Recent reviews by Fallarnon

The first word that comes to mind when considering the current state of the game is "Rough". Exceedingly rough.

The map is a haphazard tangled array of zones that make no sense. There is nothing about the map that makes it feel like you're in an actual place, instead there's just a random array of facilities and junk heaps (many many junk heaps) with decoration decisions that are clearly inspired by the philosophy"what can we put here to have variety" rather than "what can we do here that makes sense?" For example, you'll have a chain link fence start out one panel high, then it'll jump to two on the next panel, down to one again, get metal cladding and be three sections tall on the next, etc. Nobody builds a fence like that.

Then there's the gameplay. The sheer number of objects on the map which you cannot interact with is appalling. They've littered the entire landscape with the rusting carcasses of dead cars, but the vast majority of them cannot be towed off to be crushed, and have no interaction points for opening trunks/hoods to search for other goodies. What's baffling is that there's a whole questline that revolved around renovating a car - more on that later - and looting its interior for cool artifacts that showed promise, but none of the cars on the map can be entered to have their interiors searched.

Many of the tasks are just unnecessarily tedious. Take, for example, the small crusher. You have to move vehicles to be crushed through a yard that clearly hasn't been well thought out as evidenced by the sheer number of obstacles you're required to dodge. Then, once you get your vehicle into the crusher, you have to tab over to the crusher interface where you can either manually control the hydraulic press which crushes the car into a cube or put it into automatic mode. Automatic mode is by far the more enjoyable way of doing so as the novelty of controlling a hydraulic press wears thin quickly but you have to tab over and manually engage automatic mode for every vehicle.

One of the features that showed the most promise was the renovation of cars and other items for a profit. Unfortunately, the renovation "minigame" for found objects is lackluster with the same handful of tools being used over and over in the same exact way each time and the only variety being contributed by the shape of the object in question and, based on material, the specific tools used. On a metal object, for example, you might start by brushing the object down with a scrub brush but a piece of furniture or audio equipment gets the rag and cleaner treatment -- too bad the mechanics for each tool are identical.

Then there are the cars... oh the cars. During the tutorial questline you get to renovate a car and the mechanics show a ton of promise. You start by stripping down the car, removing everything from body panels to light bulbs and electrical cables. Items for renovation (body parts and the engine) go on racks where you then take them over to the renovation area for cleaning, stripping, and painting, then bring them back to later be reassembled.

Unfortunately, this mechanic is only ever seen once as far as I know as later car renovations consist of finding a candidate car in the wolrd (painful in its own right given the fifty thousand cars out there that can't be used, towed, or even raided for loot to sell at the market), finding it in the garage it's been stowed in after you found it, putting its body parts back on the chassis, and then moving it to the lift where you previously restored the tutorial car. You then are made to restore all parts of the car in-place as assembled which adds many orders of magnitude of frustration to the process even before you consider their addition of the pit of despair under the lift.

It's as though two separate teams worked on designs for a restoration mechanic and then bizarrely both designs were implemented.

All in all, the game has potential conceptually but the execution of the game is disappointing at best. Buy it for $5 if you find it on sale or sit tight and wait for the mechanics to be further refined and developed into a cohesive whole because right now it's just a jumbled up hot mess.

There's 12 hours of solid story-centric campaign here. I think if I had to pick one thing to complain about it's that at times it felt like some of the missions spent more time collectively in the cutscenes and "busywork" (read travelling to the job location) than on the missions themselves. That said, the story itself was engaging and immersive, well worth the price of admission itself.

The graphics, though perhaps not the flashiest around, are pleasing to the eye, with only minor gripes relating to reflections, a disappointing chrome effect that is really glaring on a couple of vehicles they opted to skin in full chrome, and what I'm guessing might be a lack of motion capture for climbing and descending stairs making that a painful endeavor both visually and in terms of the delay to gameplay (it slows your character to a painfully slow pace).

Combat mechanics were okay, not horrible but not great either. Getting through the campaign on Classic was a bit of a challenge at times but I got through it. Second speedrun playthrough on Easy for the achievement was a lark by comparison, but it was also completely incredible at times (For example, on a particular mission at the airport I literally sprinted through the area dodging enemies, taking only minor damage, and didn't have to fire my own weapon even once to progress).

