Reviews by Yawaru

Biology Battle
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Old game, same tricks

This is a game that originally came out in 2008 on the Xbox Arcade, which should be abundantly clear the moment you boot it up. The game works, it looks okay, but there are many other better shmups available. I'd rate it lower but I don't think there's anything broken about the game, it's just lacking in features and variety.

You play as a small ship acting like a white blood cell destroying foreign bodies in a cell. And that's it. The only reason to keep playing it is score attack. The power ups don't last long and have little impact. Unless you get it in a bundle, I wouldn't pick this up by itself, or you desperately need a new shmup.

by Yawaru, USA - Mar 15th 2016
Starion Tactics
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More boring than an RTS

Starion Tactics is basically a board game version of a space RTS. If the battles were more interesting or the stages had more variety this game could be decent. As it is, the game is like Monopoly without Chance or Community Chest cards, you just keep shuffling around the board until someone wins or, more likely, everyone quits.

The game looks decent, but it's a hollow facade. There's 3 different game modes that are all essentially the same with a few features added or removed. There is no story mode or campaign, if there's a difference between factions besides the color then I can't really tell. The resource management aspect is pretty shallow, you pay points to make ships, bigger ships cost more, but you can make whatever you want with enough money and points.

The tutorial is pretty bare-bones too, 10 slides describing what various symbols on the UI mean, yet it still contains pretty much all the information you need to play the game, frankly that isn't good.

The problem is there's a lot you can do with a video board game that this game doesn't do. The only value of various planets are the number of resources and the fact you can build new ships. The combat is a simple battle of numbers in normal mode, and random dice throws in board game mode. I couldn't even tell what happened in the dice battles because there's almost no feedback. It doesn't say HIT or MISS, and the dice aren't adequately explained in the minimal tutorial, so you're basically just waiting until the end to see who survives. The boards themselves are just a Chinese Checkers board with random planets, which gets very boring even within a single play through.

I'd rate the game lower but it's not really a bad game, just lackluster and incomplete. With a few more features to spice up combat and different types of terrain, maybe a Campaign/Tutorial mode to give some context to the warring factions and it could be a decent game.

by Yawaru, USA - Mar 15th 2016
Space Trader: Merchant Marine
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Pretty good, if this were 2003

This game is flawed on several fronts, from gameplay and mechanics to sound and graphics. So lets take it from the top:

Gameplay is bland but serviceable. There's a few different aspects of gameplay; exploring the small hub worlds, buying and selling goods, and FPS bounty hunting. There's the standard array of weapons for the shooting, the AI is sub par, and the level design is uninteresting. The actual trading and missions aren't terribly engaging either.

The game mechanics are flawed, there's a system where you need to gather materials from planets or bounty missions, then transport them to another planet to sell them, but there's a time limit to missions that doesn't always work correctly, making you potentially fail missions for no reason. The actual trading is overly simplified and therefore not engaging.

The graphics look like a Dreamcast game. This might not be a negative to you, but for most people it probably is.

Sound. Terrible voice over. Boring scripts. Poor sound quality.

So, can't really recommend this game, there are other games that do pretty much everything better that you could play instead, like Elite Dangerous, or you could play Diablo 3 for the fun of selling common pants.

by Yawaru, USA - Mar 15th 2016
Tank Universal
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Tron-inspired tank battle game

A quick note: this game uses DirectPlay, it's a depreciated program but still works. If it's not already installed from another game, Microsoft will download it for you, but Skype and certain anti-virus software (such as Kaspersky and Avast) will block installation. Just close Skype and turn off your anti-virus temporarily to install DirectPlay, then turn back on. DirectPlay won't interfere with the operation of these programs after it's installed.

While not perfect, Tank Universe is fun to play, has a retro Tron-inspired aesthetic, and an intriguing story.You play a new recruit in a rebel army where tank battles and capture the flag is the order of the day. The combat is actually more fun then your average point-and-kill gameplay; the tank shells have weight and travel in an arc, so you need to adjust for distance and lead the target to actually hit things.

The graphics are a bit unpolished, even for a Tron-aesthetic. Human models in particular are rough around the edges and poorly modeled with limited animation. That isn't a big deal as the meat of the game is running around shooting stuff in a tank.

For the price, it's a pretty solid game. I've heard the frame rate is capped at 30, which may be an issue for some people, and I ran into the issue I mentioned the solution to above, but it was an easy fix.

by Yawaru, USA - Mar 8th 2016
Wasteland Angel
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It's like Mad Max, but not nearly as good!

To me, Wasteland Angel is an unfinished game. It plays adequately, but there are a lot of little physics glitches. There's a decent amount of content, but only if you want to do score attack and improve your overall score or rank. The graphics are okay, but not great for the time of release, much less now.

The core gameplay is simple but fun; drive around and kill bad guys. Most levels are defense missions: kill waves of enemies and prevent them from capturing citizens from the town. The towns have 100 people, if you destroy a capture vehicle before it leaves the screen you can get the citizens back, but you can also run them over. There are also boss stages, such as a giant napalm truck that you can only damage by luring it into trails of napalm, a secondary weapon pick up. There are also first-person bonus levels such as racing or survival. There's also a story told in snippets of dialog and motion-comic style cut scenes.

The game works reasonably well and has controller and keyboard support, but there were several areas where the physics bugged out, such as getting stuck on environmental objects. The hit detection needs work. The fact that there's a dedicated "flip your car over" button should tell you something. Seeing as the game is a few years old already I doubt you'll see any improvements.

In the end the game gets repetitive quickly, the controls are a bit loose, there isn't much variety in gameplay, and the story is forgettable. If you like score attack or driving around shooting baddies in small arenas, this may still be the game for you!

by Yawaru, USA - Mar 5th 2016
Chains
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Better than your average flash game

This is one of those games that takes a fairly simple premise and expands it into a short but challenging puzzle game with a surprising amount of depth.

Gameplay is simple: connect dots of the same color to make them disappear, satisfy an objective unique to a given level to advance. What's impressive is how many different objectives 2DEngine.com came up with using a limited range of tools. Ranging from simple objectives such as get a high score to more complicated objectives such as keep a stream with multiple choke points flowing for 5 minutes.

The aesthetic is simple, colored dots and silhouette containers.That and the simplistic menu design are reminiscent of Flash games, but it doesn't have much impact on the game. Music's not bad, it seems to get louder when you get closer to failing an objective, but not much to write home about.

Overall, it's a decent game, there's a couple hours of quality gameplay, maybe a little more if you're into score attack.

by Yawaru, USA - Feb 28th 2016
 12 
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