beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

This game sucks. Not for any fault of design necessarily, but this shit runs at 30 FPS and has awful input lag. For a platformer that still requires at least a little bit of a precision, it feels like ass.

I also know that it is a remake of an old game so it's not that long, it seems pretty faithful but I haven't played the original. I just don't know how you drop the ball this hard. Dude the game's logo straight up breaks if you quit to the title screen. The game sometimes crashes just trying to change resolution.

It's okay if you want to just play something real quick in a few hours just for like... I don't know, the experience or something? But for the most part... stay away.

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Pragmata is a special game. It's been a long time since I played something so new and yet so rooted in the PS2/PS3 era of video games. It pairs that new coat of paint and the ways of the past together perfectly. The old and the new. Much like the game's protagonists, Hugh and Diana. I just love the very concept of Pragmata so much, and its execution was nearly flawless which only made me love it more.

The gameplay is really interesting, with its unique style that utilizes Diana's hacking capabilities to create openings for Hugh to deal more damage. Enemies have different strategies you need to approach them with, which gets really interesting when the game throws a bunch of you all at once. I didn't ever struggle too much on Standard difficulty, and I felt like it was right in that perfect area to keep the pace of the story going. The exploration is great too, which does have some light elements of needing to come back after getting upgrades to explore places you missed. I really felt compelled to find everything, because the rewards of said upgrades/cosmetics/extra story is really awesome. There are even extra missions in the main game and post game to take on and they were all pretty fun, some of them actually being decently challenging.

The story and characters were just fantastic as well. The voice acting really stands out as being some of the most natural I've heard in a video game, and that helps sell the characters. Hugh and Diana make a fantastic team, and that shows through how they are intrinsically tied in combat as well as their daddy-daughter styled relationship. It's absolutely adorable seeing the two of them interact. Whoever made all of Diana's animations must have had so much fun doing it.

A huge part of the story is Diana wanting to go to Earth, and Hugh promising to take her there. In the meantime, there are these 3D-printed replicas from things on Earth that you can find throughout the levels and take them back to the hub area for Diana to play with. I spent a not insignificant amount of time just watching her going down a slide, or playing with balloons, or crawling around in a tent. The developers all did a great job in making her come to life, which is really funny considering she's a robot. That's kind of the whole point, though, so they nailed that on the head.

As I'm sure is the case for many people, this game brought strong emotions out of me. It's a game about how far men will go to save their kid, and that's a very pure and raw thing. I won't deny I teared up more than a few times. The story really resonated with me, from the small things like learning about Hugh's past to the big ones like learning why Diana was created in the first place.

The music was pretty nice as well, it really added to the atmosphere and the frenetic gun fights in a good way. It could get a little bit samey at times, especially in combat, but not enough for it to be a true complaint.

I would highly recommend this game to just about anyone. It really is so fantastic. The only real problem I have with it is that, as much as I love Diana, she talks way too much in regular gameplay. She's always making some comment about where something is, what you just picked up, when you need to dodge or jump in combat, etc. Sometimes they are really nice to hear because she'll have unique lines for the specific mod you picked up, but the more generic items and combat maneuvers have lines repeated over and over again and way too often. I can somewhat understand doing something like this in a game meant for kids, but this game isn't quite in the same realm as, for instance, Ratchet & Clank.

On the technical side, the game also has really awful denoising in the ray tracing which is unfortunate to see. I believe there is a mod to fix that but I didn't end up using it. There are only a few scenes I REALLY noticed it in, but it would have been nice to not have it there at all. I'd recommend using that mod, using path tracing, or just turning off the ray tracing altogether because all those options look great still. Other than that though, I'm very happy with its visual presentation and it runs very well too.

Also by the way, Capcom is absolutely fucking killing it this year. RE9 and Pragmata steal the show for me, but I heard MH Stories 3 was pretty dang good too. Then we've got a new Onimusha coming out this year and a Mega Man next year. All we need now is a new Devil May Cry dude.

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This game exudes maximum cool before that kind of thing became cringe. While I don't see myself going back to play the missions over and over again like DmC or Devil May Cry 5, striving for better mission rankings and getting really stylish with my combos, I still found the combat relatively satisfying. The game never really required you to use a specific weapon for a specific task, which I felt definitely didn't force me to explore the new weapons I unlocked. I stuck with ebony/ivory (the handguns) and rebellion (the sword) for the vast majority of the game. I did feel like the handguns were actually a little overpowered and was able to beat several boss battles just by locking on and spamming them, which I have heard is a huge problem people had with DMC2 in general. They really should do basically no damage but be useful for extending combos and keeping smaller enemies stunned.

