Recent reviews by Spaetzel_Crusher

Ori

The sleek and determined lil creature has lashed and slashed his way into my heart, where he found no thorn bushes awaiting him. He has since metroidvania-ed around each ventricle, backtracking and replaying endlessly in a game loop of love.

Ori is a game of infinite pain and destruction. Ori dies and dies and dies and dies. After nearly infinite attempts to jump over a thorn bush, eventually one succeeds and you can quickly move on to your next death event. But Ori also kills and kills and kills. Ori serves up death hot and fresh to any creature that has the misfortune of crossing his path and he looks good while doing it too. I can’t tell whether death is a sport or an art to Ori, an old friend.

Challenging platforming is the name of the game. Super-snappy controls make it possible for Ori to traverse the super-dangerous levels. The challenge is real. Sometimes you have to jump like 35 times before you can land somewhere safe. But persistence pays off. You’ll understand the layout of the thorn bushes and the ways of the mantis shrimp.

All the leveling up and weaponizing is gratifying. You go from straight chump at the beginning to unstoppable god of death by the end. And YOU choose how to spend your Ori points.

The graphics and overall presentation are well within my cup of tea. Detailed vibrant captivating imaginative playful dynamic thoughtful art style. It really is art, they had a vision that leaves me in awe. Major kudos for adding to the pool of worthy artistic endeavors that humans have undertaken.

Here I must be honest I watched my girlfriend play it 99% of the time. She only handed me the controller to beat the super hard parts that she couldn’t. And I did beat them because I am sweet at video games. But I did watch her play all of it, my opinion is semi-valid.

I saw a guy drive by with an Ori sticker on his car and I tried to reach out to him but he just kept on driving. I thought to myself what a shame that was.

But seriously, I have a strong distaste for the word “metroidvania.” It’s the clunkiest portmanteau ever to gain wide acceptance and must be stopped. So I hereby propose that those types of games should from now on be referred to as “Ori-likes.”

Extremely enthusiastic thumbs up

Wow my only perfect game. Is that impressive for this game or not?

I can’t decide if this game is puzzle-tastic or puzzle-riffic.

You are a small blue thing whose boat went too far down! Time to save your own life by solving puzzles. Set to the backdrop of heaping scoops of melodrama.

The glaring issue that must be addressed is the voice acting. The narrator has both a heavy, unfamiliar accent and a speech impediment, and the script and delivery were very emotional. Combine that with an attempt to describe the blue thing as they/them, and this game earns the golden mute button award. I wasn’t sure if I should stop playing because I was kinda embarrassed to be part of what’s going on here. But hey, a puzzle’s a puzzle and daddy needs his fix, so mute button it is!

I can understand why others like the narration though, it’s very special.

But non disbutandem est. Call me old fashioned but I personally don’t care for distracting elements and do value proper allocution.

Me and the blue thing, who in my internal narration is referred to as “it,” went on to solve the absolute s#$% out of some puzzles. I love that thing.

Hogwarts Legacy, quite a game.

I’m reviewing from the other side of the couch, where I watched my girlfriend play this for 80+ hours. I’m semi-qualified to talk about it. She is a Harry Potter fiend, grew up on it, full nostalgia and love points. So this game came at a perfect time for her arc of becoming a gamer. It’s a big ticket game with a ton of polish. It’s very Harry Potter. It’s deep. Time and money well spent.

Graphics are oh so good. The interior of Hogwarts looks fantastic. The play of light across wood and marble as it cascades through lofty windows is captured in a way I’ve never seen in a game. The design of the inner appointments and woodworking is simultaneously whimsical and reverent to great European woodworking traditions. At times in the beginning of the game, I found the character model to look so good in-game that I was thinking we are near peak graphics. But then in a different lighting condition it’ll look glaringly digital and fake. Only sometimes!

But it’s funny that I write now, right after this ray tracing update. 99% of my experience was without that. I rate the graphical experience VERY highly. My computer runs everything perfectly, it’s fluid and smooth at all times. Never had the stuttering that others mention. After update I get frame dips. Not cool.

But what’s doubly not cool is the pop-in of the ray tracing. Very, very uggo and distracting. Instead of watching the subject like I always do, now I’m watching entire puddles appearing and disappearing over and over. It makes it seem like ray tracing isn’t an integral part of the composition, but rather applied on top of everything with a brush. I’m no expert on how it’s supposed to go, but I thought pop-in was largely over. What is this, Daytona USA?

I guess I’m not ready for ray tracing. If I buy a god-tier graphics card does pop-in go away? If so, seems not worth it for this game. To celebrate the introduction of ray tracing into Hogwarts, the residents dumped water all over the floors so they could see how shiny it is. Wow, totally worth the performance dip. The first time I threw something at my computer that it didn’t like. I went from thinking my computer rules to thinking it sucks, all within Hogwarts Legacy. Thanks.

Gameplay is all there. She (my girlfriend) panicked at first and thought she couldn’t do all the different spells while dodging and drinking potions. But she got there. It looks roughly the same as every other modern game today, good for her.

