Recent reviews by Misty

Quite enjoyable to take quick trips around just hauling cargo and listening to books.

Back in 2016, I would've considered leaving a positive review for this game. It was, after all, a gem that had sleek controls, crisp visuals, and a nice noire-esque soundtrack. The story modes were interesting, and it had a cast of interesting characters. It's everything a girl like me loves. It's what eventually led me from Skullgirls into the Blazblue franchise.

It wasn't without its faults, though. Although the AI in the game made the story/arcade mode challenging, I found at the time that there were only three degrees on the scale of difficulty. The first degree considerably balanced, and left opportunities to learn and experiment. The second was aggressive; if you screwed around, it'd beat you down, as if to say "Am I a joke to you now?" Finally, there's psychotic. Sometimes, it's just relegated to bosses, but some characters just get this AI in general. It will drop you into a loop combo unless you start one yourself first. It's the game's way of saying, you don't get to see the end of this story until you learn how to break your character. Sure, it made it satisfying when you got to Bloody Marie and put her down, but it was still plenty frustrating.

So why would I be leaving a negative review now of all times?

Partially, it's in protest of the team that took over. People reacted negatively to changes made to the game a decade after its release—Nazi-esque imagery in a world where everybody is awful (how awful!), the very fan-service that practically funded the game's kickstarter, and the even removal of a lot of art from the digital art-book that people paid for—because it did not meet the new takeover dev's ideology. I'm not here to say if they're right or wrong, but they had a right to their opinions. It was a bit of a rug-pull, especially for a game that has certainly seen better days chart-wise, to be certain.

The dev's response to the reaction to this change was predictably poor. They ridiculed and mocked those who were upset. Some may have even made some unflattering accusations towards the user base. They doubled down and refused to accept the criticism. So the negative reviews started happening. People wanted anyone who looked at the game's storefront to be aware of the kind of devs they were dealing with.

So what happens? The devs complained to Valve. Claimed that all these negative reviews warning that product might no longer be as advertised and that the devs that took over were being shifty were 'off-topic' to get them removed. Real classy, I tell ya.

I don't expect they'll let this stay up, but stay away. Just let the game die with what little dignity it has left.

Summary

Pros:
Good Music - Great use of overarching leitmotifs
Interesting Characters/Designs
Crisp Animation
Fascinating Story
Skull Heart Arrhythmia

Cons:
Inconsistent difficulty scale
< 600 peak players in the last two weeks
Mobile dev team that took over behaves like internet crybullies

Nothing beats grinding out cards for first-turn-kill combos that utterly destroy the story mode.

Stardew Valley is one of the most relaxing games that is secretly a brain game. You start out with just a small amount of money, and you're left to build up money so you can slowly increase your productivity. Decide what to grow, how many animals to raise, do you want to go fishing, etc. After a while, you go from having a small farm that barely pulls a few thousand gold per month to turning out tens of thousands of gold a day. You too can become that one person farming tycoon!

Between the music, the fluid combat system, and the beautiful environments, what's not to like about this fantastic metroidvania?

DDR meets roguelike. Dunno what else you want me to tell you.

I am not ashamed to admit that most of my time spent playing this was spent hiding inside or behind things, crying for the xenomorph to go away. The later areas didn't help things.

I played the hell out of this back on the original Xbox back in the day, and I still feel the need to play this classic, regardless of how aged the system is. There's just something about the tale of Revan that hooks me.

I've got a lot to say about this game, but not all of it positive. TLDR; Good game, Wait for sale.

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Pros:

• Character Design, Visuals, and Animations: Gone are the days of the retro low-res character sprites and pixelart tiled level design. Each character has high resolution character sprites that are fluidly animated, and the traversable environments are all rendered in cell-shaded 2.5D.
  
• Music: Anybody that has played a Shantae game will tell you that it has some of the best music of the platforming genre. A lot of the more memorable leitmotifs from the series, such as the Burning Town and the main theme, return in a number of ways. This include such tracks as Neo-Burning Town, which retains its middle-eastern flair while also taking on a club-music feel, and Dance Through the Danger, which I'm admittedly biased about because Cristina Valenzuela (the voice actress for Shantae's spoken lines) provided A++ vocals for the song. Never get tired of hearing that woman sing. Like all Shantae Games, you'll be hard pressed not to find a track from its soundtrack that hooks you.
  
• Puzzles: The game loves to make you look for the solution to finding that one collectable you can see but not get to. At the same time though, they are never too difficult; it's usually just a matter of backtracking, and if you keep up with chatting with the NPCs, you'll never be short on hints. Just keep on exploring. Just be aware that some transformations completely kill puzzles, and some puzzles you can technically complete before you get the ability or power-up required to do them.
  
• Boss Battles: One thing I've always liked about the boss battles in the Shantae games is that they are almost always unique, and in Half-Genie Hero, it was no exception. One battle has you relying on bits of the environment introduced in a mission, while another has you running yourself in literal circles as you try to figure out how to actually damage the boss.

