Recent reviews by MarioMetroid

Pretentious clout-chasing garbage.

I remember seeing vanripper's Skyrim magic animation years ago and when he started his Daystone series - I'm so happy to see him branching out into game development. :)
I'm happy to say his first foray into games is a successful one!
The illustrations and animations are charming and expressive, which is to be expected. Every animation loop is in sync with the catchy music, which is great! Why is this worth your time as a GAME, though?

The puzzles themselves are pretty tight so you have to carefully plan your steps - no mechanic that is introduced can be ignored to progress. Fortunately, even if you make a mistake you can immediately try again with a single button press so most of your time spent will be planning your steps rather than waiting through loading times to try again. I would've liked to see a a bit more usage of certain mechanics - namely pushing skeletons on the spikes to conserve moves - but it's a minor gripe.
There's also a portion of the game that is more action orientated, but it strangely did not feel out of place. With movement being so snappy, the encounter's patterns being like a minor puzzle, and forgiving checkpoints it was a nice detour from all the block pushing.
What you have here is about a cute 2 hour puzzle adventure with quality sound, animation, and design that is completely free. I highly recommend this game and can see this being used as an example for aspiring indie game developers that focused, tight experiences are more memorable and attainable than trying to create massive titles.

Well done vanripper! I'm looking forward to whatever you decide to do next :)

I loved Monster Hunter World and waited with bated breath to play Iceborne, especially after watching it on console. Unfortunately, at launch, the game has become unplayable due to poor optimization. I was able to play on medium settings in the base game comfortably with minor lag on startup, but now it takes me 5 minutes just to get to the main menu which has single digits of fps and causes my entire PC to come to a crawl. The game is pouring too much into the CPU and it took me 20 minutes just to click past the new expansion prompts and load into Astera - which then took me another 3 minutes or so just to quit the game.

Waiting 4 months after a console release for it to launch in this state is absolutely inexcusable.

Edit: About 3 weeks after this review, Capcom released a patch for the game and I also built a new PC. Now that people can actually play the game, I am glad to say this expansion is great and adds plenty of new content in the form of new maps, new monsters, and new mechanics for each weapon. I will say, however, that due to the inclusion of the clutch claw that some controls and keybindings were moved around so you will want to take some time to tweak them and get comfortable before diving into Hoarfrost Reach.

Monster Hunter: World is my first foray into the Monster Hunter series. I remember seeing my friend playing an earlier installment in the series on his PSP years ago and wanting to get into it since. After nearly 500 hours, I think I'm qualified to say that this installment is fantastic for introducing you to the series. This is not to say, however, you need to invest 500 hours to learn how the game works! The vast majority of that time was not spent understanding all the core mechanics but just having fun running the item treadmill, farming crowns for achievments, doing Kulve Taroth sieges, and trying to become the best Long Swordsman I could be. You might want to spend your time across several of the 14 weapons if staying with one weapon is a stale experience for you.

Also good news for PC users that didn't have consoles to dive into MonHun is that keyboard and mouse works just fine! If you don't have or would rather not play with a controller, there is no need to worry. Although, just a bit of a nitpick, I feel certain moves would be more accurate with an analog stick rather than WASD keys - I may have slightly whiffed on some Spirit Helm Breakers with my Long Sword due to the keyboard limitation of 45 degree increments for input. On the flip side, I'm certain ranged weapons like the Bow, Light Bowgun, and Heavy Bowgun are massively more accurate and responsive with the keyboard and mouse as opposed to a controller so you might prefer those weapons if you really dislike controllers.

On the surface, Monster Hunter seems incredibly simple - it's a just a game where you hunt monsters. However, as you scratch the surface you'll find tons of little intricacies to the design of the levels, the monsters, monster movesets, your weapon's moveset, how parts of the environment work, how your items can be used in multiple ways, and even how to make full use of the Canteen for food buffs.

This is a game well worth your time and money, especially as Capcom doles out more free content to the PC. Please don't be intimidated if you've never played a Monster Hunter game before - the single player campaign's (which you can play with others if you desire) difficulty builds up at a reasonable pace, doesn't expect too much from you in the beginning, and you're certain to find a weapon you're comfortable with.

My personal game of the year for 2018 and has turned me into a Monster Hunter fan - I'll probably end up getting one of the portable games now so I can play more and not just spend my time reading wikis and forum discussions.

If you like the decision-making of Civilization or other randomly generated turn-based strategy games but would prefer matches that don't take hours, then Antihero is right up your alley.

The balancing act of scouting, acquiring researching/tech, and developing military is all present. Antihero also features a campaign which functions as a great tutorial. The campaign starts off holding your hand for a turn or two to establish a game mechanic, then lets you play on your own to experiment with various victory conditions. Within 2 or 3 levels the game no longer dictates your opening moves for you and begins testing your ability to deal with certain strategy archetypes, such as a scout heavy archetype. Games will very likely end within 20 turns making matches long enough for compelling strategy and decision making, while also quick enough to make you want to jump into another match.

Also, the art style has a lot of charm to it. The music and little soundbytes from the characters and units help to complement the Victorian-era theme.

Plainly, it's a lovely game.

As early as the tutorial, there are multiple ways to approach encounters in this game. It's a lovely, modern iteration of the design from the original Deus Ex.

Not as good of an action game as Platinum's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but still a fun, action-oriented experience overall. Only hiccup with the game is its difficulty curve. It is very low for the vast majority of the game, but will have segments that feel out-of-place in terms of their difficulty - notably the first fight with 3 Triad benders when you only have your water-bending (which is the weakest of the 4 elements imo) and the final round of Ace difficulty Pro-Bending, where you have to rely on your AI partners not being useless on top of bringing your A-game to beat it.

The game on Extreme difficulty was actually pretty easy, which I don't consider a good thing. At that point you have earned enough spirit energy from normal mode (which you are required to beat to unlock Extreme) to purchase the Max Chi talisman (-50% hp), Healing talisman (which is almost required to play the game on Normal), and No stagger/stun/knockdown at Full Chi talisman. This all adds up to to you doing max dmg without having to charge your attacks, never being staggered/stunned/knocked down (making it possible to counterblock during an enemy's combo), and only dying if you play super sloppily and allow yourself to get hit too much in a short timeframe.

Still, about 10 hours worth of fun for $20 bucks is better than going to the movies and it is worth getting if you are a fan of the Avatar series, Platinum, or action games in general.

This War of Mine does a great job of showing people, through its gameplay, that good people are sometimes forced to commit immoral actions to survive in the hostile environment that surrounds them. Very moving and powerful game.

Lots of replayability due to the random aspects of the game, the different playstyles you can take - just an all-around good game.

Fun at times and it is cool to see how the music's beats and notes are lined up with the different pieces. However, if you do poorly, you are only going to do worse since you can't tell when you are in black and white the way a piece is going to behave. It is pretty telling that only 5% of players with the game have beaten the 2nd level on Normal. Main source of difficulty in this game? Memorize the parts of the level that are cheap (i.e. parts that will give you a game over before you can even react), memorize which white pieces are are challenge pieces and which ones are NECESSARY to survive a part, and have the patience of a saint since you need to do the whole 10-minute song over again when you inevitably fail.

All 3 levels are way too long and overstay their welcome. The game would be a lot more bearable if there were more, shorter levels.

Skinner Box: The Game. Walk away while you still can.