mario7
This review contains spoilers
(Review of version 2.3, I didn't start playing from any previous versions!)
They should probably add a notice to have it recommend you play this with a controller. I bet a major reason people keep saying the game is hard is because of the awkward keyboard controls (and jumping straight to cheat codes, which I will explain why you probably shouldn't later in the review).
Something I've seen people complain about is that this game makes them motion sick. Which I'd understand, if you didn't have the accessibility options menu where you can turn off screen shake and camera tilting. But I don't know if that would help, because I don't ever get motion sick playing video games unless I play an FPS like ULTRAKILL where I have to, as the game's name implies, kill many enemies by constantly switching at which enemy I am looking at in a shower of blood. But maybe some players are more sensitive to motion sickness, even with those options turned off. In that case, I'm sorry that this fangame did not account for that, and maybe try discussing with the developers of this fangame about your problem or problems for feedback.
This game hands out eye candy, and a lot of it. Even the settings menu is animated, which you don't see that much in most games. I appreciate whoever thought of animating the trash can.
You'd think they put style over substance. But you'd be wrong.
People keep saying that the track/level design is bad, but I honestly do not see any issue with it yet. And I'm not referring to visual design, I'm referring to their gameplay. It's very drifty which I really like. I don't know if people just entered a password and went to the hardest levels immediately without playing it non-cheated which gradually teaches you how to play the game, which brings me to my next point:
This game, whilst very similar on the surface, is different from SRB2Kart. There are more mechanics, like the Sonic 3 Insta-Shield which you can use to make people cry whilst sacrificing your speed, Speed Gatekeepers, and Items like Jawz (which is this fangame's equivalent to Mario Kart blue shells, which you can also use to make people cry, but this time also sacrificing your speed. I will explain why it is a good thing that picking up items to sacrifice your speed later in the review), and more that I don't have the time to explain. If you can tolerate racing games, please check this fangame out WITHOUT cheats/passwords (aside from the Unlock All Colors and Unlock All Alternate Music Passwords, I find those to be trivial, and don't find them to be interesting enough to go through the trouble of unlocking. I didn't use the passwords for these anyways, however) for your first time playthrough. They're put behind passwords for a reason, and that reason is easing you into the gameplay. If you don't enjoy at least intermediate-level learning curves in video games, maybe don't play this.
I didn't find the first three cups hard at all, and it got very slightly harder on the 4th one for me.
My favorite (original) song from this fangame is the Grand Prix Results screen! (Also, EC's different-sounding track felt as though it was intentionally in sync with the level, and as such it was the part in the game where I felt the most ecstasy as of writing this. Genuinely.)
My least favorite (original) song is the title screen theme. It doesn't have a fanfare or something blasting your ears with juice at the start. You don't expect a song you'd find going through the menus to play directly on the title screen, you know, the main logo screen you see after the splash screens? It feels out of place.
This fangame, whilst it is trying to look like a Sega Saturn game, it is not historically accurate.
There are references to things from games (and other media) made after 1997 (Sonic Adventure and maybe Post-Sonic Adventure levels, Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2's grading system) but it honestly does not matter as the stages are so well designed both visually and gameplay-wise that I honestly can't bother to care about the stages and neither the grading system as that is only a minor part of the game.
One level, I do however care about in terms of "why did they add this?!", is the addition of Regal Ruin from Sonic R. You cannot have Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers and Sonic R exist in the same alternate reality timeline, Kart Krew.
One things you might notice about the mechanics is that you can't ring boost while using items and that you have to have 0 rings to insta-shield. I and many others would initially think that that is unintuitive, but if you stand there to think about it for a bit, it might make more sense for online balance (I've heard that the developers said it was for that reason as well). You'd say that that doesn't make sense, but picture some sweater managing his ring boosting, insta-shielding every player he comes into contact with, and iteming them and you'll see what I mean. Everybody would have to micro-manage these things while racing to be the best in the meta, and it doesn't sound very fun. That's why I don't like Mario Kart Wii's meta as it relies on one funky character for you to play the best, and when the game's overly competitive, and as a result not fun anymore, why bother? This game makes you choose between just speed or items that might advantage you or give you speed. That's fun.
