Recent reviews by Rye

The vibes here are absolutely immaculate. I honestly didn't expect the soundtrack to go as hard as it does. Absolute peak.

Genuinely a masterpiece of a game.
Highly reccomend this through and through. Short, sweet, and to the point, it's entertaining, polished, and well written.

The spiritual successor to Bastion, Transistor completely lives up to its predecessor. Being essentially, 'Sci-fi Bastion', Transistor retains the Action-RPG elements and the narrative storytelling. However, it does change it up, the narrator no longer being an omnipotent recollection of events, but rather an on-the-spot narration full of cheeky one-liners and references to the game's lore.

You play as Red, a singer who has had her voice taken away, who wields a sword called the transistor. The transistor is essentially your all-knowing companion and weapon for the duration of the game. It houses 'traces' of other people which it then uses to generate 'functions', your attacks. With four slots for active functions, and each one having a base 'upgrade' slot of one, as well as general passive slots, the loadout customization is fairly extensive, and can lead to some fun, and very gimmicky builds, but ultimately gives you the freedom to build to your playstyle. Placing the functions and using them in different slots also reveals exposition and background regarding the original people that make up the function, inspiring the player to expermient and explore their options.

The gameplay at first appears similar to Bastion's, an Isometric Action-RPG. However, they introduced a new concept that distinctly sets it apart. You can use a function called 'Turn()', where you go into a planning mode, and you can move around and plan a certain number of attacks, and then execute it, watching Red go into a frenzy and perform all of her planned tasks. This comes with its own risk/reward, as in doing so, it leaves you vulnerable and unable to attack for some time. You're given three extra chances until death, where each time your health runs out, a function is 'overloaded' and unavailable to be used for some time. This came as more of a drawback, as typically some highly valuable function was lost and I ended up just loading a previous save anyways. Either way, I found the combat to be intuitive and fun to experience, yet towards the end when I had my ideal build, easy and non-chalant.

It's a game that can't help but be compared to Bastion, being almost so alike it in every way. Yet at the same time, it remains distant and evolved. Bastion pulled me along with its narration and its storyline, while Transistor had me exploring to pick up exposition and look for fights.

Supergiant Games learned from Bastion, and they made a far superior game to a game that was already outstanding. What Bastion lacked, Transistor has.

Take it from someone who has put way more hours in this game than is even remotely neccessary: this game is the pinnacle of horror games to date. Frictional Games nailed the formula with Penumbra: Black Plague, but it wasn't until Amnesia: TDD that they got it out to the mainstream public. They effectively showed that a good atmosphere will absolutely sell the game, that its not just the jumpscares that make the game terrifying, its the way the player reacts to the enviroment, the way the sounds, the music, the level design, all come together to actually make the player terrified. At the same time, with Amnesia: MFP, they showed that too much atmosphere, and not enough jump scares, can make the game lacking.
Amnesia: TDD has the perfect amounts of both atmosphere and jump scares. The atmosphere is foreboding, it makes you fear the oncoming jumpscare that you know is happening, and the jump scares are actually there for you to learn that the game isn't just messing around. Its incredibly well paced.
The puzzles are fairly intuitive too, they tend to be challenging, but not too difficult. As long as you search all the areas, you're bound to find the solution.
The engine too is also quite remarkable. Having played around in the editor myself, they allow for a lot of interesting things to be done. While, strictly horror focused, anyone with enough drive and modeling/texturing software could make their own fully fledged game in the engine.

The only downside that I will offer: the plot. At the start, it feels nice and fresh, interesting even. Yet, the eventual twist was predictable, and the ending felt rushed and was largely unsatisfying.

