Big News... Anodyne

In Anodyne, you explore and fight your way through nature, urban and abstract themed areas in the human Young's subconscious, evoked by a 16-bit-era visual style and a moody, dream-like soundtrack.

Welcome to the world of Zelda. Wait... where is the green hat? Where is the owl or fair or some other annoying creature? IT'S AN OLD MAN? Welcome to Link to the Past: Anodyne Edition.

First, lets start off with the issues, and get those out of the way. The game is buggy. Some bugs I think were intentional, as I needed to exploit one to get to a card that was otherwise inaccessible. I call it the wiggle bug, but will not post details on how to exploit it. The other bugs include things like a knock back bug that can cause you to go off map, and my favorite, the no damage bug. This uses the L broom, and involves the dust hitting the enemy but not hurting it. It is rare, but then games are complex. 

The story of the game is interpreted in many ways. The basic one is you set out to obtain approval of The Briars in order to stop the world from falling into darkness. I was led to believe something along the lines of the main character being in a coma.

The overall difficulty of the game is relatively low. The enemies themselves are easy, while bosses are difficult. Once you figure out the patterns it drops down again. That's not to say the game isn't frustrating at all. You have no clear path of where to go, and it wouldn't surprise me if I played dungeons out of order from everyone else.

Overall, the game has its fun moments, but isn't for everyone. If you like Zelda-likes, especially Link's Awakening, I can recommend trying it out. Be warned though, you will murder at least two people. I give this game a rating of Burnt Toast, it's extremely well done, but there are still some quirks to it that don't make it perfect.

Anodyne can be purchased at the following locations:
http://www.desura.com/games/anodyne (Recommended for non Debian/RPM users, as it has a standalone swf)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/234900
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/anodyne
http://www.anodynegame.com/

Big News... Caster

Dash across Scenic Locations destroying bug like creatures called the Flanx using 6 Unique Attacks that include Massive Terrain Deformation and High Speed Barrages of Energy Blasts!
Caster is an intense 3rd person action shooter experience with pulse pounding music that will keep you wanting more!

That's right folks, today's review is Caster. I finally played it. I enjoyed it. But that is not the point of a review. Let's begin shall we?

Caster let's you choose in difficulty levels. For this part of the review I played the first real mission on all three. Casual was, obviously, the easiest. I killed every Flanx and collected all the energy in about 1.5 minutes. Normal wasn't much harder. I again killed every Flanx and collected all the energy in just over 2 minutes. Extreme, however, took a lot more effort. I died 3 times just trying to kill the Fish Flanx. It took me 4 tries to finish the mission and took me about 8 minutes. While this challenge is relative to me, it shows a big difference in the difficulties.

Story wise, the game is still incomplete. It is an interesting story, but a bland one. The premise is you are stopping an overrun of weird creatures called Flanx from destroying areas you are assigned to. You slowly get stronger and eventually clear out an entire area, then move on to the next. Currently there are 2 areas, the second one unfinished.

I did have to configure a few things to get the game to run, though in the end it wasn't much work. I just had to remove all the non audio related libraries from the folder and it ran fine. Of course, some people would find this to be a big issue, so I can consider it a bug.

Overall, the game was fun, but needs work. I would love to see multiplayer finalized, as I had fun taking out my evil twin in extremely fast paced battle. It would be fun taking on other players in this game, but until more updates are out, we'll have to wait. Final score: Toast. 

Caster can be purchased at several locations:

http://www.desura.com/games/caster

http://store.steampowered.com/app/29800/

http://www.shinyloot.com/caster