Seneste anmeldelser af apocalyptech

What a delightful, surreal game. This is very pleasantly unlike basically anything else I've played before. Not necessarily mechanically, but the whole experience feels very unique. I expect that fully enjoying it probably requires a particular sense of humor combined with a certain amount of cultural familiarity, but IMO it's well worth anyone's time.

This is a very charming and beautiful game which was pretty obviously crafted with a lot of love and care. The storybook themeing is quite nice visually, and it's a fun conceit to have a character who can hop back and forth between the book and the "real" world like that. I have various reservations about the game, but I'd end up recommending it regardless.

Part of the problem I have is, I think, that it's probably just geared to a pretty young crowd. The tone of the game is earnest throughout, and the humor is pretty light. The "action" sections are mostly quite easy for an adult used to video games, and none of the puzzle sections were difficult either -- I didn't really have any moments in the game where I felt clever while solving a puzzle. There was generally just the One Obvious Thing To Do. The game just kind of compares poorly in that department compared even to other games which feel like they exist in the same demographic spaces (for instance, I'm thinking of games like A Hat In Time, Tetrobot and Co., or Snakebird).

I also feel like the most unique mechanics in the game end up being quite under-utilized. It was nifty being able to take words from one part of the book and replace them with others to solve puzzles, but it turns out there's very little surprising you can do with it, and there's rarely much incentive to experiment. Early on I got an achievement for turning a small mouse into a big mouse, and later on I enjoyed changing some floor spikes into being made of cheese, but in general the game doesn't encourage experimentation much in that regard. On one chapter I'd started taking all the words "out" of the book so I could easily go plug them in to other situations and have a whole arsenal of options, but the opportunity never really came up, and my saved words disappeared once I reached the next chapter anyway.

And then even the final boss fight in the game completely ignores these unique mechanics -- instead of fighting via the book-manipulation technique, you're thrown into a shoot-em-up arcade minigame. I would've liked to have had the opportunity to apply everything we've learned in the game to finish it off, but it felt a bit anticlimactic to me.

As mentioned in another review, the game does have some pacing issues as well. You're constantly getting interrupted by dialogue which is often not especially interesting. It's hard to feel too sore about that, though, since it's all done with an earnest and caring touch. As someone who's probably far outside the intended demographic for this game, it's probably difficult to adjust for how a younger, less experienced player would find all of this.

So, in the end, it's hard to be too mad at the flaws. I had a pretty enjoyable time regardless, and it really is a beautiful-looking game. If you want a pretty breezy and cute platformer-ish game which exudes wholesomeness and warmth, you could certainly do worse.

Okay, I wanted to like this game, but ultimately just can't recommend it. I don't think it's as bad as the average review on here might lead you to think, but it just isn't good. There were some occasional good (and funny) bits, but way too much of it felt like a chore rather than a joy.

I had quite a bit to say about why I feel that way, but the ending I got felt like it kind of obsoleted all that. Despite having a seemingly-successful final confrontation, with a team who seemed to be all getting along and celebrating their victory, the game decided my team morale score wasn't high enough and just decided to kill off Fran, offscreen, inbetween everyone's celebration scene and the "final" scene of the game. Just Anu and Octavio inexplicably suddenly going off to a graveyard to drop some flowers off. I wondered if I'd somehow missed out on a whole segment or something.

As I say, I had plenty more to say to justify why I didn't even really enjoy the game much up to that point either, but that ending left a particularly sour taste in my mouth. If a character's gonna die, at least have it be as a direct result of some decision (or decisions) I made, not just some random aggregate "team score" which never seemed to have much bearing on the actual dialogue or actions of the characters. And let the character have a decent onscreen death scene, sheesh.

Anyway, meh. I'd been hoping the "mostly negative" reviews here were overblown, but in the end I'd have to agree, even before the ending I got soured me even further. Alas!

This is a fantastic capstone to this strange little series, and it's the most polished entry of the bunch, to boot. Previous games (Four Last Things and The Procession to Calvary) looked and played great, of course, but everything's been polished to a mirror shine for this one. The visuals are crisp and lovely, and the UI/UX has been streamlined and optimized so it's a joy to play through.

Anyway, as usual it's an absolute hoot, with adventure-game puzzles which are fair and soluble. There's even an in-game walkthrough/hint provider this time around, if you do get stuck on any puzzle. Fans of the series should absolutely check it out, and IMO it'd be a great introduction for new players as well. (While it is the third in the series, and there is a bit of continuity between them, this is an entirely standalone game which can be enjoyed entirely on its own.) Highly recommended!

