RKPrime
2018
Playing Moss in early 2022 was a lovely return to PS VR. There's something special about sitting in the wonderful little worlds of the characters we love, and Quill is no exception. The platforming is fun, with some neat secrets and extras along the way.
Puzzles felt inventive and leveraged the user's mobility to see available paths to great success.
It's great to traverse, but extensive combat sections often feel like a hassle and fall into the same pattern. Some challenges near the end left me a little sour and didn't feel completely fair.
The abrupt ending to the story greatly contextualizes "Moss Book II" releasing this spring, and certainly makes it sting less that I'm playing it nearly 4 years after release.
Puzzles felt inventive and leveraged the user's mobility to see available paths to great success.
It's great to traverse, but extensive combat sections often feel like a hassle and fall into the same pattern. Some challenges near the end left me a little sour and didn't feel completely fair.
The abrupt ending to the story greatly contextualizes "Moss Book II" releasing this spring, and certainly makes it sting less that I'm playing it nearly 4 years after release.
2021
Foreclosed is aggressively fine! Its comic panel cuts and camera changes enable it to punch up in its stellar presentation, but the compliments end there.
Combat is stiff, difficult, and feels limited until late in the game. If I didn't find the easier difficulty option then I may not have finished this game. Near the end you face several enemies in an entirely empty hallway... No cover, no environment to fight with.
Checkpoints are poorly laid out, and often had me repeating 'presentation' segments that wore on my nerves. I wasted time searching for invisible switches in an archaic design choice.
The trophy list contains a missable secret ending that's unlocked only if you find all collectibles within one playthrough. Despite the Chapter Select Option (Which is only accessible after rolling credits), you cannot go back and clean these up. There's also no way to track them, or any visibly presenting trophy associating with these. These collectibles are also hidden and require shadowing every wall until a marker pops up.
Only half of the game options, such as Audio Mixing and Difficulty are only accessible via the Main Menu. I learned this 80% of the way through the game. The only reason I was exploring the menu was because I ran into my first of two glitches that completely locked me from combat, menus, moving or dying. Two heavy glitches like that don't sound like a lot, but feel very apparent in a <3 hour game.
In writing this review I'm reckoning with how frustrating Foreclosed was to play. The potential was there and that left me disappointed above all else. With a little more time and care this could have won my heart as a special experience. Instead it languishes in the skippable territory.
Combat is stiff, difficult, and feels limited until late in the game. If I didn't find the easier difficulty option then I may not have finished this game. Near the end you face several enemies in an entirely empty hallway... No cover, no environment to fight with.
Checkpoints are poorly laid out, and often had me repeating 'presentation' segments that wore on my nerves. I wasted time searching for invisible switches in an archaic design choice.
The trophy list contains a missable secret ending that's unlocked only if you find all collectibles within one playthrough. Despite the Chapter Select Option (Which is only accessible after rolling credits), you cannot go back and clean these up. There's also no way to track them, or any visibly presenting trophy associating with these. These collectibles are also hidden and require shadowing every wall until a marker pops up.
Only half of the game options, such as Audio Mixing and Difficulty are only accessible via the Main Menu. I learned this 80% of the way through the game. The only reason I was exploring the menu was because I ran into my first of two glitches that completely locked me from combat, menus, moving or dying. Two heavy glitches like that don't sound like a lot, but feel very apparent in a <3 hour game.
In writing this review I'm reckoning with how frustrating Foreclosed was to play. The potential was there and that left me disappointed above all else. With a little more time and care this could have won my heart as a special experience. Instead it languishes in the skippable territory.
I am not the audience for Crash 4, and I'm incredibly okay with that.
I think it's the best game in a series of games that are frustratingly designed. The perspective is something I'm thrilled never caught on video games, and I think that's for good reason.
The game is beautiful. This only becomes more apparent as the worlds become more vibrant and dev team are clearly having a blast with it. That was the same time I noticed that I wasn't.
I appreciate the modern additions that made the game bearable for me. Evolving checkpoints, a death counter in levels over limited lives. Very neat and very welcome.
It's raw af that N Tropy canonically hooks up with himself but in female form. Dude is WILD
I'm glad I beat it, and I can rest easily knowing I'll never need to revisit the franchise.
