Garry's Mod

Hoo boy, where to begin. Where indeed. There’s just so damn much to say about Garry’s Mod. Well… for starters, it’s not so much a video game as it is a physics engine that allows for an insane level of creativity on the part of its users. …Yeah, that’s the short version. I don’t think I can properly review this as a video game, as it really is more like a tool to create games… or to have fun putting items together and seeing how they interact. Unless the games made by its users count as the game itself. Anyway!

Developed by Facepunch Studios and published by Valve, Garry’s Mod was released on… November 29th, 2006. Almost 20 years ago. That makes it one of the oldest products in my Steam library. When this game came out, my French-speaking ass was still learning English in high school!

Everybody has to start somewhere. Me? I got myself
crushed by that tower. That's how I found out that we
still have HP during sandbox/construction...

Officially, this software was created by Garry Newman, a developer from Valve who worked on Half-Life 2. The original, titular mod was just that game with a few additions; but then this expanded into a full sandbox game comprising not only H-L2’s physics engine and assets, but also the assets of other games made with the Source engine. Notable ones include Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike, as well as possibly the biggest name out of all of them, Team Fortress 2. The only requirement is that you own the other base games in your Steam library in order to access the assets.

If you ask me, the funniest thing about this article is that I took so long to get around to talking about Garry’s Mod that Facepunch Studios released a sequel in the meantime; S&box came out last April, roughly 19 and a half years after its predecessor. But let’s focus on Garry’s Mod, or as it is also known, GMod.

I could decorate a cozy home with this stuff.
Too bad this field isn't much of a house!

Full disclaimer here, I did play a few hours of this game in preparation for this article, but not dozens, so I obviously won’t have the experience of others who've spent hundreds of hours on it. Heck, this article will be less like a review and more of an informative thing. Though, it will have some of my impressions based on what I’ve tested. I wasn’t even sure whether I could cover this product correctly, it’s just a sandbox after all; as a result, expect this to be less about the game itself and more about what others have made from it. Honestly, I’m coming in so late to this that it’s probably the best I can do; celebrate how this program was used and how it left a mark in gaming history.

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #3

I'm still working towards the next major review, so in the meantime, I'm taking today for another review of games I played on the Nintendo Classics. This time, I'm doing something different; two different consoles! Today, we're starting on known ground with the SNES, and then moving on to games from a console I've never played, the Sega Genesis!

The SNES: Fighters

I found out there was an undercurrent I hadn't heard about from the SNES era: The massive success of Street Fighter II Turbo led to a swath of copycats trying to hit the same level of fame by repeating the formula. But it's like I said a while ago: "If you follow the leader, you stay behind them". I bet you haven't heard of these games!

I mean, it does look a lot like Street Fighter II...

Fighter’s History: Developed by Data East, first released in arcades in 1993, then for the SNES in 1994. Play as one of nine fighters from around the world, each with their own reason to be in this competition; and learn to use your moves against each opponent. This game reminds me of Street Fighter II Turbo in terms of setting; it does try to set itself apart with new mechanics, however. One such mechanic is the “weak point” system, where you can temporarily stun a fighter once per round by hitting their weak point. But with that aside, it didn’t feel too revolutionary or special on its own – in fact, it looks so much like Street Fighter that Capcom sued Data East over it, though Data East won the suit by claiming that several elements in their game were inevitable for the genre.

Oh yeah, that's not Ryu at all.

Tuff E Nuff: Another trend-chasing “clone”, released in 1993 and featuring only four fighters. In 2151, the world is in shambles after an apocalyptic war. Something about one powerful guy rising above all others using technology and becoming like a god, and setting up a worldwide tournament to find the strongest among the survivors… I guess. Anyway, you can only play as one of four different characters, going up against the other three as well as seven additional opponents in Story Mode. It’s… well, if we put aside the stupid story and the lack of playable characters, this one just doesn’t catch my interest at all. It fares even worse than Fighter’s History.

Exploring The Itch.io Collection #3

Even more of this! I promise, it's the last one this month. With this article, we've reached the games that can be finished in 10 minutes.

Experiences

Just kids becoming friends, regardless of species.

Summer Gems: Two young kids, one human girl and one frog, meet on the seaside beach. They share gifts, your character writes to the other, then receives the response. It’s cute, raises a good point about environmentalism, but stops at showing this budding, momentary friendship over three scenes.

