Recent reviews by The Constable

Do you like Frostpunk? Do you want more anxiety? Do you like space?
It's great. I loved it. I made mistakes. Lots of mistakes, but I beat it. Then I immediately played it again and did so much better.

I have never actually wanted DLC for a game more. I need an endless mode, or possibly other survival scenarios.
It's not heavy on story, but what is there is great and there is a lot of story hidden in places you might not expect.

Please make a DLC! I can't wait for more!

Edit: They changed the name of the game from Backbone to Tails Noir, what the heck?

This is one of those games that makes me wish there was a neutral button on Steam reviews. The artwork, the soundtrack, the vibe is all fantastic. The first half of the story is great and really sucks you in. The back half of the story and the ending though... I would just say it's inconsistent with the first half. When the story felt like it was getting going it ends out of nowhere with none of the threads wrapped up at all.

It's a detective game where you solve nothing. It's unfortunate it went off the rails.

It's a game that has awesome bones but I would consider it flawed. Something went wrong somewhere in making this game.
Based off my early impressions of this game though I am interested to see what Eggnut puts out next.

My "yes" recommendation is based off the first half of the game, the artwork, the music, the vibe, and Howard.

I've played this game for 64 hours at this point, I wish I hadn't. The first few hours are enjoyable and have a decent enough hook, but then the game never really gets more interesting.
I kept playing, thinking it would get better, but it just never did.

Oh, upgrades for the bike? Cool. They make the bike faster or make it so you take less damage.
Do you get to throw grenades from the bike? No. Do you get a flamethrower on your bike? No?
Does upgrading the bike get you anything cool? Not really.

Okay, then you must get some pretty cool weapons then right?
Not really. Shotguns, automatic rifles and sniper rifles.

Oh then the story must be pretty good?
Every single character sucks and is annoying. You will be 20 steps ahead of the story the whole time. It is generic and boring.

Oh so then the game must have some cool technical achievements?
Nope, it's a fairly standard open world game that ran out of ideas really fast.

If you want a repetitive mix of The Walking Dead and The Last of Us with motorcycles, this is for you.

If you want to play a better game, play Mad Max. It has its flaws too, but at least you can be SHINY AND CHROME.

I'm just under my refund period and I really don't care. I hate the crane thing. I hate the climbing. I hate the melee weapons.
I just want to start the damn game and I can't. The game seems to intentionally slow you down by making you "try out all the cool features" but really I feel like it's just eating into your refund period.

I wanted to like Boneworks and I ended up hating it.
I wanted to believe this would be somewhat better, and it's more of the same.

Boneworks was the only VR game to give me motion sickness. Bonelab is now another game that gives me motion sickness.

I can't seem to hold onto guns with my Index controllers. Even though I'm holding on full force it keeps dropping guns.

Radios in the game are SO LOUD and do not respond to the MUSIC setting in the options, figure that one out.

Maybe I'll try and play some more, maybe I'll just refund. Not a sign of a great game, IMHO.

I'm an hour or so in, I have no idea who I am, or where I am, all I know is that I must kill.

I couldn't do it. I'm sorry. The game seemed neat, but I couldn't handle the writing and the characters. I found myself using the fast forward for all the dialog. Maybe the game is fun, but I couldn't stand to find out, I ended up refunding the game.

I saw this game advertised a while ago. I remember seeing the art style and saying, that looks like a cute space game, I’ll probably play it at some point. Then, I kind of forgot about it.

Recently a friend of mine picked it up and wouldn’t shut up about it, but also without spoiling it. He was ranting and raving like someone who had seen something the rest of society wouldn’t believe. He tried to get me to put on the metaphorical magic sunglasses and I just wouldn’t listen. We got in a 6 minute long fight scene in the back of an alley because he wanted me to wear the damn sunglasses, but I refused and we just kept beating the crap out of each other.

Then, finally I gave in and said “damn this is good.”

This game is probably the best science fiction game I’ve ever played. For sure the best I’ve played in a long time. There are only so many things I can say without spoiling the game. I can tell you that the game does not hold your hand, it expects you to find things that put the pieces together. It does a good job keeping track of things once they’ve been discovered. The game is so well polished without being distracting. Thought has gone into all aspects of the game. It genuinely feels like I’m playing an episode from any number of my favorite Sci-Fi shows.

