's welcome. If you do manage to finish it, you can unlock an extra ridiculously hard dungeon especially designed for people who love a challenge.

Now for the sequel....

"Action"? "Survival Horror"? You must be joking.

Area 1 is a tutorial. Area 2 involves walking from place to place in order, picking up notes. Area 3 involves walking round and round in circles assembling bits of broken machinery.

There is no action. You have no weapons. You can't run from anything that threatens you - you either have to avoid it or face it.

Not only is it a DULL, DULL game with absolutely NOTHING of interest happening, the devs aren't interested in patching it. They've known about bugs and glitches for months but are too busy stealing money from people with "Chapter 3".

Oh yes. If you haven't heard, this was an Early Access game. Parts 1&2 were released initially, with the rest of the game to follow when it was done. Not only have they not bothered fixing what was broken with parts 1&2, but they've decided they're entitled to charge for the rest of the game. So anybody who helped them by buying Early Access now has to pay again to get the game they've already paid for.

Even if the game was amazing I wouldn't recommend it, simply because this sort of behaviour should NOT be encouraged.

I'm not going to review the game directly - plenty of people have already done that. It's a brilliant take on an old formula and to say much more would spoil it. If you're familiar with the old-school platform games and are after something which plays with the associated tropes and expectations, this will probably appeal to you. I would like however to address the issue which keeps coming up - "This is based on a free Flash game - why should I buy it on Steam?"

Well, I came at it from a different point of view. I'd never heard of the game, but when I saw it on Steam with a coupon, I thought it looked interesting and so bought it. Don't regret it in the slightest.

Yes, there are many good free Flash games out there. There are many expensive abysmal games out there, including on Steam.

Whether it was a free Flash game before or not is irrelevent to me - I feel it is well worth the asking price.

What a boring game. No plot, no purpose, no puzzles, nothing interesting at all.

It's like Exile but without the puzzles or inventory.

It's like Limbo but without the atmosphere, sound effects or puzzles.

It's like a 2D version of Kairo but without the puzzles.

You wander round and round and round this huge map with no clue as to where you're going or what you're supposed to be doing, occasionally picking up collectables. But you're not told what they're for or how many you have to collect, or even if you have to. Some give you new abilities, but you're not told what they are, so every time you pick something up, you have to stand and press every key on your keyboard to see if anything different happens.

And it's S...L....O....W.... your character walks like he's wading through treacle, even after you pick up the "run" powerup (which I wasn't aware I'd even done until I read on a forum about it) and you can just hold an arrow key down for minutes at a time as your character crosses the barren map.

Also, the developer couldn't be bothered to put in an options screen. You can't change the resolution, or adjust the controls, or alter the volume without manually editing the config file. Many people only found out by accident that pressing 'F' makes the game go fullscreen.

I left the character underwater for ten minutes hoping he would drown, but not even that relieved the tedium as absolutely nothing happened.

The game has achievements? That's a joke, right? Surely the only one it needs is "Put up with this drivel for ten minutes."

Please don't tell me that I didn't "get" the game, or that I obviously only like FPSs. If you'd check my profile you'd see that I'm a great fan of both indie puzzle/platform games and 'arty' games - I have Kairo, Braid, The Path, Dear Esther, The Graveyard, They Breathe, LIMBO, Thomas Was Alone, Botanicula and Gone Home. Many of them have been commented on as being 'Arty' or 'Not really games', but they're all far better than this tripe.

Got the trading cards, then sold them and uninstalled.

Avoid.

Hi. I'm selling these fine leather jackets.

Sometimes the old ones just can't be beaten. A lick of paint certainly helps Monkey Island look better nowadays, but the script is still first class. Not many games can boast pacing, timing and dialogue as good as this.

I also love the fact that this Special Edition actually runs on a modified version of SCUMM so you can switch between old and new at any point in the game by pushing a button. The only thing I don't like about it is that you can't run it in SCUMMVm, which unfortunately limits it to Windows only. Oh well.