Recent reviews by S S Absolution

I suppose this is a rhythm platformer, although you don't need to know the rhythm to accomplish the goals. Don't let that dissuade you from trying this out. A timing platformer that creates a beat/rhythm to correctly timed actions is more or less what this is. There is some artificial difficulty mixed into the levels that irked me the wrong way at times, especially some that are late into the final levels. These points are rare, if frustrating, but shouldn't have any real bearing on the overall experience at the end.

This game is fun, and it is solid on its mechanics and its gameplay. The additional extras at the end of levels add a certain competitive spirit to get all the gold you can. If greed hasn't done that already. The graphics are good enough and have a retro feel to it. The image blur can have some negative effects, but the representation of speed gives it a faster pace that is worth the tradeoff.

The way the music stems from your actions, hit or miss, is where this game really shines. The music is awesome to listen to, and coincides with correctly timed maneuvers. The gameplay offers tight and responsive controls that make this a delight to play and except for the few artificial points in the game offers a well thought out level design that offers plenty of challenge. The end levels offer a very specific set of challenges that will require all the previous skills learnt through the course of the game, as it should be.

All-in-all, besides for a few spots this is a solid platformer that is sure to offer plenty of fun with plenty of the wackiness that is a welcome distraction from the main game. With a difficulty that impresses at nearly every level to go with strong gameplay, music, and controls, this is one you should check out.

This is a beautiful beat platformer that sat in my library uninstalled for 3 years, now... I feel like a complete idiot. After completing Mirror Level 4 I can say that this game is just downright amazing. Levels that move and change to a beat and rhythm. Time your jumps and movement per the rhythm and move with solid tight controls. There is one issue with this game but it doesn't crop up until the very end of the game so unless you're a completionist this may seem like a perfect game in the end.

I will get to the single issue I found in this later, as I cannot express enough how well literally EVERYTHING else was done in this game. There is no artificial difficulty, but the challenges will keep you engaged throughout the entire experience. The level design is spot on, allowing the beat and level actions to blend in a seamless way. The minimalist graphics is a near perfect experience allowing you to really get lost in the music. Then you have the music... YES! It is fantastic, for a beat platformer this had to have been one of the most crucial design points, and this delivers in all the levels. As stated before the controls are super, super tight. I never had an experience where the controls didn't respond to what I was putting in.

The One Issue: The hit box of your shape is always that... a box. You will shift between 3 forms, a circle, a triangle, and a square. It's kinda cool the first few times you look at it. Unfortunately, though, if you try for Mirror World Level 3 or higher this is going to screw you over plenty of times. Mirror 4 is the greatest example of this, in that you'll need to play some obstacles real close to make them easier, jumping or falling into high precision areas with perfect required timing. As you fall your triangle appears, but the whole square around you is still hittable. So, there are two equal right angled triangles that you can't see on either side of ONE of the points that can still kill you.

Wow, looking at it that seems like a long paragraph, but it's really the minimalist of issues. I still beat all the levels and had fun doing it the whole time. Like I said as well, you will run through 75% of the game and never even notice this is a thing, like complete obliviousness. I just want you to be aware of it before you have that confused look on your face like I did.

9/10 for this game. Get a potential 20+ hours out of it.

A clever platformer that has mostly solid mechanics that tries to stay true to it's storytelling narrative. This game does alot of the actual gaming features well, with only one mechanic not being as effective at times as you hoped. Back to the specifics later though. There are menu issues as well, as well as the method you are forced to get the challenge achievements with. I'm recommending this because of the way that the game plays mostly and ignoring the many little issues that this thing does to you to drag out the time spent in game.


The gameplay, plain and simple. Platforming with an interesting twist, and it feels fluid as you move through the maps. The maps as well have a distinct flavor to them that offer different types of challenges that match the surroundings well. The world's air of mystery is a positive through a portion of the game. Even with the few issues such as inconsistent latch distances, or losing your latch at the most random times never happens enough to make you feel robbed from something unexpected.