The game is comprised of combat + crafting + racing + farming + minigames + whatever, like so many modern games? Her big play leading up to this was My Time at Portia, which funnily enough has a similar structure to this game. This game is obviously better in every way but no date sim.

As a game : fully fleshed out, much to do. No details are spared. Somebody obviously cared about making this game rich and full. Details such as your character grabbing and drinking a cup of tea from a table are fun appointments that help demonstrate that this game is determined to keep your interest with bonafide content. A self-contained experience that requires no additional money.

All that being said, as a whole it seems almost like a collection of minigames. To me. When I feel like being cynical. Yes, games have advanced a lot in every way. But they can also just seem like constituent parts tied together by cut scenes.

Cut scenes : Voice acting was excellent. Fun and vibrant, the actors were all extremely skilled. With the exception of one character who was terribly voiced and was so bad it kinda ruined my opinion of whoever is in charge of this. The worst voice actor ever, BOO x500. Seriously though, the voice acting is the best I have ever heard in a game.

The only other boo this game gets is for an audio glitch. Occasionally, the character voices have a HORRIBLE delay effect randomly pop up. I say occasionally but some days it’s often. It has good days and bad days lol. This disgusting, grating problem was allowed to get into the final game. How? Who let that in? It has a ruinous effect on the entire audio aspect of the game. It is an unacceptable mistake worth taking a whole point off of a review.

I suspect it has something to do with the ability to customize the pitch of your character’s voice at the beginning of the game. The manner in which they attempted to implement the feature resulted in failure. Yet they kept it in. Because the option to change the pitch of your character’s voice is top priority, even if it has a devastating impact of voice quality overall. These games support extremely high quality audio, and the production went top tier putting the voiceovers together, all the spatial effects, only to let an obvious defect mar all of it. Extremely uncool.

I made an assumption about the reason for the glitch. Maybe it was from the spatial effects mentioned above. Whatever caused it, it should have been remedied but has not been. My heart goes out to the audio team who killed it only to have their work stepped on by who knows who.

And since I’ve come this far - forced diversity. At first I thought they handled it well but later on I’m like geez, is every game going to be roleplaying the UN with its characters or what? It could be way, way worse. Light on messaging big on video game big on Harry Potter. Big win.

It’s a very, very good game. Even at full price it’s a deal. In a world that has pretty much lost its creative touch I see so much here that sucks me in. The idea to set a game in Hogwarts is great, but it falls apart if the visuals are half assed. This game EARNED the Hogwarts setting by KILLING IT visually. It’s a real, full, passionately crafted game that I am happy to play party to. Maybe one day I’ll even play it.

The go-to for a middle-of-the-road experience.

Middle of the road is essential for your collection. Sometimes you want to play a game while half checked-out. It’s a competent experience that you can get bored of in a single session. But you return to it time after time. After owning it for years you’re still refining your technique.

I’ve played against my girlfriend like a zillion times. At first I would handily win nearly every game, being a longtime gamer whereas she is new to it all. Now it’s a dead even match like it should be, with the games being mostly decided by unforced errors. But if we have the super jump option on I take bigger risks and can sometimes pull off some krazy stunts.

The graphics are nice. I had a new appreciation for how good they are after playing on someone’s Xbox, where this game didn’t look so great. Everything about the visuals imparts an overwhelming sense of fun. Slightly cheesy. But it’s good to let yourself just drink it in and accept that.

The physics, courses, powerups, customization, game options, and controls are all just above average. But since every one of those categories are, it makes for an overall experience that really makes the grade. I could put up a wishlist for changes in each of those categories, but none has a dealbreaker either. It passes muster.

I want more from it. The dlc so far is all justified in my opinion. It doesn’t feel held back or spoon-fed. But it’s now reached its limit where the next game should be released. The price per course of adding dlc will soon make it a bad deal as a single game. And the new game should have new stuff! I want to see gameplay get deeper, but if simplicity was a key part of this one’s success, I understand if they’ll stick with that.

COMPLAINT : I spent a very long time without my computer connecting to the internet. It seems that some things are dependent on that. The play time is very wrong. We have played MUCH more than 69 hours. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we never get rewards for playing. They show up extremely rarely and when they do it’s 90% of the time something we already have. Sabertooth skull and red trail over and over and over. So despite playing a crazy amount of time we have barely anything unlocked. It’s not SO bad but being awarded the same item for the millionth time is a little maddening. Team17 please send me an unlock everything code thank you!

Get it you will never regret it. I tried a bunch of other golf games and this is the only one that gets repeat play.

It’s a new idea. It’s puzzle-tastic.

These kitties may not look aggressive but run em into each other and see the true beasts within awaken as they engage in a brawl so violent that both parties are launched into orbit.

My girlfriend takes the approach of try a million ideas until they all work out. I try to crack the code and calculate the whole thing before I draw a single line.

Complaint : the lines are not drawn very smoothly, they need more resolution. And when you try to draw along the borders the pencil gets snagged, making for an unsatisfying experience.

