Recent reviews by Tacohead

I was not happy with Lamplight City early on because I got stuck and could not proceed. I had looked everywhere and could not proceed. Turns out I missed one very important clue that was a little difficult to distinguish between an interactable item or just a static image. It prompted me to write a bad review but the developer immediately responded to it and we had a productive little conversation that ultimately pointed me in the right direction so I was able to continue with the game. It's really the only time I got stuck through my entire playthrough.

To get a response like that so quickly from the actual developer really shows how much they care about this game and is really appreciated. And when playing this game it really shows just how much they care about it because you can tell a lot of love went into creating this fantastic game.

It looks like a typical point and click adventure game but there are some significant differences from what is typical of the genre. Probably the biggest one is there's no inventory. You do pick up items on rare occasions but they basically just get entered into your casebook and they automatically get used when you look in the right area. Instead most of the detective work is done through dialogue and examining items in the environment. And choices really do matter here because they can significantly alter how your particular story plays out. I found this to be a very refreshing alternative to trying to randomly combine two items from an overstuffed inventory, even in nonsensical ways, to get yourself out of a dead end. You also can't really randomly click through all dialogue options when talking to another character. You really have to think about what you should say and what you shouldn't say.

The game really shines technically with it excellent production values. It looks great and sounds great. It's some of the best sound design I've seen in an indie point and click adventure game in recent memory. It makes for a pretty immersive experience for a game like this. The voice acting and music is also excellent all around. The story is well done and I liked how there was overlap between cases sometimes. In other words once you get through a case it's not like you never hear anything about it again. I don't think it overstays its welcome either.

However there are a few potential problems depending on the player. You can actually get through cases without solving them and sometimes you may even end up accusing somebody you are not entirely sure about because that's the only person you can select (other than selecting unsolved case). What choices you have in this regard seems to be based on how much information you have gathered in the course of an investigation of a given case. This might not sit well with some people who may only be interested in the best possible outcome of every case. Personally I kind of liked it because in real life a detective doesn't solve every case and occasionally even makes mistakes. It also creates the opportunity for numerous outcomes in the story.

One nitpick related to the above is that when your playthrough is over there's no kind of feedback that I can see to tell you how well you actually did in each case. So if you picked a suspect you weren't certain about you may never know whether whether or not that person is truly guilty. Something might happen in a later case that sheds some light on previous cases but that doesn't always happen. I guess this is realistic as well when you think about it but this is one instance where I wouldn't mind if they bent the rules a bit. Maybe some kind of summary before the closing credits with a rating indicating how well you did on each case. Once again though this is by no means a dealbreaker for me but it would've been nice.

So in the end I really enjoyed my time in Lamplight City and I appreciate the developer's passion for their game. Hopefully someday there will be a sequel but in the meantime I'm now really interested in their newest game Rosewater.

A really great point & click adventure game. The large majority of the puzzles made sense, which isn't often the case with these types of games, and the inventory never got overloaded with so many items that you constantly try to combine in nonsensical ways when frequently hitting walls that you can't get past.

All the characters were interesting in their own ways, especially Eli, and the voice acting was mostly top-notch all the way through. Really liked the story as well and all the different ways it can be wrapped up. You will have to play through the game multiple times to get all the achievements though if that's your sort of thing.

And the music was really good throughout and I really liked the artwork for the most part.

All in all one of the best point & click adventure games I have played in recent years.

I like it better than the first game. The graphics, sound, music, and narration are top notch and create such a immerseive atmosphere. I like how the backstories of the characters unfold. I don't miss most of the micromanagement of the roster and the town in the first game. The candle system works for me. The game also seems a bit less punishing compared to the first game.

The only thing I don't really like is the implementation of the token system. Mousing over any type of item has all these tiny symbols that represent tokens that are hard to see for me on my laptop. There's a glossary of all these tokens but when you press the key to open it everything else is blocked so all too often I find myself looking at the tiny tokens on the item mouseovers, trying to memorize what they look like, and then quickly opening this glossary to attempt to find their matches so I can see what they actually are. Sometimes I find a match and sometimes I don't. The game has some fairly complicated systems behind it, with the tokens a heavy part of that, so not knowing what they are or what they do half the time doesn't really help. So I don't always understand what descriptions for each item actually mean. It would have been better if you could right-click on an item and have the same information about it pop up in a window where you could mouse over the tiny little token icons to see what they actually are and what they do instead of the clunky interface that's in place now.

I'm still enjoying the game but I would enjoy it more if not for that.

As far as American football goes this is the closest thing out there to what Football Manager is for soccer and Out of the Park Baseball is for baseball. Lots of options and quick to play. Has a great modding community so simulating the NFL, even all the way back to the 1940s, is not a problem. And the developer is very responsive and active.

I was a big fan of Tom Landry Strategy Football (for the Mac) and that is what this is based on.

Highly recommended!

Good old-school RPG with some modern sensibilities.

Adamvision one-button games are perfect for disabled players like myself and PooshXL is no exception. Great games for everybody really. PooshXL may be the most challenging game he'w done yet which is saying something but it is doable. Even if you just have 10-15 minutes that's enough to get a bunch of attempts in. It's great to have games like this because sometimes that's all the time I have. It can be frustrating but it wouldn't be as rewarding and fun if it were too easy. So I both love and hate this game but that's actually a good thing.

This is a pretty significant departure from the modern Total War games of the last 10 years or so. Some of that is because of the remastered stuff and some of that is because the original Rome is a very old game and comes from a time when Total War games were different. I think, for the most part, that's a good thing, but everybody will have a different opinion on this. I do enjoy most Total War games but the original Rome has always been my favorite. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the new interface of the remaster but once I did I still like the game quite a bit and still consider it to be my favorite.

The graphics are very nice in the remaster although they won't compete with some of the newer Total War games in this regard. The new interface isn't perfect but once I got used to it I have to say it works well enough for me. I like the overall clean look the game now sports. I love hearing the general's speeches again. The game also runs really well on my 2017 27 inch iMac.

The existence of this remastered version is a bit of a bonus for Mac users because the original stop functioning with the release of Mac OS Catalina and the 64-bit requirement. So this remastered version brings it back from the dead for Mac users and the improvements are a nice bonus. It's also nice that both the Barbarian and Alexander expansions are included. The original Mac version did include the Barbarian expansion but did not include the Alexander expansion. I never got around to playing the Barbarian campaign, or the Alexander one as well, so now I have that option which is great.

If I had any criticisms for the remaster one would be that the text, while clean looking, is sometimes unnecessarily too small to read for aging eyes like mine. I imagine a mod will come along to fix this but it's still worth mentioning. And as many have commented on the AI is still kind of nonsensical on occasion. In particular I've occasionally found myself facing off with an enemy army that seems unwilling to advance towards me even though they are in range of my missile units. So I can just keep raining missiles down on them constantly without worrying about them charging towards me. Granted arrows don't seem to do a lot of damage anymore so it takes a long time to make any sort of impression but obviously something isn't quite right about this. Perhaps a patch will take care of this in the future?

Despite the few issues I would recommend Total War Rome Remastered to anybody who likes Total War games and/or is interested in the Roman Empire. It's been fun and will continue to be so probably for a long time, especially because it's apparently the most moddable Total War game ever.

This is more of a puzzle game than a platformer and it's a surprisingly good one. Once you understand the mechanics you find yourself discovering some pretty satisfying solutions. It's challenging but rewarding. It's also not a very long game but sometimes, as in this case, that's a good thing. Highly recommended.