My God This Game Never Shuts Da Hell Up!!!

An absolutely gorgeous looking feast for the eyes, with the camera panning to showcase some truly wondrous vistas. I'm not entirely surprised this thing is beautiful, as Hyper Light Drifter somehow had great looking vistas in pixel art. This team just makes games that look awesome.

What is a surprise is how fucking wordy this game is, as Hyper Light Drifter has NO words. Maybe they felt they needed to compensate by writing three million words, but if you like a ton of boring lore in a go-nowhere story, they have covered their bases!! Also if you want my professional opinion: shut the voices OFF. the voice acting isn't bad, it's just completely inappropriate in a game like this. I think a made-up language like what's in Gravity Rush or Shadow of the Colossus would be much more fitting, and maybe have Rei not QUIP ALL THE TIME and we can make it work. But this is a way too verbose game that tells so much story visually that you have to wonder if this was just them capitulating to someone. That someone barged into the development studio with a AAA game and said, "See, the protagonist comments on everything, you need this in your game."

Also combat mechanics. I have given up my battle against combat mechanics. I am going to have to interrupt my platforming to press square 4 times in front of a generic monster for the rest of my life.

This game is so enjoyable though. I love the boss fights, I love the flow of the game, I cannot believe a smaller indie studio could make something that feels so good to play. I've seen people complaining about the price tag (40 bucks) but this game looks like it was a massive pain in the ass to program so if they want to charge that much for their work they fucking should.

I played the og Gears game. It was a bit fun and a bit annoying at the same time. I felt this game have the most variety of gimmick levels in the trilogy and I somehow liked most of them. But I didn't enjoy with the rest of the things that much

In one level you ride a minecart, in one level you use a satellite gun to rain lasers, in one level you must use light effectively to stay alive from shadow bats, in one level you ride a... damn vehicle(I didn't like that one) etc. and I had a lot of fun with their variety of interesting premises for levels, also I liked that it always stick to it's serious tone to the point this game could be my favourite in the trilogy but it still have so many annoyances.

In this game, any auto guns are worthless. I played this game on hardcore and enemies just don't die to the body shots, they don't even stumble of your shooting compared to the sequels, they just continue to run like nothing happened and because of that every fight takes too long to the point of boring you. So you have to use heavy weapons mostly and also headshot with them to be able to minimize the time you spend on shooting enemies. I was wondering If they didn't test the enemies themselves and I understand what the hell is going on when I arrived to the vehicle section of this game.

Why? Because this vehicle needs two person to operate. How do you operate you ask without getting crazy when playing that section solo? With playing co-op of course!
So with co-op way, auto weapons actually have purpose with assisting, so no gun fight takes a damn 10 minute I assume. I only can assume because I decided to play this game solo and as a result some sections was pretty infuriating. For example I can't count how many times I died in that damn vehicle section or in minecart or in train etc. Oh also checkpoints are really few. This results with, you dying to a one shot shotgun or rocket or grenades and so it ends up resetting the whole wave arena fight of course. But I think my patience improved a lot with playing ps1 games so I actually beat this game, I was even gonna respect it's difficulty but I still hate the one-shotting attacks, so... unfortunately no. It wasn't that of a good time.

Another thing I can say is, it's movement mechanics are really hard to get a grasp on. Because when you initiate running or rolling or getting to cover, you really have to think twice because getting out of that or animation to finish takes time. First I didn't like it, but it managed to give me the feeling that I am a hulking tank, so I actually started to enjoy it. I also realized that if I take analog stick to opposite direction and then press the run button, character does a 90 or 180 degree quick turn so this knowledge actually made the game more fun for me.

Unfortunately I can't say the same for the cutscenes nor the characters. Other than pre-rendered cutscenes, every in game cutsceney looks ROUGH and clunky. Good thing is they are pretty short but they sometimes manage to take me out of the scene sometimes so... In my opinion this game would be better without them. Also characters aren't more than cliche grumpy angry soldier guys.

