Recent reviews by shlups

It has literally all the best elements of Dark Souls, Breath of the Wild, and Shadow of Mordor, and yet none of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that those games have. Bliss.

Buy this on sale, if you are a fan of anime, novels, anime novels, good video games, or a good old fashioned time.

This is a fantastic game. That fact is 100% true, during 97% of the game. I enjoyed this game so much, it hit me like a ton of bricks when I finally realized how much I was loving it. Due to how few cons there are to this product, I will begin with cons, and finish with pros. However, first, I want to give a quick disclaimer.

Despite how good this game is, it is not for everyone. It is extremely in the vein of a late-2000s teenage anime, and beyond that, it is an anime visual novel, which is definitely not the most mainstream genre of game. It also has rather sub-par production values (although it was originally a 2010 game for the psp, so cut it some slack). Overall, the pacing is sometimes slow, the subject matter can be a bit trifling to more western audiences, and overall it may not be the most welcoming or comforting of video games. Disclaimer out of the way! Everything in this paragraph has been about possible negatives that just aren't bad enough to count as cons. Now on to the real cons.

There are only 2. The first has to do with the game's management of some story content/writing. The second has to do with some gameplay sections that in my opinion were not implemented/balanced properly.

To understand what's wrong with these two things you have to understand what this game is about: the game is centered around a school in which 15 'ultimate' teenage students are imprisoned, forced to live out the rest of their lives in the school or kill another student in order to 'graduate' and leave the school. You play as Makoto, the average-highschooler who's out of place at this school full of the best teenagers in the world. Each time a murder takes place, a class trial will be held to determine who the killer was. If a majority vote is toward a student who did not commit a murder, the student who actually committed the murder will 'graduate' and all the rest will be killed. If the true murderer is found guilty, they alone will be executed and the rest will continue to live entrapped in the school. Before each trial, an investigation is held to find as many clues as possible to determine the true killer, and the full series of events. The first issue with the game has to do with this investigation, and how what happens in the investigation relates to what actually happens in the class trial.

In short, the game basically always adds a 'twist' in the middle of each trial to surprise the player and for that 'wow' factor. It does this by revealing information the player could never had discovered in the investigation--in the trial. Now, there are two types of players who play this game: ones like myself, who tried to play the detective, and cerebrally attempt to figure out who the killer was, and others, who simply play the game a bit more like novel, just reading along and letting the investigation go where the wind was blowing, without giving anything much thought. For the latter, this mid-trial 'twist' is very stimulating, as it's even MORE content to explore, more entertainment, more surprises. For the former player, this 'twist' sucks. After putting in ranging amounts of investigative thought, we get one thing in the middle of the trial--for so much new, previously unattainable information to appear that changes the outcome of what we thought the murder looked like. See, it may not seem like much, but when you focus and really put data together, and feel like you've solved a mystery, it is extremely exciting. When, in the middle of the trial, it turns out due to conditions out of your control that everything you figured out is wrong, it doesn't feel to good. It really took away from my enjoyment of the game. I was like, "well... couldn't you have given me that info at the beginning? Cuz everything I thought up till now is now wrong..." I'm not saying that new info isn't revealed in trials irl, because it is, but this game ISN'T irl, it's a game. So at least make it a bit more enjoyable, let the player figure stuff out by themselves and then let them get it right without changing information after they can do anything about it! The game does similar things in the trials where it goes back and forth and back and forth between who the killer is, and it can get quite fatiguing.

The second issue has to do with two gameplay segments of the trials. The first are pre-scripted conversations during the trials that have a lie hidden somewhere in the conversation. The conversation will repeat without end until your time runs out. It is your job to shoot a 'truth bullet' at the specific piece of lie text that shows up on the screen. The truth bullet is supposed to be a direct counterexample to whatever hidden 'lie' is in the text on screen... but not always. I don't know if it's an issue of translation, but it's super annoying, as frequently one can get confused about which truth bullets to use on which possible lie. Sometimes, the truth bullets represent something that is a counterexample, or their namesake is a counterexample, or sometimes nothing about them is a counterexample at all, it just kind of brings up something that is kind of related. It's quite confusing which to use sometimes. I remember multiple times shooting a counterexample to a piece of text that was clearly a lie, but it was wrong. The correct answer ended up being a bullet that would have made sense to someone looking at the issue at hand completely from the other direction. It was really bewildering, since they were both logically correct. I just wish they would make it more clear. The second piece of gameplay is the 'moment of truth' gameplay segments. This in my opinion is simply unbalanced in difficulty to the rest of the game. Now I played the game on mean difficulty, so my difficulty gripes may not hold much creedence in the two lower difficulty values, but still I feel it was too difficult. The mode entails using a rhythm-based shooting system where you can only load bullets, shoot them, and acquire your target on the beat. Only a few targets show up on screen at a time, and there is a limit to how many bullets you can hold. Because you can only do an action on the beat, it is easy to get behind, because you can't spam anything to catch up. Since you have to constantly reload, since you're also constantly firing, if you get behind, you won't have enough time to reload before the targets you're shooting down explode and you lose health. It's an absurdly difficult mode, and pair it up with some occasionally suspicious music sync, and it's a very frustrating experience.


