Steam Showcase (Free to Play and Demos)

I've mentioned before that I'm not really a PC gamer. Maybe it's because of my preference of controllers, or because my PC is too crap to run anything anymore. Either way, my playing of games has largely been on consoles, leading to me being very confused over the whole "PC MASTER RACE" thing that goes on every time things like these are brought up. Why is it? Is it because of the specs, the Steam Sales, the huge library of games, the Steam Sales, the extreme amount of customization allowed through modding, or the Steam Sales? In attempt to figure this out (and by that I mean I had a day off and I was bored) I created a Steam account and decided to try a few games out. Due to me being cheap, even on a platform as cheap as this, this one will consist of the games I got for free, including Free to Play Games and Demos. These were the results.

The first game that I tried out was Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. A rather odd choice because you'd figure as soon as I got my hands on something that can play PC games that I'd choose something that wasn't originally a PS1 game, but I digress. In short, Oddworld is a cinematic platformer where the focus is to solve puzzles in order to advance. I won't go to deep into this one because I can talk about it much more when I eventually get the full game, but what I can say is that I was pretty terrible at it. I ended up killing most of the Mudokons and I ended up killing myself multiple times over. Highlights include rolling into electricity, forgetting to press the jump button, hitting falling rubble while in midair, underestimating the sense of sound the enemies had, and trying to defuse the bomb just a bit too late. And due to me being actually a bit scared by this game, that led to me posting this on Twitter.

Which surprisingly led up to this.

Well dang.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is avalible on Steam over here for $2.49, and can be bought with it's sequel, Abe's Exoddus, or with the rest of the Oddworld series for only a few dollars more. It's also available on the PlayStation Network for you folk who prefer that.

Next up on the list is 8BitMMO, a free to play game that combines gaming's recent interest with building with a MMORPG. Plots basically nonexistent, as you just play as your avatar and do miscellaneous quests for these people that actually don't look 8-Bit at all. Now I haven't gotten into the MMO craze like a lot of others have, so I don't have much interest in this stuff to begin with. I tried for a little bit, got to level two, and tried the quests that involved killing enemies. I played along with those for a bit, but I quit after I received the same quest three times in the exact same area with the exact same enemies with different numbers. I tried some of the building, but I also quit after trying to figure out how roofs work.

8BitMMO is available here and is free to play. So go and have fun I suppose.

By far my favorite game I played in this showcase was Recettear An Item Shop's Tale. In this game, you play as Recette, a young girl who must run an item store in order to repay a massive debt that was taken by her father. If you think that this is just about running an item shop and having fun, then you'd be right. But it's also much more than that. As shopkeeper, you must display certain items for certain customers to come in, have different items in stock should someone ask for something not on display, raise prices low enough for you to get a sale but high enough so that you're making a sizable profit, buying items from people for low prices so that you can sell them and jack up the price, and so much more. And on top of time management, where you must decide between going out and buying more items to sell and opening the shop, there's also dungeons, where the game goes from a shop-sim to a full on Action RPG. There, you dungeon crawl with a hired adventurer in order to collect more items, and fight the boss at the end. It's surprisingly deep, and playing it was such a blast to play. Of all the games in this showcase, Recettear was the one I enjoyed the most, and is probably the one I'll be getting first.

Recettear An Item Shop's Tale is available here for $20.

Next up from the same developer is Chantelise A Tale of Two Sisters. Through some unreadable cursive text, you learn that Chante was turned into a fairy from a witch's curse, and now her and her sister Elise must set out to find a way to change Chante back into a human. Unlike Recettear, this game is a straight up Action RPG from beginning to end. The controls are a bit weird, with the arrow keys to move and the Z and X keys to attack. Camera is handled with the C and B keys, with the V key used to center the camera behind you. So basically you'll never let that bloody thing go. I'll be honest and say that I didn't spend a whole lot of time with this one. Not because I thought it was bad, but because finals were in the process of doing the thing where they shatter your grade and subsequently shatter all your hopes and dreams, so spending more time playing this game more would've killed me. But from what I played, it was fun. Not as good as Recettear, but not as bad as I've heard from some people.

Chantelise A Tale of Two Sisters is available here for $10.

But finally, I got to the big one. This game is the talk of the Steam library. I've seen people put THOUSANDS of hours into this. And it's popularity only skyrocketed when it became free to play. There was nothing holding me back, nothing stoping me form experienceing this. So I set in with a song in my heart...

...and the results were less then desirable.

But hey, it's avalible here and it's free to play, so if you have a PC that isn't a complete piece of garbage, then you should try it.

The Silent Protagonist needs a new PC...

All images are the properties of their respective owners. You can't make that Team Fortress mess up.

The Filler Arc: Altered Beast (Genesis)

I always try to write about games that are relevant to things going on in gaming or in life at the time. Like I reviewed Sonic 1 due to the release of Sonic Lost World, or I reviewed Rayman in due to the release of Rayman Legends, to give a few examples. Sometimes though, life gets boring, and its hard to try and find things relevant to whats going on at those boring times. Thus, The Filler Arc, where I just throw a pen at my game collection and roll with it. These will be shorter reviews that take up space, covering smaller shorter games while regular reviews take up the meatier stuff.

SO LET'S PLAY SOME ALTERED BEAST.

Being an Arcade/Genesis game, the plot is very thin. Neff, a Demon God from the Underworld, has kidnapped Athena, goddess of wisdom. As such, Zeus commands a fallen centurion (or two if you have a second player) to WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE! and save his daughter.

Altered Beast is a 2D Beat 'em Up game where your goal is to punch your way through enemies and defeat the boss waiting for you at the end. In terms of what you're capable of, you can only do the typical punches and kicks, as well as jumping. Things don't get interesting until you start getting Spirit Balls from certain enemies. Grabbing one of these increases your strength, and makes you instantly more ripped. Grabbing another grants even more strength, and makes you even more ripped. Grabbing a third one causes...

...to happen, granting maximum strength and the ability to fight the boss of the stage. After the boss is defeated, the power is stripped from you and you proceed to the next level.

Presentation wise, this game looks...alright. There's nothing much here that's really bad, but nothing really stands out. The soundtrack too, has a few good themes, but nothing that really stays with you after playing. And yes, this game has voices for certain things, and yes it's hilariously bad, with almost all of them becoming memes. Examples include POWER UP, WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM! and the previously mentioned WISE FWOM YOUR GWAVE!

This game is very short, at only 5 levels, meaning it can be cleared in less than an hour. However, as a whole, Altered Beast is just dull. There's not much to the gameplay, the presentation is average, and it's short to boot. The game may of been much larger when it came out, but it clearly doesn't hold up now. It's cheap and on plenty of systems, so it might be worth a shot, but if you go in it's best to keep your expectations low.

The Silent Protagonist want you to NEVER GIVE UP.

All images are the properties of their original owners. If I made them, then I would've tested the limits as to how ripped this guy can get.