Here are a few of my nitpicks in order of most to least egregious:
- You can't delete player profiles in-game (You could edit the ringprofiles.prf file, but it's not intuitive as the encoding has it all garbled, meaning I don't really know where the profiles end, and if the file ends in a special way. I can't find any documentation or discussion about this.)
- You can't set window and game resolution separately (You probably can't do this in SRB2 either, but still)
- Bark's voicelines are just Alex's from Street Fighter 3, which I would've been fine with if it actually fit him. They don't. I mean, he might seem like a jerk, but I don't think he's overtly narcissistic in any way. "He is blunt and quiet, but has a gentle heart and loves nature. He is actually a very shy guy."
- Inaccurate undithered/uncheckered shadows, while being focused on looking like a Sega Saturn game (You might say this might count as minor part of the game, but I'd argue that it isn't because you see those inaccurate blob shadows all of the time in-game)
- There are sorting issues in the Software renderer (Maybe I should report this... But I am too busy)
- Annoyingly bad Undertale-like tutorial dialogue voices
- I don't think it is explained why Tails is working with Robotnik in the tutorial. In the Sonic OVA he was wary of using the device Robotnik gave him and now he's just working with him? How and why?
- You can't open the real pause menu when watching replays
- Why is FoV in Accessibility, and not Video Settings?
They should probably add a notice to have it recommend you play this with a controller. I bet a major reason people keep saying the game is hard is because of the awkward keyboard controls (and jumping straight to cheat codes, which I will explain why you probably shouldn't later in the review).
Something I've seen people complain about is that this game makes them motion sick. Which I'd understand, if you didn't have the accessibility options menu where you can turn off screen shake and camera tilting. But I don't know if that would help, because I don't ever get motion sick playing video games unless I play an FPS like ULTRAKILL where I have to, as the game's name implies, kill many enemies by constantly switching at which enemy I am looking at in a shower of blood. But maybe some players are more sensitive to motion sickness, even with those options turned off. In that case, I'm sorry that this fangame did not account for that, and maybe try discussing with the developers of this fangame about your problem or problems for feedback.
This game hands out eye candy, and a lot of it. Even the settings menu is animated, which you don't see that much in most games. I appreciate whoever thought of animating the trash can.
You'd think they put style over substance. But you'd be wrong.
People keep saying that the track/level design is bad, but I honestly do not see any issue with it yet. And I'm not referring to visual design, I'm referring to their gameplay. It's very drifty which I really like. I don't know if people just entered a password and went to the hardest levels immediately without playing it non-cheated which gradually teaches you how to play the game, which brings me to my next point:
This game, whilst very similar on the surface, is different from SRB2Kart. There are more mechanics, like the Sonic 3 Insta-Shield which you can use to make people cry whilst sacrificing your speed, Speed Gatekeepers, and Items like Jawz (which is this fangame's equivalent to Mario Kart blue shells, which you can also use to make people cry, but this time also sacrificing your speed. I will explain why it is a good thing that picking up items to sacrifice your speed later in the review), and more that I don't have the time to explain. If you can tolerate racing games, please check this fangame out WITHOUT cheats/passwords (aside from the Unlock All Colors and Unlock All Alternate Music Passwords, I find those to be trivial, and don't find them to be interesting enough to go through the trouble of unlocking. I didn't use the passwords for these anyways, however) for your first time playthrough. They're put behind passwords for a reason, and that reason is easing you into the gameplay. If you don't enjoy at least intermediate-level learning curves in video games, maybe don't play this.
I didn't find the first three cups hard at all, and it got very slightly harder on the 4th one for me.
My favorite (original) song from this fangame is the Grand Prix Results screen! (Also, EC's different-sounding track felt as though it was intentionally in sync with the level, and as such it was the part in the game where I felt the most ecstasy as of writing this. Genuinely.)
My least favorite (original) song is the title screen theme. It doesn't have a fanfare or something blasting your ears with juice at the start. You don't expect a song you'd find going through the menus to play directly on the title screen, you know, the main logo screen you see after the splash screens? It feels out of place.
This fangame, whilst it is trying to look like a Sega Saturn game, it is not historically accurate.
