Recent reviews by Mark Ugly

Team Reptile understood the assignment, full stop. Bomb soundtrack, chill vibes, easy-to-learn gameplay loop, great level design, satisfying story, sick character and graffiti art... it's all here.

I'd understand the skepticism of indie titles trying to take on successor projects and ended up falling flat on their face, but trust me, these are the droids you're looking for if you want Jet Set 3.

Soft 'yes.' Solid foundation so far, but needs a lot more time to cook to reach its true potential. Haven't played a whole lot so far, but here are my initial thoughts.

Pros:

• Art style is really cool, definitely a unique take on the 'small world' survival crafting aesthetic and the armor sets look a lot more intricate and detailed than in Grounded. Kind of wish there were a bit more fantasy elements to it, but it's a great start.
  
• Game runs great so far, have a bit of stuttering when first booting it up but performance is solid for this soon into Early Access.
  
• Next to no intrusive cutscenes. Sleeping to transition through the night takes only a couple seconds, tutorial is quick and gives you the basics. NPCs can be found and interacted with to give you hints and unlock recipes for armor and other useful items. This can also be a double-edged sword, however, such as when you have to wait half a minute to travel up to and down from a 'Great Tree' base by balloon lift.
  
• 'Great Tree' base system is a very welcome addition to the genre. When you climb a giant tree you can 'claim' it, and the top of the tree is a blank canvas with no mob spawns for building bases and safehouses. If you're playing in multiplayer, you can make it private and prevent them from building anything in your private base or allow others to build with you if you want. You can also easily move your 'Great Tree' base to a different one, which transfers what you built to a new tree.
  
• Lots of potential creature mounts with different attributes, can be expanded upon in future updates.
  
• You have a built-in resource sensing mode that your character can use to track down and identify nearby resource nodes and mobs, which alleviates some of the difficulty in tracking them down or avoiding hostile creatures.

Cons:

• Combat is a complete mess. The game tries to do a few things Grounded does, and Grounded's combat already isn't fantastic by any means, but Smalland's as of this writing is much more repetitive and janky. Hit detection is awful and all over the place. Enemy AI is sporadic and way too random - sometimes it will attack twice or even three times rapidly in succession, sometimes it won't attack at all for long periods of time, sometimes it will circle you several times before finally deciding to suddenly attack. Enemy attack patterns are currently very basic - most enemies right now have only one or two attacks that they use over and over again. There are parries like in Grounded, but the way-too-variable enemy AI and shoddy hit detection makes the parry very inconsistent and difficult to time right. Unlike Grounded, there is also a dodge-roll, but it is next to useless in comparison since a successful parry stuns enemies for a bit, and their random AI makes attacking them too much of a gamble if you don't parry them first. One of the first hostile mob types you encounter are beetles that are resistant to most forms of damage except for piercing, which requires a bow and some arrows (and as soon as you shoot them they dart at you into melee range, and they attack very quickly) or a spear (which you can't craft right away, you need to go at least a couple crafting stations deep) and these jerks are everywhere. Even running away from a losing battle is too difficult, since all the enemies are lightning quick no matter how big they are and chase you even more relentlessly than in Grounded, quickly climbing walls to catch up to you and taking a long time to de-aggro. Currently, combat is the worst part of this game by a mile and needs a complete overhaul if this game wants any future success.
  
• Not enough resource nodes. Grass and wood are everywhere, yet you can only harvest plant fiber and basic wood from certain node stalks with an upgraded tool and infrequently-seen sprouts and root clusters on the ground. Makes the gameplay loop more tedious, and is a chief reason why I think a lot of the other reviews mention they get bored easily.
  
• Base building as a whole is fairly cumbersome. You have to point your cursor at the edge of where you want walls, floors and ceilings to go, instead of a more lax 'snap' system like Rust or Grounded. There are also a lot of spots where building isn't allowed, even when it doesn't make much sense, like not being able to place foundation platforms on top of one another to make scaffolding, or on top of certain rocks. Makes building bridges over water and other gaps more troublesome than it needs to be, which wouldn't be a problem, except...
  
• ...you can't swim. Falling into water kills you, and there are streams and lakes in a lot of inconvenient spots. There is also fall damage, and for a game with this level of verticality, it's pretty harsh. You get armor pieces that let you glide later on, which alleviates this, but early on this makes escaping from hostile mobs even more irritating.
  
