Recent reviews by adam1224

This standalone DLC is so much different from the base game, for the better, in my opinion.

Besides having, and re-using enemies and level elements (as expected) it builds very nicely on the pirate owl theme with flying ships.
Instead of manoeuvring between countless spikes and minute-long elevator runs dodging enemies and even more spikes, this game leans quite heavily into the world-shifting aspect. The ships have cannons that fire different coloured bullets that you can avoid by switching to the corresponding sister.

Overall the difficulty has been turned down - the game has an actual easy mode, the normal mode is actually normal and not frustrating, as it was in the base game. The level design is just a lot better - the levels have a theme, and somehow they have a lot better flow to them - maybe they removed some elements that required too much precision, and made the road forward cleaner. The levels were fun, and it was more interesting (and less punishing) to try to find secrets. Also, it may be only in my head, but I think this expansion runs quite a lot better than the base game.

And the boss - it was fantastic. Exact opposite of the base game's horrible dragon. The fight has little to no off-time between attacks, but at the same time the wind-ups were clear, the attacks did not work by overwhelming the player. The Owlverlord's attacks were stylish, and thematically fitting, and the fight itself relied more on the world-shifting mechanics than the standard platformer movement.

Everything considered - the expansion is great. Instead of being frustrating to finish and punishing to master (?), it's way more pleasant to play than the base game, while still offering depth. It also relies on its unique mechanics more, which does a lot to its individuality.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is an unreliable, miserable game that hides behind nostalgia and colourful pictures.

The gameplay is simplistic, in multiple ways. Way too simplistic for its 23 (?) levels. You have a dash and a twirl, and the ability to change the world around you - sometimes enemies, sometimes platforms, to help you progress. The music is incredibly repetitive, I'm not even sure if there's more than two tunes during the gameplay.

And even with these simplistic tools, the game piles fail on fail. The dash has a fixed distance, expect it doesn't. When you reach it to dash between enemies, it can go two-three times (!!) further than normal, just to let you reach platforms. But other times it dashes you straight inside an enemy's hitbox without killing it, so you die.

And speaking about hotboxes - it's a chore to land on platforms, or to hit enemies, because it's impossible to know where the actual edges are. I suspect the slight "screen curvature" effect behind this, but considering the game's difficulty, it gets super annoying fast. For some reason the game really likes to use purple spikes in front of blue background, or slightly purple water that kills you and blue water that you can swim in. I think I don't have problems with colours, but with the added perspective and visually noisy background I died so many times because the playable are and the background are blurred together.

The game's bossfights are gated on normal difficulty - you need to perform well enough on the messy levels that expect you both to be fast and accurate on the first try, and still killing you in seconds because you can't see enough forward.

The first boss was pretty nice - dodging attacks, and using world-shifting to kill it.
The second boss had a nice idea with the octopus, but the fact that half of the floor was instakill water, made it a quite cheap, and also slow to actually kill the boss - having 2-3 attacks between opportunities to deal damage, and you can die any time from attacks or from water.

The third and final boss is triggering. It takes 5-10 seconds to even appear. Then every attack has an (unnecessary) winding up animation of another 5-10 seconds, a hefty 15 seconds pause between attacks. 4-5 attacks give an opportunity to deal damage. The game does give you a shield that blocks an attack, but also, 90% of the time, the floor is instakill lava. And it gets more ridiculous. You have to dodge around a homing flaming rock, wait for a breath attack to put it out, and kick it at the dragon. But generally the RNG decides that you need to avoid the rock, while also throwing in "meteors" that travel slowly, and later explode, breaking the gameplay area into segments, making the rock almost guaranteed to hit you. Also hits generally stagger you, and you fall into the lava, so you die anyways.

So, to sum it up - the world-shifting idea and implementation is beautiful, trees, houses, dwells, enemies change dynamically. But at the same time the studio spent so much time on looks that the gameplay got simplistic, and it feels that there was little to no connection between level designers and whoever designed the player's character. It's controls are awkward, the game is punishing, visually confusing, and at many times tedious when trying to find a solution, or defeat a boss.

One of the best in its genre, a real classic. I played it a lot in my childhood, so it was nice to finally buy it and play it.

First of all, the game has a gigantic difficulty spike around stage 10-11. Other reviews mention stage 8 or 9 as breaking points, for me personally that was still fine.

During the game I collected I think 20 extra lives. In stage 10, I lost 9 in 3 levels.
I finished the game (after earning another 2) with 3. Three.

