Hauntii feels a bit short of its full potential, for me. Which is hard to imagine, since on the surface this is a jaw-dropping game. Clearly, a lot of effort was put into it. One look at the screen ought to tell you that. Gorgeous animated sprite work and visual excellence can take a game far, dynamic soundtracks can uplift it further. What felt missing was everything in between. And at first, I was a bit upset at this because Hauntii is a very creative project that I wanted to love. But the more I played, the more drained I felt, I'd put it down. Wake up the next morning, remember how pretty it was, be excited. Start playing and immediately become tired again.

To explain why though I'd have to introduce the gameplay loop, which consists of a few different things. Hauntii has you play as a recently departed ghost, searching for his lost memories. To find them, one must travel through Eternity collecting Mario Odyssey-esque stars, which can then be taken to shrines and transformed into constellations. Each shows you one memory of your previous life in a darling little animated cutscene, four or five of these together creating a jewel- which is your main objective. Obtaining stars is a means of exercising the true components of the gameplay: possessing objects and bullet hell. Possession is the more fun (and thematic) of the two, with there being a bunch of unique enemies and inanimate things to take control of that change the way you move and interact in the world significantly. The combat is... not so exciting. There are a few problems with it, first one being that you can never actually upgrade the damage/speed at which you fire, only how much you can shoot until you need to reload. And you attack very slowly. It doesnt feel satisfying to do in the way that other shmups succeed at. Secondly, this is a 2.5D game that only lets you attack in 8 directions. But you, and other things, can move in a 3D space. Its so fucking difficult to aim. I cant emphasize how hard it is to line yourself up with anything and hit them successfully.

This is another huge problem with Hauntii: the depth perception is atrocious. Maneuvering around objects, going up stairs, hitting a target, going through race rings- doing anything besides pretty much just moving gave me immense problems. Sometimes I feel like the game forgets that its monochromatic, the color scheme also makes it difficult to parse what youre actually looking at occassionally. There is a segment- a very big story moment- where youre possessing a whale, near the end. To attack you have to go down into the (normally!) white colored sand, and then rise back up and flop down onto your enemy. This is difficult to do normally. But then Hauntii decides to make you attack a moving ship (many, many times per phase) with the screen super zoomed out. Youre also in a black and white vortex, which is swirling, moving (sickeningly) and youre also moving (cant see yourself against the background) and the ship is moving (and attacking you) and everything is small and it sucks it sucks it sucks and the game is just completely unaware that this is in any way challenging cause it makes you do it for 30 minutes straight. If you get hit a few times you have to do it all over.

So, you go through Eternity, fighting a few enemies and solving a few puzzles, and you find yourself amassing a hoarde of stars. Like, a lot of stars. 20 at least. You begin to get tired looking for stars because you simply have way too many of them- and you want to progress the story- but theres no shrine around to deposit the stars in and on your way to one you find MORE stars and you just really have too many of these things. When you finally get to the shrine, you unlock all the memories at once. And then for the rest of the level there is no backstory, no story at all usually- and youre still collecting stars which feel partially useless because you cant use them till the next area unlocks. Games about death tend to make me very upset, see: Spiritfarer, which I could not finish because it made me feel too empty. But with Hauntii, past the first opening segment, the story and your motivations just completely dry up. The game also puts a large emphasis on your angel companion, who works to help you ascend, but past the frontloaded worldbuilding theyre either not there or just float around following you. And I would want to love them, I want to feel wretched when shes taken away but... I dont! Feel! Anything! Because the story is so all over the place! And I dont understand why because it has just a good premise, I should be crying! But I'm not. You dont even get to see why you died.

And I didnt get it, until I got to the final segment of the game. Where you and the angel ascend. And she lifts you up into the sky, and its really, really breathtaking. Then a vocal track begins playing. Thats when it hit me. This is a music video game. This is a game that does best when youre just watching it unfold. The second you actually have to play it, the wonder of it kind of fades away and youre struggling to go up stairs and shoot an enemy that is slightly to the left and up, but its visual prowess and soundtrack really are beautiful things to see. Then the angel lets go of our hand, and our protagonist evaporates. And then the game was over. So I sat there. It was truly very pretty and ethereal. But if I am left with one singular lasting emotion, it's that I simply wish it had been more.

A pretty good indie metroidvania that delivers on story, content and parry-based gameplay with its low asking price. As a parry combat fan, the combat system is fast and fluid with variety found in its arrow type, talisman style and chip (badge/charm) system. Instead of a posture/stamina resource, enemies take internal damage from parries and can be converted to damage with a talisman detonation. My lament is probably not trying out a charged attack or full talisman build. Lastly, I will miss charged parries (not delayed) for that satisfying feedback and dopamine hit. On a difficulty spectrum, this is on the slightly harder side and requires patience and determination to get through.

While I am not an expert on Taoism, it adds an unique aesthetic feel to its world, characters and specially the music. Having the story tackle Taoist religious beliefs vs scientific progress although fresh cannot help but be conflicted and confused about its possible interpretation or message. Not to mention some questionable genocidal or religious philosophies does not help. Also, the main revenge story is a standard affair, so the story is not its strongest point.

