Recent reviews by The World is Flat

"Full controller support" is a lie. This game ignored all inputs from my SNES-style gamepad, which works fine in another game (20XX).

The game never saves your progress unless you quit, and if you use up all your continues, your progress is erased. The game is not difficult, but after failing hard on world 2 and being forced to replay world 1, I gave up on what was otherwise a relatively easy game.

As a fan of the first Mega Man X game, and not really any other Mega Man game (at the time of this writing since I've not really put time into other Mega Man games), I have to say this game is amazing. The RNG can be frustrating, but it's also what sets this game apart from Mega Man X. The randomly generated level layouts and powerups make each playthrough a new adventure, but also similar enough to where you start to get better at passing certain obstacles.

I like to play as Nina a lot since she controls just like X and uses a buster gun, but Ace can be fun too with his sword. The best part is that you can have BOTH! That's right! 2 players can team up to run and gun through the levels (or more like slice and slash for the Ace players). Although a "balanced" team is Nina + Ace, both players can be Nina if they wish, or they can both be Ace! No limitations in that regard, which is great! The game even uses an alternate color scheme for the 2nd Nina/2nd Ace so that it is always crystal clear which one you are controlling during cooperative play. Nina is blue, 2nd Nina is red. Ace is red and 2nd Ace is blue. No matter who you play as, one of you will be red and the other will be blue.

The controls are tight, and dash-jumping is much easier to do than in Mega Man X, and it feels good. Instead of having to perform a dash on the ground and then jump, one can simply hold the dash button and jump all they want, and each jump will be a dash-jump! For dash-jumping off walls, the same is true. Just hold dash and jump, no need to time the buttons together perfectly like in Mega Man X. It actually took me some time to notice this, and once I did, the game flowed much better for me, as I struggled with movement a bit in the beginning since I had assumed that the controls were 100% identical to Mega Man X, when in fact, they are better.

Each boss has a weakness, which can be obtained from another boss, just like Mega Man. In addition to killing bosses more quickly when used correctly, some of the boss powers can be used to disable traps and hazards, allowing easier traversal of the stages in many cases.

Death can be frustrating since it kills the run, but runs are short if you move fast. Also there is an "easy mode" (labeled Reverent) that gives you 3 lives instead of 1 to complete the game. I do recommend starting there to get a feel for the game, then moving up when you're ready for the challenge.

[Update 2018-01-23]
Although the game recommends an Xbox 360 controller, I have never tried that, and I've had a good time playing with an SNES-style USB gamepad. My control mapping is as follows, since the controls are configurable:

B: Jump
Y: Shoot
A: Power 1
X: Power 2
R: Power 3
L: Dash
Select: "Activate Thing"
Start: Pause

Even though only 3 boss powers can be equipped at a time, they can be swapped at any moment in the pause menu, so you have access to all of them at all times. This can be seen as a downside, but trying to map 8 powers is impossible, and scrolling through them like in Mega Man/Mega Man X wouldn't be the best thing either, so I think they did their best.

[Update 2018-01-24]
Actually, there's an option in the control configuration to scroll through powers or change powers via a radial menu! The more you know!
[/update]

In conclusion I rate this game 3/3 lemons and 2/2 super fighting robots.

It was all happening so fast. In a fit of blinding rage, I suddenly knew kung fu and began laying waste to everyone, and everything, in my path. I had become a monster. My emotions left me. I no longer cared that I was bringing about my own apocalypse with the eventual extinction of the human race. My emotions partially returned to me. Each foe I killed only filled me with gleeful happiness and maniacal laughter. I enjoyed killing. I reveled in their pain, suffering, and death.

Unsurprisingly, they were on to me, and launched a massive counterattack. Entire armies were sent my way, only to meet their immediate demise. Tens... hundreds... thousands... tens of thousands... hundreds of thousands... millions of corpses littered the land. The best martial artists in the world came my way, but they too were kissed by death.

At the very top stood the ultimate grandmaster. The final boss. The mastermind who was organizing the counterattacks in an effort to bring the kung fu apocalypse to an end. He too fought long and hard, but ultimately failed. That was it, there was nobody left to oppose me. At last, I had brought world peace, I was a hero! At last, could finally get some peace and quiet.

