If gameplay was to hold the game by its own, this would be a mediocre game at best. But joined with the great art direction, funny writing, off the wall ideas and great soundscape it becomes a good show of just how well things going together can create something great. Compared to the first game, I feel some of the weirder ideas may have been scrapped, while still leaving a wonderfully surreal and entertaining game. Gameplay is a bit better than the first I believe, but never really all that challenging, neither platforming or combat wise. It works well enough, and seeing the same enemy (Censors) with different costumes just adds that little flourish which keeps it interesting. And thankfully never overstays its welcome either. The game took me around 17 hours to finish, picking up a bunch of stuff but leaving plenty to go back and hunt for. And in all, the funny writing, good sound design and clever imaginative artwork and concepts will have me coming back for a replay, of that I'm sure.
This is an entertaining little point-n-click experience with a lot of referential humour, which means you'll probably need knowledge and appreciation of the history of gaming and aged pop culture to get all the jokes. The puzzles are at times clever, rarely too hard or too moon logic-y (Once you get over the fact that most puzzles are solved by means other than the expected, I mean, you start off breaking bits off the UI to make your own fun, and you rarely interact in the "intended" way) Clocking in at around 5 hours for my first playthrough, it's a shorter experience but one I quite enjoyed and will probably return to occasionally.
Positives: The game looks really pretty. Lots of colour use. The setting is one not too often seen before. The plotline was interesting enough that I slogged through it to the end. The combat works quite well and is mostly interesting too. Look at all the other reviews around to see a lot more in depth for all the positives. For me the negatives dragged the game down from close to a 5 to a 3(.25): Pacing! The main gripe I have is, that the game seems to have a complete disregard, if not a completely derisive attitude towards the player's time. Most quests will ask you to trek across most of the available map to do something, and then trek all the way back again. Fast travel is a thing, but if a game bothers me enough that it manages to make me want to use it, that's a failing in either quest design or a bland world. Add Far Cry 2 style "speedbumps" if you do want to trek (respawning enemies to avoid or deal with) and the desire to take in the world diminishes greatly. As does the enjoyment of the combat system. Additional pacing issue is the way lore is delivered. I spent over an hour on one mission, most of the time of which was spent standing still listening to audio logs to avoid going forward and triggering an overlapping conversation. Also, it seems they wanted to put in loot boxes to help skip the grind. At least they are free, not sure if that was the initial plan. In summary: This is a very good game whose disregard for the player's time and very rough pacing soured my enjoyment of it to suck a degree the last third of it was played out of spite to see the story, not because I enjoyed it. If you don't mind repetetive combat and wandering back and forth, this game may be for you. If you, like me, have a low tolerance for doing the same thing over and over, at least wait for a sale.
Combat flows a whole lot better in this game than in Alan Wake, also better than I recall Quantum Break flow. The graphics look good, if a bit samey. Gray and black is to this game what rust and gray were to Quake back in the day. Very much the same, but somehow still managing to have some somewhat unique looking locales with it. I'd give this game 3.5 stars. Where I replay Alan Wake regularly for the setting, the atmosphere and the very cheesy story, this has a few things going for it in the setting. But that's about it. Most of the background is just text reading. If you like SCP style documents you'll probably enjoy this. Where Wake had a flowing narrative always moving forward, this feels more like it was intended to be a live service game, encouraging you to grind up random generated extra missions over and over. The floors of the Oldest House (and the Foundation) are distinct enough to mostly be recognizable, but it quickly ends up feeling you're just going over the same place again and again, with frequent nudges to go back to a previous area to grind up more enemies. Reason this ended with 4 instead of 3 stars is because the combat _does_ feel good on the most part. And what can I say, I'm a sucker for the paranormal. If you hope to find atmosphere and story direction like Alan Wake, maybe give this a miss. If you want some quite competent and at times fun shooting in a paranormal setting, you could do worse.
I'm a sucker for typing games. I'd put off getting this for a while due to the reports of trouble with changing from moving to typing and backs. It looks like happily the game now supports movement with WASD. So why the low score? Probably part disappointment I take it. The good: * Type to attack, feel like a badass cranky exorcist. Great. * Nice pixel art * Endearingly cheesy humor The bad: * Bullet hell mechanics really don't lend themselves well to being multitasked with typing in latin. * No indication of your hitbox with the bullets, but the game fully expects you to thread some rather narrow bullet pattern gaps. * Seemingly random attack selection from bosses means you could spend lots of time only dodging because there is no time to type while also dodging and staying in range. - Timer and combo meter and derived score combined with leaderboards makes this extra aggravating * Get hit once, and your book goes flying, great no hit point lost. - But if you don't reach it in a few seconds, you get to start the boss phase all over again. The ugly: * Dialog and cutscenes with a hold to skip which takes almost as long as what it skips * Very slow pace between battles (having to watch the main menu for a while before you are even allowed to interact with it is a bad omen) * Weird resolution/screenmode or something. Galaxy refuses to launch it properly, and if, god forbid, you get a notification from for instance Steam (friend [name] is now playing a game is enough) or Windows, the game will minimize, though it will not pause leaving you to scramble for your mouse before you're all dead. In all, cute idea. I like the humor, but I'm not sure it's good for my health to press on through the annoyances.