There are references to things from games (and other media) made after 1997 (Sonic Adventure and maybe Post-Sonic Adventure levels, Sonic Adventure or Sonic Adventure 2's grading system) but it honestly does not matter as the stages are so well designed both visually and gameplay-wise that I honestly can't bother to care about the stages and neither the grading system as that is only a minor part of the game.
One level, I do however care about in terms of "why did they add this?!", is the addition of Regal Ruin from Sonic R. You cannot have Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers and Sonic R exist in the same alternate reality timeline, Kart Krew.
One things you might notice about the mechanics is that you can't ring boost while using items and that you have to have 0 rings to insta-shield. I and many others would initially think that that is unintuitive, but if you stand there to think about it for a bit, it might make more sense for online balance (I've heard that the developers said it was for that reason as well). You'd say that that doesn't make sense, but picture some sweater managing his ring boosting, insta-shielding every player he comes into contact with, and iteming them and you'll see what I mean. Everybody would have to micro-manage these things while racing to be the best in the meta, and it doesn't sound very fun. That's why I don't like Mario Kart Wii's meta as it relies on one funky character for you to play the best, and when the game's overly competitive, and as a result not fun anymore, why bother? This game makes you choose between just speed or items that might advantage you or give you speed. That's fun.
Here are a few of my nitpicks in order of most to least egregious:
- You can't delete player profiles in-game (You could edit the ringprofiles.prf file, but it's not intuitive as the encoding has it all garbled, meaning I don't really know where the profiles end, and if the file ends in a special way. I can't find any documentation or discussion about this.)
- You can't set window and game resolution separately (You probably can't do this in SRB2 either, but still)
- Bark's voicelines are just Alex's from Street Fighter 3, which I would've been fine with if it actually fit him. They don't. I mean, he might seem like a jerk, but I don't think he's overtly narcissistic in any way. "He is blunt and quiet, but has a gentle heart and loves nature. He is actually a very shy guy."
- Inaccurate undithered/uncheckered shadows, while being focused on looking like a Sega Saturn game (You might say this might count as minor part of the game, but I'd argue that it isn't because you see those inaccurate blob shadows all of the time in-game)
- There are sorting issues in the Software renderer (Maybe I should report this... But I am too busy)
- Annoyingly bad Undertale-like tutorial dialogue voices
- I don't think it is explained why Tails is working with Robotnik in the tutorial. In the Sonic OVA he was wary of using the device Robotnik gave him and now he's just working with him? How and why?
- You can't open the real pause menu when watching replays
- Why is FoV in Accessibility, and not Video Settings?
2024
This review contains spoilers
What if Garfield Kart had... HYPER-REALISTIC blood...
medium-high effort game jam game. It's sonic.exe #9043.
Here's some thoughts I had playing the game, without having watched tubers screaming at this game:
- Kitty Kart 64? Come on, that's generic. You could've come up with a name for the mascot. Batty sounds like a good name. (Because bat rhymes with cat, you have a birthday cone and the word "birthday" sounds like "batty"... and also because batty means crazy... actually maybe I could think of a better one than "Batty", but I'm too lazy.)
- "DreamRacer" (The window title) sounds more fitting than "Kitty Kart 64" for this game.
- Why is chromatic aberration being used? Did you know there's an N64 shader for Godot than has a shader blur intended for viewports, to make it look like actual Nintendo 64 games? (Looks accurate if you set it to 0.5, in my case)
- Those are terrible controls.
- Why are there alphabet blocks in most of those scary lost game things? Did Petscop start the now oversaturated usage of alphabet blocks in "This was supposed to be a family friendly game, but something dark happened" projects?
- The first map reminded me a bit of Road Trip Adventure. I don't think that was intentional, however.
- Minimaps on the HUD were a nice touch (Y-Y-Y-Yes).
- Should've added a sound warning to the itch.io page, or on the warning at the start of the game? (Mmm, ear!)
- Why is that the sound you make when you hop?
- Tooth breaking cutscene was high effort. How?
medium-high effort game jam game. It's sonic.exe #9043.
Here's some thoughts I had playing the game, without having watched tubers screaming at this game:
- Kitty Kart 64? Come on, that's generic. You could've come up with a name for the mascot. Batty sounds like a good name. (Because bat rhymes with cat, you have a birthday cone and the word "birthday" sounds like "batty"... and also because batty means crazy... actually maybe I could think of a better one than "Batty", but I'm too lazy.)