RNG rules the last stages - the line curves back onto itself, blocking shots. There's been examples of not getting a colour to hit a slow-combo for about 20 shots. The colour variety, and speed of the balls make sure to add up the difficulty and make your mistakes pile up extremely fast. Fail the same level 4-5 times, then do it finally well under half of the ace time.

I write a negative review to point out this issue. Other reviews mention a high framerate problem, which makes the game run too fast, hence the difficulty - maybe one could limit the framerate through GPU's program. But as the game is out of the box, it needs cautionary reviews because the difficulty spike. If you're okay with that, just buy it.

(Though seems like it doesn't run on Mac, despite the requirements. Check old negative reviews)

Pandora's Box is open, mythological creatures attack the Earth, and you're the Chosen One™ to stop them.

To be honest, the premise is not bad, and there is potential in the idea. But it's like a messy mix of different, better games. Rooms with blood spatters and bodies remind me of FEAR, the apocalyptic setting reminds me of Darksiders - both games did their part better, while being vastly superior games overall.

Legendary is just a badly made game. The story is alright, but the other issues completely undermine whatever little positive it has.
There is barely any variety in enemies, the energy-absorbing and healing ability doesn't work against human enemies. AI is stupid, looking down the iron-sight is buggy, mouse sensitivity makes a pain to properly aim.

The maps are linear, but they still spoon-feed you instructions: energy door blocks the stairs. Obviously, you need to remove it. Pressing Q always shows you your objective, but even data collectibles just tell you that it blocks the way to the roof, where you want to go.
But the funniest was when you wanted to go to the cathedral, which has a shelter in it. After you fallen into the sewers(!) through a collapse of the courtyard (made out of huge boulders) there is a neat sign fixed on the wall showing you where to go. It's shamelessly signaling you the way to go in a setting where you can go ONE direction, and in a way that they try to make it natural... but in a place where nobody could/would ever go.

So, overall they really tried with variety, but the depth and quality is really lacking in every single field. Not as horrible as I thought it will be based on the reviews, but it's on the bad side of the things.

PS: I wanted to try this for so long because of its themes, but always got discouraged. Bought it for €0.80? during the winter sale. Not the worst €0.80 I spent, I just don't think one can't spend their time with better things/games with today's wide selection.

Murder by numbers is a pretty well done kinetic novel with nonograms added as a game mechanic. Me marking it as a not recommended game is mostly the result of personal preferences and gameplay experience - I felt it has serious issues with focus and timing, making it a challenge to power through it. You may like it a lot more than I did.

The game is - surprisingly - totally story-driven, every single nonogram puzzle is related to the story. Originally this felt like a good choice, it builds a proper story with an overarching narrative, after all.
But through the game, it became an annoyance. The story is moving at a snail's pace, it being a mix of investigation and
"buddy cop" discussions with SCOUT. A considerable part of dialogues characters just reacting to things with surprise or shock, or repetitions of themes.

Overall the story is presented slowly, fragmented between life lessons to SCOUT, Honor (the protagonist) being educated/told off by various characters, including a grumpy detective, her abusive and manipulative ex-husband, her own mother, and basically every single suspect. The game delves into themes of abuse of authority, gaslighting, LGBTQ rights, secrets between friends, the right of making a choice, but all are kind of shoehorned in, between the investigations and the nonogram puzzles. Speaking of the puzzles, while they start out as a game mechanic, the second half of the game uses them as padding. There are parts when you get 2-3 lines of dialogues tops between puzzles, at a point you solve 3 or 4 without a single word being said inbetween.

I really can't see this game as bad, rather as a little misguided. The game good things, but there was always a "but".
The overarching story was interesting, but at the same time super obvious, they used the most evil guy looking evil guys ever.
The investigations were interesting, but 100% linear and without a single thought, or meaningful choice needed.
The 3rd chapter had some good base thoughts about gender and LGBTQ themes, but they so forced and set up, like someone cut the motto from some fliers.
The nonograms were a nice mechanic to progress the story through finding items, but later on the overabundance and general difficulty made it act like a speedbump to the story. 10 minutes break after half minute story-focused dialogue, repeatedly is ... not good.

I think a traditional visual novel would have served better to convey the story, and deal with the themes the developers found noteworthy. The story felt compelling enough to finish the game, but I dislike how much time it took to get how little information, which lead to boredom and an even more inflated gameplay time - this lack of focus on the story in a storydriven game is the main reason of my negative review. Maybe I would have liked it more as a side-game, playing it in short bursts.