SteamWorld Heist II is a glorious sequel to the original game, which does just about everything a good sequel should do. The new characters are enjoyable to spend time with, there's a very nice character arc for Captain Leeway, and some very pleasant surprises throughout the storyline. The gameplay is rock-solid, building on the SWH1 combat and providing a varied set of missions which were a delight to play through. The music (once again by Steam Powered Giraffe) is lovely as well.

At first, I wasn't entirely sold on the new naval combat system, but I grew to quite enjoy it. It turns out to be very nicely integrated into the later sections of the game, to boot. In the end it's quite complimentary to the turn-based XCOMmy mission sections. I've seen some other reviews complaining that the missions all felt samey, and after playing through the game, I just don't agree -- they do fall into some specific archetypes that you'll come to recognize, but there's constant tweaks here and there which provide some nicely varied levels. There's also an incredibly comprehensive set of difficulty options; if there's some area of the game you find too difficult (or not difficult enough), you can easily tweak the game to your personal preferences.

So yeah, tl;dr is: if you liked SWH1, you'll almost certainly like this one as well. I'd highly recommend it.

I've got a few minor quibbles with some of the additions: the multiclassing system is nifty but I found myself getting a bit annoyed at how much re-speccing I was doing, both with the skill selection and equipment, just to get a well-rounded character ready. It was kind of a drag having to reassign my favorite Flanker to be a Reaper for a bit just to make those skills available, etc. This is exacerbated slightly by the fact that crew and equipment can only be used once per "day." To get them back, you've got to head back to a bar and rest, which felt like unnecessary busywork. The plot is pretty fun, but boils down to a series of macguffin chases (I'm still a bit unclear why we needed to track down and kill the Lord Admiral guy, other than him having one of five macguffins). And there's one potentially-unpleasant difficulty spike: when you first enter the second major part of the map (Arctica), you're locked out of the starting area for awhile, and the missions there are noticeably tougher than what's come before. If you don't feel that your crew was levelled up sufficiently, it might be a rude awakening (though at least you could lower the difficulty for a bit to catch up, if you need to).

Still, all that is honestly pretty minor; this is definitely one of my favorite games of the year.

... ugh, that ending.

Okay, so I actually liked the new art style. I didn't mind the simplification (ie: near removal) of the verb system. I thought the puzzles were fun, the characters were enjoyable, and the humor was often chuckle-worthy. I even enjoyed the ways in which the game was taking the mikey out of Guybrush. Right from the beginning the game tips its hat that it's doing a sort of Princess Bride thing, and having heard some vague complaints about the ending, I had been bracing for an inevitable letdown. But somehow it managed to transcend even a severely-lowered expectation. The ending is just utter trash, and kind of ruined the rest of it for me.

I put in nearly 12 enjoyable hours, and had been planning on doing some achievement-hoovering once I finished the game, but that ending absolutely destroyed any desire I had to spend another second with it. What a waste. There are plenty of other great adventure games out there which don't insult the player and undermine all the time you've already put into the game. Go play one of those instead.

I had this game in my wishlist for years but for some reason never committed to buying it until just recently. I think I was concerned that the game would rely entirely on absurdity and "randomness" in place of actual humor or something. Turns out I was dead wrong! This adventure game is utterly delightful and I enjoyed every second of it. I've been depriving myself for years for no good reason.

Make no mistake, of course: the game is utterly absurd, and is chock full of nonsensical things happening apparently out of nowhere and without necessarily having any connection to the rest of the action. It's pulled off with panache, though, and the net result was a game that felt constantly surprising. The game leans into its irrelevant asides, piling more content into one-off scenes than some other games do to main game areas. The scenes are absolutely dense with interactable objects, with a gloriously off-kilter visual style which is fun to inhabit. Completionists may find themselves spending up to 20 minutes just getting to grips with a single room, trying to ferret out all the distinct dialogue lines that can be triggered.

The humor is often crude, but never mean-spirited (though Paradigm, the main character, often directs his harshest barbs at himself). Most importantly, the humor actually uses the absurdity and incongruity as a starting point to build on. Where a lesser game might have introduced a talking glam-rock pug purely to showcase the silliness and then move on, Paradigm adds a layer of characterization and humor on top and lets the experience linger for the player. When you encounter something weird or strange in the game, you're left eagerly awaiting what it'll do next, instead of just going "lol" and having it dismissed immediately. My only real complaint is that the humor does lean into self-referential fourth wall breakage a bit too often, especially in the early sections of the game.

