Recent reviews by Wagglesworth

Goty 2020 and frankly it really ain't close

The best musou out there that isn’t exclusive to the Switch.

corgi got robbed

Gives the filler ratio in Naruto a run for its money.

the second best 3d platformer in the last decade behind Mario Odyssey.

The First Order table is among the best that Zen has released.

The pack is well worth the price for the single table alone.

Vlad is an interesting beast, though not nearly for the best reasons. Having the benefit of knowing exactly what this game was, prior to the eventual retooling of its originally more misleading store page description, I was not taken aback by what it proved to be: a choose-your-own-adventure literary experience, and little else. But oddly enough, despite some decently written miniature tales and absolutely superb artistic direction, it’s soon evident that the writers behind Vlad had absolutely no idea how to connect the individual pieces into a single, coherent storyline, and it leads to an utter mess of a tale.

Despite previously calling it so, Vlad should barely even be considered a CYOA. Calling it as such would imply that that there is some reasoning behind your decisions and actions, and that the overall narrative follows a distinct path of your choosing. Rather, you’re given a series of locations in which you can randomly choose to visit. Choose, and you’re given a several paragraph snippet of some unique occurrence, where you’ll be given a single option that will usually reward or detract skill points from any number of your available stats. These events have no relevance to overall narrative, and serve only to manipulate your stats, which themselves are completely irrelevant until the very end. The actual narrative is only touched on at specific points after a certain number of “turns” have passed. Only, these points, while not necessarily “jumping around”, speak of events that never happened, of people and groups that you, the player, likely never have heard of prior, and attempts to piece together a story using only the beginning, several middle points, and end, without ever offering what happens in between.

It’s evident from the store page and individual stories present in the game that there are some very talented writers behind Vlad, the problem is that there’s never any attempt to combine the different pieces into a single, or several, branching narratives, like a real CYOA. In retrospect, it’s really no different than Telltale’s more popular efforts, like Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us, but unlike in those, Vlad’s narrative never truly becomes coherent, nor even attempts to hide the fact that your “choices” amount to nothing more than a statistic. More so, the “game” lasts no more than a half hour, provided you calmly read through each piece. The gall of such developers to try and charge $10 for this is laughable and naïve on their part, assuming they believed that word wouldn’t quickly get around to avoid like the plague. But even so, while I would certainly call Vlad’s narrative broken, I wouldn’t designate the entire experience as a wholly negative one. The art is absolutely fantastic, and is the highest contributor to Vlad’s quality, and the individual stories, short as they are, are a joy to read. While the overall narrative is poorly meshed together, the “lite” RPG elements barely tacked on, and the asking price positively ridiculous, despite my negative grade, I would recommend that once this is bundled, to give it a run through, or even several. There are more unique events than you can visit in a single playthough, and they are fun, very short reads. As a CYOA, this “game” is a veritable failure, but as a brief and unique diversion from the more common experiences on steam, Vlad can entertain for the very short while it lasts.

Road Not Taken is a roguelike puzzle game about surviving life’s surprises. But life is so often content with stagnation and repetition, offering what seems the same grind over and over and over, soon only occasionally taunting with the glimmer of something new. But that’s just the way of things; everything new becomes old, in time. Eventually, new just begins to run out. RNT follows a similar cycle; in the beginning, discovering all these new things and how you can change and adapt them to your uses is exciting and intoxicating. But soon enough, the new is exhausted , and with it, the allure of the prospect of new discoveries waiting just behind each locked gate. RTN is profusely entertaining up until you realize this point has come, but even after then, its unique and challenging formula saves it for a time, despite other issues, both glaring and minute.

RNT plays off its theme of “life’s little mysteries” remarkably well in its gameplay. As the town’s new ranger, you’re tasked in each of your years with rescuing the children lost to the woods during each winter’s storm. To deliver them safely, you’ll have to guide each to any of the waiting mothers, wherever they may be, using your limited amount of energy in carrying the odds and ends populating each level. The greatest joy had in this game also provides its greatest challenge; the discovering of new items and creatures that can both greatly hinder or assist you in your search. There’s a surprising amount of variety in the number of ways things can interact, with many even able to change into new forms entirely, given the proper combination. You’ll quickly begin filling your travel book with all manner of creatures and their respective “recipes”. Eventually, puzzles that seemed impossible in the beginning are soon found to have only been so due to your own ignorance of some combination relevant to the situation.

But here’s the rub, and it’s one that eventually hinders all games of this sort. After a while, it’s very noticeable which pieces the game favors, and which ones have yet to appear more than once, if even that. There’s a handful of items and creatures that are exceptionally common, changing in relation to your years. In my playthroughs, those handfuls have been identical. The aforementioned variety in items and enemies becomes less so when the same few common assets are used ad nauseam, which is a shame, given the inventiveness of some of the lesser used pieces.

In between winters, your time is spent in the town you call home. Here, you can take your hard earned coins, rice, berries, etc, and trade them for townsfolk’s friendship, a la the story of Rainbow Fish. In return, you may receive helpful recipes for your book, or even better, equip-able trinkets. Early earned trinkets’ perks are useful in smaller capacities, but the greater are earned through repeat visits. They, along with the tradeables found in the forest, make up the other half of the Roguelike formula, namely the part that you lose upon death. Make too many mistakes, resulting in zero energy or too few children saved, and all of these are lost. Given the time investment needed to get the better ones, I’ll admit to believing this a bit harsh, especially since death can often be the result of truly unfair elements brought on by the roguelike system, like unavoidable loss of children to enemies or rare, impassible gates due to poor default placement of pieces.

