Recent reviews by Eliwood

I enjoyed Gravity Circuit. The combat is something that I find incredibly satisfying. Most enemies go down in just the right number of hits, the music is great, the level design is mostly great, and the art is just plain fantastic. A phenomenal game all around. If you want enjoy a viscerally satisfying 2-D action platformer, this is the game for you!

I don't know if I'm good enough at words to tell you why you should check this out. It's just a really unique well written experience. I would say this is, at the end of the day, interactive art. And I love that about this.

I would say I enjoyed my time with this game. It was cute. My review is coming from the perspective of playing the story mode. I think it was nice, characters fun, and the art is fantastic. Music is great. I think the coffee brewing aspect is nice as well. However I will say something that I think I have some minor issue with mostly stems with smaller stuff I think most people might not care about in the same way I did.

For example, I don't like being named as the barkeep when "I" am clearly an established character in the world *and* I don't have much real input. Part of me feels like I, myself, should have been more silent, or I should have had some "fake" dialogue choices to inform my character. This is very minor, but I wish more characters actually picked up their phones instead of it warping to their hands. I know that's how this sort of thing usually works, but I wish there was at least 1 frame of them going to pick it up and then it being in their hand as opposed to it going immediately straight into it.

Last thing, without getting into spoilers, but the end game "twist" feels a bit disappointing. It's ramifications as they are in this game feel meaningless to me. They're too minor of a change as far as I can tell. It doesn't feel like it really adds anything to the narrative.

That said, I respect everynoe's hard work and dedication to creating this game. I'd like more of Aqua in my life :)

Game is fun, but I feel like there's a story being teased in trailers that I wish the demo could have gotten into a tiny bit more. The music was great, the art was fantastic, but for me I'd love to be invested with these characters a little more. I know this is a demo so I don't want to seem like I'm asking for too much here. I will be looking forward to the final release!

Tetris Effect: Connected is a really great title. At the end of the day it is still Tetris, but it's everything else about this that makes it a phenomenal time. The visuals and music and genuinely breath taking and when you get into the zone Tetris Effect really feels like a whole different experience. The way the tracks shift as you shift the pieces or place them down make it awesome to just flip them for the sake of flipping them.

I would highly recommend Tetris Effect, especially if you have a VR headset. In my opinion it's better in VR (just as long as you use a regular controller)

Dark Souls 2 is a heavily flawed game with ideas I really like but find frustrating in execution. While there are a few cool vistas, most of the world and level design as a whole suffers from being rather nonsensical. Enemies are just a bunch of high damage gank fests, especially in the later game. There are things I do enjoy, such as the spell variety, connection to other players is generally better, a strong opening with many paths to make a new game feel fresh, and a great NG+ system that it disappoints me that no other Dark Souls game even attempts to come close to making a NG+ run worth doing.

But despite all this, I don't know if I would really recommend Dark Souls 2 unless you're a souls veteran and REALLY want more out of the series that you feel 1 and 3 don't provide. Despite my high play count (and the fact that I'll probably still play this again at some point in the future) I just don't think I could really recommend this game, generally speaking.

Also screw the Frigid Outskirts.

Dark Souls is a master class in video games. I'm sure you've heard stuff like this a bunch of times, but it's definitely still true here. The world design is my favorite aspect of the first Dark Souls, and it makes it a joy to come back to every single play through.

District Steel is a lot of fun. I think it was great for the amount of time I put into it. This might purely be my own preference, but I sort of wish there was a little bit more "progression" to play with throughout the levels. Like starting with a pistol, then getting the automatic, then getting the shotgun. Maybe that might make returning to earlier levels not feel as great, but I would love to get a feel for what I'm going through as well.

The mechanics are really fun. I love the time slowdown feature, though while I know most people say they don't like a hud being on screen that follows the head, I wouldn't have minded one for at least the slowdown meter. Something to let me know how much I have left without needing to look down at my wrist to check. Also, I do wish the walking speed was just MARGINALLY faster. It basically felt like I was forced to use the rocket slide all the time.

Levels were a lot of fun. It had enough variety that I had a good time. I think something I wish I could have taken advantage of more was more "breaking" of things to get through something. There's a tutorial for punching through wood with your fist but it felt like that was used maybe.. twice in the game at most? Also, I don't like that it seems to be tied to just the trigger press and not making a fast. Granted, I say this from the perspective of having played with the Index. But I digress.

I also enjoy that this game has a cheats system. I think I'll be coming back to this later to scour the levels to see if I can find all the data packs to unlock fun cheats. Having the revolver was great, but I wish there was a way to turn it off? Or find some way to change the pistol ammo to be the revolver ammo or something. Two guns sharing the same ammo slot forced me to have to choose whether or not I wanted to use the automatic or to use the Revolver. I'd like to have both options ideally. But given they share the same ammo pool, I run out of both too quickly.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this is a great game and I'd very much recommend it

Pseudoregalia is an incredible game. I love the aesthetics, music and most especially the movement. I am not able to go as in depth but the flow of everything just feels awesome. I love the wall kick. It has a learning curve but being able to learn how to use it to the best of my ability feels awesome. I love my ability to sequence break this game. It feels intentional. Getting to explore freely just for the sake of exploring feels pretty great as I come across new places. However as contradictory as I feel this sounds, my problem just comes with the overall map design.

A lot of people say it needs a map. I think that's a great band-aid for a larger problem in my opinion. I feel like a map is always great to have but I think adjusting the world to make it easier to navigate without needing it would be even better. And honestly I feel like the world design as a whole is very confusing the navigate when I try to get where I want to go. Maybe that's great for some, but it certainly wasn't for me. I know I was sequence breaking, but nothing feels like it actually lines up with other areas in the map. I wanted to avoid looking up a map because I didn't want to just "blame the game" but honestly even with the best map I found I still got lost a bit. Some of the areas just don't feel like they naturally connect.

Its length doesn't bother me at all. I think it's great to have a nice short game. There need to be more great games. I would play an entirely new map with new challenge and platforming challenges. Some new abilities might be great but I actually like what we had already and I wouldn't mind seeing what we have no fleshed out more in other titles. That is to say, I welcome a sequel.

I believe this game is worth your time.

It's a nice little experience. I really enjoyed the visuals but the story unfortunately didn't resonate with me personally. I would still recommend it though.