Sigma Team sale

Hey, remember a while back I wrote a blog entry about Alien Hallway and said it was a cute distraction that's worth maybe a dollar or so? And how I also wrote about Alien Shooter, and Zombie Shooter, and said they were fun?

Well, for a few days, you can go to Indie Game Stand and get all three of those (on Steam) plus a fourth game called Theseus: Return of the Hero (which is a sort-of sequel to Alien Shooter) at an attractive price point of, like, a buck or two. Or just Alien Hallway (not on Steam) for twenty-five cents. I think either deal is good value, and I endorse the mini-bundle.

There are a surprising amount of these games, by the way. Alien Shooter, Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded, Alien Shooter 2: Conscription, Zombie Shooter, Zombie Shooter 2, and now this Theseus thing. It's a pretty solid concept, so I suppose I shouldn't be shocked.

But yeah. Check out the bundle, blow up some aliens and/or zombies, and all that good stuff.

Zombie Shooter

So a while back I played Alien Shooter, a game where you shoot aliens. Alien Shooter was developed by Sigma Team, the same guys who made Alien Hallway, a game where you fight aliens in a hallway. Sigma Team, of course, well-known for its lineup of games such as Hallway Shooter, Shooter Shooter, Alien Tower Defense, Game With Aliens In It, and It's Just Some Game 2: Why Do You Guys Always Want Names For Everything. But hey, that's what happens when you get Leonard of Quirm to name all your stuff.

Anyway, I liked Alien Shooter. Thanks to Steam's summer sale, its also-aptly-named spinoff title Zombie Shooter was on sale for a dollar, so I picked it up to give it a try. It's pretty much the same game, but with zombies instead of aliens, right?

...Yeah, as it turns out, that's more or less an accurate description.

There are a few differences. One particularly noticeable change is that in Alien Shooter, the aliens are fast! They scurry and run all over the place. Zombies, however, are contractually obligated to shamble. (It's true--they have a union and everything.) There are some zombie rats and zombie dogs that are straight re-skins of identical enemies from Alien Shooter, and I suspect there will be "Elite Zombies" in later stages who are able to run, but your basic zombie mook has weaker ankles than an alien monster, which can give the gameplay a different feel.

Also, Zombie Shooter has a straighter level-up system: you collect XP, fill up a meter, and tick up your stats between missions as a reward for leveling up. In Alien Shooter, you could tick up your stats, but you did it by spending money on a permanent stat boost or by finding a permanent stat boost in, like, a crate. (Crates in video games have a union too. They're contractually obligated to contain money, health, and ammo pickups.)

But aside from those minor changes, it's more or less the same game as Alien Shooter. This is fine with me, of course, since I liked Alien Shooter, and that just means it's exactly what I was expecting. So I'll endorse Zombie Shooter as a solid example of why third-person shooter games are great. It's good, clean fun. Well, okay, it's good, ludicrously gory, wade-in-rivers-of-zombie-blood fun. Gibbing hordes of zombies with shotguns and grenade launchers is the spaghetti marinara of video games: you wouldn't eat it for dinner every night, but when you do cook it up, it's very difficult to go wrong.

Also, if you get a big lump of spaghetti marinara, it sort of looks like you're eating a brain!

Alien Hallway and Indie Gala V

Well, first off, there's another bundle to toss on the pile: Indie Gala V. For $1, I get four games. Uh, well, eight games, sort of, but...well, anyway...

Making History: The Calm and the Storm is a WWII strategy game, turn-based or something, I dunno. I'm assuming it's supposed to be like a Civ clone. It's got that whole "Risk" map and there's diplomacy and I don't even know. I guess I can try it.

Beat Hazard I already have from the Groupees bundle a while back. I've logged 15 hours on it and I think it's a fun game. This one doesn't have a Steam key, it's just a DRM-free download. But hey, since I already have it, I'll give it away instead. Post a comment on this entry if you want it.

Razor2: Hidden Skies is another shoot-em-up. Didn't I just get that Arkhelom 3D game, like, just yesterday? And Really Big Sky before that? Well, I guess you can never have too many shoot-em-ups...?

And then the last game is Ironclads except that it's actually five games. It's the "Complete Collection" which means it includes Ironclads: American Civil War, Anglo Russian War 1866, Chincha Islands War 1866, High Seas, and Schleswig War 1864. So, five different games. Except from what I can tell, all five games are, like, the same. So I'm just going to count them as one game.