I played with the Crimson style switching mod, which was really nice, but as I'm sure a lot of people can relate to I used Trickster for the vast majority of the game. That dodge is just too useful. Swordmaster was also fun to use when I was going for better combos but there was never really a NEED to do that.

The story was pretty typical for Devil May Cry. The cool part was just the awesome cutscenes that are so over the top, just like it ought to be for the series.

The music I found is where the game kind of fell flat for me. It got really repetitive and just wasn't as energetic and cool as I would have liked it to be. It's still perfectly serviceable, but maybe I've just been spoiled by other games that do this so much better, including other DMC games.

The bosses were all pretty unique and mostly fun to play against. The second to last boss was a huge pain in the ass with his little dolphin things and Vergil teaming up with Dante felt more like a nerf because I couldn't use DT anymore.

Altogether, I enjoyed the game, but again I can't really see myself going back to it ever again. If it was a bit more fun to play, a little less clunky, had a bit of a better camera, with smoother movement and more obvious combos for the various weapons, I would consider it.

Also, what's with all the people calling this game extremely hard? I played on Normal difficulty and it wasn't bad at all. At most, I died a handful of times on each boss. Maybe it's harder on the PS2 or something but I still saw a lot of people referring to this version of the game. Maybe it's just because I have experience with DMC games already but yeah... I don't know man, this wasn't hard at all. I feel like I could play it on harder difficulties and not struggle to much either.

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If you enjoy games like DOOM 2016 and Ghostrunner you'll probably like Metal Eden enough. If you can get it on sale I'd say it's a fun 6 hours. It seems very inspired by games in this kind of subgenre but it doesn't do any one thing better than said games. In zoomer lingo: the game's mid.

The gameplay is pretty standard. You've got shooting and platforming and neither are particularly deep. There's a skill system but none of the skills felt overly impactful. I didn't feel like much changed when I upgraded and when I got to that screen at a certain point I was just putting points into random skills instead of really trying to make a cool build. I can see the potential for some kind of style meter, where the higher it gets the more damage you do and stuff. It could be flavored differently of course but I feel like that would have really amplified the gameplay and made it more unique. There are weapon upgrades too but a lot of them seem kind of pointless as well. I very rarely used most of them.

The platforming doesn't evolve beyond wall running and using a grappling hook, and there aren't even any sequences where you have to be fast with it. Unlike Ghostrunner, there are invisible walls everywhere. There were so many times I saw something in the distance that looked like it could hold a secret so I would try to get there, but would be met with either an invisible wall or a chasm and THEN an invisible wall so I'd just die. I wish there was more freedom. The platforming can be a little bit clunky too, I fell a number of times due to weird wall detection and other times it would snap me into ledge grabs which was pretty jarring. Even fully upgraded movement doesn't do much for you... it feels like you have just about the same amount of mobility that you do in like, Black Ops 3. Maybe less.

I played on normal difficulty and it wasn't hard at all. The game has lives instead of checkpoints, and by the end of the game I had 12. When you lose all your health (and armor, both of which have pickups littered across the level which respawn with time), you use up a life and recover your health right there on the spot. I'm sure the game would be more unforgiving at harder difficulties, but for a normal playthrough I did find it a bit too easy. That isn't helped by the bad enemy AI, which can't go through doors, can't follow you around corners, and will be completely clueless of your whereabouts if you're too far away. The game has several points where it gives you a long corridor with lots of enemies at the end of it so I would just sit there shooting at them with the unlimited ammo auto-pistol. It took longer, and it was cheesy, but the opportunity presented itself.

It's weird because there are moments like that, but also plenty of moments where the game will lock you in an arena and you have to battle waves of enemies before you can get out. Sometimes it will spawn enemies close to you while you're in exploration mode too, so I don't understand why those cheesier moments existed to begin with.

The graphics seem cool on the surface but the lighting has some serious issues. This game could have 100% gotten away with old fashioned rasterized lighting because none of the light sources are dynamic in any way, shape, or form, but it doesn't seem like that is the case. All the lights have this weird fizzle to them and that makes everything kind of wobble on closer inspection. If you stand still and look at your gun, it looks like it is boiling or being affected by severe water caustics. I can't really show it on video because the effect is a bitrate killer. The lighting was really distracting and it took me out of the experience a lot. You don't notice it in combat because you've got other things to focus on, but when you're walking around it is very visible and it sucks to look at.

