6. Darksiders
Going again into a post-apocalyptic world, Darksiders presents the Earth being attacked all of a sudden by demons. In response, one of the Apocalyptic Horsemen, War, arrives on the battlefield, finding out that none other of his brethren has been summoned.
After getting defeated by the demons, you get back and judged for starting the ultimate war. You request a second chance that ends up being granted, getting sent back onto Earth 100 years after the last of humanity has disappeared. Your quest is split into 2 main objectives: destroy the demons and find out who called you.
Gameplay and Features
The first thing that the player will encounter will be atrociously slow movement. Fortunately, the combat system makes up to that, allowing for some pretty fast-paced attacks, lots of flips and jumps and basically being everywhere in a fight. Each kill will grant you a number of souls, used as currency to purchase new weapons, new combo attacks for each of your weapons as well as perks like extra-life.
Besides the fights, the second predominant element in Darksiders is the puzzles followed at the last by objective-oriented arena fights. The arena fights are required in order to advance further through the game.
Another nifty feature is War’s ability to get a demonic form, which deals extra damage and is all-around faster. For that, a type of soul that is yellow is needed to fill the Rage bar. The green souls will heal your character while the blue ones act as currency. Such souls can be gathered by killing enemies as aforementioned, destroying objects like chairs, tables and so on and by finding chests. The 4th type of chest contains relics, that, when all get collected, you will unlock a superior armor.
By advancing through the game you will regather your former powers that were stripped off you when you returned for the second time to the planet, like the ability to glide. The game will change combat styles once in a while from the melee fights to ranged attacks with a big machine-gun or even while riding a gryphon.
Maps and Enemies
The maps are a mixture of reality and fantastic, with parts of New York included in a few parts, while the tunnels underneath the city are definitely of fantastic nature.
The enemies are usually types that have been encountered in other games like simple grunts, semi-bosses, agile creatures and even the flying kind. Bosses will be met rather often and will require lots of times when you have to wait to attack in an exact time like, well, most of other bosses there.
Note!
It is recommended that this game should stay off the hands of extremely religious people since War takes no side and will fight anyone that opposes him and stands in front of his objective, meaning that he will not refrain from attacking angels.
Refusing to do that, War gets killed by the multitude of projectiles hurled towards him by the angels, since they also find him guilty for what happened 100 years ago (though it’s not exactly the same reason) and thus rendering you unable to continue the game.
Pros:
– Extremely well realized combat system
– Unforgiving hordes of enemies
– Well designed puzzles
– High amount of weapon attack types
Cons:
– The slow movement, though understandable due to his armor
– How can you get souls out of objects!?
Genre: ARPG, Hack’n’Slash
Price: 19.99 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
Score: 4.4/5
Similar Games: Darksiders 2
5. Hotline Miami
Hotline Miami is one of the very few games I will actually advice against teens under 15 years old due to the high amount of gore and the nature of the game.
Hotline Miami presents you a one man army with a job that literally takes care of people, with any tool that helps him to kill them. Set in the 80’s, you get anonymous calls about various ‘cleaning’ jobs that need to be done.
This game is only as fast-paced as you make it to be. You have the choice of going kamikaze on them or wait patiently and do stealth kills. But mind you that if you choose to go Rambo, you will need to be extremely precise in your attacks because the enemies will not hesitate to make a sprinkler out of you or give you a natural make-up with some blunt weapon.
Besides the fists, every other weapon is a 1 hit – 1 kill and that goes for you as well, should you be on the wrong end of the weapon. If you happen to die, you will be taken to the beginning of the level or at the checkpoint if the map has it and, of course, if you reached it.
If you take them with your fists (mind you, you will be the only one with fists), once you get them down you will have to perform a finishing move if you don’t want some surprise attack behind your back. The camera will help you greatly in planning your attacks, since it is in a top-down perspective.
There is a high variety of weapons, with more unlocked as you advance through the game. You will get to handle bats, knives, katanas and even fire guns like pistols, uzis and shotguns. The advantage of enemy consists in their dog due to its speed in both running and attacks, requiring a precise strike to take him down. Your advantage consists in the masks you gather from missions. Each mask has a certain ability whether it makes your fists stronger or allows you to run faster.