The power leap combined with the sprint. This mechanic gave me issues often enough that I need to say something specific about it. It has about a 75% detection rate. You'll sprint toward a ledge, charge you power jump, let go of the power jump while still sprinting and you're supposed to rocket forward. Instead, often enough, your idiot teenage protagonist will just jump straight into the air. This frustrated me at least twice per level usually. It's easy to recover from this without dying and try again but it just hated registering at crucial time trial moments. This is by far the weakest mechanic involved in the actual gameplay.


This game is plagued by minor, convenience, issues more than anything. I had two issues with the menu's that didn't help me enjoy the end game portion of this. First, was the lack of a restart option in the time trial portion of the game. Literally you are unable to just restart the level. You have to exit out of the level then go through a few menu options just to get back to the start of the level. Like I said, convenience issues mostly.

Second, was the challenge achievements and their appropriation methods. You can only get the achievements in the story mode. Why? I don't have any idea the levels are identical, you just don't have to listen to the same 4 sets of dialogues over and over again. Also, story mode doesn't have a restart option either. So you'll need to go out to the menu and restart the mission because loading the previous checkpoint just warps you there and doesn't reset any falls or misuse of the grapple.


The way the story progresses is kind of ho hum. It does a lot of setting up and then never delivering. Why is she Mad Maddie... You won't find out running through the game. I felt like the narrative device about the story was underused and never really added to my sense of wonder for the place. The characters are shallow as well. You'll talk to all but one of them once. They feel more like a filler moment than anything else. As well any real development of the story lines requires you to find the secret story items.


This is a game that did what was most important correctly, the gameplay, and chose to put everything else as a filler item in between those moments. There are plenty of secret items to add to the world but whether you seek them out will be a case by case basis since the art style, and world creations will need to have an impact on you. Unfortunately the game is kinda short as well taking me about 2 hours to run through a first playthrough. How much you can get after that will depend on your competetive spirit and your investment in the world.

I'm simply recommending this for what I believe it is. A kid's game. The simplicity of tasks that teach basic hand eye coordination to complete the training games shows what this game is meant to do. It provides simple visuals and repetitive tasks that require simple problem solving techniques that any child can learn from while they have fun. It is very repetitive and takes vast amounts of grinding to get anything done.

The things this game gets right is within its pure simplicity. There isn't much to the game, everything is based off a simple mini game that requires you to press an arrow key at the right time. As your levels increase the speed and complexity of these go up as well. This part of the game which is where you'll spend most of your time is solid. There aren't any real bugs that I ran into.

The issues with this game are in the grindfest. The end goal of the game is to get level 5 horses of each kind and then get the Magic Crystals. The issue with this is that when you mate your horses they can never mate again. Meaning that until you upgrade the Stable to Level 5 you'll need to build a tree of horse family all from level one horses. So you get a level 2 horse from two level 1's. You then have to get two more level 1's and then make a level 2. Then you get a three and have to start from level 1.

This means that the difficulty of the game ramps up, dies down, ramps up, dies down. It gets really tedious real quickly. Then to get that stable upgrade you'll do missions, which is a simple waiting game. No seperate mini game, no animation. Your horse simply walks off the screen and a timer appears marking it's return. Then another example of this is the horse races you send these boys off to. They walk off the screen and then you're forced to watch this little popup menu that makes no sense what-so-ever. Your horse will go from first to last back to first as three different text menus open up. It is the most worthless feature of the game. You can't skip this and train your horses while you wait, no you just have to sit there and read non-sense.

All in all, for a while, as a grown adult, this game was fun enough to allow me to get two of the level 5 horses. The simplicity wasn't enough to keep me around to the end but I can't see this being an issue for a child. The rollercoaster difficulty could allow for a further learning experience in adapting to changes as the speed variation makes for an offsetting experience.

