Recent reviews by Garbage

https://youtu.be/v-8RfDOeEHg


Phantom Trigger begins with the main character Stan suffering from an abrupt seizure before quickly transitioning to an alternate reality in which we control a scarfed individual called The Outsider. From here, it divulges into 2 plot lines, one as The Outsider traversing the strange world, the other depicting the events involving Stan after the seizure (these are delivered through flashbacks) and it’s a shame that the latter is stifled by the former.

Stan early on makes is clear that he doesn’t want use surgery to solve his condition/disease and opts instead for the more dangerous and experimental route. The game expands on the selfishness of this decision by showing the impact on his familial relationships but by contrast, it doesn’t take the time to properly explain the link between Stan’s condition and how that correlates with what’s happening in the alternate reality. We know that they’re closely related but we don’t know how or why that’s become the case.

These questions also don’t get answered by the characters in the strange world since most of them only speak in cryptic dialogue that merely alludes to a bigger picture. By the time the rather abrupt ending brings the game to a conclusion, their lack of character development and actual narrative impact made them feel lackluster at best. The game could have really explored something interesting with this setup but handling the delivery this way made it a predictable adventure for anyone who recognizes the initial premise.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Phantom Trigger is similar to Hyper Light Drifter in that fans of one are likely to enjoy the other but there are also enough differences to see this as more than a clone or reskin. The core gameplay loop involves going through 4 worlds and clearing the enemies within them until you eventually meet the boss at the end of the level. Again, if you’ve played HLD, this explore-each-map bit is really familiar.

Due to this repetitive nature, enjoyment of the gameplay boils down to the execution of combat and the variety provided, so a lot of this review will zone in on these two aspects. Phantom Trigger uses a 3 weapon system alongside a dash mechanic, a sword for quick slashes, a whip to pull enemies towards you and a pair of claws for slower but more powerful blows. Each of these weapons level up in parallel as they gain experience with every strike and you’ll be able to use certain moves (or combos) once you’ve levelled up the associated equipment. Naturally, since the more powerful combos require multiple high-level weapons, the game encourages you not to be a one trick pony.

Now, one of the title’s biggest strengths is its fast-paced nature. Since enemies hit quite heavily, the game promotes a playstyle dependent on reflexes and quick thinking and that rush of being so close to death only gets more intense as your engagements increase in difficulty. Also, by including combos with different effects like freezing foes in place, it also adds a layer of depth needing proper positioning to make use of these moves. It’s also equally important not to overcommit when attacking and you’ll realize how easy it is to do that when you’re not used to how the delay between dashes and attacks increase as you get further into your 3-hit combo.

By allowing these mechanics to interact with one another, the title creates this ruthless but equally rewarding dynamic, requiring you to think things like “what combo’s the best for this situation”, “what position I should take” and “how many hits can I deal safely”, all within a few seconds. However on the flip side, the gameplay really disappoints in the variety provided for 2 major areas.

The first is the enemy diversity since you’ll only get 1-2 genuinely new foes per level. Everyone else is either the same or just a combined version of 2 enemies you’ve already faced before in the game’s attempt to have this illusion of variety. The second is in the combos provided. From the total 7, 5 of them are almost repeats of one another. While they may be slightly different in aspects like their range or sequence (sword-whip-claw as compared to sword-claw-whip), it’s not enough to give them their own unique use cases. As a result, what you have is a combat system that’s only enjoyable for as long as it remains fresh and that only lasts for like a couple of hours which isn’t great considering the game takes about 5-6 to complete.

1) Great Presentation – would still give overall polish to HLD but this is no slouch
2) Good initial gameplay setup with the fast-paced nature and difficulty

1) Underdeveloped story and characters – you will not get answers to most of the important plot questions
2) Combat does not have the longevity to last 5-6 hours

While I only have one major point of criticism in how the game actually plays, that’s because Phantom Trigger is a title that I really enjoyed, for the first 2 hours. Past that, I struggled to find something to keep that feeling going because it just didn’t have anything left to give. When you’re going up against wave upon wave of the same enemies throughout all the maps, using what is essentially the same combos over and over again, the additional 3-4 hours to complete it become a real slog, especially since the story doesn’t give you the answers you’re looking for either. I wouldn’t recommend this title at full price, best to wait for a sale till it’s about 10 dollars before pulling the trigger.

For an in-depth review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/-fIZcwxYdiQ

Otherwise, here’s a summarized write up.

Story

Aztez’s story is almost non-existent. The campaign has you pushing the Spanish out of your cities and the missions just depict the process in which you do that. These serve more as descriptions of the mission rather than a main plot line throughout the experience. There are no narrative cutscenes and as such, almost nothing to get attached to story wise.

