Humble Indie Bundle 8 Review

The latest pay-what-you want, charity supporting Humble Indie Bundle has been released and will be available for the next fortnight or so. Is it any good? Well here's my round-up of the games included...

Awesomenauts

For some reason I had it in mind that this was going to be like Scribblenauts. It isn't. It's a 2D-platformer version of Team Fortress. I've played it for a couple of hours and it's pretty good fun, but it's not the sort of game that generally appeals to me so that'll probably be it.

Score: 6/10

Capsized

This is a very pretty platformer in the style of Metroid. Although the controls are a bit of a nuisance at first, it's actually a pretty decent effort and certainly one I'll see through to the end.

Score: 8/10

Little Inferno

Set fire to stuff, collect coins, buy new stuff - rinse and repeat. Interesting for all of about three minutes unless you happen to be a pyromaniac who's had all his matches taken away from him.

Score: 2/10

Hot Line Miami

This retro-themed top down slaughter fest was the game I was most looking forwards to playing given all the rave reviews it has received. After about an hour I could feel my blood pressure starting to rise and my piss beginning to boil. Whoever thought that a mouse was a good means of aiming in 360 degrees from above deserves to be shot.

That said, once my ire has returned to normal levels, I'll probably fire it up again - it's pretty addictive and I really like the whole 80's ambiance.

Score: 7/10

Dear Esther

If your idea of fun is spending a couple of hours mooching around a deserted Scottish island, then this is the game for you! For everyone else it's a right bunch of old tripe. This is exactly the sort of pretentious nonsense  tedious people use to argue that "games are art". Well, they aren't.

Do yourself a favour and give this one a skip. Your life will be enriched by not having wasted two precious hours of it on this miserable dirge.

Score: 0/10

Proteus

Another mooching simulator, only this time set on some randomly generated (wooo!) island rendered in very basic graphics. If people want to go out exploring they should take their fat backsides for a sodding walk, rather than waste their time with a bunch of pixelated, randomly generated islands each exactly as boring as the last.

Score: 0/10

Thomas Was Alone

A mediocre platform-puzzler, interspersed with some more pretentious tripe. I lost interest after about 15 minutes.

Score: 3/10

Conclusion

Well apart from the duffers, there are some reasonably good games in the Bundle. Given that it cost me something like £3.90 after paying the average price, I think that's pretty good value - and worth it for Capsized alone.

You can get the Humble Indie Bundle (8!) here: https://www.humblebundle.com/