stevenz
This game is hard to fuck with. It's charming, intimate, funny, but a little confused and empty.
The enemies feel overtuned, frequently throwing insta-kill grabs and combos where even the weakest enemies can thrash you. The spaces you trace are strangely open, seemingly in some sort of compromise between open world sensibilities and the responsibility to design levels. Sometimes it all comes together and you're scuttling the seabed, the fights are good, and there's a joke you know some young adults had a blast putting together, but by the time I reach another poison swamp it feels like it's collapsed under its own weight, and the fun is over. Like I'm in a big empty area with some crabs littered around it. Is it underdeveloped? Too big to support itself?
When it stopped being fun, I tried turning the difficulty down, but the effects were marginal. I figured even if I turned it down to the easiest settings, I wasn't going to see much more than the first few hours. When the magic is gone like that, it's hard to come back.
The enemies feel overtuned, frequently throwing insta-kill grabs and combos where even the weakest enemies can thrash you. The spaces you trace are strangely open, seemingly in some sort of compromise between open world sensibilities and the responsibility to design levels. Sometimes it all comes together and you're scuttling the seabed, the fights are good, and there's a joke you know some young adults had a blast putting together, but by the time I reach another poison swamp it feels like it's collapsed under its own weight, and the fun is over. Like I'm in a big empty area with some crabs littered around it. Is it underdeveloped? Too big to support itself?
When it stopped being fun, I tried turning the difficulty down, but the effects were marginal. I figured even if I turned it down to the easiest settings, I wasn't going to see much more than the first few hours. When the magic is gone like that, it's hard to come back.
2022
Oddly naturalistic level design with an... arcadey, boomery character controller. Found a secret in the first level that bypassed the whole area. What's the point of that? All visual sauce and polish, little else.
2021
Only played the first two levels. It's not what I expected; tactical and precise. Pizza-and-puke-core, that Cartoon Network stank that the internet likes. The economics are abrasive. Scrounging a tiny profit and losing it to a nonsense stock market.
The other reviews are funny, unbothered. Honestly being in debt IRL makes this a little less entertaining. To roil in that pain and express the grossness of it all. I get it on a level I don't want to, like other art. Probably won't be picking it up again.
The other reviews are funny, unbothered. Honestly being in debt IRL makes this a little less entertaining. To roil in that pain and express the grossness of it all. I get it on a level I don't want to, like other art. Probably won't be picking it up again.
2024
This game feels surprising and visceral at best, but ultimately unbearably stilted and sexless. The pawns are freaky, the fantasy is unforgivably dull, and the moment-to-moment animation is wonky, awkward and unimpressive.
2022
Sokpop's brilliant clarity extends from the visuals to the character stats, but they still can't make a fun soulslike IMO. Enemies block too much and take too many hits. Stupid thing to get hung up on but it's the whole game.
2016
A very, very cool AAA third-person shooter is still a AAA third-person shooter. I physically can't play more than a couple hours but it's about real places and people, which I extremely admire.
2016
I played this when I was 18, sobbing on the floor, ugly crying when I finished it. A game perhaps most like a Ghibli movie; the piece is full of magic, dignity, fear, love, and deep power. True masters made this.
2024
Went out on a limb to play this. Story is nothing special but VAs are good, and the systems are slowly coming together in the tutorial.
Wondering if it can recapture the magic of FE: Shadow Dragon as a kid, or prove interesting enough as an adult me.
Wondering if it can recapture the magic of FE: Shadow Dragon as a kid, or prove interesting enough as an adult me.
2024
It's all in the music: Gambling is pornographic, exploits the brain. We fake the stakes for games, but keep the porn. It's flashy, emotionally up and down, and pervasively, subconsciously yearning, unsure, and sad.
My relationship to solitaire is similar. Shuffling card sounds are fun, sometimes I want to play when I'm outside of the game, but I lose it after a while. Feels existential.
My relationship to solitaire is similar. Shuffling card sounds are fun, sometimes I want to play when I'm outside of the game, but I lose it after a while. Feels existential.
2022
Ok I had a complaint earlier but I'm actually fucking heavy with it.
