I've been way too busy to do a deep write-up on this game. The short version is this was one of the more deeply flawed games I've stuck out until the end credits. It has a good heart, and the spirit of what it's trying to do is all in the right place, but honestly, I only finished it because I'm considering doing some analysis of Soulslike combat design at some point in the future, and this is a marked example of something that misunderstands some core principles of what makes those games work in spite of their frustrations and difficulty. Don't let the fact that this game is cute trick you, this is as mean and rude, if not more so, as any Fromsoft game.

There is just so much obnoxious behavior in this game, particularly concerning how many enemy hits turn your character into a flying physics object to be thrown off of ledges or across the arena. The only thing that offsets the awful difficulty design is the fact that the player is, in turn, granted some incredibly overpowered abilities without a hint of balance behind them, making it so you can easily spam and tank your way through everything. The best elements of combat have "the juice," as it were, though the roll-out shell spell was so goddamn good compared to everything else that I never used any other shells after I got it! The worst elements irritated me through at least a third of the game's run time.

Their economy balance is also pretty weird; you can max out all the upgrades in the game with like ~60% of the limited crystals available. Maybe that's good, I don't know. It certainly fully disincentivizes finding all of that currency -- even as a completionist, and even given the fact that they show you exactly how much is in each zone on the fast-travel page -- but there's just too much of it.

People hype up the story a lot. It's fine. It has a lot of character, but it didn't make me feel anything or get invested. A lot of the dialog is just too by-the-numbers smarmy indie-game-core without enough substance for me to really care. The way it progresses is pretty straightforward and obvious, they foreshadow everything about it well enough, but it's also kind of incoherent in terms of themes. I mean, the themes are clear, there are just several that have not a lot to do with each other and rely on a kind of cartoon logic while also trying to feel super sad and serious at the same time. Then again, I'm also on record feeling literally nothing about anything Fromsoft has ever done with story or worldbuilding, so anything inspired by that foundation, even if written more clearly, I probably find boring by association. "Ah, the world is in decay, and everyone's sad." OK.

Lastly, the fact that the player can't scroll around the map UI is garbage. Just...absolutely trash. Do not give a player a map that is so zoomed in they can't actually see anything other than what they could already see without a map. Absolutely flabbergasting decision.

Conclusion: I wouldn't say DON'T play this game if it looks cool to you. It has good elements, and people less nitpicky than me seem to love it, but don't go in expecting a polished experience in any regard. It's rougher around the edges than any game I've finished in the last 15 years (including tons of indie and AA games).

Combat Design: 6/10
Level Design: 6/10
Music: 8/10
Story: 6/10

Rental is average at best, but you won't miss much if you play the game, as I finish the game with all achievements within half an hour. The game is like Silent Hill and Resident Evil with the aesthetics of Animal Crossing. I was more annoyed than scared, especially with the maze. I feel that the game tried too hard to be frightening and came off forced. There aren't any accessibility options or controller and mouse support, and you can't even exit the game without terminating the process. I hope for something more eventful with this, as it's candidly promising. If possible, please add native Mac and Linux support.

Medium. No significant story or content spoilers. This review is content-accurate as of 5/17/24, this game is currently in early access. This review focuses more on technical details for those interested in playing. I did not progress past the Manufacturing sector whilst writing this review, but I won't touch on it in this review.

For anyone looking to play the game, I recommend looking at some settings to tinker with. First of all, the game defaults to using TSR at a 25% resolution scaling factor. This doesn't look terrible, but it can increase the frequency of visual artifacts that some players may find distracting. Turning this up should alleviate many issues you could get from scaling, but will reduce performance. I do recommend using TSR since it does look very, very good for an upscaler. I would not recommend FSR over TSR, and I do not believe DLSS is an option in this game as of now.

If you're running an older graphics card, or a graphics card that is a little weaker, I would recommend turning the Global Illumination, Shadows and Reflections settings down, as the "Epic" setting uses UE5's Lumen technology to produce an effect that is not much different from ray-tracing, only in software. I am unsure if this game uses any hardware accelerated ray-tracing, but I think it is a software implementation. Regardless, these settings should affect your performance the most, aside from resolution scaling. Some people have reported a method to help optimize lighting even further by tinkering with engine.ini files, but I did not do this.

