little_lagomorph
2019
i loved this game a lot. i liked the story and the characters and i enjoyed the changes to gameplay and progression from bl2/tps. i like that there are less sidequests that are given more time to shine. this game relies more on absurdism than just "lol random meme" humour, which suits it well. the writing allows more room for serious moments too i feel. i don't have a whole lot of complaints honestly!
i will say i wish the boss fights were more interesting and that there were more of them. that's something i remember from bl2 and tps that really stands out, and 3 didn't really deliver on that front.
my biggest complaint is that optimisation on this game is atrocious, which is the main reason i'm knocking a star off despite really loving it. if you have even slightly a worse computer than me (rtx 2080, i7 processor, 16gb ram - i should be running this flawlessly on highest settings) you will have to start lowering the graphics settings and even then idk how well this game will run for systems with lower specs. the game made my gpu run at about 70c too, which is quite warm for me and not my favourite thing ever. the framerate was very inconsistent. so, be warned if you have an older system.
i will say i wish the boss fights were more interesting and that there were more of them. that's something i remember from bl2 and tps that really stands out, and 3 didn't really deliver on that front.
my biggest complaint is that optimisation on this game is atrocious, which is the main reason i'm knocking a star off despite really loving it. if you have even slightly a worse computer than me (rtx 2080, i7 processor, 16gb ram - i should be running this flawlessly on highest settings) you will have to start lowering the graphics settings and even then idk how well this game will run for systems with lower specs. the game made my gpu run at about 70c too, which is quite warm for me and not my favourite thing ever. the framerate was very inconsistent. so, be warned if you have an older system.
2021
OPEN BETA REVIEW. i have played act 1 twice at this point. shelved since i don't own it and can't drop 80 bucks on a game rn lol.
current state, game's glitchy as all fuck and is probably going to be like that on release unless the poor devs are crunched to death, which i sincerely hope they are not. we literally could not play the finale of act 1 because the hoards wouldn't spawn (both times lol).
DESPITE THAT, the game is extremely fun. like, EXTREMELY fun. i like the card system a lot and i think it's implementation is smart - it matters, but not THAT much. your build isn't really going to make or break you or anything, at least not on normal. it'll just give you a little bit of an edge along the way. same with the character picks. in my opinion anyway. i can see certain ones being broken on higher difficulties (like mom's instant revive), but we didn't play any higher than normal, so.
the gunplay feels REALLY good. like, REALLY GOOD. it's not often you find an fps game where shooting feels as good as in this, honestly. the guns have a real weight to them and can seemingly jam, which sounds annoying on paper but is sort of neat to me honestly and generally isn't a huge deal since you just have to reload sooner than usual. i like that there are rarities of guns and that you can customise them with addons. i like that A LOT.
melee is a little lacking, but i can see them paying some extra attention to that later and fixing it up a bit. i can sort of live without it, personally, since i rarely go with melee in shooters lol. so any flaws here don't bug me that much.
i enjoy the characters a lot, can't really complain that they're a little one-note because the ones in l4d were too lol. i do think the dialogue is entertaining enough although there ought to be either more or less of it because hearing the same cues repeatedly does get tiring.
the game appears to be pretty well optimised and despite what brain poisoned graphics chuds online will tell you it actually looks really good.
a minor complaint is the tone of this game is a bit all over the place? it hasn't quite found its footing, writing-wise. turtle rock seem a bit scared to get too serious or too goofy with it. my personal preference would be leaning into the goofiness, but either way would clean up the tonal messiness a bit.
i do also think this game is overpriced. i'm really not sure why they're charging full AAA price for this (USD$60, CAD$80). i wish it was 20 dollars cheaper, at the very least. i think a lot of people would take a lot less issue with it if the game was, like, base USD$40. 60 is a huge ask for a lot of people.
anyway, i'll be getting it at some point, barring a horrible crisis with the game or the devs lol.
current state, game's glitchy as all fuck and is probably going to be like that on release unless the poor devs are crunched to death, which i sincerely hope they are not. we literally could not play the finale of act 1 because the hoards wouldn't spawn (both times lol).
