TLDR: I'm a real sucker for dark and otherworldly immersive settings, and Agony is probably the one of the best games I've played at delivering that. But in every other way it's a discarded crack pipe filled with human shit.

Full review: I feel I have to defend Agony a bit, because I did get a non-zero amount of enjoyment out of it. I love the visuals in this game; it's pure, straight up Revelations-tier fucked up Christian hell. There are a few times here and there where it crosses the line into trying too hard to be edgy (any time there are fetuses on screen, for example), but for the most part I was absolutely sold on the intricately detailed and beautifully realised setting; it's probably my favourite depiction of Hell in a video game, and not for lack of competition. The music and sound design are decent too, and do lend the overall game some depth of atmosphere. The creature design is mostly decent too (although giving lots of the demons jiggling human titties was... a decision). It's not on the level of something like Scorn in the aesthetic department but, to me, it's not too far removed from that level.

Everything else though... well. If not for the aesthetics, this would easily be the worst game I'd ever played. I would comment on the story but I have no idea what it was because the writing is next-level abysmal, and not at all helped by some truly abominable VA. This confusion and unclearness trickles down throughout the gameplay itself as well; I never had any idea what my in-game goal was at any time (beyond something as granular as 'get to the bottom of the pit') or why I was doing it. When I turned my brain off and just started saying 'ok' to the game's directions, this became much easier to play. Even then, though, I frequently had no clue where I was actually supposed to go to proceed; the game has an inbuilt 'point to the next objective' button but A: this has limited uses (although you can opt to make it infinite in the options) and B: it almost never works in any of the more confusing areas where you'd actually need it.

I never had any clue what was going on with any of the 'puzzles' either; the sigil puzzles, for example, just consisted of me brute forcing them by trying every pattern I'd seen on the whole level, and I'm not even sure that that isn't the intended strategy. Agony also has a tendency of putting invisible kill planes and teleport planes (i.e. 'cross this and instantly return to the area origin' planes) in random places, sometimes just randomly in the path being given to you by the objective-finding spell. More than once I worked out the way I needed to go was behind a teleport plane, spent 10-15 minutes frantically looking round the area for any other way to proceed, found nothing but then discovered that something I had done in that time had caused the barrier to de-spawn for some reason and the game hadn't thought it'd be a good idea to let me know.

The controls are sloppy and stiff and don't at all mix with the irregular-but-regular-enough-to-be-annoying first-person platforming sections. It runs like absolute ass in some of the more detailed regions and it's pretty buggy to boot; the camera loves clipping through things in soul mode, and I managed to softlock myself out of bounds at least twice. And in some areas they even manage to undo the good work they've done on aesthetics by layering ugly and distracting filters over the whole screen and messing it all up.

So yeah, I guess the word I'd use to describe Agony at the end of the day would be 'nightmare'. It's an absolute nightmare of a game, in ways both intended and unintended. It's definitely a bad game overall don't get me wrong, the sheer brokenness here is inexcusable, but I really don't think it deserves the magnitude of scorn it has had poured upon it, and I'm willing to give it some decent extra marks for pulling off (visually at least) such a haunting and infernal setting.

The overwhelming success of Dark Souls and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

Okay, half jokes aside, Afterimage was cool. It's a metroidvania that's very derivative of Hollow Knight; a game I have a love-hate relationship with; both for the better, and very much for the worse. As such, I'm going to be comparing the two quite a lot. It improves on somethings that I feel Hollow Knight was lacking in, but the numerous problems I had with Hollow Knight that carry over to this game are often exacerbated here.

I think it does have an edge over Hollow Knight in one key aspect that made me like it a lot more than the former. The combat has a lot more options in terms of weapon variety (as in, you know, more than one fucking weapon), allowing for more experimentation and finding which weapons work well against certain bosses, developing your playstyle as you progress; something Hollow Knight doesn't have.
This game also has a very colorful, vibrant, and gorgeous art, which is very unusual for this type of game, and very much welcomed. Apparently it's entirely hand-drawn, which is genuinely insane and very impressive, to put it lightly; this game is ginormous, drawing all those massive environments must have taken literal years.