Arigatou, Ningen-San!: In this game partly developed by USC Games (of WereCleaner fame), you just arrived in the neighborhood and are tasked by a bird to befriend all the local animals… by petting the Heck out of them with the mouse. No real goal past that, and the only funny thing to this one is how the animals get squished as you “pet” them.

Dawndusk Dream Sewer: In this isometric experience, your character is going down some dream sewers and speaking to the people trapped within. All the way down to some sort of chaotic deity. I didn’t feel much for the esoteric, absurdist discussions in there.

Miles of endless corridors, and not a single bathroom in sight.

Hotel Paradise: Look for your room in a seemingly endless hotel. There is no rhyme or reason as to where the rooms are located, so don’t try to figure it out with logic. Just keep walking through the halls until you finally spot your room number. Apparently, each number is completely personal, no other player will have it (though considering there’s a maximum of 999 rooms, I personally doubt that statement). Very basic gameplay, intriguing concept (and finding your room WILL take a while), but this game doesn’t offer a lot else.

No Wheels Racing: A parody game about a race where none of the cars have wheels. Pick a driver! Pick a car! (There’s only one.) Pick whether you want wheels (not available) or no wheels! Then, it’s off to the races, and all you can do is stay in place, honk, or press Escape to get disqualified! …Yeah, it’s just a quick joke, especially with the build-up to the “race” or how racers honk their horns louder the longer you wait. Silly thing.

And then, of course, judgment gets passed on what you've
made of Heaven based on which folks you've let through.

The Political Compass: Devil’s Labyrinth: A visual novel in which you’re the new hire who must choose whether to send souls to Heaven or to Hell… the latter, with EVISCERATION! The “practice souls” you get are all a bunch of exaggerated stereotypes: The crypto bro, the ultra-rich, the app developer, the reality TV watcher, y’know. Guess the game tries to be comedic, but I didn’t feel like it was particularly funny, and any commentary felt wasted.

for|rest: In this walking simulator, you visit a completely grey, lifeless forest. You can click the mouse button to wave your hand at transparent thorny vines to make them disappear, which causes colors, plants and fauna to reappear in the area. Sometimes, though, a girl may appear instead… can you hear her story? While I appreciate the concept, I think I missed out on the ending because at some point I could no longer find any vines to erase, and so I was seemingly stuck. It’s a good and meaningful idea presented in a very artistic (if low-poly) manner.

All things you can do with ropes and little spheres.
Hey, that's creative!

Il filo conduttore: Italian for “the common thread”. In this experience, all you can do involves strings and little balls. Activate things, make music, see what odd interactions happen. Every scene is something different. You could be excused for thinking most of this was done with live-action objects. Nice little thing, good for at least one playthrough.

Otherside: Is supposed to be a trippy, puzzle-based experience with psychedelic visuals (the page describes it as Myst meets the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey), but I tried playing it thrice and each time, I either got stuck because puzzles were unclear, or a new screen just failed to load (with no way to leave using, say, the Esc key). Ain’t trying it again, nope. Hard pass.

Not sure what this machine is supposed to be, but...
it's all very ominous.

please: A horror/environmental storytelling game in which you are the repairman in a building in an odd… place and setting, is the best I can say. You’re asked to “please” repair stuff downstairs, always machinery that's left unexplained. We never quite know what’s going on, but we do hear sounds by the doors, and we’re left wondering. The ending doesn’t help either, mking things even more ambiguous. Sound design’s great here, graphics are low-res 3D but work great for the desired effect. Recommended!

Conversations With My Anxiety: A visual novel in which the player is on their first date with a woman named Gina, and the date isn’t going entirely as planned; thus, the player’s anxiety butts in to make things more difficult, especially to weigh in on what’s going on. You always have the option to let anxiety win, but there are different bits of text to read depending on which option you select. Accurate depiction of living with anxiety. I bet there’s quite a few possible endings, too. Do check that one, I liked it.

I'm too honest, my response would be "it's a first date, of
course I am." But I'd still have hope the date goes well.

Self-care

Take your time - I know I'll need some time myself to
write down what I want to leave behind.

little boats of farewell: A point-and-click story in which a ghost participates in the ritual of leaving paper boats to float down the river at the end of the year with what the memories they want to leave behind. Along the way, you can talk to the others there, hear what they’re willingly forgetting on the dawn of the new year. You can even pick things off the ground to decorate your boat. At the end, once you’re ready to let your paper boat go, you’re encouraged to write down your own message. Feels therapeutic. For a 10-minute game, this touched me more than I thought it would.

