Bounty Train is a curious game. It's a sandbox trading sim/adventure game/railway enthusiast entertainment piece that, while the positions are static and the routes are fixed, still manages to give the player a great deal of movement. It's a genre bending game with multiple story routes and an excellent way to generate micronarratives as you go. And it's also one of the few games where you can lose during the tutorial levels, thus causing the game to shrug and go "Well, the game's over, but here, keep playing after the game over screen." But unlike other genre-bending sandbox sims, Bounty Train keeps a focus on fixed points instead of free exploration of the map, allowing the player to focus on things like the complex economy, resource management, and the interplay between various factions and characters, opening up in a way few games of its type do, and creating an entirely unique experience.
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MegaTagmension: Blanc + Neptune vs. Zombies is another entry in Compile Heart's massive moneymaking monstrosity, the Neptune universe. As with previous versions, the characters are all anthropomorphized versions of consoles, game companies, game journalism magazines, and other game-related stuff. Depending on the game, they go to school, conquer the world, have adventures in old, broken game consoles, and a ton of other wacky adventures. Seriously, the franchise has covered almost everything now. I'm just waiting for a Mario Party game to seal the deal.
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The new Mega Man-themed roguelike platformer from Batterystaple games combines two genres known mainly for their difficulty: old-school platform games, and roguelikes. The issue with this combination is that old-school platformers trade on repetition, muscle memory, and pattern recognition to move their players through the game, and roguelikes usually throw most of this out the window, meaning the players have to learn more to rely on skills and powerups than figuring out level layout.
In theory, it's an excellent idea, marrying the difficulty and skill-honing of roguelikes with the quick-reaction ethos that drives older platformer games. In practice, however, it's a nightmare.
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Overfall is a game with a lot of good things going for it. It has a distinct art style, an excellent modular story engine, some interesting tactical combat, and a very dynamic setting. It's a game that promises a staggering amount of depth, especially when one gets into it. It's a big, expansive game with a big expansive map and big expansive ideas.
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