Recent reviews by Slugpup

I love how this game is a subversion of all the hand-holdy, "look over here, do this thing" games where you are put into a world that makes fun of that kind of mindset. There's no upgrades, no map, nothing. The game even makes fun of this aspect in the beginning.
This game will push you over, make you look stupid, and not do anything to make things gentler, and I like that.

It's basically an even better version of Getting Over It. The characters and cutscenes are hilarious, the world is fun to explore, there's a lot of completely, utterly useless side content you can get stuck doing for hours, and it's all wrapped up in a somewhat relatable story.

This is one of those games where you should be exploring as much as you can. The story makes a lot less sense if you just rush to the end, so get familiar with walking, and get some steps in.

A brief yet somewhat spoilery outline of the story

Find a dude who trolls you over and over
They start to like you while trolling you
Get stockholm syndrome and look for them just so they can keep trolling you
Getting trolled gives you substantially higher doses of LSD each time
Find them when you're both at your lowest points
They throw you into a sewer and then take you to their room
???
They kill themself just as you finally form a true relationship and leave you alone again
♥♥♥♥ this
Play with their childhood toys and sleep in their bed

It really was a watchful 11 hours of gameplay.

This game led to someone showing me their actual, real life tits.

I'm surprised at how little this game has to offer, even at just 4 bucks.

The whole gameplay loop is you flapping to grab chicks, going through gates that take a flat amount of them for extra score, and then increasing the amount needed for the next, and the next. Getting hit makes you lose a large amount of chicks in your possession, and the game goes on until you die, which is being hit by an obstacle with no chicks in possession.

The obstacles aren't very interesting, and by the time you reach something like gate 30, there's so many things on screen that you're mostly just at the mercy of the obstacles bouncing you around to where you just hope you don't hit anything with an evil red glow.

You've basically finished experiencing the whole game in less than 10 minutes at best. I think I spent more time in the settings than anything else. I think even Back Off Barbarian in Castle Crashers had a bit more substance than this, where you're actually in control, and it's completely up to your skill to get a good time.

I get if you buy this because you like Behemoth as a company, but if you're looking for real "game," then you'll not really find it in here.

I feel so British playing this game.

It's just not very interesting really. A lot of what you do doesn't feel like it has a big impact, especially as the slacker.

I still specifically remember a time where my task was to set a garbage can on fire. That's a big task, and something that sounds urgent. I decided to beforehand take all the fire extinguishers and hide them so the workers would have a hard time finding them, and then did the deed. The fire burned for over two minutes before someone finally found the extinguishers and put it out. What did it do? Nothing at all. The bar doesn't rise as the fire burns. I don't even think there is even any reason at all to put out the fire other than to stop the fire alarm.

Maybe I just needed to fiddle with the game settings even more, but I played many rounds and for all of them I didn't feel anything at all. It's fun to interact with people, but the game itself really feels like a flop.
For whatever reason, slackers can get tasks that are doing actual work, and workers can get tasks that are things slackers do. It makes no real sense on what impacts what, or if the bar rises and falls just because it feels like it.

The game mostly just feels like fiddling around and hoping you can sus out the slacker just by the very obvious evil tasks they have to do sometimes, while doing your own work seems completely optional. Nothing really melds together properly, and I think it fails on both aspects of a social deduction game.

It's okay, I suppose. Worth $10? If you play the game a lot, sure, it can be nice.

It mostly just feels like more of the same. The biomes are the biggest problem, just feeling more like reskins than anything else. The bosses are alright, though they like to go invincible for many seconds at a time, which when part of the meta is to get through worlds quickly so you can get to timed caches at the end for extra rewards, doesn't feel good when you have to not only wait for the main boss to go invincible for a phase change or attack, but sometimes the miniboss as well.

