Silverhand
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Discord: Silverhand#7777
Join my server! Active games discussion and regular server events with some chill people - https://discord.gg/BTdeFnZMH9
Join my server! Active games discussion and regular server events with some chill people - https://discord.gg/BTdeFnZMH9
Badges
Gone Gold
Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page
Adored
Gained 300+ total review likes
GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
Listed
Created 10+ public lists
Trend Setter
Gained 50+ followers
Organized
Created a list folder with 5+ lists
Shreked
Found the secret ogre page
Well Written
Gained 10+ likes on a single review
Loved
Gained 100+ total review likes
Clearin your Calendar
Journaled games at least 15 days a month over a year
Roadtrip
Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap
Best Friends
Follow and be followed by at least 3 others
Donor
Liked 50+ reviews / lists
Busy Day
Journaled 5+ games in a single day
2 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years
GOTY '21
Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event
Full-Time
Journaled games once a day for a month straight
Epic Gamer
Played 1000+ games
On Schedule
Journaled games once a day for a week straight
Liked
Gained 10+ total review likes
GOTY '20
Participated in the 2020 Game of the Year Event
Popular
Gained 15+ followers
Elite Gamer
Played 500+ games
Gamer
Played 250+ games
N00b
Played 100+ games
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
Favorite Games
1393
Total Games Played
091
Played in 2023
447
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Revisiting this after 10+ years was a pretty weird experience, but a fun one overall. For a lot of the runtime I was thinking it was just okay, movement was nothing to write home about and the combat is pretty basic aside from the 2.5D aiming mechanics, but it really gets fun towards the end with all of the powerups you get. Your superpowered state in the end game is one of the best in the genre, up there with Super Metroid. Then the game just kind of ends abruptly, with a lackluster boss fight (as most of the bosses in the game are). That kind of killed my motivation to get 100%, which I was on board for with how fun it had gotten over the last hour or so. I think the pacing of powerups here could have been a lot better if it was more gradual and they gave you some of these upgrades earlier, and the game could have been a bit longer than it is. It's a shame they never made a second one of these because it's a really solid foundation.
Iji is one of the most ambitious games of this size that I've seen, especially for coming out back in 2008. Made almost entirely by one person, this is basically an action platformer/immersive sim, which is a combination I don't know that I've seen before. There are different approaches to combat and exploration depending on how you spec out your character's stats, from handling different types of weaponry, to strength based melee builds, hacking (which is actually a pretty cool stealth-ish playstyle where you can hack enemy weapons), or just becoming a tank so you can run through everything. I did a mostly strength focused build (though I got enough levels to try out a bit of everything by the end) and went full lethal, although pacifist runs seem to have been considered as at least a mostly viable option, and there are parts in the story that seem to reflect that choice.
All of that stuff is cool and very ambitious, and it more or less works, but it does come with some downsides. The controls are very stiff, particularly only being able to attack while standing. You often want to crouch behind cover or jump over attacks and are helpless while doing that. The enemy attack patterns, although not that interesting overall, are at least decent about this though so once you get used to it it's not so bad. It just all feels very weird and like a modern game or a remake of this would do things differently. It's also not a great looking game. You're going to be looking at some low res programmer art characters against very basic and repetitive backgrounds for nearly the entire game, and some people aren't going to be into it because of that.
The balancing is also strange. Playing on the normal difficulty early on I was expecting it to get kind of tedious (though it hadn't yet) with the awkward controls and sprawling levels, but it never really did. I think part of this is because you get really, really overpowered by the end if you're collecting the maximum amount of XP per level. You're limited to leveling up 5 times in each zone, and while I get the reason for the cap with you already being able to become overpowered even with that, it feels like it should have just been balanced better without an artificial cap in place. That being said, being overpowered was pretty fun and the awkwardness of the game might have gotten more in the way if it was more difficult. I haven't tried the other difficulties so I can't really speak to those, but they seem like pretty straightforward numerical changes.
The writing is equally ambitious as the gameplay design, but less successful at achieving its goals. There's an absolute ton of lore and background info in text logs you find throughout the game, but there's also some pretty important info in these, which led to me skimming a whole lot. It could definitely use some editing down. The dialogue and narrative feel amateur at a lot of points but at least they're trying for something interesting and make an effort to tie into your choices throughout the game.
It's a weird game with a lot of drawbacks, and I wouldn't blame someone for not being able to get into it, but it's also just so ambitious and cool for what it is, and I haven't seen anything else quite like it.
This is a perfectly fine game. The first person platforming is simple but fun enough, it introduces all of the mechanics fairly quickly and I guess they're used decently, though it never gets very challenging. The story is just... there. It didn't evoke much emotion or interest, but wasn't actively bad. It's held back some by the voice acting and character animations feeling very stiff. I can admire going for what they did on a lower budget, many games just wouldn't show you the characters directly or communicate only through text as a way around this. I dunno, this is okay but also isn't very well done here. The highlight of the game is definitely the environmental design and art. The areas were really nice looking, pretty diverse for a short game, and fun to move through. It's hard to think of who I'd recommend this to, because it doesn't really excel at much, but if it seems interesting to you it's not bad and it's fairly short to play through.