Yeah that was my own journey with this game. I can't say it was a bad time but I can't say it was good either. They balance it for me so... this is the result. If you like super serious and dark shooter vibes you are gonna enjoy this game. But in my opinion, if you want to get entertained of this game, don't play on solo. Play with someone. Otherwise you can go crazy like me in some sections and your experience can get soured as a result like me

INJUSTIÇADO!

Não consegui jogar praticamente nada enquanto estava jogando Weird West, ele prendeu totalmente minha atenção.

Gosto muito da liberdade de abordagens, as consequências das escolhas, o mundo reativo e sistêmico, características essas que são comuns de Immersive Sims (como Dishonored, Deus Ex, Prey, etc).

A história é legal, porém o texto em si é muito bom, os diálogos são maravilhosos, dá vontade de ler tudo. Eu me peguei diversas vezes lendo livros e documentos do jogo simplesmente por que são bons de ler e sempre tem algo a acrescentar no lore ou até mesmo no contexto do que você está fazendo. Alguns documentos fornecem informações sobre locais, criaturas e história que mudam a forma como você joga.

O mundo que eles criaram aqui é muito interessante, e a exploração compensa com o quanto você pode descobrir sobre o mundo. O jogo possui 5 mini-campanhas que se resolvem todas no final, no geral eu gostei da trama de todas, e de todos os personagens envolvidos nelas.

Eu tenho críticas ao jogo, mas é bizarro o quanto elas não importam muito pro fator diversão. Acho que muitos jogadores que gostam de immersive sims passam por isso, por exemplo, Dishonored tem problemas mas ainda assim é muito divertido.

Mas vamos às críticas, um dos os pontos que mais me incomodam no jogo é uma certa facilidade. Tive que aumentar a dificuldade no meio do jogo por que depois de um certo progresso, as soluções se resumem a "vou matar geral mesmo", fica muito fácil virar uma máquina de matar. Acredito até que a forma ideal de jogar é a "Nimpossível".

Ainda quanto às diferentes soluções para as missões, achei os poderes dos personagens meio inúteis, terminei sem usar quase nada. São poderes meio sem graça, e quase não ajudam em situações do jogo que não sejam combate (salvo algumas exceções como ficar invisível na terceira campanha).

O Save Scumming é praticamente uma mecânica do jogo. Porém toda vez que você volta o save em um local, as IAs são resetadas, então já me deparei com situações bizarras onde resetei o save numa situação e quando carreguei todos no local viraram zumbis, totalmente aleatório. Teve uma situação em que eu estava invadindo um local e fui pego, mas mesmo assim salvei, e ao voltar o save um pouco depois, simplesmente todos passaram a me ignorar como invasor.

O jogo é ambicioso e tem muitas possibilidades! Me surpreende muito ver um estúdio pequeno como esse fazendo algo tão grande. Isso reflete em alguns problemas, mas que eu resolvi simplesmente evitando eles, como mapas e encontros casuais repetitivos.

Apesar das leves críticas, o tempo que passei em Weird West foi super divertido, o jogo me fez buscar soluções criativas em vários momentos, e estou animadíssimo pra ver o que mais esse estúdio (de um dos fundadores da Arkane) vai fazer no futuro.

De qualquer forma fico muito feliz em ver que os Immersive Sims não morreram, e que é possível um estúdio indie fazer algo com esse escopo!

-------- CRÍTICA COM LEVE SPOILER AGORA ---------
Por último, acredito que o final poderia ser mais punitivo com certas ações, eu matei mais de 400 pessoas no jogo e não colhi nenhuma consequência disso. Basta responder a pergunta de forma certa e pronto? Podia ter ousado mais.

Strong vibes, excellent narration and solid 16 bit jrpg adventuring with an overall difficulty curve just on the right spot..for the most parts.

Personally I feel like the story started of stronger than it ended up with, but the cartoon styled cutscenes were super cool and plentiful, while the pacing never dropped throughout its 20 or so hour run.

