LeahThe3th
2023
This game is really a sleeper hit. one of the best 3D platformers I've ever played, elegantly combining the Metroidvania style with Super Mario 64-esque movement and level design, it's a really well put togehter and a must play for any fan of the genre.
However, there are a good few snags that keep my overall score for the game low, to start, the current version of the game lacks a map, and while it's easy to figure out where you're going without it, it's a convenience that would have gone a long way, it really makes it feel like you're just totally stuck but it was just a matter of not having explored a specific room.
The combat sucks, just straight up sucks, but after you've gotten a few abilities you're able to avoid it or just dance around your opposition, but due to this the very beginning of the game is a total drag (especially the tutorial boss, a lot of shitty hits you'll be receiving) and the final boss, the only real boss battle of the game, ends up feeling boring and tiring.
Some of the abilities as well are a bit awkward to control, particularly the wall run and the wall kick.
The wall run just performs very awkwardly, not going forward if you're facing the wall too much, but not making up for this by having a larger range from which you can start wall-riding from, on this one section where you had to wall-ride a long distance, I had more consistency doing a sequence break jump over the intended route.
The wall kick is just annoying, you're intended to use it for a bit of extra air-time, but if you use it and you connect with a wall at any point during the animation, you'll kick off of it, instead of only kicking off the wall if you click while/right before you hit the wall, it's easy enough to learn how to deal with this but it makes comboing wall kicks into wall-rides nearly impossible.
But back to the praises, the level design is just phenomenal, it's really fun to jump across all the areas, and the level design has a (potentially) unintended ability to allow you to sequence break quite often, but not soft-locking your game due to either feasible jumps or carefully placed save-points, and it adds a lot to the movement of the game.
The art-style is gorgeous, really making everything feel hazy and dream-like, whilst not feeling like a mess thematically, with my biggest criticism being that the protagonist not wearing any leggings just looks... weird (Which you thankfully can change in the settings, looks great!)
And on-top of all that, the soundtrack is great, a very, again "dream-like" feel for a lot of the tracks, but still catchy and unique enough to give each area it's own "feel"
There's not much story to speak of and what does exist is a
[SPOILER WARNING]
very VERY abrupt ending with no fanfare, just being kind of a hand-wavy "the final boss was the personification of the dreamer creating this world and your victory was merely just letting them know they need to wake up and move on from whatever is holding them back from their real life"
[SPOILER WARNING END]
but it's not a big deal as the story isn't really the hook for this type of game, but rather is just a dressing to give it all a nice theme.
Not sure what the mix with art-deco and medieval castles is about though, probably just something stitched together because it looked cool or whatever.
Anyways, I recommend this game big time, and I'll probably be upping my score on this if I get back around to the game after they add a map to it (and maybe some QoL changes)
However, there are a good few snags that keep my overall score for the game low, to start, the current version of the game lacks a map, and while it's easy to figure out where you're going without it, it's a convenience that would have gone a long way, it really makes it feel like you're just totally stuck but it was just a matter of not having explored a specific room.
The combat sucks, just straight up sucks, but after you've gotten a few abilities you're able to avoid it or just dance around your opposition, but due to this the very beginning of the game is a total drag (especially the tutorial boss, a lot of shitty hits you'll be receiving) and the final boss, the only real boss battle of the game, ends up feeling boring and tiring.
Some of the abilities as well are a bit awkward to control, particularly the wall run and the wall kick.
The wall run just performs very awkwardly, not going forward if you're facing the wall too much, but not making up for this by having a larger range from which you can start wall-riding from, on this one section where you had to wall-ride a long distance, I had more consistency doing a sequence break jump over the intended route.
The wall kick is just annoying, you're intended to use it for a bit of extra air-time, but if you use it and you connect with a wall at any point during the animation, you'll kick off of it, instead of only kicking off the wall if you click while/right before you hit the wall, it's easy enough to learn how to deal with this but it makes comboing wall kicks into wall-rides nearly impossible.
But back to the praises, the level design is just phenomenal, it's really fun to jump across all the areas, and the level design has a (potentially) unintended ability to allow you to sequence break quite often, but not soft-locking your game due to either feasible jumps or carefully placed save-points, and it adds a lot to the movement of the game.
The art-style is gorgeous, really making everything feel hazy and dream-like, whilst not feeling like a mess thematically, with my biggest criticism being that the protagonist not wearing any leggings just looks... weird (Which you thankfully can change in the settings, looks great!)
And on-top of all that, the soundtrack is great, a very, again "dream-like" feel for a lot of the tracks, but still catchy and unique enough to give each area it's own "feel"
There's not much story to speak of and what does exist is a
[SPOILER WARNING]
very VERY abrupt ending with no fanfare, just being kind of a hand-wavy "the final boss was the personification of the dreamer creating this world and your victory was merely just letting them know they need to wake up and move on from whatever is holding them back from their real life"
[SPOILER WARNING END]
but it's not a big deal as the story isn't really the hook for this type of game, but rather is just a dressing to give it all a nice theme.
Not sure what the mix with art-deco and medieval castles is about though, probably just something stitched together because it looked cool or whatever.
Anyways, I recommend this game big time, and I'll probably be upping my score on this if I get back around to the game after they add a map to it (and maybe some QoL changes)
2021
Alan Wake is a bit of a tough sell, far less so now that Alan Wake 2 has released to critical acclaim, but even with the remaster this is a VERY dated game, also as an extra note, this port is really buggy, if you don't run it on V-Sync, there will very often be blinding strobing texture glitches, and with V-sync enabled, it still happens, just far less often.
From the get-go it has some pretty wonky gameplay, you're constantly put on a third person shoulder perspective, aiming the flashlight around at enemies to stun them, which while interesting in concept, in practice it's just staring at enemies until you're allowed to kill them quickly and ends up getting repetitive FAST.
The standard enemies you're up against are total pushovers, you can stun them once every few seconds, and it allows you to trivialize most combat encounters by just, running past them, and the enemies that blink around constantly struggle to even hit you most of the time, the only times I had difficulty were when I was forced to kill them, but there's these enemies that possess objects and fling themselves at you, which gets frustrating really fast due to being physics based.
The camera angle also causes issues like the odd platforming section to be easily interrupted by an accidental fall, or the bad jumping mechanics will make you float in mid-air then fall, etc.
There's a few brief moments where you're driving a car, and they're incredibly mediocre moments that feel like recycling of a scrapped mechanic, which according to my research, it was, with the game originally being open world.
The chapters tend to drag on a little past their welcome, with a lot of meandering through same-y forests and mountains, and it starts to get a little boring, especially when the gameplay loop changes very little from the first hour of the game, and Chapter 6 was the worst about this, just throwing tedious encounter after tedious encounter, until you reach the climax and it's done in about 15 minutes.
But beneath all that mediocre, forgettable gameplay loop is what you're probably here for in a Remedy game, the story, it's great! It's a love letter mixing styles of Twin Peaks, Stephen King, and drama shows you'd see on a random channel at 5am, every character, every populated area, is full of life and well written dialogue, and it really hooks you into the story past the bad gameplay, the cinematography is excellent, and the use of licensed music really ties it all together to make it feel like you're playing a TV show, the metatextual elements of the story really make it all very interesting too.
The themes of the story and whatever are just fine I suppose, a lot of it is the light and darkness thing and it kind of beats you over the head with it, but the world that's crafted is the main course here, there's even a bunch of TVs you can find around playing live action content for you to watch, mostly being just perspectives of Alan inside the cabin, but some include some Twilight Zone rip-off sketches, and it just shows how much passion was put into the project.
At the end of the day, I'm just waiting for Remedy to eventually make a game with the masterclass precision in writing, art direction and world-building but ALSO have good gameplay, if you like Twin Peaks, Stephen King, Control or Max Payne('s writing) this is a solid recommend, but if you can't get through the gameplay, no shame in just looking it up.
