Modkiq 最近的評論

200 games to level up once in the battle pass, lol, miss me

Cigarette eggs are good for me.

...

I think.

I am very torn on Another Crab's Treasure.. On one hand, it is a great looking game, with charm and love put into every aspect of the game, personality oozes from ever crevice, and the jokes constantly land. Scanning a random QR code in the main hub of the game only to get sent to a youtube video telling you that you've been "coconut malled" (mario kart wii) was honestly a highlight.

On the other hand, the combat is clunky, targeting does not always work, the camera does not cooperate, multiple actions share the same button (despite there being free buttons on a standard xbox controller), certain actions in the skilltree are straight downgrades (and there is no way around these upgrades if you want the later upgrades in the skilltree), frequent game-breaking glitches such as being teleported off the map, or bounce-pads shooting you at the speed of light to the other side of the map, and certain levels being big (and empty) just for the sake of being big makes for a game where you're constantly a little bit annoyed at something while you play.

The game also suffers from multiple quality of life issues. For example, when you make it to certain checkpoints, you probably want to take a step back and spend your currency to buy new upgrades, shells, and level up. Instead of having one hub world where you can do all of this, the game has 4 (though two of them at least connected). That means that you will have to fast travel to hub 1, walk to the second hub, then teleport to the third hub, and finally to the fourth hub just to get your daily shopping done. You will do this frequently, and it is such a big waste of time. This ties into how you upgrade your character; If you want to level up, you do that at any shell you find in the world. If you want to upgrade your skills, however, you need to go to a vendor. If you want to level up the skilltree, you need to go to another vendor. Why can't this be done in the shell? This would cut down on two of the hub worlds that you constantly need to visit. I am almost surprised you can lvl up your character at the shell, and that there is not a 5th hub world that only houses a character that is not relevant to the story at all, whose only purpose if to teach you that you can look into yourself to get stronger.

The gameplay itself, is serviceable. It is fine. It does not have particularly interesting movement for the platforming section, and the combat itself is watered down "fromsoft" type combat.
The issue with making combat so similar to something else, is that you invite direct comparisons, and unfortunately Another Crab's Treasure does not win any of the direct comparisons. Combat feels worse than Dark Souls, the parry mechanics are worse than Sekiro, and you don't have a lot of ways to mix up your gameplay as you are locked to one weapon for the entire gamel
That said, what makes this game stand out is once again the humor. You will fight a character that will pick you up, put you in a portable guillotine, your character will beg for his life, and it will instantly kill you. A character will look through random trash, find a magic wand vibrator, exclaim that "I have no idea what this even is" and try to whack you with it. Other enemies will be armed with tic tacs and try to shoot you with them, while others still will try to use a plastic fork and knife to eat you up.
It is fun, it is whacky, and you get to partake in this whackyness by equipping all sorts of trash as your shell. Use an F key from a keybard to defend yourself, or maybe a gacha capsule is more your style, or some used used medicine containers with some scraps left for you to consume. Or screw it, just put the amogus impostor on your back and call it a day, it for some reason has a ridiculously high defense stat.

Then you get to all the "packaging" surrounding this game. The story, the characters, the jokes, the music, it's all fantastic. I found myself just vibing to the music multiple times, not even playing the game or doing anything in particular, just enjoying the moment. This is why I am so torn on this game. I am so glad I got to experience all the charm, funny moments, attention to detail, passion and love put into this game, but at the same time itself I always felt like the gameplay itself wasn't that fun. At least it was easy and straightforward (compared to most soulslikes), so it never felt like a drag, but now that I have completed it and seen most of the game, I feel no drive to play again. I am kind of glad it is over, but I am also very glad it happened.

In conclusion, this is a very charming game with witty writing, funny jokes, great music and overall a fun adventure, however it is held back by not doing anything special in the gameplay department. The gameplay itself is just fine, but nothing to write home about. So if you are looking for more Soulslikes for the sake of great soulslike gameplay, I would not recommend this game; however if you are looking for a game to kick back, relax, and go on a witty adventure with, I recommend this game.

Whether the problem is the greed of Namco or the dev team is not important. Ultimately the results are the same for the player:

A 70 dollar game with Free2Play monetization.

The game launches with no Microtransactions other than the character season pass, then they wait until all reviews are out, they wait until refunds are no longer a threat, then they release the Tekken Shop.

