Look Mum No Computer feels both fresh and familiar. Fresh, due to its unique setting and soundtrack revolving around electronics and modular synthesizers. Familiar, as it gives me a similar joy to playing my childhood favourite, Raptor: Call of the shadows .. frantic action, all gameplay, awesome soundtrack, no handholding, slowly building up your arsenal, etc. The interactive music highlights both the game's main strength and weakness. The more you upgrade your weapons/synthesizer, the more intricate and rich the music gets. As you start out with zero upgrades, the music is also bare-bones. The upside: it only gets better from here, but you do need to be quite patient. As you're nearing the end, the music does get absolutely amazing! Related to this is the difficulty curve: it starts out easy, then very slowly picks up .. then the difficulty spikes around the latter half~third of the game. Nonetheless, this latter half more than makes up for the slow start, so don't let this discourage you from picking up the game. It really is a gem! Not just the music and the gameplay mechanics are great, but so are the cute and quirky graphics, the fun bits of dialogue and the overall tone. About the YT channel tied to this game (also called Look Mum No Computer). You definitely don't have to know it to enjoy the game; I suppose they capture the same upbeat tinkering spirit :) ..and that Sam is the actual mad lad who made the music. That's also what confused me at first: knowing the channel, I kind of expected the game to be more in-depth on how to build electronics or modular synthesizers, but that's not what this is! That would be cool too, but maybe then it wouldn't be as good at being a proper game. In short, I can only highly recommend you give Look Mum No Computer a try! I'd love Sam & The Bitfather to make more of this in the future! PS: if the game's effects are straining your eyes, try disabling "Chromatic aberation" and "Bloom" in the settings
All in all, I had a great time with Bear & Breakfast; it simply oozes so much charm and personality: the art, the music, (most of) the writing and overall atmosphere is supercozy and enjoyable. It's also relaxing in the sense that, while it's a management game, there's no pressure whatsoever: you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. The pace of the game is entirely up to you. That said: while I enjoyed the game, there are some significant flaws to tolerate: B&B has a story, but I feel like it didn't mesh well with the gameplay. It starts out pretty strong story-wise, introducing several fun characters, but it quickly transitions into pure gameplay .. and doesn't really do all that much character building throughout most of the game .. then it picks back up towards the end, but it feels quite all-over-the-place there. The gameplay itself has its ups and downs: most of the mechanics are fine, but do get tedious/repetitive over time. The game remidies this by eventually letting in-game characters take over specific tasks for you, if you want. That's great, but in my playthrough it felt like these automation mechanics were introduced too late, when the task already was quite repetitive. This may be caused by being stuck too long on a couple of obscure main quests à la "Go find this thing" .. without giving any clue where to look. The ample amount of charm and personality mostly make up for these gripes, so I do recommend giving Bear & Breakfast a go! I find it works best playing in short sessions. Definitely curious to see what Gummy Cat will be working on next!
I gotta say: fans of id's masterpieces have been absolutely pampered for the last few years .. we already got an enhanced version of Doom I before .. then of Quake I .. then Quake II .. and now this gem too .. and I didn't have to pay a single dime for any of it .. it's just insane, and they're all amazing! If you've never owned a copy of the original Doom .. best 10 bucks ever to spend on an FPS, you're in for a treat :) This game is the very definition of a timeless classic. That aside, I just gave this a try to see what it's like playing the game with Andrew Hulshult's remixed soundtrack. I already knew the IDKFA versions before and they're awesome tracks to listen to on their own .. but perhaps a bit too much "non-stop dialed-up-to-11" to always match what's going on in the game. (a dynamic music system that dials it back a little in calmer moments, that'd be interesting) Can't wait to try the new Legacy of Rust episode! If it's anything like the extra episodes in Quake I & II's enhanced editions, I know it'll be awesome! Thank you to everyone involved!
