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Recent reviews by Gradius

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Showing 1-10 of 62 entries
1 person found this review helpful
10.2 hrs on record
A very solid cyberpunk RPG presented in sidescrolling perspective with lovely pixel art (that, unfortunately, the camera is often a bit too zoomed out to fully appreciate). The story is a mix of various cyberpunk staples, you'll find lots of Deus Ex, Shadowrun, Neuromancer, and more here. That does mean it will likely stay short of providing much in the way of genuine plot twists, it's that much of a genre-piece. But the game as a whole is solid. A little clunky at times, and some elements could have been tutorialised better - I did find myself having to work out how to use guns or change weapons in cyberspace, and I also felt like the early game was a little punishing until I'd learned the ropes and gotten more upgrades. But the experience as a whole very still very compelling and there's enough content that it felt like a decently sized adventure without also overstaying its welcome. There's nothing here worldchanging, but with the last Deus Ex title closer and closer to a decade old (though admittedly this is a year older), this definitely scratches the itch. I think I had put this off due to it having some mixed reviews, despite looking great, but honestly I don't share the sentiment. Combat could be a little more fluid (and you basically never have a great reason to use guns), but the gameplay is definitely solid enough to carry a story-based RPG. If you've missed sneaking through vents and hacking people's computers in games, this is still definitely one to check out.
Posted June 25, 2023.
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103.3 hrs on record (64.6 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
At this point, this feels like a complete game to me. This comes on the back of games like Vampire Survivor, but is more of an active arena shooter or bullet hell type of game with a similar 2000s flash game aesthetic that you'd see in the likes of Binding of Isaac. Plenty of content here, though I do feel as though the balancing leans a little towards luck more than skill as victory on higher difficulties has always depended on getting a snowball rolling. If you don't get some early luck with item drops, you'll inevitably be overwhelmed in the midgame, if you can get that snowball going you'll often win easily by the end. I didn't get better though, I just got good dice rolls. I'd imagine people who are better than I can may be able to more easily salvage runs, but I did find myself wishing more runs were viable even if they were difficult. But that's only an issue that began to frustrate me a solid 40 hours in when I become interested in completing the different characters on the hardest difficulty. Oh, and it'd have been nice to have a stats screen for your various playthroughs. Perhaps that's something the devs can add eventually.
Posted April 6, 2023.
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3.0 hrs on record
Short sweet puzzle game with cutesy player characters that feels like it's inspirations were somewhere between Lara Croft GO and Monument Valley. There's nothing here that is likely to blow anyone's mind, but the experience was wholly pleasant and never felt like it was outstaying its welcome. 3 hours well spent!
Posted December 7, 2022.
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1.9 hrs on record
Early Access Review
Gloomwood is the new Thief-inspired stealth game from the folks at Newblood. You play as an unnamed (for the time being, at least) doctor working his way through a city for as-of-yet unknown reasons while evading and fighting off inhuman ‘huntsmen’ (which have some very fun voice acting) and a variety of other creatures.

As this is early access, you’re only getting a slice of the first area of the game (and probably with some of the plot trimmed too), representing about 3–4 distinct areas and about two hours of gameplay—depending on your playstyle. For those that played the demo, you won’t see that area present here, as I believe it was crafted purely for that demo (though aspects of that may still make its way into some later part of the game).

Your basic gameplay toolbox here includes sneaking, climbing onto obstacles and ropes, a ‘lightgem’ that shows when you’re in shadow, a fashionable yet practical cane sword that enables instant kill backstabs to unaware enemies, a suitcase that can store weapons and other items, the ability to pick up and throw object as distractions or to use at platforms, the ability to lean around corners, and whatever shooty-bang-bangs you can find lying about the place.

While the ability to clamber onto objects feels like it’s out of Dishonored (I don’t believe any of the original Thief games implement climbing in this kind of way), the movement is much slower (devoid of any run function), and there’s no stealth-breaking ‘cheats’ like the ability to teleport or see vision cones (at least yet—I wouldn’t be surprised to see vision cones eventually at least as an accessibility option for less skilled or less patient players). There’s also no quicksaves to be had here, at least on the default difficulty, and instead you save your progress at phonographs (old-timey record players) dotted sparingly through the levels.

