So they've added a whole lot of content, made some QoL improvements, and increased the resolution for play on your modern screen, so why am I only giving this two stars? Well they've made the game frustratingly hard, even on the lowest difficulty setting. They've amped up the difficulty of most monsters, and now special mobs are super deadly, and you may as well just skip trying to beat bosses if you haven't overleveled yourself to ridiculous extents. Now maybe they balanced the game for multiplayer, and expect 3 to 5 heros at any one time, but I'm always playing solo, and it just feels unfair. Maybe it wouldn't feel so bad if they were more generous with the loot, but unless I've just had the unluckiest of runs, the loot is much worse than vanilla Diablo. About half the regular magic items I find have some sort of curse on them, and the other just aren't very good. I made it all the way down to the caves, but the best weapon I found as the Warrior was still a small sword that did an extra 1-4 cold damage that I got on like the second level. And that's with grinding trying to find better weapons. Because, now when you exit the game and come back, all the levels have been re-randomized, just like they were new levels. Which does mean you can endlessly grind the same level over and over trying to find something useful, but it makes it hard to progress unless you play for several hours at a time, and make it to a new waypoint, which is difficult, since again, they made all the enemy mobs way, way too tough, even on Normal difficulty (the lowest setting). Now maybe it would be better if I was playing a Wizard or another magic using class, because I was drowning in all the spell books I was finding, but as a Warrior, I couldn't really make use of that.
The biggest threat to Middle-Earth isn't Sauron, it's the staggering number of bugs you'll encounter in this game. I know that the LEGO games are on the high side of jank programing, but this one is the worst I've played. I've had to restart levels so many times because glitches happened where characters got stuck in walls, bosses glitched out and became unkillable, or the item I was just holding disappeared from my inventory and now I can't open that lock that I need to open to progress the level. And what's worse is that there are some bugs that don't just affect the level, but will lock you out of ever getting some collectables and 100% the game. For example, in Amon-Hen, it somehow double counted one of the treasures I got, and I finished the level with 4/3 treasures. This caused some overflow error, so I didn't get the mithril brick for finding all the treasures in that level, which means I couldn't forge all the items at the blacksmith, which means I can't unlock the blacksmith as a character, and that also stops me from unlocking the last character for getting all the other characters. To fix this I would have needed to start not just the level over, but the entire game. A large part of the allure of LEGO games is collecting all the collectables, and well, they broke that. There are also a ton of other smaller problems with the game. The controls on the block moving puzzles for Gandalf are atrocious, the camera is terrible, and the animations that your characters do for special actions are cute maybe the first few times you do them, but feel real drawn out after the 20th time you dug a hole or lit a fire in a level. Now I'm not saying there's no fun to be had in this game, but at several points it went from fun to drudgery trying to get through this thing. Maybe if you're only interested in the story, but then why not just watch the movie?
The best thing about this game is the art. Some of it is kinda creepy and neat that way, but nothing outstanding. Everything else is downhill from there. The puzzles aren't very good, often confusing with no clear goal, just random trial and error. A lot of the times I found the solution and did not understand why that was the solution. Other times it's just find object on screen, and find place where that object goes on screen. It's basically a trumped up flash game. All that being said, I bought it for under $1 on sale, so I guess you get what you pay for.
(Note: I got this game on giveaway on Amazon Prime) You wake up on a strange planet, and you have no memory of who you are, but you're in a kick ass suit of high tech armor, and one of your hands is a gun. And thus begins another metroidvania adventure. And this one is done competently enough. The exploration is good, the combat not so much. The art is okay, it goes for a Fantastic Planet/Moebius kind of vibe, and the animation is very paper dollesque, but it's serviceable. But as I said in the title, what really elevates this game is the story, or rather all the characters you interact with. You're stuck on a planet that seems to have a weird static field around it causing a whole lot of space travellers to crash here, and you encounter one group and your mission becomes salvaging parts from other wrecks to try and get their ship working again, so the can escape the planet. And yeah, all the talking you do with the survivors is rather well done (except there are a lot of long pauses that you can't really speed through, and drag a bit) and what makes this game stand out. Yeah, this game does have some flaws, but they're relatively minor and forgivable on the whole. I didn't find any of the combat terribly difficult, but I did die a few times, the fast travel system still leaves a lot of places hard to reach, you move a bit slow, a lot of baddies are a bit bullet spongy, and money collection is a bit slow, but these are all small gripes. I strongly recommend this game if you're looking for a B-tier metrodvania.
