Scoregasm

The Short


Pros
- Heavy score-based, Geometry Wars-esque duel stick shooter
- Music is awesome
- Branching paths based on how well you score in a level add replay value
- High number of levels and multiple endings
- Provides a genuine challenge on the "Insane" levels
- Very fast. Burst mechanic helps keep the action going.

Cons
- Requires a lot of repetition in order to fully master
- Steep learning curve
- Failing a run near the end can be very frustrating
- Have to replay certain levels multiple times in order to access the harder difficulties
- Title, as well as the female "moaning" sounds in the menus (while more goofy than sensual) seem a bit crass
- Graphics are bland compared to other score-based bullet hell games like Geometry Wars

If you like quick, score-based duel stick shooters, you might want to check this game out. 

The Long

Scoregasm, stupid name aside, does exactly what you think: is a duel-stick, bullet-hell shooter with an extremely heavy emphasis on score. For fans of games like Geometry Wars that provide a fun challenge while still being balls-out hard will find a lot to love here, though a few minor niggles take what could have been a hardcore score-based shooter and make it a little weak. 

Hope you are good at dodging bullets. 

First the good: Scoregasm is always fast and always has a very solid sense of progression. One of the main problems with score-based duel stick shooters is that they always start off really slow (Geometry Wars being a big offender). So when you mess up, you know you've got about five minutes of boredom before the game actually gets crazy. Scoregasm fixes this by having each stage be very short, and having the insanity escalate quickly even on the easiest difficulties. You have to beat a level with a specific score to unlock the next one, and the higher the score you get the higher difficulty stage you can unlock. You do get to pick, so if you do really good but still want to stay on Normal you can, or you can just blast your way up to Insanity and start praying. 

In order to unlock more difficult stages you have to play better and better. 

The overall concept is simple: use either a controller, mouse and keyboard, or just mouse to duel-stick shoot everything. The game also has a "Burst" mechanic, which blasts a small nuke within a radius around you that kills bullets and enemies alike. The more enemies you kill the more powerful your weapon gets (and the faster more Bursts unlock), so if you can keep a really long chain and protect yourself with Bursts you'll be able to blast your way to a great score. Each level is usually 3-4 minutes long at the most, which means replaying to unlock more levels isn't as frustrating as it might have been. With the levels displayed as branching paths, the incentive to unlock and clear them all grabs you right in.

Some levels have unique qualities, like this spinning wheel of death. 

Graphically the game looks decent. It doesn't have the same fantastic, flashy style of Geometry Wars or the 3D, gorgeous look of Super Stardust HD, but as it stands it is still decent looking. A big problem, though is that the background elements tend to look a lot like enemies, which can throw you off. I appreciate trying to make an interesting backdrop to my shooting, but when it interferes with gameplay I have to say "no thanks."

The music is excellent. Again, it isn't Geometry Wars or Super Stardust HD quality, but it provides a kicking enough tune to keep your blood pumping as crazy stuff goes on all over the screen. 

The weird girl screaming/moaning/orgasming whatever sound that happens in the menus and sometimes in the levels is pretty tacky and crass, though. I get they were going with their "Scoregasm" theme, but really? We already knew you named your game this to get attention out of the indie crowd, but that's kind of pushing it into "tasteless" territory. 

It does a good job keeping track of all your progress

At $10, Scoregasm is pushing it a little. For fans of the genre it probably would be a solid investment, but if you just sort of like these kinds of games I'd get the demo first. Again, I got it in an indie bundle, so for me it was totally worth the cost (and I plan on playing it again tonight, since the Mac Steam version finally showed up), but honestly I'd wait for a $5 sale, or if they package it in their usual Steam Indie collections during their sale months.

It's a solid game, but there are a lot of these types of games around, and this one only does a little to differentiate itself from the crowd. Minus adding "-gasm" to the end of its title. Three out of five stars. 

It's not easy being green...