Pyre was an interesting game that gave me mixed emotions on so many different topics, but overall it closed on a strong positive note.

The good:
-The music, in my opinion, is a lot more subtle than in other Supergiant games, but great nevertheless.
-The art style is great - characters and their clothes/raiments, landscape and blackwagon, or art of the Scribes, all of them have a distinct style.
-The lore is just stunning. I want a proper RPG of this world with exploration, and all the jazz in my life!

The mixed/personal:
-I ended up liking the Rites as a gameplay element, but I'm still unsure about its readability. Enemies just walking through my aura, my characters being banished outside of the auras of enemies, enemy taking a leap while standing inside my aura... maybe there is a delay between actual checks and the animations.
-I'm still disgruntled a bit about the storytelling. I had to accept that this is a "sports-game" with the story and VN on the side, but I just don't understand why I got prompts about which Exile doing what, instead of showing a bit more. Why there is no character-building between turns of Rites, instead of "many weeks pass"? It does not ruin the game, but even if every single travel opportunity counts, there could be more dialogues while travelling. I wanted more of the Nightwings

The bad: bugs and questionable choices (that may also be bugs?)
- Whenever you take flight with the blackwagon the cursor gets stuck in the top left corner.
- Using Steam overlay repeatedly froze up the game (have to escape to menu to normalise it) or I got stuck with a semi-transparent overlay, impossible to play the game. (Check my screenshots)
- The baffling - what's the order of the contestants? You summon mid, top and bottom, in this order. Yet I have 3 different screenshots where the first summoned, mid-Exile is controlled by key 1, key 2 or key 3. And you need to know this immediately as the game starts, enemies rushing for the ball, or at you. I genuinely don't know if this is a design choice or something went sideways, but it's super frustrating, adding challenge and difficulty of the worst kind.
- Had 5-10 crashes through a full playthrough.

Overall Pyre was often confusing, always beautiful, and the longest-lasting feelings I have are caring about the characters, and wishing to know more of the world (and being a tad upset about the game showing so little). I think creating such a lasting effect means it's well worth the positive review, despite I feel it has some weaker points.

A very good, deep, turn-based RPG in a very honest South Park paint - a fantastic licensed game.

Main quest in normal difficulty feels on the easy side if you focus on sidequests and finding secrets, it's rare that you really need to customise against certain enemies.

The game offers a wide variety of interchangeable weapon and armor "enchantments", which give a good base for fighting difficult enemies by exploiting their weaknesses. Consumables are generously given and purchasable, but they are limited by stack size (10 max) - even the combat system encourages you to use them - overall the game gave the impression that it absolutely has the depth to support a more tactical approach on high difficulty.

The story is somewhat cliché, but the super authentic South Park style makes it feel like it's a long, special episode of the show. It has references to the show and obviously offer a lot more to followers of it, but at the same time it extends on the concept and it's a lot more than a pile of references.

Tomb Raider is a great exploration-adventure game with heavy focus on combat and/or stealth. While it makes everything almost perfectly, its more than the sum of it parts.

Collectables are quite the trademark of many new(er) open world, or semi-open world, and TR makes a good job at mixing collectables into the story and into its upgrade system. The game is basically the mix of these - story and upgrade. Progressing the story unlock more locations, and the locations have collectables and various challenges to fuel the upgrade system of the game, which is a mix of natural progression and rewards, based on your gameplay.

The story itself is pretty alright, its strong side is how much it shows to you. You'll likely figure out the strings before Lara tells you the whole thing, but getting through beaches, forests, tombs, bases, monasteries and ramshackle villages are the main attraction. Collectables give more info about the mysterious island and its inhabitants, past and present, which is a great extra lore if you don't really mind the few dozen diaries scattered during the game.

The game's upgrade system is dual - you gain XP to unlock more skills and features, and you use scrap to enhance your weapons. The idea is great at the beginning of the game, but later gets quite flat - more xp and scrap is good upgrades, but powershot and the QTE-disable/kill counterattacks are devastating, most of the higher tier unlocks are absolutely unneeded. Weapon-wise it's useful to juggle multiple weapons and ammo types, but the bow is impactful, and most upgrades are not on par with a silencer for the A. rifle, or a burst mode for the pistol. Shotgun is as effective as throwing chestnuts at enemies.

