Recent reviews by E.P.D. Gaffney

What am I actually playing? It's interesting how I thought they were joking when they said Classic '90s Mode would make me 'hate the developers' I assumed they were joking. I don't want to hate them. They have so much love for games that shaped me as a person in my youth. But for all their love, they simply don't understand what made those games good.

They think hiding silent zombies round corners, even if there are two potentially dangerous corners and only your shotgun has a prayer of stopping you getting bit, even if objects near the corners can force you to stop aiming, is good survival horror. They think that making zombies take anywhere from 2 to 10 headshots to kill, when all you're carrying is usually 10-20 bullets, is good survival horror. They think that zombies in basically every room, every time you return, is good survival horror. This amounts to no downtime, no reward for exploring (you tend to use up more than you gain), practically no ability to explore unless you do it on a 'reconnaissance save', and zombies that are not scary but annoying. Resident Evil games knew how to build tension and release it. This is actually important. Resident Evil had fixed cameras and still gave you more information about the room you were in and the enemies that were in there with you, often before you even saw them. Once again, this was important.

They called what I played classic '90s mode but it's the opposite. It's a modern distortion of what made those '90s games so memorable. Hard/nightmare mode in RE2 (PC Sourcenext and Dreamcast ports exclusive) is how you handle making that harder, and you'd best make it unlockable instead of advertising it as the way the game was envisioned by the developers. The really sad thing about this game and in particular this mode, is everything that separates this mode from other modes is something that I actually like, except the basic design of the game itself is often so bad that this mode becomes infuriating. The ammo and health balancing is so good. But when zombies have janky jerky walk/jog cycles that make you miss half your headshots, and illogical hitboxes that make your bullets (and even shotgun shells) and punches miss even more often, these zombies need to go down in like three shots because otherwise they get to you before you can finish them off and then you lose half your health on top of that.

I don't know how many times I tried to shotgun a few zombies and I'd hit most of them but for some reason the one closest to me would ignore the shot and grab me, despite the reticule being on their face. Many times. And the punches. Why are the punches so unreliable? The zombies get hyper armour and i-frames constantly and just grab me through my attacks. And the reloading. Another great idea executed poorly. You need to hotkey that stuff instead of after every fight forcing us into a menu that takes five years to open. and 50 commands to do one task. And who drops the magazines on the floor, what is that? Long reload should put your old bullets back into the magazine and short reload should put them in the inventory loose.

I could say more but I won't. I wanted to like it. I tried so hard. But sadly it wants to be a more difficult game than it is polished enough to have earned the right to be.

One of the most unique, memorable experiences I've had in a game. It's a little short but the mechanics, art, and music are great, on top of what I can only call an imaginative presentation.

The combat's challenge level is sort of medium. It has a lot of components for a flashy, aesthetically pleasing experience which raises the skill ceiling a bit just for the fun of its spectacle, or pushing yourself to land things like counters and this game's version of a 'zandatsu'. You're rewarded with higher attack power when the combo meter is higher as well. And some of the bosses can be fun to think through.

I haven't quite finished the game yet but I can still it's not very long. The achievements are very worthwhile to get, so I'll finish them up, which probably won't add more than an hour or two to my current playtime of 6 hours. That said, there is free DLC as well, which I hear is quite challenging and may extend the playtime a bit more.

Edit: Been trying my hand at the free DLC, and it's one of the best parts of the game. Kind of wish they'd let you start from whatever wave you got up to but it's still a lot of fun. I keep getting up to wave 4 so far (out of 5 I think).

Free, short, nice couple of puzzles, has my sense of humour, can't really complain.

No major complaints, really. Minor ones but nothing unforgivable. Conversely, it had some excellent music and visual art, a few interesting mini-games, and writing that usually ranges from good to great (it's true, here and there it's a bit middling, but not often). And when I say the writing can be great, I mean that more on a macro level, the way it relates to the overall player experience. There are parts that I know would never have hit me the same as a passive viewer of a film or reader of a book. It's a very difficult thing to accomplish that I feel a game's story could not have been nearly as effective, or perhaps wouldn't even have worked, had it not been a game wherein I embody the protagonist. For reference, I believe Metal Gear Solid 2 accomplishes this better than any other game.