- "DreamRacer" (The window title) sounds more fitting than "Kitty Kart 64" for this game.
- Why is chromatic aberration being used? Did you know there's an N64 shader for Godot than has a shader blur intended for viewports, to make it look like actual Nintendo 64 games? (Looks accurate if you set it to 0.5, in my case)
- Those are terrible controls.
- Why are there alphabet blocks in most of those scary lost game things? Did Petscop start the now oversaturated usage of alphabet blocks in "This was supposed to be a family friendly game, but something dark happened" projects?
- The first map reminded me a bit of Road Trip Adventure. I don't think that was intentional, however.
- Minimaps on the HUD were a nice touch (Y-Y-Y-Yes).
- Should've added a sound warning to the itch.io page, or on the warning at the start of the game? (Mmm, ear!)
- Why is that the sound you make when you hop?
- Tooth breaking cutscene was high effort. How?
Really wonderful visuals. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't impressed with how greatly animated and colorful the game looked in the trailer, and that is felt the same throughout the game.
I'm not a huge fan of the soundtrack, however. It sounds almost the same like all the "New" Series soundtracks, but worse. I don't know why there's praise being given towards that.
I think they got high (which I'd bet real money is what they do when they're coming up for ideas for every Mario game since the beginning) and decided to put Omochao in Mario, but worse.
Level design is... fine. All I can say is that once I'll beat the game, I hope that I will be able to say good things about it for the later levels.
Let's address the elephant in the room (the one that isn't in the game), Mario and Luigi aren't being voice acted by Charles anymore, and that is not as big of an issue, if at all. (if you thought it was, for some reason. It had to happen eventually.)
For Mario's voice, 50% of the time it sounds indistinguishable from the previous actor, 30% of the time it sounds like someone else (which I'm fine with, it's still Nintendo making Mario after all), and 20% of the time he sounds like Mickey Mouse. I wonder if they told the actor to slightly sound like that intentionally.
But... who cares? Why I'm even putting this section here is solely because I wanted to say Mario sounds like Mickey Mouse now, and I find that to be ironic for obvious reasons. Should I cut this section of the review out? I don't know. I wasted my time writing that, so I'll keep it anyway.
If the "New" Series felt like the McDonald's of 2D Mario, then this one is like Burger King. It's a good step-up, but it's still fast food.
I'm not a huge fan of the soundtrack, however. It sounds almost the same like all the "New" Series soundtracks, but worse. I don't know why there's praise being given towards that.
I think they got high (which I'd bet real money is what they do when they're coming up for ideas for every Mario game since the beginning) and decided to put Omochao in Mario, but worse.
Level design is... fine. All I can say is that once I'll beat the game, I hope that I will be able to say good things about it for the later levels.
Let's address the elephant in the room (the one that isn't in the game), Mario and Luigi aren't being voice acted by Charles anymore, and that is not as big of an issue, if at all. (if you thought it was, for some reason. It had to happen eventually.)
For Mario's voice, 50% of the time it sounds indistinguishable from the previous actor, 30% of the time it sounds like someone else (which I'm fine with, it's still Nintendo making Mario after all), and 20% of the time he sounds like Mickey Mouse. I wonder if they told the actor to slightly sound like that intentionally.
But... who cares? Why I'm even putting this section here is solely because I wanted to say Mario sounds like Mickey Mouse now, and I find that to be ironic for obvious reasons. Should I cut this section of the review out? I don't know. I wasted my time writing that, so I'll keep it anyway.
If the "New" Series felt like the McDonald's of 2D Mario, then this one is like Burger King. It's a good step-up, but it's still fast food.
2006
Sometimes I think Roblox intentionally transformed from a funny Lego-like MMO to a game development industry experiment to see how little effort you can put into your game to make kids play it
2020
Chess is a game about 2 sides fighting over power.
Chess 2, however, adds in a new force, and all the other parties stand in fear as they do nothing else but stare at their enemy, that being you, a creature equipped with advanced weaponry that they cannot easily process yet.
You have only one goal, and that is for both of them to fall and only for you to remain.
But what will you achieve? A lifetime of loneliness in a vast teal-colored void with only one, or two ways out? A war without reason is only pain. There is no benefit given to any party.