Social reach

A HerpWitch and their weird little critter.
No matter which one it will end up being.

To Be A HerpWitch: A riff on Pokémon created for a Nonbinary Game Jam, you play a nonbinary character who dreams of becoming a HerpWitch, AKA a trainer of Familizards. They are first seen dreaming of the classic “boy or girl?” question from early Pokémon, choosing neither. They get ready for work, then head out. They weren’t set to get their own Familizard, but an unlikely twist of fate leads to them getting one regardless. It’s cute, and I get that it’s short because it was for a game jam, but it does leave one wishing there was more.

down.: Self-described as “a short, somber atmospheric experience about depression, anxiety and the inability to forgive oneself”, this game is just the character walking towards the right and finding notes from her own mind that belittle her and push her to suicide. …I get the point, dealing with those thoughts is rough, but there's almost nothing to gameplay, nothing to interact with, so it feels otherwise uninspired. Maybe don’t play that one if you’re already struggling on that front.

Misophonia is decreased tolerance to certain sounds or what
causes them, hence why the character is struggling to
get past someone blowing their nose.

Escort Yourself Out: An autobiographical game about suffering from eating disorders, anxiety attacks, misophonia, and other trauma-born issues, and learning to live with them. The author made this game for a university thesis, and most of the game is a discussion on her part about how these issues affect her day-to-day life and her studies. The more game-like portions are the author escorting her younger self across a busy store, and you hold down a key to offer comforting words to help her get through all these encounters.

Plain games

Beat that evil witch! You can do it! Good boys!
You're gonna get treats if you win!

Dogs Throwing Swords II: Three Barks To The Wind: A shmup with a clever concept. Three dogs are chosen to fight the witch that has corrupted the woods and the desert. Each dog has a type of attack, the three go through the stage as a group, and you can change their position with Left-shift or their order with Left-Ctrl. Each doggo has their own health, which depletes when they’re hit specifically. Two worlds of two levels each, and two boss fights. With its 16-bit look, this game is adorable. And fun, too! Makes me wish there was more of it.

Bunflower: A Game Boy Color-style game in which your player bunny must collect three pieces of food (namely, plants) before a blizzard hits. You obtain them by helping people around bunny town. It’s super easy, but neat and just the kind of game you could give a kid that’s starting their journey in gaming.

Well, I need food! Just watch me, I'll be back
before the storm. Promise!

Filing this one under "disappointments". Might have
enjoyed, if it didn't bazoo-krash constantly.

Bazookrash: ACAB, am I right? Morlando the bear wants to sleep, but the damn sirens in the distance keep him up. Time to grab the firearms and unleash Hell on the night noise. First-person shooter, aim for the pink cars, leave the civilian blue ones alone. You have a rifle, a gauss and a bazooka. Decent idea and concept, it could have been fun, but the damn thing kept crashing on me.

Stophat: You play as a rich jerk’s hat and must try to land on your owner’s head as many times as possible, though he will start moving to avoid you. A and D to move left and right, S to descend. As another quickly-made GameJam entry, this is as basic as it gets, but… yeah, feels rather meh.

It's got the basics, so there could be a larger game
in the same genre made by the same person someday.

Gigabit: In this 2.5D platformer made in 16 days for a Halloween game jam, you play as a little robot who has to get through six stages with Halloween theming. Each time the robot hits the floor or a wall, little debris come flying out. If you get stuck, hit R to restart the level. Move with A/D or the arrows, jump with W, Up or Space. While enjoyable, it does feel like someone’s first attempt at 2.5D platforming, as some platforms aren’t defined well and there are slight issues with lighting that make some threats hard to spot. But it’s a commendable product, especially if made in this short a timeframe.

INDECT: A platform game about a cyberpunk future. Or, rather, a demo for such a game, as it only contains a tutorial and two levels, the second of which already ramps up the difficulty. Your character can move with the arrows, jump with Space and shoot with alt. Not a lot to get immersed, though it looks promising. Notably, in the second level, new enemies appear when backtracking over a path that didn’t have them before. Unfortunately, the project is on hiatus.

Nigel: A game that homages Nigel the gannet, a real bird with quite the history. You play as Nigel, who becomes a matchmaker for the couples of animals on Mana Island, solving simple puzzles to make them meet. After solving all the puzzles, Nigel gets to pick a partner of his own... a concrete bird statue. Very easy to finish, but it’s the thought that counts.

