Platformines

Do you like loot + platforming + randomised levels? Look no further. With elements of Steamworld Dig (randomised mines, collect minerals of ever-increasing value the deeper you go, locate portals for quick returns in trickier parts of the map) this offers plenty of replayability, even though the shooting and platforming elements start to get a little repetitive over what seems to be a single enormous level. Similar to the level creation in Cargo Commander, you give your new level a name and the game randomises it based on that name...somehow. The deeper you go into the mines, the more chance you have of scoring better guns, although the loot system is a little disappointing. There aren't randomised gun effects, only % stats (higher damage, firing rate, etc) and there are precious few different hats you can wear to give you extra stuff, like 2 additional jumps (yes, you can jump 5, 6 or even 7 times in the air). Jumping feels a little floaty, and your gun has the annoying tendancy to ...

End game is brutal. The equipment doesn't scale with the enemies, and so the game goes from a really cool Borderlands-lite experience early on, to a mindless and repetitive grind between recharging trips back home later on. A lot of promise, but poor execution from this console port. 5/10

Ok, first off this game isn't perfect. Isn't perfect for a $60 game I mean. Some people will complain about anything. This game is fantastic. It's like a little Borderlands and the maps are HUGE. Tons of gameplay here for $10. At the moment of writing this the game does not properly support all TV resolutions. Get some overscan on my computer but not a big deal. That's actually why I'm here writing a review; I had to restart the game to get it windowed. Other than that I have no complaints. To sum this game up I would have to say, "Borderlands. Steamworld Dig. Contra. Terraria."

Ohnoes! The Robodig is destroyed and you must fix it! Or something! So let's just shoot the story and go for a little platforming and shooting and loot collecting... in a mine! Platformines is a nice package indeed, combining features from several genres to create a fun game that does nothing really new but still feels fresh. You start by creating a male or female character from a couple of visual options, and are then brought into a randomly generated mine (where your ship, the Robodog, totally crashed). Your job is to explore the mine and relocate several building blocks to restore the ship- and to do so you need to fight masses of enemies, collect coins and loot, upgrade your equipment and be an all-round badass. You also get to listen to a chiptune rendition of "Hall of the Mountain King." Platforming is nice and precise even with a keyboard, though a pad is clearly better. From the get-go you have quintuple jumps, and there is almost no momentum, so you'll quickly put Mario t...

Discovered this one by chance and boy am I glad I did...great little Platform/Shooter with treasure collecting, upgradeable weapons and hats...lots of hats...!!! This is a real good game.

Even with a controller, this game is almost unplayable simply because of the god-awful controls. Something as simple as movement becomes imprecise and annoying because they force you to move with the analog stick rather than the d-pad. You shoot with the trigger rather than one of the a/b/x/y buttons, which (having grown up playing sidescrollers on the SNES and Genesis) feels incredibly awkward. And, of course, you can't remap the controls, because that would be silly. Nothing takes a game that looks fun and makes it suck quite like bad controls.

Platformines has been one of my bigger surprises of 2014 so far. Launching in late March without much, or really close to any fanfare, I decided to install it one rainy Saturday afternoon and it was like finding a box of brightly colored toys in a dusty, spidery attic. A lot of the gameplay elements here are very familiar -- precision platforming, gobs of randomized loot, a never-ending cycle of weapon upgrades -- but it feels fresh, these elements were never combined in quite this way before. It reminds me most of the lauded roguelike platformer Spelunky, except where Spelunky is all about survival, Platformines is more about exploration and aggression. There is a very large overworld to explore, and the further you move away from your base in the middle(ish) of the map in any direction, the more difficult the enemies are, enemies you can eliminate with one of four different types of gun. After finishing the game on the default difficultly level (5-6 hours) I uncovered about 25% of t...

It's not a very complex game: you shoot things, you loot, you find portals, and you jump through those portals to get back to your base so you can sell your loot and regenerate health. However, its simplicity scratches an itch that most other games can't because they get too complex. It is fun trying to uncover the map, and trying to navigate through the maze to reach your goal. It has straight forward action platforming mechanics that are entertaining. There are drawbacks. It can get repetitive, especially when you just want to reach your goal and you keep hitting dead ends or getting hit by the large bazooka blast radii and traps in small corridors, but if you enjoy action platformers, I would recommend it.

Not great but kind of fun. I would only recommend if you feel like lotsa repeatative searching for things. The world map is HUGE, but you only need to explore a small portion to get what you need to beat the game. And that ending...holy crust...too lame. But it was sorta fun for a minute. I would only recommend buying on hardcore sale if you want something to do between burning out on other games and moving onto the next good game you plan to get deep into.

Good, but not great. First and foremost, this is a good game with hours of gameplay and phenomenal music, but it gets stale fairly quick. The difficulty does not scale very well as it jumps from feasible to a loop of deaths. The endgame is easy to get to but insane to clear as equipment gets impossibly hard to obtain due to the expensive prices. In the end, it's fun to play for the first few hours then it just becomes annoying.