Recent reviews by Flicks

i need to eat two pounds of bandages and i need them right now

This game's a lot of real good fun, once you get used to the very fast pace of the gameplay. Lots of visual flare (especially with those recently updated sprites), good music, solid UI design. Before anything else, it just looks and feels good.

Deck-building alone carries a lot of weight through the sheer amount of options you're presented—it can be a little overwhelming (and is somewhat mitigated by unlocks through playing runs), but the ability to skip grabbing cards and the ability to increase the likelihood of getting certain genres of cards makes it easy to acclimate yourself to how certain cards function and how useful they can be to your particular character and setup, and allow you chances to build your deck the way you want to, and figure out synergies that feel right to you.

A big plus on top of this is the character variety; there's quite a few of them, each with multiple starting decks and a different weapon and unique artifact to capitalize off of certain strengths. Experimenting with all the different characters is loads of fun, and while some starting decks can feel strange at first, I feel there is a character for everyone.

Enemies are fun and varied enough to stay fresh, with a few types appearing per biome, but not so many of them that it can be difficult to remember their attacks. Normal enemies tend to be decent threats and remain so into the late-game of a run most of the time, and a lapse in focus can easily leave you crippled for a boss, if not outright end your run. Bosses are fun as well, and with the ability to choose the order you fight them in to an extent and your starting area being randomized, you can learn which bosses you'd want to face earlier or later on in runs quite readily, and learn their patterns as you do so. There's even multiple final bosses to choose from, and a looping mechanic, as well as a series of difficulty modifiers that can make runs harder after you've beaten and gotten good at the base level. Just as many other aspects of the game, which modifiers you play with is very modular, which is another way that you can customize your experience to your liking.

So basically, if a deck-building, grid-based bullet hell rouge-like sounds at all appealing to you, this game is definitely worth it's price and then some. Even off-sale, it's kind of a steal. It also has official modding support, that's extra bang for your buck. And a free PvP game based on it coming soon, come on. Developer's wildin'.

It's a pretty solid parkour/speedrunning game. Straightforward, wallrunning, swinging and hookshot feel good, the physics (especially when it comes to mid-air momentum) can be a little weird to acclimate yourself to, but generally fit the levels and there is a good feeling of becoming more skillful as the levels progress.

If there's one mechanic I would say I didn't like, it would be the time-slow bubbles in the third world, and they're not...bad, but the challenge levels starring them are definitely weaker than the swinging and hookshot ones. I do wish more levels had multiple/overlapping paths to the end for more replayability, as most of them are straightforward romps to the end, but they're still fun as is.

All in all, campaign's fun, challenge is a bit of a pain, and free roam is there, but I feel would benefit strongly from either more than one map, or just a larger map. It's a fun game and at it's low price, easy to recommend, but really goes by quickly unless you're aiming for a real good time on each level.

this game could use a save feature for longer runs but otherwise it's pretty cool. I love to muck around during a battle.

also this game will actually knock you out in real life look out

Almost 13 entire years and this game still slaps. An incredibly solid co-op shooter for a pretty low price. Lots of campaigns, multiple difficulties, mutations, the variance of encounters due to the game's (usually) pretty fair AI director makes for hours of content just at a base level, and that's before adding in the chaos of fun add-ons that change models and voices or even add entirely new campaigns that range from the ridiculous to the nostalgic, or are just straight up well-designed and offer a fun and legitimate challenge. There's a bit of jank, this game and its engine certainly aren't new, and the AI director can give you some real evil waves or special spawns on occasion, but it's usually not enough to really break up the sheer fun of working with your team to mess up hordes of zombies among memorable set pieces while hearing some pretty funny dialogue. Between its low price, hours of content, and above all, a sense of style and charisma that makes it hard to forget among a decade of zombie shooters coming after it, it would be hard to give this game anything but a recommendation.

Worth the money...if you're a fan of the classic Sonic formula, mostly reminiscent of Sonic 3 and Knuckles. The classic games are all about familiarity with the level design, which can make or break your impression of it if you're not willing to give each level multiple playthroughs in order to find fun and fast ways to blast through a level. Much like the older games, your first playthrough or even a few might be rough or even unfun, but subsequent runs will be a lot smoother and more fast-paced. If you're willing to deal with that, cool. If not, maybe give this one a pass.

Comparing it to the other classic Sonic games however, it certainly has some of the most open and varied level design of the few, feeling a lot like S3&K and even CD but remixed and in some places improved entirely. Part of that certainly owes to the fact that a majority of the zones are simply remixed zones, but on principle the design is similar but a good step up.

That being said, the new zones added are on a similar level, if not better than the remixed zones. They're outnumbered with Mania only bringing a handful, but they're very memorable all the way through. Boss fights are a step up from the original games as well, and even fun Blue Sphere stages return as well as some CD-inspired special stages that are alright.

All in all, Mania's a good tribute to the classic series. If you liked those, you'll like this.

this absolutely deserves to be tagged psychological horror

i never want to break bricks ever again

To start, I recommend the game. With a few caveats, it's a fun, good looking beat em up that is difficult but doesn't ask insane amounts of practice out of you unless you wish to put that amount of time in.

