Recent reviews by HH

I have very mixed feelings about this game. Balatro can be extremely addicting when things are working out. The problem is when things are NOT working out which happens a lot. The early levels aren't really that hard but it becomes extremely frustrating as you progress further. Especially because it feels like everything is always against you and there's nothing you can do about it. RNG plays a huge role here and unless you don't mind restarting over and over until you find the cards you need or you're a casual who's only looking for a few hours to spend then Baltro should definitely be an amazing experience for you. Otherwise I cannot really recommend this game.

Slackers - Carts of Glory is an amazing little indie game. If you're a fan of speedrunning or you enjoy a bit of competitiveness then this is a definite recommendation. Especially if you have friends to play with and discuss different ways to finish a map as fast as possible. Since that's all this game is about. It's basically Trackmania with less mechanics but much harder "cart" control.

Now I like this game a lot but it is far from perfect. It's been out for just 3 months so I'll list everything I've had a problem with hoping the devs can reflect on it.

Gameplay-wise I only have 2 things I disliked. First are fences/railings which are really weirdly designed. Sometimes when you hit a fence you die instantly while other times it just pulls you in and you literally cannot but drive alongside it.

Second is falling/hitting stuff. Honestly whenever I'm in the air and about to land down I'm just praying to gods I won't suddenly die. There are ways I found that make landings more consistent but sometimes I feel like I landed perfectly yet it still kills me. Similarly hitting stuff is very random. You can die from a 10 km/h "crash" but other times a freaking 150 km/h hit into a rock just sends you flying elsewhere. It is extremely inconsistent.

Apart from this the gameplay is very well made.

However that cannot be said about the UI. Changing sound volume or browsing through the leaderboards is a buggy mess. Hopefully this gets patched soon.

Lastly I just want to mention a few things that would make this game an even better experience.

• To be able to change the key controls (I'm left handed and have to play with my hands crossed)
  
• To be able to see the leaderboard directly from the level you're playing.
  
• To be able to scroll through the entire leaderboard
  
• To be able to see your steam friends' times
  
• To be able to watch a replay of yours and everyone else's best times in the leaderboard (I have no idea how hard it would be to do this but it would be really cool)
  
• Add a global leaderboard (it would sum up your PB's from every map into just one time)
  
• Make the timer start only after pressing any of the input keys
  
• Add more cosmetics
  
• More maps! :D

There's simply many things that can still be added and fixed. The game already has a very solid base and it's just a matter of how the devs will handle future updates. Good luck Falling Saints!

If you were ever concerned about how smart you are then play this game. You'll feel even dumber.

-Checks literally everything for 20 minutes

"Hmm, seems fine"

-Gets fined for incorrect number of eyelashes

It's too bad that many people will never get to experience this masterpiece. In addition to an extremely sad story the creators gave us an original and highly interactive game full of small details. Personally I think the storytelling is an absolute masterclass. The only downside of the game would be its short length. I recommend taking your time to look at photos, paintings, clippings and so on. This will make your stay with What Remains of Edith Finch just a bit longer.

Nope. Not for me. The gameplay is awfully uninteresting and boring.

Sekiro has the greatest combat system I've ever seen. It requires some time to learn it but once you do you'll want it in every game. The only thing we need now is a sequel or successor. It would be a huge waste to leave this combat system behind. Peak game.

This is truly a unique case. A videogame making a comeback because of an anime. I can totally see why so many people came back to the game. While I was watching Edgerunners I was constantly getting the urge to hop on my PC and actually play the game. To anyone who hasn’t seen the anime please watch it. It reminds you of how incredible the world is. A lot of the locations, weapons, implants, UI and some characters from the game were implemented into the show. It worked perfectly and it’s one of the best shows I’ve watched in a really long time. Edgerunners made me appreciate the game so much more.

Now for the game itself: Cyberpunk 2077 is in a good state. All the great qualities and core experience that was buried under technical issues on launch are now shining bright. The performance and optimization runs considerably better than it did 3 years ago and I don’t run into bugs that often. Cyberpunk 2077 even won the labor of love steam award as a representation of how much work was put into it post launch. I think it’s safe to say it has made its comeback. If you’ve been waiting or wanting to play this game for some time now but were never sure if it’s any better I highly recommend it.

It’s really a shame that the launch went out the way it did because under all the bugs and nonsense of the launch there’s a really great game waiting to be played.

The fact that there's no exploration or anything else apart from killing bosses makes Cuphead an extremely boring game. It might've worked if the fights were good but it's all so poorly designed. The whole game is literally just killing one terrible boss after another. The art and sound is great but the gameplay is just bad. If you're looking for a 2D platformer that is actually well made then go play Hollow Knight.

Elden Ring is a masterpiece.

Elden Ring is a huge open world game set in the Lands Between. The game is divided into 5 main areas: The kingdom of Limgrave, the Caelid wilds, Liurnia of the Lakes, Altus Plateau and the Mountaintops of the Giants. There are many sub-areas as well as legacy dungeons, normal dungeons, caverns and many more secrets to explore. It’s truly one of those games where if you can see it in the distance you almost certainly can and will go there. Each area is also distinct from one another in multiple different ways ranging from theming to the terrain to the enemies found there to even the main color palettes shifting from area to area or from night to day. It's funny because the game doesn’t force you or tell you to explore these places and most of them aren’t even necessary to finish the game. You just want to explore them. Elden Ring has managed to build a world that players want to explore not because the game tells you to but because it’s fun. I immediately realized just how well the open world works with a Soulsborne game. It feels like you’re playing DS3 but with so much more freedom. It’s literally perfection.

