Recent reviews by Mevsi

If I had to resume Assemble With Care with a short sentence, it would be - a short, cute, story driven indie game (with a little bit misleading trailers).

I’ll start by the positives:

First, the art direction: is nothing short of amazing. Everything looks beautiful! In conjunction with all the audio noises and the soundtrack, the town of Bellariva seems alive. A small, warm town, full of personality.

The controls are very, very easy - in fact you only use the mouse left click thru the entire game. While it’s clear that this control scheme is like that because this was primarily a mobile game (more on that later), it doesn’t subtract from the experience overall, and makes it really easy for even non-gamers to pick-up the game.

Now, something that I can’t say for sure that is a positive or negative (because i think it’s very subjective): the story.

I saw many, many reviews pointing out how the story is beautiful - just scroll here on Steam, and you’ll see it. On the game description there’s one from the Verge that I would like to highlight:

Originally posted by The Verge:

“Will make you think a bit more deeply about how you treat those closest to you”

I believe that how you experience a game story is very personal, so I can't disagree with any of those reviews. But after playing the game I felt the story was… shallow and forced. I’ll transcribe a small part of the ending of the first chapter, and a part of the second one. It’s very minimal, but beware of spoilers!

The first thing you really fix is a cassette tape player from a little girl called Izzy. After fixing it, you discover that her mother is dead. Maria (the protagonist) last line is:

“She seemed like a happy kid, but beneath it all, part of her life had been shattered - A part I wouldn’t be able to fix.”

Next chapter: “Shattered” - ok.

Her father literally shattered a figurine. Really?

His remarks while you are doing the repairs:

“Will you be able to see the glue afterwards? I don’t want people seeing the cracks.”
“Is this glue really strong enough to hold everything together?”

It’s so on the nose, thru all of the interactions between you and the other characters. I can see how people would love it, and really like this style of storytelling, but it didn’t work for me.
Aside from that, the puzzles are so, so simple. If you saw the trailer, and thought to yourself “Wow, it would be really cool to disassemble and reassemble all sort of stuff, read manuals to figure out what’s wrong, and use a bunch of different tools and equipments!”, don’t get your hopes up.
The trailer (at least for me) suggests that what you see is just the beginner puzzles, that would get gradually harder as the game progresses… but no, what you see is what you get. Just one tool, that you don’t even need to use in some puzzles. All of them are just disassemble - change broken parts - do the reverse to reassemble.

And while all of this is fine - it left me wanting more. More puzzles, more difficult.
In one of the blog posts, the devs tell about how one of the puzzles was really complex, and didn’t make past the cut - and it would be added for free, as an additional chapter.

Played it, and solved it in 1 and a half minute.

And for me, there’s where lies the problem with the game for me: the story didn’t “click” with me, and the puzzles are far too easy - and i bet that the puzzle design choice comes from being a mobile game first, where you have to work with that specific audience short attention span, less aptitude to more complex controls, less time to play, and how the hardware itself lends to more simple gameplay.

But the same devs also developed Monument Valley - a awesome game, and also mobile! And I found the puzzles way more challenging, and the story - told without any dialogue - to be far more compelling, even if it was so minimal.

...And, after all that, I still would recommend it! I wish Steam had a less black-and-white approach to recommendations, but between the 2 choices, I would tell you to buy it.

It’s very cute, cheap as hell, and will be a very relaxing 1:30 hour. Just don’t expect any great challenge from it.

Between Bethesda trying to sell mods, and T2 trying to outright ban all of them, I guess the modding community future for pc is getting pretty bleak. Don't get me wrong: GTAV is a amazing single player game, but modding is (at least for me) a essencial part of the experience, adding so much value to the product, and fixing bugs and errors that plague games for so long.

I guess T2 is gonna follow Beth steps, and try to sell them? For shark cards?... Maybe. Hope not.

Probably one of the best games ever made. Even with all his flaws (that your mind just learn to accept after so many years), everyone that likes this game are so passionate about it, and for a good reason.

I dropped from the face of earth, never played anything anymore... And I still come back to this game, everytime I can.
I hate it when a update is lackluster, I love it when something completely unexpected happens.

I remember dearly my first matches when it became free to play, so many halloweens ago, each october.

Long life to TF2.