CI shoving Deck 13 (the only developer so far who has understood how to actually make a soulslike) off to create a generic action-RPG and handing this over to some new studio is one of the most baffling decisions possible.

This has some interesting ideas, at least, which puts it above copy-pasted "I saw a thing from Bloodborne and I clapped" slop like Lies of Peepee Poopoo, but the actual gameplay is worse. The dual worlds gimmick is cool, but tedious in practice (as it almost always is), and that's true of many of its innovations. The ability to place your own "bonfires" with limited resources is interesting, but often feels mandatory as otherwise there are very long stretches with no rest points. Fromsoft eventually figured out that boss runs are annoying as hell, and fixed that in Elden Ring, but they're in full effect here.

Bosses are fairly underwhelming, too. Most of the challenge here actually comes from the huge amounts of enemies ganking you while others fire ranged attacks at your dumb ass. Bosses are relatively slow, with attacks that are easy to parry. Speaking of, what the hell's up with this whole "blocking causes chip damage that's recovered by damaging the enemy" thing? It was in Lies of Penis too, which is a strange coincidence.

By the way, add this to the pile of console games that look terrible due to temporal anti-aliasing. I swear to christ, whoever invented this awful shit that turns every game into a blurry, smeary mess is going in the Contraption when I'm in power. Performance was adequate, about the same as Elden Ring was on PS5.

Anyway, one of the default classes is a "warwolf" which gives this an extra half star.

Please come back, Deck 13. We desperately need a Surge 3.

4/10

Guard over there! Look, a guard! Guard over there! Guard! Look, a Guard! Piece of shit drill! Guard over there! Guard! Guard over there! Guard over there! Gaurd! Look, a guard! It's a civ! Guard over there!

I have a tendency to buy new releases, whether at launch or after months of carefully monitoring prices for a good deal, but Payday 3 was the rare "eh, I'm gonna get a month of Game Pass" game. Not like you can do crimes with bots, this is online only, and when the servers inevitably shut down it's game over for everybody. Ah, the future of ownership.

Thankfully, I wasn't stuck partnering up with a bunch of random weirdos (for the most part.) The majority of my time in Payday 3 was spent panic spraying a full clip into crowds of civilians doing heists with my good friend Larry Davis, and one session with Appreciations and TransWitchSammy. I think your mileage with these kinds of games is dependent in no small part to who you play it with, and I had good company throughout.

The game itself is fine but, as of this writing, also feels stuck in the same state a lot of online-only multiplayer games are near launch. It doesn't feel robust, having only eight missions which you can burn through pretty quickly. So quickly that you'll likely tire of Payday 3 well before working your way through the game's lengthy weapon and skill trees. Though there are multiple ways to approach each mission, they are not deep enough to keep the game engaging for any reasonable person to earn a bunch of high level unlocks. Personally, I made it to about level 25 before I fell off.

The cost of unlockables and the amount of money you earn playing missions also feels wildly unbalanced, though it's in the player's favor. Unless you're constantly shooting civilians and intentionally botching missions, you'll earn so much cash that you can freely buy every gun and mod the second they become available. It will be a matter of personal preference, but I do wish Payday 3 made me consider what I could afford and what was best for my build, but as it is, you have no reason to not buy everything. It's liberating, but also makes progression feel a bit thoughtless.

The missions themselves are fun, even if they aren't fun enough to play more than three or four times apiece. There's nothing as crazy as the meth lab from Payday 2 but they all feel distinct enough. Some common tasks like standing in circles to boost wireless signals do feel a bit arbitrary and incongruous with your primary objectives, but I still had a very good time overall. I just wish there was more.

As with any live service game, all of this could change. No doubt Starbreeze intends to add more missions, more guns, more operators... It's just a matter of when, how far they're willing to go, and what the life of the game will end up being.
In a way, I feel weird passing judgement on something so amorphous, especially at such an early stage, but Deep Silver is charging money for this right now. It's not free-to-play, the closest you'll get to that through any legitimate means is if you managed to stack a bunch of one-dollar subscriptions to Game Pass, and even then, it's not like you really own it. This is a long walk to say that while I love pointing directly at a guard's face with the homies while whispering "Guard! Look, it's a guard!" I'm not sure it's good enough to justify its current price tag, but also maybe it will be a year down the line. Who knows!

Piece of shit drill. Fuckaroonie.

It's kinda hard to compose my feeling of this game in a rating. On one hand I think the game itself and over all package is pretty great and well worth it for any visual novel fan. On the other hand I wasn't a big fan of the first game and only really liked the second game. They are pretty much one straight story though spaced through two games. I felt the first half was a bit of a drag and on the lower side of a ranking of Ace Attorney games while the second half would be a bit higher. There are some definite pay offs and some great characters with a intriguing story though. The music is still a highlight for sure too. In the end I prefer the other ace attorney games much more but what we have here is still good and worthy of your time if you wanna try something a bit different in terms of style.