What makes this rather more interesting are the characters specially the little sister and brother characters that endear the player to a more emotional and grounded conflict. Specifically, interacting with the little brother character feels joyful and the little sister brings out that unspoken pain and longing of the main character. The bosses too are somewhat sympathetic as well as being wronged or radicalized by their old and new systems. The dream, twin and muscle boss surprisingly got me.

For issues, the load times when dying are somewhat long on a Steam Deck. This is compounded by the boss walks which sometimes require a room or level transition that just hurts the experience. For a parry focused game, a boss checkpoint is something I will keep asking for. The parry timings are a bit strange where the timing is after the swing animation instead of before which is something to get used to or perhaps just me. The gold economy is a bit stingy or tight, so I had to build for gold generation to get my upgrades where not recovering the gold on death can really hurt or feel frustrating. Perhaps the early upgrades are a bit expensive and a little toning down would help.

For more combat specific concerns, the lack of hurt i-frames where multiple successive or lingering attacks can quickly kill the player without much recourse or counterplay. Enemies with ranged attacks or mines can trip the player up unfairly at times. Parry knockback I understand, but hurt knockback is rather far to the point being knocked off a platform is a typical annoyance. The recovery skill feels mandatory because of this, so I wish it was builtin rather than unlockable. Some command grabs too could be further polished as it feels lingering or does not make sense. What makes hitbox issues bearable at least is that the parry gameplay is consistently good.

As a platformer, it is okay but I was not really challenged which is okay as it is not a strong focus. Admittedly, the game does not have a wall kick, enemy step or anything more technical (aside from the reactive air parry.) I will say the environmental hazard's hitboxes such as the spikes could feel better. Perhaps any form of fast horizontal ground mobility like dash jumping or wave dashing would make traversal more interesting as there is a lot of flat space. I will credit the remote control drone to scout areas although that too could get more love and exploration. I think a potential successor could improve upon the platforming and exploration to elevate to even greater heights.

Overall, this is a pretty good indie metroidvania and one consider this one of the games of its year. An easy recommendation.

The Messenger is an interesting take on NES-era game design with cool art and music, but its central “twist” leaves a lot to be desired. What are, at their core, good levels and mechanics are held back by terrible pacing and frustrating design decisions.

6 / 10
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This is a game I wish I could like more than I do. And that’s kinda sad, because when I first started playing it, I thought this could very well enter my top games of this year. When I think about it, it has all the hallmarks of a great game. Its mechanics are certainly very polished, to the point where it’s hard to believe that this was really made by a small Indie studio. The music is very memorable, and the art style(s) look fantastic.

And yet, somehow I found myself increasingly annoyed with this game, the longer I played it. Something just doesn’t feel quite right with it all, and despite some great ideas here, The Messenger’s individual elements somehow add up to less than the sum of its part. The thing is, I even heard from a friend how they found this game very disappointing, which I found strange because it seemed pretty cool to me. But I realised what he meant at the half-way point at the latest.

It definitely starts out very strong. At first, it presents itself as a fairly simple, 8-bit NES-Ninja Gaiden-style, old-school action-platformer. You start the game as a young ninja, who receives a magic scroll that he has to carry up a mountain after his village has been destroyed by demons - simple enough. Some small bits of exposition out of the way, and we’re thrown right into the first level.

Let’s talk about the gameplay then; for what it does in the early levels, it’s more than enough. Combat is snappy and quick. You only have 2 weapons; a sword, and some shuriken you can unlock super early (you could also ignore them for the whole game though). Enemies tend to die in a single hit, with some exceptions that take 2-3 hits to kill. The trade off for this: they respawn literally as soon as the screen rolls past them. Again, absolutely fine for an old-school, linear NES-style platformer that doesn’t really expect you to do much backtracking. There is no dash move, so you have to dodge enemy attacks purely with proper positioning and jumping. This is all very fun. Nothing special, or crazy or hugely innovative, but a nice throwback to some nostalgic 8-bit platformers.

The next few levels are fine as well, and they introduce some of the game’s permanent power ups. The first level also gave you the wall climb ability, but the next levels make more use of progression upgrades. This is, of course, some foreshadowing into the game’s major “twist”. At this point in my playthrough it’s been quite fun, and I blasted through almost half of the early game within 2 hours. I did notice a significant increase in difficulty quite early on, but so far nothing too egregious.

I can’t really say when exactly my experience with this game went from mostly enjoyable to downright laborious, but I think it must’ve been around the Searing Cracks or Glacial Peak levels when I couldn’t stop noticing that “this is a bit frustrating.” It was a pretty gradual progression to that point. I can’t even really say what exactly it was, maybe it’s a mix of a lot of things. The fact that enemy variety is a bit lacking - there are maybe 20 unique enemies throughout the ENTIRE game, and at this point it’s maybe half of that - certainly doesn’t help with the fact that a single mistake can kill you and send you back to the checkpoint. I think my biggest problem are what feel like extremely cheap, trolly ways to kill the player, like: (including but not limited to) instant-kill traps, platforming sections that expect WAY more of you than it should (given your extremely limited air mobility), projectiles or enemies that come out of nowhere when you’re mid air, etc. To make it short: a lot of the game’s “challenges” feel like you don’t have any real way of anticipating whatever comes next. It feels very “trial and error”.