God… where to start with this game… Just be warned that this is a Thriller-esque type of narrative, where you’re going to have zero idea about what is going on at the beginning. Even at the end nothing will be completely written in stone and high levels of interpretation will shape your view of characters, the world and events. It is done well though and keeps enough information flowing as you progress to keep you interested in what’s happening.

The main content of gameplay is mostly within the fight mechanics. It starts off slow as one would expect but takes a while to really ramp up. Once you get most of your abilities though things are fluid within the game. Balance within the move sets I found slightly lacking. There is a move or two you’ll never touch after trialing them out. Then there’s one you’ll be guaranteed to use, Breach() being the obvious example.

This game also uses a fluid difficulty structure that adds layers of depth to the game. There is no set difficulty marker, and you’ll receive Limiters that, imagine this, limit your abilities in fights. This is where the difficulty slider comes in and it works fairly well for this game. Anytime I felt like the game was getting too easy, I simply slapped on a new limiter and usually I was met with resistance once again. Without this the game, would have been far too easy. I rather enjoyed this variable difficulty and found it to be fair.

The total story/world package is the strong point of this game. As you play a sort of revenge laden detective. This requires you to read the info that gets from using certain functions in specific terms. Every little detail matters in the story as it provides clues as to how the world worked before this adventure began.

The music and artwork really add to the final world product. Giving a deeper immersion into the experience and on some level allowing an emotional connection to be established between you and a character that is unable to speak. It adds to the world a unique feeling that allows the world to breathe in and out as its body is revealed.

There are a few negatives to this game though. The menu to check what function does what when coupled with another. Sometimes the ability won’t seem to match the original function of when used by itself, though this is rare. Going through each individual function and then what each corresponding function that amplifies it can get monotonous. I said screw the reading and basically threw stuff together and tried it out in practice mode. The beginning is so confusing that it almost immediately throws you off balance in a bad way, such is the nature of a thriller though.

In the end, everything turned out to be fun, interesting and slightly emotional. You’ll need to keep a relatively open mind as you go into this one as the opening is rather jarring.

I wanted to like this game I really did, it impressed me early on but a quick downslide made me upset. The mechanics are solid, and the way the game progresses up to a certain point is smile inducing. Then for some reason this turns into the star wars prequels, just a major let down from early expectations.

So a little lingo that I use for this real quick; the game is broken down into 4 campaigns: US Army, US Navy, Japan Army, Japan Navy. Each campaign has a number of mission arcs that require you to go through 4 battles a piece.

Through each difficulty, the AI makes modest strides in its advancement, the basic AI is not where the real problem stems. The true problem stems in the artificial difficulty that crops up in Leader and Legend Mode. This is my first major issue with the game.

My second major issue with the game is the random objective battle generation. This too is broken at higher difficulties. With both issues combined you’re forced to find the portions of the coding that are mentally impaired and exploit those to no end. This literally saps the enjoyment that the game begins with away. I found it quite upsetting, truth be told.

Let’s start at Easy difficulty. Just don’t play this I had one battle per campaign mission where the enemy fighter just crashed into the ground for no reason. Like just started the battle and nosedived straight into the sea I just laughed. I went to normal shortly after and found the game to be enjoyable for a time. Then I went to ACE and found the game to be even better.

Unfortunately, these became easy to accomplish as well. I went to Very Hard and began to see some discrepancies in the application of certain rules. The first campaign mission arc I faced off against enemies whom felt no need to follow the 2 High G maneuver restriction and began throwing out three to four of these moves, making it extremely difficult to keep pace. Mix in their two to three ACE maneuvers and you got a hell of a fight brewing on your hands.

Now, this wouldn’t be completely terrible if it weren’t for the mission selections. In Normal and ACE you can expect to see mostly fair fights with a rare unfair one early then becoming more abundant later on. Once you go to Leader mode though this gets thrown completely out of whack. You’ll suddenly face off in 3v1 battles very early on. I hope you can begin to see how the combination leads to some frustrating mission arcs.

