Recent reviews by TheChus

balatro

The object of the game is to dismantle the establishment and evade the cops.
"What a lot of rules! What are they good for, Snufkin?"
"Nothing, nothing at all. That's why we're going to pull them up!"

Game is good, if a bit hard to learn.
But the addition of micro-transactions 1 month after release makes it an easy negative recommendation.
♥♥♥♥ these greedy and dishonest corps. No better practices than MK1 or SF6 (maybe even worse).

The Perfect Game

"We are Oceans reduced to Shallow Creeks"

The Virgin Henry Vs. The Chad Heinrich

Oh boy, this game is a bit of a mess, and really hard to review, so hard in fact, it took me over 10 days to do it. (Sorry for my inactivity btw)
Let's get to it, Vanquish: The Adventures of Lady Exton (That's a mouthful) it's a platformer that needs some serious polish and better coding, because, as I played it, I found it a mess. I hate platformers, but I can admit that the Marios and the Megamans are some really good games, but this one is just...

You play as Madam Lady Exton, a beautiful woman living in a steampunk era, who mysteriously wakes up in a cell, after the two seconds it took to break out, she finds that her parasol has a gun, which isn't strong enough to kill anything, and that it's her duty to... to... to what? I must've missed the story, because I haven't found any, Exton is just killing innocent annoying robots and that's it, after 10 levels there's an underwhelming boss, and between that you go through underwhelming levels.

Obviously, it's a platformer, you jump on platforms, and you shoot thingies until you reach the end of the level, quite simple, so how do you screw this up? By programming it in under two hours, the controls are floaty, it seems like an ice level all the time, and the jumps have a small but noticeable delay, which gets old fast, the top of the screen is solid, so you'll crash your head on it frequently, and when you do, you can't do the double part of you jump, and you'll plummet to your death.
The enemies are more annoying than difficult, they clutter the screen, making it impossible to avoid damage, and any damage cancels your jump, removing all momentum and killing you with gravity. You do have a really generous health bar though, but your gun deals next to no damage, taking over 10 shots to kill an enemy, which the levels are full of, too full. So it takes a lot of time to get through one, and it's just so unrewarding, you just reach a balloon and go to the next level, 30 times, that's it. And the background moves back when you go forward, and that's worse than it seems, it actually nauseates me, and gives me a very bad headache.
With some polish it could be good, maybe increase the damage, remove the ceiling, and remove some of the clutter of some levels. But I'm not a game designer.

The art style is actually good, really good even, everything is well drawn, the enemies are a bit too simple, but it's overall good, the background looks nice and Exton herself looks good as well, the animations are a bit on the lazy side, they aren't really fluid and nice, but it can be forgiven.
The music though, it's the best part of the game, it's just ear candy, it loops quickly, but it's really good, the composer did a great job. The sound effects on the other hand... There's just one, the gunshot, other than that, none. Which makes the game quite awkward at times, because of the silence.

Overall, my opinion of the game could easily change, but it won't for now, because I haven't heard of the developer for 4 months, so they could've very well abandoned it, but I'm none to judge.
I don't recommend the game as is.

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Have you ever played a game so bad it's good? Well, this one is so bad it's terrible, but it has a good heart, a poorly drawn, clunky and badly designed heart, but a heart nonetheless. Disposable Heroes is trying to be a funny, random kind of game, but that's where it fails the most, right after the godawful gameplay and the cringe-inducing graphics.
There isn't much of an introduction to be had here, I've barely played it, died about 70 times in the second level, and then the game glitched and I wasn't taking damage anymore, so I only finished it because of that, because without the glitch, I only would've hanged myself, or just quit the game, one or the other.

