Recent reviews by FBI Special Agent Agent Agentson

Notice: This review ain't chasin' chickens, but it ain't no chocolate either. It is, however, short and sweet. It was written for the Steam Awards category "Labor of Love" as nominated by this guy. (though realistically, mostly because we cannot give an award to Haunted Chocolatier before it comes out).

Stardew Valley is a game that I'm ashamed to admit to only have played a measly 60 hours of, and even then, have not gotten anywhere near actual completion. One of the few games that I always keep thinkin' to myself about coming back to, and one I have seriously considered through the years, only to find myself with little time, or too busy with other things getting in the way. Despite the fact I have not touched the game since just about the time I put those original 60 hours in, it has always been a game to recall whenever mentioning the love for games, and how games, despite how bad the years have been for newer releases, that you can always find a true nugget, and there's always a reason to return and play those older games, something newer generations of gamers have generally left in the dust as a concept, always going for the latest and shiniest of games. The fact a relatively simple game about farming has been pervasive in conversations about 'the greatest games I've played' to this day is a feat, and definitely not something to diminish, as I'll likely continue having those conversations, especially once interest in this game is revitalized once its spiritual sequel comes out.

Every time I have mentioned this game to friends and acquaintances, they'll reminisce in the fact each update would make the game better, more fun and generally worth your time coming back to, and how it has only improved over time. It makes the people who have played it, sometimes for hundreds of hours, want to play it again and again, and that's a trait that's very rarely seen in games these days, something often reserved for the likes of Morrowind, Deus Ex and Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines, the classics of "Every time you mention it, someone will reinstall" games, games so good you do not need nostalgia to have love at first sight, second sight, and ultimately, games that if you enjoy, you'll continue enjoying for the rest of your life. And money can't buy that kinda love.

But it can buy you this game, and it is pretty darn good, I guess.

Warning: This review is short and to the point, as I'd wager a guess at this point you probably know what Terraria is, and that it does exist. It was written for the Steam Awards category "Labor of Love", of which it was nominated for by this guy. You can blame its length entirely on that fact, and not on the fact that I'm too lazy to write a proper review for a game I've spent almost, and likely will spend more than, 500 hours of active gameplay. You've been warned.

Terraria is a massive phenomenon, that is for sure, but I can still remember the days when we most of us looked at it and gasped "ain't that kinda like Minecraft, but 2D?", and while necessarily not the worst of analogies, you can say that it was very off the mark at the time. It most certainly isn't, and hasn't been the same as the big daddyo of the building blocks, and neither game really replaces the other. They've definitely veered off into their own paths, creating very different, and very enjoyable experiences.

I've always felt Terraria was much more approachable of a game, even if it's a bit rougher on the edges at times, especially as it relates to the difficulty curve (it is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, more often than not, especially on Master's difficulty, which I do not recommend; play it on Journey and adjust it to your liking) and the speed at which you can progress through certain parts of the game (sometimes you go too fast and get too many upgrades, leaving you wanting in the use of the goodies you just got), but after all these years, this game has been consistently worth coming back to, even if to play when there were no updates happening at the time; even without touching modding, which I haven't really done as of writing this review (a shocker to some, I am sure), I have still found more than enough to justify its price tag -- especially considering the countless hours I have spent with close friends and people I consider family which we will all cherish over the years, as we get more bitter and have less time to hang around doin' nothing at all, replacing the wall papers of all of our bases until we get it just right.

If that doesn't sell the game enough, I don't know what will, and perhaps you are to look elsewhere for more encouragement, or its opposite (although unlikely as it is to be found, as it is as universally loved as it was universally profitable). If this last update hadn't been the last one, I'd likely still be looking forwards to whatever's to come to Terraria, but I am still hopeful there's more to come from Re-Logic itself, even if it's in a less square-like formula.

Not quite as good as the original Two Worlds which still holds up as the bastion of "so bad it's good" RPGs, even if Two Worlds 2 has its own charms.

Though how much fun the game is in its wholesome jankiness becomes irrelevant when you're forced to update the game to have the command console (which is 100% necessary in a game as buggy as this) replaced for microtransactions (so you cannot spawn items in) and all your saves and mods broken unless you re-downloaded the game from somewhere else. I had not completed this game, even with my hours, but was well on my way before this.

