Recent reviews by E.Sharp

It's been a while since I've completed the game including the DLC afterwards, but that doesn't mean my love for it has wained in the slightest, in fact it may have even grown as it offers such a unique and pleasant experience which culminates in an amazing ending that still makes me think about it to this day.

The only true negative thing about Outer WIlds is that you can only experience it once, and that's as cruel and beautiful as life. So I can only wish you don't rob yourself of the experience and play it with as little knowledge as possible.

My closing thoughts are that I hope you'll give this game a try, because I am forever grateful that I did.

These are the thoughts coming from someone with almost 3.000 hours in Payday 2 and 40 hours of Payday 3 Early access.

While I won't deny the advancements that Payday 3 has done to the series, a lot of the things I have experienced are actual downgrades to what they were in Payday 2 and it makes it seem that nothing was learned about what people liked with all the quality of life features added over the 10 full years Payday 2 has been out.

The menus are a jumbled mess which have a lot of wasted space by the character sitting on the side adding nothing of value. Speaking of the menus, this ties into the progression which is horribly implemented in a menu that has barely any filtering options. If you're going to copy the MW style of weapon progression, then have the relative challenges as a tab you can press when you're hovering over the weapons in your inventory so you can check at a glance how much progress it has. Same with heists, and you'd already have a better system than what is currently is place.

Matchmaking is its own can of worms with the ever present ''Always Online'' which has shown its faults. With all of the mechanic changes to stealth that have been added to favor the un-experienced or laggy individuals, I really think people would've much preffered the peer-to-peer system that was in place before, oh but I'm getting ahead of myself, as that would be impossible considering the need to sell microtransactions.

Here's where the root of a bad launch that's not even in the game yet, microtransactions, comes into play. The bane of a lot of people's existence when it comes to modern video games plagues this beloved game as well. The shareholders can't exactly let money get away now can they? So they made the game always online to make sure people don't get the items for free, making the game a pain for everyone with it being always online, and having a bunch of people refund the game because of it.

To end my thoughts, I hope you don't do as I did and purchase the Gold Edition, because it seems like the people behind Payday 3 are not the ones who earned our trust over the last 10 years.

This review might get updated in the future, if anything I hope I am wrong and things pan out for the better, until then, I would not recommend this game

In this review I'll go over the good, the bad an what ultimately made me choose to not recommend Arcade Paradise. For reference, I have gotten to the stage in the game where I don't have to worry about the income from the laundromat business anymore. TL;DR at the bottom.


Performance - The game ran at a buttery smooth 144 FPS and maximum settings (1080p) despite not having top of the line equipment, which is quite good to see in a time of so many games coming out unoptimized. Granted there were some small hiccups but they were rare so it's in the realm of 0.1% which isn't exactly the average.

Aesthethic - Going into this not being a 90s kid, I couldn't exactly point to the accuracy of the things being shown such as words like ''tubular'' but from what other reviews are saying and my own personal experience with other people from that time period, this game definitely appeals to the nostalgia of some, though that can be a double edged sword, which I'll speak about later on in this review.

Progress - The pacing for getting the new arcades felt reasonable, ( getting a new machine every 1-3 in-game days depending on the price) though that's more so for the fact I made the early realization that the grading for the laundry doesn't start until you actually pick it up from the arrival desk, making the strategy to wait for 3 baskets of laundry to show up before putting them all to wash at the same time, giving you way more time to actually play the arcade games rather than just waiting for the laundry part to end to play at the end of the day.

A side note regarding washing/drying machine timing, which is even touched upon in one of the trailers, it says it takes a few minutes, which is true, but the problem is that the in-game time passes just as fast as the machines do, so what essentially is 3 minutes to the machine and the player IRL, it equates to 3 in-game hours, meaning a full wash-dry cycle for the people giving their laundry to the establishment takes at least 6 hours, not accounting for loading/unloading.

Arcade Games - The meat and potatoes of this game and I have to say they've done a good job of recreating classics from the past, though some may have gone over my head, which may explain why I don't really like a lot of the games, though that doesn't mean they're necesarrily bad, they're just not for me.


Audio - The audio is a bit of a mess when it comes to every corner of the game, from the laundromat service to the arcade, most notably the jukebox. First off, when you enter ''King Wash'', if you stand by the door when it's open, you won't actually hear anything as you have to pass a certain threshold for the backround noise to start, which, after a few hours of play becomes annoying, because even if there's no machine running, you still hear one running every so often in the sound loop that was used for that area. The same can be said for the arcade but it's less noticeable there.

