Recent reviews by Anomalous Underdog

Wait for a fix. I frequently get stuck in a Loading Screen (or when exiting first-person view) and the only thing I could do at that point is to alt + tab and close the game, causing me to lose progress (you can only save at a certain location).

Not a typical horror story cause it's mixed with the "survival game" subgenre (That's survival genre in the anime sense, not in terms of videogames. Think of Future Diary, Darwin's Game, Danganronpa, etc.). Though, even that "survival game" aspect takes a back seat later on, and it just turns into a detective mystery (with a supernatural twist).

It *is* a visual novel though, so this isn't for gamers who hate reading. It does have some pretty light adventure game mechanics. The product description might make it sound like there's some gameplay with the curses, but think of it more as a mere gimmick on top of the visual novel. Still, the story's well-written and well-paced that I didn't mind.

There's times when you are given 360 degree vision of the surroundings, encouraging you to look all around, sometimes even above and below. Pretty cool, and you could almost scare yourself into thinking there's gonna be a jump-scare right around the corner. It's not used all of the time, so I feel like this 360 degree thing is underutilized.

Overall, the only real challenge it asks from the player is their understanding of the entire chain of events, how the supernatural works in this fictional world, etc. The game peppers you with clues and it's up to you to connect the dots in your head and if you got it right, you have everything you need to unlock the best ending in the story.

This game had me thinking it was a short 5 to 7 hour experience, but a lot of the lore just makes you suspicious and question everything. Makes you feel like you're uncovering a secret when you realize that's just roughly halfway. Gameplay is basically Resident Evil 1 if it was top-view, in terms of combat, exploration, and puzzles, but it stands out enough from the typical horror game with its setting and premise. Highly recommended if you like old-school survival horror.

Played it to get all the endings I wanted to see. After uninstalling, I still kept thinking about the implications in the story for about a good 1 or 2 weeks. To me, that's the mark of a good game.

I was just minding my own business then this chic walked up to me and offered me a Honda Accord (???) She seems nice.

If you grew up on Rocko's Modern Life, KABLAM!, Invader Zim, Chowder, etc. you owe it to yourself to at least give this a try. It's like a blast from the past and I'm back in my childhood days. The quirky and spontaneous characters are what draws you to the game.

The highlight for me is that, this has, by far, the most mature and yet easily digestible depiction on how to move on from heartbreak, in a game that I have ever seen.

The platforming is easily the worst part of the game. The problem is that it's almost perfect, but there's like a 1 out of 10 chance that your character gets stuck in some geometry, air control would feel inconsistent, double jump not working at all, or lifting yourself up from a zipline having an annoying delay. This can lead to some frustrating deaths, especially in the last parts of the game. But if you can weather through that, you'll be treated to one of the best gaming experiences that harken back to the old Nick cartoons.

Immediately feels like Freelancer at first glance, or, for a more recent example, Strike Suit Zero, but this game differentiates itself by having a drift mechanic, where after getting the proper starfighter ship, holding the right mouse lets you momentarily "glide", allowing quick change of direction. Drift overrides your boosters, so you can just keep holding the boosters and drift when needed, allowing you to do tight turns while maintaining high speed momentum. It makes dogfights more fast-paced and overall feels to me like it encourages high speed maneuvering.

I have to highlight that fighting starships has a cool mechanic where, after destroying the outer weakpoints, it exposes entrances to the insides of the ship, which you need to fly into and shoot the vulnerable core, like a mini-trench run of sorts, except that you'll need to do multiple passes on it. The only problem is that you can encounter a side mission where you fight such a starship, but the game doesn't explain to you how to do it (I failed it a few times before realizing what to do), because it turns out there's a story mission (much later on) that properly teaches you how to do this.

Another unique thing that I've encountered in this game is "indoor" fights. And what I mean by that is that sometimes you have to fly into hangar bays and shoot the turrets inside and/or destroy some objective. And while the space is not so cramped, this is where your handling of the drift controls come into play, as you fly into corridors, encircle around rooms, and use pillars for cover. It's such a fresh change of pace from the usual dogfights. It's just a shame that there's very few instances of this happening.

My gripes right now are that the game doesn't do a good job of teaching the drift controls (the race track combined with target-shooting tutorial it immediately puts you into is incredibly difficult, you'll have more fun using drift in dogfights while in empty space).

