Recent reviews by TrackZero

I should start by noting I loved Punch Club and the majority of my time in Graveyard Keeper. However, that said, there are a number of reasons I cannot recommend in this game, first off:

It's a time sink. Tasks are far more grindy than they need to be. A number of items require specific almost one-off workbenches to be created. Then you have the problem of so many items that fall into this trap, you're almost required to have a wiki open to remember where to do what. Even if you have an item description available to tell you which bench to use, likely you won't remember visually what they are to connect to the name. Because there's just so many. Then you have a number of benches which do not allow you to set a queue, so you're creating items (that may require you to have let's say 10 of them) one at a time, clicking menu after menu (or hotkeys if you're lucky). THEN you have "quality" items, which are implemented terribly. Often out of 3 quality levels, you're only looking at a single level being practical for anything in the base game. The quality levels themselves being the cause of the problem of not being able to queue items. This clearly was implemented haphazardly. And the worst part is none of this needed to happen, the quality level system, the "broken" item queuing and mess of workbenches all fundamentally stem from the dev wanting to add future DLC to the game.

Speaking of the DLC, guess what; if you don't own it, you'll be continually confused throughout the game seeing talent/skill builds for item quality levels for skills you cannot even get without the DLC. Which again, won't even really matter in the base game. However you, as the player do not know that. You're just left in the lurch to constantly have to google/wiki answers for things that shouldn't even be present. Consuming more time that never needed to be spent.

Next up, the time system of the game is completely pointless. Certain key characters who give quests are only available on a set day of the week and because quests are often dependent upon other quests being completed, you're often in the mid to late game only working for one NPC at a time. However, time moves forward so quickly (one week is 45 minutes of gameplay) this also means you can often miss the person you next plan to meet with because you were busy working on another part of your setup (farming, building out the graveyard, mining, zombie management, etc) and not notice within your 7 minute 30 second window. Requiring you to have to constantly adjust what you're working on to wait out the next 37 minutes so you get your next chance to speak to them. This ruins the sense of a blissful grind working on some part of your setup, for no real reason. When you step back and know how the game works, you realize the weekly abstraction serves absolutely no purpose. There's zero reason each of the critical NPCs can't be available every single day, other than the fact that the devs came up with this week system and clearly became obsessed with it. Unless some DLC puts it to better use, but I'm not here to review DLC I'll never touch.

Then we get to the real kick in the pants. The ending. Spoiler time (though honestly not much of one). After potentially dozens or hundreds of hours of work put into this game to get your main character back to the real world, you've done it. Everything's ready to open the portal home. You do so and.....you don't go home. Your "love" (nameless npc model) comes through the portal, hugs you and it cuts to black via a heart wipe. And even at that point, when you're WTFing, in comes Gerry the talking skull and Donkey to literally discuss what a cheap table pull this is just so the dev can make more money. As if joking about what they're doing somehow forgives what just happened. Completely unreal. I often buy and love DLC for games. However, that DLC is not critical to giving the complete experience the base game is supposed to be delivering. And given that the DLC (sans being on sale) is 10 USD each (for 3 of them), it's completely absurd.

Now, if you're approaching this game simply as some harvest moon type game and don't in any way care for the narrative value, you won't have this as an issue and will largely enjoy yourself (aside from the item queuing problems). Or if you can get the DLC cheap and know to do so out of the gate, this probably won't rub you the same way. But as someone who only bought the base game as a singular experience, this is a complete betrayal of the agreement between game devs and the consumer. And though I loved the look, the music, the characters, the world, etc. I cannot recommend this is a purchase to others unless you're looking for different things, as noted above.

This may be the most conflicted I've ever felt during a review. There's so much quality here, thrown away seemingly for nothing more than greed. How hard would it have been to show 3-4 static images to give an "ending" as much as the intro was? Ugh. And it'll be affecting my purchase when I go to check out Punch Club 2 at some point. If I see this DLC nonsense repeating, I think I'll be done with this developer. Very disappointed.

Unwieldy title aside, The Gallery Ep1 is a great introduction to adventure game conventions in VR. The blink movement mechanic (with directional selection) took some practice, but once used to it I found little issue exploring. The puzzles weren't overblown and felt attached to the narrative, each leaving me with a smile on my face. The story told is a launching off point to a bigger tale and delivers a satifying first episode; leaving me excited for the next one by the time the credits rolled.

My only criticism is that sometimes I didn't notice the colour outline on objects and had to trial and error to see if it was something I could store in my backpack. Perhaps more distinct/customized colour choices could help in future episodes.

Also note that this game is definitely on the higher-end graphical scale, so you'll want to tweak your graphical settings to ensure you're not dropping frames. (View this as a plus, nothing about it feels "tech demo/filler", it's a properly designed world.)

While the game's content may seem light, what is there is worth the pricetag. The gameplay, music and art style make for an amazing retro arcade feel; with mechanics for beginners and challenge for those who want to put in the practice. This game just straight up rocks, and it's still only in early access! Can't wait to see what's coming. For any early Vive owner, this is a must buy.

Geowars meets Quake. Score challenge gameplay that gets you into a "flow" state. Audio cues are outstanding. Great value for the price.

There's far too much to be said about how great Team Fortress 2 is. It's free, it's got a massive player base and you'll definitely have fun. If you're a gamer you owe it to yourself to give this a few hours of your time at least. If that turns into hundreds of hours more, all the better!

Easily the best reformulation of Breakout ever created. Music, visuals, gameplay and price are all in sync, this is a must buy.