Earth Overclocked

[quote]Follow my Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41363546-Fruit-N-Doggie-Reviews/]Fruit N Doggie Reviews,[/url] so you can be updated whenever I post a new review.[/quote] [h1]Overall Rating - Painfully Bad ★☆☆☆☆[/h1] [h1]First Impressions[/h1] I originally tried Earth Overclocked (EO) back in 2017, earning three achievements, but didn't do anything further with it. Not wanting to leave such tremendous gaps like that in my profile, I installed this title again to see what was going on with it. There must have been a time where I trusted the user reviews for Steam more, because from a casual look at the images on the store page, I never would have picked up the game now. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Once you've chosen a scenario, some elements are randomly generated, such as what bosses will spawn this attempt. Otherwise, the map that's created is fairly small, taking little time to navigate the area. Two of the targets will be boss battles that lock the screen in place, and as long as you're decent at basic hit and run tactics, these can be finished in only a couple of minutes. It's only when you have to clear the other two targets, which will be a dungeon crawl, that it slows down the pace. There's not a limit to how many enemies can be spawned in the dungeon, so you can activate and draw the attention of several enemies at once, within a confined space. Plus, each dungeon has you fight against a few waves of elite enemies, adding to the time needed to clear them, and increasing your chances of being killed. Even then, any given run might only take around 15 minutes, depending on how matters are going. Having more than one class and scenario, as well as requiring you to clear a few combinations to advance extends the playtime, but doesn't add much of interest to the experience. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3596721915 [h1]Controls[/h1] Although I was able to play this game with my controller, the way the inputs are set up doesn't feel natural to me. You have the option to wield two weapons, with no reason not to have both slots equipped. I find the inputs for equipping a new weapon awkward, and odd decisions like this make it hard to recall what button to press in the moment. [h1]Story[/h1] A scientist is working after hours on his own, when suddenly a “spirit” appears before him. Describing an unknown figure in the least scientific way possible, and deciding that he needs to use his time machine with little basis for doing so, he flings himself into a precarious situation. If only he had fully conquered time travel before he'd need such fanciful technology. Aside from an opening sequence, I don't believe there's any significant ending or wrap-up if you beat the game's various scenarios. At least, that's what I would conclude from the one sentence summary after I beat Distorted Earth with the scientist skin. Somehow I wound up two weeks in the future, got admonished by the boss for skipping out on work, but in all actuality none of that happened at all because I was joking with myself? What a reward for clearing one of the scenarios. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3596721479 [h1]Visuals[/h1] EO was originally released in 2015, but that's not an excuse for the visuals used to make the game. I don't know if the sprites were sourced from some form of game-making program, but they couldn't be more generic if you tried. While exploring the map, you'll face ghosts, bats, spiders, zombies, blobs, and other enemies with no common denominator associating them together. Seeing the square tiles of the map switch from one biome to the next, with nothing to gently transition the desert into an arctic wasteland almost makes me laugh. Why even bother writing anything as far as a story goes if there's no cohesive theme about what the forces of evil are, let alone their motivation? [h1]Sound Design[/h1] Because there's no coherent theme for any given place, the music that plays in the background seems to be randomized as well, probably choosing songs from a playlist. It's possible that certain tracks only appear in specific scenarios, and when you summon a boss, the music switches to a boss battle tune. Otherwise though, from what I could tell, the background music had no particular association to what was taking place on screen. Considering how quickly you can move in-between different environments, and face completely different enemies so rapidly, it'd be hard for the songs to pair up properly. I suppose that's why all of the songs sound like generic rock. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3596721658 [h1]Pros[/h1] 🌟 Between keys and coins, you can find some place to get a new weapon, or replenish another resource. 🌟 There's map markers and a dungeon map so you can easily navigate the area. [h1]Cons[/h1] ❌ Most enemies die in only a couple of hits, no matter what weapon you use. Them being so fragile sort of undermines the entire point of having combat. ❌ Nothing is done very well, including conveying plot to the player. ❌ The control set-up is awkward. [h1]Tips[/h1] 🔍 You can spend some time opening free chests, but you should prioritize beelining for the map markers, since it takes a decent chunk of time to fight the bosses and clear the dungeons. 🔍 Whenever you find a weapon, it's worth checking to see if it has more health than your most worn-out option. Not being armed is an easy way to corner yourself. [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] When someone develops a game with well thought out ideas, I can at least understand what the vision was, even if I don't enjoy playing it. In this case though, I don't get the impression much thought was put into anything. Time travel just seems like the easy excuse for everything to be jumbled up into a blender, and for nothing to be sensible or cohesive. Weapons breaking over time was probably added so that the game would have some difficulty, because there's so many drops all over the place replenishing your other resources. Between the awkward menus, lackluster visuals, boring combat, and lame endings, I'm truly surprised more reviews aren't negative. This game is a sloppy mess, and isn't worth your time. [table] [tr] [th]PC Specs[/th] [th]Performance[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Ryzen 2700 RTX 2070 16GB RAM ADATA SSD 1920x1080 [/td] [td]The game ran without incident on default settings. 💖 - EO is healthy [/td] [/tr] [/table]