Platinum #133

A well-written, grounded fantasy war story that seems very much inspired by the works of Yasumi Matsuno, of Ogre series and FF Tactics fame. Perhaps unlike Matsuno's work, the impacts of players' decisions as the young Serenoa Wolffort are much more pronounced and immediate, and subtlety is all but kicked to the curb in favor of highlighting the difficult decisions a lord must make during times of conflict.

There's a ton of replayability and a cast of characters that had me hissing and yelling at my screen (mostly in a good way), and the core conceit of decision making in the game -- a mechanic called conviction that influences all sorts of options available to players -- had me constantly posturing with my war council at key points trying to convince them that I had the right of things. It's a very involved kind of experience if you let it be so, and made all the better for it.

You can take or leave the visual style of the game, and the EN voiceovers may take a bit of time to really hit a stride (it definitely felt less awkward as the game went on), but other aspects like the script and the incredible OST do a lot to elevate the game as a whole. I'm still going to turn around and do more in this before I put it down for the time being, including the game's "true ending", but it's already such a confident recommend to people who are into tactical games or even just people who like fantasy drama that I don't think I'd have to change this review around a whole lot once I wrap up for good.

The worst thing about Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is that it's trying to retain the "soul" and humor of Banjo-Kazooie, while clearly being an homage and iteration of the Donkey Kong Country series. Not to say that Donkey Kong wasn't funny at the SNES games, but the humor was in small gestures instead of being one of the main elements like it is in Banjo.

Everything that characterizes the characters in Donkey Kong is before and after a level (with the exception of the waiting animation that happens if you don't move the gamepad). While you're in the game designer's challenge, he wants you to fall in love with the music and enjoy the obstacles he made with so much care. Yooka-Laylee's music is completely forgettable, to not say that is altright BAD, and the whole aesthetic is horrible, from the characters to the collectables. However, the strength of this game comes precisely when it is being an honest platformer.

Well, the truth is, the game is kind of awesome. In my first two hours of Yooka-Laylee 2 (I'll call it that for short) I was finding it to be a completely normal game. It didn't arouse any good feelings in me, but none VERY negative either. But things started to get to me around 3 or 4 hours of gameplay, which is when I had gotten used to the gameplay. I mean, before I played Yooka-Laylee 2 (and the only reason I played it) I did a marathon with my friend Aiden (love you bro) playing all FIVE Donkey Kong Country to the end. And when you come off the adrenaline of having played two insanely good games that complement what the other games in the franchise did, and update the design philosophy for a new generation, it's hard not to feel that literally every other 2D platformer outside of these are weak.

What I mean by that is: the bar was set obscenely high, and I had to lower my expectations. Once I went into the game enjoying what he was offering me instead of asking for things he wasn't going to do, everything got much better. RetroStudio's Donkey Kong games are heavy and accurate. Each movement needs to be calculated to the millimeter, you need to feel and absorb the monkeys' gameplay and have a good enough connection to become an extension of your own body. Yooka-Laylee 2 is the opposite. In fact, its logic operates in a similar way to 2D Mario games. Take your skill set, and react instinctively, improvising whatever comes along (obviously within the limits imposed by the level. You don't have freedom, but that's the magic of Donkey Kong games). When I understood that, the game was a delight to play, I went through all the stages the way I most want to play Donkey Kong: using dash to run through the entire thing without looking back.

Best of all, Yooka-Laylee 2 has some great ideas. For instance: I love the hub world and how collectibles are implemented in your progression. The premise of the game is: the villain of the game has a lair... the so-called -IMPOSSIBLE LAIR-, that you can face at any time. The big issue is that the Impossible Lair is... almost impossible, as the name implies. So to have a better chance of winning, you need to go around the world solving puzzles, unlocking stages to play them in order to rescue a bee. When you rescue a bee, it becomes part of your shield in the Impossible Lair, this means that the amount of hits you can take increases the more stages you finish, because at the end of every stage there is, obviously, a bee.

The game has 48 bees and 20 levels. 8 of the 48 bees are "secret" and can be found in the hub world. But if it's one bee per level, how come there are 40? Simple: every level has two versions. Just as Symphony of the Night's castle has its inverted version, Yooka-Laylee 2's levels have a sister version that changes, most of the time, drastically the gameplay. It's hard to explain to anyone who has never played or seen a gameplay, so I won't go into the game's mechanics too deeply, but basically the overworld is full of interactions and allows you to play with the properties of the scenario. You might fill the surroundings of a level with water, and find that the "inverted" version of it is an aquatic level. Or, on a stage that is located near the furnace, you can place smoke on top of the stage, revealing that its "inverted" version is the same stage but with clouds that add another layer of platforming.

