Recent reviews by MercuryOnline

Disclaimer: I was part of the alpha process, but I paid full price for the privilege and for my final copy of the game. My review is based on the game as of June 2024.

The game is TIGHT. It's clearly made by a team that loves the source material and is focused on making every detail, every pixel, every gore splatter matter. I haven't beaten it yet, but the combat is NES-style difficult with generous save spots. There's a ton to do; there's a host of characters; and I can't wait to keep exploring. I saw someone called this Metroidvania Excitebike and I think it's a pretty funny and accurate term.

If you like brutal difficulty, the movie, gore, pixels, metroidvanias, excitebike, post apocalyptics, Mega Man, or even the 80s as a synthwave post-apocalyptic fever dream, this is the game for you. It's worth it at full price!

Like most who've played this, I was brought here by Roadwarden. I'm not much for visual novels: I find them long-winded and too self-referential. Most VNs reek of "original character, do not steal," mary sues, rambling overexplanations, paper cutout characters, and worldbuilding that started and never stopped.

Window Meadow isn't one of those lackluster VNs. It's sincere, beautiful, and captivating. Something about the author's style of writing draws me in like only the most legendary of games can: Disco Elysium, Portal, Subnautica, Spiritfarer, Fallout 2, just to name a few. WM and much more so Roadwarden are on par with those brilliant works, and they show a talent that is one in a million. WM's themes of coming of age are so well-explored in other works; and I really don't think I would have entered the game with as much enthusiasm knowing that in advance, but the author Aureus really manages to tackle the subject without being trite.

I don't want to overly compliment it, though. Is it a perfect game? No. Some of the characters are difficult to distinguish, both visually and narratively; some of the plot points seem irrelevant or don't fully flesh out, feeling a bit like Chekhov's gun - if you will. Some choices don't seem to matter, which I forgive since--like real life--many things you do might not really have that much of a change to your future. But this is a review, so I want to point out that for someone who (likely by being burned by Telltale games) has a small tolerance for subtle or irrelevant choices. But that doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for Windy Meadow. If anything, it shows another level of humanity that I personally find incredibly endearing.

I recommend this game for someone who's able to sit down, remove distractions, and give this game the attention it deserves. It's for lovers of low magic fantasy, branching narratives, and moral ambiguity. And it will help scratch the itch that we're all feeling after beating Roadwarden and while we're waiting for the developer's next project!

I can still feel those dark, snowy nights: oppressive cold, cutting wind, and the distant howling of wolves.

A lot has been said about this, but OW2 is a cynical cashgrab with every detail monetized. They've taken the beautiful spirit of the original game and crushed it down into a colorful schizophrenic overload of toxic, racist, sexist 12 year olds with impossibly perfect aim and people who are literally throwing.

The Blizzard of the '90s would be heartbroken to see what its first and only FPS flagship product has turned into.

If they ever gave a single solitary fart about player feedback--and they don't--I'd tell them that even in its sorry state, it's not too late to turn the game around. A more forgiving loot system would keep players more engaged; matchmaking that isn't intended to torture the playerbase; and new creative systems like guilds would enable actual community instead of faceless strangers ruining your game.

Blizzard called these negative reviews "bombing," but it's not the reviewers who bombed but the makers of this unhealthy, out of touch, over-produced shell of a game.

At time of writing, I finally picked up my 5th BC. It feels like the game is now done being a tutorial. O.O

Airtight controls. Brutal difficulty. Obfuscated story. Developers who are deeply in love with their project.

This game deserves all the love it has. It's phenomenal and horribly addictive.

Is it bad? No. It's not BAD. But it's not GOOD either. It's fairly uninspired, formulaic, and simple. Maybe some mods could tighten up the experience, but out of the box, I just can't recommend the game.

There are so many better Warhammer 40k games and so many better FPS. Why would you waste time on this one?

Overall: 6/10. Recommend on a sale only. And only after you've bought the dozens of other games in this genre that are better across the board.