I genuinely don’t understand why more people aren’t talking about this.
THEY NEED TO PUT ON THE METAPHORICAL MAGIC SUNGLASSES.

I will say I haven’t gotten to the DLC yet. I’ve heard some mixed reviews on it, but I’ll hold out until I see for myself. But my expectations are high based off my experience with the base game.

If you have interest in space, science fiction, or even just a good story, consider this game. Go in as blind as you possibly can and take your time. You’ll have plenty of it.

***SPOILER FREE***
***SPOILER FREE***
***SPOILER FREE***

tl;dr: Great card & puzzle game, great story, worth full price, go in knowing as little as possible.

I went into this game having played some of the previous titles made by Daniel Mullins, so I knew to expect the unexpected. I didn’t expect to have as much fun as I did.

It takes a special game to get me pulled into a deck building game, and the early pacing of this game managed to pull me in and hook me.

I would say the best way to play this game is go in as blind as you can. It’s a deck building game with some puzzles. It’s well made, and it knows what it’s doing.

Now that being said I will say that there is a section of the game that I found as a low point. I ended up putting the game down for a little while. After some time, I came back, and the game did pick up in a big way. Just know that everything is done with a purpose. The game is worth it and is satisfying. I can’t wait to play through again. This is one of those games like Return of the Obra Dinn that I wish I could forget play again for the first time.

Now, one of the reasons I picked the game back up recently, was how awesome the developer is. They listened, realized their audience REALLY liked a particular part of the game, and is making it so you can now play MORE of that part of the game. This is the kind of developer / customer relationship I love to see.

Great game / 10

Would pay full price.

Can’t wait to see what they do next.

tl;dr: Good story, not really a game. Has some bugs. I wanted to recommend it. Get it on sale?

This is one of those reviews where I really really wish Steam had a neutral rating, but I'm going to say I don't recommend this game. I'm sorry Doc (@docsquiddy), I follow you on Twitter and I really wanted to like this game, but overall I ended up being disappointed.

I have to start by saying I absolutely love the concept of the game. It's what hooked me.
That being said, this could have been a short film. I didn't find this style of gameplay interesting. For the most part it was walk to location, listen to characters talk, maybe interact with the scenery.

The voice acting is good, the art direction is cool, but the game is lacking something. I kept expecting some form of gameplay change or story twist to happen, but the game played out exactly the way it told me it would. Again, I just feel that this story was in the wrong medium.

I would have just given it a pass with a yes recommendation and a meh essay review, but the ending pushed it hard into the negative for me. There are two objectives at the end that when I tried to execute them the game kind of broke, and I couldn't continue without breaking the experience a bit, which ruined the build up to the ending. Also, the other thing you put on the table? Why? What purpose did it serve? Did I miss a story beat?

Also the game glitched out at the VERY end of the game, and the way it did without spoilers led me to think maybe the game wasn't over, but it was just a bug.

That all being said, there is good stuff in here, I wanted more. I closed the game feeling like I wanted more. I genuinely can't wait to see the next thing the dev puts out.

Also, this is just a serious nitpick but, aren't granny smith apples green?

TL;DR: It’s a okay Dark Souls-like game with a Star Wars coat of paint, it runs like butt, and you should remap the controls. Wait for it to be on sale. I paid $20 for it, but with performance being what it is, I’d wait for it to be cheaper.

This game is fine*. It's not a great game, it's far from perfect, but there is some good stuff in here. If I could give this a MAYBE instead of a YES I would.

The story starts off well enough and fits into an enjoyable place in the SW timeline. Like most things these days the story starts strong and kind of fades as the game goes. Really towards the end I think the game forgot there was even a story. If you enjoy Dark Souls and you enjoy Star Wars, you'll probably like this.
That being said, it wanted to be like Dark Souls so much, it runs like ass.

I have several gripes with the game, some are gameplay design decisions and the rest are performance related.

