Recent reviews by Cade

One of the most personally disappointing sequels of all time, SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE tells you over and over that you're stupid for wanting a sequel to SUPERHOT, the critical and commercial darling from a few years ago. Every lore dump tells you you're greedy and foolish for ever daring to want more SUPERHOT. As someone who thought SUPERHOT was great and SUPERHOT VR sublime, I would have simply let this pass as light metacommentary in the vein of other SUPERHOT storytelling, but as I moved past the first world and through the second, third and fourth, I realized they were right. SUPERHOT was lightning in a bottle, and MIND CONTROL DELETE is akin to cutting yourself open on the broken bottle, the lightning long since gone.

Gone, too, are the impeccably designed and tuned combat encounters in favor of endless repetition of the same handful of room types. A SUPERHOT roguelite could work, but the structure of MCD is so utterly flawed it seems almost contemptuous of the player. The game is divided into layers, which are divided into levels. The levels consist of a randomized set of rooms with random enemy spawns, usually between 5 and 15 rooms per level. Every two or three floors, you get to pick between one of two hacks: nominal gameplay changes that you will lose at the end of the level, succeed or fail.

Occasionally, you will come across new COREs, which allow you to have different starting abilities and new E-key powers, or new hacks, which become available in the pool. These cores and hacks come with training levels that are interesting and I genuinely think the CORE system is good. The hack system leaves a lot to be desired, but this is mostly because of how bad the structure of everything else is. If you take damage, occasionally you will be offered "heal.hack" between rooms, which heals you to full. It's a lose-lose situation; you either take the health and feel bad that you had to heal, or you take the powerup and might lose this run early, shunting you back to the tedious start of the level. This is not risk vs reward: this is choosing between fun or pragmatism. I use the term fun lightly because after World 1, you have wrung every last drop of fun out of MCD and still have a few hours left of licking the floor, hoping desperately to taste the remnants of fun you can almost remember.

When I finished floor 1, I was happy. A new structure, new powers, new things to throw, a single new gun: not bad, I thought. All they have to do is keep the game interesting and I'll see it through to the end. But no. Aside from new enemy types (armored enemies that require being damaged in specific spots [good], enemies that explode into random bullets [horrible] and two unkillable enemies meant to serve as obstacles [mediocre - essentially just an annoyance stacked on top of many others]), one or two new rooms per floor, and a couple of new COREs and hacks, that's it. That's the game. From your very first room of randomly placed enemies to the very last one you do, that's all there is to it.

Despite this, there are moments of brilliance amid the muddy and repetitive. The last world (SPOILERS follow) has some really interesting decisions and levels.
You slowly lose your cores through a series of levels that culminate in you losing your hacks as well. Unfortunately, this ends with you in 15-room level of total monotony where you have no CORE, no hacks, and really no reason to keep going. The level after, you press E a few times and then the game ends.

However, after this is the real gut punch, the kick in the teeth so that you really get the point driven home just how much the devs hate you: you are forced to keep the game open for 8 hours in order to end the game. You can't play levels, restart the game, or do anything else. Eight hours. Real time. Just to finish the game. Did I do this? Bow to their whims? No. They told me time and time again that they didn't want me playing the game, so I won't. This is not art. This is garbage. I know the SUPERHOT team is capable of better because they made one of the best indie games and one of the best VR games. I know they are capable of new and interesting gameplay because they almost had it right.


And I know that you should skip this game even if you received it for free for owning SUPERHOT. If you must play it, stop after World 1. Your time is more important than this.

I'll still be here for the next game, be it a real SUPERHOT 2, a SUPERHOT VR 2, or something entirely different, but I've played few more disappointing sequels. Disaster.

Often when you see a game touted for being old-school, what that kind of praise really means is that the game in question is needlessly archaic, chained to the past and mired in empty nostalgia. I had been interested in Dusk since its reveal and was sort of worried that despite the aesthetic and design, once I jumped into the shoes of Duskdude, I would be disappointed at a game unwilling to look forward.

Thankfully, that is far from the case. As soon as you start up Dusk you realize that this isn't a game that is selling itself purely on you being able to remember Quake and Doom. This is its own thing, and it pays homage in small ways that add to, rather than distract from, the overall package.