Music was alright, there were some moments where I was like "ah yeah this is cool!" but for the most part it seemed lightly generic. The story was really hard to follow... I think I get the gist of it but I still don't know EXACTLY what went on. I would have actually appreciated some logs that explained more because it feels like just the two dudes who talk to you throughout the game don't explain a whole hell of a lot. The initial premise is cool but everything after that I'm like... okay so why are we doing this exactly? What happened?

Also, as a heads up, the game does use some AI-voiced dialogue. It's a robot character with only a handful of lines so I don't really care, it fit in well enough and the studio is obviously pretty small.

Again, if you like these kinds of games, I still think you'll like this one. It just isn't amazing or anything. I think I ended up paying like $17 for it or something like that, I think that's just fine. I enjoyed playing it I guess, but there was a lot missing from it that I've seen done way better elsewhere.

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There are some very small nitpicks I had with this game, like extremely small, but I felt like rating this game a 9.9/10 was just being petty. It's a 10/10 for me, for sure.

The graphics are amazing. The sound design was fantastic. Grace and Leon's gameplay were both phenomenal for entirely different reasons. I loved the story. The acting was great.

They completely fixed the vast majority of issues I had with RE8. The action was in third person and the horror was in first (by default, and I would recommend keeping it that way). No segment felt like it dragged on for too long. Resource supply was perfectly balanced, even when I was worried it wouldn't be which rides that line so well. My BIGGEST complaint would be that there is no FOV slider, and if that's the worst thing about the game you know you've got absolute gold on your hands. I get that it is a stylistic choice so you feel more claustrophobic and stuff but if I were playing it on my monitor instead of my TV I don't think I would have been able to play for very long intervals.

Some might find Grace to be a bit annoying, but I found her endearing and by far the most "human" protagonist an RE game has had so far. She's not a badass by any means. Even before and during the "traumatic hotel incident" when she was a teenager, she is shown to be quite the oddball, to say the least. That only gets exacerbated when we see her going through crazy shit as an adult. I like her! Her gameplay is reflective of her not being a badass at all and I think they did a great job with it.

In contrast, Leon is as badass as one can possibly get. He kind of reminds me of Dante. Capcom knows how to make 'em, that's for sure. I preferred his gameplay segments to Grace's, but that doesn't mean I hated Grace's at all. I'm just more of an action gamer than a stealth one. I actually died more in Leon's segments, funny enough. In Grace's, there were a lot of times where I felt so much tension and even genuine fear, which is very much welcome as I felt none of that during RE8 whatsoever.

There are a few parts in the story that feel a little bit nudged in the direction of making an interesting gameplay moment, but that's still getting into nitpick territory I think because it's hard to blame a game for being a game. I can imagine some people pointing out things that seem like bigger plot holes but I don't think they are... there are multiple layers of conspiracy going on in the story with characters believing things that aren't true in actuality. Things are not what they seem on the surface at all. I don't want to spoil anything but if you play it for yourself maybe you'll know what I'm talking about there.

On top of everything else, this really did feel like an homage to all the previous Resident Evil games. You had the ever-expanding layout of a key location from the original trilogy, the over-the-top action of 4-6, and the more overtly horror-centric first person design from 7 and 8. All jam packed into one game in a way that felt really good the overwhelming majority of the time.

I was kind of stuck between giving this a 9.5 and a 10, but I just couldn't find enough wrong with it to warrant taking off that much and I don't really like grading things with such precise decimal values. I leaned more towards 10 so I decided that's what it would be. I think it's completely deserving of that. My favorite RE game by far, all things considered. I still think RE7 was way scarier, and the bosses from RE8 were a lot more involved, but there genuinely is not a lot to complain about here.

Due to how much stuff from the older games this has in it I honestly forgot SO MUCH it was embarrassing. I thought Natalia was in RE2 instead of Sherry because of a mod I saw that switched them, I forged an entirely different Kendo cutscene in my head, I got Claire and Jill mixed up... I feel like I'm going senile. Then I have to remember it's been 7 years since I've played RE2 Remake and way longer than that for the others. Revelations 2 really came out over a decade ago. So much shit has happened in my life since then man, the mind is a fickle thing.

It's going to be really hard to top this game for me this year. I want to be optimistic about Pragmata, but I don't have THAT much optimism about it. I think it will be a good game but not quite to this level. If there are Star Fox and Zelda games actually coming out this year, per the leaks, and they are done well then those *might* take the cake. RE9 just feels very much like a generational game though, and I'm extremely glad I played it. Will be doing another playthrough at some point for sure.

Plus, I mean... come on. MILF Sherry.

