Recent reviews by riotblob

it's really really really good

Baffling.

It's impossible to write anything extensive about this game without spoiling some of what makes the experience so wonderful, so I'll be brief: it's outstanding.

Avoid knowing things about it before playing if you possibly can.

As anyone who knows me can probably tell you (because I've bugged them constantly to play with me), I like this game a lot. Failure, chaos, stickiness, murder, a boat, capitalism, animals that dress up and breach occupational health and safety guidelines, friends, mini golf, wall jumping, a rabbit with caterpillar tracks instead of feet, the void, a mysterious underground complex, unnecessarily large bales of hay – Ultimate Chicken Horse has it all.

I highly recommend saving any really terrible, impossible level you construct over the course of a round and then starting a new round with it so you can make it even worse.

The only major downside to this game is it's a lot less fun with only two players and can only go up to four.


Update 29/12/2017: The Elephantastic Update made the two-player game much more engaging with the addition of an extra party box each round. It's still not as varied as having three or four players, because there are fewer possible ways to get points (other than coin points - which are suddenly super valuable), but it's a big improvement. The new character, new levels, and new items are also really fun.

Mostly an improvement on the first Assassin's Creed game (apart from the three annoying sequences where you have to control various vehicles), but still not worth playing today.

Some of the biggest problems:
- Platforming challenges (some of them timed) where only the real challenge is the awkward and uncontrollable camera angles.
- The most fun part (freerunning around the cities) is restricted to stop you actually having too much fun.
- All combat situations and most assassinations can simply be blundered through without any need for skill or improvement.
- Gratuitous sexism and cultural insensitivity.
- Pacing and uninspiring writing make it a pretty tedious experience that feels much longer than it is.

Good things:
+ It's very easy to amass an obscene amount of money quite early on, so you never have to scrounge to afford better equipment.
+ Upgrading the villa and finding the collectibles is pretty fun.
+ I like that in several missions, failing to achieve an objective is unavoidable - I don't play many games where this is the case, although it does feel very forced at times.

The most intriguing thing about the game for me has been wondering if Michael Gough is the voice actor I thought I recognised from Skyrim, or if that was someone else (who may or may not actually have worked on Skyrim).

Arkham City and Deus Ex: Human Revolution both deliver much better gameplay experiences of the general type this game seems to want to deliver. I recommend playing one of those instead.

One of my absolute favourite games of all time. "Rhythm game plus roguelike" was the hook that caught me, and then "I'll never be able to finish this game but it's fun" became "how does anyone win as Monk" became "okay, but I'll never win as Aria" … and now I'm hovering on the brink of aspiring to an All Chars run. The puns are glorious, the music is epic and the story is cool without being too intrusive when all you really want to do is get really stressed and fail repeatedly.

Also, the shopkeeper is amazing. <3

This only took three hours or so to play through (and I made a lot of mistakes) and it's not "hard" … but the story is charming, the narration reminds me of childhood, and the score is lovely. "Relaxing and nice" seems like a weird compliment to give a game (at least, a game involving jumping and mistakes), but Thomas Was Alone is great and that's how I would describe it.