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The Fall Blau chapter was relatively easy to get through. As far as I can remember, I managed to beat all of the missions on my first try. It also wasn’t extremely interesting. Luckily, the third chapter, Operation Black, took place in Yugoslavia, during the battle for Neretva, which made extremely interesting for me, what with me being a Croat.

Again, they took some liberties with the story, but also added historic events into it. Overall, I like how it’s progressing and the only real complaint I have about the game is the atrocious voice work of the main character. There’s no chance in hell she’s 14 and there’s no way that accent is real. Also, I think she’s a robot, because I have yet to detect any emotion.

Air Conflicts Plane

This newer plane quickly became my favorite – agile and strong!

Other than that, the battles are fun and simple, the planes vary enough to have a point and recently, the game introduced RPG-like stats which I upgrade after every mission. So far, I’ve upgraded my agility completely, making my planes more mobile, and I’m now upgrading my Luck, which increases the chance of critical shots. Critical shots basically kill the enemy plane instantly, so I figured this would be my best option to make the game easier to get through.

Chapter four is named “Operation Belt” and it takes place in Poland, it seems. I don’t remember this Operation from my history class, but there’s a Wikipedia entry for it, so it definitely is real. I’m looking forward to clearing that one as well.

Right now, I’m still trying to figure out what else to play. I think I might try getting access to and clearing The Chest on the Binding of Isaac, just so I can count the Wrath of the Lamb expansion as completed to.

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I think an Indie Gala bundle is responsible for me owning this Air Conflict game. I’m not the type who would buy a game of this subgenre willingly, but I’m thinking the bundle either contained other games I was interested in, or it was simply too big and too cheap to pass up.

In any case, Air Conflict: Secret Wars is an arcade flying action game, whatever the official genre name is. I’m tagging it simply as “action” for the purposes of this blog, since it will probably be the only game of the subgenre I’ll ever play. The game isn’t bad, but it isn’t extremely good either. I probably won’t be clearing in in just a day or two, since it’s a bit longer and I’m not that extremely into it to invest to big a chunk of time in it.

Air Conflicts: Lens Flare

Lens-flare makes everything look so much nicer.

Based on how well you do on your missions, you get extra “stars” which unlock new planes. I’m not sure how I did relatively speaking, but I managed to unlock my first extra plane near the end of the first chapter. Other than that, there isn’t much to the game. You get objectives and you clear them – that’s about it.I played for an hour or so and managed to complete the first chapter of the campaign – Siege of Tobruk. There are seven chapters in total. The second is called Fall Blau and takes place in Azerbaijan, I think. The game, it seems, takes you through some notable WWII events, but from a fictional perspective of a young girl, the daughter of a legendary war pilot, with some piloting skills of her own.

As I said, I won’t be playing this one intensively, but I’m hoping to clear it within a week or two of short sessions. Right now, I’m trying to decide what other game to play in parallel.

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As expected, I was done with Rochard today.

We got through the temple, realized it’s all somehow connected and got all we needed to get to and deal with Maximilian. He was at the casino and he managed to snatch Skylar during all this so I also had to rescue her. Once that was done, there was a final battle, and that was it.

What an amazingly fun game!

It just does things right. The mechanics are fun to play with, it doesn’t get dull or repetitive and it’s constantly expanding on what you can do with the toys you have. The story is shallow, but interested enough to keep your attention, the style is pleasant and everything just works well together.

Rochard Game Won

YES! I DID IT!

It took me close to six hours to complete the game and I’m nowhere near being done with achievements, sadly, but this will need to wait, since my backlog is still huge.The only slight downside is that you get the funnest toy right before the game ends. In the final area, you get to upgrade your gravity gun so it’s able to grab living enemies. Of course, there’s a good reason you get this late in the game, since it’s extremely powerful, but it’s just so fun I wish I  had more time with it.

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 I think I got to the final level of Rochard today. I didn’t have much time to play, but the couple of hours I did have were enough to get there. As expected, the shifty looking boss of Rochard and his friends betrayed him, so I’ve been spending most of my time trying to beat his goons and figure out what’s going on.

Apparently, the asteroid Skyrig was mining on was home to a temple belonging to an ancient civilization. Even more interesting, the ancient civilization seems to use the writing system that some of the Native Americans used. Conveniently, Rochard’s lady friend Skylar has an uncle who is a descendant of this tribe and even has an object needed to translate the writing.

