Recent reviews by adam1224

Assassin's Creed 2 is not an easy game to review 12 years after its release, but to be really upfront: it's a genuinely interesting game. Has a few hiccups in various departments, the faces aged...not super well, but there is so much fun and awe to be had. Great point to start the series, and one of the best games of the series, according to the many.

I'll start with the bad, because there's only a few, mostly annoying little things. The game is really easy - people around me thought it's super hard or something, because it's one of the most "gamery" game series and apparently everyone heard about it. But the game gives you tons of upgrade options, buries you under money and helps you out with the side of borderline braindead AI.
The bad thing is, that the real enemy in the game is the controls. In Crypts and challenge maps sometimes the rotateable camera turns into tank controls and you have to jump without watching, where you jump; along with this, rooftop ropes were my bane. There is just such a middleground-angle that you're not jumping on them from the side, not hoping on and walking from a 90° angle, just jump down like there is no tomorrow. Super small, but very consistently annoying thing, but I think that is the biggest recurring issue I found.


Kinda neutral points:
-As I mentioned in the beginning, many / most character faces are just ugly, likely weren't too pretty in 2009 either.
-Starting phase of the Ubisoft collectathlon. Not too bad, not super overbearing, but back in 2009-2010 I quit the game because I was so obsessed with chests, having enough money to get everything, going for the races that I barely played the story. And it was horrible. Don't do that with yourself, just pace the chests between the story missions ;)


The good:
Oh lord, there are so, so many.

I was very hesitant about the game, for me it's essential to play a game in peace, and raving fanboys and fangirls can really make an impact of my enjoyment. So the game being that old left me in the bubble of "why u play old gaem lol" and that was so good.

The game - weirdly - is a lighthearted adventure game. The one with a great treasure to be had, climbing mountains, buildings, outwitting your enemies, being cheeky like a swashbuckler. And the abusable AI, easy combat and the lovely Florence does that.
And suddenly renaissance history combined with alternate history comes crashing down, with treasons, assassinations and plotting and politics. The game has beautiful, bustling streets, as you unlock cities and travel around, the music, the building style, the cleaniness of the streets change city by city. At points you just catch yourself sightseeing - it's such a weird feeling in an game about assassins :)

The music is incredible - never annoying, but it's always present, a treat to listen to. And the same is true for characters too - they have great voice actors that bring a lot of style and personality to each character. I was really happy each time when I could hear Mario or Leonardo, both such enthusiastic support characters. Huge, huge bonus points for leaving so much Italian in the game - and I guess the Italian accent was also well done? It felt really natural, and not comically overdone.

One other point I want to mention, that I didn't really expect: as the game goes on and plays through years and years, Ezio, the protagonist really goes though a change in personality. A bold, careless and hasty character turns into a more tuned back version of himself, who still appreciates his allies and is genuinely thankful for their help. This sounds weird when written down, but when dozens of hour of gameplay separates start from the end, and the change is gradual, it's interesting to think back and realize, what a change happened.

At this point I don't really know what else to write. I loved cllimbing buildings and getting ancient treasure. Enjoyed upgrading the villa to have then mostly useless mountains of gold. Adored Leonardo's and Ezio's talks with the accents. It was great reading the history logs of the badasses and the pests of the era. Loved Caterina Sforza's portrayal, and maybe the best moment of the game for me was returning to Florence, and out of nowhere the theme music blasting as the memory getting build.

This game is a travesty.
Duke has a midlife crisis, so he has to surround himself with babes who tell him he is still cool, plastering a bloody palace with pictures of himself, to try to convince himself that he is still relevant.
The developers throw in every possible Duke one-liner, some sh*t, sex and d*ck jokes then go on and continue with a turret section then a vehicle section.
I give up at this point.
In Duke Nukem 3D the maps were small but intricate, with multiple secrets - on the first map the par time is 1:45, and you can have rocket launcher from a secret if you look around, it's not even a really hidden one. In this game I was following made-up narrative that was all about "Yeah, Duke is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool!" for like 10-15 minutes, then mediocre combat for a few minutes, then turrets, then driving. At this point I spent one and a half hour in the game (Most of it was checking out the environment, game is weirdly obsessed with physics nuances) and had less fun and action than in DN3D's first 1 minute.