DESPITE THAT, the game is extremely fun. like, EXTREMELY fun. i like the card system a lot and i think it's implementation is smart - it matters, but not THAT much. your build isn't really going to make or break you or anything, at least not on normal. it'll just give you a little bit of an edge along the way. same with the character picks. in my opinion anyway. i can see certain ones being broken on higher difficulties (like mom's instant revive), but we didn't play any higher than normal, so.
the gunplay feels REALLY good. like, REALLY GOOD. it's not often you find an fps game where shooting feels as good as in this, honestly. the guns have a real weight to them and can seemingly jam, which sounds annoying on paper but is sort of neat to me honestly and generally isn't a huge deal since you just have to reload sooner than usual. i like that there are rarities of guns and that you can customise them with addons. i like that A LOT.
melee is a little lacking, but i can see them paying some extra attention to that later and fixing it up a bit. i can sort of live without it, personally, since i rarely go with melee in shooters lol. so any flaws here don't bug me that much.
i enjoy the characters a lot, can't really complain that they're a little one-note because the ones in l4d were too lol. i do think the dialogue is entertaining enough although there ought to be either more or less of it because hearing the same cues repeatedly does get tiring.
the game appears to be pretty well optimised and despite what brain poisoned graphics chuds online will tell you it actually looks really good.
a minor complaint is the tone of this game is a bit all over the place? it hasn't quite found its footing, writing-wise. turtle rock seem a bit scared to get too serious or too goofy with it. my personal preference would be leaning into the goofiness, but either way would clean up the tonal messiness a bit.
i do also think this game is overpriced. i'm really not sure why they're charging full AAA price for this (USD$60, CAD$80). i wish it was 20 dollars cheaper, at the very least. i think a lot of people would take a lot less issue with it if the game was, like, base USD$40. 60 is a huge ask for a lot of people.
anyway, i'll be getting it at some point, barring a horrible crisis with the game or the devs lol.
2019
this game fuckin whips ass. such a great team shooter, extremely underrated as far as shooters go imo and a nice return to multiplayer shooters of the early 2010s before overwatch fucked up the market. huge flexibility in playstyle and certain gamemodes force you to play differently which i appreciate. and yes, the game is visually kind of janky lol you get used to it. i personally find the visual style charming.
huge recommend tbh.
huge recommend tbh.
cute, pretty, doesn't overstay its welcome. it is a bit tedious, though. i have nothing against it, it was just kind of boring.
after a certain point this was just exhausting to play. it's just holding W and occasionally clicking things, which is fine in some games, but not this one where you move at a glacial pace and everything is so spaced out it takes 4 hours to finish what could easily be a 2 hour game. come on
could not even finish the tutorial because the game references an antisemitic caricature meme for their money-hungry merchant race. was already getting bad vibes from the fact that all the protagonists are blond blue-eyed aryans and the first asian person you come across has literally yellow skin and one of the first codex entries seems bizarrely elf-racist but yeah that was the last straw no thanks i'm done here.
2021
this game truly deserves the praise it's receiving. amazing audio, visuals, gameplay, level design, everything, and an incredibly sweet story. if you have someone you love to play games with, i heartily recommend this.
2019
it's like, fine and fun to play because i like logic puzzles, but it feels weird about mental illness in a way i'm not sure i appreciate
2019
the 6/10 on this one is more about my personal feelings than the objective quality of the game. it's a perfectly good, cute game and has a satisfying enough puzzle experience. it was a good three hours and i recommend it but i'm not like, overly passionate or excited about it. also, the inventory is kind of annoying to navigate, so there's that i guess.
enjoyable gameplay loop and actually genuinely funny sometimes but it does the annoying thing that a lot of sex-comedy stuff does where it can't commit to either sex or comedy and ends up falling flat on both counts.
like, there's nudity, but it doesn't feel particularly sexy? the nudity feels more like i'm at a life drawing session. additionally, all the "love interests" kind of have the same body type with a notable exception and some incredibly surface-level differences like bust size which i find lazy and boring. it might just be because i'm not attracted to any of the men's default looks and i'm not attracted to women period, but the Sex Stuff gets exhausting pretty quickly and i ended up just kind of coasting through it.
it's like the game expects you to find nudity inherently sexy which ... i just don't? all the other sexual stuff seems like it's expecting you to take it as goofy-sexy, which i would be all for if it actually landed, but it's like the mannequin version of eroticism - too clean and polished.
the comedy i did generally enjoy, but the Sex Comedy all falls sort of flat because there wasn't really a punchline with any of it. the punchlines were like ... "heh, penis." i love dirty jokes and sex comedy but again, found that pretty lazy.
oh, also, one of the outfits turns one of the characters into markiplier, which is a full star off. i hate that.
like, there's nudity, but it doesn't feel particularly sexy? the nudity feels more like i'm at a life drawing session. additionally, all the "love interests" kind of have the same body type with a notable exception and some incredibly surface-level differences like bust size which i find lazy and boring. it might just be because i'm not attracted to any of the men's default looks and i'm not attracted to women period, but the Sex Stuff gets exhausting pretty quickly and i ended up just kind of coasting through it.
