Drax
BACKER
I get that this was free on Xbox Game Pass but jesus christ I can't believe I thought downloading this was a good idea
One of the most punishing games I've ever played, and sometimes, even playing your best will not be enough. But goddamn do I keep coming back for more.
2010
I keep trying to play through and finish this but unlike Ori and the Blind Forest and Celeste, there's always something that stops me from sticking all the way through. Maybe it's because so much of the game focuses on sheer speed and dodging obstacles rather than more complex movement mechanics (such as Celeste's dash or Ori's bash) and Meat Boy is both simultaneously super fast yet filled with a million things that can instantly kill you in one shot. I've referred to this as the "monkey in a cage" hypothesis where instead of varying the movement and techniques, they just throw more obstacles at you. To me, this made Super Meat Boy feel like a grindfest where I'm bashing my head against the same level over and over again rather than really enjoying executing the movement. I really respect this game and the soundtrack is phenomenal, but it's not my cup of tea anymore, and that saddens me a little. Maybe I'll just play it on and off and see how far that gets me.
They don't make video games like Silent Hill 2 anymore
2003
This is one of the most dastardly difficult games I've played in a long time; you really have to understand the game's mechanics and have good reactions in order to master it. But once you do, it feels so damn satisfying pulling off epic poses and slow punching and kicking enemies in VFX. It just oozes aesthetic with the cel shaded graphics and banging soundtrack too. Highly recommended.
If you're just looking for a simple platformer with a double jump and eventually a wall jump, this gets the job done. It's also free. Not the greatest 2D platformer I've ever played in terms of movement or level design, but hey, it's free after all.
2021
Has multiple parts in the map where you can get trapped or stuck in the scenery since there's no jump button and softlock the game. And there's no autosaving either. Good concept, but wait until they fix this bug.
The actual standard gameplay of Mirror's Edge Catalyst is very good. Faith controls pretty well for the most part, and vaulting and wall running over everything is a lot of fun. Even the combat in the levels is actually pretty satisfying because you're highly encouraged to vault off of objects and wall run kick enemies, which just emphasizes more of the movement that this series is known for. And there's even a grappling hook for certain portions!
The main problem is everything else that the game adds as layers upon the movement. Most of these are excess junk mechanics that have to be dealt with in the open world environment. There are a ton of basic optional missions throughout the overworld that do nothing except give you XP in exchange for doing time trials. Which are not inherently bad, except the time limits are super tight (perhaps unreasonably so if casual players are having trouble with them) and every optional mission feels the exact same. These could have just been cut out in order to emphasize the Dash optional missions, which are the actual time trials with leaderboards. Also, exploring the overworld is actually quite fun, but getting spotted by the various security cameras located around the overworld (that are not always obvious tells) causes the baddies to spawn and ruin your exploration, and fighting the baddies causes a helicopter to spawn with unlimited baddies until you retreat to a safe house. As a result, I often had to stay out of sight of the suddenly spawned baddies and wait for the cooldown, which really put a bit of the dent in the momentum I had exploring around.
Oh, and the story's kind of generic and feels lacking in emotion (for me at least), but you didn't come to play Mirror's Edge for the story right? The soundtrack isn't as good as the original though, which is kind of a bummer. At least it's a pretty looking game, but super taxing on your system if you go all out with the settings.
I think if they just stripped the game of these unnecessary baddie spawns and dumb optional missions with extreme time limits, Mirror's Edge Catalyst would have been much more well received. As it is though, there's a great game buried underneath; it's a shame that there's so much excess piled upon it though. I'd still gladly play a sequel, and I hope they learn their lessons from this that more stuff is not always better.
The main problem is everything else that the game adds as layers upon the movement. Most of these are excess junk mechanics that have to be dealt with in the open world environment. There are a ton of basic optional missions throughout the overworld that do nothing except give you XP in exchange for doing time trials. Which are not inherently bad, except the time limits are super tight (perhaps unreasonably so if casual players are having trouble with them) and every optional mission feels the exact same. These could have just been cut out in order to emphasize the Dash optional missions, which are the actual time trials with leaderboards. Also, exploring the overworld is actually quite fun, but getting spotted by the various security cameras located around the overworld (that are not always obvious tells) causes the baddies to spawn and ruin your exploration, and fighting the baddies causes a helicopter to spawn with unlimited baddies until you retreat to a safe house. As a result, I often had to stay out of sight of the suddenly spawned baddies and wait for the cooldown, which really put a bit of the dent in the momentum I had exploring around.