The level design is the standout feature for me, and what I'm going to be primarily focused on here. You start the game in a small house in rural Pennsylvania, having freed yourself from meathooks. Your only weapon is a pair of sickles, and without warning you are attacked by cultists brandishing chainsaws. Your surroundings are dank dungeon walls, and it's imperative you learn to circle strafe quickly to kill these maniacs without dying yourself. They have the advantage of numbers and weaponry, but you? You can move like you've been speedrunning 199X FPS games for thirty years. You will instantly feel just how precisely tuned the momentum of the game is, and soon you will learn how bunnyhopping isn't just an advanced component but a necessary part of every fight (though, graciously, Dusk puts more weight on you learning how to be efficient rather than precise timing, as bunnyhopping is simple and easy to learn). You also have the ability to pick up objects scattered around the areas, throwing them as weapons, making much of the environment more than just window dressing.

The level transitions from dungeons into a small house with cramped stairways and tight corners, something more in common with Rainbow Six than Doom. Once you get out of the house, you're treated to some fresh air and new enemy types as the game opens up into a small outdoor area. You're taught how to slide, adding another quick evasive maneuver to your arsenal, and then it's over.

At this point, I'll admit to having been impressed but not overwhelmed. The game felt good, the enemies seemed fresh, the layout was cool. In the back of my mind, though, I was beginning to worry that the level design might be overly simple, that Dusk might be content with just setting up a couple boxes of spooky enemies per mission to shoot your way out of and calling it a day.
The mission after the first goes bigger and wider, opening up the outside areas and showing just how good these developers are at crafting buildings that are fun and tense to play through. I was wrong to have been worried, checking each new door and corner with apprehension and excitement. Powerups, dual-wielding, the game was broadening at a fast pace. A hedge maze area, filled with dread-inducing corners and dead ends, populated by shotgunning scarecrows.

By the third mission, a level centering around a huge and horrifying church, I was completely hooked, but it was the ninth, penultimate mission of the first episode that made me a Dusk evangelist. Simply titled Ghost Town, this level sets you loose on a city block full of buildings to enter and explore, searching each nook and cranny for necessary keycards and bonus loot. Cultists on rooftops throwing fireballs from far away, soldiers with assault rifles lurking inside buildings. This level shows off just how good the game is at mixing claustrophobic close-quarters combat with long-range, hit-and-run battles.

It's here that I'll stop talking about the levels, because in Episodes 2 and 3 of Dusk, the game throws new and unique concepts at you over and over, and each one deserves the surprise that the developers carefully craft. Instead, as my word limit draws near and my time runs out, I'll do a quick rundown of everything else I liked and didn't.

The music is sublime, ranging from atmospheric tracks to fill you with dread to bass-heavy, pulse-pounding metal, making you ready to put an end to any cultists who dare to shuffle their masked selves towards you and your super shotgun.

The graphics, while intentionally rudimentary, still manage to look good and instill fear, and the use of color to break up drab palettes means you're never awash in a wave of samey areas.

The guns are absolutely incredible, each one useful in different ways and each one a pleasure to learn the intricacies of. The shotguns are my favorite, but I really enjoyed the long-range hunting rifle for picking off troublesome enemy types from a relatively safe distance.

The bosses, which I was surprised to see exist, are each fun and provide interesting challenges (though some of them are also skippable if you so choose).

That's about all I have to say about Dusk, a game I was enthralled with and finished in two sittings on the day I bought it. It is a fantastic game whether you're nostalgic for classic FPS games or not, whether you like horror or sci-fi, and regardless of how you feel about the super shotgun (though if you don't care for it, you are on the wrong side of history). I truly believe this to be one of the best shooter campaigns in the last few years and I'll be thinking about some of these levels (Escher Labs!) for years to come.

As evidenced in at least a handful of the other reviews I've written, the 3D Platformer is one of my all-time favorite genres. Combining tight, reflex-intensive gameplay with sprawling, diverse levels is a recipe for excellence in my book, although in recent years the genre has somewhat fallen into neglect. There have been a handful of games in the past year that attempted to breathe some life back into it, though, with different approaches. Yooka-Laylee vied to bring back the Collectathon genre. Clustertruck is a different sort of 3D platformer, based around fast, constantly-moving autoscroller levels. Super Mario Odyssey, out in just under three weeks, looks to be a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine and 64, my two favorite 3D platformers ever.
When I Kickstarted A Hat in Time, I expected to get a game that aped Sunshine and 64, had a handful of great ideas, played well, and was a fun game in a genre that was woefully underserved, especially on PC. Instead, Hat took its lengthy development time in order to polish, expand, and perfect its core concepts, and the end result is a fantastic game that doesn't pay homage to its predecessors so much as graduates from them with flying colors.