I don't know what I expected when I picked this up, other than it being a fairly good if a bit short shooter. And that's certainly what I got. The game boasts a nice looking art style and a style of storytelling rarely seen, the unreliable narrator. The tale itself goes around a lot of the tropes of old westerns and the environments mostly look the part as well. The shooting is fairly fast paced and well done with your gun or rifle killing most enemies in a few well placed hits. I really dislike shooters where the enemy takes a bunch of hits to go down, and thankfully this is not one of those. You can take a few hits, but make sure to either be fast, or behind cover. You regenerate health fast, but can easily go down quickly too. Overall I'd recommend this to people who would like a short (I took around 6 hours) western style experience with a good storytelling style. I think this may be one of the few games I'd go in for a New Game+ run of
Three stars if you don't feel nostalgic, but appreciate very well done pixel graphics. And a mere 2.5 stars if neither of the above apply. This is a hard game for me to rate. Having grown up in the 80s, this game felt like a love letter to that era, from the colour palette used, the pop culture references, the cheesy cutscenes emulating worn out VHS tapes. This does a lot well. Even the storyline is fairly well told with a good morale in the end. Sadly, this is also a game. And as a game it really isn't very interesting. There don't seem to be any choices. The puzzles are easy and far between. The platforming/traversal segments are rather easy too, and again don't carry much in the way of challenge. That leaves combat which is functional. It won't win my praise, as it is very basic. But it pulls off what it sets out to do. It just isn't very interesting. At least there is a deal of it. All the rest of the time you spend walking fairly slowly through very good pixelart locales, looking at or interacting with things looking right out of a romanticized version of the 80s and childhood summers (most of the time anyway). A lot of care and affection was clearly put into this. In all, this feels like it shouldn't have been an action game, it should've been a third person walking simulator, which had to put some gameplay stuff in there because, who plays a pixel walking sim? I do not regret having played the game. I might even revisit it later, but it won't be for the game parts.
This is a fun little romp of a game. You might've heard of the monster movies of old where the blob eats everything and grows and grows.... Well that li'l guy is you now. Lots of background objects reference a lot of things, but not in a way I felt was breaking the immersion of you being in the midst of an old extremely cheesy monster movie. The art style hits it very well. As does the soundtrack of of you munching on everything from dust mites up to buildings and beyond. Every level has you start small(ish) and eat your way bigger to progress through gates. That's pretty much it. Apart from jumping you've got an attract and repulse ability to help you cling to magnetic objects, or boost away from them. Occasionally you'll be expected to use the mouse to manipulate objects, usually moving walls or such about. Nothing too taxing, but DON'T expect to play this using a touchpad. Biggest shortcoming I'd found with the game is the length. It took me around 3 hours to finish, but it were 3 enjoyable hours, and if you are into speedrunning, I could see this being very entertaining.
CSD 2 is a more polished looking game experience than CSD 1 in the graphics department. It also comes with a lot more foods to prepare, and a large chunk of "challenges" where you work in different restaurants with their own menu. To those who aren't familiar with Cook Serve Delicious. The game has you as a chef in a restaurant cooking food, serving it and hoping it is delicious. When someone comes in you tap the corresponding order, put together the meal by hitting keys or buttons corresponding to the required ingredients, maybe wait for it to cook and try to keep up with the onslaught of peckish patrons pursuing your menu. Sadly the CSD mode feels more like an afterthought (upgrades, buzz modifiers and such were added after the initial Steam release). That is not to say this is a bad game. It is most certainly not. Just the progression is more based around you completing the cook for hire levels and gaining medals there over slowly saving up for that new dish you wanted. Speaking of dishes. CSD2 has a ton of them, each with a bit of text about the foods. They might end up feeling a bit samey. Very few, if any, has the repeated tapping of the wine from CSD1, or the arrow slicing of fish. Most all things are relegated to hitting a key or button directly. Also, CSD2 introduces holding stations which will let you (or require, depending on the dish) prepare food for quick serving, or as something to avoid having to wait for cooking during rush hour. This adds another bit of depth for you to keep track of, generally it feels like a good inclusion. The restaurant designer is nice, though only cosmetic and only has an effect when you play with your custom menu. In all I rather like the game. It's good for a quick game while listening to a podcast or just to challenge yourself to wake up. If you did not like CSD1, this likely won't change your mind. But if you like mini-games, this should keep you sated for a good while
(Reviewed after 3½ hour play, In-Dev state as of November 16th 2017) Okay I might not have gotten through all the content there yet, but so far I'm rather enjoying myself. The combat is a bit more floaty than I'd expected initially, having read the description of souls-lite. Instead of slow deliberate combat it tends to be rather spammy with a bit of cumbersomeness to cancel out. But with the sheer amount of enemies thrown at you, the slower approach seems to be disencouraged. The levels are procedurally generated, but mostly straightforward with slight diversions to pick up more loot...or find a trap. Once you've beaten a boss you tend to get a powerup which is the metroid-ish part of the game. This could be usable in the preceding levels to allow you to take an alternate next level, rather than unlock a completely new area it is more a different harder path the same direction on future runs but don't expect the abilities to give you new abilities to play with (so far). I'm quite enjoying my time with it, though it is a completely different beast than I'd expected reading the store page. Where you expect Metroid-ish exploration there's more (classic) Vania. And where you expect slower paced Vania combat you find more spamming and swarming of a Metroid-y game. Keep this in mind and you might find something worth your while. But if you feel intrigued by exploration, branching paths and abilities encouraging backtracking, combined with deliberate combat, you might want to hold off, at least for now.
