Recent reviews by baisuposter

This is the kind of game you feel you owe a review to. I picked it up after hearing comparisons to La-Mulana, which is a game that gives its fans an itch that's almost never scratched, but the great injustice of many of these reviews is how they overlook the standard, entirely non-cryptic puzzles. You might get the impression from negative and positive reviews alike that the hundreds of mechanically simple block puzzles is a grind that stands between you and this 'deeper level' that people really fall in love with, or that the regular puzzles themselves are what's unfriendly to a beginner. I'd say that if you enjoy puzzles or problem solving in general, the 'surface level' block puzzles which make up the bulk of the game are really, really well done.

System Erasure has a solid grasp on how to make minimalism work, but also what a healthy pace to introduce new elements into the mix looks like. The key problem to overcome on each floor is constantly changing and the solutions are consistently satisfying - I can only remember one out of the 500+ across the whole game I'd class as unfair or dumb, in which an unreachable block moves by itself when you pause the game. They also get pretty damn challenging, with the back half being particularly fiendish after it's done with themed areas and starts using every mechanic at its disposal against you. I wouldn't say it's on a Baba is You level of frequent outside-the-box thinking, but you're left with the impression that they've thought of every little movement quirk or unorthodox use of an obstacle, particularly with some of the optional collectibles. All of this is to say that the puzzles alone would have made me feel like I'd gotten my money's worth as someone who likes puzzle games in general.

Either way, the other parts of this game are top-notch too. The presentation is excellent, with nice pixel art on a distinctive monochromatic palette complementing the puzzle design's sense of 'getting a lot out of a little'. The soundtrack by eebrozgi deserves particular praise in nailing the atmosphere and driving home the game's most memorable moments - at least ten different spoilers come to mind here, so let me stop at saying that the first area's theme, Void Symphony, sets a high benchmark for that 'starting a new adventure' feeling that makes you just fall in love with video games all over again. The tracks are catchy, extremely diverse in style, and have plenty of little details and motifs to pick up on. The story trickles in over time with an undeniable charm that had me genuinely caring about the characters. Some elements do seem to be better appreciated if you played their last game, ZeroRanger, which I didn't, but it didn't really impact my overall enjoyment of it from the simple beginning to the rather over-the-top end.

The bottom line is that a blind playthrough of Void Stranger is full of constant surprises, and I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone looking for something refreshingly different where you don't know what to expect - with the one caveat that they'll have to be okay with some repetition and a handful of downright mean traps in the lategame for people not paying enough attention. The secret puzzles aren't as numerous as the La-Mulana comparison might expect you to believe (the game is pretty good at leading you to the entrance of the rabbit hole, in my opinion) and there are some good spoiler-free resources out there now to nudge people along if they ever get stuck. My few gripes with it are quashed by the fact that you truly do not get games like this every day.

Damn it sucks to leave a negative review for this game. It would be extremely fun if it wasn't hampered by a meaningless progression system, questionable balance changes, repeated awful business decisions (they literally added battle passes to make people who bought the upgrade pack buy more useless garbage), non-existent long-term support for the game and, of course, no players (imagine the average fighting game but without regular tournaments and netplay communities to sustain them). Bethesda wants this game dead badly, and at this point I wish it never existed just so I wouldn't mourn its loss.

If the hefty price tag of $3.50 scared you off, worry no longer with the steam summer sale. 87 cents is perfect to round off any change you have with an interesting and addicting RPG maker game that, unlike most of the RPG maker backlog, is actually an RPG. Worth grabbing the DLC too, if you're the kind of aristocrat that bathes in tubs of dollar bills.

Absolutely fantastic for a low budget game: rough around the edges, but enjoyable and well-made to say the least.

My first Momodora game, and probably not the last. Challenging and enjoyable combat with the sense of wonderment and discovery that makes it, like everybody says, a mix between Castlevania and Dark Souls. Easily worth the asking price of ten dollars.

The amount of negative reviews surprised me at first, but it's easy to see where they come from. The developer proudly proclaims that Ronin is a ripoff of Gunpoint, which makes people think two incorrect things about this game: a. it's a ripoff of Gunpoint, and b. it's based around stealth. The big thing that proves these assumptions wrong is that in Gunpoint you get bonuses for killing nobody where in Ronin you get bonuses for killing everybody. Ronin is short but addictive, and it's more unique than it gives itself credit for as a turn-based murder-platformer. Definitely worth grabbing on sale due to its size.

I KNOW

I KNOW I'VE LET YOU DOWN

As somebody who aggressively loved Hitman: Blood Money, hearing that this game was less Hitman and more of a cover-based stealth game, I wasn't too horrified. I mean, Deus Ex Human Revolution was good. And hey, they talk about an end to hive-mind system that bugged me from every stealth game ever made!

What followed is the least enjoyable experience I have ever had playing a video game. This is not the worst game ever made, it's just the most disgustingly large turd on a franchise I so eagerly follow. Anybody who has played a Hitman game and enjoyed it, stay away, and for anybody else who was looking to pick up this game I'd still be wary. Now, let me go on a far-too-long rant on why that is.