Oh, and the story's kind of generic and feels lacking in emotion (for me at least), but you didn't come to play Mirror's Edge for the story right? The soundtrack isn't as good as the original though, which is kind of a bummer. At least it's a pretty looking game, but super taxing on your system if you go all out with the settings.
I think if they just stripped the game of these unnecessary baddie spawns and dumb optional missions with extreme time limits, Mirror's Edge Catalyst would have been much more well received. As it is though, there's a great game buried underneath; it's a shame that there's so much excess piled upon it though. I'd still gladly play a sequel, and I hope they learn their lessons from this that more stuff is not always better.
2021
The combat feels like an afterthought and I wish it didn't exist; I think the idea of being able to negotiate/talk your way out of everything with prior knowledge is more than enough. Also as a very minor gripe, the controls are set in such a way where you can't sprint and jump at the same time, which irritated me during the limited sections of platforming and climbing. But besides that, these guys have the right idea on how to make a good time loop puzzle game with an interesting narrative and discussion. I think they've done it even better than The Sexy Brutale in fact. The epilogue is a great catharsis, and overall I'd say this is a nice snug little game if you're just looking for an interesting take on walking simulators with puzzles.
2016
On a scale of 1 - 10, it's an 11, and I'd give it a 12.
Jokes aside, let it be known that I generally do not like video games that are difficult for the sake of being difficult and most boss rush games (as an example, I stopped playing Cuphead around the 3rd boss because I really was not having fun). I decided to go play Furi because all my friends had given it a lot of hubbub and the soundtrack is filled with bangers.
For all the attention that this game gets for being difficult and uncompromising though, more attention should be given to just how well designed the overall experience is. The tutorial is literally a boss and gets you right into the actual meat of the game, which is a bold design choice yet also makes complete sense; it quickly adapts you to what you have to face for the rest of the game. Every boss has a distinctly different design with their own characteristics and forces you to adapt to a slightly different strategy every time, keeping you on your toes. But this isn't an issue at all, because the game is more than happy to let you adapt. You can regain your health via successful parrying and shooting green bullets (think of it as risk leading to reward), and getting knocked down only results in the boss resetting its phase. Since you still have 3 overall tries and you get another try every new phase, there is more than enough time to adapt. The fighting itself is a good mix between bullet hell, close quarters combat, and dodge and punish; all of these aspects are touched on with no excess. And in the case you suck at one of these aspects or parrying, there's a practice mode where you can hone up your skills to your own delight. Worthwhile, because boy does it feel good to get a successful parry on attacks.
Now granted, I took care in making sure I only fought one boss a day (with the exception being the last day, because I don't count the Beat as a boss and I just wanted to finish the game by the time I got to the Star), both to make sure I was doing other things with my day, and so I definitely wouldn't get burnt out from getting too angry, as was often the case with these very intense and difficult games. But not once did I get angry, which shocked me. It was just a thrill getting down to the action and having a fight of a lifetime 9 times in a row. Final shoutouts go to the Edge, which is one of the best designed bosses I've ever seen in a video game; you either get your ass handed to you in a minute, or you know what you're doing and you blaze by him in 4 minutes. One of the toughest bosses in the game, yet it doesn't waste your time as an HP sponge like many other tough bosses of video games.
Needless to say, this was a pleasant surprise, but a more than welcome one. Furi is worth playing even if you don't usually like difficult video games, and that's the highest compliment I can give it.
Jokes aside, let it be known that I generally do not like video games that are difficult for the sake of being difficult and most boss rush games (as an example, I stopped playing Cuphead around the 3rd boss because I really was not having fun). I decided to go play Furi because all my friends had given it a lot of hubbub and the soundtrack is filled with bangers.