From the get-go it has some pretty wonky gameplay, you're constantly put on a third person shoulder perspective, aiming the flashlight around at enemies to stun them, which while interesting in concept, in practice it's just staring at enemies until you're allowed to kill them quickly and ends up getting repetitive FAST.
The standard enemies you're up against are total pushovers, you can stun them once every few seconds, and it allows you to trivialize most combat encounters by just, running past them, and the enemies that blink around constantly struggle to even hit you most of the time, the only times I had difficulty were when I was forced to kill them, but there's these enemies that possess objects and fling themselves at you, which gets frustrating really fast due to being physics based.
The camera angle also causes issues like the odd platforming section to be easily interrupted by an accidental fall, or the bad jumping mechanics will make you float in mid-air then fall, etc.
There's a few brief moments where you're driving a car, and they're incredibly mediocre moments that feel like recycling of a scrapped mechanic, which according to my research, it was, with the game originally being open world.
The chapters tend to drag on a little past their welcome, with a lot of meandering through same-y forests and mountains, and it starts to get a little boring, especially when the gameplay loop changes very little from the first hour of the game, and Chapter 6 was the worst about this, just throwing tedious encounter after tedious encounter, until you reach the climax and it's done in about 15 minutes.
But beneath all that mediocre, forgettable gameplay loop is what you're probably here for in a Remedy game, the story, it's great! It's a love letter mixing styles of Twin Peaks, Stephen King, and drama shows you'd see on a random channel at 5am, every character, every populated area, is full of life and well written dialogue, and it really hooks you into the story past the bad gameplay, the cinematography is excellent, and the use of licensed music really ties it all together to make it feel like you're playing a TV show, the metatextual elements of the story really make it all very interesting too.
The themes of the story and whatever are just fine I suppose, a lot of it is the light and darkness thing and it kind of beats you over the head with it, but the world that's crafted is the main course here, there's even a bunch of TVs you can find around playing live action content for you to watch, mostly being just perspectives of Alan inside the cabin, but some include some Twilight Zone rip-off sketches, and it just shows how much passion was put into the project.
At the end of the day, I'm just waiting for Remedy to eventually make a game with the masterclass precision in writing, art direction and world-building but ALSO have good gameplay, if you like Twin Peaks, Stephen King, Control or Max Payne('s writing) this is a solid recommend, but if you can't get through the gameplay, no shame in just looking it up.
2023
Hi-Fi Rush is exactly the type of game we need back in the industry, these lower budget games, with lower prices, that don't drag out for 50 hours but instead do 1 thing really well and wrap it all up by the end, but give you some replayability as an extra goal.
The gameplay is pretty damn solid, a spectacle fighter mixed with rhythm game mechanics, though even on the hard difficulty the game managed to be pretty easy, with most of my deaths being 1 per boss-fight.
The parry while on paper is a pretty fun addition, it kind of takes the same identity as the dodge, except it's far stronger, building up a LOT of stun for just following the basic rhythm, with the only downside being that the timing is slightly harder, just ended up making the game a bit of a cakewalk afterwards.
Sometimes the special attacks from the enemies where you have to dodge or parry were a bit irritating though, just due to the fact that they have different timings for how fast they start attacking you, and the guitar hero esque scrolling track was a bit hard to do when the Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 inputs look near identical at high speeds.
The boss fights were a bit tricky up until the parry, where afterwards they became a bit of a cakewalk, if you die once, now you've learned the parry pattern and can easily parry their entire attack pattern, stun them a bit and have a large window to do a lot of damage.
The alternate super abilities were just never enticing enough to outshine the basic one, simply because having access to something that does a lot of damage that you can cancel the end of your combos out of is VERY useful.
The story was... decent, it's nothing stellar but it's just a cute little story that doesn't wear out it's welcome and is very corny and campy, fits the tone very well and the voice acting was very on-point.
The art is just simply gorgeous, I didn't think it was possible to make stylized 3D work so well, and the cutscenes are animated beautifully, and the transitions to 2D are flawless, master class work.
Music was alright, the original tracks are admittedly very forgettable but including licensed tracks helped a lot to make fights stick, if they ever make a sequel, they need to double down on the licensed music.
The biggest snag I had in the game was just at the very final phase of the very final boss where it'll throw a thousand different sound cues at you at a time, and it starts to become difficult to catch up, but that's about the worst I can say for the game, and that irritation is quickly forgotten with how well the game wraps up.
The game is a solid recommendation for anyone who is a fan of any third person action game, a huge recommendation for any fan of rhythm games, and a gigantic recommendation for any fans of the DMC series, truly one of a kind.
The gameplay is pretty damn solid, a spectacle fighter mixed with rhythm game mechanics, though even on the hard difficulty the game managed to be pretty easy, with most of my deaths being 1 per boss-fight.
The parry while on paper is a pretty fun addition, it kind of takes the same identity as the dodge, except it's far stronger, building up a LOT of stun for just following the basic rhythm, with the only downside being that the timing is slightly harder, just ended up making the game a bit of a cakewalk afterwards.
Sometimes the special attacks from the enemies where you have to dodge or parry were a bit irritating though, just due to the fact that they have different timings for how fast they start attacking you, and the guitar hero esque scrolling track was a bit hard to do when the Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 inputs look near identical at high speeds.
The boss fights were a bit tricky up until the parry, where afterwards they became a bit of a cakewalk, if you die once, now you've learned the parry pattern and can easily parry their entire attack pattern, stun them a bit and have a large window to do a lot of damage.
The alternate super abilities were just never enticing enough to outshine the basic one, simply because having access to something that does a lot of damage that you can cancel the end of your combos out of is VERY useful.
The story was... decent, it's nothing stellar but it's just a cute little story that doesn't wear out it's welcome and is very corny and campy, fits the tone very well and the voice acting was very on-point.
The art is just simply gorgeous, I didn't think it was possible to make stylized 3D work so well, and the cutscenes are animated beautifully, and the transitions to 2D are flawless, master class work.
Music was alright, the original tracks are admittedly very forgettable but including licensed tracks helped a lot to make fights stick, if they ever make a sequel, they need to double down on the licensed music.
The biggest snag I had in the game was just at the very final phase of the very final boss where it'll throw a thousand different sound cues at you at a time, and it starts to become difficult to catch up, but that's about the worst I can say for the game, and that irritation is quickly forgotten with how well the game wraps up.
The game is a solid recommendation for anyone who is a fan of any third person action game, a huge recommendation for any fan of rhythm games, and a gigantic recommendation for any fans of the DMC series, truly one of a kind.
A man wakes up, hungover in a trashed motel room, whatever his old life may be is as dead as disco, with whatever comes after picking up the pieces, He goes on a journey trying to solve a murder while rebuilding his personality from scratch in a dead-end town in a dead-end world.
If the main thing that interested you in BG3 was the branching dialogue and permanence of your choices in the story as well as them being continuously referenced for the rest of the game, then this is the game for you.
If the main thing that interested you in BG3 was the branching dialogue and permanence of your choices in the story as well as them being continuously referenced for the rest of the game, then this is the game for you.
2008
This game is such an easy knock out of the park idea, and has an incredibly gorgeous style especially for when it came out, but oh my LORD everything about the actual gameplay of this game reeks of mediocrity.
The story is incredibly forgettable in the game so I'm not going to mention it much mostly because I've forgotten any context for the scenes in the game.
The gameplay is just, bad. This is exactly how you DON'T make movement in a first person game, everything is so SLOW, building up speed is weird and clunky, every action is style-less climbing that takes WAY TOO LONG, when you think of movement in a first person game you think of something like source Bhopping, Titanfall 2 wall-riding etc. etc. but this game just wants you to look up and climb, over, and over, and over, and over, and it feels particularly dull in first person, I don't know why someone went and thought "Yeah, we need to make this parkour VIDEO GAME feel weighty instead of smooth and fast" as if moving fast stylishly and smooth isn't the whole fantasy behind parkour, regardless of if it's actually achievable in reality compared to the more weighty real world movement.