The End.

If you were unchallenged by the original campaigns, then this is for YOU!

At first, this DLC campaign expansion was released without the epic soundtrack that made the original such a treasure back in 1999. This has since been remedied in a patch. It was also released with heart-crushing difficulty, but I proved via live streams that all the missions were beatable. According to the patch notes, some of them have been tamed a bit more, making them less heart-crushing.

This is the first time that the Red Odyssey Expansion has ever been playable on modern systems. The unofficial BZ 1.5 patch filled the BZ void, but RO had a separate codebase and was unpatched.

At long last, jump head first into the Black Dog campaign to face a hidden enemy: the Chinese Red Army. All without having to hunt down toaster from the 1998 era of gaming. The CRA have the ability to cloak and perform devastating sneak attacks! Once you've taken down all 15 missions, switch sides to play as the Chinese, facing off against... not the Black Dogs... but... THE RUSSIANS!? Learn the story of how the CRA obtained the cloak technology as well as fast-travel portal technology. All of the missions take place on 2 new worlds, plus a cameo appearance of one of the original worlds!

All that said, I can wholeheartedly recommend this expansion to all fans of Battlezone. Make sure to play on VERY HARD, otherwise it won't be worth it.

I rate this expansion a solid 23/23 missions beaten on very hard.

At last, the FPS-RTS hybrid from 1998 has made it to Steam, and with a fresh coat of paint! Play as the National Space Defense Force (Americans) or the Cosmo Communist Army (Russians) and wage war across many different worlds, including Luna (Earth's Moon), Mars, Venus, and many more!

Take command of your forces from a first-person perspective. You will need to be able to issue orders and fight in your own tank at the same time. This gameplay style is the adrenaline rush that is Battlezone. Destroy your enemy's forces, then gather their biometal remains to produce more of your own. Gathering scrap is important.

The gameplay has been left completely untouched, so those who have played Battlezone 1.5 will fit right in. However, with respect to the last official patch, which was 1.4, expect a completely new experience. For one, the Tank AI no longer retreats when shot, it actually fights properly. The infamous bugs from back in the day are no more! The MDM is now safe to use in multiplayer, The East-West bug is fixed, and having a framerate over 60 FPS no longer makes the game run faster. Battlezone is finally up to modern standards as of v1.5 and Battlezone 98 Redux! At the time of this review, there may still be a few kinks to iron out, but I'm sure the dev team is more than willing to issue patches as issues are found. At $20, this game is a steal.

So this is a cool little tank game with an "unconvenional" control scheme, you control the tanks's tracks, left track and right track. To me, it felt very tricky, but it also started to feel less trick the longer I played. I used an Xbox 360 controller, so I can't really speak for how good the keyboard controls are, ESDF and IJKL. WASD would have made more sense instead of ESDF, but I digress. For anybody who enjoys tank combat games regardless of the game's art style, I recommend picking this one up. I only played the first few levels of "normal", so take this "review" with a grain of salt. Let the tanks march onward!

Wait, it's $9.99? I don't know how I own this game if it's not free, I know I never purchased it. 10/10 would accidently own a game again.

While I do recommend this game, beware that you must unplug your gamepad to play with keyboard and mouse properly, and you should probably wait to get it on sale for $0.19 like I did. It's a lot like Portal in many ways, and should provide an hour or two of entertainment.

TL;DR
Basketball Simulator 2015

Finally, an RPG that doesn't bore me to death. There are a lot of levels in this game, and there are quite a few jokes and laughs to be had.

10/10, would save the world in 30 seconds again.

First off, make sure you've already played Portal. This is a brilliant sequel to the game. There are new puzzle elements, a hilarious brand-new talking A.I. in addition to GLaDOS, and a very interesting plot. In addition, there's cooperative play, which does not disappoint. Some of those puzzles are devlilishly tricky, and so much fun. They require cooperation with a partner in order to clear them, the cooperation is not just a gimmick. Very fun game, much longer single player game than the first Portal game.