Something obvious from the onset is the hand-drawn visuals, and to be honest, they're exactly as good as they need to be. Every stage has distinct themes that are pleasant to the eye but not distracting, character and enemy art pop out very well against the background, and the animation is fluid and satisfying to see in motion. The art is backed by a pretty damn solid soundtrack, not everything is something I'd smack into my playlist but I can't say there's any track I dislike, and they all fit their respective uses in the game. As far as the art direction goes, I have to say I want more of this.

As far as gameplay goes, the base game has a good amount of content in twelve stages with five of it's own characters, and more retro characters unlocked through lifetime score, along with six difficulties, a boss rush and a kinda funny PVP mode. Not the most bang for twenty five bucks, but it's far from the worst and pretty good as far as the genre goes, and on sale that may as well be a steal if you're interested in score attacking, experimenting with all the characters or just playing a bunch with your friends. The DLC adds three new characters, a training mode, survival mode and alternate moves unlockable through that, so at eight dollars it's a pretty worthwhile addition if you're enjoying the game and want to enjoy it more for longer.

To get down to the gameplay itself, when it comes to a standard playthrough on normal, it's about par for the course. If you don't care about stage rankings, there's a few frustrating enemy types that'll beat you up, rough and long stages near the end, and some tough bosses that'll eat your lives for a few attempts. All that was well and good for me personally until I tried to go for S ranks. The way the combo system works feels intuitive normally: you get more points for dealing damage consecutively and the combo ends if you take damage. When going for S ranks, this turns into an exercise of restarting stages constantly because you drop a lengthy combo that is literally required. I understand that this genre is about combos, positioning and enemy knowledge but it comes to the point where even the slightest mistake against an enemy means you restart the stage. Many enemies have moves that simply have higher priority, better hitboxes or faster speeds than your attacks, extremely fast get-up or pushback attacks, or high amounts of super armor that require a very passive playstyle and extensive foreknowledge of each difficult encounter. And even then, small mistakes in execution still can mean it's time to just restart. But even then, it's not impossible or even really unfair, just kind of annoying in the sense that it's questionable.

Survival mode is where my other issues are, and that's really because survival in the later waves may as well be RNG with what upgraded enemies they throw at you, how long the wave is (and they can really throw hordes later on) and what upgrades you get at the end of the stage, punctuated by the fact that around the 20th stage healing items become a rarity to the point where they don't even exist at all. On stages that can have half a dozen waves of literal bosses. Yeah. Oh, and grinding out the alternative moves can only be done here, which toes the line between more fun to have and actual padding.

All in all, it's a pretty fun, solid game, and it's definitely worth it casual or hardcore. The enemy design can be a bit of a pain, so while it makes a great tribute to the older games and a good sequel, I feel like it could have innovated more, but I can save that hope for a fifth game, because if it's at least as good as this one, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Generally recommended to platformer fans for a number of reasons, so let's get the quick ones out of the way.

The music and pixel art are great. Colorful and vibrant, and while sometimes the color design may seem chaotic, it all flows together really well and aside from one exception (the uneven patches of ground where moles pop up from in one level type) everything is very easily visible. Music is catchy and generally good and fitting for the level type/boss fights. Really, no complaints here on either front.

As for the gameplay...the glue that really holds this game together is the movement. Dashing isn't a huge momentum or speed boost, but it's enough to give jumps extra oomph and it's easy to dash exactly as much or as little as you want. You can cancel a dash into another dash or repeatedly dash jump to keep up the speed as long as you want, and blazing through stages when you have the physics and enemy composition down is extremely satisfying and on it's own makes for a satisfying enough game experience to keep coming back to, even over it's obvious inspirations.

Augments are good and varied, and everything has it's own place enough to where every time I am presented with a choice, it does legitimately require some thought depending on the current situation. Even the prototype augments feel well-balanced, there's nothing that I look at and think "Wow, this just sucks. Why would I ever take that."

Later stage generation can be pretty rough, but the game is also rather kind in handing out Core Augments and the points required to equip them as well as HP and other stat increases to mitigate the difficulty somewhat. Miniboss and boss fights are much the same, generally well designed but can get somewhat bullet hellish in the later stages, but it is balanced well with the strength the player can attain. On the other hand, if the base gameplay experience is too easy for you, there's challenges that all change some aspect of the gameplay and you can mix and match these difficulty enhancements to get to a desired level of difficulty and get some extra rewards towards permanent unlocks, as well.

On the subject of bosses and difficulty, Ace's techniques and Nina's powers are both great, making stages easier when used well and a lot more fun as well, with some of them covering up weaknesses like range or directional shooting or even movement, there's the kind of good selection you expect. Power Fusion in particular is very entertaining, the fusions can definitely be a bit on the strong side especially with power damage increases and energy augments, but experimenting with them really does add a lot of replay value like the store page claims.

Co-op is pretty solid, more stable than expected, didn't run into any major bugs aside from getting stuck in loading once. Rewarded augments and core augments appear in pairs, marked for each player which is much better than the usual alternative of needing to have half the resources for each player. Nuts are shared, but shop purchases also come in pairs, so again it requires some thought, but doesn't come at the expense having a fun time with another player.

I haven't used the level editor or the option to enable player generated stage chunks quite yet, but considering their mere existence adds a bunch of replay value, I gotta say that twenty dollars is a steal for this. If you really don't like it, you'll know within the refund period. I'd say give it a shot.