Recent reviews by Kein Zantezuken

After my Steam stats clocked around 52 hours straight for Talos Principle, I finally can write my own mini-review.

First and the foremost - this game is absolutely fantastic. Year 2014 wasn't really rich for good puzzle games and Talos Principle was definitely a lovely addition to the end of spoken year and, I believe, definitely the best puzzle game of it.

Now, the comparisons with Portal 1-2 is pretty much inevitable a t this point. And while most of the reviewers and people tend to draw direct parallels up to the point saying "it is a good Portal clone" - I have to strongly disagree.
Good? Oh yes, indeed.
Clone? Not so much.

And it is not just about the usual argument "well, duh, first person puzzle is not an exclusive genre introduced by Portal" but more about the fact that Talos Principle feels rather unique and genuine. Essentially, the game uses the same tools and instruments to represent slightly familiar gameplay, but it resolves around original core concept so it feels fresh. And that comes from a guy who quite a sucker for puzzle games.

The story aspect of the game is somewhat original in its position as well. Videogames tend to explore mostly technical aspect of Artificial Intelligence and consciousness (System Shock, Deus Ex, etc), but deeply philosophical? Not very often. Game's lore masterfully blends existing work on the subject with a fiction that does not deviate so much from its base material.

Visual and technical sides of the game is a quite nice showcase of something I can call Serious Sam 3.5 engine. It is pretty. It is lovely. It is fast and customizable. The engine is very scalable, supports a lot of API natively and someone even managed to run and play the game on old IGPU with 32Mb VRAM,

All that being said, most of the criticism Talos Principle receives for its price. And while I do agree with some of the arguments on the topic - I do not regret my purchase in the slightest. More than that, since it is all goes to SS4 budget as well... yeah, win-win to me.

Long story short: do you love Portal 1-2? Did you have fun with Antichamber? Do you like good puzzle games in general? Get this one ,end of story.

No forums available so I'm leaving feedback for devs here:

Played all three stages of the demo and despite the fact it is indeed very rough demo it was pretty fun. Lovely visual and art style accompanied by as much lovely voiceover and music (which really gave me some Medievil vibes) speaks of the possible quality of the game well.

The gameplay was obviously lacking, since it was just an alpha demo. Battlesystem felt a bit stiff and limited, you only have 2 basic attacks that you can't vary and combine in any way (a-la God of War) i.e. few light strikes followed then bt the finishing heavy attack as a combo (technically you can do that and only in actual battle, but charged attack has no AoE and rather pointless and weak). Neither you can perform "situative' attacks like drop-down attack from above/air. Performing any attack in the air will also result in instant movement lock (of there will be high-flying enemies it will torture), which is a good stopper but not needed with such precise controls. Character can sneak but I'm not sure why would you need that for now, you can't perform stealth kills either so I'm assuming game will have straightforward-arcadish gameplay in general (which is not a bad thing). The battle flow is also very hard to grasp or feel due to simplistic and very "synthetic" animations, your character feels like an oval doll running around and swinging things and enemies respond exactly the same.

Other than that, controls feel good and responsive. Due to fixed 2.5D-to-3D nature of the camera (which you can rotate btw) you have hard time keeping up with character position and thus it leads to a lot of sudden deaths out of nowhere. It is not really frustrating due to checkpoint system and global progress-saving (what is collected stays collected except temporal power-ups), but I think level designers will have more work on this field, putting invisible walls and limits in some places (who would think, sometimes you need these invisible walls) to reduce such issues.

Overall it looks really promising. I don't feel like the story will be anything special so I hope developers will put more emphasize on atmosphere and gameplay (battlesystem and exploration in case with the second).

There are box-moving puzzles out there and then there is FullBore...

I hope I won't sound very biased saying that FullBore stands a bit aside from most of such games. Granted, it did not invent absolute novelty in the old genre. Instead, it used a different approach to it. There is a quote floating out there, "metroidvania with boars". I guess you can say so, because FB features a lot of exploration aspects and freedom of movement. And more than that, a lot of puzzles with less platforming. You aren't forced to solve them (many of them are optional), but the way these placed and designed - simply attracts you like a butterfly to the light. What could be hard in simple box moving and dirt digging..?

Don't even get me started on puzzles, these are simply fantastic. They make so much sense that by the end of figuring out another one you will feel like a pure genius. They deliver insane amount of feel of accomplishment. Soon you will realize it is not about the gem or a secret you want to get or discover, it is about solving the damn puzzle that taunts you. And the most interesting part is that none of the puzzles require from you any special ability or an item - it is all knowledge and experience. The way blocks and boxes work or interact with each other and your understanding of this mechanism is the key to solve all the puzzles.

But hey, a fun gameplay is not the only thing FullBore can be proud of. Quite lovely and pretty 2D graphics with awesome lighting and "fake" 3D effect will catch your attention at once. They fit the game surprisingly well, just like an amazing soundtrack by "The Adjective Plural Noun". But this is something you'd better to experience yourself, rather then read about in in a sloppy review.

Long story short - FullBore was quite pleasant surprise of 2013 for me (The First Dig, part 1 of the game, was released earlier; Steam version features full game). It came out of nowhere and since then I fell in love with it. Really, how could you not love these adorable little boars?


You won't get bored with Full Bore.

Valdis Story is one of these rare metroidvania-alike games that incorporates almost every attribute of a proper metroidvania-game. Decent story? Well-developed and complex battle system? RPG elements? Exploration aspects and secrets? Beautiful 2D visuals and animations? All check.

It took almost 7 years for the game to crawl out of the concept cradle but it sure worth it. And the result? Unique combination of old-school gameplay core ideas with a modern approach.

Personal score; 8.5/10

Cute, adorable and sometimes quite challenging game (which makes it so fun)..