But... maybe this is a message about if you are the only one left standing, that there is no conflict?
...Or maybe this is just another funny rage game project, and I have just wasted the same amount of time writing this as I have played and painfully beaten the game.
Chess 2, however, adds in a new force, and all the other parties stand in fear as they do nothing else but stare at their enemy, that being you, a creature equipped with advanced weaponry that they cannot easily process yet.
You have only one goal, and that is for both of them to fall and only for you to remain.
But what will you achieve? A lifetime of loneliness in a vast teal-colored void with only one, or two ways out? A war without reason is only pain. There is no benefit given to any party.
But... maybe this is a message about if you are the only one left standing, that there is no conflict?
...Or maybe this is just another funny rage game project, and I have just wasted the same amount of time writing this as I have played and painfully beaten the game.
Are they seriously calling adding a "new" gamemode that's already been playable for years on community servers (because it's a community mod) and a few other community-made maps into official servers a "Major Update"? This is not a "Major Update", but actually a "Major Cope" (10/10/23 note: did I actually write that?) from Eric Smith (the only person officially working at Valve that's maintaining Team Fortress 2 currently) to gaslight the playerbase into thinking this game is still being kept alive by Valve (The Company).
When are we getting new weapons? When are they going to nerf the diamondback, the spy's kunai, the crossbow (or maybe buff all the other medic primaries except the crossbow), and various other weapons? When are they going to fix the Revolver animations? When are they going to remove (or disable by default for servers) the game design failure that was random crits?
Even the official implementation of the VS. Saxton Hale gamemode isn't up to Valve's signature polish, as it's a community mod. Meaning Valve did nothing but add the maps some community members made to the casual map pool. And while I liked it in community server mod form back in the day because you knew it was a COMMUNITY MOD, adding it officially for all players to play takes a bit more than the modding community to do that.
- It doesn't use the known official voice actors for the gamemode's new voicelines (They could use the actor from expiration date or whatever for the soldier)
- Saxton Hale's player icon for the HUD uses the Heavy's icon
- Playing this gamemode doesn't add experience points to your casual rank level
I've heard rumors that Valve is getting more than one person to work on Team Fortress 2 again, but those are just rumors, so you never know.
When are we getting new weapons? When are they going to nerf the diamondback, the spy's kunai, the crossbow (or maybe buff all the other medic primaries except the crossbow), and various other weapons? When are they going to fix the Revolver animations? When are they going to remove (or disable by default for servers) the game design failure that was random crits?
Even the official implementation of the VS. Saxton Hale gamemode isn't up to Valve's signature polish, as it's a community mod. Meaning Valve did nothing but add the maps some community members made to the casual map pool. And while I liked it in community server mod form back in the day because you knew it was a COMMUNITY MOD, adding it officially for all players to play takes a bit more than the modding community to do that.
- It doesn't use the known official voice actors for the gamemode's new voicelines (They could use the actor from expiration date or whatever for the soldier)
- Saxton Hale's player icon for the HUD uses the Heavy's icon
- Playing this gamemode doesn't add experience points to your casual rank level
I've heard rumors that Valve is getting more than one person to work on Team Fortress 2 again, but those are just rumors, so you never know.
TBD
I have read the defense Garry has written for putting the sausage people into the game, and while I actually agree with it completely! I'm still not a fan of hairy weiners
2022
Game Freak, please stop rushing your games in order to give a fun experience to all Pokémon fans...
The Bad:
- Mediocre story, as sadly expected
- The "eating" animations
- All the caves, mountains and even some of the fields look very terrible, due to their badly made terrain modelling, LODs and lighting
- There still isn't a "I have already played a Pokémon game before" difficulty mode
- Flamigo just being a flamingo with a knotted neck. I would've seriously preffered for it to have gotten scrapped before release due to how uncreative of a Pokémon design it is. I know one of the designers(?) has said it's hard to think of new, unique pokémon designs, but with the amount of great fakemon a lot of dedicated fans still create, it's a bit hard to believe you can't find more people to make great and unique pokémon designs.
- Interacting with your pokémon party was perfected with the addition of Pokémon Amie in Pokémon X and all games after that haven't reached the level of charm it had in that game. Game Freak, let us pet our Pokémon again, please. It's a shame because this is fully possible with the Nintendo Switch's touchscreen capabilities...