So someone cared when they made this game, that much is evident. But they didn't stick the landing. The game is a pixel art metroidvania, but fails at a lot of it's core mechanics. As a metroidvania, it doesn't reward exploration, the path forward is always obvious, and there's only a few places where you can go back to get some pickups you couldn't reach before. There's an upgrade system that requires said pickups, and for you to spend coins that you find scattered around, but the coins are so plentiful that it's never a decision point, you find more coins in the first hour than you'll spend in the entire game. The fighting is weak, your moves are slow and can't cancel out any of your attack animations and find yourself locked into attacks in the time it takes for enemies to do a windup animation and execution, and it just feels a bit cheap. The health system in this game is a bit different, where they do try and do something a bit innovative, but I personally ended up not liking it. So you've only got 2 hp, but you also have 'energy' and as long as you have energy, nothing will actually take away your hp. And if you do run out of energy, you can do a quick time event to try and restore some, or take a longer action to restore some health. The problem is the window of the QTE is really tight, and in any boss combat, the longer health restore is either completely useless because you don't have time to perform it, or absolutely breaks the fight giving you effectively unlimited HP. And also, even outside of boss fights, a lot of basic enemies will absolutely destroy your shield in one or two hits, basically making this system moot. This leads to weird difficulty swings with parts feeling trivially easy and other parts that are just frustratingly hard. The epitome of this is the last boss fight, where the game basically removes the healing system you've had for the whole game, and decides to have a superhard bossfight like nothing else you've seen in the game.
I had a great time playing Carrion, and would recommend the game, but there are a few quibbles I had. The major one being the lack of an in game map. In Carrion you need to find your way across the game world, sometimes doubling back, but the map is labyrinthine, and hard to navigate. The game is fairly short, so it's not like you're going over the same bits for hours, so you don't memorize it in that way, and a lot of the scenery is samy-samy, so no real landmarks to use. I found myself constantly alt-tabbing out of the game to look at a map to try and get my bearings, and it really would have been a major QoL improvement to have that map in the pause menu or something. The other minor thing is that the controls don't feel the best. They're good enough, but lack a satisfying feel to them, and are sometimes hard to control. But overall a good game, and if you have any interest it's a decent and short play, with no real frustrations, other than the lack of a map.
Five Alarm Chili is meant to be spicy. Some don't like their chili that hot, but if you order the Five Alarm Chili and you can't eat it because there's too much heat for you, that doesn't make the chili bad, it's just bad for you. Some like it that hot, and they're welcome to have it their way. Sunblaze is a spicy platformer, and it's a bit too spicy for me. That doesn't make it a bad game, just too spicy for me, and I suspect too spicy for many other as well. I gave up on Sunblazer about halfway through the 4th of six story chapters. I did not finish this game, and I doubt I'll come back to it. But the game is quite good, if this is the sort of thing you're looking for. The game is a series of one screen puzzle platforming challenges, where you have to figure out how to clear the room, then do the moves that will get you there. And its a real challenge. But the inputs are good, the movement precise, and your moveset is clear. The puzzles aren't particularly hard to figure out, but executing your plan will require quite a bit of skill, and they don't give you much room for error. One misstep and you're dead. But thankfully you respawn almost instantly, and I never felt bogged down by dying, it was easy to make attempt after attempt. The plot of the game is pretty bare bones, and simply exists to give you a reason to do one room after another. You're the child of a superhero, and you want to be a superhero. Your dad finally lets you start training to be a superhero and you go into a training room simulator. Obviously things go wrong, the training room turns deadly, and you're trapped inside and the only way to get out is to complete the increasingly difficult challenges the training room sets for you. Basic stuff, but serviceable for the intended purpose. Anyways, if you really liked the Path of Pain from Hollow Knight, or did all the cassette levels in Celeste, this might be the game for you, but it certainly isn't the game for everyone.
