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MaxyBee is
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Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
3 hrs ago
MaxyBee
completed
Castlevania: The Adventure
As I type this I'm looking at every game I've rated one star, and trying to decide if it's on the better end of them. It's not. It's somewhere in the middle of the pack, an absolute also-ran of garbage games, and I have to wonder why I even considered the question.
It's hard to mess up linear Castlevania games. Make whip feel good (or have a suitable alternative weapon like a sick-ass spear/trident), make game harsh but fair, banger music to carry you through. Castlevania: The Adventure fails at all of these, spectacularly so, and yet... it feels like it's grasping for them. It knows what's good. The development team just couldn't pull it off.
Across the game's four levels you have blobs, birds, worms and so on either wobbling about minding their own business or attacking you in clear and predictable patterns. So far, so good. But... wait, who the heck am I playing as in this one? Christopher Belmont. Okay. But Christopher controls like shit. His walk, slow. His jump? Awkward. His whip? A drag to use on ground and in the air. He sucks. They messed up at a key feature: your little guy! Without that, anything in the game, be it battling foes, precision jumping, or literally walking across a screen becomes a chore and a nightmare, and makes what should be a nice quick jaunt through a petite companion to a console classic into an endless parade of lost lives and reset progress as Christopher once again betrays the player in a key moment.
Weirdly this doesn't impact the bosses too badly, as they're mostly minute single screen enounters where small twitches benefit more than larger actions as you dodge attacks and sneak hits in with your whip. Well, your upgraded whip, if you have it. You lose an upgrade each time you take a hit, and a completely unupgraded whip is so short as to make bosses a nightmare, as their attack range seems to be based on the longer, upgraded whip, or in the case of one of them, the fully-powered up whip that launches fireballs at your opponents. It's by no means over if you reach a boss without a big whip, but it is telling that all boss encounters have a candle with an upgrade in it in the room. The designers knew that basic whip was dogshit.
The music was okay. Unremarkable.
I'm amazed I've had even this much to say about C:TA. It's just a bad game. Any ambition is wasted, the end product isn't worth anyone's time, but it's still kind of interesting. A Castlevania with no sub-weapons is interesting. A Castlevania on Game Boy is an interesting exercise in working within limitations. It's just that this game doesn't manage to do anything with either of those things.
It's hard to mess up linear Castlevania games. Make whip feel good (or have a suitable alternative weapon like a sick-ass spear/trident), make game harsh but fair, banger music to carry you through. Castlevania: The Adventure fails at all of these, spectacularly so, and yet... it feels like it's grasping for them. It knows what's good. The development team just couldn't pull it off.
Across the game's four levels you have blobs, birds, worms and so on either wobbling about minding their own business or attacking you in clear and predictable patterns. So far, so good. But... wait, who the heck am I playing as in this one? Christopher Belmont. Okay. But Christopher controls like shit. His walk, slow. His jump? Awkward. His whip? A drag to use on ground and in the air. He sucks. They messed up at a key feature: your little guy! Without that, anything in the game, be it battling foes, precision jumping, or literally walking across a screen becomes a chore and a nightmare, and makes what should be a nice quick jaunt through a petite companion to a console classic into an endless parade of lost lives and reset progress as Christopher once again betrays the player in a key moment.
Weirdly this doesn't impact the bosses too badly, as they're mostly minute single screen enounters where small twitches benefit more than larger actions as you dodge attacks and sneak hits in with your whip. Well, your upgraded whip, if you have it. You lose an upgrade each time you take a hit, and a completely unupgraded whip is so short as to make bosses a nightmare, as their attack range seems to be based on the longer, upgraded whip, or in the case of one of them, the fully-powered up whip that launches fireballs at your opponents. It's by no means over if you reach a boss without a big whip, but it is telling that all boss encounters have a candle with an upgrade in it in the room. The designers knew that basic whip was dogshit.
The music was okay. Unremarkable.
I'm amazed I've had even this much to say about C:TA. It's just a bad game. Any ambition is wasted, the end product isn't worth anyone's time, but it's still kind of interesting. A Castlevania with no sub-weapons is interesting. A Castlevania on Game Boy is an interesting exercise in working within limitations. It's just that this game doesn't manage to do anything with either of those things.
18 hrs ago
21 hrs ago
aleph_null
completed
The Tower on the Borderland
1 day ago
1 day ago
aleph_null wants
Unicorn Overlord
1 day ago
2 days ago
2 days ago
MaxyBee
completed
Filament
This review contains spoilers
Filament is a great example of a development team having one really good idea, and enough creativity to work out just about every interesting variation possible. A truly impressive feat for a puzzle game, BUT I do wish they’d held something back for a sequel. There is simply too much shit to do in this one, and it can get exhausting.
I’ve been playing on and off for months, generally completely one or two variations on the main puzzle mechanic (that of making a little dude drag his endless ass-cable round pillars), enjoying some plot, and then taking a week or two off, and even with that level of gradual play I just wanted the puzzles over with by the end. That some of them were lost on me (hello binary puzzles, no regrets looking you up) only upped the irritation.
