Recent reviews by No Face

I have never put so many hours into a game that has made me angry as Balatro has. They did exactly what they set out to do: they made a gambling Roguelike. It's full of charm and personality. The idea is extremely creative. The music catchy. The visual presentation perfect.

BUT...

As you play the game, the amount of luck needed to win increases. In other Roguelikes, the possibilities expand, but the mental model I approach these games is "how do I make it to the end without getting the perfect combos?" In Balatro, especially on the harder difficulties, the answer is: you don't. Lose and start fresh. "Combat" is also largely random (as you are drawing from a deck of playing cards to make poker hands), so even if you get the right combos of modifiers, you ALSO need to draw well. Luck on top of luck.

And, as mentioned, it actually gets harder to get those perfect combos the more you play, since the pool of available "powers" expands, so it's all the more frustrating when you get them and then draw terribly.

I put over 50 hours into Balatro, but, while it was fun for the first 8 to 12 hours, it became increasingly maddening as I would lose DOZENS of runs before having one that was even close to being good enough to win.

Bottom line: this is not a skill-based game, it's a luck-based game. Pure gambling. Incredibly addictive in all the ways that gambling is. But not FUN the way I think of it. It's not an objectively bad game at all. But subjectively, it is very much NOT what I want out of the genre or the games I play in general. I'm writing this review not to discourage anyone from getting the game, you might LOVE Balatro, but you need to have your expectations in check or you might get extremely frustrated like I did. I had a terrible time, but was addicted anyway (remember: gambling), so if that sounds good to you: dive in. If it doesn't, tread carefully.

Death's Door will probably clock you between 10-16 hours, depending on things and such. It's got rock solid gameplay, simple-but-impactful combat, very satisfying exploration and puzzle solving, stylized visuals, and a pretty unique and amazing sense of humor (which is not frequent, but kind of amazing when it wants to be).

If I were to rank the difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10 (with Dark Souls games being an 8), it would probably be a 5.

Dredge is an amazing game that comes with a single word of warning (that I'll get to at in the second half of the review).

First, the good stuff: it's an atmospheric Lovecraftian fishing simulator with satisfying progression systems. This insane idea is brilliantly executed, so if you like *any* of the words I used to describe the game, you should probably check it out.

Now the warning: there is a bug where your save file gets totally deleted (or, at least, it appears to get deleted). I was 14 hours in, saved and quit, and when I loaded it up again my game was entirely gone. Though it is not obvious, the game does have a back-up save system, so don't panic if this happens to you.
The Steam forums has sufficient instructions which should allow most players to restore their save, but I'm still pretty shocked this bug just hasn't just been fixed yet.

Note the devs left a comment on my (previously negative) review *before* I was aware there was a way to resolve the problem, but (as mentioned above) I was able to sort it out.

EDF is one of the best co-op franchises going. It's weird and quirky and clunky, but if you've got friends who are of the same mind, you'll be hard pressed to have this much pure, unadulterated fun anywhere else.

At it's current price point, M:TA is absolutely worth a purchase if you like Marvel and you like brawlers. Yes, the post-game is kind of weak. Yes, the micro-transactions in the game could get in the way from time to time, but they have been removed and you now get literally everything they've ever released for free.

Bottom Line: At 40USD, playing through the highly-enjoyable single-player campaign is absolutely worth your bucks.

I finished Call of the Sea in just over 6 hours. Some would consider this a poor value for a $20 game. I, however, think this depends on the game.

Call of the Sea is what happens if Myst took place in a romance short-story written by H.P. Lovecraft.

If that premise sounds appealing to you, then it's absolutely worth your $20. Even if the game doesn't last, the experience will stick with you long after the credits roll. And make sure you let them roll...

This game has rough edges. It's an indie title, after all. The writing could use some English language polish, the puzzles are a bit too fiddly (in some areas), collision is sometimes extremely awkward at the edges of terrain, the maps is sometimes not as useful as it should be, the boss fights aren't super engaging (mostly just bullet spam), and there are most definitely all manor of janky moments.

However...

The story is solid enough (despite the translation issues), with a surprisingly epic conclusion. The actual gun-feel is excellent. And the atmosphere is fantastic! I'm amazed at how well this game nails the most essential bits of the Resident Evil formula.

Ultimately, if you're a fan of RE and you enjoy indie titles, Eternal Evil is darn fine fit for you.

Wolfenstein TNO is good, but not as good as I was led to believe. I feel like the 90% positive reviews are a good example of when a game does enough right to be generally liked by everyone, but it's not really a 9/10 game. I would give it more like a 7.

The story is surprisingly good, with an entertaining and diverse (in the traditional sense of the word) cast of characters. It's generally well written. This game also has the guts to go where many games do not and it earns it's M-for-mature rating in many ways.

The level design is generally solid, with lots of fun little secrets to discover.

However, the game is surprisingly meh in it's combat. It's not as visceral I was expecting, with a stilted (but strongly encouraged) cover system. The weapon selection UI is nearly unusuable while under fire (making it more or less useless, period, as it was clearly designed for a controller and not keyboard and mouse). Guns usually feel flimsy, especially against some of the tougher enemies that eventually start showing up with some regularity. Plus, our hero seems to fall over pretty easily. I don't recall if I did one higher than the normal difficulty or not (and don't feel compelled to boot it back up to find out), but I felt like a piece of tissue paper. It can be hard to balance a power fantasy with the necessary vulnerability to feel threatened, and I Wolfenstein doesn't do it so well. Even the stealth, which there is a fair amount of, feels fussy and unsatisfying much of the time.

Finally, it's also bogged down by particularly lethargic story sections in a hub location at various points.

I don't regret my time with Wolfenstein TNO and, for FPS fans looking for a fix, you could do a lot worse, but go in with modest expectations.

Prey is an FPS only in the most technical of sense, but "shooting things" is NOT why you play this game. The science fiction setting (which I won't spoil here for the blissfully unaware) is incredible and exploring it (Metroidvania style) is an experience utterly unique in modern gaming.  The level design, often non-linear quest design, and organic puzzles really reward lateral thinking and patient thoroughness, which is the precise opposite of the modern boomer-shooter craze. I have nothing against boomer-shooters, but Prey is simply on the other end of the spectrum.

It doesn't hurt that it has a compelling mystery of a storyline that will keep you guessing as to what's really going on right up until the end... and will blow your mind long after you think the game has provided it's final twist.

Prey is excellent.  And there's simply nothing else like it.  If you are tolerant of some creepiness, quirks, and the occasional jump scares you should seriously consider this sci-fi masterpiece. It is worth your time and dollars.

The art and music are beautiful, but the translation is imperfect. Worse still, the actions of your characters are not always apparent from the choices you have. It's fine to have a plot twist and turn, but it's not fine to not have your character act as you expect them to. It would be like if in Destiny if 20% of the time pushing "forward" moved your character "backwards." The world can behave in unpredictable ways, but if you don't control your own character, what's the point of playing at all?

There was a conversation fairly early on in the game where one character ordered me to kill another character who was shackled some distance away. I thought "if I turn it down the order, my boss will will me and then they'll kill the other character anyway, so I'll accept the order and then choose to free the character in question when the moment comes, so we can make a dramatic break for it." Turns out accepting the order *was* the choice as to whether or not to kill the character.

Choice-driven games like this live or die on characters behaving according to expectation. When your characters do stuff you don't anticipate, it just undermines the entire RPG experience. It's a complete betrayal of trust. It goes from being an RPG to being a "guessing game," where instead of roll playing, you're guess what the developers intentions were with each line. That is not a fun experience.

There were other flaws, but none as fatal as this.