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise though, given its distinctly 2002-ish aesthetic, looking even more technologically basic than 2004’s Thief: Deadly Shadows did with its at-the-time cutting-edge bump mapping and hard-edged dynamic stencil shadows. Not that the game looks ‘bad’, there’s plenty of detail to the levels and pleasing art design, but you should take the retro graphics to inform you that this will be a retro experience. This reduction in speed and agility compared to recent stealth games may throw some players off though. I also feel like it might not entirely gel with the much larger level sizes compared to games of the era, as backtracking to the start of an area might take 15 minutes at the player’s fastest walking speed.

The stealth itself feels largely solid if not hugely complex outside of the use of throwable distractions (or just shooting the enemy with a gun), with a few caveats. You can lean around corners or push up against doors to hear behind them, but leaning will allow enemies to see you (though the dev has promised a buff of some sort). Thankfully they don’t enter a searching state, so it still remains functional, but it does diminish how useful it is. There also doesn’t appear to be a way to softly open doors (or it isn’t telegraphed to you at the moment). There is some form of sound propagation system, though sometimes making a loud noise or throwing something won’t alert enemies that are relatively close. Since this largely works in the player’s favor, this doesn’t seem like a real issue currently. I did however find the use of hiding in shadows a problem, even hiding in the ‘maximum’ amount of shadows and staying out of the path directly in front of enemies I could be spotted by the huntsmen pretty easily. This was to the point that only staying behind them really appeared to be a solid strategy. I suspect this needs tweaking to increase the effectiveness of shadows, or to reduce the range they can spot you in shadows at. There also seemed to be a very limited amount of ways of handling huntsmen with firearms if you accidentally alert one. Melee huntsmen can be easily baited into long attack animations, but short of slapping them with a cane sword before they can wipe out all your health, there’s no real way of handling the ones with guns. Fighting them obviously shouldn’t be your main strategy, but there ought to be at least some way of handling them beyond simply hoping to run away before they get a shot off in my opinion.

Your briefcase, effectively your inventory, is handled pretty well as a physical item you whip out when you have enough physical space around you. You can place anything appropriately small into it, rearrange to your will, and pull items back out. Currently it doesn’t clearly instruct you how to rotate items about or to pull out bottles without just dropping them (just click them once then close the briefcase, you’re welcome), but that can be easily fixed. I did find the need to make space in the inventory to do things like load free ammo into the gun or to unload enemy guns a bit tedious though. You wouldn’t stash them into the inventory in real life if all you were going to do was take the bullets out of them, so I don’t particularly like having to keep that much free space just to do it in the game. It’s a fun implementation of an inventory though, and pretty snappy to use.

This leads me to some of the polish quibbles I have: You’re very likely to get confused by what amount of bullets your guns have in them due to the inventory also showing a quickswap number key for the gun that you’re almost certainly going to mistake for an ammo count at first. At certain points you can flip switches to lower down ropes as shortcuts for backtracking. These appear as hard to see thin ropes just lowering out of nowhere from wooden beams, surely there should be some sort of winch model employed but that’s not the case so in a dark area it can be hard to even tell what flipping the switch changed. You finally get a light source at no less than the halfway point of the content available and this feels far too late, at least offer some very minor brightening around the player so we’re not bumping into walls here!

Those I feel are likely to be addressed by release though. Mostly I’d like to see some improvements to how enemy visibility is handled so you don’t feel as though you’re constantly getting spotted while hiding in deep shadow. There’s also occasional spots of getting lost in a level that could be smoothed out, and perhaps the first area feels a little too tough (though far from impossible) for non-veteran stealth players on the default difficulty.
Sound design is generally solid with some nice bits of voice acting for the enemies and the few characters you encounter. Music appears non-existent outside of the repeating jingle of the save-phonographs, but I’m unsure as to if there will be any in the final game.

