Recent reviews by imac2much

Broken Age has the same charm that I've come to expect from Schafer's games, like Psychonauts, Costume Quest and Stacking. The characters are interesting though admittedly one-dimensional (just like most point and click adventure games) and the conversations are mostly quite entertaining. I think the voice acting is superb as well, especially with the two main characters and the Computer ("Mom"). The animation and visuals prove that a game does not need super high def SSAO bloom TressFX etc etc to set the atmosphere of a game in the right direction. The overall aesthetic (visuals, music, ambience) elicit zero complaints from me.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the gameplay. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I found the item hunting a bit tiring at times. I wish there was a way to speed up conversations, as I generally read much faster than people speak (pressing space will skip the entire conversation, not just the current dialogue with subtitles) and though there are some areas where your character can run, most of the time you walk at a very slow clip. I'm glad that there isn't much hand holding, but when certain areas open up, it can be a bit annoying to walk back and forth between screens looking for an item I missed.

Still, it's not like I did not enjoy the gameplay at all. I think the clever dialogue (and even off hand remarks as I look at items or walk past characters) cracked me up, and that makes a ton of difference in adventure games. I had an idea of where the story was heading at first, but now I'm not so sure. All I know is that Act 2 cannot come soon enough.

And stay even further away from this game. I'm noticing a trend of smaller titles whose selling points are their tongue-in-cheek critique of gaming tropes and cliches; when done well, these games can be very memorable. Unfortunately, many games (like Evoland, DLC Quest and to a lesser degree, Retro City Rampage) forget to make the core game fun too. Having unenjoyable game mechanics for the sake of reminding the player that said mechanics are not enjoyable is not a good idea. In the end, the player is STILL not having fun, with the added insult of the developer rubbing it in his or her face.

The first 5 minutes are probably the best part of Evoland, and honestly that's all anyone should play. A trip down Nostalgia Lane is inoffensive... but man, when Evoland actually tries to take itself seriously and become a "real" RPG, it breaks down fast! I don't know why, but I finished the game and I have to admit it was one of the most tiring, monotonous games I've played in a long time. There really was no payoff or redeeming quality of the last half of the game. Stay far away.

Oh man, I know people will argue with me, but I cannot stand this game. The story takes itself WAY too seriously, especially for the Loony Tunes budget artwork. I know this was a passion project by a single person, and that alone is impressive; unfortunately, I don't base the level of enjoyment on the circumstances behind a game's creation but rather on its final product. Dust feels lazy and repetitive, the gameplay gets old SOOO incredibly quickly, and you can basically just repeat the same combo ad nauseum from beginning until end. Try Guacamelee if you want a FUN Metroid-style 2D game.

I had no idea what I was doing in this game at first, and just wandered around the world... soo... slowly.... I think I might have fallen asleep. I had to look up the "point" of this game, and even then it was weird. I'm still not sure what the point of this game is, even after having "beaten" it. Well, at least it's pretty, in a Minecraft pixel kind of way.

Haha, this was such a dumb game, and yet I kept playing. Why?? I've been trained too well a la Pavlov's Dog by decades of JRPG repetition to blindly chase after stats, gear and rare loot. Knights has a good premise and the class combinations are pretty fun, but in the end the gameplay was too simple to really care about. I also think you earn gold at a really slow pace, probably to incentivize IAP. Ugh, IAP in a paid game... good thing I got it in a bundle.

What? What?? That was my first reaction after completing this 10-15 minute game. I think I have an idea of what the story was about, but I had to look up some plot analyses to double check. I was surprised to see I missed quite a few little details, but man... what a weird game and story. It's kind of a heart-breaking story... I think... but I'm not sure because I still really don't know what happened.

Self referential dialogue combined with pretentious text scrolling minutes at a time do not a good combination make. Thankfully, it's possible to ignore the dumb story to play a great DJ Max clone combined with several RPG elements (I'd compare it to Beatmania, but the game is so simple it'd be a disservice to Beatmania fans). I just wish there were more songs and less grinding... after playing the same song 10 times on one stage to obtain a rare item, it hurts to have to play it 20 times in another stage for an ever rarer item... ugh!

Man, I wanted to love this game! After reading several interviews with developer Vander Caballero and how he poured his heart into this game as an allegory to his upbringing with an alcoholic father, I really bought into the hype. Well... yes, I was quite disappointed by the gameplay, but the story was touching, and the ending especially moved me. Those weren't tears though, I was chopping onions last night. Anyone who has struggled with a troubled childhood will be able to relate to the themes of this game. Just don't be put off by the slow and repetitive gameplay. It's no good when a game reveals its most clever puzzles in the first 30 minutes...

This game is just weird. I constantly feel like there's some joke going on that I'm not privy to for whatever reason. The gameplay is extremely simple and mindless at first, but you have to start picking your brain to come up with the right combinations to burn for the later puzzles. Unfortunately, since each item starts to cost more and more money and takes more time to spawn, it becomes quite punishing to get the puzzles incorrect in later stages. So yeah, I used a walkthrough for the last two stages. I will say that the game didn't end when I expected it to, and shifted into ... well, I wouldn't want to spoil it. There is something satisfying about the dark humor, even if it initially feels bad to burn "Low Self-Esteem Action Doll" and "Balloons" to unlock "Sorority Party." Call the cops.