It's a fun little roguelite-lite-lite, compared with Tax Evasion there's a bigger focus on gameplay rather than story which I do feel is somewhat to the game's detriment.

Weirdly disappointed in Turnip Boy's transition from "Chaotic Neutral Little Bastard" to "Guy who does what he's told" but idk if that's even a valid complaint.

Short, sweet, stupid, fun.

I hate to rag on this game when I'm (at present) the only review here but I picked this up based on the previous Immortal Mantis game which was a reasonably fun experience if a little basic.

This one however? I had to grab a pen and paper for the first puzzle, no big deal, you can't expect to always be spoon fed answers. The second puzzle however? First a bunch of wire-matching where the hint is on a separate screen (back to the pen and paper) and then I have to pick the right video tape based on a VERY ambiguous clue. I have to guess how the developer meant me to interpret it.

I chose wrong.

Instant failure; back to the start of the scene. The wire puzzle solution is scrambled meaning it's back to the pen and paper.

Not a pretty start to a game and if that's how it presents itself at the outset, I'm not interested in continuing.

When this game is good, it is so good.

I was addicted to Super House of Dead Ninjas in 2018, a game that prioritises moving fast as hell and smashing up dudes with a completely empty head. Sometimes Dead Cells reaches these heights; in fact, the time-sensitive aspect of some bonuses and powerups suggests that this is in the design brief for the game. Getting the right combo of weapons makes the experience almost transcendental as you annihilate all comers with dexterity and poise.

When this game is bad, it is so bad.

The above being said; after Dead Cells has taught you to go in Fast and Hard (heheheheh), leaning into momentum and combo-stacking, the brakes are pumped. Enemies that will punish rushing in become more numerous. Combinations of enemies packed into a tight space that you simply cannot clear without taking a lot of damage become more frequent. You will unlock weapons whose high damage does NOT justify their huge vulnerability window.

When this game is much, it is so much.

My first stint with Dead Cells was in early 2020 and there was a shedload of content even then. Now in 2024 with all the DLCs and collabs and tie-ins it is bursting at the seams with content. Too much. It's too much. Thematically random areas. Weapons upon weapons upon weapons that makes it hard to create a cohesive build. Runs that take well over an hour. Exhausting.

Dead Cells is great; but is it good?

A fictitious nature documentary about whales on an alien planet not dissimilar from Earth, told through a series of beautiful images. I thought the art was really good and the narrative of the documentary (including the various asides) was believable and compelling in a way that sci-fi often fails to be without being clinical and boring.

What let South Scrimshaw down a little for me is the AI narration. At points it was glaringly obvious, different voices having different pronunciations of the same word and the main narrator slipped from a British accent into an Australian one on a few rare occasions that made it clear I was not listening to a human. I feel like it shouldn't have been that hard to find people willing to lend their voices to this.

What order did I play the Resident Evil games in? I’m glad you asked!

RE 4 “(2005)” - wow yes nice but so weird
RE “HD” - retro, I like it. Scary af in places
RE 7 - FPP in a classic Evil Residence setting chef’s kiss
RE 5 - trying to blend in too much cover shooter bullshit
RE 6 - see RE 5 except it outstays its welcome about 3x over

So here we are, the RE2make? REmake 2? Resident Evil 2 HD? whatever.

It’s good, like really good. Classic survival horror vibe in that you’re essentially just solving puzzles in a building full of dickheads who want to bite you. Losing the fixed camera in lieu of an over-the-shoulder-view hasn’t lessened the feeling of dread as you squeak open a door, hoping the Licker in the next corridor is on coffee break, Mr. X’s footsteps pant-shittingly close.

Leading me into one of my nitpicks, sometimes the AI doesn’t really play fair. Mr. X occasionally just haunts the corridors immediately outside the safe room you’re in which can be flow breaking when you’re just trying to get shit done. He also seems to haul ass to corral me into rooms with Lickers in. I don’t know if this is on purpose but it is very annoying.

The story is kind of a non-point, it’s barely coherent enough to support most of the characters' motives but I’ll take a good game with a bad plot over the opposite. Playing the game twice with maybe 10% different content and story beats just to get to the “True Ending” felt a little jarring to me. I touched on RE 6 outstaying its welcome and R2make really cut it close for me.

Ultimately I had fun with Resident Remake 2: Evil; controls are tight and predictable, enemy variety is enough for a game of this size and boss encounters are usually reasonable (even if they only seem to appear when you’re least prepared). Do I want to soak up all the extra content? Not immediately and I think that is telling enough.

2 AM - Olympic Exclusion Zone - Outer Zone

I kill the engine, close my eyes and sit back in my car seat. The wind and rain batters the protective outer shell of my car, threatening to lift it off the ground and toss it down a ravine at any moment.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘Cursed Wheel’” I tell myself; and I believe it, I really do. It must have been my judicious use of the handbrake or driving a little too fast over a small pile of stones or a little too close to the Hot Dust 200 yards back. That’s why my front left wheel is loose for the fourth time on this excursion. It’s not Cursed.