I think it's the best game in a series of games that are frustratingly designed. The perspective is something I'm thrilled never caught on video games, and I think that's for good reason.
The game is beautiful. This only becomes more apparent as the worlds become more vibrant and dev team are clearly having a blast with it. That was the same time I noticed that I wasn't.
I appreciate the modern additions that made the game bearable for me. Evolving checkpoints, a death counter in levels over limited lives. Very neat and very welcome.
It's raw af that N Tropy canonically hooks up with himself but in female form. Dude is WILD
I'm glad I beat it, and I can rest easily knowing I'll never need to revisit the franchise.
2021
Severed Steel goes HARD. Controls feel slippery and a bit awkward but I found my perfect balance and playstyle. It's just one crazy trip that I think everyone should give a shot to.
CEO fight is a bit bummy and one level puts you in a box that I had to cheese. Otherwise flawless.
CEO fight is a bit bummy and one level puts you in a box that I had to cheese. Otherwise flawless.
2022
Hyper Meteor is the best Housemarque game on the Playdate.
HM is an excellent endless game with tight and comprehensive controls. I love playing it
HM is an excellent endless game with tight and comprehensive controls. I love playing it
2022
Questy Chess is a game that I found myself wanting to like far more than I did. With intentioned, methodical level design that is predicated on repeat attempts for completion, it becomes frustrating that all resources are finite.
The introduction of single-use upgrades feels like an unforced error that demands grinding and even further repetition of levels just to tee up an actual repeat attempt. This shortcoming is exacerbated when certain Chests containing resources will respawn in certain levels, while others don't. There's really no way to tell. Health is finite, and as a completion metric for each level it seemingly became impossible for me to reach max health after reaching max level and beating the game.
Menus don't feel incredibly snappy, it was nearly half the times that I'd fail or exit a level, only to click out of the pop up and land back into the same level for a circular "system crash". More robust explanations of mechanics and items would be much appreciated.
Upon beating the game, my system crashed and I lost all my resources before accessing the True Ending. I can't tell if it was the system crash or game design to strip me of everything, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter. This is ultimately what put me off of 100%-ing all levels. The puzzles were fun, the grind and ultimately the gameplay were not so much.
Despite all of my misgivings and frustrations, I really enjoyed my time with it. While writing this review I found myself dropping my rating twice more...
The introduction of single-use upgrades feels like an unforced error that demands grinding and even further repetition of levels just to tee up an actual repeat attempt. This shortcoming is exacerbated when certain Chests containing resources will respawn in certain levels, while others don't. There's really no way to tell. Health is finite, and as a completion metric for each level it seemingly became impossible for me to reach max health after reaching max level and beating the game.
Menus don't feel incredibly snappy, it was nearly half the times that I'd fail or exit a level, only to click out of the pop up and land back into the same level for a circular "system crash". More robust explanations of mechanics and items would be much appreciated.
Upon beating the game, my system crashed and I lost all my resources before accessing the True Ending. I can't tell if it was the system crash or game design to strip me of everything, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the latter. This is ultimately what put me off of 100%-ing all levels. The puzzles were fun, the grind and ultimately the gameplay were not so much.
Despite all of my misgivings and frustrations, I really enjoyed my time with it. While writing this review I found myself dropping my rating twice more...
2022
Cult of the Lamb was an addictive
2021
My own personal purgatory... the twist is that it's a Rogue...
I get it, I've seen what the games does and understand how it's special. It just doesn't connect for me
I get it, I've seen what the games does and understand how it's special. It just doesn't connect for me
2022
Tunic will go down as one of the greats.
2022
A must-play, incredible game
2022
A solid take on Snake that's been fun to jump into.
2019
Untitled Goose Game is delightful. It's even more fun with a friend! Frankly, I'm not sure how I could have beaten it on my own.
2021
This review contains spoilers
Returnal thoughts
The greatest synthesis I made while playing Returnal was that a larger-scale Rogue-type game was always the natural progression from Housemarque’s Arcade-style roots. In thinking about it, Rogues are more forgiving than arcade games that only let you transfer your skills between runs. Applying the Rogue design philosophy to a fast-paced third person shooter and making the leap to a game of this scale is an innovation that Housemarque will always get to claim. Even if the final product isn’t completely for me, I have immense respect for what the team accomplished here. The broken narrative structure
The hell and constant death of Returnal’s First Act drives home the helplessness of Selene’s struggles and eternal entrapment on Atropos. It’s more than crash landing on a derelict, alien planet and wanting to return home. Selene has no escape even in death. Her only actionable option is to fight. The story premise is strong and unrelenting gameplay loop reinforces it. That doesn’t make it a strong loop though.
