Neue Rezensionen von Bill Simmons

Played through the demo during Next Fest and followed it ever since. The full game experience has plenty more to spice it up; weapons, modifiers, permanent upgrades, plus some. All increase your strength for the growing roboforces ahead residing on Nakatomi Tower's higher floors.

I clocked about 3.5 hours before completing the campaign on challenging and enjoyed every bit. Throughout the adventure unique events shake up the core gameplay loop, taking brief breaks from dashing down hallways at breakneck speeds. Start to finish, nothing drags along. It was one of those rare occurrences where the story beats flowed well between chapters, feeding you intel, upgrades, and lore at a respectable tempo.

MULLET MAD JACK is a fun game. Check out the demo if you're on the fence.

Pacific Drive lends you the keys to a sci-fi journey full of exploration, racing, survival, and says GO! What appears to be a hectic peddle to the metal adventure is more casual. Sightseeing, recording anomalies, and uncovering the mystery in your machine will be the main chunk of gameplay. While downtime needs to exist for scavenging, repairing, and other in-zone actions, the formidable zone threat is mostly all talk. Though moments when the zone begins to quickly close in behind you are great, they're short, only at the end of a route, and afford you plenty of time & sometimes control on when to activate the countdown. In this case a game absent of difficulty choices may leave those wanting more of a challenge hungry.

Setting was well chosen, and its change throughout the different biomes each brought about a good share of uniqueness. Whether it was the size of the zone, different terrains, elevation, anomalies, weather, day/night, enough alterations were made to keep two zones on your journey from feeling too similar. Car maintenance was solid, through fixing statuses with kits, swapping old parts out for new, and tracking down the root cause of quirks via diagnostics, all added depth to your vehicle. Exploration can fairly reward those who come prepared. Be it removing armored parts off an abandoned car to use yourself (avoiding the higher cost construction from scratch), or locating a recently launched escape pod with contents you may not have unlocked access to yet; both examples kept my faith in exploring the zone being worthwhile.

Progression through the upgrade tree was encouraging for my anchor energy collection efforts, but disappointing for the high cost rare resource requirements of some item recipes. Unlocking something new, but having no clue what a resource was, where it came from, or if you needed certain tools to harvest it was frustrating. In a dissatisfying series of events I never upgraded my engine as other tools and gear required the same resources, and just when I had hoarded enough a main mission item came forward requesting construction which sapped my stash dry.

Pacific Drive has its share of bumps, both on the road and in-game, but ultimately was enjoyable. If you're interested in a casual driving action game consider picking it up.

Coming from the perspective of someone who rarely plays RPGs Knuckle Sandwich found a way to pierce my hesitance with it's unique combat. Classic click fight, choose target, watch attack animation and subsequent appearing numbers, then repeat isn't for me, however this game changed that system around. While the RPG combat bones are still there, many mini-games to master in both your attacks and those directed towards you will demand more skill than simply pressing a button.

After playing through the demo its odd story and killer jams sunk their hooks into me as well and prompted a purchase.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game for a little over half my total playthrough and then started to get the desire to reach an ending/final chapter. In that later "half" I was intentionally avoiding combat where possible and stopped searching every nook and cranny for hidden treasures. With that change in gameplay necessary combat sections were still beatable and while I wouldn't change the gameplay settings from their defaults there are plenty of options to cater the difficulty to your liking. From difficulty of mini-games, to healing after every combat, and even having the option to skip combat altogether.

There's a lot to love in Knuckle Sandwich and that's evident even in its demo. The full game revealed some pain points over time, but their issues didn't linger. Rattling off a few:

• Some mini-games (vertical platformer and extreme spaceship bullet-hell) I sucked at and didn't get much better at over time, resulting in a predicted loss each encounter, but with 300+ mini-games there's bound to be a few you don't like.
  
• While the majority of dodging worked just fine, occasionally timing a dodge to a visual cue would unexpectedly fail when in other fights with the same enemies it worked fine.
  
• In select key combat battles the perceived difficultly was far off of its actual difficulty. This feeling was sensed either in part of a fight only, or throughout an entire fight. In both cases I experienced fights that I thought would be easier and were more difficult and vice versa.

Try the demo, if you like it you'll like the game.

