Reseñas recientes de Akhlys

I wished for a game that was a bit like descent 3 for a while now.
Not a flight siim where you have to care about every little thing like "deploy hardpoints" or fuel or stuff.
This scratches that itch. The dogfights are fun, exploration is kinda nice, you just often can't find much more than sights. If someone is on the map but far off, the story will bring you there sooner or later anyway, so not much need to visit there before.
The story.. well the less said about it the better, it's pretty crap to be hhonest.
All in all it's not a great game, but not a bad one either and if you want space dogfights you can do worse.

I just wish the player character wasn't so ugly. But oh well, that's all of western gaming in the current era.

It just didn't really grip me. Normal enemies too easy, bosses too hard, badly telegraphed attacks or rather long windups, a pause you need to remember for every enemy and then an attack in a millisecond. The story.. I dunno if it stays as vague as it is where I'm at at the moment, but it really does not give me any incentive to continue. You do stuff because you're told, not because you have any own motivation to do it.
It gripped me so little I played a whole other game from start to finish in the middle of that one.
Even while writing this I debate internally if I should continue or just uninstall it.

EDIT: ok now it expects me to do platforming with this awkward, slow and unresponsive movement set. I think I had enough

This upvote is conditional on getting it on a big sale. For full price, this is a "not recommend".
I was wondering if I should put it at not recommended, but decided against it because it is a good game despite all what you will read further down. Just not worth the asking price. Nearly no game is worth that much.

It's a nice game all in all. It's pretty polished and so far I found no way to make it bug out or softlock. You are an aspiring psychic adventurer that goes in peoples brains and messes them u.. I mean fixes them.
On its own it's great, just compared to the first one it feels off.
And I'm going to complain about this in relations to the first game now.

Your powers are fun, but they're mostly the same ones as in part 1, and levitation was so nerfed they really just should have put in a third jump instead of dangling that carrot in front of you. Some quite interesting stuff gets introduced early just so the game can berate you for using it and it gets never used again, which is a shame, that would have been a fun mechanic.
You won't find iconic levels like the milkman conspiracy or whatever the goggolor level was called here, but the levels that are around are nice. But they all played the same, maybe with the expception of a cooking show. The variety we had in Psychonauts 1 is not here. They did look very different, looks wise they were not at all all the same, just gameplay wise, which honestly wouldn't be an issue if we didn't have part 1 to compare.
Also, in the first entry, the levels seemed to be very much connected to whose brain you are in. And now? They feel way more random. There's nothing connecting cruller to a mailman after all. Sure it has the framing device of a letter he apparently didn't send, but that's all there is to it. This is not to say most brains are random, just.. many of them are connected by the thinnest of threads.
In general it's a pretty linear pretty standard 3d platformer. Where you run way too slowly and invisible walls are aplenty.
It's also way less funny. Most humor is just "oh so random" and puns.
But I gotta say, having a way to know in which area you still lack collectibles thanks to the alien slug was a welcome addition.
The story was all in all pretty good, but they foreshadowed stuff so heavily I really kinda rolled my eyes at Razputin not putting it together and being surprised. I mean, even knowing there were 7 at the start and the 7th member of the psychic 6 is never mentioned is such a dead giveaway and that happens extremely early in the game.
The characters are also not that great. The best one are recurring ones. The interns you now get instead of the campers are just.. Yeah not great. that they did get promoted to junior psychonauts alongside you despite doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but insult you for all of the game except the last fight felt like a personal insult. I did all the work, why are those token bozos being promoted?
All in all, as a fan of the first one, it's a bit of a let down but still a fun game.
Your standard part 2 that doesn't live up to part 1, I guess.

Oh, I should mention, it plays great with keyboard and mouse. I crap on games aplenty for not supporting the primary peripherals of where they sell, but this is not one of them.

But no where in hell is it worth the price they want. Maybe it's heavy on localized prices, but here it's 74$. After more than 4 years. Ludicrous. Play the first one or get another collectathon like Hat In Time.
Or, wait for a sale, don't get it over $30. Maybe 40 if you feel generous but..

The dude that made it, Tim Shafer, hates gamers anyway. He can't stand you. He used literal sockpuppets to make fun of you. Now that may have been 10 years ago but I doubt he got better. Screw this dude. I have a signed copy of the first psychonauts behind me in my shelf, I loved it so much that I actually bought it again with signature directly from double fine, despite international delivery. That was before that dude showed how vile he was just to gather sympathies of people that don't play games. That's why I waited 4 years for a big sale and it was well worth the 8 bucks I paid. But not 74 even if you don't share my contempt for the guy.

maybe at half the price tbh
It's quite repetative and so difficult that unless you're an affectionado for bullet hell games or don't mind doing the same levels over and over again you won't get particularly far. But if that's your cup of tea, why not

Nice Platformer.
Gotta say I rolled my eyes hard at the second island, is there no platformers without universally hated ice levels? They are never liked yet you see them in nearly every platformer. At least only one or two levels on that island had slippery ground.