So, dumping those on the to-do list, then. I wonder if any of them are any good.

Anyway, I also played Alien Hallway. This game is like a tug-of-war thing. There's your base on the left, and the aliens on the right, and the aliens send out aliens to try and kill you and destroy your base. However, you also get to send space marines out to go and fight the aliens and destroy their base. So you have aliens and space marines duking it out in a hallway.

There's various different types of units, and you get air strikes, and some of the units have grenades that you have to manually click when you want to use them. And you use Engineer units for resources--they roam around collecting energy from nodes to keep you summoning more guys.

Basically all you do is click on stuff when it's lit up. It's pretty easy. I beat the whole game, as a matter of fact--took me three or four hours, and I got five stars on every mission too.

So it's an easy game, but it's fun and cathartic. I wouldn't say it's the best game I've ever played, but it successfully entertained me for several hours, so I think it's a dollar well-spent.

Speaking of beating games, that's not the only game I beat today.

I finished off the campaign mode in Alien Shooter. It took me a total of three hours to play it through to the end.

Those last levels got pretty intense. Giant laser rocket dinosaur aliens all over the place.

I took this screenshot at a relatively calm section of the level. Yeah that's right, ten dinosaurs with freaking laser beams attached to their heads are marching right at me and that's relatively calm. You should have seen the part where I had to run right into the middle of a giant nest of them to plant dynamite at the portal where they were spawning. Sorry, not one nest, three nests, in three different corners of a large room so that they surrounded me as soon as I walked in. I kept dying until I managed to find the Magma Minigun, which is the strongest weapon and the only one that can reliably kill the dinosaur aliens.

After several deaths I succeeded in destroying all the portals and exterminating every alien in the facility. Except, of course, for the one little green frog alien who gets to survive and escape as a hook for the sequel. All in all, it was pretty epic, and a healthy portion of fun. I'm willing to give Alien Shooter my official thumbs-up.

Okay, how's my list looking?

• Alien Hallway
• Alien Shooter
• Alien Shooter 2
• Altitude
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda 
• Arkhelom 3D
  
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard 
• DeadEnd Cerebral Vortex
  
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
• Disciples II: Gallean's Return
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+ 
• Ironclads
• Lunnye Devitsy
• Making History
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Razor2
• Really Big Sky
  
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
• Tompi Jones
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg 
• Wake

Geez, that's quite the list, isn't it.

Shoot Moar Aliens

Oh man, don't you hate it when they turn off the lights, slam and lock the door behind you, then zerg rush you in a tiny enclosed corridor?

Anyway, I shot some more aliens in Alien Shooter today.

It got pretty intense in this level. HP dwindling, shotgun ammo almost gone, aliens rushing at me to rip my face off. Yikes. Of course I managed to massacre them anyway. Look at all that blood! It was a nailbiter indeed.

And then I got to upgrade my guy with a minigun, a grenade launcher, a speed boost, and increased firepower. I don't know what most of the stuff I'm upgrading to actually does, but I'm pretty sure most of it makes my guy more badass, so I guess I can't go too wrong.

And of course when I put the minigun into action, it sprays death wherever I click. Dakkadakkadakkadakka!

So that's some more of the campaign, but I suppose I should give Survival a shot.

Okay. A few frogs. Starting out slow.

A few more green frogs. So far so good. And a blue boss frog, that's cool, he drops a shotgun, very nice.

Okay guys, you're getting a little close, I would appreciate it if you would ease up a little and maybe...

ACK!

Well so much for Survival.

This game is pretty fun. I like it. I'm going to give it a thumbs up. There are a few minor flaws, but it's lots of fun trying to survive while gunning down huge hordes of alien monsters. There's enough ambushes to keep things tense and exciting, the unlockable stuff is fun, and all that stuff. It's old-school, but I feel comfortable saying that it has aged well.

Now, do I wait to try the sequel until I've played this one through to the end? Hmm.

• Alien Shooter
• Alien Shooter 2
• Altitude
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard 
• DeadEnd Cerebral Vortex
  
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
• Disciples II: Gallean's Return
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+ 
• Lunnye Devitsy
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Really Big Sky
  
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg 
• Wake 

 That puts me at 17/32, which means there's still a whopping 15 more to go. I'm behind.

I wanted to try out Disciples II, but I couldn't get it to run. It kept crashing every time I tried to open it. I did not foresee this problem.