If the game had kept this style of gameplay up until the end, I’d probably still really like it. A great old school platformer with some (appropriately) frustrating sections. A love letter to old school games. But sadly, this isn’t where it ends.

No, this game has a “twist”. It’s not exactly a secret since it was heavily featured in the marketing, but around 30-40% through this game, it suddenly changes art styles from 8-bit to 16-bit (or, NES to SNES), which is diegetically contextualised as “travelling through time”, as well as shift from a level-to-level type progression system into full-blown Metroidvania.

Both of that sounds extremely cool, and like an absolute no-brainer. But sadly, I have almost equally as many issues with both, and I happen to think that the game was pretty good UP UNTIL this point. See, what I did like about The Messenger’s early game is how fun it is to rush through these levels at (relatively) breakneck speed. But the MV approach here slows that pacing down to a crawl. Now you suddenly have to go back to every single level, backtrack through almost all of them - through areas you’ve already been to - just to get to some short spots within those areas where you can now change the time period manually. Again, this sounds really cool in principle, but ultimately it changes very little of actual substance here. The most it’ll do with these time-changing puzzle rooms is to very slightly alter their layouts, and make some paths impassable (or the reverse) in either mode. Very occasionally it’ll even his feels like an insane waste of potential. No new enemies, no extra abilities, no time-exclusive zones, nothing. For what feels like 90% of the game, you’re going to look at the same enemies, areas and bosses, regardless of NES or SNES era. This was by far the biggest disappointment for me with this whole game. Here we have this twist that’s been built up for literally half of the game, AND was used as the main selling point, and it doesn’t do anything interesting with it.

What’s worse is how the switch to MV completely destroys this game’s previously very good pacing. Where the game would throw you from one area to the next and keep this gravy train going, the second half pulls the brakes HARD. Running from one area to the next is fine if you do it ONCE. If you have to do it over and over again, it gets real tedious real fast.

It’s really unfortunate just how inconsistent this whole experience is. Some levels are fun, others are tedious. Some are clever, others are just annoying. Levels feel like there’s no rhyme or reason to their structure, it’s just random platform challenge after platform challenge. What’s worse is that this game seemingly paid no attention to the fact that IF you’re going to make a Metroidvania without readily available fast travel you need to account for it by making the world efficiently traversable on foot. Getting anywhere takes bloody ages, and forces you through areas you’ve already cleared 20 times by this point. Other MVs understand this perfectly, deliberately designing their world specifically around it. The Messenger feels like somebody created a bunch of platforming levels and tried to retroactively and haphazardly create some “connection parts” between them. This would all be fine if the truly excessive amounts of backtracking in this game felt like there was ANY point to it. But it truly feels like more than half it could’ve been cut down if they just allowed you to fast-travel between checkpoints rather than letting you WALK through all of it again and again.

Something equally and annoying and tedious would be this game’s writing for me. Now, this truly is a matter of taste, and humour differs widely between people, but GODDAMN am I fucking sick and tired of “meta-humour”. I can’t stand it at this point. “BRO did you realise you’re actually playing a VIDEO GAME!?!?” Yes. Yes, I did. It’s one thing if the humour is actually clever and makes a point, like The Stanley Parable, or Undertale or even something like Hotline Miami. This just feels super uninspired and tired. I can honestly say I did not really enjoy the humour here, which is wild considering how much praise it got.

I wanna quickly talk about the boss fights, and highlight another design decision I really do not understand; the amount of waiting you have to do in ALL boss fights. All of them demand that you simply stand or walk around and avoid damage, without anything you can do to somehow cut down the time, or play more efficiently. To me, this is one of the golden rules of any combat system; NEVER rely on waiting as one the core mechanics of any fight. It’s boring at best, and downright infuriating if the boss is somehow difficult. Luckily I can say that the vast majority of bosses are very easy, and only took me about 5 tries at the most. The final boss in particular feels like an absolute joke considering what you fought before. The sad thing is that the combat system does feel nice and it could totally work, but it really IS the designs of the bosses themselves that are the issue here.

At least the game is quite short. I think I was done with all of it after 15-ish hours, I even went out of my way to gather as many collectibles I could be bothered with. I wanna say it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, but that wouldn’t be quite true, by the end I was kinda hoping for it to be over soon.

In conclusion, there will be certainly a lot of people that will really like this game. I’ll say that I noticed that there was a tendency for people that usually don’t really play MVs to like it, while the opposite seems to be true for people who are big fans of the MV genre. There is certainly a lot of love and passion in this game, it’s just sad that it all kind of ended up as a middling experience for me.

6 / 10

I did not play Nier: Automata with the intention to dislike it. I wanted to be part of the experience, to have it sweep me off my feet with the brilliant storytelling and soundtrack and deep reflections on the human condition its fans extol. As it turns out, 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, but 10 million gamers can be.

What an obnoxious fucking game. This is one of the most miserable experiences I've had with something I was actually hyped for. Nier: Automata promises something it can't deliver at every step. Its chameleonic gameplay design desperately wishes to be a definitive experience. It wants to be THE video game. It's a bullet hell shmup one second, a side-scrolling beat 'em up the next, an open-world action RPG a little while later, and it even dips its toes into being a roguelite. This could work, but it requires a very high degree of polish, which Automata simply doesn't have. It very quickly devolves into a button masher, where its bastard controls and aggressively bad targeting system are of no help. Not because it's that hard (on Normal difficulty) but because there is no feeling of achievement as you mash two buttons while keeping one held down. I recalibrated my controller, I restarted my PC, all because I believed there was no way the lock-on system could be this bad. The issue had to be on my end. But it wasn't.