Cogs

The Short

Pros

- Similar to the game Pipe Dreams with a good mix between gear and slider puzzles

- Fifty puzzles

- Lots of goals including speed, moves used, etc. to be ranked on

- Game has a cool, steampunk-esque theme

- Looks good on PC, iOS, or Android. Fun phone game. 

Cons

- Game gets really hard really fast

- Later puzzles are unlocked based on skill on previous ones, which means you might have to replay some for better times/moves

- Uses the same basic premise for puzzles throughout the whole game

If you like Steampunk and puzzles, I have a game for you. 

The Long

I'm pretty sure I own Cogs on every single platform it's available for. I got it as a free app of the day on iOS, and it seems to pop up in indie bundles all the time (so I probably have bought it more than once). It was weird that I only recently got around to playing it, especially since I love everything Steampunk and I also love...puzzles? 

Anyway, Cogs is pretty good, despite it's relative simplistic core elements.

Puzzles start easy enough. Don't be fooled. 

Cogs' core concept is simple: slide tiles with gears (or pipes) around until everything is connected and whatever device you are working on can fly away or whatever. It's a concept anybody can figure out, since it's just sliding pieces about, but it does a decent job of mixing it up. Gears make way for pipes, and some have to be activated at exactly the same time or without crossing, and thus things get tricky fast. After about five tutorial levels you'll be in the meat of the game, and trust me when I say this game gets hard.

Getting this puppy airborn requires keeping an eye on multiple grids at once. 

Gears of different sizes and levels get thrown into the mix, and then gears with pipes and having to solve one, two, three, or more puzzles at once (either with pieces having gears on both front and back or solving around a cube, etc.). While the core concepts remain constant, they do a lot with very little. It's a fun challenge, and the whole "one more puzzle..." here thing kicks in pretty bad. Until you get stuck. Then you get angry. 

Stuff is getting crazy. 

There's a Challenge mode as well as an "Inventor" mode, which is basically just harder puzzles. Since later puzzles are unlocked based on your speed, moves used, and previous puzzles solved, if you suck really bad you might have to replay some, which is never fun. Why not just have them all unlocked from the start? 

If you are into these kinds of puzzles, though, Cogs is worth a look. 

There really isn't much more to say about Cogs. It has a beautiful presentation that (as already stated) has a distinct Steampunk feel about it. The background music is nice, the graphics look good throughout, and it provides a decent challenge. At $10 on Steam, if you really like these kinds of puzzlers you can't go wrong, and it's even cheaper on iOS (where it looks just as good and plays better with touch controls).

A very solid indie puzzle game. A little more variety wouldn't have hurt, but it still works based on what it has here. Four out of five stars. 

And the mobile version looks good too! You can't go wrong here. 

TRAUMA

The Short


Pros
- A unique point-and-click adventure game using photographcs
- Four levels each with multiple endings
- Effects and photography aspect of the game looks good

Cons
- Absurdly short; you can probably beat it under an hour
- Runs at 800x600 by default...what is this, 1995?
- Voiceover and story, the main focus of this game, are poor
- Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even with alternate endings
- The photos that have been "touched up" with weird elements look tacky
- Feels like a full-price flash game...because it is

Crushed teddy bears aside, TRAMA really isn't that great

The Long

TRAUMA starts interesting. The premise is that a girl and her friends have gotten into a horrible traffic accident, and she's seeing bizarre visions in her subconscious while in a coma. Using still photographs taken in different positions to navigate the world (much like the original Myst games), TRAUMA tries to have both a unique style, story, and adventure by offering branching paths, multiple endings for each scenario, and a quite voice-over throughout. 

Unfortunately, while this might have worked, it would have required a very skillful execution to pull off, and that is not something TRAUMA does. 

Every world has a distinct color theme about it

I found the game initially compelling. A game like Myst but using actual photos, that are somewhat disjointed in their connection but still trying to tell what I thought started as a compelling tale? Sign me up. The problems start, however, when you realize these pictures just don't look very good. The photos were native at 800x600, like they were taken by an ancient digital camera, so when bumped up in resolution they look stretched. They also try to "add" unique bits to the photos via Photoshop and it shows: the changes look like they drew over the image in pen with no attempt to meld it. 

