Recent reviews by Lumichrome

The Entropy Centre is a clear love letter to Portal that unfortunately has too many annoyances to be enjoyable.

I found the Portal-inspired storyline, humor, and level design to be great. However, I quickly became frustrated with the game as I got further and further into it.

The lack of an in-game manual save is a major annoyance. The game only saves at arbitrary checkpoints you can't control. If, for example, you played through the beginning of an action scene but failed the final jump, chances are you'll have to replay the whole scene from the very beginning.

The same goes for the puzzle solving. Due to the nature of the gameplay, you usually fully set up every test element with the solution in mind, and then execute the planned sequence of events. If you fail to execute correctly, you'll have to set up every element again, since you can't save after initial setup. And this means manually moving each element on the level in the same exact way as before, which is boring since you already figured out the solution in your head.

And you will fail to execute, since some parts of the gameplay are extremely finicky. One of those is the conveyor belt, which sometimes makes physics go haywire and launches your boxes all across the map. Another is the jump pad, which you will often miss because there's no course-correction like in Portal, and other times it will just decide not to preserve your momentum. These faults are completely out of your control and you will most likely have to replay the puzzle from the beginning when they occur, which is extremely frustrating.

The action/fighting scenes I also found to be quite boring. They help spice up the pacing a little, but they also suffer from gameplay issues. Enemy projectiles can sometimes travel through obstacles, and then you don't have enough time to react to them. On levels with rich foliage, you can sometimes just not notice the enemy until it's too late.

Overall, I really feel like there is a solid foundation for a good puzzle game, but the gameplay issues and frustrations make me unable to recommend it.

The gameplay is extremely fun and enjoyable, killers are pretty distinct and allow for many different playstyles. The Survivor role is incredibly teamwork-centered, and it's honestly interesting to play both sides. Unfortunately, the community turned out to be a little too much for me to deal with. Excessive tea bagging and post game chat kind of ruined the experience for me. But your mileage may vary, hey, maybe you're into that sort of thing, who am I to judge?

Papers, Please can seem a little boring at the first sight, but it's one of those games that you'll want to play again just to see how the different events will pan out, or even to see how you can improve your personal scores. It's fun to try different approaches when interacting with special characters and seeing the game react to it. Be prepared to not get far in the first few attempts, but the more you play, the better you'll get. If you enjoy games with relatively calm gameplay, even a bit repetitive at times (in a good, relaxing way), then you should give this a go.

I can strongly recommend Portal 2. It's fun, it has great characters, and it has some of the best puzzles I've ever seen in any game. If you liked Portal, you'll love this one. And if you didn't like Portal, well... you might still change your mind after you play this one through.

Portal 2 is a classic that has stood the test of time, and still manages to be fun today. It's definitely in my Top Ten favorite games of all time.