Gameplay

Aztez is Team Colorblind’s attempt at a unique hybrid between a beat em-up and a turn based strategy title, so the rating of this review is going to hinge on how satisfying the brawling is and how well it’s incorporated into the game’s strategic elements.

As a brawler it sticks to the core concept of a single character fighting multiple enemies, each of which fall into 8-9 types of foes that all have different move sets and weapons. I’m going to be making a few comparisons to Bayonetta and DMC since the devs have stated that their intention was to be more like those games.

With that in mind, Aztez incorporates most of the expected mechanics of the genre, so that includes multiple weapons, switching between those weapons in the middle of combos, dashes with invincibility frames, and blocks that allow for counter attacked if timed precisely enough. However, where the game disappoints is in its execution of its actual attacks.

You know how most beat em up games have light and heavy attacks and combining something like L-L-H-H-H results in a different combo to L-L-L-L-H? Aztez doesn’t have much of that combat variety. Instead you have a 5 string combo with your square attack and another 5 string one with your triangle attack (or your xbox counterpart). Mixing between them with S-S-T-T-T just gives you the first two attack animations of the former string and the three last attack animations of the latter string.

I also don’t call them light and heavy attacks since they do the exact same amount of damage per hit, making combos using them utterly redundant in conjunction with the earlier issue. It’s a far cry from the sheer amount of combinations offered by Bayonetta which utilizes even holding down buttons or pausing between two inputs to engage different move sets.

The only thing that really allows for move variation is when you swap between weapons in the middle of attacks since doing this allows you to restart the hit counter, making it very easy to put your foes in an endless stagger state. Once you get 2 weapons, you’ll very often be knocking enemies up into the air and spamming them to death since not many foes hit upwards frequently.

While other games like DMC have this air juggle feature with weapon swapping, executing it isn’t nearly as simple as the single button input that’s required in Aztez. The fact that newer weapons introduce different move sets doesn’t really matter when the game never gives you a compelling enough reason to divert from its spammy playstyle.

What combat does do well however is the enemy variety since they their moves match their associated weapons. You get notification prompts on when they’re about to attack but since they have 2-3 different moves, you’ll need to pay close attention to which one they telegraph since each of them has a different parry window. Besides this, dealing enough damage also puts enemies into a “broken” state in which grabbing them and hitting the attack button will lead to a LOT of blood spurting out of their bodies. You can absorb this blood to fill up a vial which, when full, can be spent to deal out a god attack.

In terms of the turn based campaign, it centers around a large map with many cities to conquer. You start with owning 4 of them and you gain resources and the end of every turn for every location under your control. Each turn has you deploying soldiers to missions for completion rewards that you can use to further expand your control. Besides that you can also use items and Agents (at the cost of resources) to do things like secure areas or ensure that a town that’s yours will never dissent as there is a random chance of that happening to a neutral town and that dissent status can spread to your own cities.

I never thought that dissent was particularly harmful though since you’re very capable of keeping it from spreading to all your cities before the big Spanish boss comes. Since beating the Spanish is all you need to win the campaign, I’ve always found the difficulty of their fights to be a much more present threat than that of my cities dissenting against me.

Overall, the turn based strategy neat addition to the otherwise monotonous gameplay but it’s not much more than a basic element. Once you realize that the winning condition depends on succeeding the last few fights, something that is achievable regardless of how little cities you have, the lack of priority for the missions becomes a lot more apparent. I found myself just going for missions based on the benefits I wanted but having to go through the same core gameplay loop in each mission constantly reminded me of the title’s repetitive nature.

Pros

1) Neat strategy element
2) Good audio queue for when an attack is coming or when an enemy is “Broken” (missed this out in the video review, apologies)
3) Decent background variation

Cons

1) Repetitive and spammy nature – combo mixing is unsatisfyingly little
2) very exploitable juggling with the simple mechanic of swapping weapons

Conclusion

Aztez has some of the makings of a compelling brawler like the ability to cancel jumps or transition from hits to blocks very quickly but it fails to provide enjoyable gameplay in its fundamental mechanics. Its repetitive nature takes a lot of the replay value out of the product and that’s something that isn’t outshined by the few good things it accomplishes. As such, I’d recommend getting it at 10 to maybe 12 dollars instead of at full price.

For an in-depth review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/OF3Ojpu-7YQ
Otherwise, here’s a summarized write up.

Performance issues
At random times, the game will disable interactions with all items in a given area and, it being a point and click, this causes severe issues. Sometimes you’re able to reset the bug by moving between locations but it’s equally possible that you’ll have to restart the game. Considering how The Low Road doesn’t autosave at all, you could potentially lose hours of playtime because of this issue.

Story
The low road has you playing as Noomi Kovacs, a college graduate on her first day at the local spy agency. The game has 6 chapters and while the introduction has you trying weasel your way into some field work, the rest of the plot centers around your main mission and its associated repercussions.

