For a game themed around sexual content, you don't go in expecting much, like being an actual functional game with a modicum of effort put in. But I can safely say this is a game first and foremost and while it's not the best metroidvania you'll ever play, it'll certainly exceed your expectations for what it is.

In particular, aside from the amazing pixel art, I was impressed by just how vast the world was, with numerous areas to unlock and explore. The gender flipping mechanic and costume concept were cool ideas, although I felt more could be done with them. Mainly you're just doing some type of fetch quest which will require you to wear certain costumes and the main sexual content being the rewards for those quests. Then fighting mini-bosses and bosses in the various areas of the world.

I got over the sexual content fairly quickly and just skipped through them, it started to get kind of same-ish to me.

If more adult content games were like this or at least at this level of effort I'd probably play more.

This is a great game for someone who wants intense bullet hell action without the daunting prospect of permadeath like in a roguelike thrown on top. It doesn't touch something like Enter the Gungeon in terms of difficulty, but it does offer a similar challenge in terms of dense bullet hell combat with the confidence that you're not going to lose much progress given there's always a save point close by. The only thing you lose when you die anyway is half the money you're holding but the save points double as teleporters that allow you to quickly teleport to a town and store your money so there isn't even really the fear of losing that, it all depends on how much you want to push your luck.

The environment and enemy variety was a big strength and is what kept me engaged right to the end and the decent amount of item variety encouraged me to explore every room.

I felt the progression was on point, I felt I was always challenged but not impossibly so, with your build dictating just how hard that challenge will be. There's also mini challenges in some rooms that are just dodging 3 rounds of attacks without getting hit. Some of these were brutal but worth doing in my opinion as not only do they give you badges (which give you passives) but hone your skills at dodging attacks. You'll definitely need every advantage you can get for the final boss in both skill and build.

Shovel Knight is a solid modern tribute to retro 2D precision platformers. You progress across the world via a Super Mario World-esque style world map where each level introduces new sets of enemies and obstacles to overcome. The main game is short but I'd rather that than long padded out games. It delivers something new from start to finish and leaves you with a positive experience. It offers up a challenge but with plenty of save states and checkpoints, it's very forgiving. You can choose to destroy the checkpoints for more coin with the risk of respawning further back if you die so you can set more of a challenge for yourself that way if you wish.

My one criticism, and I don't know why this kept happening, but the special attack would randomly switch to something else upon every respawn. Many times thinking I've still got the dash sword equipped, go to dash over a gap and he tosses out the freckin fishing rod, urgh.

Overall I enjoyed it but...

This would have to be the easiest game from Cyan I've played and I think it's due to the one dimensional nature of the gameplay. You get given an item called the adjunct, a gauntlet which acts as a key that allows you to interact with objects in the world. Aside from 1 or 2 exceptions it's the only way of interacting so you don't have to pay any attention to details within the world and instead just look for the slot to put the adjunct. This means you can quite easily fluke a lot of this game just by walking around and randomly interacting with things. They do manage to pull off some interesting things with that one mechanic though. However I felt the upgrades you get for it as your progress were underutilised.

Unlike other Cyan games before it, there's no note taking necessary. There's no clues or symbols to take note of. There's barely anything to read or listen to or memorise. I felt a bit disappointed about that because that's what Cyan games are known for and that was my expectations going into it.

The worlds they created did capture that awe inspiring but mysterious cyan look and feel so I was happy about that. I enjoyed exploring the worlds. I found the puzzles to be decent enough albeit not as challenging as I was expecting.

Unfortunately this game has performance issues and a few bugs. Very choppy framerate but with FSR and lowering a few settings I managed to make it acceptable for the most part. There were a couple of occasions I got stuck in the terrain and had to reload my save. There was also one occasion where it let me go somewhere without a way to get back out, requiring a reload.

I mainly chose to play this for the visuals. I really liked the Alice in Wonderland vibe in the vibrant voxel artstyle.

It's an extremely short game (3-4 hours) which really helps to look at it more favourably as the gameplay is extremely basic and uninteresting. I'd say this game would probably be best suited for young kids that are just learning ARPG and puzzle games. There's really not a lot going on a part from the visuals.

If you just want a short, casual game that's visually appealing and don't particularly care about the gameplay then this is an OK choice. You'll certainly love getting an achievement for absolutely everything you do in the game.