it's like the game expects you to find nudity inherently sexy which ... i just don't? all the other sexual stuff seems like it's expecting you to take it as goofy-sexy, which i would be all for if it actually landed, but it's like the mannequin version of eroticism - too clean and polished.
the comedy i did generally enjoy, but the Sex Comedy all falls sort of flat because there wasn't really a punchline with any of it. the punchlines were like ... "heh, penis." i love dirty jokes and sex comedy but again, found that pretty lazy.
oh, also, one of the outfits turns one of the characters into markiplier, which is a full star off. i hate that.
This review contains spoilers
well, i can't say i'm that surprised, but i am disappointed.
i want to start off with the positives: this game is really fun! i really like the gameplay loop of both innocence and requiem, and this is the first game i've managed to play straight to completion in a long time. the first ... i wanna say 14? chapters are interesting and pretty well-written!
unfortunately that's where my positives end. the ending message of this game is "everything is actually hugo's fault and he needs to die". the ending message of this game is "being chronically ill and/or grieving and/or traumatised is burdensome to your loved ones. have you heard of MAID?"
like, you could say this is a bad-faith reading, but the macula is quite literally described more or less as a chronic illness exacerbated by trauma. like, textually. i did not realise, probably because i'm a normal person who doesn't think traumatised children who lash out are demons, that every time hugo goes on about everything being his fault that the narrative is siding with him and trying to get you to believe that the child, who is only put into these situations by adults who use him or take advantage of him or otherwise refuse to listen to his wants and needs, is actually the cause of everything wrong and needs to die for the world to not end.
like, for most of this game i THOUGHT the story was about thriving against the odds, but then the last hour happens and it turns out it's about letting go. which would be fine if "letting go" didn't involve executing your brother with a slingshot. like ... what the fuck lol
i want to clarify: i think this ending would be fine if it didn't feel extremely cheap and contrived and if it didn't send such a deeply unpleasant message about trauma and grief and chronic illness. and if the actual death scene wasn't literally "kill your brother with a rock". i LIKE sad endings. i LIKE endings where things aren't magically okay. but when the entire story rhythm is predicated on "things get bad but then they're ok again," it feels very, very weird to suddenly go "but not this time because uhhhhhhhhh." like, come on.
i want to start off with the positives: this game is really fun! i really like the gameplay loop of both innocence and requiem, and this is the first game i've managed to play straight to completion in a long time. the first ... i wanna say 14? chapters are interesting and pretty well-written!
unfortunately that's where my positives end. the ending message of this game is "everything is actually hugo's fault and he needs to die". the ending message of this game is "being chronically ill and/or grieving and/or traumatised is burdensome to your loved ones. have you heard of MAID?"
like, you could say this is a bad-faith reading, but the macula is quite literally described more or less as a chronic illness exacerbated by trauma. like, textually. i did not realise, probably because i'm a normal person who doesn't think traumatised children who lash out are demons, that every time hugo goes on about everything being his fault that the narrative is siding with him and trying to get you to believe that the child, who is only put into these situations by adults who use him or take advantage of him or otherwise refuse to listen to his wants and needs, is actually the cause of everything wrong and needs to die for the world to not end.
like, for most of this game i THOUGHT the story was about thriving against the odds, but then the last hour happens and it turns out it's about letting go. which would be fine if "letting go" didn't involve executing your brother with a slingshot. like ... what the fuck lol
i want to clarify: i think this ending would be fine if it didn't feel extremely cheap and contrived and if it didn't send such a deeply unpleasant message about trauma and grief and chronic illness. and if the actual death scene wasn't literally "kill your brother with a rock". i LIKE sad endings. i LIKE endings where things aren't magically okay. but when the entire story rhythm is predicated on "things get bad but then they're ok again," it feels very, very weird to suddenly go "but not this time because uhhhhhhhhh." like, come on.
2019
really, really good game to play with a friend or partner. boyfriend and i played it together and it's one of the best co-op experiences we've ever had tbh. took us maybe 17 hours to beat, but we committed to finding all gems and boos and as many secrets as we could in general.
2022
a couple frustrating levels in here but overall very cute, polished, and fun to play. really, really enjoyed this one.
2014
enjoyable but clunky. definitely shows its age a bit. would recommend playing with a friend.
top notch co-op escape room game. really, really enjoyed this one.