Bounty Star

Normally, I wouldn't go out of my way to review something, but with this game sitting at Mixed I really feel I need to go to bat for it. I got it for cheap on a Humble Bundle and frankly, if I had spent the price of that entire bundle on just this game, I'd have felt happy. It's a post-apocalyptic mech action game, with all the fixings of a western. You take on the role of a woman who failed to save her town, and has been in despair ever since. An old friend helps you move into an old garage where you slowly begin farming and making a new life for yourself. It's a simple premise, but one that I think they execute on really well. The voices are very well done, in a way where you can feel the emotion in them. I think they did a really good job with the models, textures, animations and such, sure sometimes things maybe look a little silly but everything feels real. The combat feels impactful and it's a fun time exploring around and seeing the sights. Now, that said, it isn't a perfect game, and I think there are flaws everyone is going to get hung up on. Movement can feel weird, with a turning radius even for when you control the actual person. Sometimes things are slow, sometimes you get caught up on geometry, the camera sensitivity either feels just too slow or breakneck fast, at least once I had to restart a mission because I got stuck on something and could no longer move, the combat sometimes feels unnecessarily hard when you try to use melee, or if you find the right gun, ridiculously easy from range. Sometimes you'll get stun locked, sometimes your mech's movement radius causes you to fall down an obstacle and now you have to climb all the way back up to your objective. The farming and ranching, while fun, quickly loses meaning when you have more money than god. Processing a chicken seems like it'd give you meat, but you can't naturally produce it. If you sell a chicken after it's laid a fertilized egg, the egg will never hatch. You end up doing a lot of mostly straightforward missions where you shoot the bad guy real quick, stomp on an optional objective, and then leave. Sometimes enemies that you make flee get stuck on the geometry too and you then have to kill them, losing out on optional objective money. There are so, so many little things that add up to make the game feel frustrating. There are stretches where the game expects you to simply farm and do miscellaneous missions on your own before the story progresses, and these could feel boring. Is the story of this game really worth all of this? Yes. The story is, in my opinion, that good. The character moment's are so strong, the little details they add making things so interesting. The character drama is so much fun to engage with, the interactions between characters are so strong. There are fun, interesting, unique people that you meet along the way that I'm excited to see every time. Whenever you upgrade the farm and see the ways that Clem has made it homier, the way she writes in her journal that shows that she's putting up with so much, maybe even lying to herself. The way Clem even just sits, leg always pumping up and down, indicative of the way she's been scarred. There are moments where you upgrade your mech that make me laugh, there are adorable moments with the animals that make me smile so much, the way the characters all talk to each other and it feels so good to feel progress and character arcs. I ended this game feeling really happy and so glad I kept going. I ended this game having genuinely loved it, and I am really looking forward to what these devs do going forward because this project was filled with so much love and passion. Every person put so much forward, and it's left a game that I'm more than happy to play again some day. At the end of the day, if you engage with this game on its own merits and let yourself get invested into the story, you'll have a good time. It's a flawed gem, but it's a gem nonetheless. And if you can see the value in that, then it's a great game for a relaxing time.

The game isn't bad, the ideas are cool but everything feels a bit undercooked. It's not a hidden gem unfortunately, if you're a fan of games like Armored Core, or Mechwarrior, this isn't going to provide you with a new or fresh experience.

