Recent reviews by Tyrannoseanus

Vacuum

Owl. My. Godwit. I love Hatoful Boyfriend so much. What looks like an absolutely ridiculous pigeon dating simulator visual novel turns into a feather-raising build up to a flap-tivating crescendo of a storyline. Things are not what they seem at St. PigeoNation's Institute, and it's a flap-tastic time unravelling what is really going on.

Don't get me wrong, at it's core this really is just an absolutely ridiculous pigeon dating simulator, so if that doesn't sound appealing then first of all, what is wrong with you? But also if you're not into that then you won't be into this. But there's a good deal of humour here- a wide cast of different tweethearts, with unique personalities and real growth.

The gameplay is standard visual novel fare- progress the story up until you need to make a choice, make the choice, feather the consequences, rinse and repeat for each choice. There are multiple routes resulting in multiple endings where you learn more about the underlying storyline until you unlock the final route where the game really takes flight, which is the part I enjoyed the most.

Depending on how fast you read, you've got around 15-20 hours of game here to go through every route once, although that includes flying through the common scenes most of the time. Achievements are tied to endings so it's very much "See everything the game has to offer" which is great.

In conclusion, Hatoful Boyfriend is a feathery delight that defies expectations with its bird-brained brilliance. It's a game that may start as a lighthearted pigeon dating simulator but evolves into a compelling narrative with wings of intrigue. Whether you're a fan of visual novels or just looking for a beak-utifully quirky gaming experience, Hatoful Boyfriend is sure to leave you tweeting.

Maneater is an open world action RPG, where you play as a bull shark that's really angry at humanity. You spend most of your time eating your way through the food chain, from fish to humans and beyond. There's a funny voiceover man in the documentary framing of the game, so it's less macabre.

Maneater isn't a game I'd normally go out and play. It was actually a Humble Choice purchase from before I knew you could skip months. But I'm glad I didn't skip it, because it's actually quite good fun.

So the action RPG part is quite fun actually- you unlock skills from doing... stuff. Like beating bosses, side quests, etc. and then as you level up you can equip more skills. You probably get more powerful too, but more importantly you get bigger, which is super cool when you're a shark. That's the other part, you're a shark! Just as a concept I think that's cool, and swimming around eating stuff is a nice unique gameplay element. "Open world" I guess. There are several areas that you can go through, in a roughly linear order, with lots of different quests to do in each area. So yeah I guess that's a fair description.

The narrative framing of this being a documentary, and the inclusion of Chris Parnell as the narrator is just fantastic. It's really funny, it's quite dark, and it's altogether just good.

As with most "open world" games, if you want to do everything it's likely to get a bit bland. The side quests do get a bit repetitive as they're all variations of the same couple of themes- eat this stuff, defeat this enemy, collect these collectibles, rinse and repeat.

Longevity wise, to do "everything" in the base game you're looking at about 10 hours worth of gameplay. That's not including a lot of just swimming around eating stuff which you could do for as long as you like.

Ultimately Maneater was a lot of fun for what it is, good story, decent gameplay, funny. The DLC looks like it'll be even better than the base game, but I haven't tried that yet.

Laserlife is a rhythm game set in space, where you play as an alien intelligence that is manifesting the memories of a dead astronaut by collecting memory molecules. To a funky beat, so it's less macabre.

I enjoyed the unique controls. I used a controller rather than the "Intel® RealSense™ Camera" because they're expensive and I don't have one, but the controller was quite good anyway. You control two lasers with the analog sticks which you direct around the screen to hit the correct notes, sometimes using the triggers to collect the notes, sometimes not.

Unfortunately for a rhythm game the music wasn't all that varied or particularly great. It was
fine, but I'd prefer a rhythm game to have songs that I'd listen to outside of the game, whereas Laserlife does not. It was good in that it fit the theme, and it's a short game so there's not going to be a massive amount of songs there. However despite that, there's still a lot of repetition which made replaying levels across difficulties a bit bland.

The achievements were good in that most are for "do the stuff in the game", mainly unlocking the memories by completing the levels. The hardest one was collecting every memory molecule, but you can do that on easy mode which is a lot simpler, but also more dull.

Overall I enjoyed the time I spent playing Laserlife, but I'd only recommend it if you know what you're getting into. A "rhythm game" that's more about a single experience of a story than a game you'll keep coming back to because you enjoy it.

Love it

Love it

Fantastic, a true literary masterpiece.

A decent enough way to play these 4 games, but probably not as good as the originals. The ability to retry the special stages is nice, and the new intro and outro movies are pretty cool.

Short but fun, definitely worth getting it on sale as this game ticks all the boxes.

Very fun couch co-op party game. Family and friends is the most fun but the bots are pretty decent to play against too. The range of powerups available make every game different and entertaining in its own way.