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When I see the phrase 'roguelike' (as if the original [url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)]Rogue[/url] from 1980 had anything to do with this somewhat forcefully created genre - it was a dungeon crawler, hello?) in the description of a game, I usually just wave my hand and say "no" as for me it became a synonym of a poorly made product. I have a sound reason to do so, since any game bearing this label I've encountered so far turned out to be not only mostly bothersome but more importantly completely unmemorable - thanks to procedural generation. Maybe if any of them had an actual [u]plot[/u]... which [i]Earth Overclocked[/i] as a matter of fact does have, but it's really underwhelming(ly simple) and requires taking on an annoying game mode. The 51 hours which I spent on playing it ~40 went into playing/bumbling (as it's mostly just luck dependent) this unnecessary mode to "unlock" the final ending (and considering how 'lucky' I usually am meant that I mostly got useless pickups)... but really, why did I even bother? We play as a nameless scientist who seemingly successfully assembled a time machine. He is about to put the finishing touches to it, when a ghost (!) attacks him. Instead of running away he jumps into the time machine... and ends up in a crazy place, where all kinds of hostile creatures are present and fixated on killing him. We've got 16 minutes (although on the store pages it says 20...) to find the 4 pieces of the exploded time machine before... before it's game over. So we've got a relatively tight time limit, which goes against the 'explore and get better items' concept, which should be a main characteristic of the games of this genre. Considering we have to collect 4 necessary items located in the 4 corners of the map each guarded by powerful (not really, some are considerably weak compared to others) unique enemies, we are not going to have much time to collect stuff other than those that directly get in our way. This wouldn't be that much of a problem itself, since our character moves pretty fast and we can also use a 'sliding' move, which helps us travelling even quicker (and evade attacks), but 2 of said machine parts are hidden underground (how did they get there?), deep within some randomized mazes. Now this is the part where there can be HUGE differences between playthroughs, since some of the mazes can be really straightforward (with less rooms, coloured switches and enemies) while some can easily take 8-9 minutes... so if we get just 1 (let's not even think 2) 'unlucky' dungeons, we are basically screwed and can safely restart. But of course there are other factors that can largely impact gameplay which are common in this genre - weapons primarily. They can make quite a difference in clearing out a dungeon, not only in time, but in terms of safety as well (which comes down to saving time just the same, since we don't have to be that careful and can take on monsters more bravely). There are melee, stationary (bombs and other area-effect arms) and ranged weapons: obviously the ranged ones are more powerful and safer to use, while the close quarter weapons usually have more durability and shorter cooldown. We can carry no more than 2 weapons at the same time (I'd suggest 1 long-range single shot and another long-range explosive/homing gun). There are some useful melee weapons, but we should keep in mind that we have no chance to beat a boss without ranged weapons since going near them usually means suicide) plus we can carry 3 potions that can either create explosions or refill our health/armour, provide temporal invulnerability, but the best is probably the one that spawns a random armament. The game is nice enough not to make the items disappear, so we can leave weapons at critical areas (such nuances will cost us TIME though...). In addition weapons aren't that easy to come by: they can only be found in chests (the golden ones with double locks, these require 2 keys) or can be bought from mysterious merchants. Other items we can acquire include coins, health/armour refills and bonus time. In order