Masters of the Masks is a confusing and convoluted free to play turn-based RPG where you spend stamina in order to fight guys, only to die on the fourth level because the balance is out of wack. To do so, you find materials to create masks and gear and you spin wheels and wait for a few minutes in order for crafting to complete - or you can always pay to make it faster. I didn't have much fun with it.
This is a bad game. If you ignore the core, the mechanics around it are encrusted with layers upon layers of systems, resources, microtransactions and other purchases, unlockable content and levels, things that need to be added carefully to not spoil the broth. But then, if you look at the main game, this just adds insult to injury, as the core gameplay is clunky, unbalanced and not fun.
Disregarding the risk to repeat the beginning of my TIAVH2 review, let me state that the first Van Helsing game was a pleasant surprise that came out of nowhere, a different Action RPG that had a few cool systems and all-around solid gameplay in general. Let me also state that the second game wasn't as good, bogged down with weird ideas - separate classes, almost identical systems, a dumb cliffhanger, but that I still enjoyed it when it almost came out of nowhere. I had forgotten that there would be a third one, and I wish they hadn't made it - at least, not like that. It's bad, really bad.
When I was in high school, Ragnarok Online was one of the games I almost played religiously. All MMOs of that time were typically weird, in the pre-world of warcraft days, mostly coming from non-english speaking countries and featuring endless grinds, obtuse mechanics, sometimes harsh death penalties, a low potential for custom characters and the level of interaction you needed to have with other players was more or less random depending on the game. RO was fine for it's time, since I didn't know anything better. Seeing as it was on Steam, I decided to give it another shot. This is a situation where I grew up and the game didn't.
When I think of 'mining' games, much like the Motherload of old, I think about digging down to find valuables that you sell for various upgrades in order to be able to dig deeper for more valuables that can be sold for more upgrades, ad infinitum. If you're telling me that your game is a 'mining' game but with multiple levels and you need to get to the bottom of each mines in order to continue, I might find that a bit weird, but the potential is still there for a fun game. Obviously, the more you'd progress, the tougher the levels would be, so you would need upgrades. Pocket Mine 2 takes a tiny sliver of that idea and fills the rest with nonsense.
Switch&Drop starts by asking you to agree to a EULA, this is always a good sign. Otherwise you just can't play the game. S&D is a game where you drop blocks by sliding lines of colored puzzle pieces and the goal is to match three or more to break them and activate special bonuses. It would probably be fine if it didn't have in-app purchases, energy timers and best values. This might sound a bit reductionist - I'll admit I haven't played that game for very long - but putting your worst foot forward isn't a way to make me care.
Although for me, gameplay is king and systems will trump over the story and graphics of a game, LISA is a case that reminds me how I play games to escape reality and its brutal problems. I'm not a big fan of games that relate the sorrows and tribulations of people in our modern society - or in a realistic past. Games that deal with heavier subjects are things that I don't tend to consume, no matter what genre they belong in. LISA was no exception, presented as an earthbound-inspired RPG with a ton of party members and systems like using russian roulette to power-up your character, I didn't get very far in it and didn't enjoy my time with the game overall.
Combo Quest is the first paragraph in a design document for another game; CQ is the core mechanic that should be embedded into something much bigger than it is, while actually being all there is. CQ could have been a pretty neat RPG for touch devices, but it's barely a tech demo with some inappropriate in-app purchases. I didn't enjoy my time with Combo Quest for various reasons.
Click Titans is almost a direct clone of Clicker Heroes, a web game where you buy heroes to kill enemies to make money to buy more heroes to kill more enemies to reset your game with more money in the next one (in order to kill more enemies). I like Clicker Heroes, but CT is just a way worse version. Mired with pop-ups for ads and opportunities to watch videos or pay in exchange for quicker game progression. Since the only point of "idle" game is the progression, it's a bit silly to expect people to pay for it.
