I've been a zachtronics fan since I stumbled across spacechem in 2014- since I was 11 years old. I was following each release with extreme excitement, well before they became the king of the engineering niche, well before I could even truly appreciate these games.

It wasn't until 2018 that I even meaningfully played through a whole zachtronics game-by finishing opus magnum. Until then I had played about 4/9 of spacechem, the first few levels of infinfactory, the first row or two of tis100 levels, and maybe I opened shenzhen I/O once or twice. I loved Zachtronics games, but I knew I had not truly gotten into them

Tis100 is the game that I orginally bounced off the hardest

12 year old me wasn't a fan of having to read a manual. I remember looking up a youtube video for a guide on what every instruction did. Even after having done that, i pretty quickly ran into a level that I was simply stuck on. This game wasn't my first exposure to programming, a life passion for developing games took care of that, but it was my first encounter with assembly programming. More importantly, it was my first encounter with what it's like to actually do problem solving as a programmer... too hard for someone who was unknowingly trapped in the unhelpful hell of following along with game dev tutorials

Now let's jump ahead to 2022. Tis100 is the first of the Zachtronics programming games that I actually got into. I was finally determined to start tackling my backlog of Zachtronics games- especially the assembly programming trilogy.

8 years changes your perspective on a game a lot. Somewhere in that time I crossed the arbitrary line where I considered myself a real programmer. Reading documentation is no longer a scary devil... I'd take it any day over watching a YouTube video. I'm also an adult now, that's probably the most important one.

Tis100 was surprise launched, marketed as the assembly programming game that no one asked for. Now, it's one of the few games that exists in one of my favorite genres. I am now the person who asks for assembly programming games. Shenzhen I/O and EXAPUNKS are both in my top 5 games of all time. Tis100 isn't quite as good as those games, but it is still fantastic
It's hard to stop myself from writing a 1 sentence review for any of the games in this "trilogy" -> "Zachtronics programming game: 10/10". That review would undersell the game. I like to think of tis100, shenzhen i/o and exapunks as siblings. Any parent could tell you how different they are, even when it's obvious how much they have in common

In many ways, Tis100 simply suffers from being the oldest child. I want to say tis100 walked, so the next 2 programming games could run- but this would be unfair to tis100. You see, even as the rough first attempt at an assembly programming game, tis100 has a distinct identity. It is without a doubt some people's favorites Zachtronics game

That says a lot given how minimal this game is. You get no music, barely any narrative, no neat little side solitaire, a simple presentation, and a severly lacking UX . These are all things that other games include which make them automatically enjoyable- Tis100 does not believe in free lunch, you have to put in the work

This is the soul of the game. You have to work to do even the simplest things. Every single instruction in this language is designed to be annoying. You must fight this strange architecture every step of the way. Your hopes and dreams will constantly be shattered by the unceasing pain of all your limitations

The Tis100 operating system is truly cursed.
Yet the beautiful part of this game is the process of growing to understand it. Its quirks become natural. Behind all these limitations is a terrifying power...

The obtuse manual is hiding incredible epiphanies. Play this game for long enough, and you'll develop an arsenal of cursed techniques

There's a lot of potential to unlock with the power you are given. There's things you can do in tis100 that i found myself wishing I could do in Shenzhen and exapunks- despite how those games have much more powerful languages. I'm still not sure I've mastered the depths of tis100's darkness.

Tis100 absolutely nails the fantasy of learning to love a strange and obscure architecture. This isn't just a game about solving abstract problems in assembly... this node based enviornment is unlike any other programming i've done, and my journey with it has been incredibly rewarding.

I'm not sure I've spent enough time emphasizing how interesting Tis100's challenges are to me. Something about the abstract way you're manipulating data here simply vibes with me. There are very few games I've "gotten into" the same way I did for tis100, and games are my greatest love.

Even at the point of writing this review, tis100 will still be a game I occasionially revisit. I have plenty of evil bonus levels waiting for me, and of course I can always go back and try to optimize

Cycles optimization is very fun, and it's the metric that naturally interests me the most. Often it's about finding a clever algorithm or approach, rather than just using efficient techniques. It's a little disapointing how often "optimal" means hard-coding things, but that also fits well.

Node and size optimization feel slightly adjacent on the surface, but once you dig into one it becomes distinct. Pursuring these metrics is a great way to embark on the wonderful journey of cursed techniques. I mostly ignored these metrics for a lot my playthrough, but they're more interesting to me now


The best feature of the game is the friend leaderboards. Its what makes this layer of the game shine. It's fun to compare yourself after you finish a level, and it's a great motivation to pursue optimizations.

There are very few video game levels I despise. Sequence Sorter is one of them. The only thing i hate more than sequence sorter is dicey dungeon's witch elimination round.
I dropped the game for a year because of this level. Occasionially throughout 2022, i reattempted this level and just miserably made no progress. It is only now at the end of 2023, that one of these desperate attempts actually crossed the line into solving the level. Between getting stuck on this level and beating it, i played the entire main campaigns of shenzhen i/o and exapunks.

