JoRod
2023
It’s brilliant. The concept is really cool, and makes for some great a-ha moments. It’s beautiful despite not really making that much sense, but I was with it for the trip.
I could only really fault it for feeling somewhat contrived sometimes. The concept was limited by some arbitrary rules (objects just disappear without any in-world reasoning). I imagine these are there to avoid logically impossible outcomes that would break the game, but it felt limiting.
I could only really fault it for feeling somewhat contrived sometimes. The concept was limited by some arbitrary rules (objects just disappear without any in-world reasoning). I imagine these are there to avoid logically impossible outcomes that would break the game, but it felt limiting.
Gameplay-wise, incredible. I can’t see a way to improve traversal from here, it’s just that perfect. Some might consider the combat easy or button-mashy but I think it fits the game. The bosses had some issues but overall were fun. The game was never boring.
It fails in the writing. The main plot is extremely predictable and lacks emotional punch. The character writing is weak, milquetoast, and childish. I understand it’s a spider-man story, but so is Into the Spider-Verse and it doesn’t need to be childish and cringe to appeal to 12-year-olds (and remember, Spider-Man 2 is 16+).
I hope they find a way to improve this in the franchise, but I doubt it.
It fails in the writing. The main plot is extremely predictable and lacks emotional punch. The character writing is weak, milquetoast, and childish. I understand it’s a spider-man story, but so is Into the Spider-Verse and it doesn’t need to be childish and cringe to appeal to 12-year-olds (and remember, Spider-Man 2 is 16+).
I hope they find a way to improve this in the franchise, but I doubt it.
Ghost of Tsushima is beautiful. It captures the Japanese landscape and culture in a way that works very well for me (as a non-Japanese person who's only visited Japan once). The combat holds itself up for the duration, which is a challenge in this sort of games.
I think the main story being told has its ups and downs. I like the theme it explores, as cliché as it might be at this point. The side stories had their moments, but were very hit-or-miss. The biggest problem here is that several side-storylines are set up, and in all of them without exception, eventful moments happen in the beginning and in the end, making the in-between a series of redundant steps (oh no, we missed him/her again, must be in another castle).
This is one example of the biggest problem in this game: repetitiveness.
I still haven't played the Iki Island DLC, and I'm postponing that for a long while because I can NOT stand any more of the random encounters, the repetitive little noises, the tiny little details that after 60 hours of gameplay started to grate immensely.
It does have an incredible conclusion though.
I think the main story being told has its ups and downs. I like the theme it explores, as cliché as it might be at this point. The side stories had their moments, but were very hit-or-miss. The biggest problem here is that several side-storylines are set up, and in all of them without exception, eventful moments happen in the beginning and in the end, making the in-between a series of redundant steps (oh no, we missed him/her again, must be in another castle).
This is one example of the biggest problem in this game: repetitiveness.
I still haven't played the Iki Island DLC, and I'm postponing that for a long while because I can NOT stand any more of the random encounters, the repetitive little noises, the tiny little details that after 60 hours of gameplay started to grate immensely.
It does have an incredible conclusion though.
2021
I really am not a card game fan, I've always felt too disconnected from the experience being simulated.
But Inscryption captured me. It helped that the card game was fully embedded in the game world, and the atmosphere is what sealed the deal.
This was going well, but the game takes some annoying turns, in multiple ways. It suffers mostly for doing a lot of deceptively interesting stuff that doesn't really amount to much of value, in my opinion.
But Inscryption captured me. It helped that the card game was fully embedded in the game world, and the atmosphere is what sealed the deal.
This was going well, but the game takes some annoying turns, in multiple ways. It suffers mostly for doing a lot of deceptively interesting stuff that doesn't really amount to much of value, in my opinion.
2022
A lot of games have style, it’s not exactly rare for a game to have its own aesthetic and vibe. But I do think it is rare for a game to so confidently present itself in such a unique form. Colours, shapes, texts fonts, editing, music, sound design, every element of the way Signalis presents itself builds into a wholly unique identity. And this helps immensely to convey the intended feeling of confusion and oppression.
Without this, Signalis would almost be irrelevant. Its 90s survival game mechanics are fun, but we do already have 90s survival games. Its plot is cryptic. Its themes are carried by sensory impact.
So it all comes back to the way the game presents itself. And it’s so effective that it makes Signalis special.
Without this, Signalis would almost be irrelevant. Its 90s survival game mechanics are fun, but we do already have 90s survival games. Its plot is cryptic. Its themes are carried by sensory impact.
So it all comes back to the way the game presents itself. And it’s so effective that it makes Signalis special.
2022
This review contains spoilers
To get the bad out of the way, I think this game struggles with worldbuilding due to its very prominent ideologies. Let me be very clear, I probably agree with most of the dev's opinions, but in a game all about the tension of choice (with varying degrees of impact), it’s a shame that a lot of that tension was lost to predictability.
The game was very transparent regarding the reason for any character or institution’s existence, and what they represented. So many risks associated with events that reflect political opinions are non-existent, because according to the given ideology, event X can never happen. Disco Elysium (which this game very much aspired to be), from similarly left-leaning developers, avoids this entirely by actually being serious about building a believable world.
Nevertheless, I did very much like this. The day mechanics were interesting, the prose fantastic, and its approach to endings is brilliant.
The game was very transparent regarding the reason for any character or institution’s existence, and what they represented. So many risks associated with events that reflect political opinions are non-existent, because according to the given ideology, event X can never happen. Disco Elysium (which this game very much aspired to be), from similarly left-leaning developers, avoids this entirely by actually being serious about building a believable world.
Nevertheless, I did very much like this. The day mechanics were interesting, the prose fantastic, and its approach to endings is brilliant.
2019
Great cozy game. I wish more games decided to see what happened if they just cut off all the fat, made their point, and rolled the credits, which A Short Hike did, to great effect.
Each little sequence is so memorable purely because the developers gave their all to make each of them as they were intended to be made. Not a stretched out facsimile of a once interesting idea. What Remains of Edith Finch and Devotion are two other great examples of this type of decisiveness.
Each little sequence is so memorable purely because the developers gave their all to make each of them as they were intended to be made. Not a stretched out facsimile of a once interesting idea. What Remains of Edith Finch and Devotion are two other great examples of this type of decisiveness.
This was just exhausting. I’m not sure if my humour changed, if society’s humour changed, or if it’s just plain bad, but the new content was just a slog. Some of the old content too, but at least there was some cleverness to it.