Reviews for games that aren't on backloggd
This list is what it says on the tin. Sometimes for whatever reason a game isn't on backloggd - I still wanted to be able to record some general thoughts when I play them, so that's where this list comes in!
0 Games
5 Comments
Scrabble (this started as a facebook app, then became a mobile app, and no longer exists AFAIK)
1/2 star
Why is it so hard to make a proper functional Scrabble game?! Words With Friends didn’t work at all because it arbitrarily changed the point values and board setup and destroyed the balance of the original game in the process; but I suppose they had no choice with that because they didn’t own the copyright and therefore had to create a “Totally Not Scrabble!” app. The official Scrabble app (from Mattel, no less!) has absolutely no excuse.
Back when the app was functional, most online reviews savaged it for its obnoxiously-long unskippable ads that would sometimes crash the game... but I was prepared to look past that to get my Scrabble fix. What I could not look past was the asinine way the app handled online games against random opponents. When you play an online game, the app allows you to leave a game with no penalty as long as you haven’t made a move yet. If you’re thinking “hey, doesn’t this mean I can savescum my opening hand?” then congratulations, you hit on the strategy used by virtually everyone who played Scrabble on this app. As I went up in rank, nearly every single opponent I played against would use a bingo on their opening move, and this made a nice clean proper game of Scrabble basically impossible to play.
The worst part about this is that it was really easy to solve – just have the app count it as a loss when you forfeit in the first turn. Or make the player who leaves a game wait a few minutes to start a new one to make it harder to cheat. But instead of these simple solutions, the devs released completely useless cosmetic upgrades while the cheaters burnt the game to the ground.
I’m still salty about this – if anyone knows somewhere I can get a nice asynchronous game of Scrabble going, do let me know!
1/2 star
Why is it so hard to make a proper functional Scrabble game?! Words With Friends didn’t work at all because it arbitrarily changed the point values and board setup and destroyed the balance of the original game in the process; but I suppose they had no choice with that because they didn’t own the copyright and therefore had to create a “Totally Not Scrabble!” app. The official Scrabble app (from Mattel, no less!) has absolutely no excuse.
Back when the app was functional, most online reviews savaged it for its obnoxiously-long unskippable ads that would sometimes crash the game... but I was prepared to look past that to get my Scrabble fix. What I could not look past was the asinine way the app handled online games against random opponents. When you play an online game, the app allows you to leave a game with no penalty as long as you haven’t made a move yet. If you’re thinking “hey, doesn’t this mean I can savescum my opening hand?” then congratulations, you hit on the strategy used by virtually everyone who played Scrabble on this app. As I went up in rank, nearly every single opponent I played against would use a bingo on their opening move, and this made a nice clean proper game of Scrabble basically impossible to play.
The worst part about this is that it was really easy to solve – just have the app count it as a loss when you forfeit in the first turn. Or make the player who leaves a game wait a few minutes to start a new one to make it harder to cheat. But instead of these simple solutions, the devs released completely useless cosmetic upgrades while the cheaters burnt the game to the ground.
I’m still salty about this – if anyone knows somewhere I can get a nice asynchronous game of Scrabble going, do let me know!
Shining Force II Battle Royale (Romhack of Shining Force II)
★ ★ ★ 1/2
Oddly, while I think this does a lot of things better than the base game, I’m scoring it half a star lower. Let’s start with what it does well: very cool diverse cast of characters, great difficulty curve, and some really excellent map design. This is a great synthesis of the strengths of Shining Force 1 and 2 – the pure “whoa this is cool” factor of SF1 married to the more refined mechanics and balance of SF2.
Where it suffers a bit is in the lack of free-roaming RPG sections which give the mainline entries its unique charm, and the fact that the elven town maps exist. The fact that there are two battles in a row where not only the enemies but even the path you are supposed to take are obscured from view is just obnoxious and is always nearly enough to kill my playthrough there and then.
Nevertheless, I think this is a great ROMhack that any fan of the original should try at least once.
