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Steam Summer Game Fest ‘E3’ demos, ends Monday


crispy4000

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PC Gamer has a list of the highlights.

  • Everspace 2
  • Windjammers 2
  • Balsa Model Flight Simulator
  • Cris Tales
  • Desperadoes 3
  • Raji: An Ancient Epic
  • Solasta: Crown of the Magister
  • Iron Harvest
  • Faith
  • Colt Canyon
  • Skatebird
  • Gloomwood (I tried this last week, it's really good)
  • Ultrakill
  • Haven
  • The Iron Oath
  • Liberated
  • Destroy All Humans!
  • 30XX
  • Just Die Already
  • Clan O'Conall and the Crown of the Stag
  • This is the Zodiac Speaking
  • Fights in Tight Spaces
  • My Beautiful Paper Smile
  • Bloom: Memories
  • And, because why not, ProtoCorgi
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48 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Notice how it says Heavy Rain will come to steam in 2 days?

 

I guess even Quantic Dream games are only timed EGS exclusives

 

Rule of thumb is that every EGS 'exclusive' is approximately a year, unless otherwise stated.

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1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Notice how it says Heavy Rain will come to steam in 2 days?

 

I guess even Quantic Dream games are only timed EGS exclusives

 

It was announced a while back that all their games were coming to Steam in June. I played the Detroit Become Human demo last month on Steam. The game is pretty.

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Ex Zodiac is as good as expected.  Maybe a little too fast actually.  But it's bound to be one of the better demos here.  It gets what makes Star Fox SNES and N64 so much fun. 5/5

I had a good laugh with Pro Gymnast, that game is hilarious. It's a QWOP-like that actually feels intuitive.  Kind of.  I won't buy the final game because I've had my fill, but it's worth checking out. 4/5 

 

Skatebird is trash.  It's really unfortunate.  It feels like a poor man's rip off of Tony Hawk that somehow feels more sim with birds, in a bad way. 1/5

 

Raji: An Ancient Epic has a neat presentation style in cinematic and fairly good GoW-like combat.  But it's so in your face with the lore stuff though that I found myself just skipping dialogue because it started coming across as garblely-goo.  I hate when games act like you should intimately know a religion/lore/culture before you play it.  This is a demo, show me why I should be interested. 4/5

 

Windjammers 2 seems like a decently good game with awful tutorial.  I've never played the first, and feel lost with it, even after a bit of reading up. 3/5

 

Phogs is pretty much exactly what it looks like.  Don't know if I'd give it more of a shot. 3.5/5

 

Omno is one I found myself, didn't hear about elsewhere.  It's kind of got a Journey vibe with a neat air dash mechanic.  It's a very short demo, hopefully something they'll be able to build out more since it seems early. 4/5

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10 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

Raji: An Ancient Epic has a neat presentation style in cinematic and fairly good GoW-like combat.  But it's so in your face with the lore stuff though that I found myself just skipping dialogue because it started coming across as garblely-goo.  I hate when games act like you should intimately know a religion/lore/culture before you play it.  This is a demo, show me why I should be interested. 4/5

The religion /lore stuff was awesome to me, once I finished up the demo I immediately started googling the lore to learn more.

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38 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

The religion /lore stuff was awesome to me, once I finished up the demo I immediately started googling the lore to learn more.

 

Once I got to the wall paintings spouting off more names and in-references at the end, I listened to each one for like 5 seconds before saying nope.

 

If your game does a worse job presenting its lore than FFXIII, you have a major problem.  Don't care if it's co-opted from something cultural or not.

 

I have Never Alone in my library.  Maybe I'll give it a shot.  On the surface, it looks like a better adaptation of its source inspiration for the medium:

 

 

 

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Backbone - Point a click detective game with a neat pixel art style.  Interesting that you can strike out with certain characters and have to find new solutions.  Liked it, but didn't quite love it. 4/5

 

Ary and the Story of Seasons - Feels like a PS2 era Zelda clone with Disney vibes.  Lacking polish and budget clearly.  But what's there is fun enough to check out.  The season swapping mechanic reminds me of Oracle of Seasons. 4/5

 

 

 

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Ultrakill: My favorite demo so far, an old-school FPS with a point/combo mechanic. The movement is great, and between slides, wall jumps, and dashes you have a ton of options. All the weapons felt strong and well-balance, and you can do weapon switching ala the recent DOOM games to refresh cooldowns, adding another layer of complexity. The aesthetic is OK and I'm encouraged that the later levels of the demo see a location swap, since the game would've gotten stale fast otherwise. The gameplay felt deep and rewarding and reminded me of what I love about the recent DOOM games. This game inspired me to go buy and start Dusk, which I am enjoying quite a bit as well.

 

Ghostrunner: I played this after Ultrakill, and my reaction was the complete opposite. The aesthetic is cool and I like what the game is trying to do, but where Ultrakill allowed for a ton of player expression this game feels positively on rails. The loop of wall jump, dodge, dash, slash is cool, but there is no meaningful variation in this loop throughout the entire demo.

 

Gloomwood: Cool thief game. I like the atmosphere and thought that the demo level was very well-designed, although I found myself going loud a little too often to say that I got a great feel for how you're really supposed to play this game.

 

Destroy All Humans: I loved this game, the remake looks fantastic.

 

FAITH: Cool art and design;, slow, frustrating, and dull gameplay. Seems like the kind of thing that's for someone else.

 

Iron Harvest: Does this game have a tutorial?

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On 6/16/2020 at 7:40 PM, crispy4000 said:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1249480/ExZodiac/


Oh hell yes.  Been looking forward to trying this one for a while.

This is definitely going on my wishlist.

 

1 hour ago, Moa said:

Ghostrunner: I played this after Ultrakill, and my reaction was the complete opposite. The aesthetic is cool and I like what the game is trying to do, but where Ultrakill allowed for a ton of player expression this game feels positively on rails. The loop of wall jump, dodge, dash, slash is cool, but there is no meaningful variation in this loop throughout the entire demo.

I've had this feeling ever since seeing this game. It looks like an absolute treat, but its just a gameplay loop that repeats itself over and over. I'm hoping that they get super crazy with the platforming and enemies as the game progresses.

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On 6/17/2020 at 10:28 AM, crispy4000 said:

Skatebird is trash.  It's really unfortunate.  It feels like a poor man's rip off of Tony Hawk that somehow feels more sim with birds, in a bad way. 1/5

 

I played the Skatebird demo since I'm looking forward to it and hoped it was a "say it ain't so" from @crispy4000

 

I wouldn't say it is trash, though it need some more work. My biggest issue was the physics aren't quite there yet. Think the best thing you can do to make it more playable it to bind the directions to your d-pad. Playing with analog didn't feel right. D-pad felt better but the balance when you grind and such is super sensitive. Also, strangely the balance resets when you do another grind.

In any case it shows promise, I played it about 20 minutes. It's an alpha so still a long way to go.

 

As far as being "Tony Hawk that somehow feels more sim" there is a game called Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy that came out BEFORE Tony Hawk that was more sim than Tony Hawk (and arguably Skate is kind of this too) that I had a lot of fun with and it reminds me of that game in a way. Tony Hawk is the most accessible but I think there are plenty of fun alternatives to it that are fun as well.

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