Recent reviews by Zyrxil

An excellent little 2 hour game. The storytelling method is unique, and I was very satisfied by the mystery as the pieces started falling in place. Also importantly, the characters and pathos hit just right, or else it'd be hard to care in such a short amount of time.

I've been playing my way through a lot of Metroidvanias in the last few months. Afterimage doesn't come off very favorably in comparison with the others. There's nothing technically wrong with Afterimage, the problem is it's just not very compelling. The combat is weightless and boring with almost no depth. The storytelling is rote and perfunctory (especially if you've played other Chinese-made games the style is cliche). The art is pretty but very generic Chinese animation. The map is huge but boring.

It hits a lot of checkboxes trying to imitate other popular games during this Metroidvania golden age of the last 8 years since Hollow Knight, but the devs don't understand why and how the elements work enough to make them compelling in their own game. It's all competent and incredibly unmemorable. There's just a lot of better Metroidvanias to spend your time on.

I cannot praise Psychonauts 2 enough- it's been so incredibly long since I played the first game, but PN2 has been able to suck me in completely. Every single part of this game is just oozing with personality and humor and emotion, including the incredibly expressive character facial/body animations, the extremely inventive and unique levels that are chock-filled with details reflecting the characters' minds, and the well paced and very personal stories being told and interwoven with each other.

The only thing I can complain about is that some movements are finicky- e.g. jumping when pressed right up against terrain objects that aren't perfectly vertical (because the environment is so stylized) can fail, and sometimes jumping while climbing depends too much on the camera being mostly straight behind your character. Beyond that, this is simply a masterpiece.

It's...decent. But what 'The Last Show of Mr. Chardish' aspires to be is *poignant*, like 'What Remains of Edith Finch'. It doesn't get there, or anywhere close, but it is a decent story of a flawed man told through decently clever metaphorical plays, with actually really good art direction and not-bad (but not great) voice acting.

For the genre of story-focused walking simulators, it's above average but not a standout. Get it on sale if you're curious.

I had been looking forward to Shakedown ever since the first trailer, but the game itself is pretty disappointing to me. The positives are up front and obvious- the very well done retro aesthetics and animations, with the very tongue-in-cheek characters and story. The story is actually better than I thought it could be, in that it very accurately lampoons modern capitalism from the view of a character who's been living under a rock for two decades.

Now the problem is the gameplay just isn't very good. The gameplay is the top down shooting and driving in the style of the original GTA, with a system of buying property to earn money. However, there's no depth to anything, and so most of the systems in the game feel unfinished. For example, there are about 115 story missions in the game, and up to around # 70 or so, the game is still throwing tutorials at you about ways to make money. This is pointless as the aforementioned method of buying property to earn rent gets you far far more income than any amount of money you can earn through petty crime, and is faster to boot.

Now this wouldn't be as big of a issue if the rest of game were more enjoyable, but it's not. Every single mission in the game can be completed in less than 5 minutes if you don't count travel time, with extremely straightforward objectives, no twists, and barely any difficulty. So if you were expecting a game that at least measures up to GTA II, you're going to be disappointed.

All of this is compounded by technical issues- the game essentially controls like a twin stick shooter, but gamepad support had to be patched in, and the game doesn't use the mouse to aim guns by default. There is also no support for rebinding keyboard keys, something that is highly desirable as many default actions are bound to awkward keys.

To sum it up, there was a lot of promise, but it's simply unfulfilled.

Arcade-y beyond belief is the thought that comes most to mind. I'm not some sim-racing pro. I enjoy arcade racers like Forza Horizon. But overall ease of the game here is just ridiculous. Cars grip and handle way too well, and learning to corner is the one of the fundamentals of racing games, arcade or not. The aesthetics are also way too eye poppingly bright and "90s Xtreme". No, just no.

It's decent Portal inspired game, but it's fairly clear the devs ran out of puzzle mechanic ideas.

The basis of the puzzles is creating paths over shadows (which will kill you if you walk over them). There are two main puzzle mechanics- uni-directional spotlights on stands that you can move around to shine on shadows, and crystal bulbs on stands which will create light in a path that you can carry and move around. The issue is, the spotlight are introduced, then after a large number of levels moving platforms are introduced, rinse and repeat for the 2nd mechanic of crystal bulbs.

There are only a few levels where these two mechanics are combined, and shortly after they are, the game ends. This is very poor pacing, and I'm sure the devs would have done it differently....if they just had more ideas they could've implemented. They were so desperate to mix things up, the very last level of the game ditches everything and turns into a platforming section, which actually isn't terrible, but isn't great either and it's not at all puzzle based.

Now I have to say I didn't dislike it, but it doesn't impress. A full playthrough takes about 5-6 hours. I got the game for free on Amazon, and otherwise I wouldn't have played it after the free trial. It really isn't worth $20.

It's well made, with good graphics and good music. The main problem- the combat is too "controlled". You're not allowed to fight as if you have physical based objects in-game, but rather you fight as if these were a Wii motion controller game, where you're blocking if you line up your weapon with the block indicator, and you can only dodge with your body the enemy attacks the game says are dodge-able (and only in a specific direction).

This carries over to offense too, as after you block enough to open up the enemy guard, you're allowed to do 'critical hit' combos, but only on the specific line it shows you on the enemy. No aiming for heads or limbs here. I for one don't want to play Skyward Sword combat in VR.

This is a well made puzzle game that's pretty detailed and slightly reminiscent of 'The Room' games. The problem is, it's incredibly short. I was absolutely convinced I was at the start of chapter two of the game when the credits started rolling. A complete play through will take only about an hour, which is ridiculous for a $15 game.

I'm convinced there was a lot more planned, as the credits even mention a 'screenplay' even though there's a total of maybe 20-30 lines of dialogue in the entire game. The achievements even mention "the first dream sequence" as if there were more than one.

Anyway, if you're curious, wait for it to go on sale below $5.

So you've played the crap out of Beat Saber and lots of custom songs, and you just need something new. That probably describes a majority of people looking at this game. There's a lot good about Synth Riders- it has good music, a lot more official tracks than Beat Saber does, and lots and lots of QoL features that Beat Saber really should have outside of mods.

The problem is...it's just not anywhere as fun. The way you move your hands to meet the notes is nowhere as satisfying as swinging to slash notes. It also doesn't engage you in the rhythm nearly as much with the body movements as swinging does. Yeah, despite being a "freestyle dancing" game, you're much more likely to be grooving with the flow in Beat Saber than in Synth Riders due to the nature of gameplay.

All in all, it's not a bad game, and technically it's fantastic with lots of features, but it's just not as fun as Beat Saber, which means it's failed in what it set out to do.