★ ★ ★ 1/2
Oddly, while I think this does a lot of things better than the base game, I’m scoring it half a star lower. Let’s start with what it does well: very cool diverse cast of characters, great difficulty curve, and some really excellent map design. This is a great synthesis of the strengths of Shining Force 1 and 2 – the pure “whoa this is cool” factor of SF1 married to the more refined mechanics and balance of SF2.
Where it suffers a bit is in the lack of free-roaming RPG sections which give the mainline entries its unique charm, and the fact that the elven town maps exist. The fact that there are two battles in a row where not only the enemies but even the path you are supposed to take are obscured from view is just obnoxious and is always nearly enough to kill my playthrough there and then.
Nevertheless, I think this is a great ROMhack that any fan of the original should try at least once.
Brad: the Game (Browser-based, playable on http://www.bradthegame.com)
★ ★ ★ ★
Bradford Powell Jr, an over-the-hill stoner living in his family’s basement, is the unlikely star of this browser-based choose-your-own-adventure. Despite being the kind of loser who would enter a competition for losers and come in second, he is surprisingly relatable in some ways (though I hope no one here has the hots for their niece’s underage friend) – who hasn’t felt the urge to just goof off with their best friend and live from moment to moment?
And that moment-to-moment living is what leads to a CYOA with the largest range of scenarios you can find yourself in; from mundane stuff like a fight over a stolen diary to more outlandish stuff like joining the navy, travelling through time, becoming a superhero with fart powers and actually having sex with a woman. All this is wrapped up in a dense web of lore – everything including the mulch pile in the backyard has some lore attached to it completely unironically. It’s one of my favorite types of humor – where really ridiculous stuff is presented perfectly straight and a whole narrative is built around it. I know this sort of humor isn’t the kind that would be a hit with everyone, but this is a nice diversion that anyone should try – even if you hate it, you only wasted about a minute or two.
★ ★ ★ ★
Bradford Powell Jr, an over-the-hill stoner living in his family’s basement, is the unlikely star of this browser-based choose-your-own-adventure. Despite being the kind of loser who would enter a competition for losers and come in second, he is surprisingly relatable in some ways (though I hope no one here has the hots for their niece’s underage friend) – who hasn’t felt the urge to just goof off with their best friend and live from moment to moment?
And that moment-to-moment living is what leads to a CYOA with the largest range of scenarios you can find yourself in; from mundane stuff like a fight over a stolen diary to more outlandish stuff like joining the navy, travelling through time, becoming a superhero with fart powers and actually having sex with a woman. All this is wrapped up in a dense web of lore – everything including the mulch pile in the backyard has some lore attached to it completely unironically. It’s one of my favorite types of humor – where really ridiculous stuff is presented perfectly straight and a whole narrative is built around it. I know this sort of humor isn’t the kind that would be a hit with everyone, but this is a nice diversion that anyone should try – even if you hate it, you only wasted about a minute or two.
Shining Force Alternate (Romhack of Shining Force)
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Instead of going at length about what this Romhack changes, I’ll just pick out two instances that serve as microcosms of why I like it. Firstly – the Shade Abbey battle. The base game establishes zombies and skeletons as enemies that are extremely durable and hit like trucks, so when you face a horde of them in close-quarters it’s a harrowing experience. SFA takes a different approach here – zombies are actually pretty weak, but the battle has a boss-that’s-not-a-boss in the form of three flying spirits who can cast Desoul (an instant death spell) with a high level of accuracy. The spirits are a real threat because the map is small enough that they can reach you on the first turn, and it’s flavorful because once they manage to take out even one of your characters the zombies start to seem like a real threat because of their superior numbers. This battle feels absolutely unique compared to any in the base game (which mostly fall into the ‘kill some enemies and reach a strong boss at the end’ structure) but also fits right into the core Shining Force experience which I’d characterize as “casual strategy”. KO’ed units can be revived between battles for a low cost, so high-octane battles with lots of casualties on both sides work really well here.
The other interesting point is an ambush in SFA, where in the base game the battle occurs at a later time. Obviously it makes for a nice shock for players familiar with the original, but the reason it works is because SFA only gives you 12 playable characters (the size of your active party) and thus you have no need to switch characters in and out. With no need to go to headquarters to prep your party, your enemy can do the in-character thing and attack your party early without softlocking you by giving you no prep time.
