Linelith is a really creative and short puzzle game, the only mechanics are walking around and drawing lines on tiles on the screen, but even in its very short run time it shows a remarkable number of different ways these mechanics can be applied. It's hard to go into much detail on those without spoiling the game, but it's an easy recommendation at $3 and taking around an hour to 100% complete it. I do kind of wish that there was a bit more here, I feel like there could have been additional puzzles with certain mechanics before I got tired of them, but on the other hand it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome and it's a nice change of pace from my pile of uncompleted puzzle games that got too hard at some point to have one that I can complete in a single sitting.

This is a perfectly fine game. The first person platforming is simple but fun enough, it introduces all of the mechanics fairly quickly and I guess they're used decently, though it never gets very challenging. The story is just... there. It didn't evoke much emotion or interest, but wasn't actively bad. It's held back some by the voice acting and character animations feeling very stiff. I can admire going for what they did on a lower budget, many games just wouldn't show you the characters directly or communicate only through text as a way around this. I dunno, this is okay but also isn't very well done here. The highlight of the game is definitely the environmental design and art. The areas were really nice looking, pretty diverse for a short game, and fun to move through. It's hard to think of who I'd recommend this to, because it doesn't really excel at much, but if it seems interesting to you it's not bad and it's fairly short to play through.

This game is just really fucking cool. Probably my favorite looking game on psx, and it's got some really cool ideas for making a 3D shmup with a unique control scheme. Some bullshit moments with one hit kills and damage reflection, and if I didn't use save states to bypass the continue system it would have taken me much longer to figure out some of the bosses, but most of them were pretty fun once you understand the mechanics. Could see this being something that gets better with repeat playthroughs, but for the first time it was still very good.

One of the better retro action platformers I've played. Controls are really tight, and enemy and level design is very solid. Boss fights are pretty difficult, which I don't really mind in a vacuum, but the continue system making you restart the level got really annoying so I'd often end up savestating before the boss after getting through the level a couple times. I like Richter's moveset overall but I wish his mobility was a bit better. The backflip is cool but feels a little less useful than it should be, and I wish he had the slide he has in SOTN. I think Maria might solve this issue but I missed the unlock for her, will have to replay as her at some point. Dracula was a bit anticlimactic as the final boss, much easier than some of the earlier fights. Overall a very good time though, the only pre-SOTN Castlevania I've been able to get into enough to finish.

Liked the style a surprising amount, especially the saturday morning cartoon styled cutscenes. The levels design is mostly pretty nice and I liked the way the hubs for each world were a level themselves and enjoyed the quick pace of the mostly short levels. The main problem here is the controls, and they're just awful. Really floaty jumps and maybe the worst double jump ever made, you slide off the edges of platforms all the time, and there's about a dozen different actions tied to the circle button, which you basically have to mash whenever you're near an interactable object to make sure it doesn't just ignore your input and kill you, but this also sometimes makes you snap to the wrong thing. This is all exacerbated by dying in one hit, and an obnoxious lives system. Still had enough fun to finish it, and it's a pretty quick game, but there's a lot here that I hope the sequels fix.

A moderate step up in most areas from Drake's Fortune, the second entry in the Uncharted Series leans into what worked the first time around and tries to go bigger and better. There's definitely more of a focus on action set pieces to change up the gameplay this time around, and they work fairly well. The controls for those can be a bit weird at times and it's immersion breaking when you do die during them, but it's better than the slog of pure combat the first game turned into by the end. Speaking of the combat, it's notably improved. The scenarios you're put in are more varied and feel more like real environments rather than zones designed as a cover shooter first and a visual location second. The gunplay and cover systems are still just passable, but there's a bit more variety in weapons and enemies which helps, even if it was starting to get a bit old again by the end. The last major component of the gameplay is the climbing and puzzle segments, and these feel the least changed going into the sequel, though that's still fine as it was what I wanted more of the most after finishing the first.

The story here is fine, and I won't critique it too hard because it's obviously supposed to feel like a campy action movie, but the new characters and especially the new villain really didn't do much for me. I did like how the game starts with jumping around in the timeline, showing how you got to the intro of the game. It was simple but effective, kind of a shame it was dropped for the second half. That style aided the feeling of variety that comes from this game having a lot more locations than Drake's Fortune, and while they are well done and the variety is welcome, there's something about the location and scale of the first game that I slightly preferred there and was missing a little bit. You're paired up with another character during gameplay much more often this time around, where the first game had you constantly splitting up. This doesn't do much for gameplay besides occasionally having to boost them up to a ledge or hold a door, but it adds a lot more dialogue between Nate and the supporting cast. This is mostly a welcome addition, but I have to complain a little bit that Nate comes across like a real psychopath here. There was the occasional thing in the first game that was a bit awkward, but in Among Thieves he's constantly making jokes and comments with a complete lack of social awareness, sometimes the other characters will react negatively to it and sometimes they act like nothing's wrong. I don't really get the decision to lean into that part of his character, and I guess it's not a big deal but it was just a bit annoying. I'll also say that the "twist" here, if you can even call it one, pales in comparison to what they did before.