- Ed Sheeran
The Good:
+ (mostly) Well thought-out open world exploration with fast travel options
+ Some towns and fields actually look pretty nice
+ The animations for the legendary pokémon are really well made in the cave sequence
+ Tatsugiri
The Bad:
- Mediocre story, as sadly expected
- The "eating" animations
- All the caves, mountains and even some of the fields look very terrible, due to their badly made terrain modelling, LODs and lighting
- There still isn't a "I have already played a Pokémon game before" difficulty mode
- Flamigo just being a flamingo with a knotted neck. I would've seriously preffered for it to have gotten scrapped before release due to how uncreative of a Pokémon design it is. I know one of the designers(?) has said it's hard to think of new, unique pokémon designs, but with the amount of great fakemon a lot of dedicated fans still create, it's a bit hard to believe you can't find more people to make great and unique pokémon designs.
- Interacting with your pokémon party was perfected with the addition of Pokémon Amie in Pokémon X and all games after that haven't reached the level of charm it had in that game. Game Freak, let us pet our Pokémon again, please. It's a shame because this is fully possible with the Nintendo Switch's touchscreen capabilities...
- Ed Sheeran
The Good:
+ (mostly) Well thought-out open world exploration with fast travel options
+ Some towns and fields actually look pretty nice
+ The animations for the legendary pokémon are really well made in the cave sequence
+ Tatsugiri
The micro-transactions are so in-your-face when playing multiplayer that it's actually unbearable, and the very small selection of maps included in multiplayer bored me quickly. These things ultimately made me quit the game.
Weapon animations are pretty good, but it's a shame that the majority of players will use the highly saturated weapon skins designed for 12 year olds to brag about having. You're really telling me both terrorists and the military fight with colorful weapons in the real world?
I might play the over-priced campaign someday, but I don't know how to feel about this series with it's propaganda. Infinity Ward says that the Modern Warfare series is apolitical, but I'd like you to tell me how war involving countries that bare a lot of resemblance to real ones is apparently apolitical
Also, no Linux support because of it's anti-cheat! Love when mainstream games do this /s
I honestly would've played this more if the developers cared more about their game than their profit.
Weapon animations are pretty good, but it's a shame that the majority of players will use the highly saturated weapon skins designed for 12 year olds to brag about having. You're really telling me both terrorists and the military fight with colorful weapons in the real world?
I might play the over-priced campaign someday, but I don't know how to feel about this series with it's propaganda. Infinity Ward says that the Modern Warfare series is apolitical, but I'd like you to tell me how war involving countries that bare a lot of resemblance to real ones is apparently apolitical
Also, no Linux support because of it's anti-cheat! Love when mainstream games do this /s
I honestly would've played this more if the developers cared more about their game than their profit.
2012
I'm all for letting violence in games be portrayed, but this one slips WAY past the limit of my comfort zone... if you like this game's premise, heavy glorification of violence, and story, then I don't like you.
Also, as a pixel artist, this game looks so visually unappealing with it's amateurly overshaded pixel art that it genuinely boggles my mind how so many people can look at this and not internally puke...
Tutorial is not integrated into the story and as far as I'm aware, it's unskippable. I love it when an in-game character tells me to press the WASD keys to move around in the context of a story in which I'm supposed to be immersed! /s (I know a lot of games are guilty of this, but still)
The only thing I can only genuinely say is well done are the snappy visual effects when you kill an enemy, but everything else overshadows this thing so much that I really can't say I find this game to be appealing at all.
Also, as a pixel artist, this game looks so visually unappealing with it's amateurly overshaded pixel art that it genuinely boggles my mind how so many people can look at this and not internally puke...
Tutorial is not integrated into the story and as far as I'm aware, it's unskippable. I love it when an in-game character tells me to press the WASD keys to move around in the context of a story in which I'm supposed to be immersed! /s (I know a lot of games are guilty of this, but still)
The only thing I can only genuinely say is well done are the snappy visual effects when you kill an enemy, but everything else overshadows this thing so much that I really can't say I find this game to be appealing at all.
2010
Played this when I was younger solely because I genuinely thought the thing on the cover art looked like springtrap from FNAF 3.