Everyone getting it, consider the easier difficulty. It gives you one health point more (max 3 instead of 2), whch is not the important part. It also gives you more checkpoints. I probably just don't have the patience to do large swaths of levels time and time again any more, but that was a godsend.

Installs rootkit level anti-cheat (EAC)
Store page has no mention of this. I thought steam puts a warning on game's pages with anti-consumer extra software like this. I guess not.
I wasn't even interested in anything mulriplayer. But even if so, there should be a warning.

No thank you, I don't need that crap on my system.

Well.
I love and hate this game at the same time.
On one hand, there's (again) so much side content. Probably more than in any other game in the franchise yet. They basically made their own theme park simulator as side content. It was nothing to write home about, really, but better than it needed to be. And they made their own little pokemon arena battles.
On the other hand, the main story and especially the ending to it was pretty bad. Even worse than some other contenders.

This game was clearly meant as a good bye to kyriu. But thanks to that, it feels like a game where the main hero is sidelined. So much of this game is just "oh wasn't kyriu so great, wasn't he the best", while the actual main protagonist is made to look like a literal child. Sure, the childlike aspects of Ichiban were present before, but here they get turned up to 11. He just trusts people for no reason and the most annoying aspect is, he's never really proven wrong.
Oh you drugged me, stole everything from me, dropped me buck naked on the beach with no identification at all in the full knowledge and expectation that I would be arrested and possibly serve years behind bars, and you did that for idiotic reasons? Don't worry, I forgive you, you my friend now. Oh you tried to rob me at gunpoint? Oh we're best buddies now! And that's just two early examples of countless of such situations.

Also the storyline with bryce, one that is revealed to be big bad 1 later in the game, felt very cut. It's hinted at often in the game that that guy had more power than a mortal should have, lived for 150+ years and so on. Just hints dropped here and there. But... nothing ever comes of this. No big reveal, no scientific experience, no nothing, it's just ignored later on and he becomes just a normal dude.
Also his whole involvement makes no sense at all. I mean, why big bad 2 needs him does make sense, but it doesn't make sense on why he appeared on the radar of our heroes.
To not spoil it, let's just say he searches for something Ichiban does too - But he doesn't really need what he searches, it isn't really of any danger to him. It would be more convenient if he had it, but not having it would be an inconvenience, not a reason to go all out like he did.

and the ending scene.. God the ending.
Our favorite stoic yakuza literally crying saying "I'm sorry" to the dude whose whole purpose is to make the life of every ex-yakuza literal hell. Like... slavery and stuff

So yeah, gameplay was solid and all, loads of side content, but main story was... not my favorite. Some of the yakuza series main stories can be ass, and this is a contender for the worst.
But as far as the game itself goes, it's still fun.
I say get it but expect to be disappointed by the main story

I got this in a big bundle over on itchio quite a while ago and it turned out it was one of the onlyworthwhile games that I didn't already have in that bundle. So I decided to get it on steam to throw the devs some bucks (that's why my playtime here is just half an hour)
It is pretty much a heist-planning-sim. It reminds me of the old game "The Sting!" ("Der Clou! 2") just a bit simpler.
It is not really compareable to games like thief simulator, because the main danger here is alarm systems, not humans.
But as plenty of people know neither game:
It is a game where you simulate heists on your state of the art fictional 80s computer. you start out outside of a building or simlar and need to get inside to steal something specific (or photograph something or similar). The alarm systems are your obstacles on the way and you surpass them by your trusty laptop and it's very simplified command interface. You can, for example, open doors using it, but most doors can only stay open for 3 seconds or the alarm goes off.
During the game you get more and more tools, like a mini-remote-controlled-robot. There never are any human guards, thankfully.
Unlike other stealing type games (like the aforementioned thief simulator/the sting) you're only interested in one thing, you do not actually steal all that isn't nailed down.

Later on there is a sequence where you plan a few heists for more than one person at a time. I really didn't like those because of some clunkyness involved. Thankfully they were over again quick.
The story is.. meh. It's mostly a cheap framing device for the heists, and I already forgot most of it despite having fully played through the game earlier this year.
The graphics, well, look at the screenshots. That's what you get. It's blocky and low res. But other than oher games, in this one it really feels those graphics were used for style, not lazyness. For example, it uses real textures, not 10x10 pixel ugly ones like so many indies I could list. They're still low res, mind you, but with a high enough resolution to not be an eye sore. For how simple it looks, it looks fine.

Now price.. It's currently half off on steam, autumn sale, and I think this price, $10, is a fair price. I'm not sure I'd recommend it at full price. After all, it's an 8 year old indie game that's quite short. I'd say wait for a big sale like the current one.

It's not really an idle game because if you're not playing actively you make very little progress. For example, it has "quests" which are basically "slay X of monster". Half the monsters are flying ones, and you need to actively jump to reach them.