After dropping Returnal two separate times influenced by many similar reasons, I finally made a breakthrough on my third bout. At the end of the third biome, Derelict Citadel, players are rewarded with the most spectacular fight of the game, Nemesis. Entering in, it’s clear that this is the source of the White Shadow broadcast, but not the end. The conflict is cinematic with an arena that morphs across every phase. Nemesis feels infinite and overwhelming but distinctly fallible. This fight, the story segment following, and the next House Sequence are the peak of Returnal’s story. It reengaged me in a way I hadn’t expected. Losing what I’d built over my winning run was gutting but makes sense in the context of the game. The Overgrown Ruins feel like a true reward.
While no single biome on Atropos is somewhere I want to spend time, Biomes four through six feel far more pleasant than their Act 1 counterparts. Even as the lethality is ratcheted up in all encounters, a heightened adrenaline level, multiple weapon bonuses and overall progression through the game enable a better feeling of play. While still randomized, the structure and layouts of these biomes that are guaranteed still feel more fun to traverse. The tools and transports you’re granted access to come at consistent times; rewards are measured. In a game constantly in the balance of RNG things become a bit more constant for the better.
The Second half of the game being significantly stronger than the first half is to Returnal’s detriment. For a game that already had to surmount a $70 price tag, it does a terrible job of encouraging players to continue pushing and playing. What I felt like were rewards of story and gameplay unlocks came far too late. It becomes painful and a bit taunting to play through the first two biomes, constantly walled by glowing hooks that are inaccessible. This is just the most apparent among several interactables.
As a randomly generated Rogue, Returnal doesn’t benefit from the intentionally designed layouts of metroidvania titles. Typically as you begin to see new areas to interact with that are unreachable, you’ll be close to an upgrade that enables that. By gating upgrades behind completing biomes while constantly including unreachable locations in nearly every room along the way, the game starts to get in its own way. The final unlockable may be the worst. Whether it’s that it comes ~95% through the game or that it enables you to access platforms previously unseen it just feels like a blunder. There were several locations I found myself in trying to clamber up towers and ledges only to later learn there was never an obvious indication that I couldn’t do it. The lack of telegraphing was disappointing.
The structure of the first two acts is a wonderful cadence that causes the final act to fall a bit flat. Retreading the full game to collect new keys to beat it once more for a new cutscene was a bummer.
The laundry list of negatives I built up don’t require quite as much dissection as everything that came before it, so they’ll come in a more haphazard recounting here:
Returnal is not a very good name!
This game should’ve never come out at $70! I was thrilled to play it through the PS Plus Extra Library, which didn’t exist at the time of launch. It certainly would’ve sold more, thus reaching more audiences and becoming a bigger hit if it were priced lower.
I’m beyond hopeful for whatever Housemarque is cooking up next, and that’s bolstered knowing they’re supported as a PlayStation Studio. The future is bright with the potential Returnal signals they are capable of.
The trophy list is so bad it’s almost embarrassing. Heavy RNG trophies tied to each biome that were still awful after a major patch. For a game with so many options and interesting combat encounters, there wasn’t much in the way of using the weapons in a variety of ways. Though including things like that would ultimately invoke even more RNG!
The technical issues cannot be excused. Even playing after the ‘Suspend Cycle’ patch, there were still issues that haunted me. I fell off in earlier attempts after not being able to save runs, losing runs to random updates, anything conceivable. Even then my friend and I were having issues with falling through the world after resuming a cycle, not being able to join up, falling through the world on a cutscene, etc.
