Has anyone who worked on this game ever actually walked on wooden floors before?? Every time these hulking masses of man meat entered a busted-up domestic structure, the foley of their boots stomping on hardwood completely dominated our entire living room as if it was a "bass boosted" YTP from days gone by. Floors don't sound like war drums, guys!

Anyhow uhhhhhhh pretty good co-op experience! The reload timing is cool, reviving is a nice alternative to respawning, campaign length is nice and tight, and I like way those deep voice enemies say "BOOM". Besides having Bongo Bongo from Ocarina of Time do the footstep sound design, my only real complaint is how frequently you reach a door, have a need to go through that door, and then have to wait for the door to be opened for you. I'm 500 pounds of surly beefcake and jagged metal, just let me through already!

Oh and I constantly forgot that Jack existed, it's like I had no object permanence for that weird little robot

I really, really wanted to enjoy Harold Halibut more than I did. Harold, our protagonist, is a fish out of water: an autistic-coded janitor slash jack-of-all-trades, whose daily grind involves doing various tasks for the mostly warm but slightly stuck up crew of scientists and venture capitalists aboard the marooned spaceship, The Fedora. The game is underwater, so there's the expected Bioshock-esque critique of capitalism run riot, presented with a more dry, wry sense of humor. The game makes a strong first impression, with several mysteries piling up alongside the slow reveal of this artful, beautiful world. I particularly loved how you get around on The Fedora via a salmon cannon that shoots the people from hub to hub (for a nominal fee).

And, c'mon, the art! I know it's not the most technical game running under the hood, but this game is a sight to behold. Each interior is handcrafted and rich with detail, but then digitalized and animated so that the puppetry has no strings. Even though the gameplay is light, I found myself mashing the trigger on the controller to zoom into each interior and soak in as much of the ambiance as I could. The soundtrack, too, is subtle but evocative, fading in and out when the player enters certain locations. Tremendous stuff.

During its introductory moments, I thought this game might be another Night in the Woods-esque narrative game, one that took a story and set it across many days so that you could build relationships and be rewarded for meandering from the main task routes at every turn. And, for a while, it was. I would get invited to dinner by the former pilot, or pore over love letters from decades past with the postman. And each character, lovingly designed and voice acted, always had something to say about life's meaning, or the dulling effect of daily jobs (and the threat of debtor's prison) in an alien, water-logged world.

But my return visits to the various wings of The Fedora yielded less and less surprise, or even change, as the days went on. By midgame, Harold had stumbled upon a seemingly huge reveal, with widespread implications for him, his shipmates--maybe even the human race--yet our daily tasks consisted of slow runs to the pharmacy with almost no diversity of content. It felt like we were being forced to play out an extended montage, a pain that only sharpened once the weeklong scenario ended with a literal montage.

Repetition in videogames is part of the act, of course. It can be gameplay, the ritualistic dance of combat that break up FPS campaigns, or the return trips of roguelites that build repetitiveness into their DNA as a means of player progression. But Harold Halibut seems to say: God, isn't capitalist bureaucracy boring and awful?" Yes, it is. And it's especially boring and awful when it's hammered home in a world as lush and gorgeous as Harold Halibut.

There is a payoff, and the narrative eventually does get going. But the jarring pace and tonal shifts never really go away.

I'm glad this game exists. And it's clear that there's a huge amount of work that's gone into this game and realizing its vision. Unfortunately, Harold Halibut isn't able to successfully navigate the choppy waters separating sincerity and comedy, and ends up splitting the two in a way that challenged me to go on.

In the end, Harold Halibut is way more niche than you might expect. Its messages on capitalism, and humanity's tendency toward resource drain even in the face of calamity, are all vital and integrated well into the story. I just wish the game, like its main character, was a little more self-assured.

Pacific Drive: An interesting world and a monotonous gameplay loop makes for wasted potential you can steer clear of.
Pacific Drive's world is a lot like a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-lite. You're basically in The Zone only things don't want to kill you quite as much, though they'll still try. You'll see goofy and inexplicable shit, most of which will start as charmingly quirky but will end as a frequent annoyance on your journey to gather some painfully infrequent resource (I wanna say a big “Fuck you” to ThermoSap Crystals).

I think, like most, I found the art style and world alluring. The game had a good look to it and who doesn't love whacky, radioactive nonsense?
Well, quickly you're introduced to your three radio pals (as you'll never be speaking), and I found all three of them obnoxious. The developers seemed to know players would find their chatter annoying as many conversations are optional, letting the player hold 'Tab' if they want to hear a bit more about the world. Trust me: you don't. Your car kind of talks to you through a screen and tells you it “hearts” you; that's by far the best interacting you'll be doing.
The world isn't very appealing, either. That S.T.A.L.K.E.R. vibe goes away rather quickly when you realize the world is less out to kill you and more so out to pester you. Anomalies are usually right in the middle of the road, so you only have to veer off and possibly let your car hit a thin tree to avoid them. Some, like my least favorite, are near-impossible to see until they're activated. I despised these pileups that spawn electrifying posts all around your car when you get near them, forcing you to take damage until you're out of it. Driving from A to B is like half of this game and I found it to be an unamusing chore.
There's a 'Quirks' system where your car will do things like whenever you reverse, your passenger door opens. You have to assess what causes the issue correctly back at the garage to cure it. I cannot describe how horrible of an idea I think this was and while I want to thank the devs for letting the players turn it off, I want them to explain why they thought that sounded “fun” to begin with.