Now, how to get the two kiwis together...
Kiwi! Kiwi, c'm'ere! There's another kiwi for you!

She's gonna have her step count through the roof
once this night is over.

Night in the Storm: Help Vera the lighthouse keeper seagull through the night in a very faulty lighthouse. Gotta keep the boats safe! Close the window so the bottom floor won’t flood and short-circuit the generator, change the lightbulb every time one burns out, and repair the engine that rotates the light when it also stops. It’s a stressful stormy night! This one is fun, and I thought it was a good thing that you could zoom out to see the whole place at once to keep track of what you must work on. Great-looking sprite art, too.

We're so devoted to the job, we'll even try selling to your dog!

This Call May Be Recorded: You’re a new telemarketer/scam caller annoying people over the phone. Gameplay is split in two parts. The first part has you click the “Stop” button and trying to land into the blue areas over a green bar. The more successful hits you get, the more annoying your pitch is to the person called. They respond with spite, and the second part has you blocking the words from your ears by clicking where they’re coming from: Up, down, left or right. Five callees, with an increasing difficulty level. The last one is GREAT. Loved that game.

A spider in the bathroom. Someone sampling the
wines for free. The homeless guy at the door.
Truly, even for monsters, retail is Hell.

Vampire Night Shift: Designed to also work on Game Boy emulators. You play a vampire who works a night shift at a store. Help the rude customers, stock the shelves, and deal with other supernatural events. Your boss tells you early on to do everything to avoid getting fired, but that never comes up again, as far as I know – though I do suspect some events can happen differently based on your actions. Fun one, I liked it. I love the GB aesthetic, it’s cozy nostalgia.

Akuto: Showdown (formerly, Akuto: Mad World): An isometric multiplayer game (with extra options for single player) where your character must kill every other character in the arena. You can move in eight directions, throw your sword at opponents and NPC enemies alike, try to kill more than you get killed. There seems to be a whole bunch of different environments to fight in, and hazards to encounter, but I lost interest real fast when the NPC and hazards turned out too good against the player.

There's chonk, then there's C H O N K.

Fat Bear Week: A bear awakens for the yearly bingeing before going back to sleep. The bear starts off normal, but after eating enough it’ll turn round and roll around the stage to eat, then keep growing as it eats more. Each stage has a special flower hidden in it, and keeps track of how many of each kind of edible item you caught. There are five bears available, the last of which is unlocked only by eating everything in each of the three stages. This is harmless and easy enough, and I could see this as a quick game for younger kids.

Laser Paddles: Pong, with powerups and lasers! And by lasers, I mean it; the CPU paddle is programmed to shoot as soon as it can, tearing holes into yours. There are lots of powerups on the screen, and those cause balls to bounce around the screen with various effects. There are multiple balls, but all that matters is which side the last ball gets through. Tons of modes that switch up gameplay, possibility for multiplayer, etc. It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s exactly what it set out to do, so it’s fine.

This game gets hard fast, AND both the bounce mechanics
and hitboxes are kinda wonky. Nothing to help our pumpkin...

Pumpking: A platformer in which you control a pumpkin along a lengthy continuous stage still split into levels for simplicity. Stomp on opponents, or jump even higher by bouncing on their heads; collect coins, extra hearts, and later down the line, look for keys to unlock the path going down. Nothing too groundbreaking, just a decent quick thing with a Halloween theme. Though I did think the bouncing ability was hit or miss, and that some sections were a little cheap here and there.

And... that's all for now! Might not seem like much, but over three articles, I covered exactly 80 games. Proper long reviews will be coming up soon!

Year Plans 2024: What I've Missed

Last year, I made a list like this, going over all the games I had planned to cover during the year but didn’t; that meant playing roughly an hour of each of them, and collecting my “first impressions” (by default of not having enough time to play through their entirety, like I try to for regular reviews) into a single article.

I thought I had done poorly this year, but no – when compared to 2023, where I had 14 games I hadn’t played through, this time around I have 17, which… yeah, it’s more, but it’s not that much more. It’s unfortunate that I couldn’t hit my goals, but then again – I did overshoot while setting up my Year Plans. I won’t explain my method in depth, but it’s more than just “roll for a random number”. As usual, I’ll be setting this up in time for my retrospective, next week.