Yooka-Laylee doesn't have good music or decent sound design, so the setting work is all done through these interactions. Turn on the power of a level to make it energized, press a lever that lift the level to play a SCARY vertical version, make the level swing, to play a version where your main means of locomotion is ropes. These ideas are very good and cohesive with what the game does. It got to the point where I was genuinely looking forward to seeing what the next gimmick they were going to come up with, and that feeling is very DKC-like.

Talking about the Impossible Lair itself, it's probably the hardest video game level I've ever played in my life. Even with 47 bees, I sweat to pass. There are 4 bossfights (although one is almost a tutorial) and insanely difficult platforming sessions on a kaizo level, that require you to know all the game mechanics. As I said earlier, you can do Impossible Lair from the start, but the game is smart enough to wire all of the game's systems together so that you NEED to play all (or almost all) of the levels. Did you skip any? less bees, less coins to open more levels and less knowledge. Perhaps you skipped the level that presents the platforms that fall and come back every 3 seconds, and you will miss this mechanic.

This review doesn't exactly have a point, but what I'm getting at with all this is that, despite having a bad reputation, being ugly, having bad music, having bad characters, and a bunch more flaws: Yooka-Laylee 2 is non ironically one of the most inventive 2D platformers I've ever played, and overall I enjoyed it more than Donkey Kong Country 1 and 3 (less than 2, Returns and Tropical Freeze). I don't know if it's for everyone, because the game is HUGE, the levels are big, the difficulty scales and that requires dedication. But if you're a person who has already dedicated hours to the DKC games, it's worth a try.

100% complete, will all bees and tonics completed, except for beating the "Impossible Lair" final stage. After their modern take on the 3D platformer with the first Yooka-Laylee, Playtonic's second game, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair now takes on the 2D platform genre, very much attempting to recreate the magic of the Donkey Kong Country games... and pleasingly, the game does so in fine fashion. Well-designed, interestingly themed levels present a decent challenge, made all the more interesting and enticing to explore by often well-hidden collectibles. Particular highlights of the game are its superb soundtrack (featuring several entries from the legendary David Wise and Grant Kirkhope), the ability to attempt each level in two alternate forms (each with their own unique challenges and collectibles) and, especially, a fantastically well-built overworld to explore.

One significant negative point bears mentioning, which comes from the final level - the eponymous "Impossible Lair" - a half-hour long, checkpoint-free mammoth. As you progress through the main game, you'll build up the ability to take up to 48 hits during each attempt, but even taking this into account, the final level is a very steep increase in difficulty, sufficient that many people won't be able to beat the game, leaving a bit of a sour taste right at the end. Up until this point, though, the game is excellent and one that I'd highly recommend.

Final Fantasy is a series that I personally hold in extremely high regard. I spent the past few years playing through every game in the main series, along with a huge chunk of the side games, so I was coming into XVI with lofty expectations. Initially, I found the game to be a little bit of a drag, but with each passing hour the game was more and more endearing. The characters are likable and well-written, the gameplay has such depth beyond the first few hours of the game, and the overarching story (while flawed) kept me intrigued & invested throughout. There are valid criticisms to be made about this game, such as the sidequests being boring and the lack of any real RPG mechanics, but it's a game that has such heart that it was impossible for me to dislike it. It's clear that the XIV writing team has upped the ante because this game has some of the best writing in the series along with the voice acting chops to back up the script. It also has some of the highest highs of the entire franchise, with some absolutely bombastic fights and emotional moments. The future of the Final Fantasy series is extremely bright with Yoshi-P on board.

I appreciate that Playtonic made a thoughtful and intelligent effort to modify the structure and progression of the 2D platformer formula. What they did was clever, and it worked perfectly well for this game. That said, throughout my playthrough, I found myself wanting traditional boss battles, hidden levels, gradual difficulty increases and aesthetic variety. I liked that they took chances and tried something creative, but the changes didn't necessarily improve the platformer template.

I don't think I've ever had a more lackadaisical approach to playing a game. I would meander around the overworld trying to muster the enthusiasm to enter another chapter to the point that I thought I probably should have played Yooka-Laylee (1) instead (I skipped it because this has a much better reputation and I think of myself as someone who prefers 2D platformers to 3D, but that's probably just because I have played so few of the latter). Simultaneously, however, I also thought I can see myself getting all the coins, badges, etc., because it's easy and fun enough. Then I got sucked into the Impossible Lair, got frustrated and wanted the experience to end as quickly as possible (not seeing the achievements through).

