Recent reviews by Good Guy

Just a mess of an unbalanced game, with one of the most painful grinds I've seen, and a community which can get fairly toxic (although that's not everyone, and there's a good side to it). I regret most of my time playing this title, and I only play now when I have friends who want to watch me play killer, or play survivor with me.

At its best this game can be a fun, challenging fight between a skilled team of survivors and an adept killer. Usually though, it's either you get slammed, or slam the other side. Or encounter cheaters - and not even ones who use cheating to win, just ones that use it to ruin the game. Or you get toxic feedback in the endgame chat.

Sadly, there are next to no competitors for what Dead by Daylight offers, so if you want an asymmetric horror game, this is the only one with staying power.

Celeste is generally a fairly fun game, with some rough edges and a touching story to back it up. If you've seen the trailer, you know exactly what you're getting into, a very challenging 2D platformer with its own nice art style. The highlights are the moments where the way forward is well telegraphed, and the only thing stopping you is your own ability to push on. These highlights are separated by three things: Story, Pain, and More Pain. The story is fairly straight forward, and I won't spoil anything (I'm technically not done-done, but I know how it goes) - however it's one of the few times in a game where I could relate to the character on a deeply personal level and reflect on moments in my life that were just like theirs (minus the magic). It made me realize that I had played the part of everyone there, except the granny, and that lent the game a great deal of groundedness that you just don't see that often! The Music intertwines with this seamlessly, and playing this during a rough moment in my life is exactly what I needed.

The Pain and More Pain, though, should be mentioned. I played this with a Retroflag SNES controller, which I have used to comfortably beat games like Cuphead, Sonic Mania, Shovel Knight, Spelunky, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and so on. It's a solid buy on its own, but it felt grossly inadequate here. I don't think this game works best with a D-Pad, and when I moved to using a Bluetooth Dualshock controller, a lot of the harder parts got waaay easier. My playthrough of this was primarily on the SNES controller, so bear that in mind.

For the first three chapters, the game progresses in difficulty at a moderate pace - I don't feel like there were any major spikes in roughness, except maybe at the closing of the third chapter. Throughout the remainder of the game, though, difficulty tends to hop up fairly quickly, but you'll be fairly used to it by the end of chapter four, and start of five.

Moments of Pain in this game are caused by two things - precise timing and puzzling layouts. These are the tough moments that put the meat on this game's bones. Where an easier room may take one to five attempts, I found that these would take as much as fifteen. I love this kind of pain, victory feels earned, the work doesn't take too long, and generally it's fun! It may push others away, but it's the price of admission in this game.

Moments of More Pain are caused by poorly relayed instructions, distance between saves, and intense difficulty spikes. More Pain doesn't really pop up until the final parts of the game, and isn't a serious issue if you go and find walkthroughs online. The worst of this is when there are segments with brand new mechanics with little or inadequate instruction. The fourth chapter was full of this, and to some degree the last was as well, and it just sucks feeling stuck, or running into the same two walls for fifty lives only to look up and find the answer was somewhere else. Sometimes, this can be good though! There is a lot of fun in the big Eureka moments when they happen. That fun gets taken away to some degree, when you get so stuck you need to ask for a hint.

More Pain is harder to make fun when it's caused by difficulty spikes and distance between saves. One of my favorite titles I mentioned in this review is Cuphead, which has significantly more distance between saves than Celeste. It compensates for this by being relatively easy to beat 200% An easy room in this game will require a few inputs with somewhat precise timing to complete, and a challenging room will require very precise timing and as many as ten consecutive inputs to complete. The hardest rooms will take as many as twenty, and an errant twitch will send you back to the start. Offhand, I can think of about eight or nine rooms that took me more than ten minutes to beat, and four that took nearly half an hour.

In most of those, the primary issue was distance between saves. Celeste handles this by making respawns nearly instant, and not pressuring you to immediately move (even in levels where it looks like you should) The only times where these became genuinely infuriating, and not just intensely challenging, were in Chapter 8, where there is a long section where retries aren't allowed, and it seemed like quitting would entirely restart that section of the level. Of all the sections I played, this one took the longest (about half an hour in one room alone) and made me want to break something. I died over 400 times. The fact that 20-ish percent of players beat that level amazes me.

As a last note, Chapter 8 isn't part of the main game, but is absolutely part of the story - and it kinda sucks to see some parts effectively blocked by a sudden spike in difficulty. To get to chapter 8, one needs four hearts. Most of the secrets in the game have strawberries, which range from being cakewalks to get, to being about as hard as some parts of Chapter 8. I think the developers put this barrier up to ensure that one can only progress if they are competent enough to handle what comes next, but I'm not so sure that the hearts were the right go-to for this. There are two ways to get hearts, one is by beating the B-track versions of the levels, the other is to find them hidden in the levels. I got my four by finding them, and none of that prepared me for chapter 8 any more than the normal game did. I did love the reference to Super Mario 3, though (One of the hearts requires the same trick as one of the warp whistles does).

I'd recommend this game to anyone who's a fan of challenging platformers, and isn't afraid to burn a few hours hitting the same few walls. It's a great buy, but don't be dumb like me, and use joysticks.

For a free, in-development game, it's a really fun bit every now and again.

Holy Wars, Jihads, Crusades, and the Khans. This is the ultimate medieval strategy game, and I love it. I caught on last year and I have been addicted since. Truly a masterpiece in the gaming world, albeit a niche one for all us strategists out there. For those of you civ fans, it is a big step up in difficulty, but it is totally worth it. I've been hunting the achievements since day one, and i still only have about half. Definetly reccomend, if you enjoy strategy games, otherwise... I don't know why you're looking here.

Not exactly a good game. If you are looking for a poker game, don't look here, the only good thing in this game for me was the fun character interactions and the prizes in TF2. Wouldn't really reccomend it.

I love it. One of the first real games I played as a kid, it just amazed me. I set it aside for a few years and picked it up over this last summer, its a great, but short game. Can't reccomend enough.

Fun game, nice puzzle aspects, worth what I spent. Can't really say much more about it, I'd reccomend to anyone who is a bit of a history buff, specifically cold war. Besides that it's a decent game, not much to it.

Loved it, through and through. Another brilliant at release by paradox, and it only keeps getting better with updates and dlc. Just like their other games though, the game is great standalone, and the DLC only improve what you pay for. The game itself rocks through the early game with tons of cool events and popups, and ends it with devastating but rewarding foes. The midgame is really the only gameplay problem with this, besides Ironman being a pain to deal with if you are an acheivemnt hunter. Great Game, will reccomend

Despite some shortcomings such as a more limited diplomacy system (they removed the research agreements), less character background, and less replay value, this game is worth buying, but only while on sale. I love the CIV series, and have been an avid follower since CIV IV, and I was a bit dissappointed in Beyond Earth, but I still have high hopes for Rising Tide, their upcoming expansion. I somewhat recommend this game