tdstr
Four small snapshots of Americana. Love the background art in this one, and paired with the music it's very evocative of a specific kinda atmosphere. Worth trying if you have it through an itch bundle, it's very short.
2020
Doesn't do anything The Stanley Parable didn't already do better a decade ago, but it still got a couple strong exhales out of me. Perfectly fine way to spend 20 minutes.
1995
by all reasonable metrics, D is a very, very bad game. it's maybe the single most sluggish adventure game i've ever played, very little happens for most of it, and the gameplay really really sucks. but I can't help but see something here--it's got such a strong vibe and atmosphere that blows so much from the time period out of the water. such a weird thing and really nothing like it. even if you do spend a good third of the game just spinning one wheel and turning around over and over again.
2019
as a presentational piece taken on its own? it's really good, great visuals, great music, very cool.
the catch here is that you have to play the actual game, which is way, way too easy and trivial, and never really gets any more difficult than the first couple puzzles in portal and antichamber. you know, the ones where you're just being taught how to press a button or put a cube on a pressure plate. at least half of the time spent in this game is walking through hallways, pressing buttons, or grabbing cubes off of trees and putting them in their color-designated receptacle, all of which are more tasks of persistence than of being able to solve anything.
begins to approach some interesting puzzle concepts once or twice in that last stage, but it never really gets there. shame, since it looks and sounds so good
the catch here is that you have to play the actual game, which is way, way too easy and trivial, and never really gets any more difficult than the first couple puzzles in portal and antichamber. you know, the ones where you're just being taught how to press a button or put a cube on a pressure plate. at least half of the time spent in this game is walking through hallways, pressing buttons, or grabbing cubes off of trees and putting them in their color-designated receptacle, all of which are more tasks of persistence than of being able to solve anything.
begins to approach some interesting puzzle concepts once or twice in that last stage, but it never really gets there. shame, since it looks and sounds so good
2001
*Shrug*
Trying to get better at dropping games I'm not clicking with and not forcing myself through them, and I guess Myst III is next up on the chopping block.
Not because I think it's bad or anything. The panoramic interaction scheme here is the best and most intuitive the series has seen yet, and the bits of story I've seen so far have been fun, and some of the puzzles I've done have been neat as well. I'm just not really locking into the vibe as much as I did with Myst. Feels too trial and error with the story being too forward.
I think Myst [original] works the best for me since you're piecing together everything, not just the puzzles. Once Riven comes along, the Myst series now has capital L Lore and it's not so mysterious anymore, just fantastical (as well as the puzzles being far too difficult/trial-and-error-y for me to be able to parse without a guide). That lack of mystery is heightened to a fever pitch here, to the point where the "Myst" name stops really making a whole lot of sense. I can tolerate old school trial and error-y point&click puzzling through gritted teeth, but it's hard to really justify it in my head when the atmosphere isn't really as opaque as the puzzles (to no one's surprise, I am not the biggest point & click fan lol).
It does just feel like more of the same to me, only not as good. If you're ride or die for this series coming out of Riven, then that's probably still pretty dope, but I tenuously like Myst and tenuously dislike Riven, so there's not much going for me here.
Trying to get better at dropping games I'm not clicking with and not forcing myself through them, and I guess Myst III is next up on the chopping block.
Not because I think it's bad or anything. The panoramic interaction scheme here is the best and most intuitive the series has seen yet, and the bits of story I've seen so far have been fun, and some of the puzzles I've done have been neat as well. I'm just not really locking into the vibe as much as I did with Myst. Feels too trial and error with the story being too forward.
I think Myst [original] works the best for me since you're piecing together everything, not just the puzzles. Once Riven comes along, the Myst series now has capital L Lore and it's not so mysterious anymore, just fantastical (as well as the puzzles being far too difficult/trial-and-error-y for me to be able to parse without a guide). That lack of mystery is heightened to a fever pitch here, to the point where the "Myst" name stops really making a whole lot of sense. I can tolerate old school trial and error-y point&click puzzling through gritted teeth, but it's hard to really justify it in my head when the atmosphere isn't really as opaque as the puzzles (to no one's surprise, I am not the biggest point & click fan lol).
It does just feel like more of the same to me, only not as good. If you're ride or die for this series coming out of Riven, then that's probably still pretty dope, but I tenuously like Myst and tenuously dislike Riven, so there's not much going for me here.
