Recent reviews by Shellback27

It's too good. This game is just too good. The only thing I wanted after launch was a way to tell if Jokers had completed Gold Stake without having to back out to the main menu, and he added it months ago.

I hope Thunk has a big enough case for all the trophies Balatro is going to win by the end of the year.

I thought it was a joke. I thought it was some kind of altruistic test. Or maybe the person I was going to help would be me.

Surely I'd start over, and after just a few nervous minutes, the curtain would be pulled back, and the game and I would laugh at the wonderful prank it had just put me through.

But there is no jok[E].

I hope I wake up tomorrow with renewed determination. I hope some sort of cosmic understanding that I made a good and/or a correct choice comes to me in my dream. I hope I can get some sleep tonight.

NieR:Automata is good, and I would recommend this game to other players.

Edit: I have now properly earned 100% completion. My only solace as I walk away from this experience is that I leave with the frustration of having to play the game twice in a row instead of the depression the story was getting ready to leave me with otherwise lol.

My 2023 Game of the Year. Did one or two levels every night until I beat it, then P-ranked one level a night until I got all the achievements. One of the most enjoyable months of gaming I've ever had. Hearing almost any song on the soundtrack now takes me back to a very happy place.

Beyond that, there's not much left to say that other, smarter reviews haven't already said.
So instead I'll ask: What *does* the voice in the Peppinobot Factory BGM say anyway? Actually, if it's not "Sure shot, sure shot, pop the big ass, pop the big ass"... I don't think I want to know.

Game of the Year out of everything I played in 2022, no question.

But I'm in a weird spot here, because even though I loved Rogue Legacy 2 enough to earn 100% completion, it felt way too long. I've never said that about a game I really enjoyed before. It was great enough to keep going, but there were still several sessions where I wondered why I still had so much left to accomplish, which meant I had so much longer to grind.

As an important note to my sole critique, I was just about done the game when the 1.1 patch came out. Now you can attempt the true ending far sooner than your 8th full run, but you still have to be strong enough stats-wise to realistically win.
Speed will often be proportional to skill on the path to success; would I have been good enough to see the true ending as early as it is possible now? I can't say. But this update does seem like a hefty move in the right direction.

Now, I want to reiterate that this game has a lot of marvelous things going for it, and again, it is my number one for the year. If you loved the absolute classic of an original that still represents the early days of Steam to me, the sequel retains all of that magic. And with so many improvements, additions, modernizations and customizations, RL2 may even make the original look antiquated by comparison.

If you're looking for a tightly-controlled, engaging platformer roguelite, I wholly recommend. If you're also the kind of person who's compelled to finish everything a game has to offer, I genuinely hope you enjoy the grind a little more than I did.

Summarize this game in a brief headline

Encouraging Hint Button Has Its Doubts

Finally finished (for now?) with the arrival of the 1.7.5 and 1.7.6 patches. It's been a long, slow road, but Repentance was so massive and so expectation-shattering that Isaac has more than earned my 'Labor of Love' vote for 2021.

If you've somehow made it this long without playing this and you're looking to get into it, there is a MOUNTAIN to climb in challenges and achievements. But if you love roguelikes, this beloved remake to one of Steam's all-time kings of the genre will be worth every hour and dollar spent.

I gave Noita the 'Most Innovative' award last year, but with 1.0's release in 2020, I'm bumping it up this time around to Game of the Year.

Noita continues to be an incredibly addictive rogue-like; randomly generated madness with such incredible potential for powerful runs between perks, potions and customizable wands. There are almost certainly more secrets still hiding than the number I have found, and I say this as someone with now 175 hours.

And now well past the original full release, the gang at Nolla continues to spice up its world with updates and additions. Unused perks get a second look, more enemies and secrets to find... you get the idea.

Seeing as how this could win so many of the categories Steam is offering in my opinion, I just can't put Noita anywhere else. Game of the Year!


---2019 Review---

The only real no-brainer for me choosing awards this year: Noita IS the most innovative game I've played this year.

A challenging, exploration-driven, pixel graphics, cave diving, rogue-lite with weapon combinations/synergies, strange and intriguing lore and a physics engine that has proven to be everything that they've advertised.

I'll leave the full explanations to the thousands of other reviews that Noita has received and deserved, and simply exit by saying... I got 100 hours out of this within its first few weeks of early access. Can't wait to see how this one grows.

What you're getting here is a survival/exploration game with 2 separate story lines (that progress only when you want them to), constantly spiced up by randomized events. Make money by trading and/or pillaging, upgrade your ship's speed and resiliency at the docks, master arts such as combat and fishing, and accumulate experience from a life (or several lives) at sea.

That experience comes in two forms:

• In an RPG sense, experience is a tracked statistic that unlocks better captains and ships for future playthroughs.
  
• In the intangible sense, personal experience will teach you what tools, items and supplies are the most valuable for any given circumstance. A good captain will learn fairly quickly how to prepare for the worst the sea has to offer, such as dangerous weather, opposing navies and even your own disgruntled crew!

For my achievement hunting brothers and sisters, there are *no* broken achievements and there is a very helpful and spoiler-sensitive guide should you run aground trying to decipher a couple of the trickier ones.


My favorite reason to recommend any game (this one included) is the developer interaction. The one-man navy that is the Captain of Victorian Clambake has shown himself to be extremely active on both the Steam forums and the game's own Discord server. In either place, he's been very helpful and quick to respond to questions, suggestions and concerns.

I put about 40 hours into this game playing it blind in its current version, but he's also been at work on the mysterious Fantasy Toggle expansion, opening the game up to who knows what sort of nautical mythos and lore. Extremely excited to return once it's implemented; I can only hope King Neptune recognizes that I'm one of his Trusty Shellbacks if we should ever happen to meet again.

All the developer wanted for his birthday was a review, and I am happy to oblige!

This game has been an absolute delight. Short, sweet, and a guilt-free price tag, like a tasty dessert that won't make you feel physically or emotionally sick afterwards.

♦ Normal mode will be your introduction; hard mode is the tough but fair challenge you're after.
♦♦♦ The controls are easy to settle into and nothing too ridiculous is ever demanded. Timing and picking your moments will be your biggest hurdle.
♦♦♦ The most 'kaizo' among you will almost certainly want for more, but overall, fans of tight platformers should leave satisfied having walked the path to completion.

♣ Hitboxes, jumps, ladders, etc, all feel fine; I never felt cheated.
♠ Bonus points for controller re-mapping so I could use my trusty D-Pad.
♥ The dev himself has been very helpful and active within the community from everything I read prior to buying in... which is my favorite reason to show a game some support.

Well done, zukalous! Here's hoping 1SP gets out from under the thumb of 'Profile Features Limited' soon!

Without question, this is my Game of the Year for 2018. To fans of turn-based strategy, I offer my most overwhelming endorsement.

A game in the category of 'easy to learn, difficult to master', the choices you make for pilots, weapons and upgrades pitted against the randomized combinations of enemies and maps make for quite the complex experience in such a seemingly simplified premise.

And it's why Into the Breach has held my attention for far longer than I ever would have expected. Especially for someone who normally drops a game immediately upon earning the last achievement, my morning ritual of coffee and Breach from the past several months continues to this day.

Cheers, Subset, and thank you for all your hard work! You guys nailed it!