this game is pretty good, and it has all the right ingredients for making me like it. so why don't i like it more? i think a common complaint is the length and pacing of it, and i tend to agree, but it didn't necessarily feel like that while i was playing it, it just makes sense as an explanation in retrospect. i like to think i'll pick this back up at some point, but i just don't feel any desire to do so.

the soundtrack is so good, though. the art is great, the unspoken bond between the two main characters is cute, this game has so much going for it. it's really weird that i couldn't stick with it!

everything's very floaty and imprecise, and i find it difficult to manage the controls (you essentially need to have your indexes on r1/l1 and middle fingers on r2/l2, and then you're clicking a stick while moving sideways in the sidescroller to activate bullet-time, etc). it's kind of like if katana zero had the gamefeel of gang beasts - not an especially compelling power fantasy, nor is the challenge of it interesting to me. the small handful of deaths i experienced felt dissatisfying, rather than like learning opportunities or a personal failure.

sometimes i can power through a game where i have these complaints if the story or presentational elements are enticing enough, but i don't really like much of what this game is offering there. the music is fine, the visuals are grey and unremarkable, and i just really don't care about my character (what bland design, looks like someone opened a tacticool magazine and drew some guy from the background of an ad for ar-15 rail-mounted accessories), or the talking banana, whose jokes are all groan-inducing and lame.

admittedly, i'm not that far in, so maybe there's a really interesting twist regarding this banana that would turn the whole thing around for me, but i sincerely doubt it. i might pick this up again to see if the controls feel better after sleeping on it, but i've played much better versions of this, the split-aim shooting is a neat innovation, but not enough to keep me here.

you know, i don't dislike this game, i just don't find it all that entertaining. the writing isn't great, the art and music are unremarkable, the jokes don't land for me, none of the characters have any depth (which would be fine if they were funny), the room decorating is pointless, the implementation of money in general is pointless, the time loop aspect barely adds anything outside of narrative setup as far as i've seen...

and i'm all in favor of games having semi-useless mechanics/systems just to add flavor, but everything here is so flavorless. i don't know. i'm halfway through it, plus i've gotten a few sidequests knocked out, but it's hard for me to feel motivated to keep going.

among my backloggd friends, this game has the most pronounced spread of like, 0.5 stars to 4.0 stars. i like this game, but the more i play it the more i kind of cool on it. it's fun in short bursts, but i can't really sink hours into it anymore. all my runs end up looking pretty similar, regardless of starting character. i can tell 5 minutes in whether or not i'm making it through the full 30. i know which powerups work better than others, etc. etc. like, learning the game made it less fun. it's still a nice little timewaster - something to do with my hands while i zone out with a podcast on, something to play in bed on my steam deck until i fall asleep and wake up to a game over screen. but i can't really play it "actively" as much anymore

you know what it is? when you've figured out "ah, this is an unstoppable build. i've already won," you then still have to play the other 20 minutes of a run. and that can feel really good in games like binding of isaac or whatever! it even feels good in this game the first 50 times it happens. but after that, it just gets so predictable and tedious

maybe this is another plateau before i find some other level of enjoyment and progression, but for now it's just a "i can't think of anything else to play" diversion

edit: man, i've flip-flopped on this game so many times. every time i start getting bored, it adds some wild secret level and a bunch of items and a whole other progression thing to do. and then i'm enthralled yet again, this being my "steam deck in bed right before passing out" game of choice. and then it plateaus, gets boring, and then boom- another layer gets added. this game is either 2 stars or 4 stars depending on when in the cycle you ask me

it's a one-button rail-shooter about standing your ground in the workplace? you pretty much just press the spacebar, and that's the game.

but you don't come here for the gameplay, you come here for some really silly jokes. this game is cute, and stylish, and very funny! but its humor and the overall plot get really tiresome pretty quickly. there are only a few voice actors, as far as i can tell, and i like the way that gets used. i find them overall very charmingly amateurish, it feels like a cozy passion project game.

i agree wholeheartedly with its message, but if it's not a new message to you, it feels like it's stating the obvious. and it's delivered appealingly tongue-in-cheek, but also with a tone that's condescendingly simplistic in a way that feels unintentional.

it's hard to rate because sometimes i feel like it's a 4/5 joke game, and sometimes i feel it's a 2/5 waste of time. it's got charm, but i don't know if i'd recommend it.

i bought this on switch when it came out, and i just kept finding myself wanting to play monster hunter world instead. but then, it came out on pc, and i grabbed again thinking surely this time it'd hook me more. but i played it once, put it back down, and haven't grabbed it again.

i think this is a good game, i just don't think it's what i'm looking for, and i have some reservations about changes they've made (even accounting for the difference between having ps4 as a launch platform vs switch)

it's hard for me to give a star rating to something that feels so personal. obviously it's very amateurish, but i picked it up for a dollar after being curious about its sequel.

parts of it are genuinely unsettling, and parts of it are humorous in a way that doesn't land (which feels almost intentional, but not quite). it's a really interesting mix of tones.

i found some of the prose relatable because of how specifically it portrayed mental deterioration and pharmaceutically-induced brain fog.

i think there are some conveyance issues, and not because it's intentionally surreal, but because the writing is really uneven. but i like games like this. i don't feel affected by it, but it was an engaging half-hour.