But the plot is truly excellent (I am literally going to spoil the ending twist now). You’re Pluto, an augmented spacefarer who board this ship after some abnormal crisis, involving an artificial planet and radiation, has removed all of its crew, save one (or so it seems). You solve puzzles on ‘anchor’ units, in theory to free the remaining crew member from the cockpit. She’s the sole voice throughout, and an unreliable narrator. Everything ‘Juniper’ tells you is inconsistent with what you learn about her from the logs you unlock throughout, and she’s oddly praising of Swan, the remote captain who, in the crew logs, is disliked and responsible for a crewmember’s death. The shoe dropping at the end, as you realise this was the captain, Swan, reclaiming the ship by manipulating you, right before A VERY MYSTERIOUS EVENT that removes you from events, is a masterstroke. It’s only a shame that it’s obfuscated enough that there are threads abound of people who couldn’t work out that crucial element. I don’t think plots have to lead you by the nose, but I feel like how well the final twist is seeded is lost in all the criticism of the game’s outstaying its welcome simply because people can’t wrap their head around it.
Overall, this is worth a purchase, and I am all full of feelings about it. But it could have been more by doing less. I recommend thinking out the puzzles you gel with and cheating the ones you don’t. Make it a good time. Make it an experience.
I’ve been playing on and off for months, generally completely one or two variations on the main puzzle mechanic (that of making a little dude drag his endless ass-cable round pillars), enjoying some plot, and then taking a week or two off, and even with that level of gradual play I just wanted the puzzles over with by the end. That some of them were lost on me (hello binary puzzles, no regrets looking you up) only upped the irritation.
But the plot is truly excellent (I am literally going to spoil the ending twist now). You’re Pluto, an augmented spacefarer who board this ship after some abnormal crisis, involving an artificial planet and radiation, has removed all of its crew, save one (or so it seems). You solve puzzles on ‘anchor’ units, in theory to free the remaining crew member from the cockpit. She’s the sole voice throughout, and an unreliable narrator. Everything ‘Juniper’ tells you is inconsistent with what you learn about her from the logs you unlock throughout, and she’s oddly praising of Swan, the remote captain who, in the crew logs, is disliked and responsible for a crewmember’s death. The shoe dropping at the end, as you realise this was the captain, Swan, reclaiming the ship by manipulating you, right before A VERY MYSTERIOUS EVENT that removes you from events, is a masterstroke. It’s only a shame that it’s obfuscated enough that there are threads abound of people who couldn’t work out that crucial element. I don’t think plots have to lead you by the nose, but I feel like how well the final twist is seeded is lost in all the criticism of the game’s outstaying its welcome simply because people can’t wrap their head around it.
Overall, this is worth a purchase, and I am all full of feelings about it. But it could have been more by doing less. I recommend thinking out the puzzles you gel with and cheating the ones you don’t. Make it a good time. Make it an experience.
2 days ago
MaxyBee
completed
Mega Man Legacy Collection 2
3 days ago
3 days ago
pissmillionaire wants
Multibowl
3 days ago
MaxyBee
completed
Superliminal
This review contains spoilers
The greatest example of Superliminal as a game comes after a faux-horror sequence, where, having restarted a generator with a fake ikea logo on it saying ‘idea’, you have the option to go back on yourself, as a chess pawn makes cartoon noises at you and leads you to the Silent Hill 2 Dog Ending. In this sequence, this series of moments, Superliminal’s devs want you to know that this could have been fun, this could have been wacky! But no, the weight of potential artistic importance must supercede fun.
I do like this game. Perspective-based puzzling like those featured throughout are amazing video game parlour tricks that always feel a bit like magic, even as you become increasingly familiar with the core mechanic of ‘big thing small, small thing big’. It feels like the deva know they have a Portal-level trick here, and have attempted to build a Portal-level story to pull you through.
But no, it’s fine. It’s an okay story with a fun looping sense of waking-but-are-you-awake each time. As the universe of your mind crumbles and you enter increasingly abstract space it feels like a good story idea, but a much less gripping game as things get a bit esoteric.
Anyway, a game for fans of that one bit in 2004 docufilm Tarnation where he explains his depersonalisation disorder that makes everything feel like a waking dream. You know, people who went “I wonder what that’s like” instead of realising the important lesson of not letting a kid have PCP.
3 stars?
I do like this game. Perspective-based puzzling like those featured throughout are amazing video game parlour tricks that always feel a bit like magic, even as you become increasingly familiar with the core mechanic of ‘big thing small, small thing big’. It feels like the deva know they have a Portal-level trick here, and have attempted to build a Portal-level story to pull you through.
But no, it’s fine. It’s an okay story with a fun looping sense of waking-but-are-you-awake each time. As the universe of your mind crumbles and you enter increasingly abstract space it feels like a good story idea, but a much less gripping game as things get a bit esoteric.
Anyway, a game for fans of that one bit in 2004 docufilm Tarnation where he explains his depersonalisation disorder that makes everything feel like a waking dream. You know, people who went “I wonder what that’s like” instead of realising the important lesson of not letting a kid have PCP.
3 stars?
5 days ago
5 days ago
5 days ago