Recent reviews by No. 1 Butt Banger

50 GAMES OF THE YEAR, ALL YEARS

PLAY AVIANOS
PLAY KICK CLUB
PLAY BARBUTA
PLAY MOONCAT
PLAY RAIL HEIST
PLAY GRIMSTONE
PLAY PILOT QUEST FIRST
PLAY EVERYTHING

THEY'RE ALL GOOD

EVERY SINGLE ONE

IT'S ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CRAZY

Revoked code after 5 days after THEIR mistake. Could have had a sale at $12.50, instead I'll just not buy it until it's a dollar like I usually do.

4.1 is better anyway, even with the QoL changes. Go get that on sale instead.

This popped up in my discovery queue and my friend says he's been looking to try it. Hell, 2 hours is plenty for a refund if it sucks.

Man is it worth the price! Local multi is a blast, the mode that allows for items and hazards is great, and the camera is actually incredibly good at keeping up. Basically Micro Machines from the nes to like...64 meets Ultimate Chicken Horse with weapons.

All I'd like to see are the following:

1. Saving tracks at the end of the race. I think it'd be fun to be able to revisit some crazy stage creations. Another review mentioned laps. Could be fun to have a teleport to start or something at the end for laps.

2. Ability to change score limit. I want to see how insane the courses can get. I imagine it's probably somewhat limited for performance reasons but being able to adjust even by a few thousand would do wonders.

3. Some pause or start up animation for the track piece picking phase. Really easy to just hit a button and take the first piece without ever seeing it. A brief pause would give you a chance to scout what's there before taking it, a'la Ultimate Chicken Horse.

4. Workshop support for custom pieces and hazards. Modding framework is probably a ton of work, but hoooooooo boy could this game benefit from the crazy crap modders would come up with.

5. Some more color options for every car and maybe an outline of the same one as an option? Kinda easy to lose yourself in the chaos or pick a different car that doesn't have the same color you were as another car and drive off the side.

6. Leveling seems like it'll be kinda slow. I get wanting to introduce new stuff at a slower pace and all that but I wanna play a video game, not do video game chores to get to play with new stuff. The challenges don't seem that bad to do, at least.

Concerns addressed or not, this game is well worth the paltry $15 asking price.

The same night I tried River City Girls for the first time, I gave this a short run. 20 hours later I have finished this, and I'm working on unlocking everything. River City Girls, I'm 4 bosses in and really just want it to end already.

First off, the quality doesn't even compare in the gameplay department. RCRU has unbelievable depth with the combo routes and moves each character gets. There's a total of 10 story playable characters, each with a distinct fighting style and different focus on how they beat down the opposition. I started with Bruno, the luchador style fighter. At the beginning, fighting can be limited, but as soon as you buy more moves, you begin opening up wild new combo routes and fun attacks. The game's built-in movelist is kind of useless, but you can find helpful ones in the Steam Community Guides that help break down how to use each move. Once I got more of Bruno's moves unlocked, I was launching opponents with blade kick, juggling with hits, and finishing with either an aerial Shooting Star drop or the absolute wild reverse rolling aerial throw. Everything feels satisfying to land, even if some characters definitely are weaker than others. Provie and Glen both have great movesets, Provie's offering crazy mobility and group damage when her specials are unlocked. I've been beating up Randy and Andy in the tutorial as everyone just to grind out levels and money to do NG+ and Fungondo (Nintendo hard) runs with full movesets. Some characters are easily worse than others, but at the end of the day, play what you have fun with, you'll succeed if you're good enough at it. Wish I had some bros to play 4 player co-op with, but the one I'm playing RCG with got filtered early on and doesn't want to try it anymore.

The music is very enjoyable, and even had to be rewritten entirely due to some DMCA drama. You can find the files online for the old music if you like, but I've come to enjoy the current soundtrack more. The title screen theme, tutorial act theme, Cyndi's theme, and the A&R Auto hideout themes in particular are some of my favorites.