Most characters here are have their odd quirk in the game’s attempt to be more comedic with the spy setting though only your main cast, that being Noomi and her boss Turner (Turn), has good writing. The rest frequently suffer from things like repeatedly using the same sentences back to back, overexplanation of simple concepts and dialogue that is out of their respective characters.

This usually happens when the game tries too hard to be funny and it happens quite frequently. But on the positives, TLR actually has some genuinely humorous moments in the natural and witty interactions between Noomi and Turn. The story also spends proper time to flush out Turn’s character, giving him more depth and a decent amount of payoff as he starts to respect Noomi as more of a colleague than an assistant.

The overarching story is also easy to follow but can be a little absurd at times. TLR’s attempt to be yet another title that doesn’t take itself seriously only works when it doesn’t run into writing issues and given how frequently that happens, it only gives a mildly entertaining and humorous experience.

Gameplay
The core gameplay loop can be broken down into the title’s 2 types of puzzles. The first plays like classic point and clicks where you’re gathering items to be used on objects so that you can get past a certain obstacle. Separating the items from the rest of the environment is easy since your cursor changes its shape when you hover over items you can collect.

While the game does allow you to hold more than one thing at a time, you CANNOT combine these resources in your inventory, so there isn’t any experimentation on that front. These puzzles are also ultimately pretty easy, since there are so few items to collect in each of them. Despite not having answers given explicitly, the significant lack of trial and error means you’ll likely have a simple time.

The second type of puzzles are called first person puzzle segments which are the more frequent and varied bunch of challenges. These include things like looking up information to determine the best conversation option to deceive characters, figuring out the correct sequence of disabling alarms, and even something as dead simple as hovering your mouse over obvious locations on a metal gate to open it.

Straight up, these aren’t difficult puzzles but I especially dislike the last example given since it’s a glorified scripted event that requires on skill so it’s good to see them only appear once or twice. Overall, the first type of puzzles are pretty bog standard while the second type add in a nice touch of diversity, though it’s unfortunate that both lack any real challenge.

Pros
1) Decent visuals – nice water color aesthetic
2) Witty interactions between Noomi and Turn
3) Good variety in puzzles

Cons
1) Game tries too hard to be funny at times and suffers for it in writing quality
2) Voice acting quality is all over the place
– Noomi and Turn are the best and most consistent in terms of delivery and overall quality but most of the rest of the supporting cast suffer on both accounts. Their performance is usually stilted and at worst, some of them even show a huge disparity in audio quality (likely due to the different mics used). It’s really jarring to hear Noomi’s clear voice followed by a character’s tinny one.

3) Puzzles lack any real challenge

Conclusion
The Low Road is an enjoyable game with plenty of complications. The writing is questionable at times, the gameplay isn’t very challenging and the audio can really take you out of the experience. I did like the product but having to go through numerous issues, including technical ones, the game never felt like it hit the desired level of quality. As such, I’m recommending you wait for a patch and a sale on this one. Only get it once it’s ironed out the bugs and even then, 15 dollars sounds like a more appropriate price.

For a video review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/GQAQM8M83ME

Otherwise, here’s a write up.

Story

In this game you play as Bob, a freelance cleaner hired to get rid of bodies and evidence. Most of the story is delivered in your house, which is the only other place you’ll be in besides mission areas. You’ll always return back to the house prior to any contract and during that time you can interact with things like the TV, newspaper, and radio to hear the news that either foreshadowing your next contract or reacting to your previous one.

Most of the initial contracts are self-contained events but towards the halfway point a common thread will start to link the jobs together. Plot wise, it’s straightforward and easy to follow, similar to Bob himself. He gets a little bit of depth in how he reacts to certain events but the game’s not trying to make him an incredibly layered character.

Instead, he’s mostly a mildly sarcastic person that makes as many puns and pop culture references as he does regular dialogue. Overall, it’s a simple story that suits the setting, but you shouldn’t expect anything profound here.

Gameplay

Serial cleaner is a fast-paced 2D stealth action game. Your main job is to dispose of any bodies and evidence lying around and sometimes you’ll even need to vacuum up the bloodstains. Besides using your vacuum, you can only walk around the area an interact with a select few objects and you’ll have to complete the level without getting caught be the police. Cops will give chase if they spot you in their cone vision and they can also be alerted if they happen to hear you (something to keep in mind is how you make more noise while carrying a body or when you’re using the vacuum cleaner).

Since you can’t outrun most of them, your only hope is to get to a hiding spot (one of the level’s items that can be interacted with) before they catch you. You can definitely exploit this mechanic since hiding in front of your pursuer doesn’t blow your cover but this is counterbalanced by the fact that the game later on introduces faster enemies, not to mention that a hiding spot isn’t always going to be where you need it.

