Recent reviews by Flyer3f

I jumped into the game hearing it's for people who liked the DKC series. While that's completely accurate, you'll also come to appreciate the amazing sprite art, good sound effects, and great chill music that comes along with the tight platforming. While the platforming will challenge you, the game is also extremely lenient in where you can jump, as you have several frames after you leave a platform that you can jump in, just incase you miss your jump timing slightly. Anyone familiar with the classic or modern DKC series will hit the ground running, as the game feels extremely similar in terms of platforming rhythm and execution as those games. Honestly I just had a blast running through the game. I 100%'d it, even the speedrun achievement (that I usually dislike in games, since they feel like extra padding to me usually). If you like fantastic sprite art and good classic platforming games, give this game a shot. I'd certainly love to see a sequel some day!

Sonic Rumble is literally a Fall Guys clone... but I enjoy it. I think the gameplay is solidly done and it's very fun to play with friends. Moving feels smooth, the skills are easy to understand, the modes are well-designed for sonic fans as they all involve good platforming movement and quick thinking (Race, collect rings, avoid enemies, etc.). Works nice on a controller, I wouldn't recommend mobile but keyboard-mouse isn't too bad from the little I've played with it. My only gripe, and the biggest gripe of anyone I play the game with is the monetization. You are drip-fed Red Rings (premium currency), and Red Rings are VERY expensive. It is not a joke when people say that it can cost ~$60 worth of Red Rings for a character skin if you haven't already saved up free red rings. The battle passes are no better, at best they can provide you with 30 Red Rings when it costs 999 for a Legendary skin (unless it's on sale, FOMO at it's finest). It's BAD bad. It's so bad that it makes me feel dirty when I tell people I play this game every day and find it fun to play a couple quick rounds with friends every now and then. It actively HURTS this game. The battle passes range from $9 for an event pass to $10 for the premium pass. Each pass will provide you at least 1 skin, 1 buddy, 1 sticker, and 1-2 emotes or visual effects along with rings (used to unlock stuff in the shop faster), wrenches (to level up characters, pay to win since you can't farm these, only gained from events or free passes otherwise), and score boosts if it's the premium battle pass (helps you get higher rank faster, pay to win, however doesn't affect in-game score). There are 3 battle passes going on right now. The Godzilla one will give you Godzilla for free but better pay the fee if you want his exclusive Premium Pass ability.
The mobile version is worse so I'll keep this short and to the side. Thank god steam's TOS blocks external ads in games. There's literally a "MODE" where if you form a guild with friends it encourages you to WATCH ADS TOGETHER TO GET MORE SKILL STARS (used to level up skills). The rest is standard Sega garbage mobile shove-an-ad-at-your-face-at-every-opportunity fare.
Sega has been really bad at mobile sonic games in terms of monetization. I wanted to play more SFSB but refused to mash through all the windows it would pop up CONSTANTLY asking me to watch ads or pay money for bonuses or to remove ads. This game, at least on Steam, is not that bad. That said, it's still terrible. I'm on record telling friends that if there was any reason for me to get a pass I would, but like... Fortnite gives more motivation to buy passes than this. Multiple skins, customization add-ons, etc. for a cheaper price. FAR more bang for your buck. This is just... sad really.
To sum it up, game's fun to mess around with friends in if you're a Sonic fan. Solid gameplay, I have way too many hours in it. I honestly like it better than Fall Guys since it's more fast-paced and more platforming oriented. Ignore the cash shop, it's horrible. Actually horrible. Don't give them your money. I hope they give literally anything back to the players. I've farmed all the red rings I can from the challenge stages and I'm prepared to receive enough red rings to get another legendary skin by 2027 hopefully. God knows I'm not spending money on them. Just use the $60 you'd use to buy a skin to help buy Sonic Crossworlds.

This review is from after the release of The Arcade update. I'll keep spoilers low.

