Recent reviews by Headburstopen

This is the best Dark Souls game. It's got this overall gritty and sort of weird design approach on basically every level, not just art direction but gameplay as well. One of the biggest factors that makes this game click so well is the map, and how every location is situated compared to other locations in the game. Despite the map being relatively sprawling and intricate it is actually easy to memorize where everything is and to visualize what potential paths make the most sense for navigation. Being unable to warp until later in the game helps too.

Some little things are annoying, like parkour which is not one of the strong suits of the franchise. Some of the bosses have questionable hit boxes on attacks, although that's not as much of an issue as in DS2, where the bosses are just largely broken. However, most of the game works out pretty well, it feels slightly janky in the best sort of way, where initially you have to get a feel for the movement and animations, but once you do things start to feel incredibly natural. The later entries in the Souls franchise really missed this element, for better or for worse. The character movement in DS2 is much smoother and then DS3 took it to an even more streamlined level, but there's a certain kind of charm to the jank of the first Dark Souls. It's also a poorly balanced game, but this yet again makes it more endearing and memorable. The lower health pools of all of the bosses avoids the overly long boss fights present in DS2 and to a smaller degree in some of DS3.

It's like a fraction of a Grace game and a fraction of a Leon game crudely welded together in the worst ways possible. The opening at the care center is fantastic, truly excellent. As soon as we get to Raccoon city the game just utterly plunges. Raccoon city is horribly bland to look at, all gray and brown, unacceptably limited enemy variety, repetitive gameplay, and we're stuck playing as Leon for too long.

None of the new villains stand on their own or are fleshed out well enough. Zeno is simply a shameless Wesker clone, which is a terribly derivative inclusion. And Victor does not get enough development or backstory to make him a memorable character not only within this game but especially not in the overall context of the Resident Evil franchise as a whole. In fact, I truly believe that this game is going to be largely forgotten or not really even talked about eventually. It does nothing new, simply re-hashing things we've gotten before.

It's really strange that this game makes it feel like the franchise has hit a point where it's just cycling into itself, cannibalizing itself without really any new ideas to add, without any new ways of telling stories. I think that this is genuinely a depressing emotion to have about the Resident Evil franchise when RE7 and RE8 seemed so much like proof that there was a kind of limitless potential to what a Resident Evil game could be.

Village is my favorite RE game for many reasons, but part of that is that it is so totally different from any other RE game. Especially the storytelling, characters, art direction, and gameplay. Village has homages to the past games, and is in a way something like a mutated, evolved sequel to RE4, but it mostly takes the entire series in what looked like a totally different direction, kind of liberating the franchise. To me, having this be the follow-up to village is like having all of the momentum that the franchise has built up so far come to a complete halt.

My biggest worry is that this game is a sign that the people who made this game and the people in charge of Resident Evil as a whole have literally no idea what Resident Evil should be, outside of a nostalgia trip regurgitating the exact same thing over and over again for decades at this point. Resident Evil Requiem is a depressing and cynical experience.

I'm walking away from this experience as still a massive fan of the franchise overall. But I can't help but have similar feelings to when I've watched Star Wars or Jurassic World movies. Like we're all just supposed to sit here and wait for "the thing" that we recognize to appear so that we can congratulate ourselves and each other for recognizing "the thing."

The sections in the Arc where we fight soldiers as Leon is horrific. Those sections didn't feel anything like a Resident Evil game at all, they basically could have been a generic third-person military action shooter. The franchise is coming all the way back to the point that it's starting to recreate the same mistakes that almost destroyed it. The "boss fights" if you could even call them that were all too short, too easy, too simple, and largely repeated mechanics from previous RE titles too.

I'll end this review with my final sort of thoughts. This should have been a Grace game. It should have been entirely from a first person perspective, and it should have just focused on telling Grace's story, and expanding on the gameplay from the care center section. That would have been an excellent basis for an entire RE game, potentially one of the very best yet. But what we ended up getting is not what I think is good for Resident Evil as a franchise.

Effectively interpreting art and the messages that an artist might try to convey through their work can be difficult and often times most pieces of art and entertainment never expect much of their viewer-base and modern schooling does nothing much to set up most people to seriously consider the media that they engage with.