It's a fun little arcade mech brawler, with some small base-building elements. Story thus far is fine, I like what they're going for but the characters can come across a little bland in some scenes. The mech design is cool, and there's a nice variety of weapons (some are categorically better than others) with some minor customisation. I really like what the devs are aiming for with this game, but I think it needs a tiny bit more polishing to really become a "hidden gem". If the devs are reading, I would suggest: * There's a weird turning circle on the human character which makes her feel clunky (don't mind it as much on the mech as it makes some sense mechanically) * Weapon ranges feel very short - It's also weird that stuff basically just disappears beyond max range, as it punishes leading your shots properly and outranging melee opponents. * It feels weird to not be able to reload whilst ADS - You have to either expend all ammo and then hit R, or stop ADS and hit R? * I like how fleshed out the animations are (it would be easy to fade to black for instance), but some of the cutscenes could be easier/quicker to skip, as they can wear thin when seeing the same bed animation for the 20th to progress time to refresh for missions. * Combat is pretty fun so far; mission lengths are good, but some of the side objectives are very tough, while others are way too easy * The heat mechanic is somewhat punishing (but it's also relatively easy to avoid with the cryo jets), I think it just limits the customisation at the same time. * Some kind of "ping" mechanic would go a long way to help find enemies hidden away on the larger maps, as well as find those seemingly invisible curio stashes Other than that, I really like this game so far!

I wanted to like this game. It's influenced by Monster Hunter, Titanfall, and GTA. But its just full of jank in the worst ways. The writing is awful and they force you into endless cutscenes and tutorials. I just started skipping every dialogue and cutscene after the town exploded. The never ending tutorials treat you like you've never played a video game before, but the missions are really hard and expect you to try your ass off immediately. Absolutely not worth $25. I bought it in a Humble Bundle for $14 total and it wasn't worth it.

Pros - Performance is good - Voice acting decent - Excellent world building Cons - I thought there would be more to the base buidling aspect or maybe I just didn't play long enough. The characters talk about farming and I get seeds but after nearly 5 hours there is very little happing in the base in terms of upgrades and progress. - Missions are repetive, Its always just go to a place and destroy everything. There are optional bonus tasks but they are also just destroy things. There is no narartive during the missions (or again maybe I didn't play long enough) - The sprint is a toggle as opposed to hold down and can't be customised. Also you can't turn very well while sprinting. I could never quite get use to it, I always have sprint as hold in any other game so I kept getting stuck in sprint mode. Overall its ok but the pacing is too slow for my attention span.

Amazing worldbuilding, great voice acting and characters. But sadly, every actual gameplay elements feels undercooked. Mech: Only one mech, only swappable parts are internal or handheld. Base building: linear, only one way to build your base. gameplay loop: look at mission enemy report, equip weapon weakness, swap hot/cold parts depending on afternoon/night, whittle down enemy forces until done, repeat at next mission. Combat: Clunky. Which feels like it should be immersive for the setting, but it only feels clunky for you, not for your enemies. Plot progression: Stuck in plot limbo for so long, takes forever to get back to the one plot point introduced at the beginning. It pads itself out by making you grind missions to gain experience points to raise your rank before you can continue.

(Game not complete and dropped at 1.1 hours of gameplay, part of my review all my games effort) (short version) There is the makings of a good game here, however the tediousness of this game is just irritating. I got soft locked after chapter one due to a purchase requirement for a chain binder. I had no idea I'd need nearly 1500 credits to buy the supplies for it... You know what's worse than a game that's rough around the edges? Making the player do busy work to not play your game. If you have a requirement like that, add it into the story, make the player have the option to take out a loan or something. $25 dollars is highway robbery for this game.

To be fair, I didn’t play much, but got the impression that this game has heart. Sadly, it lacks the competence to be anything more than mediocre. It feels like it constantly gets in its own way. The intro, for example, has a great hook, but to get to it, you first have to sit through 15 minutes of (mostly bland) dialogue - which, although voice-acted, doesn’t auto-play (meaning you constantly have to press a button to continue). Melee is just button-spamming, ranged has a lock-on, they don’t synergize at all and have no punch. I feel it would have been better to focus on either one, ranged or meele, but improve both. There are also way to many cut-scence in between the most trivial tasks (which you can skip, thankfully). My stopping point was after three bounties, because the game just kept drowning me in tutorial missions and refused to just let me play.

I want to like this game but the controls and temp controls, especially in the later chapters make it a chore to play.

Abandonware