You start the game in your novelty-shaped spaceship, on your way home from adventures unknown. You're passing by a small planet with a load of strange, unique regions, when you're hailed by a Mafia member who tells you that you need a permit, or can't fly by the planet for free, or some such nonsense. Hat Kid has no time for any of this nonsense, and attempts to break free, which results in the fuel for her spaceship, Time Pieces, being scattered all over the planet below. Now marooned, she heads to the planet's surface in order to get these hourglasses back by any means necessary.
This sets a tone that you'll see for the rest of the game: Hat Kid will help people with their issues, but her main goal is absolutely to get the heck back home. True Neutral. This encounter with the Mafia also shows you the kinds of characters you'll be encountering: goofy, bumbling grumps with writing that I expected to grow old quickly, but which kept me chuckling until the end.

The first world is Mafia Town, a bustling seaside city where bald, broken English strongmen who all look the same rule with iron fists. You quickly team up with Mustache Girl, a character with just as much spunk as you, but who is decidedly more good-aligned. She helps you get your first couple Time Pieces in levels designed to teach you many of the mechanics of A Hat in Time: the double jump, the dive, the dive cancel, and hat powers.
Almost immediately, you'll see just how much effort has been put into making every single part of this game feel exceptional. 3D Platformers have long been bemoaned for their attempts at camera control, whether they opt for an automatic camera or user-controlled. I can safely say that there was not a single time in this entire game that I felt like I was fighting the camera. In almost every scenario, the camera is smart enough to adjust automatically, letting you focus on the platforming. When you feel you need to take control, you can make minute adjustments that don't autosnap back, letting you control the camera as you run, jump, and dive your way around tricky platforming sections.
Mafia Town is an incredible vertical slice of A Hat in Time for multiple other reasons besides showing you the ropes, though. Not only does the world offer a good amount of quirky characters, both in the mafiosos and the hapless townspeople, it also has a decent amount of collectibles to find, including Yarn which allows you to knit new Hats (which grant powers that can often open up sections of prior levels to find new items, including Yarn, and so on), Relics that allow you to play a slot machine where you'll unlock cosmetic items, and one of my favorite features: Time Rifts. These small glowing orbs are unlocked after certain Acts, and show up in the world screen as photos of locations in the world. You have to study the photo and then pick an Act, then hunt down the orb. Once you touch it, you're transported to one of two level types. The first is a love letter to Super Mario Sunshine's F.L.U.D.D.-less levels, great abstract blocks in space with incredibly tight platforming that's often a lot more challenging than in the core Acts. The second are strange, memory-hunting collection levels where you must find relics and pieces of a journal in order to progress, which will let you view a short picture book at the end with the memories you collected. The former are some of my favorite levels in the game, but the latter are fun in their own way, especially as a cooldown from some of the difficult levels of the core Acts.

There's one other core Hat in Time concept that Mafia Town introduces, and that's the stunningly fun boss fights. There's a miniboss that is played on a purely horizontal plane, where you must jump over barrels and dodge them, and that core dodging mechanic carries through to every other boss fight in the game. Boss fights in A Hat in Time feel akin to Donkey Kong Country boss battles in 3D, which is not something I would have anticipated working (or being fun) but they are some of the highlight encounters in the game. Each boss has multiple phases and attack patterns, and often has in-match cutscenes and dialogue (which is skipped if you retry the boss - one more excellent Quality of Life feature). These are not your 3-hit Mario bosses or 5-hit DKC bosses, though -- often, each boss takes 20-30 hits to defeat, meaning each boss battle is a test of stamina, reflexes, and patience. I'm not usually a boss guy in platformers, because I find them to often be trite or unnecessary, but Hat's bosses shine with the same polish as everything else in the game.

The boss encounters also have some of the best music in the game, with bombastic tracks that call to mind everything from Mario to Undertale. These are far from the only standout songs, though: the entire soundtrack is a delight, with each track suited perfectly for its area. Sound design in general in this game is fantastic, whether it's the Link-style groans and oofs when you bash into something or the thousands of voice-acted, well-written lines.

I don't want to talk too much about the other three worlds in A Hat in Time, to avoid spoiling some of the best levels in what is unfortunately a pretty short game (I finished in just under six hours, with over half of the total Time Pieces, although from looking around I was on the short side), but rest assured: each world introduces new concepts, enemy types, and even entirely different gameplay mechanics. There's a murder mystery, a parade, and a sneak-and-hide horror level (which is genuinely scary!) as well as levels that are nothing but good old-fashioned platformer fun.