For all the attention that this game gets for being difficult and uncompromising though, more attention should be given to just how well designed the overall experience is. The tutorial is literally a boss and gets you right into the actual meat of the game, which is a bold design choice yet also makes complete sense; it quickly adapts you to what you have to face for the rest of the game. Every boss has a distinctly different design with their own characteristics and forces you to adapt to a slightly different strategy every time, keeping you on your toes. But this isn't an issue at all, because the game is more than happy to let you adapt. You can regain your health via successful parrying and shooting green bullets (think of it as risk leading to reward), and getting knocked down only results in the boss resetting its phase. Since you still have 3 overall tries and you get another try every new phase, there is more than enough time to adapt. The fighting itself is a good mix between bullet hell, close quarters combat, and dodge and punish; all of these aspects are touched on with no excess. And in the case you suck at one of these aspects or parrying, there's a practice mode where you can hone up your skills to your own delight. Worthwhile, because boy does it feel good to get a successful parry on attacks.
Now granted, I took care in making sure I only fought one boss a day (with the exception being the last day, because I don't count the Beat as a boss and I just wanted to finish the game by the time I got to the Star), both to make sure I was doing other things with my day, and so I definitely wouldn't get burnt out from getting too angry, as was often the case with these very intense and difficult games. But not once did I get angry, which shocked me. It was just a thrill getting down to the action and having a fight of a lifetime 9 times in a row. Final shoutouts go to the Edge, which is one of the best designed bosses I've ever seen in a video game; you either get your ass handed to you in a minute, or you know what you're doing and you blaze by him in 4 minutes. One of the toughest bosses in the game, yet it doesn't waste your time as an HP sponge like many other tough bosses of video games.
Needless to say, this was a pleasant surprise, but a more than welcome one. Furi is worth playing even if you don't usually like difficult video games, and that's the highest compliment I can give it.
2020
I decided to go play Haven on Game Pass after how much fun I had with Furi. Unfortunately, it looks like The Game Bakers completely forgot how to make a fun game and did practically everything that was the opposite of their previous work.
The controls are kind of bad. The main characters walk at basically a crawl, but when you accelerate/dash, you actually go so fast that it's super hard to turn and at times control your distance. This leads to a classic case of "I want to travel to this place in my immediate vicinity, but if I dash, then I'll probably overshoot, and if I walk, it'll take an eternity and a half". They do have drifting (and make sure to really shove it in your face in case you try and play the game like old school Superman 64) but even the drifting felt imprecise at times to me, and this did lead to quite a few cases of falling off cliffs or off of strings that I needed to trace to get to higher locations. And speaking of which, did I mention it's super easy to fall out cliffs and strings, and if you do, you have to backtrack all the way back up to the location of the strings to get back up those higher ledges that are only accessible via strings because they decided not to include a simple jump function for smaller ledges?
Now the part that actually ruined Haven for me was the combat. For first half of the game, the combat was inoffensive. Nothing special, but it wasn't so blatantly bad as to aggravate me. Around the end stretch of the game however, the combat's flaws start really exposing themselves. Firstly, you can't manually target enemies; it's all auto-aim. During the early game, this isn't an issue since the enemies will melt quickly enough, but near the end, when you have to deal with multiple enemies that can block certain types of attacks (or are only vulnerable after their attacks, requiring timing), autoaim will invalidate so many of your attacks. Also, near the end of the game, there are quite a few enemies that focus on healing themselves/others or summoning infinite other enemies for you to deal with. Sure would be nice to single those enemies out so I don't have to deal with their effects but nope, auto-aim makes sure I deal with the cronies first.
Combat essentially devolves into a battle of attrition; you have to kill the enemy before it kills you. This happens because:
1. There is no way to prevent damage altogether via dodging and most fights (even many fights where you start with an advantage) will last long enough to where you have to take damage regardless. You can only mitigate damage, and mitigation of damage usually takes away from offense that could be used to finish the fight faster.
2. You can't manually aim as mentioned above, so enemies that infinitely spawn other enemies or heal turn fights into absolute slogs.
