Tuesday, January 26, 2010

ZA Critrique: Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space

Twofer for ya. My review of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles went up last week. Generally speaking, it's Resident Evil 4 without controlling where you go. The original games already made it so you can't move while your gun is out, so they were always half-way to being a light gun game anyways. Fun enough if company is over, but it seems like it would be a bit dull by yourself.

Oh, lots of things about the plot you didn't know that you didn't know are in there too.

This ZA Critique features an indie game. I realized a while back that I had never done a ZA for an indie title and I decided to change that. It's not that I ignore the indie scene (though I take my sweet time getting to some of them), it's just usually I write a review for the game instead of putting on the analysis pants.

Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space is a roguelike but based loosely around Star Control 2. Play sessions are very short, 5 to 10 minutes, and usually end with you getting blown up. It's a good example of a game that relies heavily on randomization to keep itself interesting. I borrowed heavily from a great post by Greg Costikyan over at Play This Thing! to hash out the major points. It's a bit pricey at 25 bucks, but there's no other game quite like it.

Hell, I even bought it twice after losing the first one.

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