• It's difficult to tell which mobs are hostile and which aren't. Your 'resource sensing' mode highlights all mobs as blue, even hostile ones. I think hostile mobs should be highlighted in red to more easily differentiate them, and neutral mobs in yellow or green or something.

So far, it's a fun enough game, but it has some pretty glaring sore spots. Unless you really want another survival/crafting game to jump into, I'd wait for a few more updates or for a sale.

I've finished the game, and I'm updating my review to touch up on a few points. I still recommend it, but I felt some points could use a bit of elaborating.

To sum it up, as someone who enjoyed the original Battle for Bikini Bottom, its remake, and the movie game, I'm having a great time. Do I recommend it to everyone? Eh, hard to say, really. It doesn't break the conventions of the genre or anything. With that said, if you like platformers and grew up watching SpongeBob, it's a great time.
--------
Pros:

• Buttery smooth platforming, even more so than the original games. The physics feel much less stiff than the older games (although it's not necessarily as quick as other platformers of its ilk, so that might be a turn-off for some), and SpongeBob has not only adapted some movement mechanics from Patrick and Sandy from the originals, but also gains some more of his own as you progress, such as an airborne flying karate kick. He can also grab and mount ledges from below and if you barely miss a jump, which was one of my bigger complaints about the platforming in the older games. It flows a lot better here.
  
• The writing is great, chock full of references to the show. Particularly the older episodes, but I've heard from people who have seen newer episodes that there were some references to more recent seasons as well. The jokes don't always land, but a few of them made me, a grown-ass man, cackle quite a bit. Plus, they actually got Clancy Brown on board this time to voice Mr. Krabs, and as far as I know, all the other voice actors reprise their roles as well to great effect, and if they don't, they sure sound like they do. It really does feel like an extended episode of the show.
  
• Very cool level design. Most of the levels are sort of 'remixed' variants of some of the original Battle for Bikini Bottom stages with themes applied to them, like the Wild West version of Jellyfish Fields, but there's more than enough changes here that make them completely distinct from their inspirations, and there are a couple of original levels later on. They are quite a bit more linear in appearance than Battle for Bikini Bottom and aren't quite as open-ended with side objectives, but even that game was fairly linear with its level design for the most part. I'd say in structure the levels are more like the Movie game, so if you liked or tolerated that, you won't have a problem here. Oh, speaking of levels...
  
• The game runs great, with little to no loading screens within the levels themselves. Everything seamlessly transitions from one zone to the next. Not like the load times in the old games were too bad or anything, but each level only needs one loading screen, and I think that's pretty impressive, makes everything flow together even better and is a good way to take advantage of modern development tools. Going back to previous parts of levels is also very simple, much like in Battle for Bikini Bottom, since each segment of each level can be fast-traveled to from the pause menu, regardless of whichever level you're currently in.

--------
Cons - These are more nitpicks for the most part, although a couple are pretty big issues for me:

• Side objectives and rewards are lacking, and most collectibles are pretty pointless. Most side paths and platforming challenges reward you with more of this game's Shiny Thing equivalent, Cosmic Jelly, and, occasionally, Gold Doubloons. There isn't much of a purpose for getting these collectibles beyond unlocking cosmetic costumes - which there are a lot of, to be fair, and with plenty of neat references to the show and even the older games - but I was kind of hoping that some of the costumes would give small bonuses or something, even if they were subtle changes such as powering up specific moves or increasing pickup ranges or something. Either that, or the Cosmic Jelly could have been utilized to upgrade some of SpongeBob's abilities, like in the Movie game. As it is, I get way too much of the stuff from normal gameplay with not a whole lot to do with it.
  
• Combat is pretty dull and repetitive, and the game constantly interrupts the platforming to make you fight enemies in arenas. This was the biggest issue for me overall. Yes, the old games had combat arenas, too, especially the Movie game, but they were far less frequent and jarring - here, the game plops you into a giant jelly shield out of nowhere on several occasions and makes you fight jelly goons to continue. Some of these enemies are a bit more annoying to fight because you have to wait for them to finish attacking before they become vulnerable (and some of them take ages) or they push you back and stun you after you hit them, and take much longer to get rid of than enemies in the older games did. I will say, once you unlock more moves as you go on, the combat opens up a bit, and the enemies now have visible health meters that tell you how many more hits they can take, which is a nice quality-of-life feature, but for the most part I feel like these just pad out the level a bit and are tolerable at best, obnoxious at worst.
  
