Recent reviews by blake++

Played on Normal

• Fun base mechanics; weird and wonky but allows for a surprising amount of depth and skill
  
• New mechanics added over time are innovative and offer interesting new gameplay dynamics
  
• Strong visuals; very atmospheric and moody, with a coating of absurdism
  
• Music is really fun and pleasant; some instant bangers
  
• Good sound design. Game feels immersive due to it
  
• Controls are somehow fun and responsive. Imagine Surgeon Simulator but it's actually really fun
  
• Optional sandbox mode to challenge yourself

• When you have to drop things in a certain position, it's really difficult to do so because there's no real indicator on where something is going to drop. There's a very faint shadow underneath it, but it's so hard to tell that it just ends up feeling like guessing. The beer and shot glass mechanics were really annoying due to this.
  
• No dedicated rotate button for rotating objects BEFORE you drop them (This makes an achievement called Caged Roach a literal nightmare instead of just hard)
  
• Hard Mode (required to play one level of it for 100% achievements) is awful to deal with, even after completing normal mode
  
• Eggs will just slightly overlap and then not cook as a result even though both eggs are touching the pan (this is doubly worse in hard mode)
  
• Changing the sensitivity with the scroll wheel feels unintuitive and also useless. I ended up never touching the sensitivity
  
• Forced mouse accel while walking around (not a big deal but still annoying)
  
• Minor typos in dialogue
  
• I have zero clue what this game is actually trying to say. I left kinda confused, but I'm also not good at analyzing stories so YMMV.

Overall, a very fun experience with some minor hiccups that could easily be ironed out (but probably won't be). Very cool ideas at play and they're done mostly well. I heavily enjoyed the game and will be looking forward to this developer's future releases; additionally, I will be listening to the OST probably forever.

Got stuck 18 hours in and a friend who had 110%ed the game went through the entire map with me and couldn't find where to go. Can never seem to want to pick it back up, so I'm just not going to.

As my first foray into metroidvanias as a genre, I think I can say it's my last. While I definitely enjoyed the combat, the platforming, the aesthetic, and the music, I will always absolutely despise the lack of actual ability to notate your map. It's beyond absurd how I can't write on a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ map and I have to use credits so I have the privilege of using 4 different types of tokens to signify 8+ different things.

Decent metadata on all tracks. Some have poor quality embedded covers, others don't for some reason. Higher quality covers are included in the folder though.

They also keep adding tracks, and the tracks themselves are great!

Most tracks were exported and worked on @mp3 320 so getting FLAC or wav would be useless. I made a guide on how to get certain tracks in FLAC though, available here.

I recommend buying on sale.

A small and fun fishing game that is a great relaxation tool while still keeping you somewhat involved. It's like really great elevator/background music. Great to play with friends.
Plenty of things to do to keep you occupied for quite a few hours, with fun ways to move around the map and optional mechanics that allow you to be more involved in the game.
It's got a great sense of humor and tons of customization for your fursona.
The art is cute and the sound design is nice, but the soundtrack is lacking in significant variety. Feels more like an afterthought at this point, but that's a pretty minor issue considering most of the time it's not even playing.

Well worth it for the asking price, must-have if you're on sale.

Except it's not as punchy nor as replayable (for me). It's still really good though.

• Really fun gameplay loop; Feels exactly like HM in first person
  
• The missions just continue to get cooler and cooler in concept
  
• Interesting traversal system that helps precise actions feel very easy and smooth
  
• The voice acting and storytelling is amazing; it's so fun and so cool!
  
• Additional challenges for missions as well as challenge-missions are very cool and add a lot of replayability
  
• Soundtrack is pretty fire
  
• Enemies are funny to listen to
  
• Great intro that explains systems well while being cool, fun, and stylish
  
• Starts up instantly on first install. No "Installing DirectX" or "Performing first time setup". Actually impressive

• Main menu piano sounds really mushy?
  
• Honestly wish Byron and Alphonse end up as a couple. Next patch? /j

• VSync OFF
  
• FoV 90
  
• Crosshair OFF
  
• Reticle Dot ON
  
• Auto Sprint ON
  
• Camera Recoil OFF
  
• Reticle Y = 0
  
• Gamepad Aim Assist OFF

Really don't have much to say here; it's just a really good game. I'm not crazy about it like I am with Hotline Miami (then again that was many years ago), but there's plenty of game to love here and it is absolutely a lot of fun.

Buy it and buy the soundtrack. Enjoy yourself!

9 hours to beat the final boss, 20.7 for 100%.

