Sept. 2023
Well, it’s that time of year again! …or I should say was, in that it WAS October which is my busiest time of the year and thus did not have time to write two months of updates (hooray…). So, kind of rushing these out but at least getting them out. Though nowadays with two fighting games out (MK1 and Street Fighter) a lot of new DBD content coming up, and starting to edit videos again, I am having trouble finding time to do any actual backlog killing… Well… time is what we make it I guess. Until the next (and hopefully very soon) update. ^_^
A worthy puzzle game that offers a plethora of different and engaging puzzles to challenge you as you progress through a philosophical based world to make you things like existence itself and what it means to be human/alive. To be honest the latter held little interest to me as all I wanted to do was solve puzzles. Luckily, knowing the story matter little for progression. Each puzzles is in it’s own sub world and sectioned off into self contained areas (much like Portal). Solving each puzzle earns you a puzzle piece which is color coded which can be used to unlock new areas and/or puzzle item mechanics. Each contained puzzle tells you what mechanic you’ll need (in case you didn’t unlock it) and use. It will also tell you if you have already gotten the item and any secrets (if any). For the most part, a lot of the puzzle mechanics are neat the recording one in particular caused some interesting though processes and solutions though it felt like I was solving puzzles in a rather unintended way at times. As stated before, there are secrets to get some of which seem to require some weird solutions outside the bounds of the puzzle to which I rarely bothered with as it seemed like too much for my brain already. Though I did enjoy the general 3D puzzles I absolutely loathed the puzzle piece ones towards the end. They offered very little and felt excessive and obnoxious at the end.
Recommend? Yes!
Rating? 8/10
At the start Bendy offers a great classic cartoon styled horror game that delivers in spooky ambiance and a charming art direction. Unfortunately, the game very quickly loses steam due to lackluster final chapters and an absolute metric ton of softlocking glitches that will have you restarting the game from scratch. You wouldn’t have the need to restart if you could save in chapter select but they did not include that feature. Even when it does save, a glitch could have already occurred and there is no way to fix the situation.
Sample Glitches/Bugs:
-Saving can glitch out and even manual saves will stop working (Fix: must restart game if you notice the save icon sticking around)
-Progression triggers can fail to execute properly. i.e. a lift refusing to move, key items not appearing, or an enemy not going into a kill zone. (restart game and hope it works but not guaranteed)
-Loading into a save can result you being inside a locked room with no escape. (No solution except start a new save)
-etc.
It is utterly disappointing that this game has as many bugs as it does with seemingly no response from the developer and no genuine solutions.
Recommend? NO
Rating: 2/10
CRPG with a party system. With a party system of up to 8, it is not only almost imperative to find 8 members (not difficult) but incredibly hard to manage. Trying to get someone to fall back will often incur misclicks to make a different party member move, cast, etc. You can set party formations but they often matter little and do not function the way they would wish. Facing enemies gets to be incredibly overwhelming and found no clear way for my party members not to fall consistently. Luckily, if a member falls they are not necessarily dead, though there is a chance they could where they have to be resurrected by spell or scroll but they also leave behind a loot explosion which becomes far more tiresome than it’s worth. Thus save scumming is incredibly advised. Each party member lacks little personality or story, so you are basically looking at pure stats for each. XP sharing and management can also be problematic as you may end up under leveled due to the size of your party. Due to these various issues the game feels like it may be more suited for it’s multiplayer mode rather than single player. What makes this version worse is that there is no ending. You beat the final boss, he drops loot that you can’t pick up, and then straight to credits. Supposedly other versions have the ending but it is very bizarre this was ported without, not to mention no way of capitalizing on end of game loot.
Recommended? Nope, but hopefully in future titles they halve the party members you have to manage.
Rating: 3/10
The Dark Souls of Jedi Games… well just about. Though it doesn’t quite capture the difficulty of the souls-like genre it still keeps quite a few staples including bonfires, loss of currency (unless a skill point has been earned) upon death, respawning enemies on death/resting, and some general combat flow.
The story follows Cal Kestis, an ex Jedi who survived Order 66 (which seems to be an ever increasing amount in the current Disney timeline). Though he lives as a scrapper he very quickly finds himself being chased by a Sith Order called the Inquisitorius.
Overall, I found the game to be… just alright. A lot of the maps are annoying to navigate ESPECIALLY when returning to areas for missed items/lore. On top of this the actual UI for the map itself makes things worse. Exploration feels a little unrewarding as you mostly just get different ponchos for Cal to wear or skins on either BD or your ship that you probably wouldn’t look at. The combat is fine though, like the game itself, can be a bit buggy and awkward. Characters are written well enough and have decent interactions. A decent experience in general but leaves a lot to be improved and desired.
