Fire Emblem Heroes is the second foray from Nintendo into the mobile game space, and while a free-to-play product usually interests me less than paid endeavors I had to give it a try being a big Fire Emblem fan. The end product is an interesting game that doesn't abuse its premium currency while being a fun light version of the original thing. I think that you still need a certain mindset before diving in - particularly because of the randomness of unit 'pulls' but it's still a neat strategy game.
Dex is a cyberpunk RPG adventure game with platforming elements that tries to combine lots of cool things but fails at integrating everything into a compelling package. Shoddy combat, frustrating hacking minigame that comprise a big chunk of this universe, weird storytelling set in an unpleasant setting didn't help me get into it enough to keep pushing past everything that frustrated me, so I gave up quite quickly.
Solitarica is a Solitaire-based RPG with some roguelike mechanics where you fight enemies by playing solitaire, casting spells, using equipment and defending yourself against their attacks in order to reach the end of a 'run', after which you get some currency you can use to unlock permanent upgrades for various decks, all with their small quirks. I tried it because it got raving praise by some people I follow and there are also no in-app purchases. It should've been a really cool game, but alas, a few design issues combined with the age - now more and more showing - of the equipment I use to game made the whole thing a frustrating slog.
HPAWS is a really interesting little shop simulation game where you run a weapon shop, working with various smiths in order to research, build and sell the best weapons available and progress through a bunch of little quests in order to get fame, money and give experience to the buyers of your gear. I really enjoyed it and I wish I had more time to play it because the fun of discovering new recipes and upgrading your shop really hooked me. On the down side, there are a few options that this game really could've used to make the experience truly perfect.
Hocus is a very simple puzzle game in nature where you swipe around to move a cube on a bizzare shape, usually involving many layers of optical illusions. That's the only mechanic of the game and it's used pretty well. Moving your cube around, you get on other sides of the shape in a way that sometimes feels a bit difficult to predict and therefore can also get a bit frustrating. I didn't completely finish the game, but that's because the later levels are user-submitted, and I thought I had quite enough of it yet.
Super Mario Run isn't a great game and it doesn't have enough content to offer, what it has is that Nintendo polish and a few good ideas that should've been exploited more and in a different package. SMR is a platformer where mario always runs and when you tap, he jumps, if you hold your tap for longer, the jump is higher. You can also tap to make him flip in the air and keep altitude and tap when hitting walls to wallkick. That's pretty much everything in terms of controls. It's possible to make a good mario game out of this idea, but what they did wasn't enough.
TESO:TU is a poor MMORPG experience, while it could've worked as a single-player Elder Scrolls product, the attempt to make it catch on the MMO craze brought a bag of problems with it and its also the reason why I've played it for the strict minimum I could and probably won't play it ever again. Its core systems are confusing and poorly implemented, the game's balance is terrible and there is tedium every step of the way, while interesting stories are told in what seems like an afterthought, especially for a product in the specific genre of grinding, looting monsters and participating in multiplayer adventures.
Nonstop Knight is a great idle experience. With graphics that reminds someone of an action RPG and with a few gameplay systems to engage the player, I was completely hooked and played it for much more than I usually play these games. In a sea of idle games, I would totally recommend Nonstop Knight for many reasons including the progression, level of customization and potential for unlocking new stuff that are all so important in a game like that.
DOOM is a really interesting game, a product of a gone area brought back into this century with a flurry of new mechanics, systems and updates over the original arena-based single player first person shooters. I was looking forward to playing it and while I'm not the biggest FPS fan in the world, it didn't disappoint me. I'm really happy that DOOM exists and it does exactly what some other games - Serious Sam, Bulletstorm - have tried to do in recent years, but better. I feel that this game is going to be on everyone's mind for a good while.
Slash Mobs is a perfectly competent - although I've had pretty bad performance issues on my iPad which prevented me from enjoying the game - idle stage-based monster killing game very similar to Clicker Heroes and other idlers of that style. It adds a few mechanics like player equipment and skill trees to differentiate itself from its various competitors, without much success.
