Recent reviews by PoweredByPixels

I feel like I am back on my Xbox playing Geometry Wars for the first time.

This game is like Geometry Wars with all the great bits that similar arcade Twin Stick shooters came up with in recent years, carried it around REZ:HD for a bit and let it shake hands with Tetris Effect.

The changing levels are amazing. The Rush attack instead of bombs is great. The enemies are euqal parts familiar and a welcome evolution.

The gameplay of Vampire Survivors and the aesthetics of Geometry Wars had a baby!

Accessible, fun, pretty, dark, looting, levelling, entertaining.

Little secret: Runs perfectly on Steam Deck.

Atmosphere is dense - not too gritty, some humour in there and very pretty. Voiced NPCs and an interesting story.
Controls and Combat are smooth, exploration is fun and teasing some metroid-vania type map unlocks that the character tells you about ("This looks like I need a grapling hook here."

The "Soulslike" aspects mainly affect the Stamina system, save points / campfires and the weapon scaling system. So far it is not terribly difficult, but has some nice bite to eat on some enemies that will punish you if you are careless. Not nearly as difficult or frustrating as other Soul-Likes.

Graphics look great, especially if you like the Diablo 3 Dark Fantasy aesthetics, and are technically well optimized (I get almost stable 60fps in 4K [with DLSS] on my 3080 Laptop GPU).

I played the demo until I literally couldn't anymore - I spent hours finding good farm spots to grind enemies for XP and loot to upgrade my skills and NPC vendors until I wouldn't be allowed to level up anymore. Good times and now I am so excited to jump back in.

I am not usually a big fan of Battle Royale type games, but i enojoy the PvE aspects and the puzzle solving. The setting is really well done and the jungle environment allows for a lot of cool traversal and exploration. Makes a good impression so far and looking forward to play more.

Frantic Fun. Vampire Survivors in space. For 3€ - a no-brainer. I don’t know why it’s so cheap, it’s vastly higher production value.

Fun little puzzler, also works great on Steamdeck. Played until Level 23 so far.
In Puzzle-mode it's a bit like Tetris and Sokoban ate the Civ1 tileset and had a baby.
(Have yet to try adventure mode)

*What's great:*
- Accessible and Easy to learn
- Combining all rules gives you some good brainteasers
- All Amazing Alliterations in the title
- Very fair pricepoint

*What could be better:*
- Steamdeck/Controller controls improvements
- Had one random crash on Steamdeck, but progress was saved

Overall
Objectively 8/10 - but subjectively - would play again. And again. And ... again. And again.

Blast Brigade is a Metroidvania Platformer that takes everything about the current Metroidvania Zeitgeist and puts it on its head. Dark and Depressing is replaced with Bright and funny. Nail-biting hard is replaced with approachable while challenging. It's a game that doesn't have many similarities to current average MEtroidvanias, and that's what makes it my recommendation. I just enjoy my time in it - it feels good on a basic level that just makes it a joy to play and replay.

(I've spent many hours playing the public demo and the influencer demos before, and bought the game right out the gate. I enjoy every time I start the game back up. I am glad to see that it's finally made it to Early Access and gives the "real" experience now.)

Platforming & Shooting
The Core gameplay is super crisp and responsive. The aiming has a slight assist to it (on controller) that gives a bit more control over targetting. Air control is good. Sometimes the aiming with special weapons can be a bit tricky (especially on the sniper), but it just takes a bit of practice. The selection of different guns is varied, and provides good tools for solving different kinds of situations.

Visuals
This is certainly a different style than what we usually see in Metroidvanias these days. It's bright, it's colorful and it's outdoors. It's fun to see and I especially adore the animations. It's very smooth and feels satisfying. Explosions and SFX fit nicely into the game and style without beeing overbearing. The colors are bright but leave enough room for clear readability. There are occasional background assets that seem a bit too blurry or background animation that's a bit choppy, but it doesn't harm the overall impression.

Metroidvania-ness
Blast Brigade comes with the expected ingredients of locked areas and skills that enable you to access them. Grenades that blow up barrels, a grapling hook to go higher, etc. The game provides ample opportunity to backtrack and discover secrets. I feel that some of the secrets could be a bit more rewarding, but the basics are there. And the game already shows how it's scaling complexity from the start to the later levels. There are some stretches where it feels like a save-point should have been added, but overall the game provides a fair challenge. I hope the remaining content will introduce some additional secrets, as the ones that are on the map now are relatively easy to find.

Other Gameplay
The characters switching is a feature that is highlighted quite often also in trailers. On a technical level the main difference is in each character's special skill to unlock certain obstacles or move around the level. OUtside of that, there aren't many differences. So for the largest part I find myself sticking to the character that's needed for the respective area I am in. It's a neat addition that fits well with the story, but the gameplay impact is minimal.

Story and Dialogues
Joining the brightness and fun of its style, the story of Blast Brigade is crazy. Mad scientists, giant monsters, robots in the jungle... it uses a lot of pop culture tropes and callbacks to movies of the 80s/90s. The dialogue is sometimes a bit ham-fisted, but there's some genuine laughs in there, even though it overly relies on making fun of the main Jeff character. It's fun to read and listen to - the voice acting is great (English only). It's clear that the developers and the actors had fun with this.

Audio
Nothing much to complain about here. Sounds pack a punch where needed, VOs are very nice. The music is a bit uninspired, and especially in boss fights I would hope for something a bit more dramatic. I hope the Early Access period gives the chance to improve that.

Early Access
The game has a good 10 hours in it if you take a bit of time to backtrack, collect unlocks, complete challenges, etc. It's running very smooth, no crashes or relevant bugs I encountered. Very high level of polish on the content that's already there is promising for the remaining content that's to come. It's not perfect, but it's a very good game already, with the chance to become a real treasure.

This is a surprising amount of fun. It's fast, it's responsive, it's funny, it's rewarding. Very cool little gem.

Why are you reading this review?
I heard a click, what did you do?
Why are you installing this game?

Killed by an explosion while digging up a grave with a bucket on my head.

Would dig again 10/10