Recent reviews by Advanst

Genuinely fantastic. I think the systems of the game work out in such a way that you have so many options at any given point, that I find myself thinking "Aw man, I should've done THAT while fighting that one thing", but the fights still feel wonderfully fluid and interesting. The atmosphere is neat and I think the soundtrack fits really nicely, even if it isn't filled with cool catchy hooks and beats. If you are AT ALL averse to a game beating your ass until you get the hang of something, then this game likely isn't going to be your cup of tea, and you might not end up finishing the game.

For anyone curious about very specific details, here's some numbers of how much stuff there is in the game:
Levels: 45 (5 worlds, 9 per world, in sets of 3)
Enemy types: 4 (With a "Blessed" variant for each enemy, and some shield-like modifiers)
Weapons:4 (Sword, bow, double sided spear, shield)
Extra features: Time trial levels that revolve around certain mechanics (One per world), collectibles on lots of levels (NOT all levels), nice and approachable movement including sliding/slide jumping that keeps your velocity.

My only gripe has to do with one of the mechanics that I felt kinda conflicted with the way I was usually handling combat, but it overall didn't end up being an issue once I started actually playing around it. For those who are experienced and curious, or don't care about mechanic/feature spoilers, it was when you're airborne and grapple something, it pulls you TOWARDS it. There were multiple instances where I would've loved to pull something towards me, but we were both in the air and I'd just go flying past the enemy I was trying to pull in.

If you are someone who enjoys replaying levels for all the collectibles, certain ranks, and generally because the game itself is just satisfying to play, definitely consider getting the bundle that has both Shady Knight and I Am Your Beast, they're both great FPS games that share the same vibe of high skill ceiling and encouragement for perfection, but both games operate surprisingly differently.

I know everyone's value of games is different, and what's worth it to some people isn't worth it to others, but I genuinely think $15 is pretty good for a game like this. The official rooms are quite nice, and there's a good few decisions made by the devs that just make the game a lot nicer to play. Some of those features include:

• An endless inventory, so every item that you can pick up and hold can get put in a hotbar-like inventory that you can scroll through.
  
• The ability to pin items, so you can continue looking around and interacting with stuff while still being able to see the contents of a note or a book that has vital information.
  
• The hint machine, a little gadget on the wall of each room that will spit out a small piece of paper with a clue, usually being vague enough to help you figure something out, rather than just telling you how to do it.
  
• A trash can where you can put unnecessary clutter, like broken pieces of vases or items you no longer need. Since you can pull items out of the trash can like it's a storage chest, me and my friend sometimes treated it like a spot for safe keeping, making sure we wouldn't lose or misplace certain important items.
  
• In multiplayer, you can inspect an item in someone else's hand, and they'll be able to see your cursor, so you can all look at a book or a note together and stay on the same page without having to pass the object around to everyone.

There's currently 3 main areas with 5 rooms each (Plus a 4th set of 5 rooms being released one at a time), and they all have a 15 minute "par time", where if you finish before the time runs out, you get a shiny medal to show for it. This absolutely doesn't mean that all the rooms are that easy to complete upon your first time seeing them, so unless you're playing with multiple people, or you have some good escape room skills, the game isn't gonna take just 4 hours to complete.

The community has been doing an amazing job of making some incredible puzzles as well, thanks to the level editor being quite easy to use, compared to some other games. I haven't gotten around to playing a whole lot of the community levels quite yet, and while there is a fair share of lower quality stuff, there's some real amazing submissions like Edgar Allen Poe Creepy Stories, which is actually not just a single room, but a collection of rooms all based off the works of Edgar Allen Poe accessible by one main hub. The room themed after The Raven took me and a friend close to 30 minutes to work through it, and only have to turn to the built-in tip system.

Really the only nitpicks I have with the game come in the form of custom levels and the level editor. While there's a lot you can do with a little bit of elbow grease and doing the Logic Object equivalent of spaghetti code, there's some things that exist in the official rooms, which you can't quite do in custom levels. I'll spoiler these in case you want to keep the surprise of some mechanics a secret.

• In the first level set, there's a big beam of reflected light that you control by moving certain levers. As far as I'm aware, there's no way to recreate this kind of control in the level editor.
  
• In the second level set, there's a blowtorch that you turn on and use to cut an opening to a ventilation shaft. There's ways to get around this and accomplish a similar effect, but you can't get that same level of precision in a custom level.
  
• In the same level as the last point, you have a remote control for some little roombas that you can drive around. Once again, there's no way to recreate this in a custom level.
  
