Recent reviews by Spirit

GOTY 2023

Remarkable, thoughtful game.

Definitely a weird journey, but an excellent one.

RIP AND TEAR

It's hard, I think, to review a first person shooter - much like reviewing a narrative heavy game if only for the exact opposite reason: what's there to talk about? Can't really get into the narrative game; I'll spoil it. Can't really break down a boomer shooter; it's all refined, shooty gameplay mechanics. You bunny hop, slide, shoot, and punch your way across a variety of colorful, alien rooms. There's currency to collect in the form of red skulls, secrets to seek out, all that good stuff.

People are equating it to Doom meets Hotline Miami? Which is fair: it's fast, it's violent, there's gibs. Me? Definitely felt more of a Doom meets Blood kinda vibe, especially with our sassy, talkative bounty huntress protagonist. What's here (about two hours on the "hard" difficulty) is highly polished, and there looks to be another... two chapters, maybe? I'm not sure. But for the EA asking price, I'd happily add it to my growing retro shooter renaissance collection.

But I digress. 'What separates this from the dozen other FPS games releasing this month,' you might ask? Ammo, much like in Doom Eternal, is scarce. And when I say scarce, I mean you're going to be treating each encounter like a game of chess: little green shooty guys? Don't bother wasting your ammo on them, punch 'em. Weird, aggressive, punchy robo birds? Lead them around until you can line up a shot with your alien shotgun, kill several weird, aggressive, punchy robo bird with one stone. Horrible Quake 2 buff entity on a beefed up unicycle tread? Just... just kinda shoot it a lot. There's a surprising amount of tactics to employ with every fight, culminating in a fun, nail-biting boss fight at the end of the chapter.

And there's a plot! It's... honestly, feels like Blood? Or any of your beloved Build Engine shooters. SOMETHING BIG is happening, and there's great little comic cutscenes (well, a handful), but it mostly plays second fiddle to the gameplay. If I had one teensy complaint? I wish Caroline, our hero, had more snarky dialogue. She could have gone on and on, it was a singular delight.

End of the day, movement and gunplay is tight and responsive, story is a bit of an enigma but intriguing, and it's solidly, solidly challenging for any veteran of fast actions shooters.

Highly recommended.

What an utterly devastating delight.

I quite enjoyed this little experience - as a lover of history (morbid and otherwise!) and museums. The puzzles are simple enough that I'd recommend just playing it through instead of opting for the "tourist mode," if only to give you a little more bang for your buck; it is a short, little puzzler.

But don't let that dissuade you! The museum layout is novel and interesting, the blurbs in the exhibit are compelling... if you have the remotest interest in the macabre, or history, this is an easy buy. You can tell a great deal of love went into this project.

If I had one quibble it's that I'd like to have spent more time in the Dark Hill Museum of Death.

Needs More String Lights

Edit: A Labor of Love!

I haven't written a review in... six existential crises, so forgive me if I'm a bit rusty.

Parkasaurus is a park management game with a twist: your park is full of dinosaurs, like that one movie. And I know what you're gonna say, reader - "but aren't there lots of management games coming out lately?"

I mean, yeah.

"And really competent ones too, like Theme Hospital?"

Absolutely.

But does Theme Hospital have dinosaurs? To the best of my knowledge, no.

And it isn't like one of the soulless, AAA, generic management type titles. Parkasaurus drips with charm and character. Each dino friend will have a different preferred biome, each dino friend can be equipped with ridiculous hats, different restaurants serve different items, and so on and so forth. There's just a lot to keep you busy here; from making the perfect enclosure that meets guest and dino requirements, to researching upgrades for your park, to digging up new friends (but when I dig up new friends it's WEIRD, apparently).

So you'll be looking at your googly eyed, hat sporting dinos poop and frolic in your park - a park you get to design how you'd like, with lots of assets and some of the minutia of management sims that players crave.

In a word, a park you can confidently call your own.

