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!