Recommended this game and other TopWare/Reality Pump games to lots of people before, but I'm not going to be doing that ever again. More disappointed than angry, frankly. They should have known better than this.

Warning: This review isn't augmented, but it wears sunglasses at night. It was written for the Steam Awards category "Test of Time" and now "Best Alternate History" (even though it has predicted most of today, anyway) of which it was nominated for by this guy. You can blame its length entirely on that fact, and not on the fact that I'm too lazy to write a proper review for one of my favorite, if not favorite game. You've been warned.

Deus Ex is perhaps the greatest video game ever made. And no, that isn't hyperbole, it really is that good. Deus Ex was one of the first games to have it all, from the graphics, which were beyond and above others of its time perhaps outside of No One Lives Forever (another fantastic game of ye olde), to the carefully crafted story and its branches -- allowing the player to make choices for themselves which aren't always clearcut "good or bad" as you'd have in other games, and have real consequences, as well as slow-but-steady, thoughtful gameplay that allowed you to truly feel in control as you decided how to act, lethally or unlethally, stealthily or in-your-face. Something that to this date, lots of games fail to do, even if they're privy enough to try it in the first place.

Deus Ex holds up as a bastion of great design, a game that can be played many times, in different ways, and you'll likely still find out something you didn't know about it. It's a game so nostalgic that you can feel the nostalgia playing it for the first time. And then the second, and the third. It just keeps going. Playing Deus Ex isn't just playing a video game, it's committing to an illuminati ritual you'll be doing for the rest of your life, replaying every inch of the Statue of Liberty and the streets of Hong Kong until you're ready to do it again. Oh and it kinda sorta predicted 9/11, so there's that.

If there's anything you can do is thank Ion Storm & John Romero for this masterpiece -- you could say in the end he did make us his wench. And do yourself a favor and pick up Deus Ex & Shifter Mod to treat yourself to a true blast from the past, just one more playthrough at a time.

Fair warning: This is a negative review and I'm going in-depth on most everything that irks me with Rogue Legacy, though it should be said that although it is not my personal cup of tea, it can certainly be someone else's. If you're up with "Rogue-likes" (and "rogue-lites" or "rogue-like-likes", as the case may be) and "seamless" grinding as means of progression (I'll be mentioning what I mean further down in the review), it could certainly be the game for you. Either way, if you're up for some harsh, unadulterated criticism, read on.

Rogue Legacy is aptly a legacy of Steam's early Greenlight days -- a time when games could do well just from passing through the Big Green into the Steam Store, and you wouldn't see dozens of games churned out every week to much dismay. It was a time where every game released was an event, and if a cheap indie game that was anywhere near good came out, people would latch onto that like glue and praise it like Jesus' second coming -- and Rogue Legacy was definitely one of these. In fact, it was one of the first "Rogue-like" games to really "make it" (and definitely one of the first to be Greenlit) on Steam and helped, alongside others such as Binding of Isaac and Dungeons of Dredmor, pave the way for the, shall I say, "Rogue-like" boom of the last few years, and it definitely deserves some modicum of respect for that.

But I'm not here to praise Rogue Legacy. In fact, I'm not a very big fan of it: Rogue Legacy has a lot of great ideas, but most of them are half-baked or just feel out of place and actively work against the player in what is otherwise a fun, if unbalanced game. I think my biggest problem with it is the fact that the only real way to progress in it is to die, as dying lets you carry over all of your gold, upgrades and equipment into the next playthrough (leaving your randomly-generated, often handicapped "Children" your hard-earned legacy, hence the name), and using said money to purchase more upgrades and equipment to make your next run more successful than the previous one. You'll live to die, and die to live again in poetic fashion, until you're strong enough to take on the four stages and their respective bosses before taking on the Big bad boss.

And the game won't make it easy on you: Rogue Legacy starts you severely handicapped (never mind the actual ailments and conditions your Children will have, such as Vertigo or Dyslexia) and with access to only a handiful of mostly weak classes. It'll likely take you a good deal of time before you're able to unlock all classes and make sure your runs are mostly successful on a regular basis, which means most of the actual gameplay is trying to get gold and consequently dying until you're strong enough to take on every boss. This process takes anywhere from 10 hours up on a first play-through, assuming you don't have previous knowledge of what works and what doesn't, or aren't particularly great at platformers, though just about anyone could finish this game provided they're willing to headbutt their way past bosses with a bit of patience.

