Recent reviews by Mandz

It's good!~

+1

Good game. K+M support needs work though.

+1

I'll let other people better than me at this sing praises for this game. This is just awesome. +1

The MISSING is a side scrolling puzzle game with the unique mechanic of being able to break your bones or mutilate yourself using the environment. You can then chuck your limbs away to solve puzzles, all to find your best friend who suddenly went missing during your vacation on an island that is filled to the brim with things that want you dead.

It's much, much better than it sounds.

The gameplay is pretty much consistent and reliable. The infinite regeneration mechanic allows for puzzles that would've been frustrating in other games of this type to feel a lot more forgiving, as well as a source of black comedy at times. You can regenerate pretty much anytime you gain a foothold, and provided you have enough space for your whole body to pop back in - which allows experimentation and creativity when trying to understand how to solve certain areas. There's at least one bug I encountered in the clock tower level, where I went out of bounds while operating an elevator for some reason. But other than that, the game is pretty solid.

Graphics are mid-tier, but it doesn't detract too much from the experience. The art style takes certain liberties when it comes to common pathways and hidden areas, but still allows for beautiful sceneries to shine when it comes to story-progressing events/cinematics. A very good looking game.

Sound/music for this game is pretty minimalistic, which is pretty understandable considering that the game relies and ambience and silence for it's puzzle areas. The voiceovers for the conversations sounds really good. The voice-acting as well when J.J. is hurt gets really harrowing at times that I can't help but feel a little bit of her pain every time a puzzle forces her to get sliced up to move forward, and coupled with the sickening crunch when she breaks her bones - it just made me root for her as she persevered to move forward, all to find her friend.

For the characters and the supporting cast (and pretty much EVERYTHING on the phone), as much as I'd like to sing praises about that, I'm afraid I can't think of a way to talk about them without spoiling key elements in the story. Just take my word for it when I say that J.J. and the people around her are pretty likable.

Now for the story, I don't want to say anything about it. But I will say that if you fear that this is a depressing game, let me clear that up for you: The ending is incredible, so much that I had a number of my own speculations on what this game is about while I was playing it, but the ending still blew my expectations out of the water. The takeaway message is very positive, and it kept me up the night I finished it. It's awesome.

*Mild* spoilers regarding the ending:
I also like that the themes explored in the ending loops back to it's core game mechanic. As J.J. herself puts it: You must "accept the pain".

Stylish, combo-centric hack and slash game.
With a beautiful, sexy character.

+ Boss battles are challenging.
+ Very responsive combat controls.
+ Quite a good number of moves, to experiment with and master.
- Content is a bit repetitive.
- Story is barely there.

While this game is incredibly sexy, it's also a very challenging survival/platformer game.

• Very voluptuous player avatar. Almost all of Haydee's animations has a sexy vibe to them.
  
• The workshop friggin dials the sexy up a notch, there's also lots of mods made by the community that help make the game easier (though I really recommend the vanilla version).
  
• The difficulty does allow to feel easy and rewarding if you perform really well on the first few zones you complete.
  
• Puzzles are mostly intuitive, and can be solved by paying close attention to the environment.
  
• Can bring out the speedrunner in some players, it surely did awaken mine ^^.
  
• Enemies will keep you on your toes, but proper shooting controls (has strafing!) does help make combat segments really tense yet engaging.

• Some puzzles communicate very poorly to the player: barriers and entire platforms can pop in and out of existence without a transition animation, leaving you to rely on memory, sounds and guessing when you press a button and you didn't see how it affected the room.
  
• The endings (all three of them), are pretty minimalistic - it kinda prompts a "that's it?" reaction.
  
• There are (thankfully minor) instances of the game failing to impede you from going to a room that you're not supposed to solve yet (Don't visit the water areas right after the white zone).
  
• Not properly optimized for all systems: expect irregular framedrops on rooms that have lots of other Haydees in it or just rooms with complex lighting (even more for AMD adapters).
  
• Modding-related: I really want to get into map-making for this game, but the game editor doesn't always run reliably for some reason (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't).

• Maybe have the shadows prerendered/prepainted (and have shadows render realtime only on moving objects like Haydee and the enemy bots). Could help with performance immensely.
  
• Have some transition animations (Ex. when a fence/door disappears, it leaves a slowly fading box outline, and produces sparks when it's slapped back in) for the puzzle elements.

I know most players will come to this game (pun not truly intended) for the sexy...
... But there's a lot more to it than that.

- Great, inspiring, truly moving story.

- There's hardly any dull moments
(Unless you take in the scenery during important scenes - which I always do).

- All main characters are interesting.

- Impeccable soundtrack (Just watch the trailer!).

Inspired me to write again (a hobby long forgotten). I won't say anything further, as discussing the more brilliant, amazing stuff would spoil it. I'd rather have you look at other reviews, who all confirm it's really good.

"Short steps, deep breath..."
"Everything is alright..."

10/10

Beautiful, atmospheric and the puzzles are intuitive.