All in all, I recommend this game to anyone who values games like GTA for their story over their gameplay. The story is really well written with an interesting flashback-style delivery that leaves you (at least if you never played the original game, YMMV if you had) waiting for the other shoe to drop to explain "current affairs". Looking forward to Mafia 2 Definitive Edition next.

- 35 Hour Play Time Breakdown -
First Play Through (Classic Difficulty) - ~12 Hours
Second Play Through (Easy Difficulty, Skipping Cinematics) - ~5 Hours (estimated)
Free Roam Side Missions and Collectibles - ~18 Hours

A Way Out is a fantastic story-driven co-op experience unlike anything else I've ever played. I played it with a friend who doesn't game much and it was so well balanced that the only way for us to advance was for me to help him figure out what he needed to do, I couldn't just carry him. The story was compelling with enough interesting twists to keep us engaged right through the end.

Honestly, after actually thinking about it, my rather lukewarm positive review for this entry in the series felt... overly generous. The reality is that this game is a cash grab made by the company who bought Humongous back in the day, and it was built to a budget which shows. The reality is that Pep's Birthday Surprise is a mere shadow of the former entries in the series.

Putt Putt is voiced by an entirely different voice actor than the other games in the series and it's just not a good showing. Further, the dialog between characters is just plain awkward, the timing it horrible and scenes take forever. Worse still, 90% of the graphic assets look to have been taken from earlier entries in the series with a textured effect overlaid on them to make them fit with the newer assets. There are also far fewer "scenery" items for kids to interact with, which was a hallmark of the games Humongous made and really helped keep younger children interested. All in all, not really an admirable effort on Atari's part, but they have long been a shadow of their former selves.

It also has issues running on modern computers because of poor patching by the publishers.

Buy this game if your child is in love with Putt-Putt and you desperately need a new title for them to play. I do warn, however, that I expect they will get bored after a short while due to the gameplay issues the game has. You also will need to know how to set up a Virtual CD Rom drive in order to launch the game.
Don't buy this game if you value production quality.

This is a game near and dear to my heart. I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I still have fond memories of playing this game with my brother on our father's Windows 95 machine, and decided to boot the game up for a nostalgia trip. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.

This is a game near and dear to my heart. I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I still have fond memories of playing this game with my brother on our father's Windows 95 machine, and decided to boot the game up for a nostalgia trip. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.

This is a game near and dear to my heart. I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I still have fond memories of playing this game with my brother on our father's Windows 95 machine, and decided to boot the game up for a nostalgia trip. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.

One nice thing I noticed about this particular installment, which I don't remember being the case for the earlier games, was that there are multiple goal paths for the game, meaning increased replay value for children. I'm not sure how diverse the objectives are, but I had to quit out of my original play through at one point and, since there's no save feature, came back to find myself restarting. I tried to speed through the objectives I already knew, but found myself quickly having to figure things out again as the goals I needed to complete had changed. A definite plus for keeping kids interested!

This is a game near and dear to my heart. I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I still have fond memories of playing this game with my brother on our father's Windows 95 machine, and decided to boot the game up for a nostalgia trip. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.

I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.

I first played the Putt-Putt games, along with a few other Humongous titles, as a young child, and years later picked up the entire collection to some day share with my family once young kids enter the picture. I have to say, the production value of these games is such that I have no doubt in their ability to capture a child's attention just as well today as they did 25 years ago. Humongous did a fantastic job with their sprite work, drawing such extensive animations, that even accounting for the lack of antialiasing and upscaling to fit a 1440p display, the bright colors and engaging characters carry the day.

Further enhancing the engagement value of this game, Humongous did a fantastic job of making nearly everything on-screen at any time clickable, giving children a myriad of options with which to hold their attention. Further, the voice acting, nearly unheard of for a game of this vintage, adds massive appeal for non-reading children. The only shortcoming I can see, and it is one that speaks to the age of the game, is the lack of accessibility options for the hearing impaired.

I would expect these titles to engage a child in their targeted age range just as well as newer, 3D offerings. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane, and feel confident recommending this title to any parent looking for wholesome, engaging entertainment for their child.