Skydrift

I'll say this, Skydrift is a great looking game and seems to have great physics. Problem is, I'm not really into flying games, especially not keyboard controlled flying. It didn't help things that I had to fiddle with the exe to get it running, I had to set the compatibility mode to Windows 7 to get it running.

Essentially, this game is a racer, but with planes instead of cars. Fly through a course, picking up power ups and trying to beat the other players/AI.

oooh, pretty!

I didn't play a lot of the game, it's not my style, so, while I can't see any problems with it, it's not doing anything for me.

4/10, it's likely appealing to a certain crowds, and it seems popular on Steam, but it's not getting my seal of approval.

Edge

Edge didn't start the first time I played it and I should have left it at that experience. This is one puzzler that should have found a solution before I met it.

I think you see where this is going.

The game seems to be an elegant melding of simplicity and intrigue, you use your arrow keys to move a block around a course, grabbing coloured blocks as you go; complete a course and you get a harder one. There is no need to have complex graphics in this style of game play, but that doesn't mean I want to see a pile of giant pixels try to push me off a ledge into an abyss.

4/10, the game seems to be doing what it intended, but I'm not buying tickets for the ride.

Luxor

Luxor is a catch all for 3 different games in my library, Luxor 2, Luxor Amun Rising, and Luxor Quest for the Afterlife.

Luxor 2 wouldn't start because it needed to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 98, Amun Rising couldn't find its exe and recommended my going to Steam support, but Quest for the Afterlife started with no problems and since it doesn't look like I'm missing anything from the first 2 that's the one I played

Luxor in all its glory.

Game is simple enough, a row of balls is slowly creeping toward your pyramid, but you can't let them in. To this end you shoot similar coloured balls to make 3 or more match up, level is cleared when all the balls are gone. You get power ups and the track winds, hiding balls you want to match to make it more difficult.

This is another one my wife has played extensively but I've never tried before. I have to admit I found myself compelled to play more than I expected. I'm going 6/10 on this, the price is a bit high for what you get, but it is a great looking game, and there is definitely some challenge in it

Dustforce

Dustforce appears to be a platformer, I installed it, started, and played through the tutorial; it may be of interest to some people, but not me.

Thats defenitely the game I played.

Low res graphics and hyperactive soundtrack put a real nice layer of shit-icing on this game, not to mention the fact I have no interest in playing a janitor, regardless of whT I'm cleaning up.

Let's give it 3/10, it's got tight mechanics and an upbeat sountrack, but it's not my style within the least. Video game fail!

Cortex Command

So, what can I say about Cortex Command other than I don't like it? Nothing, thats what. It's got kind of a neat concept, you control robot bodies, if one gets destroyed you move to another one and try again, however I don't like how they control, the robot movements are way to jerky and slow, much like a real robot would be if built today; I have to believe that if we've accessed the ability to transfer our conciousness into an external repository, we'd have the means to make said repository better than the original.

Yeah, fuck this game!

I'm giving this 2/10 as it is a neat concept and not bad looking, but it's not fun and, at full price, it's expensive.

Insaniquarium Deluxe

Insaniquarium Deluxe is a great little game, and it doesn't hurt that it's cheap either. You run a fish tank, populating it with fish (duh) and collecting money that they crap out. Bigger fish give better money, but require smaller fish to eat, and you battle of random alien invaders Hell bent on eating your beloved fish, because why the Hell not?

What I just said!

For some reason I thoroughly enjoy this game, I get into the rhythm of keeping the fish fed and grabbing the cash they drop before it dissapears and time just flies away. Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely a casual game, there is nothing hardcore here, but, probably for that reason, I thoroughly enjoy it.

8/10, top marks for anything casual.

Torchlight

I'd tried Torchlight in the past but it didn't really grab me; it grabbed me so little that I forgot I had tried it until I got it started and found a save game already present. I'm glad I gave it that second chance though, it's a good game, not without its flaws, but still very good.

Easiest way to term this would be a Blizzard influenced dungeon crawler; you get your choice of class to play, then push your way through dungeons on quests assigned to you as the game progresses. Along the way you get numerous gear and money drops, keeping what you want and selling the rest. General RPG goodness ensue's, it's just a matter if you want to play a melee or caster class.

A good looking game too.

I really liked was the pet, a dog that fought along side you, utilizing spells of his own, plus, when your bags were full, he could travel back to town for you and vendor the junk. In both look and feel this game is similar to Warcraft, a game I've spent way too many hours on, so I have some authority on the matter. On the downside, I'm not a fan of the mouse 'left click' movement system; it works well enough in this game, but having both target selection and movement mapped to one button never feels precise to me. Having said that, the movement system does keep your left hand free to run through your shortcut menus for all your spells and items, so that's cool.

8/10, I don't know if I can give this highest recommendations as it doesn't have a great deal of variation to the play, and the movement control issue, but it is a very good game all the same. If you get it on sale it'd be well worth the purchase.