The game also falls apart with the narrative. Had it been strong enough, I would have been willing to overlook the somewhat boring locations and photographs and instead focused on what it would be like in the mind of a comatose car accident victim. However, the girl's voice is blasse and airy, like she's just sleepwalking through all her lines, and what she says isn't particularly compelling either. The little side-stores that were part of each scenario were unique and somewhat interesting, but the poor narration combined with the just passable writing isn't enough to carry an already dull experience.

The main goals involve collecting photos and interacting with certain objects. 

The four scenarios have branching paths and multiple endings to discover, which is neat if you can stand digging through the same few pictures over and over. Controls to designate which direction you want to go are decent at best, annoying at worst, with you have to draw large gestures with the mouse in order to do simple things like turn around. You also draw certain things to interact with objects, which I thought was a neat way to "solve" the "puzzles" (really it's just searching until you find the answer and then knowing where to use it), but forcing it in normal movement was a mistake. 

Where could that photograph be? Hmm...

Despite all my complaints, I got a weird amount of enjoyment out of TRAUMA. I played through and got every ending, taking me about an hour total, and after that deleted it and never looked back. I think the idea of doing an abstract, Myst style game with photographs instead of pre-renders could actually be a pretty awesome indie game, but TRAUMA flubs too many of the fundamentals to be that. It's an interesting tech demo, but as a game it isn't worth your time or money.

It's going for $7 on Steam, and I can't recommend it at that price. I got it as part of an indie bundle as a throwaway game, so I don't feel bad that way (or the hour I spent on it), but unless someone gives you the game for free I'd wait and see if a follow-up game takes these concepts and makes an actual "game" out of it.

Two out of five stars. 

The chapter titles show how pretentious this game wishes it was, but it even fails at that. 

Jamestown

The Short


Pros
- Bullet-hell shooter set in the lost 1700s settlement of Jamestown. On Mars.
- Takes itself way too seriously, which is just stupidly awesome
- Competent shooter with multiple ships, styles, and four-player co-op
- Various difficulty levels mean even the suckiest player of these games can play it and get better
- Lots of bonus content

Cons
- Later levels are only unlocked by playing on the harder difficulties, which means noobs will only get one level
- Only has five levels total
- Mac version is badly ported; expect massive slowdown

Ok so...this game is kind of weird. 

The Long

Jamestown is straight stupid. Apparently when the colony of Jamestown vanished in the 1700s, it actually went to Mars. Yeah. And so now there's a war between the Americans and the Spanish (who have allied with Martians) battling for the future of Mars. In space. Driving space scooters. And space...sailing...boats. What is...what is videogames?

Point being, this is an indie pixelated bullet-hell shooter and it is great. It's silly premise and extremely ham-fisted story (which works because it takes itself so damn seriously) only adds a layer of fun to an extremely solid, very well made top-down shooter. Lots of little things also are implemented to make this game great, so let's get to this review, shall we?

Expect to kill a lot of Martian Spaniards

As a bullet-hell shooter, Jamestown works. It has a wide range of difficulties available, from "super easy" to "I hope you played Ikaruga." The main trick is the "Vaunt" system. When you gather enough money (represented by coins or golden gears that pop out of enemies), you can activate "Vaunt," which gives you a temporary shield and a bonus multiplier. Keep picking up gears and the multiplier will stay up, earning massive points. I also think you do more damage. Don't quote me on that, though.

It's a balance because the shield doesn't come back, and if your Vaunt is on you can't turn the shield back on, but if you let it drain and then re-fill it you get another shield. So you have to decide if you'd rather keep your multiplier or sacrifice it for a shield. Nothing as deep as Ikaruga's color-swapping combo madness, but it gets the job done. 

There are also lots of bullets. 

There are four ships, one of which is unlocked from the start and the rest you get later, and you can choose between regular and alt-fire. The more powerful ones are also the harder ones to control, so you have another layer of skill there for those who seek it out. 

