Senaste recensioner av slanderoid

This isn’t the first time I’ve played this game. Hell, this isn’t the first time I’ve reviewed this game on Steam. Thinking back, I think the only version of this game that I haven’t played is the Game Boy Advance version (which is likely the definitive version of this game, but more on that later.)

I say all of that to say that I’m a big fan of this game. In fact, it’s one of my favorites of all time. With that being said, I’ll cut right to the chase: if you’re a fan of classic console RPGs and you haven’t played this game, I demand that you do so immediately. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

…Did you do it? Good. Now I can nitpick/fanboy about this version without worrying whether you’ve played it or not.

So, yes, this version has several graphical improvements over the older versions (hence, the Pixel Remaster appended to the title). Those, however, aren’t the only improvements: the inclusion of an auto battle mode, mini-maps pinned to the corner of the screen, treasure tracking, bestiary, etc., all make this an improvement over most of the versions that are out there. Compared to the other version that is widely available on modern platforms, it is technically an improvement over the Android/iOS version, which was available on here before but can no longer be found on the store page. (I was one of the handful of freaks who didn’t fly into a rage over that version, mind you. I thought it was fine.)

I would stop short of calling this the definitive version of the game, however. Once again, just like the previous version, it’s missing the (admittedly hokey) CGI animations from the PlayStation port. Now, on top of that, this one is missing the extra content from the GBA version. That stuff might not be necessary for this to be a good game (it’s not), but, as a long-time, hard-core fan of this game, I was hoping for all of it to be included in one package. I guess I get to keep on waiting… Though the next version of this game will likely be a remake that will cast all that stuff aside, anyway. Sigh.

With all of that out of the way, this version is the best version of the base game that you’ll find. There are some additional things that will appeal to people who salivate over this one, too: an improved soundtrack, original artwork by Yoshitaka Amano, and a new interpretation of the opera scene that is guaranteed to make you mess yourself. This version just lacks a few things that would elevate it to “perfect”.

So, is this the version that you should play if you’ve never played the game before? Probably… but that depends on the resources available to you. The GBA port is likely as close to a definitive version that we’ll ever get. But, if that’s not feasible, this is the next best choice. Whatever you do, you should play this game, whatever version you can get your hands on because it is, objectively, one of the best games ever made.

This game makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills. It comes up in any discussion about the best adult games available on Steam. It has an overwhelmingly positive rating. Its price is higher than a lot of mature games on here (if you include all the seasons in the total price). Some folks seem to think this is some kind of benchmark that other AO games need to live up to.

But, holy freaking ♥♥♥♥, I really, really, really disliked this one.

The best thing I can say about it is that it’s like playing a game based on Animal House or Van Wilder with a few extra spicy scenes thrown in. But, while I enjoy both of those movies, this just feels like I’m-Not-Getting-What-I-Paid-For, the game.

I understand that most of that can be chalked up to my own expectations. Between misunderstanding what the devs intended by throwing a “Mature Content” warning on the game and having enjoyed Acting Lessons (which, it’s important to note, is about a quarter the length of this game), I seem to have set my expectations far too high.

Let me just cut to the chase: I saw an astonishingly small number of adult scenes during my playthrough. I’ve played enough of these to know that the scenes tend to ramp up over the course of the game. But right when I thought this one was finally kicking into high gear, the words “to be continued” popped up on the screen. (My Steam Deck almost went crashing through the window when I saw that.) Again, that might be on me because I went down the “chick” path, rather than the “∆IK” path. Still, if that’s the reason I saw very few scenes, I’m still pretty pissed because both “morality” paths should have equal payoff. If it’s not, and both paths have very few scenes, I don’t understand how everyone who plays this doesn’t feel ripped off.

Yeah, yeah, loveable characters, moving story, blah, blah, blah. I’m going to be real with you (and perhaps realer than a lot of folks are willing to be): I didn’t read Playboy for the articles, I don’t watch adult films for the plot, and I don’t play AO games hoping for a story that moves me emotionally.

I suppose this one did have a profound effect on me: it elevated my blood pressure and cut at least two years off of my life.

