Recent reviews by candyman106

I never actually thought I'd see the day this was finished. I almost thought the "Roomisode 1" in the title of the original flash game was meant to be like a "History of the World Part 1" style joke and not a promise for more episodes once enough time had passed without anymore.

That first Roomisode was without a doubt probably my favorite Videlectrix game on homestarrunner.com. I can't remember if I played it before or after SBCG4AP but since that was what introduced me to the world of point and clicks through Telltale I do know that this would've been my first introduction to a proper point and click game. Whereas most of the flash point and clicks I had played before were either very simple or more akin to escape room games, this was modeled after the defining works in the point and click adventure game genre and I ate it up.

Looking back I think it very well may have been the peak experience for me when it came to classic-style point and clicks. As much as I love the Monkey Island games and Sam and Max Hit the Road, Homestar Runner is always going to take up more space in my heart. Plus with it being in a single room it was the perfect bite-sized, most accessible version of a point and click adventure game for me. No clicking around searching endlessly to find out what interactable item or batcrap insane solution I missed, everything I needed was on screen and I just needed to use my expert sunglasses'd-detective skills to figure it out. And what I'm figuring out is also the best non-issue I could have asked for out of a game like this. It was just perfect. The closest I'll ever get to a playable version of Problem Sleuth. A magical experience for 10-years-old me, I'm sure. It almost feels impossible to put a star rating on something like that.

But this rerelease comes with the addition of two new Roomisode adventures that are just as good as the original. A childhood wish finally come true. The feeling is not quite as magical for me now that I've played countless other point and click games, including other Roomisode-style adventures in the form of the Rick and Morty browser point and click that Mike Chapman helped develop, but the game itself is just about as perfect as ever.

With it being a rerelease there are a few changes that I feel take away from the atmosphere of the game for me, but these are all pretty minor gripes. Like some of the graphical updates don't look quite as good as the original flash version to me, but obviously it was necessary to use a new game engine so this change was unavoidable. I also feel like the addition of voice acting gives the game a more modern vibe and changes how a lot of the lines read to me, but this is at best a neutral update. While it does drastically change the tone for me, Matt Chapman is probably one of the most talented voice actors there is and getting to hear any more line deliveries from them is always welcome. Plus a lot of extra humor is added in some of these line deliveries. I guess it's just that you can tell it was written to be read, such as Renaldo's phonetically written dialogue, and then read exactly as written. Just a very different vibe is all.

Aside from the nitpicks, this is probably everything I could have asked for. It's incredibly accessible not just as a point and click game but as a Homestar Runner game for anyone unfamiliar with Homestar Runner. Whereas a lot of humor in the toons and GAMES and eeeeemaiiiillllls required prior knowledge of every other cartoon on the site, this notably avoided doing that to the point of the homemade movie framing device of most other Dangeresque stuff being mostly absent outside of a few moments. Pretty much any time they did do an inside joke it would be between the rest of the jokes, like a code being a reference to an old sbemail, or a particular line being reused from one of the other Dangeresque toons. It manages to reward fans as much as any other piece of H*R media without alienating potentially new fans. Something that I wasn't sure was even possible at this point tbh. For many reasons it's the best point and click I've played in a long time and it's a small miracle that it was ever completed. I will forever be grateful for how dedicated The Brothers Chaps are to these dumb animal characters.

Just writing this so that everybody who sees my Steam activity knows: If you ever see me playing this game it's because I'm recording a video. It's not what it looks like! There isn't even any nudity in this game, I swear!

Edit: Apparently if I don't make this a negative review it tells all my Steam friends that I love the game, so I have to give it a thumbs down.

Edit 2: I guess it was still saying I recommended the game even after I changed the rating, so I'm deleting the review and posting it again.

As a lover of point and click adventures games I'd been wanting to play this for a long time since it seemed to have the reputation as one of the best. With that being said, it was a bit disappointing overall.

Gameplay-wise it reminded me the most of Escape from Monkey Island, which I think is regarded as the worst entry of that franchise. And while I do remember that game somewhat fondly, I'd have to agree. It's honestly probably a bit worse than this, the only difference is I went into that game with zero expectations. But they're mostly on the same level I'd say.