2022
It's intelligent and spiritual. The biological snippets of each creature, their ecological place... it's all very good and heartfelt, as with the spirit telling the story. It's just too corny, too timid, the story too direct and exposition-filled.
I'm not quite sure what's wrong. It's not lacking in confidence, but in asking me if I want to turn off mechanics frequently, it feels uncommitted. Would children like this? It just doesn't work for me. Maybe I just don't like platformers, or tetris.
I'm not quite sure what's wrong. It's not lacking in confidence, but in asking me if I want to turn off mechanics frequently, it feels uncommitted. Would children like this? It just doesn't work for me. Maybe I just don't like platformers, or tetris.
2022
The shape is smart: just overhead and text, lots of assisting images. I can't remember after playing what was rendered or part of my imagination - genius!
But when a game has lots of reading, it gets me itchy. Why aren't I reading a book with a better story? The premise of the main quest is surprisingly interesting, but the chatty characters give too little with too much text; not dense enough to escape the itch. I haven't gone back to it.
But when a game has lots of reading, it gets me itchy. Why aren't I reading a book with a better story? The premise of the main quest is surprisingly interesting, but the chatty characters give too little with too much text; not dense enough to escape the itch. I haven't gone back to it.
2021
Still working through this. Currently several hours after beating the Hydra.
The game has some sauce but it's extremely sparse. I spent hours just fusing demons together and it killed my momentum, and wasn't as fun as just convincing them on board, so it ends up feeling like trimmable fat. The battle system and longer loops are very smart and engaging.
Angels and Devils fighting to uphold or annihilate existing order... trite, but what's this? A Buddhist character? Perhaps Samsara can be broken.
The game has some sauce but it's extremely sparse. I spent hours just fusing demons together and it killed my momentum, and wasn't as fun as just convincing them on board, so it ends up feeling like trimmable fat. The battle system and longer loops are very smart and engaging.
Angels and Devils fighting to uphold or annihilate existing order... trite, but what's this? A Buddhist character? Perhaps Samsara can be broken.
Akira Toriyama's art gets dragged through the mud when you try to apply lighting and PBR materials to it. Game has some potential but I don't feel compelled after a couple hours.
2018
Around the middle portion, Celeste take time to render anxiety with uncomfortably raw characterization, throwing every twee narrative game trick to enhance the beat: a gamified breathing mini-game, angry dialogue letters, boundary-breaking character portraits, and a soundtrack by someone who clearly understands the headspace. That this presentation is both unbearably corny and nonetheless effective about sums up my thoughts.
But in 2018 I was frustrated that it could both do this and then turn around and deliver a brutal final stretch of just being a videogame. Coming back to the game now, some months following my own anxiety diagnosis and the pits of my mental health, I find this all even more confusing.
It hits deeper now. Seeing someone whimper at their own brain and yet find peace in breathing brings me to tears. But its contentedness to be a platformer drains all the catharsis of the final sprint. The last chapter is as sharp and brittle as glass, genuinely torturous, even with assist mode. I feel utterly alienated at the end when they had me so close.
I guess in conclusion, Celeste just doesn't know when to quit. It feels made by real platformer-heads, the kind of gamers who would make the emotional resolution say "level up". They set the dial too high and then left it there, each stage ending with a few more agonizing screens than it needs; and while sometimes that energy is genuine and something to fuck with, it just flattens the piece. A puzzle game with a biological gate on it.
But in 2018 I was frustrated that it could both do this and then turn around and deliver a brutal final stretch of just being a videogame. Coming back to the game now, some months following my own anxiety diagnosis and the pits of my mental health, I find this all even more confusing.
It hits deeper now. Seeing someone whimper at their own brain and yet find peace in breathing brings me to tears. But its contentedness to be a platformer drains all the catharsis of the final sprint. The last chapter is as sharp and brittle as glass, genuinely torturous, even with assist mode. I feel utterly alienated at the end when they had me so close.
I guess in conclusion, Celeste just doesn't know when to quit. It feels made by real platformer-heads, the kind of gamers who would make the emotional resolution say "level up". They set the dial too high and then left it there, each stage ending with a few more agonizing screens than it needs; and while sometimes that energy is genuine and something to fuck with, it just flattens the piece. A puzzle game with a biological gate on it.