fancybeets 最近的评测

really solid and short exploration / light puzzle game. we need more projects like this in the world.

i loved this!!! more games like this!!!!!!!!!

i got to the 3rd floor of an ayelid ruin and started wondering "when the ♥♥♥♥ do i get to leave this place." then i remembered i have the option to quit and refund the game!

oblivion has the least interesting setting and some of the most bland dungeons of the elder scrolls series. the combat is clunky and the loot is uninteresting. i think i looked for fundamentally different things in video games as a kid and this is just not doing it for me as an adult.

citizen sleeper was one of my favorite games of 2022, so i've had very high hopes for this one. in some ways i think it exceeds the original and in others i think it's a little disappointing.

gameplay wise, this does a lot to mix up the core loop that i really appreciated. having multiple hubs to bounce between prevented the feeling that the first suffered from (especially towards the end) of being trapped in a loop of just spamming one event clock and then resting. this one breaks that up by frequently giving you the opportunity to hop to a different hub or contract, so i almost never felt like i was waiting out a clock with nothing much to do.

i also really appreciated the vibe / mechanics of the contract missions. while i was playing this i described it as "sadgirl cowboy bebop" in part because i feel like the contracts and separate hubs give it a bit of an episodic feel where your ragtag gang of space cowboys bounce around helping different people (and each other) with their problems.

thematically, this one was a bit of a mixed bag. the original does an amazing job of giving you the feeling of starting from nothing and building up a community from scratch, which is a theme i found incredibly relatable. each of the characters you interacted with felt very fleshed out and most had fairly deep stories, so moving through their quest lines and reaching the payoff at the end always felt amazing and frequently brought me to tears. in the sequel, some of your crew members had interesting stories, but i don't think any of them packed the emotional wallop that the first game was able to achieve, and most of the other non-crew characters you interacted with felt relatively shallow compared to the first.

overall i still really liked this game. the core gameplay loop is good, the vibe is good, but it doesn't have quite the same heart or emotional impact of the original.

i was looking for a game to satisfy my "a short hike" fall itch since i've replayed that game and many similar games too many times by now. i will say that valley peaks is very good and cute it's own way but i do not think that comparisons to a short hike are very useful! this is a skill based game, and while exploration is rewarded and there are cutesy animals and cutesy graphics it's much more about completing the individual climbing trials than cozily exploring the world. i am thoroughly enjoying the climbing mechanics though and might try to 100% this some day.

when i find a really good tactics game this thing happens where my brain will start to play out various scenarios from the game in its idle time and that's been happening pretty constantly for the past few days with this one. it's a tactical turn based shooter that kinda sits somewhere between the very tight puzzley-ness of into the breach and the more flexible cover-based tactics of xcom. there's a huge emphasis on positioning and pushing / pulling enemies around (including out of windows and into other dimensions) which creates a lot of fun spatial tactical possibilities. as the game progresses you start unlocking more abilities and characters that combo together in increasingly silly and satisfying ways. i really love the core gameplay, but the dialogue, world and character building are all really stellar too.

overall very good, would recommend.

played on ps5, hence the low playtime here.

i really enjoyed this! the language translation mechanic at the center of the whole thing is great. if anything i wish that there was less guidance and that the game let you fail a little more often. the obra dinn style "confirming translation" mechanic gave some answers away too easily and took away from some of the joy of discovering components of each language organically.

i also wish the game cut down on traditional point and click style puzzles a little more. there were a few puzzles that i got tripped up on simply because i didn't realize that i was supposed to be able to interact with or pick up a specific item in the environment, and a few times where i missed something and had to do a lot of manual backtracking just to scrape the environment looking for what i missed. it's fun when you're doing this to fill in gaps in the language, but when you're just looking for an item laying on the ground it starts to feel like busywork.

aesthetically the game is really solid. the art direction is excellent and the soundtrack really fits the mood of the game. you can tell pretty early on that the overall message of the game is going to be something along the lines of "can't we all just get along" / communication solves all problems, which is a little trite and uninteresting, but hey, you can't expect all of your games to be philosophical masterpieces.

on paper i should love this game. i'm a huge fan of games as art, short games, minimalist games, visually stunning games, games with good orchestral soundtracks, on and on and on. it ticks so many boxes. in practice though, it fails to come together for me and make a good game. i think it largely comes down to the movement feeling sticky and slow. moving around in a game like journey (which seems like the closest point of comparison) feels so good, and the animations as you move and as your scarf grows in length really add to the experience of zooming around in the desert or trudging up a mountain. in this i found myself growing irritated when i could tell the game was hinting at a secret off to the left, but i knew i would have to run all the way back to my current point when i had collected the secret. on top of that a lot of the visual design for what elements you can jump on are pretty bad, leading to a lot of testing to see if you can jump on something, falling back to where you started, and having to run back up a set of stairs to try again - not because you failed a hard jump, but because the game gave you misleading information and you trusted it.

i really wanted to love this and i might revisit it to finish it in a few days to see if my opinion changes, but for now i'm giving it a no.

almost-good survivor style game with a few big things holding it back, but i'm hoping that as this works through early access it will improve.

• progression currently feels very limited. i've finished runs of danger level 1 for each biome and i already get the feeling that i'm out of cool things to unlock.
  
• weapon variety is underwhelming. so much of what makes other survivors games great is how different weapons feel, but in this most of them are just variants of bullet spewing guns that technically do slightly different things but ultimately don't feel that different in practice.
  
• having to unlock overclocks for each weapon is fundamentally un-fun. it basically forces you to sacrifice or greatly ruin your chances of completing a run just to make it possible to overclock your weapon in the future.
  
• some overclocks are just waaaay better than others. sometimes it feels like i'm just waiting to get a "pierces enemies" overclock so i know i'll be able to complete a run, and i don't feel that way with most other overclocks.
  
• side objectives swing between being way too easy to complete and damn near impossible. they need to be balanced or removed so you can just focus on managing the other things competing for your attention during a run.

i'll probably check back on this in 6 months or once it reaches 1.0 but in it's current state i don't think i'll be playing more of it.

does what it says on the tin. my switch flicking urges have been satisfied.