Análises recentes de The Centipede

You can pet a cat, and it purrs. 10/10 GOTY.

Vignette 1:

Got the Magnum 2100 in the same spot I remembered from the OG game 25 years ago.

Used it to perforate a Sec-1 bot.

Stupid cyborg popped up immediately after and he promptly got two rounds center of mass.

shot him in half

Vignette 2:

Got to the computer nodes in Research and Shodey is all like "AHHH KILL HIM" so I hid in the Jeffries Tubes under the nodes. Heard a bunch of cyborgs pooling around above me.

"Once you pull the pin from Mr. Grenade he is no longer your friend" they say. I dunno, Mr. Grenade did me a solid.

Upon emerging, body parts everywhere, including disembodied butt which, due to physics, was jiggling

10/10 no notes

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: If you want a chill survival game with slightly excessive grind, hit-or-miss humor that tends a bit more towards the scatological and mild edgelord, and that gives up being a chill survival game halfway through to be a conspiracy survival horror(?) narrative that may as well be on rails, have at it. Not my thing, but maybe it'll do it for you. I mean, it is popular enough.

THE REST OF THE RANTING:

Okay, I gave this an honest chance and played it all the way to the end. My conclusion.

Meh.

The inevitable grind of a space survival sim aside, it's basically an irony-poisoned Soviet-flavored Space Quest with... well, I can't call it earthier or lower humor; Ulence Flats was a location in the original Space Quest. More explicit low humor.

Stupid joke spoiler: You can urinate in space! It doesn't really help, but you can do it!

Major endgame spoiler: The evil AI at the end turns from a lady's face into a butt as you give it the David Bowman treatment! Har har!

The irony-poisoning comes from when it constantly reminds you that it's a game and it rags on its own mechanics as a parody of other games' mechanics. Again, Space Quest did that now and again with "glancing at the status bar gags" but I don't recall it being so constant. That said, Breathedge does have its good gags and it's best when it leans into the absurdity of the premise and the universe: the Looney Tunes-style gags are actually pretty funny. Unfortunately they're relatively few and far between and most of the gags are reliant on ironic expectation subversion that happens so often that the subversion stops being subversive and starts being expected... especially when you realize that the subversion supports limitations in the game engine and coding.

Major gameplay spoiler: All hostiles that aren't in space are stationary; they're all functionally turrets. That means they only have to be programmed with aiming capability at best but many of them are just spray-and-pray features to turn combat sequences into cover-seeking puzzles. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but it becomes really obvious when all such sequences are reliant on this limitation and therefore any time that is at risk of self-subversion you know it can't happen and therefore all sense of risk and threat is lost.

I mention Space Quest a lot because this really does feel like Breathedge takes a lot of inspiration from that series... and if it does, that's not a bad thing! Just look at the analogs:

• Dense, loser protagonist (Roger Wilco vs. Man)
  
• Chatty narrator who's basically a character (The Narrator post from Space Quest II on vs. Spacesuit)
  
• Contemporary sci-fi references (every sci-fi franchise active in the 80s and 90s vs. Mass Effect, mostly)
  
• Plots that run the line between serious and goofy (Stellar Generator superweapons and galactic invasions of insurance salesmen vs. a funerary company AI turning coffins into robots to subjugate/destroy humanity)
  
• Toilet humor (c'mon)
  
• Madcap gags (too many to mention vs. none I want to spoil as they're good)
  
• Mundane political humor (anodyne 80s and 90s griping about business and government vs. anodyne 10s and 20s griping about environmentalists and feminism)

As I type this up, I think part of it is that Sierra third-person adventure game gags just don't really work in a first-person space survival sim, or at least, they don't with how RedRuins has implemented them. The Spacesuit comes off as annoying and chatty mostly because rather than an adventure game "examine" prompt it speaks up as a character should, when something is roughly in your field of vision... but there's no guarantee that you'll have even noticed whatever it is or are paying any attention to it, leading to a bunch of "what the hell are you talking about?" moments. There's also occasions when Spacesuit's narration will pop up when subjects are behind walls or otherwise occluded, which ends up being immersion-breaking but helpful when you're looking for some random dingus. With a traditional adventure game, it's probably easier to code in a quick action section or Metal Gear Solid tactical stealth bit rather than in a physics-based first-person engine, especially when we have so much experience with FPSes and any such first-person action sequences would have to compete against those.