The port for the most part is easy to run at high framerates on moderate hardware and is smooth. It's not completely bug free but better than many ports I've experienced. The graphics can be quite stunning and I really dig the setting (biker cleaning up zombies out in a post-apocalyptic American wilderness). Has a Walking Dead vibe to it.

The gameplay however is very cookie cutter: repetitive and generic which is a common characteristic in AAA open worlds. That's not to say there's no fun to be had in this, but the repetitiveness will start to wear on you which is only made more apparent by being a ~40 hour game. This game should of been half that at the most.

The combat felt great, it was satisfying rolling up to a place and clearing it out. The feedback from the weapons and enemies gave it a lot of impact, felt like they had weight to them and there's a lot of freedom about how you approach the combat. Even simply driving the bike around is GTA levels of fun. Unfortunately it's just not enough to carry it for ~40 hours.

Majority of the main missions will cycle through the same mind-numbing tasks such as kill someone for a bounty or fetch something (often just a single thing or as dumb as something like plastic cups) then returning to complete the mission. So a lot of just driving out to do a mundane thing then returning, rinse and repeat. It gets old fast.

But there's a far bigger issue with this game and that's trailing sequences. This game is riddled with them. It's that whole thing of making you walk as slowly as possible behind someone. It's a constant in this game and it is infuriating and the main reason I've rated the game so low. I do not appreciate games that don't respect my time. You will also get hit with cutscenes constantly but at least with those you have the option of skipping.

If you're like me and prioritize gameplay over story, this game is definitely not for you. Even if you think "ok well since the story is so good, maybe I'll just put up with it", you're underestimating just how bad the gameplay is, the gameplay WILL break you. No story, no matter how great, is worth this. The gameplay in this is the antithesis of fun. It might be the worst game I've ever played. It has no respect for your time whatsoever. In fact it seems to go out of its way to be excruciatingly painful on purpose. And this is just the main story quests, after experiencing how god awful bad those quests are, I sure as hell didn't spend a second doing any side quests which I hear are just fetch quests anyway.

If anyone wants to defend it, I want you to sit through this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG46kAJ-DVA), all of this, no skipping. And then because you're having so much fun, I want you to sit through this again. This wasn't even at the start of this trailing mission and this only scratches the surface of just how outrageously timewastingly bad this gameplay is. If I tried listing all the moments of bad gameplay in this, I truly would be just listing the whole game.

Now I'm pretty stubborn, I painstakingly dragged myself through all of route A. The story is good, the soundtrack (for the most part) is amazing. I can not bring myself to replay any of it for the other routes. Better to just watch those endings on youtube. The main enemies, the shades, must be the worst character designs I've ever seen in a game. Just swirling masses of black and yellow. There's no personality to them, they're as boring as it gets both visually and behaviourally. Ain't no kid drawing a freaking shade.

I say all this when Automata is one of my all time favourite games, which is probably why I pushed so hard with this despite not enjoying it. Unfortunately the gameplay is so bad it broke me.

I would have rated this higher if it wasn't so drawn out. This game went for too damn long for what it is. Not every challenge has to be done in three's Vigil Games and you didn't need to put so many puzzles in. More does not always equal better and this was definitely the case here. I enjoyed it for maybe the first 10-15 hours. I probably enjoyed the first game more, especially being about HORSEMEN it had many horse back battles whereas this had like one. Other than the length, probably my other big gripe would be that attacks completely lack impact. There's no rumble or audio cue to let you know attacks are landing and this made the combat feel a little flat.

The stronger focus on RPG elements was ok-ish, but by the end I was like over level 20 and still using a level 10 piece of armour, which is an example that the level on the equipment means almost nothing in this game and there's no sense of items becoming objectively better as you progress. I also wish I could see how items impacted my stats when selling gear and be able to see my level on the skill tree. I did enjoy the puzzle elements but as I said, it just went on for too long. To end on a positive note, I really enjoyed the visual improvements in this over the first one.

Compared to Village, I think 7 is more effective has a horror game. It's a legitimately scary game especially in the earlier sections whereas Village is just tense.

Where RE7 is more narrow in scope, village is far more action packed with more environment and enemy variety as well as having a greater emphasis on upgradeability. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for RE7 as they are just two different approaches, however enemy variety could have been better as it's really just the mold creatures and they all look and behave somewhat similar.