Alright, I’m going to cut this one short because, the more I write, the more I realize I’m just an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. If you’re on the same page as me, do yourself a favor and check out NLT Media’s last couple of games, Treasure of Nadia and The Genesis Order. They cost the same or less, they're better quality, and you get much, much more bang for your buck. (Pun intended.)

I have to admit that this one put me off a bit at first. I mean, that cheesy art on the thumbnail coupled with assets that are clearly very “inspired” by Castlevania games doesn’t exactly scream “Game of the Year” to me.

But that’s exactly what you have here. There’s a reason it was nominated for a bunch of awards when it was released in 2022. I still kind of wonder if that “reason” is some kind of charm spell hidden in the game’s files…

I don’t mean that in any derogatory way, of course. I’ve played this game for hours and loved every second of it. (It was the first game I sank any meaningful amount off time into on my Steam Deck, for god’s sake.) It’s just that this is, on its face, a very simple game. Most of the player input, outside of menu navigation, is moving your character. Attacking and spell casting are both done automatically – the player only needs to position the character among the throngs of enemies for optimal obliteration. To me, when the enemies are coming at you in full force, it ends up feeling like I’m navigating a moving maze as I try squeezing through gaps in the enemy front. That is, until you get swallowed by the mob or Death himself comes for you and the level ends.

And that’s kind of it. Don’t be fooled, though – the gameplay loop is addictive as ♥♥♥♥. There’s something about watching your leveled-up spells ripping through a hundred skeletons at a time that never gets old. Besides that, trying different characters and loadouts to see what is most effective kept me busy for a long time.

If you’re looking for something entertaining to kill some time, you’d be hard pressed to find something better than this one. But, if you’re looking for something to really sink your teeth into, you might want to look elsewhere. Still, at this price, it’s probably worth picking up anyway.

I’ll start this one off by saying that I have very little knowledge of the original Sega Saturn / arcade version of this game. The most experience I have with his series is blasting away zombies in The House of the Dead 2 for my late, beloved Dreamcast. So, I can’t say what this remake gets right or wrong in comparison to the original.

What I can tell you is that, to someone going into this one with no expectations whatsoever, it feels like they did a lot of things right. I had so much fun rampaging through the mansion that the few nitpicky things I could say about it almost didn’t register for me.

In fact, since I played this about a month ago, I’m having a hard time thinking of anything that really rubbed me the wrong way. Umm… It’s super short? The bosses still feel like they’re meant to eat quarters, even though nobody even has quarters anymore? Controlling the game kinda sucks if you’re using a controller, so it might be worth busting out a mouse and keyboard instead? Of course, all these things can be dismissed if you remember that this is a remake of a port of an arcade light-gun game.

If that short list of half-hearted complaints completely turns you off, I get it. This game probably won’t have much appeal for folks who never saw the nineties. But, if you’re willing to go along for the ride, you’ll likely find this to be a fun, frantic race through a wonderfully goofy, gory haunted house – one that oozes nineties cheesiness but has been given a fresh coat of paint that will appeal to players with modern sensibilities.

Keep in mind, though: this game is very short – it may be worth waiting for a sale to pick it up.

This game has been kicking around in my library for years. Then, a couple months back, when I was struck with a desire to consume every bit of dumb monster media I could get my hands on, there it was, shining like a diamond in the middle of a bunch of games about lame crap like ninjas and knights and soldiers, just begging for me to give it a try.

Well, it lived up to my expectations: there are plenty of big, dumb monster shenanigans to be found here. Basically, the goal is to make your way from point A to point B, blowing up as much ♥♥♥♥ as possible in the process. (I’m going to show my age here, but if you ever played The Simpsons: Bart’s Nightmare, you’ll be familiar with the gameplay: this is just a full-length, fleshed-out version of the Bartzilla levels.) Different enemies and obstacles will be better dealt with by using the different attacks your monster learns along the way. To top it off, each level’s boss is fought in a completely different way, often taking inspirations from other game genres.

This goes a long way toward staving off boredom – not an easy task when the rest of the game amounts to blowing up buildings and stomping on humans and little else. Still, I never found myself feeling bored. Maybe that has to do with the game’s short playtime? It only took a few hours for me to finish all the levels and max out my monster. I may have been singing a different tune if I’d tried out the other several available monsters... but I only played with the basic giant dinosaur guy.