It's a wipe! is a really bad game based on a cool concept - being a guild leader and running 'raids' against huge enemies with a bunch of people at your disposal. The interface is clunky and broken in spots, the battles take forever even if nothing is happening, you have close to no control over your characters and it's quite difficult to plan strategies properly so the end result is a depressing little RPG.
I like Peggle, it's a fun little franchise where you shoot balls on pegs to clear levels. You get power-ups to help you beat the levels and the characters are quite funny (I'm looking at you, Pharaoh Cat). Take everything good with Peggle, replace it with terrible odds skewed in favor of the game, add micro-transactions to every single thing you could, slap an energy system on it and give it for "free" on the app store, you got Peggle Blast.
Lost Viking is way too hard. It's a "puzzle" rpg where you slide tiles around to attack enemies, collect gold, unlock chests and do other things. It's way too hard and it's barely a puzzle. The core mechanic is that tiles appear and you slide the whole board - a bit like Threes - but with the tiles being pseudo-random and there being about six type of tiles, sometimes you just can't do anything. The game is also plagued with a bunch of progression-related issues and a few weird technical glitches here and there. But hey, at least there are no microtransactions.
This is a match-three game where you have to spend money in order to get anywhere. A few good ideas here and there, but I grow bored of these things. It's also very frustrating in the maps where you can't do anything and the only way to save yourself is to spend some money on items to break tiles or resurrect your troops.
Puzzle Bandits, simply put, is a Puzzle&Dragons clone. You match things to make combos and then you attack your enemies or heal and after a fixed number of turns, your enemies attack you. You can fuse heroes together to raise their levels, you can buy random heroes for real money and they are really strong. While P&D had me going for at least an hour before I stopped, PB didnt last more than ten minutes because of some extreme difficulty
What is the main goal of a digital version of a card game? The goal of adding metagaming around the core experience, being either with a story, with cards to collect, achievements to get or quests to complete, is of course the main draw to these remakes of games such as MtG. That being said, the main goal of a digital TCG is to portray as closely as possible the original game and to follow its rules the best it can. MtG2015 is terrible in many ways at doing so, especially since I've been playing MtG for the past 15 years and I was at least expecting basic moves to work.
Spellfall makes me angry as a designer. It's a neat game, you match things to attack with elements, you get powerful tiles if you match more than three, you equip stuff, you charge up to cast magic. Spellfall is also everything that is wrong with mobile gaming nowadays, a cheap experience that seems fine for a while but quickly becomes impossible to bear.
What if Nintendo went free-to-play with Pokémon? How would they sell it? Would they still put the same production values into the game? Would the game feel fair and balanced or would it feel like you need to pay money in order to have even odds? I'm not sure where Micromon fits in this whole picture, but it smells both of Pokémon rip-off and of pay-to-win systems implemented together in a bland game that I won't play anymore.
Like most iOS games, there is something sad about Rhythm Thief. Born from a 3DS game about the aforementioned thief, this is a music game where you complete various mini-games in order to progress in a unimportant story comprised of three blocks of dialogue that almost have no impact on anything, something that probably was more akin to cutscenes in the original version. Why have story at all? To do so, you equip allies and fuse items and request friends like in other iOS games like Puzzle and Dragons, you collect premium currencies, hold auditions to spin the wheel on random gifts and other things of the sort that just distract you from the actual music games that are actually okay.
H:SA might be full of Halo story and characters, it might have a few good ideas here and there, but it's not a good game. I've had a frustrating experience with bad mission design, innapropriate gameplay systems and weird AI that made me stop playing way before the end of the game. I love twin stick shooters, but certain kind of challenges are left to other genres of videogames.
S&PA is a sad game, it's sad because the core concept of fighting with poker hands is interesting, but it's sad because of timers, premium currencies and 99.99$ best values. It's sad because of facebook requests, it's sad because of things you could buy to make the game too easy. At least it's sad and I'm not saying it doesn't have merit at all.