Recent reviews by Silver Fox

i paid full price for this game and played it like twice

please buy shellshot arena for me

hatsune miku

Sonic

poop

SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated is a remake of the original collectathon game from 2003 that aims to be as faithful to the original game as it possibly can, and in my opinion they did a pretty good job of it! I played the original game as a kid, and seeing all these old locations with the new art style was a lot of fun.

The game itself still holds up well in my opinion, the structure is similar to Super Mario 64 where you need to collect a certain amount of Golden Spatulas to open up new areas to explore. There are 3 areas in the hub which you slowly unlock, to unlock the next areas you have to get a certain number of spatulas and fight a boss to move on. The bosses are a lot of fun, they feel more developed than the typical "hit the boss in the weak spot 3 times with no changes to their attack patterns". My only issue with the structure is the levels are pretty linear and you just get most of the spatulas by getting to the end of sections in the level, it's not really a bad thing but on replays I feel like there won't be much variety in which objectives you can choose to complete.

With the remake itself, the controls feel pretty good and the soundtrack has been remastered a little. The voices from the original game have not been updated, which is a bit of a shame for Mr. Krabs in particular since they probably could have been, seems like it's an issue with Nickelodeon and not the game devs though? In terms of issues, I kinda wish the level didn't reload when you died, not really an issue for me since I have fast loading times but I imagine it could be an issue for some people. It also resets the music which is a bit annoying. Characters also face towards the camera during certain actions like the bubble bowl and sliding which makes it a bit hard to look around. Finally, and this is the worst change, the price for Mr. Krabs spatulas were increased by a lot which just means you have to do a lot of grinding when you're done with the game, I really hope this one gets patched!

Overall, this is a really good remake that should please all of the fans who played the original. It does lack a bit of polish, I found a lot of random bugs while playing (diagonal spongebob lol https://twitter.com/silverfoxtweetz/status/1276066273894576130) but we live in an age where games can get patched, so maybe those could get fixed? There's also a multiplayer mode, I haven't played it yet but i've heard it isn't that great, might be good as a one time thing...i'll update the review when I play it, maybe...

MULTIPLAYER UPDATE: Yeah, the multiplayer isn't that good, hitting enemies at that camera angle feels pretty awkward and it's hard to tell when you get hit because there are no hurt sounds. The camera also moves and zooms a lot to get both players on screen, even when playing online where that isn't very necessary. It's not very good, it was kind of a funny bad though?

It's a short zup-like achievement spam game where you can only move forward by clicking and jump with right click, but let's be honest, you're just buying it because it's called Knack. Kind of a shame that the PC version of knack turned out this way, but as we all know, only the PS4 can handle the true power of KNAKC

Bam!

Wow!

Moonlighter is a top down roguelite that combines Zelda dungeons and an item shop system similar to Recettear. I got this in the humble monthly and was pretty excited by the concept, being a fan of both, and I am happy to say that it mostly delivered! The dungeons are quite fun, there's a few different weapon types you can use to suit your playstyle (i used shortsword and bow) and there's a dodge roll mechanic that can let you sneak through enemies and projectiles.

The general gameplay loop is this: there is a dungeon with 3 floors, each floor has a miniboss and your goal is to find items to sell and craft. There is a item limit of 20 but items can stack up to 5/10 depending on the item. You can find an item that lets you warp back to town so you can sell your items and later you can find an item to let you warp back to where you were. These items cost a bit of money to use, but it's not too bad, but it's something to keep in mind. You sell and find items until you can afford+craft new weapons and armour to take on the main dungeon boss. It's a pretty satisfying loop but for some reason I did find the 2nd dungeon to be the hardest, maybe because it took me ages to find the materials to craft the new items? They seemed pretty rare and this is the only time I had this issue. I think the difficulty wasn't too hard, I beat the last 2 bosses on the first try, but there is a new game+ mode that might be harder.

Sadly, I think the shop aspect of the game isn't as fun as the dungeons. The way it works is that you put an item on sale, someone buys it and an icon appears that shows what they think of the price. This is recorded in your notebook and your goal is to find the correct price. I didn't mind this at the start of the game, but I was getting pretty sick of it by the end as there isn't really much depth to it outside of raising and lowering the prices a little depending on the item demand. I also think the interactions with the town aren't that interesting.

So overall, if you enjoyed Recettear and want to see a different take on the idea, I recommend giving this a shot! I didn't mention it but the soundtrack is pretty good, there's a different song for each floor of the dungeon which was pretty rad. Nice pixel art too.