Progression wise, the game’s 20 story contracts introduce new enemies and mechanics every 2-3 levels. You’ll eventually get to move items to make new paths, make loud diversions using items on the map, and even access shortcuts in the area, all of which are crucial as the game ramps up in scale and complexity. You can keep track of them by using the Cleaner vision which essentially zooms out of the map to show you all the important items.

Enemies in turn include stationary foes that signal a group of cops to your last known position, faster grunts and guards that will shoot you on sight. Variety aside, one of the good things SC has is decent AI. While cops do have their initial patrol patterns, they’ll immediately change them to investigate any missing body or pieces of evidence. This is also the case when you move objects to block their path so it’s not as simple as just memorizing all their patrol routes since there is quite abit of variation to take into account.

The game is fast-paced in that you need to act quick when you’ve been spotted but it also rewards patience. Taking things slower is key to understanding enemy behavior and the levels themselves since each portion of the area normally has at least 2 entry points, so you’re not getting shoehorned into any particular path.

For replay value, you have 2 options. You can complete bonus contracts (10 in total), provided you unlock them by finding special items in the story levels, or you can undergo challenge mode which allows you to play all previous levels with unique restrictions. These include things like disabling cleaner vision and completing the level without ever being spotted.

Take that into account with the nice amount of progression, the emphasis on player choice through level design and the competent AI and SK is an enjoyable experience with quite abit of longevity.

Pros
1) Great visuals but even better audio – if you’re a fan of 70s rock and jazz, I’d recommend getting the soundtrack bundle
2) Competent AI
3) Good amount of progression and replay value – keeps things from getting stale

Cons
1) Not much of a plot

Story
Centering around some abandoned ruins, Downwards story begins with the unnamed protagonist getting contacted by a mysterious voice. While you are at first hostile to the unknown entity, that animosity is overwritten with a rushed sense of trust due to the need to move the plot forward. Soon after, you help the entity by gathering 3 artifacts to place back on the Altar and this forms the most formulaic part of the narrative.

From here, you reach the location housing the artifact (usually in its own isolated area), converse with a mysterious old man that tells you a little about the past civilization of that particular location, and return the artifact back to the altar before repeating that 3-step process 2 more times.

That forms the bulk of the journey and during this time, the story gets very little development. Downwards wastes the potential to at least tell a interesting tale about the past civilization, instead opting to give the player pretty vague and bite sized pieces of information through the old man’s exposition.

Speaking of, the old man himself also showcases the game’s poor narrative. It’s made clear early on that it’s strange for frail old man to be in the abandoned ruins but no time alongside the main plot is spent on trying to flush out both his identity and his origin. Instead we’re just expected to treat him being here as a given.

Since these mysteries are really the only thing to latch on to in terms of a narrative for Downwards, the piecemeal way in which they are distributed will likely cause many to lose interest in both the plot and its handful of characters.

Gameplay
Downward is an open world first person parkour game. The map is designed as an open world but it consists of self-contained parkour sections, some of which are optional but most of which you’ll go through over the course of the main plot. The objective is then to get to the finish line and in this game that would be the artifacts you’re looking for.

In terms of movement, while you do have the standard move sets like wall running, wall jumping and wall climbing, you don’t get to choose where and when you can do them. These moves instead depend on the color of the wall right in front of you. Blues are for jumping, reds for climbing and oranges for running.

By forcing these interactions and having usually only one way to finish a parkour section, the game takes out any semblance of player choice, something I find completely perplexing given its genre. It tries to spice things up by progressively introducing 3 special moves along with the main story, that being a double jump, a slingshot maneuver and the ability to create platforms. However, these special moves can only be done when you’re in certain areas of the map since you need to be interacting with anomalies (strange balls of light) placed in the area. In doing it this way, it doesn’t address the whole issue of no player choice that comes with such a linear design.

Downward is going for a more platform feel. Many of its parkour areas involve taking 2-3 moves before landing on a spot and checking your bearings. Areas a more slow and methodical than fast-paced and how much you enjoy this style of play depends on your preference in pacing. Personally, I’d much rather the reliance on fast reflexes but your mileage may vary. The game also introduces a mini checkpoint mechanic called the Mark. It is essentially a checkpoint you can teleport to at any time in case you fall from great heights but other than the general parkour / platforming, the game also features overly simple combat.

I say overly simple for 2 reasons. Firstly, there are only 2 enemies and secondly, both fights have so little depth. One enemy explodes if you get too near it (so just dash away from it to trigger the bomb) and the other enemy can be defeated if you wait for it to do a particular attack. None of these incorporate any of the verticality or level design that comes with the general parkour section of the game. It is literally, walk around the enemy until they do the attack that makes them vulnerable.

