Recent reviews by protagoras

Aside from just a couple minorly obtuse puzzles, this is hands-down the best old-school adventure game I have played since the death of adventure games. It's this very close to perfect combination of irreverence towards the genre, storytelling, and world- and character-building.

Point-and-click adventure games are dead; long live point-and-click adventure games.

-- EDIT 8/28/23

(from a now-deleted reply to a now-deleted comment:)

I meant that as the figure of speech "The (old) king is dead; long live the (new) king" - adventure games never died, they only changed, Thimbleweed Park being "the new king".

Anyhow -- now as it's over 6+ years old and I decided to do yet another round of casual + hard playthough to ensure the walkthrough I wrote was still all nice and good and workable (still not good enough for speedruns but that was never the point) I feel I should tone down my initial enthusiasm from 6+ years ago.

This is a great adventure game with a somewhat polarizing last third/ending. I feel confident that if you liked point-and-click adventure games, you'll enjoy the initial 2/3rds of the storyline. After that, it's up to your personal preference.

More of a sea life screensaver than much else. But, yow - is it beautifully done. The focus is on the art and very lovely music. It's a short journey but worth taking once.

Story was... alright. Same Tomb Raider formula. The bad side wants something, you need to stop them, somehow they are always one step ahead of you, and so on...

Improved graphics over Tomb Raider 2013. Environments were more pleasing and felt more open than TR2013.

Tombs (if for some reason you expect to be raiding tombs in Tomb Raider 2016, as just about every interesting one is optional) were fine - perhaps a bit more fleshed out and unique than TR2013 - but overall were rather simple.

I enjoyed my time in the game. I think that boils down to "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts".

Baba Yaga DLC is worth it. The story is cookie-cutter (I mean the base game is as well) but still worth. Might as well get the 20 Year Celebration package.

I had trouble with DX12 and crashes at specific points in the game. Somewhere around 20 crashes throughout my ~25 hour play-through. The ending cutscene would reliably crash at the same point for me. I suggest sticking to DX11. It is a testament to the save game and checkpointing functionality that I never once lost progress. Big thumbs up for that.

Such a relatively simple game, but such a freaking blast. What you see is what you get: Hijack vehicles, use power-ups, avoid the clock and the wormy alien. All you have to do is make it to 2055. EASY...

This game takes the eternal question of "what is consciousness?", deposits you into the deep sea, and proceeds to provoke at least one (but most likely more) answer to that question out of you. It achieves this not by outright asking via socratic method or telling you the answer, but by carefully suggesting that what you might be thinking right now may not be an original thought.

It's not a new idea (see Theseus' paradox et. al. - but what is original nowadays?) however I feel that the way it is embellished and presented makes SOMA something special.

I accidentally pushed my wife's raccoon character into the water while she was holding a completed plate of food.

We laughed! We cried! It was better than Cats! We're going to play it again and again!

It's an art-game with a tiny bit of puzzling added. The story is light and short (2 hours should do it), the graphics are simplistic yet striking, and the audio fits in well. It's a scenic click to nowhere in particular. At the end, there's even an old-school demoscene trip.

I enjoyed my time but there isn't much to see or feel at this rest stop.

If you like Harvest Moon, why are you reading this and not playing this game?

You know what to expect.

You will get it, mostly.

MP doesn't interest me, and therefore I won't dwell on it. Looks fun with friends. Everyone says (at the time of this writing) that there are few players and the ones that are playing are cheaters (or inhumanly good). I doubt that will change.

I bought this for the single-player. The story didn't reach the heights of Wolfenstein: The New Order (or even Old Blood for that matter) but again - this is DOOM. You don't watch a Michael Bay movie for the story.

Gameplay is... fine. To sum it up: Point A to big arena B via hallway C where you fight monsters X,Y,Z while picking up item/secret D if you so desire. There's a healthy amount of nostalgia going on while also trying to dress it up in a pretty new package. It mostly works. About 3/4 in I got tired of the arena shooting and ripping and tearing and whatnot. It's all the same. It will always be the same. Grab item, kill monster, repeat. The story is inconsequential. You're here for blood. Take the blood. Drink it. Wasn't that nice?

Re: the SnapMap level editor - I played around with it a bit. It feels like an excellent compromise between not having a level editor and having to open a Blender-like app to carefully craft your perfect level. The software dev in me would like to see more flexibility in terms of importing level pieces/snaps, but this is 2016 and things are a bit more complicated than they were 20+ years ago.

I recommend this only because it's DOOM. It's nostalgia for me more than anything else. It may be for you as well.

At the price point MANOS is at, this is worth it. Generous nod to a cult-crap-tic 60's movie, old-school pixels, old-school difficulty, old-school sounds, etc. etc. etc.

Is it the best homage to a NES platformer? No.

Is it worth a play-through or two if you've watched the movie and have an interest in this sort of game? Sure.