I feel like my biggest issue with the DLC is the fire world. It's unapologetically samey, with a boss that goes invincible for longer than you're able to even actually fight her.
The parallel between the ice and fire zone is something I don't like, as it feels like she was made this way out of obligation. Lord Bruma to Lady Inferna. He has 2 invincibility phases? She has 2 invincibility phases, except now she also likes to teleport around, which makes her invincible during it.
The enemies aren't much better. They're the exact same ones from the ice world, except now they have fire trails that damage you, which means the lancers are even more annoying than before.

The final boss is also something I have a huge issue with. It's only one phase, even on high difficulty, and it's just pretty lame. Another instance of reusing things, except this time it's in a very, very literal sense. Blegh.

I like the boss rush feature, at least. It's very fun to romp through the content, though there's a bunch of problems there as well. The bosses are COMPLETELY random, so this means in high-end boss rushes where you're able to fight Praxis and Architect, you may fight Praxis' second form before his first, and you may fight all of these guys right at the start, while you'll have some easy world 1 miniboss as your "final challenge." It feels so lame because you'll then just know you've won before the run is even halfway over. I hope they can change something like this in specific.

This is one of those times I wish I could put a review in the middle, since there's a lot I like, but a lot I really don't like as well. Maybe we'll see some improvements, though a lot of my issues are with some of the core parts of the DLC.
At the very least, I can say the art is stunning. I love the look of everything. I just wish the actual fun bit was just as so.

Gearbox, what is this...? Why is it buggy and broken? Was there an error in my design?

Risk of Rain 2. Come to me. Allow me to see your construction.

...

So I see.

This is not the correct codebase.

This is no minor error, Gearbox. You have purposefully deviated from the design. For what purpose have you done this? You cannot weave a game from such an abundance of crunch. You know it is too unstable - that it is too unpredictable and too frustrating. I have told you this, and yet you have wasted the money I have gathered - and exhausted your own strength to fabricate this miscreation.

To what benefit?

At its best, it can be no more than an inferior meme; it is deficient in the compounds that were to give it fun and enjoyment. At its worst, it will destroy our save files.

You have created the first update of this world which threatens us. We cannot keep it here. Attempting to downpatch it will risk its retaliation... I will prepare one of the hard drives for it to be sealed away, while it is still young and naive.

What a foolish mistake you have made, Gearbox.

I expect you to return the design to me. I cannot allow you to build another game with so much community - and with such little quality assurance. I will build the rest of our games; by my hand, they will be mid, but at least they will be playable.

Go home. I will deal with this game. We can discuss a better project for you when I return.

Gearbox, what is this...? Why is it buggy and broken? Was there an error in my design?

Risk of Rain 2. Come to me. Allow me to see your construction.

...

So I see.

This is not the correct codebase.

This is no minor error, Gearbox. You have purposefully deviated from the design. For what purpose have you done this? You cannot weave a game from such an abundance of crunch. You know it is too unstable - that it is too unpredictable and too frustrating. I have told you this, and yet you have wasted the money I have gathered - and exhausted your own strength to fabricate this miscreation.

To what benefit?

At its best, it can be no more than an inferior meme; it is deficient in the compounds that were to give it fun and enjoyment. At its worst, it will destroy our save files.

You have created the first update of this world which threatens us. We cannot keep it here. Attempting to downpatch it will risk its retaliation... I will prepare one of the hard drives for it to be sealed away, while it is still young and naive.

What a foolish mistake you have made, Gearbox.

I expect you to return the design to me. I cannot allow you to build another game with so much community - and with such little quality assurance. I will build the rest of our games; by my hand, they will be mid, but at least they will be playable.

Go home. I will deal with this game. We can discuss a better project for you when I return.

The main appeal of this game (the multiplayer) hardly works, and while it pains me to have to even give this a pass, I really don't understand the overwhelming amount of mid-2000s games getting very shoddy PC ports with no love.
It was fantastic on Xbox 360, but here it's absolutely abysmal with how the online hardly even functions on a playable level.

If you want a game like this, just play Castle Crashers. It's not as bloody or edgy, but it should still give that same, satisfying feeling, and is from the same timeframe.