The Constable の最近のレビュー

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...

From a technical standpoint, I had some issues with save game loss in Yakuza 0 for one reason or another. The best way I can suggest to combat this is do not overwrite save files. ALWAYS save a new file. I am not sure why this is but it will save you some pain. This issue led to me losing a decent percentage of my progress a few times.

This is the first game I've ever played in the Yakuza franchise. A friend recommended it to me quite vigorously after he managed to 100% the game.

I won’t lie the beginning of the game did not hook me right away. The story was good but the super basic beat em’ up gameplay hadn’t clicked for me yet. For whatever reason I decided to play with combat turned up to hard, and I really had no understanding of the moves or how specials worked. But once I punched my way out of the opening scene and the game world opened up, I was hooked. I found I sort of skipped over a lot of early Kiryu content so I could spend more time playing as Majima. I found his plight more interesting, but Kiryu ended up being a slow burn fantastic character.

The story was fairly engaging and I did find myself always super curious to find out what happened next. However, there were plot elements that made no sense to me as I haven’t played any of the other games. My friend explained them away as pieces that fit in a larger puzzle, but as Yakuza 0 as my only reference point, I found them a bit jarring. Nothing to really take away from the game however. I will say the strong point of the story is the characters. Somehow the game found a way to take characters I absolutely hated and managed to make me like them.

The game says I played for 111 hours and Steam says 160 hours, but I have only completed 63.3% of the game. Now I had fun with a ton of the content in this game. The club management and reel estate sub-plots are particularly good and engaging. However, I have no intention of getting even close to 100%’ing this game. Once you finish with the majority of the sub-plots (which are the best parts of the game) a lot of the “progress” is counted in tedium. Eat at all of the restaurants, eat all of the dishes at all of the restaurants, collect 75 unique weapons, beat all the Mahjong challenges, etc.

That being said, I REALLY enjoyed the game. There are so many hidden gems that you just stumble upon walking around the city. In a way they reminded me of the “random” encounters in GTA, but they were always engaging, weird, or fun. I always got excited whenever I stumbled into one, especially late game, when I thought I had found them all.

I can’t really nail down who to recommend this game to. It has SO MUCH content and a decent amount for everyone. I will say that you have to like beat ‘em up games in order to get through the combat. If you don’t like that style of combat you might have a hard time.

As a side note I apparently started this game in 2019 and finished it today. I took a lot of breaks from the game on and off, but honestly, I kind of want to play it again already. Especially with everything I learned.

I fully recommend this game at any price.

I fully intend on playing through the rest of the Yakuza franchise after playing this game. That's how well it's hooked me.

I love this game.
Worth full price, plus all the extras!
DEVS are very active in the community and have active chat channels. They just keep making it better and better.


I'm not the biggest multiplayer guy these days, but this has sucked me in. This is a game I can get behind with friends or randos. There is something just right about jumping in with a group of randos and just getting to work. Sometimes you'll have an amazing group that gets along and just jives, sometimes you'll have people that run off and do their own thing until they bite it and need help. Any which way the game is great and has tons of replay value with the randomly generated levels.

My wife and I play this several times a week, this is our go-to for chilling out and for kicking ass.

I think my favorite part of this game has been the community. It's really been amazing, even though I'd say 85% of the matches I play are completely void of verbal communication. In about six months of playing I've run into one griefer. The rest of the community has been extremely helpful and kind, working together to get digging.

I will say that the game isn't perfect. It's introduction and tutorial levels are a little lacking and could use some work. I've had several friends I've introduce to the game just not "get" it after to the tutorial. Really I've found that the trial by fire with friends is the best way to learn this game without getting frustrated with yourself early on.

Also, since the levels are randomly generated it means you'll never get bored of the levels, and it'll always keep you on your toes. But, sometimes it leads to interesting and weird bugs. They are far and few between, but they do happen. ADAPT. IMPROVISE. OVERCOME. ROCK. AND. STONE.

This is the best Battlestar Galactica game ever made. The developers of House of the Dying Sun clearly love BSG and understand everything about what makes the space combat fun and have managed to fit it into a game. My favorite mechanic of the game is the ability to cut the engines and drift while assaulting traitor lords, this is a mechanic that needs to be adopted by more space games.

It's a short game, sure. There is a lot of challenge that unlocks once you beat the game. I'm not usually into replaying games, but this game is worth it because it's so damn fun.

The game has a warning that only supports gamepads and other controllers are at your own risk. Which is funny, because it supports HOTAS and Joystick setups better than a lot of other games.

This game is great to play with any controller, however a HOTAS set up with a VR headset is the way to play this game. It's fun playing it without VR, but it's a crazy insane fun difference with a headset.

