Recent reviews by That Guy

There will inevitably be comparisons to Hades as an action brawler where every death restarts you at level one, but frankly I think Absolum is superior in utilizing the roguelike formula to drive its action. I find Hades' core gameplay unsatisfying with its complete lack of post-hit invincibility and overall control just doesn't hold up in such a luck heavy format. Absolum is a great brawler first and foremost: remove the run-based element and it's still a strong game.

But what the run-based element adds is a level of dynamism no other brawler has. New enemies are added, new paths are unlocked, new characters show up. By ditching the randomized level approach Absolum feels like an evolving world. In this way it's closer to Dragon's Crown than Hades but doesn't hint at the repetitiveness of DC's late game.

Pretty decent homage to classic Resident Evil from a first person perspective. Much more stringent on resource management than even the Resident Evil games tout. Finished in about 2 hours but unlocks some playable extras to extend time and this is one of the harder games to achieve hunt.

The one RoboCop game, if not the one piece of RoboCop media post-release of the original, that captures the essence of Verhoeven's satirical view of a capitalist future where megacorporations are funding criminal activity to drive down real estate so they can buy it up on the cheap from failing municipalities and also creating a public interest in militarizing the police (where's the farce again?). Rogue City suffers from "too much by half" syndrome at 15+ hours but you see its whole bag of tricks an hour in. Still a solid shooter that strikes all the right chords.

Adaca is two games in one: a fairly straightforward linear level-based shooter clearly inspired by Half-Life 2 and an impressive open world atmospheric adventure game clearly inspired by STALKER. It's really a testament to the love and care the developer had that both modes stand out as impressive works on their own but together the package may be one of the highest values for money available.

The main campaign is pretty straightforward, elevated with a large catalog of fun weaponry and only let down how closely it plays up its Half-Life influences with its miniscule roster of enemies that come mostly in different flavors of armored humanoid. The AI is capable with squads of enemies flanking and rushing on all sides across the game's large scaled levels but it's always disappointing when the only challenge a game can provide in the late game is increasingly bullet sponge enemies that get trigger happy with tough-to-dodge explosives. At about 4 hours the main campaign is satisfying in its own right and the nonsensical story and samey encounters does little to detract overall.

But the second mode, Zone Patrol, is where the game truly shines. Spread across about a dozen large interconnected levels not unlike Shadow of Chernobyl, Zone Patrol literally drops you in a map and provides the vague goal of "reconnaissance." As you explore discovering new events and quests from scattered NPCs, Zone Patrol opens in a way that even the STALKER games fail to live up. With no in-game documentation or quest trackers, and a map that doesn't even mark your location, Zone Patrol succeeds in presenting a hostile feeling world full of mystery and wonder. Seeing this game's version of a blowout occur with no warning or wandering into one of the random rifts into a Cronenbergian meat-dimension keep you on your toes.

As an RPG West of Loathing is kind of middling with unchecked power creep and a battle system you'll set to the fastest speed and just ignore that you're mashing buttons to auto-win. It maintains the same level of humor as the browser game that inspired it but overwrought descriptions in a dry style can only hold for so long. West of Loathing ends before it really drags but what an unsatisfying ending it is.

I was moved to write this review after reading that the creator, yeo, called Arrest of the Stone Buddha their favorite project because I think Ringo Ishikawa is not only the flawless execution of yeo's themes it's also a flawless execution of the life sim as promised by Shenmue and Yakuza series. Japanese games have a long history of combining school life with life simulation aspects but that style of balancing work/life has rarely broken out of the Sims franchise in the West.

Ringo is ostensibly a beat 'em up like River City Ransom with no real drawback for losing fights because it's not a game about winning. You're barely even rewarded for fighting but fighting and training are core to the school punk life that you're expected to take the time to work out after school. But you're also a student and so the majority of your monetary allowance and progression is tied to studying. But you also owe it to your fellow delinquents to participate in their lives and are expected to follow a sane schedule and hang out to progress.

It all adds up to a feeling of listlessness that I feel is core to yeo's narrative style. Stone Buddha is a game of cinematic violence punctuating long stretches of aimless wandering to run out the clock. Ringo Ishikawa is about a school punk who resigns himself to be better but can't escape the violence and pervasive self-destructive attitudes of being a gang member. It's a game without a manual or obvious goals, a game where the next narrative thread happens seemingly randomly and in this way it feels more organic than any Yakuza title. It feels aimless up front but as you discover the ways to improve the characters, as you explore the small but detailed world, interact with optional NPCs, learn the schedules of activities, and participate in dialog exchanges with your friends it really breaks free from its arcadey roots and transforms into something deeply meaningful.

A quiet meditation on isolation and depression punctuated by brief flashes of extreme violence. A hitman who only feels alive at his job silently drinks alone to pass the time. The moment to moment gameplay is uneventful as you spend literal minutes waiting for the evening before swallowing some sleeping pills. Sometimes you can spend the night with a partner but it's all a malaise jumbled together until the next shootout.

The actual shootouts follow John Wick levels of comedic violence as what feels like half a city block runs at you or takes potshots on the periphery. The waves are endless until you manage to push to the final screen where you need to clear out all the baddies before proceeding. And here is where I think the game stumbles: it would be much more engaging if each screen was its own challenge but it really is about just walking to the right until you reach your car while the endless fodder never stops.

I wish Steam allowed a neutral rating because that's how I feel. A solid 6.5/10 but I don't regret the time. And at about 150 minutes you'll be through with it in about the same time as a John Wick film or other stylish European action drama.

Small Saga is ostensibly a pretty mid RPG with simplistic battles that rarely provide much in the way of challenge and story dictated leveling up that lets you spread a few points into a straightforward skill tree. But where Small Saga truly excels and stands out is in its writing and world building. This tiny world of rodents living in the shadow of the "Gods" of London is legitimately well realized with colorful dialog and scenarios. In one scene you'll take on a fat tabby threatening a village of moles, in another you're dueling in a gladiator arena being chased by an RC car in your wind-up jalopy. The climax is thrilling and the final boss as epic as the monstrous Kefka totem from Final Fantasy VI.

I also appreciate how unabashedly queer this game is and the fact that it has skirted zero controversy is proof to me that the right people are playing this.

Interactive visual novel with lovely art that juxtaposes strongly with its story of existential dread in the face of extinction. Up front I was a little put off by the performances -- the cadence of acting feels a little stilted in an "anime dub" way and I recognize it's very difficult to write believable teenagers -- but I was won over by a story about the struggle of finding support and compromise when friends drift away in the face of a crisis. Within the story I saw a lot of the struggle living in a post-COVID lockdown world and thought about the many acquaintances I lost track of but it's okay because I'm a better person for sharing those experiences in the first place.

Nightmare Frames is one of the better modern adventure games I've played. It instantly grabs you with its real-world setting, 1985 Hollywood, and expresses its love of horror as a genre up front. As Alan Goldberg, a disgruntled screenwriter stuck writing B-movie horror films, you're enrolled in finding a mysterious lost horror film and experience the rapidly encroaching nightmare that devolves from it. Well written with decent sprite art, John Carpenter esque synth score, and buckets of gore like the finest grindhouse films, Nightmare Frames is a lovely throwback to an important era of film history and is excellent pulp genre fiction.