mssq
2020
Repetitive shooty shooty bang bang. It did not help the matters that I did not found the humor to be that funny and in the end skipped all cutscenes.
This is a weird one for me as I pretty much love everything here except the game itself. Visuals, music, absurd story etc. is all great but I just found controlling the Katamari not that fun. Still it's short enough that i did not get annoyed by the controls but it just felt like I was fighting against them the whole time.
2021
It's pretty impressive for the small team that made this weird, dark and filthy world that has some pretty decent surprises along the way.
I do gotta admit that the first impression weren't that strong. You might even call it kinda drab looking at the first couple areas and I was kinda worried. Thankfully it starts to get more interesting visually and gameplay wise the further you get. The gameplay progression I found to be pretty nice as the longer it goes it is less about the souls-like combat and more about platforming which works for me as I always enjoy some challenging platforming.
It is also challenging on the combat front but nothing too hard. But it can get kinda annoying at times to learn the boss patterns as if you're not careful they can one-shot you and then you have to do your walk of shame before you can try it again.
I do gotta admit that the first impression weren't that strong. You might even call it kinda drab looking at the first couple areas and I was kinda worried. Thankfully it starts to get more interesting visually and gameplay wise the further you get. The gameplay progression I found to be pretty nice as the longer it goes it is less about the souls-like combat and more about platforming which works for me as I always enjoy some challenging platforming.
It is also challenging on the combat front but nothing too hard. But it can get kinda annoying at times to learn the boss patterns as if you're not careful they can one-shot you and then you have to do your walk of shame before you can try it again.
2023
I enjoyed the first Stasis and was happy to find out that the second entry is an improvement pretty much in every aspect.
First of all I just love the environment design and the atmosphere generally. It has this terrifying but beautiful Giger-esque art style that just resonates with me.
I also found the story to be more intriguing and suspenseful this time. Usually I am not big fan of reading text logs in games but this is one of the exceptions as the writing is strong enough and it has that puzzle aspect of trying to understand and piece together whatever happened here in this underwater hellhole. It does lose some steam at the end as some of the dialogue drags on and you cannot move between areas when people are talking which slows things too much for my liking.
On the gameplay side I think it found this nice balance between puzzles being challenging but understandable that make sense in the context of the world. I was little worried as you can control three characters that this could turn out the be just an item hunt and trying everything everywhere but this was luckily never a problem for me as interactable sections are marked as blue and visual detail that cannot be interacted are marked as green which makes clear what is an puzzle and what is not.
And yes Moses, you're a very smart bear.
First of all I just love the environment design and the atmosphere generally. It has this terrifying but beautiful Giger-esque art style that just resonates with me.
I also found the story to be more intriguing and suspenseful this time. Usually I am not big fan of reading text logs in games but this is one of the exceptions as the writing is strong enough and it has that puzzle aspect of trying to understand and piece together whatever happened here in this underwater hellhole. It does lose some steam at the end as some of the dialogue drags on and you cannot move between areas when people are talking which slows things too much for my liking.
On the gameplay side I think it found this nice balance between puzzles being challenging but understandable that make sense in the context of the world. I was little worried as you can control three characters that this could turn out the be just an item hunt and trying everything everywhere but this was luckily never a problem for me as interactable sections are marked as blue and visual detail that cannot be interacted are marked as green which makes clear what is an puzzle and what is not.
And yes Moses, you're a very smart bear.
Ah yes, the world famous Cryptic Killer who's gonna blow the whole place up unless you can do jigsaw puzzles and recognize which animal makes this noise! Truly evil stuff.
Sadly this one lacks originality with the two aspects that make these kind of games; Puzzle design and with the story which is taken straight out of Saw. It's all serviceable but this stuff has been done before and better.
Sadly this one lacks originality with the two aspects that make these kind of games; Puzzle design and with the story which is taken straight out of Saw. It's all serviceable but this stuff has been done before and better.
Not as good as the main Entropy: Zero series but still worth playing especially for the great combat scenario design. Also the banter between combines was solid.
It is sadly tad bit buggy and I had to noclip once through a door to progress.
It is sadly tad bit buggy and I had to noclip once through a door to progress.
Really loved this dark Nordic folktale inspired adventure.
They really nailed the visual design in this one. The combination of graphics and music produce anything from serene to haunting and they transition beautifully between these two different extremities.
The gameplay might have some jank here and there but it is so well-paced that you keep doing something new all the time and there are some truly memorable moments here.
They really nailed the visual design in this one. The combination of graphics and music produce anything from serene to haunting and they transition beautifully between these two different extremities.