On my setup, I can achieve a stable 120-165 frames per second using Epic on all settings at 75% (of 1440p) resolution scaling. I am using an RX 6800 and a Ryzen 9 5900x with 32gb of RAM. Some users have reported stutters occuring between some locations, but I have not experienced any. Overall, this game runs well, but older systems may struggle with some effects.

Review
Abiotic Factor defied my expectations, even knowing I was to expect a survival game within a setting that intentionally calls back to the Black Mesa facilities of Half-Life. Everything from the enemies, to the character design, and the setting which is an underground research facility within a red-colored rocky locale. Saying that Abiotic Factor is taking a lot of inspiration from Half-Life would be a significant understatement. This makes it incredibly fun for someone like me, someone who does quite enjoy the franchise, to play something like this, it has a sort of comfortable vibe despite everything going on. The visual makeup of the game retains a similar (albeit higher) level of detail that the original Half-Life games in terms of textures, but is otherwise using fairly advanced lighting technology that I think looks really good overall.

The game begins with you creating a character. Don't try to get it perfect! You can change your character's appearance any time you want after this tutorial, which sees you being driven to the facility, situated in the middle of nowhere. Once you talk to the security guard, and get your badge, you're then walked through basic mechanics, things you will essentially be doing for much of, if not, the entire game. This tutorial is nice and short, and I think covers enough ground to get you situated into the rest of the game.

Upon completion of the tutorial you're brought to the main menu, and are able to start a new game. There appear to be a lot of elements you can change to make it easier or harder or maybe just different, which is nice. Once making a new save, you are asked to select a "job" and then follow up with traits and points you can allocate for traits, much like Project Zomboid. This seems quite generous, and it is, but a couple of things is that you absolutely must take Wrinkly Brainmeat, which increases your XP gains by 20%, and if you're playing in multiplayer, I think specializing is good. 20% XP gain doesn't sound like much, but some traits that you want to level up as much as possible can take a very long time, and any time saved on that can be a lifesaver. You can have friends specialize in things such as cooking, or combat, so on and so forth, to make the experience more dynamic for everyone playing. It's best to do this with the jobs at your disposal. Dying in this game (at least with default settings)

Starting a game, you may notice a couple of red flags. Your very first task is to talk to a scientist and get your first objective. Why would an open-ended survival game have you getting objectives to complete? Thankfully, these objectives don't necessarily have to be completed within a linear fashion, and, although direct, I feel that this functions in a similar way to The Forest, in which these objectives are simply allowing the player to open the world up to them in segments, and are not the hallmarks of a linear story progression. Regardless, right around the time you craft your first Energy Brick, the game will open up quite substantially, allowing you the freedom to explore the facility, talk to more NPCs, discover new things, and set up your living space for the time being. As in any survival game, you must pay attention to your human needs. Many of these are straightforward, gotta eat, sleep, drink, and in this game you also occasionally need to use the restroom with a little minigame attached to it. Fun! Lastly, you are encouraged to enter the Portal Worlds (one time required, at least), which are worlds that have a complete setting change, and differs in many ways!

I do feel that, at the moment, some of these elements of the game feel more like an afterthought than a mechanic that is engaging. For example, the Strength stat gives you the bonus of being able to properly wield heavy weapons, by carrying over capacity. Grinding this stat was incredibly frustrating, forcing me to run around very encumbered, not being able to collect as many resources as I'd like, in order to use a few weapons. I think that having this upgrade would make more sense for a separate stat or a separate method of upgrading, but some of these bonuses feel somewhat random. Another aspect I feel wears the game down a bit is the awkward combat, a couple of enemies (notably the Peccary) almost have instant attacks that occur, and can be punishing without feeling like a player would have deserved it. This continues to occur with many later enemies, but I think it is at least helped by the fact that you can get much better defensive equipment.

Abiotic Factor is a really fun time. I fully expected this game to be a mostly-joke title, but I found myself a game that I am enjoying and will continue to do so until I have seeped out everything I can out of it. While this game does have a couple issues, I think they could get ironed out by release. Single player is fun, but multiplayer is even more fun. I recommend this game to anyone, or any group, looking for a silly little survival game where you roleplay as HL1 scientists doing... whatever it is they do.