The thing about tis100, is that it has a ceiling for how complex the task can be for solving it to remain fun. Most of the levels in the main campaign are good at this balance. Sequence sorter is so far above it that it makes for a miserable experience, one that to me doesn't play to the strengths of the game.

Of all the zachtronics games where i've gotten to the bonus campaign, tis100's is the one that interests me the least.


Another place where sequence sorter sucks is the node placement. The stacks are just placed in frustrating spots. I'm overall not a fan of the difficulty tis100 creates from its level layouts, i much prefer the approaches of literally every other zachtronics game in this regard. Usually constraints = fun, but these constraints miss the mark.

The stupidest thing in tis100 is the horizontal character limits for each line.
I can't fit the labels i want to use to describe things and it's so frustrating.
Everytime i have to shorten my labels so i can fit a direction which takes more characters (like right), a part of myself screams in agony

Commenting in tis100 is a fool's errand, you simply don't have the space for it. This makes revisiting levels worse, solving in multiple sessions worse, sharing solutions with others worse, and generally makes my experience more annoying.
There's no interesting design constraint here like many of the "annoying" bits of tis100. It's just a UX limitation that is needlessly painful

Hey Hey people, Sshien here.

Have you, watched Sseth’s video about this game? If you haven’t, go watch it, and then, come back. SYNTHETIK: LEGION RISING is a rougelite that I actually, really like. I’ve played a small number of roguelites and roguelikes this year, including Shotgun King, Necrodancer, Slay the Spire, and Real Life. And I haven’t really enjoyed any of them nearly as much as when I hop into a voice call every week for the last 7 months with my best mate, a modern day Diogenes and CEO of the Olive Oil OPEC Cartel from the great land of Brazil Lite, Rodas. We bought this game last Christmas to play together, and by jingo, we jingo’d our asses right into a deeper bromance by experiencing all of this game’s highs and lows carbon fibre shoulder-plate to hypersteel shoulder plate. And that’s fucking awesome. As Sseth put it, SYNTHETIK is a symphony of firearms, machinery, and adrenaline mixed with fast acting opioids, which your character shoots approximately once every 10 seconds. This game is TIGHT, fast paced, frantic, and demanding of you to be bringing your SSS game for the entire 1 hour run. You need to understand your class, its role, and the items and builds you will likely synergize with through pure trial, error, and intuition. And when you get strategy just right, pick up the luck bonus modules, and get good item drops, you go from “it’s gonna be joever soon” to “WE’RE SO FUCKING CRACKED BRO” (those were actual quotes from the run we beat the game with).

When you get on a roll towards the end of a run, you feel like the God of the facility, exacting holy revenge on the murderbots out to tear you heart from wire and brain from CPU. Which is all well and good because, STORY. You are here to stop an infinite paperclip scenario playing out, orchestrated by a rogue AI who is self-stylizing as a God of War. And that’s all the story you get and need with a game like this. Its mechanics and euphoric gameplay do ALL the heavy lifting, so you just sit back, and let your natural biological aversion for all things artificial and intelligent from taking your job as a cracked crackhead supersoldier. GRAPHICS AND SOUND compliment this game extremely well. The devs made excellent use of their game’s limitations to decorate their slaughterfest with beautifully simplistic art that doesn’t look realistic, but not cartoony either. I think SYNTHETIK will go down as a game that “still looks good after decades”. The sound design is incredible. It compliments your adrenaline rush with dopamine releasing audio cues and highly satisfying sound effects, from gunfire, to reloading, jamming, and the sweet sound of a new upgrade making you FEEL like you just got something powerful. All set to a banger soundtrack that goes from low bassy stealth tunes to full blown phonk bangers that get the adrenaline pumping and get you in the zone to FUCK. SHIT. UP.

After 13.5 hours, I made it to the final boss for the first time, and the adrenaline hit I took while attempting it for the first time was the biggest I’ve had in YEARS. That was when I knew this game was something else. Over the course of the next 11 hours of gameplay, Rodas and I experienced many runs that could have gone to the end, only to die on floor 4 or the final boss gauntlet. Sometimes to our own stupidity, sometimes to janky bullshit as a result of the robot god sabotaging the undersea cables linking Europe with Australia, and spiking his ms to 300 ping. Every time we worked together, fucked up, laughed, we strategized, learned, and parted for the next run in a few days. When we finally beat the final boss after 24.5 hours of playtime on my end, the sound we made the moment we beat the game can only be described as pure, masculine bro-hype. The kind you hear when an squad of sweats win their first CS:GO regional tournament. It was glorious, a truly well fought dopamine rush of such beauty that all men should seek to earn. AND THEN SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENED. But you’re going to have to see that for yourself. So go ahead, buy SYNTHETIK. It is WELL worth the price. Earn your victory on top of a pile of burning wreckage and silicon guts at the top of ARMAGEDDON.

Commenti:
- Sistema di squadra molto divertente, anche se la gestione dellʻinventario un poʻ caotica
- Storia molto avvincente e secondarie godibili
- Combattimenti contro nemici enormi molto bello, contro i nemici normali non il massimo anche a causa della mancanza del lock on
- Nella prima fase del gioco, gli spostamenti sono abbastanza tediosi (stamina che scende con la corsa...)