• In the last level set, you need to utilize a zoetrope (Very cool object, look it up if you haven't seen one!). There's no way to recreate this object or this effect in a custom level.

I'm not sure if the devs plan to give creators the power to do these things in custom levels, but it does suck a little to know that those are possible things in the game, yet we don't have access to them. I understand how difficult it would be to get some of those working to the level that the community would likely want them, but apart from more official rooms with more great puzzles (of course), being able to use those features are my biggest wishes for this game.

I will continue to play this game with friends, and I will continue to cautiously recommend it to other people. I really do enjoy the world, the story, and the way things generally handle and play out in Sea of Thieves. Amassing hoards of gold and doubloons and chests and gems and everything in between is great and satisfying, but the one extremely glaring side of the game that I'm having a really hard time getting over recently, is the PVP.

There's nothing that feels good about the PVP here. If you're a person who doesn't want to delve into how fight other players as efficient as possible, you pretty much just throw things at other people and hope they land and you end up on top. Swords have a 3 hit combo that only continues if you're hitting a player or a PVE enemy, and can get very frustrating very quickly when fighting another player, due to the ability to just spin around each other and keep swinging with no apparent movement speed penalty. The Eye of Reach (Sniper rifle) and pistol at least do as advertised, but have the drawback of not being able to precisely aim them due to a lack of a proper sight, which is fair honestly.

My biggest gripe comes from the reasoning behind engaging in PVP. Is it efficient? No. Is it personally fun and satisfying for me? Not at all. Why should I want to engage in PVP, aside from maybe getting some achievements or commendations (In-game achievements) done? Pretty much none. Even the faction that's supposed to be the bad guys has a limited number of scenarios in which you gain reputation for your emissary for sinking other ships. The important bits from the wiki:

Reaper's Bones Emissaries can gain Emissary Reputation in the following ways:
Picking up any Treasure for the first time; Stolen and Reaper's Bones Treasure will reward higher reputation
Placing any Treasure on your Ship for the first time; Stolen and Reaper's Bones Treasure will reward higher reputation
Killing other Emissary Player Pirates of any Company (gives reputation up to 3 times within 10 minutes)

Things that do not give Emissary Grade Reputation for Reaper's Bones Emissaries:
Killing Non-Emissary Ship Pirates
Sinking any Trading Company Emissary or Non-Emissary Ships (Reputation is given for picking up the Broken Emissary Flags instead)

Essentially what this means is while you're flying the Reaper's Bones emissary flag, collecting stolen treasures and putting them on your ship gets you rep, and killing other players that are flying any of the emissary flags can also give rep (but only 3 times within 10 minutes, so hardcore spawn camping is useless beyond a certain point.) The great thing is, since this faction is has its basis in PVP and stealing and such, you can see these ships on your map and what emissary grade they are with Reaper's Bones. I've used this plenty of times before to plan ahead and avoid people that could possibly pose a problem to whatever voyage I'm doing.

The issue with all of this? People don't care.

They won't fly the Reaper's Bones flag to benefit from killing you and turning in your broken emissary flag. They won't care if you even have an emissary flag, or even loot for that matter. There's a very unfortunate number of people that will roll up on you, rail your ship with no text or voice chat offered, and move on. Doesn't matter if you're minding your own business doing a tall tale, if you're a new player who is trying to get used to the game, or someone trying to teach a new player and introduce them. You'll sink all the same.

And this all hurts. I've had fantastical experiences with people in this game before, such as me and a friend meeting some dude and his wife, and we ended up doing multiple skull forts in an alliance, bantering with each other and chilling for about 2 hours before they decided to hop off. I've help people with tall tales, with their own voyages, with fighting krakens and megalodons and skeleton lords.

The cooperation with random people that you can experience is fantastical, but it's so harshly undermined by the dozen or so times I've invested an hour into a long voyage and been completely and utterly shut down despite offering alliances, handing over portions of my treasures, or even all of my treasures just so I can continue my voyage and finish it out in peace for the reputation and a fraction of the gold I would've normally gotten.

One of the things that's really harping on me as of late is trying to introduce my new and inexperienced friends to the might and magic of doing Fort of the Damned, going and getting all the flames of fate, working together and being amped up the entire time, then when we're a significant portion of the way through the boss, railing on him while he chomps down bananas, we hear two cannon shots as two of our masts go down. By the time we get down to our ship, two people are at the top of our ladders with their swords and pistols ready, stopping us from getting back on. One of my friends and I try and communicate through voice, through text, and get no response whatsoever. After all of us dying to the crew of mutes, I try and hop out of the ferry of the damned and back onto our ship, to see what they're up to and if they wanna talk this time. I immediately get blown away by one of the new Siren weapons, and multiple of them come to emote on me as I'm dead.