All the changes and additional content is obviously made by a fan who knows the game inside and out and is expertly able to not only rebalance the game to account for the changes but to enhance the experience through novel map design and unexpected twists. And while the more fleshed-out script also takes a lot of liberties with the original, I love how every major character can still be found in SFA albeit in different roles, and I enjoyed beating the crap out of one particular annoying party member who actually has a villain role here!
This is a gold-standard ROMhack, and I rate it much higher than the many ‘hard-mode’ hacks of Shining Force games that seem to miss the point of what Shining Force is. Possibly the only thing standing between this and a five-star rating is the fact that the (very colorful!) cast of characters are a bit too versatile, with nearly every character having some form of ranged attack and buff, to really stand out from a gameplay perspective. Also, having only enough playable characters to fill the active party means that this is more a one-and-done experience rather than something I can play many times with different party configurations. Still, well worth playing and possibly my favorite Romhack yet!
★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
Instead of going at length about what this Romhack changes, I’ll just pick out two instances that serve as microcosms of why I like it. Firstly – the Shade Abbey battle. The base game establishes zombies and skeletons as enemies that are extremely durable and hit like trucks, so when you face a horde of them in close-quarters it’s a harrowing experience. SFA takes a different approach here – zombies are actually pretty weak, but the battle has a boss-that’s-not-a-boss in the form of three flying spirits who can cast Desoul (an instant death spell) with a high level of accuracy. The spirits are a real threat because the map is small enough that they can reach you on the first turn, and it’s flavorful because once they manage to take out even one of your characters the zombies start to seem like a real threat because of their superior numbers. This battle feels absolutely unique compared to any in the base game (which mostly fall into the ‘kill some enemies and reach a strong boss at the end’ structure) but also fits right into the core Shining Force experience which I’d characterize as “casual strategy”. KO’ed units can be revived between battles for a low cost, so high-octane battles with lots of casualties on both sides work really well here.
The other interesting point is an ambush in SFA, where in the base game the battle occurs at a later time. Obviously it makes for a nice shock for players familiar with the original, but the reason it works is because SFA only gives you 12 playable characters (the size of your active party) and thus you have no need to switch characters in and out. With no need to go to headquarters to prep your party, your enemy can do the in-character thing and attack your party early without softlocking you by giving you no prep time.
All the changes and additional content is obviously made by a fan who knows the game inside and out and is expertly able to not only rebalance the game to account for the changes but to enhance the experience through novel map design and unexpected twists. And while the more fleshed-out script also takes a lot of liberties with the original, I love how every major character can still be found in SFA albeit in different roles, and I enjoyed beating the crap out of one particular annoying party member who actually has a villain role here!
This is a gold-standard ROMhack, and I rate it much higher than the many ‘hard-mode’ hacks of Shining Force games that seem to miss the point of what Shining Force is. Possibly the only thing standing between this and a five-star rating is the fact that the (very colorful!) cast of characters are a bit too versatile, with nearly every character having some form of ranged attack and buff, to really stand out from a gameplay perspective. Also, having only enough playable characters to fill the active party means that this is more a one-and-done experience rather than something I can play many times with different party configurations. Still, well worth playing and possibly my favorite Romhack yet!
iyellatcloud
11 months ago
★ ★ ★
A flash-based procgen roguelike that bears a striking resemblance to the Alien Syndrome remake on PSP, this does quite a few things right. It’s remarkably well-balanced, with a plethora of different races and classes, each with their own abilities. It’s also quite addictive; loot is plentiful and heavily randomized, which means you’re constantly trying to tweak your character’s build to maximize your strengths and cover for your weaknesses everytime you find new equipment. Unfortunately, the gameplay loop is addictive because it’s predictable, and that also means it gets dull after awhile; past a certain point you will have seen everything the game has to offer and it becomes an exercise in attrition that only ends when you lose concentration and screw up, get killed due to bad luck, or just plain fall asleep. Quite decent for what it is, but ultimately rather boring.