If you’re looking for something to kill some time, there are far worse games to play out there. If a simple, yet entertaining, giant monster destruction game sounds like it would be up your alley, this one is worth a try.

Under normal circumstances, I like to finish a game before I review it. However, these are not normal circumstances. Rather, these are as abnormal as circumstances get. (Okay, I might be exaggerating… but still.) Even though I’m only part way through the third act of the game, I want to get this review done because (a) I want to get this written before the year’s end and/or this award season, (b) I’ll get a badge for posting it during the Steam Awards, and (c) it’s Baldur’s ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Gate 3! You probably already know everything I’m going to say, so why wait?

So, yeah, what we have here is a game that is likely to win multiple “Game of the Year” awards, will be remembered in 2029 as one of the best games of the decade, and will be found on many peoples’ lists of the greatest games of all time. It is an absolute triumph in nearly every possible way, and we should all be grateful that it exists. That may sound hyperbolic, but I mean every word: this game could shake up the gaming landscape as we know it in ways that only benefit us as players. In a world of battle passes, loot boxes, and DLC, here comes Baldur’s Gate 3 with its ♥♥♥♥ swinging: a huge, complete game whose developers have no plans for DLC, whatsoever. Even EActivisionSoft will sit up and take notice when this game continues to exist in the public consciousness for a long time to come.

“But slanderoid,” I hear you shrieking into your monitor or phone or PDA or whatever, “we get that you think the game is important, but is it fun?!”

Let me answer your question with another question: What other game would have the player walk in on a goblin porking an orc in a barn and then have to kill them to keep them from ripping your team apart in a blue-balled rage? How about having the player talk a mad scientist into performing surgery on himself to avoid fighting him in a boss battle? How about letting a helpful but overly zealous bard pull out your character’s eyeball in an attempt to remove the Yeerk from their head, only to replace it with an eyeball he had in his pocket? Sounds like fun, no? …No? Oh, maybe I could have phrased it better: Yes. This game is fun as hell.

You’ll find all of that in this game. Or you won’t. Maybe you’ll find all different stuff. The number of different paths and events in this huge game is genuinely staggering. Normally this is the kind of thing that would give me choice paralysis, forcing me to turn the game off and never come back again. However, since every choice leads to something interesting, surprising, or, yes, fun, I never really felt like I was missing out. Honestly, I just feel like I need to play it again some time and choose completely different options next time.

Okay, let’s run down the list of other great stuff in this game: this game is gorgeous, even on my ancient GTX 1080; the characters are believably expressive, adding to the immersion; the music is memorable; the voice acting is excellent; and narratively, this game is immediately gripping and never lets go. Basically, anyone who has a litmus test for what makes a good game, this game passes. It’s almost guaranteed.

The story would be nothing, of course, if it wasn’t full of amazingly badass characters. Every member of the player’s party comes with an interesting back story and a set of side quests that will determine their fate as the story unfolds. Seriously, even the suckiest character (Wyll) has a cool story. And, as you’re probably aware, you can romance any of the people on your team and you’ll learn even more about them. I haven’t even mentioned the hordes of NPCs that the player encounters throughout the realm that have full stories of their own.

Now, this wouldn’t be one of my reviews without sharing one of my objectively awful opinions that’s likely to leave you completely dumbfounded about how I manage to even play games at all. (Other than saying that Wyll sucks, that is.) So, here it is: I wish there was a setting to bypass all of the dice rolls during conversations. Not just the animation – the whole ass mechanic itself. As someone who doesn’t give two farts about D&D, the dice rolls just feel like a way for the game to keep my character from doing what I want them to do. I’ve been playing this for well over 100 hours (and I’ve only just started Act III, so I’m counting on another few dozen hours, at least) and I’m getting old enough that I’ve begun staring into the face of my own mortality, so I just want the decisions I make in the game to be followed through with – not checked against RNG to see if my decision would work out. In a world where Nabbit and Funky Kong exist, I don't think it's too much to ask... As it is, I’ve spent a great deal of time sitting in front of the loading screen after reloading my last save because a die roll didn’t go the way I wanted it to.

I’ll give you a moment to get your heartrate back to normal. Take ten deep breaths. Do you still feel like smashing your keyboard or phone or stylus or whatever? Okay, take another second.

