Recent reviews by DoppelGamer

Play this one instead of Tekken 8. It's better and has bowling.

This is probably my favorite game of all time. Definitely not perfect but still loads of fun.
Mods are really where it shines since they let you customize just about anything to your liking and modding the game is pretty easy with all the tools available.

I used to play Road Rash 3 on the Genesis/Megadrive when I was a kid and this is a very good modernized version of that.

Normally I find most racing games pretty dull unless there's some kind of combat element and this is the only one I know of (aside from its predecessors) that gives you melee weapons. Combat is very gratifying even though it feels frantic at first. Once you get used to it you quickly realize just how easy it can be. Though difficult it is possible to win races by killing all the other racers.

Surprisingly this game is also a rogue-like. Once your health runs out it's game over & you have to start over but you get to spend XP on permanent upgrades that persist through each playthrough. This can make the first part of the game seem repetitive but luckily you can unlock the ability to start the game at a later stage.

The one thing I feel this game is missing is character & vehicle customization. Instead you just have a selection of racers & motorcycles to choose from, most of which need to be unlocked first. This game would have been a whole lot better if you could have customized your vehicle & stats like in the Road Rash games. Feels like a missed opportunity but this is still one of the better racing games out there.

8 years of development and a $40 price tag for a game that's only about 5 hours long? Maybe 10 if you really take your time? I can't even imagine how the Kickstarter backers must have felt when they were promised 2 games and got this instead after nearly a decade of waiting.
What was initially advertised as a puzzle-shooter turned out to be little more than a walking simulator with a bunch of shallow & repetitive allegory about childbirth. If you're trying to find some deeper meaning to the game's "plot" you won't find it because there isn't any.
I've been a huge HR Giger fan for most of my life and I will concede that the artistic side of the game is truly amazing but as we all know, making a game "pretty" doesn't matter if the game still sucks.
If you're really curious, save your money and just watch a no-commentary playthrough on Youtube instead.

-The short version:
I picked up this game on super-sale a few years ago and didn't start playing until earlier this year (2022). I'm glad I waited too because apparently it used to be really bad. Honestly right now this is one of my top 5 favorite open-world games. Pretty light on story & combat but extra-heavy on exploration & crafting (and survival on higher difficulties). Additional content has always been free, and expeditions help prevent things from becoming repetitive.

-The longer version (as of 4.0 update Oct. 2022):
Okay I get it. A lot of people are mad about the latest update with the revamped inventory system. People are review-bombing and whining about how they lost hours of progression blah blah blah. The truth is, no one actually "lost" anything, but the changes were a pretty big inconvenience. The devs probably should have been more vocal about the changes but in the end these changes are only a short-term inconvenience while in the long-term they're actually a major improvement.
Before the update, your inventories for your Exosuit, Starship, Exocraft, & Freighter all had 3 tabs each:
1) Inventory Slots for regular item storage that you could also use to equip technology upgrades.
2) Technology Slots which were only for tech upgrades. Even when maxed out you didn't get very many tech slots.
3) Cargo Slots which were only for item storage but you could stack a larger quantity of the same item in one slot than in regular inventory.
After the 4.0 update, they combined the regular inventory & cargo slots into one list, and you can now only equip tech upgrades in Technology slots, meaning that any upgrades equipped to a normal inventory slot became unequipped, but was left in your inventory as a regular item that you can just re-equip at any time as long as you have an available tech slot for it. This is what made a lot of people understandably upset, but review-bombing the game out of spite because of this is short-sighted and fails to see the bigger picture, which is something better than what we had before.
First off, again nothing was lost. Some items just got unequipped. Big deal. But the maximum number of tech slots you can have has been increased *tremendously*. I don't actually know what the max is because I haven't reached it yet. Same with the inventory & cargo tabs. When they were combined the total number of slots you had didn't change but the max is much higher than it used to be (at least double). Storage containers have also had their capacity increased by 150% and you can now stack upgrades too (up to 10 or 20 per slot). Best of all is that your tech & cargo slots are now all viewable on one page instead of 3 separate tabs which makes inventory management much easier.

All I'm saying is you don't have to like the new update. They can't all be winners. Just don't let that be the deciding factor on whether or not to play this game, which is still pretty fun.

The undisputed champion of rogue-like games.

Good kitty

I'm a huge fan of Metroid-vania style 2D side scrollers, although most of them tend to be more "Vania" than "Metroid". This one delivers heavily on the Metroid side, with a story & aesthetic that obviously draws heavily from Ghost in the Shell with some light humor thrown in. It was also made by the same people who made Unepic, which is a great 'Vania game.

Gameplay doesn't have the same kind of straightforward controls that games like Axiom Verge or Dead Cells would have, and they may seem a bit counter-intuitive at first, but it makes sense once you get used to it, especially when running & gunning. There's an old PC sidescroller game from the mid '90s called Abuse that had a similar play style, so if you've played that you'll have a basic idea how this one works.

All in all, this is one of my favorite games on Steam. If you're a fan of Axiom Verge, Unepic, or just side scrollers in general, you'll probably like this one.

A fun little Metroid clone whose cutesey pixel-graphics fooled me into thinking the game would be easy.

Pros: -Great example of a "Metroidvania" game, leaning obviously more towards the Metroid side.
-Good weapon customization. The 5 basic weapon types can have points spent on them to combine their effects in different ways.
-Dual-layered maps. Jumping from background to foreground to navigate levels is a mechanic I'd love to see more of in 2D sidescrollers.
-Challenging, but not too difficult.

Cons: -Really floaty physics. No control over jump height and character will slide a bit when stopping & turning.
-Lacks enemy variety. Most of the enemies are the same in each level and all the bosses are the same monster with different colors and newer attacks each time you fight it. Could have used a bit more variety.
-Health pickups and checkpoints are extremely rare. While many might appreciate the challenge because of this, I found that it made parts of the game tedious and repetitive.
-This game is really short. I managed to finish it with 93% completion in just over 5 hours. Might not be worth full price to most people. I picked it up when it was on sale for $2, which is a fair price for a short game in my opinion.

All in all, it's a good game, but not a great game. Not quite worth the full price IMO but definitely worth it if you pick it up on sale.

Item usage is clumsy, the game is way too short, the puzzles are too easy (and I'm terrible at puzzle games), and it only gives you enough story information to leave it open for a sequel. It doesn't feel like a complete game, it feels more like the first chapter of a game where you'll have to dish out extra money to play chapter 2. If the game's description had bothered to mention that it was the first of an episodic series then it might not have felt like a ripoff. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it.