It would still have been fine, the start was rather good.. but around the time you get through your first portal, it becomes a slog.
To illustrate: The last weapon I can buy, at least at this point, is the necklace.
Each gives you ~22 Qa at level 50. A single additional necklace costs 657 Qi or 657.000 Qa. Even with 60 of them (and all other weapons combined, some on level 250) I make 1 Qi a second. 10 minutes just to buy a single necklace, if you aren't actively collecting coins, and that single necklace will not make much difference - and each I buy increases their price considerably, by about 15%.
The next available upgrade costs 7.5Sx or 7500.000.000 Qa - and it's not even an upgrade that would let me make more money. The next one after that is at 100Sx

I could ascend, but that will give me just an about +80% gold per second bonus, which isn't really much at this point.
This goes into another issue. For some reason, either each ascension the "slayer points" (ascension bonus currency) need more enemies killed than before or the enemies after the first portal give you less progress. My first Ascension I got 45 slayer points. I ascended a second time with the same amount of slayer points a seemingly shorter time later. I've been in this ascension (3rd) for a comparable time to the first two, yet have only 25 slayer points. How come?

So basically, I have hit a wall. where every little progress in the game takes days, instead of minutes. Even for an idle game that would be discouraging, after all, part of the fun is looking in every now and then and having new stuff to upgrade, but with this, which is as said not really an idle game, well..

This is more of a neutral. Review #2000 where I say I wish steam would have a neutral rating. But as it stands, I wouldn't recommend this.

Lemme preface saying that it isn't particularly bad, it just has many downsides.

First of all, not too happy with the art style. wanting to make it look like an old arcade game is fine enough, but it's inconsistent. Some times you have antialiasing, other times there are some very ugly pixel steps. Often together on a screen. Back then, people actually manually added antialiasing in art, even did stuff like dithering to make it as good as they could with what they could work with. Here, sometimes it feels some ugly pixel stairs were left in for no other reason than "it makes it look old lol"
As an example, take a look at the fourth store screenshot. Compare the edges of the thong with the enemy in the lower left. One is antialiased, the other isn't, and this discrepancy hits you all the time. Obviously they just transformed the sprite to "turned" with no interpolaton and no antialiasing, but "back in the day" that turned enemy would have been another sprite and would still have looked good, not that broken line pixelated mess.
I know that's a matter of opinion, but personally "making stuff look bad just for nostalgia's sake" never sat right with me.
I'm pretty sure the enemies are higher res in the resources than in the game. So turn them using the original resolution, antialiasing and all, resize them to their "pixel-apparent" size using proper interpolation, then increase them to the display size again with no interpolation. That would preserve looking pixelated while keeping it from looking awful.
Honestly, I don't really get why so many indies want to capture a "crt vibe". I like some pixelated games, Cave Story is possibly my favorite indie game, but it seems the devs went all out for this, with scan lines, screen deformations etc. But you can add scan lines all you want, you will not reach it unless you put some very deep work into it, because the way CRT displayed image was different (duh) and the pixels melted together some. Watch "When worse graphics are actually better" on YT for example. Just making low pixel graphics cannot emulate that, just adding scan lines cannot emulate that. You could probably add a blurring filter to get close, but to really emulate it you would have to emulate the color bleeding and rounding effect, which is probably quite some work for little pay. Just making things pixelated and adding scan lines is like thinking filming black and white without sound emulates the silent film era. So why not make it look good instead? You can stay with low res graphics, just apply antialiasing and all.
anyway, I digressed hard. You can't expect that from an indie game, sure. Just a pet peeve.

Secondly, yeah they wanted the "look and feel" of an arcade game. You still made a pc game, not an arcade game. What is the primary input device on a PC? That's right, the mouse. But that game doesn't allow for you to use the mouse for anything save for "left mouse button = shooting". The mouse doesn't even work in the menu. I'm sorry, I'm not even letting console ports get away with it, so I will not let a made-for-pc game get away with it either.
A bullet hell type of game where you can't even move your ship with the mouse? Really? At the very least support the mouse in menus and default to keyboard-steering with a way to disable that just like you did with scan lines (thanks for that btw)
And to add to the previous point.. Unless you expect every player to have a joystick, a device I haven't even heard mentioned in a decade, you won't replicate the feel of arcade anyway.

I like that this game is game first, prn second. I really do, those are my favorited prn games. But the prn content is so little you really wonder why they even bothered, instead of leaving it as "suggestive", maybe lowering the age rating and having a larger customer base. I mean, I enjoy it, but.. seems like wasted potential. If you make it full on adult, why not have scenes after defeating a giantess? I mean, from the captain conquering her again with charme, to some bondage heavy arrest scenes or something, there's so much that could have been done, but wasn't.

Speaking of missed chances. this could have ben the first game in a long time to emulate the era of the upgrade flash games. Imagine you could use the money to increase the ship speed, maneuverability, weapon power, weapon size, maybe even add super weapons that charge over time. Upgrades that the enemies leave behind more coins. Then increase the enemy difficulty level to level drastically, so you may to have to replay some stages, but then you could make your ship so kickass that you can proceed.
ah well, what could have been. I miss those old games, and it makes me sad no game nowadays scratches that itch.
This is not a point against the game, just some wistful waxing.

all in all, I disagree with some (lol many) design decisions, but it's still a nice game, just not for me. As steam doesn't allow for neutral votes, and I wouldn't recommend it, I'm sorry devs, gotta go with "no recommend"