IJI by Daniel Remar
Iji is an indie game made over the course of 5 years by Daniel Remar that is rather enjoyable. It is available at:http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php
Story
In Iji, you play an Earth woman, Iji, who must stop an alien invasion that occurred while she was in a coma. You travel mainly through underground bunker-lab things trying to fight off any alien that gets in your way. The plot is kind of interesting and there are a few twists that keep it engaging, but the characters in the game seem boring and sometimes quite whiney. The dialogue is done through text and [supposedly] voice acting [which I didn't hear any of - I thought I chose to have it on] and there are many alien and human journals lying around for you to read, if chosen to. The writing is there and occasionally gives gameplay hints, but it didn't interest me in the slightest.
Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty interesting as there are 10 skills that you use and can level up throughout the game. You won't be able to level up every skill to its maximum, so you have to choose which ones you would like to use throughout the game. The level design is very compliant to the skills as there are multiple options for wandering through the levels, using different skills in order to pass through certain objectives [For example; there might be a whole mess of enemies in one area while there might be a difficult door that can be unlocked in another]. Most of the skills are used for combat, like what level weapons you can use, your attack power, etc; but there are other skills to increase your health, armor recharge, and cracking doors and crates. Thankfully, all of the skills are useful in some way.
The main elements that you will be doing in most of Iji is shooting aliens, opening doors and crates, and running and jumping from place to place. The movement of the main character, Iji, is like a large truck [her movement could be compared to that of Catlevania main characters]. In some cases, I really wanted to move faster like when I was backtracking, or trying to get past multiple enemies. But the enemies [save one] move just a slow as her, so it doesn't interfere with combat. Opening doors and crates requires a simple grid-based maze game with a time limit. In the game, I only failed a few attempts because of negligence. Because there is no real punishment to failing these mini-games, there really is not much difficulty involved in doing them.
The combat is the main part of the game. You have a shoot and kick button. Some guns have unlimited ammo, so you won't be in a situation where you can't defeat an enemy, while others use ammo that is easily found throughout the levels. If your crack skill is high enough, you can also combine different weapons to have alternate firings from each of the 8 weapons. When you are engaged in combat, you can either shoot, duck, or jump. You can only fire a weapon when you are standing on the ground, so no air shots. This I found puzzling because jumping and shooting would have been beneficial for a few enemies that flew and ones that were bigger than you. I found the combat pretty fun, though it could have been more exciting utilizing faster movement from the characters and shooting from positions other than on the ground.
There are multiple difficulty levels, starting at normal and unlocking another one after game completion. I beat the game on the normal difficulty and only died a few times - due to carelessness - in roughly 5-ish hours. There are also rewards, high scores, and unlockables once the game has been completed.
Visuals
The style of the game is carried throughout very well. Everything looks as if it belongs in the world. The animations of the characters are all extremely well done especially for the main character. The only drawback that occurs is unfortunately when the game gets the most exciting. When you are in combat, there can be explosions that shoot you or your enemies clear across the screen, these moments are truly wonderful. But, when there are too many explosions or enemies on screen, the frame rate does drop pretty low, to around 10-15fps [maybe even lower].
Conclusion
Iji is a really solid game that should be at least tried by anyone who enjoys Metroidvanias. I don't know if it is worth a replay, but I really enjoyed it while I was kicking alien ass.