Recente recensies door Casey

The Thing is by far and away my favorite horror movie and just a great movie overall. Aesthetically, this table is amazing. I love all of that. The incorporation of movie set pieces into it is really so well done. When the storm hits and the ball turns into a flare... such a nice touch (though I hate that actual storm mechanic heh).

However this board would be radioactive if it were an actual arcade coin-op. Missing the skinny ramps endangers STDM. Shooting halfway up said ramps is almost guaranteed STDM. Exiting the mini-game on the wrong side (the left) leads to a micro-second flipper up otherwise it's STDM. I don't even engage with that mini-game, I just kick it right and get out ASAP. That generator shot needed for taking out ol' Bennings is something else.

I'll review it using words from the "Positive" reviews:

-- very hard. One wrong move and the ball is going straight through the center

-- the center zone has a massive hole in it

-- aimed toward more veteran pinball players. [Has an] instant gutter

-- bottom half of the table feels like one giant black hole

-- pretty tough to make just about any shot due to the massive amount of space between your flippers and any ramps which seem really small.

If you're an average joe pinball player, 100% do not bother with this table.

Interesting mechanics with the way movement/action rotates the cylinder. Graphics are fine and the sound effects suitably crunchy. I do think the randomness takes away from the fun a bit. You can get into situations where you just have to guess as to what the result would be, especially when all the move-related abilities come into play. Doing a guessing game within a very tight action-economy kinda unravels the design a bit.

Great roguelike for pretty much the reasons most people have already said. Could maybe use a few QoL upgrades here and there, particularly in the late-game when your inventory is stacked with items. Maybe some map-related ones, too, like marking off areas you don't want to auto-explore back into. Other than that, it is a tightly wound roguelike with strong itemization, satisfying power curves as well as challenges, and nice character flexibility. One underrated aspect is that the writing is fantastic, too. Some really amusing lines are littered throughout the game.

Little sidenote, I think of all the roguelikes I've played this one has the most satisfying feeling of defeating wizards -- those fights are genuinely spectacular. Kinda took me back to the party vs party battles in the old Baldur's Gate games. Lots of spells flying around and teammates battling and if you're playing a melee guy you can use subterfuge like traps and shadows etc. Great stuff.

I've actually played this mostly on the Nintendo Switch during travels, but got it on PC as well cause it is that good.

A lot has been said about the game already; it's quite simply a very well made baseball game, riding a line between simulation and arcade with a little more of the former than it lets on. In my opinion the best facet is its "Ego" system which is basically 100-levels of difficulty. If you're having too much trouble, knock it down a notch or two, and if it's too easy then just bump it up. It's a very clever, VERY well done system. At around the 90+ Ego ratings you're basically looking at real baseball speeds particularly on the batting.

My only fault with the game is that the Franchise mode isn't all that spectacular. You can sign new guys and even do a little bit of training, but it's pretty passive. If this series ever implemented a really hardcore Franchise mode it'd really put it up over the edge.

Pros: Functions. Leaderboard is nice to have. You can set it up so you get emailed when it is your turn, making for very easy management. Compared to the version that was bouncing around 20ish years ago, this one is superior. It uses the 3.0 rules for ranked which is an attempt to even the Allies/Axis win rates. There is a note system as well, where you can leave yourself notes. Quite handy when you have multiple games going on.

Cons: I've been playing strategy games for far too long and I hate to say this but the user Interface is probably the worst I have ever seen. You will have to grapple with it a lot. When you're "used to it" it's functional, but you can never plot moves and step away from the game, because when you sit back down all the swirling arrows with inconsistent pathing and vague trajectories is just plain incomprehensible. It's also completely inconsistent. Units are just placed randomly into territories. Sometimes all scrunched in a corner, sometimes left, sometimes right. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it.

Bugs: I have run into 1 soft lock which ended a game. Besides that, no problems for 20+ games. 2 additional crashes, but the game went right back in without issue and there is an internal report function. Some bad interface interactions when it comes to accounting dice in certain situations (like amphibious w/ bombardments) that make things more confusing than they need to be, but it's still functioning. Besides the soft lock, I have not experienced any bad bugs.

Dice: They're dice. It's a dice game. It WILL screw you over eventually (and sometimes a lot). This is the nature of probabilities. But, like in games like poker, the top players are usually all familiar faces for a reason. There's still quite a lot of skill and player input involved.

It's not going to blow your socks off, but it's a decent game. Best way I can describe it is that it is what it says on the box -- a run'n'gun with Aliens aesthetic. Really reminds me of the SNES era when I'd buy something like Aliens 3 or some Terminator spinoff. It's like yeah, this isn't Super Metroid or Megaman, yeah it's pretty average, but it's Aliens. And you can fun with basic game design at the end of the day and that is precisely what this game is. It isn't Deep Rock Galactic or L4D. It's a little beneath those, but it's Aliens, and if you love that series then you'll probably enjoy this game.

