Recent reviews by Flo

Best survival horror game I've played since Resident Evil Remake.

Balatro is a game about clowning on the rules of poker and substituting them with your own, much stupider ones.

"High card is the worst hand in poker"? Nope, I beelined into high card upgrades so now a single 2 of Spades gives me a thousand times more points than a royal flush.

"A straight is five cards in sequence"? Nope, I changed the rules and now Ace, 3, 4, and 6 is a valid straight. Also, my fifth card is just a rock.

"There are only four aces in a deck of cards"? Then how did I play five of a kind just now, and why does my deck have 17 more aces in it?

These are just a few of the situations you'll run into in Balatro. It's been a long time since I've played a game that so thoroughly prides itself on being broken to pieces by its playerbase, and I'm loving every minute of it.

This is probably one of the worst platformers I've ever played to completion.

• The controls are wonky in a way I haven't felt from a 2D platformer since the '90s. You have limited midair control and can only grab onto the edge of certain platforms. Most of your abilities (jetpack, snowball) have significant startup time. Hiding in cupboards/under tables plays canned animations which often last for several seconds, which leads to my next issue...
  
• This game has over FIFTY stealth sections, all of them near-identical except for minor variations in house layout and NPC placement. This comprises a huge portion of the gameplay, probably at least a third of the game, and it's pretty awful. There's no actual "stealth" involved, you're really just expected to run around the house, picking up stuff in plain view of the NPCs, hopping into cupboards or under pianos whenever you're detected so they'll instantly forget about you.
  
• You might've gotten this impression from the last bullet point, but this game is severely lacking in gameplay diversity, even outside of the stealth segments. You'll be seeing the exact same two (!) enemies throughout the entire game, with a third being introduced in the final world. The gameplay doesn't substantially evolve from the first to last world, either via difficulty or mechanics. It's a really bad sign that despite this game only being 3 hours long, I was dying for it to be over before hour one.
  
• The game has multiple unskippable cutscenes consisting solely of a narrator reciting the original Dr. Seuss book. The only silver lining is that when you hold down space, his voice speeds up and increases in pitch, and when you pulse the button it sounds like he's a horrible gremlin creature.
  
• In what is probably a very "no ♥♥♥♥ sherlock" observation to most people, this game is targeted towards young children. The entire game, start to finish, is filled with unskippable tutorials and voiced tooltips reminding you of basic mechanics. The game also has an obscene amount of checkpoints, which is probably a good thing since I can't imagine I'd have finished this game if it was both awful and difficult.

If you're here because you're looking for a Christmas gift for your kid, get them Crash Bandicoot instead; they'll love you more for it.

Based on the conversations happening about this game online, I expected The Coffin of Leyley and Andy to be another low-effort horror story aimed at a younger demographic green to horror stories, largely bereft of objectionable material with only a few crumbs of "dark lore" for children to extrapolate in their heads, in the absence of anything truly horrifying. Fortunately, I was completely wrong, and this game is absolutely horrific (complimentary).

I don't think I've played any other western game that so nakedly revels in its depravity like this one. Without going into excessive detail, the game's dual protagonists spend much of the first two chapters irreverently breaking every single taboo imaginable; the duo are the byproducts of a broken, dystopian world that doesn't afford any time for hand-wringing, and the setting does an admirable job of giving the impression that having your upbringing in such a toxic environment would erode at your sense of morality over time.

The blows are softened by the story being shown from the perspective of the sibling protags, whose rapport with (and psychological dependence on) each other keeps the story from becoming excessively dreary. The game has a sharp sense of dark humor, with many moments of levity happening alongside its most gruesome events.

The in-game art is merely serviceable, if not unremarkable; the cut-away CGs used to punctuate key scenes, however, are stylishly drawn and gushing with character. They do an excellent job of helping the dialogue to jump out the textbox, oftentimes with multiple illustrations lavishly supporting a single line or two of written word.

This game is in early access, with only two episodes out of an anticipated four currently available. If the latter half of Andy and Leyley is even half as good as what I've already read, then I'm confident it'll be a subversive cult classic for the ages.

