Posts Tagged ‘Rake in Grass’

February 26th, 2014 Featured, PC, Reviews 1 Comment »

Jets’n’Guns Gold Review

Jets'n'Guns Gold Logo

Developer: Rake in Grass
Publisher: Rake in Grass
Platform: PC – Direct, Steam

Shooters (not the FPS sort) are one of my favorite genres to play despite my total lack of ability with them. There’s something about attempting to weave tiny ships through enemy bullets, fight gigantic bosses, and somehow come out alive in the end. Jets’n’Guns Gold is a more modern shooter but that hardly stops it from being a contender for the title of classic.

Jets’n’Guns Gold gets so much perfect that it’s hard to tear your eyes away from the screen – and more importantly – your hands from the controls. As with many shooters, the game starts you off by loading players into a fairly svelte ship and forcing them right into the action. Enemies don’t pull their punches, even on easy. And this might make me sound completely weird, but you can almost feel your ship taking the bullets. Shots feel heavy and powerful as they should.

If you keep getting killed then it might be a good time to try swapping out weapons for other equipment. The more stages you complete, the more are unlocked for use. Getting comfortable with certain loadouts is appealing, but it’s worth experimenting as well. Of course, even trying out different ship customization might not be able to help some. I, for one, spent a great deal of time on early levels simply because everything was too hectic! It’s a shame that easy difficulty couldn’t have been actually easy.

Jets'n'Guns Gold Featured

The gameplay is definitely solid and is backed up by an excellent soundtrack and attractive graphics. Although the art itself isn’t completely inspiring, seeing what creative ships and enemy types they came up with is a lot of fun. Maybe it’s just my eyes but everything did seem a bit small though, making some bullets smash into me without ever seeing them approach. On the other hand, the music is fantastic. For some reason, most shooters have excellent soundtracks and Jets’n’Guns Gold is no exception.

Fans of shooters should have already picked this up when it initially launched in 2006. If you somehow missed out on it though then now is definitely the time to jump on board. Newbie shooter fans might want to hold off on a purchase just yet, unless you’re ready to lose a lot before really digging into the experience. Jets’n’Guns Gold is succinctly defined with just one word: Awesome.

Score: 4

4 out of 5 alpacas

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September 23rd, 2013 PC, Reviews No Comments »

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf Review

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf Boxart

Developer: Rake in Grass
Publisher: Rake in Grass
Platform: Mobile – iOS PC – Big Fish Games, Direct, Steam

This post is part of the Indie RPG Bundle review collection

Strategy RPGs are pretty popular but card-based counterparts are a bit rarer to come across. Still, when there are already such excellent card games out there such as Magic the Gathering it can be really hard to create something different. Northmark: Hour of the Wolf accomplishes making a sound card-based title without hanging onto other card games’ coattails.

The game begins with an attempted assassination. The kingdom of Northmark is in a panic because of it and you’re the one selected to basically carry out all their duties. Travelling from town to town you will come across helpful people, shops, and tons of opponents standing in your way. The only way to get past them is via fighting, of course.

Fights are when the game shifts into its card form. Both players select their warriors (cards themselves) and can then apply upgrades to them, as well as how they should be armed for attacks. You can tweak the fighters via cards which upgrade their defense, attack, and a number of other things. Weapon cards are used to actually fight the opposing cards, and all relevant information is weighed in order to see what attacks are successful and how much damage they deal.

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf Featured

It’s a surprisingly complex system and one that isn’t described very well by the in-game tutorial. Still, it’s not too hard to get a feel for it after a handful of battles. Between story mission, you can even jump into some prize fights to help level up your character and get more money. Said money can be used to pick up more cards for your deck.

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf also has some excellent presentation. The art looks great from the character models to world map view. Then there are the card designs themselves which look like they could be from a tangible product. Honestly, it’s surprising just how polished it is. The writing is a bit of a let down in comparison, although it has some nice snark about it.

Fans of card games will probably enjoy this interesting RPG-ized title. On the other side of things, those without a familiarity of card games in general should probably proceed with caution.

Score: 3

3 out of 5 alpacas

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