to 'unlock' the full story - we have to play through a branch of playthroughs: first we must beat the game's original mode - Distorted Earth to access the game's 'hard mode', Earth Unleashed. Once we did that, we must beat Distorted Earth in all 4 costumes the game offers to play Final Malfunction, where we get inside the time machine and destroy its core to get home, into our lab... And this is where we should stop playing. The 4 clothes provide different abilities (and disadvantages): - basic laboratory coat - provides 1 extra life - gym suit - our weapons never break, but the less durability they have, the slower we will become - magnet suit - draws pickups to us from a distance - ninja - feels like cheating: fast movement and automatic throwing knife (constant damage to nearby enemies) If we are foolish enough and want to bumble with the game 30-40 hours more, we can keep on gambling. Gambling, because at this point we unlock the birthday suit (yes, we are naked) and thus have very limited health and armour. And this is basically the hardcore mode, since playing like this means 2-3 hits can easily end our game and considering there's no damage cooldown (after we are hit, we don't get a moment of invulnerability), homing enemies can hit us 2-3x in quick succession by doing nothing else, just staying in our vicinity... needless to say, we are going to die a lot. After we finish Earth Unleashed in the birthday suit (good luck for those foolish enough to try), we are going to access the final mode of the game: The Conclusion. As menacing as it sounds if we managed to successfully beat the naked run (and we did, since this game mode isn't available otherwise) this is going to be a walk in the park (it is just a single, long dungeon - without vendors however, so we might run out of weapons...). At the end we can face the final enemy who admits upon defeat that she released the ghost from the intro, to prevent us from successfully assembling a time machine and offers us the position of becoming the guardian of time... booo. And yes, I did not use the spoiler tag on purpose :P The controls are fluid with the usual WASD and SPACE for dashing. It is somewhat easier with a controller, aiming is better with mouse & keyboard though, but since a fair amount of weapons emit semi-homing projectiles it shouldn't be an issue. GameMaker provides the graphics engine, but the visuals are very poor even within its standards. Monsters look like as if they were drawn using paintbrush with very few animation phases. The tilesets are plain looking with a 256 colour palette of little variety. To say something positive: at least almost every object can be destroyed. Despite the level of graphics, the game still manages to slow down from time to time (not on a level that would affect gameplay- but I still felt it necessary to mention). The music is all right: a heart-pumping tune that matches the hectic nature of the game (but if we plan on playing through the hardcore/naked mode - it'll grow old fast). The sound effects are on par with the appearance of the monsters - equally primitive pew-pews. But at this point, it really shouldn't matter. [i]Earth Overclocked[/i] not only fails as a game, but also within the low standards of the 'roguelike' category as it misses the point completely by using a tight time limit, turning it into hectic gambling where we can only hope to have a decent gun against the final boss, because exploration is not an option. Obviously not recommended to fans of the genre (how many of them are there anyway? :)) and especially not to people who like games. PROS + it ends eventually CONS - the time limit prevents exploration and loot collection - some procedural dungeons and bosses are way harder than others - same for weapons, some are utterly useless - terrible graphics RATING 1.5/10

Nem bom e nem ruim. Ok joguei até concluir o farm das cartinhas. É bem desafiador e tem sua forma elegante e simples de ser.

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Для коллекции пойдет, для игры - нет

É um jogo

[h1][b]Not Recommended[/b][/h1]

💋

Surprisingly, it is a great bullet-hell action roguelike