I only played a brief demo of Rayman 1, way back when it originally released. Its beautiful art and colourful atmosphere always stuck with me, so I finally budged all these years later. The art and atmosphere have aged well; it's still as wonderful as I remember it. (Don't expect much of a story though.) It's also one of the earliest platformers where the levels feel very organic, in the sense that you can't easily tell the level is composed of tiles placed on a grid. Its gameplay mechanics are just as timeless. They still form the core moveset used in Rayman Origins & Legends. What really hasn't aged all that well is the game's pacing and balancing: it's pretty stingy with handing out Rayman's abilities. It especially takes forever before you're given the ability to run. Thankfully, this issue is resolved in Rayman Redemption, a truly impressive fan remake of the game! (Just search for it .. can't miss. Yes it's free!) It's incredibly faithful to the original game, but now you already get some of the essential moves from the start, which by itself makes the game much more fun to play. Much-much more than that though, the levels have all been tweaked and rebalanced so the game's difficulty curve makes way more sense. It starts out easier, but I'd argue it becomes harder than the original towards the end. It even adds additional worlds and bosses that all feel like they belong. Compared to this GoG release: Redemption comes with the original music; it runs natively instead of via DosBox emulation (which means much faster load times); it also provides a much more reasonable "field of view". (Everything feels too zoomed-in in the GoG release .. not sure if it was originally like that.) In short, I'd say: buy this to support the developers (Rayman is a big part of Ubisoft's history! .. similar to Mario and Nintendo) .. but play the remake to experience the game as it was intended. Have fun!
I genuinely had a great time with Return to Monkey Island, tried 'n true! It rightfully deserves its place next to my favourites: MI 1,2 and 3 .. in no particular order. I also appreciate that Ron Gilbert acknowledges the entire series at the beginning, including MI 3, 4 and Tales. It doesn't appear to make a huge difference on this game's story, except for the return of everyone's favourite demonic talking skull, Murray! :D If you're new to the series, this one's a good place to start. If you're a point & click veteran: the game starts out very-very hand-holdy (even in hard mode). Thankfully you can roam free after the initial 15~30 minutes, and it feels like a true Monkey Island again. In terms of puzzle difficulty (I played on hard), I think it's just right. The game won't throw any monkey wrenches at you: it's all based on exploration and sensible logic. Certainly easier than MI 1 and MI 2 .. but the first time I played those, I felt bad for having to check a walkthrough in some places. About the story - I can't say I had many "Oh wow, what a twist!"-moments. It just felt like a fun adventure with Ron's sense of humour and lots of likeable characters along the way .. and that's honestly exactly what I want from a Monkey Island game. It does bank a little heavy on nostalgia though. No big deal in the end, but you do spend a lot of time in familiar MI 1 places. The art style .. despite all the fuss, it's honestly fine. It mainly doesn't work well in close-ups, but those are rare .. and the back of Guybrush's head just looks .. blegh. (Just walk diagonally instead of up/down and you won't see it much :p) The style does work really well for all the skulls and zombie pirates; there's plenty of those! Nothing but praise for the music & voice acting; exactly what I'd hope it to be! Definitely open to more of Guybrush's adventures .. but if this was the last one, it nicely wraps things up. Regardless, looking forward to whatever Terrible Toybox works on next!
Fun to play whenever you want to take a quick break. Shut down your mind for a bit and make stuff go boom! While there's little content in Luftrausers .. essentially one level and a handful of enemy types .. the core gameplay feels great! Non-stop acrobatics to weave your little plane through endless streams of bullets and enemies. The healing mechanic adds an additional layer of tension: stop firing and you'll auto-heal, at the risk of getting overwhelmed with enemies fast. Keep firing, and risk taking one hit too many. The content that is there is highly polished. Screenshots won't do it justice, but the superminimal art style compliments the hectic action very well. I like all the subtle special effects: the reflections in the water; the waves created by your plane as it approaches the water line; the clouds reacting when you shoot them; ... The music is excellent, and dynamically adjusts itself to the action. The game isn't perfect though. If you're trying to "complete" the game by finishing all the missions/achievements, some of them heavily rely on luck / the game's random number generator. There's one in particular that you cannot finish at all due to a bug - see here for a workaround: https://www.reddit.com/r/LUFTRAUSERS/comments/2qjjh4/edit_save_file_to_overcome_classified_no_1_bug/ One more thing: if you want to mess with the game's stats (stuff like enemy/player health, movement speed, firing rate, and lots more), it's really easy to do! Just browse through the game's files and you'll figure it out. Strongly recommended to try at least once, but only when you've seen enough of the vanilla game; it's stupid fun :)
I don't know how to feel about this one. I love the artstyle; the music works well to fit the mood; I adore stories that are told without words .. but they're also hard to pull off. There were moments where I connected with the story, but overall .. it all felt pretty, light. I was hoping for more depth, something with higher highs and lower low points; maybe a story where you could make meaningful choices. The interactive elements usually work well to convey what the story wants to say, but some interactions are repeated. The first time it's clever; any time after that it's a slight variation and it gets a bit predictable. I would've liked that the story played more with my expectations to surprise me. I don't mind that Florence was a short ~30 min. experience .. yet I couldn't help but think at the end: "Wait, that's it? It just ends here? .. All this seemed like the prologue, and *now* is when the real story begins!" .. and then the credits rolled. I imagine this is because Florence was initially developed for mobile, which is less suited to deliver a more in-depth experience. All in all, Florence is an enjoyable light short story with beautiful artwork and clever ideas. I do think there's a lot more room to explore this type of storytelling, so I look forward to whatever the Mountains team is working on next!