A Hat in Time is one of the best games I've played all year, and one of the best 3D Platformers ever. With two worlds coming as free DLC, as well as co-op in an upcoming patch, mod support, and more, it looks like this instant classic is going to stick around for some time. I hope that anyone who likes the genre, great writing, fantastic music, and genuinely perfect controls picks this up, because they will not be disappointed.

5/5

A short but excellent (and surprisingly scary) co-op game, set in the Antarctic Wasteland. You find yourself separated from your expedition, with two of you isolated and locked in separate parts of a remote castle. You'll have to work together (and often quickly) to solve puzzles and earn your freedom. Parts of this game are absolutely horrifying, and you'll have to trust your partner to listen to your directions and keep a cool head under pressure.

It doesn't last long (one hour is what it took us, with a couple retries) and the only replay value would come from getting the other set of achievements, but what's here is surprisingly polished. I'm definitely going to play the sequel, and I urge anyone with a passing interest and a good partner to jump in and give this a shot before the sequel drops this summer.
Also, go in completely blind if you can, because you won't want to be spoiled on anything.


4/5

I've written before about the recent dea(r)th of 3D platformers. I've bemoaned the lack of games where learning to utilize momentum and all the tools at your disposal in a three dimensional environment is rewarding and fun.

Landfall Games, with Clustertruck, has hit that mark. As soon as you start up Clustertruck, you know what you're in for. You're going to be jumping from truck to truck until you hit a goal sign. For 90 levels, that is the sole goal. You will jump from white truck, to white truck, to white truck, until you pass through the area beneath the red Goal banner.
While that sounds like it'd get repetitive really fast, you can summarize most games down to that level of simplicity. The thing Clustertruck masterfully understands is stripping away all the excess fat to really nail down level design, and in that area it has absolutely succeeded.

From the first level the movement is fun. It's fast, you need to be accurate, and the braver and better at aiming and controlling your jumps you are, the more you get out of it. For a few levels, you could just ride the back truck for a long time until you got to the part where it's necessary to jump. But that's absolutely not the way to play Clustertruck.

Clustertruck has levels that are all about trial and error, but for the most part you're going to want to go as fast as possible towards that goal sign. You'll want to leave your starter truck behind instantaneously, constantly jumping, looking for new trucks to get to. It's exhilirating the first time you play a new level because all levels start out the same: you, on a truck, moving forward. But it never stays that simple. Elevation changes. Trucks being launched. You being launched by superheated air, lasers to dodge, huge pentagrams rushing at you; there's never a time when Clustertruck is content to just keep going. Each level builds on the one before it, challenging you in new and creative ways, but always teaching you each mechanic, through gameplay, to make sure you understand it before throwing in a twist to keep you on your toes.

The levels themselves are divided into worlds of ten stages each; nine worlds each with not only a different visual style, but vastly different design, gradually ramping up in difficulty. There's a brilliance here, too, because while the game gets more difficult the more worlds you progress, you'll always finish a world on a very hard level and immediately the next level, in a new world, is much calmer and easier, letting you catch your breath as it teaches you something new. It's absolutely perfect pacing, and it satisfies that just-one-more-level itch of a game that you want to keep playing for gameplay alone.

Make no mistake: it's gameplay alone that Clustertruck offers. There's no semblance of story. There's no reason for you to be on these trucks, no reason for you to be in these worlds, and aside from the very end, no real sense of a goal being accomplished in any story-based sense of the word. It's you, the powerups, the trucks, and the levels, and nothing else. Nothing but an admittedly great soundtrack that keeps going and encouraging you throughout your many, many failures, and cheering you on during your successes. There's nothing better in Clustertruck than beating a level on the first try, sailing through it as though you've done it a thousand times before, and being rewarded with a First Try bonus.

That bonus system is tied to the Style Points system, the only non-level-based progression in the game. Each level you complete gives you points based on style, whether that's jumping off of flying trucks, getting air time, or completing it on your first try. Those points can then be used to unlock new movement abilities and utility powerups. Movement abilities are used with either the left mouse button (by default) or in the case of double jump, merely tapping your space bar (by default) again.
These are both fun to use and very situational. In most cases, you'll want double jump because it's the most versatile. But for speedruns and getting the best time, the air-dash is key. Grappling hook can make you pull off insane maneuvers, and the blink (a nice Dishonored homage, called the Disrespected Blink) is... well, it's fun. I couldn't find a practical use for it. There's a few others I didn't really get the chance to use, but needless to say, there's replayability there, using the right tool for the right run.