The level design just REFUSES to give you enough fun moments like just chase scenes, dashing around, instead it's dull puzzles where you sit around in place and look around for the item you climb onto to jump onto something to go around a fence or something, it's the video game equivalent of walking around a building trying to find the entrance door instead of the fire exit, the biggest bone the game will throw you is an indoor scene where you have to wall-run around a corner and then grab onto a pipe or something, also there's these pointless moments when you slide across a wall? No idea why they're in the game.
As an extra note on-top of this, right before I closed the game and shelved it, it was because I got softlocked by grabbing onto a ledge, I couldn't jump to any other ledge and I couldn't drop back down, even though it was like a 1ft drop, very annoying in a level that was already feeling dragged out.
The way the game handles movement is just, nasty. A lot of jumps are far too stingy with what it considers enough distance, I assume it was trying to hinge a lot on those cinematic "close calls" and rewarding players playing perfectly with fluid movements and little stops, but those "close calls" come at the cost of irritating moments where you just slide off an object you should have grabbed onto, or land on an object only for the game to reconsider and make you plummet to your death, sometimes you're just punished for going for a more creative solution instead of just looking for a set of 6 different ledges to climb, it's irritating.
The combat just sucks, straight up dogshit, it's just running around corners then bopping some stormtrooper on the nose a few times, and the guns are such an awful addition to the game, the only time they don't feel terrible is when they're just thrown as a shitty gimmick to shoot through a window pane and then jump through.
There's these weird cutscene QTEs, and yeah, nothing else to say here, they suck.
The controls are just clunky as hell, rolling is a neat touch if it weren't for the fact it rolls the camera around with it, making it very easy to lose your focus on where the hell you are, but sliding feels gross and awful.
Wall running has just a completely awful control scheme, you don't jump next to a wall then hold A, as if you were moving against the wall (And also allowing the developers to make the wall-run range extra long, to prevent nasty falls) you run towards the wall and jump and the game automatically puts you in a wall-run, and makes jumps coming out of it feel a bit awkward and stiff, and if you commit to crossing a gap with the wall run, you'll weirdly plummet right at the end punishing you for having faith in the movement.
If you like the idea behind this game, but are more fond of faster movement ala Source games or Titanfall, go play SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell or Neon White, they're the real deal.
The story is incredibly forgettable in the game so I'm not going to mention it much mostly because I've forgotten any context for the scenes in the game.
The gameplay is just, bad. This is exactly how you DON'T make movement in a first person game, everything is so SLOW, building up speed is weird and clunky, every action is style-less climbing that takes WAY TOO LONG, when you think of movement in a first person game you think of something like source Bhopping, Titanfall 2 wall-riding etc. etc. but this game just wants you to look up and climb, over, and over, and over, and over, and it feels particularly dull in first person, I don't know why someone went and thought "Yeah, we need to make this parkour VIDEO GAME feel weighty instead of smooth and fast" as if moving fast stylishly and smooth isn't the whole fantasy behind parkour, regardless of if it's actually achievable in reality compared to the more weighty real world movement.
The level design just REFUSES to give you enough fun moments like just chase scenes, dashing around, instead it's dull puzzles where you sit around in place and look around for the item you climb onto to jump onto something to go around a fence or something, it's the video game equivalent of walking around a building trying to find the entrance door instead of the fire exit, the biggest bone the game will throw you is an indoor scene where you have to wall-run around a corner and then grab onto a pipe or something, also there's these pointless moments when you slide across a wall? No idea why they're in the game.
As an extra note on-top of this, right before I closed the game and shelved it, it was because I got softlocked by grabbing onto a ledge, I couldn't jump to any other ledge and I couldn't drop back down, even though it was like a 1ft drop, very annoying in a level that was already feeling dragged out.
The way the game handles movement is just, nasty. A lot of jumps are far too stingy with what it considers enough distance, I assume it was trying to hinge a lot on those cinematic "close calls" and rewarding players playing perfectly with fluid movements and little stops, but those "close calls" come at the cost of irritating moments where you just slide off an object you should have grabbed onto, or land on an object only for the game to reconsider and make you plummet to your death, sometimes you're just punished for going for a more creative solution instead of just looking for a set of 6 different ledges to climb, it's irritating.
The combat just sucks, straight up dogshit, it's just running around corners then bopping some stormtrooper on the nose a few times, and the guns are such an awful addition to the game, the only time they don't feel terrible is when they're just thrown as a shitty gimmick to shoot through a window pane and then jump through.
There's these weird cutscene QTEs, and yeah, nothing else to say here, they suck.
The controls are just clunky as hell, rolling is a neat touch if it weren't for the fact it rolls the camera around with it, making it very easy to lose your focus on where the hell you are, but sliding feels gross and awful.
Wall running has just a completely awful control scheme, you don't jump next to a wall then hold A, as if you were moving against the wall (And also allowing the developers to make the wall-run range extra long, to prevent nasty falls) you run towards the wall and jump and the game automatically puts you in a wall-run, and makes jumps coming out of it feel a bit awkward and stiff, and if you commit to crossing a gap with the wall run, you'll weirdly plummet right at the end punishing you for having faith in the movement.
If you like the idea behind this game, but are more fond of faster movement ala Source games or Titanfall, go play SEUM: Speedrunners from Hell or Neon White, they're the real deal.
2023
This review contains spoilers
tl;dr Overproduced, misguided, focused on difficulty over the value in how the original delivers its message in both gameplay and writing, bad writing, fanservicey
To sum the experience up, Undertale Yellow feels like Undertale but without the soul that made the game stand out and become one of the best games of all time, and instead trying to fill that in with just overproduction.
Did you like Undertale for the characters being fleshed out and given just the right amount of time to actually add emotion to the moral choices of killing and sparing or the world feeling full enough that going through pacifist felt rewarding? Tough luck, the characters barely get explored, and when they do, it's either an archetype that was similarly done in Undertale and then beaten over your head anyways, or sprinkled into stuff that you won't encounter until you really can't be bothered to care anymore.
Did you like Undertale for the decent RPG gameplay balanced with a moral mechanic? Well, too bad! because now it's been "improved" by upping the difficulty and complexity of even the basic enemy encounters, defeating the whole point of the very carefully balanced system that the original game had, where a neutral route has a pretty average experience, pacifist comes with more character and joy and generally happier endings, but comes at the difficulty, because making the morally right choice is sometimes HARD, and genocide being the note on just grinding mechanics in RPGs in general, sprinkled in with some superbosses, You know, something nuanced, creative, deep.
Instead of that you're getting the rose tinted fan view of that idea, where the game is a means to an end for an overproduced superboss no matter which route you take, and worldbuilding and characters being more of an afterthought, I always thought it was a really cool part of the story being that you weren't seeing merely a slice of the Underground, you were seeing a decent chunk of it, They're oppressed, cramped, scared, trying to just live anyways, under the hopes that Asgore will free them with the seventh human soul, but no, Instead you get multiple new areas bursting with new characters, and even near the end implies that there's EVEN MORE to the underground you haven't seen, it's totally pointless.
Major characters are a massive blunder, you have Martlet which is just an okay crack at the type of personality Papyrus does in Snowdin, but it lasts like no time at all before you're split off and yet the game still expects you to care about them, there was no scene with setting up the puzzles and having amusing gags, there was just flavor text saying "The puzzles are a bit fucked up LMAO" Nothing really changes with her, but there'll be another note in the genocide ending section.
Starlo is just... another type of Papyrus character who's a bit over the top but intended to be endearingly so, it's the other half of his character, Not really much of note, it's similarly endearing and the scenes with coming to terms with his emotions are nice, even if they are predictable.