• There are a few bugs here and there. For the most part, it plays just fine, but I've encountered some glitches and bugs that have gotten SpongeBob stuck in place for quite a while, or that have broken the camera a bit. Nothing huge, but it could use a bit more polish. I'm sure with future updates these can be rectified easily.
  
• There aren't any other playable characters other than SpongeBob. Personally, I don't find this to be too much of a bad thing, since SpongeBob's moveset is expanded upon quite a bit, but I can see how it would be disappointing to fans of the original, especially since with the inclusion of new characters not featured in the older games some players might have expected a larger pool of playable ones.
  
• It's shorter than Battle for Bikini Bottom and the Movie game by just a bit. Not by much, but with seven levels in total not counting the hub world and about a 5-6 hour runtime in total if you're going at a modest pace, it clocks in just shy of its predecessors. I don't necessarily mind too much, because a lot of this can also be attributed to streamlining the platforming and optimizing the load screens, and there are post-game objectives to complete, but many of those just award you with doubloons for unlocking the rest of the costumes, which, as I already pointed out, are just cosmetic.

--------

Solid 8/10 from me overall. Might be a bit on the pricey side to recommend to players looking for something fresh and exciting, but if you're pining for another good SpongeBob game with writing like some of the older episodes, this one's another winner.

Update: It's been a couple weeks, and so far I will say that I've been pretty impressed with how active the devs have been with communication and listening to feedback. I think that's a good sign for things to come. As for right now, though...

These are just super early impressions from my first hour of play, and isn't necessarily a hard 'not recommended' or anything. TL;DR, it has promise and potential, but overall the asking price is just a bit too steep to justify the content that's there right now. I'd wait until a few major updates down the road.

I've played quite a few platform fighters before - every Smash game to date, Rivals of Aether, MultiVersus, Nick All-Star Brawl, Slap City, Project M, and yes, McleodGaming's Super Smash Flash games, which were no doubt the inspiration for this project. For a small team producing a free series of games, the SSF titles were very mechanically solid, and I'd argue can be just as fun as the genuine article.

Fraymakers... I can say it certainly seems to be on its way there. I do like how the game plays - the controls feel intuitive and familiar, with extensive control customization (you can even map shortcuts to wavedashes and short hops, if you so desire). The three O.G. characters, Welltaro, CommanderVideo and Octodad, have easy-to-understand character archetypes and are all fun to toy with, and Orcane's Rivals of Aether moveset has been faithfully ported over with crisp animations and the addition of grab moves. The stages look great so far, the music tracks are excellent, and the assists are a very cool feature that add more depth and dynamic to movesets. The game also has workshop support already, and their custom content editor is available for modders to tinker with. I'm no programming wizard, so I couldn't delve too far into the specifics of that, but having access to that this early on is a huge boon for this game.

With all that said, I have a few pertinent misgivings, and it's enough to caution you to hold off on purchasing unless you're really that eager to see what it plays like.

First things first, there are a few performance issues. The online netcode at the moment is lackluster. Even with the game's recommended settings, I've experienced stuttering, intermittent freezing, and occasional frame drops. That said, I've had a few matches that were fairly smooth overall with little input delay. When it works, it works, but again, at the moment, most of the time it doesn't. Even offline, I've experienced a bit of brief slowdown on occasion, specifically in the training mode. I don't think it's enough to make it unplayable or anything, but it can be pretty irritating at times.

Second, there just isn't enough content right now, plain and simple. See, a 4-character roster going into early access is a little on the light side and is a bit disappointing, but it's not the end of the world. That is, it wouldn't be if the animations weren't unfinished. Several animations for these 4 aforementioned fighters at this point are still in the sketch phase, for goodness sake. At least the hitboxes function properly as far as I've played, but compared to other platform fighters I've played, the hits don't feel terribly 'punchy' at the moment with little apparent hitstun, so it can be pretty difficult to tell who's winning in a move-vs-move scenario until one character is already sent flying. Furthermore, there aren't any victory animations nor taunts as far as I'm aware (I've tried all of the buttons I can think of), and the only currently-available mode is standard versus matches, with a bit of a focus on competitive 1v1. If this came out earlier, that'd be more understandable, but this game has been worked on for two years now. Again, I know the team working on it is fairly small, but I've seen many games with small dev teams that have more to show for them on early access launch than this did. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt since it's the launch of early access and all, but it doesn't bode too well when the game's release had to be pushed back several hours because of a last-minute critical bug they had to fix, on top of some already-rather-cryptic release deadlines continually being pushed back over the past couple years.

