Blunderbuss 最近的评测

This is a reluctant thumbs down. It is harder than OG SMB, but only artificially due to awkward controls during perspective changes. The more perspective changes in a level, the worse it is, which is quite telling. This will always be the case when trying to '3D' a platformer. Oh well.

There are two different games fighting with each other contained in this .exe file and both are joyless, miserable, slogs to play through.

To borrow from Roger Ebert's review of the movie North: I hated the dialogue. Hated hated hated hated hated the dialogue. Hated it. Hated every pretentious, vomitous, philisophically vacant word. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by it's belief that anyone would be entertained by it.
I hated the the dialogue and text logs so much that I intentionally looked up the endings to choose which one would send the entire population of robots into the most chaos as that is what they deserve after insisting upon themselves with their philosophical dreck. I can only imagine this was someone's passion project and he was too high up the ladder for anyone to insist on an editor.

All that said, the puzzles were phenomenal. I hated the swap gimmick at first, but it grew on me and by the end of the game I appreciated the swap mechanic much more than the other newer additions. If the option was available, I'd put this at a thumbs in the middle. It's not a thumbs up because of the absolutely atrocious writing we're forced to trudge through, and I cannot believe it has not been more of a factor in the reviews for this overwhelmingly positively reviewed game.

I don't care how long ago this was released, this is my GOTY for 2023. BRILLIANT!

Zelda II + Castlevania II. Hard but fair. Multiple difficulty modes. Multiple accessibility options. Baller soundtrack. My one gripe is that most of the platforming skill jumps do not fit with the aesthetics of the somewhat awkward jump mechanics. Also a minor annoyance in classic mode: falling into a pit of lava means exiting to the Title Screen no matter how many lives you have left.

Otherwise it's a great game. (I haven't run into an ice level yet though. Slippery ice platform mechanics get an auto-thumbs down.)

I write this review with the full knowledge that making a video game starting from almost scratch is hard.

It is entirely too hard to time a counter. It is entirely too hard to kick out of a pin. Even with 'feedback' turned on it is not useful in showing you how and when to counter, or how effective your button mashing is to get out of a pin. I honestly think that the button mashing to get out of a pin is bugged as I have yet to kick out of any single pin I've ever been covered with. Training mode is very bare bones, does not offer near enough options, and does not offer basic training scenarios to help with any of this.

I understand that rosters have to be locked in at a certain point, but even at the certain point they were locked in, there were not nearly enough wrestlers to justify some of the 'stables' that were set up in game. They are obviously going to sell them later as DLC in bite size chunks at an inflated price.

Every wrestler you create yourself needs to go through Road to Elite to have any chance of competing with the pre-made roster. There's not a whole lot of customization options, and even the power fantasy of creating your own move list is severely limited because most of the options for your character are locked behind a Road to Elite playthrough.

All that said, and despite the game needing a LOT more work, the framework of what they have to work with is promising, and I have hope that further iterations, whether they happen with patches or a future release, will live up to the vibe they were attempting to recreate as an alternative choice to the options currently available.

Thumbs in the middle.

I've never played a game that punished you so harshly for daring to explore.

Masterpiece.

Astalon is a cool and good retro-metroidvania where you play as 1 of 3 characters to navigate the rooms of the tower you're ascending. Some rooms and switches and puzzles require other characters to solve so you must switch between them to navigate the rooms. There is after-death progression to strengthen your characters. I'm not quite sure I like starting over at the very beginning of the tower after each death though, even though there are a lot of shortcuts to open to help with that. Very good 8-16 bit style music. The graphics are deliberately styled in a way that looks as if you're playing on an old-school tube TV. It's good. Try it.

It's re-skinned DOS in every possible way. Every companion is uninteresting, hate-able, and a bit basic. Just doesn't feel very Baldur's Gate-y to me.

----Full Release Review------
It's still re-skinned DOS. I'm still not sold on most of my party members, BUT the game itself is absolutely incredible. It thinks of everything. Every choice you make for your character will be a factor in at least one choice you make in the game itself.

That's all I ask for.