Ceroba, I thought she was just a neat character to have as an addition to Starlo, but then after you leave the dunes she's... following you... This can't end well, She ends up just being a bit of dialogue to constantly hammer into you "MY HUSBAND WORKED IN THIS LAB, THE LAB IS SHUT DOWN NOW" or "I AM UPSET" Not a fan of her design, and it only feels like a means to an end for her role overall in the Pacifist route, being an overdesigned superboss (surprise! her character was that she has a DEEP DARK SECRET!)
Neutral, you go through and suddenly Flowey says "WAIT YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY, SUPERBOSS AND THEN ENDING NOW" and then finishing it off with "Okay now play the pacifist route"
Mediocre ending, Boss fight was really cool though excluding the annoying creepypasta level stuff and the glitch filters.
The heart of Undertale's neutral ending rests in the fact that it is still a full on ending, life goes on, it's a proper ending with a proper epilogue, though being fully text-based is supposed to make it feel a bit, bittersweet, to make you think "Could I have done better?" And then Flowey is supposed to be the voice to the player telling them yes, let's see if we can do better.
Pacifist, It's pretty much the same deal as neutral but with more Ceroba, because they wouldn't want their star of the show to have a dull fucked up backstory.
Long story short she's an idiotic hypocrite but since she was almost surely created just for this moment, she has to overpower all your friends and want to KILL YOU!!!
And then begin overproduced superboss fight.
Afterwards you get a weird mildly satisfying ending, but it struggles hard because they REFUSE to interact with anything seen in the base game, so it ends off feeling really shallow and more of a pointless tug on the heartstrings.
"u sacrificed urself... because then the monstres can live..." Why not have the neutral route be the canon ending to Undertale? Have the previous 6 humans be a little more trigger happy, to make it as reasonable that the monsters are afraid of the humans, why people like Undyne are around, why the Royal Guard exists, etc. and then let the Pacifist ending in Yellow be a "what if" where Clover just lives on, doing their best to help the monsters, and when the day comes that the Eigth human falls down, they can help them and potentially unite the underground, or find a way to pass through the barrier and destroy the divide forever, send home that Toriel was right, they could have found a way if they strived for peace instead of just trying to protect their own kind in fear.
EDIT: After a bit of extra research, it seems like this is just here because the other outcome to this route is killing Ceroba and then fighting Asgore, same end result but fits in with Undertale a lot better, no idea why the fully pacifist route doesn't end similarly, the reflection into self-sacrifice part is just a bit corny, I assume it's trying to convey the whole "Justice" thing but it isn't doing a great job at it.
Genocide, bad, major identity crisis too.
It can't decide if it's supposed to mimic the "oooh creepy Chara" stuff or the cold fist of justice, so it just does both whenever it feels like, but by trying fails at both.
If you're going for the Chara thing, skip the puzzles, the whole point is supposed to lampshade the culture of optimizing the fun and character out of a game, a mindless killer trying to be as powerful as possible, you know, the player CHARActer, but instead you have Clover, the angsty evil child.
Could have something going with the whole justice thing, Clover is looking for the 5 missing humans, and it could be treated as trying to lampshade the idea of "self defense" where if Toriel had another minute she would have told you, if a monster initiates battle "Try starting a conversation with them" and instead running the route with the idea of "Okay, most people going through this know what Undertale is about. So let's dial back the you're a monster part and leave the morals less written on the sleeve, less supernatural, more "who's really in the wrong here" and that could have been done by removing the genocide route, being totally out of character for Clover, and instead being more of a "Self-defense" route, where you're killing anything you come across, but not grinding them.
But nope, Clover the angsty evil child (with a gun) proceeds to go around murdering everyone they can find, and the gameplay isn't much better to make up for this, you g et to pick from 1 of 3 things, Hard mode fights, Pitiful bosses that can't do anything to you, and, you guessed it, MORE OVERPRODUCED SUPERBOSSES!
What's that? You enjoyed Sans and Undyne the Undying because it's a sad turn for the two protector characters of the game, trying to be major roadblocks, and Sans revealing that he knows what's going on behind the scenes? You thought those were cool moments that expanded on the characters?
Great! Here's a recycled fight from pacifist, now easier, who is meaner to you and that's it, there's your Undyne!
Aaaand here's some random shmuck who didn't get enough development in any route, now she's UNDYNE THE UNDYING's design and determination, mixed with Sans power level, Nothing interesting happens character wise, and then you just fucking nuke Asgore for no conceivable reason other than "U R SUPWER POWERED NOW CUZ U KILLED A REALLY STRONG PERSON" and then they're like "Oh shit wait a minute, this isn't a Chara thing" and rush to say "UHH CLOVER WAS DOING IT BECAUSE SHE WAS AVENGING THE FIVE HUMANS AND THEN SHE LEFT THE BARRIER NOW WITH THE HUMAN SOULS FREE MONSTERS DEFEATED FOREVER" which could have been an interesting route to take, if there was ANY reference to this at any other point in the game other than one of your starter items being the missing poster.
And to top it all off, they can't even make the character deaths sad, they're just, gross. There's an attempt to make you feel bad by having them suffer when they die and melt more gruesomely than Undyne did, but it just feels like a shitty creepypasta story, I don't feel bad when Super-Martlet melting disgustingly says "HELP ME" I felt bad when in her last moments, Undyne was still smiling confidently, her character still showed, it's the same character that you fall in love with in the other routes, but pushed to their limits.
Sure I feel a bit bad when the dance guy just gets ignored then murdered, but he's of no impact to the rest of the story.
Onto the nitpicks, Spritework is inconsistent as all hell, They try to stick with the undertale style, basic sprites, detailed but black and white battle sprites, which is good! but then as you go on, sprite complexities in both modes increases, leaving the older areas looking bad and outdated, they branch away farther from the zones of Undertale, and even make a massive sin of animating the sprites heavily, a part of the humor was with how basic the sprites were, seeing some movements were just funny, being lifted by a bird and you're just in the same pose, and it added a lot of impact to when a character was actually animated, like Asgore taking out his weapon from under his cloak, it's not something you see all the time, but instead basically any advanced movement is animated, RUNNING is animated, it's jarring going from a NES spritework walk to a "So retro!" Indie game run animation, It's something I feel Toby probably learned from Andrew Hussie, where in Homestuck a lot of quick little visual gags were something like a basic still sprite for a character wobbling around and falling over, or bouncing around all over the place, etc.
Clover interacts too much, The whole point of the silent protagonists is that they don't talk, outside of the basic decisions obviously, but they're supposed to be so basic you might as well not be talking, it's a game about tackling RPG tropes, you are a vessel for the player, and having a lot of moments where Clover goes in for a hug, or waves back at someone or something like that, it does both a disservice to the humor of the game like mentioned above, and just feels disconnected from the style of Undertale.
And another point on the writing, it just fails to be funny in general, it lacks that writing style, that self-referential humor seen in Undertale and Homestuck, and there's not even any hard hitting lines, nothing like the scarier lines from Genocide in Undertale like in New Home, or the famous "Despite everything, it's still you." It just feels like fanfiction made by people who loved the characters and gameplay of Undertale, but not people who loved the whole package, or even understood it.
I was just not fond of the soundtrack, it was weak minus a few parts and I feel this comes heavily from being too ambitious with the soundtrack, everything, even the stuff that heavily carries motifs of Undertale tracks has a lot more going on, more advanced soundfonts, it needed to be dailed back.
Lastly, balance was just fucked, throughout the middle of the game it was all over the place, then in all but Genocide (because it's always fucked up difficulty wise and that's the point) you're smacked with a sudden superboss that just grinds the game to a halt, and doesn't play fair like Omega Flowey or Asriel.
