Recent reviews by Ribcage Lampshade

Initial Impressions
Great concept, with amazing visuals to match. They knew the kind of theme they were going for here, and they smashed it. Nice menu and UI. But that's just the cover. Opening it up reveals a plethora of issues that take away from the promising concept.

General Overview
While I was instantly intrigued at this game and its premise, I was let down to see the execution. Let's start off with my main gripe. The metronome counter is absurdly off on almost every song I've played so far, even a few of the songs packed with the game. I assume they've used some sort of automatic system to create the beat with which to shoot/click to, but whatever algorithm they've used, it works only 10% of the time. Songs with strong bass lines work more or less, but outside of that, the game really struggles to keep the beat, something that's essential for a rhythm game.

I'm sure the beat changes slightly during the songs, too. Granted, while the rhythm in a song may vary, the general BPM of the music doesn't, so how does this happen?

Having the metronome counter at the top of the screen is bittersweet. On one hand, it doesn't clog up your view, so its easier to shoot at the targets. On the other hand, considering how often it loses the beat throughout the song, you could be 10 seconds in before realising the beat you were clicking to, which matches what you can hear, isn't actually matching up with the metronome, hence, you receive less points per kill.

To summarise, this game is unable to keep a steady beat throughout any song. It changes unnecessarily, completely throwing you off. The metronome doesn't match the beat of the song, and even if it seems to have finally caught up, it loses it within the next 10 seconds or so. Better off just spam clicking.

Pros and Cons

Pros:
- Able to play your own music from YouTube or locally
- Different maps with unique colour schemes
- Wide variety of enemy types
- Movement system is easy to grasp, and rewards momentum
- Nice visuals

Cons:
- Can't keep a beat, making the whole rhythm concept almost non-existent
- Footstep audio is far too loud, had to turn down overall SFX to hear the music properly, which in turn weakens audio cues for the UFO enemy etc
- Hitboxes on some enemies are very off, particularly the robed figure, and the ?floating sphere chair?
- Slow motion power up completely throws off the flow of the song
- Claims to reward clicks on beat, but spam clicking works just as well
- No tutorial or description of what enemies do, find out through trial and error, which some people may dislike

Also had a minor glitch during a song, where I hit a wall, and my gun disappeared, my view model sunk into the ground slightly, but I could still shoot and melee. Being physically lower, I could avoid the UFO beam without jumping, but other things hit me normally, and, as my bullets were invisible, it was hard to tell what I was actually hitting until it disappeared. This happened only once though.

I really want to like this game. The concept sounds super fun and original, but the whole rhythm game aspect is completely shattered by the fact that the rhythm system doesn't work! I'm no musical prodigy, but it doesn't take a genius to know when something is off beat, and this game is off beat with every song you load into it.

I won't be refunding it, though. I have faith that this game will improve its system to match to a BPM and stick with it. Because that's just it. If the game was just able to match the beat of the song you're playing, the other issues would be forgotten.

I can't recommend it in its current state, unfortunately. While this game promises a great concept, and draws you in with great visuals and the promise of using your own music, the core element of the game doesn't work, to a frustrating level. Will update my review if there are any changes I feel are notable.

Hope this helps anyone on the fence!

EDIT: Devs are taking steps in the right direction. They frequently update the game with small fixes, and have great communication with the community. Currently, the beat system is being reworked regularly, and I still have an issue with not being able to follow it, as they've recently removed the beat bar. Which sort of seems like a step backwards in a way? Regardless, I'll continue to follow this game and support it.

economy is getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥ more and more by the day

still fun though

Personally, this doesn't work for me. There was little to no increase on a lot of the games I tried it on. Mainly wanted it to work for Warframe, yet there was no change. Tried it on CSGO for a match. Saw minor changes, but not enough to make it worth the money, honestly.

My PC is quite low-end, so I thought it would be useful to me, but I feel like it has no effect, as I don't have loads of background elements running all the time. I think that's all this game does. If your system is older, you'll probably have a lot more background processes, so maybe this would be the only instance of it working. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend CPUCores as it doesn't do to my computer, what it advertises.

Personally, I think Kingdoms and Castles successfully delivers a city management experience with the theme of a medieval Hamlet to City progression.

However, this game doesn't appeal to me in the sense that I feel it is sort of lacking. I'm unsure what specifically, but its just not a game I can see myself plunging hours into, which is what I look for in a game (Granted, that may not be what others are looking for, also). The art style is somewhat charming and simple, and I like what they've done with it. The mechanics are rather basic (Although slightly confusing at times), and short term aims are displayed through ingame help.

