DeerTrivia tarafından yazılan son incelemeler

Bring a box of tissues.

And no, not for that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

An improvement on the Talos Principle in *almost* every way.

- If you've played Talos Principle, you know what the puzzles are like. There's more of them, and while I was able to get through the game without a guide, there were enough that stumped me to keep it fun.
- The music is gorgeous.
- The *game* is gorgeous.
- Cats.
- Has a gorgeous and interesting hub world to explore.

The *almost* mentioned above is the story. I don't think it's bad at all; it kept me interested the whole way through. But it is so unlike the first game that it felt (and still feels, even after completion) very weird. The Talos Principle was, by design, a very lonely experience. To have the next game in that same world have you surrounded by hundreds of characters with different personality, engaging in sidequests, going through dialogue trees, hearing debates between them... if you've ever had a favorite band who put out a record that sounded completely different than anything they'd ever done before, that's what this felt like. And while I enjoyed it for what it was, considering it in the larger context of the Talos Principle franchise, it just feels... weird is the only word I can come up with.

Don't let that stop you from buying it, though. It's a fantastic game.

As a similar-to-but-legally-distinct-from Portal style puzzle game, it's fantastic. Maybe a little on the easy side in the first half, but there were some real headscratchers later on, and getting through the whole thing without a guide was extremely satisfying. There's a wide variety of doodads to work with - boring cubes, laser cubes, bridge cubes, jump pads, three different "change-your-thing-into-another-thing "fields, fans, conveyor belts, and more. And every time Astra said "New puzzle element!", initially I would groan because it felt like it was becoming too much, but when I actually got to puzzling, it never felt like too much. So if you're looking for this style of puzzler, The Entropy Centre is a sure bet.

My gripes mainly revolve around the story.

1. A good 80% of the game is "Get to the reactor." I'm pretty sure that starts in Chapter 3 and ends in Chapter 11, or something like that. It's a whole lot of stalling, with no interesting narrative or character threads filling in the huge gap.

2. As soon as you learn what the game is about, your brain is going to say "Hrm, I wonder if this will happen," or "I wonder if the game will end this way." There's a very good chance you are right. There's so much potential for mind-bending weirdness in here, yet the story is as straight as an arrow. The ending in particular is such a letdown. It makes sense, given everything that came before, but once the main conflict is revealed early in the game, you will *immediately* think "Oh, I'm probably just playing another loop of this cataclysm cycle." And seven hours later, you will find out you were right. And was yours the one to finally break the cycle? Who knows? The game doesn't. It's so predictable and sucks all the wind out of it.

Don't play for the story, but definitely play for the puzzles.

Never thought I'd see a dark night of the soul that was also funny, charming, and scored with an awesome soundtrack, but here we are I guess.

First, take my review with a grain of salt, because I'm one of the (apparently very few) weirdos who did NOT like Shadow of the Colossus. I liked the *idea* of it very much (plus the music and the story and the art direction), but I felt like the execution of the boss fights was sorely lacking. My main issue was that every single fight had a moment, often several moments, where the player could simply stop and be perfectly safe. First boss? Climb on his back, then stand on the platform there. You are totally safe, nothing bad can happen to you there *at all*. Sand worm? Stand on the rock. Bull? Stand on the pillar. And you can just sit there, as long as you want, and come up with a game plan.

Call me crazy, but I think if I'm a tiny flea of a human fighting a colossus like this, there should *never* be a moment when I am safe. I should always be in danger. I should not be the one in control. But because I got to control the pacing and flow of every fight, the fights simply weren't exciting. It never felt like I was surviving an epic battle; it just felt like "Look for the obvious gimmick. Oh, I have to [shoot the eye/shoot the belly/bait an attack]. Cool. I'll do that now."

I was really hoping Praey for the Gods would get right what SotC got wrong. And to their credit, the developers did try. Worm boss constantly fires at you, requiring constant moving and dodging. Flying serpent dude will rain bombs down on you for eternity. Bull will (eventually) start charging you without you baiting him. The problem is even with these changes, it still wasn't enough. Each of these attacks is telegraphed with more than enough time to react comfortably and safely, and each boss has exactly *one* of these. If you check my play time, you'll see I didn't finish the game, so maybe later bosses do it better. But the first four were enough to convince me that I would not find what I was looking for here.

Also not great is the lil' baddy combat. Every now and then you'll be walking along, then a bunch of dead soldiers will pop up from the ground and attack, or a wraith will appear and charge. The combat... I mean, it *works*, it didn't feel bad or broken or anything, but it wasn't really fun, and the weapon degradation is ridiculous. After the first few fights, I just started running away every time I got in an encounter. Not because it was difficult, but because it was interrupting the more interesting part of the game: exploration.

That's one of SotC's shortcomings that Praey does improve upon: exploration. I'm not really a fan of random diary pages scattered around, but there are many environmental puzzles to be stumbled upon. No markers guiding you there - aside from your next target, and the occasional treasure map marker, your map is fairly blank, which makes exploration rewarding. When not getting interrupted by random encounters, I really enjoyed poking around each and every corner, looking for secrets.

