34
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Recent reviews by tom-

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Showing 1-10 of 34 entries
133 people found this review helpful
10 people found this review funny
2
6.2 hrs on record (5.8 hrs at review time)
Great storydriven game with mildly challenging gameplay that trains your brain to be a bit more flexible I guess. :)
You control two brothers at the same time, and even though a controller is recommended, I played on a keyboard and it was ok.
You get used to this control scheme and towards the end this fact is beautifully exploited for story reasons, which is a very unique and brilliant idea. Not easy to explain without spoilers.

The environments look great and still the hardware requirements are modest.

Achievements are implemented in a nice way and I'd recommend to not look at any guides and just ignore them for the first playthrough and just interact with the world playfully, most will be achieved by that. Afterwards you can use chapter-select to comfortably clean up what you missed.

Sidenote: The dev's next game "A Way Out" was released on Steam finally in 2020, it is co-op only and shares some characteristics (storydriven, great environment art, co-op between two characters) so recommended if you liked this one.
Posted December 21, 2019. Last edited June 30, 2020.
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7 people found this review helpful
5.6 hrs on record
Riverhill Trials is a game with beautiful environments that would have worked well as a walking simulator, but also has some mediocre platforming gameplay. If you like what you see in the trailer and screenshots, and if you can enjoy/tolerate some bad platforming, this is a thumbs up. The exploration is quite linear, the voice acting in the game doesn't take centerplace like a typical walking-sim, and is not too serious and not trying too hard to be funny either, but gives the player some basic motivation and connection to what's going on. It works well in my opinion.

The platforming, quality control and the general technical side of this game are the weaker points, the developer hasn't shown up for some months now so it's not clear if any of the bugs and glitches are going to be fixed.
The achievements are all achievable, a glitch about one collectible being obviously unobtainable (nobody ever playtested this?) is balanced by a glitch where you can pick up collectibles another time after a restart and increasing the counter, so... let's not dwell on it. :)
Posted September 18, 2018.
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7 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
14.2 hrs on record
TY the Tasmanian Tiger 4 is a mediocre platformer game. It suffers from wonky movement mechanics that are a real let-down in a jump'n'run platformer.
The levels are big and there are collectables to pick up, but it is not as enjoyable as it could be, because the big maze-like levels can be a bit confusing and samey-looking, and there are no ingame directions. I wish there was a zoom-out feature or the ability to pan the screen a bit to the left, right, up and down like in some other platformers. You'll find everything eventually, but there's alot of backtracking through uninteresting mazes.

The biggest flaws of the gameplay mechanics are:
- huge knockback: if you get hit, you will loose control for what feels like an eternity and often you're knocked into other enemies or if you've just climbed to a platform high-up, you'll find yourself at the bottom again and you can redo the whole thing. That happens alot because high-up they placed airborne enemies that are annoying to fend off, and they fly though terrain and through walls where your weapons cannot go through.
- jumping, grabbing ledges, adjusting your position while on moving platforms, all of that is essential to a platformer, but this game has issues with all of that. I often felt like the controls are the most difficult enemy in the game. In combination with the enemy placement and the knockback, that creates some frustrating moments.
- Throwing your long-range weapon (boomerangs of different types) is also wonky. If you miss your target, the boomerang will fly past it and will return to you after some time. You can have 2 boomerangs on screen, and in hectic situations that's just not enough. Waiting for your boomerangs to return is as enjoyable as it sounds. BTW on their return path, the boomerangs cannot hit enemies even if they pass right through them. How could they miss such an opportunity for more interesting combat?
- You aim the boomerang with your mouse, but it will not fly exactly at your crosshairs, especially if it is close to your character. You'll get used to it, but why they did that or how it got overlooked through testing is beyond me.

