Recent reviews by RandomTBush

What could've been a competent Monkey Ball clone with a cute art style and catchy stage tunes suffers from some terrible design decisions and a major design flaw -- additive diagonal movement speed (the sort of thing you'd expect from an old FPS game, not a physics-based precision-platformer). What this means is that if you simultaneously hold both forward and left or right (and moreso if you turn the camera sideways), you will move faster than if you held just forward by itself. This quirk has caused me to over-correct my movement and fall off the courses far too many times.

Now, I consider myself a Monkey Ball expert (I've 100% cleared Banana Mania for instance), but some of the levels in this game feel like you can only clear them if you're lucky, not if you're skilled. Dishonourable mentions go to Gables (a level designed around climbing and descending steep slopes), Razor Blades (traversing gradually thinner and steeper jagged platform rings where you'll likely bump and fall off), and Serial Jumps (a downhill ramp where you can and will bounce over the jumps through no fault of your own due to the game's physics). Oh yeah, and if you want to play the game's "Encore" stages, you need to go through an entire set without failing too many times, and those three stages I mentioned are all in the same "Expert" category. Good thing there's an exploit to bypass that requirement, or else I would've never seen said stages (and this is coming from someone who completed Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania's marathon mode while losing less than 100 lives!).

And then there's the torture that is getting "Platinum" times in Medal Mode (a mode dedicated around speedrunning the individual stages which has most of the game's achievements). So you know that diagonal movement flaw I mentioned? That is MANDATORY for most of them, and the times seem to be set with that in mind. If the required times for those were even just a quarter-second longer, that would alleviate most of my frustrations, but the way they're implemented practically requires TAS-level frame-perfect precision to obtain. I hope you enjoy constantly pause-buffering! The worst offenders were 5-2 Swinging Platforms, 7-3 Rooftop Ramps, 10-8 Vanishing Road, 11-2 Variable Size, and B-4 Double Loop, which all took me hours and hundreds of attempts before succeeding, with most of the other stages in the same tiers taking roughly a tenth of the time in comparison. And no, the reward you get for completing the game's hardest stages (Champion Encore) won't even help you get a good chunk of those.

And finally there's another elephant in the room for completionists, the "Fallout Royale" achievement. If there was ever something in a game that was such a blatant disrespect of the player's time, it'd be that achievement for... resetting a level 76,000 times. For the record, once I finally achieved every last Platinum Medal in the game, my total reset count was 7,011, which wasn't even enough for the preceding achievement which required 10,000 resets! Cue me setting up a macro to constantly restart for the next TWENTY HOURS (2/5ths of my total playtime!). I don't know who thought this was a good idea, those should've been a tenth of the required amounts for them to actually be achievable naturally. I'd be bored out of my mind if I wasn't watching livestreams the entire time...

Now, I get it. Making games is hard, especially if you're a small team of less than 10 people like with Paperball here. But some of these issues could have easily been avoided if the developers showed some restraint. For that, this game gets a D-. See me after class, Coco.

What happens when you fuse Mega Man's jump-and-shoot gameplay, Kirby 64's ability-merging mechanic, and Bangai-O's love of explosions? You get Copy Kitty, a "blast-'em-up" arena combat game that's genuinely a lot of fun, and is chock-full of content (two playable characters with completely different play styles, an unlockable "Hard" difficulty that remixes the entire game and throws in new surprises, an Endless mode, a level editor with Steam Workshop support, and lots of unlockable cheat codes, costumes, et cetera). You can tell the developers poured their hearts into this game, and I can't wait to see whatever Nuclear Strawberry's working on next!

(However, I wouldn't recommend this game for anyone who may be epileptic due to how intense its over-the-top effects can be at times, even if there are settings to lower the intensity.)

Baba is You is a brilliant little Sokoban-style puzzle game where you quite literally have to break the rules to solve its puzzles, with tons of increasingly-creative solutions and "Eureka!" moments. After completing the game 100% (barring the newer Museum/New Adventures so far), I can definitely say it's one of my new favourite games on Steam.

Highly recommended for puzzle fans.

BABA is WIN
is
BEST

Croteam did an amazing job with The Talos Principle, I loved the whole aesthetic and the puzzles were well thought-out! (Though I did get stuck on the one star which required an external QR reader, I didn't think outside the box and had to look up the answer.)

Easily one of my favourite puzzle games of all time. Highly recommended!

I've had more FEEEEEELLLSUUHHH with Undertale than I have had from games/movies this year. Even if the graphics aren't the greatest (which I know some people turned their nose up to, I had no problem with 'em), the music, story and fight system more than make up for it.

Great job, Toby Fox!

...I just can't bring myself to go for the Genocide route. Not after all I've been through.

So far, so good! Although I've never actually played the original game this was inspired by (Road Rash), this "spiritual sequel" is pretty fun from what I've played of it so far. Can't wait to see what else is in store for the final release!

(EDIT: This review will be rewritten eventually.)

If you've ever been a fan of the Sega Genesis and its games, then I can guarantee you'll love this game. It's got great gameplay, excellent spritework (barring a few inconsistencies) and splendid music! Freedom Planet is easily my favourite indie game I've played this year!

There's even a demo that you can try out, if you're still on the fence on buying it: http://freedomplanet.galaxytrail.com/download.htm

Yes, the new Worms games are fun. Yes, even the 3D ones that some people hate for one reason or another, but Worms Armageddon is (and will probably always be) my favourite Worms game of all time. And this is coming from someone who's been with the series since the very beginning.

All of the "beta" updates that the game has received since its initial release (1999!) keeps the game optimized and up-to-date with current technology, and the removal of the former multi-team worm cap (allowing the maximum of 48 worms in a 6-player game) and the unlocked map boundaries makes an already great game even better.

And it still has online servers to play on! (Take THAT, *insert game that recently had its servers taken down*!)

Super Monday Night Combat is a breath of fresh air in the way of multiplayer games. It's a bit like Team Fortress 2 and DotA/LoL merged together, and it's very fun. Just keep in mind that you won't win every single round.

Never trust another person...
Never trust another person...
Never trust another person...