• Used Dualshock Edge controller
  
• VSync ON, turning it OFF causes UI glitches

• Game feels extremely fluid but tight. Movement feels amazing once you get going
  
• Music is phenomenal and perfectly fitting for the game. Some songs can definitely wear on you though (HAIR DUN NAILS DUN)
  
• Boss battles are impeccable (except like one). The verticality of fights and the ability for more skilled players to kill a boss faster while providing a greater challenge is amazing.
  
• Different levels provide different experiences and feel mostly unique to one another, and the world and lore are decently interesting
  
• The progression of tagging into combo challenges is sick and super clever
  
• Story gets deliciously dark while still keeping somewhat upbeat. It's nothing mindblowing when it's all said and done but it's a cool accompaniment to the gameplay
  
• Dream sequences help shake up the environment and provide opportunities for weirder geometry
  
• Shortcuts and fast travel opening up via exploration is really awesome
  
• Hitting big combos is relatively easy (once you understand the ins and outs of the movement) but can require some planning; it's fun to plan out a vague route and then execute it
  
• Forcing the player to switch outfits to lose heat is a good way to make players utilize the different outfits and change up their look. Nice touch
  
• SD cards allowing you to complete maps more easily and find remaining tags is really cool without ruining the challenge of finding stuff

• The movement and combo systems are not mechanically deep and challenging enough to make playing more after 100% worthwhile. It's too easy to continue combos forever and just never drop them once you're good enough, and there's no point to go for super high scores other than to just do it. Mods can help remedy this but the issue feels a bit more fundamental.
  
• The progression of difficulty across the main story feels really bad. Some crew battles are extremely easy while others are moderately difficult (ex. The Mall crew battle)
  
• I feel like some of the aspects of the movement and fighting system to be unintuitive; for example, I didn't learn about jumping after attacking being so good until I read this Steam guide AFTER I already beat the final boss. There's a lot of stuff the game doesn't tell you (to its detriment), so reading this once you hit post-game is an extremely good idea.
  
• There is genuinely no point to respraying tags. The point value is worthless for combos and police are enough of a nuisance to make you never want to tag anything you don't have to
  
• The taxi, dancepad, and heat mechanics get annoying post-game since the same cutscenes repeat EVERY TIME
  
• No retry button for post-game challenges like beating high-scores, which are usually combo gauntlets where if you mess up once you need to restart. Instead you have to run all the way back to the NPC to restart the challenge.
  
• No tracker for post-game side quests. A tracker would greatly assist in letting the player keep track of what you haven't done and where.
  
• No final score preview for when the game asks you to hit 16 million point combos that take 10 minutes per attempt. What.
  
• You have to use dancepads in order for them to stay on your phone's map, which is dumb and arbitrary
  
• I wish you could "defeat" the waves of cops instead of having to switch outfits, so that way combat is encouraged and has potential rewards instead of just "find bathroom" every time
  
• Characters like Escher or the Lieutenant are underutilized and don't really get time to flesh out their characters
  
• Typos in dialogue subtitles. Happens in a main story cutscene in the first hour of the game (and more over the course of the game)
  
• Game does not have integrated support for Dualshock Edge at the moment. Had to use Steam Input; I personally experienced a LOT of trouble getting this working (took an hour), and I still don't understand why it started working. This could be an issue with Steam Input, but it'd be nice to have official support for Dualshock Edge. This resulted in some binds
  
• In the first bossfight vs DJ Cyber, you can get stunlocked into death by his continual attacks

If you're going for 100% specifically, these are cons related to that.

• Flying Rats Begone is an extremely unintuitive achievement with an absurd immersion-breaking solution.
  
• State of the art (Cover an entire stage with unique graffiti) and Photo Generic (Take 17 unique photos of this penguin hidden in multiple maps) are annoying to do
  
• For 100%ers, there is no true percentage tracker. Not everything is tracked as unlocked or not (such as characters) so you have to reference guides to make sure you have EVERYTHING.
  
• Even if you scrape each map from top to bottom when getting 100%, some things are still near impossible to find and require a guide. Some things are hidden so stupidly crazy that it's shocking. Most of the collectibles aren't like this, it's just a final few. And using the guide is in itself annoying since you have to recheck everything unless you remember exactly what you have or haven't gotten.

