Recent reviews by SkullFire58

This is a really awesome game, it can be a bit wonky at times, but it's fun, charming, and beautiful, and I can't wait to see where Purple Lamp goes with SpongeBob games in the future!

However, it should be noted that this is not exactly Battle for Bikini Bottom 2. BfBB is a 3D platformer with some combat and a collect-a-thon focus. Cosmic Shake is a 3D platformer with some collectibles and a focus on combat. The combat feels great in this game, but there's much less importance on the collecting aspect, nothing collectible in the game is required to beat it or progress, only the tasks put in front of you in each main questline through each world. Doubloons unlock the ability to purchase costumes, and Jellies are then used to purchase them. You don't need either of them to actually beat the game, making it feel much more linear and encouraging you to just play through each world once and only go back later to collect everything for 100% once you've unlocked all the abilities. It's strange too as Kasandra continues to tell you to bring her more Jelly, but there are never any times she actually charges you for Jellies you've collected. It's a bit of a shame, but I enjoyed this game a lot more once I realized how the game was structured differently from BfBB.

This game is... okay. After going in with expectations to be completely disappointed, I wasn't entirely? The only things this game does better than the original Tales from the Borderlands is on the technical side, most of the time the mocap and facial animations are actually really good? But other times they're creepy and some characters have stiff faces. Otherwise, the first Tales is by far the superior game and story.

There is some good in this game, there were some actually kinda funny moments and some cool story ideas. There is still a lot of bad in the writing, people have been saying it's about as bad as Borderlands 3's, but I'd say it just has an equal amount of bad, but more spread out with okay or even good stuff in between. The blow is softened a bit, or maybe I've unfortunately become too desensitized to it all haha.

The main characters are, also, okay. Anu is probably the least interesting and doesn't change all that much in personality to really make me feel attached to her. I hated Octavio with a passion in the trailers but found out Gearbox used only his most annoying moments in the marketing, in the game he's much more tolerable and I honestly felt very sympathetic towards him near the end. Fran is probably my favorite overall, great acting mixed with their surprisingly good facial animations, but the writers focused way too hard on the "she wants to have sex with everything" joke, she makes horny comments at horribly inappropriate times and makes a lot of serious moments uncomfortable in a failed attempt to be funny or lighten the mood. It clashes with a lot of the choices you're given for her that are very personal and caring actions to the other two characters.

The story itself is serviceable, after a very slow first episode things finally start to pick up and seem to go somewhere interesting, but it all starts to go downhill pretty quick and doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere. There are many "convenient" plot-holes and contradictions to force moments that just did not need to happen, and they seem to use up all their seriousness in the second to last episode, reducing the villain, who up to that point was actually really great and genuinely scary, down to an absolute joke and causing the climax to have so little weight to it.

While I'd recommend the original Tales to anyone, even people that have no interest in Borderlands, I can't really recommend this game to anyone except for hardcore Borderlands fans and people that absolutely love this genre of game. Ultimately, I don't think this was a tale that needed to be told, but I can't in good conscience say this is a bad game with the overall amount of enjoyment I got from it, it's just okay.

One of the best games of the decade, and a remarkable achievement in open world design. It's amazing how much game is in here, the world itself is so intricately designed and crafted perfectly not only to be beautiful to look at, but fun to play in and navigate too.
While there is a noticeable reuse of assets and area ideas in the basic dungeons, they never feel boring or like filler, and there's always a new reward to find in every little corner, the depth this game has is incredible.
I do have some broad criticisms about some of the general boss design philosophy this game has and the balance of damage numbers near the end of the game, but nothing ruins the game or detracts from the experience, it is as close to a masterpiece as one could get in my opinion.
Taking my time through the game and searching for every possible thing I could, I finally beat it with 227 hours on my character, and yet there's still more that I have missed and will need to go back and do later or experience on NG+.

I've been keeping an eye on this game for a few years now, and I'm so glad it turned out to be this great, even better than I had hoped in fact. A fun, satisfying Zelda-like, with Outer Wilds style elements where progressing through the game reveals things that you didn't know were there all along. While the combat can be a little tough in the beginning, you can get better equipment and a feel for it quickly, solving puzzles and finding hidden paths is super satisfying, and discovering the secrets buried deep in this game gave me many moments of wonder and awe. I love this game, absolutely worth ever dollar and I can't wait to play it through a few more times.

One of my new favorite games, such a satisfying experience to play through, and replay a few more times to master, find everything, and become as efficient with your resources as you can.

The first third of the game is such a fun, atmospheric journey, slowly navigating your way through the village, finding new items and searching for hidden treasures, managing your resources and sorting your inventory into order. Second third, while losing a lot of the atmosphere and intrigue of exploring, is still very fun, even if it's a bit more action focused. The last third, or maybe more like last quarter... that's when the game starts to lose me unfortunately, it loses pretty much everything I loved about the game up to that point, but it does not detract from my love for the rest of the game overall.

Wasn't even as scary as I thought it would be, I don't do horror games but I had heard this was one of the least scary Resident Evil games so I wanted to give it a shot, and honestly I was making it worse on myself anticipating scares that never came. Not to say it can't get intense though.

Very fun game, has a very good flow when you get used to the swinging. As long as you don't take the game too seriously, it's not too difficult to 100%. Some really beautiful art direction too (for the most part) and par times are pretty forgiving, they're very attainable without much restarting.

I only have two big complaints. Most of the music feels a bit too generic and "safe", there are a few tracks that made me turn off the music while playing those levels as they were deteriorating my sanity. World 3 kinda sucks all around, boring to look at, not very fun to navigate most of the levels, includes the worst bonus levels in the game.

Otherwise, this is a wonderful and charming game, and would love to see more in the future.

Such an awesome, fun, and beautiful game, I was smiling nearly the whole time playing this. It evokes a strong Gamecube era energy, if I had grown up playing this I would have cherished it forever. Every level is absolutely gorgeous, the lighting and color palette are perfect. Every new weapon is so cool and so much fun to try out. Some of the minigames throughout the levels get to be a little annoying, especially once they repeat themselves, but they're nothing terrible or that would stop me from not wanting to continue.

Fantastic game. Definitely a game where the first time without knowing much is the best experience, however even if you know about some parts it's still worth picking up, there's a lot of creativity in this game that's buried here to surprise you.

Fantastic remake of a fantastic game, I had as big of a smile on my face the entire time playing as I did when I played the original as a kid. Never thought I'd even get a port of a game like this, let alone an entire remake.

I was a little put off by the art style when the first screenshots came out, I warmed up to it a bit after seeing gameplay, but now finally playing the game and seeing all the areas myself it works perfectly. It's absolutely gorgeous. I gazed in awe seeing the Dutchman's ship behind the giant green moon off in the distance all the way from the pineapple. My only visual complaint is the thick blue fog affecting most of the slide areas, especially Sand Mountain. Would love to be able to turn that off more cleanly without tweaking config files and messing with other stuff, maybe even customize the distance.

The game definitely still needs a little bit of polish, there are a lot of minor problems right now, however none of them interfere with the core experience and most of it is stuff that could be fixed with patches. If they had maybe another year to work on this game I'm sure it would have been perfect.

Purple Lamp, you guys are awesome, your passion shines through and you've proven that you're capable with handling my childhood. I hope to see more from you all in the future, and hopefully you're given all the time and breathing room you need.

Absolutely mind-blowing experience. Nearly crapped my pants, and then I finished the tutorial.