Slydris

How did I end up playing this game for three hours?

This is a slow-paced game. I get unlimited time on each move and I keep going until I hit the top.

I started playing just one game, and it kept going and going. It just wouldn't stop.

It's called "Slydris" because it's like Tetris in that you have to clear horizontal lines, except with sliding. It's turn-based. I slide a piece, then more drop from the top. Then I slide another piece, and it drops more.

I guess this is the sort of game that people who like puzzles will probably enjoy. It's also something I could see playing casually on an iPad on the bus or whatever.

I know I ended up playing it for several hours straight, but it's hard for me to say that I really like it. Mostly I felt like I owed it to the game to at least keep going until I died. Which I did, of course, at level 10 with over 600,000 points.

But okay, as far as these sorts of puzzle games go, I guess it's not bad. I dunno. I don't usually play these sorts of games, and it's very hard for me to feel strongly about them.

What bothers me is that I feel stupid when I start to mess up. It makes me imagine a little voice saying "No no no, you should have done [obvious other move that I didn't see] instead! You suck at this game!"

Anyway, I'll check it off the list.

• Alien Shooter
• Alien Shooter 2
• Altitude
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard 
• DeadEnd Cerebral Vortex
  
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
• Disciples II: Gallean's Return
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+ 
• Lunnye Devitsy
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Really Big Sky
  
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg 
• Wake

I have to add some more now, though, because I ended up getting the Indie Gala 4 after all. >_>

Adding:

• Alien Shooter 2: Reloaded, the sequel to the first game
• Altitude, some game with dogfighting planes that's supposed to be multiplayer or something
• DeadEnd Cerebral Vortex, some sort of surreal labyrinth dreamland
• Disciples II: Gallean's Return, some sort of turn-based strategy type of thing
• Lunnye Devitsy, like an exploration-based platformer, I think
• Really Big Sky, a "bullet hell" shooter
• Wake, some other exploration-based platformer I guess

I hope they're at least a little good.

Alien Shooter

You can tell this game is old-school because the max resolution it runs in is 1024 x 768. It even has an option to change the green blood to red. And it's password-protected! How quaint.

It's a top-down isometric deal. Move with the WASD keys, aim and shoot with the mouse. The guy's legs rotate around independently of his torso, so that tells you something about the quality of graphics ten years ago. Has it really been almost ten years since 2003? Time flies. Is this what games were really like back then? Huh! So anyway, sneak through the hole in the fence...

Wow, this is legit old school. Look at those graphics.

So the aliens should be inside the building, right?

Oh yes, giant frogs with sharp teeth.

Gunning them down is actually pretty fun. There's that visceral satisfaction, you know?

On the downside, their pathfinding AI is absurdly bad. They get stuck around corners all day long. You can see them bunched up in the upper-right there, yes? They can't find the door. They're trying to run through the wall to get at me.

At the end of the level there's this interface for buying gear and weapons--there's money scattered around the level to collect to pay for it. I bought a shotgun because there's nothing quite like that big BOOM, right?

So my first impression is that it reminds me of the FunOrb game Hostile Spawn. Main difference being that, at least so far, this game is not as scary. Hostile Spawn is all darkness, lit by strategic use of your flashlight, and the aliens sneak up on you and all that. In this game...

Well, I guess this game does that too. But it does seem that the general style and gameplay is definitely very similar.

I'm not ready to give a verdict here until I've tried the Survivor mode, which will be a story for some other day because I'm going to bed. But first impression is mostly on the positive side, I guess.

Not the best value.

I guess I forgot to mention that the Groupees Be Mine 2 bundle added an extra game at the very last minute before it ended. But I don't really want to add it to my Quest for Value because it's a point-and-click adventure game. Those games are lame.

It's called Scratches: Director's Cut, and it's (apparently) a point-and-click survival horror adventure game. And really, I am just not very interested in the whole style of gameplay. More than any other control scheme, it pulls me out of the experience and makes me aware that I'm clicking on things on a computer screen. And it's so easy to hit a wall and be completely unable to proceed. And also there are these other things I don't like and...I dunno, I just don't really like it...

Okay, I played a little bit of Machinarium, just a few screens. I admit that the art and animation and general aesthetics on that one were very good. The little robot is pretty adorable. But aside from the visuals, it didn't appeal to me all that much. I mean, I guess a lot of RuneScape quests have the same kind of problem-solving gameplay, and I like them, but...

