Recent reviews by Splintercat

The EDF series is something you either love or you don't.
Graphics are dated. Voice acting is cheesy. Physics are questionable.
What they focused on was fun. This game is fun.
Underneath everything is fairly well thought out game. Most weapons have a purpose, and really difficult levels are a sort of puzzle you have to figure out.

Free Mother Earth from hordes of giant aliens and monsters.
Cover the screen in explosions,
Level cities in the process.

Crazy good fun with friends, can be challenging on your own.

I really wish they supported more than 4 people in an online game, that would be incredible.

In single player this game is a roguelike puzzle. Enjoyable, but sometimes frustrating if you don't get a good set of spell combos going.

This game really shines in multiplayer. It's one of the rare games that supports more than 4 people, (according to the dev there's not an upper limit). It's become a mainstay of our game night. It supports drop-in, drop-out play which also really helps things.

The game starts off simple enough, but as you learn some of the spell combinations and effects it gets really fun/interesting. Stacking targeting spells is a favorite of mine. I've seen some crazy stuff with the movement spells. The various spell effects can work together in some delightful ways.

I'll regularly hear one of my buddies giggle before releasing some bespoke terrifying spell combination on some poor enemies It's a good time.

Cyberpunk 2077 isn't a perfect game, but it does an incredible number of things well.

I love that the city feels alive. For example I was driving somewhere and saw that Trauma Team was deployed and tending to someone. Or you'll see that the NCPD has arrested someone. There's also just all the random conversations you hear. I ran across a homeless camp and saw that someone set out cat food.

On the otherside, I'll still run across things like cars or other objects loading in, colliding, and causing a ruckus. There's some of the conversations in the side jobs and gigs that will end a bit abruptly. Vehicles still don't handle super well. But at the end of the day that doesn't hurt how much fun I'm having playing this game. V is a fun character to ride along with.

Fun game on your own.
Great game with friends.

There's a surprising amount of depth and polish to this game, and there's usually a number of ways to achieve something.

Great programming puzzle game. I found the programming to be much easier than TIS-100 and I really like the whole vibe of the game.

Been a good while since I played, so apologies if I don't remember all of this properly.

I really wanted to like this game. But it's not what I wanted out of an EDF game.

Upsides:
Looks great, runs great.
Changes up the EDF formula for your character with a swapable core system.
Neat monster designs.
Character creator!
Runs great on Linux under Proton.

Downsides:
Can't change difficulty once set (at least on initial playthrough, maybe that changes)
You have to buy all your weapons, and since you don't get much money it's a grind that feels bad.
Weapons available at the beginning aren't good enough for higher difficulties.
Doesn't hit that B-Movie feeling. It takes itself too seriously for that.
Character creator isn't as broken as old Yukes games, like Day of Reckoning.
AI is meh, and I don't remember your allies ever bursting out into song.
Game just isn't fun (for me at least)


I appreciate the team that made this wanting to take their own spin on EDF. But it feels like they dropped a bunch of the gameplay mechanics that made other EDF games fun/satisfying (Namely allowing you to choose your difficulty for every mission, and equipment drops that scale with difficulty), and replaced them with ideas that feel like they came from a poor copy of monster hunter.

The parts of the story I saw were fine. Having a custom character is fun, even if there's seemly no mechanical benefit to wearing different kinds of gear (which is fine). Maybe this game would've been more fun with friends. I'd much rather play EDF 4.1 or EDF 5 than this.

Survival game that doesn't let simulation get in the way of gameplay. Eating gives you health and stamina bonuses, but you can't starve. Repairing items and structures doesn't take materials.

Valheim lets you soak in the feeling of exploration, or the satisfaction of building a cool base without getting in your way with annoyances.

Big shoutout to the team for offering a native Linux version. I've had no issue running this on Linux Mint 19, or 20 (Based on Ubuntu 18.04, and 20.04 respectively)

Currently as of 2-3 weeks in of the game being released, Valheim runs alright, but taxes my computer, and is nearly unplayable on my 8 year old laptop. But for an early access game, that likely has a lot of runway for optimizations, it's running pretty well.

How to describe this game?
It's like you're in a B-Movie. You fight giant bugs and flying saucers as a tiny person.
It's amazing.
No seriously.
The graphics are meh.
The voice acting is ... fine.
The physics are funky.
Instead they Min-Maxed for fun. This game is some of the best fun you will have with friends. It's even pretty fun on your own.

EDF! EDF! EDF!

I'm getting to the point where I just automatically buy a game if it's from Supergiant. Each game they make seems to be more polished than the last.

Hades is an amazingly well polished roguelite.
The combat is really responsive, and I've yet to run across a powerup that I found worthless. Everything feels really well thought-out.

I've really enjoyed the characters and feel they are well realized and have actual personalities.

I play on Ubuntu through Proton. Which works almost flawlessly. The only issue I've ran across is some stuttering that seems to happen every 10 seconds or so. I'm trying to figure out if it's really the game, or if it's some issue with Proton and maybe having too many cores or something.

-- Edit --
Proton 5.9 GE 6 ST fixed the stuttering issues. Game runs smooth now.

Fun game that scratches that Mega Man X itch