Did you get it out of your system? Okay, let’s get back to it.

I know that I was talking up the different, random paths the player can find themselves taking through the story just a little bit ago, but I think the die rolls would be better on my second playthrough. I’d love to see what kind of crazy crap happens when I fail a die roll for telling a bog hag to eat ♥♥♥♥. But, on my first time through, I don’t want the outcome to be out of my hands. I just want to tell her to eat crap and let nature take its course without RNG getting in the way.

Okay, I’m done disparaging the fundamental mechanics of TTRPGs. However, I’d be an even crappier reviewer if I didn’t remind readers that this game is huge with hundreds of different possible outcomes in any given moment of the game – so there are bugs. I’ve had the game crash several times, which was frustrating until I remembered to save early and save often.

Which brings me to one of my favorite features of this game that I haven’t heard much about. When I first started playing, I tried relying on the autosave to carry me through the game. This was a mistake – it only reliably autosaves when you enter a new map and the maps in this game are (care to take a guess?) huge. Instead, the game allows the player to make manual saves at any time. Have you been battling for way longer than you expected and now your mom is calling you downstairs for dinner? You can save if you need to. Are you in the middle of a conversation with an NPC but your cat has become a puke cyclone, so now you’ve got to step away and get mopping? Save. Are you in the middle of a date with your in-game romantic interest where you can see their nips and you want to come back to it again later – for science? Save, save, save!

I know it’s a silly thing to love about a game that is revolutionary in many ways but I’m a simple man. I’d love to see this feature show up in more games in the future. Autosave has come a long, long way but sometimes I’d love to be able to make manual saves whenever I want, too. I want it all!

Anyway, that’s enough rambling, I think. This game is fantastic. It’s my game of the year for good reason. (It even beat out Resident Evil 4, an outstanding remake of my favorite game of all time.) Barring financial or health reasons, everyone should play it. That means you. You should play this game. If you’re somehow still on the fence about playing it despite there being over 400,000 positive reviews of the game at the time of writing and, for some reason, this review is the one that is going to tip the scales: play it, for god’s sake! It’s worth every penny you’ll spend on it and many, many more.

The only reason I’m playing this game so long after its release is that I had no idea that it existed. In fact, the only reason that I know that it’s a game that is real and can be bought and played is the fact that I got it in a bundle about a month ago. I would have purchased this one on day one if I had had a clue.

You see, I played both Downfall and The Cat Lady a couple of years ago and fell completely head-over-heels for them. They strike the right balance of horrific, bizarre, and funny that I’m looking for in horror media. And, they were able to walk the (very fine) line between appearing inspired by my favorite horror franchises and presenting something new. I devoured them both and immediately wanted more.

But that’s where I went wrong. After that, I played the third game in the trilogy, Lorelai, and walked away disappointed. No, it was more than that: I kind of felt slighted by it. Nearly everything that I loved about the first two games in the Devil Came Through Here series was missing, replaced with drama and mannequins.

Since then, I’ve been wondering what the developers would do next. Would they keep moving in the direction that Lorelai went, or if they would “return to their roots”, so to speak? Well, now that I have unwittingly discovered its existence, played it, and beaten it, I can say with 100% certainty that this is not only a return to form, but also might be the best in the series. (Or, ahem, the best of their catalogue since this isn’t technically an entry in the original trilogy.)

The developers took every knob at their disposal and turned them all up to “11”. Hell, maybe even “12”. The horrific parts from the original games have become something completely vile. To describe this game as bizarre would be doing it a disservice – it’s something like otherworldly. And this game definitely gets funny. Like, the part where I used a living lump of meat with spider legs to defeat the demonic, alien-like curator of a wax museum? Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gold.

This game was clearly inspired by other horror media, not only by games from its own developers, but by classics like the works of Stephen King or Silent Hill. In fact, the game outright tells the player so if they are willing to read the messages hastily scrawled and left behind in a public bathroom. This doesn’t stop the devs from going their own direction, however. Inspiration seems to come from everywhere, including, but not limited to, fairy tales, crime dramas, and slice-of-life. There is likely a chapter in this game for fans of every genre of horror.