There is no way to skip cutscenes or most dialogue. If you start a new game+ you have to sit through the entire prologue again. I’m fairly certain this is being investigated by the UN as a War Crime.

The bounty hunter system seemed like it was going to be a really cool gameplay mechanic and then it was just forgotten about.

The big over the top set pieces are boring and filled with QTE’s. (Which funny enough you can just disable.)

I personally disliked the force recharge system. I felt like it was constantly getting in my way and taking away from some of the fun of the game, specifically between fights. When you exit a fight and have a few moments of peace the hud with your force bar vanishes. So next time you walk into a fight you have no idea if you have force abilities or not, because the hud takes a second to appear. Sometimes it appears before the fight, other times you do a little limp wrist maneuver to symbolize that you’re out of “ammo.” The only way to recharge your force is by blocking (if you have the upgrade), parrying, or attacking. Which means a lot of the game turns into mash the one attack button until you have enough force to use the cool moves. This includes some melee attacks. I think it’s a system that needed a little more tweaking, since I found it more of an annoyance than a balance system. The stamina bar in Dark Souls is more about timing and managing your moves, attacks, etc. while magic was a separate system. (Let me tell you that I was one of those people that hated Dark Souls the first 3 times I tried it. Then one day it just clicked and I loved it. This game I kind of just felt “meh” throughout the whole game.) I do also understand that a wait to recharge and just push dudes off a cliff is also not fun as it allows users to break your game. I don’t know what I would have done better at the moment, but I still think something “else” could have been designed.

Again, this game wanted to be like Dark Souls, this time letting you choose which path you want to take (think turning left in DS1.) Well, the problem is, despite their being an achievement that says “It’s all connected...” (yeah) it’s not. You must visit different planets to push the story forward, however it is a VERY linear story (which is fine), but they give you the illusion of choice. In Dark Souls if you got good enough to push your way through the graveyard and to the boss, GUESS WHAT? YOU WIN! In this game if you choose to visit the wrong planet first you don’t have the upgrades you need to complete the planet, in fact you might actually get stuck in some places and have to perfect jank your way out. The game also doesn’t give you any indication, besides a single line of very quiet dialogue that you might need a powerup. I’m not asking the game to hold my hand, but with all the text-tutorial pop ups this game has, I would have thought they would have used the opportunity to have one more. (At one point they have an on-screen prompt to use the lightsaber button to light up a dark room. Come on people, at that point just do it for us…)

The last oversight I found was actually the default control bindings. I highly recommend if you’re playing this game to rebind the buttons to be more in the style of Dark Souls controls; R1: Attack, R2: Heavy (force) attack. This is because by default; X: Attack and Y: Heavy (force) attack. This might seem like a pedantic complaint, but the B button is your dodge button, which you need to time well between attacks, parries, etc. Having to move your thumb between X and B takes a lot longer than you’d think when you must keep going back and forth. This actually led to some early frustration with the game as well as a lot of deaths. Once I changed the controls to be more like Dark Souls, I noticed I was actually doing much better.

Performance-wise, I really really don’t want to recommend this game. I’m currently on:
AMD 3900X
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
32 GB 3200 MHz
WD Black SN750 1TB

I can not maintain 60 FPS. This game has micro-stutters so bad at some points I have to limit the game to 30FPS, even then I feel the loading in the background. I think I paid $20 for this and I was actually considering a refund because one of the first levels runs like a dog turd. I’ve tried all the suggestions online, nothing fixed the issue consistently. The game needs additional optimizations but it’s out and it’s basically abandoned at this point. (Just like Titanfall.)

The game is also just glitchy. I mean again, we’re comparing it to Dark Souls, so some jank is fine I guess, but some of the jank is just more annoying than anything. Wall running and falling off the wall mid run because Cal just stopped. Character models constantly look like they are colliding with the floor, so they look like they are vibrating. The game is lacking the polish that other Respawn games have come with, *cough* Titanfall 2 *cough*. I’d like to expect more out of a AAA studio, but here we are.

Wow this review ended up a lot more negative for a game that I think is “fine.” It was $20 and I probably won’t ever touch it again.

All that being said, Trilla has awakened things in me...