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Articles by Ket

  1. World of Goo - Final Thoughts

    World of Goo is a bridge building game with a frustrating twist; that twist being that your building material is a jelly like ‘goo’. Everything bends and sways as you build your way to the pipe at the end of the level making for some truly interesting puzzles. The art in the game is charming, and unlike its brother game Little Inferno each new level feels fun and fresh and in no way monotonous. The game will keep you interested for a good 6 hours and is defiantly worth playing. A positive, charming and fun take on the typical bridge building style game.

    On another note the game is showing its age on PC in undesirable ways. Having had its release almost 10 years ago in late 2008 the antialiasing is lacklustre and the game can only be played either full screen (I guess 40+ inch monitors weren’t common back in 2008, and it wasn’t such a daunting thing to see.) or a tiny tiny window ( I guess great resolutions screens weren’t a thing either). The game is also available on Android and IOS and even the Nintendo Switch. As these are much more recent releases it might be worth playing on those platforms for a smoother experience.

  2. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - Final Thoughts

    This game was not as great at the first and nothing about it stood out. The dialogue is uninteresting and over-done, the levels are unpolished and at times buggy and it generally feels clunky. The first game, though simpler, was much better. The story follows various characters though their psychotic killing sprees. The game ends after the Russian president is killed triggering a nuclear blast killing the characters we have been following. Meh. The game was nothing special however as a redeeming feature there is a level editor, allowing for some real cool fan made levels to be produced and endless Hotline Miami action.

  3. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number - First Thoughts

    It becomes immediately apparent when you first start playing Hotline Miami 2 that the production quality is much higher than the first game. There is much more animation, including environments with balls that can be kicked around and computers that break when hit by a bullet. All the art is much more refined and there is more to offer in the way of weapon options plus a beautiful menu and general haze over the display that apply similar imperfections that you would find on an old VHS tape, and its beautiful. So far I can’t say that these changes have proved their worth in the game; part of the beauty of the first game was the simplicity. Gun play does feel worse in this game, but that could just be due to me jumping straight in from the first game where guns are much more accurate and I just need to get used to things being slightly different.

    So far I have just played the first act, and there is already much more in the way of story than we are ever presented with in the first game. The tutorial is very gory and ends in a gross **** scene, however it is quickly revealed that you are just on the set of an adult movie, and nobody was really hurt at all. The first act is presented as some sort of cop movie, however there are blurred lines between what is a movie and what could actually be the ‘director’ having some sort of psychotic eppisode. This is shown first when the character is in some sort of interview talking about the movie, but ends up killing the interviewer. This possible insanity is again shown when the character is being interviewed by the police and is asking the police if they are going to answer the phone ringing in front of them, which coincidentally is similar to the phones and voicemail systems that the Hotline Miami 1 characters use to receive their strange messages and conduct their mysterious calls. When the interviewee brings up the fact the phone is rining the police officer says that there is no phone and the game hints to the character being unstable. I am certainly intrigued at this point to say the least and look forward to playing more.

  4. Hotline Miami: Additional Thoughts

    So it turns out that wasnYou had fun didn. You jump on a bike and drive on an endless road as the credits roll again. A strange way to wrap up the story and I am not sure I have an opinion on that extra bit of story after the first credit roll whether it is good or bad - but okay, it is simply self-referential. Maybe I will find out more in the second game! Hotline Miami is still a great game and still very much worth playing.

  5. Hotline Miami: Final Thoughts

    A great top down shooter. Fast paced without rushing you. I am not sure on what the story is supposed to be. The whole game you go around executing people you are told to kill from some unknown voicemail messages, until you are put in hospital, you execute some police to find the person that tried to kill you, who tells you they were getting the same messages. You steal a police file with information who was killing you then you go to the club which is the headquarters for the people telling you what to do. You kill the leaders of this gang (Police files referred to it as a Russian Gang) and you drop a photograph before it fades to black.

    TLDR; Vague story, great top down shooter. Well worth playing.

  6. Event[0]/Final Thoughts

    I jumped into this game after spotting it on my Steam library – it turns out I got it in a Humble Bundle a while back. The cover image showed a terminal and it looked interesting. Jumping into the game you have a lengthy period of time where you are waiting for short sentences to appear on the screen. I was intrigued so overlooked it, and I suppose that it was a failed attempt to build suspense. After the text you reach a ship, and you get a terminal with some pretend AI. I love these AI things, however the AI in this game instantly felt shallow and didn’t have responses to many words at all. When attempting to run commands such as ‘ls’ in this terminal it says something along the lines of ‘good for you for knowing these commands but please just talk like a human’. Not so easy when that speech is so limited but okay, it is a story telling technique. Once these small annoyances were overlooked and the bounds of this universe were found I started really getting into the game and a story starts to develop. Then it just stops. You solve a couple of ‘puzzles’ (I use that word loosely. With the puzzles in this game it feels it is more of a case of finding something hidden then actually solving something.), you get to the bridge of the ship and the game just ends. I played every ending of the game just to make sure I wasn’t just ending it prematurely for myself and no, that's it. Its very disappointing. They built the foundations of that could be a very interesting game and story but there isn’t really anything more than those foundations.

    TLDR; It feels as if you are served a hot chocolate with cream. You eat the cream with a spoon and get hyped for what is to come only to find there is nothing under the cream. No hot chocolate. A cool concept for a game that turns out to be very shallow, short and disappointing. Getting it as part of a Humble Bundle I’m not too bothered but I wouldn’t bother going out of your way to spend money on this game. (And I certainly would never want to pay the £15 asking price!) Watching the credits for the game reveals that it is ‘based on’ a student project.. If it was advertised as a student project rather than a game it would be awesome - a student project is all it should ever have been. Good on those guys.

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