In short, this game is a generic hack and slash. It doesn't even try to hide it, the levels are arena like in nature, and enemies teleport into the arena and waves. (which begs the question, why not just all attack at once?) Typically, I'm a fan of these kinds of games, I enjoy the fast paced combat that they offer and the quick thinking required, and as much as I wanted to like this game, too many things kept me from my eventual ragequit (yes, I'll admit it, I ragequit). To start with, the combat itself is fairly bland, with very few in the terms of combos or special attacks, it boils down to alternating between mashing two different buttons however you feel like it. Combos are not based on a length of time, but rather how many hits you can get it in before you get hit. This isn't so much a downside as it is a personal preference; combos are more challenging and more entertaining when there's a time limit attached to them, to keep you in the fight for as long as possible. Some of the controls feel unintuitive, such as moving the control stick in any direction to use your directional attacks rather than your standard ones (this could be just me, as by habit I move towards what I'm attacking). The camera is sloppy, it positions itself how it feels and makes you have to constantly tweak it in order to watch out for attacks from other enemies, making it feel like you're playing two games at once, one that involves mashing buttons, and the other that involves photographing group pictures. While not particularly a downside, the amount of fanservice tends to be a bit much.

In short, its not the game for me, but someone out there is bound to enjoy it.

I'll admit, this flew under my radar. It got added on to the Humble Bundle V shortly before it ended, and I never really though much about it till I scrolled through my library and saw it, and realized I didn't even know what it was about. Well, it ends up being a delicious indie combination of Amnesia and Silent Hill all wrapped up in a nice 16bit 2-D experience. The gameplay can become slightly tedious at times when you sneak past the same monster for the 20th time or so, but it makes up for this in being a relatively short game. Essentially, it's paced very well. It's not a very difficult game, either, as you always have ways to get ammo or food or such as per pills that are always available (they get restocked everyday) yet come at the price of lowering your 'mental health' and giving you a worse ending. Which brings me to my next point: the plot. It's your typical indie horror plot, there are monsters, and they want to kill you, and there's all kinds of unexplainable things that happen that don't make sense until the very end where suddenly they make slightly more sense than they did before. It's a nice play through, really. Whether you're getting your bang for your buck is debatable.

If you never got a chance to enjoy Baldur's Gate in it's original glory, go ahead and pick this up. The graphics aren't as enhanced as it would lead you on to be, it's still presented in it's original pixelated glory(not that there is anything wrong with that), despite an increase in resolution. the slight bit of new content that it does add is refreshing, the two new characters are fun to interact with and are fully voiced. TL;DR if you've never played Baldur's Gate, get this, otherwise, get it on sale.

I can tell you right now why this game is awesome: every point of overkill that you do to an enemy is applied as knockback to their dead corpse. That means flying bodies everywhere. If you don't think that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥', then get out of here.

I aquired Bastion through the recent Humble Indie Bundle. The thing is, though, Bastion isn't a game that should be humble. There's so many things that work to make this game excellent. The art style is absolutelty superb, delivering some breathtaking artwork. The soundtrack is well fitting, and can tense moments all the more tenser. Gameplay itself is fun and addicting, constantly taking out baddies to earn more 'fragments' so you can upgrade your weapons and take out MORE baddies.

Yet, the thing that throws Bastion over the edge of greatness, is it's story. The story itself is one of hope in a time of despair. The plot itself has several minor twists, but avoids Bioshock-level revelations, still leading to something interesting.
So the story is what makes it great, right? Well there's something about the story that makes it great: The storyTELLING. The entire game is accompanied with a narrator (Who sounds amazing), who constantly provides insight on things going on.

I just realized I hadn't reccomended this game, and was astonished.

Zeno Clash is a first person fighting game made in the source engine.
Yes, First Person Fighting.
I'm gonna make this short

The fighting is superb, unless you're one of those people that spam the same attack over and over again because it works, then it'll be boring and tedious to do a super punch every 5 seconds. The bit of gunplay you do have, works in nicely. The bosses are unique and different, and you don't spend the whole game punching things in the face, either. The plot is strange, but fantastic, and the lore behind the game is... unique.

TL:DR Punch wierd bird people in the face