Recent reviews by Hothead

NTA your house your rules

Everyone who leaves negative reviews about this game is bad at it

♥♥♥♥ off I don't believe in that made up nonsense

After eight years of waiting, I can't wait to finally try out Team Cherry's Silksong! will be especially nice to play while I recover from a recent accident I had which gave me a crippling phobia of bells. If I ever hear loud bells, or see too many bells in one place, or (god forbid) have bells thrown at me, I would surely be so scared I'd have heart attack and die.

Fortunately, bells were never a huge part of Hollow Knight, so I expect Silksong will be smooth sailing. Looking forward to this bell-free experience!

Pros: If using a guide for the harder challenges, you can 100% the game in a little under 7 hours
Cons: I can never open the game again

Calibration system is atrocious and only works for robots. I got stuck at 2-3 for 20 minutes because the calibration algorithm circa a month ago decided that my one accidental -53 millisecond hit was proof that I was running on MS-DOS and needed to be compensated for accordingly

They're putting the Pickle Peppino transformation in the next update trust

MISSILES LOCKED: TARGETING ROUTINE INITIATED!

64.3 Is the best rhythm game experience created by man.

This is another one of those "I wish I could give a mixed rating" reviews.

Pony Island is a game with a couple of great ideas weighed down by a lot of tedium and an overarching story that frankly is not that compelling.

The idea of a video game created by the devil is extremely compelling, but annoyingly enough, most of the material based off of that concept are annoying and dated jokes which at least partially hinge upon the conceit that ponies are inherently funny subjects, as they are enjoyed by little girls. If you don't buy into the veritable comedy goldmine that is "pony humor," a big portion of the game will not land for you.

The gameplay itself also straddles the line between enjoyable and tedious. It's certainly fun to blast demons with your big pony laser, but after an hour or so of gameplay, you begin to realize that the core gameplay loop doesn't actually change all too much. You play as a pony, you jump over barriers, you rotate your head around with the mouse button and use your laser to kill things. Rinse and repeat.

The big exceptions to this rule are the "coding puzzles" and game engine interaction (title screen, etc). I have nothing to complain about here, as with the exception of one very obnoxious puzzle at the end, these are uniformly enjoyable and should have been the bulk of the game. These are also the only sections in which you feel like you're in a real back-and-forth with the devil, which is very sad.

As for the story, it's passable. Your job is to break out of the devil's combination computer and arcade machine. The devil does not want you to do that, and would rather have you playing Pony Island forever. Antics ensue. There are a couple of "easter egg" areas which hint at a larger story, but you figure out exactly what that story is after only visiting a few of them. Again, it's not horrible, but nothing to write home about. The big issue is that the nitty-gritty of the plot is very hit-or-miss. Some parts of the experience are genuinely intriguing, while others are dull and should have been removed from the game completely. The third act in particular was almost entirely superfluous, unless, again, you're really really really into "pony humor." The best thing I can say is that the characters had some nice interplay, and that's it.

The big thing with Pony Island that everyone remembers are in the penultimate boss fight. It's definitely the highlight of the game, and depending on how accepting you are of the short time-frame they're present in, they may be worth the price of admission for you alone. I won't spoil anything, except that they're some of the first examples of the sort of gameplay present in a lot of later, more widely-acclaimed games--including Inscryption, which was created by the same developer and renders Pony Island *ALMOST* entirely obsolete.

Other than that, there's not much to say. The music is good. The characters are all fine with one exception, who serves as another example of the dated humor in the game. The presentation, while not unique, is remarkably uncommon and serves the game well. It's simply a very middle-of-the-road experience, with the exception of the one boss fight I mentioned earlier.

Again, I wouldn't not recommend Pony Island. It's a short experience, and it's not a horrible one, so I can't in good conscience say not to buy it. I got it on sale and I don't regret the purchase. The game is hardly a must-play, though, and there's a lot of competition in its field. Buy it if it's on sale and you're okay with wasting about thirty minutes of your life jumping over hurdles.

Also, if you haven't yet, play Inscryption.