They wait until the rage dies down from the Tekken shop, and now we have a Battle Pass. How much is the battle pass? Tekken devs will tell you $6, it's only 600 Tekken Coins after all. However, they only sell packs of 500, but at that point it's cheaper to buy the 1050, so you'll do that. You buy the Battle Pass, but oh no now you have 450 coins left. Just enough for a skin, nice. Then you buy a skin, and not only have you been tricked (forced) to buy two things, but you also now have 50 coins left, which will bother you for the rest of time.

Not only are they doing dishonest business practices, but the game does not even function properly. Your enemies will disconnect on you constantly (because they don't get a loss when they do), when you do land a hit, they spam the screenshot button to stutter the game until you drop your combo, and the devs do nothing about it.

Speaking of online play, the game director made fun of people on Twitter when they were worried about the netcode. Of course it will have rollback. Lol. I have not played a netcode this bad since I bought Smash Bros in 2018. Delay based mixed with rollback. Even on wired, slow motion matches, long freezes and stuttering is not uncommon. How is this possible in 2024? The director said in an interview he prefers visual fidelity over gameplay. Seriously? I'd rather have a 2-frame teleport (which still happens btw) than to struggle with slow motion gameplay and freezes. They even allow players who run the game at 20fps to play online, and guess what that means? Your game will also run at 20fps, and you play in slow motion.

We are quick to accept microtransactions in games these days, but frankly they do not belong in a 70 dollar game. Even if you are willing to accept that, are you okay with microtransactions in a 70 dollar game when they've been dishonest about it? When the game doesn't run properly?

I think we would all be singing a disappointed, but much different tune if the game was in a good state when they made these updates, but Namco and the dev team does not have enough "good will" banked up to pull these moves. They have shown nothing but greed and toxic behavior, solving approx. zero of the issues people are having with the game even 2+ months after release.

A Space for the Unbound is a heartfelt story wrapped around gorgeous pixel art, a nice soundtrack, but frustrating gameplay, extremely on the nose hints that ruin surprises, and endless padding.

Ultimately this is a "story game", it is the main focus, and as such is the most important thing for this game. Overall, the game tells a beautiful story about inner struggles, depression, anxiety, self reflection, abuse, loss, bullying, and more. The main character's struggles are sure to be relatable, especially if you play this while you're still in school.

The main issue I have with the story itself is that every hint is so on the nose, you'll know most twists and turns before they happen, while not really looking out for or thinking about trying to solve the game's story. This section will contain spoilers:

The game opens with the South Star Princess dying, yellow (warm colored) flower petals used for magic, and a dark colored cat. One chapter later you hear of the North Star Princess, but you don't know much about her. You then see Raya's light blue (cold colored) flower petals used for magic, and she has a light colored cat. Complete opposites, totally not the North Star Princess. You know Nirmala wrote these stories, so either you are in her story, or Nirmala has a new identity and taken on the role as the North Star Princess. The game reveales both of these are true. Shocker.

This goes for a lot of the twists in the story. They're always very clearly explained before they even happen, and the only sense of mystery the game has comes from the game realizing they're being too obvious, so they have a cat tell you very ominously that "You don't know what's happening, fool, I am very mysteryous, nothing is as it seems". Then in the end the cat just gives up and starts explaining that it didn't want to be mysterious after all, they're all just here to help. This part of the narrative just felt and still feels out of place even after completing the game.

The hints are so on the nose, that when you launch the game, the first thing you see is a trigger-warning list. "Animal death", I haven't even played the game yet, and my first thought is "The main character's cat will die, ok". This alone ruined any emotional impact this scene would have had otherwise.

Other than that, the story itself is mostly fantastic, and handles the heavy topics with grace. The only thing that really took me out of the immersion was that they made the teenage characters censor themselves during fights. A late teenager would not censor themselves and say "You're such a B-!" when they're in a fight. It's not how people would speak, especially not a high school jock who isn't afraid to beat up people he doesn't like. This happens fairly often, so I thought I should bring it up.