Finally, I began to beat missions in Leader mode, but something was suddenly missing. The fun had totally evaporated. I wasn’t devising better tactics to combat the enemy I was exploiting weaknesses in the AI and that was it. I was using the same combinations over and over again. It became instantly repetitive. I was frustrated that the game boils down to proving you’re more flexible than a computer program. Check my achievements, you can see that I can beat 3v1 missions on Leader, it’s just that it’s not fun.

With the difficulties that I enjoyed ending up becoming easy quickly this game lost its fun factor after the second campaign. You’ll try and get more satisfaction from this but you’ll end up more disappointed than before you started that quest. It’s ok to enjoy bad things though so play on.

After playing this and completing all but the final mission I read up on the rules of the tabletop game this is based off. I was not a fan of the way units activated to completion and that it doesn’t offer complete freedom in the strategies you use. That being said, it’s not terrible, though I prefer the way movement and shooting goes in 40K. So, I will not discuss how I believe this limits your options, as it is true to the tabletop and therefore a non-issue, but this version has a serious issue that involves this.

If you move a unit but you forgot or just noticed another unit that you’re curious if they can get into range. Just forget about it. As soon as you click the other unit, the previously selected one has now ended its turn. In the tabletop that’s fine as you could look over and measure something without actually activating that unit. In this, that is impossible. Plan your entire turn out to surgical precision and then start doing stuff, only then will this not punish you.

That would be fine if the AI wasn’t so dreadful. It’s bad, and I don’t care what anyone tries to say. The enemy units will simply banzai charge your heavily fortified lines on all difficulties once you come into range. So just form a neatly comprised firing line, then perform a classic contact retreat, ambush tactic. It’s literally the oldest strategy comprised. Oh, you need to move up, just move the firing squad forward, wash, rinse, repeat. I’m assuming this wouldn’t happen on multiplayer, but with my dislike for the rules and the host of other problems I wasn’t interested at all.

The easiest thing to criticize is the camera, well maybe besides for the user interface. There is no vertical panning option. Meaning you can pan side to side, but the only way to look further into the battlefield is to zoom into your units. This will not help you at all. Most of your time playing this will be about trying to get a good look at the battlefield. You will move your units and shoot at the enemy about a quarter of the time you’re playing this. That’s how bad the camera and UI is.

The UI, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Pretty sure elementary school kids thought of this one and it was then implemented by paid professionals who must not have played a game like this in their lives. The amount of information you’ll want to look at, and what you’re given are polar opposites. They give you a unit list, but don’t mark which ones have moved or not? Why give me a menu with all the unit’s stats… That’s all the menu is, like seriously… why? Then have another menu that has the exact same thing just on the other side of the screen. Like I’m too lazy to shift my eyes over to the other side?

Storylines are just terrible. I would bet that if you’ve played the tabletop then you could predict 100% of what was going to happen. I don’t play it and I knew what was going to happen every step of the way. There aren’t any original ideas in this, everything is incredibly contrived. As stated before I haven’t completed the final mission, simply because I was so unmoved with the relationship between Allison and the last boss that I wanted the human race to go extinct. I didn’t care about protecting the people, or the other NPC’s around me. I just wanted them to die, hopefully then I could get a decent protagonist.

Fans of this tabletop need to demand better. This is a terrible excuse for a game. Even if you fix all the problems, it would still be mediocre at best. You’ll have done and been through everything this game will put you through. Even with my minor dislike for the rules, I might still have been persuaded to check this tabletop out, but after this experience I’d rather not hear about Warmachine ever again.

Got this game super cheap with a coupon I believe. Still it did not meet the measliest of expectations. Can you perform basic estimation addition? Can you read? If that's all you can do then this is the game for you, it will challenge you to your pinnacle. If you just so happen to fall in the remaining 99% of humanity, then go ahead and pass this up. There is no saving grace to this game in which I can even recommend this to anyone. If you really… absolutely must have more then please continue.

