Recent reviews by Augmentalize

If you liked Left4Dead and Left4Dead2, but always thought it needed some extra sprinkles on top to add to the chaos players are able to inflict on both the surrounding environment and each other, then boy do I have a game for you!

I pulled away from this game a few years back when it was still going through various upgrades and trying to find its footing. Couldn't really get into the swing of thing when everything was in flux. Came back to it recently and once I got into the swing of things on Newcomer mode, I started to enjoy it.

Admittedly, I didn't 100% this and have no intention to. I mostly wanted to experience the story, worldbuilding, and music. I'm not really here for the whole chain-dash challenge and 8 module door kind of thing. Not really how I play games. That said, I don't think the Newcomer mode does much to make the game approachable, so if this style of play isn't for you, you're still better off going to watch a Let's Play if you find this genre of game frustrating. Another strike against this game is the sound mixing. I had the game on 1:1 SFX/Music ratio since it was *very* loud to me, and this did *nothing* when the flashback scenes happened. I ended up having to take my headphones off and I could *still* hear it blasting.

Overall, a good game if you like top-down action and don't mind a bit of difficulty. Good music, good art, pretty fun core gameplay.

Shredder's Revenge is a return to form for arcade-style beat 'em ups, and a pretty solid homage to the TMNT of the 80s. It's a fun game, and the progress mechanics and various story endings keep you coming back to go through old levels with new characters. If I had to critique anything about the game, I would say that it could have used the differentiation in the TMNT skin tones, to make it easier to tell the difference between them at a glance when you're playing with multiple turtles. Also, I think there should be some kind of mode in How to Play that lets you try the moves out in a practice arena.

A friend of mine bought this game after I expressed interest in it since the puzzle mechanics looked a lot like the ones in Ghost Trick, and while I did have fun playing the game, there were some difficulties to be had with it.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

First off, while I didn't run into a lot of glitches in my playthrough, getting Elena up and down stairs was ocassionally finicky when it came to placement, which can get sort of annoying. I also don't understand why the choice was made to have her unable to run around indoors, but that's just me. When Elena loses her powers halfway through the game, it really puts a damper on the fun of it all, not to mention it seems unecessary cop out and sort of ruins the purpose of having the powers as a prominent showcase if you're just not going to use them in the second half of the game. Puzzles involving interesting mechanics like this shouldn't be shoved into the corner for the climax of the game only to be brought out to do one or two things at the end.

Secondly, as far as story goes, the game is a little... lacking. It starts out well enough, and a reversal of the Dad Looks For Missing Daughter trope is always welcome. It even continues fairly well with the way that you were able to help a few of the people who's lives Wadsworth ruined in his mad attempts to speak to his wife again. While I liked that you could reconcile Darby and Skyflower, I had a problem with the fact that Elena couldn't explain to Fleur that Wadsworth was kind of ♥♥♥♥, or that you couldn't find out more about the veritable ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ menagerie of ghosts milling about the mansion.

It also makes no sense that Wadsworth is showing her the suffering that he's had to go through in his life, but despite it not really being time travel and basically being projections in his own mind, Elena can still somehow alter events and give him knowledge of what could have happened when none of the characters have a reason to know any of this stuff at all. And in addition to that, after seeing that his own greed and desperation to see Martha again lead to a genocide, the murder of two people he'd loved, and the probable neglect of his son, to have him be able to flit off to the afterlife scott-free (especially since Elena's nonsensical foray into what could have been doesn't actually change the fact that he killed two people and slaughtered her ancestors) is unsatisfying and anticlimactic. While it's all well and good for us to consider the nature of good and evil, setting up the Big Bad of your game as an admittedly realistic portrayal of the attitude taken during Western Expansion in the U.S. and then having it turn out to be some mysterious dark lady-shaped force posessing him for no reason is just disappointing.

Finally, merging those two points, I feel like the game could have been stretched out a little more if the random ghosts had been given little miniquests or something that would allow you to accomplish certain tasks for rewards (e.g. tellings about hte history of the mansion, turning the notes or locations of notes into rewards, making it a little harder to get the keys by having a miniquest needing to be done first, etc.). There could have also been more variety in the puzzles and a more satisfying resolution to the story.

Overall, I do reccomend playing the game, because it's actually pretty short, pretty fun, and Elena is a very likeable character. Even with all the flaws it has, it's still worth a run-through at least once.

Honestly though, if you did like this game, I highly reccomend picking up Ghost Trick for the Nintendo DS. It's an older game that has a similar gimick that it does much better, and it's the reason I picked this up in the first place.

Like Super Meat Boy, but with more eldrich horror and a lot more cute thrown in among the murder