6 reviews liked by the_frogman


Shovel Knight Dig seems like a case of mistaken identity. All of the things that make Shovel Knight great don't lend well to a roguelite and all of the things that modern indie roguelites have done well haven't seemed to make their way into this game. Shovel Knight worked because its difficulty was complemented by hand-crafted level design, with all of a screen's hazard's visible at all times. Dig's procedural generation can result in frustrating enemy and trap placement that often feels unfair rather than fun. Getting hit by an offscreen obstacle or having a gem or cog destroyed right as the screen transitions is never a pleasant experience. The roguelite elements also become grating--the items seem to do mostly nothing useful, and hardly complement one another, making runs blend together instead of each being distinct. Having a large number of items that are either actively harmful or useless pollutes the already dismal loot pool, making only health upgrades useful to me personally. On top of all this, I just spectacularly sucked at this game--I don't think I'm terrible at roguelites, I've breezed through a decent number of them, but I actually had to turn on some of the accessibility options to make this one winnable for me.

Carrion's massive strength is the mechanical fantasy of the monster. Movement and interaction in Carrion is awkward and slippery, but it's done to encourage the player to full force towards anything they're trying to do. There is no subtly in movement. You are either lying patiently, motionless, in wait for prey, or you are slamming and thrashing and ripping people limb from limb as you haphazardly slam into walls and drag your innocent victims to their deaths. Carrion disregards common understandings of 'good movement' to elevate its intended experience as high as possible. In this regard, encouraging players to act like a movie monster, Carrion excels.

It's just the rest of the game that's mid. Carrion's levels aren't 'bad', but there's not a lot of variety to them, neither in mechanical ask or visual presentation. There are some areas that try to ask more of the player in terms of movement skill, but because moving through Carrion is intentionally awkward, these areas sometimes ask more of the player's movement skill than the game realistically provides them.

Revisiting older levels is also not an enjoyable experience, given the mazy, one-directional nature of both levels and the Frontier. You're not really supposed to play any part of Carrion backwards, but you need to do so to get at containment units in already finished levels. And because some containment units require upgrades found later in the game, there's no way to get them all as you go. Not having a more straight-forward way to access previous levels is a big blindspot in Carrion's gameplay.

Ultrakill is a fine video game. I'm not going to go into further detail because the fanbase for this game is rabid and I do not wish to get locked into an argument with people who go apeshit with people who do not share the same amount of aggressive love for this game. My thoughts are: the game is good. It is not perfect, but it is good.

The art is very good and the combat is pretty chill. I didn't get far enough, I think, but as someone who got like 5 hours in I can say with at least that much you should definitely play it just to see what people are talking about. I'll edit this when I get farther in.

you guys should listen to Cosmic Thrill Seekers by Prince Daddy & the Hyena

Fuck Blizzard, and fuck your awful balancing.