Recent reviews by Haruspex

Absolute garbage money-grab "update" of a good game.

My initial first impression was positive. I first tried it on my Steam Deck. It found Deck's 800p resolution just fine. It ran well. The controls worked. I wasn't really sure what was different from the original Skydrift, but meh. It's fine.

Then I installed the game on my desktop. Now, I have an 1440p monitor, while the Steam Deck has an 800p display. Upon launching it on my desktop, The game was crammed into a little 800p screen in the corner of my monitor. First off, it seems it auto-detects resolution when you first launch it, which is fine, but there's NO resolution settings in the game at all. Zilch. None. Worse, it goes against Steamworks guidelines and saves the first detected resolution into Steam Cloud, so no matter what machine I use, I'm stuck with the Steam Deck resolution with no scaling at all, because I first launched it on a Steam Deck. There's not even an ini file you can adjust the resolution in. The only way to change it is to use a HEX EDITOR!?! Why? Even the original Skydrift had a resolution setting.

As for the game itself, I don't see any difference from the original. It seems Handy Games got the rights to Skydrift, threw together this stupid downgrade, then resold it under the false pretense that it's like a remaster so gullible idiots like myself would fall for it and buy it again.

At the very least, it goes on sale regularly and for super cheap, but I highly suggest you avoid this version and just get the original.

Back when I was younger, I used the BUILD editor that came with Duke Nukem 3d to make virtual art galleries of cool images I found online. (Painstakingly downloaded one at a time via dial-up.) The Duke3D texture file had plenty of space for me to happily load in as many low-resolution images as I wanted, and I could apply those to walls and such in the BUILD editor. I could even string multiple images together to create little animations. Of course most of the images I used were from anime, but also video games and such.

Stumbling upon Otaku Engine reminded me of those days. The ease and simplicity I remember from creating maps in Duke3d is here. Probably easier actually. While my use of Duke3d was sort of off-label, Otaku Engine is tailor made for exactly that purpose. I'm having a blast so far.

You might notice it's been a while since the last update, but based on the blog the creator has provided, it appears the only reason for that is that there's a BIG update en route. An actual gameplay loop is being implemented, and the simple creator tools are being expanded into basically a simple game engine, so soon you can create more than just galleries. You'll be able to create little experiences, narratives, puzzles, that sort of thing.

It's cool as-is to make environments and fill them with art, but further development seems to suggest the best is yet to come.

My first reaction upon starting was, "This is Vampire Survivors!" That's exactly what you can expect. It's first person Vampire Survivors with a 90s FPS vibe reminiscent of Blood.

As someone who spent his teens playing FPS games like Duke Nukem 3d, Blood, and Shadow Warrior, Bloodshed feels right. Movement is fast. Jumping feels like it should. The guns feel correct, like getting re-acquainted with an old friend.

So far I've only used one of the three playable characters, and in proper 90s FPS fashion, he's absolutely full of the expected one-liners. They're fairly frequent and there's enough of them that it doesn't feel annoyingly repetitive yet.

The only thing I've noticed so far in the short time I've spent with the game is that the progression feels a little bit slow. It's not the worst ever, but it could use a little tuning. Since this is early access, I would imagine they'll be dialing this in over the course of the next months.

Besides that, I just want more! More weapons, more spells, more characters, more maps, more powerups. I think that's a good sign.

Runs amazingly on the Steam Deck, and by default it doesn't use much wattage so my Steam Deck OLED estimates about 10 hours of battery life playing this game at 90fps.

It brought me right back to 2000, and I'm a teenager again with a brand new Sega Dreamcast. I never beat the game back then, and I'm looking forward to doing so for the first time almost 25 years later.

Controls feel right, and now we have the added benefit of a 3d camera with the right analog stick. No more snapping the camera to Raziel's back all the time in an effort to line things up for one of the many block pushing puzzles.

One small nitpick is that some of the menus weren't created expecting the Deck's 800p, 16:10. This means in the map screen, the edges of the text is cut off. It's easy enough to ignore and you can fix it completely by switching to 720p resolution though.

Basically what Pokemon could have been if the big N wasn't so insistent on mediocrity.

This the the best pixel art software in existence. It's an absolute joy to use, and it's saved me a ton of time when making assets for games.

Pretty cool little museum-style collection of Atari history.

Now I was born in the mid-80s, so I really don't have much nostalgia for anything Atari at all. My first console was an NES. My only real exposure to anything Atari back then was while on vacation in the mid 90s. We were at my grandparent's lakeside cabin, and I found an Atari 2600 with a few games in a closet. I fiddled around with Battlezone, Pole Position and Asteroids. They felt primitive by my standards, but it was a fun distraction for a few moments.

One thing I didn't expect in this collection was the vector-based games. It was also in the 90s that I first saw a real vector-based game in an arcade. Something about the way those crispy, bright-white lines appeared on the black background was mesmerizing. No pixels to be seen anywhere, just sharp, crisp lines, like laser beams. I'm playing this collection on a Steam Deck OLED, and the brightness of that display plus the true and honest black levels absolutely replicates that feeling. Vector-based games are absolutely beautiful on an OLED screen.

One disappointment is the feeling of games originally designed to use a trackball. While games like Breakout and Tempest work fine moving with a joystick, you really need a trackball for the speed and precision these games require. I haven't quite looked into it yet, but I expect there must be some way to simulate a trackball using the Steam Decks trackpads.

For the moment, I'm enjoying just going through the timeline, watching the video interviews with people who were involved in the industry back then, and marveling at how sharp they all still seem mentally even though they're getting old, not to mention the drug use that occured in the Atari offices. (A topic they discuss in this collection.)

It's Persona.

Not that that's a bad thing. The story is really good and captivating so far, and the combat feels satisfying and balanced. Graphically it's stylish and beautiful with a fantastic art style. Voice acting is excellent. Music is suitably epic.

Purchase with confidence. Your money is not wasted on this.

I enjoy it so far. It's like the Choro-Q series meets some serious Sega arcade vibes. My only gripe so far is that it feels a little too easy, but maybe the difficult level will increase as I get further along. Runs perfectly and it's a great fit for the Steam Deck OLED. The colorful imagery really pops there.

I haven't played it much yet, but I'm excited to see the direction it's going. So far I have nothing bad to say about the game. Also the developer is an honest and principled individual who stands by his convictions and refuses to allow cyber-bullies to compromise his vision. That's worth supporting.