Recent reviews by Grinky Grongus The Gaming Goblin

Nah. How does the first dead island combat feel better? If you've played dying light or dead island riptide, those feel infinitely better. I could forgive the triple A quips "hmm, those wooden boards look breakable" I can enjoy bad writing, or the mid card system which locks things like the iconic dropkick behind a swappable skill, or the lackluster weapons I seem to keep finding. What's unforgiveable for this franchise is BAD COMBAT. I truly feel anyone who praises this hasn't played the previous entries.

There's no feedback, they stand in place, doing 'being hit' animations instead of reacting dynamically to being hit with a wooden oar or metal pipe like in previous entries and dying light. Charge up an attack, and you halo 2 energy sword dash and get locked into the attack, either missing or winding up with you being hit. Which is hard to avoid, considering they eat hammers to the face like they're packing peanuts, having no stagger or interrupt. Along with the, admittedly with my small playtime, uninspired special infected such as "big guy" or "runner" archetypes, dying light added at least a slight change, and dead island 1 and riptide had the standard ones but it was the first of the franchise.

I just don't see this as any sort of improvement over previous entries from over a decade before, in the one category that mattered most.

I can't really explain it... but this feels like man minesweeper

Biggest detractor for me is it's melee system. I really like all the other mechanics, but the melee system doesn't really feel... cool? I'm just dashing kicking and punching combos and eviscerating things easy, doesn't really feel like fighting, more like i'm hitting the right dance dance revolution moves in order. I would recommend playing either way, could be your cup of tea, but my idea of a good melee system is closer to realistic-ish mordhau rather than arcade combos.

As I race through the valley of kings 100cc pizza cup, I shall fear no Odie, for my lasagna is with me.

I'll start by saying I considered leaving a negative for the save issues. Loading a save while playing has a 50/50 shot of getting stuck, and I had saves that had been stuck on 'loading game state' using up 98% of my 24 gigs of ram, but I fixed it partially by installing the beta branch, which is tolerable.

Onto the review, the games premise is you're an ex detective in an alternate history 80's. The generator for all the crimes and world is really astonishing, the depth of what 'evidence' is available. From security footage to fingerprints, to tracking people's place of work and who works there, there's a lot to use to link evidence together. Sometimes it's really straightforward, a step by step process with obvious evidence, it was fun but nothing particularly challenging, my normal routine for investigation always churned up the suspect.

That was until the generational killer. There's different types of muderers with different motivations, generational being someone who kills a specific age group, mine targeting younger. unfortunately after googling that halfway through my investigation, my killer was only 22, so there are some generated content errors here and there, but back to the case. Normally any other killer would leave a trail, a moniker or calling card, some leaving their name scrambled as part of their ritual, or jealous coworkers leaving a message, even stalkers confessing their love after their dark deed. All this killer left was a toy car, death to the new written in blood. I had his prints on the murder weapon, which was my go to verification for most suspects. Unfortunately, that was all I had. I'd started with the security footage first, Pulling up one unknown person entering the premises during the determined time of death. I'd asked door to door if anyone had seen them, and someone pointed me toward city hall. I searched high and low, checking every damn enforcer squad and public clinic in the place, brekaing into every office to check employee records. nothing, no fingerprint match, and with all the doctors who could have access to the poison i assumed, my trail went cold. I decided to check other leads, everyone keeps an address book of their friends, perhaps a jealous pal hated the sight of their youth. I also checked the home phone for the last known caller, calling them from a payphone to see if i could get their name, which was an unfortunate no. Assuming that as guilt, i broke into the basement of the apartment complex to check call logs, to see where it was from. I got a match with one of the almost 20 different individual apartments located in the address book, so I decided to head there first. no print match on either of the couple there, another dead lead. I decided to check every single doorknob of every single apartment in the address book for prints, any time i'd get more than 1, I'd knock and ask them to verify for me their prints, just in case a spouse inside had done it and by luck hadn't show up on the doorknob. Most were cooperative except for one, which i decided to save for later since there was no print match anyway, all I had was hunches. Then I decided perhaps it was someone they knew from work, or maybe the killer had been around there snooping before following them home. I checked their footage and nobody I didn't know or checked already at the restaurant, yet another damn cold lead. My police scanner informed me of another murder, i ignored it to check the entire apartment complex my victim lived in, as my stalker case before the perp only lived 3 floors down. Scanning every single doorknob again, I was cold. When I mosey'd over to the next murder, I was immediately hit with deja vu, this was the same monster who i'd let have enough time to strike again. That'd never happened before, it'd been a one and done for every other one, most cases solved under and hour, this one going on at least 2 already. I compiled the same exact amount of evidence I'd had before, prints and a poison filled syringe. neighbors caught a glimpse of someone with a skinny build, which didn't help much as they don't make databases for weight, but it was a start. Remember the unknown person on the cameras from the very beginning? this whole time I'd been asking around with a picture, and someone said that was their friend that lived on the top floor of the first victims apartment complex, I ran there and upon arrival, she was a lot heavier set than my suspect, and no print match meant another trail gone cold. I'd decided to do my whole shebang again, investigating the scene. Address book, last caller, and this time even finding a strangers birthday on the calendar. Following and failing with the calendar lead, i redid everything, this time ending up in raw sewage in a leaky apartment basement when in my search for call logs. I went to the chemist to buy perfume to unstink myself, as being stinky makes npc's able to smell you when sneaking. I'm unsure if that name was randomly generated, but think of it as a CVS. Walking in, I thought, maybe the killer had touched a poison bottle to buy here! coming up on hour 4 I was reinvigorated, I scanned the bottles to no avail. I bought my perfume and trudged by the employee board showing pictures and names of all their proud workers. In a small bit of curiosity, I pulled my scanner out to check for prints. After scanning 3, I noticed every single photo was coming up with a different print, and at the very end of the line... a match. Ibai Martinez it had listed under the photo, of course he got his poison from his work, that was why he had chosen that method. I looked up his name and found his address, his girlfriend being particularly uncooperative I asked the neigbor if I could look around. When they were preoccupied, I scrambled into their vents, finding my way to Ibai's apartment. I locked him up while he was brushing his teeth, and had to serve his girlfriend a knuckle sandwich for trying to intervene. The generational killer wouldn't be doing any more harm.