Now about the pros.

-Great voice talent for English version
-Fantastic writing
-Great translation
-Great music
-Mostly great gameplay
-Very good story
-Awesome premise with investigation, intrigue, and other 'in' words

The main thing is with this game is it's just amazing. It's amazing in ways words can't describe. It's... a feeling. As long as you're not fazed by the stuff in the disclaimer... you have no reason to not like this game. Honestly. Try it for 2hrs. If it's not for you, refund it. There's just something about the art style, music, story, characters, writing, setting, and experience that combine into something that you can't really explain. On top of that, it's really quite competent in all other ways, like no bugs, quality of production (with what resources they had, remember it's a psp port from 2010), and writing. The translators/localizers did a particularly good job with this one. So if you're not too into anime, like me, or at least aren't too familiar, do not fear, they have you covered. I got this recommended to me by the youtuber CultofMush. I was a little hesitant, since my experience with Japanese games is basically just Nintendo and Fromsoft, and a random 13hrs of Disgaea, and I rarely watch anime, but it was an awesome experience. BUY

Only had a few hours with it because of the free weekend--but of what I did play, the following phrase is a great way to describe:
A strange but not altogether horrible combination of masterpiece and buggy, overachieving indie game

Dude i wanna play it again. Amazing. Just amazing. BUY

Longer review:
For peepole hoo played doom 2016, this is a very similar game, very much a sequel, but much more polished and with a possibly longer campaign. Just about everything in this game is better than its predecessor. In fact, if you didn't quite like how the combat worked in doom 2016, perhaps EVERYTHING would be better than its predecessor for you, as the combat is one of the main things that was reworked (it is still very much the same thing however). More lore, more polish on things like challenges for rewards, cool milestone system that makes it feel like you're playing the whole game and not just a campaign, better graphics, better combat (at least more difficult combat), clearer user experience (clearer UI, game objectives, end result, etc.)--are just some of the things that are better in this game, and I could go on. IMO it's definitely much harder than its predecessor, for a couple reasons: 1) there can be so much going on at one time that it is easy to be overwhelmed, even at lower difficulties. 2) changes to combat like significantly lower ammo amounts make you switch weapons frequently and have to know each weapon well. and 3) the game pushes you at times, resulting in an overall increased skill ceiling. Perhaps the only thing that is worse than doom 2016 in this game (other than the fact that the games are very similar) is that it isn't COMPLETELY a joyride like the trailers would have you believe. Its difficulty, even on lower levels, is HARD. This is further enhanced by many elements of the combat: everything is so functional in the combat. This makes it so it's not as fun sometimes, regardless of the difficulty. There isn't this gluttonous feeling like you had in the first game. Take the first time you get the chainsaw for example in doom 2016: there's this kind of joyful, excited feeling that you get to literally tear enemies apart. But in this game, the chainsaw is only used when ammo is needed, and for farming those fodder demons. It's so functional, the joyful excited fun is kind of taken out of it. Not really a bad thing, just a little pet peeve I noticed while playing. The combat is technically--extremely good. Just in a more competitive, balanced way rather than a live-out-your-fantasies-in-a-movie kind of way. Not bad, just a little pet peeve, but worth noting. Overall, doom eternal is better than its predecessor by a thoroughly measurable amount, even without the fully-fledged multiplayer and snapmap creation, I do miss those.
For people who have never played a doom game, DO SO. BUY THIS ONE. But in general, it's a shooter with well-wound ID-style gunplay and lots of demons to kill, in a more performance based fashion than a cinematic one, as mentioned above. It's a fantastic game, and even just finishing the game now at 1am, (1:22 now), and seeing the trailer as I came to the store page, made me immediately want to play through it again, as I said at the beginning of this review. The game has a strange charm to it, and you notice it like halfway through the game. It's hard to describe, but the way you look at the game in level 1 and level 13 are very different--but both make you feel good. There's a lot of lore, great collectibles, and too much fun overall. Seriously. BUY IT. Give ID your money so they don't have to team up with Avalanche and make an abomination called Rage 2 again!

This game is good. Just not great.