On the utility side, there's the most useful one: slow time. It slows time for you, the trucks, and the level, allowing you to nail a perfect landing that might've been a little too fast. There's also one that stops trucks (dangerous. I never got the hang of it), one that creates a truck under you, and my favorite, an homage to another first-person indie game. I won't spoil it, but let's just say it's both super and hot. Okay, I'll spoil it, it's superHOT. The trucks move when you move, or when you're in the air. It's more for fun than for utility, but it brought a smile to my face. Be sure to right click when you have this utility active.

A level editor is included in the game from day one, with Steam workshop support. It seems pretty deep, so I can't wait to come back to Clustertruck in the months ahead to play new and exciting user-created content.
There's also a leaderboards system with friends filtering, so you can keep running levels to beat your friends... or the world. There's a ghost system for trying to beat a certain score's ghost, but I didn't play around with it, so I'm not sure how well it works.

Clustertruck is incredibly polished, but there are a couple issues that kept it from being perfect. The hitbox on certain wheels is hard to judge, so sometimes you'll brush them and it won't feel like it was your fault. There's also a small bit of jank with the way the climbing up the back of trucks (I call it the "slingshot") mechanic works, where sometimes you'll get far more momentum than it feels like you should. It's nothing game-breaking in the slightest, but it can keep runs feeling inconsistent at times.
It's also not a very long game. I was finished with it at 4 hours, and there's no collectibles or anything to make you replay specific levels. I'm fine with that price : gameplay ratio, but others might not be.
In addition, the very final level might frustrate some as it's got some mechanics you've never had to deal with in the main game before.
Don't let any of those things stop you, though; this game is already one of my favorites of 2016, and it earns that title by gameplay alone.

If you've got any interest in 3D platformers, games about speed and momentum, careful positioning, or dialogue-less humor (while the game's concept is funny enough, there's one joke level in world 8 that made me laugh out loud), you might want to give this one a shot. It's difficult, but not unfair. It gives back the more you put into it. It's got replayability and that arcade feeling of chasing that one high score that's just out of your reach.

Clustertruck is a game that is unashamedly nothing but gameplay. And that's something I'll always champion... as long as your gameplay is good. Clustertruck's gameplay isn't good. It's excellent.

4/5

It's been a while since I played a 3D platformer that was both well-designed and fun to play. Some are great in concept, some have excellent mechanics, and some have good level design, but rarely do you come across a mix of all three (especially in the indie space, where 3D platformers are an underrepresented genre).

So I bought Grapple expecting some mindless fun while I waited for bigger, brighter, more well-known indie 3D platformers to come out (Yooka-Laylee, A Hat in Time), thinking that even if the game was bad, I didn't spend too much on it and it was worth a try.

So I was blown away to find a true hidden treasure, especially one with such a (sorry!) horridly bland name. The very first level lets you know this game has true effort put into the controls. Responsive, easy to understand, and simple, you'll be using the same three buttons the entire game: Jump, attach your grappling hook where your cursor is pointing, and drop from a surface you're attached to (not counting movement, obviously). That's it.
So, how can three buttons carry you through ninety unique levels, each with its own collectibles for the completionists out there?

A Nintendo-like approach to introducing new concepts, teaching you how to master them, then testing you on them, as well as everything you've learned before. The gameplay loop might look simple, but there's enough added as the game progresses, just in level design, to keep you interested even after the fiftieth (!) level. Jump pads, launch cannons, walls you can stick to but not grapple to, walls of death, invisible walls that only appear as you get close... It's brilliant design and doesn't outstay its welcome for a minute, even though some of the levels in the last set of 10 made me try for longer than dozens of the other levels combined. Especially the end level: that's a doozy.

I bought the game and started it up the next day expecting to play a bit. I played for eight hours that day across a few sessions and finished it. The light sprinkling of puzzle elements on top of 3D platformer was just what I needed, and if you're a fan of Portal, Super Mario 64, the F.L.U.D.D.-less levels of Super Mario Sunshine (It can't be just me that loves those), it might be just what you need too. I've never seen a single person mention this game before, even on places designed to spotlight unknown indie games.

I want that to change. I want more people to play Grapple, to see that 3D platformers in the indie space exist, can work, can be great. Artistically, sure, it's not the best. A ball, some walls, and a hook, all in the empty expanse of space? But it doesn't need anything more. Even with that said, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the soundtrack. It's great, calming but engaging, and helps put you into that flow state as you swing yourself around at dizzying speeds, calculating trajectory on the fly, missing the hook by inches and searching desperately for that one last place you can hook to.

