Recent reviews by Oink

Disco Elysium is by far the best role-playing game I've ever played. Deeply political but also deeply humane and just as funny as it can be depressing, it's sure to change your life even if just in some small way. However, the company that created the game was victim of a hostile takeover by part of some talentless criminals, who snatched the game and its world from the people who have been lovingly crafting it for over two decades.

The game, as it stands, is an indictment to its "owners", and a love letter to its creators. Find a way to play it and let it fill your heart, but don't give them any of your hard earned capital.

It's fun listening to the mysteries multiple times, following different people, and hearing all the different sides to each story in order to reach the solution. The writing and acting are hammy, which can be grating, but the english translation is perfect outside of a couple typos here and there in the UI.

In short, "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine" suffers from being too long, clunky and monotonous. Still, I am tentatively giving it a thumbs up, because the game can be enjoyable if you stop after the first four or five levels and you don't care about having a walkthrough at the side, as well as copious amounts of healing items obtained through cheat codes.

Some may turn their nose up at such a suggestion, but for me the game would have been unplayble otherwise. The platforming controls are slow and rigid, but otherwise okayish, although Massachussetts Jones does on occasion hit an invisible hitbox and jump in a completely different direction, more often than not leading to your swift demise. Any player of the Infernal Machine will quickly learn to press the Quicksave key after every jump, item picked up, or enemy dispatched, though.

The cinematic platforming is okay, since you're never really forced to go quickly, which is the death sentence for this type of gameplay. The puzzles range from very boring to quite interesting, although the game does have the bad habit of first making you figure out *how to start* the puzzle before you even begin the puzzle itself. The levels are sprawling and multi-layered, often making the in-game map useless, and often as well you WILL have to resort to having the map open because there's no way to discern where to go without looking at the next waypoint. The combat is the only part of the game I would describe, however, as genuinely dreadful. There's lots of weapons but they are all uninteresting, and Alabama James's tank controls don't really make for enjoyable shootouts. A bunch of the weapons, like the combat rifle or the rocket launcher, simply crash the game on use. Just use some infinite health pickup cheat and tank them with serenity, and your game experience will be all the better for it.

The biggest problem with the game is that it's way too long. Not only is the middle section of the game filled with frankly boring levels, many of the levels could use being slimmed by being shortened by at least a third. There's genuinely good moments in Ohio Jak and the Infernal Machine, but unfortunately sometimes you have to trudge through some real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ before you get to them. My favourite levels were Shambala Sanctuary, Teotihuacan, and King Solomon's Mines. The excessive length of the levels also means that you have more time to get ground down by the clunkiness of the controls, it's quite anti-synergistic.

In the end, I got this game as a birthday gift (by somebody who clearly must hate my guts), so it's easy for me to say "Just play 30% of this game's content". You will have to decide whether the 5 bucks are worth it or not. If I could, I'd rate this game "Neutral". You definitely need to be something of a retro gamer to enjoy it in its antiquatedness.

This game has the chance of being a pretty good casual asymmetrical game, but the fact that one side is extremely strong because of the dozens of exploits and unbalanced elements this game has, I say: hold on your money. If they do fix this game, sure, buy it, otherwise just stray clear.