They went a bit further than some of my other experiences with mute PVPers with the BM and emoting, but this is not an uncommon experience. An immediate stop to your fun and your mood, just because other people could.

The vocal community continues to shoot themselves in the foot, insisting to new players that "This is 'Sea of Thieves' not 'Sea of Friends'" or "That's just how things go, if you can't handle it, go play something else", seemingly trying to ward them off. Rare has added and introduced far too much PVE content in that of original set of Tall Tales, the Pirates of the Caribbean Tall Tales, and their whole suite of 3 new types of PVE enemies to expect everyone to be happy with getting thrashed by relentless PVPers.

As much as I wish it was, this isn't a perfect world and you don't have those cool epic interactions of "uneasy alliances", you have people sailing their brand new ship back to the people that sunk them, and fighting again, and vice versa, getting stuck in this loop until either one crew loses the desire to continue fighting for the treasure, or the treasure is sold.

Sea of Thieves is an amazing game to play and vibe with friends on, chilling and shooting the ♥♥♥♥ between islands and voyages, and there isn't really another game that offers this to my knowledge. We like the sailing and lamenting about going into headwind again and getting struck by lightning and flying off the boat. We have a hard time wanting to launch the game and take our chances of running into another one of these crews. And that's a real bad ♥♥♥♥♥♥ feeling to have.

By far one of the most fantastical FPS games I've played this year. It offers far different gameplay from Halo, Destiny, CS:GO, and plenty of other shooters.

The game is far from finished, but the currently available content is enough to get your money's worth if you're down to go for the P Ranks on all the levels, especially on the harder of the two current difficulties. I put a fair number of hours into the ULTRAKILL Demo before it released in early access just speedrunning the same levels over and over, and enjoying the satisfaction of making giblets of the enemies.

The weapon selection is great, the level design is pretty fantastic, and the bosses so far are most definitely interesting, and the overall difficulty spectrum is going to widen both toward the easier side of things, as well as the more brutally, terrifyingly difficult side of things, as only the two moderate difficulties are currently playable.

The soundtrack is also pretty damn good. I definitely favor some of the tracks more than others, and some don't quite fit into my casual listening tastes, but they fit the game quite well.

Absolutely fantastic game, I've already recommended it personally to dozens of friends :))

Not worth $15. I got it from humble choice for July 2020 thankfully.

As for the good stuff? Satisfying swinging, amusing environments, fine music.

As for the bad stuff? Weird medal/rating system measured in teapots, the times required for the 4 teapot tier are extremely cutthroat. The levels don't feel very coherent early on (Which isn't a bad thing on its own, just because of the grading system), and the intended routes in the later levels are far too specific for my tastes in a grappling-focused game like this.

Overall, it's not a bad concept for a game, and honestly not terribly executed, but it feels like the level designer had ideas that really poorly contrasted with the fast and touchy nature of swinging around at such speeds.

The basics
Honestly, the visuals are acceptable, the music is fine, not outstanding, and the gameplay itself isn't the most satisfying thing, but it's quite relaxed and offers a very high skill ceiling... But the level design is horrendous when you're being judged and given a rating from 1 to 4 teapots(?). The times are purely based on how one specific route performs, and without extensive testing or looking up a guide, you're unlikely to find those routes on your own because of the amount of general freedom you have while swinging in 3d space.

As a lot of other people say, the first worlds are fine, and honestly I thought the 4th world was okay, but the 5th world... Honestly not amazing. It really seemed like it was visuals first, gameplay second. The areas looked better than the previous worlds and levels just from an object placement standpoint, but that's not what I was looking forward to in this game. I saw swinging and movement, and thought it'd be a fun playthrough and it was, for roughly... 75% of it.

The awards/timings
Being timed and given a grade made me treat the levels not really as much of a fun experience of taking in the weird vaporwave atmosphere, but instead resulted in me critically looking at each level to find the fastest path. The leaderboards are acceptable, and the awards are also somewhat acceptable, but the 4 teapot times shouldn't be so cutthroat, or should at least be a hidden extra like platinum medals in the Trials series of games.

The difficulty
I managed to beat all 100 levels, and the last 5 are frustratingly difficult from a reasonable completion standpoint. The difficulty doesn't necessarily come from the length of the levels, which the intended casual path is extensively longer than that of the previous levels, but the fast 4 teapot times are still just as fast with even more ridiculously specific strats than before. I feel like the difficulty more-so comes from the lack of critical thought and care for these final levels.