With very little satisfaction from both combat and general parkour, there is no incentive to partake in the optional obstacle areas even if they do reward you with in-game currency that you’ll use to unlock the progression tree. This is also because the progression tree doesn’t give you anything that will substantially change your playstyle (it’s all just add health, reduce damage, etc).

Pros
1) decent visuals – expected for a UE4 game

Cons
1) Scripted level design – no player choice to experiment around
2) Lack of any substance in the narrative – plenty of cryptic mysteries with not much else
3) Sound effects that lack impact – the player rarely makes thuds on the ground when he’s jumping in succession. It’s often quite silent making it really jarring when you know you’re jumping on concrete after concrete (nitpick)

Conclusion
Downward is a game that feels like it’s trying too hard to do too many things at once and as a result, it fails to go beyond simple mechanics. From the running, to its combat and there is little unique about this title that’s well executed enough to provide a compelling value. I would only recommend picking it up at 5 dollars.

Edit: Originally i had made a wrong assessment on the platforming elements of the game. I was unaware that it was trying to be a parkour platfomer and have since adjusted my review. I'm sorry for anyone that was potentially confused or misled due to my inaccuracy

For an in-depth review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/Zho4nNUOix0
Otherwise, here’s a summarized write up.

Story
Inspired by the Romanian’s Communist regime that ended in 1989, Black the Fall focuses solely on the tale of an unnamed machinist trying to escape the facility. The story is likely only going to appeal to a specific set of people. Whilst playing, we witness many scenes that play out as a form of symbolism to the real-life conditions during Romania’s Communist regime (eg. Poor working conditions and abusive authority) but that’s really the extent of the narrative.

There are no memorable characters, no spoken dialogue and no distinct personalities. Essentially if you aren’t interested in how this parallels to Romania’s past, then you’ll likely find no compelling factor in the story.

Gameplay
BTF is a slide scrolling puzzler where the objective of each puzzle is to get from the left to the right side of the screen. It’s easier to understand the puzzles if you separate between the ones inside the facility (section 1) to those outside of it (section 2).

Both sections include simple platforming, avoiding getting seen by enemies and interacting with brightly lit switches that do things like opening doors. At times, you’ll platform your way to the objective but very early in the game puzzles start to focus on a laser pointer you come across that allows you to control nearby workers to activate switches you can’t reach. You can also manually control the pointer to point toward light-sensitive panels to activate things in the environment.

Section 1 puzzles for the most part are pretty simple, since most of them take place in a small area with very few items to interact with and therefore very little experimentation. There are some puzzles in section 1 that are bigger in scale but these are few and far between. Besides the simple straightforward puzzles using the laser pointer, you also have a few interesting ones that surprise you now and again with how ‘neat’ they are. I say that because you’re not going to think it was anything more than mildly clever in terms of its difficulty.

Even the interesting puzzles in section 1 can still be seen as rather simple. An example is a puzzle that requires you to listen for nearby environmental hazards and move forward in the dark using you sense of hearing. Not particularly difficult but a ‘neat’ addition nonetheless.
In section 2, puzzles change because you also get a new robot companion. This time, you can use your laser pointer to direct him to specific areas, effectively giving you 2 players to control. Puzzles here are more complex by comparison because of the increased scale allowing for more interactable items per puzzle and, with it, more experimentation.

Also, this is where the game introduces puzzles that require the robot’s help and since the robot’s moveset is more diverse than just moving left and right (it can swim while you cannot), it makes for more creative puzzle design. It’s clear that section 2 has the more challenging puzzles but even then, they were never difficult enough for me to feel stumped or to force me to pause for minutes on end.

Ultimately when looking at all the puzzles as a whole I would say most of them are simple to decent in difficulty. From that category, only about 25 percent of them are ‘neat’ or an interesting twist to make you go ‘huh, never thought of that’. The rest are either just really easy which is a problem in terms of value since the game already doesn’t have a lot of puzzles to begin with.

Pros
1) decent presentation – nice minimalistic visuals for character designs and nice sound effects. BGM takes a more ambient role.
2) some puzzles are genuinely an interesting execution of mechanics

Cons
1) most puzzles are simple – gets better in section 2 but they still don’t pose a significant enough challenge
2) the story is likely only to be appreciated by a small set of people – no conventional narrative to enjoy.

Conclusion
Black the fall is a short game, but above all else, it is a puzzler that doesn’t sport a lot of difficult challenges. Most are simple to decent at best with about a quarter of that portion being interesting in a unexpected manner. Taking that into consideration with the fact that most people aren’t going to be invested in the Communist setting, it’s difficult to justify the value proposition. As such, I’m going to recommend that you wait for a sale on this one, probably till it’s about 10 dollars. And that’s pretty much it for the review.

For a more in depth review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/bAfkYFvnzao
Otherwise, here’s a summarized pros and cons list on why I don’t recommend the game at full price. But first, a primer to the game.