I actually didn't finish this game, but I read a story synopsis and it was, well, not too creative. Decent, but not amazing. The reason I didn't finish is because the story effectively takes a break for about 8-10 hours after the first hour, having you invest into smaller stories that you come across in small missions. The other reason I didn't finish was that the gameplay felt like actual hacking and work, and it was the kind of grindy, difficult work that one might receive in a classroom. Some features of the UI were extremely difficult to operate, and while that was somewhat realistic, I came to play a game, not because I liked doing difficult computer work, which is part of the reason why some hackers become hackers. Speaking of that, this game makes hacking extremely easy and simplified. I guess that if a hacking OS was developed in real life, it may actually be this easy, but in reality now hacking is way more difficult, complicated and sometimes more fun than this.

The world building and details were fantastic. I can't tell you how many times I laughed scrolling through logs on PCs I'd hacked into. They were well written and funny. But the massive break from the story made me feel like I was actually doing hacker work (although way too easy) and not playing a game. I came to experience a story, play a game, be something and someone else for a while, not to actually do hacker work. This game did not advertise as a hacker sim, but as a game where you play as a hacker with a story. That is my main problem with this game.

And don't get me wrong--I am all about games that require you do think and reflect and do not have big visuals or explosions or gunfights--this game's gameplay was boring. I've already said how the hacking was too easy and the UI was way too hard, but simply, hacking got boring rather quickly. That's basically it. In terms of additional information, there were no bugs and it was programmed very solidly.

Overall, get this game when it is very cheap and play it for a few hours. You can have more fun with it than just two hours, so you don't have to return it, just buy it very cheap or free, that's how I got this game, it was free for a limited time and I downloaded it. 79/100 -- good, just not a B.

Honestly, I don't know what to say. Rocket league is fantastic in everything that it tries to do (except when it doesn't but well get to that) and its a great game! Nowadays it is more for people who actually want to 'get gud' instead of CasUaLS. But still, you can have some fun even if youre not serious about the game. I'll be doing an edit on this review once I hit 600 hours, but its been great so far. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a skill-based serious game, but I also recommend if you are looking to play some games after a day of hard work or something of the like. Also, the community is not too toxic, and there is a very vibrant and dedicated esports community.

The one thing i don't like is the extra money. There's no way to get a new car without spending money (except for events). There's no way to get a new item without randomness without getting into the rl trading community. You have to buy keys in order to get a normal, tradeable, decent item. And keys come at pretty decent price, tho. The catch is, you can't know exactly what you're getting, as it does that random slot machine type ♥♥♥♥ to determine what item you get from using the key. Personally, I think that if you pay enough money, you should be able to get whatever item you want without the use of sites like aoeah.com.

Items are a pretty small part of the game tho.

EDIT (at almost 1700hrs): The game is good I guess. I didnt update this review at 600hrs because... there wasn't much to say. Once you're a few hundred hours in... well, not much changes until you're a few THOUSAND hours in. And truth be told, I probably would have waited to around 3k hours to post this update had I not decided to quit (we'll get to why later). Now, this game is still really really well executed, just like I said 2 yrs ago, but some things have changed that I'd like to update people on as kind of a last hurrah of this game, a kind of goodbye. First off, the game was acquired by Epic, and some would have a problem about that, so take that as you will. But, Epic games made several changes, like adding a "rocket" pass (battle pass), took over management of Psyonix (the actual developers), and removed/reworked the trading system, by way of removing those ♥♥♥♥♥♥ crates altogether. Overall, Epic's influence on the game has been pretty good in my opinion, although, each update usually breaks something in the game, leading to hotfixes preceding every update. Not sure if this is epic's influence, or just Psyonix getting washed. Who knows. Another thing that's changed since my OP is the skkill level of players, and the community. This is game is so hard to get good at, that from starting out in the game the road to the highest level of play is ridiculously massive. Hoever, this is common in esports >5yrs old. The community, in my opinion, is slightly better than 2yrs ago. Rocket league was never that toxic to begin with, which is great, but overall I think there are fewer younger/immature players in the player base. Just from observing twitch chat, and my own ranked games over the past months, it seems like the community is overall better. Just letting you know.

Now, I said that I quit earlier, and I dont want anyone to think that it was because the game was bad, because it isn't. The game is great like I said. Just like whenever you play a game for more than 1k hours, you begin to have some negative feelings about it (even tho those feelings had nothing to do with me quitting), but continue to play the game nonethless, because you're addicted. Me quitting the game had nothing to do with the game itself per se, but instead has to do with the aforementioned addiction. Which is why the rest of this review will be as a warning to gaming addiction: it exists, and it can definitely be an issue for anyone. I was definitely addicted to this game, as the 400+hrs in the past 3 months will certaintly tell, and it was that life stuff was really getting in the way of rocket league that made me quit (or the other waay around lol). So this is a warning like with any game, gaming addiction can definitely be an issue, but as long as you keep it in check, this game is really well made and you can have too much fun playing it. Bye, RL community!

Great game! Robtop, we want 2.2!