Not only is all of that fantastic and great, but there wasn’t a single voice actor that made me cringe when they started speaking. In fact, the overall sound design is excellent. On top of that, this is the most visually appealing of the series. (No. Not series. Whatever this game is in relation to the trilogy.)

Oh, crap. I almost forgot to talk about the bad ♥♥♥♥. Well, when I played, I somehow soft-locked the game in chapter three, so I had to restart the game. That was a huge bummer. I almost didn’t start over… but, I did and I’m glad I did. Also, there was a weird bar across the bottom of the screen throughout the game that mirrored the bottom tenth of the play area. It didn’t stop me from playing, but it was ugly and annoying. Finally, if the game included save files, my first negative point would have been moot. But, since there is only one save file, there was a problem with soft-locking. It’s probably a creative decision to only have one, but I think it’s a misguided decision at best.

Ugh. That’s enough negativity, I think. Nothing’s perfect, after all.

Seriously, I would love to spend forever talking about this game, but I would inevitably get into spoilers. This is probably one of my favorite games of the year - even if it came out last year - and one of my favorites, period. It comes with my whole-ass stamp of approval. You can probably find it in a bundle if you look for it, but it’s absolutely worth the asking price. Whatever you do, you should play this game if you’re able. (And, if you like it, tell your friends and your friends' dogs because the developers seem to only be promoting this one through word-of-mouth.)

I’ll just start this one by saying that, if you’re in the market for a horror game that has a similar vibe to the classics from the PS1/PS2 era days, you should definitely give this one a play. It maintains the feel of these olde-tyme games while improving on that formula, which is something of a triumph, in and of itself. It’s a joy to play, even if it’s making you crap your pants at the same time. This game excels at what it aims to do. Its quality is undeniable and it’s worth every penny of the asking price.

However, my recommendation comes with a caveat:

(I’m going to stop here and let you know that this review is headed deep into spoiler territory. It’s flagged appropriately, of course, but I wanted to give you a heads-up. So, if you’re not a nit-picky jag like me and you just want to play a good horror game, just ignore the rest of this review. Seriously, get out of here. Go away! Shoo!

Okay, back to the spoiler-filled review. Here we go…)

When this game came out last year, nearly every review I saw likened this one to Silent Hill 2 – you know, when they weren’t creaming their jeans over how good it is. But therein lies a problem: comparing a game to Silent Hill 2, which is a classic for very specific reasons, means one of only a few different things:

A. It’s not actually anything like Silent Hill 2 at all and the person who said that needs to get their brain looked at.
B. It has a similar aesthetic to Silent Hill 2 (in which case it’s better to say it’s like Silent Hill in general).
C. It has the same story.
D. Both B and C.

Signalis falls under option D: other than the thin veneer of outer-space-ness, the levels and enemies are basically the same as Silent Hill 2; in particular, the sock-face enemies and the caged boss could have been lifted directly out of a Silent Hill game. And, when you strip away all of the robot stuff, the plot is basically the same as Silent Hill 2. I mean, the climax is literally the same as Silent Hill 2’s for god’s sake. This game isn’t “like” Silent Hill 2 – it’s Silent Hill 2: IN SPAAAAACE!

Hell, even the first-person segments that I thought were pretty cool at first were probably inspired by Silent Hill 4: The Room.

Since I’m damned tired of typing Silent Hill, let’s go over the game’s other “inspiration”: keen folks may have noted the mention of “Replikas” in the blurb. Once you get into the game, you learn that their counterparts are called “Gestalts”. Does that ring a bell? Could it possibly be a reference to Nier? I’ll go ahead and just say that yes, yes, it is. The reason I know that is that, about two-thirds of the way through the game, it pulls a fake-out ending on the player. If it had ended at a natural ending point, this could have been interesting, but it happens in such a way that there are too many questions left unanswered and it can’t possibly be the end of the game. To me, it felt kind of cheap and unearned.

Honestly, when I sat back and reflected on everything after I finished the game, I was kind of shocked at just how little of this game is genuinely original. (I suppose the art style is pretty unique, even though it’s clearly inspired by anime.) I guess you could make the argument that “there’s nothing new under the sun” and you’d be right about that… But does the unoriginality have to be so damned obvious? Silent Hill at least had the decency not to rip off the plot of Jacob’s Ladder, even though it was clearly partially inspired by that film.