Commenti:
- Atmosfera stupenda
- I primi puzzle carini
- Combat terribile e non soddisfacente
- Storia incomprensibile
- Momenti "walking sim" troppo trascinati per le lunghe

Commenti:
- ottimo metroidvania FPS, l’esplorazione viene molto premiata
- grande varietà di nemici e creature
- gameplay che non annoia mai, anche grazie ai vari oggetti/upgrade
- narrazione molto simpatica e frizzantina, senza scadere in battute imbarazzanti

It took me 14 years to realize that this game, isn't good.
If this game is supposed to be an example of the golden era of JRPG's I hope that era stays dead. Very rarely do I encounter a game that seems to, on a foundational level, not want me to enjoy it.
The game's basic mechanics are good. Combat, while a little slow and inconsistent is engaging. That's about it. The story is boring and long-winded, the characters are stilted and stiff, the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, and save points are about 40 minutes away from each other often with level puzzles in between them. The "dreams" are basically light novels that have been injected into the game that flesh out a plot that on it's own, is mostly lethargic.
I really wanted this game to be good. One of the last vestiges of my childhood but after nearly 100 hours of slogging through this, it just isn't.

A solid, if somewhat unpolished brawler, Sifu takes familiar cues from various contemporary melee combat systems and combines them with arcade-like elements.

Within the first hour of Sifu, it's hard to deny how brutal it can get, with enemies actually making use of their numbers advantage rather than attacking you one at a time, and the omission of visual cues that are usually present in similar modern melee-based games. The death mechanic may also give an impression it's something you have to grind through and unlock things so you can stand a chance through each run, but if anything Sifu actually does reward the player more by being observant and patient rather than just grinding for XP unlocks.

The unlockable skills are there to serve more as extra options to open up your playstyle rather than a necessity to get through the game. They will help a fair bit, and prioritizing certain upgrades give a notable effect, but you actually can get farther by playing it safe and focusing on the game's flow and mechanics, in particular, the 'structure gauge'. The closest familiar comparison to this is the 'posture gauge' from Sekiro, and it does work similarly here. Attack and deflect an enemy's attack enough times, you build up the posture gauge to go for an instant execution.

The rest of the challenge comes in the form of getting familiar with each enemy's attack patterns and animations and knowing when to use the appropriate defensive measures. Your tools for defense come in the form of blocking which is safe but costs you your own structure gauge, parries which is a somewhat riskier but more aggressive approach as this continuously builds up the enemy's structure gauge, and dodging which you can do high and low dodges. Dodging, in particular, can be both the safest and riskiest defense at the same time, as successful executions don't cost you structure, but the wrong dodge can make you eat an attack directly.

The game isn't all defense of course, especially with the aforementioned element that enemies actually do take advantage of the fact they outnumber you in each encounter. They will flank you and catch you off guard if you tunnel vision on a single one. Thus it's important to balance out defense with aggression. Prioritizing certain enemy types, taking the first opportunity to attack, using weapons, and so on.

Sifu is also stylish and is good at making you feel like you're playing through a kung fu flick. The larger and more open areas, in particular, are also great in emulating the martial arts film the game pays a lot of homage to, as the flow of these parts lets you vault through various furniture and make use of weapons as you try to whittle down groups of foes. There are also neat little details that extend as gameplay mechanics too, with enemies being able to attack each other, giving you more incentive in dodging their attacks.

Unfortunately, not all of its presentation works in its favor, for one the camera actually manages to be a nuisance in certain areas, obscuring enemies off-screen and prompting you to get hit by a thrown bottle you have no way of anticipating for example. There are also moments where you're forced into really tight spaces as well as darker areas where it's harder to observe your surroundings.

This extends as well to the responsiveness and playability of the game, with Sifu taking priority in blending its animations realistically rather than consistent feedback. There are moments, especially with boss fights where deflecting and dodging just feels off, with a noticeable delay to your actions. They're not bad to the point of breaking the game, but they can get really annoying and add an unnecessary learning curve to adjust to.

Speaking of boss fights, they're also not the best in terms of design. Each boss has two phases, and each phase has a set of attacks they constantly rotate with depending on their health and distance. They're fine on paper, but the way they're executed makes them feel padded out and more annoying to fight over time. Figuring them out is fun, doing them over and over without variation for a few minutes straight as you build up the necessary gauge isn't. The game would have benefitted more from this either by giving more attack variations or lessening the necessary amount of attacks you need to defeat each boss.

The often advertised mechanic of dying and aging also feels very underwhelming. The fact that it only adjusts your health to be lower and damage to be higher is limiting by itself, but those things don't even feel significant either in actual gameplay. Especially in consideration that as you progress through each stage, enemies deal more damage and also take longer to defeat both through health and structure gauge, thus canceling out really any potential benefit or change of playstyle through the aging. I feel like this mechanic could have worked better with exclusive moves or upgrades through certain ages for example.

Despite its shortcomings, Sifu does provide a challenging yet rewarding experience and is a good example of how you can mix arcade-style difficulty and progression with modern gameplay mechanics.

Plus it's hard to not enjoy a game that has a crotch punch.