Writing aside, the game's biggest issue is the padding. Everything you do has padding. I think the developers were scared that just writing a good story wouldn't be enough, so they needed to insert a ridiculous amount of steps to do literally antything in the game, and it's simply not fun.
For example, you need to go buy a cake, but you need to run around every part of town to gather each of the ingrediants. Fair enough. Actually, this wasn't enough, the chef is having a mental breakdown, so you need to sabotage her dream-food by pouring oil into it. The steps finding the oil alone is:
Leave dream > Find Oil > Can't buy it, so you find a secret password to get free oil > You need your own container > Find container > Actually the container is dirty, find the one place in town you can clean it lol > Get free oil > Finally sabotage the dish.
This was one of three foods you have to sabotage before the chef will help you. So to get the cake you need to run around town a minimum of 3 times.

Doing this adds nothing to the story, you can barely call it gameplay, and it makes for an incredibly dragged out experience. It's simply not fun to run around the whole town looking for a random button to press, often with no hint. If it was just a few times, sure, but it happens almost every time you need to get anything done.

The worst part is that you can't pick up items before you need them. For example that container you need for the oil, I found that ages before I needed it in a quest, but I wasn't allowed to pick it up.

Adding these extra steps is something the game does any chance it gets. You need to break into the school? Cool, find a hammer to break wall (we'll skip every step it takes to find the hammer) > Run back to the wall > Break it > Actually you can't break it now, run for 3 whole minutes to the same wall in the past, then break it > Run for 3 minutes to get back > Finally, breaking it in the past made it decay, so it's broken for real now. What did this add? Another 6 minutes of holding left on the control stick? It wasn't a puzzle because the game literally told you to do it. It's just frustrating.

I think if you take away this padding, keep the missions and dialogue generally the same, but without all the extra steps that add nothing, you'd probably save 3 or 4 hours of the game, and nothing would be changed otherwise.

Something else that is baffeling to me is when the game introduces combat. You have a quest to beat the "Future Fighter" high score. This is the first time you will fight. Funnily enough, this high score is the absolute most difficult fighting you will do in the entire game. Why make the hardest fight the first? Everything after that is easier by a long shot. It is honestly ridiculous. Sure, you can try it once and skip doing the high score, but the high score isn't difficult to begin with, I did it first try, but it's still weird that they choose to make it the first fight the most difficult.

This review is getting quite long, so I will end it here. In conclusion, the game features a fantastic story, gorgeous pixel art, nice music, but ultimately fails in the gameplay department. They should have toned down the gameplay and settled for a shorter playstime more focused on the story instead of tedious tasks, and they should be a bit more careful with the hints. Not saying a game can't be "figured out" before everything is revealed, but it should not be figured out without trying to pay attention to the finer details and without giving it much thought. I am glad I played it, I overall enjoyed the story a lot, but I can only hope they learn from their mistakes when their next game comes out.

Highly fluid and enjoyable movement, funny characters and nonsensical worldbuilding creates one of the most fun games I have played this year. This game is just pure fun.

My only issue with this game is that there isn't more of it. Hope this game does well so the devs can keep making amazing experiences like this.