Graphically, the game evokes improved-NES style art, which is nice. Not complex, and due to simplicity, makes it easy to make characters to fight against...and fight as, in the Arena mode. The animations for each character, even the enemies, are detailed and expressive. The weird Roids jocks constantly hip thrusting and smugly elbow dropping on you gives you a sense of how they behave, and it's a nice touch. Nerds try to tackle you and land face first, Vixens get assistance from others they call in to launch them forward for a dash attack, Warlocks channel their weird dark magic before firing it off, the Rich Kids literally punch you with money trails... It's good for how simple the artstyle is.

As for the difficulty...the game pulls no punches. As you progress through the game, the AI generally begins to improve and become intelligent. At the start, the enemies will walk into your punches and specials, and typically won't attack as much. Later on, they begin to back up out of your attack range and force you to approach or begin to pincer you, and by the end, if you try to be reckless, they'll whiff punish you, hard. If you don't know how the block button works by the end of act 2, you're gonna learn if you expect to finish the game. The strongest healing item gives you back 40 stamina, which with a max level 40 Bruno was somewhere around 533 max, so healing is less effective than not getting hit a lot to begin with. I was getting admittedly frustrated with the final area at the end of act 3, and the final boss, but despite that, still felt pretty satisfied and elated when I finally started busting their chins open on the pavement consistently. I felt like I improved, which is kind of rare in beat 'em ups as the AI either is dumb as bricks by default or cheats a'la Konami beat 'em ups.

The plot's as barebones as you'd expect for River City Ransom. It's there to give you purpose to punching stuff, but does give a lot of nice nods to the original game and some other Kunio-franchise games. It does get kind of dumb by the end of Act 3, though. Have fun bringing milk home.

The game is kind of...devoid of dev assistance or post-launch stuff, which bums me out. A glitch used to exist at launch that let you play Story mode as any of the Arena characters, which, while they were more limited in moves and stats, still was something fun to play with, that the devs had mentioned they wanted to include as a real feature before patching it out. Mod support was also planned, but at some point both just disappeared into the aether, probably due to River City Girls. I am gonna mess about with a friend and try to make a CheatEngine cheat table to let one pick whoever they want to play as through the story, if possible... I know you can still bring OG Alex and Ryan into the story mode, though if you change characters you lose the ability to pick them again. That enough points to, hopefully, just needing to poke around at memory addresses to change character freely.

All in all, if you consider yourself anything of a Beat 'em Up fan, you should play this game. It's rough around the edges, certainly, as it seems to be both Conatus's first and only game, and has some NES era game design choices both as a joke and a gimmick, but that doesn't stop the game from shining when it counts.

P.S.: I mentioned River City Girls as it, unfortunately, seems to be the future of the River City games (though man I really hope after Provie and some of the other RCRU crew, and a horribly bastardized Paul, showed up in RCG2, we get another look into the Western River City and its 80s-90s aesthetic and gameplay) and if you intend on playing it, play it first. The AI in RCG is pretty mindless and a lot of the best options for combat tend to be to juggle with some weak attacks, combo in a strong or special, stomp until restand, block retaliation attack, and repeat. They also like to block, and unlike in this game where blocking is both limited by your/your opponent's energy stat, and breakable with grabs, there's no guardbreaks in RCG. Not that I've found yet, anyway. What I'm saying is, it's way less fun to play after RCRU... and you'll probably hit the special button when trying to pick up weapons enough times to become detrimental and annoying. Dedicated grab button and strong attacks being on charge inputs really makes a world of difference.

if you liked 20xx or mega man x just flippin' buy it

It's a good game. The swinging is usually satisfying, though I have a few gripes:

1. Tongue reattaching when a different piece of it hits a limb/wall/whatever ruins momentum and prevents some silly swinging. You can rapid swing around a branch but only at the perfect tongue length to avoid re-attaching and losing momentum.