But God knows a game that plays terribly can still win you over if its story is transcendent - Deadly Premonition isn't one of my favourite games for nothing, and that plays like arse. Yet nothing about NieR: Automata disappointed, frustrated and annoyed me more than its story. Even if its fans hadn't spent the last seven years bleating that it was special, I would have been let down. You see, when Pixar does a plot twist like this, it's just Wall-E. When Yoko Taro does it, it's suddenly profound and existentialist and says a lot about our society. It's the kind of plot twist you want to un-know because it's so pissweak, especially after so much of the game is fetch-quest-y; it never thinks to keep stringing you along as good stories do, it wants you to do your chores before you get a crumb of plot. It was the kind of twist I considered at the very start and discarded because there would be no fucking way a story this lauded would end up so trite. Not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that with all the acclaim, with all the praise, with all the awards, this is what they actually went with. Gamers really need to become more literate if this game's plot is what passes for incredible.

Right at the very start 2B says emotions aren't allowed, yet she feels like a fucking weirdo when she's the only one behaving properly. The rest of the androids are undermined by their meainingless, charmless anime writing while the robot assistants grow annoying because they try to keep the guise of professionalism up after you've already read through dozens of lines of 'Kyaaa! My date rejected me! Uwaaaa!' It's just not a good plot. I found nobody likeable. 2B has more character in her nighttime job of being a virtual porn star than she does in her actual game.

Even the soundtrack is obnoxious. It wails on and on like it believes its own legend already, but in a game so self-assured yet so bad in actuality, I couldn't expect much more. The graphics are ugly in the manner of high-end mobile phone games, where they're trying to be photorealistic but can't quite manage it so everything is plasticky and sheeny and the environments are more barren than they should be.

I don't think Automata is intentionally this bad, though there are no doubt a few fans out there who think having the world be a cage of invisible walls and narrow tunnels is part of Yoko Taro's unseen brilliance. I just think it's the work of a very inept director with an awfully high opinion of himself - judging off of this game. Because he wears a mask in public and acts quirky, it should follow that he's brilliant. But not everyone is a Salvador Dali. Not everyone is a Hideo Kojima either, much as Druckmann. Suda or Taro want to be. Guys, bring the goods before you start inserting yourself into your games. Otherwise you're not just a bad director, you're a hack.

I'm marking this game as 'Abandoned' because I feel completing only route A doesn't count as beating the game. Yet I can think of more humane forms of torture than playing through it two more times, like being boiled alive or watching High School Musical with the sound on.

OKAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YEAHHHHHHH ALPHADREAM'S GOT HANDSSSSSSSSSSS OKAYYY
yea i totally missed out on mario and luigi games when i was a kid this was fucking awesome
When i was a kid I only got to play a lil bit of bowser's inside story and I thought that was really cool but remembered nearly nothing about it so this may as well was my first impression of mario and luigi and i loved it. i KNOW some people wouldve clammored for me to play the original instead of this, but some of you were also exaggerating some shit as far as im concerned because i thought the game had some pretty funny expressions, i loved the unique areas of beanbean kingdom and the underwater segments and the desert and just- gahhh there was so much that was cool and i loved the bros attacks
I think the only thing that I had an issue with was naturally just me wandering around trying to figure where to go next would happen, there's a pin system but I almost never used it to remind me of a place of interest because Id be more like "okay where are sledge and mallet at again" or wondering how to manuever around the layout of a dungeon, shit like that! it happens! not really at the game's detriment
its a very easy game but VERY SATISFYING

oh my god and fawful is so hilarious and i love the gear system i love how levels in this aint even that intense like the highest lvl any normal person playin this is gonna hit is gonna be like maybe lvl 30-35 or somethin
i find that hilarious
ALSO THAT FINAL STRETCH GOES SO CRAZY AUGH BOTH OF THEM GET SO MANY PUZZLE MOMENTS LIKE THE LITTLE MARIO BIT AND THE FUCKIN GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH LUIGI GETS SO MANY GOOD MOMENTS AND THEM PLAYIN UP THE "oh hes a coward and less popular than his brother" thing actually works super well in this game because hes mroe of the underdog but he loves his brother and they got such insane synergy together AND CACKLETTA'S FUCKIN AWESOME but i do wish her regular form was around more instead of the bowletta thing she had goin on but it was still a majorly smooth move on her part
the final fight had me actually knda nervous LMAO but it wasnt so bad just took a lil longer than the other fights and the timing you had to do for some of that shit was soooooooo tense it was so cool im so glad i got this on my 3ds and played it

i wish nintendo let electric shit be a staple of luigi,

also some things piss me off like birdo is only in this one? rly? damn
uh
but yeah thats it otherwise im nitpicking this is pretty much a perfect video game dude
its got cool puzzles, fights, nothin felt like it overstayed its welcome to me
i loved it so much infact i think im gonna download the sequel to this right after i finish typing this review :>

if i was a kid i think i wouldve been a fawful kinnie ngl

We love a game where the genre of background music changes depending on the ethnicity of your enemies.