Backpack hero managed to be a masterpiece and a complete mess of a game at the same time, culminating in what is possibly my most frustrated experience in a long time.
Imagine you play a roguelite like Slay the Spire, Enter the Gungeon, Binding of Isaac or Risk of Rain. You start a run, you have fun, you unlock things along the way depending on your actions. It's great, it's a fun time. Now imagine, in-between every run, if you want to unlock anything or even see later levels of the game, you have to run across a huge open field, talk to 10 NPCs randomly scattered along the map (the game won't tell you which one you need or in what order), sit through endless repetitive dialogue that goes nowhere about how your dad thinks it's dangerous to go into the cave over and over and over again. Not only that, but it wants you to build endless buildings, sell loot you've found in the dungeon (the game doesn't tell you if you'll need them for anything or not), and it constantly want you to check in on every single NPC to even receive missions or get the pleasure of going to the next floor in future dungeon runs.
Even if you know what you're doing, it takes forever to get anything done in the main hub.
Every item you ever collect in the dungeon (a lot, this is an inventory manage game after all) is collected in your hub inventory. An NPC may be looking for one specific item, you might even have it, but good luck finding it
* The game does nothing to tell you what is important in the NPC town, so you have to spam every dialogue and every option select for every character just to make sure you don't miss anything.
And to top it all off, the game is insultingly easy. If you have ever played a deckbuilder (roguelite or not) or any form of strategy game, it will be almost impossible to lose as long as you read the effects of what you are using. Heck, even when I completely failed to do that and I accidentally burned my only arrow during my an archer-only "challenge", where every other game would kill you for failing to have any synergy or ways to deal consistent damage, I was able to win because an enemy dropped a rose earlier, letting enemies take very small amounts of damage every time I blocked. I was able to win, including beating a boss, dealing 1 damage at the time. Absolutely ridiculous. After 5+ hours of gameplay, every run feels like this. It is so easy it is almost insulting. There is never any risk, never any challenge, nothing that makes you reconsider your choices, and once you get a powerful weapon or two, never any need to think. Click the same inventory slots every turn, and win for free. Never the need to swap anything out of your inventory, which is a shame because it's one of the main mechanics.
All of this, and I still found myself wanting to play. There is a fantastic game deep down somewhere. Inventory management is fun, and having your inventory slots tied to abilities you can freely use is creative and fun. It is such a shame it is held back by you never needing to engage with its systems due to the absolute lack of difficulty, to the point where I have won games by not adding or removing anything from my inventory. Furthermore, when the game forces you to engage with its systems in the hub world, it strips the game of everything that made it fun, including making the graphics look like Backpack Hero from Wish. It is tedious, stays in the way of what could be a fantastic game, and despite hours of gameplay, you are still stuck with the same starter loadout you begun with. It's a shame.

good

The medium is a great horror walking sim that mixes up the gameplay with puzzles, stealth, exploration and chase sequences.
While the exploration part is the most enjoyable, especially with the main mechanic allowing you to explore both the physical and spirit world at once, it is great that the game mixes it up a bit sometimes. The visuals are great, and exploring the haunted resort is incredibly tense.
The voice acting, and especially visuals inspired by Beksiński's gorgeous art is absolutely fantastic. The story is interesting throughout, and generally the game gives you just enough information about characters, events and stories to keep you intrigued through the whole game. You always have a sense of "I wonder what will happen next".

While the game does make it to the finishline, it very much stumbles its way there. The further into the game you make it, and the more characters and threads are introduced, the more clear it becomes that the game is not prepared to answer all the questions it brings forward.

- Everything we play through did not need to happen. Seriously. If the demon can only survive if it catches a strong enough medium, why would you invite the strong medium? The creature would just die given enough time, and the story would conclude.
- How come Sadness, the child part of Lili can be outside of her body, when it is established earlier that bodies do not work without their child version? Is it because Sadness didn't "move on"?

- If Lili has to die before the demon can be hurt, why can't she just use the gun herself? "The Demon won't allow it" she says, but the demon never controlled her body, and she is allowed to carry a gun so she can give it to someone else who would presumably shoot her. The monster is also not by her side most of the time, so there would be plenty of chances for Lili to solve the issue herself. If not Lili, then why not Thomas?

- There is one sequence in the game where you find Jack's (the person who died in the beginning of the game) tie and pin in the physical world. The monster also teases you saying that Jack was sent to them. You can also hear Jack speak, and even see his spirit. While clearly a fakeout, this implies someone went to the funeral home, got his belonging, and drove back to the resort with them. They would also have to know his voice, and what he looked like. This frankly makes no sense. You find a picture of Jack and yourself, where Jack fades out as you look at it.
Who would do it? Even if Jack's spirit is sent there, how would the demon know to find Jack's tie and clip when the demon cannot see the physical world? Do you not really make the spirits move on? Have you been sending countless spirits there throughout your life? What about the spirits you help move on that are already in the resort? Why would they thank you if you just send them to a different part of the resort? The demon is likely lying, and you are actually helping them move on, but if that is the case, how would the demon know Jack?

-The agent that tortures Thomas' spirit version also has a demon. This demon escapes into the normal spirit world after the agent dies during the house fire. How come Thomas' spirit is still trapped? Trapped inside the demon? Wouldn't Thomas' spirit be able to banish the demon after the host dies? Also, how come the agent with seemingly no supernatural powers was prepared to trap Thomas in his mind?
The game also brings up some heavy themes. While I think telling stories about heavy themes like children being molested is incredibly important, I question if this is the right way to do it.