If you're a completionist: the achievements work fine, and they are not too grindy or bothersome.
Posted June 13, 2018.
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6 people found this review helpful
11.1 hrs on record
NightSky by Nicalis/Nifflas is a very good physics platformer with light puzzle elements and a great variety of gameplay elements for the different areas, with similarities to Type:Rider (obviously), the Trials series (of which I played Trials 2 Second Edition), Radium 1 and 2, and if you want to go back even more, the Kikstart games (around 1987) and All Terrain Vehicle Simulator (1987) for the terrain traversal aspect where precise control of your speed, jumps and friction are important elements, even though it's all "just" 2D.

The atmosphere and graphics are calm and surreal, very nice to look at with slight animation in the background and ambient sounds, but there is no backstory as to what kind of places you are in, except for the slightly descriptive level names (f.ex. "Old Ruins", "Murky Depths"). The game intro suggests it's a dream, and there is a game ending that is not shown in the current version, probably a bug but I'll come to that later.

The variety of gameplay mechanics that differ from level to level is really entertaining. Often you control the ball, but sometimes you have no control over the ball but over mechanisms in the game world, like pinball flippers, or platforms that you have to rotate in such a way that the ball reaches its goal, or there are dispensers of dynamic objects that you need to trigger and play around with the physics. There's also some levels with switchable gravitation, and some with vehicles (mechanisms around the ball, influenced by your control of the ball) that roll or fly or behave differently. The creativity of the designers really shines in all that variety and you won't get bored.

The gameplay relies on you getting a feeling for the ball control and retrying the levels until you pass (no time constraints except when some physics puzzles come into play). That's not too frustrating in the normal mode, casual gamers will get alot of fun out of that. There is an "alternative" (difficult) mode where you go through almost the same levels but with some modifications, this mode requires more frustration tolerance and willingness to retry alot in order to improve your ability to control the ball or to experiment with level-specific mechanisms. The global achievement stats suggest that it is very difficult, but actually it's manageable. I've seen much more difficult games with higher global stats.

For achievement hunters and completionists, it is entirely possible to 100% this game with some patience and training. There is an unnecessary fade-out and fade-in when you die and retry that gets slightly annoying. Also the physics can be a bit random when high velocities and forces are at play, which is both good and bad, sometimes it helps you through a level just by pure luck.

I often wished that the game had more checkpoints, because you'll have to repeat sections again after each death in a following section, but in retrospect it all was tolerable, and you definitely get better through repetition so the repeated section will be less and less of a problem. The difficulty doesn't ramp up too steep, the last few levels had an even difficulty in my opinion, with no sweaty-palms "showdown" spike even at the end.

Technical aspects:
The game runs well on really old hardware and there's the possibility to lower the graphics settings to make it run on your potato.

Unfortunately the dev support for this game (as with some of their others) is an insult to the game and its players. The end sequence broke with an update and it was never fixed. Using the steam console you can revert to an older version that is based on a different engine and doesn't unlock achievements. Also it seems to crash on launch on Mac OSX and was never fixed either (judging from the forums, not from my own experience). An annoyance I encountered was that the game causes 100% load of the CPU in fullscreen mode, while in windowed mode its CPU usage is very low as expected (60 fps and similar GPU usage in both cases, so that's not the cause. Laptop users will want to keep an eye on this issue. I simply forced my CPU into low power 800MHz mode via Windows power settings and the game still ran with 60 fps but much cooler CPU/lower fan noise. Or borderless window with a tool might be an option I didn't try).

+ great variety of puzzles/modes of control to get the ball through the level
+ polished graphics and atmosphere
+ good for casual gamers and people who want a challenge and completionists alike
+ low hardware requirements but still appealing graphics even in lower settings, in cases where reducing them is necessary at all

+/- some frustration tolerance and willingness to retry a level multiple times is needed

- no support from the devs, bugs are left in there
Posted January 21, 2018. Last edited January 21, 2018.
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6 people found this review helpful
5.7 hrs on record
Definitely one of the better HOGs I've played. Gameplay-wise, it does nothing wrong except maybe a quirk in the achievements (look at the discussions for how to deal with it if you care for 100% achievements).

The game offers a few story-influencing choices that slightly come back at you in the ending, but independent of what you chose, you still win in any case, ofcourse. It's a nice touch and they clearly want you to play it again, as indicated by that quirky achievement, and also because the game would be kinda short otherwise.