Let’s make a time loop game. First, we need to establish a mystery, something that’ll really play into the strength of the format, with something new to discover each loop. Since we at Arkane have mastered the magical assassin concept, we’ll blend the ideas, and have players discover how to assassinate a list of targets across a repeating day.

But how do we prevent players from just lucking into a solution, going to the right places and beating the game in two hours? Dishonored was already criticized for being short, and if even 1% of players beat the game in one run, we’ll never hear the end of it. So, we’ll have to force some repetition: necessary codes will be mutually-exclusive, so players will have to loop at least a few times before they’re able to unlock the ending. We’ll author a linear sequence of events that will guide the player and pace the experience.

What about players who don't like the repetition though? It won’t take long for people to get tired of repeatedly fetching their favorite weapons. To solve that, we could have players preserve their loadout between runs… but that would mean that we need to add a little more depth to it, so they don’t just gather everything once and stop caring. The weapons could have randomized bonuses like a looter-shooter, and collectible trinket buffs as well. Adding in character buffs and loot rarity would ensure that there’s always something new to find each run.

Of course, that will work well with the invasion-based multiplayer. Everyone will be fighting a unique opponent, which is great. We can also kill two birds with one stone by limiting the amount of powers players can equip at one time, further emphasizing unique approaches and making gunfights easy to follow. Speaking of limitations however, there will need to be some sacrifices in the realm of map design, since having a one-on-one fight across sprawling maps with load zones would be a nightmare, especially if hiding on rooftops and turning invisible is on the table. So, we won’t have events progress in real time, just in a single time-of-day per mission, because we won’t know how long those encounters may last. It also wouldn’t be good to lock weapons and buffs behind the multiplayer system, because that would let expert assassins steamroll new players. As a final failsafe, we’ll include an option to only play single player, in case it devolves into an invisible sniper camp fest.

Great. This design makes sense from front to back. We’ve walked through all the decisions and how they fit with all the others. We’ll have a time loop game where… players preserve everything from loop to loop, with no time pressure to navigate a linear sequence of events. We’ll prevent players from being bored with excessive repetition by… having them farm currency and random items. They’ll do that until they feel comfortable with tackling the big challenges and handling multiplayer invasions, because losing to an invader resets all the progress on your current loop. You’ll only ever do it when you’re not trying to focus on completing the story, since multiplayer has no benefits compared to isolating yourself in single player.

Hold on, how did this happen? We made decisions that made perfect sense; why is everything so wrong? Why do all our systems work against themselves? I guess it’s because we started with some good ideas, like the time loop assassin stuff and spy-versus-spy multiplayer invasions, but then immediately focused on how to sterilize those core concepts for people who aren’t interested. We made a time loop game and then removed all the time pressure! We took the magical powers and intricate maps we’re great at creating, and saddled them enough limitations to where they're worse than our old games! We made those sacrifices so the multiplayer would work, and then disincentivized engaging with it, killing the point and the playerbase in one shot! Next time we try this, we gotta keep it simple. Focus on what we think is cool and commit to it. Start from scratch. Ok.

Let’s make a time loop game.

You're telling me that two years after this game was unceremoniously shoved into its "Former Game of the Week"-themed grave, we're trying to bring it back? I won't stand for it.

I would've assumed that a game like this needs a hook, that the minigames need to actually be good, but after two years you can now play Tip Toe with friends and I'm not really convinced that that's enough to redeem the experience. Winning is still primarily the consequence of lucking out and not getting griefed into the sun, rather than a reward for actually doing anything right during the course of the minigames.

Maybe I just hate fun? Definitely a possible answer, but I'm mostly tired of streamers as tastemakers. I don't care about the latest Free-to-Play battle pass, no matter how many Hatsune Miku cosmetics or Lebron Jameses you put in. Release my friends, demon, I want to play games with them again.

Animal Well isn't the first game to be defined by their secret mechanics and hidden layers of puzzles. Fez paved the way, Outer Wilds built an entire game around it, Tunic mastered it, and Animal Well...

