Recent reviews by notwa

how to describe creeper world... it's sorta like turtling-with-protoss-photon-cannons simulator 2020. that's a hard sell, but i think establishes that it's not really a tower defense game per se, and more of a slow-but-steady war over land against your amorphous opponent: the "creeper". really it's mostly about the land; keeping an eye on terrain height, line of sight, and building placement is critical to being efficient.

i enjoyed the game, but it didn't really hold my interest past the campaign. basically, the surprisingly in-depth procedural level generator won't ever match the intentional puzzle-like restrictions of the campaign missions. however, the thousands of user-made custom maps, including the game's custom scripting language, could be pretty interesting if i feel the urge to play it again.

breaking it down real quick:
graphics: feels like early 2000s shareware, but easy to tell what's going on. all the potentially distracting stuff is toggle-able! but the UI feels a little small for modern screens.
sound: s'okay, could do without. music is fine, but a bit hyper and non-contextual for slower nature of the game.
story: quickly spirals into total sci-fi absurdity. still had me curious enough to see how it ended. this is an independent entry in the series by the way.
controls: it's worth learning some of the shortcuts in the options menu, but virtually everything can be done with just a mouse.
gameplay: creeper world carves its own little niche in strategy games and does it pretty well. i just wish the endgame was a little more involved. i recommend it anyway if you've got the time (campaign is like ~20 hours?) for something a little different and slower-paced; it might scratch an itch you didn't know you had.

mad stylish 3 button game

nothing new: it's basically the first game with a couple derivatives of the existing modes, plus some bit-trip ripoff. the song analysis doesn't seem to have changed.

super clunky UI: it assumes everything in your music folder is a song, presents you with (probably sponsored) soundcloud trash every time by default, and the search field bugs out at 25 characters. also, the game reloads virtually everything every time a song is restarted.

ugly: text is sometimes misaligned and poorly hinted. the default theme has the ugliest 3d ellipses instead of the classic prisms for some reason. oh, and they couldn't even bother implementing FXAA — it's one of those games that just assumes telling the gpu to antialias will actually do anything.

some of the user-made skins aren't bad though.

graphics are partly pixel-arty for no apparent reason and the music gets annoying quickly. most enemies are straight out of a bullet hell which just feels awkward. gameplay mostly consists of; choose char, upgrade stuff, get gold, die, repeat. the limited number of collectibles are partly duplicated across different equipment slots.

ok so there's all the bad things, anything else is pretty good. grindy randomized fun, and yes it's not a rogue-like in the slightest.

much easier to control than stadiums (or nations forever, same thing) but not as competitive and less varied tracks. drift as ♥♥♥♥. goes half off every week so buy it.

i only played this because it had a fun nonserious server to play on now its dead rip

video game (feat. video & aggro lavine's boyfrend song)

good physics but hard to appreciate. they stuck with the idea of never teleporting the player so objectives are generally easy enough to not need to retry. a LOT of time will be spent watching cars crash into things in ultra-slowmo. can't turn it off even though multiplayer disables it.

the map is nicely designed but the graphics dont do it any favors. even important parts of the road blend into the unsaturated scenery. there's a few hundred things to jump and crash into for completionists. the whole area is unlocked from the start and never changes so it does get stale.

progression feels slow and repetitive: complete # objectives, reset map with slightly more difficult AI, rinse and repeat. unlocking cars is the main reason to continue; they're decently varied and each with an upgraded version to get.

dont forget the EA-mandatory condescending announcer guy telling you how to press a button, and unskippable opening logos. also audio options dont take effect until you gain control of your car so i hope you like ACDC's viridian city blaring each time you open it.

it's a game with a lot of wasted potential but i found myself pouring hours into it anyway so idk who even reads these things im gay

ps. dont play online with a webcam plugged in