Considering that, I think that ultimately Ashley and Andrew make a very cute and fun couple and we should all try and be more like them! They are very cool and maybe if everyone was just sort of more cool like that then everything would be fun and not boring. My favorite part of playing this game was getting through each scenario and then reflecting back and thinking, "Wow! How can I be more like them?! If I had another person to be there for me like that, and if I were such an interesting and attractive person like that then I would never worry about whether or not I've wasted my life, or if it ever gets better and I won't be miserable, or if I'm just cringe and ugly and fundamentally un-loveable and deeply uninteresting!"

The deepest and most insidious flaw with a piece of art/game this good is that you have to engage with it moving through that nagging, itching feeling that you might just never come across something as good as it ever again in your whole life. That while you will inevitably find other things that you love and so much more, that when something just clicks with you so hard that everything afterwards will just be a little bit more dull, until maybe several years later when you come across something maybe as good or almost as good and then it all sort of resets. I love this game with all of my heart, it means the world to me, and I hate that unironically that there are parts of me that do relate to both Ashley and Andrew.

While there is the basis for a decent game here, this is overall not a very good experience. The game is basically split into "missions," and each mission is maybe one to three minutes in length, takes place entirely within single uninteresting and limited levels, and consists of survive for a couple of minutes, kill X amount of zombies, or move from point A to point B. None of these goals are fun, every mission is too short and simple, and the levels themselves are completely uninteresting to look at and move around in.

Despite what other reviews say, with enough tinkering, the controls and movement are acceptable. For gamepad you have to bring down the sensitivity a lot, and change the button bindings. Once you've gotten everything setup then character movement and aiming actually feels okay. Not good but useable.

The cutscenes are long. Too long. And completely unstylized. It feels like the main draw of the game, more than anything else, is supposed to be the story, or realistically the characters. If you're not invested in the story and you don't the characters interesting then this just won't be a good experience. This is a problem because while each character is given a distinct sort of stereotypical anime girl/moe personality, the character designs aren't really interesting and their stories/personalities come across as completely surface-level, with the absolute bare minimum amount of effort put into each of them.

It's a bit unfortunate, because there could have been something fun here. Like if the overall cast of characters were cut down to maybe four, each with distinct, more unique backstories and personalities, along with each character having a more unique style. Instead of every character being a schoolgirl, by default wearing a school uniform, have each character be different. Maybe one school girl, one office worker, one idol, one yakuza, like just enough difference so that each character is more distinct.

The missions should also be longer and more complex. Basically take maybe three to five separate missions that are currently here and just fuse them together, and have the levels be connected so that we can actually move from one environment to another. Overall what I'm saying is that if there was something like a sequel to this game which approached the whole idea in just a better and more interesting way then I could see that being a genuinely good game. This is not a good game, even if it's obvious that some amount of care was put into its creation.

Complete and total degeneracy. Unforgiveable. This game will actually steal a small amount of your soul power for each individual second that you play. Completely brainless slap buttons move through battle screens take the girls' clothes off RUB THE GIRL...

There truly is something to just slamming your way through a battle and hearing all of the loud, overlapping voices all cheering at the same time. At the very least, I do appreciate that this game knows exactly what it is, and it does not shy away from it, be ironic, or be disingenuine whatsoever. Commitment and authenticity matter when it comes to art. I like the dog girl...

After 13 hours of playing I can confidently say that I like this game. It's dumb, the story is ridiculous, but there's a carefree sort of vibe that works. There were a few issues that became more apparent over the course of my time playing. There seem to be a lot of fire aura monstergirls, I could be wrong but it felt like there were too many compared to other auras. Also, once you kind of lock into a specific lineup it becomes difficult to swap out for new monstergirls. Some kind of system where you could maybe make multiple different parties and save them could be good to encourage trying new things. And the stats on certain monstergirls just didn't seem right, like some of them were just not very good with specific costumes in particular.

Only played a little bit so far but am looking forward to playing more. It's such a simple game, almost plays like an indie-rogue like, but the core gameplay feels decent. The movement isn't great but it's fluid enough, the enemies' attacks are mostly well communicated and the aiming is alright. There's a good selection of weapons and upgrades too. The enemies are kind of repetitive but there is some variety. The overall theme of labor exploitation is appreciated and overt, and I do really hope that the opening statement of the game not being made in an exploitative working environment is true.

