Recent reviews by Absurd Logic

If Kairo and The Stanley Parable had a mutant bastard child that wasn't any fun to be around, this would be it.

Gameplay
- Boring. Seriously. You just walk room to room.
- Minimal controls - WASD movement, E to interact
- VERY few things to interact with
- Not as many puzzles as you'd expect

Audio/Visual
- Outdated textures and props feel like the game is from 2004 (or earlier), not 2014
- Short sound clips that loop endlessly (that chair scream, ugh) or cut off abruptly

Environment/Ambiance
- Cheap, pointless quasi-jumpscares (falling containers? a cardboard tube? monster noises in the dark? really?)
- Puzzle contraptions don't fit the rest of the environment, and would be better suited for a game like Kairo
- The ONLY challenge is remembering room locations (draw a map) and navigating the fire room tiles (copy or screenshot the wall map)
- Afaik, the tile room is the only one that can actually kill you (which just puts you back in the starting room)
- Shreds of the "story" scattered around are not enough to maintain interest

Conclusion
Unless you got this in a bundle, save yourself the aggravation (and money) and just watch this Quick Look video[www.giantbomb.com]. (ViolentMonk posted it in the discussion boards.) If you're at all on the fence, it will make the decision for you.

If you did get it in a bundle, run it for the cards (~1.25 hours for all 3) and go watch the above video or a LP until they drop. No point in going through the frustration yourself. There are no achievements either, so there isn't even a superficial reason to keep playing.

I've filed this one under "Crap Games" and fully intend on forgetting it exists. And honestly, it's bad enough that even if it did have achievements, I probably wouldn't bother. I'm not that masochistic.

NOTE: I haven't bothered with the Last Stand DLC, so this is only a review for the base game.

At first glance, I thought this game would be a pass. It had nothing I would typically be interested in: I rarely play MP or co-op because I find the competition/survival aspect stressful, I tend to avoid historically-based war themes (especially involving Nazis), and while dinosaurs are cool, they haven't been a draw for me since I was a kid.

But as Dino D-Day was free for a weekend, I figured what the hell, I'd give it a shot. The dinos+WWII aspect was at least enough to make me curious.

Lo and behold, by the end of the weekend I had sunk over 14 solid hours into the game, half in online MP matches and half messing around in SP with bots to get the hang of classes and mechanics at my own pace ("dinomon" difficulty mode is a hilarious godsend). The fact that achievements unlocked for me even though I didn't own the game yet was pretty cool too.

As for my dislike for WWII themes, it was surprisingly a non-issue. While in a match the Axis/Allies thing kinda dissolves into the background and simply becomes red vs blue. It helps that they don't flaunt or overuse Nazi-related imagery or buzzwords. There's the occasional themed comment from a character after a kill, but otherwise any blatant "historical" references are primarily in the menu text and voiceovers.

I really like how you can seamlessly switch classes or sides at any point (, and . keys respectively). It's not something I'd abuse if a match/team is working together really well of course, though the game sometimes auto-balances teams and swaps you unwillingly. Not really a biggie, but less fun if you get saddled with teammates who don't know what they're doing. You can always switch back when a slot opens though. :)

What sold me however, was how laid back MP matches were. Not at all like your standard CS:GO/Halo-type level of stress and hair-pulling: it didn't feel like there was a competitive urgency in matches, the voice chatting I did hear was free of gratuitous cursing/whining/trash talk, and "newbie abuse" in text chat was very, very minimal. I think the absurdity of the dinosaurs is a big part of all that, honestly. It's difficult to take the game as seriously as one with a completely human cast, so "failure" becomes either amusing/inconsequential or just simply a temporary annoyance till you respawn.

Parts of the game were more frustrating, but mainly the class-balancing issues, like how much of an edge Compys and Raptors have over humans based on their size and speed. Being pounced to death over and over can get annoying - especially when you know the people playing the small dinos are just using them because they're easy and OPed, and require almost zero skill to rack up kills. (Obviously that's not always the case, as good players do play small dinos, but you can tell when someone doesn't quite know what they're doing. I'm more impressed when I get sniped by someone from across the map.) Either way, it's still not even close to the amount of stress I expected.

Conclusion:
Dino D-Day, despite boasting themes and genre/play-styles I wouldn't normally even take a second look at, managed to enthrall me so much that I bought it. (The 90%-off sale was also a factor, but I actually did want the game.) I even considered the 4-pack, but that kind of requires that one a) has friends, and b) they would even be interested in the first place. I guess I'll stick to making friends in-game for now. :P

Btw, if anyone needs a buddy for some of the trickier two-player achievements (Nigel/Microraptor, Ilona/Raptor, etc), I'll gladly assist.

