Recent reviews by Hash!

Celeste is a wonderful game, any gamer will tell you that all aspects are lovingly-crafted, it embodies an incredibly charming spirit and I believe that spirit is why it holds such acclaim on Steam, with 98%+ positive reviews, it has garnered a cult-like reception.

The soundtrack has become as familiar as an old friend to me, the pixel art surrounding me like a warm blanket, the level design, the gameplay feel – movement, physics – leading me to wonder if it all manifested in the developer’s mind as proof of divine intervention, or some savant-like machination a la Daniel Johnston’s “Hi, How Are You”.

It really does feel like magic, when you come to a difficult screen and it seems to be just difficult enough that before giving up, you manage to crack it – and the following screen, in other games, would be even more difficult, and may wear you out, but in Celeste, no, you get a fair amount of earned reprieve, and while you’re catching your breath you get to enjoy the art, find some strawberries (but not all), and take note of secrets to investigate deeper later on.

I haven’t played many titles with as much quality before, but I’m always glad, and astounded, that work of Celeste’s ilk seems to appear out of nowhere, and I may be years late to appreciate it, but by God, if we have any purpose in life, appreciating Celeste must be one purpose indeed.

I had zero bugs, issues, glitches, and have not completed Farewell yet, but have gotten far in it, I've collected most strawberries and blue/red hearts.

25+ years of gaming and this is my favourite.

No need to write a review, it's the best game ever made, there is no game with better writing, every element is great. The atmosphere is immense, the music is something I revisit all the time, I wish we had moreeeee

mud
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I've been playing this game for five years and it's only gotten better. buybuybuybuy beautiful mostly-procedural world with very cool landmark locations and so many different ways to approach situations, and mod support (but not too many mods out atm)

Dennis Fong won John Carmack's Ferrari 328 as part of a Quake 1 MP championship in 1997, ID knew how fun it was to run around in Doom MP, they made Quake more fast and more vertical, when developing Q3A they decided to focus fully on MP and as a result, arguably created the competitive FPS genre or at the very least propelled it, trailblazing with the id tech 3 engine, which was used for Call of Duty, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, and had a lot of code which Valve's goldsrc used - that's right, HL1, CS, and COD owe a lot of their success to the blueprint that ID discovered and crafted.

Carmack has said in later years that Q3A was never designed to be this brutal game that is very difficult to learn, it just worked out that way, just like in Chess if you fail it's really your fault, there isn't anything to get lucky with aside from some great prefires or spam or happening to run into someone, but there's no artificial way to take the lead, you just have to be better than your opponent, and as a result, if you're interested in proving who the best player is, Q3A offers one of the most balanced experiences for a real fair competitive arena.

It's really hard to overstate how profound Q3A was for the time it was released, it took an absolute beast of a PC to run at good FPS - back then almost no one was sitting on 200fps and almost no one was above 75hz or 100hz on a CRT. The atmosphere was moody, the game was dark and intimidating, but at the core of it, as a player, it never feels like the game is against you or punishing you, it is FAIR, brutally so, there is no "escape" button to save you, the character designs are kinda wacky, the bot DM maps and bosses ease you in - starting from Q3DM0 the first map against Crash, a very small hallway with only one or two weapons and two opposing spawn points - this is amazing game design - teaching you everything you need to know to get started before throwing you into a deathmatch with multiple bots.

As a kid I gained my skills in those offline deathmatches, and I went online and got blasted, I sat in awe of the skill that some players seemed to have, instead of being discouraged I wanted to live in the world they did - where they were able to put the game on and dominate. So many iconic memories of playing on maps like The Longest Yard - a map where you have access to a railgun, multiple opponents, and almost zero hiding spots and cover, if you had good aim (most people were using rollerball mice pre 2006!) you'd be able to pick players off while hearing that reassuring "IMPRESSIVE, EXCELLENT" driving the dopamine home, iconic.

ID were a bunch of guys who were having fun making the games they thought were great, they had no business blueprint to achieving annual ROI, they had no formula to follow, they operated in a free creative arena and as a result created one of the most fun and balanced competitive arena shooters of all time, dare I say the best, still, because in my eyes, yes it is dated but which modern title can I say is crafted better, overall?

Thanks for reading!

Amazing

Lowly Tarnished... thou'rt unfit even to graft.

there's an npc called mr libido that gyrates suggestively, at some point you win a chicken and he becomes a manager in your real estate business, you name him nugget, you can pick up giant signs and hit 5 people at once with them, you can play outrun, space harrier, fantasy land (zone?) and uhh what's the other one...super hangon, all SEGA games from the arcade/mega drive/genesis... You can drink whisky then play darts poorly, you can play snooker, baseball, sing karaoke, dance intensely (check my screenshots), you can fish, you can throw money on the floor, you can run a cabaret club, there are so many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things you can do in this game it's ridiculous, but you can't get in cars and I don't understand mahjong or shogi why tf are traditional asian games so difficult I mean how galaxy brain do you have to be

10/10

git gud or git ded

Amazing tower defense game. Too many TDs are watered down I feel, but this one retains that hardcore minmax feel that the TDs of old (WC3 Customs anyone?) had. Incredibly addictive, incredibly fun, so much to unlock, even after 50+ hours I'm still unlocking stuff and new levels. There's tons of incentive to go back and redo levels, and heaps of depth in general. Highly recommended - the best TD on Steam for sure. Carries with it a long legacy - gemcraft stemmed from its first iteration on Newgrounds.