Overall Among Thieves was a good time, a step up from Drake's Fortune in most aspects, and while I did like the first game I can see much more with this one how they turned it into a series without it getting old fast. I'm looking forward to continuing it.

A fun 2.5D platformer with a lot of cool ideas and a unique aesthetic, but it suffers a bit in some areas compared to its contemporaries. Klonoa's moveset is really good for how simple it is, and the game makes a lot of use of all aspects of it. The controls feel good, and everything related to the 3D aspects of it works surprisingly well. The levels are a bit too easy for a bit too much of the game I think, but they do definitely ramp up really nicely towards the end. Boss fights are definitely the highlight, they're all very unique and fun. Level design is enjoyable overall with levels having pretty distinct identities, my main complaint with it is that if you're looking for collectibles it's often hard to tell what the main path is and what's a quick side path you should do now. This wouldn't be a huge issue if not for my biggest problem with the game, that it has no level select (until after completing the game, which feels even worse to me because they went to the effort of making one but just don't let you use it). The collectibles in this would be a great way to add challenge to what is otherwise mostly a very easy platformer until the last few stages, but it really killed my interest in going out of my way for them that if you miss any you're just screwed out of getting them until after completing the game. I really don't get that decision at all. It also has a relatively large emphasis on story, which I didn't really like. It gets a bit interesting at the very end, but mostly didn't feel like it was worth having dialogue when similar games like Donkey Kong Country and Yoshi's Island get by perfectly fine without. To end on a more positive note, the style and vibes of this are really pleasant and the positives do outweigh the negatives here overall, I had a good time with it.

A breath of fresh air in an era where deathmatch shooters feel all but dead. Splitgate is a very simple pitch of "Halo + Portal", and it delivers on that concept well. For me at least it was a bit of a slow start. I played this a year or two back in beta and it didn't stick with me. Now it's released? Maybe? Still sort of feels like a beta in some ways but that's getting into semantics, it's very playable currently and is being actively developed.

I didn't have a moment where I clicked with this game, and wasn't in love with it from the start. If you go in expecting Halo, and the game seems to really want you to feel that way, everything feels slightly off. The weapons handle just a bit differently, time to kill is faster, getting around the maps feels weird until you get used to using portals properly. None of this is bad though, and is more just a learning curve to get past. I kept playing just because it was easy to pick up for a short session, and now that I've been playing daily for a few weeks I really like it.

The map selection is one of my only real complaints, it's not terribly small but it could definitely use more variety, and some of the maps currently aren't great. The most successful ones are the ones basically ripped from Halo with minor adjustments, honestly though I just want more of those. As unoriginal as they are, they're just the most fun. This is a problem I believe will get better with time at least.

This is a really fun game overall right now, but I feel like its longevity depends a lot on the updates it gets down the road, it seems on a good path though. I'll likely keep playing this over any of the big AAA shooters this year. I don't think I've been this into a free-to-play shooter since Blacklight Retribution, hopefully it has a better future than that did.

If you check out the game because of this use my referral code and we both get cool stuff :)
KGBESY

Re:Fresh is a short and simple 3D platformer in the vein of A Short Hike, and wow does it really just want to take the ideas from that game without understanding what made them work. I'll say at the top that despite my complaints I still had an okay time with this, it's not truly bad and it's only around an hour to do everything in the game so it's not a big waste of time, but I wanted to talk about why it's disappointing.

You play as a robot after a storm hits a small island town and you're tasked with finding materials to help the NPCs rebuild. The movement is pretty basic with a jump and later a dash, and solar cells that act like A Short Hike's feathers in giving you extra charges for either of these as you collect them. It doesn't feel particularly great though, just passable for the basic unchallenging platforming here. The exploration is also pretty limited, and I feel like the structure of the world really hurts the game. The areas aren't that big, and even then they're split up in a very distinct way, with bridges between small islands that you unlock at different points connecting to the main hub area. There's only 3 of these, even being generous and counting the small starting area. I think even if they were combined together it would be kind of disappointing in size and density, but split up and made so that you have to approach them in a pretty linear order removes a lot of the feeling of exploring a detailed world. The worlds in games like A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game aren't huge by any means, but they're dense and feel made with care in a way that exploring them is a joy, but I can't say anything of the sort here.

Rather than the approach of slowly encountering NPCs as you explore, most of them are dumped on you all at once near the beginning of the game when you walk into the main town. This certainly doesn't help with any of them being memorable, but the simple dialogue also didn't really work for me and I didn't find any of it charming like the other games I've seen or played in this style. The overall story isn't really noteworthy either. It's definitely trying to be charming and cute, but I don't feel like it really hits those goals.

