Recent reviews by Setnaro X

First things first, I won't be talking about the story here because I was able to beat the game before Cyan patched a bug that involved the mentor not speaking to you throughout your entire journey. I was not aware about this bug and just thought it was like all other previous Cyan games where you venture into a world in total silence with only the music to enhance the immersion. As such, I was not able to fully understand the story, but that gives me a reason to play the game again.

Firmament is a pretty unique and daring game compared to other works by Cyan. In most of their other games, you have nothing to aid you in your journey other than your own brain and whatever objects the world allows you to touch. In this game, however, you are equipped with a device called the Adjunct. This device is what allows you to interact with everything in Firmament. The whole concept of the Adjunct is pretty good and how it works is quite fun, but it's not without its own fair share of (unintended) problems, which I'll definitely point out.

But first, let's get the positives out of the way. The game is GORGEOUS. Not really all that surprising since Cyan has always pushed for cutting-edge environmental visuals. The landscape in this game is nothing short of phenomenal. Just the very start of the game, when I rode the elevator up from the bunker I awoke in, I quickly discovered I was all alone atop a snowy, desolate mountain. It left me speechless. Later on, after figuring out how to teleport to other areas, I came across an abandoned garden, a "bank" vault, an acid mine, GIANT SPIRES. It was all truly awe inspiring.

OK, so the gameplay. As I mentioned, you control the Adjunct. An arm cannon that shoots an electrical beam, sort of like Metroid Prime's grapple beam. The beam is only able to connect to specific sockets. And the world is RIDDLED with sockets EVERYWHERE. Anytime you connect yourself to a socket, you are presented with context-sensitive choices depending on what the socket is attached to, ranging from opening doors, shifting carts, opening doors, operating elevators, opening doors, manning a robot spider, opening doors, shutting off the water supply, opening doors, pushing a cart. Oh, and did I mention opening doors? (there's a LOT of doors in this game. That's not a bad thing BTW, just an observation). Many sockets offer multiple options so it can be pretty engaging trying to figure out all the things you can do with this one gimmick.

Unfortunately, there is only really so much you can do with the Adjunct. Something I loved about the older Cyan games (especially Obduction) was how you could interact and inspect a lot of objects, even if they serve no purpose in figuring out puzzles. From picking up a toy car to picking up a compass and opening it up and spotting a little message to read. In Firmament, there's really nothing you can interact with outside the use of the Adjunct. This inadvertently makes the worlds not really as immersive as they oughta be. A nitpick, for sure, but it was a feeling I had as I made my way through the game. This also presents itself with another problem. Since all of the puzzle solving involves connecting to sockets, the difficulty really does boil down to "WHERE THE HELL IS THAT ONE SOCKET I NEED TO PROGRESS?!". This becomes extremely apparent in certain areas like the underwater segment where you are directing the heat and pressure through pipes. You have to REALLY look hard to find the socket you need to progress.

Another nitpick I have with the game is the upgrade system. Yeah, in total Metroid fashion, you can upgrade your Adjunct in order to continue solving puzzles. I initially thought this would mean puzzle solving across all three worlds would feel more immersive, with some backtracking needed to get past that one part you couldn't because there was an upgrade missing. Somehow, the upgrades didn't truly feel like they were anything major. Save for probably two or three major puzzles, it really felt like the upgrades were supremely underutilized, and unlike Metroid Prime, didn't have me wanting to explore other areas to see what benefit there was to upgrading my device. Save for one upgrade, all of them were basic stuff: the beam gets an extension and becomes more "powerful", I think? The game doesn't do a good job telling you what the upgrades do aside from having a required puzzle you gotta complete once you obtain an upgrade, but I did it instantly without fully grasping what it is I did. The other upgrade that I thought was really cool was being able to connect to more than one socket, but again, this was underutilized. There isn't even an endgame puzzle in the finale that requires the upgrades to make the ending have a greater impact. Makes me wonder why we even needed to upgrade in the first place.

Now for the true bad stuff. The game is kinda buggy. I can look past a few bugs, but there are some bits here and there that felt REALLY frustrating. Because the game is a bit more open-ended in how you can manipulate stuff, it is completely possible to get yourself legit stuck in certain areas. In one instance, I got stuck in an elevator puzzle without a way to reach a particular socket to pull myself out of the situation. There was also a crane I had to move at one point that got lodged into a wall, preventing me from escaping. There's an option in the game that allows you reset yourself back to a safe spot when such a thing happens, which kinda kills the immersion one may have when they get caught up in solving puzzles, and that just ain't cool, man.