Game is worth full price.

Let me start this by saying I was really hoping to like this game. I watched a lot of interviews with the devs, I tracked its progress, and when it started getting rave reviews I was on board. While I’m new to my own VR headset, I’m not new to VR. My first full length VR game was HL: Alyx and I am thankful that’s the case. I feel like I would have regretted my headset purchase if I had played Boneworks first, and I get the disclaimer they put on the game about “ADVANCED VR CONCEPTS” and all that jazz, but it still doesn’t help my overall frustration with this game.

I do what to give props to what I like. The gunplay is fun when you actually get to play with it and are not shoehorned into using melee options. While I wish there was more selection in the weapons what’s there works fairly well and is fun. I do have some negatives to say about the gun mechanics, but I’ll get into that soon.
The overall aesthetic of the game is cool. I like that it’s kind of Tron with some other inspirations mixed in.
I like that it has multiple modes. I find the story boring and annoying. However the other modes are interesting. I actually liked some of the puzzling and the gameplay in the sandbox mode. It felt more natural and well put together.
There is one moment in the game where they tell you you’re about to do something stupid. It’s written on the walls, and I bet almost everyone still fell for it. This was kind of an excellent moment but also a ♥♥♥♥ move because it sent you back halfway through the level. I only say I like this one because they literally wrote the warnings all over the wall and I’m the idiot.
The techno-headcrabs design is awesome and a really neat concept. They are the only enemy type that I like.
What I dislike about this game.
I’ll start with the worst offender. The controls. The controls for this game stink. The only option you get for the controls are to swap which stick is the movement stick, which I like an idiot, decided to use. If you use this option you are screwed because you just broke the controls for the game. Unless you go into the Steam Index controllers and learn how to remap the buttons yourself, you’re screwed. This is because the jump button and the movement stick are now on the same hand. Good luck platforming when you have to run and jump but can’t do that effectively. It took me 30 minutes to realize I wasn’t doing something wrong the game had just gone cross-eyed. While this

This leads into the next thing that’s terrible about this game any platforming what-so-ever. It’s just not fun. While I had issues with broken controls at first, once I resolved that issue I still couldn’t make jumps without combining move, run, and jump like I was playing a VR QWOP, only to miss the platform by a hair and have to waggle my arms to get them to let go. This is frustrating throughout the main story, however I found it most egregious during my favorite part of the game (the handgun course). There is a platforming section in that course for no particular reason that without fail manages to grind my gameplay to a halt.

Speaking of grinding the game to a halt, physics puzzles. They suck in this game. They are frustrating, tedious, and worst of all not fun. Most of them just take too long, but others break, you miss your step by a hair and end up back at the bottom of some pit that you had to VR climb your way up feeling like an idiot the whole time. One puzzle took me 20 minutes because I had to lay some boards down in order to continue, but they just wouldn’t cooperate. Finally, I got them where I wanted them and my virtual foot connected to my virtual body, which I have no control over then to move and jump, came into contact with said board and sent it to the bottom of a cavern. This will happen to you multiple times throughout the game.
Enemies are fine for the most part. I mentioned that I really like the techno-headcrabs, but everything is pretty bland. They are fine for what they are with one exception. The only enemies in the game that have firearms have this weird dual body design almost like a punching bag with a ghost over it riding on a yoga ball. This becomes and issue when firing at these enemies. I find myself missing a good portion of my shots if I aim for the bright overlay that you believe you need to shoot for, sometimes even at point blank range. However, I can consistently hit these enemies if I aim for the yoga ball. This feels like an exploit, is annoying, and isn’t fun. I understand you want to do something different with your game, stand out, and have unique enemies, but the hit boxes on these things are just annoying.
Annoying seems to be the operative word for the melee combat. There will be several sections of the game where you start off without a firearm and it takes a considerable amount of time to find one. During these sections you will find melee weapons which are ineffective and horrible. This is one thing that I really feel like I was lied to from watching the devs talk. They talked about the weight of the weapons and the movement just feeling “right.” No, the weapons feel jank as hell. Every weapon has this wiggle to it, which is what I think they were trying to get the feel of weight across with, but its just comes off terrible. This is where the game conflicts with itself. It’s going for this stylized inside the computer “Tron-like” world, but the physics for things need to be realistic? Why? Your attempt at making things realistic comes off broken.