The greatest synthesis I made while playing Returnal was that a larger-scale Rogue-type game was always the natural progression from Housemarque’s Arcade-style roots. In thinking about it, Rogues are more forgiving than arcade games that only let you transfer your skills between runs. Applying the Rogue design philosophy to a fast-paced third person shooter and making the leap to a game of this scale is an innovation that Housemarque will always get to claim. Even if the final product isn’t completely for me, I have immense respect for what the team accomplished here. The broken narrative structure
The hell and constant death of Returnal’s First Act drives home the helplessness of Selene’s struggles and eternal entrapment on Atropos. It’s more than crash landing on a derelict, alien planet and wanting to return home. Selene has no escape even in death. Her only actionable option is to fight. The story premise is strong and unrelenting gameplay loop reinforces it. That doesn’t make it a strong loop though.
After dropping Returnal two separate times influenced by many similar reasons, I finally made a breakthrough on my third bout. At the end of the third biome, Derelict Citadel, players are rewarded with the most spectacular fight of the game, Nemesis. Entering in, it’s clear that this is the source of the White Shadow broadcast, but not the end. The conflict is cinematic with an arena that morphs across every phase. Nemesis feels infinite and overwhelming but distinctly fallible. This fight, the story segment following, and the next House Sequence are the peak of Returnal’s story. It reengaged me in a way I hadn’t expected. Losing what I’d built over my winning run was gutting but makes sense in the context of the game. The Overgrown Ruins feel like a true reward.
While no single biome on Atropos is somewhere I want to spend time, Biomes four through six feel far more pleasant than their Act 1 counterparts. Even as the lethality is ratcheted up in all encounters, a heightened adrenaline level, multiple weapon bonuses and overall progression through the game enable a better feeling of play. While still randomized, the structure and layouts of these biomes that are guaranteed still feel more fun to traverse. The tools and transports you’re granted access to come at consistent times; rewards are measured. In a game constantly in the balance of RNG things become a bit more constant for the better.
The Second half of the game being significantly stronger than the first half is to Returnal’s detriment. For a game that already had to surmount a $70 price tag, it does a terrible job of encouraging players to continue pushing and playing. What I felt like were rewards of story and gameplay unlocks came far too late. It becomes painful and a bit taunting to play through the first two biomes, constantly walled by glowing hooks that are inaccessible. This is just the most apparent among several interactables.
As a randomly generated Rogue, Returnal doesn’t benefit from the intentionally designed layouts of metroidvania titles. Typically as you begin to see new areas to interact with that are unreachable, you’ll be close to an upgrade that enables that. By gating upgrades behind completing biomes while constantly including unreachable locations in nearly every room along the way, the game starts to get in its own way. The final unlockable may be the worst. Whether it’s that it comes ~95% through the game or that it enables you to access platforms previously unseen it just feels like a blunder. There were several locations I found myself in trying to clamber up towers and ledges only to later learn there was never an obvious indication that I couldn’t do it. The lack of telegraphing was disappointing.
The structure of the first two acts is a wonderful cadence that causes the final act to fall a bit flat. Retreading the full game to collect new keys to beat it once more for a new cutscene was a bummer.
The laundry list of negatives I built up don’t require quite as much dissection as everything that came before it, so they’ll come in a more haphazard recounting here:
Returnal is not a very good name!
This game should’ve never come out at $70! I was thrilled to play it through the PS Plus Extra Library, which didn’t exist at the time of launch. It certainly would’ve sold more, thus reaching more audiences and becoming a bigger hit if it were priced lower.
I’m beyond hopeful for whatever Housemarque is cooking up next, and that’s bolstered knowing they’re supported as a PlayStation Studio. The future is bright with the potential Returnal signals they are capable of.
The trophy list is so bad it’s almost embarrassing. Heavy RNG trophies tied to each biome that were still awful after a major patch. For a game with so many options and interesting combat encounters, there wasn’t much in the way of using the weapons in a variety of ways. Though including things like that would ultimately invoke even more RNG!
The technical issues cannot be excused. Even playing after the ‘Suspend Cycle’ patch, there were still issues that haunted me. I fell off in earlier attempts after not being able to save runs, losing runs to random updates, anything conceivable. Even then my friend and I were having issues with falling through the world after resuming a cycle, not being able to join up, falling through the world on a cutscene, etc.
2022
Sonic Frontiers is fun to play. The open world format works well but that's where things stop. The large set pieces you're meant to work towards never function in the intended way, especially the boss fights which end up just being grueling. The voice acting recasts are heartbreaking, no one feels like the original sonic team characters. Huge bummer.
2022
This game is excellent! A lot of fun with a friend.