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I feel very... conflicted about this game. I think I like it? It has some pretty good combat, although it is very rough around the edges. I-frames barely exist, even in places you think they would, like after taking damage. If there are any, they're extremely small and it can lead to just getting chained by enemy attacks. There is only one jump height as well, and you can't alter the length of your dash in any way. Because of that, it feels like you don't have a lot of fine control over your character. Despite that, the combat is flashy and nice to look at, which does translate into it feeling fun to play.

The thing I really DIDN'T like about this game is the Stanley Parable style narration and meta story design. It worked for that game, but it didn't really work for something like this for me. I would have VASTLY preferred this game to rip out the narrator entirely, maybe extend the levels by a little bit, and just let you freely explore around them while progressing. I understand this game is from 2016 and that was all the rage back then, you know, Deadpool came out in 2016. It's just annoying now, though, ten years later. They could have still told a very similar story without that, much like we saw MiSide do more recently.

The art is decent, the music is pretty good. There was another kind of dumb meta moment at the beginning of the game where I didn't get to choose the difficulty I wanted, it just asked me questions and then gave me one and I couldn't figure out how to change it. That was pretty annoying as well. If you're going to be playing this game, just know what you're getting yourself into.

Cute girl though.

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Actually, this review is going to be quite simple. It was pretty good. I liked the added abilities, while still using some of the core gameplay. There weren't really any puzzles but I didn't mind that so much. It wasn't very long, so while the gameplay was kind of one-note it felt more like a segment in a much larger game that uses a specific mechanic. It was cool seeing a bit more of Rose's story as well as a bit of some other characters from RE7 and RE8. Playing in third person was just fine and the spook factor was still very balanced in the same way it was in the base game.

Nothing revolutionary, but I did enjoy it. Was a little bit disappointed that we aren't seeing MORE of her story to be honest. I hope she's in RE9 in some fashion or another because it feels weird to build up and then stop on a pretty crazy cliffhanger only for her story to go dark as we switch to Grace and Leon in RE9.

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To get this out of the way first and foremost, the Switch 2 upgrades are quite nice to have in this game. The original only runs at 30 FPS in actual gameplay, and distant objects render at 15 FPS. It was nice to have the upgrade to 60 FPS not only for the immediate surroundings, but that half-rate for distant stuff is also increased to 30 FPS and the distance is increased. I love this game a lot but that was the one thing I really had a problem with.

I haven't 100% completed this yet, but I got through the main story and got the majority of the collectibles.

The additions were quite good, but nothing really insane. For $20, I got I think five hours or so which I'm totally content with. That's not everything on offer either, because I still could do another run of each stage to get the stuff I missed, and there is also an extra challenge mode which I'm sure is going to take me a while to get through as well.

Unfortunately, only one boss battle was added. There are some new transformations that are quite fun, but I wish I got to use them a little bit more. So yeah, nothing too crazy, but it is still more of the same game that I found really fun. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with this expansion.

If you have the opportunity to play this, definitely give it a shot! I had a good time with it.

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We're starting the year off incredibly strong! I'm glad I finally got around to playing this one. I didn't really have much of a desire to play it until recently when Resident Evil 9 was announced, and then I figured that I should probably get the connecting piece of the story. I was in for a treat.

The graphics are absolutely stunning, the game ran really smoothly for the vast majority of the time, and the story was really intriguing and well paced!

The story did remind me a lot of Silent Hill, honestly, since it involves a dad trying to find his daughter who is being used for a ritual to be reborn. It has a bit of a twist to it but it still is pretty reminiscent of Silent Hill at that core story element. All the different characters popping up was pretty cool though, I enjoyed how they all had their own "dungeon" to go through and different abilities that those areas reflected well. I can tell a lot of thought went into all of it. I really liked how much of the story tied back to not just RE7 but other RE games as well. It's not as simple as a random Chris cameo, rest assured. There was one part in particular that I was kind of fanboying over, not gonna' lie.

The gameplay was decent enough, but there were some annoyances here and there. There were a lot of areas that had infinitely respawning enemies where you had to just through them and it was never clear that was what you were supposed to do exactly. It seems like a weird hold over from a bygone era of gaming and there is a reason why games don't tend to do that anymore. A lot of the enemies just seemed to take way more hits than they should as well, even on the regular difficulty. I only died a few times, but if I had to play the game again for the first time I would pick the easy difficulty just to make combat go a little bit faster. It isn't deep enough to warrant how drawn out the encounters can feel, even in the boss battles. Enemies just feel really bullet sponge-y. I shouldn't have to dump 5 or 6 shotgun rounds into a basic zombie lol.