SPOILER ALERT FOR ONE PUZZLE AHOY:

I even had one instance where I overthought the solution to a puzzle which lead to me getting stuck REAL BADLY. It involves controlling a giant mecha spider that you ride on. At one point I reached a building where I operated a bridge in order to expose a socket I had to attach to. Problem is, when you operate the bridge, you can't get back on to the spider in order to reach the socket below the bridge. I thought the solution to this puzzle was to man the spider and go around the building to another open platform in order to activate the bridge, get back to the spider and go around back to the bridge to reach the socket, but as I made my way around the building, I found out the hard way I was not supposed to do that, and instead clipped through a bunch of forests and rocks and ended up getting my spider mech trapped. I'm surprised this was something overlooked by Cyan. I don't claim to be a great game programmer, but the fact that there isn't any invisible walls to prevent players from clipping through an unintended path to get to where I was in is sort of surprising. Luckily I had a spare save file that ended up being my savior for my run and eventually I figured out the correct way to reach the socket.

Aside from that one instance, I had tons of fun playing Firmament. Due to the way the Adjunct works, I'd say this is probably one of the easier games developed by Cyan, as I was able to finish this game in just under 12 hours, so I'm willing to say this is a good entry point for folks new to these kinds of 3D puzzle solving adventure games. Overall, I recommend the game, especially once Cyan gets around to patching the bugs.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I never actually played any of the Wario Land games before, so whether or not this game succeeds in being a spiritual successor to that series, I can't say. What I CAN say is that Pizza Tower may be one of, if not the best platformers I've played in such a very long time. I don't think I've ever experienced a game so tightly woven together like this one.

You play as Peppino, a very angry and anxiety-induced pizza man, on a journey to keep his pizza business from falling into debt by running through a tower filled with dangerous and quirky stages. Or at least, that's the interpretation I got from the opening intro. Really, the narrative isn't a super strong point here, but that doesn't really matter. All you need to know is this game's aesthetics harkens back to the old school, squigly-style cartoons of the 90's/early 2000's, like Ren and Stimpy, Ed, Edd and Eddy and Cow & Chicken, and the humor is a definite match of those cartoons as well. But don't let that fool you: the gameplay and controls for this game are NO JOKE. Peppino's movement is phenomenal. Super tight with a lot of cool techniques to give yourself a plethora of ways of maneuvering around the stages. You got the basics, like dashing forward, jumping, wallrunning. You got some advanced movements like sliding, shinesparking, diving. And then you got the straight up advanced techs like dive cancel stomps, grab cancels, slide boosting. All of these can be strung together in order to keep control of Peppino as you make a mad dash for the goal. It all lends itself to a true speedrunner's dream, because if you string it all perfectly together, the speed becomes hella exhilarating. Ludicrous even (sadly there is no plaid costume for your character).

Unlike most typical platformers, stages aren't designed with the typical "Point A to Point B" layout. Instead, each stage has you running through a huge, maze-like arena, figuring out the best path to get to the goal. Once you reach your goal, you are then tasked to make it back to the starting point as fast as you can, as you are given a time limit to do so. Run out of time and you'll start to be chased by the evil Pizza Face. Get caught before you reach the beginning and it's game over. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. If you're feeling daring, you can partake in a lap 2 just as you reach the starting point, in which case you're tasked with running through the map AGAIN with the remaining time left. If you're able to keep your combo meter going by picking up items and attacking enemies with very little breather in-between as you make your way all across lap, you might just get the ever elusive "P" rank, to showcase your amazing Pizza skills.

None of the stages in this game were ever bad. They were all so perfectly designed, I felt compelled to P rank every single one of them before even getting to the end game. Some stages had gimmicks, like picking up a shotgun in order to shoot down indestructable walls, grabbing a rocket in order to boost across the air, turning into a pizza box in order to flap across areas in a single bound. These gimmicks never felt tacked on; they all felt like a good mix up to the overall flow of the game. If I could make one complaint here, it's the fact that there is SO MUCH cut content for this game. I followed this game's development from the day it had its SAGE demo uploaded all the way to now. It's quite sad to see a lot of cool stuff get dummied out, but I guess that's also what helped make the game feel so tight so I can understand the choices the devs made in having to remove a lot of stuff, so if nothing else, it just means there's potential for DLC stuff. If that doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world, because this game is pretty much Pizza Perfect.

