Fingerthing legutóbbi értékelései

Courage the Cowardly Dog for Art Major graduates, but can also be generally enjoyed by fans of blood antics and novelty plush toys

a reminder of the important things in life: bite the hand that feeds you, and locate the shortys
please add a checkpoint before the final boss it's insane (in a bad way) to have to redo the whole sequence, even if it is amazing.

It's actually so Peak. What if the writer for The Lincoln Lawyer and William Gibson mainlined two ounces of coke, anime and politics to write Ace Attorney with Danganronpa's visual flair. Though, even describing it as such feels reductive. This is a smart, prescient story with oodles of charming character writing. The commentary about our post-truth world feels like a bullseye hit, and Serra might be my favourite assistant in any of these games, and the hints at her and Morgan's shared history, and its implications, like a shot to the heart. Haha.

Engaging mysteries that left me guessing for most of its run-time, with plenty of delicious twists and turns. The Lincoln Lawyer reference wasn't lip-service either, the attention to authenticity of legal procedure helps the story's immersion greatly. If you, like me, have grown tired of the typical (J)ADV games repetitiousness and kangaroo courts, of the Devil feels like all of the good stuff with none of the nonsense. Or at least, the dumb nonsense. There might be a baneposting and baki reference in here, though that just feels in keeping with the spirit of the original ace attorney localization.

My only critique is that some of the presentation can come across as slightly unpolished, mainly that the game doesn't feel particularly optimised or smooth. Though seeing as (I think?) there isn't a dedicated programmer on the team, and this is the studio's very first commercial release, I'm willing to let it slide.
Keep an eye on this one. of the Devil has a good chance of being at the top of the list for these games. I'd gamble on it.

peak elden ring, for good and for bad. as anime as anything fromsoft has made that doesn't have armored core stamped on the front, for good and for bad.
the world design feels like a remarkable step-up from base game, layered and dense and folding in on itself. though i wish it was better felt and more essential since it still fundamentally suffers from the same problem as the base game. most of the open world, the actual content and what you do in it, is unmemorable lunch meat between the real sauce -- legacy dungeons and bosses. though even the legacy dungeons, beautiful and intricate as they are, remain places i don't particularly know because of an overabundance of checkpoints. yes, i'm the guy who misses the DS1 boss room run-back. i understand WHY it's the case though: it's because the boss fights are so ridiculously hard that to put a checkpoint any other where than right outside door-bell range would be cruel.

though wow holy crap these bosses are heat. they're clearly what the game is *about* now. several of them had my jaw agape for a solid minute while my brain tried to even comprehend what was going on. these bosses are living monuments that you get to chip away at with a tea spoon. i think this is as fast and as complex as these bosses can possibly get without breaking the foundation that is this combat system, though a few encounters are tenuously close to that mark; they feel closer to sekiro than elden ring (the final boss in particular.)

boss fights are cool, but i think its telling that for a lot of players (including me!) one of the most memorable locations of all was one where there's no combat at all. just some gentle, bespoke music and two items which descriptions hit like quiet thunder. these games are at their best when they surprise *and* challenge players in new ways, the basic premise of "What would you, as an adventurer, do?" i see the ways this DLC attempts it, and i commend it for it, but it's just simply impossible to do it on a scale that's *this* big, consistently. if elden ring kept its map size and the design philosophy of dark souls the game would be out in 2027, and we'd need 6 months to get through it. so i get it. maybe im looking for it to be something it's not. but i miss it.

and yes the performance is dogwater but that was the case as well 2 years ago, why are we complaining about it now? anyway, dlc is an obvious must play. no one is doing spectacle like these guys, it's a treat.

You should absolutely not play this game unless under *very* specific circumstances and expectations. Those circumstances and expectations are what has made me stick around for 200 some hours, and unless you can fulfill every one of them, I don't think you should play. You probably shouldn't play it anyway.
Anyway.
What circumstances and expectations?