Oddly enough, I think I may have actually preferred to play the game in 3rd person. People said to not do that for a first playthrough because it does obviously change the vibe of the game and it makes it a lot easier, but gameplay-wise I think third person would fit WAY more for what they were going for. Compare that to RE7 which was designed very intrinsically for first person since it was a VR game (and one of the best, mind you). The combat here felt more like a traditional RE game that they just decided to make first person, so I think 3rd would have been better in that regard. However, you'd kind of lose the immersion and some of the cool cutscenes that result from playing in first person, so it would be a bit of a trade off for sure. Maybe one day I'll do a NG+ run in third person and see how it compares.

Anyway, overall, really good game that I had a good time with. About 18 hours (12 IGT) for my completion. Give it a try if you haven't already and are a fan of the other RE games, especially 7!

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THE BEARD GAME AWARD 2025 GOES TO
DONKEY KONG BANANZA!

This game was so incredibly fun and the character dynamic between smol Pauline and DK was so charming. I'm so glad I was able to get a Switch 2 and play this game, it really was so fun. If you have a Switch 2 (for some reason) and haven't played this game yet (for some reason) then you absolutely need to, I loved it so much.

The full list of the games I reviewed this year will be in an unlisted reply to this post. I'm looking forward to whatever games I'll be playing next year! There are a lot of new ones coming out I'm interested in and some old but gold ones will be on the list too, I'm sure!

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There's not too much to write about this one other than that is an extremely solid rhythm game. It has more or less completely replaced Muse Dash for me (although I use the Muse Dash skin for the game lol) due to its higher complexity. I haven't played nearly as much of it as I would like to just because there are so many other things out there to play and do, but I come back to it pretty often.

The track list is pretty good and the DLC for the game (along with the game itself) goes on some pretty steep discounts fairly often. It seems like a huge amount of money but if you wait for those sales, it's not too bad at all. It's also worth checking key resellers because I have found some REALLY good deals on those places.

However, there is one GLARING issue. There is no Touhou or Miku whatsoever. It might sound a little ridiculous but not having Touhou or Miku in a rhythm game does legitimately lower my perception of it just a little bit. There aren't really any other rhythm game staples here either such as Brain Power. Whenever this gets brought up, I've noticed people tend to dismiss it by saying "just play one of the other dozens of rhythm games that have those songs then" but I really would like to play them in this format in this engine as well.

The game also REQUIRES an internet connection for its strict anti-cheat which is a sore spot for sure, and it makes it so you can't have custom tracks and things like that. It does keep the leaderboards and the online play squeaky clean, but there is certainly something lost there. I would love it if games would just start pushing you into offline-only mode if they detected any mods or whatever so you could still enjoy the game on your own terms how you want it to be.

Otherwise, yeah, great game, really fun, get it and some DLC packs with tracks you like on sale and you'll have a great time!

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It took me a while to do a review on this because it's not the type of game that you just play through once and then you're done. This is something you come back to over and over and over again, just like the original Kirby Air Ride. It's already become a mainstay at family gatherings and hanging out with friends and I can't imagine that changing any time soon. It's the type of game that is just so solid that it'll last quite a while playing it this way. Before this new one came out, we were STILL playing the original from time to time so many years later.

Now, it doesn't do anything crazy, but if you have ever played the original Kirby Air Ride you will be in for a massive treat. This game is so similar to the original that my brother laughed with glee when he realized he hadn't played that game for YEARS but still had the muscle memory for this new one. It's the original game but with much prettier graphics (and they are REALLY pretty) and more stuff. More tracks, more events, a whole character roster with little customizations, custom air ride machines (and more of them), a fun little story mode, and a massive City Trial map for the main event.

Said City Trial map hasn't yet begun to feel stale, and to be completely honest with you I'm still not even tired of the original game's map. I do honestly really wish there was at least one more City Trial map, because that would help mix things up quite a lot, but you can tell that the one map (Skyah) was very meticulously crafted alongside everything else in the game. I can see myself coming back to it time and time again with friends just like the original one.

The online mode is a really nice addition because, like many people, I've always wanted to play Kirby Air Ride online! It works remarkably well and doesn't bear any of the issues you traditionally would see in online Nintendo experiences, and it does seem that the era of bad online for Nintendo is starting to be left in the dust. However, there is still work to be done. I don't know why, in the year 2025, we aren't able to play online with multiple players on a single console. With the original, you could hook up two Gamecubes over LAN and play with two people on each console. Mario Kart Double Dash let you do this with up to 8 consoles with 16 players. Stepping outside of Nintendo, plenty of other games over the years have let you play split screen online, such as Halo or Call of Duty. The only reason I can possibly guess for this lack of ability is some sort of mandate from Nintendo to get people to buy more consoles. Corporate greed ruining video games, once again. There is no other reason why you shouldn't be able to play with at least two people on a single console online, unless the netplay is hanging by a thread... which honestly could be the case too. Either way, it's a huge missed opportunity that I feel does diminish the excitement for online play. Kirby Air Ride is a game that I always love playing with people in person, so it would have been cool to play with people IRL and also online.

