Recent reviews by kurt cobain's shotgun

someone mentioned here that the "endgame" was confusing, lackluster, and made no sense.

in my opinion, i think it's very intentional, and as someone who was a stark hater of "Tails: Noir" or originally known as Backbone when i purchased it day 1 and played the 2020 demo, i can safely say that there is a strict difference between intentional conflictive story-writing and unintentional conflictive story-writing.

spoilers ahead








there is a juvenile perspective to all of it, which creates that sort of supernatural feel towards it because the characters are still children, just barely 15, 14, or 16. they don't have experience with anything nor do they actually have answers for it, and refuse to seek help, believing it to be some sort of phenomenon within a world that has seemingly gone mad.

these juvenile perspectives, thoughts, aspirations, ideas - they all create that sense of "something strange is going on here" when in reality it is all purely coincidental and its rather a demonstration of the idea of adolescent egocentrism that many psychologists have discussed. as teenagers they believe whatever that is out of the "norm" that occurs to them can really be a happenstance of maybe their life is interesting or special, when in reality as it was proven here: it isn't.

the endgame is the culmination of these ideas the story presents. as us, Mark, reels and tries to recover whiplash from every discovery and theorem he gets from Louise that might be true, it's reality that crashes them back down to simple overthinking and child's imagination. it's in a strange position that we find ourselves when that very idea and obsession with it sort of causes the death of the most beloved best friend one could have. it's a selfish and evil thing to suggest that Mark's egocentrism that created his paranoia and overprotectiveness, fueling his hysteria and panic attacks that he's clearly experiencing throughout the story. however, this is the brisk deduction i've come to after just now finishing the game and piecing the pieces together without properly digesting it.

in that short summary, the more we began focusing inwards to what we felt and thought, the more the world seemed to unravel around us and the less answers we found. they only got worse as the game progressed, only easing when we THOUGHT we had an answer or an idea, crashing into panic when that was debunked once again to disappoint. denial was a strong subject in this game, and we lived in denial for the entire game - even after attempting to deal with Mom's death and our grief after.

the game demonstrated such confusion as more and more questions came abroad even after we thought we conquered our denial, our guilts, our fears. and this caused an even bigger reaction from Mark as the person who had his back all game was being threatened- in his mind, threatened- by a threat that never existed. when you thought you pieced it together after suffering, wouldn't you fall into a frenzy when it all came crashing down in front of you?

it's a butterfly effect that ends in the death of Cathy, a character we've all come to enjoy and who had our backs throughout the entire story whether she needed to or not. after all, had we just wondered where she was, maybe tracked her down without feeling like she would die if we weren't there, our presence just in that moment had caused the very thing we sought to prevent. and it's in credit due to the motivation that we were somehow protectors against the supernatural, the inhumane, the unexplainable. we believed our brisk, irrational plans and reactions would somehow prevent these tragedies from occurring when it is in fact nature. and in this discovery of fighting against nature we are crashed back down to earth by watching our beloved best friend die to our irrationality as children

in short, great game, amazing story writing, and it really captured the panic and uncomprehending reality that some of us can never "understand"

and this game is only about understanding each other, each other's perspectives and how we present ourselves is not a reflection of how our life truly is behind closed doors. to move is to understand, clarity is understanding, and Mark finds his peace and his realization through this. he only ever seemed to be unable to stop running and panicking when he fought against it. now, as he matured and grew, he finally realized it. what he realized to himself, i am unsure, but i know what i understood and interpreted with the story and message it gave to me.

goated game, one of the best stories ive ever had the pleasure to follow along with


(the understanding just might be the motivation of life- that spark)

I will re-purchase when it's completed. Really good game but I managed to get to the end with 3 men lost (1 left behind because the officer demanded a retreat after my squad had been encircled) (1 to capturing a french trench) (1 to getting shot during a retreat)

Fun to play, wish it was longer, will cop when finished

Poorly packaged together, the UI is incredibly frustrating knowing that the OG Rome is superior. It's a major creative choice flaw to give it the Rome 2 UI, camera work, and "feel" to the game instead of retaining its core OG roots. It's trying to change a game you're remastering- that's not the point of remastering. You update it, give it some polish, maybe some new mechanics or features to the game that don't kill it but still retain its original premise - but you don't overhaul the UI to your annoying one, add elements from another game packaged with the aforementioned UI into it that don't necessarily work and just move to complicate certain aspects that were satisfyingly simple and linear. For me, at least, I loved Rome 1 because of how simple and down-to-it it was, and these new functions seem to kind of annoy me in a certain way. It's not just about me, but this review is, so personally I expected a fresh coat of paint and maybe an oil change, not a mismatched car panel that you ordered off of Craigslist and now I look like every illegal construction worker around your in-construction-cookie-cutter suburbia home lot, but the engine still runs so it's good!!!!!!