Rochard Pun

A lame pun, but it was bound to happen.

Now we’re back at the temple, to see what we can learn and why it’s so important.The evil boss is interested in translating them, so he left the mining company for dead and went after the uncle. Of course, Rochard managed to escape death, follow him to Skylar’s uncle, save him, get the item, and even infiltrate the Skyrig base to steal the rest of the data.

The game is fun. It provides a challenging level of difficulty, but the puzzles are interesting and the action happens often enough so it doesn’t get dull. It took me a couple of hours to get through a large chunk of the game today, but the time just flew by. It’s very likely I’ll complete it tomorrow.

However, some of the achievements require me to play through the game more than once, so I won’t be aiming for 100% right away. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy it; it’s just that there are other games I have yet to even try.

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I decided to mix it up a bit and try a game recently added to my backlog, via the latest Humble Bundle.

Rochard is a puzzle platformer based on physics. Your character uses a gravity manipulator/gun that allows him to shoot enemies (eventually) and manipulate physical objects such as crates, droids, explosives, etc. Quite early in the game, you also learn how to manipulate gravity itself, reducing it to a fraction of the one we usually work with. This allows Rochard to jump further, lift heavier objects, throw them further, etc. It also allows him a special move where he throws an object and uses the counter force to propel himself further.

Rochard Cut Scene

The story is told in real time.

The basic story is that you’re part of an asteroid mining company looking for an extremely valuable material. In one of the digs, you stumble into something weird which is followed by an accident and a raider attack. Pretty soon, all hell breaks loose.You use all of these abilities to progress through the game. There are, of course, preferred solutions to any puzzle, but the general rule is, if the physics allow it differently, you can do it your way. This is why I like physics puzzles. Even if you get stuck and don’t see the proper solution, you can always build a tower from local debris and advance that way.

The story isn’t deep or amazing, but it works with the game and its style. The graphics are cartoonish, somewhat Pixarish, even, and the voice acting is decent. Overall, the game has a nice and enjoyable style which can last for many years to come. If you combine this with the fun mechanics, you get a pretty damn good game.

The first area of the game I played through was a sort of tutorial, but the instructions weren’t really getting in the way of what I wanted to do, which I like. I was slowly getting through the story, past the initial accident and the raider attack, all the while upgrading my tool to allow shooting, gravity manipulation, and most recently, explosives. The game also introduced new minor mechanics every now and then, which keeps things very interesting. I’ve played for a bit over an hour total, so I assume I didn’t get very far, but then again, there’s a “Complete the game in three hours” achievement, so I’m thinking it shouldn’t take more than five to six hours on a regular playthrough.

It’s getting late now, though, so I’ll play again tomorrow.

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I lied yesterday. I didn’t complete the extra, “DLC” worlds. After clearing Vanishing City and seeing the ending, I was already a bit tired of the mechanics and the same old, so I decided to call it there. I cleared one more level after that, but it’s just more of the same.

Overall, I’ve completed all of the levels of the first four worlds, including the time attack levels, got all the upgrades and basically saw the campaign in its entirety. For me, that’s enough of Xotic for now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun enough game, but it has its bad sides.

Xotic Victory Screen

I won! Yay me!

Firstly, there are clipping issues in many of the levels. I get that a low budget game is hard to test properly, but I was getting stuck far too often for comfort. Secondly, while the old school mechanics are fine, I don’t like the fact that you have to start from scratch if you die. A single save per level, or even a checkpoint system would have been preferable. In the end, I’ve completed most of the worth world on the Easy difficulty, simply because I was getting to annoyed with constantly restarting. And lastly, the weapons really aren’t as imaginative or interesting as you would expect from an FPS.

Still, overall, it’s fun and good enough to go through. I just don’t think it’s good enough to go for all of the achievements. Right now, I’m at 26/46 and I’ll probably stay there.

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My gaming time will be severely reduced for the following few days, including today, due to unexpected family visitors. That is, it will be reduced compared to what I did last week. As it is right now, I’m only playing for an hour or two in the evenings.

Luckily, Xotic is a suitable game, because it allows short sessions, but can also be played for longer without many issues. It really is the basic first person shooter. The story is there, but not important, and the mechanics are rudimentary, but work well.

Xotic World Selection

I think the base game has 4 worlds, but I’m not sure.

