Recent reviews by Moby The Duck

Devs delisted DLC that unlocked everything from past, present and future updates because it was "too good of a deal" and replaced it with just as expensive DLC that doesn't unlocks everything and has fine print saying some DLC might be excluded from the deal and require extra payment in-game.

Scummy.

Wow this game is old, I remember playing this on Armor Games like 20 years ago, but never bothered with more than a few minutes, since it was a flash game.
Decided to finally give it a better try, but turns out to be very average and actually incomplete after all these years.

Very bland RPG system, lots of useless skills, every enemy feels the same because EVERYTHING has the same skill set (heal, damage reduction, damage increase, damage over time, shields).

Requires a lot of grinding and luck to get past some fights. Ally AI is braindead and constantly wastes turns doing useless moves instead of attacking, and you can't control them.
Stats are confusing, no idea how "piercing" works, it says its related to criticals, but is it better than strenght? Who knows!
The first game is incredibly short, the last zone is just an endurance match against overpowered enemies that requires you to grind a hundred levels to bypass ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ skills.
Most of the time you have to retry fights and hope the enemy doesn't instakills you with a move in the first turns.
The "challenge" mode, that is basically going through the game without grinding, feels like it was made so the only way to win is by abusing a glitch where you can absorb item stats.

The second game is more elaborate, but has the same problems as the first. Mostly, the numbers are bigger.
Wish they had added some QoL stuff to this, like speeding up the game.
AI is still very dumb, fights are still RNG. You can "control" the ally AI, but all it does is set the "heal threshold".
You go through a few zones, fighting joke enemies (pink rabbit, zombie elvis, hobos, super hobos), then the game just... ends.
The map clearly show more 3 zones, but you kill the mayor and the game ends, no questions answered. Asks you to "check Armor games in case they add more zones". Funny.

There is a way to unlock the last zones, but it requires you to play on the hardest difficulty, without grinding for levels. That isn't fun AT ALL.
The first boss fight requires you to repeatedely cast the same skill over and over again for ALMOST 150 TURNS, while the AI ally chips the boss away.
Oh, this time they fixed the item absorption glitch, so you are required to abuse some skills and hope that the RNG is kind to you. Sometimes enemies decide to attack twice in a row and you just die.
And even if you do manage to reach these last levels, again their are just challenge runs and not related to the story.

Its no Epic Battle Fantasy, I'll give you that.

This game makes you think it will be a base builder of sorts, but it actually is an "exponential furnace" kind of game.

What is that?
You pick item A and put it on furnace 1 to craft item B. Then you pick item B and put in furnace 1 to make item C. Then use item C to create furnace 2. Then you can use item B + C in furnace 2 to make item D. Then you can use item D to create furnace 3, to create item E, to mix it with item B to create item F and it keeps going and going and going and going and going...

Thats 90% of the gameplay. Managing furnaces.
You think that eventually you will be able to create massive assembly lines, but even then its all very shallow.
At most you need to work with limited space. You can build stuff to move items between islands, but you mostly just keep the main machines in one island.

Everything is time consuming, everything takes 3 items to craft. Eventually the game becomes some sort of idle game, where you have to build other stuff to speed up the crafting.

After hours of crafting stuff so you can craft new stuff, you eventually reach the "final" material. You need 20 and each takes like 5 minutes if you get all the speed boosters.
Then you need to get a house and... wait.
Wait until the crafting is done, you get a small cutscene and the game ends.

There isn't much gameplay aside making furnaces and connecting them. You can shoot some creatures or you can break some rocks. Both ways, you just hold a button while aiming at something.

And as a bonus, there is a "privacy" tab in the options menu thats says they gather data from your PC for.... reasons?
I legit have NO IDEA what a game like this needs to get data from my PC.
Its on by default, and its annoying to opt out. What even is the point of this?
Buzz off, HypeTrain.

Overall, very shallow gameplay. This game reminds me a lot of Forager, another game that is about making furnaces in small islands so you can create more furnaces.

Not very good, buy something else.

What if the first Metal Gear on MSX was filled with jokes and self referential humor every 5 seconds and insta gameovers that you can't avoid unless you know about them beforehand? (In other words, after you already game over-ed)

What if all dialogue was complete non-sense, nagging and 10 minutes of exposition for something that literally doesn't matters inside or outside the game's context aside a one-note joke?

What if you had to replay long stretches of the level because save points are rare and far between each other and you die in two hits?

What if you have to keep opening the inventory screen to swap items because you only have one item slot?

What if you had a nearly useless upgrade system with rare useful upgrades and a level system that only gives you exp if you play ONE exact way, thus being possible to permanently lose exp and upgrades?

What if you have to keep putting restrictions for using EVERY item in the game for completely insane reasons, like not being able to use guns without HAVING MEDKITS TO HEAL THE ENEMIES AFTER YOU SHOOT THEM, BECAUSE KILLING AN ENEMY IS A GAME OVER?

What if the game randomly gives you time limits, then does everything it can to annoy you to fail said limit, like the mentioned gun restriction, inventory restriction, rare checkpoints and unfunny jokes?

