Recent reviews by wooothebadman

While this is indeed a lazy "bad controls" game where the player fights the physics engine, there are actually objectives and arguably some design in play. You can do well, you can complete the game. You can also use an axe to perform brain surgery.

Good for a little chuckle as being a terrible surgeon and a world that does a good job highlighting this concept (you can earn a diploma with the main character's name taped over it) but also possible to get slightly invested.

Note: some players find this game highly frustrating. I'm no stranger to getting upset at a "STUPID F***ING GAME" but that didn't happen here for some reason. Perhaps because it doesn't have online multiplayer lag.

The thing is, I screw around like this at some point in most games. Having an actual game that has some kind of effort put into it makes it more fun. THIS is exactly as lazy as the dev's advertise:

1. You are a goat.
2. There is a physics engine.

That's just not enough for me to play around with, frankly. I got this game for $2, and that still feels kinda pricey.

When you hear people on Steam lament about "another RPG Maker game," it's because of stuff like this.

The writing isn't bad, no. It isn't even worth referring to as "writing." This may have been made by some youngsters or something because this reminds me of the kind of thing I wrote with my buddies back in middle school because of the absurd lack of depth to anything and childish dialogue. EX: Main character walks into a monastery and comments, "This monastery is s**t!" or some such. He just uses profanity and yells at things I ASSUME so that he sounds like some kind of cool dude with a 'tude or something? That's half the time. The other half he's just blandly helpful. He loves his girlfriend (or I guess you could choose to not tell your girlfriend you love her?). He's mostly helpful, but he complains a lot. Which is probably supposed to be some kind of parody of RPG tropes and their bland fetch quests and such. Maybe he's supposed to be bipolar? Regardless, there are a ton of easily avoided spelling and grammar mistakes (EX: use of the word "abandonned").

I'm not just ragging on these guys for choice of words and typo's, though. Oh, no. The story itself reads like a kid wrote it. Seriously, it's like Axe Cop only not hilarious or creative. For example, at some point you enter a village and are asked to go to a cave to stop... bandits or something (?) from attacking said village. A mercenary guy joins your party to help you as he is emotionally invested in helping this village, I think. In the cave you fight some kind of ghostly knights and an ogre. Then you stumble upon a time travel amulet for no reason. The main character goes "Sweet!" and finds out how to go back in time. The whole reason you came to that cave (remember the village being attacked?) was completely forgotten the moment you stepped into that cave and the warrior who joined you silently sticks with you for the rest of the adventure, given no characterization or lines of dialogue again (save for maybe pointing out the amulet is a time travel amulet). Later on, after you're done using the time travel amulet, a pop-up tells you the amulet is now broken. I can only assume this was some kind of afterthought when someone asked, "Why don't they just travel back in time again?" Maybe it only held enough magic for one use, but where does this place you in time? And why was the demon you were chasing exist in the same time line? It seems like when it broke you went back to the future and yet he's there with you. What kind of sloppy nonsense is this!

The whole game is like this. The first town has you start in a prison that you break out of. But then it's said the prison guards somehow hold the town hostage. So, doesn't that make them warlords or something? Not just "prison guards?" Why do they bother running a prison? Did they turn the castle into a prison? And they all live there? What?

How about the combat? Well, it's overly basic. I guess some people think this is par for the course for RPG Maker games or JRPG's, but I think it's plain lazy. Sometimes you have to heal or manage your mana, so I guess that's something. But there's so little strategy and so much overlap between the classes.

If there's one consolation it's the music. Sweet Christmas, this person poured his/her heart into it. I mean, it's not that it's outstanding. You know? Like I'm not rushing to get the MP3's onto my iPod or anything. But there's actual composition, effort, know-how, and emotion in it. There's even a live (I think) guitar in there! I'm a sucker for metal, true, but those boss fights were intense ONLY because of this chugging distortion and orchestral synth-work. Composer, please, whoever you are, ditch these guys. You actually have some amount of talent and skill! These guys can't even piece together any kind of semblance of a game.

Some kind of Steam bug caused my hours played to not log when I first played through this game. It's about 7-10 hours long, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, I think it's worth noting right up front that this is- essentially- a POINT AND CLICK ADVENTURE game (although you technically do not point and click the mouse, it definitely FEELS like that's the genre). From looking at it, I don't think that's apparent. I certainly didn't. I got it because I didn't know it was. I generally dislike those kinds of games. And yet I ended up rather enjoying this one.