I'm not going to comment on the Survival aspects. I've never liked them in any game ever, so I turned them down here. I'm not really qualified to offer a critique on how well these systems work. That said, I do appreciate the ability to tune the Survival difficulty separate from the game difficulty.

Music was good, and the story did have some intriguing elements. I actually really love the idea that you're not stabbing or killing these things, but ringing the bells. Not only does it give players a very clear indication of how much damage they've done, but just aesthetically/thematically, I thought it was really interesting. I can't really say how any of it shakes out in the long run.

In short: I don't think the boss fights were all that exciting or interesting, and the smaller encounters really don't add anything fun, they just get in the way of the good part (exploration). If you liked SotC, you will probably like Praey to the Gods more than I did.

I'm torn on this one. I'm going to give it a thumbs up because it successfully kept me hooked with "What the hell is going on?", and the puzzles are well-designed. The 2.5 hour runtime should tell you they're not terribly difficult, but there were a few headscratchers, and they were all intuitive - there weren't any with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ solution no one could have reasonably found out on their own.

The reason I'm torn, though... I won't spoil anything, but I will say that the story is the kind that makes you view everything up to that point in a completely different context, which is cool, except the more that I think about it, the less I actually like it. Once I got past the twist, I started to realize the most interesting character in the game actually has nothing to do with anything and is just there for show. And I'm sure someone will say "That's the point!", but unless the point was "Make the player regret seeing this story to its conclusion," then I'd say they whiffed. And if making players regret it *was* the point, then... well, that sucks.

It's the difference between story and story-telling. The story-telling is fantastic - like I said, I was hooked. I was super interested in finding out how all of these seemingly unconnected threads came together. But the story - how it all ended up coming together - feels less and less satisfying the more I think about it. I know the old cliche is "It's not about the destination, it's about the journey!", but when the destination retroactively makes the journey less satisfying...

I don't know. I will lean thumbs up because, as a narrative-driven puzzle game, it's well made (and also gorgeous). And I imagine everyone's mileage may vary for the ending. It just didn't do it for me.

It's goofy, it's charming, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Almost every level has an entertaining gimmick, and as soon as all of the humor has been extracted from that gimmick, it's tossed aside for another, which is *exactly* how it should be done. It lets each level stand on its own, and every gag ends on a high note, without being driven into the ground. Just a chill, silly game. Thumbs up!

The game description asks "Will you let the next four years pass you by?" I am saddened to report that these are just empty words. You can't actually do that, nor can you avoid "... it's up to you to take it." The game railroads you into going to parties, ♥♥♥♥ talking bullies, and asking girls for their number.

As a result, there's no way to enjoy a truly authentic college experience: burning out from taking 21 credit hours in a semester, avoiding parties at all costs (or finding a pet to hang out with at any party you can't avoid), waking up at 6am only to find your class is cancelled and your professor didn't bother to tell anyone, FAFSA forms, nonexistent parking, and duck ponds.

Also, the writing is awful and the people look genuinely terrifying in 'motion.'

So, this is going to be a weird review. I'm giving it a thumbs up because it absolutely achieves what it sets out to do. But playing the role it asked me to play was legitimately painful.

Without too much in the way of spoilers, you play a woman going to work at an AI assisted counseling clinic. An AI program (Eliza) listens to a person's problems and generates responses in real time, but because robots are creepy, you act as a human proxy that holds up the AI's part of the conversation. The game very quickly smacks you in the face with just how inadequate this is, as people come to you with pretty extreme cases of depression, self-loathing, etc., and the best Eliza can do is recommend breathing exercises and medication.

As far as telling a story goes, this is compelling! But as the person who actually has to click "OK Tim, I have some recommendations for you. First, I'm going to send some meditation exercises to your phone. You should also ask your doctor about Apoxotin. Thank you for coming in..." It became physically painful to click that button. By the time I got to the fourth session, I couldn't do it anymore.

On the one hand, that's a sign that the game's writing and storytelling is working really, really well. And even though the main character has her own identity and backstory, I was 100% invested in myself as the proxy. I was the character. Full immersion in an hour. Super good work.

But being fully immersed in a world of automated therapy was so awkward and painful that I actually just couldn't bear to tell another person - an NPC in a dang visual novel, but still a person - to go listen to calming music and pick up a prescription. I just couldn't do it.

Maybe it's because of my experiences with counseling and medication, both of which have largely been positive. Maybe it's because some of my own mental health issues were recreated to a scary degree by these NPC's (get out of my head). I don't know. All I know is that Eliza is so good at immersing you in this absolutely terrible system that I can't bring myself to play it anymore. It's amazing, and I never want to touch it again.

Aaero was a really pleasant surprise. This might be my favorite rhythm game since Amplitude. It's not as brutal as Thumper, and not as relaxed as Rez; it's a nice in-between of challenge and chill. The music is good, the charting is great, it's gorgeous, and if you're into score chasing it's infinitely replayable. The only real weakness is the limited amount of songs, but for $15, it's a fair amount. Highly recommended.