Recent reviews by Earl Wizen

It was fun, I'd say sub five bucks its ok

Enjoyed the game quite a bit. Great western grim aesthetic. Played 2-p coop campaign; some issues easy to fix by not being in menus during other player's transitions/cutscenes. Basically, sync up whenever leveling or buying upgrades. Combat was fun, different upgrades and combos. Feels good 8/10 solid game

It's been incredibly fun so far. Simplistic tools with fun puzzles, and platforming between rooms. Great pixel art and cool ambiance. I want to equate it to one of my favorites, VVVVVV, with the platforming and "solving a room" aspects, but it's definitely different since you get tools and keys. 10/10 so far. I personally dont mind paying full price for quality.

I used to do parkour back in high school and although never achieved the Gumby freerunning or tricking skill of the stand-in character here, I have seen hours of videos, trained many moves, and been to a few jams so I feel like I actually am somewhat qualified to evaluate this game seriously. I can tell that there's a lot of love for parkour cooked into this game.

Of course if you're talking parkour games, everyone used to mention Mirror's Edge, then Dying Light, and other games I've played. All good stuff but those games focused on a story and had combat. Parkour was a mechanic, at best a critical component but not the focus of the game.

The feeling I get from playing this game for the first time is that it's kind of like the Tony Hawk Skate games for skaters, but if a parkour game was made for traceurs/freerunners. The game has numerous tricks and combos, and it's your job to get up to no good running around and chaining them together. That part feels really good and satisfying and I've never seen the moves and animations of pk/fr so faithfully represented before. Biased as I am, 100% am pleased to support the Devs just for that.

Almost every combo is SHIFT+(Some Number Key) and the action the runner takes depends on the terrain. If you are "high" off of the ground, on the edge of a box, SHIFT+1 is a cork 540 off of the box. If moving towards, and near, something vault-able, SHIFT+1 does a monkey vault. This obstacle detection is also very cool, allowing for same gaming inputs to map to different moves based on where the player is "flowing" in the world.

A criticism this creates in me is that out of the box, the moveset is large but the key combos aren't differentiated well. SHIFT is run, but it's also part of the combo input for basically all moves. For example, you SHIFT to run but then when you get to the vault-able thing you have to press SHIFT+# again, stopping the run momentum right before the object, which is sort of janky.

One recommendation would be to re-map the combos to not use the SHIFT key but in my opinion although that's part of it, that's addressing the symptom more than the problem. Looking again at Skate as an example, one thing that is critical to that game is that once you get on the board and push forward, you've got a momentum that isn't broken until you crash. In my opinion it should be the same here: some kind of auto-run feature which keeps the character moving in the mouse-aim direction while you are typing those combos in and making things happen. Since the right mouse button is currently only "get up from ragdoll" I'd imagine it could be a "walk" button, where the default is "run" and holding right mouse makes the character walk instead.

In game it mentions that gamepad support is coming soon, so maybe that will resolve this point.

Another knee-jerk feeling I had is that obstacle spacing is a bit unclear. Not that it is unfair, just that you "just have to know" whether you are in the right spot where an input will actually be a vault vs a ground trick. To fix that I guess I'd recommend some sort of visual indicator, maybe a shimmer of the object, or a clue in the animation (reaching out ahead of time).

In any case, I want to re-affirm that I am very impressed with the framework of the game and really feel the love for the "sport" oozing through. Throwing some change at this is extremely easy; this is the game I dreamed of a decade ago come to life. I unfortunately can't say I'm confident that this game will be rolling in green since I think the heyday of parkour is more or less past, but I am looking on in strong approval and really wishing to see this develop into something even better.

Great little platforming puzzle game.

Such a great deduction game, you evaluate a scene from nothing and fill in all the pieces. I was really invested in how the narrative all ties together too. Gaming excellence

Many games these days launch "unfinished" which is a whole philosophical problem itself. I'm not going to solve that right now. I myself prefer holding patience for games that actually push fixes and patches efficiently after launch and addresses the criticism in a timely manner. I feel this is more realistic in modernity.

However, this game launched late September, it's now late January -- 4 months later nothing has been fixed. All the criticisms you read in the other reviews (no offline, leveling, matchmaking etc) remain unresolved. I have appreciated the attempts at communication from the Twitter and so on, but at some point, words are just words and without ACTION behind them, mean ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing.

I'm a Payday 2 oldhead and a big boy now. $100 means a lot less than it used to, but it terms of the market price is still a big deal. You get 10,000 players to buy the Gold edition and you just made a million bucks. Inflation be damned; that's still a hell of a lot of money.

It's disappointing to see that things are so disorganized and chaotic, that the best that's been given to players in this time span has just been promises of an action plan - not even the plan itself! I do agree with thinking "short and long term" and being "careful to not simply react" but proceed with care; these are critical to dealing with crises... Absolutely, make a tactical plan for dealing with issues, but at the same time, metaphorically when things are on frickin fire at least turn the hose on to keep the flames down in the meantime. It's been literally 16 weeks, and there hasn't been a single fix. In terms of player feedback, there are some low hanging fruits that just involve matchmaking sortie, GUI, offline features, that - I'm no dev - I feel should be realistic to complete in 4 months. Reworking the skill system is a whole enchilada, so a delay there is understandable if it is delish once it gets to the table.

Basically, this absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ just indicates to me that Starbreeze still doesn't have their ♥♥♥♥ together despite my hopes for a fresh start. I'll be sitting on this one in my library for another 4 months probably before I have to think about it again.

My final thought if my completely CEO mindset gigabrain [/s] ass was running a gaming company is this - I don't care if it's different dev teams internally, don't push a DLC when the game is coming apart at the seams. Fix the meat and potatoes before you try to serve desert.

I'm so incredibly glad that the sequel to one of my personal favorite games is just as well-made as the first. The game has the excellent puzzles and beautiful out-world design of familiarity, but like the first game it is the engaging dialogue and a philosophical narrative in the driver's seat the whole time that makes this game an instant classic for me.

How rare it is to get a good game these days; how much rarer then to have a sequel that fulfills the same human desire for play and grows past and through the original game.

Originally posted by Straton of Stageira:

We begin with the self because that is what determines our existence as individuals; but the self cannot exist without that which surrounds it. The citizen lives within the city; and the city lives within the cosmos.

Originally posted by @ v17.1.0042:

Just look at this view! There may be a lot that I don't understand, but I know this is beautiful.

It's just like when I played DRG in Alpha. This is absolutely worth and fairly priced at $10. The sounds and proximity chat make the game special, especially when things Doppler shift or cut out due to movement; it's very situational humor.

The game is so much fun that my only concern is getting more content. I wish there were a few more worlds to visit, a bit more variety in the random seed generation, more variety of creatures, more secrets. Then I remember I'm playing an Alpha that has an actual game loop and didn't crash my PC a single time. 10/10 would visit my beady-eyed chiropractor again

Game froze at gamma select screen before main menu. Tried several times relaunching before somehow getting to menu. Tried to play tutorial and stream to friend on Discord. After some tries, realized that Discord streaming froze the game. (PC is good and running at 50% capacity). Gave up streaming it just to get through tutorial. Notice that inventory cannot be interacted with. Play; die at end-boss of tutorial. Can't select "respawn" on the game overlay menu.

These issues are unacceptable to me, especially after having my eye on this game for years. I'll take my refund and not look back