As the President said: "Duke, you're a relic from a different era." That era passed, and apparently the developers as well who knew that made Duke Nuke 3D so good. And even made the game centered around telling us how cool Duke is, instead of making him, and the game good.
(I know I'm super late to the party, got similarly 1-1.5 hours in in 2014. Thought I give it another try, and it's just painful)

I maybe should have looked better into Iron Marines. It's a big disappointment, even if I bought it in a bundle deal for about 3€, as the game is just absolutely not fun.

The game only have a campaign that is usually extremely limiting in terms of strategy and even build options. Many if not all of them are script-heavy, which includes spontaneously spawning enemies at random locations or unmarked instakill environmental dangers (the later one broke the camel's back for me). The game expects you to go in, and either succeed, or fail to see what you should have done. And this is not like transitioning from Age of Mythology to Cossacks and learning balance, strategy or build order - this is getting to know the actual map's script to counter it.

What makes this "learning experience" especially painful that while your hero units can be strong, they still can get killed relatively easily thanks to these lovely events. And the lack of their power can make you easily lose the map, which just leads to more repetition. Also the game is amateur, and absolutely untrustworthy when it comes to actual RTS stuff. Half of the time you can't even click on enemies because the game won't register it. And there is no attackmove to counteract this. No minimap. The game uses arrows to scroll but qwertz/qwerty for powerups and hero powers. Also a mouse.

And as a good old mobile port, the game has heroes that you need to level up by grinding and repeating levels, along with buying one-use powers and permanent upgrades to units and building. At least these upgrades can be quite impactful and absolutely not just % bonuses, but that makes it even weirder that you should grind missions to upgrade your mechs. Actually inside the game you have handful of "upgrades" - I've only seen them (excatly two) on the central building. Other than that turrets have two extra firing mode.

"Energy-money" generates slowly (unless you use money-giving power), there is a set number of squads you can recruit limits your options. It creates an extremely unfun experience because you have to be careful with the few squads you have, which makes the game slow. There is no useful micro, almost no macro - so much of the game is spent with waiting for energy, waiting for HP to get restored, it almost feels like it's a tower defense game. (On the second planet they literally made tower defense levels, gotta do what you have experience in I guess)

The Heros can level up their powers. The game is so half-baked even today that in you're in game you have no tooltip to even know what your skills do (and there are 12? heroes, so you expected to bring someone new in at a point). Also while the devs claim that level-ups give extra power to heroes, there is not even mention in game about HP, stats, if leveling up powers between milestones give *any* extra to it.
When asked by the community about the stats, the dev told them that "creating an in-game encyclopedia is no minor task and takes months of work and dedicated manpower" - which is understandable. But they did this after adding stats to a SINGLE character on the game's wikipedia page, calling it a day. This happened mid-2019, one and a half years ago.not even the other starter (on mobile, free) characters' stats got uploaded to the wiki, which shows both how extremely lackluster the game's features are, and that judging from their actions, the have no intention to make any work related to it - not even as much as creating a few tables and copy-pasting values into them.

The units, and the overall the design very obviously copies Starcraft, but it could be a pleasant little game with its own story. But the combination of strictness and handholdiness of what's expected from the player, coupled with the sub-par controls required for an RTS makes it so much more frustrating than it should be. I really wish I could like it more.

The Dev's previous game, Pony Island deals better with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ than this game had, but that does not change on the fact that this game has an excellent meta-narrative of the game, the story of its characters and the game industry of recent years.
It's weird and at points it's unpleasantly ugly/weird, but it's best if you go in without knowing much about the game itself. IMO it's not an eternal masterpiece, but definitely a game that worth it's price, and will stick with you for a long time.
It had an awkward start, but the deeper I did goin the rabbit hole, the more invested I was.
I definitely think that you should play this, if you find it interesting by the screenshots and its trailer.

Gave the game another try after years left it on the backburner, but it did not got better.

The game is a rhythm-based RPG which mixes a puzzle-like rhythm game and a very generic and base RPG system with loot, equips and stats, and the oh-so mandatory crafting system.

