Recent reviews by TreeTrunk

I am currently 53% through the main story having also done a lot of side activities. It is a very fun open-world game! It's impressive how you can swing through the city at invigoratingly high speeds and when you fall on the ground, seamlessly there are people everywhere that look just as realistic as they do in the cutscenes talking about you, gawking as they just saw the Spider-Man and asking for help. Mind you the only other Spider-Man game I've ever played was the demo of one of them that came with the DVD of the first movie with Toby McGuire, so I don't know if that's been done before or how it compares with previous Spider-Man games, but I do feel like love and care was put into this game not just on the technical end but from the creative end as well.

As you progress and hack towers more icons for side-activities appear on the map, so it's one of those games but they are narrated well and are fun excuses to explore the varied environments.

The combat is a really nice... how do I say... 'fast(?)' version of the Batman Arkham games that fits well with Spider-Man, the perfect amount of challenge on 'Amazing' difficulty. Mouse and Keyboard controls took a little getting used to but now they feel second-nature apart from the CTRL key being dodge, I should probably rebind that, I remember doing that for HZD.

Peter Parker and the villains weren't the most interesting in the world to start off with, in the beginning Peter was coming across as a little obnoxious like he was trying to be the main character of Sunset Overdrive, but the world and people around him refuse to resonate with that so it doesn't take away from the experience. The story does get more interesting as it goes, it has it's moments of genuine tension and urgency.
Toby McGuire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe aren't in the game so my nostalgia can only be satisfied so much, but this is an adventure I definitely want to see through to the end!

A nice minimalist hidden object game where you mostly click on the shapes that look like cats. The simplistic visuals actually helped make the game engaging as you're sort of lead to believe the game is simpler than it is. There's always a tiny bit of angst when looking for that one last cat, but it was still a great way to relax after an exhausting day.

It's quite insulting how the quests are designed with long-distance walking/sprinting between arbitrary points of the map while frequently coming across crafting materials that you can't pick up because your pouch is full and groups of higher-level enemies attacking you as you're just trying to complete one of the multiple quests that branched from the quest needed to expand your inventory, especially since the visuals are awful and the combat is shallow.
The NPCs make noises as you read subtitles but none of the story is engaging either.

A bunch of new levels with new ideas for fans of the game. Minigolf, the level breaking the 4th wall, the new ability, pretty much all the new levels were actually fun and didn't feel like just more of the same. Great job!

Wow, another hidden gem! Visuals are very simplistic but the gameplay is not too easy, not too hard throughout the 2-hour experience, the focus was really on 'fun' more than challenge which I really appreciated.

Another incredible VR experience just like the first game, an action-puzzler all from the comfort of your seat. The joy of experimenting with the environment usually squanders moments of frustration that do come with puzzle games, with few exceptions.
Though, what I particularly appreciated about this one is the unique blend of comedy and emotional investment that encompasses the style of story telling. It's definitely a mostly fun, uppity and comedic atmosphere. The game is self-aware of how cliche it is, but to also have that perfect sprinkling of seriousness that if anything helped compliment the story, especially at the end, was mind-blowing. Or maybe I just really liked the ending, and the intro, and the dialogue ("ARE YOU WEARING ONE OF MY MASKS?! XD).

I nominated this game for the "VR GAME OF THE YEAR" Steam Award!

Pretty fun, short and sweet side-scrolling shooter. The comic-book style story telling wasn't really interesting and the voice-acting is halfway there, but thankfully I could just read the text and click through it.

Gameplay is really basic, combat encounters are designed for your very limited view point of scenes so the AI is quite laughable at times, and you are only allowed to use the one weapon the game allocates for that particular section, but it's still mostly satisfying.