You can also play this game four player on one box, assuming you have the controllers (getting an Xbox 360 Windows Wi-fi plug helps if you already own an Xbox with four controllers) and four of your friends can blast Spanish Martians together. The game doesn't really scale much (or at all) for more players, but since you share credits if one of your friends totally sucks then you'll probably want to evict him from the team. You also have to share the vaunt-earning powerups, so that's another switch-up. 

There's a lot of unlocks and challenge modes, but the game still feels a bit short. 

This game only has six story missions, and there's an (annoying) twist to unlocking them. Playing on easy only nets you one level; future ones are unlocked by beating the previous levels on harder difficulties. I get that this is a good way to force wimpy players to attempt it on harder difficulties, since that's the only way to unlock the final level, but if you just aren't that great at bullet-hell games (or your Mac version has the worst slowdown of all time due to a shoddy port) you'll not get as much value out of it. 

There's tons of challenge modes, ranging from dodging bullets to scoring a set number of points in a set amount of time. By "tons" I mean "a little over a dozen," but they are good extra content that will help teach you how to do better. The lack of content might be a little disappointing, but these are the types of games you play through shooting for high scores, and are meant to be played again and again. I mean, I love Ikaruga, and that game only has four levels. It's that brutal difficulty that keeps us coming back, and your attempts to get better and better scores (and eventually "one credit" it).

Four players is absolute madness. 

The game looks and sounds great. The graphics are all pixelated in HD and look beautiful and colorful. The music is period-esque sweeping orchestrations that are completely absurd and fit the goofiness perfectly. You could really do a lot worse. 

At $10, Jamestown should be an easy sell to anybody who is a fan of these types of games. If you don't know if you like them or not (or 1943 was your last experience with this genre on the NES), then $10 is a pretty low bar of entry for checking it out. It's colorful and fun, though the poor Mac port, limited content, and restriction of the final levels for only the hardcore is a bit of a pain. 

Still, it's worth a shot just because you'll be shooting Spanish Martians on Mars. In 1770. 

Four out of five stars. 

This game is so stupid. I love it. 

Hoard

The Short


Pros
- Arcade style action where you play as a dragon
- Burninate the countryside, burninate the peasants, burninate all the people in their thatched roof cottages
- Four player multiplayer is actually pretty fun
- Easy to grasp a hold of, core concepts are solid and fun for a few games

Cons
- Graphics look pretty bad
- Doesn't mix stuff up enough; once you've played the tutorial you pretty much know how the rest of the game goes
- Keyboard and mouse controls are totally broken; better get a controller here
- Single player is not fun at all; AI is stupid
- Multiplayer is awesome, but nobody is playing it
- You aren't really getting much value for your $10 here ($15 on PSN)

It's gonna be really hard to not make Trogdor jokes this whole review. 

The Long

Hoard is an interesting little game where its big promotional push is you "PLAY AS THE DRAGON!" Essentially an arcade game (that reminded me a little too much of the free Dash of Destruction Doritos game on XBLA), your goal is simple: burn stuff, get money, return it to your cave before the other dragons beat you to it. By getting gold you can get upgrades like speed, damage, life, and carrying capacity, until you are the biggest and baddest dragon of them all, razing countrysides, stealing princesses and holding them for ransom, and putting Smaug to shame. 

It's a cool idea. Too bad that's about all this game has. 

If it burns, we can kill it. 

All matches typically play out the same. You have two to four dragons who all want fat loot. It starts slow, burning farms and small settlements as you grow in power (or burning each other, if your friends are jerks). As time passes things ramp up: thieves show up to snitch your gold and you have to defend it. Princesses, escorted by knights, can be kidnapped and if you can hold them for long enough they'll pay out a hefty ransom. Cities keep popping up and growing stronger, making your adventures more and more treacherous, and all the while your friends are getting more powerful (and are still jerks) so they burn you to steal your precious gold. Some friends. 