I guess, in my final estimation, is that with the combination of all the things it's trying to do Breathedge is trying to be Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter but with bits of Space Engineers tacked on. Problem is, SQ1 is better on all the metrics that matter and it came out 36 years ago.

And... oof, Breathedge's rushed-feeling cutscene non-ending. I don't mind spoiling that much.

I got a bundle key from a friend who didn't want it which is unfortunate, because...

Get to fly a Phantom II - check
Somehow out-dogfight F-15s, -16s, -18s, and Su-27s - check
Refuse to fly anything that wasn't the hottest thing in the sky in 1958 - check
Actually works with my VR headset - check

10/10 unrealism in favor of fun, worth the twenty-five bucks

I'm sure it's a great game if and when it works, but apparently its use of PhysX is strongly dependent on graphics card, graphics drivers, and even what installation of MS Visual Studio is installed... so more likely than not, your setup is actually incompatible with the puzzle solutions.

It's a beautiful game with some creative mechanics. The dilemma posed is this:

1) Do you want a precision platformer, or
2) Do you want a magnetism puzzler?

Teslagrad is option #1, in the end. The puzzles aren't hard to solve. Executing the solution, on the other hand, is a brutal effort of split-second timing, pixel placement, and lucky.

People like #1, and that's great! More power to 'em, but Teslagrad is way more a platformer than a puzzle game and requires both a fundamentally different mindset and a different attitude towards frustration and repetition. Just know what you're getting into: a repetitive, possibly frustrating, definitely rewarding-once-you-get-it process.

For me, personally, I've not the time nor the inclination to put up with the frustration to get the payoff... and that's fine. I got to the eye boss, died fifty times making marginally more progress each time, and decided that the cost/benefit just wasn't there.

The story's fine. Not great, not terrible, easily the best part of the whole thing but to get there you've got to actually beat the game and collect the seemingly optional scrolls (surprise, they're not) which, after discovering there's no fast-travel option and for a filthy casual like me who had to rely not a little on luck to get past some of the platforming sections the first time... yeah, nah, not for me, mate.

Hope you like it, though!

RIP AND TEAR

until it is done

Things I've done in Bridge Crew:

* Warped away from more exploding stars than I'd care to admit. (Correlation isn't causation, but I'm starting to worry that my friends and I disrupt stellar stability.)

* Watched helplessly as AI Ensign Rao rammed my ship into an asteroid.

* Repeatedly.

* Ran across the bridge doing everything while the Captain *literally* got high.

* Stared down a Warbird we were in no shape to fight because Rao can't keep a target in arc to save his soul... and just before the hull tore itself apart under the stresses of incoming disruptor fire, looked straight at Rao and informed him that this was his fault.

11/10 would suck vacuum because of Ensign Rao's limitless ineptitude again.

(Seriously, it works best with friends. Engineering is probably the station most in need of a human's initiative, followed by Helm--screw Ensign Rao--and finally Tactical. The voice commands work most of the time but are distinctly limited; the menu-commands always work but still don't have the finesse that a human at the station can get. Probably intentionally.)

ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

> first mission in game
> last baddie one-shots my Centurion
> OK

> second mission in game
> jump up to say "hello" to the big bad Shadow Hawk in my measly Blackjack
> "hello" is spelled "all the medium lasers to the face"
> Shadow Hawk turfs it
> knows it's only a matter of time before he gets his
> OK

The RNG regularly makes you and anyone else it feels like its ♥♥♥♥♥ in a way John Romero could only dream of, so it perfectly emulates BattleTech tabletop. The cinematic camera is also a nice touch, though it could perhaps clip through hills less.

11/10 will tempt the dice gods again