Recent reviews by Sienihemmo

I've been playing Knuckle Cracker games since Creeper World 3, and over time the series has morphed into something new. Not necessarily bad, but I'm obviously no longer in the target demographic. In previous games I liked the slow crawl of battling against waves of creeper in huge maps, with the freedom to build however many of each building I felt that my chosen strategy needed.

IXE on the other hand feels more like a puzzle game than a strategy game. A lot of the levels have very limited resources which feels unsatisfying to play. Often you can't just sit and look at the action for a bit either, since it's really easy to accidentally softlock levels and end up needing to restart the whole thing.

Also the "crafting" system of combining materials feels really awkward, I didn't feel like I wanted to interact with that mechanic at all.

There's no replayability because of the limited ships and limited resources. All of the levels seem to have one intended solution and that's it, often involving a resource that gets you maybe 1-2 attempts to get it right, before making the level impossible to complete without restarting. Would you like to try a 100% anticreeper run this time? Aww that's unfortunate, this level only gives you 1 AC ship and a limited supply of AC ore. Would you like to try winning by spamming a lot of missiles? Well me too, but unfortunately this other level only gives you 3 ships with missiles.

I realise that limiting the players power to increase the challenge is a good game design decision, but earlier CW games have focused more on establishing a foothold and then just trying to pass the levels in interesting ways however you want. They've never been puzzle games with an intended solution where trying another approach is met with a literal impassable metal wall. The freedom of choice and being able to play as lazily or intensely as you want is the stuff I crave.

Overall as a game it's decent enough. But as a part of the Creeper World series it's pretty weak. I feel like this should've been a spin-off title like Particle Fleet.

The story is interesting with some twists to it. The world is fascinating, but confusing at first. A lot of the game is really confusing at first in fact. If you get the game, be aware that the tutorial will take about 10 hours and only after that will you get to the "actual" game.

The characters, world and game mechanics will feel really odd to begin with, but if you get through the first 10 hours it'll start to make sense. And the story does explain a lot of it over time, like why one of the first things that happens to your character is that you get called in to talk to the president.

A lot of the game mechanics are really unique but they're pretty easy to learn. The gameplay has the same kind of vibe as snowrunner, where the terrain is the primary opponent. If you do side content, you'll learn what the best routes are (just like in snowrunner), so after a while you can really relax while doing those routes. If you only do the main story and nothing else, you won't really repeat the same routes but get to see new areas instead. You will also miss some areas completely that only have side content in them.

Lots of jank, bad translations and a gameloop that doesn't match the trailer material at all. But I still think it's a decent game. In the beginning on easier difficulties, what the trailers show will be maybe 5% of gameplay. The rest will be spent in quiet areas, just looting and killing random patrolling enemies.

But as you progress the story and unlock harder difficulties along with more interesting weapons, it starts to get more intense. I think that's where the game really starts to feel good. It's just unfortunate that it takes over 30 hours of gameplay to start getting there.

My advice would be to pull up something to watch on a second monitor and grind out the lower difficulty stuff over time (the random enemies are weak enough that being suprised doesn't really matter). And when you unlock the snow maps, that's when things will slowly start to get more interesting. You'll start to get more unique weaponry for your character and the outpost itself, and the enemies will start to get harder.

As they fix the jank and the translation issues, I think the game will turn out pretty good.

I like it a lot. I especially enjoyed the worldbuilding. I hope they make a sequel one day, even if it is highly unlikely.

Very zen, you'll find yourself spending way too long meticulously cleaning. You can play for maybe 40 hours before you even need to repeat a level.

Upgrading the drillship and adding stuff to it is cool. The tech progression is kinda confusing at times, but the quest system is good at guiding you through it. The combat can get really difficult, as even on the easiest difficulty I had to actually prepare for fights, as I play solo. So I'd imagine if you bump up the difficulty, you really need to use all the tricks the game gives you.

I also like the ability to control the drill remotely, like telling it to go underground or move to a landing point closer to your location.

Speaking of the drill moving, an important thing to note is that the drillship can only surface at fixed points, not anywhere you want. It's understandable from a technical perspective, as having the ability to surface wherever you want is probably beyond what an indie studio can do. But it can also be a turnoff for some, understandably.

Good game, even better with friends.
- Guns feel good to use and there's an okay selection, but it'll grow as the game gets more content.
- Good variety of enemies, which all die satisfyingly.
- The explosions from the various support fire stratagems are glorious.
- Calling stratagems makes you feel like a techno-wizard, after you get the muscle memory to spam them from memory.

Good fun, especially when in a group with friends. Low to mid tier battles are the most fun and relaxed, so you'll get a lot more out of the game if you enjoy playing with WW2 or cold war era vehicles.

Also, paying around 10€ per month for a premium account makes things a lot simpler and completely negates the ingame economy issues that most reviews mention.

Scratches the same itch as Viscera Cleanup Detail, but with shorter levels.

Keeps the experience fresh with different mechanics and short minigames (some of which are level specific), though most aren't used enough to have a chance to learn them. One example is the minigame for defusing unexploded bombs, which is only used twice in the entire game and one of them is a tutorial.

The physics can be really janky with vehicles at times, on a few occasions I found it easier to just demolish stuff by hand instead. Especially using the crane with the ball felt pretty pointless with how difficult it was to get the ball to swing hard enough. The bulldozer also often got stuck on loose resources created by the dozing. Most of the jankiness could be solved by making resources pass through vehicles so they have no collision.

Also for some reason some of the NPC's had models that were themed like peasants from the 1700's.

But overall it was an enjoyable experience, perfect for playing while listening to podcasts or watching something on another monitor. It took me just under 13 hours to get 100% completion including achievements.

Buying the trilogy edition is 100% worth it if you havent played any of the reboot games. Paying 100€ for something that essentially has the content of three 60€ games is excellent, and it'll get you hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay solving the different maps in different ways, a lot of which have completely unique methods so it rarely gets repetitive.

If you've played the earlier games, the standard edition is still a good buy because the third game is not just more of the same (unlike with Hitman 2). The missions have quite a few different mechanics that alter how you play them. The mechanics also tie into how at the end of Hitman 2 you lose access to the ICA's resources. Stuff like not having access to a map, having to solve puzzles and needing to find codes for keypads. Lorewise it makes sense, since you no longer have a handler and a team of analysts and other support staff taking care of that stuff for you. Very nice.