There's really only a couple complaints I have with Grapple: The invisible maze sections are the main one. They're designed to teach you tight, small swings, really precise hook control, and to not overswing confidently into the unknown. But they're mostly dizzying annoying bits of trial and error. The second is a late-game stage where you're flinging yourself skyward in the midst of pure red blocks, trying to get to launch-cannons but without easy ways to get momentum. It's frustrating, boring, and doesn't feel like it has the same sense of speed. Everything else, though? :starfull:

Grapple is an excellent game. Everyone should at least give it a shot (more so if you like those games I said above or are looking for something unique in the indie space), because it's worth experiencing. Some of the levels are brutal, but they will reward your patience and perseverance, because it's not the game's fault you're failing: it's you. Analyze your swing, perfect your hook anchor, and fly.

4/5

One of the shortest games that I still consider to be a satisfying experience, Refunct is somehow a peaceful Captain Toad meets Mirror's Edge first-person puzzle platformer. Great, peaceful music in a beautiful little single level, quick gameplay that teaches you how to play and all clocking in at half an hour tops. I beat it in 10 minutes, with an extra three of exploration, and as far as enjoyment-per-minute ratio goes, Refunct is near the top of the list for me. Give it a shot on sale, don't expect a long or deep experience, and you'll come away satisfied the way you are after watching a sunset.

Odallus is to Castlevania what Shovel Knight is to Mega Man.

While this may have some of you stampeding to buy, hold up! Odallus is great, but it's not for everyone. In fact, while I wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of Castlevania and other games of that ilk (and difficulty), it's not without its flaws and quirks. If you can look past a handful of non-gamebreaking (though maybe you'll need to repeat a level once or twice) bugs, some questionable gameplay decisions, and a script that's as filled with errors as the average NES port, jump on in (albeit perhaps on sale; I 100% the game in less than six hours. While I prefer my games on the short side, and think $15 is a fine price point for a game of this quality, some may feel that's too high a dollar to hour ratio).

Some things I liked:
The actual core gameplay is fantastic. Taking its cues solidly from Castlevania, but updated to be more user-friendly, combat is all about balancing offense and defense. Normal enemies are mostly easy fodder, but the boss fights range from mildly tough to rage-inducing (especially if you don't know where to hit, as sometimes it's not quite obvious [I'm looking at you final boss final form]). A handful of subweapons have varying usefulness, and you can eventually get sword upgrades that attack faster and deal more damage.
The platforming is pretty great too, and unlike Castlevania, you can alter your jump after you've leaped - no more sailing into the abyss. Well, you'll still sail into the abyss, but you have slightly more control over your fate.

Except for the minecart level. That's just death over and over.

The levels are all unique and all very cool. A town being razed. An icy mountain. A forest. A watery temple. Each with their own enemies, boss fights, and items and gadgets to find. Like a Metroid-style Castlevania game, you use these items to backtrack to different locations for different upgrades and equipment, and fortunately the game is incredibly backtrack friendly. In each, there are doors to open, floors to break, and bosses to fight. But once opened, broken, and slain, they remain that way; backtracking through levels becomes fun to find the last secrets, instead of a frustrating grind through a place you already mastered. It's a great way of balancing difficulty, and makes the last level very hard, but not overly infuriating, as parts of it stay beaten even after you fail.

The soundtrack. Damn, the soundtrack is fantastic. Crunchy retro tunes really set the mood, and help you feel exactly like a barbarian trying to avenge his ruined town and dead son. Or something like that, I can't really relate. Put that on the box, not a relatable main character.

Some things I thought weren't quite perfect:
I got stuck on the minecart level a few times because if you die above ground, sometimes you get stuck and have to exit to the main menu and start that level fresh.
Some boss hitboxes aren't well-defined.
Upgrades aren't just a happy bonus, but damn near essential for beating the game proper. Doing it without is possible, and there are achievements for it, but I'm a casual baby and could barely beat it with all the upgrades.


Overall, it's an excellent game, and as a big fan of Oniken (who couldn't beat it :() I'm pretty much down for whatever Joymasher does next. They truly nail the area between retro fanservice and modern quality-of-life improvements.

★★★★☆

A love letter in many ways to classic Western movies and classic games, Westerado: Double Barreled starts with a familiar premise: your family has (spoilers for the first 30 seconds of the game) been murdered. Your ranch has been burned down. With nothing but the hat on your head, the shirt on your back, and the revolver in your holster, you set out on a quest for vengeance.