As I said before, many of the issues I had with Hollow Knight are carried over to this game too, along with a host of new annoyances that weren't there previously.
Doing repeat attempts of bosses is an unavoidable part of soulslike games; the problem isn't the concept, because that's just a natural part of games like this, but the execution. For some reason, I've noticed Souls-inspired games (and even the FromSoft ones themselves) love putting the nearest respawn point for some bosses several minutes away from the boss arena, with tons of enemies on the way; Rennala in Elden Ring and the Broken Vessel in Hollow Knight, to name a couple examples. This game, true to its Hollow Knight, and by association, Souls, roots, also does this...but, the difference is, it does this shit. Fucking. Constantly. I swear, every other boss in this game has a several minute trek with a bajillion enemies in the way from the nearest respawn point. Taking two or three minutes to get to the boss before fighting it is annoying, and that time adds up. None of them ever gets as egregiously long as in Hollow Knight, with the area from the respawn point to the aforementioned Broken Vessel, but it happens so often that it might as well be. Loss, the Galefeather in the Emerald Falls; Eldred, the Flaming Wings in the Rainbow Plains; the Runic Guardian in the Silent Coast; there are so many cases of this. This was easily my biggest issue with Hollow Knight, so to see it continue here, and even worse than Hollow Knight, was quite annoying.
Another thing is how spongy bosses are compared to you. Bosses, even when you're doing the maximum DPS that you can do at that point in the game, take next to nothing, yet you can die in a little as two or three hits from even their weaker attacks. There's no real sense of progress beyond seeing bigger numbers appear as you level up more and get better gear, but that barely means much when you're still doing paltry amounts of damage to the bosses' gargantuan health bar and they can still kill you with a light breeze. This isn't helped by some bosses being way too aggressive, and because you have zero ways of getting i-frames outside of the second or two after taking damage (that is, until an optional boss that's really late in the game gives you i-frames on your dash), you're often given little to no chances to heal. It's the same problem with Malekith in Elden Ring, only not as bad, since nothing is ever as much of an affront to God as Malekith.

For all its faults, I definitely prefer Afterimage over any of the other Soulslikes and Souls-inspired games I've played– although, admittedly, that's not a very high bar to clear, as I'm not a particularly huge fan of any of them. In fact, I would go so far as to say I actively dislike a lot of them. (I am God's Strongest Soulsborne Hater.) I'm honestly surprised at how little attention this game got, considering how popular the genre is; the only reason I found out about it in the first place was me just browsing the PlayStation store and seeing it by chance, saying "hey, this looks cool", doing minor research on it, and then giving it a whirl. If you're into this type of game (like, if you love Hollow Knight, for instance, which I know quite a lot of people do) and haven't played it yet, go play this.

This is a fantastic game! It's a long and tumultous ride, and it's not always perfect, but this is one of those games that really comes together in the end, and even though I found myself bouncing between loving and hating it as I explored the world, I found myself realizing that I think I love this game by the time I was in lategame and had most of the movement abilities unlocked, and had developed a better understanding of the combat, the equipment and all of the other various mechanics. It's a very pretty game with a serene and relaxing soundtrack, enjoyable if perhaps oldschool (meaning simplistic by today's standards) combat, the world is always engaging and packed with both striking sights and secrets to find, and the game offers a true and strong growth and progression curve where your character begins almost underpowered but evolves over time and becomes a goddess. This game deserves your love!

Let's start with the elephant in the room... Not that it's a secret since everyone either praises or complains about it, but an idiom regarding elephants is apropos because this game truly is enormous. It's gigantic. Titanic, astronomical! It's the biggest metroidvania ever made, and it's not even kind of close. If your typical metroidvania has about 5-6 distinct areas with different biomes, Afterimage has TWENTY-TWO. And only two or three of them are symbolic little areas that you can run through in 30 seconds. Everything is else is a meaty, large-scale area that could be an entire minivania by itself. This obviously delivers quite the bang for your buck, and anyone would be hard-pressed to try to argue that this game doesn't have enough content for its price, but it's also quite often exhausting and this is the first game in a long time where I've voluntarily stopped playing because I'm just too mentally tired from all the exploring, combat and secret-finding to have the desire to continue. This is probably the game's biggest low, and it's understandable if people who have less free time, have to work multiple jobs or take care of family just can't find the time for this game. If you're that person, you're gonna have to skip this one. I had the time, though, and even though I did feel exhausted and sometimes even annoyed with the game's size, I ultimately ended up loving the world and the game.