That's not to say the online outside of that is horrible though, not by any means. It has great functionality with private rooms that multiple people can host custom matches from for smaller groups within the room. It's something that I do genuinely appreciate, especially in the wake of Mario Kart World's absolutely abysmal online experience with its lack of options.

The little campaign mode was fun! It was long or elaborate, but I enjoyed playing through it and the "true ending" was awesome. Kirby has a habit of pulling out crazy stuff for endings and this was no exception!

I also really respect Masahiro Sakurai, the game's director, in his attempt to just release a fully complete game without adding more content to it later on. He flat out said that what you see is what you get here. That's a good outlook to have because it really pushes a developer to make sure they get the game right on the first go around. It is a little bit unfortunate because there are some things I would love to see that I think would enhance the game even further, but at the same time I think we're all aware and have seen many examples of games that add so much content they are barely recognizable and just become slop. You risk alienating players at that point. Sakurai's view is far closer to that of someone who just really loves video games, and not a corpo who is always thinking "line must go up." I really dig it. I wouldn't hate it if there was another City Trial map added though, and maybe some more cosmetics. Just saying!

Besides that, the graphics are also obviously beautiful, you don't really need to play the game to see that. There are always so many things going on screen but it is a very orderly chaos. Everything feels so intentionally designed and I love it. There are many moments in the game where you are able to think "Yup, this is definitely a Switch 2 game" where that wasn't really as present with something like Mario Kart World.

The sound is amazing, the music is amazing, as if you expected anything less from Kirby. The characters are all unique and have different synergistic combos with the different air ride machines. In fact, this is another one of those Sakurai bangers that is deceptively simple on the surface but has pretty deep mechanics that all coalesce into something that is marvelously enjoyable for players of all skill levels and of all ages.

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Pretty solid walking simulator that focuses on Red Vox's music. It has some AWESOME imagery and of course the music is top notch. I do wish that they toned it down with the funny stuff for all the secrets because it kind of took away from the core experience for me, but I did get 100% and I was not prepared at all for what was waiting for me at the end lol.

It's free, and it took me about 3 hours to 100% but only like 30 minutes or so for a single playthrough. I'd recommend it!

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For the most part, this game didn't spook me much but it had a lot of great set pieces and inventive ideas on how to scare the player and build tension. I was impressed a few times with how much the game got to me though, particularly a specific segment towards the end. Rather, it was the lead up to the main segment that got me rather than the actual part itself.

That's something that this game does struggle with a little bit. There will be a lot of tension building up through atmosphere and story over a long period of time, and then the scare finally happens and is pretty good, but then it just keeps doing the scare over and over again to the point where it is just no longer scary.

It is definitely more of a "haunted house" type of horror game than it is a survival or psychological horror game, I would say. For that type of game though, it is the best I've seen by far. The developers really knew what they were doing with the type of game they wanted to make and I do respect it.

One major gripe I have with the spook factor of the game is that it is CONSTANTLY playing these random scary sounds like doors creaking, things being tipped over, thunder, etc. and you just KNOW they are sound bytes programmed to play at random intervals. Listen, it's not scary when it is happening all the time and there is literally no threat. You'll hear a door opening next to you right where a wall is. Stuff like that really takes AWAY from the atmosphere for me, and the game was at its best when it was dreadfully quiet.

MADiSON is also heavy on the puzzles, and they can be a little bit convoluted but are mostly really good. I have a whole notebook page full of puzzle notes which is a REALLY good sign! The puzzle solutions are all randomized for every playthrough too, so although you can look up a guide to help you know HOW to solve the puzzle, it won't be able to straight up give you the answer. This almost killed the game for my friend and I though unfortunately, because we missed a puzzle clue that could only be found one time and we just didn't find it in the right way. We basically just tried a bunch of random stuff because it would have been REALLY hard to brute force it, and thankfully we got it within like 30 minutes.

The story is also pretty interesting too. It has to do with demonic possessions and rituals. While you're playing, some parts can seem like they come out of left field entirely, or it feels like there are completely separate stories going on at once, but after thinking about it a little bit once I had finished playing... it is all connected in a pretty good way. There is one small plot hole that is never technically explained, but it isn't too egregious and you can understand everything else relatively well.