1. I have a veteran, ride-or-die PSO2 friend that's shown me the ropes and knows how to navigate the byzantine menus and systems. This game is built ontop of the carcass of a game from 2012, and the creaking weight of legacy tech stinks up the room like a corpse. Progression systems are spread across 10 different menus and operates on impenetrable logic unless (unless!) you have a friend who was there from the start to help you navigate the bloat. With that said, the UX is still unpleasant to interact with, with unclear navigation and fumbly controls.
2. I like fashion and photography and character art. Point-blank, do you? If not, turn elsewhere. PSO2NG has a remarkably robust character creator that allows a level of player expression only really rivaled by Second Life. This means the vast majority of the player-base are some variant of a blow-up sex doll, which has taken some sort of mental toll on me, but it's sometimes charming in its own depraved sort of way; you can see some truly wild stuff in here. This extends to the housing system, which is equally free-form and Wild West feeling. All in all, in terms of player expression in a multiplayer setting, I haven't really encountered anything better that doesn't require skills in Blender. The tools, awful as they are, are all in-game.
3. I have never played PSO2 base game. A lot of reviews seem to lament the state of NG, especially in comparison to the old version of the game. I carry no such baggage, and I'm glad I don't. I dislike this game enough as it is!

With all three points in mind, I've played 200 hours because I do actually enjoy dressing up in cute outfits and doing photoshoots. It's an awful shame then that they insist to attach a "game" to the dolly-dress-up. Let's see...

The combat is boring and monotonous, which they try to hide with a pachinko parlor's worth of noise and colour; the gearing is nonsensical and largely RNG-dependant, filled with baroque systems the game never explains clearly; the open-world is a chore to navigate, needlessly large to make your daily chores take longer; the story is deeply unengaging and I found myself actively hostile to it, skipping every cutscene to just get it over with; the economy is in the gutter with the real money cost for gacha pulls being through-the-roof high, resulting in a player economy that's equally stingy (built by whales, for other whales); the server infrastructure is in an inexcusable state, where if you get disconnected for even more than a few more seconds you get kicked out of your raid, with no possibility to reconnect to it, meaning no reward! It's as exhausting to play as that sentence was to read.

I'll probably keep playing this game, because my friend does, and my fashion catalogue isn't going to shoot itself, but I resent every nanosecond that I'm forced to engage with any of its systems in order to earn the money required to get to the "good stuff." If I wanted to hate myself and the world, I'd just work as an accountant for Lockheed Martin and moonlight as a femboy on Twitch wearing clothes from Dolls Kill. It'd inspire similar feelings.

For a game I enjoyed quite a bit, I find it surprisingly hard to start talking about Animal Well. Perhaps that's because I'm not sure it has a lot to say outside of an earnest desire to provide players with a string of lovely "aha!" moments, and perhaps a renewed and legitimate fear of kangaroos.

In the small but prestigious pantheon of Puzzlevanias/Mystery-Box/ARGcore games (Fez, Tunic, Outer Wilds, Void Stranger, La-Mulana), Animal Well stands out as perhaps one of the most accessible. The initial campaign is a pleasant 6-8 hours that artfully introduces new mechanics and teaches the player vital skills through carefully considered level design and intuitive, relatable abilities (everyone knows how a yo-yo and a frisbee works!) without using a single word. The developer has outright stated that this, "Layer 1," is meant to be beaten by just about any player, and it is a tremendous success in how good of a teacher it is. This alone is remarkable in a genre that is often deliberately obtuse and hostile, making the game an excellent entry point for those new to the Flavour. But of course, true-blue sleutherheads know that the main campaign is only the beginning. There's a post-game. And a post-post-game. That's what the freaks are here for, and the game delivers on its promise of a world-spanning easter egg hunt, with secrets galore and bunnies to solve. Yet in the days after unpacking its most significant mysteries, BDTP, if you doubt my credentials, I find the game surprisingly slipping out of my mind in a way that other genre titles never did.

The best in the genre essentializes its mysteries by making the *feelings* of Mystery -> Revelation core components of their grander narrative or thematic goals. Fez demands scientific rigor in its puzzles, and rewards you with cosmic awe/terror. Void Stranger frustrates and obfuscates information for the player at every turn, making them feel as lost as its protagonist. The Outer Wilds uses "aha!" moments as daring twists in its murder mystery of the universe.
While delightful, I fail to see how Animal Well's numerous revelations feed into any grander narrative. Who built this well? What is it? What's the significance of the bunnies? What do the manticores represent? What does any of this mean? These are not even real questions since there are no answers to them in the text. Just before writing this I lurked the Animal Well discord lore channels to see if I'd missed something, but no. Any answer is either a joke, nonsense, or effectively fan-fiction. No wonder the channel is mostly quiet for such a high-profile indie release.

That's not to say there's *no* meaning present. My initial point about kangaroos wasn't entirely facetious, Animal Well does an excellent job at imbuing the animals with a sense of, well, animal unknown! Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they ignore you, sometimes they hunt you, sometimes they scare the crap out of you for no good reason. It comes across as refreshingly devoid of anthropocentrism, and Billy's carefully observed and reproduced depictions feel more truthful (and honest) to the natural world as a result.
Additionally, its elegance in puzzle design is a powerful statement on its own. Smarter people than me can unpack it though, and I'm sure they will for years to come.