This was on my wishlist for a very long time and finally decided to dive in as it's Halloween. One of the most frustrating games I've ever played at least in recent times. The levels are actually quite short when I think about it objectively but they also felt dragged out while I was playing. Even right at the beginning of the game there's a really long and boring dog walking sequence, followed by a long and boring sprint through a series of tunnels, which I found out later was a sign of things to come.
It just feels so pretentious in parts like when you go to turn off the breaker box, you know before you even do it that you won't be able to go back the same way you came as the ticket machines won't have power and your character cannot jump over the waist high barricades. So you make sure that before you turn off the breaker box that you explore the door next to that room and in doing so, see the blatantly arbitrary corners present in that path and you pre-pick the lock of the random locked gate in the middle of that path that leads you back behind the ticket machines. One thing that's done well though are the ghost-monsters or at least the sound design of them as they do feel like they are behind you while you are sprinting.
Another moment is when I came to a room with three heads on the wall, across from them is a note that hints at where the 3rd head should be facing (either sideways, up or down). I then remembered coming across similar notes that hinted at where the 1st and 2nd heads should be facing from exploring previous rooms, though I only remembered what one of them said as I thought those notes were purely story bits. After trial and error I finally got it right and was so relieved I didn't have to go back to see what those notes said again. Perhaps those notes were saved in my inventory or something but my point is this games attempt at horror design is mostly basic, boring levels with enemies later on that annoyingly smack you in the face until you shoot them down. I didn't dread back tracking because of any horror-elements, but because the levels feel like a chore to explore.
For my whole play time I was desperate for some story pay off or something to just happen but looking at the discussion forums it looks like that never happens, the whole game is just up for interpretation, people are even debating if the protagonist is the fat girl or the skinny girl as mentioned by some stuff in the game. If THAT much is left for interpretation then there really is no story.
There's even a bit where you save the game (you can only save the game in specific save rooms) but instead of it saying 'game saved' it says 'save removed' then you go to the next room and fight a big invincible boss that kills you after you empty all your ammo into it, it brings you to the game over screen then when you choose 'continue' there's a scene where dialogue lines appear between a therapist and their patient, then you start right from where you saved the game last (right where it said 'save removed') and when you go to the next same room as where the boss was, the boss isn't there and you can progress. That kind of stuff is just silly it doesn't add anything.
The visuals and gunplay is also really dated, besides the sound design of the ghosts at the beginning there's really nothing interesting about this game. I think this will be just the 3rd game I've ever refunded.

I only found out about this game when I spotted its mini-profile background in the Steam Points shop and boy what a great time it was!
Each level has you roll, jump and swing to the other side. There is quite a lot of frustration involved as you learn and re-learn the timing of your jumps and swings especially as you progress into the later levels, but once you pull through, the game honestly produces almost awe-inspiring sequences on more than a few occasions.
Nice soundtrack and fun bonus levels after finishing the main levels. Good thing I decided to browse the points shop that time otherwise I would have missed this hidden gem!

Edit: I nominated this game for the 'Best Soundtrack' Steam Award!

You're a bird on a skateboard riding around finding other birds to talk to. They give you missions via humorous and whimsical text-based dialogue as the only voice acting here are bird chirps. The NPC birds have personalities (there's one obsessed with snacks, another who likes to set things on fire, etc), some re-occurring between multiple levels, making you feel like part of a team trying to accomplish something, as opposed to a lone skater wrecking havoc.
The level design is mostly basic, taking the form of typical human environments bastardised as skate parks.

I used to play a lot of THPS 2 & 3 a very long time ago and in those games I remember the controls being: flip trick is button 'c', grind is 'v' and grab is 'b', as well as movement being the arrow keys, so I didn't need to use the mouse at all besides menus. I used those controls for SkateBird and I got through the whole game with those but it never felt as crisp as those games before. There was quite a bit of struggle involved in dealing with the controls and camera. Things like when you ride off a ledge the bird and skateboard will just tumble to the side, making it near impossible to land wheels first, when you ollie once the bird will jerk backwards wanting to have the skateboard land on the backside, and when the camera is facing forward, and you push forward, the camera immediately turns 180 and you end up going backwards.

With those shortcomings, all the missions are still doable, you can still string long combos, and the game is really enjoyable. The story was silly and cool in the right way that made things fun and made me want to finish each mission to see the next joke and story bit. Nice soundtrack as well.