For starters, the story is trash. The only reason the story exists is because Agent 47 equips and unequips his emotions as frequently as most people equip and unequip a watch when bathing in 94 different bubble-baths getting dressed between each. Blake Dexter is a complete ♥♥♥♥ who sets up a framing job before lighting an entire building on fire. His girlfried/wife/whatever stays with him even though she remains the "voice of reason" throughout the game up until the third-to-last level. Victoria is a character who only exists to be a macguffin whose biggest accomplishment is killing about ten guys with guns before refusing to kill the villain because OH GOD I'M A MONSTER LET ME STARE IN ANGUISH AT MY HANDS. I could write a thesis on how this game's plot is awful, but I digress because Hitman was never about the story anyway and is just filler and justification for the levels.

...and the story is only used to vaguely justify killing some people that the game explicitly states as evil. Multiple times. Even by the mooks that litter the levels. The only exception to the rule that everybody is shown as a monster before you kill them because morals are the horrible fetish nuns. Why are there horrible fetish nuns? And why can't they tell if there's rat poison in their coffee even after looking at the inside and smelling it? Why don't people see the difference between the wrestler they were just training and a bald white guy who looks like he guts domestic animals in his free time? Nitpicky, but stupid how a judge that they refer to on a first name basis is a better disguise than some nameless police officer that nobody cares about unless they see him holding a gun?

And yes, the hive-mind system works in theory. It's just that if somebody is firing a gun at where they think your cover is, regardless of if it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bookshelf against a wall, they get alerted, plug themselves into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ paramilitary archives, find out what your disguise is and start firing where they think you are. And everybody who sees the two people who saw the first guy go hostile. And everybody who sees the five people who saw the first three go hostile. And soon you have a generic cover-shooter fight with an absurd amount of people that's only exceptional in how bad its aiming is, unless of course you have a sharp object for the game to aim into their neck or if you use Red Dead magical i-just-murdered-everybody-in-three-seconds-o-vision.

The amazing talents behind this game decided to focus their efforts into filling the game with a ridiculous amount of dialogue that, in the long run, is a less charming version of "GET LOST CHUM-LY" whenever you run or get too close to somebody. Or, of course, the game wants to show you how funny it is with such award-winning lines such as "didn't you use to date my sister?" or "heard of breath mints before?" And you'd better believe that you'll get maymay'd on so many times over the course of this game akin to water torture, just with your eardrums and people who cannot believe their eyes every time they see somebody at a light jog.

Praise for this game starts and ends with potentially good levels and easter eggs. Except for the strip club, the multiple levels in Chinatown, the subway of much spinning in place and the fact that they wanted to shoehorn in Kane and Lynch not once, but twice.

Increases in difficulty just put more guards around the place that block different ways to kill your target. Additionally, you lose points with every pacification/kill/walking two inches too far down a hallway/fun. It's like the game developers decided that they wanted to make a game with a lot of ways to kill your targets before poking the player in the ribs every time they don't do an accident kill. This is assuming that you actually have a target in your level. The lack of killing in this game for a game about a contract killer is mindblowing, and when you are killing people it's silhouttes that the game call "evil masterminds" and "story-relevant". The last people you actually kill as a player in the game are three ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that haven't been mentioned in the slightest up until that point, before you take out the main villain in a cutscene in a sequel hook that only made me wonder where Hitman Absolution stopped taking itself seriously and finally downed the bottle of piss it didn't realise had been sloshing down its throat the whole time.

Playing through this game using only a suit actually introduced challenge and interesting things into this game up until one level that had an un-detectable disguise sitting in the middle of an empty room that was all-but essential for clearing this level with good points. And so, rather than taking out the last target in an interesting and challenging manner, I exploited the person I had to knock unconscious and then lobbed a screwdriver into the other target's skull with unparalleled accuracy from a second-storey window. I then proceeded to get Silent Assassin.

Other greatest hits from the "Silent Assassin's Golden Memories" folder includes grabbing a knife in the middle of a crowd and putting it into my pocket before anybody noticed, weaving my way into one of the billion ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bins in Chinatown and waiting until the target went to sample some sushi before throwing it into HIS skull. Skip forward a few missions to the next mission in Chinatown and I went with the very exhausted option of gunning down all three of my faceless targets, hiding in cover a few metres away from the exit and waiting for two minutes for the police force to drain approximately $6,000,000,000 worth of bullets into a box. When they decided that they'd done a good enough job, they walked forward a few steps, loudly proclaimed "HE'S VANISHED" and walked away from the only exit to Chinatown.

And the cheat meter. Revolutionary to Hitman games is the ability to brainwash people into forgetting about you, detect people/weapons/ways to kill people/secret ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ doors from miles away and take away the only form of challenge with accident kills by telling you where to use a wrench as well as babying you to the point of telling you that a lever right beside electrical equipment emits electricity.

I could go on even longer about how much hellfire and brimstone this game makes me want to explode out into HTML, but I'll just stick to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out salt for the next couple of weeks from the discomfort of my own home. If you have standards low enough to ignore 90% of this stuff, or have enough cynical tolerance to happily crap all over the game, then go for your life. To anybody who wants a good stealth experience, Blood Money is always a far, far, far more desireable experience past the tutorial. And to anybody who loves Hitman and is nitpicky, you'd probably also vomit in your mouth when you see the crow suit easter egg.

(edit: 15-year-old me was completely right when he wrote this despite his questionable metaphors and dollar store Yahtzee impression)