I've followed this game for a while, but mostly at a distance. I purchased the Itch.io early build in 2023. I think I gave it maybe an hour, went "Oh this is definitely feels like FNAF but a porn parody" and moved on, hoping the future of the game shows more polish and interesting gameplay decisions. I loved the character designs, but I also recognized the game was in super early access and I wanted to wait, see the improvements, and experience the game again at a much more complete state.
Fast forward to now, I had actually forgotten I had purchased In Heat and saw that there was a TON of new updates and wanted to give it a new try in Itch. There are 3 game modes: Security Office, Nighclub, and Arcade. Each of these plays very differently but still have similar game styles that keep you on your toes and having to pay attention to every camera (most of the time). Also each has a BOSS level to complete at the end that switches things up for the player to keep things interesting. There are difficulty spikes, but it's mostly keeping up with changing mechanics, and the challenges posed honestly excited me since it felt like a fun challenge instead of an insurmountable wall. Also I'll be rating the gameplay as more important than the lewds. If I just wanted lewds I'd go to e621. It's all about balance.
The Security Office plays like FNAF 1 but with FNAF2-styled mechanics. Instead of power, you get... STRESS. You squeeze a stress doll to relieve stress. If you stress too much you hyperventilate and can't hear anything besides your own breathing. There are valves and switches to check and make sure they are working in the building overnight. If they fail for too long, you're fired. Also, keep the monster girls at bay due to threat of "Cellular Mutation and Degration" that could occur with crossbreeding. There are 6 monster girls and you'll need to understand each's mechanics, some more subtlely explained than others. For the most part though, keep them out of your room and you'll be safe. Very fun, cute character info drops everywhere, gives some gameplay twists on the FNAF formula that I liked, and kept the tension high for a nice sigh of relief at the end of the night. The girls all look fantastic and have super cute animations that really highlight their personalities. The lewd Game Over animations are just a little dated, but also not bad. Quite liked the camera movements on them, just would be nice to see them touched up a little for the final release.
The Nightclub is a management simulator that involves handling the Nightclub as a brothel, assigning girls and customers to each room. As you can see, the concerns of bodily harm alluded to in The Security office are completely ignored in this mode. Gotta keep up with the demand while making sure each customer is happy with their assigned girls, and you have to have a half-decent score by the end to win the night (Score goes from F to SS afaik). That part is relatively straight forward. The game is a little less straight forward when customers pile up, as the game tells you you can place a girl on the stripper pole in the lobby to appease customers, however I'm not sure how exactly. I think it either nets you more points or makes customers stick around longer for their turn. Maybe both? Rooms are made unusable if there's a power malfunction in the room or if the room needs cleaned. These are rather frustrating, mostly because knowing which room is which can get confusing. The 4 are specified by ♥, ♦, ♠, and ♣. Unfortunately the camera layout does not make the same indication, so you'll have to remember which room is which unless you wanna look around with cameras. I just made a 4-square guide on notebook paper and it makes the mode much much easier. This is something I would consider maybe changing in the future, either make the rooms easier to tell at a glance which needs fixing or add their symbols to the camera layout. I imagine this is where the stripper pole comes in, because if customers pile up while you're cleaning or fixing power outages, you'll lose revenue for a lower score in the end. If a girl gets too horny, they will hunt you down and have their way with you if you don't close the door on them, causing an hour to pass without your assistance. You may also invite a girl to have relations with without them hunting you down if you merely call their cellphone while they are not busy at the expense of an hour. The animations are nicer and pretty bouncy. The animations are as expressive as ever, and it's very funny to see them angry-horny as they hunt you down. The girls and customers have funny and creative dialogue when you put them in the room. I'm rambling. Besides making room locations more intuitive for management, that it's very fun to manage all the girls, making sure you can min-max your revenue for the night.
You'll have to do Dating Mode with Poppi before unlocking The Arcade (Do Sammy's and Nile's first if you care about lore). The Arcade is, according to my friends, very similar to Ultimate Custom Night. You'll be in a simulation viewing cameras but you have abilities that allow you to interact with power ups and items in each room. You'll be balancing your Psyche power and Corruption of the simulation in order to make sure nobody attacks you. There are so many types of enemies and mechanics in this mode it's hard to actually explain any of it. You have doors! And power! But you can, like, recover power with the generator? But it breaks and you have to fix it? And thats like 3% of the things you'll have to worry about in this mode. A shotgun blast of mechanics and each night is very different with different girls and versions of them trying to attack you. I like it, but some things are way too vague. I don't know what more than half of the power ups do, and the boss night too me several days to figure out the best plan of action in order to last the full night. That said, it's extremely creative. I had fun trying to figure out the mechanics of the girls that attacked me and trying to minimize my chances of being ambushed in the room. The power ups are way too vague and probably too many though. I'm not sure how I'd balance that. I'm just glad I figured out which power up would deflate the corruption to 0. Once you beat each night, you'll unlock Custom Night, where you'll be able to enable and tweak each girl for insane difficulty if you want that. The animations and dialog of the girls is expressive and fun as always. Unfortunately the Game Over screens are reduced to just a high-definition render. That said, I really liked the renders, and I don't know if I prefer a very nice render or a lower-rendered animation loop more. Both are nice. Poppi remains the funniest character.
I think I've rambled enough to know what I'm talking about when I say that this game oozes charm. It's early access with a $15 price tag currently, the price of buying FNAF 1 three times. I absolutely think this game has more than enough content to warrant that, as you basically get three different games, plenty of extra content, and a full fleshed-out gallery that'll let you view every animation you've seen in the game. The characters have very fun designs, are full of personality, have great voice work, and the devs clearly want to put a lot of effort into making an interesting and in-depth story to explore (I think The Office could use a little more of this but again, early access). I streamed this to a couple friends who were surprised at the depth this game has and loved the personality of the girls. I bought this game again on Steam even after I already bought the Itch.io version ~3 years ago so I can continue supporting the development. I had a ton of fun playing this, this game oozes with charm in every mode, and I am excited for what the devs have in store for the final updates in the future of this game.