None of the cases after or before ever stood up to the work I put in for that, which truly cemented me with a story to be proud of, now a lot of the info you'll get is near useless. Build, blood type, this stuff is hard to come by and therefore mostly useless info when walking around the street, so I wish that had a bit more emphasis on low info cases. I had one with a brown eyed office manager who was dating a saftey officer, accused of corporate espionage, and that was my second toughest case with the low amount of info, but that was a taken job for money

You see, in sandbox mode you start with nothing but 100$, working your way up to getting better gear and buying food and drink to stave off your needs, or medicine when you get injured. It really made me have a reason to solve cases, as my ultimate goal was buying an apartment. I've clocked 20 hours now and finally have about 10k in the bank, with a really really nice fully furnished apartment, complete with stories to tell.

I apologize for the erratic way of this review but, it was definitely worth the money and I intend to keep playing until my 'Social credit' ( which is a real mechanic in game, although I'm unsure of what it does) reaches max, maybe i'll try to buy a top floor luxury apartment if a listing pops up, but from my first steps into Astrids, a dimly lit bar full of ambience in a nice corner of town, in my own generated 6x6 city block, goonercity, I was hooked, and it didn't disappoint the whole way through. All it needs now is more, more content, harder cases, more variety, fixes for obvious save game issues and the damn ability to shoot guns instead of using them as monkey clubs. Definitely a game I'll remember fondly, worth the dollar per hour entertainment

A really enjoyable little gem. the writing is superb as it's funny, intelligent, and for this bizarre world very realistic, along with the wonderful pixel art style and lo-fi hip hop remix musical direction. I will admit, the combat is the weakest part of the entire package, but you get slow motion which in games is something I adore, and certain bossfights at times I actually enjoyed. Minor advice, listen to the gold headed man near the dumpster at the beginning, Well worth your time. It's free so just give it a try. Very excited to see the final product, this is a gem in the works

story based, words cant do it justice. I've never experienced such realistic dialogue, please play it, be warned it is technically a walking simulator, but its not just that, don't be dissuaded, get it on sale


edit: thinking it over, all the small things they accounted for are astonishing, for instance you find a trowel next to some tp at one point, and any backpacker or hiker usually knows, try not to touch the trowel for digging poop holes, above that don't let the trowel touch poop! Anyways, you tell your contact on the radio that you found a trowel and that you plan to use it for some mundane use, when they reply back that it's actually for burying poop, and it being an interactable item, i had already picked it up. My character replies over the radio "Aaaaaand i've already toouched it, great" which is something so small but just shows that, i could have not picked up a trowel and even that would have changed my dialogue, the game is great with things like that.

it's brink.