TROGDOOOOOOR! Ok, that was it. I promise. 

With a handful of maps, if you have four players together (online, in Steam's case) this game is actually pretty hilariously fun, at least for a few maps. You can all act like jerks as you fight to get the most gold (the game is time based, so whoever has the most at the end wins), and since matches are usually only 10 minutes you can easily jump into the next one before the losers get all whiny. It's a blast for a couple of games, especially with people you know.

And then you realize something: that's all there is to this game.

Repetition sets in quick. 

Killing guys, getting gold, going home; you'll be doing this over and over. And while it's tolerable when with friends (and for the initial few runs), after a few games you'll all probably be done with it forever. Single player is a horrible experience; playing against AI dragons just doesn't have the same fun and thrill factor as stealing from friends would. It gets bland extremely quickly, which is a shame. 

Run away!

It also hurts that this game looks ugly. The "board game" aesthetic was a little endearing for a while, but the lack of variety between maps (hope you like green or brown fields) means they all look kind of the same. The sprites are really small and lack detail, and the effects are bland. Again, the fact that I filed this under "board game" helped, but I still can't shake the impression this game just doesn't look very good, even for an indie title. Sound is also poor and gets extremely irritating very quickly. 

It's also worth nothing that (for me, at least, playing the Mac version) the keyboard and mouse controls were straight up broken. It plays fine on an Xbox 360 controller (using duel sticks to move and shoot fire), but on my regular computer stuff I could hardly control it at all. We are talking completely broken here. 

I got this in an indie bundle, so for that price it was worth it, I guess...

As it stands, I can't recommend Hoard. If you have four friends and everybody can get the game for super-cheap, it might be a fun diversion for a few hours (or if you pick it up in an indie bundle, which I did). But paying the full $10 on Steam (or oddly up-priced $15 on PSN) is absurd. There just isn't enough variety here, even for arcade point junkies. Again, there isn't anything fundamentally broken about Hoard (except keyboard/mouse controls), but at its core this simple game just doesn't have the carrying capacity like other simple games like Bejeweled or Royal Envoy. 

Plus, there's no Trogdor. Two out of five stars.

I almost made it this whole review...

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The Short


Pros
- Genuine Lovecraftian horror
- No combat; you run or you die
- "Insanity" mechanic is fantastic and only adds to the horror
- Slow burn of creepiness that reminds me of the classic Silent Hill games
- Excellent sound design and graphics
- Might be the scariest games I've ever played

Cons
- Can be difficult to know exactly where to go next
- Might be a little slow at first for the impatient
- Messing up just once and result in a quick death
- Playing it in the dark with headphones can seriously freak you out

This may not look creepy, but you have no idea how tense this experience is. 

The Long

What makes a game (or a movie, or a book) truly scary? Some people would say it's an overabundance of gore to disgust you and freak you out. Others would argue its the fear of isolation, of not being able to see what is out there coming to get you while you are totally alone. And some think it's zombies on motorbikes. 

For me, the best horror is a slow burn, a general uneasiness caused by fear of the dark or the unknown. The fear of not being able to trust your senses, of seeing things that you don't know if they are real or not. And when you start doubting yourself, that's when you really start freaking out.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent does this perfectly. It might be the creepiest game I've ever played. 

If these screenshots don't look creepy, its because I'm avoiding any potential scare-spoilers. 

The concept behind Amnesia is simple: you awake in a dark castle with - you guessed it! - amnesia. You seem to have left notes to yourself along the way, so armed with a lantern and tinderbox you set out to find exactly what is going on and try and get out of the castle alive.It starts with a very slow burn, walking through empty corridors, the only sounds your echoing footsteps and the winds breezing in through unseen windows. But the atmosphere goes a long way, so when stuff really starts getting messed up, you are already extremely on edge. It's a great horror trick, one Silent Hill 2 did very well with its introduction, and it is masterfully executed in the opening moments of Amnesia.

