Recent reviews by cave hermit

Short and sweet PSX-styled survival horror throwback. Atmosphere was solid, and I found the plot pretty compelling, enough so to make me play through the entire game in a single day.

Even having never completed a survival horror game before, this game was quite breezy for me difficulty-wise: I never really felt too starved of resources, the puzzles were enough to make me think a little without outright stumping me, and the game offered plenty of hints on where to go next, both through in-game notes and with an outright hint system.

The game took me just under 6 hours to complete, and it seems to have a few replay-oriented features similar to other classic survival horror games (namely new game plus equipment based on your final playthrough performance rank, and some sort of hidden object hunt added to subsequent playthroughs).

Relative to many other indie games on the market, this game is a bit content light for the price tag, but the total playthrough time is on par with most other (often AAA-priced) survival horror titles.

If you're looking for a traditional (if slightly easy) survival horror experience, can't go wrong with this! There was definitely a lot of care put into this game, and it delivers on what it promises.

I tracked down Todd Howard in person to ask him for my money back, but he just told me that I loved the game so much that I wanted to buy it again on Xbox series X and tell all my friends about how great it is. I was confused and was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about when suddenly he locked eyes with me. I remember how his gaze seemed to draw in my consciousness before everything went dark.

When I came to, I was back home sitting at my desk. It appeared as if I had been in the middle of drafting a lengthy Reddit post talking about how Baldur's Gate 3 had nothing on the rich role playing opportunities and emergent gameplay elements Starfield had to offer with the power of the Creation Engine. Checking my surroundings, it appears that 2 days had passed, and in my fugue state I had purchased the constellation edition of Starfield for Xbox.

Todd Howard has truly done it again.

I very much enjoy DOTA 2 as a game, but besides the terrible community that comes with MOBAs, Valve has very clearly shown that they no longer care about the game beyond milking its declining fanbase dry. That's why no real effort is made to fix constant game coordinator errors, maintain features, or add meaningful gameplay affecting content, but yet there's a constant deluge of tacky overpriced cosmetics and contentless battle passes that expect you to shell out absurd amounts of cash for the actual rewards, which are untradable for about a year or so. Valve is not the company you used to look up to, they are not your friends, stop giving them a free pass.

I wrote an extremely detailed review for this game, but it seems to be too long to post on steam, so here's a pastebin
link to it: http://pastebin.com/MAq1B8C7

If you've spent any decent length of time on the internet, you've probably run into videos like this at some point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmw2eeLooyI
That is a bullet hell shoot-em-up, a type of game that is relatively easy to understand (shoot things, dodge things, repeat), but is usually seen as impossible for any normal human being to play. Crimzon Clover is one of those games, but contrary to popular belief, bullet hell games are not impossible; very difficult yes, but not impossible. In fact, Crimzon Clover is one of the more forgiving games in the genre in most modes, and it's a great game to get into the genre with as I'll later explain:
The original Crimzon Clover was an indie game released by CLOVER-TAC, a player with a few world record bullet hell game scores: this original release was a Japan only, physical disc only release (which is now out of print). Despite the fact this was an indie release, the original game had pretty impressive production values, comparable to bullet hell games released by major developers like CAVE
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Due to this success, the game was picked up for distribution in Japanese arcades by Taito through their line of Nesica digital download capable arcade machines. For this arcade release the game recieved a new shiny coat of paint, a new game mode (replacing an old mode in the original), and a few gameplay touch ups. This Steam release is a port of the arcade version.