The inventory menu is easily the weakest aspect with zero item/ gear stat or spell descriptions, and there are A LOT of spells and skills to keep track of, so holding a sheet with descriptions on the side is absolutely essential to play through this.

While dungeons are a lot easier to traverse than Phantasy Star II, they still have no checkpoints, so if you game over it's straight back to the title screen.

Phantasy Star 4 also loves throwing gimmick bosses at you, so be ready to suddenly get wiped because you didnt use a requisite item or weapon.

Even with its share of flaws and less intuitive design choices, it's still a fantastic jrpg worth the trouble.

Zachtronics games are at their best when they are abstracted enough to expose some interesting aspect of programming without just being assembly coding. Opus Magnum is the best example of this -- its ballet of alchemic operations represented in physical space allows you to experiment with timing, parallel processing, and register management without muddying things with syntax and op codes.

Exapunks unfortunately leans more towards the TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O side of things, with a thin layer of story and mechanics over top of direct assembly coding. As someone who writes code professionally, this never appeals to me. It is too fiddly and clunky to really expose the fun parts of programming and I find myself challenged more by the syntax and idiosyncrasies than the actual problems the game is presenting.
I wanted Exapunks to explore hacking in the same abstracted way as Opus Magnum does alchemy, with mechanics that let you explore the world of network security, data manipulation, and crime, but it isn't really interested in that.

The narrative and world building over top of this game are well done and sort of present a cool window into this world. It didn't seem to be doing anything super unique, but it is telling a hacker story clearly inspired by Neuromancer and doing a competent job of it.

If you like Zachtronics games that hew closer to the metal, this one definitely scratches that itch. I wish it clicked with me more than it does, but I just can't get behind this implementation of programming for fun.

After completing the game on numerous runs, I can say that I have unfortunately warmed up to this game and like it a bit more now. Original review below.

Enter the Gungeon, but for people who are fans of
-Big boobs
-Crammed rooms
-Big boobs
-Newgrounds

An 8/10 game brought down significantly by frustrating encounter design. There are 40 levels in this game, each of which is a huge coin flip where one possible outcome is a treat, the player using their unlocks and abilities to make a mob of enemies look like fools. The other possible outcome is playing one of the most frustrating levels in recent memory - shotgun enemies showing up 5 at a time, any one of whom can one-shot you. Multiple un-stagger-able enemies whose only attack is a ground pound with an enormous hitbox that instantly ragdolls you. Multiple gun enemies pouring into an arena as a motorcycle tries to run you over, exploding if it hits a wall.

The hitboxes on enemy attacks in this game are truly massive, and it's incredibly frustrating when so many of them are one-shots, nearly one-shots, or have the ability to chain-stun you. The game is clearly designed purely as a power fantasy, but the ability of enemies to lock the player down ruins much of this fantasy as there's no satisfying way to counter the most annoying enemy habits. Perhaps more annoying than any attack is the enemies' tendency to constantly pick up things in the environment and throw them at you, resulting in near-constant slo-mo as you dodge roll around the map to avoid chairs, environmental hazards, bullets, one-shot command grabs, and ground pounds, none of which can be blocked or parried.

When this game works, it's fantastic - you feel like you're playing through a John Wick movie where they forgot to give him a gun, but if you try any of these fun cinematic takedowns at the wrong time, you'll likely die, since you take full damage and can be staggered out of any of these animations. It's bad enough that I actually went to go post on the Steam forums for the first time in a decade, and apparently I'm not the only one. The fact that you can go to the "playground" and customize your own encounters - and the fact that this instantly makes the game 40% better! - indicates that it's got decent production value but desperately needs an experienced level designer, someone who can figure out how to challenge the player without resorting to "dodge a lethal map effect every 2 seconds".

There are moments in Midnight Fight Express where the fighting is kinetic, the action is high paced and the chains of your combos are racking up as you bounce between guys, picking up whatever you can where everything feels so damn good and the experience is surreal.