The game is essentially an adventure game mixed with survival horror, with some twists. The biggest of which is the insanity concept. When you are in the dark, your character slowly begins to stress out more and more, leading him to become more "insane." Eventually your vision starts to blur, your head aches, and you start seeing things that aren't actually there at inopportune moments. Or are they? Since the monsters (which this game has, though you only see them in small snippets if you want to live) can be straight up invisible at times, it can be hard to trust your eyes once your insanity meter is high enough. This leads to another terrifying aspect: do you run from that monster thinking he is real, or is he just a figment of your deranged mind?

The places you go are very creepy without the need of any blood or gore.

Since light plays such an important factor, you'll be doing a lot of digging around for lantern oil, lighting torches on the walls or candles, and only braving dark areas when you feel completely confident. Your character moves slowly, but not slow enough to be completely frustrating, and he can run when stuff gets crazy. And it will. Trust me, it will.

The art design in this game also adds to the scares. Rather than painting the walls in blood and guts with hope that you'll freak out, it instead uses gothic architecture and your own imagination (and some stellar sound design) to cause you to imagine your own monsters. It's a primal creepy, the fear of the dark or the weird and old, and it gets its hooks into you very quickly. When you do get to the few sections that are bloody or gory, since the rest of the game has been extremely tame the shock value is amplified to almost near-unbearable. While games like Dead Space 2 reveled in gore constantly, Amnesia knows how to use it to properly provide scares: after a long burn. It's excellently executed.

This game reminds me of Myst for some reason, if Myst were full of Lovecraftian horrors. 

Controls are simple. You make mouse gestures on objects to interact with them as you would in real life (click and move the mouse forward or back to open doors, dressers, etc.). This really seems like a game that would work real well with a Wiimote, but I digress. This "hands on" approach to stuff like opening doors (rather than just clicking and opening them) makes the world feel more real, and also makes it all the scarier when you are running for safety and have to swing the door open rather than just click and bust in. You could argue it's a mechanic implemented to make you die more often, but I think it works since it was introduced from the start and it gives you time to get used to it before you constantly screw it up in a panic. 

There are a few problems. The slow opening, as mentioned, might turn some players off who expected instant scares, but I found the chilling and surprisingly great looking environments enough to push me forward until stuff really got nuts. It can also be hard to know what to do or where to go next; there isn't really a hint system and some levers or buttons are a little too well hidden. Puzzles aren't particularly difficult, but when you get caught on one it really breaks the horror immersion element. Your character also walks really slow by default, as I said above, which means if you ever have to backtrack it can be a major pain in the butt. 

I know I'm probably failing at conveying this, but I'm serious: This game is really, really scary. 

Graphics look excellent. They aren't the highest polygon count and don't have the best texture bump-mapping or whatever, but it all fits a theme and looks good throughout. Lighting is decent but could have been better (long shadows from your lantern probably would have helped make this game a lot creepier rather than just a blanket glow), but the architecture and locations are so perfectly crafted the little things are forgivable. Perhaps better complimented should be the sound design: this game has no music and is almost always in complete silence, save your footsteps, a breeze from a broken in wall, and the patter of little feet you pray belong to a rat. The silence goes a long way, with the game unafraid to just leave you in the quiet as your lantern oil burns down, which shows the developer had a lot of confidence in their scares. As they should; this game is horrifying.

Amnesia gets in your head. 

As a fan of horror who thinks gore is a cheap way to convey "scares," Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a godsend. Creepy, slow, quiet, and with a good mix of jump scares and genuine thrills, Amnesia is what the modern Silent Hill games wish they were, and is certainly on par with the originals from that excellent series. But even then, Amnesia does enough original to carve it's own unique niche from the horror genre, and one I would love to see expanded upon. As it stands, if you are a fan of actual, genuine horror and don't mind games that take their time getting there, Amnesia is certainly worth the $20 asking price (but it goes on sale constantly; I grabbed it for $5 off Steam).

This is real horror. Five out of five stars. 

A little creepy goes a long way. 