Third, while I do think assists are a cool idea, I do think they also could be implemented better. I haven't used all of them, but from the ones that I have, I dunno, a good chunk of them seem to feel a bit superfluous, at the moment? Most are straightforward enough - for example, there's Gunman Clive, who fires several bullet projectiles in front of him, or Captain Viridian, who can lift you up to help you recover or chase opponents on top of the screen. There are, however, quite a few that are difficult to parse what they do in the moment, though - some are so fast I barely see them on-screen, some appear to just be simple short-range melee attacks that I assume apply debuffs, and then there's ones like Rhythm Doctor that don't appear to do much of anything. There is some flavor text that tells you what they do on the CSS, but many are a little long-winded. I like the idea as a whole, but it needs a bit of polish - I know the idea was to keep them mostly short and sweet so it doesn't interrupt the flow of the match, but I think there should be a very brief screen-darkening and freeze-frame effect when they're summoned, just to give the players enough time to digest what's going on.

That's the gist of it. Again, I think there's a solid foundation here with enjoyable gameplay, great art design and faithful representations of indie games. It does look like it's shaping up to be a great celebration of the indie scene of gaming, but it's still a ways away from being worth its current asking price. As updates get rolled out, I'll come back to this review and modify it to reflect how it is in a more complete state, but for the time being, unless you're truly pining for another new platformer fighter, I'd wait and see how it looks once it's had more time in the oven.

TL;DR I recommend this game at full price with one caveat - buy it for $25 only if you haven't already experienced the original game. If you're brand-new to the Stanley Parable, it's a grand slam. However, if you're looking to buy into it having already played the HD rerelease of the game on Source... I'd wait for a sale.

Non-TL;DR from me has a few spoilers here and there, so if you're on the fence and don't want it ruined, avert your eyes:

-------------------------------------------

Positives about the Stanley Parable in general:
+ Davey Wreden's writing and Kevan Brighting's narration are both hilarious and incredibly engaging. The way Kevan shifts the tone of a scene on a dime is just a treat to listen to, and the writing veers into all kinds of unexpected directions, each of which is done rather well. Their efforts have put more personality into two entities, one unseen and one voiceless, than more than half of today's lead game protagonists.
+ The amount of player-choice scenarios the devs accounted for is pretty impressive. Half the fun is trying to search every nook and cranny of the game's map and engine to dig up more secrets or even more endings.
+ The original music score is very professionally done and fits the tone of whatever's going on onscreen to a T.
+ It's not overly-complicated or puzzle-centric for the most part - a lot of secrets are pretty straightforward to find (although a few of them are a bit more involved) and you don't have to worry too much about precision platforming or timing to progress the story in most instances.


Positives about the Ultra Deluxe edition:
+ I'm much more impressed with the model work and environmental detail this time around. They kept the Source feel of the original while giving it its own visual identity, especially with a lot of the 'new content' areas.
+ More than twice as many endings is not a fib - there really are that many more hours of content included here. With that said, there's something to be said about the quality of some of this content - more details on that below.
+ Much of the new content is also fairly straightforward to access and doesn't require you to think too hard outside the box, although, again, another aspect of this contributes slightly towards one of my biggest gripes about this edition in particular.
+ Performance is very good, haven't experience any crashes yet or glaring errors while staying on the main routes. It's only when I start to really pry at the seams that I begin to notice a few bugs, but most casual players won't see too many of those.


