Recent reviews by Toucan Son of Sam

Swinging fists and pantsu, just like my Friday nights (my Friday nights are spent playing this and crying).

On one hand it's regressive because it comforms to the stereotype that all sons look like their dads.

On the other hand it's progressive in that it betrays stereotypes by showing all the different racial dads with the same sized pixels.

I'll still play it though.

Naked and crying, just like how all of my jiu jitsu sessions end.

As someone who likes shooters, but never really had a taste for bullet hell, this is the most mechanically friendly and outright fun genre example that I've played.

Shooters are always a hard recommend to anyone who isn't already looking for one. It's a very niche style of gameplay that tends to play to a very small but dedicated fanbase. However, Crimson Clover makes for a great game to dip your toes into. The mechanics are easy to understand, and the difficulty curve is nice enough that it let's you come to grips with the game you are playing before it starts turning the screws on you. Yet it doesn't feel like an entry level game.

The graphics, gameplay, presentation. and soundtrack are all great. Maybe the only thing this game actually lacks is a co-op mode, but that's just a personal preference. At the price point the game is going for, I'd say pick it up if you are even the least bit curious.

Now that was just silly.

To put it shortly, this game is an amazing roguelike with a even more amazing aesthetic.

Death Skid Marks is a bit like a top down, real time Faster Than Light. You drive a vehicle on a post apocalyptic vertical highway, getting into combat with all manner of other drivers. All to get to a concert.

The game has a real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ punk art style and attitude, and it works extremely well for it. The actual playfield graphics are a little simple, but have personality to them. What really sells the art style is the menu and rival graphics. The character art is vibrant and crazy without veering too far off into caracature territory. Sort of like Rat Fink meets Ren and Stimpy on a heavy metal concert poster. The art style is very love it or hate it, but most people I've noticed seem to love it. And I absolutely love it.

The music is thematically similar. It's all rock and thrash, and it's loud. Actually, it's too loud. A lot of the audio is static-y and overamplified, and the audio quality suffers a bit as a result. It's one of the few games I've actually had to turn down in the menu just for the sake of playing it. That being said, it does fit the mood.

The actual gameplay is reminiscent of old top down, vertical car racing games. The actual game controls with the WASD to move, and mouse to shoot and use some special attacks. The gameplay is entirely combat with other vehicles, played somewhat similarly to Faster Than Light, with similar difficulty and similar systems to pay attention to. Your vehicle has health in four different quadrants, and if any one quadrant hits zero, you are done for. You also have passenger health to watch out for. Depending on what and where you are being hit, your passengers can be hurt directly. You can run other drivers off the road, shoot or melee the car up, or do the same to the occupants. There's also occasional road hazards that can harm or kill you, like debris, road contruction, or helicopters and suicide bombers. With certain enemies, your plan of attack changes. It starts out pretty simple, but it quickly ramps up. And unlockable vehicles change your attack and defense abilities even further.

Much like Faster Than Light, progression often depends on upgrades, and you can often miss out on needed upgrades thanks to the RNG. When you start the game, you generally need to have a good idea how you wish to upgrade your vehicle and passengers. And the upgrades generally need to follow a set pattern. In some situations, it's rather difficult if not impossible to survive if you haven't upgraded in a certain way. The unlockable vehicles actually simplify this a bit, by generally following a set gimmick for the vehicle that gives you a preferred way to attack. But it's still likely you might get stopped midway through a run because you don't have the manuverability or firepower to survive an encounter.

On that note, comes the weakest part of the game for me, the bosses. For the most part, the bosses are bullet spongy and follow set patterns that generally aren't that threatening. And another issue I have with them is they don't always react to damage at all. For the first several hours I wasn't sure I was damaging some bosses. Some of the bosses do show damage on them, and degrade over a fight. Which makes it more confounding fighting the bosses that show no damage at all, save for maybe scorch marks. And some of the bosses can only be hurt in certain ways. Basically, I ended up just giving up on some runs because I didn't know if I could even damage the boss, and what even did damage the boss. I guess what I'm asking for is more visible damage, less boss hp, and make the bosses hit a bit harder. And I wish the boss patterns weren't so rote. Even of the couple end bosses I've fought had a generally bland, slow pattern of attack.

