Recent reviews by Panther

The game has style, it has a somewhat zen atmosphere, it's mysterious, it's interesting, it starts nicely. Until you actually play it a couple of hours and realize what it is.

It's been said a million times: the game doesn't "respect your time". How I see the meaning of the phrase, there's a lot of walking from a place to another with a tedious pace. There are a lot of puzzles which could be skipped: they offer nothing new and most of the ordinary puzzles could be done on pen and paper - there's no need for a computer game, let alone walking in one.

That leads to my biggest disappointment with The Witness: the game mechanics offered by the 3D game engine and the world aren't used that much. The environmental puzzles give you this "oh, that's clever" feeling the first few times, but it gets old latest by the time you realize even the movies include not just one but a bunch of them. You then start to realize what a time waster the game actually is.

Out of the 500+ regular 2D puzzles I think half could be just easily thrown away. And out of the 100+ environmental puzzles only a dozen should remain and be the key to solving the mystery. A lot of times I could see there's a puzzle, and I could even see the solution to it, but I just couldn't be bothered to solve it as it would have required a lot of tedious work in-game.

The game had a few extremely good moments: some puzzles such as the keep with it's mazes which, when solved as environmental puzzles, required some thinking out of the box. I also loved the cloud puzzle, which should've been the ending. But other than those, I don't think I actually enjoyed The Witness that much or had a feeling of accomplishment. I tried the secret challenge area at the end quite a few times, but realized the satisfaction it would've given me would've been negligible and thus I gave up trying.

I can only recommend the game in two cases: you have zero urge to finish a game you've started, you can just enjoy a game for a few hours and then uninstall it. This is the recommended route: it will give you a few nice puzzles and a couple moments of awe. The other case is if you're looking for a time waster, something to put 40+ hours in looking for some puzzles to solve. If neither case suits you, skip this game. Play Antichamber, The Talos Principle or even Disoriented instead.

A few bugs here and there, controls are awkward. Funny as f*ck, Would get my pole polished in a closet next to a porn star while she's filming a chick ride a dude again. if you can tolerate ultra-realistic humor, get it.

A really fun game especially played in local co-op. The progress system feels a bit grindish at first, but it's actually not bad at all. The game gives you new weapons and other stuff to keep it interesting and fun all the way to the end. There are also little secrets here and there, making you want to replay some stuff, which is a necessity anyway to finish the game.

There could be an option for different loadouts when playing in co-op, as it would allow a more tactical approach to the missions. The levels are very enjoyable, but there could always be more and some special ones. And there could be a better ending, not just an easy mission proceeded by a bunch of text. But these are just thoughts on how to improve an already good game.

Jydge is very enjoyable, I totally recommend it.

The game looks nice and funny, but unless it hits your taste exactly, it's super boring. There's really only four functions in the game: move left, move right, jump and slide. Apparently there's a grappling hook also, although I didn't get to try it.

I am a Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Meat Boy fan, but this game is nothing like those at all. In Sonic you have speed and in SMB you have real challenge and options. This game has butt slides. Unlike the masters of this game, I really don't care if starting my butt slide happens now or the next frame, the end result is still a butt slide.

We've just began playing the game co-operatively, but are dying of laughter. Get it, now!

I rewrote my review because of one critical menu option change. Please read on if you are interested in solo play and Flatout.

Having had extremely fun times with Flatout: Ultimate Carnage, I bought Wreckfest back in 2014 when it first came to Early Access. I waited all the way until it was released before installing it, as I wanted it purely for the single player career mode, which I enjoyed a lot in Flatout. This review is for the career mode only.


Unfortunately, Wreckfest is not like Flatout. The career mode is put together way too quickly, resulting in a really unbalanced, frustrating experience. The first cup was a walk in the park. Then in the second, I had to suddenly grind lots of credits to buy a new car to be able to progress. So I did a dozen derby runs with a car against lawnmovers.

Suddenly with a new car the driving difficulty skyrocketed and I wasn't sure what happened, but I always finished pretty much dead last. Everything was frustrating and felt like grinding. You didn't win, so you had no money to buy upgrades, which you'd need to progress. And repeat this x10 with tracks way too similar to each other. With no minimap, you have to learn every turn in every track by heart, which again means more grinding and repetition. Having played for like 8 hours I still hadn't experienced any sensation of speed or fun. The game was starting to feel extremely repetitive, frustrating and boring. The crashes were nice, but if you ever saw one, you were in one, ruining your race.