Also, special shout outs to the music. It's super stylish. It's kinda hard to explain, but the best way I can do so is imagine if the OST of Sonic CD, Earthworm Jim and Jet Set Radio were all thrown into a blender spinning atop a turntable. The music just oozes style, from the sick hip hop beats of the pause music making you wanna break it down, to the frenetic electronic jam as you're dashing through lap 2 which further adds to the adrenaline rush of the experience. I'm telling you, if you put on a pair of headphones and play "The Death That I Deservioli" while going out for a jog, expect to find yourself a million miles away from home. It's THAT wild.

This game is really good. If you love high speed platformers or just enjoy speedrunning, this is the perfect entry on the menu. So make sure to order it with extra cheese, and don't you dare save room for dessert.

I've been playing this game for YEARS back when it released on the Wii U. I never thought in a million years that The Wonderful 101 would have an official PC release. And yet here we are. So how does it hold up?

Maybe I'm being biased here but I genuinely believe this is PlatinumGames and Hideki Kamiya's magnum opus. The combat system is extremely intricate and complex but damn does it feel satisfying to master. This is NOT a cutesey wootsey Pikmin-style adventure game. This is very much an action game that ranks up there with games such as Devil May Cry and Bayonetta (2 other games Hideki Kamiya is responsible for. Go figure.). This is a game that does NOT hold your hand whatsoever nor does it do any spoonfeeding. You're gonna get punished. You're gonna get destroyed. You're gonna get nothing but consolation prizes along the way. You're probably also gonna get frustrated with the weapon switching gimmick and say the controls are bad and that it should've stayed on the Wii U where it belongs.

BUT!

Stick with the game and spend enough time learning to master the controls and you'll tap into an experience so cathartic that it's actually really difficult for me to put into words exactly just how fun it is to discover all the cool and intricate things you can do on the fly. This is a game that ALLOWS you to be stylish provided you got the skills for it. It employs all the stuff you've seen Dante and Bayonetta pull off and then some. Juggle combos, air dashing, STINGERS GALORE.

In The Wonderful 101, you control 100 super heroes who are able to morph into different weapons by lining up into their respective shapes by drawing with the right stick. Circle for fist, line for sword, a right angle for gun, etc.etc. At first it may feel overly complex (and to be fair, it is) but drawing the shapes is a matter of doing the gesture, not about precision. If anything, drawing the shapes would be more comparable to that of inputting a command in a fighting game. It's a gimmick that is extremely well thought out because the game takes into account what shape you did and how big you did it and whether you summoned it for yourself or passed it off to another hero for support. All of the characters that represent each weapon have their own charming and adorable personality.

Due to the nature of the drawing system, you have a whole lot more freedom in the combat than most other action games. In other action games, you usually swap between weapons at the push of a button but in order to make it less confusing for players, you usually only swap between 2 weapons (Bayonetta). Or, in some cases, if you have ALL weapons available, it's a matter of tapping the button quickly to get to your preferred weapon but if you accidentally pass it, you gotta constantly tap more to get back to it (Devil May Cry). In The Wonderful 101, switching is only done by drawing. No weapon wheel, no scrolling list, no menu. Nope, if you can think it, you can draw it. This can lead to moments where you can do just about anything you want provided you are skillful enough to gesture the needed glyphs. Want to punch an enemy into the air with your fists, switch to guns for bullet juggling before coming down with the hammer to slam them down to the ground? Yeah, you can do that. Want to keep an enemy stuck in slow motion with bomb so you can switch to whip and pick them up, toss them aside and then freeze them with claws? Sure, go ahead. Have fun.

All the enemies in the game are beautifully designed too. True to Kamiya's nature, the enemies all come in a variety of agressiveness, some being so reckless you'll need to pay attention to their telegraphing, from the movement they make to the sounds they make, in order to properly counter their attacks. Enemies come in a variety of different sizes and shapes. From a walking giant robot to an armored tank to a giant metallic turtle. All the enemies can be handled with any weapons you got but they've been cleverly designed in such a way that each one's got a weakness to certain weapons that you must discover and take advantage of.

It should be noted that since this is a Kamiya game, expect to run into a lot of mini-games. And I mean A LOT. You think Bayonetta had too much? Boy, you're in for a ride. Look, there's nothing wrong with the mini-games themselves as each one lasts just long enough for you to grasp its rules and controls before getting right back to the Wonderful 101 action, but since you're constantly being ranked for these segments just the same as the main game, it can get very frustrating trying to perfect these arcade bits, especially when you set out to do a Pure Platinum run. Some of these mini games can be overwhelming and down right punishing, even on the hardest difficulty where you can die in just one hit! Good lord. For what it's worth, all the mini-games feel just like their classic counterparts. You'll be playing stuff like Punch-Out, Zaxxon, Space Harrier and Star Fox, all for the sake of trying to save the world, so prepare yourself and hopefully you got some good arcade skills to survive.