That also ends up being a big problem with Rogue Legacy and a lot of Rogue-likes in general: The game expects you to find everything out for yourself, and often times there'll be options that are incredibly weak or just borderline overpowered. Picking the Mage class, for example, is mostly suicide unless you know what you're doing and have put a serious amount of levels into the Spellcasting side of the level up "tree" (visually represented by a Castle), which requires putting a point in everything to fully upgrade and doesn't really tell you what you're going to be unlocking next -- which also adds to the frustration -- as each time you level up something, not only the next level for that will be exponentially more expensive, every other upgrade will also cost more.

It's not unlikely to get to a point where every skill costs upwards of 2,000G+. If you're not banking over that in a single run, you're out of luck, because failure to spend all of your money before heading back into the dungeon will mean you lose all of it, which can easily mean your run could have been for naught if you didn't get that much cash before biting the dust. Not to mention the amount of money you'll be spending on gear and runes (magical enhancements, ranging from extra double jumps and dashes to gold bonuses and health & mana regen on kills) -- which are unlockable (but still have to be bought, after the fact) with challenges that range from "no one could fail this" to "you don't have enough double jumps/you picked the wrong type of spell" or "we didn't play-test this enough" -- and the fact you have to manage your upgradable Equipment Weight so you can't equip every item you find right away, potentially delaying the ol' grindstone a couple more runs -- a "feature" that only really works in the "Souls" series.

Though those are the biggest problems, Rogue Legacy has its fair share of mostly small annoyances that steadily pile up: from the fact that keyboard controls might as well be non-existent and you HAVE to use a controller, RNG that is constantly rigged against you (starting with negative traits or terrible classes on Children, "challenge" rooms with way too many strong, multi-hit enemies that are impossible not to get hit in), rooms with absolutely nothing in them and rooms that only serve to get cheap hits in with varied traps, the fact that the game has no qualms with doing ridiculous amounts of damage to you but will give you very little healing (especially in the beginning, also ties back to the RNG), the way touching almost all opponents will result in you getting hit -- even when they're scrawny mages or eyeballs, bouncy spiked balls that can easily consume most of the screen and can't be killed or despawned unless the game decides to... I could probably go on, but I feel this rant has gone on for a bit too long.

Overall, I think the biggest shame is that Rogue Legacy failed to pick up enough steam, pardon the pun, in the modding community (which as far as I know doesn't exist). That would have brought some light into it and possibly shaped it into a truly fantastic game as the gameplay is solid when it works, it just tends not to. If some of the gameplay elements were tighter, more balanced, and it had some more content other than running the same four areas, killing the same bosses and their "remixed" versions (which are likely the same, but more gimmicky) and/or had at the very least been supported for longer by the Devs this could have really shined.

While I can't recommend it, stick long enough with it and you might even find some enjoyment in it once you're a wiser, higher level child and can actually strut around the dungeon without dying instantly so that you can put it to bed once and for all, but until then, you're left with your imagination of the what-could-have-beens of a better game.

Tokyo Hosto is a bit of an oddball of a visual novel. Although it is certainly not worth its pricetag, being incredibly short (which makes it easy to finish), terribly drawn & written (which adds to its irreverent ways) as well as being mechanically unsound -- no options menus, no real saving, no 'skipping', having to press "Enter" to progress every single time -- it still managed to grab my attention for long enough to finish the game, and I can't say I regret it.

In its thirty-or-so minutes experience it ends up being both funny and enjoyable, and I would definitely recommend it... provided you're getting it on the cheap, or for free as I did. Add an actual options menu and an hour or two of content and you've really got something here.

My Name is Mayo isn't a very complex game, but it can be somewhat enjoyable. I'm sure most of you have played or heard of 'clicker' games, and this isn't much different. But what makes My Name is Mayo shine, in my eyes, is that although it is short - and very much completable in under an hour - it plays with your expectations and integrates achievements into the game experience which is something a lot of games lack.

