Recent reviews by LtDicai? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Short adventure game, reminiscent of Another World or Heart of Darkness. Beautiful pixel art graphics allow the plot to effortlessly unfold without any dialogue.

I remember being very sad when I learnt that EA Black Box had shut down (you have to thanks EA for that) and we weren't getting a Skate 4 game. Then in Facebook I saw this post by a company named crea-true that said they would be making their own game. Obviously I got really excited and thus followed the development until they announced the Kickstarter campaign, which I supported straight away. After a while and some tech demos they released the game in Early Access here on Steam and, after some fan outcry, gave keys to all backers.

The game does the skate sim genre justice, you control your feet individually with each stick, and the foot to stick assignment changes accordingly with stance, so you need to keep that in mind when trying to ollie or doing tricks. You also have different control schemes in case you can to either play a more simplifed version just like EA's Skate or you can have full control of your feet, flip speed and catching the board upside down for doing darkslides. These settings can be changed individually to tweak it to your liking and ability.

Mind you, the game is quite rough around the edges unlike what was achieved in EA Black Box's Skate games since this is no AAA game. There's no proper support for bails, once you fail to land a trick the skater becomes a ragdoll and you get teleported on your board after a few seconds. You can also walk around with your board at hand but this part has never received polish and thus animations are clunky and static.

The main map is a slice of New York which offer nice variety for doing tricks around the streets. There are other maps but they are all based in rather realistic locations so you don´t have out-of-place half pipes or sick ramps like you would have in a more arcadey game like Tony Hawk.

Overall if you can see past around the quirks you can find a really enjoyable game to cruise around and try to make really cool looking lines and then record them with the built in camera system. This is my go-to game to play while listening to music or podcasts.

Interesting game, I usually don't play rogue-like games but this is an exception I would gladly make.

I've been expecting My Friend Pedro for a while, since it was announced at the weird E3 Devolver Digital Conference. Put side scrolling action with gun play and slow motion together and color me impressed. It's also a nice fit for Devolver, they publish these quirky but stylish games that might never come to light if it weren't for them, so kudos on them.

But back to My Friend Pedro. I started playing with a controller because it looked like a nice fit and the game was released on Switch, so it should playable with a controller but it felt like I was playing Twister with my fingers, dodging while dual aiming and firing was less than ideal, so I went with keyboard and mouse and found the experience a bit better, dual aiming at least made sense now. While at the start of the game you are presented with a lot of set pieces that look like they can be approached in multiple ways, you'll find that later on there's usually one way to do it properly.

Once I found a playstyle that suited me (dual Uzis) but the generally the only way to get more ammo is by killing baddies, but I'd only get ammo for whatever weapon they were holding, and some levels tend to focus on only one weapon, so I needed to mix it up a little. I understand this is by design, but later weapons are two handed, meaning I couldn't dual wield them.

Movement is generally fine, walljump is kinda quirky but works most of the time. The skateboard that looks so cool in trailers and gameplay videos is actually to hard to control. You can do an ollie and kick the board directly to someone's face, but more often than not I'd jump and try to kick the board but it wouldn't even connect the kick, so that was annoying.

One thing I really disliked were the bosses, they felt out of place with the rest of the game, especially the flying gunship.

However, I'd still recommend this game!

I found this game by chance and it looked interesting enough. It claimed to have influences in Portal and Metroidvania games, so I was sold. I started as a little puny character that could barely jump. So time later I'm cruising the skies, teleporting and sticking magnetically to metal walls like's nobody business. I found each coin and chest because it was so entertaining! And to be fair, I didn't care much for the story, it's just there to give you some directions on where to progress further. Also I didn't enjoyed the combat and the randomly respawning enemies, and although you later get upgrades that can make this constant respawning end, you don't get them until it's too late. Boss fights are annoying, since they are damage sponges, basically.

+ Excellent collect-a-thon
+ Great progress makes you feel super powerful when revisiting old places, just like a proper Metroidvania must feel like.
- Combat is weird, and most boss fights are not interesting, you just attack them until they're gone.
- Some mechanics are not properly explained on their respective tutorials

La vez que salió Portal allá en el 2007 fue en un grupo de juegos llamado The Orange Box. Al parecer no le tenían mucha fé, y por eso lo lanzaron junto a otros juegos para justificar el precio. Sin embargo, para mí, la joya de The Orange Box fue justamente Portal. Me quedé fascinado con la mecánica del juego desde que la ví en un trailer. No dudé en jugarlo casi apenas salió y no me desilusionó. La mecánica funcionaba muy bien y los desarrolladores supieron hacer puzzles interesantes con ella. Además de eso, había un personaje que unía toda la experencia: GLaDOS. Esa voz computarizada que al principio parece normal y en mal funcionamiento se convierte lentamente en un personaje completo con motivaciones propias y un odio inexplicable al jugador.

Dicho todo esto, cuando terminé el juego quería más. Quería saber más del mundo que vagamente te contaban en el juego. Y obviamente quería una secuela. Pero un miedo rondaba mi cabeza... "las segundas partes nunca fueron buenas" dice el refrán. ¿Podría que ninguna secuela consiga el mismo efecto en mí que el original?

Bueno, estoy contento en afirmar que estuve equivocado. El juego logra salir de la (gran) sombra del juego anterior y forma una identidad propia, expandiendo la mecánica original de los portales con otros elementos que añaden un nivel de complejitud a los puzzles. Totalmente recomendable.