Recent reviews by RetMaestro

Despite some interesting character work, I cannot in good conscience recommend a game with such a poor combat system, repetitive encounters, and tedious and unrewarding back tracking that exacerbates the aforementioned issues. I got halfway through the game where the story just was not worth the pain and tedium of the mechanics. A sad state of affairs, and if this game is ever revisited for a remaster the only reason to try it again is if it includes an overhaul of the combat system.

Cute souls-lite game. Easy to drop in and out of and respects your time, can finish the entire story in 10 hours if you just mainline it. 8/10 would recommend.

Fun face lift for game from the distant-ish past. Nothing revolutionary but largely tight controls and only minimal camera shenanigans.

Fun game but don't expect a satisfying conclusion.

Fun movement, useful abilities, varied enemies, interesting setting. Fun game for those who can tolerate the one-hit-death mechanic that underlines the difficulty of this game.

Its very good

Cute little roguelike that shows its age in design that is still ultimately a fun use of your time.

The positives are as follows, the art, the music, and the player "combat" options. The music is a nice neutral song that doesn't distract from the game-play which is excellent since it's the only track in the game from best I can tell. The art style is cute and cartoon-ish keeping the style from being dated and captures the charm of a simple indie game without being another pixel game allowing it to stand out more than just another 16 bit game. The options the players has at hand are simple but entertaining; you are encouraged to run and strafe giving a clean sense of constant movement that keeps you engaged. Using the extinguisher can be a bit more frustrating but i found that running and spinning while using it both effective end far more entertaining than strafing with it. The water bombs are less engaging than the other options as you largely have to stop on a keyboard in order to line up the shot given the strange keybind for it.

The Dull; the missions. Somehow I was both annoyed with several missions and found some downright boring. The annoying part of Miss Ion and her missions are that you have to do them in order to upgrade your character which is almost a necessity to complete them game so you better get ready to find that stupid red bag for Miss Ion over and over again.

The bad; the AI for NPCs and the fire spread. Nothing is worse in this game than the fire spread. It very rarely makes much sense and often times just decides to ping across the room for no other reason to eat in the time bank. Obviously it is designed around the position of your character but its unnatural as a result. Often time there is no indication that the massive fireball of death that will kill you instantly aside from a sound that is drowned out by all the other noises of fire and a visual indicator that is obscured by the fire being all the same color. The fire spread reaches its most annoying with the poison/irradiated fire as that fire takes forever to clear allowing the fire to just go nuts around you often leading to stationary fire fighting standing in the next room to prevent your character from overheating and dying. The AI also sucks, the pathing is very rudimentary and will get caught on the edges of obstacles because they just try and straight line it to you leading to multiple backtracks to gather the idiots to save them.

A fun narrative action game with the central theme of time manipulation. You can choose to enable hints or go in blind, nothing in this game is particularly difficult enough to warrant the assistance however it does allow for a smoother ride of blind enjoyment.

The combat in this game is an interesting mesh of "style" fighting and "arkham" counter combat. While these two systems are normally a fine coupling the dodging of the arkham system feels a bit clunky and non-responsive. It is not particularly difficult to max out the main character's upgrades which is definitely a nice change of pace from other games that seemingly desire the entire length of the game to be a slow slog towards a build finish line. The companion abilities are fun but mostly the same in terms of actual utility leaving a bit to be desired, the singular one that isn't an AoE ability is naturally the most entertaining to use as a result

The story revolves around you, the Harbinger, stopping the end of the world. You accomplish this by resetting to the beginning of the last day of the world and acquiring hints and clues to decipher the murder of a central character. The game would have re-playability but they allow you to replay levels that you made differing decisions on saving you multiple runs which I greatly appreciate.

Fun-ish game. 7/10. The Story is relatively rushed but it doesnt shy away from being as bleak as possible and is a relatively faithful adaptation to the source material. Side-quests are relatively un-inspired and combat isnt particularly deep. Honestly the car fighting is the most mechanically intensive portion of the game. The handling on most of the vehicles is absolutely terrible when you gain actual speed.

I've ragged on it a bit but honestly i enjoyed the 50 hours i put into it, yes the open world side missions are a bit repetitive but unlike most open world side missions you can literally drive by harpoon it and spend no more than 10 seconds on it. The characters are pleasantly entertaining, minus the mini-bosses which are just palette swaps. Its a shame that there isnt going to be a sequel because id love to see another crack at this Max with some experience from the developers.

Story is very by the numbers, nothing that really makes it noteworthy. All of the characters are either wholly unlikable, annoying, or so boring you couldn't be bothered to remember their names. most of the guns don't even add much in terms of interest during the game play. Gun play is solid but it doesn't really help carry the lackluster campaign. Buy at a big discount if at all.