Fantastic journey. Go into this one blind and you won't regret it. Great for Horror and ARG lovers.

Played through this a couple months ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. The character designs are a cute, though maybe a little too generic sometimes, but the personalities shine through and make the characters all fun to talk to and interact with. You can see the inspirations from Touhou everywhere in this game, from the bullet-hell styled gameplay to just the way characters will start fights over nothing (or even just accidentally in a few cases). Very fun for those who enjoy metroidvanias and challenging platformers (due to controlling your movements in battle). Maybe lower the difficulty if you're struggling, as it does become very challenging later on. It's also a quite long game, with more DLC to get but I think I might've had my fill for the time being.

Used to like this game a lot, but the CEO decided to put his political views supporting our fascist dictator on show for all to see. See the comments on reviews to see the chuds defending this behavior. Game support has been dropped for a more inferior sequel while still charging for drops. Even the bot on the discord doesn't give rewards promised in-game. I'd stick to the Master Chief Collection if you want to play more halo.

Decided to pick this up, excited because I liked Splitgate a lot. Unfortunately, this game is designed more like COD, Fortnite, and Apex rolled together with Halo weapons and just happens to have a portal gun. The maps are all super flat and rather condensed so there's no wide vertical map play. Most game modes I had more success in if I used the shotgun because I was mostly turning corners to find someone in my face rather than shooting long to medium range. I feel like this could be mitigated if the maps were designed differently. Also, the loadout system is a mismash of Reach and COD, where you have loadouts you make with classes that have specific powers and level up guns to make them actually worth using. It got very frustrating playing against people with higher ranked guns. Always hated that about COD, don't know why it had to come here. Honestly just was frustrated with the game but realized it's free and early access so I thought I'd wait a bit for things to get polished or ironed out. Unfortunately, they claim to want to "Make FPS Great Again" so clearly they need a wake-up call that many players aren't a fan of their political commentary (intentional or not), nor are many of us fans of the state the game is currently in. Literally went back to Splitgate 1 the week Splitgate 2 came out, and now feel uncomfortable trying either game. Good play.

The game play loop is very solid. Had fun with my friends playing this. I will say however that the game's not quite worth the $10 bucks. Very very simplistic with no unlockables or customization. Still being worked on and getting updates is fine but for an early access this is still very bare bones. AI Promotional art needs to go.
I think if the price was reduced to $5 I could probably recommend it? The dev's really got a fun game here, but it just needs a bit more to it, especially since all the assets are very stock. More areas. More colorful landscapes. More seasons. Weather. Time of day. A customizable hunter could be neat. You got something good here, work with it.
Also, remove the AI art. Put your logo on a black background and you won't upset people.