I think it's safe to say that my generation is doomed.
I will try to (properly) play this game again some day
I think it's safe to say that my generation is doomed.
I will try to (properly) play this game again some day
2023
(Review 2, check my 1st review for a review more focused on the contents of the game itself)
I think the only actual scary thing about this mod is the sheer amount of popularity it has garnered now; It's been played by popular tubers and just recently has even been played by John Romero himself!
I want to reiterate that I think this is one of the cheesiest attempts at a horror story ever made, and that I cannot believe that this is what people perceive as being the peak of horror at the time I wrote this review.
I really, really miss Petscop. I know that was also a bit cheesy at the start of it with the insensitive Candace Newmaker references... but the creator has stated that they realized that halfway through the series and made up for that mistake by incorporating an actually decent and (sort of) believable story that strayed away from making any references to real people.
The problem My House has is that it's story isn't believable at all from the start. The AI generated drawings and portraits, the obvious "liminal spaces" aesthetic (which has become really oversaturated over the past few years) on the later parts of the map, and a lore document with cheesy tropes that should've not been included so that your imagination could fill in the gaps... These things bastardize the whole idea of the creator grieving the loss of their friend.
I think the only actual scary thing about this mod is the sheer amount of popularity it has garnered now; It's been played by popular tubers and just recently has even been played by John Romero himself!
I want to reiterate that I think this is one of the cheesiest attempts at a horror story ever made, and that I cannot believe that this is what people perceive as being the peak of horror at the time I wrote this review.
I really, really miss Petscop. I know that was also a bit cheesy at the start of it with the insensitive Candace Newmaker references... but the creator has stated that they realized that halfway through the series and made up for that mistake by incorporating an actually decent and (sort of) believable story that strayed away from making any references to real people.
The problem My House has is that it's story isn't believable at all from the start. The AI generated drawings and portraits, the obvious "liminal spaces" aesthetic (which has become really oversaturated over the past few years) on the later parts of the map, and a lore document with cheesy tropes that should've not been included so that your imagination could fill in the gaps... These things bastardize the whole idea of the creator grieving the loss of their friend.
This took two years to finish, when it could've easily been made in 11 months at maximum if more interest was put by the developers into this. With that large amount of time "spent" working on the project, you'd think that the end result would be something 1:1 with the real thing?
No. (At least when it first released)
I'm not gonna go into detail about every minor thing they got wrong (The HUD textures and the player animations being the major things) but it wasn't a lot and the major things were easily fixable if you modified some files of the source code of this open source project.
But... hear me out, I think other than that, it is pretty accurate. Sure, there are still a few minor inaccuracies in some minor areas, but they are so minor you really wouldn't notice a difference playing a modified version to fix the two major inaccuracies.
No. (At least when it first released)
I'm not gonna go into detail about every minor thing they got wrong (The HUD textures and the player animations being the major things) but it wasn't a lot and the major things were easily fixable if you modified some files of the source code of this open source project.
But... hear me out, I think other than that, it is pretty accurate. Sure, there are still a few minor inaccuracies in some minor areas, but they are so minor you really wouldn't notice a difference playing a modified version to fix the two major inaccuracies.
2023
The mapping detail and music are pretty great, but those are really the only positives I can give to this attempt at another "haunted video game" thing, because the lore included with the game overshadows these things and is the main point of this mod.
I don't understand why people unironically think this game is the greatest Doom 2 mod of the year just because it taps into the whole "scary haunted video game" genre that most indie games, game mods (including this one) or web series just can't seem to get right for the past few years. The thing I hate the most about this mod is the inclusion of the "liminal spaces" thing. It just feels really, really forced.
Please stop giving this the large amount of attention it doesn't deserve.
I don't understand why people unironically think this game is the greatest Doom 2 mod of the year just because it taps into the whole "scary haunted video game" genre that most indie games, game mods (including this one) or web series just can't seem to get right for the past few years. The thing I hate the most about this mod is the inclusion of the "liminal spaces" thing. It just feels really, really forced.
Please stop giving this the large amount of attention it doesn't deserve.
2020
Graphics are great (Honestly what I'd prefer an open world Pokemon game to look like), everything else is just a weeb's wet dream. I'm not into modern anime so I don't really care to play much more of this game.