While I could call out a number of specific issues, they all stem from one core problem: it doesnt know the meaning of restraint. Each of Animal Well's ideas are really cool, and its biggest discoveries feel like a cosmic ephiphany, a sense of omniscience in discovering a new way to see the world. With each new item, and as you learn what the details of the world are telling you, the world seems entirely different.

But also, therein lies the problem. Compared to the examples I mentioned earlier - Fez, Outer Wilds, Tunic - Animal Well has several times more of these layers. It keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper, but without changing one key element: Getting around the world is a boring slog.

While you get a few new means of traversing the world, the game remains consistently annoying to navigate. Unlike the beautiful fluidity of Ori, or the stylish and precise Hollow Knight, theres nothing particularly fun about Animal Well's movement. This wasnt a problem when just trying to complete the main game up to the credits roll. But once you get deep into the endgame puzzles, each new discovery leads to you needing to retread the entire map to find every possible use for your new toy. While I initially enjoyed discovering and solving each new layer of puzzle, it eventually turned into a miserably tedious experience.

This is still a game I wholeheartedly recommend to most people. Even if follows a lineage of other puzzle games, Animal Well is still very much its own experience, with a completely unique aesthetic and atmosphere and novel structure and mechanics. But you have to decide when you've had enough. Getting too deep into the experience might eventually transform from a series of epiphanies into a miserable chore. So if you're a completionist, beware, because this may be a rabbit hole too deep to crawl out of.

Sorry to the dev, they are a VERY brilliant level designer, but I can't in good conscience "recommend" this game because it's just not going to be accessible to the vast majority of players, even people who love and play a lot of platformers or even first-person platformers. There is a small audience of players who either: 1. are good enough to not make mistakes consistently, 2. have the patience to replay content dozens and dozens of times when they do make small mistakes.

This is the first time I've tried a game like this knowing it would probably try my patience too much, and I did really enjoy the time I spent with it, but it's disheartening to me to feel like I'd be another 15+ hours of replaying the same content to get to the end because I don't have the ability to not make small mistakes in games (I'm 32, I know what my hands are capable of, they make little slip-ups once per 10-15 minutes, it's just how things go).

I got to ~290m after 13 hours of playing, and I'm just tired of replaying some sections of this game too much to consider continuing. My friends who are still playing are at 300-350m and regularly falling back down to 150m, requiring hours of replay just to get to the last failed jump. That's by design, obviously, but I don't think very many people will have the patience to get to the top if it takes 15+ hours of mostly replaying previous content to do so.

Great game feel, great camera setup, and, as stated above, absolutely brilliant level design. Looking for shortcuts is pretty fun, many sections I've replayed a dozen times I absolutely loved for some amount of time, but emotionally the negative feeling of falling to 100m-150m has grown to the point of completely ruining any enjoyment of playing the game.

Would love to play something similar from the developer that has a different approach to losing progress or gives more difficulty options or control to the player, their level design sensibilities are immensely good.

Level Design: 9/10
Locomotion Design: 8/10
Accessibility: 1/10

I've had to let this one stew for a bit, honestly.

I picked it up for myself as a late birthday present out of curiosity more than anything. I'd heard a lot of unflattering comparisons to Vampire Survivors (a game I very much despise) and clicker games (which I also despise! Wow, patterns!) which had put me on edge, so I was a little surprised to find out that none of those comparisons are apt.

I can understand being skeeved out by the direct usage of Poker iconography and terminology on display, but the truth that's apparent to me is that Balatro is ultimately another roguelike deckbuilder. You match symbols together, try to play to synergies, and pray for one of your random drops/powerups to be the one that enables a certain playstyle or tactics. If anything, despite my relative apathy towards deckbuilders (I play YGO, so slapping a roguelite aspect on just repels me) I admire this game for its honesty and relative lack of illusions.

Still, I find myself in an odd position.

Despite admiring it, I'm not really smitten with it.

One of those games where I can see why it's considered a mindmelting trap for people with ADHD, but I personally don't get much out of it. Would honestly rather play Suika Game. Incremental micro-unlocks and "pick one of 3" powerups and glorified slot machines in the form of card packs don't really enthuse me.