I love this game. It has a lot of content for a one-person project that cost me almost nothing to buy. The art is great. Combat has a lot of impact. Grabbing vitae has a lot of impact. There is variety to the combat and enemies. The story is minimalist but still interesting, with a lot of little hints at the lore as you explore. There are easter eggs. There are things to unlock. The upgrade system is cool. The developer is constantly in contact with players. It was just a really positive experience playing through everything this game has to offer. Took me 13 hours, which is probably a bit short, but not for what I paid, and it will be memorable.

Minor complaints include bugs (a lot of little ones, nothing major), some janky UI controls, and an unprofessional-looking inventory screen.

One of the best games I've ever played. In a game as unforgiving as this, there are some design decisions I wouldn't have made, but ultimately, if you're willing to put in your time learning each fight, they're all just sparring sessions until you can't lose anymore. Then you can start debuffing and that's where the game really gets fun.

What's so good about the game, in my opinion, is that it remains challenging for quite a while if you start debuffing, the posture and deflection system gives rise to some of the most convincing sword fights in a game to date, it has a huge amount to experience, the atmosphere it wants to portray is something it truly excels in, it is very rewarding to succeed in, it rewards exploration very well, and (contrary to what you may have read) most fights can really be approached in many different ways despite not being a game that gives you RPG builds like Dark Souls.

Returning to what I don't like, sometimes, it's not the design decisions themselves I would have changed so much as the lack of information the game provides about these things, some of which turn up once in tutorial messages when you first encounter them and can never be looked through again. I didn't look at a guide until my fifth playthrough, and although I think this is usually a good habit, I think for this game I did myself a disservice in waiting so long, in large part because of this lack of communication the game is sometimes guilty of.

Perhaps the main design decision I'd change is the fact that if you use consumables and die, those consumables remain lost. I don't understand this. This discourages experimentation and the end result is I don't use consumables until I am sure I'll win and I just want to do it faster.

Runner-up worst design decision is surrounding mini-bosses with low-level enemies to be stealth-killed excruciatingly methodically any time you don't beat the mini-boss and want to try again.

All that said, the game is challenging but it's not 'hard' in the sense that you need lightning-fast reflexes to deflect and dodge adequately. You absolutely do not. The timing is actually surprisingly forgiving. Ingeniously, it's designed so that maybe some people will learn a fight in fewer attempts, but if you're willing, barring what I imagine are few exceptions, you will always learn the fight if you try it enough times, to the point where it will become very obvious what the tells are and what you need to press to account for your enemy's actions, with more than enough time for you to do so. This procedure of learning, or 'sparring', will need to be repeated for most boss fights but it is very rewarding. Whether or not you feel your time is worth that is up to you.

Wonderful game. Intricate world-building; highly unique varied, and enjoyable combat system; excellent art direction; more fun the second time. It's the kind of game I keep thinking about and trying to develop a deeper understanding of after I've finished it. Not too many games do that for me, but I love it when they do. Comprehensible, engaging story on the top layer, with a multitude of layers hidden beneath that as long as you keep digging. And it isn't fully spelt out for you, which for me just adds to the experience.

Not 'difficult' as the tags say. Just some of the very late levels have some things for which you need to build muscle memory, and then require you to start the bloody thing over, frequently waiting for lights and whatnot to be in the right spot, so that you have an unnecessarily long iteration time between attempts of the thing that's actually giving you trouble. That and some of the puzzles give you like ten seconds to work out a part, before some light leaves you or anger blob kills you. There are very good things about this game, but this stuff is frankly infuriating (unless you like that sort of thing, which I suppose some people do) and ruins an otherwise decent experience. I think the fact that when someone requested checkpoints and the developer responded that it's supposed to depress you and you should accept it, that was probably the last straw for me.

Edit: I've finished the game. I have to say, there's a lot of good here, but I just can't recommend it after my experience near the end of the game, especially the last level. Difficulty isn't about demanding pixel-perfect precision for one or two actions and then making a player redo five minutes of busy work before each attempt. And despite what the developer said, it's not depressing but infuriating. The design is simply flawed. Even the story execution is flawed. It's quite good, but is actively hindered by their integration with the levels themselves. The pacing becomes bizarre as a result.