The big gripe I'm dancing around with the Ultra Deluxe edition:
- You know how I mentioned there's a bunch of new endings and content, and a lot of it is straightforward to access? Well, 'new' is a bit of a misnomer, there - a vast majority of these endings are just slightly-rewritten and retooled variations of routes found in the original Stanley Parable, and many of them are accessed simply by taking an item with you down those same routes from the first game (the item, in question, is a simple metal bucket, hence the memes and mentions of buckets in reviews and discussions of Ultra Deluxe). That's all well and good on its own - some of these endings genuinely are quite a bit different from the 'normal route' ending you'd get by earning that ending without the bucket, and there is some subtext in this narrative decision towards poking fun at 'premium editions' and sequels lacking content with direction and coherence.
It's just a shame I had to pay the base price of the original game to experience that meta joke.
It's pretty much blatant hypocrisy to call out sequels and premium editions for shallow content, then immediately afterwards give us content that's... well, not really much deeper in scope, to put it bluntly. I wasn't entirely disappointed with the decision to just alter existing endings, but personally I was really hoping they'd double down more on the 'cleverness towards accounting for player actions' side of the narrative.
Basically, I get why they did the new content this way, and if it were a cheap expansion or even a free update, I'd think it had some merit to it, but charging the base price of the original game for very-similar content doesn't really make up for the metatextual commentary here.

-------------------------------------------

So there's my two cents. The Stanley Parable has some of my favorite comedic writing in gaming, and again, a good chunk of the new content hits the mark, but I don't really think it reaches the highs of experiencing the original for the first time, which makes me a bit apprehensive towards justifying another purchase if you've already experienced the 2013 release inside-out. If you're a first-time player, though, the base game on its own is worth the price of admission in my book, and who knows, you might end up actually appreciating some of the new stuff, anyways.

I'd only recommend this if you've played the prior titles and are that desperate for more. Otherwise, get those and play them instead. Trials Rising has a genuinely fun game hidden behind a dozen terrible design decisions.

- You've probably seen the complaints about the menu system. Allow me to drive the point in even harder - this menu is bar none the worst menu I've used in a video game. It is seriously bad and an immense chore to navigate. The map screen is bloated; icons float over one another making selecting a particular level way more frustrating than it needs to be. I like the idea of adding missions onto older levels for replayability sake, but viewing them and shifting between them is also made needlessly difficult. User made levels are difficult to find. The game makes no effort to organize the menu buttons in a way that makes sense, so even getting to that map screen is a nightmare. They did it just fine in literally every other Trials game before this, so I really don't know when wrong here.
- Microtransactions are all over the place. Currencies can be earned in-game, but apparently the devs nerfed the rate at which you obtain it, so that's always fun. Loot boxes can and will give you dupes, sometimes several dupes in the same crate. You can sell some of these dupes for the 'cheap' currency, at least.
- Compared to previous games, the physics are kinda crappy. Clipping issues are somewhat more abundant in Rising than previous Trials games, which makes some of the minigames and secret challenges much more difficult and frustrating than they need to be.

If you can tolerate that stuff, the game has a pretty sizable chunk of content. Otherwise, like I said, pick up one of the previous titles first and play that instead, like HD or Evolution.

Absolutely brilliant game. My comparatively-few hours played does not and should not reflect how amazing my time with Hades has been thus far. Intense soundtrack, stellar voice direction and character writing, gorgeous artwork and level design, incredibly-addictive and smooth top-down brawler gameplay, plenty of reasons to keep playing over and over again via added bonus challenges and unveiling a deeply-engrossing background story of love, lies and deceit.

This is all coming from someone who thought Bastion was merely pretty good, but a bit overhyped. If you're still sleeping on Supergiant's latest gem because of skepticism about their previous outings, I'll gladly be the alarm clock that wakes your ass up - get this game, especially if you're into roguelites.

My personal GOTY of 2020, without question.

Gonna go ahead and resubmit my review. The writing hasn't changed, but my opinion has. Hopefully it makes sense and puts things into perspective.

Here's Crystal Mech's Patented Enjoyment Test to determine whether or not you will enjoy Yooka-Laylee:

• Find a copy of the first 'Ty the Tasmanian Tiger' game. If you already have a copy, good! Boot that s*** up. If you don't, conventiently enough, it's on Steam for about fifteen bucks. All else fails, emulate it, I guess, I dunno what you want from me I'm didn't make the game or anything so I don't really care
  
• Set aside a good four or so hours and play through as much of that game as you can. If you wanna hundred percent it, you do you, but at least play a good majority of the game.
  