The Punisher is an honest character. In a world of goody-goody, boy-scout superheroes who seem keen on saving the world through no-kill rules and putting their enemies in jails with revolving doors instead of cells, The Punisher gets shit done. He picks up a gun and goes out in the street and shoots the bad guys to death. It isn’t complicated by anything else. They’ve done bad, he kills them, they can’t do bad anymore. There’s no risk of recidivism, of reoffending, of getting away; they’re dead, and it’s done. He's cleaning out the bowels of New York City, one pull of the trigger at a time.

The Punisher is a dishonest character. He, and his fans, and his writers all hold the belief that treating a symptom is treating a cause. Drug addicts and purse snatchers and rapists and jaywalkers and protesters all meet the same end of the same barrel of the same gun, mowed down for “being criminals” and nothing more. Non-violent offenders, first-timers, gang members fresh out of getting jumped in — every criminal gets shot to death. There are no second chances, no degrees of justice, no punishment too severe. If you’re one of the lucky ones, maybe you won’t get tortured before your head gets blown off as retribution for being addicted to heroin.

The matter to ultimately keep in mind is the fact that The Punisher is a comic book character for children. Teenagers with behavioral problems, at the oldest. These mass-market superhero comics have exceptionally rarely been intended for actual adults; there’s a reason that Frank Castle debuted in a twenty-cent Spider-Man comic, and not in the middle pages of Arcade between shit by Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. Much as the most diehard Punisher fans would like to pretend as though The Punisher has ever been telling a mature story for mature adults, this can only hold true when in direct comparison to other superhero comics from the same parent company. Certainly, The Punisher is as dark as Marvel is willing to get, but what you ought to take away from that sentiment is that these stories are the darkest that Marvel is willing to get. Take The Punisher seriously, and you’ve already lost long before you began.

The 2004 movie tie-in game mostly seems to understand this. Despite coming out shortly after the movie and bringing back Thomas Jane to play Frank, there’s little that the game actually has in common with the film; aside from a set piece or two where The Punisher has to take on a legally-distinct version of Kevin Nash’s character in his apartment, the game is far more faithful to the comics than Jonathan Hensleigh’s version was. Fuck, the movie took place in Tampa instead of New York. There's an unwavering adherence to the comics present here that reveals The Punisher as the absurd little aberration in this world that he is; throughout the runtime of the game, the grizzled angel of death that is Frank Castle has to share screen time with goofy characters like Nick Fury and Iron Man, all kitted out in their magic power armor that they use to fight human waves of color-coded Russians and Italians. The Punisher will grab some Yakuza guy in a bright-pink Steve Harvey suit and shove a gun in his mouth until the Yakuza screams “it’s my birthday!”, giving Frank a burst of health. You then blow his head off, and Frank quips “last one”. The game is well-aware of how stupid this all is, and assumes that you’re as in on the joke as it is. Don’t think too hard about it; everyone knows this is silly.

A core mechanic of the game lets you take human shields, which can absorb an inordinate amount of bullets and then be interrogated to recover any lost health. You can also press the L1 button to throw them about fifteen feet ahead of you, at which point I immediately clocked that this was a Volition game. The Punisher seems like it wants to be Max Payne at first glance, but it’s actually Saint’s Row. The controls are remarkably similar, as is the tone; The Punisher himself is taking all of this very seriously, but it’s all so ridiculous that you as the player clearly aren’t expected to. The gameplay loop is simple to start, but gradually demands more of you; starting enemies will die in a shot or two to the chest, but foes later on will be kitted out in Arsenal Gear Tengu armor that essentially requires you to land perfect headshots if you want to deal any meaningful damage.

This all comes together to create an inverse enjoyment curve. You start the game mowing down whoever crosses your path in a very wish-fulfillment-styled rampage, but spend the latter half slowly walking around the battlefield with a human shield and taking potshots at enemy heads with the most accurate weapon that you have. Shotguns are basically invalidated as a weapon type the second that enemies put on bulletproof vests, and you’re limited from that point on to little more than your choice of the AK-47 or the M16, and whatever handgun you can get ammo for. Regular enemies die to headshots just as easily as the guys who showed up dressed as the Combine, so there’s a massive compression in what you’re able to do as a player the further into the game you get. The optimal strategy is to take a shield and fish for headshots, and that’s about all you’ll be doing for the final three hours of playtime. Two of the bosses can only be damaged with explosives that get dropped by the adds they summon, which is about as fun as it sounds.

It ends up as little more than a game that’s mostly okay, which used to be something that was celebrated when a licensed title pulled it off — even more so if it was a movie tie-in game. Aside from a few good laughs and some initially interesting gunplay, there’s not much to this. It can’t manage to be more than a version of Blood on the Sand with about the same gameplay quality and a less interesting final product. Even as ridiculous as Frank grumbling “I’m gonna kill every inmate on Riker’s Island” is, he still can’t reach the heights of Fiddy going after his fucking skull. I’d suggest that anyone who’s thinking about this ought to go try Blood on the Sand instead, but the average Punisher fan probably draws the line at being asked to play as a black guy.