The "follow the trail" mechanic wasn't explained very clearly. While it does show a prompt on what button to press to highlight the trail, unfortunately at the time, my entire ship was oriented in the wrong direction, so I didn't really see it. I was repeatedly failing a certain side quest because, in trying to find some stolen cargo as my objective, I was apparently leaving the objective area (I don't know where I was supposed to go). It took me a few retries to realize that there was, in fact, a visible trail that I was supposed to follow.

A lot of times, I don't realize that I've arrived to the next objective too early, and the character dialogues haven't finished yet, which unfortunately made them skip to their next lines. This happened frequently enough that I had to consciously force myself to pause, since I was interested in the story.

Sometimes the less important side quest dialogues (which automatically trigger when you happen to be near enough a side quest location) try to interject when you're having some important conversation. It even happened once while I was in a cutscene.

I feel like having a conversation log that you can review ought to help with these problems.

The story isn't that bad, but I find myself wanting to skip some cutscenes as I don't feel so invested in the main character's internal struggles. I find the story overall passable enough in the sense that I want to know what happens next.

Some of the voice acting on the NPCs are amateurishly bad, like for example a character was clearly trying to sound distressed, but it just felt like the VA was reading off a script and exhibiting what I could only describe as mild peril.

This game is a shining example of the creativity that AAA studios just wouldn't risk making. At its core, Inscryption is a Yu-Gi-Oh type of card game, but if you want to advance the story, you have to see it more than just *that* card game. It's also fine if you don't want to bother with the story. There's a mode called "Kaycee's Mod" that turns the game into an endless roguelike (a little too difficult for my tastes, but it is still in beta at the time of this writing).

As a card game, it is great. But the story? Well, I wanna say the only thing bad about it is that after finishing it, you'd want more. I would have preferred if it had multiple endings. I can easily imagine how the story could have ended up if I, as the player, had some choice in certain events. But clearly as an indie game, it just doesn't have the same amount of story content that AAA games can afford to have. That is not to say that the story is bad, just that it's too short. If you were very critical you could even say some parts of the story are half-baked, but on the other hand, I think the mystery and vagueness is part of it. If the developer can make a sequel or spin-off that fleshes out the story more, I wouldn't mind buying it.

In terms of value-per-dollar ratio, it is fine, especially with that endless roguelike "Kaycee's Mod". If the card game is all you care about, then I say buy it, and activate the Kaycee's Mod content that's currently in beta. As a beta, it probably doesn't teach all the rules yet so you may want to play a few rounds of the base game first. If you are still unsure about getting this, then at least wait until the Mod gets out of beta, then check it out again.

Perfect prologue to Wolfenstein New Order

Has everything you'd expect out of a Metroidvania style game. If you love Castlevania but want something more fantasy-based, get this. It's comparatively easy (you'd probably only have trouble in the late-game bosses) compared to other Castlevania games.

Kickstarter backer here. I was not disappointed. Just finished my first playthrough. It delivers on its promise of a metroidvania with Dark Souls level of cryptic story. The boss fights are not as hard as I thought they'd be (most took me 5 tries or less to beat them), but they were surprisingly fun. Only the final boss gave me a hard time, but even then it's easy to quickly figure out the pattern.

The world is pretty varied and interesting. You'll find the usual Castlevania tropes on maps here: there's a library, dungeon, sewers, underground areas, etc.

Enemy variation is pretty focused on Catholic elements. Flagellants, nuns in masks, fire-breathing bishops, it gets weird. There's even some Biblical angel depictions (the ones where it's just a head with six wings, stuff like that). It's at this point I kind of wished they'd give it more variation, because quite a few of the enemy types are reused across multiple areas.

The combat by itself is pretty easy. You get abilities that let you overcome enemy defenses. What will kill you, however, are the level traps (spike pits are instant death, and you have to respawn on the last save point you visited). Combine that with the enemies, moving/crumbling platforms, swinging blades (that tend to throw you into the spike pits if they hit you) and it can start to get annoying.

What's worse is that there's times when my button input seems to be late even though I'm sure I pressed it at the right time. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's my hardware. But it happened enough times to make me say "oh come on that was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!". I'm not amazing with platforming, I actually dislike sidescrollers with heavy platforming cause I'm not that good with precise jumping and all that, but I eventually got past the platforming parts in this game, so I guess by that standard it's not too difficult.

There's some instances where you're climbing a ladder and an enemy attack is just waiting for you, and you can't really do anything about it (you can't block while climbing ladders). And I think that's just bad level design.

All that said, I still had fun with the game. Just know that you'll probably get some frustrating moments from time to time.