Now, this actually wouldn't have been such a big deal if healing were easier. But the best healing items (food and dedicated medicine) can't be used in the field or in battle. Nope, you can only use heal capsules that heal 80 HP in the field and in battle. So as a result, since almost every successful battle will require you to take some form of damage, you will need to heal. A lot. And since the most efficient way of healing is via campsites and going back to the nest, you will be backtracking and/or using up tons of food (for fast travel) to make this happen. A lot. Or you could just try and use the 80 HP capsules, but those have a max held cap of 5 and also require rust that could be used for repairs and offensive capsules, not to mention you can only build those at the Nest, so you will be wasting resources and backtracking anyways. A lot. Oh, and did I mention that every section in the overworld has its own loading zone? You'll often have to go back several zones just to get to a camping site or a fast travel site, so get used to seeing that loading screen. A lot.
Other things I want to nitpick that really annoyed me:
1. You can easily exploit the XP/leveling/relationship system for boosts by eating something, going to sleep, and then eating something as soon as you wake up at the Nest to level up really quickly. So in my case, I was maxed out 2/3rds of the way into the game. Eating food and viewing events gives way, way, more XP than any amount of combat in the same span of time. And once you cap out your level, you obviously don't gain any more XP, so there's even less incentive to engage in combat; the only incentives you get are Rust (which are very easy to obtain in the overworld) and making sure the aggressive enemy isn't present on the overworld. Except...
2. You're often encouraged to use your field burst to knock down enemies in range, and this stops them from aggroing on you and engaging you in combat. The only problem is, this stops them from engaging you in combat altogether; you can't walk up to the knocked up enemy and start the battle with an advantage, like how every other RPG does it. So you either have to move on and deal with the enemy again when traversing that part of the overworld, or you have to wait for the enemy to get up and then approach it from behind to gain an advantage state just so you can wipe it from the map. How did the game developers mess this up?
3. Oh yeah, did I mention you can't run away from battles? So not only is there very little incentive to engage in combat (since it uses up precious resources that require backtracking to replenish, you gain little XP anyways and even that is invalidated once you hit max level, and you only gain Rust for most general fights), you can't even run away from fights if you accidentally get involved. You might be here for a while.
4. Some of the fights include fighting against robots that can bind one of your guys so they can't do anything, and then you have to spend your time with your other guy unbinding your friend and taking more damage. This is especially annoying because the robots can only be permanently disabled when you have a duo overload... which can get suddenly interrupted by asshole AI that choose to bind one of your guys, and then the robot gets up and proceeds to heal. Oh, and during one of the fights, the robots have attacks that can knock one of your guys out of the screen, so you have to waste time waiting for your guy to return to the screen while your combo attack/disable was interrupted. Yeah, it's not a good time.
5. This could have just been a bug with the specific version I played, but there were a ton of instances where after my action was fully loaded from holding down the button, the action would fail to materialize. So not only did I fail the action, I wasted time trying to materialize the action. It speaks volumes that somehow the bug wasn't even the part that annoyed me the most.
A lot of people have written about how the dialogue was extremely stilted and strange, but honestly, I thought most of it was fine. Not incredible, moving dialogue like I've encountered in other games, but for the most part, it held up just fine. I especially resonated with some of the daily life interactions and events I got at the Nest as part of the experience and bonding gain. Don't get me wrong, I can see why people could be turned off by the dialogue since a ton of the dialogue focuses on their love for one another and tends to touch upon very little else found in relationships, but the dialogue was definitely not the weakest part of the game. The narrative was just okay though, I didn't experience much of an emotional reaction from the ending or from most of the characters' struggles.
At least the game is aesthetically pleasing and has a pleasant soundtrack from Danger. The main characters are fine too, I didn't really mind them much. Unfortunately, everything else is so much worse than Furi, especially the combat. I really hope The Game Bakers take the feedback from Haven seriously, because I could definitely see the potential from the game's ideas. But the execution was extremely sloppy and in fact very anti-fun, and at times I felt that there was a significant lack of focus from what they were trying to create. All in all, one of the most disappointing experiences I've had after one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences I've had.