Now onto the actual game: You can select from two overall difficulty settings: Arcade and Novice. These names explain themselves, as Arcade difficulty is the same as the arcade machine's difficulty setting (tough but fair), while novice mode tones down the difficulty a bit to allow new comers to try out this genre of game without too much frustration. Once you select a difficulty, you get to pick from three different gameplay modes: Original, which is basically the default style of gameplay, Boost mode, where the game difficulty dynamically increases based on how long you stay in break mode (explained later), and Unlimited mode, which usually looks like that video I linked above. Gameplay is standard, fly, shoot and dodge, with bullets only killing you if they hit the small golden orb in your ship's center, but there are three mechanics that are a bit different from most bullet hell games: in most bullet hell games you get a few smart bombs every life that you can trigger instantly to destroy all bullets on the screen. In crimzon clover however you get an energy meter that fills up as you score points; once you reach a certain point on the meter (the point goes further up the meter with each bomb you use in a life), you can trigger a bomb. However, if you let the meter fill all the way up, you can enter Break mode, where your ship gets a big power increase and your main point multiplier is pumped up until the timer runs out (except in Boost mode where you have to manually end break mode with a bomb). Furthermore, if you can fill up the meter a second time before break mode ends, you can enter double break mode, where your ship gets even more powerful and your multiplier jumps even higher. The third mechanic that's a bit different is the lock on system. Besides your standard forward shot, you can hold the lock on button to create a transparent barrier around you: any enemy that enters this barrier gets locked onto (you can lock onto the same enemy multiple times as well), and as soon as you release the lock on button, you release quick homing lasers or missiles at whatever you targeted; furthermore the more enemies you destroy in a single lock on burst, the higher your secondary score multiplier (which vanishes after a short time) becomes.. With these mechanics in place, Crimzon Clover is much more forgiving than most bullet hell games, but that doesn't mean it's not a challenge to beat without continues: you will be beaten down over and over until you memorize bullet patterns and refine your dodging skills (beating a bullet hell game by using continues means nothing by the way!). However, if you do manage to conquer this game, you'll feel an incredible sense of accomplishment and pride that you could never get from the majority of mainstream AAA titles that hold your hand every step of the way. Despite the game's short length (5-7 stages, I can't remember the exact number), this game holds tremendous amounts of replay value for those who are willing to take it seriously: the inital challenge to beat original mode without continues could take a player any amount of hours from 10 to 100, and afterwards there's always the allure of a new high score, not to mention the other two modes.

Bottom Line: if you like retro games like those for the NES, incredibly tough modern games like Dark Souls or I wanna be the guy, or if you just want a change from the other games on the market, give this game a shot: it's very rare for bullet hell games to be released outside of Japan, and this happens to be one of the best in recent memory.

EDIT: I neglected to mention two other features: There is also a time attack mode where you're thrown into a unique stage with unlimited lives for three minutes to try and get a high score. Speaking of high scores, there are online leaderboards, and you have the ability to save replays of your playthroughs.

This isn't so much a game as it is an experience, more akin to an interactive movie, or rather an interactive tv show that wouldn't be out of place in an Adult Swim lineup. The whole game is basically a massive fever dream disguised as an adventure game, with inexplicable stuff happening for no apparent reason, and there are a handful of mini-games hidden throughout the game for you to find and briefly amuse yourself with (my favorite would definitely be the wedding themed Quake clone "wedding qake"). Besides the brief and ultimately meaningless mini games, there is no real "gameplay" to speak of besides walking around the levels looking for more surreal scenes and jokes to trigger: in fact if you ignore all the secrets that can be found, the game is incredibly linear and short, with whatever puzzles required for the plot taking no effort to complete whatsoever. I bought this game today, and I beat it in 2 hours despite wandering around aimlessly looking for secrets and replaying mini games. The voice acting supplements the humor perfectly, but as for the humor itself, it's a matter of personal taste; the humor is basically surreal slapstick in the vein of aqua teen hunger force (which, surprise surprise, happens to be an Adult Swim favorite; it's almost like this game was published by them *wink wink*), and if you're into that kind of humor, you're in luck. If you don't like this kind of humor however, you should probably pass this up. So for those who do like this kind of humor, should you buy this? Yes and no. This game is an amusing experience while it lasts, but it ends far too quickly with very little replay value, which stings even worse when you take into account the $15 asking price. So yes, do buy this if you like this sort of humor, but if you can wait, you should probably wait for a sale.