2016 wasn't that great, but there were a bunch of real cool videogames that came out this year and this is my column where I write about my top ten in a few lines and try to convey what I enjoyed about them and why I think they're important games. I'm lucky enough to be able to play almost anything that I want - bar buyer's remorse preventing me from getting too many games at once - but you'll notice a small 3DS skew on this list. Man did the 3DS have a good run...
Survive in space is a mess on many levels. It's core gameplay isn't too bad but gets hamstrung by weird decisions, it's side systems of progression and upgrades are confusing at best and the game has some UI and tone issues. It seemed neat at first glance, but after playing it for a while, I realized I wasn't having any fun with it and had to stop. I'm still looking in my quest for good arcade space shooters with RPG elements, but Reign of Bullets was much better.
Tap Smiths is just boring; It's a game where you make items by tapping alternatively left and right on your screen and then after a while your day is over and you go sell these items and make some money with which you buy upgrades for your hammer, anvil and other tools. Then you rinse and repeat, with no apparent changes in the things you are making, how much you are making, and how much money you get at the end. That's why I've found Tap Smiths boring, there's no challenge, no progression and no real goal.
Hexcell is a puzzle game where you have a big grid of hexagonal shapes with numbers in them telling you how many adjacent pieces are part of the solution. You then need - in a minesweeper fashion - to discover every right and wrong cell of the map in order to win. As the levels go on, they add new mechanics and I didn't really enjoy them, since it tries to turn the game into a weird picross, but then again I've beaten the whole game since it's fairly good and I love puzzlers.
voi is a pure little puzzle game on iOS where you move black shapes in order to create a target image. Overlapping black creates white and layering these shapes on top of each other will finally result in your goal. It's a real neat little game even if I just pretty much described it in its entirety. I went through all it's puzzles and I wholeheartedly recommend it to puzzle fans.
Plantera is a neat, although simple idle game where there is much less automation than in other games of that genre. You plant different kind of fruits and vegetables, wait a bit, then collect them to get money, which is used to plant more stuff, expand your garden, buy animals and upgrades and repeat, seemingly forever. I had some fun with it, even if the UI was a bit difficult to use at times and if ultimately I lost interest when I had unlocked all kinds of things you could buy and figured out it would be value upgrades from now on. Unlocking new mechanics and doodads in idle games is a fun thing and slapping a new game + system is always a good way to have the player go through the whole thing a few more times, but Plantera didn't have any of that.
Wizard Swipe is an iOS game where you have to 'swipe' the screen to throw spells at waves of advancing enemies to protect your castle, using more powerful spells on cooldowns and upgrades to survive better. It started pretty okay, but the difficulty curve quickly ramped up to a point where I would have needed to grind too much in order to get further. It's too bad, since the game has a nice blend of challenges and upgrades so I wish I could've stomached to play some more.
The last time I had played World of Warcraft was when the last expansion came out. I found that the systems it added to the game (garrisons, more tough enemies in the world for you to get special resources and loot from, more story-driven quest lines) was a step in an interesting direction. With this new edition of yet another grinding session, WoW tried to keep piling up more of the same on top of a core game that was filleted down to the thinnest it can get before becoming more of a button mashing contest than a proper MMORPG.
I have not much to say about LOUD on Planet X, it wasn't a game I enjoyed at all, so I didn't play it more than what I felt was necessary to get a grasp on it. It is a music-based tower-defense game where you tap to the beat of the music to attack aliens, using special items and more powerful moves when appropriate. The main issue I had with it is that I disliked every single track of music they had, which is really bad for a music-based game. So that really soured me to the whole thing. I also was a bit confused about the timing of taps, sometimes it followed beats, sometimes I felt like I was just tapping willy-nilly, still hitting the mark. Maybe this game will be more suited to your musical tastes, but it sure wasn't to mine.
Grim Dawn was released a little while ago, but before it came Titan Quest, an action RPG that I've spent countless hours playing, both the normal game and expansion that came after that. In some ways, it was better than other ARPGs, some ways that even stand true today, regardless of the progress in the genre. I was delighted to hear that some bizarre version of THQ was re-releasing it, with updates. Engine changes, of course, but balance changes on items, skills and enemies as well! TQAE definitely feels like the old game that it is, but I would rather play it than many other available ARPGs.