And then the game basically turns you loose on a sandbox Western action-RPG and lets you do whatever the hell you want. Sure, you're supposed to find your family's killer and enact your revenge, but let's be honest: there's a lot more to do in Westerado, and you'd be foolish to simply skip through the main storyline and be done. Most people will probably do the same quests first: helping a concerned wife bring her drunk husband home, clearing out a graveyard of bandits, etc.

The quest design at first seems pretty straightforward, but there's actually a great deal of freedom here. As far as I can tell, literally every single NPC in the game can be killed, which can be a boon during certain quests whose other option for completion is a hefty amount of money. In one notable mid-game quest, a local Indian chief tasks you with freeing buffalo from ranches. I did so with a blend of violence and not-giving-a-damn and wound up finishing with the blood of a few ranchers on my hands but the satisfaction of herds of bison now roaming free.
Upon attempting to finish another quest, however, I learned that this quest was now failed because the woman who gave it to me was angry at me for killing one of the ranchers. It's this inter-connectivity that makes the quests interesting, and as the game goes on the quests get bigger and more important.

In my favorite questline, you're tasked with trying to bring peace between said Indian chief's tribe and a local militia. I don't know how much else I could've done, but let's just say it didn't go well. In my story, I ended up heling the tribe wipe out the fort and take it over. I was then given the option to continue this questline and help them take over the nearby city, a task I attempted but then failed at. Upon reloading, I reckoned I wasn't sure I wanted to kill every shopkeeper and innocent civilian, so I moved on and hoped the Indian tribe would stay in the fort and not murder everyone. To be fair, it WAS the militia chief's fault for pulling a gun during peace talks, but still.

The main questline is unique in one feature, however: for most of the bigger quests, completing them gives you a detail about the murderer. As far as I can tell, the murderer's identity is randomized fully, so it's not the same game for anyone. In mine, I learned that he had a medium-brimmed hat, then learned it was a ten gallon, then that he wore blue, etc. until I had a reasonable picture of him. It's a satisfying way of tying sidequests to main storyline, but it's important to note that you can confront ALMOST ANYONE in the game through dialogue. I think if you got lucky you could confront the murderer right away if you happened to find him.

With all this talk of systems and RPG mechanics, I want to make one thing clear: this package wouldn't work if the core gameplay wasn't top notch. Fortunately for everyone, it is. To fire a shot you have to unholster your gun with a button, then press a button to prime it and the same button again to fire. This methodical, three-step process every time you want to shoot something feels good, and it can lead to stressful moments in firefights with more than one enemy. Reloading is a similar process of hitting the reload button once per bullet, so to fully reload you have to mash R like a madman to put your six shots back in your revolver.

That said, is the combat itself any good? The answer is yes. Westerado's health system boils down to you having up to three hats: each hat is an extra life point. Get shot with no hat, and you die and are returned to a respawn point, half your money gone. The upside of this is that each enemy is the same; shoot an enemy and his hat flies off. At this point, sometimes he'll surrender, but other times he'll keep on firing. Shoot him again to put him in the ground.

Occasionally, one shot will kill an enemy who's wearing a hat, but I couldn't figure out consistency on this: whether it was where I aimed, some sort of critical hit system, or what. Sometimes the hats from dead enemies fall on the ground, and you can quickly pick them up to restore hat-health (to your maximum of three). It's a fun and lethal system that feels close to the likes of Hotline Miami or other fast-paced, everyone-has-low-health games.

Though you start off with only one revolver, eventually you can buy other guns, including a shotgun, dual revolvers, or a rifle. I only purchased the rifle, and it was a great upgrade; though slower-firing, it could pierce through enemies and offered a wider view of areas.

I'm running rapidly out of room, but I'll spare a few sentences for aesthetic and aural notes. The artstyle of the game is a beautiful mix of spritework that doesn't adhere specifically to any sort of artificial old-school hardware limitation; because of this, color abounds and there's a lot of variety. The characters all sport a lo-fi charm, and the animals are both cute and occasionally deadly.
Bodies remain where they've fallen, so it can be fun to walk through a location you've cleared of enemies and look upon their fallen remains as vultures fly in to scavenge their corpses. It sounds morbid, but the cheerful cartoon artstyle doesn't make you feel bad for your enemies as their bones are picked clean.

On the sound front, the music in this game is sublime. Harmonicas carry the main weight here, evoking a Western feel that makes you want to strap on some spurs and spit into a jar. (Editor's Note: Cade does not support spitoon usage and urges people to find other pastimes less harmful) The music changes crazily when it's fighting time, pumping you up to pump lead.
Once the last enemy is killed, a triumphant trill lets you know you've lived one more battle. It's well-done and exciting each time.