The game's visuals aren't exactly the most amazing thing you'll see. The visual aesthetic employs a heavily inspired American Golden Age comics of the 1950's with the Japanese Tokusatsu action, ranging from Power Rangers (Super Sentai) to Kamen Rider with a chibi artstyle that heavily resembles Viewtiful Joe (yet another game Hideki Kamiya is responsible for. Go figure.). The game feels like you're peeking into a world made of toys, with the characters having a shiny plastic look to them, with the camera using a tilt shift effect to sell that look altogether. The texture aren't the most amazing thing here. In fact, given how this is a game that originally came from the Wii U, there's a whole lot of blurriness everywhere (even some text and screenshots) and it's a bit baffling that they'd be calling this a Remaster when it really is just a straight port. To be fair, I wasn't asking for the game to be remade but you'd think the Remastered title would imply that the game was given an extra amount of polish, which it doesn't.

For the PC port, I personally haven't had much issues experiencing the game however I've seen how it runs for other folks. Depending on your rig and resolution settings, you'll probably encounter some weird, unintended hiccups. To somewhat quote someone here on Steam, this port feels like it's being held together with Elmer's Glue. It makes me extremely sad that my most favorite game in the universe has a very shoddy port and while I am one of the lucky few to have a game that runs without any problems, this really falls into the "your mileage will vary" category.

As of this review's posts, the bugs that I've encountered include enemies ignoring bomb/hero time effects, the multiplayer camera being extremely buggy and input commands not behaving properly. Another big issue is the game being locked at 59fps. Now, for me, 59fps is a GODSEND because the original Wii U version ran soooo poorly, I would've been OK with the game just being locked at 30fps. 59fps is, no joke, the best thing the game could ever have BUT I know 60fps would've been a million times better and it actually does make me upset that PlatinumGames promised a locked 60fps experience when that's not entirely the case. Thankfully we do have fanmods that fix this little problem and I only hope that PlatinumGames will eventually patch this game to run exactly how it was intended to run.

Final verdict: Listen, I love this game a lot. There is nothing that's gonna keep me away from enjoying it. I only hope that if you do decide to jump in, you keep an open mind. This is not a game where you can just pick up and start getting Platinums right off the bat. It's a game that requires time, practice and patience to nail the combat system and if you're willing to go the distance, you'll find a game that gives you a whole lot more in return.

This is one of those games where I feel extremely ashamed to have discovered so late. I grew up playing Myst, Riven and Exile, and those games left a huge impact on me during my childhood. So when I heard that Cyan released a new spiritual successor, I instanty jumped at the chance to try out the game. I am very happy to report that Cyan still knows how to craft an excellent game that more than lives up to its name.

Obduction plays very similar to Myst. It's a first person, point-and-click puzzle/adventure game (with full 3D controls not unlike RealMyst) where you explore a deserted town in a distant world that you were inexplicably dropped into, and you must figure out how to get back home. Along the way, you'll encounter a very strange yet familiar set of objects, locations and history that hides a tale that's just begging to be told. What makes this game feel so excellent is that every puzzle feels like it has a meaning behind it, which further adds to the lore that the game presents to you. I'm not a big fan of games that throw in a puzzle that has no real connection to the story that is presented (SOLVE THE SOUP CANS). Thankfully there is nothing like that here.

Maybe it's because I'm very experienced with these types of games or maybe it's because I just have a good, keen eye for details, but nothing in this game felt frustrating to me. All the puzzles had a great sense of logic behind it. In fact, there is so much logic put behind some of these puzzles, it's actually kind of possible to "sequence break" (but not really) certain segments if you really think outside the box and retrace your steps, which is exactly what happened to me when I saw a telephone in this game and came across a puzzle that "required" it ('nuff said). This game had me going "ah ha!" at every moment, which is exactly what I love most about experiencing these types of puzzle games. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm happy to say this is the first Cyan game that I managed to complete without the use of hints or outside sources (my dad would buy me all the Myst walkthrough books because he would see me cry whenever I would get stumped real hard on a puzzle; you try being a 7 year old playing Riven >_<). It could just be that this game is overall easier than the previous Myst games, but that doesn't diminish the fact that the puzzles are extremely engaging to solve.