Apart from that, the game is a clear love letter to Igavania-style metroidvanias, with a little bit of Hollow Knight thrown in. You've got all of the mechanics and features from a typical Igavania, like XP, a skill tree, randomly dropped loot coupled with a bestiary to help you track drops, and a whole host of weapons and equipment that allows for a fairly wide build variety, within certain confines. You can't quite build whatever you want and mostly you just build variants on swinging your sword at a monster's face, but there's a lot to choose from and a lot of ways to customize to your playstyle. The game even has cute homages to SOTN and Hollow Knight, in the form of rooms clearly modeled exactly after rooms in those games, that made me smile because it felt like a true, loving homage and not just a tired reference. What's the difference between those two? Eh, I don't actually know, I just know that I liked walking into the Hollow Knight room and audibly going "Heyyyy!" with a strong sense of loving familiarity.

One thing that's less of a loving homage and just straight up style theft, though, is the game's aesthetic and vibe. This game is straight-up Genshin Impact, and it's absolutely shameless about it. Same vibe with blue skies and green fields, with the sounds of piano, violin and choirs. Areas clearly inspired by the ones that are in Genshin. Even your character's basic outfit has the same color scheme as the Traveler in Genshin, with the white, gold trim and blue so dark that it's almost black. The most shameless rip, however, is Ifree, your floating sidekick, that's just a complete carbon copy of Paimon. Why someone would want to clone the most annoying sidekick in modern gaming, I don't know, but these guys did. Ifree really is the exact same character; cocky, condescending, obnoxious, obsessed with food. The one thing Ifree isn't is a fucking moron, unlike Paimon, so that's a welcome change. He also talks less than Paimon, very thankfully, and he doesn't repeat exactly what was just said like Paimon does. Does this vibe thievery matter? Not to me, I just had to note it because it's so brazen and obvious.

On the subject of talking, I guess it does have to be mentioned that his game ha some anime-ass voice acting and it's not always great. Accents sound like americans doing an accent, annoying anime stuttering sounds like someone who doesn't stutter trying to "f-f-force" a stutter. Stuff like that. It's not great, and even though the game is huge and has an involved story, there actually isn't all that much talking in the grand scheme, and you never have to sit through like an hour of talking like you do in Genshin.

The difficulty has always been a subject of some contention, but really, I didn't have much of a problem with it. The game does start out very, very easy, and people who give up within the first 10 hours because the game is too easy aren't entirely off the mark, but the whole game is like if a metroidvania was an image and you grabbed the corner of that image in Photoshop and dragged it out. Everything in the game is on a larger, longer scale than other MVs, which includes the progression curve. The game does get much harder, and especially mid-late game around level 65 is actually surprisingly difficult and made me feel like I might not have the energy to take on the endgame if it's going to keep being this hard. It doesn't, though, and leveling up REALLY matters in this game. Bosses that were unkillable at level 80 are easy at level 90. I finished the whole game on advanced difficulty, and not to brag about my own skills because I really feel like my ADHD makes me much worse than these games than I could be, but I really don't understand why they patched in an easier difficulty after complaints. People foudn advanced difficulty too hard? Seriously? On that note, it does also appear that the devs have really listened and made a lot of improvements to this game, as I see complaints in old forum and Reddit posts that are now solved, and my experience was free from serious glitches and a lot of the stupid designs that appear to have been in the game at release have been adjusted, so if you played the game on release and hated it, or heard from people who did, it might be time to look again because the current state of the game is, as this review implies, fantastic.

I could go on, and there are many details I haven't mentioned, like how there's even a SNES-style overworld you can use to access certain areas, among many other mechanics I haven't mentioned in thi review, but this game isn't the most original game and there isn't really too much to comment on besides saying that nearly everything here is good to great. This game isn't breaking much new ground, but it sure is tilling a lot of already broken ground, and it absolutely satisfies an avid metroidvania player, even if the journey is sometimes rocky and sometimes even frustrating. Ultimately, it's a fantastic game that takes the Igavania formula to a whole new level with content spilling out of every crack with things to find, see and do. Everyone who likes the genre and has the time to invest in a massive game absolutely should rush to play this game as soon as they can.

(Note: It's not that massive in comparison to other genres, it's mostly just large for the genre it inhabits. My total playtime was about 42 hours, and that's with 100% of everything done except finding every single drop in the bestiary. You do not need true 100% for the trophies/achievements, for anyone who cares about those. I did it because I liked the game and wanted to see all it has to offer.)