This was one of my favorite games on PS2, and this port's new features (endless mode on all levels, BGM select) make this the definitive way to play Katamari.

I'd tried to get into Dwarf Fortress for the last 12 years, on and off. The triple threat of its old, byzantine UI, its lack of tutorials for even the most basic things, and its indecipherable ASCII graphics scared me off every time.

With the Steam release and its shiny new tileset, its clean, common-sense UI, and its inviting tutorials, I was able to wrap my head around Dwarf Fortress in a way that I never could before; what I discovered was a game that I'm sorely regretting not getting into sooner.

The depth of mechanics in Dwarf Fortress is unparalleled. After creating a mighty fortress, sprawling miles wide and miles deep, only to have it plunged into a civil war after the noxious stench of a corpse pit sent a powerful axe-dwarf into a murdering frenzy? I'm not sure I could ever go back to Rimworld, which now seems quaint in comparison.

If you loved the stories you've heard of Dwarf Fortress but were scared off by its complexity, buy this. The game will teach you just enough to stand a chance, then throw you to the wolves. You'll have the time of your life fighting them off.

Excellent followup to Somnium Files. Other than some weird technical issues in one or two parts, exceeds the original in almost every way.

Psychonauts 2 is the only sequel I can think of that came out over ten years after its predecessor without missing a beat.

• All the voice actors from the first game return, and despite the 16 year gap, they sound identical. I was stunned.
  
• Peter McConnell is back on soundtrack duty, and Psychonauts 2's soundtrack is every bit as good as the original game, if not better.
  
• Psychonauts' art team and character designers returned for the sequel, and the art direction of Psychonauts 2 is oozing with the same distinct, lopsided charm, just in 4k.
  
• While Erik Wolpaw didn't return to co-write Psychonauts 2 as planned, Tim Schafer readily filled the void and penned an excellent script that made me laugh and kept me on my toes.
  
• The gameplay of Psychonauts 2 is massively improved over 1; combat is much more fluid, and psy-powers each have multiple uses. No more pointless confusion grenades.

Psychonauts 2 is a strong contender for my 2021 GOTY. I only "paid" $33 for it since I backed it on Fig way back in 2015, but it's easily worth the full $60.

As someone who never touched any of the "Igavania" Castlevania games because I was scared away by the design of Classicvania, this collection has been a joy so far. I'm falling in love with the series.

• The games run as they should, with no major issues that I can see.
  
• The bonus features are pretty nice! Outside of the amenities expected in a collection of emulated games (savestates, rewind, filters), there's now a comprehensive encyclopedia and bestiary, an art gallery filled with high-resolution renders, promotional posters, box art, and manuals for all regions, and the ability to play any regional version (USA, EU, JP) of any game.
  
• Circle of the Moon has new (optional) popups that tell you when a monster you're fighting can drop a card. This is SUPER useful and alleviates a lot of the frustration in figuring out where all your super-important ability cards are.
  
• My only complaint is that despite Castlevania being a series that can translate really well to keyboard (since it works great on D-Pad), keyboard support is kinda barebones. You have a serviceable but strange default control scheme, and no way to rebind it... despite being able to rebind controls on controller. I ended up playing the games with a Steam Controller, which worked fine. They even made a config just for the Steam Controller...

Overall, this collection is a great way to experience the GBA Castlevanias. I hope Konami gets M2 onboard to bring the rest of Castlevania to Steam, including Symphony of the Night.

Like a ton of other people, I was apprehensive about playing Cruelty Squad because it looks like a massive ♥♥♥♥-post of a game. I was right to think that, but it's also the best immersive sim to come out since Deus Ex.

The way this game unfolds over time kept me hooked for 20 hours straight. You start with a humble silenced pistol and SMG, but as you acquire more weapons and implants, the number of ways you can complete your objectives becomes almost limitless. You can storm in with heavy armor and explosives, or grapple up the side of a building and break in through a vent, or angle a caustic gas grenade through a window half a mile away, or perch on a building on the other side of the map and methodically snipe everyone that moves... I've beat the game twice and I'm still finding fun new ways to replay levels. This game encourages you to bend it over your knee and break it, and I love it. a