Recent reviews by YellowCellPhone

Great game, comedic timing like nothing else, great longevity especially with friends, yada yada. I am here to warn you that you are going to die randomly in this game, it won't be your fault, and you need to be able to shrug it off or otherwise this game is going to be unplayable.

Your friend will bait a slime to the door, will enrage a Braken that randomly decides to rip your face off, will catch a nutcracker shotgun blast while you're inconveniently standing behind them, will talk in front of those dogs. Oh, but there's so many ways to die that's literally just how the game is designed. The ship can land on a beehive, you land on an eclipsed moon and immediately get set upon by a forest keeper, you can stand in front of a vent as an instakill enemy like a Braken spawns, mines can spawn directly in the main exit doorways and turrets can spawn pointing at the door. Random lightning strikes on stormy days can just smite you off the face of the earth, and I had a day where me and another guy died to the same random lightning strike within the first 15 seconds of spawning when neither of us held any items, let alone conductive items. Not to mention unwinnable situations where extremely restrictive enemies like Coilheads and Jesters spawn almost immediately, turrets physically obstructing the only doorway forward, and the fun twins of dogs + giants and Brakens + Coilheads that mean you're playing so cautiously you're getting maybe 1 round trip out of the whole day. I could never imagine playing this game solo, where runs lasting hours can be wiped out by tiny mistakes or no fault of your own, and Zeekerss added an enemy that punishes you for not having a buddy close by.

It's a fun game, but it's jank, and mean, and it really feels like the meanness is baked into its DNA. Play in friendly groups and let the rage pass quickly, or else this will nooooot be fun anymore. It sucks to be caught in the death loop of early and unproductive deaths, because it's unfun and dragging your crew down.

In the space of about 5 seconds, I slid into an enemy, yoinked him as a hostage midair, decapitated his friend with a pointblank shotgun blast, then planted a grenade on him and tossed him into 3 more soldiers for a quad kill.

Overall: Worth it for Quiplash 3 alone, but Quiplash 3 definitely isn't perfect and the other games are still worth a look at

Quiplash 3: Amazing. So many laughs, each game is the perfect length, and a fair-ish scoring system for a Jackbox game, My only complaint is that the final round always being Thriplash is SO UNBELIEVABLY BAD, especially because the final rounds of Jackbox 2 like Acrolash, Wordlash, and especially Comiclash were some of the best parts. Thriplash has soured so many games because someone will sweep the leaderboard with "♥♥♥♥ piss ♥♥♥", or will sweep because nobody voted for "♥♥♥♥ piss ♥♥♥", and if nobody put The Three Dreaded Words then everyone will say "my Thriplash sucked and I lose off of this." No one likes Thriplash, no one likes the profanity-free version, and I hate Smitty's smug voice.

The Devil and the Details: Pass. No one quite knows how this plays and nobody was ever a fan. Game is a mess.

Champ'd Up: Decent. Given how specific the premises are, rarely did someone's "response" drawing (where you can't see the prompt) ever beat the original drawing. People had fun drawing stupid things to dumb titles, and every once in a while you'd get a drawing that really went above and beyond, but like... not really? TKO is better in my opinion, but I like this one.

Talking Points: Pass? Completely dependent on how creative your friend's group is, because nothing is lamer than someone saying someone stuttering their way through, or just staying dead quiet. Definitely a game we had to "warm up" to before playing, and after warming up we'd just play another game. Really depends on if you have friends that can do a lot with a little and can talk for minutes on end, and like... most people don't think that's very fun, and if you do then not everyone in the party does too. Also, the scoring system is completely arbitrary, each presentation taking several minutes can mean this game can drag on with a full party of 8, and the real winner is whoever gets the most laughs.

Blather 'Round: Decent. Basically 20 questions, but as a group. I thought it was lame, but some of my friends legitimately enjoy it and want to play it every time we open Jackbox. Also caps out at 6 players, which is super lame given how simple the game is.