The main character's voice is extremely gay, and you can turn it off, but we chose to left it on because it was kind of funny to listen to. I can imagine they added the setting to turn it off because people were complaining it was breaking up the atmosphere, which is completely understandable.

Anyway, as far as horror games of this nature go, they aren't my favorite things in the world but I did enjoy it and it did genuinely spook me out a few times. I went into it thinking it was going to be more or less indie horror slop but was pleasantly surprised. Give it a shot if you're looking for something spooky!

#beardgamereview

A simple but extremely fun metroidvania that uses the aesthetic and foundation of the original Castlevania to make something super expanded. For a metroidvania, especially in the modern day, it is quite short which is actually a positive for me! Still, it is a lot longer than the original Castlevania if we're not counting how many times you'd have to replay the same levels because you keep dying and there aren't any passwords or save files in that game.

This fan game rearranges all of the levels into different rooms and areas in a much larger castle that can be freely traversed through. There are tons of power ups and different whips (with 8 directional action!) that don't just unlock different routes but also can fundamentally change the way you play the game. It is very well designed and I never found myself getting lost. Because of how relatively small the map is when compared to modern metroidvanias, it was pretty easy to make an entire trip around the castle to find what I was looking for.

The game also features a card system that lets you purchase cards with the money you collect throughout the game from various enemies and candles. You can only equip three at a time, but they will enhance your moveset or survivability. I went for a build that was solely focused on surviving and only saw one game over, so perhaps the game could be a little bit harder, but I'm also fairly decent at Castlevania so maybe it is a bit harder for newer players. There is a card that makes the game harder, which might be a tantalizing option for another playthrough.

I'm actually a really big fan of the original Castlevania. It's on my top 100 games list! Seeing the game remade into something way more feature complete with a map and everything was like a dream for me and I loved every second of it. The pace never felt like it was going too slow, the vast majority of the rooms weren't annoying to deal with despite revisiting them several times, and I never ran into any bugs whatsoever.

I do wish that the game gave me a little bit more incentive to use other items. The healing item was so good, especially when I had been pretty meticulously going through and collecting all of the secret items (which the game graciously marks on the map), that I didn't want to get rid of it to use something else in fear of not being able to find it again in the future. Given that hearts can be collected all over the place, perhaps they should have reduced the amount of hearts you can have at any given time or made the healing item only available towards the end of the game. They could have even done something where the healing item was just separate from the heart function entirely, but I can respect the choice to keep it simple and closer to being in line with the original.

It was also pretty annoying that you would auto pick up any item you walked over. I know that's how the original game is, but a lot of hacks have done away with that feature so that you have to more intentionally pick up items. It's always annoying to accidentally pick one up and then you have to wait for the cooldown to pick up your original one that got booted out.

I can also appreciate the creator's restraint when it comes to not adding tons of content that would have not appeared in the originals outside of the powerups. However, it does mean that the game ends up feeling a little bit lacking as a brand new entity and it does feel a lot more like a hack. That is genuinely a good thing still, but I can't help but feel like something is missing.

In any regard, I'd highly recommend checking this one out if you like metroidvanias, and especially if you have an appreciation for the original Castlevania. You'll love it!

#beardgamereview

Unfortunately, the game's interesting concept is not carried out in a way I would consider "fun." The combat is extremely boring and severely lacks depth, with a system that only lets you attack when an enemy is close to you that can get really janky depending on enemy and player positioning, especially in conjunction with enemies that can't be attacked with physical attacks. All of the enemies are damage sponges even on the easiest difficulty, which I switched to in order to spend the least amount of time in the dreadful combat as possible while I trudged through this game. A lot of enemy types revolve around needing to use specific abilities, which require you to either wait for them to recharge or use specific combos to recharge them faster when you're attacking fodder enemies. It's an interesting idea for a combat loop, but like everything else in this game, it is extremely poorly executed and just ends up making everything feel like a slog.

The puzzles and platforming don't fare much better, and the segments where you're altering people's memories are extremely obscure in a way that is reminiscent of old school point and click adventure games. I had to look up guides for most of them due to how nonsensical and arbitrary they were, as if you were meant to arrive at the solution through either sheer luck or by the process of elimination

There were a couple moments where I genuinely could not wait to play again after a session. Some story hooks really intrigued me, and the atmosphere could be really great at times. However, most of the story is quite poorly written and it gave me the feeling of it being a rough draft that was written in sequence with whatever the writers thought was cool to put in at the time instead of getting multiple passes. Tons of characters sprout traits out of nowhere, some characters leave the story as quickly as they entered and never make another appearance which makes them seem wholly irrelevant, and holy hell... so many character and location names are the cheesiest, cringiest things I could have never come up with. It really feels under-cooked, like the writers wanted to make this world that was equal in size to something like the world of Cyberpunk but just could not cram it all in the scope of this game despite their best efforts.