Tight responsive controls and a need for speed, Orbo's Odyssey pumps high octane fun into your veins. Racing to complete each level while unnecessary for most objectives will be something you find yourself doing subconsciously. It feels great to execute a high speed drill launch and weave in and out of obstacles or find the next objective area. Throughout my entire playthrough I could feel the myself becoming one with Orbo. Orbo's movements and my own on the keyboard felt as though Orbo was extension of myself. Towards the last level my skill and maintained momentum kept me soaring high and launching fast.

I really had a fun time playing through Orbo's Odyssey. I've been a fan and following the project for some time, it was great to finally get to experience it with my own two hands.

Fun, light, fast, great music, excellent controls, perfect length.

I've been waiting years for another fun asymmetrical horror game to launch, and finally my prayers have been answered with Texas Chain Saw Massacre. TCM cuts out a lot of the padding other asymmetrical horror games contain and makes both roles (victim and family) enjoyable to play. Matches often don't take long to finish (~10 minutes/match), but in that time you're granted a tense, blood pumping, challenge to escape/kill. Too often do games in this genre become action games with a horror theme after the fear begins to wash away. With about 50 hours under my belt it's still pretty scary thanks to hard work and time spent in audio and visual design.

GUN Interactive and Sumo Digital did a great job at giving this horror classic a proper video game release.

Mortal Sin gets the stamp of approval. I've been hankering for Gauntlet Legends/Dark Legacy and while Mortal Sin ain't Gauntlet it reminds me of the epic conquest one takes through the Gauntlet realm. In Mortal Sin though the conquest is concise, limited to three main areas, then ending in a final bout.

How you get there is up to you, class, build, and route. Your initial start has limited options to get you slightly comfortable, but soon after the doors are open and the world of Mortal Sin is your oyster.

In that transitional period from novice to competent Mortal Sinner there were a small handful of situations where I didn't fully understand what happened; be it how I died or how I was supposed to do something. There's not a ton to learn, I might have missed a tip and convinced myself parrying everything was possible, but it wasn't, sometimes blocking is by far the better option.

A few runs in and I got a good grasp on the basic mechanics of combat. Playing a each of the new classes as they were unlocked kept that learning process fun and engaging. Switching from fists to great sword, then dual katanas to spear, each had their own quirks. Not only with the weapon but also the skills that are a part of the class. Using a spear will make you prioritize decapitating heads for quick eliminations. While a great sword encourages charged swings to activate a short limited time invincibility. The deviation on how you approach combat based on class hones the finer skills (combos, combo-meter, parrying, etc.), which you can use no matter what you play.

As you get better at dispatching the vile creatures who reside in this domain you gain permanent upgrades. Both before battle with starting gear, additional skills, +more and in battle with additional potion effects, combos, +more

There's a full game here to enjoy now, and more planned to be added in the future.

Good job.

Managed to defeat level one Pete, felt good. Pete's other greater forms await me. While I'm not ready now to defeat them I will be one day.

EDIT: I managed to beat Pete's 2nd form. If I can do it so can you!

Appealing visuals, immersive sound design, and brutal strategic combat; these were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little survival horror game. But developers accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction... frequent subpar gameplay.

Early game pacing feels okay after understanding the combat restrictions and optimal engagement strategies. At the very start this means 3 hit melee combo, then 2 dodges, and repeat. That limited strategy lingers for a little too long, but evolves to include aiming for limbs/heads with your pistol and using the GRP to quickly toss foes into environmental hazards. Your arsenal does continue to expand as the game moves forward, but weapon functionality for the most part remains the same. There's no special high powered weapon that appears later on. The only vaguely similar option comes from reaching the top of a upgrade tree for any weapon, unlocking its alternate fire. However the cost (both ammo and credits for the upgrade) is far too high to warrant its use/unlock. Unfortunately this knowledge only dawns on the player after they've purchased the upgrade and without a way to reallocate your credits once spent it'll likely be a function you seldom if ever use.

About half way into the story combat becomes repeatedly frustrating to deal with. The addition of mutations and the process for dealing with them is a constant struggle between how the game operates and how the player wants to act. After dealing enough damage to an enemy it will begin to mutate. Once started the player has a few seconds to attack the mutated area marked by various tentacles spewing from the location with a ranged weapon. Unfortunately the game has an auto lock-on feature after finishing a melee combo that forces you to look at limbs/heads rather than the mutating section you'd want to target. The remedy is to purchase the highest cost upgrade in the melee tree for 2,700 credits (+1,200 credits for the two upgrades before it). If you're lucky enough to witness an enemy mutating at range firing 1-3 shots will end it and eliminate them.