If you liked the Thief series or retro ‘imsims’ like Deus Ex, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Gloomwood immensely. If you’re coming from a more action-orientated game like Metal Gear or Dishonored, be prepared for a change of pace though. There’s plenty of tense action, but it’s also slower and more methodical. We’re still a couple of years from anything close to a complete game, but even at this early stage most of the polish is fairly close to where it should be and there’s enormous promise. This is a solid first preview of a game I’m looking forward to a lot.
Posted September 7, 2022. Last edited November 23, 2022.
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18.1 hrs on record (7.5 hrs at review time)
The monetisation system is piecemeal, overpriced, extremely limited in terms of customisation, and you get a fraction for free as you would in any previous title. Yet, it's largely option and only distracts from the rock solid title beneath it. Wish it were easier to jump into games, or that people who just want to play deathmatch would have an option that didn't throw them into objective game modes.
Posted November 25, 2021.
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1 person found this review helpful
7.6 hrs on record (7.2 hrs at review time)
Good fun. Funny writing combined with some inventive puzzles, including one particularly ballsy one involving what you'd think was something very unintentionally in the game (though honestly, considering there's no dialog to acknowledge it early on, I feel like the game would be better off only introducing it early. As it was, it annoyed me for way too much of the game before it is actually used). Occasionally ran into a puzzle that stumped me, and some of the default controls (i.e. for swapping between interaction hotspots, or fast-forwarding dialogue lines) weren't the most inutitive. The platforming could also get a bit glitchy, particularly once you've got certain upgrades that let you slide down walls (even if you really don't want to). There's also at least a couple of platforming sections that felt overly hard to me. But overall the experience was extremely positive and full of laughs.
Posted June 17, 2021. Last edited June 17, 2021.
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72.6 hrs on record (33.3 hrs at review time)
It's pretty damn good! A fun twist on Greek mythology that surprised me with it's general authenticity (the main character, Zagreus isn't actually an original character). The game feels fluid and fun to play, though I found myself generally only using two of the three attacks I could use (Main, Secondary, and Cast - often secondary felt unnecessary or cumbersome to use for very little damage). I also have to nitpick the default PC controls that map secondary attack to Q instead of Right Mouse button. Makes actually fighting with your secondary a bit awkward, especially since cast (which uses a 'charge' that you then need to pick up off the ground) is already an inherently limited ability, but gets an easier to access mouse button control next to the main attack. The art work is good with an emphasis on the character portraits and use of heavy shadowing. Music is excellent, as usual for Darren Korb / Supergiant Games, with more of a rock or even speed metal feel. The story is excellent and the voice acting generally pretty good (although a few of the characters do seem a little off in terms of their acting - I'm not sure I trust American devs adding in 'mate' to their script). The game's repetition is kept in check by the enormous amounts of dialog and story content trickle fed to the player. However I still do wish there was the option to use some of the 'renovations' offered to change up the look of the dungeons rather than just the House of Hades you return to after a death or successful run, however since the levels aren't actually randomly generated this probably would add needless complexity for the developers. In terms of difficulty the game is fairly forgiving, I very rarely encountered 'insta-death' areas, though sometimes I'd lack enough damage to make it through an area effectively. I also sometimes encountered scenarios where flying enemies would refuse to go back over land, making them very hard to hit with melee weapons. I expect a competant player should expect to be able to start clearing runs within 15-30 attempts (i.e. it took me 23 attempts to hit my first cleared run). The game also feels like it encourages spamming attacks a little to much with how much more powerful dash-strikes are, but becoming reliant on this will limit your progress on harder difficulty levels.