The king and queen are abusing the workers as usual, until a newsboy shouted “Long live the king and his son.” Then the world turned dark as his wife gave birth to the king's son, the child was so ugly, the Sun said “F#CK THAT, I'M OUT!”. So the dirty peasants demanded the king to kill his only child, but the king was out to lunch, for two years, then he noticed the sun wasn't in the sky anymore, and decided that he was going to kill the little malformed being, but the thing heard his father's words through the thin brick and concrete walls of the castle, and fled through a secret passage to the forest, where he'd hide, a two year old, deformed boy, surviving alone in the cursed woods…
The king decided that it'd be better to just end this, so he sent his best men to the forest, where they all died, without hope, the kind king drafted some random villagers and sent them to their death as well, hoping that maybe the baby would be killed by one of them. So Harry Potter, Maximus Decimus Meridius, busty woman #15, and Shrek go out on an adventure to die trying to save someone else's kingdom.
The story is basically Binding of Isaac and some original parts, Isaac being the baby, and the original parts being the fact that I wanted to shoot myself in the foot. To be perfectly honest though, there isn't anything terribly wrong with the story, it's just unimaginative and uninteresting, so that's that. The narrator lady is pretty talented though.

The gameplay is by far the worst part, you can either pick arrow keys and C and V, or WASD and C and V, C being primary attack and V being secondary, the mouse is useless, you won't use it even for the menu. Okay, I've originally played Dark Souls without DSFix, I can handle terrible controls, but man, that doesn't matter, the hitboxes are just randomized, especially the room hazard ones.
Some people call this game a rogue-like, but it's not, the loot is random, but you can re-start from the beginning of the level, instead of the whole game, so not a rogue-like. You basically move through the rooms to advance, but don't kill all the enemies before looting all the room, because when you commit monster genocide, you immediately mote to the next room, no choice, nothing…
You start with a worthless piece of stick, and you must loot better weapons if you plan on getting through the game, because if you get too close to an enemy, he will hit you 12 times a second, since you don't have any recovery time, so that's not nice, you also can't hit towards a direction you're not facing, so it'll get frustrating to kill enemies charging at you, since you have to walk towards them to hit them.
All the characters play the same, they're basically reskins, which is sad, because there could've been some nice variation to make things more bearable, but nope. You also can't play as Shrek without local co-op, probably the game's worse offense, blocking off Shrek.

The Graphics are one of the worse attempts I've ever seen at self-aware humour, because it's not funny, it just looks awful, it's all (badly) hand-drawn, or maybe MSPaint-Drawn, and sometimes you can't even distinguish some things from other things, it all just looks terrible and nausea-inducing, the music is fine though, not much to complain there.
It just makes me mad that the developer thought that this product might look good, it does look funny, but the terrible controls just kills the mood.

Overall, there're many wrongs for this game's rights, and it's just a hassle to play, I couldn't recommend it, I just played all the way through because whoever's up there decided to be nice with me and glitch the game.

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Well, after those slower-paced adventure games, how about change it all up with a high action top-down shooter? Yes, I know, quite the change of pace, but I feel back home with this game, as I'm much more used to this kind of game.
Smithy is a top-down shooter developed by FBI agent Fox Mulder's cousin and Tristan. Names aside, this game is trying to be like Nuclear Throne, the style, the guns, the enemies, you can almost call it Nuclear Clone, if only with less content. Now, I've bashed and forgiven games due to being unoriginal I mostly review the game as is, and as this one is, it's not the best, but it's not the worse either, there are kilometers of room for improvement, but the developers don't seem to be updating the game, which is quite a shame.

You play as a cute little hamster that is apparently a weaponsmith, even though he buys his weapons rather than crafts them, and does no smithing at all, so that personality trait is absolutely pointless, now, this hamster must go deep underground for no reason at all, and needs to shoot all the enemies and terrain in front of him, that's it.
No story at all, you just shoot stuff, OK then… How is the shooting?

This game is a top-down shooter, which means you look from top to down, I don't know what gives it away really… The cursor is your reticle and WASD is your movement, quite simple, you start with 2 guns and you can buy another 3, and you can upgrade all 5 of them to hold more ammo, which is an immense issue in this game, all weapons run out of ammo way too fast, and ammo drops are about as rare as a non-pretentious Wachowskis' movie, so you'll quickly run out of it, and you can only switch your weapons at a little panda in the start of the level, so if you run out of ammo far from the bloody panda, you'll have to dodge all the enemies until you get to it, this essentially makes the best weapon the one that holds the most ammo.
The level is basically a square, and to get to the exit you'll have to get to one of the sides of the square and open a path, by the way, all the terrain in destructible, but it just becomes a huge waste of ammo, as most of it is just a bullet sponge.
The enemies are as basic as you can get, you have a bat that chases you, a rat that chases you, a bigger bat that chases you, and a frog that fires in the cardinal directions, that's it, no bosses, no nothing. Now, most of the time they will quickly flank you and become a pain to deal with.
Now, I've got all the way to Level 15 and there wasn't any real progression made, I don't believe there's a point nor an end goal to the game, kinda like life itself.

The Graphic style is cute, a bit too simple, but nice, most of the guns and enemies look alright, and the music is actually really good, there are, I believe there are 3 tracks you can choose from, a bit on the short side, but still, and you can change them at any time with a hotkey, so that's nice.

Overall, this is a quite uninspired game that was probably done in a month, it's just a simple time waster, and there are much better ones, just play Enter the Gungeon or Nuclear Throne, those aren't even that expensive, I don't really recommend this one, because it mostly lacks content, I wish the developers had put more effort into it.

Read more Video Game reviews at: cassus.org

Read the review for Broken Sword 1 at: https://cassus.org/muut/#!/adventure:review-broken-sword-shad
Read the review for Broken Sword 2 at: https://cassus.org/muut/#!/adventure:review-broken-sword-2-th

Man oh man! Let's talk about wasted potential shall we? Right off the bat I want to say that this game has the most interesting and gripping story. But that's the only thing I can praise this game for, if only they'd kept to the formula…
Now, if you've watched the Godfather trilogy you know there is a noticeable progression line in terms of quality, the Broken Sword trilogy (excluding 4 & 5, obviously) follows the exact same progression, as in, the 1st is really good, the 2nd is an overall improvement over the 1st, and the 3rd is just a disappointment.
Most of it's decisions are just backwards and poorly thought out, which is a shame, because the story is great, it could've been a wonderful movie.

>SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS GAMES AND 3rd'S INTRO<

Broken Sword 3 starts with Geor ge Stobbart travelling to the Congo to meet a client, he's a patent lawyer now, and has broken up with Nicole for good, but during the flight, the plane crashes terribly because of a sudden storm, luckily for Stobbart, he crashed really close to the place he was supposed to land, but when he got there, he saw his client being questioned and threatened by a mysterious man and his goons, ultimately being murdered by them… After deeper investigation, he heard the scientist's last words, which warned that there might be a deeper conspiracy involving the end of the world and the name of a man, Susarro.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Nicole was supposed to meet a hacker and coder that could've unveiled a conspiracy involving a armageddon and possibly the end of the world (it appears destiny really wants Nicole and George to stay together) but when she got to the man's house, she found him murdered, and after an encounter with the assassin and some deeper investigation, Nicole found out that she could've been framed to seem like she was the killer, soon after she got arrested.
The story is really mysterious and interesting, it also goes much deeper into the lore and what happened to the Neo-Templars, and the ‘magic’ of the world they wanted to control.

The story is great and truly worthwhile, but for all I care, it could've been the Sopranos, but the gameplay still is what's at fault with this game, and part of the reason why I wouldn't recommend it as a game.
If you hadn't noticed, the series goes from a 2D point-and-click adventure to a 3D adventure, and with that brings the reason the gameplay is terrible, you see, most of the puzzles are now reduced to box sliding and climbing. The old intelligent and imaginative puzzles from previous games are reduced to just that, sliding damned boxes and climbing on them. But that's for the better, with such a backwards interface and controls, I wouldn't want to ever open my inventory, the new ‘wheel’ system works against itself, especially when you have to cycle through hundreds of items.
The puzzles are also terribly easy and simple, you can't really do much challenging stuff with just boxes and climbing, you know?
But wait, there's more! The camera and the movement are horrible, tank controls are better, you're never sure if the up arrow will move you up or some other randomized location, and when the camera changes, the controls also change, making you figure out where the arrows will make you go all over again.
Want more? Alright, the dialogue system will make you want to suicide, you can't skip dialogue. That's right, you have to hear what all the characters have to say without skipping, also your character's remarks will get boring really fast, since you know, you can't skip them, so if you missclick on an item you've already inspected, you'll have to hear it all over again. Most of the game will be spent on hearing dialogue.

