Recent reviews by CuteMonster

A wonderful and personal game that plays a bit more like a single player board game. Gamifying the tasks in your week is extremely relatable and cathartic, and the narrative is complex. Tender at times and funny enough to make me laugh out loud at others. Genuinely one of my favorite experiences this year.

5 Stars. This happened to my buddy Eric.

I'm excited to see how Ben Jungwirths Journey as a game developer will go with this as a start. The look and vibes of this game are a good mix of mysterious and whimsical, and the progression of new abilities and bug makes it very compelling to explore. The flow of combat is meaningful as you jump and dash from enemies attacks and swap to the perfect gun for your situation. I looked forward to rooms with waves of enemies and the bosses have alot more going on than most FPS bosses and it can be very fun to change up your "build" to better adapt to a fight. Sometimes Id get a little lost or backtrack in a way that didn't feel very interesting, the hallways only do so much to distinguish themselves sometimes. I feel like the spells healing you is a very fun concept but magic is such a precious resource in a longer fight that I found there was no spell better than the basic fireball that heals you more efficiently than any spell. Likewise the bugs you can eat for power ups during combat can drastically change your strategies but chasing them around and trying to eat them just feels AWFUL. They are small targets and the resources you have to make them easier to eat are just not worth it. This is all just to say some of the ideas are more interesting in concept than execution. Finally, while I do appreciate the two difficulty settings I felt by the end of the game I was getting frustrated on most bosses, their tells were too subtle, their attacks too fast and my ability to heal was extremely limited. Still this is a game where you are constantly excited to find new guns, spells, or abilities as you explore and that's where the focus is. Id see interesting concepts for bosses or combat encounters even in the final areas, so the game is overall very successful at what it aims to do.

The sound design and music is....okay! its passable. Not much else. Likewise the writing is...fine! It's sorta cutesy and sometime a little funny. But the game is just sorta cool and I like the atmosphere. If you think it looks cool and you just want to explore and shoot stuff with some spooky and silly vibes, this is a *really* well made first game.

Lunacid is the entry point for anyone curious about the Kings Field games but has not yet tried them. It knows exactly the era it is pulling its iconography from and uses that to heighten the game's atmosphere. The draw distance and repeating hallways mess with your sense of comfort and familiarity, the slower pace makes enemies more threatening and exploration more tense. This game uses its aesthetic and lineage the same way a VHS horror movie on a blurry, cramped CRT makes it all the scarier *because* of those limitations.

This is not necessarily a game I would recommend to everyone, but the best games in my opinion shouldn't be. Play this if you enjoyed Elden Ring and want a modern re-contextualization for what it was like when FromSoftware got their start. Play this if you want a game that gives that rare sense of turning a corner and going "what is THAT?!" in a tense excitement. Lunacid will be looming in my thoughts for far longer than the time I spent playing it.

Lucah has an incredibly high degree of polish and interesting mechanics for such a small game. While I don't normally like relying upon buzzwords alone, Lucah has 2d top down exploration/atmosphere similar to Hyper Light Drifter while the gameplay is reminiscent of Dark Souls and Bayonetta.

Combat is challanging with enemies with big tells that you can dodge, parry, and strike with 2 sets of customized light and heavy attacks all while juggling a stamina bar and a meter for special/ranged attacks.

Some of my favorite mechanics include a consumable rewind that restarts a combat. This encourages you to quickly make up for mistakes with more trys to master instead of just out-healing an encounter. I also enjoyed a counter that very slowly ticks up and increases on death that, while in an average game may never get too close to filling up and cause a bad outcome, always encourages you to keep moving. I liked the sense of consiquence for death, that the game gave me tools to get better at combat while I was learning.

Finally the games narritive is very unique, relying on expression rather than concretely defining everything. This is also emphasized in the art style as you are never quite sure the exact nature of things but are very sure of the tone. There are interesting elementes of poetry a visual novel tucked in this game that I was pleasantly surprised by. You will come for the combat but end up staying for the story.

The only con I can really think of is that sometimes the art style can be too messy at times and navigation can be a little challanging. I almost never got lost for very long but it took me a bit to realize there is a map in the menus. Overall thought the game is wonderful, especially for its scale and has some great replayability with ranked combat if you want more after your first playthrough.

I think many people are going to be expecting a big budget game that truly captures the Avatar Experiance. If you are only expecting that then this will be a let down, but for Platinum Games fans that love Korra and want a fun $15 afternoon, I recommend this game.

Pros:
-Combat is fluid and rewards mastery, the Platinum standard
-Visuals look and feel cool, and mimic the action of the show
-Probending Mode, the Naga endless runner minigame and varying difficulties offer multiple playthroughs
Cons:
-Very little charm, or even other characters from the show, much more about the action
-Story is bland and forgettable (though completely skippable)
-Starts out a little slow, deffinitely takes a level or two to get the cool factor really rolling

In short, know what you are getting into. I got a good 5 hours in my first sitting on what was just initially purchased as a fix for my Bayonetta 2 cravings and I had a good time. If you want a AAA Bioware open world action RPG that truly captures the charm and combat of Avatar then this wont be anywhere close, but to the curious Platinum fans, ignore the reviews, spend a few bucks, and have a go at it.