It seems keys are given away pretty often for this game, and you don't have to play long to understand why.

Let's start with the difficulty options: Hard, Hard, and Hard. There are three buttons, but they do nothing. Oh look, it's an attempt to be clever, or troll the player, or whatever the purpose was. Okay, I get it: No choice, expect rage-quit difficulty.

Except I wouldn't call the game hard. At least the core of it. And I don't normally play these kinds of games. Hell, I beat the first 3 stages just by idling in the same spot on the screen, holding LMB to fire, and occasionally using the special laser attack (RMB), which mows down enemies for a good 5 seconds or so. You can activate a shield with Space, but it doesn't make a difference. If you get hit you lose a life (3 per level) whether you're shielded or not, so I don't see why it was even included. (Maybe another 'hah, we're making this difficult' jab?) Both "abilities" are only usable once per level. They reset when you die.

You're constantly moving forward (WASD adjusts your relative position), shooting stuff that comes flying at you and dodging repetitive obstacles like bugs carrying shields, wrecked bicycle wheels, ground canons, etc. It felt like a cartoony version of those old "fixed shooter" arcade games. Or maybe a weak "runner" game, just in the air and with a couple of weapons at your disposal.

The obstacles are the same in every stage, and in the same locations. Their patterns can be memorized via trial and error. The different swarms of insects are more annoying than difficult. Just stay to the left and keep firing constantly to clear the way, saving your laser attack for the more unpredictable types. The most difficult aspect is probably figuring out the hitbox of each enemy/obstacle/projectile, so you know just how far to nudge to avoid getting hit.

Each level adds a new obstacle/enemy or two, but the overall object is the same: shoot swarms and avoid predictable hazards till you reach the 'end' of a level. It gets boring quickly, because all you're really doing is correcting your errors until the whole level is burned into your brain. It's like the video game equivalent of memorizing a really long and pointless string of numbers. You repeat it over and over and over and over, and eventually you get "good" at it by pure rote. But getting to that point is anything but fun, and there's nothing rewarding about it other than bragging to your friends, who are just gonna roll their eyes at you for attempting it in the first place.

Overall, I'm glad I didn't waste money on this. If you score a free key by all means try it out for yourself (or for the cards), but otherwise there's no point. There are no achievements, the 'plot' and minimal dialogue are hollow and uninteresting, and there's really no incentive to beat the game whatsoever. Save your money.

To preface: I encountered zero bugged areas, quest issues, broken achievements, crashes, screen blips, or hangups while playing this on Win 7 64-bit, so the devs most likely tackled all or most of the issues people have been complaining about up till now (Jan 2015). That said, don't let the bug complaints in other reviews deter you.

Violett. Admittedly, this is a tough one. I adored the music, the art style (the 2.5D in-game, not the 2D intro/ending), the colorful characters, the bug world, and the goals. I'm a fan of puzzle games and "collect-them-all" type of scavenger hunts, and I rarely have difficulty completing them on my own.

However I simply could not complete Violett without a walkthrough. Many of the puzzles are ridiculously convoluted, and that's aside from the main 4 required for the Brain Overload achievement. The roof elevator puzzle alone nearly made me weep and ragequit.

Even "simpler" puzzles are not at all intuitive. They could take hours of trial and error, especially:
- If you miss a necessary item that you can only get in another scene (but you aren't told where);
- If you move to one side of the screen, the scene elements can block the very thing you need to click on (e.g. the Kitchen & Garçon de cuisine achievement, or any number of orbs that are hidden from certain angles);
- Any instance of "nope, can't have this/get there till you do this/find that/give this character X number of these";
- If you don't figure out the specific puzzle mechanics or "logic", which are rarely or never explained.

I'm not saying games should hold your hand through puzzles. That wouldn't present any challenge. But when the clues and/or a solution to a puzzle are so COMPLETELY off-the-wall and nothing you'd even think to try without tripping over it accidentally -- that's just bad foresight in the puzzle design itself.

And then there are the doors. Oh god, the doors. Go in here, come out there. Go back in the same way, come out on a different level. Rinse, repeat. It's like a damn Benny Hill hallway chase scene, except you're the only one running around like a loon. Oh, and even worse, if you pull a lever/push a button in those scenes, every route changes and you have to figure it all out again. *facepalm*

I do wish the characters had a bit more interesting/interactive elements instead of just being part of the scene or spouting chimpmunk-speed gibberish (sounded like Russian at some points) along with a single picture bubble as a "clue", but that limitation didn't really take away from [mostly] understanding what they wanted from you.