Overall concensus: Probably one of the better packs. Cap was raised to 10 players, 2 of the games are BANGERS, 2 are playable, only 1 is completely godawful

Drawful Animate: Pass, just play another Drawful if you have it. Rarely, if ever, does a 2 frame animation allow more expression than just a single image. Call us a bunch of uncreative idiots, but no one ever did anything animated and just redrew the first frame again, making it double the effort (and time) for every round with no payoff. And Drawful still has really basic drawing controls compared to other drawing games from previous packs like Champ'd Up and TKO.

Wheel of Enormous Proportions: Pass. Slightly more trivia and significantly less getting uncontrollably screwed over compared to Murder Trivia Party, but that's not saying much. Yet I would still rather play Trivia Murder Party, because the trivia in Wheel is mostly selecting the answers from lists ("select every member of Monty Python" or "every form of poetry"), and lists are pretty lame because barely will you know every answer and are barely penalized for getting wrong answers. Plus the minigames in Murder Party are a lot more engaging, quick, and have a chance for frantic collaborating with your group, while Wheel is just... spinning a completely random wheel with no input from the audience, so sometimes Wheel can feel *more* random and inconsequential than Murder Party.

Weapons Drawn: PASS. For one, it's just so LONG, I think the only game we played took a half hour, while most other games in this pack don't pass the ten minute mark per game. Well, it felt like a half hour to us. So it's an extra long commitment, and... well, the concept isn't bad, but it's just so easy to cheese. People can choose to ignore the drawing prompt and hide their clue in a sea of scribbles, and there's no actual way to punish them, and in fact they get rewarded for this because you can't deduce who made the drawing. And even if you have a group of friends who decide to follow the prompts and not be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the point system is really scattered, and nobody was ever certain they were winning or in dead last until the very end of the game. It's a social deduction game where it's too easy to not follow the rules and win, and a win felt random and undeserved. Also the drawing system is still extremely limited, and the magnifying glass during the investigation phase controls like the X button in a popup advertisement. Horrendous.

Job Job: A must have. Every game has been a riot, and the prompts are all solid with no "how the hell am I supposed to answer this?" questions like in Quiplash. Probably a top 5 Jackbox game for everyone I've played it with, maybe even our #1.

Poll Mine: Ranges from the most fun you'll have, to mid at best. Some polls I swear we were seconds away from drawing blood and spent the entire debate time shouting, because a team member chaotically admits to putting a stupid answer as the #1 on their poll, completely throwing out the presumed ranking and potentially spiraling your team out of control. A fantastic time. Other times the prompt is just so awful you are unenthusiastically forced to guess your way out, which leads to a lot of wrong answers and a lot of "sure, I don't really care, we all just put random stuff down so who would have guessed?" from the whole group. And I swear, every time I have introduced a new person to this game, one of the prompts is something like "Rank all players in this current game on who is most likely to ______" which is just awkward because they're excluded from inside jokes and never picked. The bad games are bad, but the good games are SO GOOD. If this game had a way to select what prompts are played each round, this game would be #1 GOAT Jackbox game. And having players voting for the top option isn't even a wild suggestion, THE WHOLE GAME IS ABOUT CHOOSING YOUR TOP OPTION FROM A LIST.

First and foremost: it's pretty decent, $10, under 10GB, and you can play the entire campaign in coop.

I've played this game through at least 3 times in the last few years and it's... decent. The shooting is functional, the customization is excellent, the driving is passable, the on-foot gameplay is honestly kind of bad (not SR2 bad though), the sandbox environment is below average, graphics are fugly, coop works (unlike SR2), the missions have enough variety to keep you entertained, the comedy has aged surprisingly well, the story is ridiculous but features some truly likable characters. A better than the sum of its parts game for sure.