Ultimately, if it was just the enemies, or just the story, or just the levels, I wouldn’t have such an issue with the game wearing its influence on its sleeve. But since it’s all of the above, it kind of grinds my gears, I guess.

…Wait. You’re still here? I figured everyone would hae clicked away by now. Well, what are you doing here? My rant’s over... There’s nothing else to see here. Go play this game – or a different one. Go on now, get!

I’ll be honest: when I heard that they were remaking Resident Evil 4, I wasn’t sure about it. I mean, the original is one of my favorite games and, since I play it every couple of years, I believe the old one still holds up to this day. I thought remaking it would be “gilding the lily”, as they say.

But, I’m glad to report that I was wrong. I still think that the original is fantastic, but the quality-of-life improvements made to the remake were needed to make it relevant in the modern age of games. This game is drop-dead gorgeous, the action is more fluid than ever, and the story has been improved by a lot. It somehow has something for everyone – modern gamers that haven’t played the original and fans of the original that needed an excuse to play it again.

A lot has been changed. There are almost no QTEs in the game anymore. Sections that seemed to stretch on have been shortened or combined with other lengthy sections. The island (considered by many to be the weakest point in the game) has been optimized so that it doesn’t feel like it drags on. Ashley’s mechanics have been improved to the point that she’s not really a burden anymore – she doesn’t even need yellow herbs this time around, thank god!

It’s not all coming up roses, though. There are memorable parts of the original that didn’t make the cut. The lava-filled rooms in the castle, for one. The gondola in village, for another. Oh, and all of the times that trucks come barreling at Leon and he has to shoot them to death before he gets run over? Those are gone, too. I kind of feel like getting rid of those parts was unnecessary… But I’m not a game developer, so I don’t can’t say ♥♥♥♥ about it.

But, really, those are the only things I can think of that are missing. Everything else is here and it’s ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ great! And, some of the things that were cut were replaced with new sequences that are totally badass in their own right.

They absolutely outdid themselves when it comes to the game’s tone, too. I’d say it’s much scarier than before. (To be fair, I didn’t think the original was all that scary to begin with…) In the original, the castle was a bright and shiny spectacle of extravagance but, in the remake, everything is dingier and darker and covered in blood. Somehow, though, in making the game darker, they didn’t compromise the game’s humor. Leon interjects with dad jokes at the perfect times. And, I won’t spoil anything, but the best of his one-liners comes right as the player beats the final boss. I’ll remember that for a long, long time.

I could go on about this game for hours. I’ve already decided that it’s my Game of the Year and very possibly my GOAT. Instead, though, I’m going to go bask in the afterglow of having beaten this one again for the first time. Play it if you can – you won’t regret it!

Cookie Clicker is the first clicker game that I played and (spoilers) it’s still my favorite one. Maybe it’s just that it made a good first impression… but I think it’s more than nostalgia that makes me like this one.

Maybe it’s the games twisted sense of humor? Whether I’m selling grandmas for cookies, causing the apocalypse, or ascending into the Milky Way to improve my cookie production, this game always has me doing something that makes me chuckle. Maybe it’s the varied gameplay? With all of the different minigames that are available, there’s never really a dull moment in this game. Or maybe it’s how I can customize the way I play the game so I never feel like I’m being boxed in? If I want to actively click cookies and put my clicking finger to the test, or if I want to let the game passively generate cookies, there are modes that will let me do either without compromising my bakery’s cookie production.

I don’t know. I guess it’s probably all of the above that keeps me coming back to click cookies over and over again.

The only gripe that I might have is that this is one of the slower clicker games that I’ve played. That could just be the fact that I learned how to play these games with this one and I bumbled my way through the early portion of the game. Still, the exponential growth doesn’t feel very exponential in this one. Whether that’s the scaling cost of buildings or me repeatedly falling on my face in the beginning, I don’t know.

Still, I wouldn’t recommend any other clicker to learn the ropes of the genre. If you’ve played clickers before or are new to the genre, this one shouldn’t be missed. It’s a modern classic for a reason. And, even though this is the only clicker game I’ve played (and reviewed) that costs actual money, you shouldn’t miss this one. It’s definitely worth the price and then some!