Recent reviews by Zalno

Full Disclosure: I backed the game on Kickstarter at one of the higher tiers. Take what I have to say for what it's worth.

TL;DR Version: The gameplay is fun and solidly designed, but the overall experience is brought down by a lack of stuff at launch compared to the previous game and a predatory monetization system.

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Let's get the good out of the way first. The game looks great. The transition from pixel 2D to 3D was handled pretty well. All the character models and stages are in a cel-shaded art style, which I personally love. The music is excellent as always and now there's more than one track per stage. And every character is now voice-acted, which adds a lot. They got the new voice of Mario to play Forsburn!

If you're a Steam Deck user, I'm happy to say that it runs pretty well on it out of the box. So if you want to play this game anywhere in the house or if you want to hook it up to the TV via dock and play it on your big screen, you're good.

The gameplay itself is your standard Smash Bros.-esque platform fighter fare. Up to four players duke it out on a stage and try to knock each other off. The new additions for this game include grabbing, shielding, and ledge mechanics as well as getting back off the ground and recovering from a ledge. There are no super or assist modes, but I didn't feel like that hampered my enjoyment of the gameplay. I'm not a competitive player, so I couldn't tell you all the other various character tweaks compared to the last game.

Because there are no items in this game, each character is designed around a specific element that infuses their special attacks. Some attacks will have effects on either your opponent or the stage itself. This gives each character a greater sense of depth in how you play them since each character essentially has their own sub-objective to reach their win condition.

As far as single player modes go, all we have right now is the arcade mode instead of a story mode. It's your standard Classic Mode from Smash Bros, a succession of 1v1 fights against various characters broken up by bouts of 10-man brawls and a break-the-targets mode. The fights themselves are decent enough, but beating story mode is underwhelming. You fight a re-skin of another fighter with some armor and get a 2D splash screen, some XP and coins. At least Rivals 1 had you fighting against a Master/Crazy Hand equivalent. Also, you can't play the break-the-targets mode separately. I would've liked a way to practice those modes to get higher scores later, or at the very least have something else to do.

Quite a few gameplay modes and features are missing from Rivals 1. In addition to the lack of a story mode, there's no proper tutorial mode or abyss mode, which served as a roguelite-esque gauntlet. Stage hazards are also gone, but I never cared that much about them in RoA 1 to begin with, so it's kind of whatever. There's no option for making your own custom color schemes like in the previous game, either. It's a decision I suspect was made partially to maximize profit from all the microtransactions the game has.

The devs decided to make all characters, stages and gameplay modes free throughout the game's development, which was a huge red flag when I first heard about it. My fears were proven correct when I saw the in-game store, because it's microtransaction bullcrap all the way down. Every cosmetic item in the store can be obtained with Aetherbucks, which is their premium currency. They are divided into rarities (ew) with the most expensive skins going as much as $15, which is pretty steep. I just bought Webfishing on Steam last week for a third of that price. You also need to be logged into your Aether account if you want access to those cosmetics. So if, for example, you want to play Rivals of Aether II on your Steam Deck while on a train somewhere and you want to use that fancy Lovers of Aether Zetterburn skin you just bought, you get to eat ♥♥♥♥. This is the kind of crap I'd expect to see in a freemium game, not something that costs $30 up front.

You can obtain several cosmetic items using Aethercoins, which you get at the end of every match. The rate you gain XP and coins is pretty slow, though. It's not clear what influences how much you get, but it seems to be based on either match time or activity. After doing various testing, it seems the cap is 200 XP and 100 coins per match. I got that by playing against three bots in a FFA match with 5 lives and no time limit. It takes 1000 XP to level up. This is a problem when even the cheapest items you can get in the store cost 2000 coins. It's not immediately clear what the rate at getting coins in a match is. There is a coin booster you can get as part of a $20 starter bundle, which feels like the developers are selling you a solution to a problem they created, which feels very slimey.

The game has a problem explaining things in general. There's no preview for the each character's level progression; no idea what you're unlocking beyond your next goal and no idea how many levels you can get to. That's kind of important for a battle pass to have. You can obtain taunts, but the game never makes it clear how to equip them. Without a training or a tutorial mode, the only thing people have to learn how to play as any character are slides and YouTube videos.