Sometimes bosses would just have suddenly bad difficulty curves in their own fights, having like 2 moderately difficult attacks, and 1 that can easily just be AFK dodged, and then putting you in one where you're likely to be hit 3-5 times in a row only 30% into the fight, forcing you to restart and make sure you're max health so you can understand what the hell is going on for the next attempt, in general it felt like a lot of the fights just wanted you to be juggling health items.
But then, in the final boss in the steamworks areas, you get NO VENDORS, You are told to get fucked if you wasted your healing items beforehand, because you can't backtrack, It was a huge pain in the ass and I have no idea that oversight didn't get noticed.
Regardless, after all of my complaints for the game, I think for any Undertale fan, you should at least play it, it's competently made enough that you'll probably at least come out thinking something, which is far better than I can say for the mods that are literally just boss fights, or just not having anything like Undertale instead.
To sum the experience up, Undertale Yellow feels like Undertale but without the soul that made the game stand out and become one of the best games of all time, and instead trying to fill that in with just overproduction.
Did you like Undertale for the characters being fleshed out and given just the right amount of time to actually add emotion to the moral choices of killing and sparing or the world feeling full enough that going through pacifist felt rewarding? Tough luck, the characters barely get explored, and when they do, it's either an archetype that was similarly done in Undertale and then beaten over your head anyways, or sprinkled into stuff that you won't encounter until you really can't be bothered to care anymore.
Did you like Undertale for the decent RPG gameplay balanced with a moral mechanic? Well, too bad! because now it's been "improved" by upping the difficulty and complexity of even the basic enemy encounters, defeating the whole point of the very carefully balanced system that the original game had, where a neutral route has a pretty average experience, pacifist comes with more character and joy and generally happier endings, but comes at the difficulty, because making the morally right choice is sometimes HARD, and genocide being the note on just grinding mechanics in RPGs in general, sprinkled in with some superbosses, You know, something nuanced, creative, deep.
Instead of that you're getting the rose tinted fan view of that idea, where the game is a means to an end for an overproduced superboss no matter which route you take, and worldbuilding and characters being more of an afterthought, I always thought it was a really cool part of the story being that you weren't seeing merely a slice of the Underground, you were seeing a decent chunk of it, They're oppressed, cramped, scared, trying to just live anyways, under the hopes that Asgore will free them with the seventh human soul, but no, Instead you get multiple new areas bursting with new characters, and even near the end implies that there's EVEN MORE to the underground you haven't seen, it's totally pointless.
Major characters are a massive blunder, you have Martlet which is just an okay crack at the type of personality Papyrus does in Snowdin, but it lasts like no time at all before you're split off and yet the game still expects you to care about them, there was no scene with setting up the puzzles and having amusing gags, there was just flavor text saying "The puzzles are a bit fucked up LMAO" Nothing really changes with her, but there'll be another note in the genocide ending section.
Starlo is just... another type of Papyrus character who's a bit over the top but intended to be endearingly so, it's the other half of his character, Not really much of note, it's similarly endearing and the scenes with coming to terms with his emotions are nice, even if they are predictable.
Ceroba, I thought she was just a neat character to have as an addition to Starlo, but then after you leave the dunes she's... following you... This can't end well, She ends up just being a bit of dialogue to constantly hammer into you "MY HUSBAND WORKED IN THIS LAB, THE LAB IS SHUT DOWN NOW" or "I AM UPSET" Not a fan of her design, and it only feels like a means to an end for her role overall in the Pacifist route, being an overdesigned superboss (surprise! her character was that she has a DEEP DARK SECRET!)
Neutral, you go through and suddenly Flowey says "WAIT YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY, SUPERBOSS AND THEN ENDING NOW" and then finishing it off with "Okay now play the pacifist route"
Mediocre ending, Boss fight was really cool though excluding the annoying creepypasta level stuff and the glitch filters.
The heart of Undertale's neutral ending rests in the fact that it is still a full on ending, life goes on, it's a proper ending with a proper epilogue, though being fully text-based is supposed to make it feel a bit, bittersweet, to make you think "Could I have done better?" And then Flowey is supposed to be the voice to the player telling them yes, let's see if we can do better.
Pacifist, It's pretty much the same deal as neutral but with more Ceroba, because they wouldn't want their star of the show to have a dull fucked up backstory.
Long story short she's an idiotic hypocrite but since she was almost surely created just for this moment, she has to overpower all your friends and want to KILL YOU!!!
And then begin overproduced superboss fight.
Afterwards you get a weird mildly satisfying ending, but it struggles hard because they REFUSE to interact with anything seen in the base game, so it ends off feeling really shallow and more of a pointless tug on the heartstrings.
"u sacrificed urself... because then the monstres can live..." Why not have the neutral route be the canon ending to Undertale? Have the previous 6 humans be a little more trigger happy, to make it as reasonable that the monsters are afraid of the humans, why people like Undyne are around, why the Royal Guard exists, etc. and then let the Pacifist ending in Yellow be a "what if" where Clover just lives on, doing their best to help the monsters, and when the day comes that the Eigth human falls down, they can help them and potentially unite the underground, or find a way to pass through the barrier and destroy the divide forever, send home that Toriel was right, they could have found a way if they strived for peace instead of just trying to protect their own kind in fear.
EDIT: After a bit of extra research, it seems like this is just here because the other outcome to this route is killing Ceroba and then fighting Asgore, same end result but fits in with Undertale a lot better, no idea why the fully pacifist route doesn't end similarly, the reflection into self-sacrifice part is just a bit corny, I assume it's trying to convey the whole "Justice" thing but it isn't doing a great job at it.
Genocide, bad, major identity crisis too.
It can't decide if it's supposed to mimic the "oooh creepy Chara" stuff or the cold fist of justice, so it just does both whenever it feels like, but by trying fails at both.
If you're going for the Chara thing, skip the puzzles, the whole point is supposed to lampshade the culture of optimizing the fun and character out of a game, a mindless killer trying to be as powerful as possible, you know, the player CHARActer, but instead you have Clover, the angsty evil child.
Could have something going with the whole justice thing, Clover is looking for the 5 missing humans, and it could be treated as trying to lampshade the idea of "self defense" where if Toriel had another minute she would have told you, if a monster initiates battle "Try starting a conversation with them" and instead running the route with the idea of "Okay, most people going through this know what Undertale is about. So let's dial back the you're a monster part and leave the morals less written on the sleeve, less supernatural, more "who's really in the wrong here" and that could have been done by removing the genocide route, being totally out of character for Clover, and instead being more of a "Self-defense" route, where you're killing anything you come across, but not grinding them.
But nope, Clover the angsty evil child (with a gun) proceeds to go around murdering everyone they can find, and the gameplay isn't much better to make up for this, you g et to pick from 1 of 3 things, Hard mode fights, Pitiful bosses that can't do anything to you, and, you guessed it, MORE OVERPRODUCED SUPERBOSSES!
What's that? You enjoyed Sans and Undyne the Undying because it's a sad turn for the two protector characters of the game, trying to be major roadblocks, and Sans revealing that he knows what's going on behind the scenes? You thought those were cool moments that expanded on the characters?
Great! Here's a recycled fight from pacifist, now easier, who is meaner to you and that's it, there's your Undyne!
Aaaand here's some random shmuck who didn't get enough development in any route, now she's UNDYNE THE UNDYING's design and determination, mixed with Sans power level, Nothing interesting happens character wise, and then you just fucking nuke Asgore for no conceivable reason other than "U R SUPWER POWERED NOW CUZ U KILLED A REALLY STRONG PERSON" and then they're like "Oh shit wait a minute, this isn't a Chara thing" and rush to say "UHH CLOVER WAS DOING IT BECAUSE SHE WAS AVENGING THE FIVE HUMANS AND THEN SHE LEFT THE BARRIER NOW WITH THE HUMAN SOULS FREE MONSTERS DEFEATED FOREVER" which could have been an interesting route to take, if there was ANY reference to this at any other point in the game other than one of your starter items being the missing poster.