There's also a radio that can't be found in the laundromat, and the TVs don't function, so I wouldn't know where the sound is even coming from, which is a constant trend in these audio problems which is ''backround'' audio instead of ''spacial''. The only exception to that is the arcade cabinets which play their little jingle when you get close and dissapears off as you get away. Unfortunately I cannot say the same thing for the Jukebox, which is even worse than the backround noise of both. Once you play a song on the jukebox, it will play on the global audio of the game, so whether you are in the arcade, the laundry section or even outside, you'll hear it at full volume.

Textures - While I was praising the game for its smoothness and graphics, the texture quality leaves a lot to be desired, and for things like the board where people have their ads for missing dogs or little tidbits of information which are fun to uncover. Those at least should be given the light of day with some better textures, since I doubt the glasses upgrade would make me able to see them better.

Management - There's never any bills.

Arcade Cabinets - While the games are up for personal preference in terms of quality up to a certain point, what's not exactly hard to miss once you've noticed is the awful arcade cabinets a lot of them have which can do away with the nostalgia glasses rather quickly, not to mention that they're even on the starting machines you get. Here's my findings as I've started to notice them:

- Video Air Hockey (VAH) has 2 joysticks on each side alongside a whopping 8 different buttons. 1 for the boost alongisde one joystick would've sufficed, maybe 2 buttons if you wanted an additional function but 8?!

- Strike Gold which even though is a one player game, it's setup like a 2 player game, even with singleplayer/multiplayer buttons like the overlay, which funnily enough is present on VAH but not the buttons.

- Racer Chaser has a wheel and a joystick in a configuration which suggests a shifter, but I don't exactly know why a Pacman movement equivalent would need a shifter, not to mention playing Pacman with a wheel would be atrocious. It also doesn't concide with the fact you can shoot ''notes'' while on foot. So in the end, the cabinet should just have a joystick and 1 button, which is something that I'd say for a lot of the other machines, so I'll avoid repeating it ad nauseum.

- Woodgal's Adventure alongside others is a game which tracks progress, and like Space Race where you upgrade your vehicle, considering it's a token based machine, how would it know which player plays it and keep tabs on everyone's progress? I know there are ways but they're never shown, and a game centered around arcades should at least try to be somewhat accurate. Speaking of accuracy...

- Cyber Dance is actually quite good when it comes its arcade cabinet mimicking DDR, but I've put its place here because the game is flat-out just bad and it deserves its own section here. First of all the notes barely align with the music, and if they don't I have to painfully press them off-rythm to get a perfect, which defeats the point of a rythm game. The music, compared to the good soundtrack is surprising to be honest, as the game has a decent selection of interesting songs for the jukebox, yet the ones in Cyber Dance seem like the ones thrown in there that didn't make the cut.

Cabinet Placement - One issue I have with the forced placements is that they don't make sense. Why would the dart board be next to the dance pads, giving it no room. Why would one of the chairs and table set be by the token machine where people are most likely to head first? Maybe some of these problems would be alleviated if you upgrade your arcade all the way but, I don't see why presumably permanent placements would be in such odd locations.

Tokens - I don't see why you are collecting money from the arcade cabinet hoppers when there's an exchange machine at the entrance. Wouldn't you collect the money from the exchange machine and just the tokens from the cabinet hoppers when they're full to refill the exchange machine? You'd probably need to do the same thing for the laundromat tokens.


The game comes from a good place but unfortunately misses on a lot of things which may make or break the experience, though I'm not here to rain on anyone's parade, if you like the game, more power to you. If I could've added one thing, it would've been different sounds for collecting the coins from the arcade cabinet hoppers ( 3 most likely ), meaning the more you waited, the more tokens would drop out, which is quite satisfying.

TL;DR - The game's all right but I wasn't a fan, if you like playing arcade games, though granted not from the 90s, give The Coin Game a try.

Preface

- I am going into this game with no bias on the community this game has or on the developers creating it, juding it purely from an aesthethics and gameplay perspective, only playing it since I keep seeing it everywhere.

My thoughts

- Helltaker ressembles Crypt of the Necromancer in the grid style movement (I'll touch on this in a later point) which might be a good thing or bad depending on who you ask, the majority being good. The puzzle part of this game being challenging the first go around though made a bit redundant by the fact you can skip it (mostly).
- Soundtrack wise, the music was good albeit a bit repetitive.
- The unnavoidable demon girl harem theme is there for those who like it as I feel it plays a big part, myself being indifferent to it.
- As for the movement I'll go a bit more into detail here as it's fine for the puzzle levels but not as much for the final level. Having to dodge the chains, using sometimes split second decision making isn't helped by the fact you're stuck in the fixed moving animation while everything else is fluidly moving around you. It's a poor integration of mechanincs in my eye.


It was an all right game that gave me a few chuckles but in terms of actual mechanics it's a bit lackluster and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a definitive fan of the whole demon girl harem aspect.