Recent reviews by HalibutHD

Short version:
A game about designing network infrastructure, with some other quirks as well. It's pretty in-depth and quite interesting, and challenging at times. There are monsters but they unfortunately aren't implemented very well and are mostly just annoying, I recommend setting them to "friendly" mode. If you like the idea of putting together a mini-internet from scratch with some nice creepy atmosphere, this is a solid recommend. Just know that it's a little rough around the edges.

Long version:
The core gameplay basically involves building the internet with pretty low-level, rudimentary equipment. There are a bunch of devices scattered around the world that generate packets to be sent to other devices, and your job is to get them from point A to point B. And that involves A LOT more than just connecting wires to all of them. You'll need to design traffic filters, routers, and even firewalls, all using physical components that take up space. I'm not too familiar with how networking works in real life, but the version ingame seems pretty similar while also being easy to pick up step-by-step.

There is a lot that is deliberately hidden from you, in terms of where things are, how things work, and so on, but that's part of the fun. There's some stuff that I wish was explicitly called out (like the fact you can upgrade some tools or that your scanner cycles through multiple targets) but the game is mostly better-off for what it leaves you to discover. The first time your network starts getting DDOSed is a great moment of "wait what the hell?"

There's also a story to follow, including some side objectives. I'd describe it as light, but engaging. It felt like a coherent world with a few characters' stories to learn about. Unfortunately the dialog is a bit lacking, though. I really wanted to radio my supervisor and say "yeah I'm being chased by giant spiders, please advise." But they never really get brought up.

The environment, graphical quality, and atmosphere are all solid, too. You're encased in an undetermined amount of earth and rock, shrouded in darkness. It's part creepy and part comfy.

But now, this is where I start going over negatives.

First of all, the monsters. They are pretty much just bad. For some reason, you'll get killed just by standing near them for too long, even if they haven't seen you. And if they do see you, they're faster than you. And the environments are really cramped so there is not a lot of room to get away. I have no idea how you can avoid dying, if you even can. And to top it all off, they spawn right on important locations where you have to build stuff. If there was actually some way to deal with them, it would be cool, but there isn't, from what I can tell. Just set them to "friendly" and you can vibe with them. There are other interesting challenges without having to deal with them killing you.

Next is the terrain. The world is a bunch of hand-crafted areas surrounded by procedurally-generated, deformable voxel terrain. Everything outside of those hand-crafted areas is really bland, just dirt, rocks, and small empty caves with some decor. I've seen water too, which has cool physics, but I only found it once. Aside from that, there is absolutely nothing to find. No monsters, no collectibles, no hazards. You kind of just dig in a straight line to where you need to go. Plus, digging through rock is a crap-shoot on whether it actually works (you kind of have to rub the drill all over it instead of just in one spot).

And the last big thing is the movement. You'll start off with just a drill to get to new locations, and that's it. You need to get an upgrade to place terrain, and you can get a jetpack later as well, but at the start, you only have a pathetic jump. You can easily get stuck in a single-block-deep hole. It takes an insane amount of fenagling to deal with any kind of verticality, and you also slide down slopes, which is just annoying.
What's even worse is sprinting. It has a limited duration which I assume is to make it harder to get away from monsters, but it mostly just means that going anywhere is really tedious and time-consuming. You have to do a ton of unnecessary walking to work on a large network.

I could also mention the balance - there are a total of 4 regions to set up networks in, and I pretty much only needed to complete part of one of them to afford every unlock and finish the game. I didn't really touch the other 3 regions even though they each seemed to have interesting challenges.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement, and it could very well be implemented at this point - the underlying design is really good. But overall, it's a good experience.

Got this as an impulse buy since it sounded cool. Factory builder, fully 3D environment, cave exploration, a plot-line to keep you distracted? Sounds cool.
All that stuff just feels poorly crafted right now, on a design and technical level. The thing that made me bounce off so fast was that everything feels set-in-stone, but not very thought-out. It needed more prototyping before they settled on what they have. I don't think it'll be easy to turn this around into something solid, and for a factory-builder, I would hope that the devs would have a good grasp of planning, prototyping, and design.