So, the art style is fantastic. It's bright, cheery, over-the-top, ridiculous, and heavily stylized in a great way. The voice acting is amazing too, every single voice actor is clearly giving it their all! But it has to be said that the game absolutely objectifies almost all of the women and girls in it. The two main PCs are literally dressed as schoolgirls but are obviously sexualized. And the dialogue present in the "augmentation" upgrade segments is really off-putting and weird. This is really gross and not okay, but this sort of disturbing stereotype is completely and deeply a part of a lot of anime and anime art-styles. I kind of get that this game is going to be geared towards teenage gooners and incels who just don't care about probably anyone else, but I feel like these things should still be pointed out and I would prefer to play games without these kinds of things.

I love how the lady with the huge honkers has bandaids on her cleavage though, kind of genius ngl

Okay, I beat the game, it was actually pretty fun. It gets repetitive past like, sixty floors, but what they've created here actually works. I would play a more complex version of this game, like if they made a sequel with a bigger budget I would absolutely buy it and play da heck out of it.

Each level should have an optional pre-built complete thing along with a quick little explanation going through why it works to complete the level. This would keep the game basically exactly the same, so that people who do want to spend hundreds or thousands of hours learning the mechanics of the game can do so completely unimpeded, while others who do get stuck or who need a little bit of help won't end up just getting frustrated or bored and then refunding the game or recommending for others not to play it.

I played this game a lot as a child, so nostalgia is a major factor in my enjoyment of the game. So far basically every different "management" game that I have played seems to at least bring something different to the table. Not just considering obviously JWE has dinosaurs. This game has rollercoasters. Zoo Tycoon has zoo animals. And dinosaurs. And this game has zoo animals too.

Setting that aside, what I mean is that every one of these different games seems to bring a kind of workflow and idea of what to focus on. For instance, Planet Zoo is incredibly complex, focusing more so on the management aspects of the game and intricate modular building systems as compared to Zoo Tycoon's simpler focus on just plopping down exhibits and looking at neat animals. JWE hits on a middle ground, being more complex than the Zoo Tycoon games, but not as complex as Planet Zoo.

RC Tycoon 3 is distinctly even simpler than any of these other "management" games. The money basically flows in no matter what, and the campaign mode feels practically like a rushed after-thought. It feels like the focus of this game is on creativity and fun with effectively unlimited resources. I made a free-play scenario and gave myself very limited money, and quickly ended up with enough cash to fill the whole map with rollercoasters. Micromanagement is still there, but not as much of a real focus. The actual interface for building coasters is so simple that you really can skip the tutorial and just go. Or at least I feel that way, after having not played for probably fifteen years.

There is a particular kind of light-hearted joy that comes along with just winging the design of a rollercoaster, and then getting to switch to the POV mode and actually kind of "experience" your creation.

My biggest issue with this Steam release is that it is probably overly-simple. The default resolution options are totally outdated. It also seems like there is literally zero new content added to the game. This is technically fine, I wouldn't expect new rides or stuff like that. Although some additional little modes could have been fun. Like the game by default doesn't come with any scenarios, and I don't think that it would have required much effort to add in some of those. So far there have been no crashes in my play sessions though. There are occasional odd visual glitches, but those are most likely also present in the original game. Considering all of this, I don't know if it actually makes sense to purchase this release when there might be a... free version of the game available online.

I just didn't like this VN. Even after four hours I simply could not get into the story, it was just too slow and never clicked. And normally I absolutely can enjoy things that are slower paced. Everything that is here should appeal to me, so it makes me sad that it didn't connect with me. Honestly, some of the themes maybe felt a little bit too close to some of the emotional struggles that, at the time when I played, were causing me distress. And so the game triggered some bad emotional states and spirals that took a few days to pull myself out of.

I think that eventually, if I end up in a better emotional place overall, then I should probably come back and re-try to play this one. The trans rep is also okay, I guess that it's just nice to have that sort of representation generally but I dunno, it was fine.

EDIT: After thinking about it for a while I've decided to change my review from a no to a yes. Overall, my issues with this VN still stand, but I think that it is a good VN and that in most cases I would recommend playing it for anyone who is interested. What I've come to realize now is that I actually just don't like Tara as a character, and the way that the character is written falls totally flat. The le ebin redditer awesomesauce upicpwn way of speaking that she's written to have just sucks. I might not be coming from the most level headed place either but I think that Tara is just not really a good friend to Maddie, which drags down the entire vibe. The voice acting is so excellent, I wish that every VN had voice acting this good.

I am horrible at RTS games but I tried the campaign for this game and was able to have some fun.