That brings me to the last point, feeling broken. The overall game has some polish to it, it just needed some more. The gunplay is fun, most of the time. When the gunplay breaks it’s frustrating, especially in the wake of everything else. Reloading is the least satisfying compared to any other VR shooter I’ve played. Instead of just pushing a button to release your magazine you have to either grab and pull the magazine or knock it out using another magazine. It’s neat in concept however the room for error isn’t big enough in my opinion and just ends up doing something weird, especially during a firefight. This also happens with storing or retrieving items for your inventory. Trying to stow a weapon sometimes just results in it crashing to the floor, or somehow throwing it half way across the room. It needs the slightest bit bigger room for error, especially during a firefight. There also should be an audible alert that something is already stored in a virtual pocket. There are times where you will try and store an item in a pocket that is already occupied. You may or may not notice that the item you tried to store has just dropped to the floor. This is an issue because later in the level when you go to take out your handy dandy rifle that you strapped to your back, you whip out a crowbar.

Now, I can’t say I don’t see the potential in Boneworks, I really do, but in it’s current state I find a ton of frustration to go along with that potential. I think I would like it more if some of it’s modes weren’t locked behind the bland and uninteresting story, if it chose a direction for it’s design, if it had a save system that wasn’t meh. Having played Stress Level 0’s other game Duck Season, I’m genuinely shocked they haven’t decided to omit shotguns from Boneworks. I thoroughly enjoyed that Duck Season. While it had it’s own “jank” it felt fitting for a game of that scale. In complete contrast to this review I guess the lesson is “less is more.”

I would not buy this again for full price. There is a lot in this game, but a lot of frustration too. This would be a $15 or less buy from me. I keep trying to jump in and give it another shot, since I’m well past the point of a refund, but I’m reminded quickly of why I put it down the last time.

I played this for all of 6 minutes and I can't be bothered. I was really hoping for that Mad Dog McCree style of game play. Honestly it was losing me as soon as the kid started talking, it lost me when it told me not to worry about reloading. You just pull the trigger forever, aim a little and yay you win. I think I got this in a combo pack with Boiling Steel for like $12 total and I still feel like that's too much.

Also I think something is a little broken. I only played for 6 minutes but somehow I already have 300 headshots?

I guess this could be cool if you're into wave shooters, but honestly there are so many other options on the market and this is just uninteresting.

While it only says I've played this on Steam for ~1, I've owned it straight from the dev for much longer than it's been on Steam. Such a fun little random experience. I still fire it up from time to time just to see how much I remember and how far I can get. It's a little frustrating at first until it clicks, but when it does, it feels great. It puts in perspective how much is done for you when you press 'R' in most games and it just magically does this reloading thing for you. It's such a playable experiment. Honestly I'd love to see more things up there in the "I don't think this will work, OH GOD IT WORKS" gaming realm. For me this is up there with Steel Battalion in terms of awesome gaming experiences. I honestly wish more studios put out weird little experiments like this to try new and exciting mechanics.

If you've never played it, it's well worth a try.

Story 7/10
Atmosphere 10/10 (Only in pressurized environments, heh)
Gameplay 10/10
Graphics 7/10

Supports Ultrawide resolutions and has FOV adjustments.
Supports the Steam Controller. It actually has custom in game graphics and adjustments for it too.


So, I just finished this game. Funny enough this game is how I found out my motherboard was failing. When I started this game I was able to blast it on 3440x1440p on High-Ultra with no problem. Then suddenly I was getting a constant string of lag whenever something CPU heavy happened.

Now on to the review, I went into this game mostly blind. The only thing that was ruined for me was there is in fact a wrench in the game. The story line and writing sucked me in immediately, it has a lot of atmosphere but it's not trying to hard. Honestly parts of it feel like playing Half-Life 2 for the first time. The gameplay is great, it has a ton of freedom and options to overcome issues, which lead to a lot of "I wonder if this will work... oh cool" moments.

If I had one complaint about the game, it's that the hacking minigame was really the weakest point of the game creatively. The rest of the game is so detailed and so much thought put into it that the hacking pinball game just seems slapped on. The good thing is that it does not take long, which is good because if you plan on hacking stuff, you'll be playing that game a LOT.

I'm playing through the Mooncrash DLC now, which seems like an even neater concept to throw at this already great formula. It's a nonlinear rouge-like with an interesting hook.

Overall a great game that I wasn't expecting. I really would love to play it again soon and choose a completely different path for most of my choices.

If I had to buy this game now again I'd easily pay $40 for it.

This was an enjoyable puzzle game. The story wrapped around it took me for surprise. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I think I got the game and soundtrack for around $10 and I'd say it's worth at least that.

The game plays / feels like Portal for the most part, minus the jumping and airborne puzzles. I'd say the game took me about 5 hours with getting stuck on 3-5 puzzles because I was being an idiot.

I look forward to see what this studio does next.