• Transformations: Lots of them. I won't spoil all of them, but a number of the classics from both the gameboy color Shantae title, as well as the returning forms and abilities from Risky Revenge make their return in Half-Genie Hero, in addition to a number of new ones to play with.
  
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  Cons:
  • Performance: For a modern game with such modest specs, Half-Genie Hero has its share. For one, the game has Vertical Sync permanently enabled and expects your monitor to have the exact refresh rate of 60Hz, meaning that if you're running on a 120Hz monitor, or you're playing on a TV at a non-60Hz refresh rate, such as one running at 1080i, you're going to have a bad time. It spazzes out on higher refresh rates, and on lower rates, sprites flicker, FPS caps at 30, and within the first minute of the game the camera goes epileptic before shooting off into the void. Even if you're running it at a 60Hz refresh rate on a progressive resolution—say 720p—and your system meets and exceeds the reccomended system specsthere's no guarantee you're going to get that smooth 60FPS the game expects to run at without a bit of fiddling. Case in point, I had to tell Radeon Settings to use the Frame Rate Target Control at 60 just to get that smooth 60 at 720p.
    
  • Level Design: To put it bluntly, the levels are incredibly short. Most of the dungeons consist of medium or large 'rooms' that require you to navigate back and forth through on the x and y axes, taking into account the elements and obstacles of that particular level. You might be required to hop across a series of platforms that fall if you stand on them for too long, or scale a tall room hopping from moving ring to moving ring. For the most part, it's a far cry from the Shantae standard of dungeons being a series of small interconnected rooms. Heck, it's so simplified that you don't even get a map this time around. This brings me to...
    
  • World: In the previous Instalment, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, you access to Scuttle Town as your 'hub', from which you had access to a boat which would take you to the world you would then need to navigate and explore, just to get to the dungeon. In Half-Genie Hero, the devs took the 'boat' and decided, "How about we just drop you right in the 'dungeon' and cut out the middle man." You just go to Skye's place, hop on her mode of transportation, and off you go to the dungeon select screen. Don't even get me started on Pirate's Curse vs. its predecessor. Of course, to account for the smaller world and bigger, they had to put in a lot of...
    
  • Padding: With only a series of short dungeons, the devs definitely seemed hard pressed to make sure the game lasted. To account for this, they utilized a number of things to pad out the game. Backtracking was always a big thing in previous Shantae Games, but a lot of it could usually be mitigated by knowing where something was ahead of time. There wasn't TOO much that hinged on you having a specific transformation, or a particular ability for said transformations. I'm not talking about little mini-puzzles that force you to use specific transformations and problem solving, I'm talking about the things that draw things out such as the mouse form mazes, or one-off abilities such as sonar for the bat transformation, which is used for all of one puzzle that can technically be solved without it. You see that collectable on display right out in the open where you can't get it because you don't have a specific ability? You're going to be tormented by those a lot for three quarters of the game until you get that power you don't have. Then of course you have things like rings that disappear from the foreground or the infamous disappearing platforms. If you've played the classic Megaman games, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They're just a right pain to get the timing down on, which just creates...
    
  • Artificial Difficulty: I just want to say that Half-Genie Hero is not a hard game. That said, it does have segments that will make you want to tear your hair out. For example, in the very final dungeon, you are required to use your Harpy transformation to navigate a series of spiked walls, some of which were moving. This might not have been so bad if the game actually gave you reason to use said transformation [which was only just acquired AFTER the second to last dungeon] and some practice, but you're basically thrown into the deep end of the pool with cement sneakers on, and you've been missing leg day lately. It is basically Flappy Bird in that section. You have an early segment where you're in a restricted movement auto-scroller, and you need to rely on reflexes and skill to not miss a jump or hit something that will inevitably damage you. This kind of segment returns after the final boss and is cranked up to 11, with shorter platforms, the rings where if you're not placed just right, you will miss and go back to the start, and wall of death that continues to take up more and more of the screen, making the segment a game of memory and reflex as you end up with less and less space to work with. It was, apparently, difficult enough that the devs removed your life bar for this segment. I can only imagine how bad it would have been otherwise.
    
  • Stretch Goals: In case it wasn't readily apparent, Half Genie Hero is a kickstarter game, and budget can be blamed for some of the shortness. Two of the levels in this really short game were in fact stretch goals. Yep, the game would be shorter if those goals hadn't been met. Iterestingly enough, the very first stretch goal, a mode where you play as Risky Boots, is not present as of this review, and is slated as Coming Soon. So in a way, the launch exclusion of Risky Mode, coupled with the performance issues kinda gives the game an Early Access feel rather than a full launch.

The Binding of Isaac is a game for people who have time to kill, and want to do it in the most self-hating way possible. The RNG will make you rage, and you'll no-doubt get some BS deaths. You WILL learn from your mistakes though. Other 'hard games' have the other players to tell you, "Git gud," but as a solo game, you are the only one who can tell yourself that.