Recent reviews by sev

good game, dev is a ♥♥♥♥

I like this game, but it has a good number of issues.

Firstly, it's clear the developer is more interested in gameplay and presentation over story. While the game features comfy aesthetics, chill music, responsive controls, and decent sound design, the story is essentially nonexistent and only ever hinted at. Really, it might as well not even be there with how little it adds to the atmosphere and quality of the game. It is never explained why Sybil is in the castle, anything about the various creatures inhabiting this world, why the royal family fell from grace, why Sybil even went on her journey in the first place, or even what her connection is to anything. There are probably 20 text boxes worth of dialogue in the game, with half of those recited by the princess in a diatribe at the very end of the game.

Furthermore, gameplay, while very solid and enjoyable, will be difficult for those not accustomed to 3D platformers, and those unwilling to invest time in mastering the mechanics. The map design, while aesthetically pleasing and fitting of the overall style, is visually very bland and samey, making navigation difficult at times; and maps are also mechanically unforgiving, requiring you to have a deep grasp of Sybil abilities in order to fully explore all of the levels. The main gameplay loop is centered around using your movement abilities to collect keys to open the boss room, followed by a pretty straightforward boss battle, with a very anticlimactic and boring ending sequence. The main upshot to the situation is that, for such a short game, there is plenty of room for skill expression, and it's interesting to try and complete parts of the game without certain upgrades.

It's actually pretty easy to "sequence break" by using your tools in unconventional ways, and for first time players, that may prove an unpleasant experience. For example, most of the pathways in the game that expect you to have the Cling Gem can be completed without it. I didn't even know the Cling Gem existed at all, because I didn't explore the final area before the boss doors, thinking I was supposed to come back after gathering all the keys. I never once tried to climb the tower, to discover the upgrade that I could have gotten forever ago. Instead, I thought the wall kicks I had acquired were this game's version of a wall ride, and got through every room with just that. I actually got the single wall kick upgrade long before the Sun Greaves, which allowed me to get through many rooms on its own.

There is basically no guidance at all in the game—not from the surface-level story elements, not from any of the spattering of cute goat NPCs, and barely any from the world design, by way of making sequences look difficult without certain upgrades. You're left to your own devices to discover what you need to pass any obstacle, and gameplay elements necessary for that are not explained at all aside from when you first pick up upgrades. And since your toolkit is so substantial with even a few number of upgrades, you're left wondering if there is even an upgrade that would help you out here, or if you can just throw yourself at that jump until you can make it work (like me; and it turns out you usually can).

In fact, I would argue exploring on your own and finding abilities and secrets before they are needed is necessary to fully enjoy this game, as about 80% of it is simply exploration, parkour, and backtracking to find upgrades. I would be much less happy with the game if I were forced to backtrack to find upgrades to get past a part of the game, just to find the thing I need in some hole somewhere in some path that I didn't even see, each and every time. On a positive note, there are almost always at least two or more ways into any specific area, and many rooms made impassible by lacking upgrades can instead be accessed from the other side by taking a roundabout path with rooms you can traverse with your current kit. The number of hard-stop rooms are few, past the non-obvious upgrades you get in the first area of the game.

As I mentioned, the parkour and movement mechanics make up the brunt of the game. The combat, while solid like the rest of the gameplay, is very simple, and can basically be skipped entirely—except for the last boss and one room that forces you into defeating all enemies. Healing is basically not required with how easy the combat is and how light a punishment falling into hazards is. The final punishment for losing all health is simply to be teleported back to the nearest save point, which are plentiful enough to make this level of failure annoying at best. I feel that a mechanic that would allow you to quickly retry difficult parts without having to trek to/from a save gem or rest point would be optimal; and if you agree, there is a mod on the Nexus just for that.

Overall I would recommend this game to anyone that enjoys the challenge of mastering plentiful, compounding, and sometimes difficult movement mechanics, doesn't care about story, enjoys exploration of both the map and the tools available to you, and doesn't mind Metroidvania backtracking—because there's a lot of that if you decide to stop at every roadblock to go find the expected upgrade for each puzzle.

I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about competitive and only play Quick Cash; I haven't had any major issues with the game and still have fun with it. If there are any cheaters in casual, they're garbage enough that they still get styled upon. Balance changes have been good for casual modes. Music, atmosphere, and overall presentation are great.

If you aren't sweaty, you'll enjoy this game. Otherwise stay away, taking the way people complain about ranked into account.

I tried to create an account and faced errors getting logged in. Contacted support and they asked me a whole bunch of questions that were unrelated to me/my account, since it was Steam linked and I had literally never logged in once before, made a character, or anything else. Support was extremely rude and actively refused to help me, even to unlink my Steam account from the account I had made. So I guess I can't even try to play it.

they did it gents

I am disappointed.

The style is good. The music is tight. The graffiti is cool. The tricks are neat. The movement is smooth.

But there is absolutely zero challenge, zero stakes, zero tension.