But is it without flaws? Nope. Haven't met a game yet without flaws except, of course, GOLF Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples. The digging minigame gets a little old after a while - you have a patch of Earth and each assigned scientist can dig a certain amount before running out of science energy; digging, of course, provides the DNA goodies you need to make more friends. But I prefer the passive "send expedition out/get fossils" gameplay. It's just a little tedious after a while, clicking on an expedition once or twice a day to click a bunch of dirt.

When your friends bust out (as friends are wont to do), there's a little musical cue, but I don't think much else? If you're in a different wing of the park you'll just have to scroll around until you find the fires and flying food trucks. And it all happens so fast... but maybe that's just some kind of commentary on the challenges of running a dinosaur park in Trump's America.

It's also a teensy bit lacking in overall variety (amount of dinos, dino behavior, biomes, hats). Don't get it twisted, though - still LOADS more variety than the some other dinosaur management sims, and I'm anticipating more content throughout development and possibly in potential, future DLC.

Overall, this is great fun, even in this early state. And it puts that other dinosaur park sim to shame.

Y'know, the AAA one.

The one with the bad movie tie in.

...

If you guessed The Predator you were WAY off.

Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth + Review!

Afterbirth -

Spoilers ahead; ye be warned.

I'm a huge fan of Isaac (See: previous ridiculous Bible verse-themed review), and so I was looking forward to this final expansion/mini DLC experience, pacing like an expecting father outside the maternity ward - waiting for the good news.

Instead of a human baby, as is the norm, the doctor team Nicalis stumbled out in a cloud of whiskey vapor with something resembling the "Basket Case" baby and handed me the bill.

Afterbirth + adds a bunch of things, most notably Steam workshop for mods, a new character, new bosses, a new end path, new difficulty for the not-exactly-beloved Greed mode, a handful of new items and trinkets, and an assload of bugs!

It's mostly a pile of flaming sick. For example, each new boss I've encountered is bad on the ATOMIC level, inside and out. They don't telegraph powerful moves, they move far too rapidly, they're hideous (in a game renowned for excellent and endearing pixel art), and in the case of the new final boss... well, he's just buggy, ugly, and broken to ♥♥♥♥; the king of ♥♥♥♥, if you will: teleporting around the room, suddenly becoming invulnerable, teleporting ON TOP of you - it isn't great.

They've also introduced some new portal-type enemy that can appear on every floor, spewing enemies until a set limit or until you've dispatched said portal. It's unbalanced and not in the spirit of Isaac... this DLC in general isn't in the spirit of Isaac. Tanky, bullet-hell bosses that no one asked for, a tougher Greed mode no one wanted, and a forced Hush fight if you want to fight the buggy, broken, disappointing boss-rush final boss of the game. Even the bestiary is lazy... what, no little blurb or factoid about each enemy? Just their health, location, and how many you've killed? They just couldn't be bothered.

I'm not impressed, even ignoring the Antibirth-sized elephant in the room. Afterbirth + is lazy, broken in a number of exciting ways, and not fun - certainly not worth the entrance fee. I believe the folks at Nicalis have run out of ideas (around Afterbirth), and it shows. Why we had to pay for this "shrug, beats me!" of an expansion is beyond me.

Will some of the more egregious bugs be patched - some items nerfed and buffed (mostly nerfed)? Absolutely.

However, unless there's some drastic improvements I can't recommend the equivalent of a creative shart - no matter how hilarious that sounds.

This isn't the sendoff Isaac deserved.

Edit: lots of patches; still not great.

Love is Blind

Full Disclosure: Review Copy Provided by Developer/Publisher!

Ian's Eyes is not very good at all... which is a crying shame. An interesting concept and a cool Coraline-y (albeit low fidelity) aesthetic is ultimately marred by some bewildering game design choices, awful voice acting, an uninteresting story, unlikable characters, and ultimately poor, repetitive, unfun gameplay.

A lot of love when into this one, though, which makes this a difficult review.

But I digress.