Unfortunately, those moments are not consistent, and when this isn't happening, the game is fairly bland and a bit of a chore to get through. It's a bit of a bummer because those moments of bliss hit and I just found myself thinking, "if this game was this more often, it could be pretty damn fun." There just aren't enough of those moments to really recommend this game.

The game has its own sense of style and doesn't take itself too seriously with how it functions and the story its telling. That being said, some of the offbeat humor and moments just didn't work for me. The general story itself is also pretty forgettable, which certainly doesn't help with the game's general "washes over you like nothing" vibe.

The style is attempting a more simplistic presentation so there's not a lot that really will impress you there either.

The controls though are solid and on top of those moments of bliss, once you become fully skilled up, the sense of strength and growth from what you're upgrading is noticeable. There are some very satisfying kills despite the basic look and style.

It's still not enough to recommend though, as the game also feels quite long. It's a bummer more than anything since there are moments of greatness that really make this game feel cool. This being the work of one person seemingly is also quite the feat despite its shortcomings.

A sad experience, made all the worse by its wasted potential.

The spritework and animations are gorgeous, absolutely full of character. The soundtrack is strong. The gameplay is fun, the combat and puzzles challenging without feeling punishing. You can tell some of the inspirations directly, like the cooking and hearts/stamina system being stolen straight from Breath Of The Wild.

The story is miserable. John, the main viewpoint character and protagonist early on, spends every single scene doing literally nothing as the plot happens around him, and then has zero interest in what happened or what it means. No agency, no curiosity, no feelings. When you're not directly controlling him he becomes a statue. The first chapter teaches you that everybody else in the plot is either an abuser or a victim. Nothing matters, either people hurt you or they die, or both; but either way they're eventually gone so don't bother becoming attached. The only recurring characters know the plot but act all aloof and mysterious and manipulate events, leaving you frustrated instead of wanting to know more.

And all of it gets in the way of the fun, the exploration and the puzzles and the wonder and the fights against fantastical bio-mechanical horrors. There's something amazing here buried under layer upon layer of cynical tragedy and pointless suffering. It took the wrong lessons from Undertale and Lisa The Painful.

Eastward suffers from one of my biggest problems with indie developers nowdays: Make the game pretty, forget to make it fun.

But it also goes an extra mile by trying to be something that truly didnt need to: Earthbound

And also failing doing it.

Ignoring the obvious praise of the art direction of this game (seriously is real good) the game is basically a slog to play. According to the devs its 30 hours long (it took me 24 hours with like 3 being on a mini game that is more fun than the game itself) which you would mostly spend talking with NPCs, putting bombs to solve easy puzzles and talking to more NPCs for the first 10 hours of the game.

Then after it you would unlock the other mechanic of the game which would add another button to your current putting bomb button. Repeat this for another 10 hours.

While doing this you also get to read the story which, on a basic level, it has a lot of potential with an interesting setting and lore behind but that it crashes by the awful pacing and obvious lack of direction cause at the end of the day, the devs didnt know what to do with their characters.

There are, in my opinion, 6 prominent characters in this game, that you get to know during it just so at the end most of them end up doing nothing. It's a great disrepect for probably one of the 3 interesting aspects of the game.

Speaking of characters, this game could theorically have a rock or a box as the main character and i dont think it would change anything. So much shit happening in this world and in front of his eyes and he doesn't react or act to almost anything. It also doesn't help that his sprite makes him look like the most boring and uninterested person ever.

Then, after 20 hours of slog, you reach the final 2 chapters, which are filled with interesting concepts not only story wise but gameplay wise and you are wondering why wasn't the game cut 10 hours so you could just play this sections earlier.

And at the end of the day, thats the real curprit i mentioned earlier: this game is too big. Too big of a story that wasn't developed well enough. Too big of a game that was basically empty from mechanics up to the last 2 hours.

And too big of a disappointment, cause when you really think about the good parts, you can only think what this game could have been if it wasn't trying to be what it isnt.