...Sigh. Alright, I guess now I'm going to have to play the damn game just to be able to articulate the things I don't like about it, huh? Okay, it'll have to be an intellectual exercise. But I'll do it tomorrow, okay? I'll just try it and keep an eye out for things that I like or dislike, and I'll write them down, and maybe I'll learn something from it. It's probably going to suck though.

Speaking of games added to bundles, the Indie Gala 4 unlocked its third game. It's Steel Storm: Burning Retribution. Which I already have, so...disappointing. I actually liked it at first, but it got repetitive and annoying pretty quickly once I unlocked some stronger weapons. As soon as I unlocked the homing missiles, the correct strategy became "Spam homing missiles constantly and never bother trying to actually aim or hit-and-run or kite or anything" and all of a sudden it was boring and tedious instead of exciting and suspenseful. To say nothing of the awful sound effects. I have Babo: Invasion now, which seems like a better-executed version of the same concept, so if I'm looking for a top-down shooter I'll just go with the Madballs instead.

They also added Alien Shooter 2 and Really Big Sky to the bundle for people who pay above the average. Which I didn't. I was waiting to see what they would add. Well, Really Big Sky looks like a decent "bullet hell" shooter, but if I wait for a Steam sale I can get it for $2.50 which is actually cheaper than paying an extra five bucks to upgrade my Indie Gala bundle...so that's not good value at all. And it's hard to be excited about Alien Shooter 2 when I don't even know if the first game is any good yet. How many Alien Shooters do you need?

So I think I'll pass on the bundle upgrade once again. There's just nothing there that interests me. I like value, but I'm not going to go that far out of my way to find it. I'm already bending over backwards to try and get value out of the games I already own.

Hack, Slash, Loot, and Indie Gala 4

I finally finished my scheduled hour's worth of Hack, Slash, Loot. I just can't stop dying in this game.

I did finally manage to get a character to the second level, though! This archer guy found an enchanted pair of boots that regenerates HP, which apparently is game-breakingly absurd because normally you have so much HP and it basically never goes back up (you can find healing items but they're uncommon), but with regenerating health, all those minor injuries that would otherwise chip away at you until you're dead just get shrugged off completely.

Then I got poisoned. Poison is the opposite of regenerating health. If you get poisoned, you're screwed because unless there's a healing item within a few rooms of where you're standing right now, you are stone dead and there's nothing you can do about it. Since I had regenerating health, though, they canceled each other out until I could find a cure.

I beat the boss of the second level, some dwarf king guy, and then I went to level 3...

...and I got dogpiled by some Orcs and Uruk-Hai and they busted through my regeneration enough to kill me. So my archer is dead.

This game is frustrating because it feels like I have no control over what happens. Everything is blind luck. Hit or get hit in combat? All controlled by a roll of the dice. Get poisoned? Sorry, you're dead and there's nothing you could have done. Find a power-up? You got randomly lucky, good job. You can't stockpile items to save for a rainy day because there's no inventory system. You can't do anything meaningful to affect combat because you only have one attack and one set of gear. All you can do is cross your fingers and pray. I keep dying and having no idea what I possibly could have done differently. A couple times I died in the first room, to the enemy who spawned a few steps away. What exactly did the game expect me to do?

Is there any reason to play this when I could be playing Dungeons of Dredmor instead? Dredmor has deep, varied gameplay, far more appealing visuals, a more sensible combat system, a satisfying level-up mechanic, customizability through game mods (which I even know how to make myself, if I want to)...this game is just worse in basically every way. And by the way, worth noting, they're the same price in the Steam store.

I'm going to have to disapprove of this game. It could be worse, I guess, but I like it less each time I try it. I just feel like I have no control over the outcome of the quest.

Anyway, the Indie Gala 4 is out. I paid the minimum price for it. The beat-the-average games didn't look very interesting. There was some multiplayer airplane-dogfighting-thing which I doubt I would have ever played, and some strategy-type game or something...neither of them looked like they were worth an extra five bucks. But I got two games for a dollar and they're adding a third one at some point. That's a fair enough price.

A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda is a side-scrolling shooter of some sort. I dunno. Whatever.

 Alien Shooter is a top-down shooter where you shoot aliens. Straightforward enough, I guess. It was originally released in 2003 so it's pretty vintage.

• Alien Shooter
  
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg