Recent reviews by The Team Fortress 64

I find it hard to write a review for something like this as it's like a small mini-game you'd normally find in a larger mini-game collection title. That is to say, I find this sort of approach atypical in the modern gaming sphere where content is seemingly king; there aren't dozens of game modes and configurations and there's no form of progression (although there are some settings that can modify the game slightly, but not all of them practical)

This game is like you bought a virtual foosball table, and then you just use it to play foosball. But that's fine actually, as it is well designed and the minimalism is reflected in its price.

And similar to foosball it is, except you have a row of individual "dudelings" you can cycle through to then make them jump upwards and direct the floaty ball towards the enemy's goal. Even though you can only jump straight up, your "dudeling" will also exert a force on the ball in the direction of the enemy's side. There are some power-ups and other intricacies I won't detail, but that is essentially the whole game.

However what you get is really fun and doesn't get boring fast, and while the AI does a decent job to keep you on your toes, needless to say this game is best payed with friends.

It's wild that the best platformers I've ever played have only come out recently, and this is one of them. The mechanics are simply incredible. If you like platformers and don't play this one then you're almost indubitably missing out.

The most relaxing game I've played in a long time, you basically just build the space ship of your dreams while creatively thinking about how to more efficiently collect space debris for resources. Land on asteroids and small planets and extract more resources. The solar system is full of hostile robot entities so there's a little bit of fighting as well. It's sort of like Minecraft, Valheim etc. in space, perhaps even like No Man's Sky, but other than how extremely unique and detailed your ship and space station can be, it is a lot more limited in scope as of now. There's a lot of potential for content, especially considering it's in space and you could theoretically land on any planet. As of now though, the focus is entirely on space traversal and every asteroid and planet you land on is miniscule in size and devoid of life. Still, if they keep their focus on what's already there, I wouldn't mind. It's fun to just be in space, too.

Whoof, I hardly know where to begin... with some backstory, maybe? Enchanted Portals was announced about four or five years ago as a game heavily inspired by Cuphead, and I was really into it because I just wanted more Cuphead. Unfortunately, despite the obvious effort put into its animations and artwork, it was decried as shovelware trying to copy Cuphead. By that logic, all the Battle Royales are carbon copies of one another and should be equally condemned, but human beings can be sorely devoid of logic sometimes.
By mob rule, the game was essentially predestined to fail its funding. After a second unsuccessful kickstarter campaign, I was sure it would never even release.

The game that did come out, frankly, just seems hastily cobbled together. It's a weirdly incoherent experience; one scene you see a masterfully animated intro to a boss fight and impressive scenery, and in the next you feel like you're in an online Flash game. Some levels nonsensically mix low and high res sprites, smooth animations and literal stop motion. Half of the game's soundtrack sounds like stock music, and soundscapes and many sound effects are totally missing.

I think after being unable to finance this project, they gave up and cut their losses, adding randomly generated "run and gun" filler stages in the mix to pad out game time. The game doesn't put its best foot forward; especially the final stage of Enchanted Portals feels like a glimpse into what could have been, featuring two of the most impressive fights, one even with a proper, fully animated intro. The only instance in the entire game. I'm sad just thinking about the Beethoven fight and what could have been, because in the final game it's a single phase, short stage. It looks amazing, yet it's but a crumb of an amazing cookie I'll never get to see nor taste.

I don't think it had to be this way even with the financial problems. I wish they had focused on just the boss fights so it's a proper boss rush game. The hastily made run and gun stages add little more than frustration, although one or two of them are actually somewhat decently designed. I think they could have added more polish to the bosses that needed it the most and released it as a $10 game instead, that could have made it a much better experience and a more accepted Cuphead light.

It's disappointing because you see all the potential right in front of you. I mean, obviously the potential is Cuphead and I never assumed it could reach that level, but it didn't have to fail as much as it did either. It's frustrating because most of the issues seem fixable with patches, and while I'm not sure it's still in the game's cards, I'll provide some more detailed feedback in a post. Link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2444350/discussions/0/3824174193421897527/

There's some reviews stating this game had no controller support. That's not true, it's an issue with Steam Input. For some reason it applies a keyboard config to controllers and it's not even using game keyboard mappings. Change the config or disable Steam Input and controllers work again

This makes me wish there was a "meh" rating on Steam.

The driving mechanics are serviceable, but I'd place them a good distance below Mario Kart, SuperTuxKart, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2, Crash Team Racing, Sonic Robo Kart and The Karters 2. They're also somewhat janky-feeling.

Everything about the game feels bland and uninspired. No voice acting, barely any animations, boring-looking tracks and items, mundane soundtrack. The game 3, 2, 1, Smurf did all of this much better over 20 years ago

My biggest pet peeve with this are the graphics. Now I don't need AAA quality to enjoy a game, but when it affects gameplay, it becomes a problem. Namely, the visual contrast is so low that I have a really hard time figuring out where the road is and I drive into walls and off cliffs all the time. I've never had any comparable issues with any racing games I tried thus far, this is a first for me. I'm simply not having any fun as all my concentration is going into trying to make sense of the tracks.