What if every boss could kill you in one hit and everytime you retry to have to skip through several conversations and animations, trying to retry an annoying and terribly designed boss fight?

No. I am not laughing.
Gameplay limitations due old hardware is one thing, gameplay limitations purely to annoy your players is another.
A parody is one thing, repeating the same joke for 20 HOURS is another.

You suck, UnMetal.

Kinda hard to recommend this game due several annoyances I had with it, but even so, I had fun with it.

A typical metroidvania, takes some inspiration from Hollow Knight, but manages to create it's own identity.

Gameplay loop is fun enough, combat is satisfying, although repetitive.
The art style is very distinct and relies a lot on gore and edgyness.
Movement is fast and fluid, abilities are fun to use.
The one problem I had with the movement, is that there are weird rules for resetting extra jumps and air dashes. You can recover jumps from wall slides and some platforms, but not the dash, which caused me a few deaths.

The main issue with this game, is that its filled with glitches and other annoyances.
Not "haha funny" glitches, "game breaking, progress erasing, softlocking" glitches.

It seems that ever so often, the UI of the game breaks.
I had my map getting erased 4 times, puzzle and chest icons not clearing from the map after completion, a bright pink glow that hides the entire screen when using a teleport station, UI elements becoming white squares or completely vanishing.
Enemies that vanish after getting hit once, enemies that die but keep making noises, spawners that keep creating enemies after dying, puzzle parts that don't trigger right due engine quirks.
The UI glitches are so bad that you have to close the game to fix them, only quitting to menu won't fix anything.

I got stuck of a few platforming puzzles because they got completely out of sync.
Some retractable platforms and lasers should activate in a particular order, but somehow they were activating in a way that always made me get hit.
After dying and reloading, the puzzle reset itself and I could complete them.

Combat is cool, not complex, but works well enough. You can juggle enemies and do fun combos once you figure out how not to launch them away.
Some enemies have a sort of super armor that lets them hit you while being attacked until you drain some health, so that always got me hit.
There are a few secondary weapons, but I didn't use anything other than the first one because it is the strongest and fastest. The others are either useless or mostly used to open a few doors.
In particular, the motorcycle, is the last weapon you get. It is INCREDIBLY slow to swing, causes you to launch yourself away from the enemy (risking getting hit or instakilled by stage hazards) and doesn't deals that much damage.
You can make them stronger, but it requires quite a lot of grinding to get the money and item drops for it.

You eventually find powers like the Hollow Knight ones, but they all share one button, and you have to swap between them to use each one.
A few are useful only for unlocking certain doors, and others are really bad at doing damage.
The "ultimate" power deals 4 damage several times (even though it says "the more you hold, more damage it does"), while the slingshot power deals 120 in one blow.

There is a parrying system, but its basically useless.
It is supposed to a "high risk/high reward" system, where getting a parry lets you instakill the enemy, but the timing is WAY too precise to do so.
Instead of having a tell so you can time your parry, the enemy flashes right when you have to parry, so its almost impossible to get the timing right unless you press it at random.
Most of the time it just makes you take a hit, specially on later enemies that can drain almost your entire health in a few hits, or knock you into an instakill hazard.

Art style wise, its mostly pretty good, everything very well drawn, but the one major problem I have with it, is the main character, Cherry.
She looks... weird, to say the least. Its like she is being drawn off-model.
She has a small head, elongated pencil-thin neck, noodle arms, pear shaped body, elephant legs with no knees and feet with no ankles. Oh, and she has a talking robo-vagina. That is incredibly detailed and constantly talks to you.
On other (promotional) art, she looks ok, I specially like the one that looks like Gashi-Gashi's art.
Other than that, its all good. The brutal kills are varied.

Talking about brutal kills, they get a bit repetitive.
You hit hard, but enemies hit harder. You are always using brutal kills to get energy and health back.

The backtracking exists as it is expected of a metroidvania, but here its a bit annoying.
Not only because of the map glitch erasing your only way to track where you have been and rooms you didn't clear, but also you have no way to mark rooms for later, like some rooms you can only get pass after you get the final ability in the game.
And then, some rooms you backtrack to have NOTHING of useful on them. Several rooms I completed after getting the ability to do so would reward you a bit of money and crafting material, even though the chest they give you is the one reserved for big upgrades like extra energy and key items.

The upgrade system is a bit like Hollow Knight's brooches, but the main difference here is that health, energy and damage are also equipable upgrades rather than collectables.
That just means you have less slots available, as you always have these 3 equipped, unless you want to make stuff harder for yourself.

The second main issue with this game is that its incomplete!
A few areas have locked doors with nothing behind them and the game ends on a THREE PART CLIFFHANGER.
Will it be a sequel? A future update? Will it even exist? Who knows!

Overall, good game. Has a lot of questionable design choices, has satisfying, but repetitive combat, and is filled with annoying glitches.

Sandbox mode is fun for a while, you can create all sorts of machinery and contraptions.

