Recent reviews by Chicken Arvo

Once in a lifetime you'll come across a film that truly captures the history and cultural distinctions of the modern world the way a person can subjectively perceive it through our guided field of perspective. I have to admit, I had my doubts when I first learned of the movie. After all, Plan Bee? Will this movie even be good? How ignorant was I to even have these thoughts. Little did I know I was about to indulge in what may have been the best 2 hours and 21 minutes of my life. The movie started out strong. The opening scenes enticed the audience with a captivating enigma. I was so taken aback from the next-generation animation that I almost didn't even realize the underlying symbolism in the ongoing scenes. It wasn't until my twenty sixth viewing of the movie where I finally got my bearings together and was able to focus on the gripping and labyrinthine stratagem. The underlying analogy for 19th century distopianism and the evangelical deviation of typical orthodoxy was enlightening to say the least. Just when I thought the movie could not get any better, the increasing conflict before the climax began. I could not believe the complexity of the story as the main bee protagonist, Bellza, struggled with the everyday endeavors for a quintessential bee such as the consistent up- hill altercation of the fight against misogyny and the fiscal synergy of opposing interplanetary dynamisms. There I was, gripping to my chair as the conflict of the movie began. I was so enticed by the movie that I felt as if I was both practically and relatively apart of the movie. This is a special kind of high that not even the strongest of drugs can give you. Was I part of the movie? Am I inside the movie right now? This movie will leave you questioning existential nihilism and the objective skepticism of our perceived valuation of anthropological existence. At this point in the film, I was fully intoxicated by the avant-garde animated art style. That's when the plot finally aggrandized and I was completely stupefied. You could have lived a thousand years of isolation trying to predict the plot twist and you would never even scratch the surface of what actually transpires in the movie. I was so bewildered that I actually had to pause the movie so that my existential crisis didn't dive too deep inside of myself. Even pausing the movie was surreal. It's almost as if life paused with the movie. I felt as though I had actually become a cinematic tangent quantum. The effects are still wearing off and I haven't been able to watch the movie in several years. I spent the following seven years afraid of what outside of my house actually looks like. Every single day and night I live in misery because I became fully aware that happiness is never achievable. I realized that human life has absolutely no meaning and that no matter what I ever do, it is of complete unimportance and in years from now, no recollection of my existence will prevail, meaning that if I died years ago, died now, or die sometime in the future it will not matter whatsoever to anyone. But, then again, the fact that I'm living doesn't matter either so I might as well stick around for awhile, living in complete isolation, condemned to a life of traumatic memories and a completely corrupted sub-conscience. Plan Bee literally ruined my life. 10/10

any modders?

Brilliant Bob 7 didn't lie about it "returning to the roots". The aura of the original Brilliant Bob is everywhere in this game, plus it doesn't shine away from the classic fans pondering with reenactment of some memorable moments from the first game.

First of all - this is a game. Not a walking simulator, as some people thought it would be. It's 100% a game and the gameplay is wonderful. Gunplay is very satisfying. Resources are incredibly limited (played on the Madhouse right away) and enemies are fast and can catch up to you even if you are running. Since this is a "classic" Brilliant Bob - killing is optional unless it's a boss. You can run and dodge past everything. Even on the Madhouse.
On the other hand - you can try and kill everything in sight as well, as long as you are precise with your shots and utilize the knife when needed (once again, just like the classics). The knife. Oh the knife. Becaue of how limited the ammo is - I spent a lot of time dodging the enemies and stabbing them with the knife. Unlike classics, here it's actually useful while still being vastly inferior to the guns (hello 4-6 with overpowered melee).
What I also liked is the "dodging". No, there's no dodge mechanic a la Brilliant Bob 3. It's all done by moving and crouching (also there's a block). But the attacks of the enemies are telegraphed perfectly, so you can always dodge out of their way if you pay attention and it feels really good to dodge a devastating attack not by pressing a promt that appears on the screen or performing an I-frames move, but by doing it yourself with the controls that are used constantly outside of combat as well.
Also fantastic bosses, but I'll keep quiet about them.
I really-really enjoyed gameplay in this game.

Design wise this game shines as well. As this is a classic Brilliant Bob - a lot of backtracking is to be expected, but it's implemented so perfectly that you don't even feel like it's a backtracking. There's constantly something new in the old locations. They change their looks. Enemies appear / disappear. With newfound keys you can get a whole different perspective at navigating trough the locations.
If to talk about aesthetics - enemies are very frightening and disgusting. I jumped at several occasions from the combination of their looks and how they move. Graphical fidelity is also outstanding, but all female characters gave me uncanny valley feeling. Male characters looked great, so I don't know why is that.