And to top it all off, they can't even make the character deaths sad, they're just, gross. There's an attempt to make you feel bad by having them suffer when they die and melt more gruesomely than Undyne did, but it just feels like a shitty creepypasta story, I don't feel bad when Super-Martlet melting disgustingly says "HELP ME" I felt bad when in her last moments, Undyne was still smiling confidently, her character still showed, it's the same character that you fall in love with in the other routes, but pushed to their limits.
Sure I feel a bit bad when the dance guy just gets ignored then murdered, but he's of no impact to the rest of the story.
Onto the nitpicks, Spritework is inconsistent as all hell, They try to stick with the undertale style, basic sprites, detailed but black and white battle sprites, which is good! but then as you go on, sprite complexities in both modes increases, leaving the older areas looking bad and outdated, they branch away farther from the zones of Undertale, and even make a massive sin of animating the sprites heavily, a part of the humor was with how basic the sprites were, seeing some movements were just funny, being lifted by a bird and you're just in the same pose, and it added a lot of impact to when a character was actually animated, like Asgore taking out his weapon from under his cloak, it's not something you see all the time, but instead basically any advanced movement is animated, RUNNING is animated, it's jarring going from a NES spritework walk to a "So retro!" Indie game run animation, It's something I feel Toby probably learned from Andrew Hussie, where in Homestuck a lot of quick little visual gags were something like a basic still sprite for a character wobbling around and falling over, or bouncing around all over the place, etc.
Clover interacts too much, The whole point of the silent protagonists is that they don't talk, outside of the basic decisions obviously, but they're supposed to be so basic you might as well not be talking, it's a game about tackling RPG tropes, you are a vessel for the player, and having a lot of moments where Clover goes in for a hug, or waves back at someone or something like that, it does both a disservice to the humor of the game like mentioned above, and just feels disconnected from the style of Undertale.
And another point on the writing, it just fails to be funny in general, it lacks that writing style, that self-referential humor seen in Undertale and Homestuck, and there's not even any hard hitting lines, nothing like the scarier lines from Genocide in Undertale like in New Home, or the famous "Despite everything, it's still you." It just feels like fanfiction made by people who loved the characters and gameplay of Undertale, but not people who loved the whole package, or even understood it.
I was just not fond of the soundtrack, it was weak minus a few parts and I feel this comes heavily from being too ambitious with the soundtrack, everything, even the stuff that heavily carries motifs of Undertale tracks has a lot more going on, more advanced soundfonts, it needed to be dailed back.
Lastly, balance was just fucked, throughout the middle of the game it was all over the place, then in all but Genocide (because it's always fucked up difficulty wise and that's the point) you're smacked with a sudden superboss that just grinds the game to a halt, and doesn't play fair like Omega Flowey or Asriel.
Sometimes bosses would just have suddenly bad difficulty curves in their own fights, having like 2 moderately difficult attacks, and 1 that can easily just be AFK dodged, and then putting you in one where you're likely to be hit 3-5 times in a row only 30% into the fight, forcing you to restart and make sure you're max health so you can understand what the hell is going on for the next attempt, in general it felt like a lot of the fights just wanted you to be juggling health items.
But then, in the final boss in the steamworks areas, you get NO VENDORS, You are told to get fucked if you wasted your healing items beforehand, because you can't backtrack, It was a huge pain in the ass and I have no idea that oversight didn't get noticed.
Regardless, after all of my complaints for the game, I think for any Undertale fan, you should at least play it, it's competently made enough that you'll probably at least come out thinking something, which is far better than I can say for the mods that are literally just boss fights, or just not having anything like Undertale instead.
This is just... Really something, I don't know what to describe it as, maybe from the lack of my own experience.
It's... touching in a way, resonating with some things that buzzes by this short 5 minute experience, I think it's a personal journal or vent piece? mixed with the source material it lives in somewhat, I assume as a vehicle for the misty eyed nostalgia for easier better times that are being called back to here.
While I can't say I fully "get" what's going on here, It's touching if not bittersweet thinking about what it means to the author, and the meaning that I'm personally taking away from it, reflected through my own experiences.
I wish whoever made this well.
It's... touching in a way, resonating with some things that buzzes by this short 5 minute experience, I think it's a personal journal or vent piece? mixed with the source material it lives in somewhat, I assume as a vehicle for the misty eyed nostalgia for easier better times that are being called back to here.
While I can't say I fully "get" what's going on here, It's touching if not bittersweet thinking about what it means to the author, and the meaning that I'm personally taking away from it, reflected through my own experiences.
I wish whoever made this well.
this is like the same shit capcom was doing with street fighter games where to get the same game but with what you actually wanted for it you have to buy the same game again
if you don't own the one that came before it this one wins by far i guess, better maps, better gameplay, all the content from the game that came before it except some maps and some mediocre modes
if you don't own the one that came before it this one wins by far i guess, better maps, better gameplay, all the content from the game that came before it except some maps and some mediocre modes
2015
An interesting look look into the whole idea of transhumanism and what really being alive or human means, though gameplay is quite shallow and a very face value look over the topic.
2023
This is just a dull sequel, it refines things to a modern polish like much better level design and the mechanics they incorporate into them, as well as the gunplay and stealth mechanics, but past that everything is just a downgrade.
The grind is a total chore due to being full of challenges that take eons to grind through, bug out all the time, and can't be sorted properly, while at the same time needing to grind to unlock skills, and to level up your weapons to have attachments that make some of them even usable due to the awful iron sights.
Past the iron sights issue, the attachments barely do anything as it was a heavy handed copy paste from modern Call of Duty games with minimal thought of how badly that could be put into a game like this, and the skills are boring and unimpactful, you can only pick so few but even then due to badly planned out systems the meta is clear and obvious.
The armor system is atrocious, a straight downgrade from the perfected systems from the previous 2 games, there's nothing wrong with a system of a short rechargable bit of health, and then a much MUCH larger permanent pool below that, instead you just get effectively 2 different health bars, with your health being less valuable than your armor for some reason? and there's never a reason to not run heavier armor and armor bags for all of your teammates, apparently there are some advantages other than extra downs (which are useless because of how useless your health is) but you are NOT told this AT ALL.
It also makes additions like trading hostages for med-kits completely useless, because you should never EVER be relying on your health unless you're spending them just so you can conserve your armor bags for later.
Past that there's the stealth changes, most of them were actually pretty good BUT, the removal of detection was a huge mistake, stealth players are still restarting on every failure, but now when playing loud there's no reason to try and psuedo-stealth by not setting off the alarm until you've done like half of the objectives already, because ALL of your resources minus your ammo are a PERMANENT loss.
Not that it matters all that much, with the hardest difficulty being a total cakewalk once you've gotten a skill and weapon loadout that gets you one shot headshots for most of the level.
The special enemies are also a bit of a joke, Tasers are really unlikely to shock you a lot of the time and have a gigantic weak point on their thigh on-top of the fact that they were already easy kills, Cloakers are now useless, reviving you instantly when they're killed, and chew through your health instead of your armor, which even if it was a risk takes so long you'd have to be trying to mess up for it to impact your run, Naders are actually decently well designed at the very least, due to the fact they chew through your health so fast that getting stuck in the gas for a few seconds will down you even at full, and Bulldozers just generally have AI/Map design issues where they're 9/10 of the time going to go down without a fight, but that 1/10 of the time they're bulldozing the entire team because the first heist is in a gigantic wide open area, Shields are alright, I guess.
Overkill weapons are just not in a good state, the helicopter drop needs to be removed as most levels are not designed around making your weapon accessible, and it's not strong enough to the point where risking so much just to get the weapon for a short period of time as the ammo lasts is worth it, the Grenade Launcher is absolutely garbage on anything other than the perfect map for it, due to the insane splash damage on it and the fact that it's only impact explosions on hit, and the sniper is just, well, a sniper, you're killing single targets, It works well at killing specials I guess, not that that's a hard thing to do, and it's bugged against bulldozers where it only 2 shots them to the torso.