Huge, inexcusable complaint: There's a section around the second act of the story where the game halts all story missions and forces you to play and beat the first level of every minigame diversion. Some of them, like Tank Mayhem or Professor Genki, are fairly fun and I don't really mind them. Others like Insurance Fraud and that one where you have to drive at a reasonable speed and not crash into things are absolutely dreadful. There is a solid hour or two of driving to these mediocre and unchallenging minigames, completing them, and getting jackall for rewards like the rest of the game. Completely kills the momentum of the story and has definitely stopped me from replaying this game a couple of times.

Also, it should be mentioned this game is straight up not difficult, even on the hardest difficulty. If you can maybe put your crosshairs somewhat close to baddies and know to jump out of cars after they burst into flames, you'll probably only be losing to arbitrary mission fail states, like leaving a mission area or taking too long to do an objective. This is a power fantasy more than anything.

Very similar to Doom 2016 and Eternal, but the gameplay is even more hectic because you have infinite ammo and more movement options, but get minced by every attack regardless of difficulty and restoring health requires playing riskier.

If you thought Doom could have been improved by walljumps, no ammo management, a ground pound, literally slapping projectiles out of the air back at enemies, and even sicker boss fights, have I got a game for you.

They knew what the userbase wanted with those hype trailers, and they released this mess instead. The most lackluster BF game I've played as far as map selection, graphics, optimization, and moment-to-moment gameplay. Not even taking into account the overwhelmingly awful decision to get rid of classes, split the game into 3 different modes (one of which is basically dead on arrival), have insultingly poor weapons and customization options on release, gut destructible environments, the potential to nickel and dime you with live services, remove singleplayer anyway, then have the gall to charge up to $110 (before more season packs are introduced).

I refunded it as soon as I could. I have over 700 hours in BF3+4 and I couldn't stand playing this for more than 1 round. It's completely unsalvageable, the problems are too numerous and amateur that any attempt to redeem 2042 will be too little too late. Stay away.

And for people who actually enjoy 2042: enjoy it while you can. 2042's playercount and retention is so abysmal that short of a miracle, EA is almost definitely going to shut down active development before the end of Q4 2022. Rest in peace DICE and RIP in pepperinos Battlefield, I don't see you being spared the ax of EA, and maybe it was time you were taken out of misery anyway.

I like it but I have a lot of problems.

THE BAD

-The gameplay is plain at best. This feels like an alpha build of the horde fighter instead of the finished product. No parry or block system is criminal, because it turns the game into constantly battering a crowd or miniboss with a power attack then dashing backwards out of their attacks. Spells have so little feedback when connecting I can't tell if they're dealing damage or just completely whiffing. Enemies have very little variety in defeating them except whacking them until they die, or whacking them into environmental hazards. Hitting enemies on the floor is hard.
-Most levels are a literal handful of plain arenas that are connected by paths with environmental hazards. Like Doom 2016 and Eternal, just if each level was super tiny, and because there's no pickups and low mobility have no soul.
-The animation needs work, particularly in combat. Finishers only exist for standing enemies and are plain unsatisfying. Climbing animations are eh. I'm not expecting an indie company to make AAA Doom levels of gruesome, but... I really wish they had AAA Doom levels of gruesome.
-The gore needs to be toned way up. I think Killing Floor 1, a game made on an older version of Unreal over 12 years ago, is a far gorier game. This is a game set in a hardcore depiction of Hell but enemies might only lose a limb when dying. I want them to be cut in two when I scythe them, I want to be able to tell which organ explodes out of their bodies when I hammer them, at least let me decapitate them if I swing my sword at neck height.
-Customization is tied to weapons and armor that can't be modified.
-Writing and voice acting is... well, it's not going to win any awards. It's a standard revenge story set after a certain ending to a game that not a lot of people played. It's enough to get you to the next cutscene or story moment, but I'll be shocked if anyone can recall any details after closing the game, or get the context of certain interactions. Special comment goes to Vydija's voice actor, who sounds like she smokes an entire pack of Marlboros between each line. Still don't know if I like or hate that, but it's a style I guess.