Primer

Baobab’s Mausoleum EP 1 is a retro styled point and click made into the JRPG format (meaning instead of clicking per se, you’ll be using the WASD keys to move and the spacebar to interact with items). Before you begin any gameplay section, the game frontloads you with 2 pieces of information. Firstly that this mysterious town of Flamingo’s Creek is a horrific place, termed a place that only appears in nightmares, and secondly that a murderer is on the loose in the town.
After said scenes, you play as FBI Agent Watracio Walpurgis who has recently gotten into a car accident. Much of the episode’s story is about you trying to stumbling into the town in an attempt to find someone to fix your car. From here, each act (from the total of 10 offered) is framed as you progressing through the town’s different areas. In doing so you need to solve the puzzle of the area which often times just involves finding an item that someone is looking for and handing it to them.

Pros

1) A single puzzle that makes you think outside the box

There is a single puzzle who’s solution lies outside the game itself. Neat addition to bring some much needed challenge since the rest of the puzzles are rather simple (all of them can be completed in as little as 5 minutes)

Cons

1) Wasted premises

Earlier I mentioned the two main premises of the game, that being the strange aspect of the game as well as the murder plot that was hinted at in the opening scene. Neither of these get expanded upon sufficiently in this episode. Because Watracio doesn’t care about anything besides fixing his car/getting out of the town, he barely reacts to the bizarre nature of the town he’s in. I mean the guy gets into a car crash because of a mutant dear and he shrugs it off as though it’s a common enough occurrence.

In this game you’ll see giant crabs, explode an individual by catapulting an acorn into his face but Agent Watarcio doesn’t seem to react accordingly to any of this. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that a “place that only appears in nightmares” fails to phase Watarcio, even if he is a trained FBI agent. It just seems like he doesn’t care for the sake of not caring (since rarely acknowledges the strange behavior of the surroundings) which leaves very little incentive for player themselves to care.

The next wasted premise is the murder setting. You get teased in the beginning with a scene where people are hanging from a tree, begging for your help. It’s a morbid sight that makes you think you’re going to be solving some kinda case but the game barely spends any time on this plot point. The only development it gets is in the last Act where we get our first bit of exposition on the possible murderer, before the game decides to pull a cliffhanger ending right when things were getting good. In the end, there wasn’t enough utilized from these premises to keep me interested from a narrative standpoint.

2) Aggravating Zelda level

In trying to emulate Zelda: Link’s Awakening, the game tries to have you face an entire puzzle with a health system, a ranged attack and moving platforms that protect you from environmental hazards. The problem here was that it was very easy to miss the moving platforms and which led to the player falling into the hazard anyway. In Link’s Awakening, each time Link passed through one side of the screen, it would transition to a new area and Link would be stationary throughout this transition. It makes senses since you could otherwise run into enemies without knowing any better.
Baobab’s Mausoleum on the other hand does not make you stationary during said screen transitions, and since there is an area where the environmental hazards are right after an area’s entry point (meaning it’s right before a screen cutoff point), it’s normal to continue holding the direction button only to find that you’ve landed yourself in the environmental hazard, bringing you one step closer to repeating the entire puzzle all over again since there are also no ways to replenish health (which is another way it tried to be like Zelda without incorporating some of the more helpful mechanics). An area that could have easily taken 7 minutes took half an hour because of all the retries where deaths never felt like they were fairly given.

3) Simple puzzles
Puzzles in this game are really simple. Most Acts are framed with you trying to get out of your current location (eg. diner, mansion, petrol station) and that involves either giving an NPC an item they're looking for or obtaining the key to a locked door. So difficulty here can come in either finding the desired item or determining the correct individual for said item and both of these are relatively easy. NPCs pretty much tell you straight up what they want when you ask them and actionable items are usually pretty prominently placed around the map. Overall, so long as you give the map the once over, the solution will come obviously enough

Conclusion

EP1 lasts 2 hours and in that time it didn't manage to get me excited for the series as a whole. Story wise, it didn't expand on its more interesting plot points enough to keep me invested and the core gameplay loop wasn't compelling enough on its own to make up for this fact. Ultimately, I would only ever pick this up at a 50 - 60 % discount

I’m only recommending this game with a caveat in mind which is explained below. For a more in-depth review, please check out the video below:
https://youtu.be/jh0jneCFErE

Otherwise, here’s a summarized pros and cons list after a primer on the game.

Primer

Nex Machina is a twinstick shooter that often delves into bullet hell territory. Using a normal blaster, a dash mechanic and some special weapons, the objective is to clear each room of enemies and defeat the boss and the end of the level, all while trying to get as high a score as possible. You can play all worlds in succession (via arcade mode), a score attack of one world (via Arena mode) or any world individually at your discretion (via Single World mode). There’s also local coop for Arcade and Single World mode, though there is no support for online coop whatsoever.