And then to follow all of this up with a MTX store to come soon, as well as DLCs to come, with the only update 40 days after launch being a bug fix patch with no balance changes, and Overkill (or Starbreeze Studios as they're known now, I guess) responding to poorly received features with "we're feeling pretty positive with the systems so far"
It looks like it's going to be another sour year for the series, and probably will take quite some time to recover, as it usually does.
The grind is a total chore due to being full of challenges that take eons to grind through, bug out all the time, and can't be sorted properly, while at the same time needing to grind to unlock skills, and to level up your weapons to have attachments that make some of them even usable due to the awful iron sights.
Past the iron sights issue, the attachments barely do anything as it was a heavy handed copy paste from modern Call of Duty games with minimal thought of how badly that could be put into a game like this, and the skills are boring and unimpactful, you can only pick so few but even then due to badly planned out systems the meta is clear and obvious.
The armor system is atrocious, a straight downgrade from the perfected systems from the previous 2 games, there's nothing wrong with a system of a short rechargable bit of health, and then a much MUCH larger permanent pool below that, instead you just get effectively 2 different health bars, with your health being less valuable than your armor for some reason? and there's never a reason to not run heavier armor and armor bags for all of your teammates, apparently there are some advantages other than extra downs (which are useless because of how useless your health is) but you are NOT told this AT ALL.
It also makes additions like trading hostages for med-kits completely useless, because you should never EVER be relying on your health unless you're spending them just so you can conserve your armor bags for later.
Past that there's the stealth changes, most of them were actually pretty good BUT, the removal of detection was a huge mistake, stealth players are still restarting on every failure, but now when playing loud there's no reason to try and psuedo-stealth by not setting off the alarm until you've done like half of the objectives already, because ALL of your resources minus your ammo are a PERMANENT loss.
Not that it matters all that much, with the hardest difficulty being a total cakewalk once you've gotten a skill and weapon loadout that gets you one shot headshots for most of the level.
The special enemies are also a bit of a joke, Tasers are really unlikely to shock you a lot of the time and have a gigantic weak point on their thigh on-top of the fact that they were already easy kills, Cloakers are now useless, reviving you instantly when they're killed, and chew through your health instead of your armor, which even if it was a risk takes so long you'd have to be trying to mess up for it to impact your run, Naders are actually decently well designed at the very least, due to the fact they chew through your health so fast that getting stuck in the gas for a few seconds will down you even at full, and Bulldozers just generally have AI/Map design issues where they're 9/10 of the time going to go down without a fight, but that 1/10 of the time they're bulldozing the entire team because the first heist is in a gigantic wide open area, Shields are alright, I guess.
Overkill weapons are just not in a good state, the helicopter drop needs to be removed as most levels are not designed around making your weapon accessible, and it's not strong enough to the point where risking so much just to get the weapon for a short period of time as the ammo lasts is worth it, the Grenade Launcher is absolutely garbage on anything other than the perfect map for it, due to the insane splash damage on it and the fact that it's only impact explosions on hit, and the sniper is just, well, a sniper, you're killing single targets, It works well at killing specials I guess, not that that's a hard thing to do, and it's bugged against bulldozers where it only 2 shots them to the torso.
And then to follow all of this up with a MTX store to come soon, as well as DLCs to come, with the only update 40 days after launch being a bug fix patch with no balance changes, and Overkill (or Starbreeze Studios as they're known now, I guess) responding to poorly received features with "we're feeling pretty positive with the systems so far"
It looks like it's going to be another sour year for the series, and probably will take quite some time to recover, as it usually does.
2019
Pretty solid, and writing is consistent enough throughout all the routes to just be an interesting cherry topping to all the different characters (Although I'm a bit sad over the lack of the Dancestors, even though most of them lack enough character to even do anything with) and the soundtracks are nice, but...
The art is SUPER inconsistent, most of the end cards look great but depending on character the sprites can range from looking great, like Dave, Aradia, Dirk, Equius, Eridan, Feferi, Kanaya, Rose and Sollux, to looking a bit off like Jade, John, Jane, Jake, Tavros and Terezi, to just looking... wrong like Karkat, Gamzee, Nepeta and Vriska.
The art-styles for the characters is just all over the place even considering the ones that do look solid, ranging from different amounts of detailing, or just being shaped a bit differently, and the trolls suffering heavily from inconsistency in the shade used for their skin, it really detracts from the experience when it is the primary visual in this sort of medium, Why do Rose and Sollux look reasonably consistent with their other appearances, while Vriska and Roxy look like a total re-invention of the characters?
It just kind of sends home the idea that the project was just done by a bunch of starry-eyed fans wanting to put out their vision of the characters, and this CAN be done well, as it was done through the writing, which was fantastic! Just try and keep it tame with the visuals.
The art is SUPER inconsistent, most of the end cards look great but depending on character the sprites can range from looking great, like Dave, Aradia, Dirk, Equius, Eridan, Feferi, Kanaya, Rose and Sollux, to looking a bit off like Jade, John, Jane, Jake, Tavros and Terezi, to just looking... wrong like Karkat, Gamzee, Nepeta and Vriska.
The art-styles for the characters is just all over the place even considering the ones that do look solid, ranging from different amounts of detailing, or just being shaped a bit differently, and the trolls suffering heavily from inconsistency in the shade used for their skin, it really detracts from the experience when it is the primary visual in this sort of medium, Why do Rose and Sollux look reasonably consistent with their other appearances, while Vriska and Roxy look like a total re-invention of the characters?
It just kind of sends home the idea that the project was just done by a bunch of starry-eyed fans wanting to put out their vision of the characters, and this CAN be done well, as it was done through the writing, which was fantastic! Just try and keep it tame with the visuals.
2021
I personally believe it's very difficult to give an honest review of this game, so all I can really do is recommend a list of what I personally feel gives a deeper understanding to the ideas and inspirations that fueled this story.
1. Homestuck, very obviously being something that is not only directly referenced multiple times, but is clearly the inspiration for major themes throughout.
2. Metal Gear Solid (1,2,3,PW,)
Some of the thematic comparisons are a little lost on me at the moment of writing, but there's an amusing amount of parallels, and the inspiration is enough to the point where in a certain scene, you can see Kojima's face faintly in the sky.
3. Homestuck community controversies/fandom culture
This isn't one I'm well versed in, but a passing knowledge is somewhat worthwhile, at least from my takeaways due to just how much of it impacts in the general result of what Homestuck is, it's obviously not a cut and dry commentary on the fact that the community was bad, but to ignore the community in a story inspired by being in the position of a metaphorical messiah for a fandom, is short-sighted.
Even if you don't agree with the messages being told here, I would very well recommend a full playthrough, I believe that keeping an open mind to hear out some (not ALL) of what we decently disagree with, nurtures critical thinking, and helps us grow.
1. Homestuck, very obviously being something that is not only directly referenced multiple times, but is clearly the inspiration for major themes throughout.
2. Metal Gear Solid (1,2,3,PW,)
Some of the thematic comparisons are a little lost on me at the moment of writing, but there's an amusing amount of parallels, and the inspiration is enough to the point where in a certain scene, you can see Kojima's face faintly in the sky.
3. Homestuck community controversies/fandom culture
This isn't one I'm well versed in, but a passing knowledge is somewhat worthwhile, at least from my takeaways due to just how much of it impacts in the general result of what Homestuck is, it's obviously not a cut and dry commentary on the fact that the community was bad, but to ignore the community in a story inspired by being in the position of a metaphorical messiah for a fandom, is short-sighted.
Even if you don't agree with the messages being told here, I would very well recommend a full playthrough, I believe that keeping an open mind to hear out some (not ALL) of what we decently disagree with, nurtures critical thinking, and helps us grow.