I believe this despite being frequently pursued by semi-sentient balls of possessed trash and flying robots that want to steal my car. I believe this despite the existence of the Friendly Dumpster and the enigmatic-but-useful Pacemaker. I believe this despite every single piece of evidence to the contrary. There is no such thing as a Cursed Wheel.

Leaving it is an option. I can drive for miles without tending to it, I might even make it home if the conditions are perfect. Conditions are never perfect. A rogue squall could drift across at any moment and I could be left trying to repair so many more issues under a battering of acid rain or a confusing storm of Bollards and Shakers throwing my car and my self around like toys. Best to deal with it while the weather is only pre-apocalyptic.

I slide out into the maelstrom and tighten the wheel. It’s literally a moment’s work, even with my tools haphazardly thrown into a side-storage container. I even check around the car for any signs of weakness in the vehicles doors and panels, it’s the kind of thing that can save your life in the Olympic Exclusion Zone. All good, I slide back into the driver’s seat, soaked but satisfied. It’s time to head home.

I pick an exit point (why do they have to be so far away?) and all hell breaks loose. The real storm is coming and I am going. Fast. Tearing across the terrain in the near pitch-black at 100, 120, 140 km/h, squinting through the pouring rain. While my back was turned, exploding Tourists have drifted into the road causing me to veer into a ditch and mow down two dozen saplings before colliding with a tree. I check the dashboard console, no serious damage but the hold-up means that the initial storm has overtaken me and the worst is still to come.

Pulling back onto the road and flooring it, I can feel the true nightmare breathing down my neck, my exit point so near and yet not-near-enough. It’s a damn good job I dealt with that wheel.

An alert chimes on my dashboard.

There is No Such Thing as a Cursed Wheel

Voidigo feels like a labour of love. One of those games that “didn’t come out til it was ready” and definitely reaps the benefits. Combat is fluid, there’s enough variety in environments and enemies to prevent the experience getting stale, there’s a wide range of weapons and powerups.

Which leads me to my only (minor) criticism: there’s too many weapons and powerups. By the time I finished the game (beaten all bosses, completed a run with every character and upgraded/used enough powerups/weapons), I’d only scratched the surface of the range of powerups and weapons on offer; and the lack of significant postgame/NG+ content doesn’t inspire me to push for that 100% completion.

That being said, this is an extremely accomplished roguelike in the vein of Nuclear Throne, the main content of which kept me interested for 30 hours of which I enjoyed almost every minute.

Okay so you’re a criminal who’s in space prison for a very long time and the way you reduce your sentence is by solving a space mystery. But honestly that’s just a framing device for what is essentially a horror/puzzle game with an interesting mechanic.

You start every level “blind”, in that the screen is almost completely black, and you see the world around you by firing your LiDAR Gun at your environment which covers it in white or coloured dots, depending on the function of the thing you’re aiming at. It’s surprisingly not as disorienting or sickness inducing as you would expect.

The atmosphere is extremely claustrophobic à la Iron Lung or Capsule, limited visual input means you hear every single little sound the environment makes which makes for an incredibly unnerving experience.

What drags the game down is the latter stages, long treks across the environment following a yellow cable or daisy-chaining wires while avoiding turrets does not increase tension; rather it settles you down into a boredom that is never really broken. Oh and there’s chase sequences later on that really do not flatter the methodical approach this game forces on you from the start.

I had fun playing this one, mostly. Fighting mechanics are simple without being too limiting, often when a run fails it's not down to RNG and enemy variety is reasonable. The story is nothing to write home about but it doesn't get in the way of gameplay.

However RNG can sometimes make or break a run, especially as you unlock more and more items that can spawn in. You're just as likely to get items in one run that:
- increase/multiply gold
- make gold heal you
- make gold explode enemies and
- magnetise gold to you
as you are to get random items that synergise in no practical way.
What to do in that situation? Mothball the run? Persevere knowing you could be having more fun? It's a tough choice and not conducive to an enjoyable experience.
Also post-game content is extremely grind-heavy and adds very little in the way of fresh new experiences.

I found the UI to be overly complex re: zooming and overviewing the levels.

For a game where you are penalised for flubbing shots it is surprisingly ready to trick you into flubbing shots.
There is very little way to know where your ball is going when taking a long shot.
The ball arc just moves too fast..if the whole game followed a one-button design sure; but it doesn't.

It's a fun concept but the shortcomings just made it annoying way before I started having fun.

Could have been better. The developer clearly tried to go highbrow deep concept but without any real foundation on which to build the concept it felt like a whole buncha words dotted around a spooky house and a climax that felt like "more random stuff to do".

Steam description mentions the "aftermath" of a cult? but there's seemingly no mention of said cult within the game which is bad narrative.

Very walking sim. Very unspooky. Very 30 minutes I won't get back.

Honestly it's not entirely one-star bad but it is absolutely mired in game breaking bugs. I am literally locked out of leaving a building because the game thinks I am on the phone and there's absolutely no way to make it think otherwise.

A neat puzzle concept that is kind of poorly executed. Design choices that seem to be mostly ugly graphics dressed up as "dream stuff". So many unnecessary bugs with traversal. Also the story? Painfully uninteresting and trying to hit too many notes in too short a time.