The campaign is rather boring, Minecraft this is not.
You start with a basic vehicle, complete quests and defeat randomly spawning enemies to get better parts, repeat until some sort of ending.

Building can be fun, there are a LOT of parts for you to use, but on the campaign is rather hard to find something specific, so you build with whatever you find.

It seems that to do anything in this game requires some sort of factory or elaborate machinery.
Crafting is quickly explained through a series of quests, but good luck trying to actually craft something, because the machines have no hud or any sort of interaction system. You build the machine, IF you have the right parts, then destroy the scenery to get materials, then equip a specific part to hold the materials to bring them to the machine, then watch as the materials go through the conveyor belt, one by one, to be turned into a part.
If you want to craft something specific, you need to watch out to bring only the right materials, or build filters on the belts. And all machines need power to work.

Then there is the risk of your machines being attacked by the randomly spawning enemies, so you need to build turrets to keep them safe.

And then there are small annoyances like not being able to just store enemy parts as you find them, you need to first connect them to a main piece like a cab or structure, THEN you can teleport the whole thing into your inventory.
I didn't find the SCU, so all I could do to collect scattered parts was either throwing them near a shop, or connecting them to a cab, then teleporting the amalgamation.
Also rarely bought anything because the shops never had anything interesting (likely because of the faction rank), and since I saved so often I never had to use money to respawn.

Also, there are no chests in this game. Silos are the most you can get, but each item and material on them is individually rendered, so eventually it will affect performance.

Basically, the game is too overcomplicated to benefit from a campaign. But sandbox can still be fun.

"Brain Damaged" is right, this game both has and gave me brain damage.

Its a regular high speed retro shooter. What passes for a plot, in the game's own words" is a "non-sensical, incoherent dream plot, strung together by pop culture references".

All weapons are fun, although I feel some would benefit from a bigger "kick" to it, like the electric gun.
Ammo goes by fast and power ups are lost after the last level in a chapter, so you are advised to cycle your guns and use the power ups as there is no benefit to hoarding them.

There is a big variation of enemies, but most follow the same logic of "rushing you" or "shooting you". Some do both.

Difficulty is ok, I died about 6 times on the entire game and mostly from trying to handcap myself and not use some guns or any power ups.
Using the power ups makes the game trivial, even the last boss goes down in a minute.

What passes for a plot is just a massive pile of waste. Its all late 2010s and early 2020s references, Trump wall, Elon Musk, coronavirus, furry conventions, memes, millennial "jokes". Of course, everything is "ironic", so it gets a pass. (It doesn't)

Overall, a good (or at least above average) retro shooter, Postal flavored. This time, you get to see Doom Slayer's bare ass on screen.

Interesting concept, gets old fast. Incredibly overhyped, most of the praise it gets is sarcastic.

Gameplay is a bit fun on the first 30 minutes or so, but it never evolves past that.
Would be nice to have a cool replay of the level, but all you get is one in a very small resolution, blurry filter, with words flashing and annoying robot voice, so you can't even enjoy what you just did.

Story is uninspired. Kept telling me "haha you can't exit the game, we control it", but I closed it anyway. Then it forces me to replay what I just did, and again goes "haha you can't exit the game". Boring, at least do something to deserve the "you have to reopen the game, now what".

Didn't really hook me.

Art style is pretty nice looking, and while I like the gritty comic book style, it is extremely dark, half of the screen is always black or very dark colors.

Gameplay is ok for the most part, found it extremely easy. Enter cover, shoot enemies, stay still when they shoot to dodge and recover ammo, dive when the cover breaks, repeat.
Managed to get to the final level on my first try, but the game glitched and sent me to the title screen even though it showed "chapter 4".
I just have an issue to the way the character magnets to cover, sometimes you are trying to avoid a rushing enemy or just walk around, and if you get too close to a cover, the character will automatically glue to it.

Enemies are all basic. Some shoot, some rush you. The worst of them is the big golem that is invincible unless you hit his back, but it has perfect tracking so you have to get close so it can stomp, and then it will stop for a second. Or just abuse their AI by going around cover.

The game tries to copy Dead Cells a bit too much. Similar protagonist, same 3 stat upgrade system, same 2 weapon/2 items/1 amulet system, same use cells to unlock more items system, same bosses give transversal upgrades system.
Pretty much everything but setting and camera is copied from Dead Cells.

Talking about camera, it sucks. The fixed isometric camera makes it hard to see or avoid stuff that comes from the lower part of the screen.

And as a very bad look for the devs/publisher, a small part of the game was cut in development in order to be sold as day 1 DLC. The Crow DLC adds very little stuff, was released on the exact same day as the game and costs 1/5 the price extra.

Overall is... ok-ish. But I think I've seen everything it has to offer in the 2 hours I played.

A very short, but entertaining and charming game about a Dragon Ball Z episode where characters blast each other with weaponized Ki blast words, with a very good aesop about how "Saying 'No' more means saying 'No' for bad and uncomfortable things, not 'never saying yes'".

Nothing much to be said about it, just a fun comedy/aesop game with PS1 graphics (more specifically, Megaman Legends).
Finished it in 2 hours.