It's Ian's first day of school, a Jimmy Neutron lookin' young man voiced by Elijah Wood if Elijah's voice went through some kind of horrible modulator that made it more grating and awful. You're his seeing eye dog, North, a... Golden retriever, maybe? I don't know, he's small and has creepy eyes and a stingray mouth.

You're given a brief tour of the school by Principal Bates (henceforth Principal Masturbates because I'm immature), who looks like Captain Ahab and is voiced by Tommy Wiseau after a botched lobotomy (the tour works like a tutorial, showcasing gameplay mechanics). Now this first day is special because it happens to be the centenary of the school's establishment. Unfortunately for you and your human, something goes terribly wrong and everyone, staff and students included, turns into mindless, blind zombies. As North, you have to guide young, obnoxious Ian out.

And ♥♥♥♥ me sideways if that just isn't the biggest, most boring chore. If you were thinking this might be a scary experience you'd be mistaken: when you're caught it quickly fades to black and you're greeted with a tally of your deaths. Then you're back at the last checkpoint, which are blessedly fairly frequent. However, if Ian had a bit of dialogue before your untimely death, every time you come back he utters his dialogue again AND AGAIN in case you'd forgotten. And if it's a particularly challenging hallway to navigate anticipate having “we have to get to the library, North!” or something burned into your frontal lobe.

The dialogue, as badly as it's delivered, is written poorly. "We have to wait for help, North," is uttered by Ian and, in the same breath, "I guess help isn't coming." JUST CHILL DUDE, MAYBE HELP IS STILL COMING. "Let's wait for Principal Masturbates," he says to North. "BARK," North replies, his creepy mouth opening and closing slowly as he struggles to presumably breathe as he is the unholy byproduct of golden retriever and stingray copulation. "You're right North, Principal Masturbates is not coming back." WHAT? WHY? NO! This happens A LOT, and near the end there's a hilarious exchange with Principal Masturbates that tries to be powerful and is anything but.

It may have been my favorite moment in the entire game.

Let that wash over you.

The baddies, who travel on preset paths, notice you if you're too close or loud. You can use North's sick barking skillz to lure them off their paths – sometimes they wander back, sometimes they stay where you've lured them. And that's the primary gameplay. Going from room to room, hallway to hallway, avoiding the same five or six kids and teachers. I encountered one (now two! Except the second one might be broken!) lazy puzzle in the library... and I think that was it? I'm currently stuck in a particularly hellish room but I don't think I'll press on for my own sanity. (Author's Note: TOTALLY got past that bit and I'm at the very end. There's a classic (read: hastily googled by dev) riddle puzzle but the game absolutely refuses to register my answer... and sometimes the event doesn't trigger at all after reading the passage. Soooooo I guess I'm definitely finished now! Not that the ending could save this drek - it could dispense blowjobs, world peace, and cakes and it would still be awful!)

If the game was even a little fun it'd be fine – I love a challenge. It's boring. Running up and down a hallway, giving blind kids the slip as you go from one side of the school to the other to find out if a door is locked? Not fun. Wandering down a hallway and blundering into an enemy because the fixed camera deemed it necessary? Not fun. Navigating a narrow hallway populated by a half dozen enemies using weird, clunky, not-super-responsive controls? Not fun. Worst of all, I don't give three blind mice worth of asses about North or Ian or Principal Masturbates Furiously. The whole damn plot is them trying to leave the school and... that's it. I guess there's THE MYSTERY as to why the kids and staff went all EVIL, and there are cassette tapes to collect that... might glean on that? But it isn't worth the headache.

Ian's Eyes could have been good... maybe a bit more time in the creative oven, with a few more people working on the project? This wasn't the case, and good intentions only count in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RQwDGIhqDc

The Most Dangerously Boring Game

Full disclosure: review copy provided by developer/publisher!

I find myself waking up on a mysterious island... deposited, as it were, for a television series or some billionaire's sick death competition or something. All I've got to go on is a single note: 'The only way off the island is through the other 99.'

Cryptic.

Ominous.

Sexy.

Winklepicker.