Pros

1) Good performance
Runs at around 150 ish region with all settings at max with a gtx 980ti. Does not stutter even when screen is filled with the many many particle effects flying around everywhere.

2) Decent Shooter Trance
The game’s mechanics are rather simple. Analogs to control movement and shooting respectively while shoulder button is used to dash (with I-frames). As you continue through the rooms, you pick up powerups in the form of special weapons and upgrades, the former of which is the more interesting. Special weapons range from things like lasers, remote bombs, smartbombs, rocket launchers, etc and their low cooldown incentivizes you to use them as much as possible, thereby changing up your playstyle as well since they each have their own optimal use case.
Enemies will try to overwhelm you with numbers and since the game has such a low margin of error (you die in one hit), especially on the higher difficulties where more and faster enemies are introduced, it challenges you to be responsive, have smart judgement and manage your resources (in terms of your available dodges) well. The dynamic between you and the enemies is only further enhanced when robots that do things like shoot projectile and lazers get introduced, thereby adding an aura of bullet hell into the mix. Ultimately, I find this part of the core gameplay loop, regardless of its repetitiveness and lack of progression, a compelling experience. To be able to best overwhelming odds with my full arsenal makes it easy to just sink time into this game. As unforgiving as the game can be, deaths themselves never feel unfair, though what they lead to can be an unfair circumstance, but more on that in the cons. For now, if you like twin sticks, this one doesn’t do anything too original but it does well for what it offers.

3) Functional presentation
Games that try to be flashy often do it at the expense of unnecessary visual fluff and the abundance of particle effects in Nex Machina is bound to garner mixed reception, I’d like to bring your attention to their functional visual designs as well. Useful information like how much time is left for a temporary score multiplier (since this is also a score attack game) to be in effect is implemented in the game zone itself in the form of a circle that’s closing in on itself. The same can also be said about the audio since there is a narrator that passes you rather useful information about your arsenal, such as when you’ve lost your shield or when you’ve gotten all the upgrades. It might seem like a trivial thing, after all you can see what upgrades you have, but once you get used to how little the margin of error there is in this game, you start to realize how detrimental it can be to take your eyes off the centre of the screen for even the slightest of moments, especially given the fact that you die in one hit.

Cons

1) The implementation of the death mechanic
Remember when I said we’d get back to how deaths can lead to unfair situations? Well to understand that, you should know that Nex Machina uses a simple retry/ continue system that arcades use. X number of lives per retry and if you waste them you gotta use a credit to have another go. While you’re still able to retain your gear after losing lives, a retry or continue forces you to abandon your loadout completely, causing you to continue from that point on with the base (and rather weak) equipment. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem since it doesn’t take long for these upgrades to randomly drop again but when you take into account the fact that you’ll normally have to use the retry or continue function during the boss which resides in the last stage of a level, then you’ll notice how common it is to fight the hardest encounters with the least amount of equipment. This seems like an unnecessarily harsh punishment since some of the upgrades we lose are almost crucial to our survival (the triple dash brings with it 3 times the amount of I-frames). While you could argue that every boss is beatable without any upgrades, it still doesn’t get away from the fact that the main appeal of the game lies in using the upgraded equipment, so creating a situation where you don’t have said equipment when you probably need it will end with the user feeling more frustrated than challenged.

Conclusion

This game gets a circumstantial recommendation because of the way it’s built. It’s designed to be replayed over and over again, whether to get a higher score on the same difficulty setting, or to try to complete all the worlds again on a harder preset. If you’re into either of these things, then you’re likely able to find the value in your 20 dollar investment. However, if you’re someone who wants to just picked this up to experience the twin stick shooting from start to end a single time, then content wise I’d only recommend getting it at 12 dollars instead.

For a more in-depth review, you can check out the video below:
https://youtu.be/-74-kc7tHCA

Otherwise, here’s a highly summarized pros and cons list after a primer about the game.

Primer
Kindergarten is an abstract puzzle adventure game. You play as an unnamed kid who has the power to relive the same day over and over again and you go around helping the other children (the puzzle element) in the Kindergarten which, by extension, sheds some light on the establishment’s secrets.

Pros

1. Simple but entertaining characters
- unique personalities that, while not memorable, were entertaining for the course of the game nonetheless
- provide subplots that tie into the main storyline in the end.

2. Engaging puzzle mechanics
- Puzzles come in the form of helping characters with their quests
- Puzzles require the use of resources like money and time (in the form of apples)
- Puzzles require a good degree of trial and error and backtracking and it’s pretty satisfying when you figure something out for Puzzle A when you’re just talking to random people.
- Game rewards you for gathering information first instead of trying to tackle puzzles from the get go. Encourages a more patient playstyle


Cons

1. Repetitive backtracking
- While backtracking is fine, having to see the same scenes over and over again ruin the pacing a little. Would like the ability to fast forward past these scripted events because otherwise it makes them unnecessarily slow.

