Recent reviews by Free Flyin'

This review is a work-in-progress. I'm nowhere near finishing the game, and I'm devoted to finishing it (in the next few days!) because I know that I have to, and more than that, I want to. I'm just over four hours into the game by now, so I'm unable to fairly or accurately summarize or review the full game; that's what I mean by "this review is a work-in-progress". I recognize that people who aren't having the experience I am might think I'm nitpicking or being overly critical, but please have hope that I'm speaking from the heart as someone who really genuinely wants to love this game and is trying their best express themself.
I first played White Label I think over three years ago and loved the music and rhythm game. What little writing was already in the game (the tiny text-only cutscenes between certain songs) was directly emotional and meaningful to my exact life circumstances. Hell, I knew of of the programmers because I heard about them in an excellent YouTube video detailing a different game they were a part of developing, Bass Reeves Can't Die. I didn't have high or unreachable expectations, and my hopes aren't being dashed because of hype; I knew that this game was likely to become special to me, and I'd likely love or at least enjoy this game when it did come out. I am enjoying it so far, by the way, but not in the way I normally, wholly enjoy things.
I am plagued with technical issues that, based on others' reviews clearly not everyone is experiencing or minding, but which one or two other people seem to also be facing. See my comment on the review for specific examples other than the most important one:

In the top dome with Beat and Quaver in Chapter 1, you walk up to the stage through seating to see Quaver on stage, where the cutscene of her playing and singing starts. The animation and the music are so beautiful, and the scenery makes it such a haunting but magical start to a scene. You hear the door open as the guard steps in gun drawn, but when it pans back to Beat and Quaver, Beat has a microphone she didn't have before. People talk and point but their mouths don't move. The Silence come out and scare the cop into dropping the gun, and when it fires it cuts into gameplay. Suddenly, the chase scene starts, and without being finished processing what I feel like is a sequence that's haunting, then tense, then scary, then action-packed, then broken, I'm suddenly kicking back smoke grenades, dodging being shot by drones, and getting pit-maneuvered off a city bike by an APC which I can't figure out the button timing for because the delay is massive and the tutorial didn't tell me. I don't think I'm slow at processing information, logically or emotionally, but I felt so left behind by this scene that I was out of being immersed in it either way.

There are many things so far that I've found confusing to the point I would consider them genuine problems, but there are a number of things I can look at and go "That's absolutely a bug" or "That's absolutely a design choice I don't particularly like"; the intersection of those, though, are all the things that happen and I just can't tell which is which. They badly hampered the pacing of the game and pull me out of being invested in it. I've read, watched, played, understood, and enjoyed stories that jump around in time, but Unbeatable feels hard to follow not just because it is a complicated story being told through an unconventional medium; it feels like a game confusingly paced, with no clear indication when jumping in time, place, character, or scenario which doesn't often feel like it couldn't just be the game bugging out on me again. The worst part is, this belief has been instilled in me by times I've screenshot or recorded something notably incorrect, like the fade-out in HARM tower at the end of Chapter 1, whereupon the UI for the journal popped up immediately after the screen was fully black, just for a few frames, before jumping into credits. The lack of adequate transition because of this bug into credits genuinely concerned me that I thought I'd sequence broken the game, and that pressing something would just make it worse. I've seen at least one review in which someone had the same DC interrogation room bug where the game fully froze right as the lightbulb faded to black, but I sat there for a full minute with my hands off the keyboard for fear of pressing something and skipping or breaking the game more, just to find out (on clicking) that the .exe was not responding. This feels like the greatest issue pulling me out of the story and game right now:
I'm not comfortable with writing any of these things knowing that people who read this can either be hurt by it or very easily hurt me in return by razzing me or, worse, telling me I'm being too impatient or unreasonable (my biggest worries), but I still want to try describing my problems with this game, some of which I feel are objective, but all of which I know might be purely my own experience. I can tell the people making this cared when they made it, and want them to know that I care when I say I'm just not having a good experience with it right now. My worst fear is that I sound patronizing, or like I'm trying to tear people or the work down. I cared enough that I'm writing a review this long before I've even seen half of the game, and I already have this much I feel is worth saying. I know that the earlier I get my thoughts down, the more likely people are to actually see them and hear me before I get buried. I'd like to think that at least someone at Playstack might see this and hear me. Some of my favorite games, be they the most fun or, especially, the most emotionally impactful, have had massive technical problems either on launch or still after the better part of a decade later. I don't want to drag on too long until I finish the game and review it fully, but at least one game is a quick touchstone: Wandersong is one of my favorite narrative experiences in a game, with what I think is a truly meaningful story which twists classic tropes into something I hadn't experienced before and loved wholly, but its game engine had aged so terribly that the incredibly boilerplate parkour that made up a large part of the gameplay took dozens and dozens of tries to force my way through because the bard just didn't jump as high as he did in videos people made when it came out. Despite that, it's still one of my favorite games I've ever played. I want Unbeatable to be able to have an impact on me like that. I want to see Unbeatable as the mic check told me: "All stories are kind of love stories. At least the good ones are. Are love stories." I do think I know what you meant by that. That was an emotional gut-punch, and I'm not ready to give up. Doing something new is scary, in no small part because I do see myself in it. I just don't understand where the near-tears emotion I felt in those first three minutes went, and I know I may find it again, but as I've experienced more and more of what I perceive to be, what I feel like is not just challenging but flawed pacing in an experience that has been less than smooth, I can't help but feel how I feel: a bit confused, a bit disappointed, but most of all, a bit desperate. I believe this game can be good, but before I finish it, I have to admit that the way the game is challenging me is, I believe, not the way it intended.

A hilarious, fascinating, infuriating co-op (or singleplayer) experience that is worth so much more than 20 dollars.
This game is an incredible Rogue-like that fills the gap between first person Rogue-lites like Delver and co-op RPGs with unbelievable depth to its mechanics, breadth of its content, and its indelible charm.