Where this game really shines for me, is the prerendered CGI cinematics. They feature really well-done characters with gorgeous cloth-, hair- and fur animation and rendering. In other words, much higher production values than most other HOG cinematics. The cinematics also are in a good resolution and encoding quality (bitrate), which often is a problem with other Artifex Munid games. For non-technical people: these factors determine how "washed-out" the cinematics look, due to video compression.

This quality in the CGI may not be everyone's focus, but for me it made playing the game again for that achievement really no big deal. It was also nice that these cinematics had an interesting and coherent story to tell.
Posted October 20, 2017.
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7 people found this review helpful
34.9 hrs on record (34.8 hrs at review time)
Ra² is, like its predecessor Radium, a physics-based game where you guide a ball through a variety of levels. For me, the highlight of this game is the diverse gameplay elements it employs to keep things interesting throughout its many levels. Most levels focus on your ability to control the ball, but the challenges you face to complete a level vary in entertaining ways:
- finding your way through a labyrinth
- timing your movements to avoid hazards that move in patterns, which sometimes makes it a rhythm game
- finding out a short and low-risk route through sometimes non-linear levels, and it can happen that "short" and "low-risk" are two opposites where you have to decide between the two
- optimizing your way to control the ball through linear levels, making it a racing game

Memorizing and training a level is often necessary before you are able to pass through it, so dying and retrying is normal. The levels are quite short , from 10 seconds to maybe a minute in a few cases, and the turnaround time between a failed attempt and the restart is a few milliseconds. No waiting for screen fades, no annoying messages or detours through a menu. The potential of frustration is balanced by a constant sense of improvement because you are memorizing the levels and becoming more skilled at the ball handling with each retry. Also there are no random elements in the game.

And then there are time limits to beat, which is alot of fun if you are that kind of person who likes a challenge. Being observant and finding out ways to optimize your run through the levels is very rewarding. Hunting for achievements is a joy in this game. It feels rewarding and not unfair. Achieving 100% is entirely possible with some patience and training. The leaderboards are also a motivation to keep trying.
Posted August 23, 2017.
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1 person found this review helpful
0.0 hrs on record
Portal Pinball table for Pinball FX2: I'm not a pinball expert and don't have the words to explain in detail about the mechanics of this table, but it just isn't as much fun for me as most other tables.

Lots of ball drains to the sides after long phases of not even being in control, and the speed of things happening is kinda slow, like activating modes and all that. Read the other helpful reviews for more details (including the negative ones), and feel free to downvote this so there's more page space for the more helpful ones.

Like everyone else, I like the Portal universe and it was incorporated into the table well, with original voice snippets and characters/features making their appearance, so I'm not disappointed in that aspect atleast.
Posted July 12, 2017. Last edited May 17, 2018.
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33 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
0.0 hrs on record
Mafia II Joe's Adventure DLC is not as bad as Jimmy's Vendetta DLC, but still not really good. Like 4/10, compared to 2/10 for Jimmy's Vendetta. At least it has some well done cutscenes, new locations and there are a few story missions among the many uninspired, sometimes terribly designed missions. The story is kinda vague and doesn't add much background to some of the potentially interesting characters and their motivations. At least there is some connection to the main game. There would have been so many opportunities for the writers/designers to flesh out the story and the characters, as they did with the main game, but they were just lazy or in a hurry, it seems.

Many missions are very annoying to play, because of non-existant savepoints, unclear objectives, cheap deaths and high police density. Fighting the police takes away alot of fun. While it doesn't make it that much more difficult, it makes it tedious and irritating.

