Recent reviews by geyik

Serve the Emperor today, tomorrow you may be dead.

Do you love Warhammer universe and are you a human? If so, come along.

If not... this game is probably not for you. If I'm to get objective for a second, this game is not good. Level design is simplistic to a fault, same for combat loop. Story would be even worse.

But still I like this game. Why? Because Warhammer 40K brings something primal to the surface. It's simple, brutal and unforgiving. It can be said to be "heavy metal to the bone". I delighted in crushing my enemies like ripe tomotoes to the point that I overlooked all the simplicity of level design, gameplay and story. (Except one issue that even I couldn't enjoy: melee combat is fun, but game cannot seem to decide between melee and ranged. Like, are we the players encouraged to go melee or discouraged? A reasonable answer is "a mix between the two", but there are times when it's not feasible.) Thus I recommend this game only to other Warhammer 40K enthusiasts.

I love this game... kind of.

I also like playing slitherlink. I mastered it enough that I feel like I'm successful at it. It may serve no other purpose, but why expect or demand more from Sunday puzzle?

And you might have gathered that this game is similar to slitherlink: there's a core gameplay loop and everything in it works great. There's combat, stealth, driving and gliding, riddles and side missions. What purpose do those things serve, though? Well, if you want to treat this a Sunday puzzle let's forego this question, we may say it is okay to do those things for their own sake. If so, sure, go ahead. If you want to engage in what I listed above this is a fine game.

Thing is, though, it wants to be more than Sunday puzzle. Why, it beats me, but when we're asked to interpret it as a whole, we're faced with a series of disconnected set pieces. Or rather, this is the filler of Arkham games. Nothing really makes sense, Batman is a huge jerk, and we keep on punching people.

Writers seem to be aware of it. When read at a metatextual level, self-awareness of all the usual comic book shenanigans is delicious. Batman is a huge jerk in this game, and most fun I had was when various characters openly or tongue-in-cheek call him on it (not that he ever realizes it but still).

If this was a Batman movie, it'd be terribly boring. If this was a Batman comic, it'd be even worse. As a game, high quality of gameplay loop makes up for it, but only barely.

oh me oh my how did i not review The Swapper so far? like, this is a game so influential that i keep recommending it left and right as the go-to mind-blowing sci-fi puzzle platformer. writing is A-grade sci-fi, puzzles are fulfilling (i mean, not great great, but pretty good) and art is gorgeous. like, i don't want to get all hipster-y but really it's a great shame that they couldn't market it more aggressively: more people need to know this gem because they WILL like it. you will too if you like the boxes this game check.

beklemediğim kadar sardı: eski-usül bir macera oyunu, ancak bir şekilde iç mizahı yeterince cezbetti, bulmacalar da sıkmadı. arada ufak bir doğaüstü gizem hissi de var (henüz oyunun 3/5'indeyim sanırım) ama bence esas başarısı kendini bana hiç fark ettirmeden 3 saat oynatabilmesi: benim için genelde 1 saat oynamak bir ara vermek için iyi bir nokta oluyor.

ek: oyunu bitirdim, ikinci yarısı biraz daha zayıf. doğaüstü tarafı pek iyi kotaramamışlar ama olsun, bu gene de denenmesine engel değil.

worst of all were the controls.

it starts off strong, but quest at hand feels tedious to put it lightly. mechanics are terrible. characterization not bad, world hit-or-miss (it's a miss for me)

i'd recommend the swapper for better mind-blowing sci-fi puzzle/platformer action.

ehhh... i had 2 complaints (that i solved) with the game, but overall it's a fun little puzzler that is very cheap. 1 buck for 2 hours? sure, why not give it a try?

my complaints? i thought PoV was fixed. however, we can rotate the view with right click and zoom in-out with mouse wheel. so all is fine!

I received this game when developer randomly gave me a key. This was a nice enough gesture that I promised "to leave a positive review if i liked, and not to leave a negative one if i hadn't" which they assured me it wasn't expected either way.

So with disclosure out of the way, I can now in good conscience say that: "yes, this is a short and good-enough game." As a matter of fact, an old review of mine holds verbatim here:

Originally posted by re Out There Somewhere:

short but promising. i'm curiously waiting for developer's next game.

Overall this is more like an exercise in level design and a proof of concept. A good portfolio piece. Not expensive at all so accessible to boot! Platform lovers: why not give it a try?

meh, 1 dollar for an hour of not-so-bad puzzles. sure, go ahead. at that duration, even bad puzzles wouldn't overstay their welcome and these are not bad. they're just... not very challenging/ complex in nature. and that price point, you don't get to complain. so what you're (or are not) buying is: a cheap, short and not-hard (let's not say easy) puzzles.

Ah, you beast of mountain, Celeste, how easy you are to love!

Like our redheaded protagonist Madeline, I too attempted this climb at a bad moment in my life. Why? Truth be told, after last year's The End Is Nigh I didn't see myself falling for another precision platformer, but a let's play series changed my mind: This was, without a doubt, cutest game of the year and I needed that. I needed a run-of-the-mill success story in my life. This doesn't mean the story is bad, far from it, but one can find it a little on the nose. Which is perfectly fine. Again, I needed the game telling me that "i can do this."

So, what's the deal with story? Very briefly, Celeste is a supernatural mountain and Madeline's inner demons don't want her there. But she made her mind, she will make it to the summit. If conquering the mountain requires conquering inner fears, so be it! Friends you make along the way is just the cherry on top (or is it? Can one truly conquer demons without a little help from one's friends?)