The main question I have after playing this game is, where the hell is Treasure now?

If, like me, playing the Mega Drive as a child was a major part of why you’re into gaming, you probably love Gunstar Heroes and Treasure, that game’s developer.
I was very pleased to discover after looking this game up recently for a pair of reasons, that this was a Hitmaker/Treasure game as if I hadn’t already believed one source on this game being great that felt like a stamp of quality where I’d definitely enjoy my time at the very least if not have a brand new favourite.

reasons being Samuel Roberts of The Back Page Podcast calling this a GBA all-timer and the recent Pluto anime adaptation on Netflix.

All the hallmarks of what puts Treasure games, Gunstar Heroes and Alien Soldier especially on the map are here.
The pixel art is fantastic, the music is good, the combat mostly feels smooth and the level and boss variety keep the game from ever feeling completely repetitive which is important with simpler genres such as beat ‘em ups.

Really that simplification of genre and the console limitations are the primary cause of my hang-ups with this game. I’m a man who can respect past titles and I don’t need to have the most frames and fanciest lighting - but I am still a man living in 2023 where some features, not even QoL have been removed or at least smoothed out in modern representations and it can make it difficult to go back.
One minor thing is some fiddliness, which I found a lot of can be attributed to the few buttons the GBA has.
As Astro boy pushes through the stages fighting enemy robots and goons along the way, before inevitably fighting a usually quite impressive boss, he can dash using his jets for fast movement and some evasion. As with most games you become more used to the timing as you spend time with Astro but a third button would have made this feel more natural and feel less like you mistimed things due to missed inputs and the like.
Another minor niggle is with the special moves, his butt gun for hitting the entire screen and his big beam cannon are simple enough with using either shoulder button to activate, but the third powerful dash uses both A+B at once and whilst that is one of the easiest button combinations to do in gaming it also suffers from not always registering which can be frustrating as the fights become more difficult and your time against bosses becomes more desperate.

Outside of button limitation the other minor annoyances are things that just feel a little out of date. Whether it’s being hit from something you couldn’t see off screen, bosses becoming impossible to dodge because they take up all the space or similarly your own attacks not counting because they aren’t on screen enough, these things give not a feeling of challenge but a feeling of being cheated.
I appreciate a challenge and this game has it, but I also don’t think any of the above counts.

Where it does count are things like the bosses (sans full screen takeovers) where you are either having to learn spacing to dodge and get hits in best or even learning patterns and what specials are best to use when.
Sometimes Astro Boy is grounded, sometimes he’s floating about and occasionally in a break from that you can be jetting at high speeds in bullet-hell-like combat.

Challenge and variation also comes within variation on these levels, Astro will be on moving levels, low gravity, platforms, dodging traps and more and outside of some frustration due to not “getting good” at later stages I never felt the game was too repetitive even though really it maybe is.
Pacing is always something I come back to in reviews and due to this variety and how the story is given, Omega Factor gets a big thumbs up in that department.

The story itself is good, with some smart elements I did not expect but “your mileage may vary” depending on how invested in Astro Boy and Tezuka’s other works you are because this game boasts 40+ characters but if you’re like me you maybe knew a dozen tops.
Some of the cameos felt to me much like I imagine the many MCU post-credits do to casual fans, to quote the other Back Page Podcast host’ it has very “it’s me Blorko” energy.

One interesting but potentially flawed mechanic ties into meeting these characters and that is the whole “Omega Factor”. Astro meeting folk, getting a new understanding of emotions etc. unlocks this and in game terms gives you a level up.
I call this potentially flawed because although it is interesting and the game does give warning for when “Sensors” need upgrading you have no idea what comes ahead and it isn’t quite an RPG where having different builds is something the game is balanced for.

The other strength in the story I do want to speak about but I do not want to spoil it for those who have no idea so WARNING.

WARNING - for those wanting to go in blind do not read the rest of this review.
Just know that in my humble opinion the story does take this game from good to potentially great.

For me this twist and feature of Astro Boy was half-spoiled but I didn’t know exactly about how it was integrated.
Before the credits hit, it’s bad news for our lad, the villain Sharaku, Prince of the Mu Empire and his third eye have succeeded, the world is on fire and a big spooky skull from space is coming.
Much like Empire Strikes Back though, this is just the beginning of the end for our hero as he is resurrected by the Phoenix and sent back in time.
This allows Astro to redo battles, meet new people and change the past by going back and forth with the new information he gains.

