The Swapper owns. It is about 5 hours long, which seems the right length for a puzzle game, unless you want to find all the secrets.

My review of it on Steam literally only says "scary rocks :(" which is fair, as I do remember the rocks being scary. 

oh, and the graphics are cool because they are literally hand made. With clay! 

Great game, nice atmosphere, I really enjoyed it. 

Oooh nice handmade graphics, a bit like The Neverhood? That was an old classic puzzler which unfortunately no one has ever tried to do since, from what I've seen. 

BTW I've finally finished playing Fallout New Vegas. only tried a few mods. Project Brazil is completely overrated and just an ugly unfinished vault quest. Might be good when parts 2 and 3 are done, if ever, but at the moment it's pretty boring.

But Beyond Boulder Dome was awesome. As good as the official DLC's.

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/46907

Anyway back to the real world of playing full titles in a single sitting, played James Bond Blood Stone today in 6 hours. Nice game, like everyone says Splinter Cell with better environments, slightly more forgiving combat (in other words less stealth), boring story, linear levels. 7/10. 

are definitely unique and good (in the same way quake's graphics are) but I would still call them lo-fi to temper someone's expectations. 

impressed me a lot. Good stylish visuals, great sound and atmosphere 

I've been playing The Swapper throughout the last night. As of now, it looks like it'll be another favourite indie sci-fi game of mine after Waking Mars. 

weird controls? 20 degree fov? insanely slow movement? i'm so glad i didn't pay full price for this. is this worth muddling through? it's really awkward just playing the intro. 

i've been told it has a terrible PC port, due to control issues. 

That definitely seems to be my take on it. I got this funky 'widescreen fix' memory editing hack utility so I was able to increase the FOV to more normal levels, but all the menus are very very awkward to navigate and the game doesn't pause while you're doing it so you can get attacked while struggling to get an item.

don't get me wrong, that is an AWESOME mechanic. I loved it in system shock 2, for example. But not when the UI is working against you. :( 

FWIW, i think it's a good game and might be worth buying it for console, if you have a console. 

 

I don't have a console and am not willing to take the time to learn how to play with a gamepad (I'm absolutely terrible at shooters with gamepads).

It's ok though. I can stand not playing it as I only got it as part of that EA bundle from a while back. 

Use a gamepad for platformers.

You'd have to be some sort of degenerate savage to use a gamepad for FPS. 

I try to use the input type the game was made for. And avoid FPS games that were made for gamepad. 

nice level design, but broken pc controls (at least for me) and yeah the slow movement is pretty bad. it's not really as good as made out.

maybe the sequel fixes some of that, but i haven't played it yet. 

I've been playing SS2 instead. :) Haven't played it in like 10 years, so I've forgotten enough I don't mind that I know the story. 

Turning off V-Sync in-game and then forcing it on through the NVidia Control Panel for it (alongside Triple Buffering) helps improving the mouse control. Appearently the game is locked at 30FPS with its own V-Sync on, whereas NVidia CP locks it at 60FPS which is a definitive improvement for mouselook smoothness. As a side note, this workaround is for 1 only, 2 is much better in this sense. 

I adjusted the maximum sensivity of my mouse and game became really fun. It is too slow to rotate without it. 

...remains on my personal short list of favorite games and I don't see it getting bumped.

It's a hard game and can be punishing on resources and some of the battles but where it won me over was on atmosphere (which was really helped by the sound design) and the depth of gameplay for its time. The story and premise kept you interested and it did this without breaking immersion like other games that take over movement control or have cutscenes.

Like Deus-Ex, I think it's one of those games that when people talk about it, it gets reinstalled and played by others who have and have not played it. 

I'm playing on hard and not really finding it hard at all actually... I'm playing as Navy but aiming for maxed out standard weapons (haven't gotten 6 yet, but I do have the perfect condition rifle sitting in a chemical storeroom waiting for me).
So I'm using Pistols and Shotguns for now and between those two, I have no shortage of ammo. Probably because I have a high hack skill so I can open all the locked boxes I find.
Mind you, I'm still on deck 4 of the Von Braun. As I recall, it does get a little tighter as you near the end of the game. 

Thanks erc, that does seem to help. At least, aiming mode mouse seems smoother now with less 'deadzone'. 

I'm glad to hear that. Personally I prefer 1 over 2 in terms of atmosphere since the original feels much more dreadful than the sequel. So it's kind of relieving that the mouse control can be made better with a little tweaking.

As for Shock 2, Navy with Standard Weaps, Hacking, and a little bit of every Tech skill is the best way to go. Be sure to keep and eye on that Condition 10 AR (and your AP ammo) since it'll most likely be your weapon of choice towards the end of the game. 

SS2 was not nearly as strong as an RPG as Deus Ex was towards the end. It falls into that trap where the RPG stuff is fun for most of the game, but the end just turns into a FPS that's dragging an RPG system along behind it. If you didn't spec into a character that was a standard FPS tankbro, the design just isn't going to support your choices any longer.

No RPG is "perfect," and they'll all have paths that are more or less optimum, but SS2's ever-widening diversion between 'more' and 'less' was much more imperfect than most.