Recent reviews by Battle Hamster

Overall great game!

Needed more time in the oven but overall a really great game (if you have the hardware for it).

Honestly thought hard about refunding and not playing anymore of this game about 3 hours in. ♥♥♥♥ items, ♥♥♥♥ perks, constant railroading, and lame origin stories, the beginning for this game is probably the weakest part of the entire experience. However, both story and gameplay get a lot better once things open up and the game begins to offer you way more options for each situation. Both the side gigs and main story were interesting enough for me that I went for a full clear of everything available because I knew I'd have fun doing it.

There are a lot of bugs in Cyberpunk and practically all of them result in either a load to your last save, one less item appearing in your inventory, or some "immersion-breaking" graphical weirdness. For the most part I found them easy to ignore or play around. I soft-locked once on a loading screen but other than that the game never crashed on me.

I want to like Noita. Its a very interesting idea for a game, and I think if you're willing to go through the Steam Workshop to find mods that fix all the annoying stuff it's probably pretty great. However, the un-modded vanilla game (which is what I'm reviewing here) has so many frustrating design decisions it's driven me insane, and now I find myself writing a negative review for this game after spending 122 hours playing it.

Noita has the awful habit of baiting you with the prospect of fun while also putting up a thousand different roadblocks to stop you from ever reaching it. Even worse, when you do start to get an enjoyable run going, there are a thousand more things designed to rip it away from you. This isn't too uncommon for roguelikes but I really don't think it fits this game at all. It's mechanics are constantly at odds with each other and it doesn't seem able to decide between being a creative sandbox or a serious roguelike

This game's store description prides itself on the simulated world and creative elements, and I can safely say that things like experimenting with the environment, creating different spell combinations, or trying out new playstyles are the most enjoyable and original parts of Noita. However, instead of embracing this, Noita treats experimentation as something to be avoided and rations it out like tiny crumbs if you are willing to grind for it. Spend enough time slowly making your way through areas and maybe we'll give you something new and cool as a treat... or not, sometimes you just waste your time for garbage. Everything that can be used by your character in this game is tied to the worst type of randomness where two-thirds of the available options (or more!) are either straight-up useless or so niche in application they are effectively useless. This goes for spells, wands, items, potions, perks, basically every creative option that could potentially make your playthrough more interesting and unique. Some of the spells and perks even go a level beyond this and end up being actively detrimental to your character. This is all in addition to the challenge of getting through each stage, with certain enemies being extremely frustrating to fight against even if you do get a decent combination of spells and wands. I have played and enjoyed plenty of difficult roguelikes, but it makes no sense to me that this game is as difficult as it is. It greatly discourages trying out new things in favor of using the same reliable tactics and spells for everything. I think I have something like 4 victories in 100+ runs and all of those are because I found an overpowered spell combination early on and stuck with it (bouncing burst + damage field + homing is usually gg).

There are a thousand smaller grievances I could mention. The game punishing you for enemies breaking into the Holy Mountain, harmful liquids teleporting up through the floor and killing you, enemies picking up nuke wands and killing you from multiple screens away, pixels of acid, lava, or toxic rock doing massive amounts of damage, electrical attacks stun-locking you to death, the base movement speed being annoyingly slow. I'll spare you the full list but there's at least one ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing that seems to occur every single run which gives even more incentive for players to find the most reliable strategies and never stray outside of them.

It's likely that the developers simply have a different idea of what they want this game to be. But it seems crazy to me that this game is so committed to its roguelike elements of difficulty and randomness when it's everything else that really shines.

A very good top-down shooter game with roguelite elements. The guns in this game feel great to shoot and are also unique without being overly complex or gimmicky. Highly recommended.

very fun!

This game has nice art and music but in terms of what I expect from an adventure game it's sorely lacking. Game is very short and the puzzles provide no real challenge or thought. On one hand this means you probably won't ever get frustrated but it never really gives you any satisfaction.

The story is as thin as can be and character motivations are extremely lacking. I don't really expect a great story in my adventure games but something that would explain why exploring and puzzling would be appreciated. Escaping the prison because I don't want to die is fine but trying to find a some random statue just because my character saw it in a dream is not so great. This also makes the morality system kind of laughable as your character is never given any motivation to be good or bad until the very end of the game when its too late. At first I thought the system was there to make a statement about how choices can be morally ambiguous until you make them, but no, letting people live is always good and killing people is always bad. This line of thinking also applies even to religious fanatics who run prison castles designed to torture and kill those they view as impure and birds that sell out an entire town of people for some eggs. I have to say though that I did like the design of choices for the painter's quest. If there were more decisions to make that were as interesting as that one this would be a much better game.

If I was to recommend this game based on something it would be the art style and music. However, the gameplay is so shallow that you're probably better off just watching a let's play or walkthrough or perhaps just listening to the OST on youtube. Hell, the pictures and video trailers on the steam store page might be able to give you the full experience if you aren't totally into the aesthetic.

Stellar Game.

Cyan continue to be masters at creating absolutely spectacular environments that draw you in like no other developer out there. Obduction is a game that will make you stop and not only appreciate, but contemplate the world you have been thrown into.

While this is labeled as a puzzle game, the puzzles exist as a means of storytelling and serve as a convenient excuse to get you paying close attention to everything that's around you. Puzzles integrate into the environment as opposed to having the environment built around them. As such, while none of the puzzles are as challenging as those you might find in a game like The Talos Principal or The Witness, they still feel rewarding because they allow you to explore further into the world.

However, there were some things I didn't enjoy as much as the exploration aspect of the game, chiefly among them were the obnoxiously long load times on a hard disk drive. I would highly suggest installing this game on a solid state drive as one of the main mechanics in this game has you loading up new sections of the world on a regular basis to solve a puzzle. Each one of these is accompanied by a loading screen that can get especially bad if you wander off while in the middle of a puzzle. Occasionally the game will also just stop you dead in your tracks if it didn't have time to preload an area.

The story felt a little contrived in some places which was annoying for a game with such a rich and imaginative environment. Way too many hints are given about how to satisfy the conditions for the good ending, so much so that it feels less rewarding when you actually do it. Why do this they provide plenty of environmental clues for you to figure it out on your own? I have no idea.

Although there are some minor issues, overall Obduction is a great game that is a worthy successor to the Myst series. The world Cyan has managed to create has to be experienced before understanding what makes it so spectacular. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who loves to let their imagination run wild.