Sanctum

I vaguely remember buying Sanctum on sale because I'd heard good things about it, but knew nothing beyond that when I first started it up. I found running it on Windows 8.1 required me to set the compatibility mode to Windows 7, but once that was done the game ran smoothly and cleanly.

Sanctum is a pretty good example of a tower defence game: a sci-fi backdrop, that I paid little attention to, pits you against waves of aliens trying to get through to a power source, leaving you to stop them via defences you build in their way. The towers you build can be equipped with any number of weapons, which are upgradeable using points collected during fights with the aliens, possible after each round when you get a chance to add or upgrade defenses,

Add yor guns, start the level, and watch the bodies pile up, aw yeah!

The graphics are not amazing (the game uses the Unreal engine, and it feels a lot like playing Unreal Tournament 2004), but they do the job required just fine and the mechanics are pretty solid, weapons and defences given seem to be adequate for the job. This is not an easy game to master, but fortunately it's not difficult to play, even if you skipped the tutorial you'd be able to muddle your way through.

I'm going to go 9/10 with this, my first hour in the game slipped past me very quickly (the sign of a good game is unaccounted time, just like being drunk) and, although this does nothing to redefine the genre, it certainly gives a nice addition to it. If you find it cheap, this is definitely worth checking out, if for no other reason than it's the only FPS tower defence I've ever played. Highly recommended.

Steam World Dig

I don't like platformers, but I do like exploration games, so I didn't mind Steam World Dig. Game is like this: you're a robot who inherits his uncles mine (how that works is beyond me, but...) and, now that it's yours, you need to dig for the ore hidden below.

A digging fool!

Thats pretty much the whole game, dig through the ground, avoid animals that will hurt you, try not to fall too far, and come backup to sell your ore. The more ore you sell, the higher your level gets and the better equipment you can buy to dig with. There is a very slight puzzling aspect, given you often need to approach items from the right way in order to get to them, but actually terming this game a "puzzler" would be a large leap.

Despite the platforming aspect I found myself enjoying the game and the price is definitely right at 2.75. This one get a 7/10, not much there, but it's nice looking, well built, more fun than I expected, and cheap.

Nightsky

Nightsky is interesting and I still haven't decided if I like it. A physics puzzler, you drive an orb across darkened landscapes, using the landscape to power across open gaps and triggering puzzle solutions.

It's like a sky at night!

The game has a great pace to it, looks good, for what you can see, and has excellent physics, but I don't think this is the game for me. 5/10, it seems well made and it might be right for someone else, but it's not grabbing me.

Luftrausers

I don't know what the deal with Luftrausers is, I just know I don't want to play this game. It's a kind of physics driven airplane shooter, like if you crossed asteroids with 1941, both gameplay and graphics.

A picture is worth a thousand words, which is many words than I'll be able to say about this.

I don't think I like this game, for many reasons. I dislike the techno sountrack; I despise the "flying" physics, which consist of little more than glorified jumping up and down; and I want nothing to do with the 8-bit graphics.

2/10, seems like a lot of effort was put into this, but it was largely wasted.

Aquaria

Some games are non stop action, lots of enemies, lots of guns, and lots of explosions, we'll call these "good" games, while others are introspective journeys of emotion and color, we'll call these "Not so much with the good" games; Aquaria is not one of the "good" games.

I didn't play a lot of this game, but I did spend half an hour as an underwater nymph, gaily swimming from location to location, taking instructions in an almost poetic rote, and singing the songs of underwater life. To be blunt, I was ready to shoot myself after those 30 minutes.

Underwater singing, the only thing missing from Serious Sam!

This is not an action game, it's a type of fluid platformer. You play a girl, swimming through caves and using a unique song system to interact with the world around you. The physics and controls work well, and it is an astoundingly beautifully rendered environment, but nothing I'm going to spend time in.

This may not be a bad game, but it's not one I'm willing to call good. I'm sure if I spent the time to discover the story promised by it I would appreciate that much, but the game mechanics are not to my taste. 4/10, it's good looking and well built, like a pretty girl with no personality, but, also like that girl, interaction left me with the same satisfaction I would have gotten from screaming at a sheet of paper for the same period of time.

Machinarium

Machinarium is a neat little puzzler, although, as such, tends to be a bit frustrating unless you have a lot of time to commit to it. All in all it seems to be a good game though.

You play a robot capable of interacting with on screen objects within your reach, doing so allows you to solve puzzles that help you progress through the game levels. The basic mechanic is nothing more than a point and click style, but that's not surprising for a mobile port.

The first puzzle is not really that difficult.

I enjoy these style of games and this seems to be a decent example of how to integrate puzzles into a story direction, so I'm treating this as a win. 7/10 for this guy, it's ok, and not horribly difficult, but it's not cheap and I don't find myself driven to play it.

Puzzle Quest

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Puzzle Quest until I re-installed it; essentially Bejeweled crossed with RPG elements, it delivers better than many games do, especially considering the genre lines it crosses.