What I didn't like, however, is the game's tendency to not explain things until after you've done them. For example, diving into the game, I didn't realise I would need stone for a well, essential in increasing villager life quality, so I placed my initial keep far from any usable stone (Which was something that threw me off, darker stone is unusable), so had to build roads to the other side of the map in order to actually get the stone. The happiness mechanic also confused me, as, despite having numerous happiness-generating buildings across my city, none of the villager homes were ever at sufficient happiness despite having checked all the building requirements (The city advisor kept saying I didn't have enough libraries or churches, despite having multiple of each throughout the city, getting the boarders and areas of effect right). I am unsure exactly how the game calculates random events, as at one point, around the beginning of my playthrough, a farm randomly set on fire and it spread to the others around it, destroying them, and set me back quite a bit, so that broke the realism for me and made it harder to recover that early in the game. Finally, a little feature I feel would be useful would be the inclusion of an arrow to direct the front of the building, as at numerous points I placed a building with a 1x2 area lengthways along a small alley (If you'd call it that), and was consequently unsure if it was accomplishing anything. Speaking of which, there is a lack of information in a lot of areas, yes the advisors give you pointers, but a lot of the time I was just unsure if what I was doing was right. Some people like that learning through experience part in a game, but I personally feel like I'm doing something wrong.

There were also a few minor bugs, such as charcoal piles not being accessible to different houses despite the fact they should've been, the food collectors not using granaries right beside them, and instead going to one on the other side of my city, but being unable to get there in time before winter came and took the food in transit.

Overall, though, I can see why this game is quite popular at the moment, and I'd say it does the job of being a city builder, accompanied with a charming art style and an appropriately-executed theme. I do recommend this game, but I stress that it didn't appeal to me in the ways that I was hoping.

8/10, a nice themed city builder, with a few overlookable bugs, but not a game for me.

I went into Hotline Miami expecting quite a bit, due to having friends who were big fans of the game, and I can truly say that it met my expectations and I was not the slightest bit disappointed by it.

The gameplay is excellent and I love it. Everything from the physics to the adjustability, it was an experience I have not had anywhere before. Speaking of the physics, Hotline Miami has been designed in a way that allows players almost full and unrestricted freedom to how they want to approach a situation. Using doors to knock down enemies, using gunfire to draw attention, ricocheting thrown weapons off walls to knock out enemies around a corner, the possibilities are only restricted by your own imagination.

Hotline Miami I feel is a trial-and-error based game leading to some occasionally infuriating moments that had me quite on edge, but personally I love these kinds of games and I love the satisfaction I get from overcoming such obstacles. If you don’t have a long temper, maybe this isn’t the game for you. The difficulty is somewhat apparent from the outset, but it gradually gets harder until it somewhat peaks, but the way it slowly introduces you to the core gameplay mechanics and encourages you to experiment with possibilities earlier in the game, prepares you for the difficulty curve very well, I feel.

The story is rather abstract, starting off by throwing you into a situation without much explanation, but that’s good in the sense that it makes you want to find out more. It somewhat lost me part way through once all the people in all the shops the protagonist frequents become the dead Russians he’s killed but it was still interesting and gripped me. It’s dark and ominous tone fit well with the gorey nature of the game.

Yeah, this game is violent as hell. They may be pixels but the protagonist is brutal af.

On the whole I heavily enjoyed Hotline Miami, and will therefore soon start on the second one, having gotten the dual pack in the summer sale (yea boi), and I’m quite excited for it.

9/10 would Fists of Fury again.

Recieved this game back when there was a lot of hype around it. Gave it another go now after growing up with team-based moba-like games with large selections of playable characters. And honestly, I think I wanted to like this game.

I feel that there was an idea, a good idea here, but the execution was terrible. The gameplay is comprised of long matches of attrition that make you feel like you're getting nowhere, until right at the last second, one team screws up and the other pushes forward... For about 10 seconds until everyone gets back and the process starts again. If anything, its more just battles in neutral territory fighting for who gets to advance forward for about 3 seconds before they have to pull back. If I wanted to wage war for exceedingly long amounts of time while simultaneously not getting anywhere, I'd buy a realistic World War 1 Trench Warfare game. It's a frustrating, boring tug-of-war based game that, I feel, will eventually be lost to the ages.

The explanations of characters and their abilities are vague enough to the sense that you'd need to play them to actually understand what the hell they do. Even then, once you find out the character is complete garbage, you're stuck with them for the entire match. From what I've played, from a low level, you're stuck with godawful characters that put you at the bottom of the leaderboard, therefore, its yet another long and gruelling marathon to unlock characters that might be good, but then find out they're bad like the ones you had before. It feels like Pay-To-Win, as there's an entire row of DLC characters that honestly sound like they're miles better than the vanilla ones.