The story isn't great, but I didn't finish it, so I cannot speak to its end. I'd be fucking mystified if it managed to redeem itself (I Googled it: it doesn't). My biggest issue was since I got stuck in the mid-Zone looking for ThermoSap Crystals, the story took a huge stall. If I couldn't find any of those Crystals in the mid-Zone, it was a wasted run and wasted time. It really pissed me off.
Now I could have been farming them from occasional rust buckets on the side of the road, getting like three at a time when I needed dozens, but I didn't know that until I was many hours in. That s'pisses me off, too.

Pacific Drive really tested my patience and I guess it won: congratulations. I do not recommend this bore of a game.

Probably the clunkiest of the PS2 Gundam entries, Journey to Jaburo leans into weightiness and sluggish controls to facilitate realism. Unfortunately, almost every enemy is a bullet sponge in order to produce a semblance of difficulty, which leads to ridiculous happenings: weak beam weapons, bad hitboxes, and generally poor game feel. Even so, adapting to the game's odd controls was somewhat fun and allowed me to reach a level of competency by the campaign's last mission.

There are good points. The visuals are more than up to snuff 20 years down the line, thanks to some graphical tricks. The haze in desert levels is awesome, foliage in forests is thick and adds a layer to the usual rhythm of combat, and the in-game cutscenes are just cool overall. Music from 0079 is present, and gives the whole game some authenticity - playing through the anime's story is one thing, but hearing its tracks while you're charging through enemy mechs makes it all a little more bearable.

Journey to Jaburo is not that fun, but it is a faithful adaptation of 0079. It's also a companion piece to the much better Encounters in Space, and suffers as a result. Worth playing? Probably not, unless you're a big fan of the Universal Century timeline.

Honestly about still as good as I remember?

I feel like there's more to appreciate coming back to it now in a,, endearing way. It's like a collective playable synthwave album, down to how the attacks are basically a rhythm, but just jumbled around by bursts of twin stick sections and walking moments where you let the music play while a stupid pastiche narrates at you. And all of that is still really really fun to me. I'm enjoying the push and pull like normal, even if it's all rudimentary now that I've already beaten Furier and still have the muscle memory.

Which really surprised me, because I think that's the kind of opaque bullshit I would come back and go "wow this meant genuinely nothing, what the fuck did they think they were cooking?", but with all the environments and how the music sways it comes off more in the stoner sense where they THOUGHT they were being so interesting and deep but their eyes are staring blank straight through you lol. That's like the best way I can explain why it's fun to experience on a return.

It congeals together in such a way that I find myself unable to resent its very standard and now blatantly generic "phase" design. It's like yeah, I can get into it ^.=.^ I'm still banging my head to You're Mine, after all. Hilariously it makes me feel like I'm too harsh on Sekiro that This is the rhythm like action game I'm eating up today.

brutal doom for the video essay generation well, color me impressed. this is actually cool!

it seems like every other day i find a new indie game or analog horror video in my youtube feed using hackneyed "subversions of expectation" or file manipulation or arg elements for spooks. imscared was cool, but imscared came out 12 years ago. so when i heard about myhouse.wad, i brushed it off. it wasn't until last night that i bit the bullet, and let me tell you: i should have done it sooner.

the house of leaves inspiration is blatant enough as to call it an adaptation. there's no point in dissecting it, but i'd like to use it to explain why my house doesn't suffer from the pitfalls you might expect. remember how house of leaves has a bunch of hidden shit inside of it that redditors have been talking to death for years? well, you don't need it to enjoy the book. it's an addendum for people who wanna go crazy over that kind of stuff. my house is the same way with its metahorror. the creepypasta elements are contained in the downloadable journal rather than the game itself. the "deeply emotional" (read: tactless and generic internet psychological horror) themes fans don't shut up about are contained in secret content that you won't find unless you're looking for it. in that case, why should you play the wad?

cuz it's a damn good time! if you liked lost in vivo's combat-heavy take on otherworld from silent hill, you'll like my house. the maps are super pretty and fun to explore. there are cool new enemies too! if nothing else, play it to see a modern action horror doom map with strong atmosphere. it only took me 30 minutes and i'd recommend it even if you already know the "twists".

as much as i still want to mock the fandom and compare it to brutal doom, i do hope this inspires people to take full advantage of gzdoom's special features. maybe someone will make a map that uses similar technical tricks to make something in a genre other than horror. as it stands, i super enjoyed my time in my house and i recommend it to all the skeptics. this one's different.

SOLD

Hab mich das erste mal getraut ein Handy-Gacha zu probieren weil ich ein Fanart mochte.
Habs son bisschen gespielt, hab son bisschen gegrindet, hatte auch echt Spaß dabei, hab son paar gute Pulls gehabt, hatte nie das Verlangen echtes Geld auszugeben und weil ich unendlich sparen müsste bis ich mir endlich einen dieser 10-Pulls holen könnte, hab ich das interesse verloren.

Fantastisches Genre was ihr da habt, guys!

Ansonsten, fun kleines Tower Defense Game. Gute Artworks. Finds unfair, dass all die besten Character Designer der Industrie nun dafür arbeiten PNGs in Kisten ziehen zu dürfen.