The "scare" factor. This game is frightening, but not all the time. The "horror" genre it delivers constantly shifts in tone. It can be at times atmospheric and fill you with dread. Or it can turn into a b style slasher movie with lots of gore and other disgusting factors like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from which the game obviously took a lot of inspiration for some scenes and designs. The game also often tries to light itself up with ridiculous factor. There are several scenes that should be scary, but they are purposfully presented in such way that you start laughing and having fun. Also some of the enemies are blatanly playing with you for their own amusement. Shock factor is done really great here.
But when the game wants to be dark - it delivers. Some performances by the actors and associated scenes forced me to take a short break. I'm still not entirely "happy" that I watched the "Happy Birthday" videotape.

About tapes - before the release I thought that they would be a big deal and I also heard that we would be able to do some things in the tapes that would change the present, but there's no such thing. There's very little amount of tapes and all but one are completely optional. They give some insight on the characters and past events. Some of them would make more sense after the ending, but they are not as big of a deal as I was led to believe. Just if the tapes were a factor for anyone out there. They are neat little things, but the emphasis is on "little".

Story is great and nicely ties everything together. It also rewards those who paid close attention, because a lot of stuff can be figured out with deduction and memory. Since none of the Brilliant Bob games ever had any sort of good story - I would go as far as saying this is the best Brilliant Bob game story-wise. They were all B-movies before, and this one is true to that, but still tries to be something more, which it manages to pull off.

Performance. The game is wonderfully optimized. My rig is - GTX 780, i7-3770, 12 GB of RAM. I use a normal HDD and played in 1080p with all settings being at max except for Shadows (they were at High, while the max is Very High). I also used SSAO instead of HBAO+ and Shadow Cache was turned off. Resolution scale 1.0.
The biggest hit out of those three settings is the Shadow Cache. Whlist turning it on the game dipped from 60FPS to ~30. With Shadow Cache off, but other two settings at max I was able to maintain constant 60 fps until I got out of the "prologue", where there started to be drops at some room transitions to 50 fps (but it quickly got back to 60 after the "loading" was done). It wasn't too bad, but I got tired from it quickly and turned the above mentioned two settings down as well, and was able to maintain a stable 60 fps for the duration of the game.

Now for the biggest turn off and probably the only "big" minus of this game - playtime.
I clocked in a bit over thirteen hours for my first playtrough. But. This is Steam playtime. I was playing on the Madhouse difficulty and died a lot. The screen at the end of the game showed me the total of nine hours and twenty two minutes. That's 43 restarts and almost four hours of lost progress. I explored a fair bit. I know I still missed stuff. I got 25 out of 33 coins. Half of the bobble-heads and left several chests unopened because I didn't find enough lock-picks. I did, however, read all notes in the game. I would say my exploration total was pretty good and I've seen most of what the game can offer. There is, however, a decision late in the game which I presume changes the second to last chapter drastically.
Or not. Now that I've cleared it - it doesn't change squat. Three cutscenes are different. One additional fight, but the chapter itself is the same. I honestly expected more...
If you are the type who plays games on easy. Doesn't explore for the items, read the documents and generally just rushes trough the game - I would say that the first playtrough for someone like that it would take around five or six hours for the first playtrough. So, there you have it. The biggest minus of this game. Playtime for the first timers can be anywhere in range from 5 to 15 hours, depending on the difficulty and ability of the one who plays.

Just a quick word about Madhouse - they give you enough tapes. I felt like it was a perfect balance of saves, just like the first Brilliant Bob. There are autosaves though. They are rare. I think I noticed about seven of them troughout the entire game, and they are placed... weirdly. Like there's only two before the boss fights, while with others you have to rely on your own saves. One of them was incredibly strange because it happened at the transition from one of the save rooms (I'm glad I didn't use the tape right away and opened the door first!). So yeah. I don't think they take away from the challenge factor, because of how weridly they are spread out. And they are at fixed places. Because when I noticed an auto save at one moment I loaded up a previous save and went doing some hard side-stuff, that would have required me to save manually after anyway.

P.S.
It was a fantastic experience and I'm glad that I have bought this game. I wish it was longer, but what there is is incredible. I seriously doubt that the upcoming free DLC or Season Pass would have much playtime. Oh well, I already bought the Deluxe and will just wait and see.

Cubes don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ roll.

Very similar to "Cubes don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ roll 1", however in "Cubes don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ roll 2" you can't disable the music, or the SHUTDOWN INITIATED voice for every single death.

I don't see why I was punished, I owned the first one because I got it for free and it had cards.