Something else I want to point out, is that its hard to learn the mechanics and overall gameplay when the enemy AI is about as difficult as a real player who's clocked over 100 hours into the game. Trying to practice for the online segment is frustrating, as, without knowing what I'm fully doing, I'm pit against stupidly hard AIs who have pinpoint accuracy and coordination that rivals nothing less than that of a laser cutter.

To conclude, I did not enjoy this game. Everything from the games lasting close to half an hour, the Pay-To-Win elements, the practice mode which isn't for practicing on at all, and the poor attempt at creating a variety of characters with different abilities.

3/10, Naut Awesome.

A casual Rhythm game that can quickly become a competitive Rhythm game.

Very basic gameplay, 3 lanes, hit objects on each lane to fill up that lane's bar, hit spikes and a that lane's bar goes down by one, once's a bar's complete, all lane bars are cleared and you get points based on how full each lane bar was.

Seems simple enough, right? Here's where the competitive aspect comes in. Use spikes to your advantage. If you don't collect anything for a couple of seconds, all lane bars are consumed. But what if you need to hit some objects on the left lane but the right and centre lanes are full? Hit spikes, they'll decrease the lane bar of the lane they hit, but it'll give you more slack to hit something before the bars expire. The more full all the bars are when a you hit an object on a full lane (And therefore clear the bars) results in how many points you get.

Obviously, this is all done to the beats and tempo of the song you're playing.

Songs of the Day change daily (Duh), and players compete for a high score. If you get within the top 10 (I think its 10?) then you'll appear on the leaderboard for everyone to see. Pretty satisfying to see yourself on the leaderboard of 'You reposted in the wrong neighbourhood'.

However, uses soundcloud for songs, or local files. You won't always find the song you wanna play to.

9/10 would surf to dank memes again.

Now, this review may be slightly bias, due to the days worth of playtime under my belt from when I was a kid.

For starters, this is easily one of my top 5 Star Wars games of all time, if not the top. The PC version has slightly different menus than the PS2 version I remember, but other than that, everything else is there.

Frankly, I don't know why LucasArts thought they should make an entirely new battlefront, in my opinion, they could have easily copied BF2, touched up the graphics a lot, added some more modes, planets, heroes, more campaigns and maybe some other things nobody asked for, and it would pass as a successful game. Let's be honest, Battlefront 2 is better than Battlefront 2015, and if you use the excuse of 'Yeah but the 2015 graphics are better', my friend, PC modding has already taken care of that. HD textures.

Now, onto Multiplayer.

Not gonna lie, haven't actually played it yet. Granted, GameSpy brought down the servers early 2014, but dedicated fans out there have created mods that can still allow like-minded players to contrinue playing this great game with others, so it won't be long before I give it a shot.

Campaign? Inventive, interesting, and I feel is rather a high point of the game. Follows a specific company of clone troopers throughout the galaxy, showing everything from the first battle of Geonosis, to the excecution of order 66 and the clone's transition to the empire. Added with the fact that these missions aren't just 'Do what you normally do in regular gameplay but don't lose', they actually have really enjoyable mini-quests. Though sometimes, the missions can get a bit hard. Felucia for example. Acklays, man.

In my opinion, the game's only flaws are in its classes, and balancing. There are some issues with some specific things in the game being overpowered. For example, Bothan Spies. The disintegration gun is far too powerful in my opinion, and added with their ability to turn invisible, it can really screw you over. Second issue is with the Gamorrean guards in Jabba's Palace. Granted, they're not a playable class, but still, they get in your way, and are hostile to everyone, not to mention the fact that there is no way to make them stop spawning. You may be asking what my issue is with them. Oh I dunno, maybe the fact that they can ONE HIT KILL ANYTHING. Boba Fett for example.

As an honourable mention, I think that Space Battles are definitely one of the best parts of the game. Its just a shame that it took until Rogue Squadron on the PSP to allow for ground AND space battles in one (Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe RS was the first BF game to actually allow that). But then again, that's just me being picky.

Overall, this game is a huge hit in my books, and is easily better than some of the stuff A-List publishers roll out today. No DLCs, no extra content, no pay-to-win, just the base game, in all its glory. And what a lot of glory it has.

My Laptop is absolute bantha fodder, and it can run this game on lowest graphics with complete ease, rarely goes below 50fps, and when it does, its most likely due to the fact that I'm playing XL on Hoth, or just when there's an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥ ton of AI on the screen at once.

Definitely give this game a go, if you can look past the graphics; which aren't even that bad considering when it was made, then this game is a real gem, and I'd encourage anyone to pick up a copy and get stuck in.

EDIT: New computer plays fine, just has issues with the whole audio jack thing. How to combat: just stick a wire into the audio jack if it crashes upon loading the map.