Moving on, the graphics are okay, they aren't ugly in any way, especially for 2003, but the animations and voice acting will be awkward at times, even cringy, but you can through it just fine, but now, there is something that is bugging me to no end… WHY THE BLOODY ♥♥♥♥ ARE NICOLE'S EYES AND HAIR BLUE??? She's always had dark hair and brown eyes, I mean, I love dyed hair, but I'm confused because of the sudden design decision, she's got daddy issues now or something? (She does, but that's not the point)
The music is OK, but nothing really worth mentioning, it feels kind of recycled from previous games though.

Overall, the game is great in the story and graphical departments, but I found the gameplay unbearable, I do recommend watching this game somewhere, but playing through it is hard, you've really got to love the series to enjoy this one entirely.

Read the review for Broken Sword 1 at: https://cassus.org/muut/#!/adventure:review-broken-sword-shad

Oh boy, this sure is a Adventure game from the 90's, MAN, LOOK AT THOSE SEQUELS! Yes, I am going to review a couple of sequels from the Broken Sword franchise, I'll mostly focus of the differences with the first one though, as I explained how I felt about that game with detail, so I left a link up there, for you to read it, but you probably already saw that, unless you're reading it upside-down, then, good for you!

Broken Sword 2 picks up 6 months after the original left off, George and Nico started dating, but George had to go back to the States because of his father's health problems, which caused them to break up. Now, most of the game you will be playing as George, and one thing that bugged me is that he never really talks to Nicole about his sudden departure, and I think they needed to get deeper into it . I really want to see them happily together, it's kind of like the Mulder-Scully problem.
After a while though, George returned to Paris, only to find that Nico had an appointment with an archaeologist because of an odd stone she'd found, only for them to discover they've been set up, and they knock them both out, kidnap Nicole and leave George to die, at the hands of a terrible, evil, and psychotic… spider? Well, they've set the house on fire, but I didn't find a point to the spider, but I digress.
George then goes to the rescue of Nico, and after finding her, she explains that the man who kidnapped her was thought to be in a drug ring and that Nico was tracing him, but now she suspects there might be a connection with an even deeper conspiracy.
I can't really go into the story, I might've even spoiled the fact that George rescues her, but still, there's really not much to go into without spoiling, but the story is really interesting and worthwhile, an overall improvement over the first one.

The gameplay is pretty much the same, ya think, ya point, and ya click. But the UI and several tweaks to the engine and some mechanics makes the small differences good, for example, now you can cancel an action by selecting another one, which you couldn't in the first one, smalls changes like that that really improves the game in my opinion.
Now, the puzzles on the other hand are harder, there's really nothing obvious, and you have to do some serious thinking to get out of some situations, but still, most of it makes sense, you've just got to do some exploring and talking to people to get somewhere. There is one or other puzzle that is somewhat insane, but nothing too bad.
There are also some comedic situations that are really worth while and quite funny, just remember to get that coal.

The graphics and voice acting though, now that's what I call an improvement, the game looks much better than it's antecessor, and the voice acting is top-notch, the in-game animations are much better, the music is too an improvement over the first one, the music theme also complements really well this game's theme.
The game really looks and sounds great.

Overall, this game is an improvement over the original, mostly little things, but improvement nonetheless, I recommend it, but for starters, the original one should be played first, for a better introduction and building of the characters.

Read more Video Game reviews at: cassus.org