First off, the environment. This is the main sticking point for me, I don't care about exploring AT ALL. The game seems to think that good environment design is putting lots of brightly colored plants everywhere. There are so many different colors, and they're all neon and glow-in-the-dark, but the cave walls themselves are pretty dark most of the time, so it's completely exhausting trying to navigate anywhere, or find anything. Every room looks the same (at least within each region). I'm usually a pretty good navigator but in combination with the mandatory mouse smoothing, I literally could not tell if I had turned 180 degrees or 90, or 360.
I also didn't even see the map until an hour or so in since it's so dim, and the HUD is so noisy.

There are wrecked outposts scattered around the place, and they have sort of the same issue. It's all just grey metal, but there are so many little lights and bits and bobs that I can't pick out the important bits from the unimportant bits. There's not much reason to revisit these places anyway, though, they're just for the story. It's a shame though, since some of them have seemingly-functional machines. You can't pick them up though, and some don't work, so it's not really worth "restoring" them. Otherwise this would be a really cool mechanic.
Shoutout to the useless, un-removable purple "research cores" right next to the starting hub.

Next thing is the story. It seems like a big selling point for the game. It is... boring. Most of the voiced dialogue is just "ok now build this thing," with a joke or something in there. And the plot is "Oh my gosh, this place is supposed to be a factory the size of a city, what happened?" I have absolutely no idea, you haven't even given me any clues to speculate about! Maybe it was a space virus or something. I don't even know why the cube lady thought there would be a city here, it seems like she was in a coma for a while when she trapped herself in a cube but she was perfectly capable of talking to me as soon as I woke up. Did she not notice the distinct lack of any indication that there was a factory the size of a city like 200 feet away, or did we just happen to wake up at the same time?

I just don't care. There's one character with basically no identity, and not much worldbuilding. However I am a BIG fan of the fact that she is a CUBE, and you can pick her up and she becomes an inventory item. You're just lugging her around the whole time in your backpack. This is so funny.

I won't comment on the factory building since I feel like I barely touched it - in the 80-ish minutes I played. Satisfactory is "factory-lite" but even that has you making a base by the 60-minute mark.

Overall, it just feels like this game has weird priorities. It doesn't really feel like it has a fleshed-out map, story, or base-building mechanics, but it *thinks* it does. The whole plot is fully voice-acted already - but the writing feels like a draft. That's the overall vibe I get from everything. But we'll see if the devs deliver.

*Minor mechanical spoilers*

The thing that made me realize how great this game is:
You can put your hand on the ship to hear inside it even if there's no air. They thought of the fact that the sound would travel through the hull of the ship and into your spacesuit if you touch it.
You can even use it to track down power cells since electrical cables buzz if you touch them when they're powered on.

Cool game.

Possibly the most elegant and satisfying "pure" puzzle game to date. The puzzles are all creative, challenging when they need to be, and fair, without exception. You can really figure out every single puzzle without outside help with a little experimentation, observation, and taking some breaks. Plus, the game is gorgeous, and sounds great too.

The obvious point of comparison to Taiji is The Witness, but I'm here to tell you, they feel very different to play. If you didn't like The Witness because it looked/felt boring or pretentious, Taiji is NOT that. Not even a little. The Witness feels like it's constantly backseating you trying to see if you "get" it. It resets certain puzzles if you get the solution wrong. It makes you wait forever for environment pieces to move. You literally find philosophy lectures lying around on the ground. It's extremely pretentious. Taiji, on the other hand, says, "I made you some puzzles, please enjoy!" Simple as that. No waiting. No resetting puzzles. It's a huge improvement. All the good stuff about Witness with none of the bad.

Ignoring "that game" for a moment though, let me tell you what you're getting with Taiji.
You have a world filled with mostly right/wrong answer tile-based puzzles, some of which will need some clues from the environment around you (though fairly few). A good number of them do have more creative solutions than just "right" or "wrong," though. There are a number of secrets to discover as well, but the exploration aspect of the game is way, way smaller than the puzzle part. If that sounds good to you, you'll love this game!
In terms of story, there is no story, essentially. It would have been nice to have, but to be honest, it's an improvement over The Witness. The endings are cryptic and there's no real context for them, but they're at least interesting.
And I'll finally mention, the price point might be a little high for the overall length of the game, but there really is no filler whatsoever. The production value is great, and overall it feels like a $25 game.