The actual combat while on the road is much more compelling at least, and that is the bulk of the game. There's also stops on the road where you can get stat bonuses, like playing Russian Roulette, being experimented on, gambling, or slapping weapons together. The Russian Roulette game tends to yield the best results, since it's a hard 50/50 chance to get 8 stat points, and you can generally pick up another replacement hitchhiker in case that volunteer takes an accidental bullet to the head. The actual money you earn is better off spent on vehicle upgrades and weapons first off.

The game isn't perfect. The bosses are the one part that really mars the game for me. But there are vehicles that can chesse some bosses, so that alleviates it a little bit. As a whole though, I recommend that game whole heartedly. So long as the boss battles don't frustrate you, you'll find a hard as hell but amazingly fun game worth sinking a few good hours into. Also there's apparently a free content patch coming out tomorrow, so there's that too. So I'd say pick this one up.

The only possible benefit to buying this horrible knockoff of Katamari Damacy is I had five less dollars to spend on drugs.

Stay in school kids.

Short version: This game feels slow, boring, and unfinished. And the game mechanics seem to be working against itself. That being said, it's probably an okay kids game.

Long version: At first glance, this game seems pretty decent. Twin stick styled overhead shooter with eye pleasing low poly graphics, responsive controls, and decent music. But after playing nearly two hours of it, I can say so far it's been very same-y and disappointing. It's not a roguelike, as I've seen it be referred to as, since there's little penalty for death. It's just a twin stick dungeon crawler type thing.

First off, the combat. WASD moves the character, mouse shoots. You can get limited ammo power ups, wear armor, blah. The enemies are for the most part nonthreatening, so the power ups aren't really vital. Plus the level design is really claustrophobic. So enemies will usually be funneling through narrow halls and doorways, oftentimes getting stuck on each other. The only real danger of being hit is at the start of the floor, when the doors open, and enemies from the adjacent rooms all bum rush you, getting shot from offscreen, or when an enemy decides to hide behind a door frame and ram into you. And because the game is pretty slow at the beginning, you have plenty of time to react to any encroaching danger, at least if you can see it. Another serious issue comes from the fact that the enemy ai doesn't seem to know how to navigate the modular rooms, and frequently gets stuck in door frames. Or if they are a roaming type, end up collecting in a far off corner of the map, no where near the player. The usually frenetic and fun combat that usually comes from twin stick shooters just isn't here.

The level design itself, as I mentioned before, seems to be working against the game mechanics. It's a twin stick shooter shoehorned into tight boxes and hallways. With the exception of the boss fights, which do open up a bit, the level design is nearly identical boxes and hallways. There's really no reason to dodge anything when the better alternative is to just run back into the previous room and shoot enemies as they get stuck in the door frame. There are a few bigger rooms that may spawn, but they usually have a gimmick about them take takes up most of the real estate, but the gimmick is usually 'hold the space bar for a bit'. And even though the floors are randomly generated, it's hard to tell, because thus far they've all looked nearly identical in layout. You start on the bottom left corner of the map, next to a set of bonus rooms you can unlock somewhere on that floor. The exit to the next floor is generally only a few room to the top right, and a tresure chest room reasonably close to that. And a few square rooms scattered around all of this, hiding exit keys and monsters. The boss rooms open up a bit, but the bosses themselves are pretty simplistic and easy.

There's a selection of power ups, but a lot of them seem superfluous. There's spread and split shots, which seem pointless since there's very few areas that aren't tiny boxes with bottle necks. You have homing shots, shots that make your bullets bigger, passive bullet shields, single use bomb like items. You can equip armor that gives you extra hits and passive abilities. But really, you'd probably just be better off pumping all of your stat points into damage and speed and just using whatever else you might have. You can also get stat boosting or reducing mushrooms, but they don't really factor in much, since they seem fairly rare, and barely bump your stats in either direction. So neither risk nor reward.

