Recent reviews by Anterk

The setting and story in Slaps & Beans comes up alot. It's like talking to someone who really, really wants to be funny, but who has no guidelines or concept for what makes humor or antihumor work. Or, maybe the game is funnier in the original language: it's so poorly written I assume it's translated.

The gameplay between the constant story bits is dull. You cannot jump, and no additional movement option was added to compensate or to help make the game more interesting (unless you count dashing, which I don't). There's not much in the way of combos, so you're left with basic button mashing and the ability to swap between characters.

The skinny character is faster, has a powerful multi-slap attack, and gets a dull counter move in the form of a side-swapping dodge. The big character has a heavy attack that makes an annoying "boing" sound, has the ability to pick up stunned enemies, and has a real counter. Neither makes a strong impression.

There are annoying QTE sections, which makes sense for how limited the game is, and there is at least 1 chase sequence that adds jumping. So, there's some variety, but it's not the kind I like.

I'd totally refund this if it didn't come in a bundle.

I got this game years ago out of curiosity, played for a bit, and immediately got bored and dropped it without really understanding why. Now I get it.

Armello is just prettier and shorter Talisman. You'll feel like you have control as you wander around, but the dice rolls and actions of other players will throw in so many hitches things might as well be totally random. I completely loathe the combat system, which is dumb shields vs swords dice rolling and takes way too long to play out. Your best bet is to try to have the right cards when combat happens, and combat is enough of a requirement that you'll always want to be planning for it instead of pursuing more interesting strategies.

I hate this game. It's nice to see a trash board game succeed as a videogame, I guess.

Red Dust takes the expanded FPS gun handling from Receiver (the need to collect, manage, and load bullet supply manually, along with correctly handling your weapon) and tries to make a decent game out of the formula. Unfortunately, Red Dust still manages to fumble the landing: There's no in-game menu to see or change controls (this is a huge issue in a game with such complex weapon handling), currency gain is stingy as hell and it's also your health, the map will occasionally black out in a fantastic example of style compromising playability, and a number of enemies are basically instant hits on you up close even on easy.

The last point is particularly frustrating. I was willing to make do with everything else, but each time I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on the game I find myself dying in some new way to an enemy I either couldn't see in time (some mines are placed on walls at angles where you really need to watch for a few seconds of red flash out of the corner of your eye or your screwed), or I made a mistake that allowed a melee enemy to get close and now I either cannot make enough space to deal with them or I get machine gunned to death trying.

Red Dust comes the closest to a playable game I've ever seen in terms of shooters focused on simulating gun mechanics. It's still not landing the hit, though.

I really like the shooting model here. Unfortunately, there's a big issue that prevents me from recommending the game:
It's multiplayer-only, so when the community is offline the game is totally dead. Currently, I'm unable to find players, and I have no reason to be invested in this game so I'm not going to work to try to scrounge some up.

If there's a discord server or something you can download the game and try to coordinate play, but that's more work than I wanna do.

Simple little solo card game with some stressful/tasty decision points where you must choose what you want to risk losing to keep playing: cards from your deck, your hand, victory points, or multipurpose tools?

This digital version of the card game has the handy features of automatically handling rules and streamlining the process of figuring out the cards left in your deck by the discard. For the price of free, it's worth a try if you're interested in a nice little card puzzle.

UI is extremely challenging in that it's prevented me from outright performing actions. Match progression is deflated by a flat growth curve: Your potential plays are only limited by whether or not you have gold, and you'll routinely have access to 1 gold (no more, no less) on both your and your opponent's turns. Even Yu-Gi-Oh!, with it's complete removal of mana, still manages more of a feeling of progression through the need to either build out your field to lock down your opponent or to summon a strong creature and keep it alive.

As a result of the flat progression, success in a match feels like it has less to do with how you use your cards and more to do with your deck composition and card draw. The best strategy is always to summon the least you need at any moment, and then to try and ping your opponent until they die. There's still room for strategy in which cards you actually choose to play on any turn, but with less of an emphasis on future turn planning I find the experience underwhelming.

