Reviews - KIAaze

-Sound, music and graphics:
The graphics and sounds in the game are quite good.
There isn't much music, except in the menu/map screens and on some endings. But the available music is pretty good.
-Gameplay:
Well, it plays like a renpy game. But apart from the standard visual novel gameplay, there are also a few minigames, four of them to be exact:
1) Vera Blanc, the protagonist, has the ability to read minds. But to use this ability, you have to play a hangman-style game, which is quite fun.
2) At some locations you have to hunt for clues. This is done by playing a find the differences game.
3) For situations in the game where you are under time pressure, you have to play a time-limited memory game consisting in uncovering pairs of the same number.
4) When you are running away from enemies, there is another memory game consisting in remembering a sequence of numbers.
None of all those minigames are especially difficult. The hardest one for me, was definitely the number sequence one, although it's also not that hard. While the minigames didn't bother me the first time I played through the game, and I even found them relatively appropriate, they were really annoying when replaying through the game to find all the various endings! It would have been nice to have an option to disable them in the menu.
Story: The story was quite good and engaging. However, there are quite a few errors in the text (mostly missing, duplicate or misplaced words, not many spelling errors). Another problem is inconsistencies in the story depending on actions taken. Ex: After defusing the bomb, the local news still tell me the train exploded.
The game offers at least 3 different good endings, a lot of bad endings (with one interesting one) and quite a few variations along the path, making it replayable. But despite that, it is still quite linear overall, and short.
Improvement suggestions: An overview of all achieved endings and remaining endings/things to discover would have been really nice.

This game is like a mix between Super Meat Boy (insane difficulty) and Portal (cool new ideas (and incidentally also infinite falls through "circular levels")).
At least unlike Super Meat Boy, it is nice to non-hardcore players by giving the option to play at slower speeds, with invincibility or even unlock game modes directly, just so you can have some fun without being constantly frustrated and giving up on the game. There are also a lot of checkpoints, which helps a lot. Like in Super Meat Boy, you respawn almost instantly (at the last checkpoint), making dieing less frustrating.
If you like it insanely hard, just leave all the default settings on. And after that, there are still enough achievements to unlock, like playing through the whole game without saves and without dieing...
There is also an unlockable secret lab with a "gravitron" level, where the goal is to survive as long as possible.

Apart from being challenging and having interesting gameplay mechanics and level design, the game also has a lot of humor.
Each level section has a name, and those names, when not funny on their own or well describing the current level, make sense once you continue ("What lies beneath?", "Doing things the hard way"). :)
The dialogs and terminal logs are also quite fun. All the characters have different personalities, which even makes it fun to replay certain sections (the "intermissions"), where you have to guide another character through levels. Victoria for instance is always scared, while Vermilion is all excited about the horrible/weird things happening to them! :D

Negative points:
-The difficulty is a bit uneven. Some hard parts at the beginning, and easy parts towards the end.
-Exploring the relatively safe surroundings to locate the entry points to the various "buildings" or some of the trinkets can be a bit boring and tedious sometimes, as you have to cross great distances, falling up or down. There are a lot of "empty screens" on the world map.

Great story, adorable characters, great gameplay, great music, great art, lots of choices to make, multiple endings, innovative weapon leveling mechanic, cross-platform, free, just an overall excellent game.
I haven't played it for a while, but I can't remember anything negative to say about it, except maybe that it gets pretty hard at the end, especially if you go to "hell".
Of all the GNU/Linux games that have been coming out lately, I almost regret that this one is free, since it's easily one of the most worth paying for!

The good:
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-Polished: good graphics, sound and gameplay
-Challenging enough without being too challenging.
-Translated into a lot of languages and you can add your own.
-Collaborative mission editor, also works while playing!
-DRM-free
-Uses GPLed darkplaces engine (also means you should be able to do lots of modding, additionally to the available in-game editor.)
-Cross-platform. Runs natively (and perfectly) on GNU/Linux.

The singleplayer alone is definitely worth the cheap price.
If you liked the first episode (now training missions since the recent update), the second one is more of the same, but with new enemies and weapons and a lot more missions + the unlockable first person mode (well, third person, but not top-down)
The full game (up to Burning retribution) offers 27 missions in total. Each mission can take from a few minutes up to 1 hour. Never really measured it, but the total single-player gamelength is easily worth the price.

There is also an IRC channel for players at #steelstorm@freenode. Not built into the game (like with Globulation), but a good way of connecting players and devs. ;)

The bad:
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-It is a bit repetitive.
-Not that innovative
-Has no immersive storyline (although care has been taken to add a good briefing to each mission)
-Insults you when you exit the game. Not a big deal, but I am not a fan of it...

The multiplayer is not very active, but it's also not dead. One can still find players, especially during weekends.

Note:
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A new multiplayer mod called Towers of Doom just came out and looks quite interesting, so maybe the multiplayer activity will increase.
It is similar to DotA, i.e. you have weapon shops, AI units, turrets, 2 teams and the goal is to destroy enemy structures, except that it is a shooter.
It also introduces some new interesting weapons with area effect and repair powers and different tank chassis, so the game might get better in the next episodes. Stay tuned! ;)