Recent reviews by Gangrene

When I first saw this game, it kinda looked like a Lethal Company clone. It's not, it's doing plenty of silly things unique to itself.
Compared to Lethal Company, the objective is far more open-ended, and is probably much better done if you intentionally don't try to learn more about what you're doing. You're not a worker, you're an actor.
It's a far friendlier game, inviting you to do wacky things instead of optimize your strategy.
I don't know what else to say about it, it's not Lethal Company and is definitely worth the price of a subway sandwich.

First of all:
I am playing this game and will likely continue to play it. It's fun to play with friends.

Second of all:
This is 2D Fortnite. It plays every note that Fortnite does.
This is a Storefront with an arcade machine in the back. Cosmetics are the service, the "game" is just a stage.
You need to spend $7.50 to unlock the ability to sit, and another $7.50 to point your hoof/paw at things.
Expressing yourself is a premium and you will have an out-of-body experience until you buy in.
It does, at least, provide a moderate selection of free stuff.

Why a no?

The warmest or worst possible player-player experiences you can have online

You ever played Team Fortress 2 and seen the server go friendly? This is better than that, because it's more than two teams and it's more than just crouching and taunting. You and impromptu friends can do quests together and it really feeds a sense of community. It's one-of-a-kind.

But, if you meet a malicious player ship, one that's more armed, more staffed, and less busy than you, the only thing you can do is SUFFER. You will be sunk. You will lose all of your loot, and all unique sources of firepower. You will fail quests that you spent gold to start. You will wait to respawn. You will have to move your big slow ship again to find a new place to go about your business. And most importantly, there is nothing about sinking that can make you better. Nothing to learn from. No "ship loadout" you can come out more equipped with. You just lose. The only thing you can do to avoid it is to stop playing, or get more friends.

Aside from the non-optional online PvP, the gameplay is..
Sailing a ship is really fun. There's a lot of moving parts that you need to physically interact with and it creates a truly one-of-a-kind experience, and is probably the most authentic simulation of ship sailing I think anyone can enjoy.
Fighting the bot-controlled skeleton ships, being that it largely involves using the sailor mechanics under stress, is also very fun for when you're thirsting for blood.
Any combat that doesn't involve using your ship, however, can get stale and boring REALLY fast. Ranged enemies take more time to telegraph their attacks than you take time to heal the damage they do, and you can generally just run away from melee enemies.
A lot of the gameplay that isn't fighting involves ferrying large quantities of treasure on foot, one item at a time, to the ship, which gets monotonous *quick.*

You are here to maintain a ship under stress. Everything else is a breather.

Gamers like to make the argument that video games and every other unsanitized entertainment is about exploring the fantasies that they would never actually do, in a safe and inconsequential way.
I would never kill anyone, but
But this is not a game about killing people. This is a game about turning pillars of geometry into streaks of decals. They have the functionality of a roomba with paper taped to it. You're not here for killing people. This is not a simulation of killing people.

This is a simulation of capitalism, in a safe and inconsequential way. This is a game that lets you experience the volatility of a stock market without losing any of your lunch money. This is simulation of a job that doesn't pay enough. This is what it looks like to lose your body to a job. This is what makes you irreplaceable to a company. This is what you get when you retire.

Oh you just wanted to know if it plays good?
It's fun enough. I wouldn't say the gameplay loop is super distinct, and it's got at most 100 hours of content to explore.
Combat is more predictive than reactive, and that means you're just looking for AI quirks to exploit. You can absolutely be a speedy glass canon, but you're going to default to a more cautious and methodical way of doing combat if you don't know what you're up against. The difficulty curve is not particularly smooth.
The controls are simple enough, no over-abundance of weapons in your pockets or unwieldly grenades.

I highly recommend this experience, but not for the same reason I would recommend a game like Furi.

It's already a crime to violate GDPR
But it should also be a crime to violate GDPR with a game this cool
I wanna play it again :(

Most of the time I've played this game has been trying to find the fun. The most fun I found was items that did all the work, and it definitely doesn't last.

The physical space you occupy is only 2D in appearance, in reality your gameplay takes place on a 1-dimensional line. You can attack left, or right. Jumping is just a way to temporarily move yourself off the line in which all fighting takes place.

The attacks you use in combat feel pitiful and inadequate. Starting with commando, you will have to get used to holding down the "z" key and waiting for health bars to drop to zero, or running away when the health bar won't drop to zero fast enough. Occasionally, you'll even press another two buttons to speed up your attacks even more!
Of course you also have a dodge, but the dodge can only be used once every four seconds, making it's use about dodging 'big' attacks rather than.. most of the attacks. Not about maintaining aggression, just a get out of jail card when sponging up hits is too risky.

Items are essentially a requirement to keep up with ever-increasing enemy health bars and damage, and are an actual requirement to get certain unlocks, but items are offered almost entirely randomly. (There is an unlockable that lets you solve this issue, but it feels like cheating). As a result, most forms of progression feel like gambling, just instead of putting money into it, you're putting time into it.

All of this to say is, the game isn't challenging. It's just arbitrarily mean.

Buuuut
The art is pretty alright
And the stage tracks are all bangers.

I AM ON MY WAY TO DETHRONE GOD

good

edit [still good]

Okay so like, this game is older than I am, but all the boomers were talking about Shodan as something legendary, and the experience of this game being irreplicable. I decided I'd check the game out, and compare it to how it is today.

Graphics, have of course aged terribly.

The UI is nearly incoherent.

The story is hard to want to keep track of, but somewhat interesting.

The basics of combat are a little less than satisfactory.

The level design lacks visual queues.

The movement is weird.

None of the things I mentioned make this game good on it's own, but when the janky bits combine, the fun begins.
The clunky UI and menus? Wow this is lame. Extremely basic shooter combat? Also lame. But what if those things were bridged together through weapons jamming?
There's something incredible about operating a menu to repair a gun while you're running from a chase, only to finally get the gun to work and start blasting away.

The unintuitive level design gets you to explore the story, and see if you can find a way to turn fate into destiny.

I recommend this game. If you accept that it's not going to be perfect, and you use your imagination to interpret what you're doing, there's fun to be had.

(Warning though, this is somewhere between a 20-25 hour game. Getting lost in these labyrinthian floorplans is a large part of it.)

This game isn't really exceptional by any game standard. The art and animation is pretty and the music is enjoyable, but the story makes me feel like someone I don't want to be, and I got through most puzzles with trial and error. The finale was a bit of fun though, trading the usual puzzle solving for some moderately difficult bullet hell segments. I don't really recommend this game, but the game being about an hour means it might be worth curing your curiosity over.