Recent reviews by Night Thastus

A fairly easy and quick to beat puzzle game. 100% in 4.5 hours.

There are some things I would change:

* Allow the 'marking' tool on normal levels - not just special levels. This will not 'confuse players'. Please don't use that excuse. Hexcells, Tametsi, etc all manage similar ideas just fine.

* Give players the ability to mark cells/columns/rows as complete

If you do those things, easy mode doesn't need to exist. I think it's too braindead and doesn't really belong in a deduction game. You're not deducing anything at that point, you're just clicking on colored hexes.

Otherwise, it's OK. It's $5 for a few hours of puzzles.

The you that remains, and remains, and remains

1000xRESIST is a story about what we inherit from those before us. About cycles. About authority. About resistance. About forgiveness. About memory. About death. About letting go. About faith. About duty. About family. About the passage of time.

Similar to In Stars and Time, I came in with very low expectations. I expected something with a shallow, cliche story that was held together only due to an appeal to being anime-esque. Something that passed for 'deep', more by being nonsensical than actually having anything to say. *cough* (death stranding) *cough*

And I'm glad to say I was completely wrong. 1000xRESIST is a well-told story that simultaneously has a lot of fantastic twists and turns - while being completely comprehensible, well-structured and well-paced.

It's not perfect. I could describe this game as *zero budget and a DREAM*. Some parts are SCREAMING that the author(s) knew what they wanted but could only do so much with the resources available. But I'll gladly take a budget story with passion and something to say over something well-presented but mediocre ANY day. And if you're looking for 'gameplay', there's none here - it's more an interactive movie than anything else.

All throughout the story I wanted to know more, understand what I knew, and constantly had my emotions pulled out of me and put back in. That's the kind of game that I tend to remember years after playing. If you feel the same way, this game is for you.

If you like 'cozy games' you may like Spilled!. But for me, it didn't end up working. The art style is FANTASTIC but I felt controlling the boat was awkward and the whole thing was both monotonous and quite short (50 minutes).

I may just not be the target audience for this sort of game though, so take my review with a grain of salt.

If you like Viscera Cleanup detail, you will love this. If you found VCD a bit annoying at times, I think you'll find CSC much more forgiving.

Things I like about CSC:

* As you complete jobs, you see tangible progression in your home. Nicer furniture, better equipment, newer appliances, etc.

* You get to unlock new upgrades for all your gear, which ALSO comes with visual upgrades and is an awesome touch. Going from a basic crappy mop to something top-of-the-line is really cool. I also love the way you can mix detergents and even apply them to the power washer.

* Mission locations are varied and interesting to walk around.

* Missions have Thief-esque stealing you can do to make extra money. It was very satisfying finding secret AND getting rewarded for them.

* Super satisfying to get everything cleaned and tidy, find all the secrets, and discovered what happened.

I will say that the protagonist is a complete psychopath. Despite any minor voice lines, he's on board from day 1 and seems to feel absolutely nothing for all the people he's getting killed by helping the mob. He's making quips and jokes almost immediately. It just feels like a bit of dissonance I can't quite shake. But who cares, the gameplay is great.

Overall, I really like CSC. My biggest complaint - I want more content! Give us some more DLCs (will gladly buy) or add some kind of support for player-created content like Steam Workshop. Or both!

I don't know exactly how to explain my thoughts on Ball X Pit.

The visuals, style, and sound are all great. That much is obvious.

But there's something missing. The whole game is too easy, but more critically it's *too simple* and monotonous. You can't really 'lose' at most levels unless you aren't paying any attention. Instead, you may fail to have a high enough DPS to proceed. This mostly only happens early on and can only really re-occur in NG+, so you can't even lose that way.

That's my main problem. It's kind of braindead. You do the same thing, over and over on every level. No level ever really requires much thinking or strategy. Character abilities initially are interesting, but quickly become mostly irrelevant. Games like this can have complexity (abilities, movement, etc.) on the enemy's side or complexity on the player's side - but neither has any real meat to it.

It also lacks some of the fun of a game like Enter the Gungeon or FTL. There are never those 'Hell yes!' moments where the stars align and you get an incredible combination that lets you wipe the floor. Nor do you ever feel like you're getting more 'skilled' at executing it even when your luck is bad. Every combination feels almost perfectly equal in power. It's like they tried *too hard* to be balanced, as absurd as that sounds.

And then the game flirts with being an idle/incremental game in a few areas, but it doesn't have enough depth there to go anywhere with it. It feels tacked-on.

The entire second half of the game I kept expecting the game to open up and reveal some big twist on the idea, but it just...never materialized. So I finished the game and left it feeling pretty disappointed.

I recently got around to playing both Chapter 1 (prior to Ch2's release) and Chapter 2. I did not play the Interlude.

I won't comment as much on Chapter 1, but regarding chapter 2:

* It's bigger the chapter 1
* It has more cutscenes/cimenatics/setpieces that Chapter 1
* There are new enemies
* The levels are all really great, full of a lot of fun details and have great style
* Overall way more ambitious than Chapter 1 by a long shot in almost every way
* It hard as ♥♥♥♥ compared to Chapter 1

Chapter 1 on hard was not that bad. Chapter 2 on hard was grueling at times. I save-scummed, secret-hunted constantly, min-maxed my usage of Weapon Parts, and always trawled back through cleared areas looking for any spare ammo or health, and it was STILL hard.

I don't know how tf the two higher difficulties are even doable. If you want challenge in your boomer-shooter, look no further.