At a base level, the basest of all levels, I do think the mechanics are somewhat engaging despite the simplicity and comparison to blackjack more than poker. Compared to its contemporaries I also think it has infinitely more impactful decision making, especially with how finite money is and how little shops actually offer.
But Balatro - and indeed, nearly the entire roguelite genre - has an awful habit of playing their entire mechanical hand early on and then hoping it's enough to hook you. While it works for some games (Isaac, FTL, Dead Cells, Synthetik) I don't find it works so well for deckbuilders. There aren't enough interesting twists on the core mechanics for me to want to keep playing, and if anything its iconographical honesty might actually make it worse.

Sure, the game is addictive, but I'm older now dude. I creak when I wake up, I say "Mmm scrumptious" when I buy a pastry from Greggs, I tend a garden, I play Granblue Fantasy, I've got an inanimate object I collect.

'Addictive' is no longer enough to satisfy me. Life is addictive, pastries are addictive, math is addictive, the world I live in is addictive.

[Semi-related ramble that I was gonna post as a comment on someone else's Balatro review before remembering I don't like to barge into other people's posts and go "Nuh uh".]

I so direly wish higher profile indie games would have a design core that isn't just "addictive". Having seen roguelites come into existence over a decade ago, it feels like every other popular indie game is trying to make players chase the same kind of high that Binding of Isaac or FTL did all those years ago. In turn, they miss out on just being good games at their core.

Fucked up that Hitman: Freelancer is the best of these games I've played in years, and it was free DLC.

Before playing this game, the only 3D Sonic I ever played was Sonic Colors. And even then, a good chunk of that game was in 2D. So Adventure was my first fully 3D Sonic game ever. For years, I'd hear people say this game was broken beyond belief or just simply a "guilty pleasure" game that they enjoy despite being shit. While I did not love it like some people do, I can personally say I did not think the games were either of those things.

The game is broken up into 6 (technically 7 if you complete all other routes) character routes. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big the cat and Gamma respectively. Each of these characters play differently from each other, whether it's for better or worse, and even tho each playthrough varies in quality, I can at least commend how ambitious this is. Because in each character's playthrough, you get different cutscenes and also context for certain scenes that may not be explained in earlier playthroughs. As my friend Lemonstrade said, it's sort of similar to what Drakennier does which again is super cool conceptually, especially for a 1998 game.

But back to the actual characters, Sonic is the clear best one here. He has his spin dash, is of course the fastest in the game and also has a super fun aerial dash. I've heard people say the controls are bad in this game and I simply don't get that at all. Sonic, at least, feels simply perfect to control. The levels on the other hand, I can see people having issues with. I disagreed with the fact this game is broken beyond belief, but it definitely can be a bit broken if you're unlucky. I only glitched through the stage like 2 or 3 times, but the first time it happened was on the very first stage. That made me think the entire game would be broken, but it wasn't. Unless I got lucky, those claims, while still credible sometimes...are massively overblown. Besides that though, Sonic's stages while still fun, can feel incredibly janky just because of how fast he goes. It's hard to explain but if you've played the game you'd know, a lot of times the animations and your movement through levels can feel very unwieldly. It can be really hard to control sonic sometimes, and it often looks super awkward when looking back at it. Like I said it's hard to explain, and while I still had a ton of fun with his levels (just because he feels so good to controls) I can't help but think thee levels feel off. Again, this is mostly when you're at full speed going through loop de loops and shit. When it's slower sections you're going through, it's not an issue.