Plus, the UI sux.

I was attracted to Pseudoregalia by the destroyed world vibe, PS1 artstyle, and the hype. Trouble is, Pseudoregalia is simultaneously execution-focused and clunky, beautiful and tedious. Anyone who is recommending this to a general audience needs to get their head checked.

The best example for me, in regards to the clunkyness, is the wall jump. It's actually a wall kick, one that hangs in the air a bit too long and has a slower startup that I expected. There also seems to be a limit on spamming the move. So, you have a wall jump that is trying to reward platforming execution in a 3D environment, which is already a recipe for trouble. In 2D, wall jumping is simple because 2 directions. In 3D, additional directions means you may not always get what you expect unless you're already a master of this kind of game. First person mode helps somewhat by reducing the possible directions to your facing angle vs everything else, but now you've got the can of worms that is first person platforming.

The tedium began for me in the first area, with a jump that didn't look like the path forward. I tried it anyway, thinking it was a secret or something, but my attempts failed and I went around the entire starting area again before realizing the path forward was that same side-path-looking jump. I had just been taught the path forward may be intentionally obscured.

When I did make it to the second area, I encountered a space so large and so annoying to navigate that I began to dread what it would take to find the next hidden means to progress. I did find the wall jump, but that just brought me down lower as I repeated failed to use it to successfully cross a great gap. I eventually made my way back to the hub area, found a path forward, and then gave up because it required wall jump skill. And, I completely and totally hate the wall jump.

The people trying to hype Pseudoregalia up should really calm down. It ain't for everyone.

This game might be for you if you love the art. The art and the puzzles are the sum-total of substance here: You're trapped in a school filled with absurd levels of death, you encounter 1-note characters that fit the cutesy art style, and you smash your head into the adventure game logic and unlock pointless achievements until you win. I find the experience to be extremely dull.

It's a warhammer-themed hearthstone-like. I enjoy how the factions feel different. The Space Marines are the usual all-rounders, the Necrons have a chance to bring back units, the Eldar utilize the dead to power abilities, the Orcs and Tyranids are distinct flavors of mob, and Chaos are... I'm actually not sure, didn't try them.

Good enough free game. I'd play more if I wasn't so sick of the grind. Didn't encounter any bugs or anything, easy recommend.

I bought this game for the Guardians, and the combat is good enough that I plan to finish it. However, I hesitate to recommend this game because:
-It's one of the glitchiest games I've ever played. I've encountered at least 1 (if not more) forced reload(s) every chapter, from getting stuck in the environment, to objectives not loading, to getting stuck on elevators, to the game outright crashing.
-The Guardians never shut up. On the first mission where the next objective wouldn't load until I restarted, I spent 5 or 6 minutes running around a big open space just trying to figure out what I was missing. The Guardians spat out pointless, air-filling, annoying dialogue the entire time. I have no idea how much dialogue was recorded for this game, but the sheer amount of it is so much as to become grating no matter how much you enjoy the characters.
-The QTEs are terrible. The first moment when it feels like a QTE should be possible via what the animation shows you will actually result in failure. Instead, you always have to wait just a bit longer. It's infuriating, especially when many QTEs are setup behind unskippable cutscenes. You can set cutscene QTEs to automatically succeed, but you'll still have to deal with the stupid weapon charge QTE during combat.
-This is more a personal thing, but every moment of achievement or interest is overshadowed by a giant stupid meter I couldn't care less about taking up half the screen.

When the game is working, there is 1 thing I really enjoy about it: The combat. Directing the Guardians and dodging feels super clunky at first, and if you have trouble with double-tap inputs you'll want to avoid this game. However, once I got the flow of combat, I found myself enjoying the moment to moment of dodging, shooting, shouting orders, triggering team attacks, and rescuing downed allies. The combat might be too easy for some, but for me it's the real selling point.

Buy only if you really want to fight with the Guardians.