  Did you enjoy it? If yes, by all means get this game, you'll have a grand time.
  
  But if Ty's dated design choices leave you unable to finish the game, don't bother dropping $40 on this, because from what I've noticed, Ty 1 and Yooka-Laylee share a lot of flaws - disjointed and overwhelming level design, serviceable but uninspired soundtrack, not the smoothest control scheme for a platformer, repetitive level design that makes the levels rather easy to get lost in, somewhat forgettable characters, boring minigames that break the pace of the core gameplay, crummy vehicle controls, a horrendous camera system and in general doesn't bring much new to the table.
  
  I'm in the camp of people who wishes they could issue a soft 'no' or a 'maybe' as a recommendation, but for now, I'll just say that Yooka-Laylee does pretty well with what was promised, and if you're willing to overlook the common design flaws inherent to the genre as a whole, it's a fun romp - albeit a bit dry for a $40 purchase - and this is coming from someone who has beaten Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie at least five times each now.
  
  Bottom line, if it really does pique your interest and you're looking to scratch that 3D platformer itch, go for it. There's nothing revolutionary here, but it's a nice little nostalgic throwback.

I'll try and be as concise as I can when summarizing Season 1, for those of you who haven't played it:

- Q: Is it a good game on its own? A: Yes, but that primarily depends on what you're looking for. If you haven't seen the show or read the comics, don't worry about it - there's nothing particularly ground-breaking either way aside from a few cameos early on. If you're sick and tired of the zombie apocalypse scenarios and are looking for something new, there isn't much here to change your mind, but I found it to be an engaging story on its own. If you aren't fed up with zombies, however, and you enjoyed the TV show or the comics, it's more to love.
- Q: Do your choices really alter the game that much? A: Short answer, without spoiling it, if you're expecting to affect the game in a dynamic, drastic way with your choices, don't get your hopes up. Long answer, with some spoilers, most of the 'choice' you're given throughout the game stems from what you make Lee say to others and how they respond later - which is where all the 'X will remember that' buzz comes from. Aside from a slight change in dialogue every now and then, the whole story plays out pretty much exactly the same way as it would if you did something differently and most of the characters are essentially scripted to die at certain points anyway, no matter what you do, i.e. there's a point where your friend's kid is on the verge of succumbing to the virus and you have to suggest who should be the one to put him out of his misery - yet it doesn't really matter what you suggest, because the kid's mother will interject and agree to do it herself. This is just one of countless scenarios like this, and although some character deaths can be prevented early on, with the 'choose who lives and who dies' events placated throughout points in the story, the character you save is destined to bite it at another point anyway, which takes away from the replayability of the game. That's not the only scenario, either - the game is chock full of moments that are essentially predetermined, which took me aback a bit when I first found out after playing through the story the first time. With that said, it's not that the story is bad, per se - in my opinion, it doesn't really do anything much that the show already hasn't done, but it does a great job with immersion and character development like the source material and was well-worth the price of admission on that merit alone - it just feels less dynamic and makes most of the supposed choice you're given feel a bit meaningless.
- Q: What about the rest of the game? Does it play well? A: Very much so. Interactive objects and points of interest are highlighted around you (although you can turn these off if you're looking for a challenge), and the dialogue trees give you many options to work with in reacting towards other survivors. QTEs are usually pretty lenient, and the game doesn't require you to do complex calculations or think too hard for many of its puzzles. It's much more of a visual novel experience, which I don't find any fault in. The dialogue trees can be a nuisance sometimes since they don't always give you a lot of time to respond and can sometimes be misleading towards what Lee actually says and what tone he uses, i.e. questioning someone's mental stability when you attempt to express care about their safety, but it doesn't happen too often for it to be a huge issue.
- Q: Bottom line, would you recommend playing The Walking Dead, and for what price? A: Yes. From what I've seen, I don't know a single soul who hasn't played this game yet, but if you haven't and aren't annoyed at the increasing saturation of the zombie genre in pop culture, then by all means do yourself a favor and pick this one up, especially if it's on sale. I think 25 dollars is a fair price myself but it goes on sale for 6 dollars often, so keep your eyes open.




Who names their kid Duck, seriously...

Yes, there are lines. But here's the kicker: there are also shapes. My god.

10/10

(for real though, it's a great cheap game, definitely consider getting it)