Recent reviews by Poopdog

The game is good. It's just good.

It's not trying to be a AAA blockbuster, yet is is. It's not trying to make some targeted socio-political points, yet there are still moments that make us all laugh at our society together.

The attention to detail and immersion is superb. The ship is your "menu". When you travel to different planets, you see other live players at that planet. When people join your party, they board your ship. When you are scouting for a mission, your teammates can make suggestions on where to drop. It all lends to a very cohesive team experience.

The combat is fun. It's chaotic, relatively simple to pickup, and arcade-like. It's not insanely high skill-cap like a COD or a Battlefield, yet you can still play it at that high level if you want.

I could go on and on. But just get the game already. At $40 it's already an absolute steal.

This game is fantastic, but infuriating. There is a fatal flaw. The boss battle difficulty is *completely* unbalanced from the rest of the game, even on Normal mode. In any game on "Normal", I expect to die to the boss a handful of times before learning the moveset, and then accomplishing it fairly easily. Hard Mode I expect to be a several hour affair. Fine. However, some of the bosses are easily beaten on the first try, yet other bosses took me literally an hour or two (the frog. and the final boss which I just gave up on for reasons which will be made clear).

I'm not an exceptional gamer, but I'm not bad either. This is why I play on normal mode. And it wasn't until the very end that I realized why the bosses were so difficult: There is a HEAL ability that you can get called Regenerate, but it is NOT found during the main storyline of the game. Yet having the ability to regenerate health is a virtual necessity for the final boss. When you die in Ori, the game restarts at the last save point, usually the last "phase" of a boss encounter. Fine. Except that they start you at 30% health, which virtually guarantees a swift death if you don't have Regenerate.

I'm honestly shocked that a team of developers with otherwise very excellent game design sense would neglect to give the player Regenerate during the normal course of the game. Meanwhile, they do force you to get probably 3-4 abilities that are essentially USELESS outside of their immediate intended area of the game. You get a Flash of Light ability that is literally pointless once you leave the darkness area. Yet they didn't think to lead you through the part of the game that teaches you to heal? They didn't think that might be helpful during a boss battle?

I honestly haven't been this mad at a game in a long time, because of how different the bulk of the game is from the boss encounters. The entire experience was fantastic otherwise. Stunning art, beautiful sound design, great controls and puzzle design. Excellent flow, like any Metroidvania game should have.

But then I got to the final boss and the entire experience was tainted. I quit the game at an hour into Phase 3 and never looked back. I'll catch the ending on Youtube.

Really disappointed in this team honestly.

This is about as close to a perfect game as you can get; certainly in the Roguelike genre. The art is phenomenal and deeply evocative of classic comic-books. The effects are stellar (though in late game can sometimes clutter the screen). And the replay value is unlike any Roguelike I've ever played. Before this game, FTL was probably my gold standard for the genre. Aside from that, these two games share very little in common.

Hades allows you to quickly progress not only in individual runs, but slowly progress over time in between runs. And with that comes a massive amount of power as you wreck old zones that you once struggled with... very rewarding. And unlike many games in this genre, they found a way to make the storyline A) front and center, B) NOT BORING, and C) integrated fully into the game itself. They rarely force you to talk to people for any long periods of time. Most toss-away conversations are 3 short speech bubbles long. And frankly, the dialogue is so great that I can't in good conscience recommend skipping them.

There's no greater reward than beating a roguelike finally after several failed runs, and Hades is no different. But unlike many in the genre which are turn-based, the fast-paced combat keeps your heart racing the entire time. And beating the game is really only the beginning of a much larger late-game system that completely revolutionizes playstyles. I won't reveal any spoilers, but suffice to say that the post-game content isn't just a flat damage / difficulty spike like a classic "New Game Plus" might be. No, Hades feels like an entirely new world once you've beaten it. The weapons change in significant ways, you continue to explore the characters in a relevant way, and this also deeply affects your power level and playstyle. This is all not to mention the virtually limitless builds that are possible. One round you might get unlucky and feel stuck, but in another round you might stumble upon an epic combination of abilities that makes you feel unstoppable. The rewarding feeling that brings is unparalleled.

The music is essentially classic heavy metal, a la 90s Metallica. It's so bizarre for a Greek mythology-themed game, but it's weirdly perfect. The boss fight music feels amazingly epic and again, fully integrated into your combat.

The game is fast-paced and punishing. But victory is all the sweeter for it. I can't recommend this game highly enough. If you're into hack-and-slash games and/or the roguelike/lite genre AT ALL, you cannot miss this title. It is a must-purchase. And $25 is an absolute steal.

Firewatch has a lot going for it. It's visually fantastic, just short enough to feel satisfied without dragging on, great voice acting and character development, a great sense of expanse and exploration, and overall fantastic immersion. They carry the theme of "self-imposed isolation" throughout the entire story and it was very well-composed. The explored those emotions and implications thoroughly.

The major con that everyone keeps addressing (which I will rehash here, spoiler-free), is the ending. It's not a BAD ending, per se. It's simply lackluster. It falls flat. The entire game is spent building tension, making you care about these characters and what's happening to them. They build 4 or 5 smaller stories within the main storyline, and they're all incredibly tense and interesting. You begin to craft possible explanations in your head as to what's going on with these mysterious plotlines, and it's fantastic. At one point my wife put the controller down because she was literally scared of what could happen next. For anyone who has ever tried to write narrative before... that's INCREDIBLY difficult to achieve. Amazing job. However...