You WILL need a guide if you're going for the Supercharged achievement to collect all the orbs. Some of them are so hidden away it's like the devs don't want you to find things unless you click every spot on the screen. At least there aren't any click penalties, cuz man, would I be in trouble.

So why do I recommend the game?

Aside from the frustrations of the puzzles, I would still say Violett is a unique and fun experience. I didn't really mind using a text or video walkthrough for some most parts, because I could look past that and enjoy other aspects of the game, like the art, character design, "2.5D" level design, and silly Alice-like atmosphere. If you have no issues with "reading the directions" and then just enjoying it while you follow them, you may get the same level of enjoyment out of Violett that I did.

It's not a masterpiece by any definition, but even after a complete playthrough my mind drifts back to Violett's bug world now and again, and in that sense I would say the game is pleasantly unforgettable.

I wouldn't get it at full price (mainly because the insane puzzle designs waste far more playtime than they should), but when it's on sale (especially for .99 cents), you should consider giving it a shot.

I must say, gameplay is not as seizure-inducing as the trailer video makes it seem. The intro was, but after that it was less of an eyesore than expected, and navigating was tolerable to a degree. Except for the pitfalls. Everywhere.

Combat...ugh. It gets boring really fast. Only 3 weapons, aiming is a crapshoot, and there's no variety. Enemies charge at you in straight conga lines. And there's a bad attempt at emulating slow motion bullet-time or something when you get enough combos or hits, which really doesn't help if the player slows down too.

I wouldn't call this a game. At least not in the professional sense. It's equivalent to someone putting their mediocre grad school "final project" up for sale, like first time app developers who excitedly throw their piece of crap onto the iMarket carousel hoping they'll become the next Angry Birds.

With that in mind (whether true or not) I can kind of forgive some of the crap factor, but playing this was still a terrible experience. The first few "tests" showed a little potential, but it all goes downhill from there.

I'd say .14 cents is about right for what you get out of this, if anything. At least you can sell the cards and get your money back, plus a little extra for your trouble.

Run it for the cards. Then run away.

There is not a single good thing about this piece of crap.

• It launches in fullscreen mode, even with -w added to the shortcut/launcher.

• The game crashed my computer twice. Blackscreened, frozen. I finally got lucky and Alt+Enter worked so I could see the stupid logo in the first place.

• There is no menu. No audio or graphic settings. Nothing. Hitting ESC just exits the game entirely.

• There are no in-game options other than picking what "vehicle" or whatever to use at the very beginning.

• The "music" is awful. Sounds like someone repeatedly crammed death metal, dubstep, house, and some other genres together, vomited all over the mess, and called the resulting travesty a "soundtrack".

• The "graphics" are minimalist to a fault. I didn't even know which ugly collection of shapes on the screen was my vehicle/robot/thing until I tried the WASD keys to move.

• There is no tutorial, no instructions, not even a decription of what the hell you're looking at. What are the controls other than WASD? Clicking with the crosshairs does absolutely nothing. FFS, I don't even know how to shoot! I can slide around, but the bigger ugly mess of shapes just keeps killing me over and over. HOW THE ♥♥♥♥ DO YOU EVEN PLAY THIS GAME? HOW?!

I ran it till I got the cards, then blissfully (and quickly) exited that digital cesspool of fail.

Cards or no cards, it's not even worth the .09 cents I paid for it.

Short Version:

• Recommended, but only if on sale, and mainly for the great art.
  
• Seasoned P&C/HOG players will not be impressed by gameplay.
  
• If you're colorblind, skip this altogether - the minigames rely too much on color-matching.

PROS:
+ Beautiful art
+ Nice soundtrack
+ Smooth mechanics
+ Some unique puzzles

CONS:
- No real story
- Repetitive tasks
- No instructions for puzzles/minigames
- No choice to skip puzzles/minigames
- Includes 2 short but stressful 8-bit 'obstacle-avoidance' action minigames (not what P&Cers are looking to play)
- Hint system not very good
- Anticlimactic and unsatisfying "ending" (if it can be called one)
- No replay value.
__________________________________

Long Version:
My feelings towards this game are mixed. I bought it based on all the positive reviews, and while I did enjoy it (mostly), and I do recommend the game (on sale), I still have a bunch of curmudgeonly gripes.

