Recent reviews by badgerboi94 (they/them)

An amazingly good game with some SERIOUS issues that make this a very mixed review. Yes the game looks visually stunning, but there's a soft wall you hit that suddenly slows the game down to a crawl. This game has a lot of ambitions, but has a lot of content obviously cut or rushed to meet its deadline.

First up, the monetization. This game gets past the tutorial slowly, but once it does you find out the real game is a practice in how much psychological manipulation you're able to withstand. The first maybe 10 hours you put into the game you don't feel it. Yeah, Konami turned snake's tuxedo into DLC instead of being an unlockable item, but the story and open world missions don't require that much beyond what you can acquire in-game. Then you start developing more and more weapons and parts for your base, and that's when Konami's greedy hands start tapping on your shoulder with mandatory wait times. The offline timers can only be progressed thru waiting, but by giving Konami your hard earned money, you can get MOTHER BASE COINS (Yay!!!!) and skip the timers! In fact, if you feel like you gather resources at a too-slow a rate, then guess what? mOrE mOtHeR bAsE cOiNs!@!@!@! Buy more resources (but through a circuitous way as to not break laws) so you can build MORE mother bases! Everywhere, the entire ocean can be filled with Mother Bases Paid For By Mother Base Coins!

And if you delete your save and never go online? You'll lose your previous mother bases and start it ALL OVER AGAIN!!! Which may or may not be illegal, but is definitely pissing in the wallets of your consumers.

Next the gameplay. It's tight and responsive (when it works) and can be extremely exciting and fast paced (when you find it). There's so much stuff you can do, and all of the goofy Metal Gear elements are found thru experimenting with different tactics and weapons. The way the AI will counter your tactics as the game progresses keeps the battlefield feeling fresh and gives the player a constantly evolving threat to try and deal with. The gunplay is so fun, and if you like to shoot to kill, this game will reward you with viscerally juicy headshots, and knocking people back 5 feet with a shotgun is never not entertaining. It just doesn't get stale, you have so many tools at your disposal, and if you need to change to fit a new fighting style, you can do that and... wait around for a box to... Well, if you're experienced with Metal Gear, you'll find ways to exploit the AI and there's MULTIPLE ways to cop-out of a situation if you're ill-equipped for it, usually. The sound design too!!! So many of the weapons just have a There are story missions where you're required to fight things a certain way, but aside from that, it's not just the world that's open, it's your mind. As you experiment, you find new ways of dealing with the landscape around you and become the big cheese himself, the Big Boss. Except...

Well here we are again talking about the monetization... Again, you need to wait. The majority of my time was just spent waiting in this game. Not in the open world, no, but just sitting in a helicopter, waiting for timers. Really, it should be labelled an "idle game" because about 50% of the time in this game, just sitting around, waiting for your soldiers to work for you is the best way to gain money, especially in the post-game, and especially if you don't want to engage with the online stuff. Most of my hours were spent with the game just sitting idly on my desk while I did chores, made food, rolled up, went for a shower, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like that. Yeah, you can obviously just pass the time doing combat missions, but who has that kind of time to devote to a video game? Honestly, with how much waiting was baked into the way the game plays, it makes sense why the story is the way it is.

Jesus it's a mess. If you don't listen to what essentially boils down to a geopolitical podcast hosted by Diamond Dogs, you'll skip past 70% of the story. Like with Peace Walker, they couldn't fit all of the story into cutscenes, so instead it's delivered thru audio logs you get. You can listen to them either on mission (which helps fill the otherwise silent background of the open world) or (guess what) in the copter, waiting out those timers. There's all the usual Kojima-isms, and fans of him will be delighted to comb through at their own leisure, but if you don't listen to them as they come, then the story feels like a really long cable, with two explosions of exposition, that just kind of piddlefarts out at the end, leaving an unresolved story.

Graphics are good. Obviously. It's a Kojima game. All of his games are visually stunning, and I will fight you if you say that any game other than MGS3 is the best looking game on PS2, and I've only encountered stutter when running it with like, 12 tabs of firefox, torrent software, and discord, for the most part it's solid.

The online exists. Maybe it's good, maybe it sucks.

I had more to say, but Konami said this review had to be done in 12 minutes, and it's been 45.

Played it for a while and got hooked. Daily challenges, one time fee, hundreds of different strats. Slay the Spire really hits that dopamine center of the brain that likes to see the big number go up. And with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of community content, it's definitely a game I'd buy again at full price.

A short game with great style! A challenging short platformer whose atmosphere resonates through your whole body.

I made the mistake of playing the pacifist run first and now I'm unable to open this game ever again.

It's like a playboy for explosions.

This game has a really steep learning curve. 61 hours on record since I've written this, and only now can I say that I can play relatively competently. This game isn't for people who just want to pick up and play.

However, if you git gud, this game is fun as hell. Plus, it's a free stand-alone mod. So hell, there's really no downside to downloading it.

The comparison to CS is made a lot, but really only because it's the only thing close to it. Games of Neotokyo are extremely dynamic, and each round can go in any direction. The first round, you could spend the whole 2 minutes slowly picking off stragglers. The second, you could get your whole team wiped out by a recon det-rush. The maps were designed for easy flanking. Because of this, teams need to adapt to their enemy strategies, block off route (A) because their recons bunny hop through there. They know they're blocking off route (A) and coming around through route (G). etc.

What makes the game the most fun though is the ranking and class system. You gain experience for killing, capturing the flag (ghost), surviving the round. Unlike CS, you unlock weapons through what your rank is. This doesn't necesarrily give any player a distinct advantage. There are Assault players who swear by the ZR Silenced, a rank 1 gun, and for myself, whenever I play recon, I won't play by anything other than the SRM, another rank 1 gun.

Unless you're playing recon, and you're really confident in your bunnyhopping skills, you literally need to stay by your team mates. It's way too easy to die in this game, and believe me, sitting out for 15 minutes a game is not fun. If you want to stay alive, get a mic, and start talking. If the ghost is close to you, pick it up, and call out positions.

If you're a beginner and you want to learn the ropes of how to play neotokyo, then I suggest going to Agiel's Deathmatch Server. It's usually dead, but it lets you learn the ins and outs of how brutal combat can be, and how to move faster.

Overall: 8/10. It's not for everybody, but it definitely should have more players than it does now.