Overall I think I found RE7 the more enjoyable cohesive experience however both games are excellent in their own right.

The humour felt too try-hard most of the time. Don't know if I've just grown tired of Justin Roiland's brand of humour, there was some amusing moments though. Definitely had to turn down gun and enemy chatter. The last gun was definitely a strong way to finish off the game, that got a laugh.

The combat was fun at least, especially combined with the jetpack and grappling. I didn't find most of the guns that useful in combat though, mainly just used the first gun.

The rest of the gameplay just annoyed me. Long unskippable banter (and just stupid stuff like you've been listening to gene rattle on for like 5 minutes and then it wants you to click on gene to talk to him again, why?, I'm already talking to him just make it tell me the next part, ugh), dialog choices that didn't matter and objectives that waste your time (like an objective where you literally have to wait). I get that's the joke sometimes, that it's horrible gameplay on purpose but I just didn't care for it.

Performance was passable albeit the framerate was inconsistent and even when it would be over 100fps and motion blur turned off it was still a blurry mess when moving around.

The saving grace is that it's very short at least.

Let's start with the good things:
The artstyle and atmosphere of this game is excellent (has a high production Tim Burton-esque vibe to it). The character designs were interesting and had loads of personality. The story was fairly generic but suitable and enjoyable. The game performed perfectly, no issues running this at full framerate. There were just a couple of minor bugs (e.g. a prompt staying in the corner of the screen) but were not at all game breaking. Everything aside from the gameplay was high quality.

Now the bad:
The gameplay however is really generic, uninspired and just flat-out annoying. I get that the focus of this game is the linear cinematic experience, but what they do to achieve that just doesn't make for fun gameplay. It is constantly interrupting your flow with cutscenes or disabling actions to get through dialog.

The combat itself is built around the idea of interrupting flow. The idea of constantly refreshing your moveset via a deck of cards is great on paper but it doesn't translate well in practice. You're constantly stopping to select from randomly drawn cards which just makes every instance of combat feel so drawn out and aggravating. The board game battles just added another layer of interruption on top of that lol. There's also just not that much variety. Thankfully it's extremely easy so it's not likely you're going to die and have to replay some areas.

They utilize a choice-based dialog mechanic when interacting with other characters but the choices don't matter. Seriously, don't do this, don't waste my time forcing me to choose responses if those choices don't matter. It's not fun, it just wastes the player's time. This, coupled with the combat system made me want to avoid interacting with characters when possible which meant avoiding any side quests.

Another time waster are these intermission sections between key sections of the game. All you do in them is walk forward for ages to trigger the next section of the game. If this wasn't mind-numbing enough, they have the nerve to slow your character down to a crawl.

It was such a shame given every other aspect of this game was so good. Unfortunately, you can't have a good game without good gameplay.

The concept of this is great. Each level being a mini-world, many of which are like little rubicks cubes that look small and simple of the surface but contain lots of hidden rooms and passages that you discover by manipulating world elements.

With over 70 levels broken up into 3 episodes and a bonus episode, it was surprising how many offered it's own unique gameplay with unique mechanics. They managed to keep the creativity going right till the end except for the bonus levels which were basically previous levels with a twist.

There's probably only 2 things I'd nitpick and that's no restart option (have to leave then re-enter the level to restart) and some levels built in a way that don't allow you to backtrack if you missed something.

I managed to complete all but the last 4 bonus levels, which required me to 100% the 3 episodes.

Easily one of my favourites from this year. It's very relaxed and casual. No enemies or race against the clock. The entire emphasis is on exploration and the level design packs so much into small rooms with so much creativity that you'll want to explore every nook and cranny.

You're never really interrupted with lengthy dialog (unless you choose to interact with an npc) or the game explaining mechanics. It also doesn't waste your time, you can carry along multiple items to complete multiple subtasks at once, you're given a way to traverse faster right off the bat and the spider webs let you zip across the room so you never feel like backtracking or getting to a certain location is a chore.

The artwork is charming and crisp. The bugs you encounter in each room have a ton of personality. The controls felt perfect. I never once felt the game, a mechanic or controls were fighting against me.

This was a joy to play from start to finish.