Steam Demos left side and even side

Steam has been rather generous of late with demos for R.U.S.E, Worms Reloaded, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, Amnesia; the Dark Descent and VVVVVV so go read my humble opinions written below and then go check them out, after all free is a great price.


R.U.S.E

Its a single level from the campaign, in which you are invading the coast of Italy to beat up the combined arms of the Italian and Nazi forces. So far, so what?  It's main schtick is how it deals with information and misinformation on the battlefield.  Using your various RUSE powers you can either use it to find out whats going on in an area or use it to deceive your foes or even do something as simple as boosting the speed of your forces.
This sounds fairly nice on paper, but in the game I distinctly felt that throwing units at my opponent to defeat him worked better than any elegant strategy due to the hideous amount of units my opponents would use.  I think perhaps that this game would play a lot better in multi player as humans are a hell of a lot easier to distract than a computer.  Worth keeping an eye on if you like a good multi player RTS that doesn't fit the usual C&C type.

Worms Reloaded

I played the original reloaded and found this to bring back pleasant memories.  The graphics felt a good step back from the mad cartoon style of the newer worms, making them simpler.  This game, rather like much of series, would probably feel best with hot seat style game play or at minimum some voice communication of some form.  If you've never played an old school worms game this is definitely worth having especially if you know a mate you can play with.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

On a whim, not too long ago, I bought up Penumbra, the predecessor to this game.  I regretted it shortly after as the combat was just plain bad.  This issue has been noticed and in the opening text straight up says you should hide or run from foes, which bodes well for what sort of encounters its going to place in your path.  The games real power lies in the fun physics engine and the atmosphere.  This leads to a lot of nice moments like slowly opening the door and peering round to see what lies beyond and seeing some ominous terrifying sight in the dark beyond.  Looks like this should be a good game for any horror fan providing that they keep the encounters devolving into a bad stealth game.

VVVVVV

I've heard about this game for awhile, hearing it to be some kind of retro masterpiece.  I'm not a fan of retro games, with the majority of them being a rose tinted nostalgia trip to mechanics that should remain dead and buried.  This lead to me ignoring VVVVVV, which was a grave error.  It uses an elementary mechanic of flipping the character from top to bottom and uses it in mad, mad ways.  Sometimes its harsh but with many check points (not often seen in many retro games I might note) and quick reload you can jumps straight back in to trying again.  I should also note that it has some lovely music which certainly helped keep me in the zone.  Its under £4 seems the right kind of price for this game.