• CrewBoom[thunderstore.io] + Hatsune Miku Skin[gamebanana.com]
  
• QuickLaunch[thunderstore.io] + FasterLoadTimes[thunderstore.io]
  
• FastTravel[thunderstore.io] (Call taxi via phone for easier fast travel)
  
• FinalScoreDisplay[thunderstore.io] (Always display final score under base score)
  
• BetterToilet[thunderstore.io]

• MovementPlus[thunderstore.io] (Greatly expand game skill ceiling) + WallPlant[thunderstore.io] (Add wall plant mechanic)
  
• DisableAnnoyingCutscenes[thunderstore.io] (Disable new heat level cutscenes)
  
• QuickCharacterAndMoveStyleSwapper[thunderstore.io]

Like I said, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an immensely satisfying and fun game. It feels extremely natural and fun to play, and it is dripping with pure atmosphere and swag. The soundtrack is amazing, the levels are unique, and the world is interesting. With no prior experience with any JSR games, I had a blast with BRC and can say it's one of my favorite games. But it's also something I can't see myself ever really playing for JUST the movement or just the levels. The post-game experience is just so lackluster and the systems are so lacking in depth that it's not something I see myself coming back to. However, I think everyone should play Bomb Rush Cyberfunk at LEAST once. I had a lot of fun with it and I'll keep on jamming to the music for a long time. Buy on sale.

Spent 15h in one day (two sessions).

• Used mouse and keyboard
  
• Aim Snap: OFF
  
• FOV: 90
  
• Graphics Preset: Very High
  
• Motion Blur: OFF
  
• VSync: OFF
  
• Difficulty: Survival 2

Story is mostly good, but there are quite a few decisions I find myself scratching my head at and that soured my overall experience. Underrated.

• The story can often be really compelling and intense; at certain points I found myself mirroring Deacon's emotions; I really felt like I was in his shoes, but he still had his own character traits. I even teared up a couple of times! Sarah's reveal was nuts. Grabbing the centrifuge at the lab and Sarah killing Jim was a real "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" moment, the latter for especially how it shatters this idea of Sarah making everything "normal" again, when the truth is that this is the new normal and they can't ever go back. Sarah has been changed just as much as Deacon has by the world around her.
  
• Dunkey painted the relationship between Deacon and his wife as weird but their banter is actually really charming. The wedding moment is actually really cute in its own weird way. You can tell they love each other. The game is also funny when it intends to be.
  
• Attention to detail in cutscenes: in a good portion of cutscenes, Deacon excercises trigger discipline. Nice touch!
  
• For the final big assault, it's cool that a high trust level with camps will result in them helping you and a special cutscene.

• Big spoiler here, but basically I was unsatisfied with some of the major elements of the main plotline of the game. Finding Sarah is not treated with the gravity it deserves. It feels so anticlimactic, and it doesn't feel like Sarah is really happy to see Deacon? It doesn't feel like they had the same need to see each other again, which I think is not intended. Deacon also never really opens up to Sarah on the things he's done to get here. Really would've appreciated that moment and seeing how Sarah would react to that. Their relationship was good for the most part but I really was disappointed that a lot of stuff I wish they talked about, they never did.
  
• The MC is sexist (something that isn't treated as a real character flaw and isn't really resolved, even though the game continually shows that most of the time women can absolutely hold their own)
  
• Radio Free Oregon is constantly spewing right-wing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at you, and while the game acknowledges he's a nutjob by multiple decent characters, it's still spewing it at you constantly and wanting you to listen. I can't turn the radio off so I stop hearing his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I have to choose to skip it each time.
  
• From the above two points, I can only assume that most of the people involved in this project were against some of these ideas, but the infamously right-wing schizo game director insisted upon their inclusion and force-feeding.
  
• Did we really NEED to have Rikki cheat on Addy? It would be great if the notable queer character was just able to have a stable relationship with another queer person without cheating. And after resolving it with Addy, later she admits she still wants Deacon!!! WHY
  
• The ending for Boozer is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass. The fakeout death is lame, and the way the good/bad ending for him works is also lame.
  
• Quite a few unresolved plot threads (Deacon being sexist, Boozer not ever being willing to get help, the girl we saved from Marion at the slave camp, what to do with the slave camp where they obviously overwork and bully)
  
• Intro's pacing is a bit too fast at first; initial cutscene spam is insane. First 50 minutes are basically a movie (the game later replays one of the cutscenes)
  
• I wish side jobs had more complexity and separate endings for some of them. His character doesn't really get challenged doing most of these side quests, which is a wasted opportunity. Side jobs are mostly one-note.
  
• Characters tend to be boring, but have good moments

The motorcycle riding is peak. Fighting enemies in general is fun, with lots of cool systems and mechanics that enhance the experience. Helps the world feel more alive. Sadly, boss fights are almost always bad, and some enemies/areas are really awful to fight. Mostly positive, but still kinda a mixed bag at times.

