Recent reviews by Swizzler

A fun and creepy single-session puzzle game!

This is one of my favorite games of all time. I've played through the story at least a dozen times, completed every achievement and challenge, and constantly want to find new ways to enjoy it. I encourage people struggling to get into the game to actually try role playing it, make up a character that has social rules, weapon restrictions, etc. One of my favorite playthroughs I was playing as a character that was obsessed with explosives, they only used explosives as weapons, and if any quest or dialog had an option that involved an explosion, that was the option I HAD to pick. One of my most memorable playthroughs, as the character flip-flopped factions quest to quest to simply fulfill their need to EXPLODE THINGS.

Fun and challenging. There's some quality of life stuff it's lacking (like if you were interested in the time trials, there's no easy way to tell what position you are in on the leaderboard without loading the full list, you just get the 5-ish players around you and that's it, it'd also be nice to get some sort of indicator on # of times died, checkpoints hit, water touched, etc for those various challenges.) If there's ever a snake pass 2, I think a map editor with a score multiplier based on how fast it's finished and what additional challenges you took to finish a level would be a fun add that would increase the amount of playability. Ended up taking a little over 14 hours to 100%, mostly because the water challenge would be void if even a pixel of tail dipped into water, even if it happened offscreen. I think a more fair way to handle that challenge would have been to only count it as "in water" if the game switches you to the swimming controls.

It took a while, but they got hitman back to where it felt like the other games were. Unfortunately at this point updates are starting to slow to a trickle, as the 007 game approaches a formal announcement. I really wish they'd try the episodic model again, having one new level to work on over and over knowing another one was coming down the pipe was always exciting. I think the last thing they could do would be to update freelancer to take advantage of all the hitman maps, not just a select few.

Incredible game, Incredible universe. Inverts the show- don't tell aspect of storytelling for a vast majority of the content and somehow makes it work. some of my best moments with this game were flipping between documents unraveling the stories they only half-tell in the game, delving deeper into the rich world they built here. Then on top of that they made a competent superhero powerset for an action game. Can't wait for more.

I tried... I really tried with this game. I was itching for more deus ex, and hoped this would scratch that itch. it doesn't. This game is literally painful to play, as in I feel ill playing it after about a half-hour play session. I bought it on deep discount, and still feel ripped off. Buttons on the interface are barely responsive, often requiring you close and re-open a menu to get it to start working, you can't interact with items if there is more than one interactive item near the center of the screen, and it is not uncommon for the game to place a consumable on top of an intractable item such as a trash can or phone. So picking up the item involves positioning your character in such a way the very large object under the very small consumable object isn't visible so only the consumable is intractable.

There is no hotbar, despite controller controls being barely functional, instead you must fumble through an absurd amount of "quick menus" tied to the F, G, and H keys. You have no inventory, instead you have what clearly used to be an ingame real-money store lazily swapped for ingame currency when it was ported to PC. I'm not even sure how obtainable some items are, as money is rare and items are expensive. (I assume originally to push you to buy them with real-money)

The story is braindead, it starts semi-interesting with the player character starting on the same squad of villains from human revolution. After the tutorial, you immediately betray them, because you assumed that you would be seeking revenge for your previous crew on your first assignment, in a completely different country on a completely different continent. The PC immediately decides the villains are actually behind your squads death with zero evidence, and jumps off the plane mid flight.

The game almost does something cool here, as the PC, not being Adam Jensen, his body is rejecting his augments during a neropozine shortage. A cool direction to take this would be to slowly get your augs removed to save yourself, while making the game progressively harder as you become more human. Instead you find a back-alley doc selling not-neruopozine, but it does the exact same thing, is in much greater supply, and has no side effects (at least explained at the start) thus immediately resolving the issue.

Oh also you can't jump at all in the game, which from how often you do that in deus ex you might as well have stuck the PC in a wheelchair.

gave up shortly after that, as I said the game was literally making me ill not due to the story or gameplay, I'm assuming it's something in the engine with how horribly jank it's rendering.

You are going to hate this game when you first play it. It does not hold your hand. You probably got interested in it because you saw videos of people surviving for YEARS in-game and making 72-part lets-plays where they conquer entire cities and amass an arsenal of weapons. You will not do that. You will be counting the hours you survive when you first start this game, but as you learn more about it, you can learn to survive longer, handle more zombies at once in a fight, and eventually, overcome.

Also by default the game respawns zombies every few days, most the lets players doing years-long playthroughs have that turned off.

From what I read about the development the game was pretty rough, but what I played in 2022 felt very subnautica, a worthy followup to the first game, and sets up a good direction for a full sequel. I only have small nitpicks, like how the game's tech feels too similar to the first game. I feel like it would have been cool to see a xenoworks version of some of the survival tech, instead of just the same alterra designs. I also would have liked a hint system for what to do next. While it's refreshing to have a game as hands off as subnautica. I don't ever remember being as lost as to what to do next as I was in below zero, and had to break down and google what to do next at several points, as I only had a foggy goal, instead of a solid next step.

I thought this game was going to be a fun short and easy romp, which is was until the most recent patch at the time of this review. The new map they added completely turns the balance of power against the player and provides an unexpected challenge, requiring the player to be constantly mobile, sacrificing potential xp to chase down static powerups on the map. Also introduces the first enemies with projectiles and objects in the world you can use to defeat enemies far too tough for you. I thought I knew what all I was going to expect from Vampire Survivors, now i'm no longer sure, but I'm sure excited to see it.

The puzzles quickly diverted away from the original concept of time travel and instead relied on extremely-fast reaction times and other twitch skill based mechanics rather than puzzle mechanics. I was really looking forward to this mod, and was really disappointed when I finally sat down to play it and found they fell into the typical mod trap of balancing the game around people who have sunk thousands of hours into the game.

There's nothing more frustrating in a puzzle game than knowing the solution, but being unable to progress because it has unreasonably fast execution requirements.