Recent reviews by DoctorSpectrum

This really pulls my Devil Trigger

Pros:
* The art style isn't bad
* The small indicator showing the percentage of enemies in the current fight you've defeated is nice
* The world is relatively original

Cons:
* The story drags like hell and takes forever to get anywhere. After maybe an hour or two a subplot about demons arriving started being hinted, which I'd love to pursue, but instead the game forced me to do fetch quests and assassinations for different groups, most of which blurred together into one.
* Random encounters are compulsory. Trying to finish a quest and you bumped into enemies? Too bad, fight them before finishing the quest!
* Environmental hazards are just cruel. Fell down that pit because you misjudged a jump? There goes half your health, unless you bought an upgrade to avoid it! Standing next to some fire? ♥♥♥♥ you, you're taking damage.
* You can't manually attack enemies unless you build up your rage ("Skulls"). I know the game was originally for tablets and mobile devices, but on a PC there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to manually attack, or at least give us the option to toggle manual attacks on and off
* Enemies outnumber you by far and it's easy for the game to devolve into being stunlocked until you're dead or bullet hell. Individually the enemies are fine, but the majority of the time if you're facing more than three or four, it's a struggle to cope with them.
* Airborne enemies constantly fly away from you, making them difficult to fight and frustrating to deal with.
* The gameplay is essentially the same fight repeated ad nauseum, with the only changes being the enemies you fight. There's somewhere between ten to fifteen unique enemies - most of which are interchangeable - and everything after that is just a palette swap.
* Fights give you virtually no experience or gold; most of what you get will be through quests.
* Movement is clunky; you walk very slowly, jump awkwardly and arguably too high, and if you accidentally tap the same direction twice to adjust a fall, odds are you'll waste a skull and do a quick dash to the side, which additionally could be to your detriment.
* The protagonist's only motivation appears to be getting money, which he has no apparent use for outside of the in-game shops (which 90% of the time won't sell anything worth buying). It could be that this changes towards the end of the game, as I didn't beat it, but if that's the case there's no hint towards it earlier.

TL;DR: On tablets and phones, in short bursts, this could arguably be a fun way to kill time - arguably - but on a PC this game is a bore. It's too long, too slow, and the fights alternate between being tedious and too difficult. Not worth buying or playing.

Between countless Fire Emblem games, some tabletop roleplaying, and a recent campaign of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I've come to enjoy turn-based strategy. There's something very satisfying about using your brain to look at the situation, and by taking careful risks, use each and every single one of your units to make a satisfying move which puts you further towards winning the game.

That was what I was hoping for when I bought Frozen Synapse - a nice, fun, turn-based strategy which lets me plan carefully in order to win. Personally, I was almost crossing my fingers for an XCOM/Fire Emblem rip-off, since to me, they represent the core ideas and mechanics of turn-based strategy and more of that sort of gameplay couldn't be a bad thing.

Unfortunately, what I found instead was a boring, drab game where the "strategy" comes down to "have you guessed what your opponents were going to do?" Sure, that's an essential part of most strategy games, but usually you get help, like showing where your opponents can move, or knowing how much damage they'll do so you'll know which units can survive a fight with them. Instead, in Frozen Synapse, you choose which actions you want your units to take, press the button to end your turn, and then your opponents make all of their moves at the same time.

Whilst this doesn't sound like a bad thing, it means that you can spend time setting up your units, planning for your opponents to do something, only for them to bypass that method completely and catch you by surprise, all because you didn't have the precognition to see into the future and realise that they could do that. Sure, you could try and plan for all outcomes, but that means using more units and therefore cutting off your options elsewhere. Essentially, gameplay boils down to you crossing your fingers that the enemy walks in front of your units and dies before they notice your units.

On top of all that, the controls are confusing as all hell and very unintuitive. There's a tutorial, but it rushes by pretty quickly and being given step-by-step instructions is much different to having to think ahead and choose and work out what to do in a real level. I should say something about the graphics and story too, but really, what is there to say? The graphics are ugly, uninspired, and boring, and the story is a bunch of cyberpunk technobabble which made my eyes immediately glaze over because it was so boring.

Normally, I try and finish games to the end because I want to get my money's worth, but this is the first time in a very long while that I've simply quit and said "No." I tried to get into the game and give it a good go, but as I struggled to predict the enemies' paths for the umpteenth time, I recalled that in video games, players should be interested within five to fifteen minutes. Well, I gave the game nearly an hour of my time, and as far as I'm concerned, I shouldn't have gone further than fifteen minutes.

Overall, I would not recommend Frozen Synapse. This is not the type of turn-based strategy I enjoy, and whilst it's certainly a nice try and something different, there's a reason that turn-by-turn strategy has remained dominant in many games - for example, chess - for so long: because it works and it's fun, unlike Frozen Synapse.

An excellent stealth game with a brilliant premise and core mechanic. Although it's a stealth game, it's a puzzle game just as much, so you'll spend plenty of time using your brain to work out the best way to get around a level. It's one of those games where there are a variety of solutions to a single problem, and you'll feel pleased with yourself when your plan goes off successfully. There's also a ton of humour, both in dialogue and in gameplay (I accidentally got knocked over by a door a few too many times), so that only adds to the interest.

Highly recommended.

This Metal Gear?! game is perfect for fans of nanomachines, son.

Excellent story, setting, and concept, with lots of great humour to keep the game going. The game will entertain you between fulfilling the story and doing some of the bonus stuff (such as finding all solutions to a puzzle, which I greatly enjoyed). The only problem is that it's a bit short - even with the DLC, it only took me around four and a half hours to complete the game. I'd recommend it being bought if it's on sale.

Excellently designed game which is incredibly addictive. Although dying so many times will get on your nerves, the satisfaction will keep you going, as will the need to prove your worth to the game. Check it out if you're prepared for a challenge.

It's not at a Thief level of stealthy-awesomeness, but it's nevertheless still a fun game with a good story and gamepay.

It's Portal. What more need be said?