There is quite a story mixed into this one but I've never actually paid that much attention to it, I've just enjoyed the game aspect. The puzzles are not actually solved so much as played until you meet your goal, that goal being to destroy an enemy: Match orbs/icons to build magic or damage and try to defend yourself from the same.

There it is in all its puzzly questy glory

Enemies are defeated by creating skulls in the grid and matching skulls up in three or more's, with the player and the AI taking turns. Gold and experience are also acquired, allowing you to buy better equipment and upgrade spells, which become very important as you go up in levels. The orbs correspond to mana types required for different spells which dramatically alter the play.

7/10 on this one, it's fun and challenging, but it won't appeal to a broad spectrum of players, a little more in depth than casual gamers want, and not enough going on for hard core games, even RPGers. Still, if the above interests you at all, I would recommend this title above any others I've tried.

Magicka

So, chugging right along through my games, I came across Magicka. All in all this seems like a decent enough game, but I'm not impressed with the control scheme. Having said that, if you manage to find it on sale and need a game to play with friends, this might not be the worst choice you could make.

You play a wizard on the way to saving the world, random encounters and general RPG fun ensue along the way. It would appear this game is designed to be played in groups, but I only judge games by what they do for me.

Pretty game!

The control scheme is mapped out in an interesting way, left clicking your mouse tells your character where to go and fighting is done by selecting magics, which are hot keyed to your standard movement keys, (QWERASDF). This system seems to work ok, but it does take some getting used to, so, if you try it, be prepared for that.

I'm going 6/10 with this guy; I only played through the first level so I don't have a broad perspective yet, and, although I do plan on going back and playing more, I'm not feeling a lot of love for it right now.

Vessel

The first thing Vessel tells you is a controller is recommended, and I couldn't agree more. A puzzle platformer the game has you running through levels sometimes using, and sometimes destroying anthropomorphic blobs of liquid.

Thank god for platforming!

The physics work well and it's a very well detialed game, however, once again, I find myself not wanting to play a platformer, regardless of a controller to help me out. 6/10, the game seems to be doing what it's going for, I just don't want to go along for the ride.

Dungeonland

It's hard to argue with free to play games and Dungeonland is a cool game, looks like it could be a lot of fun, if you have friends, and a controller wouldn't hurt either.

The premise is you're in an amusement park built for heroes, you go through the different 'levels' with a team of heroes, smashing your way through bad guys. The game is bright and colourful, and has a cheery feel to it. As always with free to play, the in game purchases will add up pretty quickly, so take the base game with a grain of salt.

Throwing knives, magicians, and sheep, this game has it all.

The game can be solo played, the game partners you with bots, but it's quite obvious that it's meant for groups of friends. I played through the first level and found myself wanting to do a bit more, but I doubt I will if I can't find anyone to play with. I should also note, I played with a keyboard and mouse, but I think it would have been a better experience with the controller, things just didn't feel right; that's not a complaint, just an observation.

I'm going to go 7/10, although that may be a bit higher than I feel for it, it appears to be a great game for friends.

Duke Nukem Forever

I picked up Duke Nukem Forever on a Steam sale about a year after it was released; I have no idea what I paid for it anymore, but, whatever it was, it was too much. I doubt this is news to anyone who cares.

Here's everything you need to know about this game: I played through the first 3 levels; at the end of the 3rd level the game crashed and my save for it was lost, my only option to continue on was to replay that entire level. I have never gone back and played that level, it is not worth my time or energy, and I have too much of both right now.

Almost didn't include a screen cap because they are all lies, the game is nowhere near as fun as that looks!

2/10, the game tries hard, gets 1 point for being a shooter, and another for nostalgia, but it's a mess of mechanics and, at the end of the day, no one cares about Duke anymore. If this had been released before 2005 it might have been a better game, but 2011 was way to long in development, this is a bad game.

Lugaru HD

So here's the thing: I'm not playing a game where I'm a giant bunny-man, even if it had HD graphics, which Lugaru HD does not.

Pictured: giant bunny man I won't play.

I literally played 5 minutes of this game so I may not be in a great position to rate it, but I am imminently qualified to say what I will play, and this is not it. 2/10, it gets 1 point for being ultra cheap and another for the fact I didn't give it a chance.

Portal

What does one say about Portal that hasn't already been said? I can't think of anything, but I'll say it anyway, if only because of my inherent eloquence.

I wouldn't call this the perfect game, as many do, but it is an excellent game, one of the better ones I've ever played. There is no character backstory to distract you, or much plot whatsoever, you're just trying to escape a computer mastermind Hell bent on seeing you die in an educational exercise. The game is exceptionally well crafted, with both aesthetics and physics and has probably the best puzzles I've ever encountered, complex in analysis, but simple in execution.

There's a Portal...Hey, I get it now!

The use of  a non destructive gun, while not something I generally advocate, is a singular achievement in gaming and masterfully done in Portal. Some people cite the length as being an issue, and true, this is not a long game, but I think it's the right length, it quits before getting boring.

10/10 for this little gem! I got it free as a gift from Steam a few years back, but it's well worth the full price of admission.