Here's the problem. They never did anything with it. They took those 4 or 5 micro-stories, full of high-stakes, fear, and tension, and they ALL didn't pan out. They just fizzled. It's like spending hours making bread dough, letting it rise, resting it, seasoning it perfectly, and never putting it in the oven. YOU'RE SO CLOSE, FIREWATCH. You did the hard work! Now just close the deal! I'm on the hook, reel me in! They never satisfied any of those high tension moments, they just explained them away. Every conclusion left me feeling like, "oh, that's it? Okay, I guess."

So I'm very torn. It's really quite an experiential game, my wife and I completely enjoyed it for what it was. However I feel there was a lot of lost potential with the ending. They just sort of ended it, not taking advantage of the hard work they put in developing the tension. The payoff is the easy part, I feel. But the didn't give us that.

On other minor con is that I felt the illusion of choice with my dialogue choices, however after finishing the game, I learned that the hundreds of dialogue choices you make have very little to no substantial impact on the actual progress of the story. At most, it slightly changes the tone of your relationship with Delilah, and some minor easter eggs here and there.

Pick it up on Steam sale. It's worth a play through. It's very unique. I'm just still not sure about the ending.

Silent Age is another sleeper hit on the indie scene, and mark what is hopefully a continued reawakening of the point-and-click adventure genre. The puzzles aren't particularly hard, which for this reviewer is just fine. Many modern point-and-click adventure titles concoct obscure and frustrating puzzles and item combinations that don't leave me satisfied upon completion, but just shouting, "Oh really?!". That's not how puzzles should be.

Yes, Silent Age will go by fast, and won't be particularly challenging. But the visuals are phenomenal to simply drink in along the way, the time travel system is fun and responsive, and the story is genuinely clever and interesting. It takes place in the 70s, with a fictional post-apocalyptic future that you're meant to prevent. With some twists and turns along the way, it makes for a really unusual setting and an unlikely hero. Your character, Joe (?), is a typical blue-collar janitor. Part of the charm of this character is his innocent stupidity that comes across as very endearing, in the same vein as Homer Simpson. Despite his low IQ and childlike disposition to his surroundings, he always tries to do the right thing, and ultimately is the one who is called upon to save the day. I won't spoil, but the ending was fantastic.

Overally it was quite a fun experience. I got it for 99 cents, but it's definitely worth 5 bucks, and possibly even the full 9.99 price tag. Consider how much movies cost for 2 hours of entertainment. In the same way, you'll get a couple (or even more) hours of entertainment with Silent Age, and for this reviewer's money, it's much more immersive.

If this ever goes on 90% sale again, this is a MUST BUY in my opinion. It was a fantastic title that ended just when I wanted it to. No dragging on needlessly. It's an honest title that knows what it is, and is very confident in it's identity. Can't say enough good about the Silent Age.

After playing through the entire game and doing most of the side content, I'm still torn. I can't recommend it in good conscience however.

Gameplay: The combat feels like a classic JRPG but with some real-time elements that allow you to control a secondary character (or let someone else use the mouse to do so). This guy can collect healing objects for you, or even slow down your enemies on the timeline which is incredibly useful and adds a new dynamic to trying to interrupt your enemies. Overall I enjoyed the classic combat. My one major gripe is that you only ever can have 2 of your party members out at a time, which seems absurd to me. Especially since your enemies routinely have 3.

Art: You can't say enough about the art style. It's got a brilliant storybook feel that is woven throughout the story as well. The color palette and style is bold and refreshing. Animation leaves a lot to be desired however, as they all look more like paper cutouts hanging from strings.

Story/Writing: This is what ruins the game for me. The story is hopelessly childish and unoriginal, which leaves me wondering what the target audience is. I do realize that this matches the visual style, but there must be ways to achieve a story that is appealing to adults while maintaining the whimsical visuals. Things like Trine 2 or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons did this wonderfully. Overall the story was sickeningly saccharine. In contrast, Brothers started out extremely fanciful, but quick got dark and serious in it's themes. They're both coming-of-age tales, but Brothers pulled it off in a much more brilliant and emotional way (and without words, yet!). In Child of Light, you'll never care about any of the characters. Speaking of words, I must say a few about the poetry. I feel as if the poetry could have saved the hokey story. However, the poetry was dreadful. The writers made no attempt to compose with any meter or rhythm, but instead stuck stubbornly to their A-B-A-B rhyme scheme regardless of the cadence of the sentences. Shakespeare is rolling in his grave. I love great poetry when it has a solid rhythm and bounce to it (See Penny Arcade's Twisp and Catsby stuff!), but this sounded more like a junior high student writing poetry for the first time. Even the rhymes were a stretch from time to time, and left you gagging or saying "oh come on, really?!".

In conclusion, I give this a "NO" with a very heavy heart. I wanted to like it so bad. There were parts of it I really enjoyed. But I found myself rushing from battle to battle in order to enjoy the combat, while the story left me wanting. I don't mind a good kid's story. But this wasn't just a kid's story, it was downright childish and lame. If you think the beautiful art and great combat can redeem an ignorable story, then maybe give this a try. But for me, it wasn't worth the 10 hours.