This implementation reminds me of one of my all-time favourite games series; Zero Escape.
Whilst not quite as deep or big-brained using stages like a time-line means the interaction is quite similar and I am here for it.
The issue I have with the game here however is two-fold.
First off, not enough changes, you aren’t just skipping into new dialogue you are once again having to play the entire game with just some occasional boss changes and eventually some new stages and endings. I praise this game’s variety but this is repetition at its core and it is time consuming.
Once again difficulty rears its head here and at this point is where I suffered most because at first it felt easier, in Rebirth you have kept all the levels you’ve obtained and it seemed to trivialise the first stages but slowly it becomes apparent that actually enemies are tougher and stronger - something the game didn’t inform you of and doesn’t really make any sense.
It took until about stage four of the initial seven for this to really kick in but sadly in stage five and six I failed more often than I had in the Birth run-through and it wasn’t too interesting things like the bosses. Also, one final nail in the coffin was that the checkpointing the previous run had was mostly removed - this is a part which has me questioning my own memory but at point I was having to do whole levels before a boss again and again where originally I feel like if I did die the game started me near where I got to.

In the end, I think I rate Astro Boy: Omega Factor lower than most who have played it and I believe “git gud” is part of that story. Maybe I am more of a modern gamer who needs their hand held than I think, but I feel I haven’t typically turned away from challenges in the past and even infamously difficult things I don’t complain are unfair.
I would just leave the point that I am reviewing this game two decades after its launch, I have no history with the Gameboy Advance as I went from GB Light straight to DS Lite with no Nintendo handhelds of my own between, and I also have very little history with Astro Boy as a franchise.

Regardless I think Omega Factor is great, I am going to play more and it has whet my appetite for more Tezuka works as well as Treasure games.

I was sent a free copy by the devs and they were cool!

Cookie Cutter is kinda just alright. It isn't the best metroidvania out there, but it also isn't the worst thing in the world. At first I was thrown off a bit by the moments of over the top goryness and the design of the main character, how you can see her panties whenever she moves. But besides that, the art-style of the game is nice and it's kinda similar to Hi-Fi Rush.

The gameplay is fine, I never felt like I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of each room. The combat is pretty difficult at times and the arena fights can take quite a while, but completing them feels satisfying. The different weapons all look cool and have nice animations but some are just a lot weaker than others. Nothing was really bad about the platforming and movement, but it didn't really feel that good.

The weirdest part of the game I think is the pacing. So much stuff is seemingly shoved in during the final third of the game that it makes me think the devs originally planned for the game to be longer. Abilities, NPCs, Story. It all feels really rushed and undeveloped.

Also the game ends on a really abrupt cliffhanger that's not even a cliffhanger. It's just like the story stops at a certain point unsatisfyingly.

This was a nice game to play in the background while listening to some podcasts. Not that bad but not that good either.

Pep's Season of Spooks - Game 12
Fuck me, this really is as shitty as everyone says.

Madmind Studio were so busy trying to come up with extreme, edgy, sadistic ideas for their vision of Hell that they clearly either forgot or didn't care about making a decent game.

Yes, all the graphic violence and nudity (turned up to 11 in the Unrated version) is probably pretty shocking for players who aren't used to horror... for the first 10 minutes. Then all you're left with is a horribly dull, buggy walking-sim with the occasional stealth sequence to add frustration to the boredom.

The few hours I spent playing Agony pretty much comprised of:

- getting stuck on the environment
- wondering what the fuck in the environment was causing me to take damage
- looking away from the poorly animated scenes of sex, r@pe and torture (of which there are only around 5 reused constantly throughout the game)
- cursing the horrible checkpoint system as an enemy bugs out and teleports to me, instakilling me

I've seen some people defending Agony by praising the visuals, and I genuinely have no idea what they're talking about. To me the environments were so ugly (not in the intended way), and the awfully-animated cutscenes had a habit of glitching and going blurry.

After checking Steam I saw that Madmind have clearly taken advantage of Agony's reputation since they've released Succubus since (even though this game has a "Succubus Mode"?), which I can only assume was made for anyone who didn't jerk off enough to this game. They also have another three games coming up. Please don't buy any of them. Their entire MO is simply shock value and not actually making good games.

If you have to, just play Scorn instead.