These words and more come to mind as I set off in the hopes of finding civilization or whatever. Ten paces and I find two bottles of water – so far, so good. Five paces after that I find a corpse – not super great. A note, stuck to his chest and slick with blood, suggest there are 100 people on this island, and I have to kill everyone who isn't me to “win.”

This is what Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and the Rio Olympics have trained me for, however. It's hardly my first murderdome, and it won't be my last. I grab a stick conveniently next to dead note guy and press onward. It isn't long before I find his murderer, sitting at his campfire, staring off into space, thinking about murderer stuff. I sneak up behind him and he rises, RAMROD STIFF, and turns to face me like some horrible terminator. “U WOT M8?!” The doorag-wearing cockney cries, charging me with a lit torch. Everything slows down as I smack him once, twice, thrice, fourthrice, fifthrice – my stick, stalwart companion that it was, breaks. It's up to my fists. I lose track of time and he dies, collapsing in a heap, all twitchy and boneless.

I glance at my watch: 98. I have a lot of killing to do. I hope I don't lose myself to bloodlust or something.

And after I dispatch another 30ish cockneys with doorags and sticks I decide maybe I should have been more concerned about the bloodbore.

The Other 99 is a... singleplayer, first-person survival-action-horror game where you, the player character, must murder everyone else on a desolate island off the coast of Scotland so that you can, presumably, leave.

And it isn't really that good, if you couldn't tell from my opening bit. I guess I'll start off with listing some things that are good about this game. The concept is pretty cool, if not entirely original. As you beat on an enemy their face will bloody, which is nice. Once I saw an enemy notice me, light a torch, and come looking for me. That was very organic, and I was impressed. There also appears to be dynamic weather Oh, and people just die... killed by fellow AI or hilarious accidents, but out of sight. Hypothetically you could probably just hide in a cave until there's one other person. That's kinda interesting.

On to the bad stuff! Jeez, where to begin. It's poorly optimized, with the framerate dipping constantly – really impressive considering the island you explore could have very well been made with Far Cry's map editor. The combat, which should be a strong point, is just goofy. Stick, torch, pipe, boneclub, fists – it didn't matter what weapon I used, I killed everyone I encountered with ease. They just kind of get stunlocked and... well, die. I didn't have to block or dodge or anything, just wander up and pummel.

Chivalry/Zeno Clash combat, this is not.

There are notes scattered throughout the island that convey the struggles of survivors: “Jenny got gassy and the tribe voted to throw her out but then she killed everybody and this is Jenny,” or “I locked up Adam because he was huge and scary so hopefully he starves to death and I win,” and every note has doodles and blood on it. There's also a great deal of graffiti on this island. “THEY DID THIS TO US,” a rock message purports, with a drawing of helicopters. What, did the helicopters do this to you? Why are you wasting energy drawing passive-aggressively?

That's how the story is being revealed so far, unless I'm missing something. Didn't really capture the imagination, either way.

Finally, it's just... empty, and most damningly, boring. The island is mostly empty save for 99 white, bald cockneys who sometimes wear doorags (once there was a black guy, but just the once), there's no crafting element implemented yet (and what it will add to the experience when I can just kill everyone with my fists, I haven't a clue), you consume things in the pause menu, and when you die it just cuts to black (cliffs are more dangerous than the denizens of this island).

“But it's early access,” some will certainly moan.

It still has to sell me on what it CAN be, on its potential, and what The Other 99 has presented really doesn't sell me. After I glance at my death watch and see I have another... 50ish jerks to kill, and I groan? That isn't fun, that's a chore. It's not thrilling, it isn't scary, it isn't good.

The Other 99 doesn't have a soul of its own; just another early access “kill everyone/survive/craft” game waving for your attention in a sea of equally unambitious flops and turds. Maybe over the course of the EA development things will be fleshed out... like actual, compelling combat, a variety of enemies, and an explanation as to why evil, sentient helicopters are abducting cockneys and leaving them to kill one another on an island.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4bfg0dRF1E