Recent reviews by Fighter_Builder

My name is Nubby. I made the numbers.
It was difficult to put the digits together.

Alright, I decided to give this game another chance. After sinking some more time into Psycho Patrol R, I definitely feel I was too harsh on it in my original review. I do still think the balancing has a lot of room for improvement (and I feel the Early Access trailer was legitimately VERY misleading about the combat difficulty. You try pulling that ♥♥♥♥ on the bridge even on the easiest difficulty and you'll get absolutely smited.) but after getting a feel for it, I don't think it's quite as fundamentally broken as I originally thought. I am making progress, slowly but surely.

If anything, I think this game needs a demo of some sort. 2 hours didn't feel like enough time for this particular game to click with me and I felt like I had to rush to make my decision the first time around as to whether I should continue playing.


For the sake of preservation, here's my original review:

This game is really fun! I highly recommend giving it a chance if you like arcadey puzzle games and/or Minesweeper.

It's also free.

finally got around to playing Mouthwashing

god, what a game

There's not much I can really say about this game that hasn't been said already, so I'll keep it brief:

This game rules. I'm not typically super into card games, but this one just hits way different. Balatro strikes a really great balance between luck and skill. It lets you be clever while still making you work for the ability to snap the game's balance in half with a busted joker combo and a bunch of shiny iridescent playing cards.

Only thing I really wish this game had was cross-saves so I could carry progress to/from the mobile version. From what I've heard though, apparently that's already on the roadmap 👀

I have absolutely zero clue what's happening but I can't look away

I initially left a meme review saying nothing but "so cool" over and over (which wasn't inaccurate, this game is absolutely cool AF) but this game deserves an actual genuine review. I could honestly gush about this game for an excessively long time, but I'll do my best to keep it (somewhat) brief.

I'm just gonna say it, Shadow Generations is PEAK. Sonic Team were firing on all cylinders for this one and put out this absolute top-tier banger of a game. My only complaint with Shadow Generations is that I wish there was more of it, but when that's the only negative thing I can say about it, I'd say that's the mark of a pretty damn good game. It's a bit on the shorter end overall, but in that sense it is the textbook definition of quality over quantity.

One thing I particularly want to highlight is the level design. Not only are the levels in Shadow Generations a blast to play through from start to finish no matter whether they're 3D or 2D, but these are the longest Sonic levels we've gotten since Sonic Unleashed. That was 16 years ago. Shadow controls great too; all the powers he gets are well-utilized and they're all a lot of fun to use. Doom Morph can be a bit unwieldy though, but it's fairly easy to adjust to.

And the STORY. OH MY GOD THEY COOKED! I refuse to spoil anything about the story because this 100% deserves to be experienced blind, but trust me when I say this is the good stuff. Please do check out the Dark Beginnings prologue shorts as well - they're incredibly well written, the animation is gorgeous, and the fight scenes are phenomenal, and it's honestly a crime that they aren't included in the game itself in the extras menu or something. Ian Flynn nailed the writing here, and he absolutely did Shadow and his story justice.



...Oh yeah, Sonic Generations is there too. This isn't a bad way to play it if you don't already have it. They did change a couple things here and there, not all of it works but it's all fairly harmless. They did do a light rewrite of the game as well; it's not a complete overhaul of the story or anything, it's mostly simple stuff like Sonic acknowledging and interacting with his friends more during cutscenes. It's still the same incredibly basic story, just told with a bit more sincerity. That said, Ian did kinda do that thing he did in Frontiers again and added some extra references where there weren't any before, but this is Sonic Generations we're talking about - it is literally References: The Game. If there's any game where that could be excused, it would be this one. (And don't worry, Shadow Generations does not have this problem.) But yeah, it plays fine, I'd say the writing is marginally improved, and I haven't had any technical problems with it. It's Sonic Generations. Not really sure what else to say about it that hasn't been said already.

This collection is fantastic and I love both of these games, but I'm getting occasional lag spikes playing on my Steam Deck??? This is a 2D Ace Attorney collection, it should not be taxing enough to start dropping frames on a Deck. I knew Denuvo was a performance hog, but holy hell this is low. I still highly recommend this collection aside from that, but I'm just baffled by this.

I'm really enjoying this game so far! I'm definitely much more used to 4-key rhythm games than 6-key and above, but I still found this game very readable and enjoyable to play regardless, and I was able to pick it up and get comfortable with it in no time. Not a huge fan of how the danmaku levels are handled though; even with the simplified bullet patterns, I don't find it particularly fun to have to divide my attention between a bullet hell and a rhythm game, even if it is trimmed all the way down to just two keys. Those are a relatively small part of this game though, not nearly bad enough to ruin my experience or anything, but I still felt it was worth pointing out.

you can pet the cat