The game also just feels unpolished overall. The menus were weirdly buggy for me while using a controller. The dialogue interface is odd and I didn't even realize there were dialogue choices when I made the first ones because of how it's presented. There's a system for customizing your character but it's extremely limited, and I'm fairly sure there's not enough of the collectible currency in the game to even unlock all of the options available which seems odd. The game also runs shockingly bad for how simple it looks. I was planning to play it on my steam deck, but quickly realized that wasn't going to be a good time after booting it up, but even on my pretty beefy desktop it didn't run great. There were a lot of other small things that were offputting but I've already spent too long complaining about this.

Overall, despite the complaints it was okay, it's a very short game and if you really want more of these and feel like you're out of other options you might get some enjoyment out of it. I mainly wanted to review it to talk about how it completely misses what makes A Short Hike great while being a very similar game.

A very Okay follow up to Supraland, Six Inches Under doesn't do enough new to change your mind about the formula of these games but is a quick and comfy extension of the ideas from the original. Some aspects were streamlined, and the game overall is a good bit shorter, but I feel like something was lost along the way in terms of scale. That does seem to help with reducing backtracking, but I hope for the "full" sequel they go back to something closer to the first game, but with some of the improvements here. One of the main mechanical improvements is the combat, which still isn't anything special but is much less painful. The way in which that was streamlined though, combined with the shorter length, makes the progression feel like it hardly matters outside of key items. I definitely did less exploring and side quests here, and don't really regret that. The puzzles are still the highlight, and for the most part they're good here, but there's still the occasional time where you hit a wall and it really feels hard to figure out what was intended. The items are used for puzzles in clever ways, but it didn't feel like any of the new items were huge cool surprises that changed how I viewed the game world like in the first title. It feels like there's more of a story focus here too, at least compared to what I remember, but it's all very surface level commentary on social inequality, and most of the jokes didn't really land for me. Despite the small complaints, it was a fun time and I ran through the roughly 6 hour main story in 2 afternoons. I'm definitely down for this developer to keep making and refining these games, I'd try more of them.

Loved the style, the story was cheesy but fun (the comic book presentation was great), gameplay felt okay with the exception of the adaptive difficulty being dumb. The health system is really bad and the trial and error isn't fun even though I sometimes like that style of combat. The combination of feeling like you need to perfect clear a room to have good health for your next save rather than just trying to complete it normally, and having to wait through the lengthy death animation between tries for the adaptive difficulty to work at all make it tedious. I could see the flow here being much more like a Hotline Miami, for example, and the difficulty being much more fun in that case. Can definitely see the good ideas for the start of a series here but it's a bit rough around the edges now. I've already played 3 a while ago and enjoyed that more, have heard that 2 is the best one so I'm excited to see the improvements there.

It's interesting going back to this to see what does and doesn't hold up well about it. I'm playing it coming off the back of replaying Celeste, which is all around just a much better game, and certainly didn't help the case for Meat Boy. I think the most core problem is that the movement here feels good to go fast when it's working out, but the slipperiness and inconsistency of it becomes very frustrating in harder levels. That combined with the type of difficulty used in the later level design makes for a pretty bad time. I breezed through the first couple of worlds and felt like it was holding up pretty well to my memory, even if it does have a few too many filler levels. The later levels don't feel like they're demanding mastery over the controls and moveset though so much as making you fight against it, and introducing gimmicky mechanics that don't feel fun or consistent. Having to hold jump for just the right amount of frames coming out of a wall slide at a certain speed so you have just the right amount of momentum so that you can make it through a tiny gap between sawblades isn't fun. Now make a dozen jumps that precise on some of the later levels.

It's not just that it's difficult, as I mentioned replaying Celeste recently, that game gets more fun as it gets more difficult, because your moveset in it feels reliable and like you can replicate any movement consistently, and the levels feel designed around it and not against it. That's the part of this game that makes it feel really dated to me. There are older platformers out there that still feel good but it's a certain type of difficulty in design from around this time, mostly popularized by this game, that I just don't have much patience for these days.

For some side notes, the instant respawn and the end of level replay system are really good, and more games should have both of those. I didn't go for many of the collectibles or side content this playthrough, as I did already do all of them back in the day but they also felt like leaning even more into that style of difficulty I dislike. What little story and humor there is also feels very dated.

Overall, I dunno, this seems a little harsh. I did enjoy this when I originally played it and it did help bring pure platformers back into popularity, but now there's so many others you can and should go play before this.

Cool concept, the art style and music are great, but it gets very frustrating very fast. The game is too punishing when you die, removing all of the collectibles you've gotten since the last checkpoint, most of which feel very repetitive and pointless to re-collect. The checkpoint system as a whole feels outdated, and would've been improved using something like Celeste where as soon as you're on safe ground the collectible is saved. The difficulty continues to increase and the main objectives of the levels start to be pretty challenging later in the 2nd world, and that's around where I stopped. I feel like most of my deaths were due to the controls not doing what I was trying to do, when I knew exactly what I had to do to in that spot, which is very frustrating. Unfortunate, as it's a neat game and I really wanted to like it.