I was originally going to format this review as a comic storyboard, but I wrote too many words for that to be viable. For your consideration, here is an album of Punisher doodles that I left on the cutting room floor.

I have a lot of gripes with Assemble With Care, but I feel bad about disliking it in the ways I do. It's a tiny indie title with a heartfelt presentation and narrative, casting the player as a sort of wish-granter through her astute ability to repair broken items. This, as a concept, is perfectly fit to be a game I love and cherish with open arms. Where it falters is execution, because both the story and gameplay have this lumbering sense of awkwardness attached that leave me questioning what the intended experience was.

The story is delivered through visual-novel segments that bookend the main gameplay sections. The voice acting is fine, though a bit stiff and kinda kiddy for my taste. Among many issues I take is the interpersonal relationships your clients have with you and each other. Helena is irrevocably mean to Carmen, and though there is legitimate reason for her to be upset with her little sister, the entire situation resolves in a very neat and contrived ending where the two agree to live with each-other over the span of a couple days, seemingly on a whim. The ending of their story arc suggests that they have things to work out still but, because the characters at the end suddenly come off as hunky-dory, I have no reason to believe that. I have a similar gripe with how Joseph treats her daughter Izzy, the speed at which these characters heal or soothe their bonds are just unrealistic to my experiences. I understand that this is a short game and thus the story needs to be similarly tight, but I don't think the correct angle was to set the story beats so close to each other.

The gameplay follows a similar issue in that its brevity makes each individual 'puzzle' feel lackluster. Save for the epilogue, most of the disassembly and reassembly processes are too easy to feel as gratifying as I would like. It never truly feels like I'm 'fixing' anything beyond reconnecting wires. There's none of the revelation or drama inherent in repairing a game console or assembling a complicated piece of tech, it's all just sanded into this clean and easy installation of wires that, at its most difficult, is mildly confusing for a minute before you double-check. A comprehensive assembly or repair game is something I would like to play, but I got next to nothing from the puzzles in this game aside from frustration because of how the fidgety selection mechanic is. The post-release epilogue puzzle was the first piece to give me something for my brain to chew on, a three-dimensional wire-crossing with enough complexity to be a neat curiosity. It's a shame that it's one out of fourteen.

Assemble With Care has the concept of an incredibly intriguing game, but instead of developing it with more gratifying puzzle craft and fleshed-out storytelling, it stops short and provides a mildly frustrating story with an equally placid and frustratingly easy set of puzzles.

Just a fun little experience with little dudes.
I liked the aesthetic and art style of the game a lot - it reminded me fondly of cartoons like Over the Garden Wall and Flapjack. The dialogue and humour were also great for the most part (the "tiny old man" bit got me way harder than it reasonably should have), although the side characters were definitely lacking as each of them only had a handful of lines throughout the whole game.
The gameplay was interesting, but it does lose it's lustre by the end as you don't really do anything new throughout the entirety of the runtime. It's just about matching your little dudes to the elemental hazard and throwing them at the hazard so they get rid of it.
Overall not a bad game by any means, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm not gonna be grinding this for the platinum as I think I've had my fill of this world though.

Given this is an indie title, I was expecting a short linear title with melancholic visuals and atmosphere; instead, it was a collectathon with a twin-stick shooting mechanics. If content or busywork was a key metric, this would be value for money; however, I felt it was more repetitive and monotonous without much variety and memorability in its tasks where it outstayed its welcome. Progression is blocked until a certain amount is collected incentivizing task clearing before moving on each room since the next checkpoint amount is unknown. As a completionist, this means that I quickly got tired with the gameplay loop since the game does not add more mechanics or depth such as powerups or skills. Not to mention some tasks and puzzle are downright annoying or levels long to traverse. Why there is a level with long flat space without strong traversal is beyond me. Also, I always had too many collectibles to spend for upgrades at any given time so the balance already feels off. I understand this loop was to let players engage in its world and mechanics but it felt artificial as the activities are rarely worth it.

Being a twin-stick shooter aficionado, the execution feels bad with its camera and hurtboxes. Firstly, gauging if a bullet will hit is ambiguous with the isometric camera and tall sprite models. While it may be a skill issue, I have called out several hits that should have not which is my barometer. On the offensive side, the range and damage of the basic fire is just short and weak that I would rather have melee combat instead. Aside from haunting objects, majority of the shooting is plain and uninteresting. Completing the combat trio, the enemies themselves are barely engaging or either annoying specially with how they spawn for unfair damage. The set pieces themselves are okay but was not thrilled and one of them had a bug that kept damaging me after every cycle. If the static tracking camera is kept, having perhaps a lock-on or homing attacks would have at least smoothened out the issues but would still feel underwhelming as a whole.

As for the experience, the story and world is vague that its emotional moments barely land. With its collectathon structure, the player is barely given motivation or intrigue with interconnecting moments hanging by a thread of curiosity. I would like to see the main protagonist be more conflicted with what is going instead of going thru the motions. I do like what it is going for but I feel other games have tackled something similar to greater effect and meaning. Simply having interactive options like a hug or be pet button would have at least made this all more believable as the cutscenes already do that.

Taking it as a whole, I feel this can be a good beginner or entry point game. While not completely devoid of value, I do not recommend this.