2. Tongue slack is too extreme. Whenever I jump and go into a swing, I'll "bottom out" on the tongue and lose momentum. I believe it calculates tongue length on fire or has a few set values, but I feel it would be better if it calculated on hit, something like Umihara Kawase or Worms Armageddon's Ninja Rope. A "retract" button would go a long way, too.

Other than that, it controls/plays smoothly and is enjoyable to whip around with.

Had it forever and never really played it because the Cairo sections were kind of boring and it didn't feel like a Serious Sam. Really, there was a square arena and maybe 30 enemies total that trickled in!

However, once you get to the Great Pyramid and on, the game ramps up and feels just like a Serious Sam should. Tons of enemies, amazingly fun weapons, and solid wisecracking from our hero make it feel like a great step in the series.

Here's hoping 4 carries on the legacy proper.

DFO is, quite frankly, one of the best games I've ever played. I played during the turbulent Nexon years. I lived through it closing and stumbling through the Chinese version. I played through the open alpha and finally now, where Neople, the original developers, publish the game globally by themselves.

And this is the best version of DFO we'll ever get.

My Steam says 6.4 hours, but over the course of the game's lifespans I've easily sunk 750+ hours across a bunch of characters.

Pros:
Character classes are all fun to make and play, as each 5 levels gives you new skills to toy with and combo with.

Plenty of character slots to use, with more given out for free all the time.

Biweekly events to help players get useful items like life tokens, safe upgrades, even avatars and equipment.

Neople is extremely quick to respond to the playerbase when issues arise and compensate very well.

PVP is a blast.

The XP curve is so much better now, and Scenario dungeons make the once-awful grind mighty doable.

Co-op with up to four players, or PVP with up to 8 in 1 on 1 matches or all-out brawls.

You can play dress-up.

The official anime is absolute garbage, but it's so funny to watch as a result. Spot-the-anime-cliche!

You can get most cash shop items from events or from other players.

A point shop where you get points for running dungeons/from events/rebated from cash shop purchases, which you can use to buy helpful items and a limited range of avatars.

Lost Treasure keys actually drop fairly frequently, compared to never seeing a key fragment drop ever in Nexon days.

Extremely moddable. You can replace background music and even the sounds the characters make. I have the old Nexon English voice packs, plenty of old dungeon music, and my Mechanic's Combat Robot blasts Darude - Sandstorm instead of its original song every time I crit.

SKILL RESETS ARE FREE AND THERE'S A SKILL TREE! SCREW YOU NEXON FOR MAKING PEOPLE PAY TWENTY DOLLARS FOR A DAMN SKILL RESET

Gold is fairly easy to obtain and costs for leveling equipment isn't prohibitive. Hell, Epic quests pop out equipment for your characters every 5 levels.

Extremely controller friendly. I have Xpadder set up with a PS2 controller and use the game's input commands system to activate most of my skills.

It's not Mighty Number 9.


Cons:
Fatigue. A lot of people complain about it, but it's a necessary evil to help protect the game's economy, which is actually still pretty healthy compared to Nexon days. Still, it can be a bummer to get to a new dungeon or brand new skill and have to wait or use a fatigue potion to play with it.

Only can make 2 characters a day, which is only really a con before you have enough alts to deal with fatigue if you want to play more.

Avatars are untradable, except in the special packs that other players can buy and sell. You have to cash shop or point shop these. Dammit nipple I just wanted a shirt for my Slayer.

Some classes don't do as much damage as other classes as easily, this can be kind of discouraging. Ranger is weaker seeming than Launcher, for example. Though Ranger is still absolutely fun as hell, and got a buff/rework recently that makes him better without a reinforced weapon. And, if he gets a powerfully reinforced weapon, he can easily outdamage the Launcher late-game. Play what you enjoy, not what the community says is good.

Connection in PVP is pretty important if you wanna get real competitive.

