Recent reviews by Shaleblade

A cute & short 3D platformer with a simple, decently-explored central mechanic. Its level design generally mitigates the inherently finicky nature of judging trajectory. I didn't find it compelling enough to 100%, but I enjoyed my time with it, and definitely appreciated the attention to two charismatic endangered species. 7/10.

Goodbye Volcano High had me worried at first. It started slow with familiar, somewhat tropey high school drama. However, it picked up momentum and weight as it went. The final third of the game solidly brings it home, hitting with emotional resonance to our own pre-apocalypse in a way that everything else I've experienced would be too cowardly to not subvert. The shaky start and occasional misses were well worth the impact it left. 🌠 (4/5 stars)

an exceptionally fun & clever Minesweeperlike that unfortunately got too hard for me about 2/3rds of the way in. 😔 Don't let that discourage anyone - I easily got what I wanted out of the game

Definitely not for every imsim/Arkane fan, but I got a lot out of the invasion system. Played as Julianna for a friend's entire playthrough, and the cat & mouse that lead to was like nothing I've experienced before.

4.5/5 Stars

I ended up drifting towards & away from this game a lot, and getting back into it was sometimes hard. Sticking with it was really rewarding; I really appreciate the various ways each character related to rust belt despair. Bea was my ride-or-die for this run and I don't regret it for a second, though I'm looking forward to replaying it in the future seeing what spending time with Gregg's like.

4/5 Stars

Played through it 4-player co-op the whole way through. Much of the game's fun comes from the emergent gameplay, which the co-op does wonders to facilitate. The campaign's writing is unfortunately all over the place, mostly forgettable and occasionally Definitely Not Good. There are a lot of problematic elements for people smarter & more motivated than me to pick apart, but I can at least safely say that a race war did not enhance the game's narrative.

4/5 Stars

Absolutely flawed, but incredibly charming. Legendary co-op was the perfect challenge level for me. A+ jank. 4/5 Stars

The transition to 3D was rocky and didn't allow for much depth, though exploration was fun. (Rope physics were also a bit more... adventurous? Which was neat - there were times where you had to wrap rope around something.) Then, boss fight! Wow, it's actually good, too! And... the game abruptly ends. Like, I cannot overstate how abruptly this game ends. If you've got 3 friends who happen to already own it, it's not a bad way to spend an afternoon, but I can't quite recommend spending money on it.

2.5/5 Stars

Vomitorium doesn't have a lot of inventive ideas to bring to either the metroidvania or FPS genre, but the (seemingly Giger-inspired) horror aesthetics and clippy pace (takes roughly 3 hours to 100%) make it go down easy.

Could definitely use a content warning for sexual violence (nothing visual).

3.5/5 Stars

One of the most egregious examples I've seen of good ideas stretched out far beyond their viability. Fully completing this game takes about 10 hours (16+ if you're voice acting the game with friends), and its charm and intrigue fade far before you'll see any "true ending" that resolves overarching plotlines. This game needed drastic cuts - if it were a third of its length, it would have been a solid 7/10. But its problems extend beyond feeling like chewing on the same piece of gum for too long.

Its characters are a mix of one-note archetypes ("the snooty rich one," "the shy childhood friend") and One Joke ("the narcoleptic teacher," "the lolrandom one [athletic]," "the lolrandom one [anime]"). A few of them receive some development (contained either to their character-specific ending or the "true ending" arc) and most of which receive eleventh-hour Emotional Dramatic Twists™. It would be easier to gloss over the weak parts if they didn't stick around for so long, but many of them weren't stellar material to begin with. A couple character arcs manage to earn a drop of genuine pathos, but more try their hardest and come off as unearned and incongruous.

The central plot is similarly thin & disappointing. I had hoped that, after so much drudgery in completing all the other endings, it would redeem the game, or at least end on a strong note. Unfortunately, everything teased in bits & pieces is resolved in a final arc with a hodgepodge of revelations, ranging from "huh that's kind of interesting" to "that's it?"

There's little else to praise the game for. Aside from the fun human drawings of the cast, the art is almost entirely just stock art. Many dramatic moments fall flat because of a lack of visuals, and the prose does not step up to the plate to compensate. The soundtrack, similarly, is all free-to-use music that can't shake feeling cheap. Typos, issues loading saves, and a poorly-implemented text skip feature don't help either. Hatoful Boyfriend was ultimately a disappointment - not just because of what it did wrong, but because of how thoroughly its good ideas were mired in mediocrity.

2/5 Stars