All in all, I came away from Animal Well satisfied if a little empty. It's an extremely luxurious and supremely polished puzzle box that opens up surprise after surprise, layer after layer. Yet after cracking open the last one, there is no grand revelation of what any of it was for.
Those "aha!" moments sure are thrilling though, delightful all on their own. And now I know origami a little better. Plus, the whole thing was made by one guy! He made his own engine and it runs like a dream, how cool isn't that? So, y'know, it's a pretty good time all-in-all.

I flip-flopped on whether or not to recommend this game or not. On one hand: The writing and acting is superb, the cutscenes stylishly directed despite the lo-fi aesthetics, and a varied (and long!) score which bounces between witch house bangers and the developer's best CLIPPING impersonation. On the other: Dull, monotonous gameplay that largely misses the point of what made Max Payne and bullet-time fun. Compounded by a somewhat bizarrely bloated runtime. (Seriously, you could have cut out 15 levels here for a dramatic improvement to the pacing.)

What ultimately tipped the scale for me was a bit of news that came out while playing. There's a film adaptation in the works, starring LaKeith Stanfield. Assuming it comes out, and retains Xalavier's writing chops, it will be a much better way to experience this story. Admittedly, I'll miss the likely absence of the protagonist's murmured, intimate and very-closely-mic'd narration, though not so much that I'll miss how tedious this game was to play at times.

To get into some more detail about the failings of the gameplay, the key mistake here is the game's insistence on nearly every enemy being a melee attacker. This decision laid bare for me one of the fundamental appeals of Max Payne. Bullet Time, and the Dive, exists to counter *ranged* enemies. Even more specifically, hit-scan enemies. You dive into a new room to throw your attackers aim off, because if you get shot more than like three or four times, you're smoked. The dream, then, is to dance across the battlefield as bullet trails soar past you with inches to spare, and land a decisive shot before it's too late.
Diving in El Paso makes you an idiot. No reason to do it, no bullets to dodge. There are enemies that shoot slow-moving projectiles, which you can largely dodge in normal speed if you're awake. The closest the dive comes to being essentialized is the Knight enemies, which have a large weak-spot on their backs -- easy to target if you dodge past them -- but why do that when they easily go down to a stake or a well-placed frontal shotgun shot?

So instead you quickly discover that the best method is to use the slow-mo, stand still and play point-and-click on enemy heads before they can get close to you. And if you're out of slow-mo, just kite backwards!! They can't do anything!! Because they don't have guns!!!!

This results in gameplay that outwears its welcome by around 90 minutes, which seems bad for what should be a brisk 6-8 hours. My friends, my 6.8 hour playtime felt every bit its length.
As I suggested earlier, cutting 15 levels would be something of a remedy, as every third level or so presents some fun gimmick, either in visuals or audio, in a way very reminiscent of, uh, Remedy. Keep those, cut the Doom WAD filler. While we're at it, change the combat. Shoot, maybe remove it altogether. The cutscenes are all great, so maybe make it just that? And then also have actors emote the story, using their faces. Then give me a big bowl of popcorn. Wait a minute...

This story spoke to me a great deal, which is why my tone is a little snippy. I earnestly, truly, hope that the film adaptation is able to retain the stylish edge and intimate feel that El Paso, Elsewhere has, while doing justice to its love of violence in a way the game could not. Then I could recommend it with my whole chest.

An attempt at an "engoodening" while also acting as a critique/parody of the original, obviously informed by the disastrous launch suffered some five years ago. It's a game about itself, and its place in the world: Finally, YIIK is actually post-modern!
Combat and exploration feels snappy, in contrast to the glacial original. That certainly helps the presentation as well.

I've no idea if what they're cooking is going to coalesce into something, but the smell of this demo has got me Enticed. They got a lot going on here, it'd be easy to mess up, but I'd cautiously hand over my I.V (... jesus, I just realized the pun) drip to the full thing. Gamer.

empty gmod map turned video game

i appreciate the in-game media being ai blob-melt, really makes you feel like you're living in the future

remarkably polished presentation, far exceeding my expectations. love has been put into every detail.

the game itself... feels like a proof of concept. perhaps it is, considering the price tag, and what may or may not be a sequel tease.
anime moe blobs being canonically composed of piss and poop sets the tone very well