At least they made some improvements off the engine, but the colors seem too vibrant for me as well, I don't know, just not my cup of tea.

Not worth the obscene price of 30 dollars. I thought it would just be a much more aesthetically pleasing RTW1, but it was a mess. Plus it's a Kaczynski special with the sudden explosion of storage this has to take up compared to the OG one.

Overall, ♥♥♥♥ this game. Just stick to the original and don't let corpos ruin your time and bank.

if u love baseball this is really good

i literally only played 11 minutes and refunded to have a grasp of what it feels to have an insanely in-depth simulation and management game because football doesnt have anything as amazing as this

at the very watered down core, the first four chapters really dont matter unless you actually give yourself emotional attachment to characters

like seriously

at that point once you've played the story once you're more or less bull rushing through it to get the stats you want for the ending you want

its like a filler episode that provided one detail for the story progression and it shows up for one thing and gets forgotten the rest of the final chapter

really good and loved it but it felt like nothing truly mattered at the end, and it was very frustrating to have all stats for an ending but be off on one condition by 1 point- i know its a novel and its an rpg and that it has specific settings for a reason but its just annoying to have all the stats but be off by 1 in one specific statistic that i'd have to restart the whole fourth chapter to get in a one-off random choice that includes a +1 to make the minimum

i originally wrote the review in the demo with optimism for the game and genuine interest in the story

but the prologue was an insanely talented disguise to how underwhelming this game is

it felt so rushed, out of place and linear- not at all what a "choices matter" detective noir game was, and speaking of that, the prologue sets it as a detective noir from a discriminated raccoon detective who clearly has history in the force and has a chunk of his ear missing with no real explanation

again, everything has it all set in place as a something-you-should-already-know but no context is ever given whatsoever

they really could've split a section of the story into his past, maybe sections in-between chapters of his past life and how he got there, and maybe have clues or whatever pop up within these flashbacks to use as foreshadowing or to use as clues to help you further the story?

or you know, also write a pretty drawn out story with multiple endings i mean ♥♥♥♥ that red string club or whatever was as long or longer and had more endings and compelling writing than this, this just relies on its graphics, soundtrack and natural tone/atmosphere (which is phenomenal it was the only thing keeping me from refunding)

it also turns into a weird surrealist psychothriller which was a complete curveball for me but not unexpected from slavic writers, (especially from Ukraine) they have a history of creating gritty or dark themed games with a heavy emphasis on thriller plot twists or psyche-based twists (think: 2033)

overall not very worth it for a story that is more than the remastered metro games and a few bucks less than the newest release, very disappointed for what i thought was going to be an intricate story about being a detective and solving the cannibal homicide case that was becoming something bigger than himself

speaking of which, the corruption and "this goes higher than [position of power]" was also ran through very quickly and seemingly brushed aside for the cool awesome epic surrealist thing they wanted to add in to appear as a more unique or interesting part of the story when i wanted my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ detective noir story time

tldr its an L, just go buy metro if you want your gritty atmosphere to turn psychothriller (plus more action and fun)

overrated in terms of how "great" of a story it is, but its just a good story

kind of hamfisted but whatever, the sale of like 2.99 or something i picked it up on like a year ago ain't bad

pretty good

i dont know how much time i have into this game but the whole "telling you what is happening" and "telling you where to go" has gotta be one of the most undeveloped features of the video game

how do i accidentally complete my mission stumbling into a randomly generated public event oh well onto the next objective that i didnt get any real cue for other than a corner of my screen flashing for 3 seconds while i am being visually violated by several explosions and gunfire

i like how unique and beautiful it is, only thing i dont like is the horde of furry artists ready to ruin this game for anyone with a sane mind

waiting patiently for the full release






edit 2022, months after playing the full game day it came out:

where did it all go so wrong