2022
the worst shit ever. fuck those fucking bear traps and fuck that guy with the gun. actually unplayable without a guide and even then there's like never a moment it's not miserable. only fun I had was streaming to friends and pretending to be a 3 subscriber youtuber and being fake scared at everything and even that i was completely tired of less than halfway through
good for realigning your perspective on what a 1/10 is
edit: this is $40 on steam what the fuuuck
good for realigning your perspective on what a 1/10 is
edit: this is $40 on steam what the fuuuck
Exactly as advertised, but I wish there were more than 4 built-in tower types. Would have loved this as a kid, though.
2015
friends were saying "hop on trove?" as a joke and we did not last an hour, lol.
reminds me of this minecraft modpack I played a bit back in the day that restructured the entire game to be a dungeon crawler action rpg. wish i remembered the name, but i doubt i could find it now. strange duality of extremely simplistic and brain-dead combat, paired with 10 years of feature creep mechanics and menus. it's very obviously a game made in the wake of minecraft, with building and mining mechanics, but I never got to the part where that's ever anything more than an unimportant side-gimmick (if such a part exists).
feels like a fake video game that the main character in a cartoon would get really addicted to for a single episode.
reminds me of this minecraft modpack I played a bit back in the day that restructured the entire game to be a dungeon crawler action rpg. wish i remembered the name, but i doubt i could find it now. strange duality of extremely simplistic and brain-dead combat, paired with 10 years of feature creep mechanics and menus. it's very obviously a game made in the wake of minecraft, with building and mining mechanics, but I never got to the part where that's ever anything more than an unimportant side-gimmick (if such a part exists).
feels like a fake video game that the main character in a cartoon would get really addicted to for a single episode.
2014
played 10 hours back in 2020.
the most fun i had was in the character creator, the rest was a series of increasingly tedious and lengthy quests that consisted of things like "walk 500 meters to the north to this person and press e on them" or "go to this area and kill X enemies", layered with dozens of confusing and unintuitive menus.
which, to be fair, has been an issue with almost every MMO i've tried, but i've particularly never been a fan of the WOW style real-time rpg gameplay that proliferates through so many of them. admittedly i've had very limited MMO experience, but its bizarre that the only one ive tried with combat that wasnt mindnumbing was wizard101 lol
the most fun i had was in the character creator, the rest was a series of increasingly tedious and lengthy quests that consisted of things like "walk 500 meters to the north to this person and press e on them" or "go to this area and kill X enemies", layered with dozens of confusing and unintuitive menus.
which, to be fair, has been an issue with almost every MMO i've tried, but i've particularly never been a fan of the WOW style real-time rpg gameplay that proliferates through so many of them. admittedly i've had very limited MMO experience, but its bizarre that the only one ive tried with combat that wasnt mindnumbing was wizard101 lol
2019
Neat little puzzle box you can finish in less than 5 minutes and nothing more. As with a lot of these super short itch games, it's fine, but it's definitely too short and simplistic to leave much of an impression. Value-neutral.
This is a Simple Complex Puzzle!
2018
it's more levels for overcooked, still functionally the same game.
to reiterate from my overcooked review, it's a decent party game, fun to burn through in a couple hours but not something where i'd really wanna revisit most of the levels more than once. our group had some netcode problems this time, though, and one of our group of 4 dropped out around world 5, so that's maybe something to be aware of if you're not all in the same city
to reiterate from my overcooked review, it's a decent party game, fun to burn through in a couple hours but not something where i'd really wanna revisit most of the levels more than once. our group had some netcode problems this time, though, and one of our group of 4 dropped out around world 5, so that's maybe something to be aware of if you're not all in the same city
2016
don't know why I never reviewed this one way back when I played it. it's a solid party game, nothing more. fun to spend a couple hours burning through but not something I was ever really driven to revisit once we beat it
2006
100% coming back to this in the future but i'm putting it on hold for now since i've been stuck on one boss in the second zone for a while now & refuse to lower the difficulty from normal lol.
still suuuper fun though, kind of what i've always wanted from the broader beatemup/hack&slash kinda genre, just raw, forward execution with no lame fetch-questy adventure game bloat getting in the way. returning when im more in the mood to sink my teeth into really getting good at this
still suuuper fun though, kind of what i've always wanted from the broader beatemup/hack&slash kinda genre, just raw, forward execution with no lame fetch-questy adventure game bloat getting in the way. returning when im more in the mood to sink my teeth into really getting good at this
2009
Very solid orb shooter. For the most part, it's basically the video game form of exotica music; good, accessible fun that is simultaneously also weirdly racist about *vaguely gestures towards every island in the Pacific Ocean*. Last few levels are ridiculously hard though, with the difficulty ramp up mimicking a cliff in that last world. Which I guess isn't too out of the ordinary for PopCap, if the Peggle games are anything to go by.