One thing I noticed when going back over the titles I didn’t play this year: I had a lot of RPGs in there. When I was picking these games, I also stumbled on a few two-game franchises and put the whole franchise in there to make it simple. So yeah, I had a lot of stuff to check out. Opening with…

The variety

Wait till they toss in bugs! And fire! And MORE!

Starting with a funny puzzle game (that I had almost forgotten about!), Girls Like Robots is a creation of Popcannibal. In this game from 2014, we seat girls, robots, nerds and various other characters (with the loadout changing at every chapter) to reach as much happiness as possible. Girls love to sit next to robots, but a robot cannot stand being surrounded by four girls. Nerds like edges, corners, and robots, but girls don’t like them. Girls and nerds like pie, but robots don’t! New requests, character interactions, and rules get added regularly to shake things up. It’s fun, and gets surprisingly tricky even an hour in.

Quick Review: The Darkness II

He's condensed 90's edge.

I usually open on a quip, but this one I need to explain: The Darkness is a comic book series originally written by Garth Ennis under Top Cow Productions, a partner studio of Image Comics. This franchise, which has one of the most basic names ever, follows Jackie Estacado, a young mafia hitman who, on his 21st birthday, becomes the host of an ancient Eldritch entity known as The Darkness, which grants him a vast array of powers, including summoning imp-like demons. He’s stuck with the abomination until it gets what it wants from him, which doesn’t stop him from using its family-unfriendly powers in the best way he can manage. That is, VERY anti-heroically.

The franchise began in comics, but also had two games, the second of which I’m covering today. Developed by Digital Extremes, published by 2K and released to Steam on February 9th, 2012, this is a sequel to a first The Darkness game released in 2007.

Well! A dinner and a show!

I never played the first game, but a helpful catch-up intro explains its events: When the Franchetti family, which Jackie worked for, went after him because of the Darkness and killed his love Jenny, he rampaged through them and killed their head, taking that throne for himself. For two years, he keeps the entity dormant, but on a regular night at the restaurant, he is ambushed by a dangerous group and must call his demons into action.

You don't wanna know what the demon arms are gonna do
to that guy we just grabbed.

Lots of controls here. This is a shooting game with all that implies (shoot at enemies, grab guns, reload firearms, take cover), but the Darkness has its own set of abilities and mechanics. Using Q, your Mock-Venom arms can grab items and throw them at attackers (you can even grab the attackers themselves when they’re stunned), take their guns from afar, and even slash using the mouse wheel. The Darkness regenerates Jackie’s health over time, and we usually have an imp-demon by our side as well.

Killing enemies awards points, with more gained for creative kills. You spend those points in a skill tree, first unlocking the ability to eat the hearts of those you murder to regain health, and only getting more dangerous from there. The entity’s weakness is light; in well-lit places, its powers are nullified. In those situations, you can destroy whatever creates light around you to regain these abilities.

As a mafiosi, you can never have enough bullets.

He's like the grandpa with a hit count in the hundreds we
all wished we had brown up with.

In-between action missions, we come back to the luxurious manor and catch up with the mafiosi working under Jackie. And among many cinematic moments in the game, our protagonist (it would be difficult to call him a hero) is plagued by visions of his love Jenny, with him still suffering from her loss. All this while he investigates leads on the restaurant hit, which takes him to a cult strangely tied to the Darkness...

When the guns aren't enough, there's always the option to
throw a fucking gas container at the enemy's head.

In case the bloody fates you inflict on enemies weren’t a hint, this is an M-rated game. It’s got dark mature themes, and the comedy goes exactly where you’d expect. Your imp pisses on corpses. Characters casually talk about violence and sex, occasionally at the same time. We even visit a brothel as part of a mission. It would be charitable to say this story has shades of grey; more like shades of black, as actual good characters are mighty rare here. It’s a raw, disturbing story; consider yourself warned. That said, if you like cinematic storytelling, you’re going to find a decent amount of it here.

I'm not great at first-person shooters. However, I appreciate that this one has variety by including such a wide array of unlockable abilities, powers and means to kill enemies. It also means that enemies are plentiful and, therefore, you need to get good at using all these powers if you want to survive.

