Recent reviews by manchego obfuscator

I've never played the original 1999 Resident Evil 3, so I can't and won't attempt to make a comparison or speak to the amount of cut content from the original (something which many series fans complained about upon the remake's release); while I can't claim that it plays very differently from the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake, and I certainly understand some fans being disappointed that Nemesis mostly pursues you in scripted set pieces here, I found the RE3 remake to be an enjoyably compact dose of modern RE gameplay, with strong pacing that doesn't drag on in any one section and a mostly well-balanced difficulty curve; my only real complaint is that a couple of the late-game enemy types and the next-to-last boss are bullet sponges to a ridiculous degree.

BrokenLore: Low's first section is set in a generic, stock-UE5-asset-looking fog-filled Japanese town, with abysmal performance even on a relatively capable PC, forgettable PT-inspired horror imagery that appears on repeated loops through the confined environment, and a tastelessly heavy-handed (though thankfully not at all graphic) scene of implied sexual assault; this is followed by a drastic shift to PS1-esque graphics in a section where you have to collect eight mirror shards while being pursued by a monster through a tedious maze. It may only be an hour or so long per HLTB, but that doesn't mean I feel any obligation to finish it.

Very qualified recommendation. I was under the impression that Pine Hearts was something of an A Short Hike-influenced, combat-free take on the Zelda series, but while there's no doubt a considerable ASH influence here, it's really much more of an isometric walking simulator. While you do acquire new abilities over the course of the game that allow you to reach previously inaccessible areas, these abilities function almost exclusively as keys that allow you to get past specific obstacles, with only a handful of actual puzzles, and with most of the gameplay consisting of various fetch quests. And while the Fisher-Price-esque art style has some charm to it, especially in the dialogue-free cutscenes, the tone too frequently comes off as more cloying than charming (most of the characters have alliterative names like "Kindly Katie" and "Gullible Graeme"). It's only a few hours long, the ending (while predictable) still manages to be surprisingly touching, and despite the limited gameplay, I enjoyed exploration enough to finish it; I'd still only recommend it on sale, though.

When I heard Pinball Spire described as a pinball Metroidvania, my immediate point of comparison was 2018's Yoku's Island Express, which I quite liked (and need to get around to replaying at some point). However, the two titles don't actually have much in common at all beyond that superficial description; whereas Yoku was more of a Metroidvania that used pinball mechanics for its traversal and puzzle-solving as an alternative to traditional platforming, Pinball Spire is more of a traditional pinball game that prioritizes carefully lining up shots to hit specific ramps and targets, albeit with a Metroidvania structure and various other gameplay elements that would be physically impossible to realize on a real pinball table. There's nothing wrong with the latter approach, but it's just not for me; I enjoy pinball, but my enjoyment and skill level are ultimately just too casual for a game where progression, not just a high score, is tied to lining up shots in this fashion, and where missing one will often lead to you being kicked back to the previous screen.

(I will note that there are difficulty sliders of various kinds, but I didn't find them to make too drastic a difference in my experimentation with them).

Generally very good hybrid of 2.5D cinematic platformer and first-person walking sim/puzzler, even though a few puzzles are a bit too obtuse, and a few other sequences rely a bit too much on trial and error; there are also some holes in the world-building (the premise is basically that of a certain 1998 Jim Carrey movie, but on a scale so much greater that it couldn't possibly be sustainable), and I don't love every aspect of how the evil corporation and resistance to it are portrayed here. Still, the storytelling and voice acting are mostly great throughout; the puzzles, platforming, and environmental exploration are generally satisfying; and Out of the Blue does an excellent job of tying the two different genres (each tied to one of the two playable characters) into the narrative, which takes a number of twists I hadn't expected and has an ending that doesn't go in the obvious direction, avoiding a straightforward and simple catharsis.

I like a good walking simulator as much as anyone, and I've enjoyed several of The Chinese Room's other games; unfortunately, *Everybody's Gone to the Rapture* just isn't good. Even when using cheats on PC to fix the infamously slow walking speed, the pace of the game and its narrative is still far too slow, with a frustrating and unintuitive central mechanic; obviously, I'm supposed to follow these glowing orbs, but sometimes simply following them triggers more story scenes, and other times button prompts appear to trigger a simple but nonetheless tedious frequency-tuning minigame. I could not for the life of me figure out how to reliably make those button prompts appear, and while I'm sure there's something I'm missing, I don't really care enough to figure out what that something is.