Note: Sonic Team is releasing Origins Plus in June as of posting this. The game will be $40 USD, include all the "DLC" of Origins, as well as having a bigger expansion with Game Gear titles and a playable Amy and Knuckles in every Genesis game. The game might be worth it to you when that time comes, but as of now, save your money for when it's worth the price, because they will sell you these upgrades in June if you buy this version.I've held off roasting how this game has been handled in hopes that the huge issues with it would be fixed in future updates, however not only is there no word on any more fixes, Sonic Team just announced a Sonic Origins Plus, which will cost an additional $10 for current owners of Sonic Origins. While I would love to play as Classic Amy (and honestly expected her to be an end game unlock for THIS version) and would love the Game Gear titles, for fans of the Genesis games, this collection does a rather poor job at replicating the feeling of the older games. The game ports are for the most part "satisfactory", but this is replacing perfectly fine emulations on Steam, which were ALL taken down before this came out (and retailed at a cheaper price for all 4 games). The cutscenes are the best part of this collection, as they're lovely additions to introduce you to the world of Sonic and are very nonobtrusive. However, some issues crop up when you investigate the games themselves. (Some physics issues I believe have been patched but I can't confirm all of them due to how random they seemed in the first place.) When I played, sometimes you'd ramp off of something really fast and slam into a wall a little too hard, crushing you. While this is a very realistic scenario in real life, this does not happen in the classic games. Also, in Sonic CD, Sonic no longer has voice clips. There weren't too many in the first place, but they were cute and added to the charm of the game. The more problematic parts that bothered me the most though was how the audio was handled in S3&K. I have no idea why they did it, but the audio sounds very muffled on every stage. I don't mind the replacement tracks (even though they seem worse quality than the old PC port of the 90's), but the audio is just so poor it makes me never want to play the Origins version of this game again. Don't get me started about how poor all the sprites look. I don't know how they messed up the blurring of pixels, but something just looks so off with it.The worst parts are honestly that this game does not preserve history as it was originally, and it instead tries to overwrite it with poorly implemented "upgrades" for the newer generation without considering what makes the original version so timeless. Even the classic modes of the games are just Anniversary modes except modified to "feel" more original (no widescreen, lives system, etc, yet still poor pixelation, bad audio, and weird physics issues). The marketing for this game was also awful with the DLC which amounted to a bunch of basic features of a menu being ripped out and sold to you for extra. Maybe when Plus comes out, this game will be worth your money, but until then don't be like me. Wait until the game is worth buying, and even then wait a few days for reviews. Who knows? Maybe they'll release a nice overhaul that fixes many of the issues I pointed out.Edit 2/25/23: It has come to my attention that Sonic Team actually does tend to patch the game again when the Plus edition rolls out in order to fix more bugs and improve the overall quality of the game. This doesn't change my review, but is something to keep notice of when the game gets its update in the future.

This game wants to be centered off it's main mechanic: Tag team racing. Now, this isn't such a bad thing. It feels good to coordinate with people and win a race together. However, it's a miserable slog in single player mode and just plain not fun if you aren't playing with friends.

Pros:
- More Sonic Characters!
- Tag team mechanics are fun and quite solid
- Engine feels like it's based off the Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed engine if not directly using it, which combines kart racing mechanics with a large car feel that feels incredibly satisfying when you get into the swing of things
- Amazing music! Seriously, look up the OST on youtube!
- Decent courses that can get very creative with level themes, though the brought over courses can feel a bit lame (the ones from Sega All-Stars Racing, not Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed)
- Fun and varied missions
- Amazing kart customization! You can change parts to optimize your favorite character towards your racing style, or just customize it to look as pretty as you want it! Different colors, paint jobs, types of materials, horns, decals, etc! Absolutely would love to see this expanded in future titles!

Cons:
- All Sonic characters... doesn't bother me too much but sad to see other Sega characters disappear into the ether
- The AI is butts. Will absolutely sabotage you in single player due to taking type-incompatible shortcuts, flying off the road, or just slamming into walls out of pure stupidity. Ive seen characters drive backwards past me. I've also noticed them just... eat shared wisps without using them? Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention but I swear...
- Single player experience is not fun due to team mechanics making playing frustrating or boring since you need to rely on your AI or unknown online team mates to be as good as you are
- Story mode has a ton of padding. Would be improved by just having grand prixs in sequence for the story mode, and then having a mission mode on the side. Trust me, the story isn't worth padding story mode for so long. You will absolutely race on one course, the next mission will be a mirrored version of that course, and if you're really lucky the third mission will be a grand prix with that course inside of it. It gets really repetitive...

This game is so close to being amazing, which is really the problem with the era of Sonic games this comes from. I unfortunately don't have any friends who wanna raid the online lobbies and race together, so unfortunately I feel like I can't get a proper online experience from this.
I tried not to compare this to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, however it is impossible since this sits right next to it on the store page. This game is unfortunately a downgrade from it, as transformed had transforming cars, transforming maps, and a ton of variety involved that all felt great together. I want to see the team racing mechanics brought back in the future, however, but as a side mode. A game like Transformed with a side of online team racing mode would be incredible. Hopefully a combination of the best parts of Transformed and Team Racing could be possible in a new iteration of this series, however I have to recommend picking up Transformed instead for now. It's only $5 when it goes on sale, and I've bought the game on 3 consoles personally and continue buying it for friends of mine.