Main negative would be that it's slightly too grindy to get to the good part - which is the higher difficulty levels. The higher difficulty levels introduce harder enemies, but they also introduce friendly fire which makes the game way more enjoyably chaotic.

It's a COINOP simulator in the style of a boardgame.

The game is actually really well made in a lot of ways and does vastly improve on the Nam predecessor. The gameplay loop is basically kicking the insurgents and much nastier Taliban out of the area, then protecting it from those very same forces. Going against them, you have the constraint of very long, empty roads suitable for enemy mining, mountains suitable for enemy hiding, and a lot of locals suitable for not cooperating. The fight isn't just the enemy, but the totality of trying to get it all under control. By the end, you'll be training local Afghans to hopefully fend for themselves before your much better trained U.S. forces depart for good.

The cons of the game are that the UI is almost worthless, the mouse operation (i.e., clicking around) is not all that it could be, things like loading guys into vehicles can be a bit nightmarish on occasion which isn't good because it's a core part of the game. It's a lot of flak to fly through, but if you can handle it the core concepts are quite good. Every so often you get some really good chunks of action, like cleaning out a town and then running spec ops into the mountains for ad hoc observation posts, then using them to locate enemies and blast them with long range arty and aircraft before dropping MOABs on their tunnel systems. When it works, it works. It's just very rough around the edges and the devs have mostly abandoned it so it will not ever be smoothed out.

Legitimately, I think this is the only game that nailed the empire-building aspect right. It is so well handled that I do wonder if Paradox is looking at this game to yoink a few ideas.

You really need to re-think how you approach conquests in this game because 20+ years of map painting will poison your mind to the game's actual setup. Basically, the real goal of the game is to build Legacy, which is a value point outside the 'map painting' aspect. Legacy building in and of itself is a roller coaster ride and that is where the game nails the ancient empire vibe pretty much perfectly. Empires grow big, they accumulate territory, its people grow fat and decadent, conquered indigents grow restless, the empire ages, it slides into decline, it shatters, wayward generals split off as usurpers, if it can be revivified then it might be stronger than ever, etc.

The thing is that if you look at it strictly as a map painter you'll not really handle all this well. You need to see it more as a Legacy building game, and empire building is more adjacent than leading it on a leash.

A few cons are mostly the UI which is somewhat lackluster if not mysterious, and while it's cool that FOG works with FOG:E, I've never bothered because it's just so hamstrung a process. It does allow you to LARP a bit if you want to just play out the battles of a specific general. Really, though, the process should be seamless. Having to load and reload files between two separate games is 90s material. If they're making a Medieval version of this (which they should) they REALLY need to combine the two. They have something on their hands with this formula.

Was wondering when someone would swoop in and blend the auto-battler and roguelike genres. Given the popularity fo booth, it seemed ripe for the taking and "Dale Turner" nailed it. You basically choose characters, roam from room to room (the path is your choice), collect items, run into events, and fight bosses. Right now the only fault is I think the UI could be cleaned up a little. I'd say it's a small nag, but some games smoke the UI so well (Monster Train for example) that I think some devs might undervalue how important it is. Other than that, it's a very fun game with lots of room for improvement.

SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND:

The game has been out a few days now and was presumably mostly purchased by fans of the first game, meaning people familiar with it and good at it. Despite that, per achievements, only a whopping 20% of the population has even gotten to the SECOND stage (myself included). I did not play Spelunky 1 much at all, so thought it fit to just hop right into the 2nd, presumably 'better' iteration. The game is very difficult.

Good: Charming game from what I can tell. I'm assuming if you get good at it the game has its own rewards, as is usual for the roguelite genre. I do like the adventure aesthetic, and despite the difficulty I kinda find it endearing in its own sense. The game produces a LOT of "moments" as you carefully navigate a world extremely determined to kill you. Moments being daring escapes, absurd deaths, and all manner of nonsense from the game's physics.

Bad: No idea what else the game has. I just replay the first stage repeatedly, occasionally making it to 2-1. Overtuned difficulty is not helped by very ticky-tacky controls. As someone who beat the OG Ninja Gaiden on NES, and the later iterations on Xbox/360 on Master Ninja mode, I was a little taken aback by how Spelunky's control scheme is not as fluid as it should be for a game that is strictly 2D. Particularly, I found the jumping/whipping timing to be VERY unintuitive and basically had to teach myself to always account for its 'floaty' feel.

Bugs: I've run into two bugs that required restarts. I do not know what caused them.

Better controls and some very slight difficulty tuning would do the game wonders.