This game is broken. Do not reward failure. Do not buy. NoPlace is supposed to be an action RPG. Since the mechanics of this genre are flushed out over several years of iterations of this gaming style, there are few variables that can still be modulated a developer to express their creativity: style, characters, and story. NoPlace's appeal is in its style: towns nestled within the bones of giants, ruins of times long past, swarms of monsters and you —A weary and bitter man with his sword against the big bad world in search of his daughter. It sounds like it could be a great story but, you will never know because THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK. The game routinely glitches out leaving you stuck in lock screens, unable to obtain key items, or just crashes out right. The fighting and the dash puzzles are complete drag. Controls for this game are not as responsive as they need to be for this genre. Attacks and blocks show up just a bit too late at the smack of a button. Moving on screen is needlessly slow as running is activated passively by continuous walking. The enemies are spongy and "special" moves do little to tilt the course of a battle. Aiming is cumbersome being keyed to the same button as switching your weapon and must be released before firing. I get it, I too would be exhausted if I was fighting with social governance points strapped to my back at all times. That gets me to the characters of this game: Thorn's relations are so fickle that they disintegrate nearly instantly as the game starts. Somehow I am supposed to believe this guy who gives absolutely no fucks at all at anytime in any place, cares about a foster child by exposing him needlessly to death, leaves his ailing wife without provision of care, but also still wants to find his daughter. Thorn's friends are no better they are bitter, resentful, and antisocial to one another which seems antithetical to survival in a harsh world. I found the whole lot repulsive. Right Garbage/10
...a bit too much heart. 8 Bit is another piece from the nostalgia call back center. The nostalgia weary can hang up any time, but I enjoyed the game. The difficulty is balanced throughout and there is no need for grinding. There are a dynamic roster of characters and an excellent catalogue of enemies. All of which were well illustrated within the 8-bit medium. The story hits its beats with good timing and tells a generational hero's journey that is true to form and entertaining. The melodrama is over the top at times with game play that is punctuated by a few too many "intense" emotional exposition scenes. There is one scene in where the playable characters are so consumed in a vigorous round of expositional, climactically-heartfelt hexaolouge that they forget their incapacitated friend unhealed in the snow (I personally found this hilarious, please never patch it). The music needs more work. Almost every theme song shares a nearly identical set of phrasing at the end at each song before looping over. Some of the end phrases are in a different or modulated key depending on the song but they are so similar that most of the songs sound the same. Sometimes, I think the old RPGs get too much credit; were this game on the old 8 bit systems it would be among the best of them. Unfortunately timing is critical. A Good Burger Upon Your Plate, Burgerlord
Glory and Honor. Paid in blood, vice, and sickness: Of body and mind. You start out as the unnamed heir to an estate only to find out your deceased relative made every single black magic mistake possible: Ineptly summoning creatures from the neither realm, overnight classes in necromancy, DIY mutant herbal toxicology, bargaining with the capricious gods of the sea, and of course delving too deep in the underdark --thereby unearthing the Darkest Dungeon. And its all yours. You act a moderately wealthy human resource manager controlling eager adventurers to go forth and restore your newly acquired estate. A comprehensive gothic era benefits package boats the best in health care (Sanatorium), a holistic mental wellness committee (Tavern) and multidenominational spiritual convalescence (Church). Adventurers under your employ set off in groups of four to traverse dungeons for various knick-knacks for trade at the local market and to improve the hub town. Treasure isn't all your adventurers return with. Dungeons are filthy! Did your knight touch that antique with his bare hands? Then it is the plague for him! Who knew what ungodly depravity lurked within the warrens! How will you cope? A tryst with the ladies of the night may calm the mind of your berserker but, her loins will not go unscathed. No matter how steeled your man-at-arms may be he is but a man made of weak flesh; being trapped in darkness evokes inner demons that must be cleansed. Be warned, the cure is as bad as the disease and just as costly! This game is cool until it isn't. DD has four main dungeons that you will repeat, with increasing difficulty, until you can take on the fabled estate. The grind is monumental and its rewards are painfully impermanent. You will fail and members of your team will die. Replacements are always at the ready but you have to grind them up to snuff. The strategies used to defeat enemies and the narration becomes repetitive as well eventually killing the game. 91hr on Steam
Spiritfarer is a hackneyed pastel pastiche of tacky phone games threaded to by consecutive fetch quests. If only I could have banish these needy pathetic furry souls to the barren arctic wasteland of northern Saskatchewan to be mauled by polar bears for my trouble. Relief through digital apoptosis is denied to you because your character is already dead. Yeah yeah; the art, the cat, the "FEELS". I know criticism should be put into shit sandwich but I am a tyrannical Burger Lord not a miracle worker/10