It's really just a somewhat okay experience overall but without a meh rating on Steam, I do lean more towards not recommended. There are better options on PC like the aforementioned games. Emulation is also a thing ;)

No, I'm not review bombing. I probably don't need to explain this to most people but for everyone else, all my hours are on BattleNet as the game only just released on Steam while it has been available since 2016 and before if you played its beta. As someone who once adored Blizzard and dreamt about working there as a kid, and is now heartbroken over their downward spiral into anti-consumerism, greed and downright human rights violations, I felt the need to provide this opinion piece.

The game itself... is alright, if I'm completely fair to it. It didn't meet my expectations as a fan of Blizzard as well as Team Fortress 2 when it released and that hasn't changed, but it would be okay to play every now and then.
However, everything surrounding Overwatch that has only gotten worse since 2016 is too outrageous to ignore and pushes it from a "~meh" to a definitive "do not recommend" for me.

To address the mildest problem first, this is an always-online game. Many people might shrug their shoulders at this statement since gamers have unfortunately accepted this as the norm for video games nowadays, especially when they are live service, but other companies like Valve demonstrate time and again that a game can both be live service and fully offline playable with titles like Counter-Strike, DOTA2 and yes, Team Fortress. I appreciate how I can host a server for the 2007 version of TF2 if for no other reason than nostalgia, not to mention the various full-blown community spin-offs/overhauls that spawned from it such as TF2 Classic. This is a future that is denied for Overwatch and there isn't really a reason for it other than pure greed and wish to control your userbase. Yeah, I bet skins sell a lot better when people can't just disable them or mod them in or use custom skins on servers, but who knows. Either way there is simply no way to make any adjustments to the balance changes that Blizzard forces upon you.
Worst of all, this means the game will be unplayable, lost to time, once they shut down their servers. To me that is simply unacceptable, especially since Overwatch is not technically a free game, a lot of people paid money for it.

Another problem is that it has turned into a microtransaction hell. My main concern isn't even the abominable prices, it's the fact that they chose to put entire characters behind Battle Passes, in a game where counter-picking is a main component. Effectively, this game is now grind-to-win/pay-to-win.

Which brings me to the next issue: The fest of broken promises. There was supposed to be PvE to justify everything about OW2, and when we purchased Overwatch back then, the promise was that the game would finance itself with cosmetics (yes, lootboxes in a $40 game, and I paid €60 for the better edition) and that at least it would be ensured everyone would be on an even playing field. This is not the case anymore, and even if you spend all that money to unlock every hero, other people on your team may not have every hero and thus you still end up at a disadvantage.

Don't get me started on what is supposedly Overwatch "2"... Blizzard genuinely managed to have their cake and eat it, too, in the most negative way possible:
On one hand, Overwatch "2" is an utter scam, being the same game as Overwatch but with a 2 slapped on its title, thus creating false publicity for themselves as well as getting another nomination at the Game Awards, again for the same game, ultimately taking screen time and attention away from other games that deserved it more. This was an incredibly egomaniacal move by Blizzard and I still can hardly believe that this actually happened.
Yet on the other hand, Overwatch "2" made a ton of poorly-received changes, and if you don't like them, like I explained, there's nothing you can do; you can never go back to Overwatch "1". So yeah, they did both in the worst way possible, impressively enough.

And finally... yes, there's the elephant in the room, Blizzard and Activision are awful companies. Blizzard has found themselves in several lawsuits for sexual and other kind of harassment at the work place and even though they do their darndest to make it seem like they're the super duperest most inclusive company in the world on social media, in reality all that matters is money and thus we get "slip-ups" such as the Blitzchung controversy. In essence, their motto is "We stand with human rights only when convenient, but as soon as money is involved, we stomp them into the ground."

Disgusting.

This is the worst game I've ever played. Sure, I've played really buggy games and I've played pay-to-win games that would be decent if it weren't for the monetization.
But have you ever played a game with a difficulty curve that looks like this?


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Ｂ　　　　　　　　　　Ｂ　LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE WTF
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ＢｉｉｉｉｉｉｉｉｉｉＢ　Absolute Snorefest　 　　　　
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This might seem like hyperbole, but I assure you it's not. Up until that spike, I might as well had been blindly running into enemies while spamming the attack button, I more than likely would have been able to beat every stage that way. A complete walk in the park.

But then suddenly, I get to some vault area and I become completely overwhelmed. Swarms of blue slime enemies that chew away at my health. I manage, but soon after I find myself in a long hallway that is absolutely chock-full of enemies, with so many healers that I feel I can't even deal enough damage to outdamage their heal. I die like three times, but I beat it.

And then... we get to some sort of final boss. A giant treasure chest that turns out to be a mimic. And impossible to kill. I wasted half an hour just trying to figure out what to do as nothing works. No matter what, I can't get close to killing it because tentacles will block all of my attacks.

After some research, it turns out that it's indeed impossible to beat this boss unless you have the right gear, piercing weapons to be exact. Are you freaking kidding me?

I've never played a game so maliciously designed to waste my time. I have no idea what the whole point of that dungeon was if it just ends in me not being able to do anything until I gear up. Not even a hint that I'm not equipped to beat all of the stages.

I have lost any and all interest in continuing and I absolutely cannot recommend this game to new players in the state it's in.

Ich bin ein einfacher Mensch. Ich sehe ein neues Moorhuhn, ich kaufe ein neues Moorhuhn

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect whoever made this really hates pineapple on pizza. And babies.

If I were a fan of Sonic, I wager this would have been quite a blast.

No, but seriously, this is really good for a free experience and an April Fools' project turned actual game