The goat level
One of the final levels was this big goat made out of rocks and a skull on the head. You're supposed to go in through the eye hole and into the rest of the sculpture, as it's all hollow. It sounds interesting and honestly kind of is enjoyable, as the eye hole was pretty small and was satisfying to fly through accurately... The bad part was the neck/body. The finish ball is toward the ass end of the goat, and there's debris inside the hollowed body, so even if you do make it into the eye hole, you have to pretty massively slow down in the air to get down the neck, then your only option is to grapple onto the backbone along the top of the body cavity, but the whole space is so small that a fraction of a second holding on too long or too little can mean the end for you in a split second. That was one of the easier levels of the last 10 or so, and I somehow managed to nail the very last level in a matter of about 5-10 attempts, with my first attempt making it past the initial 15 seconds being the one that made it to the end, though it was pretty scrappy.

Twitch integration
Additionally, I streamed it for a little while with the Twitch integration, and it's well integrated, the voting is simple, and most of the modifiers are mostly harmless or fun... Except for the "Flood" modifier. Thankfully it only lasts for a minute, but at the bottom of every level is a layer of water that acts as a kill plane if you fall too far or go too low. The way Flood works, is when it's voted for, the water level consistently raises throughout your active time in that level. This, on paper, seems like a modifier that wouldn't be the end of the world in most cases, but it's quite the contrary. A lot of levels are based quite close to the ground, and Flood makes a good portion of them impossible to complete unless you have some godly line to speed through. God forbid you get Flood on any of the levels from worlds 4 or 5, or else it's just a minute of waiting around for the modifier to go away.

good

This review has become somewhat out of date due to the game actually being updated (Yay <3). I might redo it at some point.

TL;DR:

This is a game that seems to take aspects from Hitman and Superhot, and just mashes them together, a concept that I thoroughly enjoy and recommend. Lots of different ways to accomplish the main objective, plenty of different tools to do it with.

Full review

~ Description ~

30+ enemies per level, up to 8 gadgets, 6 possible weapons, 4 maps to choose from, 4 difficulty options, 3 available objectives, 1 game. Sword With Sauce is a game that you wouldn't really expect to do so much while looking so simple. You can wallrun, run & gun, scale stacks of shipping containers, smash people from above, 360 noscope, and a whole lot more. Depending on which mode you choose to play, you're either simply trying to kill everyone in the level, trying to do so without being caught, or just killing endless waves of baddies. The number of settings and gadgets that are available give you many options of how to play the game.

~ Movement ~

The movement in the game may feel somewhat sluggish at first, but, at least in my case, I got used to it fairly quickly. On top of your normal WASD movement, jumping, sprinting, and crouching, there's a whole parkour system. Wall running, wall jumping, wall scaling, and mantling are great additions to the flow of the game, and really just add to the number of methods or paths you can take throughout a level.

I can't say the parkour system is flawless, but, it feels buttery smooth when just running around and jumping off of stuff. The general physics of jumping, wall running, and all that feels oddly natural and easy to pick up if you've played First Person Shooters before.

9/10, the only thing that makes it not perfect is the timing windows of some of the actions are kind of tight, and can result in choking runs of whole levels from a simple improperly timed button press.

~ Gunplay ~

The gunplay is something I'm not particualrly fond of, but it gets the job done. The automatic rifle, the shotgun, the pistol, and most other projectiles have a hefty travel time, which can be pretty gosh darn frustrating when trying to save ammo, or just get an efficient kill.

There's a handful of nitpicks I have relating to the guns. One of which being the fact that the crosshair still shows up when you're aiming down the sights of a gun. Another is that, even if the enemy unloads half the magazine in an automatic rifle, when you pick it up off their body, it'll be at the maximum ammo in the mag. The ammo nitpick doesn't really bother me, as it'd probably hurt the gameplay if it was more accurate, but it's worth mentioning if I'm nitpicking.

!!! The paragraph that was here was a complaint about a bug related to aiming. It has been made obsolete by the update the devs put out on May 17th (Alpha 1.5.7) http://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/games/581630/announcements/detail/1268172671068879959

Anyways, the gunplay is one of the only negative aspects in my eyes. 4/10 when taking the bugs and nitpicks into account.

~ Weapon diversity ~

With 6 primary weapons, 3 of which not being guns, it's important that you know what you're getting into with each of them.

• Automatic Rifle - A simple automatic rifle with a 30 round magazine. Fires at a moderate rate, is inaccurate when moving, and on any difficulty above Easy, takes multiple shots to the body to kill.
  