The controls are kind of bad. The main characters walk at basically a crawl, but when you accelerate/dash, you actually go so fast that it's super hard to turn and at times control your distance. This leads to a classic case of "I want to travel to this place in my immediate vicinity, but if I dash, then I'll probably overshoot, and if I walk, it'll take an eternity and a half". They do have drifting (and make sure to really shove it in your face in case you try and play the game like old school Superman 64) but even the drifting felt imprecise at times to me, and this did lead to quite a few cases of falling off cliffs or off of strings that I needed to trace to get to higher locations. And speaking of which, did I mention it's super easy to fall out cliffs and strings, and if you do, you have to backtrack all the way back up to the location of the strings to get back up those higher ledges that are only accessible via strings because they decided not to include a simple jump function for smaller ledges?
Now the part that actually ruined Haven for me was the combat. For first half of the game, the combat was inoffensive. Nothing special, but it wasn't so blatantly bad as to aggravate me. Around the end stretch of the game however, the combat's flaws start really exposing themselves. Firstly, you can't manually target enemies; it's all auto-aim. During the early game, this isn't an issue since the enemies will melt quickly enough, but near the end, when you have to deal with multiple enemies that can block certain types of attacks (or are only vulnerable after their attacks, requiring timing), autoaim will invalidate so many of your attacks. Also, near the end of the game, there are quite a few enemies that focus on healing themselves/others or summoning infinite other enemies for you to deal with. Sure would be nice to single those enemies out so I don't have to deal with their effects but nope, auto-aim makes sure I deal with the cronies first.
Combat essentially devolves into a battle of attrition; you have to kill the enemy before it kills you. This happens because:
1. There is no way to prevent damage altogether via dodging and most fights (even many fights where you start with an advantage) will last long enough to where you have to take damage regardless. You can only mitigate damage, and mitigation of damage usually takes away from offense that could be used to finish the fight faster.
2. You can't manually aim as mentioned above, so enemies that infinitely spawn other enemies or heal turn fights into absolute slogs.
Now, this actually wouldn't have been such a big deal if healing were easier. But the best healing items (food and dedicated medicine) can't be used in the field or in battle. Nope, you can only use heal capsules that heal 80 HP in the field and in battle. So as a result, since almost every successful battle will require you to take some form of damage, you will need to heal. A lot. And since the most efficient way of healing is via campsites and going back to the nest, you will be backtracking and/or using up tons of food (for fast travel) to make this happen. A lot. Or you could just try and use the 80 HP capsules, but those have a max held cap of 5 and also require rust that could be used for repairs and offensive capsules, not to mention you can only build those at the Nest, so you will be wasting resources and backtracking anyways. A lot. Oh, and did I mention that every section in the overworld has its own loading zone? You'll often have to go back several zones just to get to a camping site or a fast travel site, so get used to seeing that loading screen. A lot.
Other things I want to nitpick that really annoyed me:
1. You can easily exploit the XP/leveling/relationship system for boosts by eating something, going to sleep, and then eating something as soon as you wake up at the Nest to level up really quickly. So in my case, I was maxed out 2/3rds of the way into the game. Eating food and viewing events gives way, way, more XP than any amount of combat in the same span of time. And once you cap out your level, you obviously don't gain any more XP, so there's even less incentive to engage in combat; the only incentives you get are Rust (which are very easy to obtain in the overworld) and making sure the aggressive enemy isn't present on the overworld. Except...
2. You're often encouraged to use your field burst to knock down enemies in range, and this stops them from aggroing on you and engaging you in combat. The only problem is, this stops them from engaging you in combat altogether; you can't walk up to the knocked up enemy and start the battle with an advantage, like how every other RPG does it. So you either have to move on and deal with the enemy again when traversing that part of the overworld, or you have to wait for the enemy to get up and then approach it from behind to gain an advantage state just so you can wipe it from the map. How did the game developers mess this up?
3. Oh yeah, did I mention you can't run away from battles? So not only is there very little incentive to engage in combat (since it uses up precious resources that require backtracking to replenish, you gain little XP anyways and even that is invalidated once you hit max level, and you only gain Rust for most general fights), you can't even run away from fights if you accidentally get involved. You might be here for a while.
