What I got on Steam Summer Sale (Invisible Inc, Technobabylon, Metal Slug series)
I bought some games from Steam Store on recent Summer Sale at bargain prices, because, why not?😀
And what I got?
Technobabylon
Cyberpunk “point’n’click” adventure in the tradition of the classic “Beneath a Steel Sky”, with pixellated graphics. In the moment of this writing I did’t played it, so I wont give any more details.
Metal Slug 1, 2 and 3
A well known and acclaimed classic “run’n’gun” from NeoGeo coin-ops from 1990’s.
I bought them purely for nostalgic reasons and for pixel graphics accompanied with cool background music.
In terms of playability and visuals, I ordered the games from best to not-so-good:
- Metal Slug 2
- Metal Slug
- Metal Slug 3
Third one is not bad, but its too long, and there is certain feeling of fatigue during gameplay, and its aesthetics deviates too much from the first in the series.
The second installment has less levels but more entertaining ones, while keeping the most familiar elements from the first part like the fact that the main enemy is Nazi-like army of Morden instead of supernatural elements like zombies or aliens.
Invisible Inc.
Cyberpunk tactical espionage game, where player is controlling a squad of agents that are on the mission inside megacorp’s headquarters, stealing corporate secrets, money and gadgetry. For me it looks like a fusion of classics like “Covert Action”, “X-Com: UFO Defense” and “Syndicate”.
What I like in this game?
- Nice homages to the classics of the genre, like noir vibe and the character of Deker.
- Instead of grimdark visuals stereotypically associated with the genre the graphics is colorful and nicely stylized
- Toned down violence and mechanics that is forcing the player to use stealth and hacking instead of brute force
- Climatic music and sound effects
- Randomly generated missions
What I don’t like?
- Difficulty level is high, even on Easy setting
- The game mechanics is very stingy when it comes to resources available to player for buying augmentations and gadgetry. I can understand that this is for balancing the gameplay, but on the other hand it robbers the player from pleasure of introducing and using new hardware, like in the classic “Syndicate” or “UFO: Enemy Unknown”.