Why? Because it doesn't rely on bad humor and pop culture references; it tries to take itself seriously and be original. Although there are humorous moments. They come from character interaction rather than forced silliness. Also, I'm a sucker for stories with zero interaction from human characters. The story is a bunch of AI's arguing with each other, all trapped in their different kinds of programming. It's great.

The gunplay is passable. I don't think it's meant to be a draw, though. It's just there to add gameplay variety and instill tension via the knowledge that you can be shot and killed.

There's also MOSTLY a lack of those infamous way-too-obtuse "puzzles" you find in point and click games. There is still one of those instances in this game (the "crying baby" puzzle), but I find a proper game makes you use your brain to solve its problems rather than just "click everything" or "drag everything onto everything."

Interesting puzzles, good premise. Gets the job done.

Just wish the story wasn't so obtuse. Pretty good chance for a sci-fi story (contemplating the idea of cloning and possible existence of souls and such) but goes about it in a disjointed, try-hard way.

I was actually pretty surprised by how bad this is. 9 hours in and I feel lost. Not that the game is all about exploration like some kind of Skyrim, but rather that I'm just doing repeatable objectives while jumping and shooting the same bug enemies. I have no sense of progression in my character's abilities or the story. Easily worse than, say, Destiny (which is a big disappointment) because it doesn't have a solid foundation of good shooter fundamentals.

Finally a game that rewards my "OCD" habit of destroying all destructible objects!

But to be more specific, this game is basically GTA except that it's actually fun and is aware of just how stupid it is via Robocop-like meta satire... although it might be unintentional and the regular kind of stupid, I'm still unsure.

It does require you to make your own fun to a certain extent, though. I've seen people play it who didn't quite get how wacky things can get with Rico's magical grappling hook so they ended up not "getting" it. But if you're the type of person who ties a statue's head to your car, drives off to remove the head, then does donuts so that the still attached head whacks people like a flail? You can probably have a good time.

This game is too shallow and simplistic at times. Like, I am learned in the history of gaming to a certain extent, so it's fun to use this knowledge. But I really would like to turn on some kind of randomization (like maybe the Dreamcast could be a hit in an alternate universe!) on replays for starters. Some stuff is probably flushed out in the modding community, but I don't have time to dig through all that to get the game I want.

I also wish there were more opportunities to be creative: write taglines, interview answers, game descriptions, reply to fans... stuff like that. Even though it's impossible for a sim game to "score" stuff like that, I always like when sim games have this kind of creative input allowed.

Still, I played through this game like three times (and I don't replay games any more) so it's pretty doggone fun.

Solid game design fundamentals that remains intriguing and unique in each puzzle. Just a warning, though: this game is the epitome of the pretentious indie game. I simply ignored the nonsensical rambling of the "story" (which- despite attempts at ultra-high brow art- oddly features a low brow Mario reference) and had a great time.

Falls short in too many areas. Just going to echo the major points, though:

1. Combat is too simplistic. Just spam your high damage ability and grind. Nevermind any kind of "balance" concerns, it never even attempts any kind of depth by giving things like ability/class variety, itemization, consumable management... nothing!
2. Writing is too awkward. I can forgive the above point and a weak story/premise if the writing is good (especially since this is an RPG where the focus is on writing).
3. I did complete the game. The "hours played" is a little long because I left the game on for an hour or so while I did other stuff. I don't think the game is too short. If anything it's too long. I say this because this game IMMEDIATELY throws you into grinding. And there's plenty more grinding to be had throughout. On top of that, you revisit the same areas all the time! Basically this is a ~2 hour game stretched into 7 or so. And you can't avoid at least doing some grinding. I was about level 37 on the last boss and he presented the only challenge of the game. If I was... I dunno, level 25 or something I don't think he would be beatable.

More on the writing-
The major problems come from two sources: everything is too direct and on the nose (Main character is told to kill, he states that he refuses to kill. Every person has to explain everything like how the government is fascist and fascism is bad. People outright point out their own biases and then say, "But you're not like that" within one second of meeting someone, etc etc) and the dialogue itself is awkwardly phrased. It sounds like it's written by someone with a passion for writing, but their first language isn't English? Like if you were to meet this writer in person you'd be impressed and say, "Wow, your English is great!" but it's not up to snuff when it comes to dialogue in a written story. The phrasing is always SLIGHTLY off. On top of that, it neither attempts to be natural or what I call "movie dialogue" (where each line is meant to both move the plot forward AND demonstrate a [thin] personality within 5 or so words).
So- to put it more simply- it's kind of a pain to read.