Westerado is a fantastic game that blends action and player choice, and I've tried to keep spoilers to a minimum. At one point, I wandered off the map through a tiny, not-really-visible path, and found a crazy area that made me at once intrigued and amused.

The writing in the game, while sparse, is charming and interesting, and keeps you wanting to solve mysteries, get in gunfights, and help out townsfolk. While the normal price and even the sale price is a bit steep, there's nothing like Westerado out there and there appears to be considerable replay value (the randomized murderer, extra player characters with their own motivations, hidden boss fights, etc.).

Though the lo-fi aesthetic may initially appear to be just one of many, the unique touches and captivating gameplay elevates Westerado above the rest in the indie scene. Though the game's length is short (I finished the main story with the first character in roughly two hours), it's well-paced and I didn't do anywhere near everything.

Highly recommended, though perhaps waiting for a sale is the best option; for non-completionists and speedier gamers, you may come away disappointed at the relatively short length.

A stealth release outta nowhere by a small team working within Ubisoft to create good games (maybe a rebel group making non-buggy games without tons of DLC and giant day one patches?), Grow Home slipped under many people's radar, perhaps overshadowed by bigger games released around the same time. That's unfortunate, because Grow Home is a fantastic 3D platformer (a mostly-dead genre treading water with few and far between indie releases) that does basically everything right. I'd hesitate to call it a masterpiece, but the core mechanics, (simple) story, and charming aesthetic (not to mention the absurdly low price) easily bump it into the everyone-should-give-this-a-try tier. Let's break it down.

Gameplay
A smaller game like this, with no budget to craft twenty hours of cutscenes and grandiose sweeping plots full of twists and turns, lives and dies on gameplay alone. Fortunately, in this area, Grow Home excels. The game starts you off simply: left trigger to grab with your left hand, right trigger to grab with your right. After a few shaky climbs up cliffs, you start to get the hang of it, and soon you're flinging yourself from cliff to cliff like a robotic monkey, champion of your domain. This progresses slightly over the course of the game, with temporary slow hovering powerups giving way to crazy hang-glider-esque leaves that let you soar straight down at dizzying speeds then up into a triumphant crescendo, finally culminating in a rocket pack that lets you control your ascent and descent, but with small amounts of (thankfully automatically recharging) fuel. The climbing is fantastic, putting the likes of Nathan Drake and Lara Croft to shame, instead aiming for and reaching the lofty heights of Shadow of the Colossus's excellent system. Unlike SOTC, though, this game isn't too much of a challenge, and with no stamina meter to speak of you're rarely in *too* much danger.

The central progression mechanic involves growing stalks off of a large plant, riding them like missiles into glowing green energy rock in order to make the central plant grow larger. It doesn't sound fun, and indeed I had more fun with the collect-a-thon style crystal hunt, but it's serviceable and it's always frustrating (in a good way) when you have to grow more stalks off of a stalk that *just* didn't reach its target.

Graphics
Grow Home's artstyle is fantastic, a flat-textured, low-poly aesthetic full of whimsy and charm, with silly-looking creatures and exotic-looking plants everywhere you look. These flora and fauna are occasionally functional, but a lot of the scenery is just that. The lighting looks beautiful, and standing on an asteroid seventeen hundred meters in the air, staring up into the sky and then looking down at the ocean and all the vines below you is a breathtaking experience.

Sound
With little in the way of music to speak of, Grow Home's weakest area is this by far. The creature noises, ambient sounds, and occasional hint of music are fine, but nothing I would call outstanding by any means.

Other thoughts
With little in the way of replayability and a very short time to finish the game (though add a few hours on for getting every collectible, including (light ending spoiler) the eight star seeds after the credits roll , Grow Home might not be for everyone. If you want a fun, upbeat experience with no combat to worry about and little story to wrap your head around, give it a shot. It's a delightful little game in a rare genre, and it's absolutely worth your time - provided you don't mind that time being a little short. The price point is fair for the amount of game you get, I think, and I'd easily recommend it at full price -- but waiting for a sale might be smart if you're the type who prefers to get dozens of hours of gameplay for their money.

Bonus: If you hate uPlay and think that Ubisoft game = have to deal with secondary launcher, fret not. Grow Home doesn't use uPlay and operates like any other game on Steam.

Closing remarks
Grow Home is excellent, and I hope this team delivers even more exciting experiences, with or without Ubisoft. The central mechanic is so good I'd play similar games in other scenarios (EVA spaceship repair sim? Please? Co-op? Someone hire me to design that).

Highly recommended.