Scary Rating dogshit/10 - Overall Rating dogshit/10

When you look around and see the reviews and scores at 5 or worse for Scars Above you have to ask, do smaller games and smaller developers have any chance? Scars Above is a lower budget game and it does have things we’ve seen a bunch of times before but it’s fun, well made, does enough to differentiate itself and is at a lower price point.

One of the first things that stand out to me about Scars Above is the atmosphere and world. I would honestly describe it as Metroid Prime-ish. The environments look great, feel alien and are populated with some good looking creatures. Unfortunately not everything about the way Scars Above looks is that great. Animations could be better and characters don’t look particularly good. It gets worse when watching them talk. They lack expression and it looks like what they are saying doesn’t match up with their face. It’s not the end of the world though and mostly it’s a very good looking game, maybe it just falls short in some areas because of the smaller budget and team.

Scars Above is about a group of scientists getting mysteriously transported to a hostile alien world. It’s a pretty enjoyable story that had no problem holding my interest throughout and I think sci-fi fans will enjoy it. It has a great main character, Kate, who is brought to life very well by Erin Yvette. Kate is a capable, likable scientist who has no problem stepping up into the hero role. She is constantly curious and analytical but still has plenty of compassion which ties into what the story is about. I think it was just refreshing to play as a scientist and the approach it brings to many areas of the game is too. Unfortunately outside Kate and Naya the rest of the cast is very forgettable.

The gameplay is very likable too. It’s a third person shooter but actually feels more like a mostly ranged action game. There’s no cover so you’ll find yourself sprinting around shooting enemies, using gadgets, dodging and maybe sneaking in some melee hits. There is a stamina bar to consider while doing this and your resources are on the more limited side. The really cool thing about combat is using elements and the right combinations of them to fight efficiently. Your guns are fire, electric, ice and toxic and these can be combined together on their own and with things like water, rain and ice in the environment. Enemies have weak spots as well which are vulnerable to a particular element. There is a small variety of gadgets like a shield and gravity trap too. It’s really fun and keeps you on your toes as you frantically move about dodge rolling incoming attacks, prioritising targets, using the right combination of gadgets and elements and healing when needed. It’s just a shame they didn’t push things even further. I’d love to see a follow up to this game that builds upon what’s here. The biggest flaw for me was the difficulty. The game starts off with this promise of a good challenge but once you get comfortable and Kate gets more gear and skills it falls off a bit and death becomes a lot rarer. It’s not too bad and there is enjoyment it getting powerful but it’s enough to consider putting the difficulty up.

Outside combat you’ll be exploring, investigating and solving some puzzles. The world is linear but often loops back on itself, creating a short cut and it has some small side paths to check out. The checkpoint/recover points also respawn enemies in the area, so it is slightly souls-ish but there’s no recovering anything from where you died. The experience in Scars Above is called knowledge and is earned by scanning things and picking up little knowledge cubes. This builds up to earn ability points which are used to unlock new skills. There are weapon upgrades to look out for as well. Investigating is similar to what you have probably seen in other games and has you clicking and scanning stuff to figure what happened or get answers. I am not usually the biggest fan of this but I didn’t mind it here. The puzzles are a bit basic but at least they don’t feel hand-holdy. As you can see Kate being a scientist is carried across most aspects of the game and it is done well. As a whole the game does a great job of being consistent through its story, main character and gameplay.

Something that Scars Above also does well is pacing and progression. It is on the shorter side and has you pushing through at a good pace, except for a section right before the end when it does slow for a bit while you complete three tasks. I kept feeling like I was constantly getting something whether it was an ability point or more story or a weapon upgrade or a new enemy. The other fantastic thing is it doesn’t waste your time. Scars Above is not open world, it’s not full of padding, and it doesn’t run too long, there are no lackluster side quests, no pointless collectables and no microtransactions. God damn, this is a beautiful thing which more games should learn from.

Scars Above is like a PS3 era game and I mean that as both a wonderful compliment and a bit of a criticism. It does look lower budget or a bit dated and even feels like it a bit too. But it doesn’t mess around and isn’t full of bloat. It’s just fun, plays well, works well, has great atmosphere and tells a decent story. It is interesting because it can come off as unoriginal but it feels so refreshing at the same time. The developer Mad Head Games is another one to keep an eye on. Scars Above is at a lower price point and would be fairly reduced by now too, so I would recommend not hesitating to pick it up if it has you interested at all.

7.7/10