Developer: 3rd eye project | Publisher: Sony UNTIES || Overall: 7.5/10
Well, it’s been a while since I wrote a review; don’t think I was being lazy though, folks. I was playing a LOT of games. There’s a few I played that I need to review and honestly I have so many that it is going to be hard to write “full reviews” for each of them. And a lot of them don’t really need it.
So, I’m going to try something new old (pun) and use the format of reviews I used for those old GameMaker games I reviewed 20 years ago. Yes, it’s been that long. It is a little less advanced from a writing perspective, but this is 2020! No one likes to read anymore.
Overview:
3rd Eye is a game about girls doing weird and scary stuff. Most of them are dead, say and do disturbing things, decapitate heads, etc. You use a “3rd Eye” to reveal creepy stuff. When you see creepy stuff, it is stuff like zombies or beheaded girls, or rotting stuff. Think horror and you’ve basically got what’s going on randomly popping up.
Graphics:
The graphics have a hand-drawn/painted look and everything moves around like puppets. There’s not much animation, and dialogue is delivered with strange dialogue and odd cutscenes. I guess the characters are based on the Touhou Project cast, but I hardly know much about it as evidenced by my other Touhou Project reviews. There is a lot of dark humor that I wouldn’t have expected considering the age of the girls being depicted.
Sound:
The sound is mostly creepy music and creepy sound effects. There aren’t any voice overs, and the sound definitely helps in making the horror work, and is probably the least offensive thing in the whole equation.
Gameplay:
So, basically, it’s a point and click hidden object game. The puzzles are kind of annoying and there are multiple endings I guess. I played it for 4 hours before stopping, but there is probably a bit more to the play time than I would have initially thought.
Crappiest Part:
It feels like the program was made in the middle of the 1990s. Its janky as fuck, messes up your monitor’s resolution, other weird shit. The programming is almost as creepy as any other part of this game. It is a pain in the ass to play because it was developed for consoles; there’s hardly any options and you basically have to use a controller since I couldn’t figure out most of the keybinds. Oddly enough it was harder to use a controller at points than a mouse and vice verse. I had to constantly switch between the two to do things.
Conclusion:
In the end, the game is okay, but you’ll probably only want to put up with it if you are really jonesing for a horror game or a showpiece to impress your nerd friends with a niche Touhou Project game.
Alright, grab an XCOM. Any one of them will do, we’re just going for basic themes here. Dump that in. Now, scoop up some Alien Swarm (it’s free) and plop that in there, too. Now, and this is important, add a dab of tower defense. Just a bit. Trust me: it’ll make some sense. Hit “blend” and watch those mix up. Take the pitcher of your rather interesting mix of genres and pour that shit into a phone and you’ve got Strain Tactics from Touch Dimensions Interactive.
Despite most of the game revolving around directly positioning your squad members and marking targets to shoot (though they engage automatically if enemies are in range), the squad’s helicopter is fully controllable at all points of gameplay. The helicopter acts as a storage locker for gear, a transport for players and NPCs, and fire support against visible targets on the ground, which gives the player immense amounts of control about how they deploy, what their troops are armed with and what their exit point will be. Your team begins each mission aboard the heli, and they don’t disembark until you’ve decided to. It’s a refreshing amount of choice in a genre that routinely grants you limited power despite your role as a “commander” or whatever. When was the last time you had the option of landing your squad near your target in XCOM rather than running a fucking marathon from your drop zone? Oh, never? What about using your dropship to blast the shit out of dangerous enemy units before they become a threat to your squad’s objectives? What?! Never?! What a shame! It’s okay, though: Strain Tactics lets you do that. Using a minigun, a small cannon, or even some big ass firebombs, the helicopter can lay waste to outside targets. While it’s not always a viable option, what with interior locations and the occasional heavy foliage area, it’s a rather interactive way to support your squad in a way that makes a ton of sense. Why this hasn’t been done before in mainstream titles is baffling to me, but Strain Tactics delivers this sort of engaging gameplay dynamic in a tight little package. I’d dare to say that it’s something you could make a franchise off of.
However, the honeymoon isn’t long. The game has problems, one so heinously rooted that I’m not entirely sure it can be easily fixed with patches: it’s a phone game.
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This is how social interaction works in Infestation World.
“Oh no! He talked about the games faults. Get him!”
