Wall World Review (jupiter darmin)
Wow... I got addicted to this one FAST. Some games you just fall right into and then can't seem to pull yourself out of, and this is one of them. (That's partly because I very much love grind-y games, and this is a fairly grind-y game, though with frequent pay-offs so it doesn't feel like you spend 82 hours to get a single thing done.)
So what is it? These people have been living on "the wall" for so many generations, that that's all they know - the wall. They hear "legends" of an end of the wall (the ground), but "no one has ever seen it," so from their perspective, it's just a legend. The world is filled with caves, monsters, loot, and all kinds of stuff. Your objective is to survive wave after wave of the monsters by mining into the caves, gathering as may resources as possible, upgrading all of your equipment (be it upgrading weapons, mining laser, etc) and then making it back to your "robospider" in time to fend off the horrors.
And so that's the grind. Enter wall-world in your robospider, climb up or down the wall, find a cave, inject yourself into it, mine your way through it, gather resources, make it back in time for the monster waves, fight, repeat.... until your robospider blows up.
While that might sound dull, I have found it quite a great way to pass the time. There are permanent upgrades you can buy in the menu that make future play-throughs easier.. plenty of in-game upgrades to buy.. tons of blueprints to discover... and of course lots of dead NPC's with weird messages to stumble upon.
Despite the pixely graphics, Wall World does a pretty good job of making the gameplay not hard to look at. The animation is detailed and fun to watch. The equipment you upgrade in the main menu is spastically animated. These aren't copy+paste graphics - they look good and feel good. (So does the rest of the atmosphere - the sounds and music fit right in with the theme.)
There are a couple points I feel are cons. First of all, we need some kind of a "score" system, else this game will eventually lose replayability. Yes, there's the permanent upgrades you can buy, but I believe I've cleared most of those out already (it appears there are some I'm still missing, but we'll see as I continue playing). Or, at least some kind of a "stats" page (gems mined, enemies killed, whatever) - otherwise, eventually I'm going to realize that I've run out of things to do. I would LOVE to not feel that way about this one.
Too, it just feels like there aren't going to be enough permanent upgrades. From a little reading, again, I can tell I still have some left.. But I cleared through so many of them, so quickly, and now I'm barely finding any more.
I have not yet tried the DLC. I bought it because I don't want to run out of things to do, but I'm playing the base game to death first.
Time for the standard question: Is it worth full price? For seven bucks, this game is an easy yes. No need to wait for a sale. $7 is a more than fair price.
Overall verdict? Fantastic game, great execution, haven't really run into any bugs yet, just overall a great, addictive game.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go power up my mining laser and get back to work.