2022
Easily one of the best pieces of Half-Life media, managing to not step on the toes of canon, not go too far into its own stories, not shift the tone too hard, and doubles down on all the things that made the peak moments of the series.
Weapons are pretty similar to the set-up in HL2, mostly reanimated and rebalanced, my only major criticism is that a lot of the roster is wasted on 3 AR/SMGs that play very similarly, and are all insanely strong, typically 1-tapping most common enemies to the head, but I never found that I was too often filled with ammo, as the more survival horror ammo economies mean you're always going to be rotating through your loadout, the kick is also a great addition that plays really well with the physics sandbox, and in over-all execution I prefer it over the Gravity Gun, the Xen Grenade was also a really creative idea, although I found its more common uses lacking and enjoyed it more when used with puzzles, or in the final boss fight to spawn in a bunch of enemies to help you take him down.
The levels are over-all really great, but it starts off with quite possibly the worst by far, just running around Nova Prospekt as you dump grenades in holes, but from there it's incredibly fun, especially the levels that take inspiration from the route Episode 2 and Epistle 3 were heading for, by incorporating Aperture Science test chambers that feel like they could be straight out of a Portal mod.
Enemy design was a bit lacking, but HL2 and mods for it don't really rely on it for the enemy design, and are more of scene setters, but I did find the temporal crabs interesting, and the large zombies (presumably inspired by Jeff in Half-Life: Alyx, especially in their first appearance where you have to not be spotted by not making too much noise) were a lot of fun in most scenes they were in.
It even manages to pull off some fun boss fights, something the original Entropy: Zero struggled incredibly with.
Another thing it does better than the original is have an actual enjoyable story and characters, rather than an edgy punisher wannabe protagonist gunning down rebels as the only thing he adds to the story being insults to said rebels, only to have his teeth kicked in when a canon HL2 character shows up, Walker and his clone have an interesting dynamic in practice being a method of development for Walker's character, the protagonist being an emotional development, and his AWOL counterpart, being awareness of the reality of his situation with the Combine after the events of the first game, and the futility of trying to appease them.
Not sure why they had to make every other piece of dialogue a meme though, it really hurt the dialogue.
Over-all, this is a must-play for any Half-Life fan, and probably my second favorite Half-Life piece of media, coming right behind Half-Life: Alyx.
Weapons are pretty similar to the set-up in HL2, mostly reanimated and rebalanced, my only major criticism is that a lot of the roster is wasted on 3 AR/SMGs that play very similarly, and are all insanely strong, typically 1-tapping most common enemies to the head, but I never found that I was too often filled with ammo, as the more survival horror ammo economies mean you're always going to be rotating through your loadout, the kick is also a great addition that plays really well with the physics sandbox, and in over-all execution I prefer it over the Gravity Gun, the Xen Grenade was also a really creative idea, although I found its more common uses lacking and enjoyed it more when used with puzzles, or in the final boss fight to spawn in a bunch of enemies to help you take him down.
The levels are over-all really great, but it starts off with quite possibly the worst by far, just running around Nova Prospekt as you dump grenades in holes, but from there it's incredibly fun, especially the levels that take inspiration from the route Episode 2 and Epistle 3 were heading for, by incorporating Aperture Science test chambers that feel like they could be straight out of a Portal mod.
Enemy design was a bit lacking, but HL2 and mods for it don't really rely on it for the enemy design, and are more of scene setters, but I did find the temporal crabs interesting, and the large zombies (presumably inspired by Jeff in Half-Life: Alyx, especially in their first appearance where you have to not be spotted by not making too much noise) were a lot of fun in most scenes they were in.
It even manages to pull off some fun boss fights, something the original Entropy: Zero struggled incredibly with.
Another thing it does better than the original is have an actual enjoyable story and characters, rather than an edgy punisher wannabe protagonist gunning down rebels as the only thing he adds to the story being insults to said rebels, only to have his teeth kicked in when a canon HL2 character shows up, Walker and his clone have an interesting dynamic in practice being a method of development for Walker's character, the protagonist being an emotional development, and his AWOL counterpart, being awareness of the reality of his situation with the Combine after the events of the first game, and the futility of trying to appease them.
Not sure why they had to make every other piece of dialogue a meme though, it really hurt the dialogue.
Over-all, this is a must-play for any Half-Life fan, and probably my second favorite Half-Life piece of media, coming right behind Half-Life: Alyx.
1996
This game is absolutely legendary, not just doing laps around DOOM, but also pioneering all the basic gameplay elements that still define good movement and mechanics in FPS games today, from Rocket Jumping, to strafing in circles to avoid tracking projectiles, to precision platforming, any high skill high movement FPS gameplay roots back to this game.
The level design is pretty strong, Episode 3 and 4 being the ones that take better advantage of the whole game (as well as not being brown), with the first 2 being too claustrophobic and penalizing you too hard for using the most fun weapons, the Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher, they're maze-like but not confusing like DOOM, and get really creative with the 3D spaces and movement for their secrets, some being something that only really surprised players back in the day, like just looking up, and some that involve some knowledge of the engine, like Rocket Jumping.
Weapons are just fantastic, while I'm personally not a fan of weapons having a regular and a super version, this is quite possibly the most well rounded set of FPS weapons in any game, and any game that takes any pages from its book still stick quite close to its teachings, like Team Fortress 2 which for the most part still revolves around the weapons that are in this game, the Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher are some of the best designed weapons in FPS history, which is amazing considering they're the first of their own kind.
The game falls shy of a 5 star rating for having just a weak first 2 episodes and a set of boss battles that range from boring to enemy spam, with the final boss just being the same 2 types of high tier enemy in a narrow hallway, and then just (admittedly a very cheeky way to end the game) tele-frag the big bad, Regardless it's still an incredibly quality game and a must play for any fan of the FPS genre.
The level design is pretty strong, Episode 3 and 4 being the ones that take better advantage of the whole game (as well as not being brown), with the first 2 being too claustrophobic and penalizing you too hard for using the most fun weapons, the Grenade Launcher and Rocket Launcher, they're maze-like but not confusing like DOOM, and get really creative with the 3D spaces and movement for their secrets, some being something that only really surprised players back in the day, like just looking up, and some that involve some knowledge of the engine, like Rocket Jumping.
Weapons are just fantastic, while I'm personally not a fan of weapons having a regular and a super version, this is quite possibly the most well rounded set of FPS weapons in any game, and any game that takes any pages from its book still stick quite close to its teachings, like Team Fortress 2 which for the most part still revolves around the weapons that are in this game, the Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher are some of the best designed weapons in FPS history, which is amazing considering they're the first of their own kind.
The game falls shy of a 5 star rating for having just a weak first 2 episodes and a set of boss battles that range from boring to enemy spam, with the final boss just being the same 2 types of high tier enemy in a narrow hallway, and then just (admittedly a very cheeky way to end the game) tele-frag the big bad, Regardless it's still an incredibly quality game and a must play for any fan of the FPS genre.
2017
This game is pretty good, but it's INCREDIBLY short, easily beatable in 2 hours, any extra time being devoted to seeing as many dialogue options as you can, as there are a LOT.
It seems like they've just stretched themselves thin trying to perfect everything, but it ends up leaving an incredibly short experience without much of note, it's pretty much just a prologue.
Gameplay is fine though, it combines aspects of the webcomic with Point n' Clicks very well, and there's an incredible amount of attention put into everything, with tons of different dialogue options, and plenty of achievements tied to them.
It seems like they've just stretched themselves thin trying to perfect everything, but it ends up leaving an incredibly short experience without much of note, it's pretty much just a prologue.
Gameplay is fine though, it combines aspects of the webcomic with Point n' Clicks very well, and there's an incredible amount of attention put into everything, with tons of different dialogue options, and plenty of achievements tied to them.