Recent reviews by SamuraiDan

a very satisfying sandboxy gameplay loop whereby you are given a ton of different options and the freedom to use more or less all of them in different, varying situations. while being yelled at by invader zim. couple that with some raunchy humor that's well done for what it is and neat satire of 1950's america and you've got a killer game.

it starts out with a very annoying tutorial using a character you never hear from again that is like a charmless joss whedon knockoff who's always one line away from saying something like "wow! we're fighting talking tree trunks!". then the first area of the actual game threw me against two bosses, one of which spams ads and refuses to ever give me time to reload and another which has an instant kill attack where it throws me in a death pit, plus the boss before those two which only ever lets me attack while it's unsafe. it has no downtime, I have to either tank hits to get in shots or dodge and miss my chance. I loved the first game, how did they mess this up so much?

an expansion and refinement of the first game in every way (and the first was already good). short, sweet, fun. not much to say other than that. worth the price, full stop!

I will recommend buying this with the caveat that you do so only while it's on sale even though it's already pretty cheap. it's very well made and enjoyable, but it's also three hours long. of course with a runtime that short nothing has time to get stale, and the creative self-puzzle making gameplay alongside the charming visuals and steam robot ala cowboy world doesn't get old... but what can, in a three hour game?

My only real complaint is that it's a bit on the short end. aside from that, this is an amalgam of soulslikes, metroidvanias, and survival horror games yet somehow manages to be it's own thing by combining all three. it's also gorgeous. highly recommended, although don't go in expecting it to be any of the things it looks like. if you play it like a typical MV or soulslike you'll die... a lot.

The only major flaw I can think of with this game are that with the right build, every boss becomes a DPS rush where you spam the heal and attack buttons to win. the rest of the game isn't that hard either. everything else is a nitpick. the art design, animation, music, character designs, story and actual gameplay are all tight knit and well made. it's a grade A experience as far as indie metroidvanias go.

the difficulty is all over the place, the levels are mostly flat squares, the tarot challenges are annoying at best and downright sadistic at worst, and all the guns save one are nothing but weaker copies of the original game. belial won't shut up and none of his quips are worth a hoot, and load times are oddly long for being a 2004 game I am currently playing on an SSD. and on top of all of that, the game just feels outright worse than black edition. the enemies don't react as well, there's not as much weight to the combat, there's all sorts of little things missing that add up to a truly inferior experience., I don't know why anyone defends this. it's mediocre at best, and not the upper end of it.

this game has put me in a weird position, where I did enjoy it, but I can't really recommend it. on it's own it's a fairly enjoyable if somewhat mediocre "go into room kill everything go to next room" style shooter. but painkiller black is right there and it's literally the same thing but better.

this is supposed to be a remake, and it sort of is, except the story continues on from the later entries. so you're playing the same levels in a different context. and (unless you got the DLC bundled in with it) you don't even get half as many. graphically it's a technical improvement but aesthetically it's less cohesive and polished than the old game. the only real positive in comparison to the original is how much easier it is to get running on modern systems properly.

tl;dr: just get black edition, unless it's so far in the future that BE no longer works on modern systems. then I guess this is an OK option? but do get all the DLC in a bundle.

if the idea of a janky, low budget god of war filtered through gameplay and visual trends of the 360 era sounds appealing to you, get this. if not, don't. it's that simple.

an excellent dark souls esque metroidvania held back a bit by some poor balancing (the gerrod spirit trivializes most of the game, though not all of it) and a map that could stand to be improved, though the touch of changing the color of a room you've found everything in is something I hope every MV game steals going forward. towards the end the bosses get a bit more tiring than difficult, peaking with Ulv and going downhill from there afterwards. I have very little bad to say, other than those. good music, good art direction, an aesthetically cohesive whole, and good gameplay variety. I'm looking forward to playing the sequel once it's out of early access