It's puzzles. They're very good. Full recommendation, no notes.

So, this game is pretty fun, and currently on sale for a huge discount. I haven't tried playing with a friend, but solo at least, it's enjoyable, but really annoying at times. The thing to know about Orcs Must Die 3 is that it's basically Orcs Must Die 2. That is to say, it feels like it's 10 years old. (No idea when the last game came out but it's not that important.)

So, to the point. In the time since OMD2 came out, we've seen a lot of progress in the field of game design. We've come to expect certain design decisions that make games more intuitive, accessible, fun, whatever. OMD3 did not notice this.
Featured in Orcs Must Die 3:
- A linear campaign with zero branches or shortcuts
- Headshot system with atrocious hit detection but huge damage multipliers
- Your character calls you a moron when you misclick placing a building
- Refund all your upgrades for free!*
*only item upgrades, not new unlocks for some reason (makes you not want to buy new stuff cause it's the only permanent choice you can make)
- Your character does the fortnite default dance at the end of the mission and you can't pick up any items that dropped
And the greatest sin of all:
- Next to no warning that enemies are going to attack from a new location
Seriously, it's absurd. The thing that you have to pay attention to is a tiny icon on the minimap changing colors. That and the ghosts of a bunch of orcs coming from the new location. Which sounds like it would be easy to notice, but it's just not. You just tune them out unless you're building barricades. This is so dumb, and so annoying, that I just don't understand how it's in the game. There is literally a voice line to warn you about this, AFTER you've already placed all your defenses. Why? I have to sprint off and try to stop an entire army of orcs with nothing but a blunderbuss and my leftover 17 cents, just because the game didn't tell me they'd be coming this way.
And after you get used to that, the game will simply give up on telling you anyway. The logical thing to do is to mark out where the enemies will be coming, then let the player build defenses, then spawn the enemies. But for some godforsaken reason, consecutive waves can have a time limit on the build phase in between them, AND spawn enemies from new locations. AND you have to somehow notice that the orcs are coming from this new location by looking up at the minimap for the tiny icon. And did I mention that the time limit is
Ten. Seconds.

I hate it. But it feels like one of those things that you just put up with in an older game like "yeah, they didn't know any better at the time." Like quicktime events, or extra lives, or something. It's just annoying crap that feels dated.
But, I mean, underneath it all, it's fun. Half the fun is crafting new defenses, trying to work within your budget, theorizing how best to deal with what the game's throwing at you (once you actually figure out what it is). And the other half is executing on that once it goes live.

Overall, a tentative recommendation. It just feels like the game forgot that it needs to be played by its players, instead of the devs who already know everything and have everything unlocked.

what the ♥♥♥♥?

This is a game about drawing lines, with a light sprinkling of pretentious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If you're thinking about getting this game, get it for the lines, not the pretentious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Pretty fun puzzle game overall.

Terraria comes very close to being the perfect game. Just amazingly fun, especially with friends to play with.

This game is a bit too shallow to be a good management/park game, and the dinosaurs are too underdeveloped and uninteresting to make a good dinosaur game. There's seriously just not enough to do to make Jurassic World Evolution worth the price tag. 7 hours in I had experienced just about all there was to see, and I didn't even have much fun along the way. It all felt like a tutorial for something greater that just didn't exist.

I kept up with this game's updates for years on the Wolfire Youtube channel. Never felt the time was right to finally go out and buy it, although I did enjoy watching it slowly grow and progress as they added new mechanics and features. When it released I figured, yeah, it's probably time to buy this game. Maybe it was just my expectations and previous experience, but I didn't get much out of Overgrowth. So much time working on it and yet a short campaign with a pretty terrible story and writing, few other things to do, and a lot of uninteresting mods. In the end I played more Receiver than Overgrowth.