2. Basic visuals
- Not a huge criticism taking into account the game’s price but it should be noted. The title often looks a little outdated due to the recycled animations and pixel artstyle.


Conclusion
Kindergarten may not have a deep story or the best presentation, but manages to deliver a unique puzzle solving experience through both its setting and execution. I would definitely recommend this game at full price.

For a more in depth review, tune into the video below:
https://youtu.be/hl7xT9bxZf4
Otherwise, here’s a summarized pros and cons list on why I don’t recommend the game at full price. But first, a primer to the game.

Primer
Gorescript is a game with a simple premise at heart. With no narrative aspect, you go through 18 hand crafted levels. Your objective is to find a way to the endpoint that’s usually hidden past locked doors and rooms with many enemies. In the maps you are able to find secret power ups that range from new weapons to random equipments that enhance you in some way. What remains is a shooter that tries to pay homage to classic FPS, Doom more than anything else, while employing a fast paced nature in its combat by making you about twice as fast as other enemies. It is a collection shooter, in that you collect resources like ammo, armor and health which is laid out across most rooms.

Pros
1) Decent, albeit simple, map design
Gorescript’s maps are what I would call medium sized. Not as intricate as Doom’s but still offering a varying degree of interactions every now and again. The idea of unlocking doors by finding red and blue keys allows this title to be more than a room-clearing shooter. There are also other things like teleportation rooms and lifts to be used to gain some verticality, something that isn’t always possible given how you need to find an item to even allow you to jump in the first place.

Cons
1) Simple combat
There are a few things that make the combat feel basic, most notable of which are the gunplay and the enemies you shoot against. Gun’s feel like they lack impact with many of them lacking a good sense of kickback or recoil. This is further amplified by how enemies react to your shots. They only flinch ever so slightly and most of their death animations consist of a simple blood splatter followed by them dropping to the ground in a basic downward motion (instead of getting thrown back like one would normally think after taking a shotgun shell to the face). Besides this, enemies can also be bullet spongy. Most take more than 3 shots to kill from a shotgun at point blank range. This spongey nature becomes less of an issue when you get more powerful weapons (rocket launchers, ray guns and a BFG clone) but even at that point, it doesn’t solve the game’s repetitive characteristics.
With only 3 enemy types, Gorescript further disappoints by having them use generic attack patterns. In doing so, the game is forced to bombard you with sheer numbers instead of interesting and engaging fights in order to increase the difficulty. This also creates an environment for repetitive strafe shooting since you move almost double the speed of enemies. Seeing as how you can obtain all weapons by Level 4, you’ll have pretty much experienced all this game has to offer by a third of its journey, due mainly to its lack of progression as well. Earlier I said that there were powerups you could pick up and while some of these do change your playstyle quite abit (giving you the ability to jump is rather significant), most everything else ends up being a boring damage or health modifier.

2) Terrible map reveal mechanic
Traditionally in dungeon maps, one would expect a real-time map to reveal itself as you go from room to room. That way you’d be able to tell where you have and have not been. Gorescript takes out this utility by revealing not only the room you’ve just entered, but also the adjacent rooms you haven’t reached yet. After a while, it’s common to open the map to find that you’ve got an almost complete view of the layout even though you’ve only gone to a few of those rooms. Making matters worse, the map then become useless at showing you where you have and have not been since there’s no reliable way to identify the rooms you haven’t entered into once they’ve been placed into the map.
It’s a weird design choice to have the map revealed in such a way, and part of me can’t help but think it was done to artificially increase difficulty or to unnecessarily lengthen playtime since the maps are designed in a maze-like layout.

3) Lackluster presentation
There’s nothing wrong with the retro artstyle, games like Flinthook and Owlboy have used similar ones to great success. However, being retro is no excuse for a lack of diversity in the look of a level along with the rather low wall texture quality. The background music used here is pretty good. It highlights the fast paced nature the game was going for by utilizing EDM music (mostly from the electro genre if I’m not mistaken). However, once you turn off the BGM, you’ll be greeted to some really outdated sound effects that are meant to simulate enemy attacks.

Conclusion
Gorescript’s inspirations from games like Doom is clear to see. However, it feels like it only managed to capture the form instead of the substance of what made Doom great. It has the locked door mechanics and its own variation of a BFG, but it lacks the more important things like proper enemy variety, good visual feedback to emphasize gunplay and iconic map design. Whether I judge this game on how well it did on its own or how well it emulated the 1993 classic, I can only ever recommend getting it at 4-5 dollars