A point of contention for me lies here as well, particularly in the store page’s embellishment of a winding, twisting narrative, unique to each journey. The only narrative comes in the townsfolk, who remain constant, personalities and dialogue alike. Even their preferences in tradeables remains identical between playthoughs. The only change is that of color scheme, and which one is most willing to marry you, which becomes readily apparent early on. Despite store page promises of offering the opportunity to lead a unique life each playthrough, the character with obvious affection for you will always yield trinkets and info for fewer tradeables. There’s no reason to invest in anyone else.

Regardless of my issues with it (mostly with the not-so-random level randomization), RNT is tremendous fun, and it’s a unique challenge that I’m going to continue playing, if only to try and earn the remaining pages to my travel book. In retrospect, my biggest issues could easily be rectified with a few randomization patches, or better yet, a future DLC expansion. As it is, the journey slowly loses its luster more than several hours in, but it never loses its shine altogether. The combination of some amusingly humorous travel book entries, a charming art design and some legitimately unsettling sound work help to mask the budding feeling of familiarity on repeat journeys. I think what’s most disappointing is that despite the game’s want to emulate the unpredictability of life, it has instead exemplified how easily it can fall into routine and predictability. While the initial few hours and playthrough are wholly the most entertaining, a lackluster attempt at differentiating narrative and the occasional sense of déjà vu on later playthroughs only slightly diminish an otherwise fantastic puzzle-rogue.

Despite originally brushing off Super Panda Adventures as just another throwaway (and ugly) platformer when I purchased it in a bundle many months ago, once coming to Steam, I opted to boot it up and actually experience the trainwreck first hand, if only for the card drops. If there was ever a grander example of the wisdom, “never judge a book by its cover”, I’ve not found it (at least on Steam). A word to all: Ignore the obvious warning signs of a budget price and lackluster art; SPA is a surprising amount of fun, and offers a stupendous metroidvania adventure, despite a few small flaws along the way.

What surprised me most about SPA wasn’t the notably tight controls nor the exceptionally entertaining notion of controlling a panda with a katana. No, what surprised me was the sheer size of the level layouts, and the many paths therein. Levels are typically huge, and often reach deep into the ground and high into the clouds. While there are plenty of collectibles and upgrades waiting to be discovered, the emphasis on exploration and pathfinding is based more on your abilities and equipment as you find them, rather than on hidden paths or destructible walls. Meaning, the passage to a new upgrade is usually only blocked by a wall higher than your current jump, or a door requiring a key that you can’t reach for a similar reason. Repeat exploration is encouraged, and most levels feature something new to do after each new ability is earned.

Combat is also surprisingly prevalent and entertaining, but then, the prospect of a sword wielding panda is an entertainment in its own right. SPA features a leveling system, powered by hidden caches of points and killing enemies alike. Typical upgrades are standard fare, but by finding special orbs in each level, your armor and weapons can be upgraded, and changed in appearance as a result. Although I never became bored with the combat, exploring and re-exploring the same levels over again could have felt more tedious without the consistent rewards of combat or in seeking out hidden caches.

Not all is well, however, and while minor, there are several notable flaws that hamper the experience. Boss encounters typically carry a massive disparity in difficulty from the rest of the adventuring, due to enormous health bars and attacks equally both powerful and annoyingly difficult to avoid. The large levels, while a joy to run around in and explore, have no map system to fall back on, and so path finding relies solely on memory. When looking for each and every collectible and upgrade, that fact becomes irritating quickly, especially on the more vertical levels. Worse, there is no “percentage complete” function, and so those missing odds and ends could literally be hidden in any level, and there’d be no solid clue as to which.

Regardless of listed faults, SPA is an absolute delight. While the unenthusiastic art design would normally all but promise a similar quality of gameplay, SPA provides a metroidvania styled adventure similar to what you would expect of a higher priced title. Given the quality, this game could have been sold at a standard $10 price point. For a standard asking rate of only $4, it’s an absolute steal.

I will give the developer credit where it is due; 4PM’s store page bills itself as a mature and unique, albeit short narrative promising an emotional ride on the subjects of alcoholism and suicide. Along with the trailer and screenshots, (that admittedly look pretty good), and a low, low price point, it seems a promising option among the rest of the junk that regularly pops up on steam. And that is where I must give the developer his due; he’s made a really good sell. And that’s the best I can say, because the game itself is a laughable experience, and for literally every wrong reason there could be.

First, the entire game is put through a ridiculously prominent fuzz filter, one that is evidently absent from the store’s trailer and screenshots, likely to better entice you into wasting your money. The filter itself is used to try and mask the horrid graphics underneath, but it doesn’t succeed. It loads slowly for no apparent reason, breaking up the many short mid-scene jumps with even longer loading freezes. Worse, the actual animations of the cast, particularly their faces, makes any attempt at creating an emotional resonance with the player fail miserably. Instead, the poor acting and bug eyed reactions will likely give you the same reaction as I had: loudly laughing your head off at the sheer stupidity at every attempt at “drama”.

And what little attempt at a story there is, happens almost entirely at the end. “The big reveal” that occurs near the end of every good drama is shoehorned in with only a couple minutes of piss poor dialogue, with virtually no real exposition or story prior. The absolute pretentiousness of it all is positively palpable throughout.

Despite how utterly trash this game is, I recommend it to a specific brand of person. Anyone who enjoyed the previous King to the Pretentious Kingdom, Dinner Date, is in for a real treat. Where I found DD to be comparably boring, 4PM offers several moments of gut wrenching hilarity, particularly during mid-game, where gears shift from pretentious slop to White Girl Simulator 2014. The entire thing lasts little more than around 25 minutes, and most of that time will be occupied wondering if something is ever going to happen. When something finally does, the credits come not 2 minutes later, and you’ll be left wondering how a single developer could create such an experience, let alone reach his keyboard, with his head so far up his own log cutter.