If you wished on a monkey paw for a good game, you would get Greak. There is no denying the art and animations in Greak are excellently done. There is a decent foundational lore, story, and dialogue. The musical score is delightful and the sound balance is impeccable. It feels like people gave a damn making this. Knowing that life consists of tradeoffs, you can understand why there isn’t much by the way of game to play. Just as I thought Greak was picking up, the credits start rolling. It kills me to write that the game play itself is a mess. Greak’s gimmick is a real-time three character monty. It comes on gradually: the game starts as a plucky action platformer until Greak starts finding his siblings. Each additional character makes the game play more cumbersome as you are required to switch between them; often, to solve simple bordering on tedious puzzles. The action is nullified as your unplayed characters will automatically kill enemies ahead of you. Additionally, a single character’s death will result in a ‘game over’ which makes fighting bosses needlessly chaotic, ineffectual, and short. Unplayed character’s invulnerability can be toggled on/off which will remedy surprise ‘game over’ but it cannot solve the overall gameplay issues. Looks like a burger, smells like a burger, tastes like farts/ 10
River City Ransom Underground [RCRU] is not perfect. Expect that, it is a feature of the game (...i think). RCRU is a tongue-and-cheek call out to River City Ransom with all the old looks, midi-style music tracks and all the annoyances that were present with the 8-bit version . See Also: >Wonky/ Brutal A.I. > Endlessly Regenerating Bad Guys > Inescapable Kill Loops >Steep Learning Curve >Severe Punishment for Dying I have to hand it to the developers for their efforts to make this game happen. When the game first came out, this game was bugged out. The Dev's could have dropped this game like a bad date. I think they did a great job in addressing the major issues of the game, and throwing in some fun bonuses along the way too. I am a geezer of a gamer and I have been enjoying the hell out of this beat 'em up. I completely understand the non-recommend side. The game is a bit slow, your moves aren't going to land well, there is a lot of pointless fighting and if you get trapped you just have to watch you character die. Again, this game isn't perfect; I don't think it was meant to be, but it still is pretty fun. A Dad grilled burger on a summer day/10 (Review transferred from steam account; 41 hrs of game play)
I have been encouraged to play Bioshock as it has made its way to classic status for many. My playthrough of Bioshock was enjoyable but I am reluctant to recommend it. First and foremost is the game’s performance. This game is riddled with graphics, sound, and stability issues that make this game unplayable off the download. Only with some backend finagling is this game functional. I was able to mod the game to look and sound exquisite. Were the modified version the one that was sold to me, I would be much happier with my purchase. The city of Rapture in its post-apocalyptic state carries with it both a feeling of horror and mystery which wanes in its potency during the play through much like chewing gum. The horror of Bioshock is short lived and I believe this has to do with the limited enemy set. The skins and the actions of the enemies are so similar that Bioshock effectively has 4 enemies for the entirety of the game. There simply isn’t enough in game material to keep the horror of fallen Rapture present throughout the story. Likewise, the mystery of Rapture is methodically broken down into nuisance by a bombardment of numerous lengthy audio files meant to fill-in a story that should have been shown as opposed to narrated. I guess I should have counted myself lucky that I wasn’t met with walls of expositional text. (I am looking at you Mass Effect 2) I keep thinking that the story of Bioshock takes off in the wrong place. I never got to feel the impact of the glory and collapse of Rapture. The story arc and character depth would be much more impactful were I able to play through the transition of the fallen city of Rapture as, Jack developed as a character while he discovered first-hand the horrific price of plasmid augmentation and uncovered the mystery as to his origin. Again, Bioshock needs to show more of its story; an easy thing to say now fifteen years later. It was alright/10
This is an excellent metroidvania and is one of my favorites within the genre. The uniqueness of Blasphemous lies with its story and art style taken from the Catholic tradition; I thought this was an excellent choice in art direction as there is a deep well of breath taking art, music, and lore from which to craft a video game. My Gripes: As is tradition, Blasphemous oozes guilt, sin and suffering at themes in the storyline. It does get a little bit tired as every character is focal point of near pornographic proportions of self-flagellation, and fatalism. Second, the visuals of this game suffer from undue pixilation--a frequent grip of mine. However, Blasphemous has roughly 1300 years/4 periods of visual art styles to emulate and seeing the visuals truncated circa SNES graphics was disappointing. It would have been top shelf to have played Blasphemous as Baroque/Renaissance painting for example. Lastly, the game play is fairly analogous with others of this genre with the exception of the “air impulse” which requires simultaneous button press midair with a timing and angle that is uncharacteristically unforgiving given Blasphemous’ source material. I definitely recommend this game. Overall, it is well and lovingly crafted. There are also free DLC that come with this game which provide additional game play which I enjoyed. 8/10