As a reviewer on kotaku aptly put it: "a transparent cash grab stuffed with missions that a skilled and interested modder could put to shame."
Posted June 8, 2017.
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9 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
0.0 hrs on record
In contrast to the main Mafia II game, the Jimmy's Vendetta DLC has hardly any story, and no storytelling other than textual mission descriptions, with heavy stylistic anachronism in these little bits of text that are there. The writers of the main story probably were not involved, and the writer of this DLC story apparently had no respect for/awareness of the fact that the game world is settled in the 1940ies and 50ies.
There are no cutscenes except one at the beginning and one at the end. But they hardly breathe any life into the story of this DLC.
It crashes every now and then, especially when viewing the in-game leaderboards, but also spontaneously during gameplay.
The gameplay is meh, the mission design is a bit tedious, it's arcadey, timer- and score-based. That itself wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't a paid Mafia II DLC but some cheap indie game or an inofficial mod.

This DLC must have been designed by a different team than the main game (the main team probably was exhausted from the crunch time), and the publisher must have been desperate to get something ready that is cheap and quick to produce, maybe to keep the DLC release in a specific time window. There's such a jarring disconnection in terms of overall quality, storytelling, and gameplay goals, compared to the main game.
Posted May 23, 2017.
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7 people found this review helpful
17.3 hrs on record (13.3 hrs at review time)
Radium is a game based on your skill to navigate a ball through hazardous environments, by controlling the ball with two control points that exert force on the ball. Some levels include collecting tokens to open the exit. You should watch that short video on the store page, screenshots can't depict how the interaction with the ball works.

It's very simple, and I found it challenging in exactly the right way. Difficult, but not frustrating. Getting a feel for the physics, retrying and learning the levels is a big element, and you will make progress and it feels very rewarding. There are no random elements in this game, when you fail it will be your fault and you will happily try again. The experience is very smooth, with a very short 2 seconds countdown before the timer starts, and a key that instantly restarts the level if you're about to fail. The levels are quite short, rarely more than a minute long, most of them around 30 seconds I guess.

Then there are time limits to beat to collect stars, and this game becomes essentially a racing game where you have to take corners with the right amount of speed, you will steer and drift and use walls or try other approaches through parts of a level, to try and optimize your time.

There are several gameplay mechanics that the game employs to change things up and keep you entertained (very successfully so, I might add):
- collecting tokens: in some levels, they are distributed around a maze or nonlinear network of tunnels that you have to learn or to optimize your path through them. In other levels they just are scattered in an open area with some hazards, and you have to see how to collect them quickly by just steering the ball as precise as possible around the hazards. You'll often have to weigh risk of collisions against speed.
- special tokens that reverse the ball control, from pulling towards the control points to pushing away from the control points. Often they cannot be bypassed and you have to be ready to adapt to that other "mode", which is always a chance for disaster :)
- limited visibility in some levels: sometimes there's darkness and only your ball's surroundings are illuminated to some extent, which emphasizes your learning the level, with each retry getting better and anticipating the point where to break or where to initiate a curve or something. Like car racing in fog, on a track you are familiarizing yourself with. Some maze levels employ this limited visibility to make you try out branches of paths, and to beat a certain time limit you'll have to remember and take the direct path to the exit.
- many of the later levels have moving hazards (for example sawblades) that follow a path, and timing your movements and controlling the speed of the ball becomes even more important. Things can get tight and you have to be quite precise in controlling the ball. The movements of those hazards are predetermined and never random, so retrying a level will eventually help you master it.

Most of the levels have a very nice difficulty, I rarely spent more than 20 minutes on single level until I was able to beat the hardest time limit to earn 3 stars. Often it was more like 3 minutes. But it's not easy either, it's very normal to initially fail a level a couple of times by colliding with a hazard, or to make it through but not beating any time limit and thus earning only 1 star.

I noticed that within most levels the most challenging/risky parts of that level come up near the level beginning, which is a player-friendly way of designing things because this way you're not wasting time on any part that leads to the risky part where failure is probable. I've seen other games make that mistake but Radium keeps you motivated to retry, and keeps boredom low. There are some exceptions in the last levels though.

For people who care about achievements and 100%ing their games: this game is absolutely friendly in this regard, the later levels pose a challenge but it's not a matter of luck but a matter of skill, there are no broken achievements and the achievements are not grindy.
Posted August 31, 2016.
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Showing 1-10 of 34 entries