The majority of mutations tend to succeed and can't be stopped, be it from other enemies attacking you before a shot gets off or blocking line of sight. A mutation fully healing the enemy, regenerating missing limbs, and increasing their damage output; makes failing the tentacle mini-game all that much more annoying

Stuck with many mutations moving forward every combat approach tends to follow these principles:
- Throw as many enemies into environmental hazards
- Avoid using melee as a means of damage
- Use shotguns solely to remove legs for the quickest elimination method outside environmental hazards

Trying to stay ahead of the increasing difficulty curve means making the most of your upgrades and collecting as many credits in the area. Though inventory space is tight, at only 6 slots for about half the game (where it then doubles to 12 slots) and some item locations are placed in ways that make you shake your head. Reaching a junction where there's a reforge is a relief to offload all the junk you've been lugging around for credits. It's annoying when you sell these items, climb down a set of steps, a ladder, another set of steps, and find another one of these function-less items. Should I as the player be smitten to backtrack my way up two winding staircases and a ladder to sell this item, cause I sure ain't. The Callisto Protocol blessed me with many quiet walks to and from reforge stations, all of which made me question why it was designed this way.

To make backtracking matters worse manually saving only creates a copy of the checkpoint save, meaning you can't save like you'd want to. Example: Encountering a tough section has led you to revise your plan, but this means heading over to the reforge and selling items, then upgrading others. Without the ability to save on your own you'll be repeating this process on each subsequent death.

Throughout your vast journey on Callisto only two bosses appear the entire game, one being a recycled enemy that shows up three more times following the initial encounter, simply put it's disappointing. Numbers aside the battles themselves instill those same feelings when both function nearly identically. The later being close to that of a final phase of the first boss fight. It's laughable to stand in front of the final boss and dodge attacks over and over again. Especially when it's not the great mass before you that's the challenge, but rather the projectile chip damage appearing every 60 seconds.

Performance was fine after the first patch was released. I didn't find much stuttering in my playthrough, though when it did occur it was always following a new enemy encounter for half a second, usually on contact (melee/ranged). I had some subtle decreased performance in the larger stages with many moving items.


Overall:

I didn't hate playing through this game, some parts were fun, some were dull. Regardless of the over-hype this game received there are still plenty of real issues to warrant a thumbs down from the gaming community that transcend failing to meet customer expectations.

The Callisto Protocol: 5.1/10

Emerging from a pod you awake unaware of your surroundings. Through following a series of breadcrumbs distributed in the form of data logs you'll quickly learn the area well. At the start death feels inevitable when the step meter reaches 0, however after only a couple loops(deaths) you start to survive, thus preserving your integrity bar. I have a lot of playtime and I'm still on the same save after plenty of accidental, experimental (I wonder what would happen if I jumped from here?), and the likely inevitable deaths that come from exploring for the first time. So while the threat of save deletion exists if your integrity bar reaches 0, I wouldn't worry that much about it.

I earned my first ending around 4 hours in, which was delayed due to searching many times over for something that didn't exist. In all that searching though I became aware of other elements that are part of different endings. Returning to loop again with that information seemed promising, however another 8-ish hours later I've yet to earn another ending. I'm out of hints, I think I'm missing some secret item, but I've done everything I can think of. Even after coordinating a series of steps that culminates to trigger a major event I was sure a new ending was destined for me. Alas that was not the case, again I received the same ending I got 8 hours of playtime ago.

13 Steps is a fairly scaled game in terms of difficulty if the player takes the time to explore the area and uncover the upgrades that are hidden throughout. Players should find some locations challenging to begin with, but via trial and error make light work of them in the end. One location in particular at the "end" of the game was surprisingly much more challenging than the rest and will truly test your ability.

There's quite a bit here to uncover, various threats roam the environment, and pacing for what will likely be your first ending feels good. Gameplay was very smooth with the exception of some minor hiccups that can occur (granted the game only released a few days ago). Overall I would say it surpassed my expectations slightly.

The open-endedness of compiling a open mic set allows the story to branch out in wild directions. Only to then hone back in on the premise of working the crowd that night and earning laughs. Menial tasks of feeding your houseplant can turn into much more than that after a few conversations. Inner dialogues, rolled fate, and your stats bring more life to the story as things can twist and turn at a moments notice.

Good stuff.