With a bizarre, hard to follow story, baffling puzzles that I often had no chance of figuring out, and controls that were so slow that they made it even more impossible to try everything I could to figure out the solutions on my own. I think they did improve the input of the controls on the remaster, but the character still moves so slowly that I was often just twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to get across the screen.

The characters, setting, and story have a lot of creativity and charm, but I had a really hard time understanding what was going on, who was who, where we were going, and why any of this was happening. I think in another medium this story could have really shined, but I really struggled to connect with it here. It's not completely without merit, and the puzzles I enjoyed I did enjoy quite a bit. But I found myself mostly frustrated and confused between those moments of enjoyment.

I'm glad I played it and I think anyone who's interested in playing it should play it (with a walkthrough handy, just lower your expectations is all. As iconic as this is, I don't think it holds up very well. Glottis rocks, though.

While Blue Shift was maybe more my speed, I can't deny how special this expansion feels. It introduces so many elements to Half-Life that it ends up feeling so much like a direct sequel that it's no wonder Half-Life 2 took so long and was so much more advanced. This is the Half-Life 2 of another world where the franchise didn't take off as much as it did in our reality and the only sequel it got was this revisit to the formula on the same engine with a lot of the same assets.

But it's definitely it's own game, even though it's like kind of technically a DLC, right? Idk how these things work but this is like equivalent to a DLC or something right? Even though it's totally it's own game? And look idk, maybe I've just gotten better at these games to the point where they don't drive me insane, but compared to my experience with Half-Life I thought this was much better. Though there were a few hiccups along the way as is bound to happen, overall it was much more clear to me what I'm supposed to be doing and where I'm supposed to be going. Not that Half-Life was impossible in this regard, but if you compare the two games directly this is a vast improvement.

The end boss fight is a perfect example of this. I'm not a big enough gamer to have played a ton of boss fights in my time, but I was able to pick up on the patterns and figure out how to defeat it and I actually had fun doing it. Meanwhile Half-Life's end boss was so frustrating and bewildering that I didn't even find myself fully able to enjoy the confusing ending. The ending scene to this game wasn't too different, but having just successfully beaten the boss in a timely and fun manner I was more accepting of the fact that I have no idea what the ♥♥♥♥ these games are about. Teleporting aliens? Is that it? I've got no clue.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this. I'd probably be more down to replay Blue Shift just because it's length and difficulty make it more accessible to me, but out of the three this honestly feels like the ideal Half-Life (source game.

I honestly enjoyed this more than the actual game. It's not quite as special to me because it's the same gameplay and environments as Half-Life used for a different story and new challenges, but I enjoy the story and challenges more here. While I found the full game to be at times too confusing, too difficult, and too long, this was pretty perfect in all those regards. I think if this were my introduction to the Half-Life series it'd be really something special. I'm looking forward to seeing how the other expansions utilize the world of the base game in different ways.

Quite possibly the perfect game.

Yup, these are math website flash games alright. Somehow you can always tell, they've got an especially simplistic aesthetic to them and depending on the game can be extremely grind-y. Almost like an idler with extra steps. Each one improves on the last in little ways with the gameplay and graphics. The second one feels pretty much like a remake of the first. The third goes in a disturbing, yet amusing direction. Would probably be the worst of the bunch for it's bugginess and offputting nature, but improves enough in other areas to keep it about the same for me. Not bad little games at all, but idk if I'd play them again.

Not really a visual novel guy, but this is interesting I guess. If you know you know. If you don't, just play it. I appreciate the lengths it went to for certain aspects of it's meta storytelling. I do think it handles some pretty heavy subjects kind of clumsily, like it's going for a few different things that don't really balance out very well. It feels like it wants you to take these subjects seriously while also executing them in a very deliberately unrealistic way. I don't really know what to make of all that, I guess you kind of just have to take it for what it is, it's not even really worth critiquing. Can be somewhat repetitive after the halfway point, but it kind of has to be. Again, certainly an interesting game, I'll give it that much.

It's neat but you have to pay ten dollars a month to play the game in full screen.

A lot of this game was really good. The way it chose to deliver the story was creative and immersive. There were some cool timely references. The one thing that pretty much ruined the game for me, though, was the ending. It was so incredibly anti-climactic that it just ruined the rest of the game for me. There was really nothing to work with. You can barely even call it an ending it was so sudden. I feel like it was just a lazy ending. No offense to the developer. I really liked the rest of the game. The ending kind of screwed it all up, though.