Gameplay: The game boils down to opening a few menus comparing a few numbers to find the “true” highest value, select, go to the ship out screen make sure you’re gonna make it in time and have enough fuel. Select your destination then press go. That’s it… that’s 95% of the game, sure you’ll go through a few other menus to buy ships but that’s about it.
The mini game that you play to dock and undock your ships is played a total of 10 times, and then you’ll only do it for the achievements. Especially once it gets later into the game you’ll just pay the fee because the time it takes you could make many more millions instead of saving a few hundred thousand. Its ok at best, boring most probably.

Ships: So this is like any basic game you could believe, the ships constantly get better… all the way up to the end. Suddenly the final ship just isn’t as good as the one you get before it. Not being able to navigate the Panama Canal is suddenly a big deal, even when you don’t think it will be. In the time, it takes the ship to go to the seriously profitable routes the one before it can travel to a different highly profitable and then a couple more.

Graphic: You’re gonna look at a map of the world with a few different menus, and your ships docked at port and the mini game of you sailing into the docking space. So, the graphics aren’t anything special but they’re good enough for what you’ll require.

Soundtrack: The sounds… meh… I did not care for them at all. It tries to mimic the port feeling but just distracts from the experience, the music at the world screen is bland and mind-numbing. Good thing it will only play for a max of 10 seconds at the very beginning and then a max of 4 seconds near the end. Then annoyingly a loud freight bull horn will sound. If the volume difference between the two wasn’t so drastic this wouldn’t be an issue, but the bull horn is so much louder than the music it just grates at you.

Just don’t get this, it’s boring and mostly a grind fest. You’ll click and unclick then click again at contracts to mix and match the best combination to get the highest payout and that’s the entirety of the game from the lowest ship to the highest ship.

The strengths of the gameplay make up for the few issues that the games does have. The game is surprisingly deep in what you are capable of using as a viable plan due to the customizability of your squad. No mission requires a single form of play, except for the first 4 or 5 Single Missions, which act as tutorials for that portion of the game. This allows for a freedom that is gravely underused in most games. The ability to plan out what you see fit, when you see fit.

For example, there are hostage rescue missions where you can choose to kill all the terrorists or simply extract the people you need to extract. You can implement a lethal strategy as your troops breach the compound or you can go for a less lethal but more dangerous approach. The customization you can do yourself to the gameplay allows for a variety of replay-ability. 

The gameplay is where the game thrives but little annoyances will chip away very slightly at the enjoy-ability of the game. Your SWAT team members will suddenly develop symptoms of can't hit the broadside of a barn-itis. Guys with high powered semi automatic scoped sniper rifles will miss targets at 30 meters with chaotic regularity. Bustin' 15 shots at the criminal with an effectiveness of 0% while his MP7 reaches out and touches me with 100% accuracy at full automatic. 

Once in a while flash bangs will go off at an enemy's feet but only daze them for fractions of seconds. These problems are not regular occurrences within the entirety of the game but they do appear from time to time and can make for frustrating encounters, especially in some of the harder missions as you progress deep into the enemy contact.

Don't get me wrong though, these are rarely ever rage inducing or even close to such. After you're done with the game you will remember a few moments when you got screwed but that's less than 3% of the memories of this game. Almost the entirety of the remainder is as solid as you can find for actual gaming purposes. The audio/soundtrack is ok, but it won't be your favorite. There's not much else to say, this is just a really solid game that really only has a few minor issues. Worth the time and money.

Wasn't expecting much from this. Wasn't expecting much at all. Then I played the game and slapped myself in the face. Later I looked in the mirror and berated myself for being an idiot. Then I wiped away my self-inflicted tears and went back to my computer with new tears in my eyes... tears of joy brought by this game.