The game offers you a safe room from which you can explore The Tower and fight enemies of your choice to grind resources, to craft equipment and spells (Generic attack also comes from a spell) and then make a key to open a door and get to a higher level.

The combat is spent on a 3-window screen, you change between them with the Q and E buttons. Directional arrows fall from the windows, each doing different things - defense window's arrows damage you if not pressed at the proper time, mana window's arrows recharge mana on hit, and you cast your spells by pressing all the correct arrows of the selected spell in the spell window.

One of my main problems was that the game tries to be "hip". Or "radical". By being so clever and sleek that it plays the self-awareness card, and the "lame hero who got transported into world, and who has a woman sidekick who constantly mocks him".
Conveniently, she is the narrator as well, who has a varied amount of knowledge, based on what the tutorial or plot requires. And she talks through only an "intercom" I think? I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be a reveal-surprise-twist later on the line.
Anyway, it was a bit jarring how many times various drugs were mentioned even before the tutorial, at one point the protagonist accusing the narrator of being a date rapist, which is a very, very weird tone one wants to set in a rhythm RPG with colourful and silly characters.

The final nail in the coffin was how tediously stupid menus are, and how often button presses do not get recognised in battles. Not super often, more like 1/10-20 times, but it adds up, and makes the game feel really sloppy.

Likely there's an okay, tolerable game under the surface, but it's just not fun to play for me.

"Can be played one handed, 10/10"

Jokes aside, the game is simple but great.
Attack with direction buttons, attack range is shown, you can pick up different types of weapons to use them. There are QTE-y like brawlers that take multiple, unique combos to take down, but still can be one-hit killed with certain weapons which feels awesome.

It also should be mentioned: the game progressively gets harder by enemy design, and has a "floor" difficulty of 100%. No matter how many times you die at 100%, the difficulty can't and won't decrease. The game is not super hard, but definitely challenging and tense. Keep that in mind when considering a purchase.

The game takes place over an - IMO a bit unnecessarily - big map. The game claims to have more than 250 levels and that is very likely true - there are insane amounts of stages, the game gets quite samey by the end. The scaling challenge which is based on player performance helps a lot to keep the player on their toes, so there is no real downtime. So it does not feel stretched, just long; many of the sameish thing.

Though on the aforementioned map there are I think 11? types of levels, not counting the boss levels. They are mostly unique - while there are spins on the same thing ( beat down X, beat down enemies to knock them into Y items, beat down Z in storm and W while using a filter) they still offer some relatively nuanced thing to them, making different skills useful.

The skills- you unlock them by beating certain levels, and then you are free to mix and match them, as you can use 3 at the same time. All skills are passive, but most has an active effect - while there are true passives that give longer weapon use time on pickup, most get charged up by getting kills, then being used along/instead of a normal attack. They work well and are useful, though if you *really* want to fight flawlessly, some skills can really mess up your rhythm unless you pay extreme attention - same can happen with one-shot kill weapons, like dagger, bow and bomb, killing a multihit enemy in a single strike, then hitting a miss where they stood.

Certain levels are surely harder than other by design, but I guess it depends on the player and their preferences too. The game is far from being impossible to beat, but with the scaling difficulty that is impossible to turn off, I think everyone can expect a quite consistent and unavoidable challenge.
(I hated the last bomb level, took 10+, maybe 20 times because I constantly messed up at two points. I feel like I needed to get this out of my system)

It feels bad to be among the 3-4% of players who vote this game negatively, but this is what the personal review system is for, right?
I was playing the game because it got recommended me in the discovery queue at a point, and at a point I added it to my library; and because I am participating in an event where you're supposed to play the top rated games of your library - and Eternal Senia was in the top few unplayed ones with its 97% longterm review-rate. So I needed to finish it.

As a forerunner - the game is not bad. Has ups and downs, and a lot of lukewarm mish-mash ...filler-quality stuff to it. Knowing what the game is I'd never have added it to my library. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends because it lacks a solid backbone to enjoy, it's more like a timesink. If you have more time, different taste - you may like it.