Play it, it’s fun and uses brain power.

This game is sub-phone game quality. Positively no refinement or polish.

It’s better than staring at the wall by a slim margin. Therefore it is acceptable.

I chuckle when the kitty can’t avoid the barrage of objects being thrown at him and falls in the bathtub.

Stray! My boy!

Dag, this game is good. I bought a fancy laptop with the beastly graphics card. I plugged it into my 4k OLED TV and Stray let me simultaneous know the following things: My laptop is sweet. Stray is sweet. My TV is sweet. I am sweet for coalescing these things.

The gameplay is not deep. I knew that going in and so should you. It’s not possible to die and lose. All challenges can be retried until you complete them. The plot moves itself along, you don’t really make choices. I’m good with all of that when it comes to Stray.

The mechanic and visuals of Stray jumping around and catwalking everything is satisfying. You won’t ever misjudge a jump and miss. You will never attempt to traverse a long pipe and fall off. Stray’s animations as he traverses the dystopian hellscape are very catlike and dynamic.

Artistically I love the game. Lighting effects, level and character design, writing, vibe, believeabilty - it not only checks those boxes but ticks them too.

Stray is definitely a cat and solves things in the manner a cat would. I love the idea that he’s walking up to random robots and showing them a photo to see what they’ll say. Strapping a robot onto his back certainly helps him get things done. Great idea and execution.

Music is whimsical, visionary, and dark.

Magnificent experience! Somewhat shallow gameplay doesn’t hurt this game at all. Honestly many games with “deep” mechanics are often just busywork and fetch quests anyways. In stray I was always eager to see what’s next and never was bored. The top tier audiovisual presentation is what made this game nearly perfect.

This game unlocked inner magic that was secretly living inside of me.

I love this game and its siblings. I’m a grown ass man yet you can find me on the edge of my seat, laser focused on finding that last kitty that is probably hiding up in a tree somewhere.

When you start a level everything is so foreign and new to you. By the end, every inch is like an old friend. It’s a metaphor for our machinations in life.

Clicking the final object in a section releases a deluge of brilliant colors, shocking the senses. The austere line art gives way to a symphony of saturated hues.

Music is top notch, like it is in all Find All games. I hope the composer earns enough to buy one of the houses depicted in this game.

I’m into to all gaming styles, including ones much more complex than Find All. This game is limited in scope and gameplay. Sometimes that’s what you want.

For me it’s a social game. I’ve never played it alone. Fun to play with my girlfriend. I get to yell, “No not THAT balcony” at her and she gets to yell “That’s not the coin I was talking about but that’s good too” At me. My old ass parents played it after dinner and they didn’t know that video games could be nice and fun. They thought it was all people machine gunning each other and twitch based looter shooter action with 360 no-scoping.

Only flaw of the game is that there are not more in the series.

Get your expectations straight it’s a find the hidden object game. If you don’t know what that means, Find All will teach you.

Misfire.

I salute the idea but it is poorly executed. Right off bat the game is showing us tons of rough storyboard art and giving us a behind-the-scenes feel while subjecting us to a long credits sequence. I know you guys are proud you made a game but I don’t like you in that way. Maybe woo me and show me something good before you start giving me a sneak peek at how the magic is made. Credits-first isn’t helping the game feel cinematic. The intro makes it seem like a bunch of teenagers made this game.

The game itself - funny and charming I think… didn’t make it far because it’s poorly laid out. The original run of point-and-click adventures had a great flow and clever design to subtly guide the player to action and satisfaction. This game plays out like… OK I don’t know what to do. I guess I have to try every clicking every option with every object until something happens. To add to that frustration the main character will just say “no” to lots of things you click on. There’s a window in a barn. I’m like let’s open this window and he’s like “I’d better not” or something. Not very satisfying.

Went to big town. It didn’t seem very big at all. Kept leaving and coming back like there must be more here but I tried everything. Turns out a blank piece of sky in the background must be clicked on to go to another part of the town. I don’t want to hover my mouse over random parts of the background hoping that maybe it’ll lead to the next area. At least not right off rip.

To get to one of the first areas, the monastery, you have to ride a donkey up a long path while it makes some super wonky sound effects. It takes a long time. But here’s the thing: watching that donkey slowly and jankily make its way up while the camera pans IS in the spirit of those older games. It has the right vibe.

While it has the right vibe, it’s deployed too quickly. We never found the 7 dollars that the French soldier at the monastery wanted. But we sure spent a lot of time watching that donkey walk up and down the path when we kept going back to see if we missed something.

To me it seemed more like a “try every possible combination” style game than “have fun navigating scenarios” style game. Quickly advancing the story and allowing a few things to get done right away would have taken me in. I see charm somewhere in there. After a long intro and credit sequence that seemed a little too comfortable with our friendship, followed by a play style of randomly-click-until-something-happens. I don’t think I’ll ever be motivated to find that Frenchman’s seven bucks.

The quality of this game is below the bar of acceptability. When the grid goes down and all I have is steam to entertain me for decades I’ll give it another try.