There's only one type of puzzle in this game that you'll be coming across rather frequently that I'm not too fond of. Not because it's hard, but because it's actually fairly easy to brute force. The game spends a while teaching you its use of mathematics, not unlike Riven. Riven has you learning about the base 25 number system because it's the numbering system that the D'ni culture lived by. For Obduction, the game teaches you the base 4 system in the form of handling alien technology. Despite the game's lore telling you that it uses sophisticated devices to ensure it's not easy to bypass, that's exactly what ends up happening once you start to fiddle around with it, thus never really having a real need to learn how to use the base 4 system. It's no real biggie, as most of this tech stuff you'll run into will usually be for opening up paths for the purpose of faster traveling (among other things), but it's the one part of the game that doesn't make me feel like I'm solving a puzzle more so it's me just simply picking a lock and being successful without any repercussion, which almost, ALMOST breaks the immersion of the game. It doesn't help much when the game includes a device designed to "translate" numbers, just to ensure you're not fully stumped during segments where a specific number sequence may be needed.

You'll definitely need some patience when handling this game, because if it's not the puzzles keeping you stumped that will test your patience, the amount of walking you'll need to do surely will, and since the game has full 3D controls, you don't exactly have the ability to zip across areas in a single click like what Myst/Riven used to do. I personally didn't have much problems spending a vast amount of time walking around, but that's because I was so busy looking at just how beautiful the game looked. The floating rocks, that strange blue reflection that surrounds the area, the really wicked loading screens. It's all so mesmerizing to me. I just couldn't get enough of it. The game is fairly high demanding, and I've read from other reviewers that their rigs couldn't handle the game, so I was worried the same would happen to me. At the time of this review's post, I used a GTX 1070 with an i7 2700K to play the game, and everything ran just fine for me at high settings. There are quite a lot of hiccups, a lot more than I would care to share, and it usually happens whenever I'm bolting from one place to another, making the game load often (and hearing my CPU fan kick into overtime on several occasions), but when I play Obduction at a slower pace, it's not too bad. It really varies, but from my own experience, it ran like a dream. Obviously, this will all depend on your rig.

If you're a huge fan of the Myst series, and have yet to play this game, do yourself a favor and grab this game ASAP. It's Cyan doing what they do best, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I hear they're already working on another game as I'm posting this review, so I'm making sure this time I don't miss a single new moment of their work.

This game offers cupcakes. What more do you want?

Aztez may look like a simple button masher beat em' up, but it's far more than that. This game is rich with combat variety in the form of 8 weapons, each with its own distinct action trait that allows for players to strut their creative side of combat. The game alone offers a surprisingly good amount of depth that most other indie developers would shy away from. It's obvious that this game takes a lot of cues from Bayonetta and DMC, and while Aztez may not be quite as stylish as the Umbran Witch or the Son of Sparda, the satisfaction of pulling off air combos, weapon switching, shield canceling, executing frame perfect counters and summoning Gods to aid you in battle never felt so good. Mix this in with a really cool single player campaign in the form a strategic, board-game-like adventure where you must protect your empire as you attempt to survive for as long as you can, collecting resources, collecting cards to alter the battlefield, and fend off wave after wave of incoming enemy attacks, and you got a game that'll keep you hooked for hours on end.

Basic. That's the best way I can really sum up this game. Actually, this is less a game and more a very, VERY early tech demo. Don't expect to jump in and start wailing enemies all stylish and cool, like Dante or Bayonetta. All you're really given are 3 types of attacks. One button for sword swinging, one button for kicking, and holding down the Right Trigger and pressing any of the other 2 previous attack buttons will activate a special type of attack. Even with mixing up all 3 of these attacks, there's very little combo you can do in this game, and with the animation of the game being pretty stilted, even trying to exploit something here is out of the question. You also have a dash which lets you shoot straight across for a sudden burst of speed. This is only really helpful for getting out of enemy attacks but it also serves to let you cancel any attack you're doing (Dash cancelling basically).

Enemies are as typical as it gets. Ninja mooks, gorilla-like mooks, a big dude that shoots rocket, and one big boss that's a combination of all other enemies you've encountered. Enemies don't seem to flinch when you attack them, so the entire combat experience just gets really dull, especially with how huge the environment is and how slow you run. On the plus side, I can say that the game does look really wonderful. The obvious Chinese inspired locations and theme while under the night sky looks very beautiful, which is saying something for what is pretty much a tech demo.

The only real reason I'm giving this a pass is because it's a free game, so I really can't complain. As a dude who loves action beat-em-ups like Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta, I want to look at the plus side of things, and there's definitely a lot of room for improvements with this game. I envision a lot of cool things that this game can be capable of pulling off, but that's up to the developers themselves to work on.

Give this demo a shot if you truly have nothing better to do though.