ALL of the characters are flatter than cardboard and ALL the cutscenes are boring, slow-paced, and lacking interesting angles. There are no characters that get me hyped like DJ Professor K did, and no character or mechanic to really make you feel like you're a part of the game world like DJ Professor K did. All of the unlockable characters aside from story ones have a few lines of dialogue and then just chill at your place forever. There isn't even any unique selection dialogue or special tricks only they can do, they are just glorified skins.

The cops are sterile and useless, yet are always presented as this incredible insurmountable force in all the cutscenes. The snipers are pitiful and going in a straight line is enough to throw them off. Instantly defeating any cop with a midair spray makes them incredibly easy to kill in batches. The bosses are incredibly easy to dodge and damage (and the normal cops are too of course). Health refills quickly and makes any mistakes overtly easy to correct. Everything feels completely unearned with the lack of stakes and ruins whatever tension could have been introduced with some of the cooler setpieces.

All 3 of the movement styles (board, skates, bike) handle exactly the same with the only minute differences being 1) what special secret areas you can arbitrarily trigger and 2) the speed/duration of manuals, plus extra manual tricks you can do on the board. You can't ride backwards on skates (JSR staple) or bikes, and you can't ride goofy on boards. You always land perfectly and straight on regardless of what your state is midair; even JSR had the courtesy to spin you around if you would have landed weird. I get it's a style to have the game flow like this, but with such a focus on tricking, making it inconsequential to spam tricks is just pitiful. In fact, so much as touching a surface that so much as resembles stairs forces you into walking state and kills your combo—this is actually the only failure state I think the game has when it comes to the trick system, and even then it's a mere slap on the wrist. Actually being on foot at all is an inherent disadvantage and there is no reason for it to even be implemented. They axed the Soap shoes grind despite the animation still being in the game and I am pissed; no shoes grind makes on foot even more useless.

The 3 trick buttons are completely interchangable between eachother and on all movement styles, with the exact same durations and functionality; just spam all 3 buttons in linear sequence and you always get max points, it's brainless. If you dont care about getting max points (they are are plentiful and piss easy to acquire) then just spam one or two instead. Boost tricks are broken and can be used to effortlessly continue any combo forever, or gain max speed in exchange for a small and easily recouped piece of meter in the very same combo + meter gain multiplier you just extended.

Spraypainting is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pain in the ass and was only cool the first time. It is actually possible to fail the spray minigame if you wait around for like 30 seconds but you can immediately start it again and get no penalty. The only incentive to spraying anything specific is achievements or personal taste. Once again, no failure states: just wiggle stick in a circle a few times so the annoying gameplay stoppage goes away.

The entire game is over-tutorialized and hand-holdy despite the fact they never tell you you can break into the secret areas or spray cops in the air, arguably two of the most useful abilities in the game (well the first isn't if you don't care about secrets). The game never tells you about the grounded trick jump but it's actually required to get a specific spray for completionism sake. Even if you dance on a Cyber pad (god what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid name) before your idiotic mary sue of a gang partner tells you you can Cyber, nothing happens and you have to wait for his dumb ass to patronizingly tell you about them.

Many of the locales (and characters) are ripped from JSR[F] 1:1 in terms of aesthetics and prominent design. For example, the bus station and the hideout look like they could have been beta stages for JSR. Most of the grinds flow well but the fast speeds you can reach occasionally makes it difficult to continue combos with the props given, and there's rarely incentive to go max speed.

I could keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ going but I'll probably hit the character limit.

Suffice to say: Game's fun if you turn your brain off, but severely lacking and I am very disappointed. If you want to relive JSR this'll do it, but it does little new and doesn't really push boundaries with what it does do. Honestly just go play JSRF.

It's MP3. Get it on Bandcamp instead.[jtholen.bandcamp.com]

yeah its pretty good

Overall I think the idea is solid: The upgrade system is broad with lots of options, abilities are fun to use, guns have fun gimmicks. But while I can enjoy the game for a bit, there are severe issues that hamper the experience—and the roguelite elements hold it back even more, because the amount of replay value you get from it is nonexistent. The flat colored stages with same cookiecutter enemies flooding you from all angles gets old very quickly. The focus on mobility with dashing, high jumps, and teleportation means nothing when every direction you turn there is some meatsack vying to shoot you. Decisions are split-second and you are punished harshly if you do not capitalize. Some might enjoy this, and I think I would too, but the game fails in other ways that make it more punishing and obnoxious than motivating.

When it comes to combat, which I would consider paramount to a shooter, kiting is very difficult unless you put terrain between you and the enemy that they cannot easily path around, and that is just not possible in some stage layouts. The small size of almost every arena is also very restricting, killing a lot of potential momentum. So all that is left is you, backpedaling or strafing around the same 3 or 4 types of enemy per faction, occasionally teleporting/explosion jumping if you've got the ability, every stage, every time. There is no uniqueness in that, no variety, no replayability.