I have read or heard multiple comparisons of this game to Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. I understand why that comparison is made, even if I think it's a little generous. I also thought of Tropical Freeze, particularly the K levels, when attempting the Lair. In DKC, I would make a little progress, die, die some more, figure it out, make a little progress, die, memorize a series of button presses, make some progress, die, die, figure it out, die, then, eventually after building on each previous playthrough, breezing though earlier challenges, finish. It was the same in Yooka-Laylee, but you are able to measure your progress in the size of your remaining beettalion, so it was very easy to figure out if you were on track to improve or, alternatively, do well then get caught in a single fuck-up that snowballs into a bee-massacre.

Because check-points were so spread out (and started with a boss fight), in runs where I tried to conserve bees, I found myself restarting more often than dying. Surely the developers foresaw players hemorrhaging 8 bees in the water section, getting below 25 total and wanting to restart, so I'm genuinely befuddled as to why there wasn't an option to do so in the pause menu (instead of having to exit the level). A minor gripe in a vacuum, sure, but when you do it 30 times, it gets annoying. Maybe it's a me-sucking problem, and they didn't build the game for bad--but obsessive--players patient enough to get lucky.

Otherwise, the chapter level design is frequently great. It's the kind of easy that rewards your experience and makes you feel clever, while offering an occasional challenge (nothing to prepare you for the endgame though). I typically roll credits on a platformer before going for collectibles, but because I had so much fun exploring, I finished half of the 40 levels with all five coins on the first run (and all but about 35 total); it meant getting told by the obnoxious check mates I suck and should skip a level, a lot. Anyway, fun game, and I'm now much more eager to play its predecessor.

- Took 20:25 to beat eventually beat Capital B on my 43rd attempt (23rd with all 48 bees); 169 coins, 41 tonics. Very good: ★★★☆☆

This game overall is a decent game, It has it's flaws but I'd give it a 7/10. It starts off quite strongly but then level design gets a little boring, Who wants to do an underwater level followed by a swampy level? Not me. The amount of collectibles is nice, other than when they put Quills in places you spend hours checking every corner of the map. Pagies are locked behind little challenges which I really enjoyed. The bosses are great, pretty hard to be honest and each one is pretty unique. Nice platforming mechanics, Love the abilities too. Wish there was voice acting in this game, I'm not a big fan of them just mumbling with subtitles. Enjoyed 100%ing. Onto the Impossible Lair :)

Platinum trophy earned. This is the first game - in fact, the first project of any kind - that I kickstarted and, while certainly it has its fair share of flaws, I enjoyed my time with the game. It pretty much delivers exactly what was promised in being a Banjo-styled 'collectathon'; for the most part, it plays and controls well, with some imaginative worlds and well-designed characters. I'll join those who could have done without the minigames (they'd be fine if they were somewhat more forgiving) and certain other challenges were overly frustrating, but they don't mar the overall experience to that great an effect. Hopefully we'll see a sequel from Playtonic that addresses the flaws that are present here - and either way I look forward to seeing what will come from the studio in future! Oh yes, and special praise should go to Grant Kirkhope and, especially, David Wise for the excellent soundtrack here!

I just beat the Bad Guy for the first time and I’m meant to immediately start over on the newly unlocked difficulty but I uhhhh… really don’t feel like doing that.

I appreciate that the levels are randomly generated but they aren’t quite different enough that I want to do them again so soon, especially since the only randomization is in the map layout. There are like 5 enemies in the entire game (excluding bosses/mini bosses, which also repeat) and each map has the same enemies every time. There’s just not enough variety to keep it from being boring after a while. I made it through one playthrough but more than one doesn't interest me at all. Maybe playing with friends would make it better. I only have a couple of those and I don’t want to risk losing them so I’ll never know.

One thing I really liked is that instead of picking a class and being locked into certain skills, the skills are drops that you find and equip. You start the game as a blank slate and are limited only to whatever drops. I think that’s a really cool way to do it and drops could be exciting but even the idea of finding new skills or even better versions of my favorite skills isn’t exciting enough to play more.

It's better than Dungeons, but that's not exactly saying much. I think the story has a nice charm to it but the combat is a bit tedious it's basically press B to win. I do like the premise of the overworld coming together to fight back the Nether and the evil piglins. Another big issue I have is the god awful or lack of building options. It's Minecraft and you cannot really build anything. The soliders are horrendous to control at times but I do like how each one of the mobs in incorporated. I do like and enjoy playing through these Minecraft spinoffs but I think they need to up their game a little when it comes to the gameplay especially, but that's not to say this game is bad because more than anything it can just be a little frustrating at times. Also if you don't have someone to play it with, don't bother.