• Shotgun - Deadly and threatening up close, 6 shells per full load, and practically useless when not point blank. The shotgun's spread is so inaccurate, you'd be lucky to hit an enemy a couple meters away.
  
• Sniper Rifle - An instant kill on any difficulty when delivering one of the 6 shots in its magazine to the torso or head, the sniper rifle is not just the only hitscan gun in the game, but it can penetrate walls, floors, ceilings, and multiple enemies as well.
  
• Bow & Arrow - With physics affecting the arrow's trajectory, the bow & arrow unfortunately requires a bit more precision with its shots, but it gives the massive benefit of delivering one-shot headshot kills and being completely silent. One of the main drawbacks of the bow & arrow is the requirement of having the quiver equipped as one of your eight gadgets.
  
• Katana - Requiring multiple slices to the body at higher difficulties, but only one swipe to the head, the katana may take more care and precision than you expect. The blade boasts multiple positives, including silent kills, being thrown as a projectile, and even protecting you from bullets and other sword strikes with a well-timed block.
  
• Shield - This weapon will make you feel like a bumbling idiot at first, but within a handful of minutes, it'll feel as if you're a true Captain America. You can reflect incoming bullets back at the source, or even other targets. If that's not enough for you, go ahead and throw the shield to see it bounce between nearby enemies and back at you if you're within range. Just make sure you're there to catch it as it comes back.

I give the diversity of killing tools a chill 7/10, as there's a lot more that can be explored and added.

~ Gadgets and maps ~

At the current time of writing, the map list is fairly small, with there being just 4 maps to choose from, those maps being Mansion, Harbor, City, and Atrium. There's not a solid difficulty curve from map to map, but (At least to me), the maps do get more difficult as you go down the list.

The gadgets are pretty interesting so far. With options such as a drone, HeadTraps, deadly gas, a gas mask to protect you from that gas, coma darts, De-Crab-itation, and black holes, you're sure to find a favorite out of the 22 available gadgets. There will be some gadgets that are obviously more powerful than others, but they're all worth trying out.

While there's not much to say about the maps and gadgets specifically, the map design gets an 8/10 from me, and the gadgets get a 9/10, mostly thanks to the wide range of available gadgets to mess people up with.

~ User interface ~

It seems like this is the the thing people talk about most with this game, but personally, it doesn't bother me. The main menu, gadgets menu, etc., could all use some work and polish, but I think they function relatively fine. Good enough for an alpha, and it seems like it's come pretty far already.

Not the smoothest thing in the world, lots of room for improvement, but certainly functional. I've seen better, I've seen worse. 4/10.

~ Music/Sound design ~

The audio in Sword With Sauce isn't anything special, but it definitely gets the job done. The music can get repetitive if you're just going in and dying over and over, but the music isn't a big deal. Now on the SFX end, the levels could use some background noise, such as wind blowing and birds tweeting on Mansion, waves crashing on Harbor, etc... The gun sounds are okay, footstep sounds are alright, but the levels themselves sound empty beyond those.

Overall the music and SFX aren't bad, but they're not amazing. 5/10 because hooray for being right in the middle.

~ Overview ~

It's certainly no AAA game, but it's not some indie garbage. Give it a chance and you can have a lot of fun and a pretty decent challenge. With 8 hours in the past few days, and probably a decent amount of time in the future when I just wanna boot it up and blast some baddies, this game has more than paid for itself with entertainment in my book.

A fantastic 8/10 indie game in alpha with a bright future if it continues to get updates, totally worth it for $3USD.

TL;DR:

A visually appealing game with responsive and meaningful controls, awesome soundtrack, but a fairly unexpected challenge.

Just as a pre-warning to anyone thinking this game is all cutesy and fun and smooth and an entirely chill time, you're in for a shocker. The game appears to be fairly smooth while you play it, with a couple possible threats, dangers, and/or obstacles every now and then, but whenever you get past roughly the halfway point, the game becomes something else.

Full review

~ Description ~

Element4l is a unique platformer where you transform into different elements to make your way through the level. You have air, which makes you rise and is essentially your "jump". You have ice, which is your main element for general travel throughout the level, as you can slide on the floor and mantain momentum that way. There's rock/earth, which makes you turn into a heavy boulder, and forces your momentum downwards, kind of like a Mario-esque ground pound in a sense. And last, but certainly not least, there's fire, which turns you into a fireball and gives you a little jolt of speed towards the right.