Okay, so story is what brought me to foot of this mountain, but that alone can't compel me to make it to summit. No, dear reader, this game offers possibly the best platforming of the year. What's delightful is that developers are extremely generous with player expression. You can make the game as easy or as hard as you like. No, I'm not just talking of assist mode (but it's there) but also: There are 7+1 levels, with +1 being optional. There are pickups you may or may not choose to collect, some (casette tapes) offering hard-mode levels and some (strawberries) offering nothing at all.
So if you're here just for the story, make yourself invulnerable and walk through the levels. If you want the base game alone, climb the mountain (which, according to speedrunners, can be done in 29 minutes). For a casual playthrough, pick some strawberies along the way. Further challenge? Get all of them. Further-er challenge? +1 optional level. Furthest challenge? Hard-mode levels. Furthest-er challenge? Completing hard-mode levels unlock hardest-mode levels. Furthest-est challenge? Do them... without dying a single time this time. (Disclaimer: I'm currently on last hard-mode level, not daring to put myself through that ordeal just yet. I don't think I have it in me to attempt hardest-mode.)(Addendum: Okay nevermind, I have beaten last hard-mode level, and also, 5 out of 8 hardest-mode levels. Turns out I had it in me.)
And yet, despite all these sadistically brutal levels of difficulty, developer doesn't mind if you don't play them. Quite the contrary, loading screens remind you that dying in the game is natural and expected and further, celebrated. They tell you to take regular breaks. You, as a player, feel loved, just as you come to love Madeline.

And the gameplay? One of the most active speedrunning communities today give their seal of approval: tight as a stubborn bottle cap. Is it perfect? For most players (that is, if you don't attempt to push the game to its limits) you won't see any flaws in it. (Note: this doesn't mean flawless, but for allmost intents and purposes it is. Of course, not everyone has to love precision platformers but if you do like precision platformers DO NOT MISS THIS ONE.
And the visuals? One word: Delightful. Art style is brilliant, and cute, and weirdly experimental at times. Main game is pixel-art, but character portraits and level completion screens are hand-drawn cartoon-like, but level-select screen is 3D. And all meshes beautifully together. Uniquely coherent.
And the audio? First, characters' gibberish speech straight up doubles their lovable natures. Music? Very successful, especially considering dying dozens of time on a screen can send you to a blind rage. Music doesn't get on your nerves at any point. At each level there are enough of variation, but they are composed thematically together. The only way I can see players bored of music is if they start challenge-runs and their time spent on levels reach 10 hour a piece. Then yes, it may get repetitive but come on now, "remember to take regular breaks." (I may be selling the soundtrack a bit short, let me be clearer: I like it so that I occassionally listen to it by itself.)

And thus I too stood atop a mountain, watching the sunrise/set at the horizon below. I didn't know it at the time but the game was right: I could do it. And I'm ever grateful for the game believing in me, and giving me a cute surrogate that I could believe in, in turn. Madeline, Theo, Maddy and Noel; thanks for all.

You know what saddens me the most? It's that the developers cared about this game. Yet this game is shrouded in unbelievable amounts of bad design decisions that I can't wrap my head around it. Want to see what I mean for yourself? As an experiment buy this game, progress enough and get to the cannon minigame: it is so bad that it deserves to be studied by itself. Yet it's not an isolated incident but rather an encapsulation of everything this game fails to deliver.

So this is a game that was 10 years in the making, with gorgeous visuals, no doubt about it. Apart from visuals, what does it bring to the table? It can be likened to run-and-gun levels of Cuphead (as opposed to boss sections of it) which tries and fails to tell a captivating story. Where and how does it fail? Because it's a story of heroics-gone-wrong, with little player agency. It's like storyteller is shouting at us, knowing in full that we can't resort back: "Why? What did we wrong? Tell me, help me improve!" But no, you will succeed in failing: that's the only thing game allows you to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not particularly against failure or good-deed-gone-wrong, but here it's at a complete odd with the scenery. It's pastel, colorful, cheerful, playful. Even the "big bad"s are beaked robots calling themselves pirates. Completely impossible to instill a sense of seriousness, apart from all the loss we're dealt. For player growth through failure there needs to be a more somber tone than this game provides.

Also gameplay is incredibly frustrating. How did developers agreed to implement them I'll never know but I can guess: spending 10 years on any is a surefire way to get tunnel visioned: your bad ideas don't appear bad anymore, after all those are the only ideas around. And you learn to walk around problems they present because you've been dealing with them from day 1. So all in all this might have been the only game they knew, so there was no problem in shipping it like this because they couldn't imagine any other Owlboy anymore.

What do I mean by frustrating? I told player agency being limited from a narrative standpoint: This holds true from gameplay side too. You don't shoot, you carry teammates that shoot for you (you do the aiming, so it's not automatic) which shouldn't be too different from otherwise but it is: Whenever you take damage you drop your gun, so you need to reequip it while trying to dodge tons of enemies swarming you. Enemies swarm you and most have the same colour palette as you do, therefore making it almost impossible to distinguish who is who in the midst of chaos. Further, levels are large and displayed in limited portions with transitions being abrupt and discontinuous. When you get exit the screen from left you enter the next one from right though since level is loaded there will be active enemies that will damage you making you unable to fight back and make you not distinguish who's who. I can't begin to express how frustrating that was. (Solution: keep your character fixed and let environment roll around you a la Cave Story. Was is impossible in this game's context? Not my problem!)
Another thing: this game can't decide if it wants to be action packed or tactical. Movement is slow, there are cooldowns, enemies are not very energetic, but on occasion you'll need to mash buttons or move quickly. Why? What do you want me to do, game?!

I may finish the game, I may not, but either way don't buy into the hype that was gorgeous visuals. Watch some in-depth gameplay first.