Recent reviews by BIG WIRT ALERT

game's incredible, there's really not much more to say

This game is an absolute delight! It's charming, fun, and incredibly weird. It's rare that a game doesn't take itself too seriously but also presents its world in such a way where you could really live in it.

A pretty decent game overall. Shooting feels great, really good sound effects, a pretty standard affair of guns but they're fun enough. I found the game to overstay its welcome a bit in the latter half, the game's probably a bit longer than it needs to be. At a certain point you've seen all the enemies, you've seen all the guns, and yet you still have like 6 more levels to move through. I would have preferred a bit tighter pacing but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Good game nonetheless, I try to play a lot of boomer shooters and this one hits all the right marks.

if u dont like this game you're a psyko bwl

A beautiful and fascinating little game. Great artstyle and music, and an interesting world.

Feels like kind of interesting mix of Wario Land and Sonic games, especially with the emphasis on speed and movement tech. Great game though, feels great to move and once you start to get the movement stuff down it's a blast to play. I do wish that the game had introduced some of the movement stuff more gradually instead of hitting you with it all at once, but that's a personal thing. Good game!

This is a good game with a handful of flaws ranging from relatively minor to pretty major. I enjoyed my time playing, but there were a lot of issues I encountered with the general game design that I feel could have been greatly improved on.

When the game is working well and isn't fighting itself, this game is a blast. The animations look great, the combat feels good, and it's just generally quite good. However, it makes a couple of interesting choices that damage the experience.

First off, you have to unlock the Arkham style "press button to counter enemy", even though the tutorial tells you how to do it (unless I interpreted that wrong). This ability is basically necessary to have a good time playing the game, and while it is technically the first unlock you can get (meaning you can have it as soon as the second level), it's still optional, which means if you're like me, you upgraded other things first. It felt like a weird choice in a game that clearly relies on that style of gameplay.

Speaking of the unlockable abilities, they all felt a little bit useless to me. You'll see it in other review, but grabbing enemies is basically entirely pointless because as soon as you grab an enemy another enemy will sucker punch you. The unlockable moves all had inputs that felt unnecessarily complicated or just difficult to remember during the fast-paced combat. It's not like the moves were fighting game level complicated, most often it's just "hold up or down" while doing a move, but so often during the combat I was so focused on the fight that I couldn't recall specifically "ok, its hold down during this move to disarm the opponent". Maybe I'm just dumb. I also wish the game had chosen to go with the gameplay style of "button for light attacks, button for heavy attacks" because it chooses "hold light attack button to do a heavy attack" and it makes heavy attacks feel slow, cumbersome, and hard to get off when you need them too. This speaks to a greater issue with inputs in general, I found myself unable to pick up weapons when I needed to, my character would sometimes throw away guns that still had ammo in them, etc.

The game has a habit of introducing mechanics that go against everything you've just learned but also doesn't provide you with an effective way of dealing with. Many of the gimmick enemies are just generally more frustrating to fight rather than interesting. There's also occasionally a lack of consistency, like some enemies who flash red mean that they're gonna do an unblockable attack (which you need to dodge) but with some enemies, you can attack them to knock them out of that state, while others are just invincible during. Many enemies who do these unblockable attacks will just chain together unblockable attacks one after the other (like, literally as soon as the previous one ends they start a new one), meaning you can't do anything for a couple seconds but roll away from them, which brings down the fast-paced fun of the combat.

The final boss breaks the code of "other enemies won't attack you while you're parrying or finishing an enemy", and will randomly just blast you while you think you're safe because the game has taught you that.

The motorcycle/jetski/whatever missions are all fine, they feel like unnecessary padding on a game that could have just been straight brawling. They don't do anything offensive but they aren't particularly interesting either.

Overall I find myself kind of torn on the game, it feels like it was envisioned to be a sort of general fighting sandbox that got dragged out into a full game, and it has the problems associated with that. I had fun with it and I think a lot of my frustration is that I feel aspects of the game could have been a lot better if some different choices had been made. I wouldn't be writing a review this long if I didn't feel passionate about it in some capacity, so that's to the game's credit at least. And the final thing to mention: narrative wise I was really pleasantly surprised, the ending was somewhat of a fizzle out rather than an explosion, but the build up and the way information was slowly revealed was really quite good.

Ultimately, I'd recommend the game, despite the perceived shortcomings I had with it. Like I said, when the game isn't fighting itself, it's truly a blast to play.

This game is very nicely polished, and surprisingly scary! I got ending B but I'm definitely going to play it again for a different one.

it's like a greatest hits collection of every souls game

Grapple Dog is a real love letter to GBA era mascot platformers, and it's fantastic. The controls are snappy, the sound effects and music are amazing, and the pixel art is bright and gorgeous. The game has some surprising challenge too!