Recent reviews by WaggleWings

you just gotta send it

You come to me. You look me in the eyes, and you say, "Project Wingman? Oh yeah that's like budget Ace Combat (AC)." I shudder. Your words are no lie, as the game is merely a fraction of the cost of the dogfight juggernaut and mirror's its brutally fast air battles near-perfectly, but you miss something deeper something a bit jank but with heart. There's a reason I have more time in this game than AC7. It feels like a game that took the best things from arcade flight games and cut them down to a manageable size all the while making tiny little improvements alongside the polish to make a game that feels homely to me. Never have I felt so excited to unleash a swarm of AGMs at an unsuspecting refinery while my wizzo screams to pop flares behind me. This game makes me happy, and what more could I ask for?

Ok so what do you do in this game? Well, you drive a truck. A big truck. And, you fix a bunch of broken down sites. It's your job, and it feels just like one. The truck is slow and outdated, the assignments are more than you don't get paid for, but it's just simpler to just get it done. Then while you keep working, you get better and faster, as you learn the systems and think of shortcuts. It's a good gameplay loop at its core. Only issues I'd mention are that there are some parts that are a bit rough to navigate given the art style and the MSSIRT is a bit unwieldy physics-wise. However with a bit more detail I'd easily put hundreds of hours into an MSST simulator it's a wonderful lumbering beast of a vehicle and I love it.
But this game is only kinda about driving a big truck isn't it? We read the description. It's an interactive fiction game, so let's hear about the fiction you interact with. To put it simply and without spoilers, I like it... a lot. It's gay, there's robots, there's humans (I guess), and there's a wasteland of crumbling infrastructure. Between all that it managed to tell a story that both made me think about the world in a way I hadn't before and made me cry a bit.
All in all, this feels like it was literally made for me and me alone, but despite that, you should play it anyway. Do it. I dare you.

I could write a short, funny takedown of this, but this is genuinely one of my favorite games, so I'll break out the eloquence this time around. On a very base level Receiver 2 is a gun simulator, which is something that would carry this title alone if it had to. The visceral nature of controlling every single aspect of your firearm is more engaging than any other FPS I've seen, and while the controls are far from real life, it feels familiar to the experience I personally have and genuinely helped my personal understanding of handguns. However, the core of the game is more than that. You will spend the majority of your time in a rogue-lite type experience, where you navigate uncanny urban buildings that bleed together and slowly erode your sense of direction if you aren't careful. Within these environments there are really only a few types of enemies, but each one is a distinctly different challenge and is simulated on the same level of your own firearm. Because of this, a set up that may look somewhat shallow on its surface actually holds much more depth and possibility for emergent stories and experiences than you would expect. From sneaking through tight back ways in the desperate hope that you can hack a turret to get just one more bullet to making a risky jump to get the advantage on entering a room, there's so much more to this than just walk forward and shoot.
All this is failing to mention the lore that permeates the world you are stuck in. I will avoid going into specific detail since I recommend going in blind (though please do heed the warning when you first launch the game). However, I found the combination of lore, safety tips, and historical facts provided by the collectible tapes to be more than enough reward to keep going. There are also notes spread across the area that reward not only exploration but even some investigation outside the game if you are so inclined. The lore itself I find personally relatable and gripping; it's a genuinely interesting world to learn about.
Finally the new-ish addition of the compound adds a whole other layer to the game, literally. At any point you can leave the main game to train, explore, or chill in the compound. It is mostly a shooting range and a set of trials to hone your accuracy and reflexes respectively, but the map encourages exploration similar to the early main game with even more to find, including a whole new set of tapes to listen to. I admittedly spent what is probably far too long trying to get decent scores on every trial for every gun, and was very rewarding if apocalypticly infuriating at times. Additionally, this map does the most to highlight how beautiful the game can be. While some of the later stages of the main game blew me away for different reasons, the exterior of the compound is absolutely stunning. In my opinion, this addition is just pristine.
Overall, I just have to reiterate that this is one of my favorite games of all time to date. I've spent so much time in it and enjoyed every second. It's a game that has given me some great memories the whole way along and even managed to scare me more than anything in memory. So, in conclusion:
This game is good.
Buy this game.
Play this game alone in the dark for immersion.
Improve yourself.
Defeat the threat.

disappointing

Westerado Double Barreled is a wonderful little game where you play as a poncho-clad gunslinger, wandering around a nice western landscape, while you try to find the man that killed your family. A single play through won't last you long (about 3 hours), but randomized murderers, multiple characters, and various secrets can provide a good amount of replayability. The gameplay itself is also quite good. The gunfights are quite fun, and can even be a bit tactical, at times. However, the conversation system and how you can interact with NPCs are the most interesting parts. In any conversation you can whip out your gun, with varying degrees of success, and you can just shoot everybody, if you want to. Overall, Westerado is a great game, that's totally worth your money.