I wish I could give this game a neutral ranking, to acknowledge the good in it, but if I have to pick thumbs up or thumbs down, the choice is clear to me.

I'll be finishing the game just to finish it but...if I'm being honest with myself, it's a chore. I think that's a shame because it has amazing art, music, animations, and an excellent sense of humour.

I can get into the mechanics and what's wrong with them, but I think it suffices to say that the game this most reminded me of was I Wanna Be The Guy. I was reminded constantly of that game, and that game is 100% an intentional troll job, but the thing is that when you download that one, you are in on the joke. I can't tell if the feeling that I was tricked into playing IWBTG with a metal æsthetic was intentional or not. The number of times a tiny enemy or projectile took me by surprise to chip at my health but also knock me a centimetre backwards to fall into an instant death on spikes, is higher than you'd expect.

The game isn't impossible, but its difficulty often comes from taking you utterly by surprise. Your character's sword swings don't take several seconds as some reviews claim, but they feel like it because they take maybe ten times longer than in other 2D platformer games with sword combat, such as Hollow Knight or Strider. And what's worse, as you unlock your two other weapons, you find they're both slower than the default weapon.

Now, what makes this sluggish sword the significant problem that it is is that you must constantly bat away projectiles with it that not only feel wrong timing-wise in comparison to other games, but the projectiles very very often come from off-screen amidst a horde of close-quarter enemies. If the game were purely about melee combat, this would not be the problem it is. Other problems include infinite spawns of secondary enemies that can't possibly be taken down with this type of combat if you don't stop it before it gets bad, and that essentially requires a bit of dying on your part.

Enemies popping up in places that were seemingly randomly chosen during development (though consistent at runtime), with no concern for where the player may be, cement the focus on dying till you memorise the section and adjust beforehand on your retries.

I think that the way parrying restores mana, it should restore health. That would make the game feel less like a practical joke.

Checkpoint placement ranges from fair to overly forgiving to downright cruel. You never know what it'll be.

Another problem is terrible communication. Your elemental weapons are good against...whatever the developers decided. Your ice axe, for some reason, is great against the enemies that spawn armies of ice wolves to attack you, whilst your fire sword takes about three times longer to despatch them.

The art, as I said, is gorgeous. But there was no care taken to make sure it maintained clarity during combat. Many times I take damage and have no idea why, or only see the source after the fact. There's a level where you fight white silhouettes against a white sky background, firing nearly white projectiles at you, and nothing in the game has an outline to make it distinct from other objects, including the white silhouettes.

Also, the controls don't always work. I don't think it's input lag. I think it's a legitimate coding bug. Also, the D-Pad is broken. Up moves right and Down moves left, and Left and Right do nothing. Can't be rebound in the rebind screen, either. So I'm using the analogue.

And finally, the fact that the dodge always moves you backwards, so that you have to turn to face the way you don't want to move before you dodge, is a problem. It should do that by default, and otherwise move the direction you're pressing.

So, yeah, it's at best middling, in my opinion. I think challenging games shouldn't be about killing you every few seconds, but keeping you on your toes for extended periods. What Shinji Mikami called 'flow' regarding Resident Evil 4. But it's not an easy thing to achieve, so sometimes we get this instead. Shame. Could have been a lot of fun, this game.

Amazing amazing amazing game. It uses a striking combination of some of the best sound design I have heard in all my life, excellent music, no voice acting of any kind, incredible writing for dialogue and everything else, and possibly the most effective use of pixel art I've seen yet. This combination is important and effective because your brain makes up for the lack of fidelity in the visuals, whilst the game provides all the other atmosphere you could ask for.

The puzzles were almost 100% difficult enough to be a welcome challenge without being overly obtuse and ridiculous. In other words, exactly what I wanted.

The game reminded me of a combination of the puzzle and atmosphere style of classic Resident Evil combined with a very well executed Victorian setting that reminded me very much of Poe and Conan Doyle, with a sort of Lovecraftian veneer to tie it all together.