Recent reviews by jiachikieln

Very accurate recreation of how the original 'felt' to play and explore.
Lack of forced perspectives made it easy to get lost in the world again, as much now from taking in the scenery as from missing 'that one item or button', a liveable trade.
Main hiccups are mostly technical issues, like lighting and rendering bugs/pop-in at the edges of the screen. Also, the 'internal' screenshot resolutions can frequently render them useless for visual information, *cough* comparing lights to corresponding symbols on a stone wheel *cough*.
The 3d renders of characters are often uncanny, but generally understandable alternatives to locking down movement for cutscenes, though the one 'fleeing' character did demonstrate that they were still 'forced' to stop you at least once.
Really, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was how neatly trimmed Atrus was, when his journal reads more as a man buried in his work, using your help as a trump card only after months of all-consuming writing and formulating.

Nice range of environments, quirky weapons, and a few really rough boss fights. If you like Serious Sam, you'll be able to take out many of the big fights, but the extensive hiking and exploration in between might not click as much. No, there are not enough harpoons, just dive past 'them' and hope for the best.

A pleasant experience, even if you are an achievement hunter. Most cases of frustration I encountered came down to my own stubbornness in a quirky physics solution to getting something, and missing 'obvious' clues. Blue circles with a line are sleeping scarabs, perfectionist isn't remotely hard to complete, just a pinch tedious if you suck at pinball. *cough*

You need a group, months worth of free time, and likely 3-5 mods to make the prospect sane. This has been built around 10-20 man tribes, so if that all sounds a bit daunting for just taming some dinos and seeing the sights, feel free to play with the difficulty sliders, they are there for a reason.

I wish I could convince anyone I knew to play this lovable, bizarre point-and-click adventure game. Some of the more obtuse puzzles could be maddening, but it was an experience well worth sticking through. I don't even care for clowns all that much, but I'd allow Dropsy at least one cautious, awkward hug.

Physics based platformers rarely get along with me, and this is no exception. Floaty jumps tied to momentum loss on contact with 'anything', topped off with blind jumping so you can't even call it a puzzle. I have no idea after getting the 'boots' how I was supposed to actually 'do' a good third of the jumps afterwards, as I kept getting lost and ending up standing in places I probably shouldn't have been for a free refresh. I could ace LPB1 and all but a certain space section of LBP2, and those are the definition of both fun and floaty, this lost steam just before Maddie challenged my jumping skills.

Storywise, it felt like a cellophane wrap around an overly long tech demo. Maddie was 'ok', her 'conflict' was rather inconsequential, and I feel very uncomfortable pondering what sites the narrator's daughter frequents considering her questions about the two of you. I did what I could to ignore the narrators fumbles, his delivery felt like someone asked him to read the script out loud, then left after recording the rough read, before a first take.

I'd overall call this a 'meh' experience, with no plans to replay it. The first cave was pleasant enough, and I even lingered around and looked at much of the makeshift village just for the sake of itself. The dark section was a bit bare, but the story wasn't entirely out of steam, so right up to stumbling past the 'beast' I held some hopes. Outdoors, as pretty as the view was, the resolutions on textures were now outright making gauging distance and what's jumpable outright guesswork. Everything effectively became a slog, I did Maddie's challenge just to spite her, and the boots kept me awake by breaking jumps that I otherwise couldn't physically do legitimately. The less said about the ice cave hiding grappleable surfaces and expecting me to chain 5-10+ jumps, often bootless, the better.

As pleasant as the gunplay is for itching old thrills, the 'glory kill' function tends to operate more as a trap than a streamlining addition. Locking you in place and removing invulnerability 'before' dropping the bonus hp rewarded for your efforts, enemies tend to get plenty of well-timed free shots to finish you off before you can collect. It feels more like it would be at home with a 3rd person view, with better acuity for your surroundings and some form of dodging/side strafing evading trick to work smoothly in higher difficulties. As it stands, it is a glaring, stapled on problem, hanging off of a functional, 'one more time' oldschool shooter, and in the way on anything past ultra-violence (Normal +1).

While the game itself is alright for the $2 price, I am well aware that sale price scaling has been abused before. 90% off of $15 for a $1.50 total? Wow, what a deal! Oh wait, that's 25% off $2, nothing special.

Imagine if Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft are two ends of the fantasy world-builder complexity slider. Wurm Unlimited/Online sits firmly towards the Dwarf Fortress edge, so expect FUN the more solo you go. Strongly suggest playing Wurm Online first as a 'free to try' tutorial with live support, if you don't know how deep you can handle the DF style experience.