Achievements are an integral part of the My Name is Mayo experience - as well as being the major goal in the game, and display your progress towards that goal, achievements also dictate what thread of the stories you'll follow next by selecting them in a menu. The more achievements you get, the more you can see of the game. This makes you care about the achievements as you'll be unlocking them often and jumping into the menu to see what you've unlocked -- and what you'll unlock next. The stories are very simplistic by themselves, but they tend to be random and funny in ways you'd not normally expect.

And I think it scores some points on that, comedy is always welcome, and My Name Is Mayo ends up being a very good delivery system for it. But it does have its share of flaws.

I think the biggest problem with My Name is Mayo is the fact that you're required to click a tad too much -- though the clicking does extend the feeling of wanting to see what will happen next, it quickly gets too tiresome when the game starts expecting you to click 200-300 times just to unlock the next part of the story. It also has no automation as well, and while it is not necessarily needed, I feel 10,000 clicks to unlock every achievement can be a pain on the wrists.

All in all, the inexpensive price more than matches the content, and I think the humor is worth it, but do yourself a favor and get an auto-click script or somethin'. Stay safe, use protection. Get out there and achieve Mayonnaise Nirvana.

"Quake Live™ is already in your Steam library" -- even though it is not.

Apparently Quake Live, which used to be free to play for over 5 years is now $10 on Steam, with basically no warning.
I've also read that the game is currently dead, and this version has had things taken out of the game, but I'm not giving Bethesda money for a game that's supposed to be free to see if it's the case or not.

Hey, at least you have working achievements now.
Well, that's just peaches now, isn't it?

Used to be the best free-to-play shooter out there -- with tons of updates and incredibly fun skill-based gameplay, now has been sadly abandoned by the developers for over a year, leaving only a pile of dust and lies behind. And to think I actually thought about getting on the micro-transaction train with this. I feel less cheated than I feel sad.

"Most importantly, we are 100% dedicated to adding more content to Loadout such as new weapon parts, maps, game modes, and much more."

You had a good run, Loadout.

As I sit here, trying to find ways to put my feelings about 'Emily is Away' into text, it's hard not to think back to the days of yore, when the 90's were not the 90's anymore - and the dot-com bubble's burst had long since happened - and I was an idiot. Look back at your life five to ten years and you'll remember a lot of ♥♥♥♥ that you can't even conceive was done/thought/said by you, though it's only natural. We can only improve by failing and iterating on our failures so that we become better people -- it just doesn't take any of the pain away.

To quote Mad Men's Don Draper "Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. [...] In Greek Nostalgia literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone." and that is what you'll feel when you play Emily is Away, but it's not Nostalgia in the common-sense of the word, as Don also put it "it takes us to a place where we ache to go again.", but Nostalgia in a more literal sense: A real pain from the real wound that is time. It starts grand, memories flood in: the sounds, the images, and then it takes a dark turn. You remember everything you're ashamed of, and everything that you exactly did not want to remember... and that's why Emily is Away is a masterpiece. It takes you back to a part of yourself you'd long since forgotten, before all the improvements -- just the shell of a person you were before all the refurbished parts got put in. But it is not a good game.

Emily is Away lets you make choices, choices which will affect how the story plays out. Just they mostly don't do anything. A lot of them tend to be simple variations on "Yes", "I don't know" and your usual "How are you?/What are you up to?" what have you in your usual chat conversations (which I'm sure most of you are familiar with) -- but sometimes the answers matter, or they make you think they do. It doesn't matter which answers you pick, the same events will play out, and even if the events don't play out, the story is largely the same. Have Emily visit you or not? Either way it'll result in her getting weirded out with your relationship (and/or the lack thereof).

It's easy to get very immersed in the beginning and then have that quickly wear out as the choices mean less and less. Sometimes picking an answer will result in the protagonist ♥♥♥♥♥ing out and deciding not to say what you just told him to, which can be frustrating, but is a part of the game that makes sense: We're looking through the looking glass into the life of someone who does not know what to say or do as we did as we once were young, unlike our present selves which are a lot wiser (at least hopefully). The more you 'progress' through Emily is Away, the more you're impotent, and the less control you have over your choices as well as over yourself. And it takes a whole lot to get out of that well.

In the end, Emily is Away is an amazing concept, but breaks my heart to no end, not because it is depressing (although it certainly is) but because it could have endless potential but makes little of it, and it should have been more. It *deserves* to be more.