Recent reviews by Lapladav

In short, the game looks great and polished, but the gameplay is critically unfulfilling it's potential and for that I wouldn't recommend the game at full price.



The game's art-style, animations and audio is great. The gunbrella is a really fun mechanic for both fighting and platforming. The characters were interesting and the story was alright.

HOWEVER, the game has extremely easy boss fights and nearly no platforming.

I would argue that the first boss fight is the hardest due to the limited health points we have, but that quickly changes after like the third boss because the game suddenly starts handing out health upgrades like candy and you can then mostly tank and spam the ensuing bosses. I was playing on the hard difficulty and never needed to use any consumable during fights. This is a spoiler, but Mama, one of the two big baddies of the game, is only seen like 3 times in the entire game and the third time she dies to a joke cutscene. While a little funny, it was mostly anticlimactic and disappointing. Also, the second to last boss is by far the easiest in the game. He does one single move on repeat that is incredibly easy to evade.

As for the platforming, I can only recall two sections that really made use of the platforming. This is mostly disappointing because the gunbrella is a great mechanic for platforming and it was barely utilized. I would have expected more platforming challenges and also more secrets reachable through platforming. There were so few secrets and so many opportunities for secret rooms.

Small final note that the setting to adjust the film grain doesn't save for some reason. I have to readjust it everytime I open the game. It also reset itself after I beat the game.

This game is so much fun! I never played the original game, but loved the music. This has the same quality of music with a super fun rhythmic gameplay.

I'm just sad that the Hard difficulty is melting my brain too much to have much success.

This is a knockoff of Insaniquarium (which is available on steam). It's not inspired by Insaniquarium, I'm actually shocked at how much this is just blatantly copying Insaniquarium without adding anything new.

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/app/3320/Insaniquarium_Deluxe/

Wanted to try this game because Crash is kind of legendary. I really enjoyed Spyro and Sly Cooper so I figured I'd like this too. I hated every level I played and it doesn't look like the experience changes at all throughout the rest of the game.

The game has a nice visual style, but that's about the only thing I liked. It's definitely not for me.

Platforms, enemies and traps all have janky collision/hit boxes. You can bump your head under a platform without touching it (and often will when trying to go fast), die to traps you aren't visually touching (the fires being the most notable) or get hurt by enemies that didn't visually hit you. In short, you can't trust what you see. The pretty visuals don't precisely match the reality. I suspect this wasn't a problem in the original game.

Movement doesn't feel right, there's something off about it. There's something very off about the distance when jumping forward compared to jumping left or right. High jumps (from bouncy boxes) also feels odd, the character starts falling down at an abnormally fast speed.

The levels of Crash are extremely linear, they're basically a corridor. This isn't a problem, but it's the kind of level design that makes you want to go fast. However, sometimes the level design places a pitfall behind elevated terrain or structures in a way that completely hides it until you get very close which means that you can't see it coming if you move quickly. It's not a big issue, but it does ruin the mood.

I've only beaten the first boss, but it was a major disappointment. His weapon seems to have an active hitbox at all time instead of his attacks having a hitbox which caused me to get mostly hit when he wasn't attacking. Also realized that you can just attack him instantly after he starts his attack, repeatedly, and he'll never even move making the fight trivial.

I like to complete this kind of game, I usually 100% each level before moving to the next. Can't do that in this game. I searched online how to activate the pads that prevented me from completing some levels and finding out you have to reach certain points in the game (I think one was almost at the very end) to unlock certain colored pads and then backtrack to the levels that had those colored pads to finally complete them... was very disappointing and when I decided it wasn't worth continuing.

I wouldn't recommend it, it's not my cup of tea. If you enjoy the first few levels though, you're going to have a blast because it's not going to significantly change from that.

The game looks good and has some funny bits and fun mechanics, but it's also a very janky plateformer and shooter. I found myself mostly spamming the dodge button while split shooting through most levels.
It's honestly quite possible that I didn't play it "the right way", but I'd die instantly to 3-4 shots unless I played that way and the game didn't show me another way.
The game is remarkably short, I'm sure you can comfortably beat it under two hours if you find a way to play it fast paced like in the trailer.

This is a good little metroidvania with a similar gameplay to Hollow Knight. The platforming is good and the fighting is very good. The bosses are, for the majority, relatively easy but quite enjoyable nonetheless. The game has plenty of secrets that reward thoroughtfully exploring the map. Early on, you unlock an ability to heal on demand which makes this game very casual friendly.

Few bad points to note that soiled the experience a bit:

- There's an optional boss that is hidden bellow a special pit that is visually identical to the other "death pits" in the map. There was nothing suggesting that pit wouldn't also hurt you, not sure how you're expected to find the boss without looking it up.

- The cemetery is a secret optional area that is hinted at through the two purchasable skulls, but that hint is grossly insufficient to guess that you can teleport through an unremarkable part of the surface.

- There should be an upgrade to track down remaining collectibles after beating the game or some other threshold. The Map Sweeper chip doesn't retroactively work or help for the trickiest collectibles.

- When a boss is guarding a new ability, the new ability should be required to exit the area after defeating the boss in order to guarantee that the player took the ability and to teach the player where to use it. This was an issue for me since the bomb ability is multiple rooms and a branching path past a boss. After defeating the boss, I went towards the room with the Bomb ability unlock, but backtracked before finding it to see what the other path was and then forgot about it. I ended up clearing 98% of the map before becoming stuck and needing to look online what I was missing to finish the game.

Great game

By far the best escape room game I've found on steam, with the bonus of having steam workshop for unlimited replayability.

Fun experience. The game has some significant choices, enough for two distinct plays, but they all end up at the same place regardless so it's mostly going to impact which achievements you'll get.

Hell Yeah! isn't that good as a platformer, it's strength is in it's characters and style. This DLC get's rid of all that and focuses on being a hardcore platformer, which is extremely painful since the game has poor controls. I've beaten every mission in one sitting and hated most of it. It's just not good and shines a spotlight on all the previously negligible flaws this game has.