I’ve managed to complete the entirety of world 3 and have finally unlocked world 4, Vanishing City. There’s 8 words in total, but the final one is labelled as “Coming Soon”, meaning it’s probably a future DLC, and the three before that look like some sort of DLC themselves, what with each having only three levels. This makes me think that Vanishing City might actually be the final world of the base game. We’ll see what happens tomorrow when I complete it. Whatever does happen, I’ll consider the game complete when I clear the remaining 3 short worlds. If the final one is in the DLC, I don’t intend to get it soon, so I won’t be doing that one.

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Xotic is an FPS I got in one of the Groupees bundles, I believe. It’s not your regular first person shooter, though. This one is focused on breaking records, getting score and racing to the finish.

The plot is secondary to the gameplay. Basically, there’s this intelligent orb which went mad and started destroying planet after planet. You are created to fix the damage and maybe eventually deal with the orb. That’s all there is to the story, really. At least, that’s all there was to the story in the first world I’ve completed.

Xotic Screnshot

Xotic is a beautifully colorful game.

There’s a whole bunch of worlds, so I’m nowhere close to being done right now. From what I can tell, each level has several objectives. You have to kill the enemies to get the exit to appear, but you also have to collect all the items, kill all the pods and destroy all the brain orbs. For each of these done, you get extra awards and increase your score.

Each level is also worth a certain amount of experience points. You can use those to upgrade your weapons and stats between each level, meaning Xotic also has an RPG aspect to it.

I find it fun for now, but something worries me. Raptor classified me as a Hardcore Xotic player after less than an hour of playing it and getting a total of 10 achievements. This means that a lot of players probably abandon the game before the end. I’m worried that this indicates the game gets old to fast. It didn’t get old for me, though, so I’ll be playing it for the next few days, probably.

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Ben There, Dan That is the first of a series of two adventure games made in Adventure Game Studio. They follow a comical duo of British guys on their journey through time in space.

I’m sorry to say this, but the game was barely playable for me. It has humor. It also has style. Nothing can take away from that. Sadly, it also has bad animations, painfully slow gameplay and an annoying set of controls and interface. These things made the game a pain to get through, so I’m glad it didn’t last long for me complete it.

Ben There, Dan That

It may have been worth the money, but certainly not the trouble.

That being said, there’s still the sequel to get through and, from what I hear, it’s longer than Ben There, Dan That. This means I won’t be playing it any time soon. I just don’t have the willpower to get through it, even with a guide.It took me 20 minutes of painful walking back and forth before I decided I’m done and used a guide to complete the rest of it. As I said, it’s a funny story, the style is OK, but the way it’s made just makes it an annoyance.

EDIT: I was told this is a horrible review, so let me do a short attempt to “fix” it.

In short, the game is great in almost every way, but for me, it’s ruined by bad and sluggish control. The humor is great, the story is silly as it should be and the puzzles are cool, but I can’t get past how badly and slowly it controls. Someone else might be able to, but I can’t.

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If I keep up at this pace, I might run out of games in a couple of years.

And Yet It Moves is a puzzle platformer, I’d say. It’s another game I got in an ancient bundle. Unlike the few others I’ve played recently, I actually already had some experience with this one. You see, one of the holiday sale achievements from a year ago, I think, required me to complete the first world of this game.

There’s three worlds total in the game, meaning I was already one third of the way there when I started today. The remaining two worlds were completed quickly enough, taking me around two hours total to complete the entire game.

And Yet It Moves Credits

You rarely get to play through the credits of the game.

It’s entertaining enough, but it’s obviously short. I can’t really hold that against the game, though, because I think the mechanics and the gameplay would have gotten old soon enough. This way, the game kept me entertained long enough for me to finish it, and no longer.

The mechanics are simple. Your character can walk and jump like in a regular platform game, but you can also rotate the entire world around him, allowing you to reach areas you couldn’t otherwise. The mechanic takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s not too complex and it doesn’t require too much mastery to get through the game. Every once in a while a new element is added to the game, such as parts of the level which respond differently to rotation, enemies, puzzles, etc., which keeps things going and stops the game from getting stale.

In short, And Yet It Moves is somewhat fun and definitely innovative, but it’s not something I’ll be returning to. It has a certain charm, but it’s not extremely memorable. I won’t be getting the achievements of this one any time soon. They aren’t to annoying to get, but do require repeating levels and getting through other game modes that I’m not interested in.