I want to like Chimera Squad but every mission feels the same. I love the character based approach though. Also it was fun having aliens on the team for once.
Xcom 2 and Chimera Squad both had some annoying UI problems but luckily they were fixed (for the most part) by mods.
HyperRogue has 352 reviews. It is a rogue like that is played on a hyperbolic plane rather than a euclidian one.
If you’re not familiar with hyperbolic geometry, don’t be fooled by the videos. It has the illusion of looking like it is on a sphere in many of the videos. It’s not! Also, you don’t need to be some master of hyperbolic geometry to play. I don’t really understand it but can still play the game well enough.
Essentially, imagine a hexagonal grid. Now, replace some of those hexagons with septagons (7 sided). The further away you get from a point there will be way more tiles in the hyperbolic grid than the euclidian.
The UI is pretty bad, the menus are pretty icky. Those are my only real complaints.
The game is charming. It has.a very retro feel to it. The music reminds me of something of hear from an old school point and click game or RuneScape. The graphics are minimal but charming.
The mechanics are easy enough. You get hit and you die. Most enemies die in one hit. There are no weapons or stats. It’s more like chess in a way. The game will also not let you accidentally move somewhere you’d die, so, yes, very much like chess with checkmates.
Because the game is so simplistic you can get into a flow state where you quickly move and attack enemies. It’s very satisfying to play.
For me it was the themeing. Games like League of Legends try to come up with weird reasons why the games work the way they do and it feels silly. SMNC leaned into the goofiness. Instead of killing a dragon for gold you’d have to catch the Mascot. I wanna say you’d get stuff from brands to help you out but I can’t remember.
Further, just because a name like that came be “copyrighted” doesn’t mean the rest of the game isn’t lmao.
If I made Nuclear D.C., a post apocalyptic game set it the Fallout universe in Washington D.C. as a followup to Fallout 3, I wouldn’t magically be okay just because it’s set in a “real” place.
By the time I got to the end and didn’t have a few secret achievements I was angry because I solved the puzzle entirely. Great game, probably my most common recommendation, but it doesn’t fit this category exactly.
That said, I was much less frustrated than I woukd be for other games.
For a Gameboy suggestion, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. This is the first game featuring Wario. You can complete the worlds in any order. When you get a game over you lose all the Golden Coins you’ve obtained which act.as keys to enter the final world. So you still have to reheat the final stage in each world again if you get a game over. One of the worlds is a giant mechanical Mario you get to go through!
I haven’t played this, but the next game in the “series” is Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 lmao. But I have played Wario Land II. Wario Land II is interesting because you cannot die in the game. Getting hit makes you lose a few coins and that’s it. When a boss hits you you get sent back in the stage a bit. Rather than having power ups, some of the enemies affect you. For example, if a bee stings you then you begin to swell up and float. If you’re lit on fire then you catch on fire and can burn certain blocks. These are fun because they’re oftentimes the only way to progress.
A lot of Gameboy games were kinda crappy. No offense to them or if you liked them, but these two still really hold up. They look and sound amazing. It’s a shame to me that so many people seem to remember and are nostalgic for the first Super Mario Land but haven’t played the second which is WAY better.