Recent reviews by BitFiend

The type of horror game I love the most, one where you can shoot the scary thing with a gun. Polly, the protagonist, is a character that has a lot of traumas slowly get revealed to you as you play the game through flashbacks and physical representations. That's when you face them the same way as the monsters. By shooting them with a gun. But not before being put through a rollercoaster of emotions and fear.

The art style looks beautiful and I don't often encounter games with an OST that reminds me of Sonic games and I love it so much. The game made me feel like difficult games can be fun again by focusing more on fun gameplay and story rather than cheap difficulty for the sake of it. Some of the problems I did have with the game were fixed in a recent patch after I finished playing!

Silly Polly :)

Short and sweet horror game that focuses more on the unsettling atmosphere rather than cheap jumpscares. You face the character's traumas about being a lesbian in highschool which expresses itself through triggers, minigames and anomalies blocking your progress.

Hit me personally too. Just like in real life, I succumbed to anxiety.

The second I laid eyes on this game I knew it would be an instant-purchase the second it released. I have already finished half the game in about a week of playing.

You're telling me I get to play a picross/nonogram game, design a home with the items I retrieve from solving said puzzles AND a cute lil customisable rat lives in the home? This game was made for me personally. As a bonus I even receive regular pictures of cute IRL rats in my in-game mailbox and cool rat facts that literally make me want to finally get a rat myself.

To be honest, I was afraid of the gameplay aspect. I've played multiple picross games and, while I'm not an absolute purist, I can get annoyed by some "QoL" features I see in these games. One I dislike is the game knowing you filled in a certain number in a line/column without there being any logic to it. The game essentially cheats on your behalf. Some picross games, like this one, includes an option to turn this off luckily! It only tells you when there's logic to it, which really only relieves some of the thinking on your part. The amount of customisation you can do to curate the game to your personal preferences are EXACTLY what I want to see and no other picross game I've played includes this many options. Even if I want to go back to the OG picross experience I just can, but I like this game feeling more casual. The way puzzles are treated are nice too, there's no penalties for making mistakes or using your rat buddy's abilities to help you in a pinch.

Honestly just the best picross game I've ever played in every possible way.

Also, I really appreciated reference items like Neil's Keyboard and the IKEA Shark.

The additional content, the Shadow part, was excellent. Great addition to Shadow's story, the levels are tons of fun and there is a lot to do. The bosses are very fun to fight, and I love that Sega FINALLY shows Sonic 06 some love with what they've included. I expected the game to border DLC content similar to Forces' episode Shadow, but it's way more than that and worth buying for. The new abilities you gain are fun to play around with and satisfying to master. Shadow himself also controls really well.

The Sonic part though? I personally always thought it was mediocre and mostly nostalgia bait and that hasn't changed, mostly because there haven't been many changes to the original content. At least not from what I can tell. I would check, but the original port is rubbish and either doesn't want to launch or the controls mess up despite using 3rd party software, so I will have to trust my memory.
They added chao to collect, which is nice after Forces one-upped them with number- and silver moon rings. I also have a weak spot for them so they catered to me well with that one.
Both Sonics can now drop-dash, another feature from Forces I loved. Unfortunately the boost and spindash are both instant, unlike in Forces, so the feature is unnecessary. Still found myself pulling off the move as classic Sonic for fun though. The downside is that they added it as a skill for classic Sonic, the one I wanted the feature on, while making it a permanent ability for modern Sonic, the one I DON'T want this feature on because every time I've used it, it was accidental because there's no reason to use it in 3D.
The last change is a bunch of dialogue changes which didn't bother me personally, but a lot of people got mad about it. I didn't even notice them until people pointed them out.

Meanwhile the Shadow part did everything right that the Sonic part failed to do, and I think it's a shame they didn't go back and change the Sonic part to match the improvement they made on the Shadow part. For example, I keep failing to do homing attacks in the Sonic part that I would have been able to get in any other Sonic game while not having this problem even once in the Shadow part. When on rails you can use the bumpers to hop between parallel rails, but only as Shadow, not as Sonic. As Shadow, you get the double jump from Forces instead of the pathetic momentum-killing mid-air dash Sonic does. I'm sure part of the reason is because it would break the current levels, but I feel like it would have been worth going back and changing because it would improve the game a lot. Then again, too many Gen fans would be mad they changed their beloved game, so I will just have my cake.

Nevertheless I mostly enjoyed the game, mostly because the Shadow part was just so good and really lifted the game up.

The most fun I've had with a multiplayer game in a while.

If you're familiar with and enjoyed Andrew Hussie's work you will no doubt be delighted to find that same style return here. Instead of leeching off of Homestuck this is an entirely new thing and at most gives very minor references as Andrew Hussie has always done for his previous works. I'd even say the style is improved with less drawn out conversations between characters that could always feel exhausting and a tighter planning that makes the game not overstay its welcome.

I'd also say the style helps it stand out from other VNs by being able to include way more different panels rather than showing a dialogue box with an x amount of character sprites to work with and the occasional drawn panel. I'd say you don't see the same panel for longer than 3 dialogue boxes before it changes, sometimes there's not even a dialogue box with a panel at all.

Without spoiling too much, the story goes from 0 to 100 real fast. Every chapter makes me wonder where they're going with it and it's always both surprising and satisfying enough to not make you lost to the plot. The game creates some insane situations and is notably very politcally charged. That is a risk though, if you don't like politics or disagree with the game's views you probably won't enjoy this game that much.

However, if you're looking for a story that heavily criticises the current state of the world (or well, from a year or 2 ago, it's been quite a year) and snowballs into a weird revolution, go check it out.

A great game about solving murders while playing picross/nonogram! I enjoy playing picross games in general and this game gave both the basics, challenge and some additional quality-of-life mechanics that made the game all around enjoyable. The story itself is very nice and the characters are charming and fun to interact with. The cases blend in well together to be part of a single narrative, even though they might be a little bit predictable at times.

The only real downside to this game is that I've experienced some bugs while using a gamepad to switch locations. Other than that there's a few missable puzzles (I personally experienced one) which prevents you from getting an S rank on the case and having to redo the entire case to get an S rank to unlock the final puzzles necessary for unlocking SCOUT's memory. It doesn't help that you can't skip cutscenes either.

I also really appreciate the nod to LGBT+ representation in the game, including a little interaction regarding SCOUT's gender identity as a robot and how they should handle it. It might seem small but means a lot, to me at least.

If you're still friends after playing Mario Party together, try this game instead.

Recently did a second playthrough of this game. And then did a third one in co-op with one of my best friends because it's just such a fun game. It's like GTA but better imo. The customisation is so good and, unlike the Sims, there's a really good game attached to it. When you're done customising your character for 2 hours and done customising a bunch of cars and bikes you get to play a story mode of a decent length, explore the open world or play game modes after unlocking them. Above all else, the entire game can be played in co-op which is absolutely amazing to me. Definitely one of my favourite games of all time, and it's so cheap on sale. 100% worth it.

The best Fallout game to date.