Recent reviews by RaXeno

Return to Monkey Island is a delightful game both for longtime fans of the franchise and new players alike. A lot of effort was taken to make improvements on the previous formula and control schemes to encourage convenience without taking away from the charm, exploration, or problem-solving of the originals. The humor, writing, and voice talent are all there, and the surprisingly few voice replacements do very well. There is no lack of witty dialogue. My favorite gag was the Forgiveness Frog.

I do have a few criticisms which I believe hold RtMI back a little, but I do not believe they take away from the enjoyability or nostalgia the game has to offer.

Firstly: the art direction (not to be confused with the art STYLE). Like past MI games, the artwork takes a stylized approach only this time, it almost has a childrens storybook feel to it. The colors are beautiful and the environments especially are filled with life. The character designs look great, but I feel that they lack in expressiveness, which in my opinion, hinder visual gags. For example, past games, both originals and remakes have the hilarious bug-eyed expression on Guybrush's face. I feel that the characters' black beady eyes do not compliment Monkey Island's slapstick humor very well, but it could be easily worked around with a few more extreme facial expressions/eye illustrations used sparingly.

Additionally, I felt that there was less visual humor entirely. eg. Guybrush's pants falling down in MI2. Comedic timing is there and it is brilliant as always, but more visual gags was just a personal wish of mine.
Again, this certainly wasnt enough to ruin the game for me, and it didn't stop the game from feeling like a true Monkey Island game.

My biggest praise for RtMI is its VERY clever means of modernizing the point-and-click adventure formula to be user-friendly and convenient. Further, they provide really helpful tools and simple dialogue features to help players get on the right track whereas with older adventure games, you were pretty much thrown to the wind. My favorite feature is if it's been a day or two since you've used a save, youre provided with a very natural narration offering you a reminder as to what you were working on previously.

Very lovely game with a lot of heart. Very welcoming to new players or players who need some reminding. Fun challenges for long time players.

Bugsnax is a lot like Pokemon except instead of catching a pikachu and making him fight to the death for money, you just eat him.

As someone who already finished (and loved) the other three games in the franchise, I'm glad I gave this one a shot. It adds a little extra to the lore and predominantly shows what's going on before the events of Danganronpa 2 (However, I would personally recommend playing this AFTER 2 since some of the foreshadowing was more exciting for me than I think it would have been if I had played this before Goodbye Despair.)

I believe the gameplay is kind of strange especially to an American audience. It's a Japanese Third Person Shooter, similar to Gal Gun. It's clear to me that the game understands its entire audience may not be familiar with this genre, so the beginning of the game feels quite hand-holdy. There are also little details like enemy hitboxes seem to be simplified and not quite consistent with their models (Grenade monokumas' backs were the biggest issue for me). Puzzles also seemed pretty dumbed down at first. But as the game progressed, I was impressed with how challenging some of them got. Genocide Jack is also a nice alternative to turn the game into a button-mashing beat-em-up. By the end of the game, I was very comfortable with the gameplay and controls. I would, however, strongly suggest using a controller over mouse and keyboard for this game.

The story is good and doesn't feel like a wasteful addition to the Danganronpa universe, nor does it feel like a quick cash-grab. In fact, I was genuinely shocked to discover that this game's story has some of the most disturbing themes out of all of the Dangonronpa games, at least in my opinion. (This is in regards to the child antagonists). I feel there was some dialogue that made less sense as an English translation, but generally, most points made are clear.

Lastly, if you're still on the fence but enjoyed the other Danganronpa games, Toko is enough reason to play Ultra Despair Girls by herself. I actually couldn't stand her in the first game because of how negative she and Byakuya both were, but her growth in this game is both profound and thoroughly entertaining. It's clear to me that the writers and translators had a field day writing Toko and Komaru's interactions. Ultra Despair Girls Toko became one of my favorite characters in the whole franchise.

Bots are gone, and it appears a lot has been done to keep it that way in the last 20 days. I hope it continues. It's been wonderful playing Tf2 with my friends again, just like I used to <3

Thank you, VALVe, and please don't stop!

Welp.

I met some interesting chicks,
Flirted with a trucker gal,
Told knock-knock jokes,
Spent a disconcerting amount of time holding my controller to my neck,
Got dumped by an anime body-pillow,
And sang a steamy love song to a jar of mayonnaise.








Long story short, I love this game.
10/10 Would Lionel Richie again.