Even if you're the kind to enjoy the endless slaughter of faceless mooks as I am, the enemies are the weakest part of the combat. They aren't fun to shoot and aren't fun to be shot by, and there's just not enough of them at once to hit that excessive peak where you feel like an unstoppable killing machine, which would redeem it somewhat. There's also not enough of a focus on individual battles, with every boss continually spawning the same enemies you normally fight—not even trash mobs or creeps like you'd see in other games, just all the usual enemies. And when they can dish out the usual damage too, having to contend with them and the boss is just not fun. What makes the enemies worse is the their sound design, as they have very quiet movement, VO, and guns, that all tend to get lost among other sounds, which makes enemies hard to pinpoint.

Really, most every sound in the game is boring and flat, without energy and motivation; there's a lack of punchy SFX, which feels out of place for an action-packed scifi/cyberpunk shooter. All the guns, including your enemies' guns, feel like they're shooting foam darts. The music is good but also lacks fullness and presence, which in other contexts I would praise since I hate the constant ducking and overdriven clipped instruments in most modern electronic music, but when combined with the rest of the game's sound mix holds it back rather than improves it.

The thing I dislike the most about the game is a result of the above problems: It's incredibly difficult to interpret taking damage and locating enemies. It would be okay if the sound cues were better, or if the gameplay loop were more engaging, but it isn't. The "you've taken damage" screen effects last way too long; they're not instantaneous and attention-grabbing enough to make it clear you've been hit; the hit sounds lack punch and are overly busy; there is little to no visual feedback on the direction of damage taken; the quiet enemies as I described make it overly difficult to judge damage sources... I could go on. There are frequent moments where I will be getting shot from behind, or backpedal into an enemy, and not know the enemy is there, and if I'm already taking damage from somewhere, it's next to impossible to know I've begun taking more from that. In a shooter, this is very not good, and makes deaths feel unfair or unearned.

The levels could save it, but as mentioned, they are small and boring. The design is nice, but they don't do enough to stand out or make them interactable. Explosive barrels, the "C-balls" that only exist to give you ammo that you have enough of anyway, and an unlockable shell in Watts-Rucker are all you'll find while playing. There are shootable objects in the paths between arenas to unlock new items to drop, but they are placed obviously with a sound and visual effect, so there's not a feeling of accomplishment or exploration. They're just kinda there. You know to expect them after the first or second time, and after you unlock everything (which happens fast) they stop showing up. Why not have them give some credits or XP after instead?

Speaking of items, most of the upgrades are marginal and do not change your gameplay experience much. And if you really like a particular build, you just have to pray to the entropy gods that you'll get the gear you want, because the swathe of trash upgrades are going to make that difficult. One could argue that picking upgrades is a critical portion of the game, and rolling with the punches to make a build on the spot is the whole point, but forcing users to pick between multiple options that are either marginal at best or unwanted at worst, over and over again, is never good—especially when it happens so frequently (at least with me). Games like Risk of Rain do it right where almost every item is at least somewhat useful or will be in the future. Yet, if you have no use for an item, the money you get for "zapping" them is pitiful, a paltry 30 or so credits, while the cheapest worthwhile mods you can buy at the shop start at 150ish. Sure, you can get 50HP back, but that's also pitiful once you start getting max health upgrades. You can't even buy it twice, so it doesn't scale.

Speaking of the player character, the devs went hard on the lore to back up your remote control robot body and to try and make the world interesting. The focus is appreciated but the delivery is not interactive, written very dry, and is lazily gamified—it feels like side content rather than a core part of the experience, which severely limits its entertainment value. Why not get codex notifications and a codex reader ingame, Metroid Prime style? Having the codex right next to the gameplay and the enemy, and making it feel like you're learning and observing as you play, adds a lot of depth and mentally links lore to enemies—it could even be tied into the upgrade system. I honestly want to read the lore and enjoy it, but it's shoved in a submenu outside of the main gameplay, so I am not given any incentive to overcome that inconvenience. The lore doesn't provide any tangible benefit to the main game either, like hints about combat styles or previously unknown weakpoints. Weakpoints are already highlighted ingame anyway, so what good does mentioning those do besides fluff?

All that can save the game are abilities and weapons at this point, and I'm pleased to say I think they're... fine. I like the versatility and unique take on the abilities, and each of the combat shells' pair of them work well together. The cooldowns are a bit high but that does tend to force you to vary your approaches. I do feel like they probably had the first two shells' gameplay designed first, and then built the rest of the game around that, because the skills and weapon mixups are clearly the meat of the game. The revolver is especially good and it always feels satisfying to land a slick headshot. All the first person animations are fluid and fun to watch, and the focus on weapon switching as a mechanic is interesting and something you don't see often.

So where from here? I don't think more enemy factions/levels will be able to salvage this game, but that's all that seems to be happening in the time I've been playing. A few gameplay tweaks here and there, but nothing to give that spark that really makes me want to pick it up and play another run. The game isn't doing anything new or interesting outside of its few one-note innovations, especially in the current trend of "boomer shooters" that play mostly just like it.

It's MP3.