These villains are smart enough to bring in guys with big
lights on the field to weaken the Darkness.
Jackie and Alan Wake would totally get along. /s

I ran into a few issues of my own: I struggled to use the arm slice attack on specific targets. I got stuck in a vent – thankfully that could be solved by looking for a fix online. Ammo can be tricky; Jackie can carry up to 4 guns (and dual-wield), but when he picks up a new gun, he tosses away the old one, which lies around even without ammo so you may end up in situations where it’s hard to find guns with ammo, instead grabbing empty ones you threw away before. If you want to explore, there’s an extra goal in finding every Relic, which comes with heaps of worldbuilding, and there are extra missions known as the Vendettas to try out.

Another annoying enemy is this whip guy, who literally
whips the guns away from your hands. Real fun when you
need to put bullets in people. Good thing you have demon arms.

I liked this one just fine, enough to finish it at least, and though I don’t know whether I’ll touch it again, I can say I at least had a good time with it. If FPSs are your jam, though this one’s a bit on the short end, it might provide enough of a twist on the classic formula to be worth checking out.

The Darkness II is available on Steam for 29.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Tower of Guns

That’s a lotta guns.

Lotta guns, and now a lotta enemies.

Developed by Terrible Posture Games, published by Versus Evil and released on March 4th, 2014, Tower of Guns is an attempt at combining three genres: First-person shooter, Roguelike, and shmup (sort of, for that last one). Its story is fairly simple: A mysterious tower filled with robots and weapons appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a village. What happens next in the plot? Doesn’t really matter, it’s randomized. What matters is that you must try to reach the top of the tower.

The game plays like a roguelike: You destroy enemies, finish the rooms, and collect upgrades to your stats. At the end of a level, you fight a boss, then move on to the next level. Before starting a run, you pick a weapon among those unlocked, then you can choose a perk that changes some details about the character. The first perk available allows you to jump in midair twice, the other cancels fall damage. You will see new rooms on each playthrough, per the randomized nature of roguelikes. The game keeps track of your number of deaths, upgrades collected, items found across playthroughs, and so on. On a playthrough, you can find coins to unlock new items; collect red orbs to replenish your health; blue orbs that counts as EXP for your gun, which increases in power as it levels up (getting hit will decrease its EXP, however); and so on.

Kill the turrets, too! Yeah, you can do that,
they're destructible.

The difference is that, unlike a lot of roguelikes, you play in first person, aiming at enemies and shooting to kill them. The shmup part comes from the sheer number of enemies that can attack at once. Several of those enemies are turrets that you can destroy as well. The boss at the end of each level even has a health bar! Unlike a regular roguelike, this game is split into proper levels instead of having a continuous world to explore (thus limiting exploration a bit), but the feel is close enough.

I’ll give it that, the game tries to have a lot of variety in weapons and settings – since any combo of gun + perk is possible, all sorts of crazy setups can be achieved. Notably, it includes a handful of weapons with very peculiar effects, such as one that gets weaker the higher in level it gets. One issue, however, may be that as your character’s stats increase, they may become difficult to control – with a speed too high far into the game, as an example.

This thing is quite literally trying to crash into me!

Okay, it looks like I might have a chance against
this one boss...

I personally can’t say I was wowed by what I experienced, but I can see why it’d be addictive for some. Randomization, a large choice of starting combinations, and a lot of secrets to discover – that’s the formula that helps make roguelikes so popular and replayable. I’ve tried a few (Quest of Dungeons in this set of Quick Reviews, I also spent a few hours playing The Binding of Isaac), and I can safely say I felt more at ease with the usual bird’s eye view than in first person. Doesn’t make the game any easier, but it’s simpler to deal with threats coming from all sides in bird’s eye view. I at least appreciate the attempt at putting that spin on the genre. As I’ve learned during writing, first-person roguelikes aren’t common but there’s still quite a few out there.

Okay, this is a bit intense even by FPS standards.

The other issue with roguelikes is that you need to spend a lot of time playing one to really have a good feel of the entire game. In spite of that, I’ve seen the wide variety of options before starting a run, including guns that are mechanically different. The “plot”, also randomized at every run, tends to be pretty silly. Several rooms and enemies are creative, and per the genre, you’ll see new places, enemies and bosses on every run.

I don’t really have a bad opinion of it, though I don’t know if I’ll play more – although it’s fun, it didn’t do a lot to stick out in my mind, and the high number of enemies coupled with my lack of skill in first-person made this game pretty tough for me to play. Still, if that combination intrigues you, do give it a look.

Tower of Guns is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD, currently on sale with 70% off at 4.99$.

Also note that, due to the late release of this review, there won't be a review on Friday; instead, the last two reviews of this set will be posted next week.