The puzzles in the game are largely quite straightforward, and pretty obvious once you've got the items you need. It's also a Lucasarts-inspired adventure game in that there seems to be no way to put yourself in an unwinnable state. The only reason you might want multiple savegames would be to help gather up any missed achievements, in case that's something that might interest you. In the end, I'd wholeheartedly recommend this. It's well worth the full price, and it's probably about the most fun adventure game I've played in some time.

Trüberbrook's a very strange point-and-click adventure game that feels pretty heavily inspired by Twin Peaks and/or Lynchian surrealism in general. I personally found it quite enjoyable, though the tonal shifts were sometimes quite jarring (which, I suppose, is in keeping with its Twin Peaks influence). For instance, the game starts out playing it pretty "straight" for the most part, but soon you're randomly destroying town monuments for no good reason and riding a tram system using coat hangers, before eventually whipping back to more grounded activities like informing a character that you've just found her brother's dead body. The game's full of your typical adventure-game antics which I feel are often a bit at odds with the general tone. It does also suffer from the usual adventure game conundrums where you may not have a clue how you solved a puzzle even after you've solved it -- there's one in particular involving getting a cat down from a tree where I'm not even sure which items I used in the attempt.

Regardless, it's a pretty delicious slow burn, and it's visually lovely. I don't think I've ever played a point-and-click adventure game quite like this one, and I was glad to have the experience.

I've got several quibbles with the game, but I'll lead by saying that I do recommend it. It's a cozy, light puzzle game whose visual design and overall atmosphere are top-notch. I very much enjoyed spending time in the game -- definitely a treat for the senses! The overall vibe is quite chill (with the exception of one relatively short sequence where you're sprinting away from hostile creatures), and it autosaves your state pretty much after every action, so it's easy to play for short stretches at a time. It also worked perfectly for me on Linux via Proton. So yeah, recommended!

On to the quibbles, though:

First, the puzzle element is extremely light, IMO. Veterans of other puzzle games may find them easy to the point of triviality. The core mechanic is just triggering a specific sequence of sounds/patterns/colors, and with very few exceptions the mechanics to do so are extremely trivial. There are a few puzzles here and there which require some extra planning and timing (especially on the last level), but even those are likely to disappoint more hardcore puzzle fans. Perhaps this was aimed at a younger audience -- it'd probably be great for kids, etc.

Secondly, I'm actually not at all convinced by the "music" aspect to it. There's nice ambient music throughout the game, and as you activate your characters' buttons, you do get randomized notes playing, but there's never anything musical about your interaction with the game. You never create any melodies, you never follow any beat, you never even produce coherent scales or memorable snippets. Hitting the same button repeatedly (as happens in many of the intro puzzles) just yields random-sounding notes. It doesn't sound bad, but the musicality is secondary at best. What you're really doing is matching the colors/patterns. Each puzzle you unlock has a sequence of "notes" to play, but at no point are you doing anything audibly -- it's a purely visual exercise. There are never even any audio clues to interpret. You could play this game with the sound turned completely off and have zero impact on the gameplay itself. I honestly found this aspect kind of disappointing; I'd been hoping for something which actually integrated music into the gameplay itself, apart from just cueing random sound effects.

And then lastly, IMO it's mechanically clunky. This might be because I preferred to move my avatar around using WASD instead of the mouse, but doing so means it's easy to lose track of the mouse pointer, and to activate all the patterns, you've got to click on specific buttons attached to your character (and associated hangers-on). It kind of broke up the flow for me. Having some dedicated keyboard buttons to trigger specific sounds (a little hotbar somewhere, perhaps, to show which are bound to what slot) would've been nicer to work with.

Anyway, all that sounds like I'm being pretty harsh, though as I mentioned in the first paragraph: despite all that, I did enjoy playing through the game, and don't regret the purchase at all.

This is a very pretty and well-realized version of Myst which updates the game with modern 3D-game sensibilities. The environments are generally lovely, and it's a pleasure walking around. I found that a lot of the eerie menace of the original was somewhat lost in this one. Achenar's rooms, for instance, were wonderfully disturbing in the original, but they lose a lot of "punch" in this remake, possibly due in part to the lack of fixed perspective.

The remake also lays bare some of the shortcomings of the original Myst, such as the fact that there are very few actual puzzles in the game, contrary to its reputation. The world feels awfully small compared to what we're now used to in 3D gaming environments.

Still, it's a pleasant experience, and it's nice to see the game with all the extra polish on it. I'm inclined to say that it feels a bit overpriced, though I don't regret buying it at full price personally. If you're in the mood to revisit Myst but want some modern sensibilities to ease the experience for you, IMO it's worth your time.

(I've only played the original (Masterpiece Edition) and this one, FWIW -- I have *not* played RealMyst, so I can't compare to that one.)