4. Some of the fights include fighting against robots that can bind one of your guys so they can't do anything, and then you have to spend your time with your other guy unbinding your friend and taking more damage. This is especially annoying because the robots can only be permanently disabled when you have a duo overload... which can get suddenly interrupted by asshole AI that choose to bind one of your guys, and then the robot gets up and proceeds to heal. Oh, and during one of the fights, the robots have attacks that can knock one of your guys out of the screen, so you have to waste time waiting for your guy to return to the screen while your combo attack/disable was interrupted. Yeah, it's not a good time.
5. This could have just been a bug with the specific version I played, but there were a ton of instances where after my action was fully loaded from holding down the button, the action would fail to materialize. So not only did I fail the action, I wasted time trying to materialize the action. It speaks volumes that somehow the bug wasn't even the part that annoyed me the most.
A lot of people have written about how the dialogue was extremely stilted and strange, but honestly, I thought most of it was fine. Not incredible, moving dialogue like I've encountered in other games, but for the most part, it held up just fine. I especially resonated with some of the daily life interactions and events I got at the Nest as part of the experience and bonding gain. Don't get me wrong, I can see why people could be turned off by the dialogue since a ton of the dialogue focuses on their love for one another and tends to touch upon very little else found in relationships, but the dialogue was definitely not the weakest part of the game. The narrative was just okay though, I didn't experience much of an emotional reaction from the ending or from most of the characters' struggles.
At least the game is aesthetically pleasing and has a pleasant soundtrack from Danger. The main characters are fine too, I didn't really mind them much. Unfortunately, everything else is so much worse than Furi, especially the combat. I really hope The Game Bakers take the feedback from Haven seriously, because I could definitely see the potential from the game's ideas. But the execution was extremely sloppy and in fact very anti-fun, and at times I felt that there was a significant lack of focus from what they were trying to create. All in all, one of the most disappointing experiences I've had after one of the most pleasantly surprising experiences I've had.
I wasn't a huge fan of the game at the beginning but honestly, once I got more perks and weapons, it was a lot of fun just sneaking around and taking out baddies with throwing knifes and silenced pistol shots. Some of the bosses and enemy swarm with really beefy mobs (mainly the juggernauts) were very unfun to fight though. Still a good time if you're looking for a solid modern 1st person shooter where you can go guns blazing or be Mr Stealth.
2001
Only complaint is that the combat at the very beginning can be a bit obnoxious, especially with enemies constantly smacking you down while they run away with Yorda to the other side of the room. Otherwise, it's a beautiful and magical experience and neither too long or too hard. Definitely a must play, and I can see how it inspired so many other amazing titles to come.
2019
This review contains spoilers
I have a few minor gripes with this game here and there (for example, why can't I make time go by faster in my ship? Why does it have to be at a campfire? Why didn't I get the option to instantly restart the time loop via my pause menu until I talked to Gabbro a second time, with no indication I should do so for this important QOL feature?), and as a result have marked it down very slightly on my personal scale, but what I can say, is that this game is an extremely special game that does what it specializes in extremely well, with virtually no other games even coming close. Think of it as a metroidvania but the only "powerup" you'll need is knowledge to solve future physics and time based "puzzles." It's a pure exploration game that really encourages you to figure out solutions with your own will and knowledge, and as a result, very few (if any) games can actually match up to the satisfaction you get from progressing further into the game. Hopefully this gets marked down as a staple of the 2010s, for as much positive press as this game got, it really does deserve to be remembered as a hallmark of video game design and one of the best video games of all time.
Pretty chill pinball metroidvania adventure game with cutesy designs. Only major complaint is that 100%ing the game feels pretty tedious, having to grind specific shots to activate all the scarabs and certain slug explosion shots for some of the Wickerlings (because some of the shots are very imprecise). Also, the fast travel could be improved a bit, seeing as a lot of the underground or low-lying land locations can take a while to backtrack to. Otherwise, I really enjoyed my time playing some mean pinball with island music.