Overall the game was super fun. Lots of exploration, climbing, shooting bad guys, and unveiling the island's mystery. There are multiple difficulty levels for combat, and some upgrades can make the game easier (The DLC ones, but they are in the game as well), so it's pretty approachable.
Tone-wise it's bloody combat with loads of horrible and visual ways for Lara to die, it was a bit shocking, and it is even now. Some QTE parts are really out of place and can be super stressful after watching Lara get impaled on scrap metal or pine trees multiple times, but things like that only shows how good the other parts are. (It's maybe a 30s long segment with a checkpoint in the middle, at least they were forgiving)

I'm a lot late with the TR reboot-series, but I'm really looking forward to the sequels after this.

~6/10, better than average, had some mindless fun with it, but the game feels like someone forgot the brakes on - it's slow, and in the end got really repetitive.

While the movement and combat system is pretty okay, at points the game really tries to use it effectively, but fails at it.
There are just too many functions on the two mouse buttons, and the autorun-autoattack function messes up a lot more than what it helps. Also... who maps inventory on I **AND** C keys, and maps character sheet on U?

Mouse clicking is somehow...inaccurate. I was repeatedly running up and down around some monsters when I tried to disable their channeled ability. Clicking on the ground to move, trying to get into range and clicking on a small circle to cancel that summon is weirdly inconsistent. Also mouse just not good for selecting targets for spells when they group up, the game tends to pick the enemy closest to you / last damaged.

The gameplay is overall okay, while being super padded and slow-progressing.
Loot sucks. Your real power-spike is finding a new card (items, spells). There are magical and legendary versions of them, but they add so little to the base effects and cost so much more to upgrade that they aren't really worth caring about. If you find an effective item, or you can equip/upgrade a used card, that can be a game-changer But until that - you don't really have much to work with. If you don't find the ice or flame weapon (to counter enemy ice/flame hearts), you will only chip away enemy health. Speaking about enemy health:

Enemies are a pain in the ass for most of the game, and slog for the other. I found the elemental weapons somewhere in the second half of the game, I was doing 1 damage with each click against enemies that needed 15-20 clicks to kill. Meanwhile everything was out to poison, stun, or freeze me. There is obnoxious amounts of padding in combat - shields that you need to click on, golden shields that let in one attack only before invulnerability sets in, enemies spawning guardian minions, enemies teleporting all over the space, general invincibility between boss phases... and everything ice-related is a torture between the movement- and attack speed slows, freezes and roadblocking icicles.

Enemies at the end of the game are ridiculously tanky, and unless you get a whetstone(?) item and use it repeatedly, any attack of yours does a single heart damage, or breaking the ice/flame "cover" of that heart. Some enemies have 20ish hearts, even using skills is just boring in lategame, because everything is a HP sponge. You likely have well-upgraded shield, HP regen items and such so it's not a real challenge, it just drags on and on and on.

And basically that is the game. Nice design, weird choice with the controls, autorun and autoattack, and lots of padding to keep you busy for a few hours. (The story is nonexistent)

20-something levels into the game I have to say that it's a great minesweeper-type game. It lacks the visual sleekness of hexcells, but what it lacks in elegance, it has in variety, difficulty and extra tools. It's a great product even at its super low full price, and astonishingly good if you get it on a sale.

Variety: The best and "worst" part of the game. The form of levels and the mechanics can make levels so different, that I catch myself repeatedly making rookie mistakes because I forget if on this level diagonals count or not, or I fail to get into a different mindset for triangle levels than for hexagonal ones. It's variety that leads to brain-twisting difficulty here.

There are the "numbers in row/column" feature in the game, like in Hexcells.
But also there are hexagonal levels, triagonal levels, square levels, square levels with different sized squares, and who knows what else later on.
There are coloured tiles with individual mine-number counters, and the game uses the number of available mines *heavily*.
There are are square levels where diagonals count into neighbouring tiles, on other levels only side-connected ones.

Extra tools: first of all, in the game's launch menu turn on the night mode under the options tab, or finishing a level may make you blind. IMO this is essential, and it's something that the dev later added to the game after complaints and requests. Also under the input tab you can change all controls to your liking.

The best tool of the game is the drawing tool - you can click on the pencil icon while solving a puzzle, which turns on a drawing overlay that lets you draw on the puzzle. You can use two, custom colours at the same time, and this option lets you sketch up options as you try to solve a particularly hard section, or to draw something nice while waiting for your brain to cool off.

Overall Tametsi is a super cheap, very challenging, but still user-friendly game.