The checkpoint activates once you clear one floor of enemies and go onto the next one. When you die you will start again from the last checkpoint regardless of how far you got into the stage.
At the end of each level you will receive a grade and the total amount of points received. If the points received exceed a certain amount a new mask will be unlocked. After reaching a certain total amount of points new weapons will be unlocked.
Pros:
– High replay value
– Entertaining
– Different methods of clearing a level
– Weapon randomization at each restart
– Random pathways set for some of the enemies
Cons:
– That little rage when you finish all but 1 that has the luck of being faster than you and you have to start again.
Genre: Action, Top-down Shooter
Price: 8.49 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
4. Race the Sun
Race The Sun is one of those games that takes you less than a coffee break to finish but also one of those games in which you’re almost always going to say: just one more time.
‘You are a solar craft. The sun is your death timer.’ (I can safely add that the walls can be your death as well). That’s how the game’s description begins. In Race the Sun the objective is simple: survive as long as you can.
The only ending is your death. Whether your ending is met through a crash in a random wall that appeared in front of you from out of nowhere or the sun has set because your luck in finding the so much needed yellow crystals has disappeared like Waldo, that ending is inevitable.
Gameplay and Features
As you have already seen, you pilot a solar spacecraft at a high-speed and your mission is to stay in the suns’ light as long as possible, avoiding the obstacles and also staying out of their shadow since it will cause the sun to drop at a faster rate, thus meeting your timely death much sooner.
The game also offers challenges that are split into 3 categories of difficulty. Each difficulty will reward a certain amount of points, needed to level up. When leveling up, you will receive rewards that are either new power-ups, abilities or spacecraft decals to paint your ship with. The abilities consist in perks that will allow you to pick up a higher number of the same type of power-ups or a magnet that will lessen your job into being a pinpoint accuracy pilot for gathering said power-ups and score points (named ‘Tris’).
There are 3 power-ups that can be picked:
– The yellow crystal called ‘Energy’ – This is, in my opinion, the most helpful of all 3 since it turns back time, causing the sun to rise for a short time, thus prolonging your time spent in that round.
– The green crystal called ‘Jump’ – Well, this one does pretty much what it says it does: It makes your ship jump. Useful when you’re close to meet a wall in a very intimate way or when you want reach those pesky ‘Tris’ points that are placed really inconveniently on platforms.
– The purple crystal called ‘Emergency’ – Well, this one is a better life-saver since it functions as a passive collectible and it activates itself once you get too mesmerized by a wall and go straight into hugging it. Once you show that wall your infinite affection, you get teleported above the area in which you almost met your untimely demise.
There are 2 more other abilities that get unlocked through leveling up:
– World Portal Key – A portal which into space, where you don’t have to be worry about such trivial things like the sun … but the walls still need to be avoided.
– Region Warp – This is more of a cheat since it allows you to skip an entire region. A perfect way to get cheap ‘Perfect Region’ rewards.
The Maps
The maps themselves are infinite (or I, at least, haven’t reached their ending), split into Regions. With each new region reached the difficulty increases, new elements like falling cubes or even nuclear bombs that will flash your screen for a good few seconds, transforming you into the most religious person, blurting out all kinds of prayers to not go kamikaze into a surprise wall (I’ve ran out of ways of saying ‘crashing into a wall’), making appearances all over the area.
The map will change once every 24 hours to add to variety. A second difficulty map, called suggestively ‘Apocalypse’ gives your craft a speed boost while even more mobile elements fill the screen. Alternatively you can create or download maps, through Steam Workshop, adding to that said variety.
Pros:
– Fast-paced, difficulty bar well balanced
– Various pick-ups that can save your fuselage in critical conditions
– Steam Workshop
– Level Editor integrated
Cons:
– I would’ve named the game ‘Race into Walls’ since around 95% of my deaths, at least, happened into walls.
Genre: Endless runner
Price: 9.99 $/€
Steam Store Page: Click Here
Score: 4.7/5