The people that buy global chat megaphones are either selling things or absolute idiots. It can be funny, or it can be grating. At least Megaphones are now 2 Mileage points instead of the...what, $5? they were in Nexon.

If you want the absolute best equipment ever for facerolling PvE content, you gotta beat the odds of winning the lottery five times in a row. That said, you can do plenty fine with a good set of Chronicle armor and a nice pink weapon.

The game does not tell you about Quick Rebound. For the sake of God, pick up Quick Rebound. It's in the top bar of skills in the skill window.

The constant flow of events can be overwhelming; Just remember you DON'T HAVE to do all of them if you don't want.

All of the stuff in the game can be daunting to new players, but it gets easy to understand after a few days.

The game doesn't automatically enable Tutorial mode for new players. Do yourself a favor and hit O, then navigate to System and enable Tutorial mode.

The Global chat is NOT indicative of the community. Come find us at reddit.com/r/dfo for help and info.



If you like beat 'em ups or fighting games, give DFO a shot. If you're like me, you'll fall in love instantly.

Hey. You. Lookin' at this review. Let me ask you a question. Do you like AWESOME things that are AWESOME? Then you gotta play this game, dude. It's friggin' cool, and CRAZY addictive. Like popping BUBBLE WRAP addictive.

20XX is a Mega Man X inspired roguelike, and unlike another recent Steam release that takes its inspiration from Mega Man, it won't make you cry like an anime fan on prom night.

This game comes with two playable characters, Nina (X) and Ace (Zero). Each has a standard weapon, but new ones can be acquired in stages, and more can be unlocked through play. When a boss is defeated, you can choose to take their power (Which another boss is weak to!) or an enhancement or the game's currency to buy things in stage shops or vending machines scattered around the stages.

As the game begins, you start in a random stage with weak enemies and a fairly small amount of set pieces. As you progress through stages, enemies get tougher, stages get longer, more items and abilities drop, and you can acquire armor pieces that, when a complete set is formed, gives another bonus! Once completing a stage, you're given the choice of up to 3 stages to progress to, until all 8 bosses have been defeated. Once you defeat the last boss, the final teleporter ends the game and gives you a score/recap.

If the game gets too EASY for a PRO like you, you can enable Skull modifiers, that do things from make stages longer, start stage generation at level 5, increase enemy count, remove drops from the game, remove specific bonuses from the game, make pits/spikes instantly kill you, speed the game up, double enemy damage, etc.

If the game is TOO HARD for a CASUAL like you, or you feel like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around being overpowered, you can begin a casual run with 3 of the items you've unlocked. It can be cathartic to tear through enemies with a ton of power bonuses.

If you really have an itch to scratch for a Mega Man X game and can't wait any longer for MMX Corrupted, I cannot reccommend this game to you enough.

PROS:
TRIPLE FLIPPING TRIAD
HAS OLD FF CHARACTERS AS TRIPLE TRIAD CARDS
CAN GET TRIPLE TRIAD CARDS FROM DUNGEONS
CAN PLAY TRIPLE TRIAD AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS
FREE TRIAL GOES UP TO LEVEL 35 ALLOWING FOR AMPLE COLLECTION OF TRIPLE TRIAD CARDS WITHOUT PAYING SUB FEE

CONS:
TEDIOUS MMO GAMEPLAY REQUIRED TO GET SOME TRIPLE TRIAD CARDS
HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE FOR EASY CHANCE AT OTHER CARDS
FREE TRIAL RULES ARE STUPID AND YOU CAN'T PARTY WITH FRIENDS TO REDUCE THE TEDIUM UNLESS ONE OF THEM SUBSCRIBES
HAVE TO BUY EXPANSIONS FOR MORE CARDS
RULES ON DECKBUILDING ARE KIND OF STUPID IN EXCHANGE FOR BALANCE
CAN'T PLAY TRIPLE TRIAD IN EVERY AREA
MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN FROM SCREAMING AT NPCS WITH BULLHONKEY TRIPLE TRIAD RULESETS