The gameplay might have some jank here and there but it is so well-paced that you keep doing something new all the time and there are some truly memorable moments here.
I finished it after about 40 hours of playtime. Now this comes from someone who wasn't a big fan of BotW and was hoping that this would click more with me. And it did! For a while and then I had the same exact problem as with BotW that it gets too repetitive with all these loading screens and unskippable texts which would be mostly non-problems if the rewards were worth it. But they just are not. Over half of the time I get something that is worse than whatever I currently have in my inventory or something that I already have backpack full of. There is just lack of good rewards and tangible progress except with some of the bigger quests. But I did enjoy exploring longer this time and that was mainly because the verticality. Which mainly means the caves as I really never found anything that interesting in the sky.
Now my biggest gripe with BotW was the dungeons and sadly they're even worse this time. (Except Lightning Temple which was great) They're pretty much the same as in BotW but they took that one interesting aspect of manipulating the whole temple out. Now we just have 5 basic puzzles that you have been doing already in shrines or somewhere else.
But it's not all negative, this time the dungeons are visually more interesting and the boss fights are also improved. Also the journey to these dungeons is much more memorable.
I might sound negative but I did play this for 40 hours so its not like it's terrible. Actually the later main missions, including the final boss are actually pretty amazing! But overall I'm still tad bit disappointed with this new gameplay formula.
Oh special mention for the music! It is truly beautiful and I had goosebumps just from the music during the end credits.
Now my biggest gripe with BotW was the dungeons and sadly they're even worse this time. (Except Lightning Temple which was great) They're pretty much the same as in BotW but they took that one interesting aspect of manipulating the whole temple out. Now we just have 5 basic puzzles that you have been doing already in shrines or somewhere else.
But it's not all negative, this time the dungeons are visually more interesting and the boss fights are also improved. Also the journey to these dungeons is much more memorable.
I might sound negative but I did play this for 40 hours so its not like it's terrible. Actually the later main missions, including the final boss are actually pretty amazing! But overall I'm still tad bit disappointed with this new gameplay formula.
Oh special mention for the music! It is truly beautiful and I had goosebumps just from the music during the end credits.
Tad bit confusing but original and actually scary which makes this easily worth experiencing.
It's a game that lacks own identity and feels like its held together by force... or duct tape.
The combat itself is enjoyable enough and parrying multiple times in a row feels great but I don't really see what the "Souls-like" brings to this. It's so rare that you die in combat and when falling down is not instakill I never lost my experience through the whole game by dying twice in a row. And even if I did the skill tree is so dull that you could probably beat the game without upgrading single thing and not miss much.
Exploration might be the stronger suit of this one with the metroidvania inspired level design but sadly I found most of the planets kinda dull outside the one which had underground caves.
Outside all that it is still mostly fun time but I am a fan of the genre so your mileage may vary.
The combat itself is enjoyable enough and parrying multiple times in a row feels great but I don't really see what the "Souls-like" brings to this. It's so rare that you die in combat and when falling down is not instakill I never lost my experience through the whole game by dying twice in a row. And even if I did the skill tree is so dull that you could probably beat the game without upgrading single thing and not miss much.
Exploration might be the stronger suit of this one with the metroidvania inspired level design but sadly I found most of the planets kinda dull outside the one which had underground caves.
Outside all that it is still mostly fun time but I am a fan of the genre so your mileage may vary.
Great classic point and click adventure with interesting storyline and puzzles that are challenging but never obtuse.
Only bigger gripe I have with this is the main character. He is very unlikable especially at the first half of the game. Not sure if he had some character growth or if I got used to him but I did not find him as annoying on the second half.
Only bigger gripe I have with this is the main character. He is very unlikable especially at the first half of the game. Not sure if he had some character growth or if I got used to him but I did not find him as annoying on the second half.
It is the story and the unique Atari style it has that makes it worth playing. On the gameplay side I was little bit letdown especially on the first two chapters but I can see why people enjoy this one even though it did not work completely for me.
2022
Half-Life meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I had a blast with this one. There is very little that scratches that same itch Half-Life did with its campaign but this does while blending atmosphere and world from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I had a blast with this one. There is very little that scratches that same itch Half-Life did with its campaign but this does while blending atmosphere and world from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
This is one of those games that feels like it was designed by checking what is hot currently in the market. So you get your bog-standard co-op multiplayer game with loot, leveling up and daily challenges.
It's just forgettable game outside the Alien IP.
It's just forgettable game outside the Alien IP.
2020
Running around in labyrinths is decent fun with friends but an miserable experience if you have nobody else to share the pain.