Recent reviews by Lace Sabatons

It's Fallout. If you can put up with a 23 year old interface, then it's still one of the best RPGs you could ever want to play.

Obvious thing first. What catches your eye about HunieCam Studio is the art of sexy ladies. That's some good stuff. There's nothing TOO exciting to see here--it is on Steam after all--but the game is enjoyably lewd. The art is attractive (in both style and subject), the characters are diverse enough to appeal to many preferences, and the voice acting is a nice touch. The whole cast managers to be alluring and funny, without becoming annoying. HunieCam Studio is probably the most erotic thing I've found on steam.

As mentioned above, though, that's not really saying much. If you're looking for something erotic, there are better places to look.

However, the great thing about HunnieCam is that it's also a great game. It's not just a thin veneer of interactivity that exists to justify stringing together a few softcore porn images. It's a legitimately fun, challenging game to play, which kept me engaged long after I was bored with all the sexiness it had to offer. It could have been about potatoes and I would have kept playing it. (Though, I probably wouldn't have STARTED playing it).

This kind of management sim usually isn't my thing, but HCS hooked me. Each session takes about 60-90 minutes, so it's not too big of an investment to fit into your day. Whenever I was done, I always had some ideas on how to improve next time. It kept me coming back until I finally got that Diamond ♥♥♥♥ Trophy. Nobody drops women onto buildings better than I do!

I'm always kind of annoyed when Steam recommends a game to me "Because you played HunieCam Studio," because it's always some anime-ass softcore porn. What I really want is another managment sim that hits this level of quality.

I really want to like this game. I want to like it so much that I played through the whole thing, despite realizing how bad it was going to be 20 minutes in. It's right up my alley with its grizley subject matter and over-the top style. Everything is lovably purple, with the number 666 showing up pretty much anywhere any kind of number is called for. On that level the game is brilliant.

But aside from a lovable style, there's not actually much of a game here. There's no freedom, no challenge. Each level drops you into the house, where you follow a line on a map until you run into a certain NPC. The game shouts "There! That's the person you're trying to kill on this level!" Then you check your notebook for some hint at how the game wants you to get that job done. You follow that hint until you reach another hint, then follow that hint, and so on, until someone dies. There's never more than a single path towards killing any given target, so there's no decisions to be made. The only thing that might actually be considered a challenge is figuring out what the hints mean. The hints oscilate between so obvious as to be trivial, and so obtuse as to be useless. There's no happy middle between the two. No sense of satisfaction in figuring stuff out.

Then there are the times when you need a tool that isn't already in your inventory. Some specific item, like a screwdriver. Your first instinct is to go look for where you'd keep a screwdriver in your own home. Is it in the garage? The tool shed? Nope. It's on a table in the sitting room. You just have to wander around aimlessly, scanning every drawer and surface while you wonder if you're missing something that would make this fun.

The demonic powers are also a little annoying. I could ignore the fact that the telekenisis never feels right, or that the fireballs are basically only available in pre-scripted sections of the game. That stuff, to a degree, makes sense. But the ability to make people forget seeing you doesn't even work! The moment your seen, all of the controls go completely dead, so there's no opportunity to use it. I went so far as intentionally getting caught multiple times in a row just to try and figure out what I was doing wrong, but it's no use.

The game's cutscenes are too numerous and too boring. And even as numerous as they are, they often fail to explain things. Without spoiling anything, the game's story makes a few strange leaps forward that I still don't really understand. Several characters apparently come out of nowhere. Halfway through the game everyone starts talking about my uncle. Your mom even tells you to stop bothering your uncle, because he's been complaining about you lately. Meanwhile I'm left to wonder who or where my uncle is, because it's the first time I'm hearing about him.

I'm disappointed that the game wound up being as bland and boring as it is. The graphics are nice and clear, the controls are mostly pretty solid, the deaths are reasonably creative. In most respects the game is a competently assembled thing. But there are just too many problems for me to give it a blanket recommendation.

I'd say you should buy it only if you meet two criteria:
1. You, like me, think the premise is AWESOME.
2. It's on sale for less than $3.

Otherwise, give this a pass.

If you play video games at all, play Hotline Miami 2. Do it.

There were times while I was playing this when I literally felt like I was on drugs. I don't mean that the game is super trippy (it is), and I don't mean it's an intense experience (it is). What I mean is that I had a physical reaction to playing this game that felt like some kind of drug I'd never tried before. I was outwardly calm, had no emotional affect, but on the inside I was on fire with some kind of adrenaline rush unlike any I've ever had before. But at the same time I was completely calm. I kept oscillating between them in my mind as I played. "Am I okay? Oh my god my brain is exploding. No I'm okay, this is weird. What's going on. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ MY HEART IS GOING TO FLY OUT OF MY CHEST. This is a really weird thing for a video game to do to me."

I can break down into words why this game is good, and I will. But I can't give the game any higher recommendation than "it literally made me feel like I was on some kind of drug."

Okay, so, here's the rundown.

If you played hotline Miami one (which you ABSOLUTELY should.) you understand the basics of this game. It's a top-down bloodbath. You walk into a house, there are people in the house. You kill all of the people. Blood is everywhere. Sometimes you die. You hit the R button. Instantly you're trying again. And again. And again. The whole thing is so fast and twitchy. The game actually tries to make you go just as crazy as your character is supposed to be. The game WANTS you to run into rooms throwing fists and bullets randomly until for some reason it works. It's a twitchy, maddening experience. A successful run through a level can be completed in about 2 minutes. But each level will take you about 20-30 to get through without being shot in the face by a Russian mobster or a street hoodlum or a cop or whatever.

Mechanically, very little has changed, save for a few things being tightened up. Which is good. The first game was one of the greatest produced in the current renaissance of Indie gaming. But, if I may be so bold, I believe the sequel surpasses the original.

It took me 13 hours of play, which I squeezed into 3 days, to beat the game. I didn't want the game to stop, but at the same time I kept thinking "I MUST be near the end by now. There's no way the game could keep going." And yet it goes on, and on, until suddenly it doesn't and you're just not ready for the rush to be over.

After the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, drug-addled story told by the first game, a person could be forgiven for thinking that they knew what to expect here. But everything is on its head. There are more protagonists in this game than I was able to count. The game switches between them rapidly, and between segments in the storyline like it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Pulp Fiction. Now and then you're a mental case getting phone calls telling you to kill people, just like in the first game. But you also fall between being a soldier in a fictitious Cold War brush conflict, a cop, a group of teenagers who just want a bit of the ol' Ultra Violence, and a journalist whose just trying to piece the whole thing together. Nothing that's happening to you ever makes any sense until you have a chance to look back on it with 3 gameplay hours of hindsight.

The soundtrack to this game is going to be my favorite album for awhile. I don't have the kind of vocabulary a person needs to really describe music. But you will NEVER mistake this game's music for anything else. It's both incredibly distinct and unlike anything you've ever heard before, but also evocative of the mid-80s early-90s, when the game is set.

The visuals cross over from being "graphics" to being "art." Pixel art games are a bit of a fad to be sure, but you can always tell the difference between people who are just trying to jump on a bandwagon, and people who have a legitimate passion for the visual medium of pixels. Again, my vocabulary for describing visual art is insufficient. But most games simply don't pack this much visual information into each individual pixel. And the colors are so bright and vibrant. It's glorious.

Heads up if you do play it: the game can be used with controllers, but WASD and a mouse really is the way to go here.

Play this game.

Arkham City is not without its flaws, but if anything I think I would have to say that I've enjoyed it even more than Arkham Asylum.