So, about the game:
I liked the music. Despite being super short and looping, the menu theme is pretty cool. Again, sorry - but a tune this catchy would deserve a game with more content. Other music during the game were quite distinct (especially the ones played during boss fights) and the sound effects were pretty good as well. Combat sounds effects OK.

Graphics is a bit of mixed bag, feels better than standard RPG-Maker sprites, but nothing really outstanding. I don't know if the spell and lightning effects were original, but they were used pretty well for the most time. Environments were varied (3 different chapters) but really barren at many points, and there is just nothing much going on. It's an ARPG with 2-3 characters that you don't fight with, and it was made with RPG-Maker as the dev's first game project,

And for that, they did a pretty good job, with the tools they've got. The combat is a real YMMV thing - it's grindy but easy, so it's either laidback and chill (I felt this way) or repetitive and meaningless, as others felt. The item system was sadly pretty horrible, upgrading a worn item can require up to 30-40 button presses because it needs to be unequipped, then in a submenu of a submenu of a menu you need to scroll though a list of all possible recipes to upgrade it, then go back and re-equip it.

As I said, it feels weird to criticise someone's first attempt, but as the game is on Steam and in public, it can't get a universal pass. My main issue with the game is that it's - feels like admittedly, based on its description - a fanfiction-game of some characters from an MMO, and even ignoring the grammatical problems (It was painful to read "sis" a few hundred times, like a reminder if you'd ever forget who is the girl the protagonist nonstop talks about, despite never being present), it's a repetitive, cringey, anime-tropey story. There are barely any dialogue to be found, only monologues.
There are I guess multiple pages worth ramblings about " I relied on you, but I want to help, I'm independent, where are you" from a character who's avatar is constantly blushing and/or crying.
And in the true ending she does her best to convince her sister Magaleta - from not sacrificing herself - that she needs her because not mature or independent enough I... feel like the dev wanted to make a damsel in distress waifu-character from the MMO the strong protagonist of the game, but also keeping her original, timid personality because that's what they originally liked. I may be very wrong about this as I did not play Ragnarok Online, but the representation and the personality that is "presented" is jarringly different.

So, all in all I am quite baffled how this game has 97% review rates, and in a way I feel super cheated by the premise of this game being *that* good. It's okay, but it's a far, far cry in quality from the 95+ % games that people actually paid for.
Looks like it being free really gives a lot to it review score, I think it's in league with other games that are in the "mixed" review category. If you're on verge, treat it like so.

Intrusion 2 is a product of a different age, and partially should be judged according to that. And partially based on current age, as I played it now, and you'll buy it now.
The game is a huge zero in terms of story, people kept mentioning chapter names in the forums, but I haven't even got a single title, spoken or written word in the whole playthrough. Also the game has the weird mix of creepy-cool mechanic enemies, 3 different mechs that you can even drive for a bit, rideable giant wolf and kickass bossfights. It's well made nonsense, but that stems from the game series' origins.

The original, first Intrusion was released online on Kongregate, on Newgrounds, and on other sites - in 2008. Intrusion 2 is far from being a carbon-copy of the first, but it's very similar in lot of aspects - gameplay, character, climbing mechanics, general look and setting, and some huge bosses.

What is new, is a gorgeously made world, with greatly detailed sprites and enemy design, varied type of enemies and some bonkers physics and "AI" for some enemies.
The "AI" really matters in some cases, as uniquely made enemies move around almost in an underwater style and catch you with their tentacles, or weird 3-legged bone-robot-skeleton-cat things jump and wriggle around... it has some solid, otherworldly feeling to it.

I also mentioned the physics - it's both good, and bad. You can push around rocks to squish enemy soldiers, but for this the price is tripping over in every possible body and item in the word. Having to shoot cases that blocked the door so you can progress, eating a handful of attacks because a destroyed robot's arm blocks you movement. Jumping and bouncing works in a weird way that item shape, and I think velocity together decides how and when can you jump. Which can result either 5m long, or 3-4 meter high jumps. Or just a little springy walk that barely lifts you because you weren't connected to the ground properly beforehand. Which can be debilitating, as one bossfight involves jumping on rocks floating in lava, later levels grappling mechas use the clutter, that is blocking you, as a weapon and it's a real pain. So in short, while the physics system is quite well done, it's great when the stakes are low, while annoying and risky other situations.

