Recent reviews by owie!

i hate hyphens

Look, the gameplay is alright. Courses are nice and the drift mechanic is cool. however, the ai sucks and the game is a cakewalk. 8 hours to 100% without challenge which kinda takes away whatever fun the core gameplay has.

Anyway, here's a bunch of racist sh1t one of the devs has said and im omitting quite a bit other reviews have mentioned as well as pro-ICE sh1t, anti-lgbt and bad business practices like not paying people and being pro-crunch.

"Asians will literally believe they are far above accountability for any of their own actions
They always expect you to hold them in high regard, while seeing everyone else as non-human and simply not deserving of any respect - Asians are not based, they are cowardly narcissists"

"The gaming industry was at its absolute strongest when it appealed almost exclusively to an American audience - And you know it "

"Asians will come into America, the land of rebellion, and start immediately browbeating everyone for not kissing government ass - We must push back on their chicken-sh1t ways and make them bow and grovel to our far superior culture of insurrection - Go back if you can't handle it"

"The internet has had enough of rude asians"

and this one just reads like a sh1tpost so ill include it because it made me laugh:
"Anyone against free speech needs to be harshly ridiculed and shamed [gif of a bald eagle in front of a flag] Their reputation needs to be absolutely gutted and made an example of. - Make the marketplace of ideas the Wild West again"

The anti-asian sentiment is underpinned by reposting of east-asian cars and porn lol

i know theres edgy folks that'll go "oh sick a racist!! time to buy the game!" but im just leaving this review for the people who do care about these things so they can avoid the game if it matters to them. free speech means im as free to condemn the devs words as he is to say them yknow? i dont recommend the game even without all that sh1t anyway

okay, i haven’t played the marble blast games so i can’t talk about marble it up ultra in its context as a successor to those, but as a life long platformer fan, i can’t sing this games praises enough.

first of all, the aesthetics of this game are lovely. while the ui and hud feels a bit cheap, the spacey, fruitger aero look breathes new life into the stylings of early 2000s arcade games. paired with this is the soundtrack which feels inseparable from the games visual presentation; it uses some classic synth sounds which feed further into the nostalgic vibe, but the techno/funk inspired basslines and rhythms allow the music to stand on its own as being just genuinely fun to listen to.

secondly, the level design and control. i was recently playing some super monkey ball and looking over old marble blasts stages and theres a stark contrast between marble it up and those games. while having a bunch of variety, the game still feels absent of throw-away, gimmick levels. they offer a satisfying balance between mechanically and mentally challenging you; there’s often multiple ways of clearing a stage with the faster ones typically being less obvious which makes going for better scores a puzzle in which you exeperiment with momentum, routes, and your own precison. at the heart the gameplay though is the marble itself, which feels both tight and weighty to control while also having a level of nuance to its movement. For example, mid-jump you’re able to change the direction that your marble is spinning allowing you to put a spin on your landing. This one detail adds a good amount of depth to the platforming and really makes you consider what sort of routes might be possible that don’t quite look it at first glance if you’re willing to push for further mastery.


lastly, the game has some great replayability. there’s multiple tiers of medals you can get for setting fast clear times, but also there’s treasures you can find to unlock customisation options for your marble. the initial clear, the treasure, and going for platinum medals means you have at least 3 reasons to come back to a single level and interface with it in a new way. on top of that, while i haven’t tried any workshop levels yet, the game does support it which i think is great for its shelf-life in your library.

i’m pretty broke and the price of this game is a bit steep, but having picked it up on sale i’d say if youre a fan of platformer games that just feel good in a tactile sense to play, it is actually worth the money at full price.

im getting rat pilled

this game feels pretty nice to play; it controls well enough, the sense of speed is satisfying and it's easy to pick up. The thing that really makes me apprehensive to buy the full game down the line is the decision to make this game a procedurally generated roguelike.

When you're making a game about movement, in my opinion the environments you move in are equally as important as the movement itself, and so far, i really feel like the procedural generation holds the game back from exploring the movement system more and creating interesting or challenging spaces to navigate. I'm struggling to see how they'll keep the game interesting especially given the repetitive nature of roguelikes which demands things be spiced up and different with each run. speaking of roguelike elements, the shop items don't seem to have much depth, which they don't necessarily *have* to, but it adds more to the question of why this game is a roguelike in the first place if it'll feel the same every time you play it.

I see that the full game will have some more mechanics and boss encounters so it'll be interesting to see if they're able to incorporate those in a way that creates some kind of challenge or longevity.

the visual style and music is pretty cool though for the most part though.

Amazing gameplay but has the most r/iamverybadass dialogue of all time

dear devs,

i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you

i love drive-by simulator so much, thank you thank you thank you

Every year, aimlabs gets worse. I used to play it just because the tasks were fun, but now opening the game is just annoying with its overwhelming UI trying to sell you aimlabs+. features that were previously free are now locked behind the subscription. Also there's generative ai and a battlepass too? it's a bit much for a pretty lackluster aim trainer

Man I Love Fishing

Leaving this review after getting 100%

The short is - i definitely recommend this game, but i feel like the replayability is overstated. Great for 40-50 hours, after that there's not much left to do. if you're going for 100%, don't do what i did and play a lot of this game for a few days, instead play a little bit in a day over the course of a month or more so you're not left dragging your feet through daily tasks which aren't fun. Outside of that, the pro's below really do outweigh the cons.

pros:
the controls feel great and pulling off tricks is satisfying, reminiscent of skate 3

the career's procedural generation will keep the multiple runs you have to do fresh

the grand tour provides a sense of progression alongside your own improvement as a player

the bike parks are very well crafted

you have multiple camera options to approach different situations and the first person view looks lovely

cons:
procedural generation can be buggy, I've once had a house spawn right in front of the track's start making it impossible to progress, though this is uncommon

the replayability only lasts for 40 hours or so im my experience which is enough, but if you're going for 100%, the dailies will feel like a total slog

achievements and grand tour objectives sometimes don't pop after you complete them, requiring you to do it again (this happened on my first golden run, i doubt any one else will get so unlucky)

while first person view looks great, some of the career areas feel very empty and liminal at the expense of keeping the off-road navigatable for arboreal tasks.