Some quick reviews:
Geometry Wars 3 - PS4
I love mind melting dual stick shooters. This game is ridiculously fluid, smooth, and buttery. Absolute zen like meditation playing. Functionally similar to the other Geometry Wars games I've played -- you destroy enemies, they drop geoms that increase your multiplier.
Lots of game modes, bosses, and worlds. Modes include stuff like timed score, 3 life score, 'asteroids' style, gate races, 'king' mode where you can only shoot from small temporary bubbles, etc. Worlds are flat / curved / spheres / cubes / etc.
The game took a minute to adjust to -- I kept dying to things spawning on me, but that rarely happens now that I'm fully tuned in. I spent an inordinate amount of time on one of the early levels trying to beat a friend's high score before realizing that if I kept going forward, I could unlock and upgrade new ships and special weapons (and then go back and crush my friend's score).
Highly recommended. It's faster and more hectic (for better or worse) than, say, Super Stardust, though if you asked me to decide on which is better I don't think I could answer. SS feels more coherent; GW feels like everything and the kitchen sink.
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Fat Princess Piece of Cake
Continues to be my go-to time waster. I can easily play for an hour or more without running out of 'energy' to play more... there's no need whatsoever to spend money unless you really want to.
Pro tip --- the weekly challenges can be played more than the initial 5 times... and since you keep 3 slots going, it's the single best place to 'grind' for jewels/powerups. The levels do get harder, so you'll have to stop eventually.
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Deadman's Cross
An absolute abomination of a F2P game. One of the worst ever.
There are various things you do:
1) Engage in a shitty, unresponsive, 'sniping' mini game killing zombies hoping to unlock cards.
2) Use these cards to set up zombie hoards. Before you get excited that there's a CCG in here, it's absolute ass. There is no interactivity, two decks just hit each other till one dies... the tutorial even begs you to fast forward through them.
3) A awful drpg style 'search' mode where you explore rooms and fight hoard battles.
4) 'battle' other decks, which basically means hold a fast forward button.
Basically, you're sniping looking for rare cards to both add to your deck or fuse/improve your deck. But the entire deck minigame is atrocious. It's not even a game.
Oh, and there are things on timers like any super shitty F2P game. I don't even want to talk about this game anymore. It's an affront against good game design. It's just awful.
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Battle Islands - F2P PS4
An odd base defense / offense game with massive use of F2P timers. Place a barracks, wait 5 minutes. Upgrade a whatever, wait 30 minutes. Place a hanger, wait 7 hours. That sort of shit. You eventually build an island up, and send out soldiers/vehicles to attack enemy defended isles for resources.
A potentially interesting game ruined by F2P crapola. Unless your idea of a good game is watching a timer countdown or opening your wallet every 5 minutes.
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Conception 2
So far, so good. A bit too much time spent upfront in tutorial and then 'dating' (i hate that sort of thing), but the combat mechanics seem interesting and cool. I've heard it's too easy though, which could be a problem. The 'time' mechanic in the game is clearly broken, which is actually good... you effectively have unlimited dates so there's no sense of things being 'missable'.
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Watchdogs PS4
Something feels off. The game does get better as you upgrade your skills and can start pulling off neat tricks, but I'm just not engaged. Some cool things in the city like poker games (that move a bit too slow) and shell games... but other minigames are atrociously bad (usually involving strict time trials in extremely goofy circumstances... one example being taking a 'digital drug' and bouncing from psychedelic flower to psychedelic flower... which in itself was fun at first till you realize to three star it you need an almost perfect run and there are multiple events. There's almost too much going on.
Can't finish it.
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Evil Within
Want to love it. But don't. Not sure why. I think I just hate hiding in lockers, or perhaps, I got my fill last year with Outlast. Still, I can tell I should like this game. (doesn't help that I don't have lot of time to sit down and play my PS4. I've basically only played the prologue and I think I'm going to sell it. Hopefully the next owner will have the time for it and love it.
I'm having a hard time really judging both Evil Within and Watch Dogs just because of that lack of time. Maybe if I really sat down with them, I'd find myself engaged. On the other hand, other games like Wolfenstein and Infamous sucked me right in.