Using all four of these elements, you progress through snow, sand, fire, lava, and some toxic waste. The gameplay is very smooth, chill, and relaxed for roughly the first half of the game, but it picks up to eventually be pretty difficult by the end. There's several "puzzles" close to the end that require near-perfect timing to complete, which, personally, I was not much of a fan of.

~ Physics ~

The physics are great and I heavily enjoyed them. If you're underwater and transform into your air bubble form, you will quickly rise to the top of the water and pop out at a high speed. The transfer of momentum is also incredibly good. If you're rising in water quickly, and you transform into rock, you'll still be travelling at a decent speed, but you'll decelerate fairly quickly due to the rock form being so heavy.

There's an interesting little feature where there will be orange-ish bits on walls, and you can turn into a fireball to bounce off of these bits. The amount of speed you usually get off those walls can be a bit frustrating at times, since the timing and angles can be fairly cutthroat in the available window that you have.

9/10 for physics.

~ Flow-ness ~

The description of the game says, word for word, "with a strong focus on flow and smooth gameplay". I feel like you should take this sentence with a grain of salt, due to the later portions of the game being rather difficult. The first half of the game is chill and flows extremely well from area to area, and it feels great just enjoying the music and solving the fairly simple physics "puzzles". As soon as you get into the more difficult areas, my focus shifted more from the scenery and music to the game, and trying to figure out the timing and such of the levels rather than the flow of things.

I appreciate the effort put into the level design and how the game easily went from place to place, but some sections were just painful to work through.

I give the "flow-ness" a 9/10 for the beginning of the game, and about a 4/10 for the latter half.

~ Soundtrack ~

The soundtrack was awesome. It helped me to immerse into the game in the beginning, and actually kinda helped me calm down a bit when frustration hit later in the game. If I was chilling and wanted to relax, I personally would prefer to listen to a soundtrack such as FTL: Faster Than Light. But in the game's context, art style, and gameplay, the soundtrack makes sense.

On its own, the OST is a biiiiit too busy for my taste, but I'm sure there's some people out there that would enjoy it.

I give the soundtrack an 8/10

~ Story ~

I honestly have pretty much no clue what's going on with the story/plot here. I guess it's nice having a little bit of direction with what you're trying to do as an objective, but it never explains the "Soulpieces", why you had to originally look for the other 3 elements, or what getting all the soulpieces would even accomplish. Pretty much all you have for the entire game is "Looking for life".

Story/plot is pretty low at a 2/10, but it doesn't really affect the game that much, so I'll give it a free pass.

~ Achievements ~

I think most of the achievements are fair and pretty obtainable, but mine didn't unlock at all for me. Not really sure why, but it just decided to not give me any of the achievements. Apparently they're all secret achievements too, so the only place you can really see them is through the achievements list on the store page.

I'm kind of burnt over not getting any of the achievements, but I'll leave them with a 7/10.

~ Overview ~

The game is pretty quality overall. It took me about 2 1/2 hours to complete once (Comes out to about $3.6 per hour of gameplay so far), which included no fooling around, no stopping and smelling the flowers, and mainly just trying to beat it. I'll most likely return to play through it again with the knowledge and familiarity with the elements I now have after finishing the game once.

If you want a game that goes from 0-100 within about an hour, this is the game for you. A worthy challenge and definitely a unique platformer to look back on for ingenuity in a world of beaten-to-death platformer styles.

A solid 8/10 game that I would pick up for the full $9, but it's ABSOLUTELY worth it for the sale price of $2.69.

TL;DR:

Great looking game with much more to come. Already tons of fun with a decent bit to do in its early access state. I highly recommend it.

10/10

Full review

~ Description ~

Tower Unite is a standalone version of the hit Garry's Mod custom gamemode GMod Tower, or more commonly mentioned as its shortened versions, GMTower and GMT. Tower Unite takes a unique spin on the idea of a social MMO game, giving the player a bunch of activities to participate in with others, including games like Minigolf, Ball Race, and Virus. Playing any of these gives you the in-game currency Units, with which you can buy all sorts of things, including cosmetics for your avatar, fireworks to launch in the plaza, or furniture for your condo.