The bright spots are the graphics and music. The graphics are colorful and pleasing, while still having a low poly look. The overhead prospective is fine, with the exception that enemies can hide behind door frames and get cheap hits on you as a result. Game runs fine, with the exception of the second boss, which for some bizarre reason tanked my framerate down to almost single digits. And the music is chiptune-y and reasonably catchy. Having closed the game out 15 minutes ago, I can't even remember any of the musical tracks already, but it did serve it's purpose of being something inoffensive playing in the background.

Overall, this feels like an early access game that just happened to be put on the full release list. There's not much content (apparently I'm already half way through the game, and the only reason I have almost two hours in it is because of the slow pace), and the combat doesn't change past the tutorial. I can really only recommend it at a deep discount, as a bundle extra, or as something for a younger kid to play. But I can't personally recommend it, considering there's better alternatives on Steam that are cheaper too.

One caveat before I start. This game is still unfinished. There are really only three tracks, and half of a campaign to play through as of my last playthrough.

With that out of the way, this is pretty much the absolutely insane Road Rash successor that I didn't know I wanted.

The main campaign mode (the only thing implmented in the version I've played) is semi randomly generated (meaning that you'll get random victory conditions on the tracks), and has rogue like elements like permadeath and an ability to buy stats with the money you collected during a run. The campaign, so far as I can tell, still follows a basic track structure. It goes desert tracks for a few races, rooftop tracks (which is where most of the glitches seem to currently reside), winter track (which is basically a greyier version of the desert track), and quite literally Rainbow Road from Mario Kart. What really makes these tracks dynamic is the random effects you can get. Like all oncoming traffic, weather effects, or even raining and explosive cars. Some of these effects are amazing, and really push the races from fun but basic to absolutely crazy.

The actual bike handling is pretty forgiving, if a little stiff. It's pretty easy to stay on the track, barring some occasional blind turns. I do kinda wish there was more tactile feel to the handling, since it really doesn't feel like you are even on a bike. But in the context of the game it isn't so bad. Because it works well with the game's combat system.

Which is the meat and potatoes of this game. It is amazingly satisfying to club someone over the head with a pipe. Most of my time in the campaign mode was chasing down and braining rival racers. The more racers you take out, the more money and better weapons you are granted, thus continuing the cycle of violence. The gun play seemed okay, but I honestly didnt try it much, since I really just wanted to beat more racers (and police, and random traffic) with melee objects.

Of the games three basic tracks, the desert/winter ones are the best realized. The rooftop tracks I had issues falling out of the level geometry and getting stuck. And the Rainbow Road alike track makes for an interesting easter egg, but wasn't much fun to race on, with constant tight turns and narrow track width, and no traffic to interact with. But these are things I'd assume would be smoothed out over time.

Overall, thus far there's not a wealth of features in the game, but what is there is quite fun. The combat is fun enough that I found myself slowing down just to hit more racers with blunt objects. And doing so while cars are dropping from the sky and exploding is quite amazing. I'd recommend it once it becomes a more complete product. Even now it's pretty fun, but the glitches and lack of content mar it currently. If a totally crazy and still very playable bike combat game sounds up your alley though, I'd go ahead and recommend it now.

At it's core, it's a playful mockery of video game storytelling themes. The writing is clever, and the narration is charming, while also managing to be just a little unsettling. It's a game, so much in that you control movement and press buttons. But there isn't any combat, and the freedom of choice is just an illusion (which is kinda the point). It's meant to be played over and over again, just to see the different reactions you can get from the game. And there are many many reactions to find.

And if this doesn't sound like something you'd want to spend any time with, you can always treat it like a really obscure easter egg hunt. Because there's a ton of those too. If you are like me, and you try to break a game just for fun, you might find out that this game considers it a legitimate storytelling branch.

And if that doesn't sell it to you either, you can consider it a narrator annoyance simulator. It's something for everyone, provided you like these three things.