VVVVVV

The Short


Pros
- Simple in concept platformer involving switching the direction of gravity
- Puzzles/platforming range from very simple to extremely difficult
- Metroid-esque map system and non-linear gameplay
- Presented in a charming, 8-bit style
- Music is incredible

Cons
- Only about two to three hours long
- Part of the game where you "escort" a crew member is extremely frustrating
- Getting all the collectibles can be a near-impossible task
- Movement is a bit slippery; it takes some getting used to

Get ready to VVVVVV. Whatever that means. 

The Long

Something I love about indie games is the fact that they don't have to be massive. Where games like Castlevania: Lords of Shadow pad their gameplay in attempts to add "value," indie games can focus on a single mechanic and then make a short but well crafted game around it (like Braid, or from a professional standpoint Portal). VVVVVV is the perfect example of this. Using a simple mechanic paired with difficult, NES style gameplay, it delivers a short but sweet experience. And at $5 on Steam (or $7 on the 3DS e-shop) it shouldn't be missed.

Each area has a unique mechanic, not unlike Braid

VVVVVV's gameplay is extremely simple. The only control you have is to "flip" your character, reversing gravity and sending them flying up or down until they hit a stable ledge. You can't stop them from flipping until they are on a solid platform (so no flipping in mid-air), but you can direct their falling/flying direction. From that basic concept comes one of the hardest platformers you'll ever experience. The game starts easy and quickly gets difficult, every area employing a unique strategy that mixes up what you are doing. And just when you think you are about done with it, the game ends.

This is not an easy game. 

Puzzles and rooms are clever, with checkpoints being given extremely liberally to prevent frustration. I'm reminded a lot of Super Meat Boy in that regard: it isn't trying to punish you for failing, rather it wants you to pick yourself back up and try over and over. I was stuck in some rooms for upwards of 5-10 minutes until finally beating them, and there's one trinket I'm certain I'll never get.

Controls can take a bit getting used to. Your character moves a bit like he's on ice, sliding a little more than he should with his momentum. It can be difficult at first, but after a few rooms you'll get the hang of it. Considering every room was designed around this control scheme, it never feels unfair, but it is different from other platformers so you'll need to keep that in mind. 

This game is surprisingly big. 

You explore the world via a Metroid style grid/map system, with each area their own "dungeon." While the exploration is nice, it only really serves as a means to the next area. You can also tackle any area in any order, with the game sometimes forcing you into a hidden level after beating a world (or on the last world). Since you never get any power-ups or upgrades, the entire game is beatable from the start, so it really boils do to either which one you find first or which one you pick to do first.

Despite the tight controls and excellent level design, there are a few down points. One "bonus" area requires you to escort another character. When you are on the floor he'll run blindly towards your position, and on the ceiling he'll stop. Unfortunately, having to gauge the momentum of your teammate can be tricky, and if either of you die it's back to the checkpoint. This is probably the single most frustrating part in the entire game, and the one I do not look forward to when replaying (while I love the rest of the game). 

The game is also very short, which might turn a few people off, but it's also only $5 and feels the right length for not adding any new mechanics. It also has tons of bonus levels to attempt (most of which are harder than the main game), so content-wise you are still getting a decent chunk for your cash.

This game has some great music. Bonus that it's also on Rock Band!

Graphics look good, employing a retro-esque 8-bit style. It's simple but all fits together nicely, with rooms being different colors to show progression. The music is a real stand-out, with almost every track being a mix of retro-sounds with a modern beat to it. They sound fantastic, and some areas I wanted to stay in longer just because the music was so excellent. 

This room isn't as bad as it looks. 

For $5 on Steam, you really can't go wrong. I've heard the 3DS e-shop version (at $7) is actually a little better because the game plays better on a controller than a keyboard, but I can't attest to it as I don't have a 3DS. As it stands, if you have any affinity for difficult-yet-fair platformers or just like old-school NES platformers, VVVVVV is a must buy. There's a demo for it on Steam but...come on. It's $5. This game is really something excellent.

Five out of five stars. 

Plus, you know. The soundtrack is so good.