~ Activities ~

With a fair number of things to do already in the game, and a large handful more slated for future updates, here's a handful of personal highlights: Minigolf, typing derby, fishing, Ball Race, casino, bowling, and condo decorating. At this time (Nov 27th, 2019), future planned/in-progress content includes: Accelerate (GoKart Racing), an arcade, a 1v1 FPS dueling arena, a nightclub, custom ball race/minigolf maps, bumper cars, an ocean expansion, and way more. Take a peep at what's going on here: https://trello.com/b/6BwRMiPw/tower-unite-roadmap

~ Gamemodes ~

All the Game Worlds that existed in GMT are in Tower Unite, and are pretty significantly upgraded. Here's a quick rundown on a couple of the Game Worlds that exist at the moment, not including Planet Panic, a team vs team competition of who can use their UFO to get more balls than the other team, and Zombie Massacre, best compared to an arcade top down twin stick shooter:

Minigolf

Not much thought has to be put into this one. Everyone knows what Minigolf is. You hit the ball, try to get around the obstacles and into the hole in as few hits as possible.

As for courses, Waterhole, Garden (Previously Karafuru Gardens), and Forest makes a return. At the time of writing, there are several new holes; Altitude, Kingdom, Sweet Tooth, Treasure Cove, and Emission.

I will add that Minigolf in Tower Unite is FAR better than it was in GMTower, mainly because the Source engine just wasn't built to have minigolf played in it. The Minigolf in Tower Unite is a lot smoother and more accurate than Source ever was.

Ball Race

Basically Super Monkey Ball, but more floaty feeling, and you're racing other people. Some levels here and there will take some slight cooperation, but most levels are straight point A to point B courses, prime for some speedrunning fun, especially with the official in-game leaderboards.

Many courses make a return; Paradise, Memories, Sky World -- now under the name Nimbus -- Woorldnads, Khromidro, and Oasis all make a return. All of which got a mighty fine visual upgrade with the migration from GMod in the Source engine, to Unreal Engine. New courses include Event Horizon, Prism, Summit, GLXY, and Midori.

All of those courses range across four difficulties, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard. I'm a big fan of how subtly the physics changed in Tower Unite, and it's really nice how smoothly things control. The physics are definitely improved from GMTower.

Virus

Another fan favorite, Virus is a survival PVP gamemode, where one person out of a team of humans becomes the single infected. All the humans have to do is wait out the timer and they win, but the infected is fast and has quite the amount of health, which can be whittled down to eventually kill the infected, respawning soon after.

Due to my lack of experience with Virus in GMTower, I can't exactly say how different the maps are, but overall, the experience seems pretty similar. Depending on how many people you have, and the general experience everyone has with the mode, matches can be extremely intense and enjoyable, or could be somewhat frustrating stomps. I don't really see that as much of a negative, since that's how most PVP games/modes turn out in general.

Little Crusaders

Little Crusaders is a re-imagination of Ultimate Chimera Hunt's One-Versus-All gameplay from GMT. Since they couldn't use the stuff from the Mother games, they had to create original assets, which came out to be a pink dragon counterpart to the Ultimate Chimera, and little stout knights to replace the team of Pigmasks. Ultimate Chimera Hunt is another mode I didn't play a lot of back in GMT, but as far as I can tell, pretty much all of the core gameplay is exactly the same.

~ Differences ~

People migrating from GMTower to Tower Unite may be looking for differences between the two, and I'll share all of the notable differences so far...

CONDO

• Several new building tools to assist in making your decorating life easier.
  
• Tons of new props to play and decorate with, including functional things like a basketball hoop and soccer net.
  
• Almost a dozen condos to purchase and use, including the classic GMT Lobby 1 condo, the Lobby 2 condo, and also the entirety of Lobby 1 itself as a condo.

PLAZA

• There is an entirely new lobby, complete with a pool, slide, and a much more centered tower.
  
• A new portal entrance to a new game worlds area, from where you can queue for any of the gamemodes.
  
• The casino has a slightly different layout for the interior, and there are new machines, including Virtual Blackjack, Wheel of Money, and Double or Nothing.
  
• The theater has an almost entirely different interior look, including the lobby and halls to the theaters.
  
• There are no longer doors separating the store area and the boardwalk.
  
• A new monorail that will lead all around the island.
  
• Anew bar on top of the tower itself that you can hang out at. And yes, you can jump off the top of the tower.
  
• A lighthouse with a new NPC up top.
  
• A dolphin from which you can "adopt" aquatic pets to help decorate your condo.

BOARDWALK

• A new attraction called Poseidon, a huge rollercoaster with plenty of twists and the likes.
  
• Fresh - Food and Smoothies which sells the blender and food ingredients for it.
  
• Celebrations, which sells everything season related (Halloween candy buckets, winter snowmen, presents, etc.), as well as fireworks and confetti.
  
• Gone Fishin' Bait Shop, where you can get your fishing rod, and bait to go with it.