THE GOOD

-The art style goes ham and I love it. Unabashed depictions of torture, dehumanization, and extreme violence in any scene. Sky boxes are deeply detailed and you can't take a screenshot that isn't covered in naked people, vaginal architecture, or skulls. The craziness of the art style is the main reason I won't refund this game, because I want game developers to know there are people who want to buy something like this.
-Gameplay, while not revolutionary and missing key features, is solid and satisfying enough.
-So far the developers have promised several free updates that aren't just bug fixes.
-Let's be honest here, it's not that expensive.

It's fun but the TTK is wonky. On one hand, you need a low TTK because every fight can be instantly avoided by portaling away and closing the portals behind you and regenerating health, so you need to be able to quickly kill someone before they ♥♥♥♥♥ out. On the other hand, it's a high octane movement shooter, where your enemy can reliably teleport behind you (nothing personnel, kid) and drop you before you have a chance to turn around.

The low TTK means the most effective way to play is portal peeking and minimizing aggressive play. You can only see through your own portals, so if an enemy portal is up you don't know if someone is staring though it, and if you get shot you can only blindfire back, destroy the portal, or wimp out -- all assuming your opponent doesn't kill you instantly. This is not helped by your spawn gun basically being the Halo 2 Battle Rifle, a jack of all trades precision gun with generous magazine size, no recoil, and good fire rate. You have a jetpack and a sprint, but if you aren't traversing a map almost entirely on portaling then you're just opening yourself to get whacked by someone portaling behind you, or picking you off from a portal vantage point you can't retaliate against.

The movement and shooting is very solid, I just wish I didn't have to play around portaling. Wishing for a Splitgate gamemode without portals might be like wishing for a Titanfall gamemode without Titans, but both of them have rock solid shooting mechanics that are suffocated by their gimmick.

A cool extension to Doom Eternal, starts right where the main campaign ends, but definitely not a flawless one. It gives you a maxed out Slayer (all runes, all weapons minus the Crucible, upgrade mastery, and sentinel coins) and bunch of arenas to kill new and old enemies.

This game's difficulty is 100% on the supremely difficult side -- some of the fights and Slayer Gates on Ultra Nightmare are absolutely ridiculous and the final gate in particular took me no joke at least 50 attempts. The double marauder part takes place in the end of the first level and I thought it was a lot more relaxed than later encounters. Spirits suck major ass, as everyone says, because they turn enemies into massive ♥♥♥♥♥ up bulletsponges who are immune to staggering and weak point attacks, and when exposed are only vulnerable to one weapon attachment (better hope you have ~80 cells spare to kill one and have that attachment equipped, or else it's going to turn something worse into Kenyan murder machine mode :DDDDDDDD). But my main thorn in this are those stupid Blood Makyrs, because what I was begging Doom for was another invulnerable enemy who can instantly throw out close and long-range attacks while staying in an invulnerable state, and if the wind decides it they can just... stay invulnerable and keep throwing those attacks out. Oh boy, and one of those attacks they go vulnerable for is a rapid fire, multishot, tank sized projectile that does massive damage and slows you down to a crawl so if you survive it you're just going to get ganked by something else you literally can't move away from? Better hope you didn't drag your crosshair off them for a second to shoot the 2 Dread Knights and dodge one of their attacks, because Blood Makyrs are vulnerable for less than 5 seconds at a time and throw out vision-obstructing projectiles (on top of their normal vision-obscuring glow) and need to be headshot to kill.

The levels look fine but the second one (Blood Swamps) plays poorly. There's two sections where you have to stay in a really tiny safezone (like you can't dash more than once tiny) or else you take constant environmental damage. Did not enjoy when they make you fight a marauder while a turret shoots at you in one of those. Also several fights where they just outright obscure enemies in thick fog or make them invisible like Spectres, because what I enjoy in my Doom games is being blind and randomly spraying into the void until I find something to shoot.

The DLC is on the shorter side, only 3 levels, and I'm assuming if you aren't a rat like me who plays Ultra Nightmare and gets stuck on certain fights, it'll probably last you 4 hours casually.