• I love the motorcycle riding. The game forces you to make decisions on when and where to fill up, and it can get you into bad situations that are very good for keeping the game feeling fresh. I've had to stealth my way into and out of infested gas stations just to get gas. Some of the best parts of the game is just knowing vaguely where your destination is and crafting the best route out of the terrain to get there.
  
• Stealth is EXTREMELY rewarding and satisfying
  
• Gunplay is actually fun for something that technically features random bullet spread on every shot
  
• Clearing out nests to lessen zombie influence in an area is a cool give and take
  
• The fact that gunshots can ACTUALLY attract unwanted attention and result in some bad outcomes is very interesting. I've been screwed over because I used my pistol and have had to fight my way out of a really bad situation
  
• Hordes have impressive AI that lets them feel smart while also feeling somewhat predictable. It's definitely not what I would buy the game for but it is a very nice aspect of it.

• Boss fights are always meh and buggy. Results in super unsatisfying conclusions to arcs
  
• Wolves have WAY too much health and have ZERO headshot hitbox. They suck to fight and they pop up somewhat often
  
• Clearing out nests became so boring that after the first few after setting fire to a nest, I would run away, save, then reload so the zombies that spawned from the nest despawned
  
• Horde-killing is a storyline that unlocks stuff, but it isn't mentioned to you until the end of the game when you probably already have the best weapons and thus all hordes are extremely trivial

Quality of life is something that can easily not be noticed, but when it's not there, it's bad. Game needed more testing on the best mode, which is Survival 2. NPCs can be extremely annoying with the whole "come back to camp for a quest" shtick. Definitely would appreciate a patch for this stuff. Not sure if you can fix some of this stuff with mods.

• Game lets you know when you are entering a point of no return

• Autosaves WAY too often; can lead to encounters feeling cheap because there's not as high of stakes
  
• Due to Surival mode, you have to press M every few seconds to check your map to make sure you're going on the right route. You also have to get off your bike to check your gas tank, which sucks.
  
• Game would've benefitted from a radio with licensed songs. Without the option of fast-travel on Survival, you end up driving to places a LOT so some backing music would be nice
  
• The map doesn't have clearly defined borders around the edge, so it's hard to tell what areas you can explore and what is just not accessible
  
• The classic open-world system of "I've got a job for you; come by when you can" *goes by* "I could've told you this over the radio, but instead I made you come all the way here for no reason!"
  
• Quest givers will also wait for you to leave their camp, and then call you to come back so they can give you a quest in person lol. It's agonizing.

Review continued in comments. (char limit)

If I could leave a neutral review, I would.

I think I've just gotten to that point in my life where games like these are just too much. I can deal with immersive sims, I can deal with psychological horrors, and I can deal with puzzlers, but a combo of all three of those? I think it's just too much for me to handle. This is an extremely intense game IMO, and for someone like me whose favorite type of horror game is kind of light on horror and doesn't have all this ♥♥♥♥ to juggle, I think this game just wasn't made for me. But I think I'm pretty safe in recommending it to those who are really looking to be challenged and terrified.

I suggest buying The Frictional Collection, which tends to go on sale often I think.

mp3 @ 256kbps offered as well as lossless WAV files. Metadata included on mp3s but not WAVs. No album cover included.

For $10 and the amount of tracks offered, this feels like a ripoff (compared to other game soundtracks I've seen on the Steam store).
I would say buy on sale, but it hasn't yet gone on sale since release.
I would put "Mixed" if I could instead of "Recommended".

EDIT: You can get the album cover and everything else on Bandcamp for the same price. The files are probably properly tagged too. If I could go back and do it again, I'd just buy it on Bandcamp. Trying to get a refund to buy it on Bandcamp is just too much work though, so I'll just fix the tagging on my end.
https://camginex.bandcamp.com/album/arctic-eggs-original-game-soundtrack

EDIT2: If you want to grab the album cover for the Steam release (which is different from the Bandcamp release) it's available here: https://steamdb.info/app/2954800/info/

While the second one is probably a lot better, this is still a lot of fun. I really only like the mono modes though. I don't have as much willingness to put hours upon hours trying to get good at games anymore, so Audiosurf is a great alternative to games like osu! for me. Plus, I'm always playing music I like. It's a great tool to keep your hands busy while you listen to an album without detracting from the experience. It definitely feels like the music algorithm isn't as good as it could be though, as some fast songs feel underwhelming.

This is great, but just spend the extra cash to buy the second one, which goes on sale often.