It's so close to being a phenomenal game, and for a large part of it, I was convinced that it is. The premise is great; the feeling of playing is exhilarating; the unlock system is meaningful and fun; the music and the art is basically perfect

Where did it go so wrong, though? Before I answer, Ghostrunner is exactly my kind of game. I love the following and have beaten them multiple times: Super Meat Boy, Mark of the Ninja, Hotline Miami 1 and 2, the Dark Souls series, Mr. Shifty, N++, There's No Time to Explain, and most recently Katana Zero (which I'd rate as 10/10). The brutal, hard-as-nails, twitchy, against-impossible-odds game is one of my favorite genres, and I was so excited to see a first person cyberpunk ninja synthwave game that I pre-ordered it.

And for a while, it delivers. I was hooked out of the gate. See all the above for what it does right.

As for what it does wrong...

It's got some pretty spongy control issues that, frankly, are inconsistent. It's okay for a game to expect perfection from me, but every death must be MY FAULT not the fault of the game. When I hit a wall run perfectly and instead slide off and drop into a cliff, it's not fun; I didn't mess up. The game's collision detection messed up. When I do the "climb up" animation and then slide back down and fall, it's not fun.

When my hitbox is inconsistent with projectiles, I don't know if I'm properly dodging or if this is the time it'll hit me. And possibly worst of all is the enemy introduced at the end that is invulnerable and explodes near you without warning. How close is too close? It's not consistent, and like with everything else in the game, a single hit kills you.

And then there's the collectibles. It feels out of place and they vary between literally "right in front of you" and "how would I possibly have seen that?" The swords are cool, but cosmetic only. The items are super boring and nondescript. And the voice logs are great, but you can't play them while you play the game. Just sit at the inventory screen for 90 seconds listening to someone talk

And then there's the ending. I'll avoid spoilers, but the last two levels are boss fights and they aren't fun. It's super super tedious, requiring a tremendous amount of perfection, and I found it completely unsatisfying. Lots of pattern recognition, more of the horrible wallrunning collision detection, and checkpoints that require long buildups over and over again before a cheap death. I was super annoyed by the end of this; I seriously considered just walking away at the end. I guess I'm glad I didn't because now I won't wonder

The plot is perfectly serviceable. The voice acting is good. I kind of liked the ending story, even if it was predictable and formulaic. This is a game about kicking ass, not a nuanced tale. But the characters dialogue during the missions keeps the game moving

These issues are solvable. Will the devs work on them? I have no way of knowing. It's got enough flashy appeal to try out, if you like these kinds of games, but the lack of polish in the game's crunch really made me struggle between that thumbs up and thumbs down

How fares your kine?

Better. Pathologic 2 restores my blood, my bone, and my skin. A beautiful sight, huh?

The voice acting is surprisingly good. But that's the only offering of this short, dry, uninteresting walking simulator. Don't get me wrong, I really like the genre ("Firewatch" and "Beginner's Guide" being the best I've yet played), but this is a great example of how not to do it. The house is ominous and atmospheric; the "puzzles" are unremarkable; and the story... well, "what story" is the right question to ask.

This got a ton of attention because it's about a girl who's gay. It's not a big reveal. It's not under adversity or oppression. It's just... "I'm a teenage girl and I like a girl." That's it. That's the story. There's no spoiler warning, because there's no story to spoil. The characters talk at you quite a bit, but there's no arc, growth, geniunity. Just extremely banal "I think I like this person, but I don't know if I should."

So it's a walking simulator with good voice actors whose talents are wasted on something that isn't a story. It's not provocative; it's not deep; it's not even interesting. There's nothing to be interested by. It's a house that seems like there's going to be a horror scare at any minute, but it's just nighttime and empty. It's a story that's populated by flat characters. And then it ends abruptly. There's no narrative structure; there's no central theme. It ends. Unsatisfyingly and right at the moment the story could have possibly turned into something interesting. But no. Not in Gone Home.

I wanted to like it. I heard good things about it. I didn't go in with a bad attitude. I'm the kind of person this game is intended for: open-minded, patient, lover of stories, walking simulator fan. And this manages to miss the mark completely.

The simpering, fawning worship of this game is due to overhype and people who are too eager to rubber stamp something simply because the protagonist is LGBTQ. That doesn't make a good story; that doesn't make a good game. It's dishonest to treat characters as automatically interesting because their single defining quality is "not straight."