I've recently concluded that the shell (har har) of a Soulslike is not nearly as flexible as this industry wants it to be. This is bad timing since this same industry has just crowned the ""genre"" (I will not yield) as the future of AAA productions, and everyone and their mother is scrambling to churn their own one out. Inevitably, then, we'd get games like Another Crab's Treasure. A sixth-gen platforming throwback that inexplicably ties itself to the Souls combat system and format, exclusively to its deficit.

A struggle with reviewing Soulslikes is how quickly they revolve into bullet-point lists of what they get 'right'. "Oh, the healing is too slow, and the roll is wonky, but the changes to shields are really fresh and exciting, but bosses are a mixed bag, and the main weapon is lame blah blah" and so on and so forth. But this seems wrongheaded when looking at a game like ACT. It's a cutesy gimmick platformer that uses the shape of a Souls game to more naturally hook in commentary and break up the flow of the levels. Does it need razor-sharp combat, skillfully designed bosses, or massive game-defining challenges? I'd say no, but this is where the rigidity of Soulslikes come in. What's the point of having this combat system without those things? Why play a 12-hour game of sloppy, slow, imprecise and volatile combat when you can play a better version of the same thing? Especially when the Big Daddy of the style plans to release the most anticipated entry ever in less than two months?

(To be clear, I don't imagine this was an accident. I applaud the decision to release the game just far enough away from Shadow of the Erdtree that people won't disregard it for Elden Ring replays and the like but close enough that people will be itching to play a similar experience. Whoever did the math on that is very clever. Or maybe it's dumb luck, but w/e)

Well, let's investigate. What does Another Crab's Treasure actually offer us that is its own?

The first port of call is the setting. Staging the entire thing underwater gives complete freedom to freshen up the library of enemies and aesthetic tricks used in similar games. While they still include a couple of hallmark classics (poison swamp, sure, but this has the single laziest "I guess we have to have a gank fight somewhere" ever conceived), they do carve out some completely original ideas. Fighting crabs is a nice change of pace! As eye-roll-inducing as the name 'The Sands Between' is, the boss-as-stage-hazard situation is something I've been curious to see in one of these games for a long time, and this is a pretty honourable attempt. And once you get to 'The Unfathom' (equally eye-roll-inducing name), it's lights out. Only a few areas are left, but they take full advantage of the setting and carve some immense atmospheres. In fact, for the first and probably the only time ever in a Soulslike, they environmentally tell you which boss will have a surprise second phase. It's pretty cool, as are the other puzzle boss situations. Even with a mediocre batting average, they make some solid strikes!

It is also, just as crucially, a classic backtrack-heavy, vaguely Sly Cooper adjacent 3D platformer. Everything nice about the aesthetic and setting is doubled operating in this form; it's a really fun hook for one of these games. The literal hook, the one for grappling, is also really fun! But this is where Souls-isms start to bite us in the butt. Why does this game have such a spiky difficulty curve (even if it isn't that hard)? Why do some random enemies and boss attacks one-shot you through a shield? The damage output feels absurd sometimes! Sure, it's nothing new for a Soulslike, but it feels even more out of place here. The two wolves inside this game are incompatible, especially when one is such a sloppy version of itself. Dying in the middle of a cool/unique platforming set piece because you get caught in a net of weird hitboxes, input buffers and attack animations sucks! I know we all go "Fuck Off I Totally Rolled There!!" playing every Souls game, but we all know it's a lie. You can tell you inputted slightly too late or didn't fully push the button down. Not here. Input drops galore. Here I go again! I'm ranting about how this isn't functional as a 'Souls' game when it needn't be one at all! Why chain yourself to this?

The writing has been getting a decent amount of praise, and I can sort of see why. It has a lovely conclusion. I like the climate change hook, and the game does well to pull it into a decently compelling humanist story, even if it drags its feet for a handful of hours to get there. But I'm mixed about the goals here. There are many attempts at 'having something to say,' and the specifics all come across as incoherent. Stopping the accelerationist tech-bro, who will destroy the world in his attempts to save it, was the wrong thing to do because doing so will cause the same outcome? I doubt this is an intended interpretation, but this is what happens, right? I'm 99% sure Sam Altman's sudden disappearance would bring tangible benefits. But that's the risk you run stuffing stock satire together so carelessly. It's also a risk you run by being terrible writers! Sorry to bury the lede so deep here, but my god, the dialogue in this game is bad. It's the worst I've seen this year, all lame arched comedy and po-faced capital-c Commentary. The voice acting is even worse! I want to crush Kril with an anvil. I hate his stupid voice so much! Don't even get me started on Firth! Michael Reeves, get out of my fucking game!

This is a game thrashing around for an identity. If you want nothing more than to swing at people in FromSoft-style melee combat, you could do worse. But I can't muster any enthusiasm for it. As an object of storytelling, it struggles. As a combination of aesthetics, it's winning, if unspecial. As a video game, it distracts from its strengths by needlessly pulling itself into a framework that doesn't fit with the rest of the experience. The game is fine on whole, but what's even left to recommend? I have high hopes that someone somewhere will be able to prove me wrong regarding the Souls formula. I'd really like to see a game that doesn't feel burdened by the difficulty curve and combat system and can make legitimate strides in pushing the level design philosophy forward. I just don't think there's as much room to grow as the money men seem to believe.