Chapter 2's levels do have one major flaw, and it's that they are a big too big any windy at times. It's somewhat easy to get lost and confused as to where you're supposed to be going and what you have left to do to progress.

As for bugs and annoyances:

* Enemies move in janky, jerky, screwy ways. Not one of them moves in smooth lines. You can say 'it's because they're sprites!!!!!' but I would be 100% ok with them sliding side-to-side a little if it meant they moved smoothly. As it stands they zig-zag in the most annoying way. It's not intentional dodging, it's just bad pathing and animation.
* Enemies suck at pathfinding, and can't climb ladders or open doors.
* Doorways are buggy - enemies constantly get stuck on them, and projectiles like the axe constantly bounce off of them.
* Swinging doors are even worse than empty doorways for enemies, they have 0 idea how to traverse them
* FPS cap would randomly stop working, causing the whole game to slow down and act janky. This is apparently fixed on the beta branch but not release.
* The bosses all seem to move and charge at you as if you have some kind of dodge ability. You do not. Not very fun.
* Getting ambushed by a spawn of enemies behind you constantly, all the time, on every level gets very annoying.

This review is going to be very spoiler-heavy, not much I can do about that - because most of the issues are with the story.

I like the visual style and voice-acting a lot, it's quite good. And the main character is generally likeable. He's not super deep, but not completely flat either.

As for choices - unlike some people, I don't really care about choices not having an impact most of the time. I know how much dev work that would be. I don't like the ILLUSION of choice, but in the end I don't care as long as the story comes together well. This one did not.

For the non-spoiler parts, the game is quite short for what you pay. It's about an hour an episode, so 8 total, and a good chunk of that is dispatching or playing the hacking minigame, neither of which I'd write home about. It's only a couple hours of actual story, which is not nearly enough time to give any depth to these characters.

As for the story, a lot of it doesn't make sense. Some of as a result of giving the player 'choices'.

* Why does Invisigirl comment about how we look at Blond Blazer, even if we've never shown an iota of interest in her?
* Coupe or Sonar bomb vast quantities of the city...and we're just supposed to let it go? People died. A LOT of people died. Probably thousands? Tens of thousands?
* Invisigirl's explanation for stealing the pulse makes 0 sense. Doing it to keep it out of Shrouds hands wouldn't work, he's clearly smart enough to figure out where it is. Wouldn't a better explanation have been along the lines of "Everyone who gets in that suit dies, and you nearly did, and I love you, so I stopped you from going back to being Mecha Man"? That would make a lot more sense.
* Why wasn't destroying the pulse ever an option? Seems like that would be the better way.
* Are we just not going to address how worried everyone would be about Mecha Man being back? Everyone who has played that hero has died. Invisigirl and Blond Blazer really don't say a word about it?
* Phenomaman story arc doesn't go anywhere. He gets sad his girlfriend dumped him...and then he shows up at the end to help with the boss. That's it? Really?
* Shoud is comically evil. I mean it's LITERALLY funny how badly he is written. He has some vague goal of controlling crime because that's better than not having anyone at the top? But like, we barely know this guy. His motivation and backstory are threadbare. We never really see his thought process. At one point he threatens to kill an adorable dog, I guess so the player has a good reason to kill him if they want to? Ugh.

Dispatch was REALLY compelling for the first couple of hours, but the longer it goes the more you realize the story barely exists, and what does isn't very deep or interesting. It's a shame because the writing can genuinely be very funny and is good at the early hooks.

The story of a team coming together and changing would be great...if any of the characters got the time needed for any characterization.

Better than I expected. It was funny, it was intriguing, it was sad. A bit on the short side, but I'd prefer that to overstaying its welcome. The presentation is quite good.

Cute, funny and charming. Doesn't overstay its welcome. Good music and visual style.

The dialog is great all around too.

Wyrmhall is one of those games that can feel like a breath of fresh air. It's not bloated with 60 hours of copy-paste content or asking you to grind for hours on hard content and struggle for every inch of progress. It's just cute and fun and wants you to enjoy it and smile and laugh with it.

Wyrmhall has a positive energy that feels honest and more of us could use in our lives.

There was an opportunity to actually fix and improve a lot of the problems with the original Oblivion.

Instead, this is gameplay and mechanically identical to the original - with only the new UE5 graphics on top.

For example, the level scaling system. If you get unique artifacts at a low level...a few hours later they become totally useless. Equipment stats don't scale as you level to what they WOULD have been if you had gotten them at a higher level originally.

If you get a bunch of rare artifacts early in your playthrough, they'll all become worse than generic bandit gear by the end. It's very stupid.

Since it's the same engine, all the bugs from the original game are still present, most noticeably when you're doing quests that could break in the original.

Personally, the usage-based leveling system is also archiac and could have been reworked. Skyrim has a number of excellent fan-made alternative leveling schemes that are a huge benefit to it.

One critical part is that Oblivion has some of the weakest environmental storytelling of the last few TES games. Every single dungeon, cave, and fort are basically copy-pasted from one another. There is never any interesting quest, cool loot, or interesting detail to see. They are so incredibly bland and boring. That's true in Remastered as well, they just look a bit nicer.

It also runs quite poorly. The minimum and recommended specs are a lie. With a 9800X3D and RTRX 3080 @ 1440p, I need to use low settings AND DLSS just to get exteriors to hover around 70 FPS. It's awful. Interiors are fine. The graphics settings do almost nothing to the framerate, as with all UE5 games.

I am hopeful this game will improve if modders can figure out how to get plugins to load with it. Don't expect performance patches from the devs though - it's a UE5 problem they can't fix.