Recent reviews by BinarySplit

I didn't play this - I watched Wretch Plays' Let's Play and it was so good I felt compelled to buy this game just to leave a good review.

Supposedly Wonderful Future's gameplay is almost entirely expressed as a visual novel. There's a lot of reading, a few hard choices, and a lot of thinking in deeply unusual ways about the ethical and philosophical problems it throws at you. The writing is fantastic, and it's novel and creative in ways that you hardly ever see in modern media. I thought I was relatively experienced in sci-fi storylines, but I've never seen anything like some of the situations you play through in this game.

Overall, I highly recommend Supposedly Wonderful Future. It will expand your mind.

This is a mixed recommendation - I chose thumbs up purely because The Hex is appropriately priced at launch, which is unfortunately rare these days.

The premise is interesting - 6 characters, 6 genres of gameplay (+ 3 more genres across minigames & the hub world). The problem is that you have to put in a lot of effort to get through the game, but for too little reward. Gameplay is continually interrupted by cutscenes. It makes you wonder why they put effort into actually implementing gameplay, because you never get more than 30s without a cutscene showing up and ripping you away from the action.

Throughout the ending I had this constant sense of dread that I was missing the true ending because of how many loose threads hadn't been tied up. In a completely linear 6 hour game that has very little action, the prospect of having to replay it from the beginning is horrifying. No idea what I'm missing. I don't want to sit through all those cutscenes again to find out. Some quality-of-life improvements (e.g. cutscene skipping, and free roaming after the end of the game, so that I can tie up loose ends without having to play the full game from the start) would make the game so much better.

Ultimately, The Hex is a unique experience with good ideas and mediocre execution. I don't regret buying it, but I feel it's not living up to its potential.

I disregarded the other reviews, thinking that they just must not be getting how immersive sims are supposed to work, thinking that it must have some redeeming factors underneath the bugs, thinking that such esteemed developers couldn't have released something as bad as people were saying. I was wrong.

Underworld Ascendant's problems are in the fundamental areas of its design. While it's fun for a few hours experimenting with fire, physics, magic, etc., the overarching objective of the game completely saps you of motivation: You play missions (always either a fetch quest or an assassination) in a small set of levels, while each mission increases one of several numbers that brings you closer to some sort of ending. I don't know what that ending is. I played about 15 missions and wasn't even half-way toward the ending, and there were no indicators of progress other than these numbers increasing. As far as I can see the plot doesn't change, the world doesn't get permanently affected by your actions, anything you do that isn't directly related to completing missions to increase those numbers is pointless.

A good adventure game with a very Blade Runner-esque storyline.

The puzzles were just about the right level of difficulty. I had to use a walkthrough once, but otherwise most things made sense.

While it is a good game and I'd definitely recommend it to fans of adventure games, I'd recommend the Blackwell series and Kathy Rain over Gemini Rue, as they have better character development, and consequently their stories are more interesting.

Wait for a sale. It's one of those games that is unique, highly polished and actually really fun, but it's too short for the price and doesn't seem to have any replayability beyond achievement hunting.

It's worth learning German for!

It's frustrating. The gameplay seems to rely more on trial and error than technique. There isn't much else to keep you interested.

The whole experience felt like it was missing something like World of Goo's "Project Z" moment. Play that instead if you haven't already. It's an incredibly good example of how to make innovative but not exceptional gameplay highly compelling with a good story. Basically it's the Portal of 2d-physics-puzzle games. Throughout the game the difficulty curve ramps up at exactly the right pace, each gameplay element unfolds in many different ways as the brilliantly designed levels nudge you toward figuring out new tricks yourself, and the story is just so unique you can't stop thinking about what might happen next. Damn, I think I'm gonna have to go play it again now.

Zeran's Folly is pretty good as a story-oriented metroidvania. Similar to, but not quite as good as, Wuppo. I enjoyed it, and on a 50% off sale I'd say it's well worth its price.


+ Interesting characters, good story
+ Enough optional content, but not so much that 100%ing it is out of reach
+ Reasonably fun gameplay


* The writing is not for everyone. It's very crude at times. Characters openly talk about sex, rape, incest, child molestation, etc. Nothing graphic happens or is implied to happen during the course of the game, except a boss and several costumes have exposed breasts. It just is a part of characters' backstories & motivations. I imagine some of it could be shocking if the internet hasn't already desensitized you to everything though.



- It's very hard to control. Most attacks involve some sort of movement, but their behaviour changes dramatically depending on if you're in the air, and if you're "Focused". If you're hovering by repeatedly using an Up+Attack move, but your feet touch the ground for any reason, your Up+Attack move won't get you back in the air, but instead will send you rocketing across the screen. If you fall into a pit of spikes, you'll take damage and lose Focus, which means you lose most of your mobility moves until you've managed to avoid damage for ~1.5s. Without your mobility moves, it's hard to avoid damage, especially when you're stuck in a pit of spikes.
- Because of the control issues, it's not a precision platformer. I played on Easy, so I had enough health to survive most of the times I got f***ed over by the controls. However, if there were more difficulty, I imagine it would be more of a frustrating challenge than a fun challenge.
- The dungeons are a bit too long without much enemy variety. By the end of the game I was just cheesing the fastest characters to breeze through them.

I recommend you check back later. In it's current state, it's unfortunately rather shallow. There's plenty of stuff to do, but it doesn't really build up to anything greater. It's just a handful of small supply chains connected by A LOT of manual busywork. You'll quickly find the optimal strategy, and then it's just a matter of repeating the same actions and waiting your way to success.

The foundations of a good game are certainly there, but they need to find a way to make it less of a linear march towards wealth.

I played this back in 2010 and just found I hadn't left a review. Aquaria has left a lasting impression on me - it is an incredibly polished game that will leave you wanting more.

Aquaria is basically a Metriodvania-style game, but without gravity you have a lot freer movement and don't have to do any platforming. Its world is beautiful, filled with secrets and collectables. You can collect pets and learn to craft recipes for health. The story is relatively engaging, though there will be times when you just want to ignore it and go exploring for collectables.

I haven't found a game since that scratches the same itch as Aquaria - 2D Metroidvanias without platforming elements are very rare, and the level of polish in Aquaria cements it as one of the best games of all time in that genre. Every few years I check back hoping that the developers will be working on a successor.