Graphics 9/10
Controls 8/10 (Not a fan of the default scheme for attacks, and feel like three attack options is often just superfluous)
Fun 9/10
Difficulty 7.5/10 (Not too bad for a roguelike)
Music 9/10 (Point deducted for Orpheus' singing voice being a bit grating to my ears)

Highly recommended for anyone with even the slightest tolerance to roguelikes.
Posted December 9, 2020.
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4.4 hrs on record
It's good! Finding all the items can be a bit annoying and it'd be nice if there was a more granular hint system than just linking you to a video walkthrough.
Posted November 26, 2020.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
2.8 hrs on record
A pleasant art style, and beautiful music. Controls that for the most part work well. You can turn into a bird, that's neat. Though landing when you've gained some speed can be difficult as there's no button to decelerate and hitting the ground simply makes your bird form bounce off at top speed. So there's a lot of times you'll try and land on a smaller platform only to skip off. Story is vague, but present. The ending feels a little anticlimactic, as though it could use one extra scene to it to provide a bit more closure. Unfortunately the game's collision can be somewhat buggy. For two of the 'dungeons' I ended up falling out of the level. Once through a staircase (apparently you can jump out again, but I just restarted), and another where for some reason there was no collision enabled for the bottom most part of the dungeon leading me to repeatedly fall out of the void. Luckily the game had also glitched in a way that allowed me to retain my bird powers (leading to confusion when the beginning puzzles of the dungeon were exceptionally easy as a result of being able to fly), which let me - with much trial and error - fly back into the level. Though it took some precarious jumps to navigate back to an area with collision to finish it. These two instances really did detract from the experience, as the dungeons provide the majority of the 'meat' of the gameplay. Though thankfully I did just about manage to get through the worst of the bugs. Beyond that, exploring the world is a pleasant experience. It's peppered with light bits of world building and lore-text, and gliding around floating islands while the music plays is pretty relaxing. The lack of combat or any real 'death' also makes for a nice change of pace. This was an enjoyable experience just shy of 3 hours long, though the bugs I did encounter hurt matters, and I wish the transition out of flight left me with a bit more control.
4/5
Posted November 24, 2020.
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1 person found this review helpful
2.1 hrs on record
"If you want a picture of the gameplay of Beyond Eyes, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever."
-George Orwell

The core concept of the game is simple enough: You play Rae, a young girl who loses her sight following a fireworks accident, venturing out of her garden and into the wider world in search of a cat she had previously befriended. The world is rendered as a blank void of white, save for sources of sound, but the surroundings immediately around you are filled in as you travel, occasionally revealing different objects than what Rae had imagined from the sound of them alone.

The world, when revealed, is portrayed through a painterly watercolor artstyle.

Unfortunately, this game, while trying to realize a novel concept, is desperately unfun to actually play.

You move at a snail's pace while having a view that stretches maybe a metre ahead of you - while also seeming to fade away with time. There's functionally no gameplay beyond bumping into walls you somehow couldn't detect (I’m thankfully fully sighted, but I still imagine sensing a brick wall right in front of you isn't too hard from sound and wind reflecting back off of it), or missing bridges that essentially only appear as you're walking over them. The game also doesn't even have the decency to let you 'glide' along walls, so if you touch a wall you're stopped in your tracks. But if you move too far away, you're likely to miss openings that you needed to pass through. The game does almost nothing with its sound design either, with very limited positional audio or use of sound for navigation, and for some reason there is a constant chirping hum on the left side of the background audio that constantly bugged me as the lack of any 3D panning meant it was probably just an unintended noise their microphone had picked up and was then just on loop for two hours of my life. I say two hours, but it felt like ten. For a game about a sightless character navigating primarily through sound, surely having basic positional audio on the level of any other 3D game would be a no-brainer, surely? Guess not.

Sorry Rae, I don't care if you get your cat back. I want my two hours back.

I'm glad developers are trying experimental things, but this simply isn't engaging or fun. It's full of frustrating design choices that worsen as the game progresses and any chance of interesting mechanics is stopped at the gate. If this game had only been 10 minutes long I perhaps could have forgiven its simplicity, but the game is several hours in length. An interesting concept or presentation alone cannot make up for deeply frustrating gameplay that you have to trudge through for a few scant glimpses of the narrative.
Posted November 22, 2020. Last edited July 3, 2021.
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Showing 1-10 of 62 entries