Recent reviews by Fighter_Builder

I initially left a meme review saying nothing but "so cool" over and over (which wasn't inaccurate, this game is absolutely cool AF) but this game deserves an actual genuine review. I could honestly gush about this game for an excessively long time, but I'll do my best to keep it (somewhat) brief.

I'm just gonna say it, Shadow Generations is PEAK. Sonic Team were firing on all cylinders for this one and put out this absolute top-tier banger of a game. My only complaint with Shadow Generations is that I wish there was more of it, but when that's the only negative thing I can say about it, I'd say that's the mark of a pretty damn good game. It's a bit on the shorter end overall, but in that sense it is the textbook definition of quality over quantity.

One thing I particularly want to highlight is the level design. Not only are the levels in Shadow Generations a blast to play through from start to finish no matter whether they're 3D or 2D, but these are the longest Sonic levels we've gotten since Sonic Unleashed. That was 16 years ago. Shadow controls great too; all the powers he gets are well-utilized and they're all a lot of fun to use. Doom Morph can be a bit unwieldy though, but it's fairly easy to adjust to.

And the STORY. OH MY GOD THEY COOKED! I refuse to spoil anything about the story because this 100% deserves to be experienced blind, but trust me when I say this is the good stuff. Please do check out the Dark Beginnings prologue shorts as well - they're incredibly well written, the animation is gorgeous, and the fight scenes are phenomenal, and it's honestly a crime that they aren't included in the game itself in the extras menu or something. Ian Flynn nailed the writing here, and he absolutely did Shadow and his story justice.



...Oh yeah, Sonic Generations is there too. This isn't a bad way to play it if you don't already have it. They did change a couple things here and there, not all of it works but it's all fairly harmless. They did do a light rewrite of the game as well; it's not a complete overhaul of the story or anything, it's mostly simple stuff like Sonic acknowledging and interacting with his friends more during cutscenes. It's still the same incredibly basic story, just told with a bit more sincerity. That said, Ian did kinda do that thing he did in Frontiers again and added some extra references where there weren't any before, but this is Sonic Generations we're talking about - it is literally References: The Game. If there's any game where that could be excused, it would be this one. (And don't worry, Shadow Generations does not have this problem.) But yeah, it plays fine, I'd say the writing is marginally improved, and I haven't had any technical problems with it. It's Sonic Generations. Not really sure what else to say about it that hasn't been said already.

This collection is fantastic and I love both of these games, but I'm getting occasional lag spikes playing on my Steam Deck??? This is a 2D Ace Attorney collection, it should not be taxing enough to start dropping frames on a Deck. I knew Denuvo was a performance hog, but holy hell this is low. I still highly recommend this collection aside from that, but I'm just baffled by this.

I'm really enjoying this game so far! I'm definitely much more used to 4-key rhythm games than 6-key and above, but I still found this game very readable and enjoyable to play regardless, and I was able to pick it up and get comfortable with it in no time. Not a huge fan of how the danmaku levels are handled though; even with the simplified bullet patterns, I don't find it particularly fun to have to divide my attention between a bullet hell and a rhythm game, even if it is trimmed all the way down to just two keys. Those are a relatively small part of this game though, not nearly bad enough to ruin my experience or anything, but I still felt it was worth pointing out.

you can pet the cat

I like this game, but why did recent updates introduce a softlock that can happen when simply buying or selling items and why do the developers seemingly not care about that? I get that this game's been out for a while but that's a pretty serious glitch to just leave unaddressed like that considering it has the potential to erase a lot of progress if you haven't saved in a while or if you're in the middle of a speedrun. Between that, occasional faulty randomizer logic, and the Classic Mode load times that put the loading times of both Sonic 06 and the Wii U version of Mighty No. 9 to shame: Please fix your game; this is embarrassing. The new stuff is cool, but it really should've spent a little more time in the oven.

It's a pretty obvious Vampire Survivors clone, but it's not a bad one IMO. If you want a slightly different take on a VS-like game, I'd say this is worth a shot. I'd say either get it on sale or try the demo and make your own decision.

neat

UPDATE: Looks like Valve is finally taking action and rolling out some pretty huge ban waves, putting a massive dent in the aimbot population. Love to see it! Time will tell if Valve will continue addressing the problem in the future, but for now I'm just going to enjoy this victory. See you all at 2fort 👋

Original Review:

I love this game. Through all its ups and downs over the years, it's remained a big comfort game for me. I may not play it super consistently these days, but I always had a good time whenever I decided to get back into it for a little while. Can't really do that with aimbots flooding all the servers though.

Valve, please fix TF2, I'm begging you. I want to play funny pootis game again

Ty 3 isn't fantastic - it's easily the weakest Ty game - but I wouldn't call it bad either. I still had fun with it in spite of its flaws at least, and I think this game generally still does more right than wrong, so I'd still recommend it if it goes on sale.

my brain hurts