Recent reviews by Ricebug

After playing this badly portrayed version of the Butterfly Effect, I gave up on O2LS. The premise is you get stuck in a time-space loop after unleashing some kind of sinister radio waves. It was cute the first time I looped. By the twentieth time, I was thoroughly disgusted and uninstalled the game. Even after carefully exploring all the paths open to me, I kept getting sent back to my origin, babbling on my cell phone and starting over from the beginning. A few hints would have been nice.

Judging by the screenies and reviews, O2LS looked like a solid game. I should've known better when I saw the Netflix logo. Don't waste your money unless you're a hard-core puzzle freak.

The dev(s) keep polishing this thing, so it promises to get better with each upgrade. In this day, where many Indie games end up in the video game cemetery, JT won't become abandonware. My only gripe is a common one: too much scrounging around for parts, which makes it a grinder. Not as bad as some I've played, but still a chore to play.

Game is very difficult. Too many commands to remember. The only way to play this game is to create a hard copy of menus and keyboard commands, plop it on your desk, and have at it. Otherwise, be prepared for a steep learning curve.

An absolutely stunning achievement. The graphics are Top Drawer. The puzzles get more devilish as you progress through the game. Few games have caught my attention like this one.

Some might ignore a game that has only one developer, but they would miss out on this little gem. What? A locomotive with teeth and crab legs hunting you down? You can't be serious. Yet while the game could benefit from character facial animations, it does little in taking away from the truly scary moments.

Give it a try.

Exxodus comes out of the gate with new enemies, devious puzzles, and some improvements. Instead of calling your buddies one by one, you can now holler, "All y'all!" and everyone within earshot can respond at once.

While I do recommend a controller, there are too many commands wrapped up in the few buttons you have to master. As with the other Oddworld games, save points are few and far between, making dying a tedious repetitive grind. I wish someone would do for the PC version what they did for the Play Station, where the player can save, literally, a screen at a time.

I'm gonna allow comments on this in case someone has updates on the Save Game issue.

I suppose the requirement to pass the training mission before being handed a contract seems reasonable. But your scope wanders all over the screen, getting more unstable as you "progress." I was a marksman in the Air Force, and this doesn't jibe with reality. Prepare to spend an inordinate amount of time repeating, rinsing, repeating until the algorithm decides to let you into the actual game. Meanwhile, I have better things to do.

Don't let the cool cut scenes drag you into buying this game. Don't get me wrong, either. For a certain kind of player, this may be the game of the year for you. If you're like me, however, you will get little pleasure from playing it. The game's strength (actually evolving into a learning creature) is also its greatest drawback.

After the opening cut scene, you find yourself alone and without your mother. It's night, and you are assaulted with frightening images. While the community has done an admirable job of trying to explain this, it will certainly puzzle the new player. Watch a few YT videos and listen to the speculation. The entire game is an exercise in experimentation, from interfacing with distant icons to communicating with family members. The devs wanted you to learn and think like a young primate, not as an experienced human employing Minecraft tactics to figure things out.

So what about the tutorials the game offers at its easy level? The "Full Tutorials," as the game calls them, are bones meant to be licked and smelled, not wolfed down like hunks of meat. They are bite-sized hints sprinkled around the environment. There is no "go there, get this, put this with that, etc." You are completely on your own to try and figure things out. I suppose this is the reality of evolving from an ignorant primate to a smarter one. The only problem with this is YOU, the player, are human, playing a game as a primate and trying to read the minds and intentions of the developers and how they want you to survive and progress along an evolutionary timeline. While the game’s design is realistic at best, some of its fan base will give up out of sheer frustration.

For example, after getting back to your clan, you're tasked with making a bed. It's up to you to try and figure out WHAT materials to harvest and how MUCH of it. Then, you have to find a place to PUT the bed. Instead of following the time-honored tradition of standard crafting, however, where you have slots to store stuff, you're left with dropping everything on the ground and sorting out what and how much goes where. I’m highly organized, so my OCD won't tolerate stuff laying all over the ground needing to be sorted and cataloged. I guess that will happen somewhere along the evolutionary timescale. While the game is patient, allowing you time to think, experiment, and rinse, repeat, rinse, the frustration factor quickly ratchets up.

If you're wondering about the Creation vs Evolution thing, don't worry. I'm a born-again Christian, well-grounded in both science and what the Bible teaches. Stuff like humanity evolving from apes no longer rattles my faith as it once did, and neither should it rattle yours.

At 71 years old, I play video games to relax and to keep my mind sharp, not suffer a stroke.

I can put up with bad language, but this game is simply over the top. Every single AI in the game has some foul-mouth saying. as you pass them by. The only one with a decent tongue is Rico, Roman's cousin.

Driving is a slippery affair, whether you use a controller or KB/M. With driving games being around since the Amiga, it seems that the physics should've been perfected by now. All of the cars drive as if they have no shocks. Horrible.

The fighting is also horrible. You have a punch (B on the controller) and an alternate punch (Y). Guess what? The Y does nothing. So winning a fist fight is chancy at best.

All in all, the game promises a lot but is horrible on delivery.

Devilish little levels for the hardcore puzzle freak. Plays either with a KB/M or a controller.