Good news, I got the platinum on grass cutter without too many hairs pulled from my head, I thought you should know. Anyway, here's some more games from the sale that is now over, but best to know what's been missed, though people could just pay full price.
I WANT TO BE HUMAN
After a whole post without 2D platformers, both the most frequently appearing genre in budget titles and of course my favourite, they return. I want to be human is one of those intentionally super tough games like Super Meat Boy or Celeste but without the quick checkpoints, speedy game play and many more cheap deaths. You get a life bar and a gun to shoot your way through the levels. the first world is actually pretty fun and challenging (with very easy bosses, yay), but then you get to world 2 and the difficulty spike is so sharp that it might take your eye out. Suddenly there are laser beams, hidden spikes, bombs, turrets, death pits and more absolutely everywhere (plus all the enemies shooting you that seem like an unnecessary nuisance when trying to get the platforming just right) and the long checkpoints means you'll need to do a near perfect run to get through, which makes this game a hell of a grind. I have long since known and said that platformers with a weapon are never as good as pure platformers like the ones mentioned above or of course, the 2 infamous Icons of this genre, Bubsy the Bobcat and Aero the Acro-Bat. That means this is already a 'lesser than' game in my eyes even before I wanted to put my controller through the television. On the plus side though I absolutely love the art style and the music is pretty good, it's just a shame that the character has to shout 'ow' in the voice of a 5 year old girl every time you take damage, which as mentioned, is a lot. If, like me, you like challenging platformers, it may be for you, depending on the amount of gamer rage you get. Overall I paid less than £1, and the first world was fairly good, which means I'm gonna give it a 5/10. I could try and 'get gud' but I can't be bothered.
MOTHER RUSSIA BLEEDS
We got a brawler here. This one is a classic brawler game (like Streets of Rage (there will be many comparisons coming up), walking around the screen, beating people up, you know the drill. Set in Russia, the plot obviously involves drugs, slums and governmental conspiracy, as that happens 24/7 over there. After being abducted from your slum, as one of 4 swappable characters you have to figure out the source of the drugs that have broke down your home slum. There's a few interesting mechanics here. Your life is restored by using the drug, which you refill by draining from dead enemies plus there are also other uses for the drug, the primary one being a berserk mode which lets you instantly execute enemies. There are other types of drugs to unlock in the arena mode (arenas you unlock throughout the game which is a horde mode that I didn't bother with (there's too many games to get through)) but personally I found this to be a waste of the resource that was much better used on the health benefits (like crystal meth). The game also supplies a different way to implement lives (certainly different to SOR4 anyway (or indeed, any Streets of Rage)). Instead of the traditional method of having a certain amount of lives at the start of the level whereby losing them means you have to restart the whole level, there's only 1 life but with checkpoints. It makes each fight tougher as one death means restarting from a checkpoint, but not as frustrating as having to start the whole level over again. I approve of this change. It's got one of my favourite differences too, loads of blood and gore, always fun to see. It's not perfect though, certainly the most annoying thing to me is the hitboxes, where I often found myself missing punches because I was a slight millimeter off the enemy and felt like every enemy character was living as a 2d character in a 3D plane. Guns are the other annoyance to me, sure, it's good to pick them up and wipe out all the enemies but no so good when a character comes off screen wielding a fire arm that you have a split second to notice, let alone react to and pops a cap in yo' face a couple of times which kills you. Overall though, this is a very good brawler, with a decent story to boot, I can highly recommend this one, and if, like me, you enjoy a good retro style brawler, this is for you. I'm not sure it's quite as good as SOR4 (though that is aided by a nostalgic edge), but MRB certainly runs it close. 9/10. Oh, there's also up to 4 player local co-op, which would be good if I had any friends.
SUPER BLOOD HOCKEY
Like Golazo! before, we're back to an arcade sports game, and another pretty entertaining one. Now, as an Englishman I know very little about Ice hockey, my only real experience being from NHL 2k7, which I enjoyed quite a lot. This is nothing like that other than it's the same sport (so I guess it's kinda like that). A side on 16 bit style game that is more to do with bashing the opposing team about than actually scoring. A lot of the focus on this game is the brawls, which will leads to injuries to the brawls losing team, some temporary that they soon recover from, some disabling that take them out of the rest of the match and some fatal, meaning in certain modes that player is gone forever (also, it too has a lot of blood, another plus). Although it's a fun game to play, franchise mode is where it gets good (though it's no master league). After getting your kidney harvested to start up your franchise (I Believe that's the American term for sports team (I don't know why, they're not opening up a McDonalds) you have to build your squad from a selection of players, which you can add to over time when you get the cash, and you will need to. These players can then be improved through performances in game and training, as well as changing their diets to increase/ decrease their weight (no I can't actually tell what difference that makes) and buying illegal drugs from the dealer in the back alley. The thing really to watch is brain damage, the higher it gets, the more likely to get injuries in a game, and the more chance they get a disabling injury to leave them unavailable for a while (and you have to pay their health bill, or you can pull the plug on them and cash in oth the compensation) or indeed fatal injuries, removing them forever. You can set them to train on losing the brain damage but I find it never really keeps up with how much is received during matches, which leads to you needing a squad so you can rest your better players up to recover. This game isn't perfect though with a couple of gripes that often run amok in these arcade style sports game. Firstly, the AI team mates don't seem to know what's going on at all, I'm pretty sure I know more about Hockey than they do as they wander out of formation constantly and their positioning when your on the puck (is that the term, like one the ball?) is useless as it seems by far the best chance to get a goal is to square it across goal but frequently your team mates will come and stand right next to you, which offers no help at all. The other issue is the player swapping, it can often be infuriating trying to get control of the right player when trying to defend, leaving the team susceptible to conceded goals, this seems to be a common issue in these cheaper arcade sports games. I did like this game and might even go back and play it again (though I never did with Golazo! after thinking the same thing) and try to retain my franchise crown (and maybe turn it up from easy mode). 8/10.
SNAKEY BUS
Time to hit the streets in the fastest thing on 4 wheels, a bus! This is a cross between Crazy Taxi and Snake, and it comes together very well. As a bus you travel from stop to stop, gaining points and extra carriages as you pick up passengers. The objective, to survive as long as you can. The game is not quite as punishing as Snake, as you can hit other parts of the bus going round and round the map, but when you get stuck, or depending on the level, fall off the edge, it's all over. The bus flies around at high speeds and the bus jump high into the air, as all busses should. You have to plan your route if you want to score high so the challenge is not only in driving around but thinking both ahead of time and on the fly to keep yourself going. I really enjoyed it and the enticement of yet another platinum trophy kept me going. This time it's not an easy one, but also not the hardest, perseverance will pay off, assuming you actually gain skill at playing the game, like how all games work. Because of this shiny carrott at the end of the stick, it made me care about high scores for the first time since Geometry Wars 2. There is a lifespan on this game as there's only a handful of different areas and bus types, but it is great fun while it lasts. Certainly worth a few hours of time. 8/10
Some good games this time, which makes a nice change, maybe I've learned after all this time that the best games aren't the ones where you get a platinum trophy after less than an hour, but are actually good enough to not get fed up of them after barely any time has passed, with extras to keep you coming back. Who knew? Anyway, still more games to go, this ain't over yet.
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