~ Conclusion ~

I think Tower Unite has shaped up to be a great game so far and we're not even halfway through all the gamemodes being available to play. If you don't have the money to get Tower Unite right now, or you're still skeptical I would suggest coming back later and seeing how things have changed. There will be new items, activities, gamemodes, and all sorts of stuff in the coming months. I'm super hyped to see how Tower Unite will continue to improve and expand.

TL;DR:

Awesome with friends, not so much by yourself. It's a great casual FPS with a pretty funny story and good DLC that's worth it if you can get it on sale.

I would give it a solid 9/10 overall, but keep reading if you want more in-depth explanations and ratings on stuff.

Full review:

~ Description ~

Borderlands 2, if you haven't heard of it already, is a first-person shooter with a story that'll give some headache-inducing laughs at some parts, and some gut-wrenching feels at others. There's plenty of backstory for each character and enough lore about the areas that you could keep digging for a handful of hours past completion of the game, if you went straight for the end. If sidequests are your thing, you're in luck, because Borderlands 2 has quite a few.

~ Story ~

I enjoyed the story, but it wasn't much that popped out to me. There were certainly some twists and turns, and it had good writing, but it didn't really grasp me like some other games have. Due to this being an FPS where running around shooting s*** constantly will progress the game, I don't feel like this affected the game too terribly much.

The characters themselves are pretty good and have a decent chunk of depth and backstory. The only character that I have an issue with is Tiny Tina. As fun as Tina is, they made her come on a little strong when you first meet her, but she's pretty cool and funny in her DLC.

7/10 for the story.

~ Gunplay ~

Since this is an FPS, and a lengthy story-based one at that, I feel inclined to speak a bit about the gunplay.

If you're looking for traditional guns that shoot normal bullets and put holes in stuff, you're gonna be slightly disappointed. A lot of the guns in the game have modifiers that make them burst fire when zoomed in, or alter the accuracy as you fire the gun in succession more.

If you're looking for guns that have unique twists on nearly all of them, you'll love Borderlands 2. Almost everything has some sort of modifier. From burst fire on your sniper rifles, to faster fire rate as you shoot more. Being able to electrocute, set people on fire, corrode them, or cover them in slag, an element in the game that makes it so anything covered in it takes more damage, or mutates it in some way.

I personally like the gunplay, since it's so varied and fresh when you get a new gun that fits nicely in your loadout.

9/10 for the gunplay.

~ Other gameplay ~

Apart from gunplay, there is a lot of stuff in between all of it, including movement, driving, and some others.

As for movement, it felt pretty nice. Nothing really clunky, and it was pretty smooth overall. I will note that the world clips (where you can stand) and the models (what you can see) don't match up perfectly in some areas, but the world is pretty freakin' big, so I can let that slide for the most part.

7/10 for the movement

Driving is not a favorite here. You use forward and backward like any other driving game, but you turn the car with your camera. I personally don't think that was the best move here, since the terrain is best navigated with some more precision controls than your camera. This didn't really affect me much though, since driving isn't a massive part of the game. It's mostly a means of transportation between one area to another.

4/10 for the driving

Menu navigation wasn't the best I've seen, but it wasn't the worst thing I've seen either. I'm very indifferent about the menus. They look good, and I like the idea of the panels switching out between skill trees or your inventory and your current loadout. I like the visuals, not so much the actual navigation.

6/10 for the menu navigation

~ Music ~

The in-game soundtrack is fantastic. It brings a great fighting vibe when you're in the midst of battle, and it also fits very well when you're between fights out in the wasteland. I don't really have much else to say about it other than that it's very broad and goes very very well with the different areas of the game.

10/10 for the music

~ Achievements ~

I always have to consider the achievements in a game to see if it's worth going for 100%. Borderlands 2 is not a game I'd be willing to 100% right now due to the fact that a decent portion of the game's achievements are locked behind DLC, and I'm not willing to dish out the money for DLC that I don't really want to play just for the achievements. Apart from the DLC wall, the achievements are pretty fair, and you would get a lot of them on a single playthrough, even though some may take a bit of extra effort and searching to get.

6/10 for the achievements

~ Conclusion ~

I liked the game a decent bit, and I only played through it with one other person, so I'm sure if I had a full party it would be far more enjoyable. I've done one whole playthrough and I'm about 1/3 of the way through a True Vault Hunter Mode playthrough and about 1/3 of the way through another normal mode playthrough with a different character.

I suggest the game wholeheartedly. If you really want to extend the lifetime of you playing the game, I would suggest to grab the GOTY Edition on sale. If you want though, you can get the game on its own, and I would highly suggest getting the Tiny Tina DLC on sale as well.