Recommend? Eh, maybe if it’s on sale.
Rating: 5/10
Simple platformer, with some generic combat, and a light story told throughout. The world can feel like a pretty generic 3D world as it is basic platforms just in the sky. The story is given both in general dialogue bye the character as you progress and if you collect all of the stars (strewn about the world and earned by defeating all enemies) you get bonus story which is possibly needed for the final battle. Nothing about the movie game seems to particularly excel or impress in any field however some of the mechanics/puzzles are neat and the story is a nice light and bit of a heartwarming story. That being said, some of the puzzles seem to not work well. In particular, rolling the stone balls.
Recommend? Maybe on the cheap.
Rating 5/10
Potentially lewdy VN. From Bar Wench to Captain, you must lead your newly acquired crew to either rags or riches and possibly find love and companionship in the process. The game has some decent scenes early on but is clear it frontloads it as a lot of potentially great situations are never expanded or explored later on. Not to mention a couple of routes were behind DLC and some characters never ended up getting their promised routes at all. There are some non-VN esque points where you do ship battles but they are either incredibly straight forward or entirely guess work which is pretty lame.
Recommend? Eh. It would be better had the game been complete with all routes, even if some ended up being DLC. The game clearly just does not get the same love towards the end as it did from the start.
Rating: 4/10
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34Time has been reset once again (and once again making us suffer terrible naming schemes) giving old characters new beginnings. Liu Kang, once the Keeper of Time now the protector of Earth Realm, seeks to keep order in his new timeline. Despite his seemingly flawlessly constructed timeline someone seems to be tampering with fate behind the scenes. As per usual, NRS does generally well in their cinematic storytelling. Seeing everyone’s new origin and interactions starts out fairly strong as the game starts with a strong movie-like presence. However, its eems as the ball rolls everyone shouts their quick background exposition as they start leaving a bunch of subplots open and unanswered (Is there more to Mileena’s case? Jerrod’s death? Relationships between certain people?) and would have much preferred some to be expanded on. Even some events that actively happen seem to just kind of gloss over. Thus the story gets a bit messy towards the end despite having a pretty great concept in the final chapter. All in all, this story did not feel like one of a main line title but moreso a spin off than anything. The new conquest mode (invasions) explores fun little stories each season that also gives you limited time to unlock a plethora of skins/palattes, gear, etc. in theme of said season in a board game style adventure. Much improved from the super armor heavy and item overloading of it’s first season I find it to be much more pleasant than the time towers of 11.
The very short time between the game’s announcement and release (a mere four months) left me incredibly uneasy despite some excitement. At this current moment I think both were quite warranted. On one hand the game is incredibly fun and have not enjoyed an NRS game since the time of MKX and Injustice 2 (though the latter was a bit grind heavy) and on the other it seems more and more clear that this was pushed out early to make up for WB’s lack of earnings. Things such as plethora of bugs/glitches, egregious price gouging in simple items, inconsistent and/or lack of information between the devs and actual implementations, and more that point to the idea that this was pushed out much too early (again likely by WB). That being said, it does seem like NRS is making considerable changes such as improving the previously sluggish and annoying Invasions mode, reducing the price on seasonal fatalities to be reasonable (though some may still prefer them to be free), balances (mixed reactions), fixes, etc. Though I’m a bit mixed if I should praise the game for fun gameplay with assist based kombat in an MK game or if I should be critical that this was pushed out far too early with a lot of issues (though slowly being fixed). I think I’ll stay somewhere in the middle though feeling optimistic that NRS will make something even greater out of this through continued support. Perhaps that is something we have to decide for any release these days when buying a game and trusting a dev/publisher to follow through despite taking our money.
Recommend? Yes, I have yet to tire of the gameplay and look forward to experimenting with both the current roster and those that will be released later on.
Rating? 7.5/10
Well that’s really disappointing to hear about Bendy and the Ink Machine. I had planned to play that one soon because I thought the art looked cute and I love a good horror game. I’m an achievement hunter though and highly buggy games–especially ones that have bugs around saves– make that so much harder. Maybe I’ll bump it to next October when it’ll at least be thematic. Appreciate the head’s up about the potential problems, at any rate. Nice to see others enjoying the Talos Principle! The sequel just dropped, so I’m excited to see what improvements they’ve made in the intervening years.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but hopefully these new expectations make the experience better for you.
Talos was great, though I’m a bit intimidated by some of the secret puzzles. It’ll probably be some time before I get to the sequel, but looking forward to yours (and others) reviews when they play it.