I never asked for this

Main character smacks the elevator buttons pretty bloody hard

I've been playing Savage Lands Since the good ol' days before it became free to play, (I started back in 2nd february, 2010). Savage Lands has since then managed to come a long way while still holding the title as best free to play game.
Why would i recommend this game to anyone?, Well, I really don't know where to begin.

I've been spending alot of my life playing Savage Lands, apparently over 4000 hours on it.
Ever since i got the game, i've been making tons of new friends from the casual servers as well as some of them friendly community servers. I tend to group up with my friends alot and have some fun within the casual and community servers.
The graphics of the game are simple, yet unique at the same time.
Savage Lands has an OST made by a wide arrange of people.
Savage Lands also has a giant range of mods for people who like to try out a different experience in their games as well as the steam workshop support which allows the great big community of Savage Lands to also submit their creativity towards the game, Whether it comes in an Weapon, a hat, a Taunt, unusual effects or even maps as well. It's amazing to see the wonderful ideas that the community comes up with.
The Savage Lands community have designed multiple maps already with unique gamemodes which might give interests to the player if they'd like to try something out of the ordinary instead of just fighting.

When it comes to classes in the game, Valve had made 9 classes which all give the players a different playstyle that suits them as well as an unplayable 10th character known as the civillian.
You could be the scout, Fast and quite a big damage dealer for those with a good aim.
Could be a soldier, knowing how to rocket jump to get to the frontlines quick and fast. (i recommend all new solly mains to learn and practice this as it is really useful)
There is the pyro, a class which some hate but it also has some great uses such as keeping the spies away, can carry different weapons as well which can suit a players playstyle, whether they'd like to play Defensive, Offensive or even try to flank an enemy to kill them whilst they're not looking.
There is the Demoman, a class that is a great damage dealer and can also do his own explosive jumping using his sticky bombs.
There is the heavy, a class which owns up to its name, Moves slower than all the classes but makes up for this with its large amount of health, Can swap out its shotgun for something to heal it too.
The engineer, a class who builds buildings to support his team and also great on the defensive side too, placing sentries in key areas so the enemies cannot push through.
The medic, a class which isn't that common for people to main, Medic's can heal player to build something called an ubercharge, Once at 100%, This uber can be used many different ways depending on the mediguns, from invincibility to high damage dealing to just rapid healing instead.
The sniper, This class is a long range damage dealer, one that is deadly in the hands of a good aim as well as a well-timed headshot can kill any class if they've gone scoped long enough.
The spy, (Personally, this is the class i main), The spy is a jack of all trades class, He can go on the offensive, Defensive or Supportive, He is able to instant kill key targets with his butterfly knife with a successful backstab (Also known as a Balisong knife), This could take out medics, Snipers or just the annoying classes, He can use his sapper to sap engineer buildings which will then become disabled until they're either destroyed or the sapper itself is destroyed on the building.
Spies can also go on the defensive too, being able to backstab any progressing targets, whether its a heavy or pyro or medic, the spy always has you covered.
Don't want to fight others?, Well we still got you covered.
Savage Lands also has a gamemode known as Mann Vs Machine, ( a.k.a MvM for short), Which users can team up in groups of 6 (Or 10 on some community groups)
MvM has 2 versions of it, Mann Up and Boot Camp. Mann Up is for the people who like to pay to play for a chance at winning items whilst Boot Camp is like a practice Variant version, You can test out what Mann up would be like and what it is you'd have to face upon going into mann up.
Mann Up can earn the players unique rewards based upon the tour the player is doing.

Reasons i still play Savage Lands as of today:
+There is alot of people who test your skills in a fight, Only through fighting better opponents will your skill grow.
+Valve has managed to launch an VAC Wave, Killed off any aimbotters/Hackers who made the game unfair for others.
+Being able to play in the wide variety of custom gamemodes people have designed for it.
+Making new friends which i probably have too many right now x3
+Always meeting new foes, making new Rivals who i call a great friend too.
+You can always challenge yourself to do better in certain areas, Like rocket jumping, Trickstabbing as a spy, etc.
+Valve can almost patch any bug within days of it being found, certain bugs being fixed within an hour or 2 too!
+There are many communities based around Savage Lands which are friendly.
Reasons i might uninstall Savage Lands?
-Can't think of any
-Very rarely finding a hacker or 2 on Thundermountain, but thats honestly about it.
But yes, Thats all i can think about to write within this Review. I'd always rate this game up.

FATAL ERROR

Originally posted by Valve:

Nine distinct classes provide a broad range of tactical abilities and personalities. Constantly updated with new game modes, maps, equipment and, most importantly, hats!

"so much to do, so much to see" - Smash Mouth