But then I found the menu option, which changed everything. If you're used to playing most games on hard difficulty, you'll probably do as I did and just start with hard. That also turns off the stability control driving aid, which pretty much makes your car not to have shock absorbers whatsoever. Turning that to "half" setting made my placings go from dead last to easy win, making cash and free upgrade parts come in. Also, now I can drive with the heaviest car available and use the realistic damage model, and the races actually start to feel somewhat fun!

The good things about the game, with the critical menu option set correctly:
- Crashes feel nice at times.
- Game looks good and runs good even on an older computer (2012 high-end).
- There are some special races which are fun, such as driving a school bus against supervans or vice versa.

However, even after finding the menu option I'm still not recommending the game, because:
- I wasted like 9 hours before finding the option, which shouldn't even exist. It's not a driving aid if it completely changes the game and how your car behaves even if it shouldn't (e.g. free rolling slowly). What's worse is it's the default option on hard difficulty. Some people for sure miss the option, ruining the game.
- The game still feels quite repetitive and boring. The tracks are way too similar. Update: I have now finished the career mode. Races in the end were 20% super exciting, 80% super boring. If there's a 12 (let alone 24) lap race, the AI players might be dead within the first two laps. Then it's just you driving in circles. If it was only 3 laps, then it was good.
- No minimap, although it's not that critical once you've grinded enough.
- The UI is still horrible, although you get used to it after a while.
- Soundtrack is pretty bad. I loved the soundtrack in Flatout but this isn't like that.
- Small bugs here and there. Nothing major during the driving itself, but sometimes the stats of the car or the parts you have are all messed up. Also, at least for the Hotshot car, tire look affects performance, which shouldn't be the case.

In short, buy Flatout: Ultimate Carnage instead.

Now that Wreckfest is finally leaving early access, I was hoping this game would work as a nice appetizer. Unfortunately, it does almost all the things a bit wrong and just manages to frustrate.

This has got to be the worst case of rubber band AI ever with everyone finishing withing a couple of seconds of each other, no matter what happens during the race. The controls feel sluggish and there's too much random factor involved in everything, including shooting. Every race starts with you in the last place and this one guy in pole position. Coincidentally, the same guy always happens to win the race and miraculously appears out of nowhere even if you were about to drive to victory. If they would've just made the AI fair, you could actually feel a sense of accomplishment. Now it's just all made up excitement and it ends up being super boring and frustrating. Winning races isn't exactly that hard on normal difficulty, it's just how the races go are boring.

To progress in the game you must grind more or less repetitive races over and over again, and your prize is yet another car which is basically just 5% or so "better" than your previous one - i.e. the car has 5% more hit points, it's 5% faster etc. The same is true for all the upgrades. There doesn't seem to be any variety after unlocking a few cars, and the handling remains terrible. And you always have to buy the best car available to overcome the AI, which means buying the same upgrades over and over again. I only played through the first tournament, but the game hasn't exactly got me hooked yet. I'd like to play an arcade driving game, but I'm leaning towards Carmageddon at the moment.

Technically a good job - in four hours I bumped into just one bug, so it seems solid enough. Visually, not much to complain either, and customizing the look of the cars is fun. The audio on the other hand is mediocre at best.

It's a shame really, as there aren't that many modern car shooter games, and this one could've been actually fun. It needs a bit more variety, less grinding, and less rubber banding. Try it if you get it on sale.

Pretty chill and funny game, if you take this kind of stuff with humour. At least me and my friend got a few good laughs out of it. Game runs smoothly and the devs worked on the early access game consistently and finished it A-OK!

Sometimes a bit frustrating (aren't all puzzles), but most of the time relaxing and more importantly, rewarding. The puzzles are for the most part pretty good and challenging enough not to feel boring. I played a few levels every now and then to relax. It took me a few hours in total to finish the game, which I think is the perfect length for a game like this.

Took me a couple of hours to get into, but once you do get the hang of it, the story really hooks you up.

At times the game is a bit obscure and you are wondering what to do next. There's a ton of different combinations and strategies available by combining different kind of team members, and some items you can only guess what they are for. I don't usually play these kind of games (RPG maker), but with a story and world so fascinating, I made an exception. A solid game, recommended if you aren't too sensitive a person and if you can just bear the slow beginning.