Dystopian 2.5D black-and-white cinematic platformer heavily influenced by Limbo and Inside, in which you play a bird-girl trying to escape a decaying, underground industrial world of anthropomorphic animals. Clearly a game that placed a high priority on its art direction, even for this subgenre, as there are lots of gameplay-minimal sections where you just walk forward, or have no real control over your character while the camera pans or flies through its environments; as for the actual gameplay, the puzzles and platforming are fairly simple, with a few somewhat frustrating timed platforming sections, and a few spots where the art direction makes it tough to distinguish between scenery and your path forward. The story also ends on a frustratingly ambiguous and less than satisfying note. But that said, despite its flaws, it's appropriately short (at approximately 2.5-3.5 hours), well paced, and the art direction is absolutely beautiful, with some very good use of public-domain classical music on the soundtrack as well. Despite its flaws, I still enjoyed it a lot, and fans of cinematic platformers should definitely give it a try, at least when on sale; in fact, it's currently only $2 on Steam as of this writing.

(Warning: this ran well enough on my RTX 4070 - or at least, any frame drops weren't significant enough to bother me - but is apparently not well optimized, especially for lower-end PCs; it's unsupported on Steam Deck for that reason)

An opening voiceover from none other than Shohreh Aghdashloo, a distinctive Persian mythological setting, and a short 2.5-hour length (at least, if HLTB is to be believed; I couldn't bring myself to finish) aren't enough to overcome incredibly simplistic and linear gameplay that makes your average Lego game look deep and complex.

Also opens with a famous Milan Kundera quote about kitsch ("Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."), which seems bizarrely out of place here unless the latter part of the game takes a drastic narrative swerve; nothing about the portions of the game I played suggest any sort of self-aware irony or deliberate pursuit of a kitsch aesthetic.

1000xRESIST frequently betrays its limited budget in ways that aren't to the benefit of the storytelling here, with extremely simple and not particularly expressive character models, fairly minimal character animation outside certain key parts of the story, and dodgy voice acting for some secondary and tertiary characters; additionally, some of the gameplay, such as it is, is fairly clunky, particularly the sections where you need to wander around a semi-open area to find and talk to various characters in order to progress the story. But despite its faults as a game, I can't really give it a lower rating than four stars, thanks to its generally captivating, millennia-spanning story that encompasses themes of Asian diasporic identity, individual and collective resistance, trauma, COVID-19, and more. Not every narrative beat or aspect of its world-building lands perfectly, but it's still remarkable to see such ambition from Sunset Visitor's debut game, and it adds up to a story that has real emotional power, even for all its imperfections.

As a streamlined open-world game with an emphasis on light puzzle-solving and platforming as well as traversal, Giant Squid’s second game is significantly more ambitious, and significantly more of an actual game, than its debut title, the very linear and gameplay-light underwater swimming sim Abzu. While the exploration, atmosphere, and puzzles are all fairly engaging for most of its running time, The Pathless ultimately doesn’t feel as tightly designed or polished as its predecessor: all the puzzles are designed around a small handful of gameplay elements that start to wear thin by the end; the story would have worked better with abstract text-free storytelling a la Journey or Abzu; and the boss battles that end each region start as welcome changes of pace from the exploration, but end up as overly drawn-out affairs with frustrating difficulty spikes (you can’t actually die, but taking too many hits will kick you out of the arena and force you to restart the current phase of the boss). And while a traditional map or quest markers obviously wouldn’t have fit the deliberately streamlined approach to open-world design, I do wish there had been a feature like the one in Sable, which allowed you to set waypoints anywhere you could see from a suitably high vantage point; as is, I spent too much of the time using the Spirit Mask, which highlights key landmarks, but also desaturates the visuals and slows you down. It’s still generally fun to explore and solve puzzles, and I enjoyed most of my time with it, but it’s more flawed than I had hoped.