Having the "voices" in Senua's head straight up tell the player solutions to the game's awful and easy puzzles might be the most baffling design choice I've seen in a game this year. Simultaneously being the single most embarassing example of excessive hand-holding in AAA games and massively undermining what these games are trying to say about mental health.

Still though, this is probably better than the first game simply because there's less "gameplay." The puzzle and combat sections in the first game were terrible, and I guess Ninja Theory wasn't confident in their ability to improve those aspects so they wisely decided to just strip those sections down and commit more to the walking simulator and cinematic aspects, which are mostly well done.

- 5.5 hours played

As you can tell by the score, Hellblade 2 wasn’t a game for me. Which is sad seeing as I loved the first game. I’m a fan of walking sims and games where not much actual gameplay is required. Games like Until Dawn, Firewatch, Everybody’s gone to the Rapture and the Telltale games. If gameplay is lacking you have to offer something else to hook me. This game sadly didn’t do that.

For some the hook is the visuals. This game does look amazing and it’s one of the very few games I have played this gen that I can truly say belongs on this newer generation graphically. The motion capture performances are fantastic and the environments look stunning. But that’s not enough. Because the game whilst stunning, is mainly stunning caves and rocky hillsides. It doesn’t matter how beautiful that mountain off in the distance is if I’m stuck following a very linear path and can’t get anywhere near it. The environments offer no level of interactivity. Senua can’t pick up and investigate items. She’s doesn’t talk about details in the environment. She can only mantle ledges, open doors and pick up balls for the puzzles. She doesn’t feel like she exists in these places so you just breeze through them on a track. Holding LB and up on the left analogue. It’s a very pretty rollercoaster ride with very few rises in the track. There are two cool set piece moments but these end up offering the same gameplay of sprint behind cover and time your next sprint. All that’s different are the visuals and the fact you have to hold onto the cover in the second sequence. Also the world of Hellblade is brutal and oppressive. I’m actually glad it was only 5 hours long because it’s a depression fest. There were some seriously grim scenes in this game of violence, decapitation and murder. It’s also audibly horrific. The music, the way the enemies shout and the guttural noises being made all mix with the visuals to create a fever dream of horrific images. But it’s all looks because in its gameplay it’s severely lacking.

It’s a walking sim and a very cinematic one at that. Gameplay involves walking forwards. Sometimes running when the game allows. Some basic flashy combat and rudimentary puzzle solving. There’s been a 7 year gap between this game and the original and nothing has improved other than visuals and animations. Combat feels worse. It’s looks amazing. The enemy transitions between each fight are very fluid and cinematic. But it’s extremely basic. You have a light and heavy attack. A block/parry and a dodge. And you also have a focus meter that slows time. Every fight in the game is a simple 1v1 no matter the story situation. The animations between each 1v1 fail to make the encounter feel grander. And every enemy you fight is either a man or a humanoid creature. There’s nothing like the big hell dog monster from the first game. Fights are here to offer variety but lack that element themselves. Therefore they just get mixed in as another boring element of a boring game. The puzzles are no better, they are another tedious element of variety that actually do more damage than they do help. I was bored of the walking and talking but I preferred that to solving the same visual puzzles from the first game. And the new find the ball and place it on the pedestal puzzle this game offers is no better. Neither the combat or the puzzles had me scratching my head in confusion or frustration which would have helped me feel something at least. It’s a very linear game where nothing stopped me moving forwards at all. In the end it all became a rather rote experience.

Now the story. The one element that usually carries a walking sim. This also failed for me. Senua is in a better place this time around but still suffers her psychosis. She’s still hearing the voices. She’s on a quest to avenge her people after the north men murder some and took the rest as slaves. The mental health issues are no longer a major part of the story and therefore this game lacks what made the first special. Here they are just voices and become one of the many ingredients instead of the games special sauce. We meet other characters along the way and they seem to take a lot of the limelight but at 5 hours this game doesn’t have enough time to flesh them out. Also one character is “redeemed” by the end and I just couldn’t buy into it. Because the things that character has done have been horrific and 5 hours is not enough time to forgive that. Sure Senua spent longer in game than the 5 hours I spent but it’s not conveyed very well how much time has passed and by the end I couldn’t believe in the redemption. Also the first game had Senua as the sole character. What made that interesting is that anything that happened in the game could be taken as either literal, or her mental battle against her demons and psychosis. Now in this game with 3 villages worth of people all experiencing the same things as her makes you believe they are happening. But a twist at the end may mean it’s maybe all not as it seemed. And once you start pulling on that chord, the whole middle of the game unravels and starts to make no sense what so ever. Also unbelievably for such a short game, the ending is super abrupt.

The credits rolled on this after 5 and a half hours and I was glad. I think this is a game for a very niche audience. It was not for me at all and to be honest it barely felt like a game. I only paid £8 for gamepass to play this, I can’t believe they are charging full price for this physical. I’ve also seen some people state that this game is reveloutionary in the graphical department but I disagree. It is beautiful but as an overall package it’s severely lacking, therefore I don’t think it will be remembered or talked about enough to change anything.