It's possible all my issues will be addressed later down the line. The developers are receptive to feedback and have promised a number of features coming to the game over the next year or so as part of their roadmap, including custom colors, buddies, and the much touted story mode. But I'm not reviewing a game based on what it might become. I'm reviewing it based on what it is. And what it is right now is undercooked and needlessly predatory. If you really want to play a good platform fighting game on PC, I'd recommend the first Rivals of Aether over this.

This game takes the fishing minigame from Animal Crossing and makes it actually fun. And it gives you a dedicated meow/bark button. Definitely worth the $5 and easily deserving of the Sit Back and Relax Steam Award for 2024. The only drawback is that the keyboard heavy nature of the game makes it difficult to play on the Steam Deck. But if you can look past that, you'll have one of the most relaxing games of the year.

Easily the best Tetris games ever made. If you enjoyed Rez at all or if you enjoy beautiful audio/visual experiences in puzzle games, please give it a go. You won't regret it.

This installment is made mostly for fans of the previous games. While the gameplay feels a lot more fun, the story definitely takes a nosedive as it tries to resolve all the lingering plot threads from the previous decade of spin-offs and mobile games that came after Kingdom Hearts II. The gameplay's also noticeably easier thanks to all the extra abilities and attacks you can do, but you can use the PRO codes to turn them off and give yourself a more challenging experience. The levels are also much shorter compared to earlier games. And the less said about the Frozen level the better.

As far as PC ports go, it's fine. Runs at 60 FPS most of the time and doesn't have any horrible DRM, so I can't complain. Plus you can mod it like crazy, so whatever.

It's definitely a fun time, but I'd recommend getting this either at a discount or as part of a larger bundle.

Do I even need to explain this one? It's all the Marvel vs Capcom games plus The Punisher. Just buy it already. You know how licensed games work. We don't know how long it'll be available before it gets yoinked again.

I was going to wait until Denuvo was removed from the game before buying it, but since Microsoft shut down the studio behind it I might as well give it my support and say something about it. Maybe that's on me for waiting this long, but this closure proves that it doesn't matter how successful you are. Nothing can save you from big publishers shutting you down on a whim. And I fear that the likes of inExile, Obsidian, Double Fine, and many more are next.

If you enjoy spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, you will enjoy this game. It's a spectacle fighter that incorporates rhythm action in every aspect of the game, all to the beat of one of the best gaming soundtracks from 2023. Hi-Fi Rush wasn't just the best game Tango Gameworks ever made, but it was the best game from both Bethesda and Microsoft in years. And their efforts were rewarded with a studio closure.

The least that Microsoft and Bethesda can do is remove that Denuvo malware from this game so that people can enjoy the game long after both of them inevitably collapse under their own weight.

I originally thought the game was over-hyped. Then my brother bullied me into playing it.

Hate to admit it, but he was right. This game's good.

If you enjoy Balatro, you'll enjoy this one. It's a roguelite deckbuilder where you collect icons for a slot machine to earn as much money as you can before you have to pay rent. It's a fairly simple game, but it's fun. Great for a quick pick-up-and-play session.

If you are interested in picking up a Digimon RPG, this is the one to get right now. It's not perfect, though. This is one of those RPGs where you'll need a wakthrough open in another tab to make sure you don't miss anything. Also, the sidequests get very repetitive very fast. But the turn-based combat is decent enough and the plot is enjoyable so if you're willing to put up with 2000s era RPG issues, you'll have a fun time. Works perfectly on the Steam Deck, too.

It occurs to me after having played this game for over 1300 hours, I should probably write a review of this.

At its core, VRChat is a social game. You log into the game, load up a world with other players. But thanks to the tools available in the VRChat SDKs for Unity, it's one of the most versatile games I've seen to date. There are homes to relax in, night club worlds for DJ sets, game map recreations, recreations of real world locations, museums for all sorts of things, arcade maps with fully functional arcade machines inside VRChat, tower defense worlds, laser tag worlds, rhythm music game worlds, multiplayer shooter worlds, driving simulators, party games, game show worlds, theater worlds for watching videos with friends, worlds dedicated to immersive story telling, and so much more. All of these can be experienced with your friends. Some of these worlds can get very, very complex thanks to the Udon, VRChat's in-house coding engine. And that's not even getting into all the stuff you can do with avatar creation. And you can experience all of this without ever once having to spend a dime.

Fair warning, you will want to get a VR headset and full-body tracking to get the most out of it. That being said, you can still absolutely play the game in desktop mode. Recent updates also provided an option for people without mics to use text chat via keyboard.

This is, without question, one of my favorite gaming experiences in the past few years.