Recent reviews by xul

A world of fast-paced ultra-violence that rewards moving fast and being precise. Whack-ass story, great music, and fun gameplay. I encountered a few bugs while playing, the worst of which was probably a dog repeatedly warping through a wall, but nothing that really broke the game.

I wish I could recommend this game, but I can't due to save games being totally broken. I played through Episode One to the credits, viewed the decision making statistics, and exited the game. Upon restarting the game an hour later, having played it nowhere else, my save file was missing.

There was no indication whatsoever during play that there was any issue with saving (locally or cloud-based), and their own support page indicates that even if there was an issue with cloud saving it should still have a local copy until the game is able to resync. After combing Telltale's support site and the internet, this seems to be a common issue and not one limited only to Minecraft:Story Mode. In fact, the same exact issue seems to have befallen my save in the Game of Thrones game. I submitted a ticket through the Telltale support site explaining my issue, including results from their Diagnostic utility, and eight days later have still not heard a single thing back from them.

I've now submitted a request for a refund through Steam, which I view as a pretty unfortunate outcome. I've really enjoyed other Telltale games, including what I played of this one, but the fact that this issue exists, appears fairly common, and is present in other Telltale games with cloud saving is really disappointing. I have bought and played a number of the Telltale games, but between this game-breaking (game deleting!) issue and the fact that their support hasn't responded in over a week, it's highly unlikely I'll buy any more of their games.

Short, enjoyable, and polished first-person puzzler with a nice little story conveyed through found artifacts (audio clips, items) as well as the narration from TOM (the AI). One of the reviews I saw called it "Portal, without the portals", and that's not a bad way to sum it up. It's not as long (or challenging) as Portal 1 or Portal 2, but if you like either of those games you'll probably enjoy this. Certainly worth picking up on sale.

A mobile-targeted, freemium take on the recipe of The Incredible Machine, filled with materialistic cats thinking of things you should buy them. In case that was too subtle, there are also obnoxiously frequent reminders to buy your cat(s) said useless things. It could have been a cute, casual game - instead, it's not worth playing.

If you want something in the vein of The Incredible Machine, go pick up Contraption Maker.

If you want to keep the cute cats, go pick up Fort Meow.

If this game made you hate cats, feel shame and go play Bad Rats.

I really wanted to like this. It has nice art and atmosphere, but it's just not fun.
The game basically feels like a tedious process of desperately trying to find what you need to click on, followed by all-too-brief moments of actual puzzles.

The "quests" are started by clicking on something in the environment (indicated on mouse-over), followed by collecting a bunch of needed pieces to activate the associated puzzle. The pieces in the environment are not uniform in size or appearance, and there is no visual indication to differentiate a clickable piece from a static piece of the background. The pieces are often very small, and frequently seem deliberately designed to blend into the background or feel like an unremovable part of another object. When coupled with the fact that there is no visual indication, and some things that look like the pieces *aren't*, it becomes more frustrating than fun to find these pieces.

There is a help system, which involves collecting mosquitoes to "charge up" for use. You do this by (surprise?) clicking the mosquitoes. The help seemed almost useless, with nothing happening often times when clicked - as if you weren't on the right screen for the help to assist, nothing would happen. I also clicked it once and then clicked an item, resulting in the collected "charge" being lost, with no help given...commence more mindless clicking.

The level design also frequently means that if you haven't started a "quest", you can't get the associated items even if you are staring right at them, meaning once you are able to get the quest you have to go back through all the screens you had already visited collecting the items you'd seen but couldn't previously get.

My final gripe is with the actual puzzles where you had to solve jigsaws / place items in their correct spots. It was incredibly picky about the pieces being aligned near perfectly, and - in at least one of the puzzles - the pieces would fly back to their original location if not placed properly. In one of these puzzles, pieces also seemed deliberately hidden in the environment.

Basically, this game is less about solving proper puzzles and more about testing your vision looking for tiny, obscured, clickable things.

I bought this during the (2011?) Holiday Sale because it looked like quirky fun...and (ok) because I wanted the achievement for the steam badge or coal or whatever it was. I enjoyed playing it briefly then, though I seem to recall the vehicle construction feeling a bit clunky and frustrating. I got whatever the achievement was, and played for another hour or so, and then dropped it until tonight. Picked up from my savegame, and after the initial confusion of wondering wtf was going on and what music notes did, got back into it.

It's definitely different, and quirky, and humorous. The vehicle creation can be a bit frustrating, particularly until you get used to it a bit (dragging vs clicking, making sure you click on joints so you don't reset the piece type, etc.), but the only real remaining frustration I had there was when I couldn't delete a piece because it had attachments (I think it was based on the order you placed the pieces, so that even if there was a valid "connection" elsewhere, it wouldn't let you delete the initial "connection", resulting in having to remove and recreate a whole bunch of pieces). If you are expecting something serious, or competitive, or particularly challenging I doubt very much you'll enjoy this. Revel in the silliness, play it casually, and ♥♥♥♥ around plently and you're likely to have a good time. I'll probably revisit it at some point in the future to make silly vehicles, and try out using custom music so I can have all my buddies rocking out to Cypress Hill, because that sort of thing amuses me.