It was an okay game - it reminded me of Plazma Burst, and while the boss design was hands-down amazing here, the core game could have used a little more meat on its bones.
It's repetitive and limited. The player has 5 weapons, of which 2 slightly different machineguns, 1 pistol that won't get used, a railgun and a slow granade launcher.
There is a great, over the top and fun ragdoll effect in the game, and it's so hard to properly trigger. A good, powerful shotgun or some similar weapon would have been a great variety. Also, if it could be possible, the harpoon mecha's harpoon would be exceptional for a different game mode - grabbing enemies and throwing them away, or killing them by smashing shipping containers to them is a joy with this phyics engine, and we got so, sooo little of it.

Music - it's super repetitive and uninteresting for the bigger part. I'm fairly sure that something went wrong on the penultimate level as music is 3-4 times louder than game sounds. On the other hand, the second boss' music was outstanding, and worked really well with the mechanics, which made it the most enjoyable bossfight of the game.

Overall it's a solid OK game of I guess a single person? who likely wanted to make a proper version/sequel to their game, and they absolutely nailed it. I think this game is a 6 or 7 our of 10, well above average - epending on your enjoyment and how it aligns up with your expectations. Not really higher, but because - I think - this game doesn't want to be more than fun, and that is perfectly okay.

I give up.
After about 8 restarts, the game crashed on me (runtime error) three different points in the starting room, within ~ 15 actions. Opening a drawer, looking through photos from another drawer, exiting the room. Then two clicks later again, after going down the stairs.
Looked up a guide to fix it, Steam files verified, apparently two were faulty. Great, start again.
Now the game crashes on startup, quoting a python error from drive C.
Okay, look further for info, have to run game as administrator, and only from its folder.
Game starts. I get out of the room, down the stairs, open the door, cutscene - that does not end, the game is not reacting, and when I alt-tab to check if there are any messages, the game just closes itself in its shame.

In this time I got two different types of crashes at 6 ingame places, and one on startup. Withing ~ 25-30 click's worth of gameplay.
This is one of those 0/10 type of scenarios, just avoid this game like the plague.

Creaks is a real Amanita Design game, that took a step aside from the other A.D. games, as it has a classic puzzle platformer gameplay, and the usual graphics - simple but colourful and detailed.

I personally really liked the game - I like puzzles, but it's hard to strike the balance for difficulty, fun and variety, and Creaks did it very well. The controls are super easy (and offer full controller support, which is pleasant) and the game mechanics are fairly simple too - buttons, levers, pressure plates and various enemies.
As the game progresses, the underground environment goes through shifts of style, keeping the visuals fresh and preventing going stale. Along with the graphics, a handful new enemies presented, with different mechanics to them, and as the game is without a real word being spoken, they are presented and introduced in action, everything is up to the player to figure out.

This mix of environmental changes, nonverbal communication, experimenting with the enemies would be for nothing if they wouldn't be balanced around a slightly short game. So many games fall into the trap of having overstretched base mechanics/enemies, and as they start combining them the game just feels endless, while not really showing new stuff. In Creaks I think a new mechanic is introduced every 5-8 levels, keeping it pretty fresh.

About the story: I liked the presentation and the puzzles themselves more - for most of the story we're just going deeper and deeper, or sometimes a bit upwards to go even deeper afterwards. The story is comprehensive (I guess?) but personally I prefer to know the direction of the story on the go, and not just stumble from one room to another, waiting to see how the story slowly being told. Honestly, I felt it to be boring.
Either this is a clever trick to show "stumbling in the dark" for a game taking place underground, or it's not even really a story being told, you're just witnessing things unfold. Either way, my highly personal opinion is that it's secondary in nature and forgettable. It's very likely that you'll enjoy it more than I did, it's perfectly okay, it was done well.

I guess it was a good game that mixed good quality of everything, there are no real weak points that I feel really, objectively weak or bad. (They even have a chapter selection option, which was useful when internet hiccups prevented some pictures to be registered)
If you like how the game looks like, try it! (Expect like 4-10 hours of gameplay of it, depending on skill, focus and tempo. )