I bumped into Tooth and Tail after watching a GDC talk about the game's art direction, felt compelled to give it a try, and was pleasantly surprised! Beyond the amazing and charming artwork, I found this a refreshing take on the real-time-strategy (RTS) genre. My favourite RTS is Total Annihilation, where you can spend a *ton* of time first building up your base before you go on the offense. I'd say Tooth and Tail is on the complete opposite end of that spectrum: games tend to be short (5~15 minutes, for most single-player maps at least) and you'll need to fight back early-on. It took some getting-used to, and the later maps in the campaign can get pretty intense .. so some maps I had to retry several times, but I was ok with this because the games are so short. Some would say the gameplay is simplistic; I would call it streamlined, and I like it because of this. Just the bare essentials of an RTS .. to the point where the game is made to be played with just the keyboard or a controller .. and there's something very enjoyable about that. (FYI - the default controls do use mouse buttons .. but mouse movement isn't used at all, so it works best for me all-keyboard) I also really liked that the game doesn't hold your hand story-wise; there are 4 different factions and the bits of dialogue assume you already know everything from the get-go .. so you'll be pretty clueless at first, and everything only starts to make sense gradually. I also enjoyed the "Banjo Kazooie-style" voices to add a distinct character to each of the units. I only have a couple points of improvement: it's cool that the maps are procedurally generated, but there often are very narrow pathways that are visually hard to read, which makes navigating a bit finnicky sometimes. You'll also need to learn about each unit mostly through trial and error; would've liked something to speed up that process. All in all, whether you're a newcomer or veteran RTS player, I can easily recommend Tooth and Tail!
I'm not usually the type to play games that intentionally make you feel powerless, weak, not in control .. yet I was drawn to its visuals, its dark atmosphere .. and somehow curious to get a glimpse of what it's like to deal with psychosis. I know very little about mental illnesses, but to me it clearly shows Ninja Theory have treated the subject matter with care and respect. Browsing through other reviews, Senua's Sacrifice can be a love-it or hate-it kind of game. I think it comes down to how much you're willing to put yourself into Senua's shoes, suspend your disbelief, and see the world through her eyes. Objectively, I should give the game a 3/5 .. the actual combat and puzzle gameplay mechanics are very lightweight and repetitive, no doubt .. but I didn't care, at all .. I was so immersed in Senua's mind and how she observes the world around her .. intrigued by how unforgiving, unpredictable and full of illusions her world is, where you don't know what to believe. She often hears multiple voices in her mind that are a mix of casting doubts and encouragement at the same time. I thought those voices would eventually become grating, but strangely enough.. I found it to be the opposite; the voices are the only thing that remain familiar to Senua; they always keep her company in a world that is constantly changing and playing tricks on her. That's what the game truly nails for me, immersion and atmosphere. In just about every sense.. visually, the voicework, the soundtrack, the story. Not the kind of story where everything is neatly laid out, but one that leaves you wondering what it all means, my favourite. Subjectively, an easy 5/5.
Just finished the game, and spent at least another hour just walking around its wonderful world just to see what each of the game's characters had to say about the grand adventure we just had. I loved playing Psychonauts 1 and I've been quietly following along with its sequel's development; you get some small glimpses of what the game would be like, but I wasn't prepared for how amazing it turned out to be! Much like its predecessor, Psychonauts 2 is a very unique game.. just calling it an adventure-platformer doesn't do it justice at all. The core platforming gameplay is solid and fun, for sure .. but its world, its characters, its story, art and music all just ooze personality and creativity. The game has tons of different characters, all memorable and likeable; I honestly can't think of one that I found plain boring or annoying. I only have a couple of minor niggles with the game. Swapping in and out your powers in the four available slots can be a little clunky in more intense fights; facial animations sometimes seem a little stiff .. and what's with Raz putting on and off his goggles in (what feels like) every cutscene? All in all, Psychonauts 2 was pure joy! If anything, you can't help but respect Double Fine for taking big risks like this: making a high production-value game that's weird and quirky and unique, over trying to fit in with the popular kids. I can't wait to see whatever they will cook up next! (.. speaking of which, I loved the cooking level that was clearly the result of one their Amnesia Fortnight prototype games :) )