We all have our demons, and our demons can make us do horrible things. Victims of abuse are more likely to become abusers in the future, and this is really the story this game is telling.
However, I can't help but be critical of the way the abusers are portrayed. After the child molester is discovered, you go into his mind and live through his traumatic events. You then find a child version of the molester, scared and innocent. You delete this part of them. It is a great contrast to the adult person, ready to molest a child. However, I do not get the purpose of this. You don't delete the evil part of them, the shame and regret, you delete the innocent child version that suffered in the past. Doing this gives the person brain damage and they can no longer move.

The same goes for Lili. She is abused, and her demons break free, killing everyone. The abused becomes the abuser once more, and the only solution to fix this is to shoot her in the head so her demons can't hurt anybody else? This strikes me as odd. The horror setting of the game may not allow for a happy ending, but surely there is a better way to approach this.
In conclusion, The Medium is a good game, filled with great voice acting, gorgeous visuals, a unique split-world mechanic that is a joy to explore, and a story that is great at building intrigue and mystery, but kind of falls flat near the end.

What an incredible journey this game is. Your Ex is the Lord of the Vampires, and she is about to destroy the world. You go on a pill infused journey to stop her.

The storytelling and soundtrack especially are world class. There were so many times I couldn't put the game down, as I felt a strong need to see what happened next. You learn about how you were with Draculae, how you'd speak to each other, past dramas, your inner struggles as you are faced with a decaying body, and wanting to go back to a simpler time, while still feeling the need to keep going to stop the world from ending. It's enthralling. The cutscenes are shot perfectly, the voice acting feels very real, and the soundtrack lifts the entire experience to the next lvl. Despite the game's indie budget, it feels incredibly AAA (in a good way) in these departments.
The gameplay itself has you running around, shooting monsters. You have a full arsenal of guns, a dodge-roll, and a slow motion mechanic (that I forgot to use throughout the entire game, oops). You can also dive, which I also forgot to use. Oops.

Despite the simple premise, the game is quite satisfying to play. The enemies are placed in ways that make you really have to think about who you want to prioritize. Shooting werewolves in front isn't going to be of much use when you re being sniped by energy-balls from the back.

That said, what is holding this game back from being a full 5/5 stars, is its pacing in the gameplay lvls. While the story pacing is great, you can often feel like the game drags on. The game spends a very long time between introducing new enemies, so you are stuck fighting just a basic enemy that runs towards you for a good hour or so. Then they'll introduce one more enemy, and it once again takes forever before you see anything new. After everything has been introduced, the same issue persists, it takes too long before something special happens. That's not to say the gameplay isn't fun, I think more the issue is that the devs did not have enough resources to make everything they wanted to.

A side-complaint I also wanted to mention is that for most of the game it is simply too easy. Out of all the levels, I think I only died on 3 of them, one of which being the first boss, and one of my deaths was because I got stuck in the geometry and was unable to move. While not a huge issue, I would have loved to see a difficulty mode where they don't necessarily boost any numbers, but make resources and ammo a bit more scarce, forcing you to use your whole arsenal while not having instant access to healing, and without the slow-motion bar. While I played the entire game without using the slow-motion, if I were to use it it would completely invalidate any challenge in this game if I were to use it.

Usually when a game offers a slow-motion mechanic, the enemies and world design is balanced around it. For example, the enemies that charge energy-balls are very easy to locate and take out, even with full-speed gameplay, before they ever get to shoot. They could have made it a lot more interesting if the player was forced to use the slow-motion to deal with situations like these.

It feels like there should have been more enemy typed, it feels like there should have been at least one more environment to explore, and it feels like there should have been more secrets. Because of what I can only assume is budget constraints, they had to do the best with what they had. They wanted the story to have this length, and they wanted you to have this amount of time between the hard hitting story beats, so instead of making something new, they remixed what they had. While not a big issue, it can sometimes feel like the game drags on a little too long before new things are introduced.
Personally, with this many levels in the game, there should have been more enemy variety. Once you overcome the challenge of one enemy, and how they are combined with other enemies, throwing more of the same at the player is ultimately pointless. They should either have added more variety, or cut down on the repetitiveness.

That said, the game is full of awesome moments, unique setpieces during the lvls, and the main character's monologues never get old. In the end, "I wanted more game" is probably not the worst critique a dev can get.
I really hope this game does well so they can make a sequel. I need to know what happens next.