I've enjoyed some hard games. I've played through Cuphead on hard mode, and unlocked the Pacifist achievement. In Hollow Knight, I go to Godhome to fight Nightmare King Grimm on Radiant difficulty as a warm up. In Spelunky, a game I see other reviewers here compare this game to often, I've completed over 100 successful Hell runs. I say these things not to brag, but so you know that the following isn't coming form a place of sour grapes. Caveblazers is needlessly, brutally, and sadistically hard, in an unfun, and unforgiving way. It's not worth trying to play or get good at. which is a bit of a shame because the underlying engine seems to be reasonably good for doing a pixel art dungeon running platformer. Its just that any joy this game has to offer is immediately sapped away by how oppressively difficult and random they've made the game. The only comparison that I can think of is when your older brother ropes you into playing his home brew D&D game and has your first level party fight an Ancient Gold Dragon after going through a dungeon peppered with traps he's taken from Grimtooth's Traps. And if, by some miracle of luck you somehow manage to survive, your reward will be a +1 dagger, and a mystery potion that will reduce a random stat by 1d6 points. Don't waste your time with this game.
(Note: I got this game on giveaway from Amazon Prime) So there's a lot to like about this game, it's got great animation, some satisfying platforming, and lots of places to explore. The map in this game is great, clearly laying out where you are, where you've been, and if you've found everything in each area. But there's also a lot in this game that just doesn't work. The controls felt just a little bit awkward, the pacing of upgrades is sluggish, and the additions of some mechanics seem to be there just because they're in other games. I think the worst thing about this game is the boss battles. They seem to be needlessly hard, with the bosses being absolute bullet sponges. Meanwhile you need to dodge difficult to dodge attacks, and it becomes a game of attrition to see if you can play perfectly while whittling down the boss' health bar, and it just takes forever to do. And it's not like the boss battles are interesting, they just repeat the same few patterns over and over. Or if they do get more aggressive, it's the same attacks but with more bullets or whatever. But if you can get past the disappointing boss battles, the clunky controls, and the middling dialogue, you do have a somewhat respectable metroidvania here, if you've already played out your Hollow Knights, Shovel Knights, Oris, and all the other, better metroidvanias.
So I got this game on giveaway last year, but it never really piqued my interest, but this last week I decided to give it a try and yeah, I shouldn't have slept on this one for so long. It's a great game. I never played the first Steamworld Dig game, so I can't compare it to that, but this game seems to start where that one left off plotwise. The main character's BFF has disappeared, and you've heard a rumor that they may be in this town that you're just about to roll into. On your way into town there's an earthquake and you fall into an underground pit, and stumble over somekind of death cult, Anyways, after getting out of that predicament you finally get into town and learn that these quakes have been happening a lot recently, and someone is stuck underground in the mine, and you think it might be your friend, so you're determined to go look for him. The gameplay loop is you go digging trying to get the next plot point, while collecting ore, which you'll bring up to town to sell to make money to upgrade your stuff, which you'll use to go do more digging. Along the way you'll uncover secret areas, ancient artifacts (collectables), new abilities, all while trying to find your friend, uncover the secret of these earth quakes that keep happening, and avoiding death cultists and the like. Solid game, nothing to complain about here. The controls feel a little floaty, and the combat isn't very satisfying, but it's all manageable. I mean this game is no Hollow Knight, but if the worst thing that I can say about it is that it's no Hollow Knight, then you're still left with a great game. I managed to complete the game and get 100% of the secrets in around 15 hours of gameplay.