As for the other characters, they all have significantly less stages than Sonic. Tails has you racing against sonic, and with him being able to glide, you can take some seriously crazy shortcuts. The game itself even encourages this which I thought was pretty neat. Knuckles has you searching for three master emerald shards. It's basically a treasure hunt, with the emerald icons turning different colors depending on how close you are to them. These were alright, but story-wise I wasn't really a fan. Honestly thought his story would be more different from Sonic's than it was, not to mention the final Chaos fight was barely different from Sonic's (and Tails had a unique fight for his ending). Amy was probably my least favorite character to use. Her levels consisted of getting to the end like Sonic, while running away from one of Robotnik's robots. Problem is, while her hammer bounce is kinda cool, her moveset isn't nearly as fun as Sonic's yet her levels are still long like Sonic's (which isn't much of an issue with Tails and Knuckles). That plus, besides the one Gamma scene, her cutscenes were lame. Big the cat is the most contentious character by far, and honestly I didn't hate him. Yeah his cutscenes are super dumb and don't add much to the story. However his campaign is by far the shortest, and the fishing is actually really easy (and kinda fun) once you get the hang of it. Gamma is by far the best character next to Sonic. Not only are his stages fast paced, with you having to kill enemies quickly to get more time to your total. His story is actually significantly different compared to the others, and quite touching at that. If I had to rank each character's campaigns, I'd say Sonic>Gamma>Tails>Big>Knuckles>Amy.

To go to each actual level, you have to navigate the hubworld. For a 1998 game, it's not bad but it can feel somewhat empty I felt. Though, there are things to get that aren't just apart of the main story. There are some optional collectables and even some minigames you can play. There's also the chao garden which, I tried to get to work but since I was emulating the game, I suspected there was an add on I needed or something idk. But from the little I've heard, it does sound fun.

The story in general, does have its high points, like the aforementioned Gamma campaign and the ending is really nice. It's simple but effective. However, the actual voice acting is horribly stilted a lot of the time. It's not even a so bad it's good situation, it was just mediocre a lot of the time. That is, except for Robotnik who is super over the top but hilarious. Even despite the fact they reuse fight dialogue in actual scenes (which is jarring for sure) his dialogue is super duper memorable and easily the highlight. Something else that was memorable were some of the face animations, goddamn are they awful sometimes.

I didn't like LOVE the soundtrack like some people do, but it is quite nice overall. Very experimental which I appreciate a ton. My favorite songs were probably Red Skull Mountain, Welcome to Station Square and Egg Carrier: A Song That Keeps Us on the Move.

Once you complete all 6 character routes, you unlock the 7th and final one..Super Sonic. This is essentially just the final boss and some closure on the story, but it's definitely satisfying. You become Super Sonic, defeat Chaos's final form at supersonic speed, and in turn this cleanses Chaos of his evil as we find out he wasn't ever bad from the start. The closure on the whole Chao's and the past cutscenes was really nice. That along with Gamma's scenes ofc, easily the highlights of the story.

This game is definitely flawed in some ways, and Adventure 2 might improve on everything in this game idk. But I can officially say, this game is overall good and that Sonic had a good transition to 3D. Not everything works in this game, but I can acknowledge this game is full of heart.

May drop it down to a 6 cuz I was feeling like that for a good while but for now it's a 7.

There's this pretty average barcade in Melbourne that I've gone to 4 times now. An average barcade is also a pretty shitty barcade from my experience and what I hear. They have a tasty cocktail that I refuse to buy called "The Bubsy". Anyway, 'Speed Race' is super bizarre.

I've never touched controls with so little friction before. I'm not sure if the cabinet they have at this barcade is in good condition or not, but all three inputs are as smooth as a pilot custom 823 14K gold fountain pen with a medium nib on Rhodia 80GSM paper. The gear change stick moves without any chunk, click, or heft. The steering wheel turns like polished glass with no resistance as much as you like in any direction. The pedal goes up and down with a ginger spring.

Somehow this works wonderfully for this game though! It's my favourite cabinet I've played there! Weaving between those cars, managing the narrowing of the track, pulling off from the side with that strange gear stick; all of it feels like how I imagine figure skaters must feel on freshly polished ice. Sometimes I need to get from one side of the track to the other, and I throw the wheel to the left and let it spin with my hand off it, catching it a half moment later. This is the most enjoyable part of the game. Tossing the wheel back and forth. Then, when the track gets narrow, you hold it carefully the way you might hold a babies finger that they've pointed towards you and gently ease it left and right.

It really works! I guess it's all swishy friction, if I am to use Tim Rogers' vocab there. It feels icier than that though. Regular swish still has that moment of friction that we call "swish". It's not slippery like greasy friction either though. Ice skater's aren't slipping on oil, they've got blades on their feet.