There really isn’t a way to balance Elden Ring when you combine an open world with a Soulsborne game. Because of this the experience and difficulty will drastically differ from person to person. You as the player will have to balance the game yourself and one of the ways to do that is by exploring. It’s obvious that people who explore a lot will get rewarded with more runes. I am someone who likes to explore everything and when I killed the first main boss I realized just how overleveled I was. The hardest time I've had in the game was literally at the very start against the Tree Sentinel or Crucible Knight. I understand that you don’t want to balance the entire game around assuming you explore everything because then it would be extremely hard for those who explored less. I wanted to explore the whole land and still have a good challenge. To balance that I completely stopped opening runes and after a while the game started to get much harder. If you’re someone like me who likes to explore a lot and you want the game to be challenging I recommend you to not open every single rune you come across - or at least don't use everything to level up.

Elden Ring has an incredible mechanical depth. There are many different types of weapons, armors, spells, consumable items and stats that allow the player to customize nearly every element of their gameplay. You can be slow and tanky or quick but naked. Use a dagger that is light and apply strikes in rapid succession or wield a slow but deadly gigantic sword. Incantations can summon the powers of magical beings such as the breath of an ice dragon while sorceries can call down meteors or conjure magical projectiles. The variety of combat styles or enemy abilities is staggering as almost every special move you see in the world or on a given weapon can be bought or found. This means that you’re not bound to use a single weapon or shield with the ability that you like because you will find the ability independently and reapply it to an item that you prefer. This comes in addition to the reward of many boss weapons and armor sets which have unique skills that the boss once wielded against you.

This does nothing to mention your mount Torrent nor the special potion customizations nor the talismans nor the many summonable Spirit Ashes which can help you out against powerful foes. You can seriously make this game as easy as you want. The greatness of gameplay possibility is something that I can’t fully cover and likewise it’s something that you deserve to discover for yourself. I played through the game by dual wielding Straight Swords and later on combined them with some fire skills and I had a blast with it.

The side bosses are easily the worst part about Elden Ring. Practically none of the cavern/dungeon bosses are interesting. Of course I didn’t expect these locations to be filled with Nameless King level bosses but this is just extremely disappointing. The bosses are just extremely boring to fight against. In some of the fights you even have to take long breaks from offense to go completely on the defense while the boss gets a seizure and spams attacks for 10 seconds. I never felt this annoyed about bosses in DS3 but in Elden Ring I sometimes start getting mad right away because I know it’s just straight up bad design. I quite liked the side bosses I fought in Evergaols or in the open world but dungeon/cavern bosses are mostly just bad. It’s a real shame because everything else about this game is amazing especially the exploration.

One thing I liked about the side bosses though is how they become normal enemies as you progress in the game. Let’s take the Crucible Knight for instance. He is a very tough boss at the beginning but as you grow stronger and get further into the game he becomes a normal enemy. There are also several other bosses that you later on encounter as normal enemies and I do like that. Since the game is so huge there’s obviously gonna be a lot of reused bosses and for the most part it really isn’t that bad.

Now the main bosses. At the beginning I was feeling a bit disappointed and had mixed feelings about them but they got much better once I crossed the first third of the game. There are some bosses that I actually fell in love with but I’ll avoid talking about them bacause I don't want to spoil anything. In terms of gameplay and consistency I enjoyed the bosses in DS3 more but the designs, buildups, cutscenes and overall the atmosphere of bosses is what Elden Ring does perfectly. In conclusion I was more than happy with the main bosses once I finished the game.

One more thing I want to add here is that some of the bosses had ridiculously low health bar despite the fact that other enemies in the area were challenging. I noticed this not only in the side boss fights but even in some of the main bosses and I’m not quite sure why they balanced it this way. Fighting these bosses felt like a joke.

When I first started the game I guess I was just expecting “Elden Ring”. Instead I got DS4 but it’s more than I could’ve ever imagined it to be. It’s expansive, it’s adventurous and has a level of wonder to it that DS3 didn’t have. It carries the dark fantasy of Dark Souls but isn’t restrained by it. Just as often as the game is horrific, dark and hopeless, it’s intriguing, bright and beautiful. It takes the mistakes that DS3 made and refines it to a polished masterpiece. The magic system is a strict improvement, the tutorials are far more forgiving, the way to progress is less abstract, the map is fantastic, fast travel is better, there are more NPCs and side plots/quests to explore, there’s a mount that lets you traverse the world a lot faster and there’s even dedicated places for PVP. It’s arguably Dark Souls perfected and I can’t recommend that enough. The only real problem I have with Elden Ring are the side bosses but even then it's one of the best games I've played. If you’re into big fantasy worlds or you’re a fan of Soulsborne games at all just give it a shot. You won’t regret it.