STORY
It didn't feel like there was much of a story. The wordless intro clip only show a basic scenario: meteor hits planet, planet breaks into puzzle pieces, you need to find them all and fix the planet. Not much of a plotline, just an excuse for the player to do stuff. The store description says that the world "fell apart" and "its future depends on you", but I honestly expected a bit more for the main objective than literally putting a picture puzzle back together. And aside from the puzzle pieces, the actual game feels disconnected from the initial "story" idea; it doesn't seem like there's any dire trouble to tackle in the world - just finding misplaced parts and accessing new areas. There's not much that connects the minigames, puzzles, and hidden object bits to an actual story, anyway. Yes, the puzzle pieces fix the planet. But how does anything else in the game itself factor into the "story"? I know that's being nitpicky, but if "Story" is in your title, there should at least be more plot-like connections between the tasks a player must complete.

GAMEPLAY
You get a couple of initial tutorial arrows showing what to click on, but then you're on your own. The puzzle piece hunt is obvious, but you still have to click around to find out what parts of the scene need "fixing". Those bits give you an secondary objective to find a certain number of objects (gears, pipes, dice, etc) to fix the broken part. Sort of a semi-hidden-object hunt. After fixing your ladder/panel/door/whatever, you either unlock another area, or are presented with a minigame/puzzle to complete in order to get the last piece for another secondary objective. Basically, "Find all the _____, or else you'll never get that last _____." At least clicks are precise, and the movement between scenes/areas is very fluid.

MINIGAMES/PUZZLES
Many of the puzzles were very familiar/common in other games. But there are a handful I haven't seen in P&Cs/HoGs before, and the difficulty varied, which was nice. Either way, you get NO instructions once you start. Some are intuitive - like the "Simon Says" levers, or a version of that tube puzzle where you rotate pipes to complete a network. But many have you scratching your head before you realize what you're supposed to be doing in the first place. (I spent far too long on the Compass "puzzle" until I looked up the solution out of frustration.) At least you can click the red X to exit and reset everything if you mess up.

I really didn't like the action 'video game' minigames you're forced to play to continue, and was very glad there were only two. They're 8-bit obstacle games: one guiding a boat up and down to avoid walls, and one moving a plane left and right to avoid trees and planes. If you crash even once, you start over. They're not all that difficult, but they introduce an unwelcome level of stress that I generally play P&Cs/HoGs to avoid.

Oh, and forget about finishing the game if you get stuck. You can't skip a single thing. Not cool.

HINT SYSTEM
The hint system is cute, but iffy. Click on the blue flies to fill the "?" meter. Once it's full and clicked, a red bug will fly out and circle around whatever you're supposed to click or focus on next. The problem is that if you're in the wrong scene within a level, the bug will simply fly to the edge of the screen to the signpost arrow. I understand that means the next 'piece' or whatever is not in the current scene, but when you move to the next scene the bug disappears. So all you really got as a hint was "Nope, it's not here". Then the hint bar won't release a bug again for quite a while, even when full. I don't know what the timer is on it, but it's annoying to unknowingly "waste" hints like that. It's not difficult to refill the meter, but that really doesn't do much good if you can't use it.

VARIETY
The description calls each chapter "vastly different". I disagree with most of that. Different, somewhat. Vastly, no. Any major differences between levels are purely cosmetic. It's just different scenes, music, and what type of objects you need to find. The minigames/puzzles themselves are obviously going to be different, but that's expected for any game like this, so I wouldn't consider that a "vast" difference.
The tasks in each level are pretty much the same:
1) Find all the hidden puzzle pieces.
2) Find multiple objects to "fix" things so you can progress. Objects are hidden in similar ways in each level (behind panels, overlaying a similar shape, blending into the background, etc).
3) Help some random person (usually just a version of "find this many ____").
4) Solve a handful of minigames or puzzles.
5) Put the puzzle pieces together at the end of each level.
That said, it didn't take long for it to feel a little repetitive.

ENDING
What ending? When you complete the world puzzle, you're put in a room with the people you helped out. Initially you think it's a bonus level, but then you realize all you can do is change the radio to play music from each level, and in the next room you can replay each minigame/puzzle individually. Beyond that...what exactly was accomplished? It's very anticlimactic and unfulfilling.

REPLAY VALUE
None whatsoever. You can't complete a level if you don't find/solve everything, so once you play through, you're done. Maybe it has replay value if you want to revisit a minigame. But I don't see myself loading this up again just to play a puzzle with a 1-minute-or-less solution.

CONCLUSION
Despite my nitpicking, I do recommend the game to PoC/HoG fans (wait for a sale though - save the $5 for a latte or something). The lovely art and music are worth a look, at the very least. If the game was any more expensive, I'd probably just go look at some nice galleries on deviantART instead. But honestly I can't comment/complain about value, since I got it on sale for $0.49.

Developers: Beautiful game, nice puzzles, but if you advertise it as a story, it needs more plot depth to be "immersive" or feel that I'm saving or helping anyone.