At the end of the day, ironically, I wish I could forget ever playing Remember Me. It wasn't good. It had enough there to hook me initially into wanting to play it, but I was severely let down with the gameplay and story nearly every step of the way and I just cannot recommend anyone play this game over pretty much anything else they have in their backlog.

#beardgamereview

Personally, I err on the side of not recommending this game, but it definitely still has a lot of merit and I think a certain type of person will still enjoy it enough.

For the most part, I actually was really enjoying this game and getting super interested in the setting and story. I found myself hardly being able to wait to play it again. The lead up to the ending though is abysmal. The story throws so many twists at you so quickly while also turning back in on itself like some sort of drug addled ouroboros that I just completely stopped caring. I'm sure there is a lot of symbolism and stuff but it ended up feeling just way too pretentious and strange for me to actually get into it versus what had started as a pretty grounded game. It gets really immersive, potentially too immersive at times honestly, but then throws away what seemed like such a carefully and intricately crafted narrative at the finish line.

On top of that, the game still has plenty of bugs in it and doesn't run very well at all. You can break out of the map, get stuck, see things that aren't supposed to happen yet, break quests and puzzles... all while the game comes apart at the seams with awful auto exposure and stuttering from just standing still and moving the camera around.

As far as the "horror" aspect goes, there was one part that genuinely scared me and that's about it. Most of its horror is either shock horror or simply macabre. Shock horror is great when you do it right and this game does have its infamous "face peeling" moment done very well. However, pretty much everything else just had me thinking it was more stupid than scary.

This is a real shame because, like I said, the game DID have me hooked for most of the run time, minus a few issues here and there like any other game. It wasn't exactly what I expected, but after adjusting to what the game actually was I was liking it quite a lot. The massive problem was just the ending and the lead up to it. The game felt like it lost all of the identity it had built up and just derailed entirely.

I've played walking sims and puzzle adventure games just like this one with far better, more cohesive stories and gameplay structures. If you're looking at this thinking it might be interesting to you because of the horror aspects, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking at this thinking you might really enjoy the setting of Italy during WW2, you'll like the beginning but hate the ending. If you're looking at this thinking you might enjoy a story told through the environment with little interactive bits here and there... go play What Remains of Edith Finch instead.

Also there is some really weird shit in the ending about the main character being a chronic masturbator that doesn't seem like it fits it ANYWHERE to the game's story at all. No idea why they had to add that in there... it felt like a complete curve ball from left field smacking me in the nuts after I had just watched a team of circus animals Mighty Morph into a T-Rex.

#beardgamereview

I'm recommending this game with two extremely big caveats.

1) It has some serious tech issues that did actively prevent me from enjoying the game in some parts. Wait for a patch, wait for driver updates. Hopefully it will be fixed by the time this game goes on sale, which will be a perfect time to buy it. I'm not just talking about poor game performance, though that was an issue, I'm talking about weird shader issues that fucked with some of the important cutscenes and even a crash that seemed to make things perform far worse than they were beforehand. For right now, play it on PS5 if you can instead. Maybe you'll have less issues with a more powerful system than mine too, but I can't say for sure since people with 5090s were also getting crashes right at the beginning of the game. It's really unfortunate because this holds back what would otherwise be a fantastic game.

2) This is not a Silent Hill game. This is its own thing completely. There are similarities here and there, but it is much more apt to say that ƒ is inspired by Silent Hill, like many other games that share those same similarities and themes. I really wish that the game could have been given its own title, because it would have helped it stand out so much more. If not that, I wish it would have been connected to Silent Hill in a much bigger way. This game takes place before any of the other Silent Hill games, and it could have been the genesis for what happens in the future, but they went a completely different route and it is really its own story entirely.

With those two things out of the way, yes, I do recommend the game for anyone who is wanting a survival horror game that has a really wild story with a Japanese theme. It really does scratch the "Fatal Frame" itch quite well, to be completely honest. If you like both Fatal Frame and Silent Hill then this game will be right up your alley for sure. It never gets into combat so much that it becomes a Resident Evil type of game and running sometimes is the better option. The audio is fantastic, the graphics look amazing when they aren't glitching out, and there were some moments that had me truly awestruck. It's not SUPER scary, and it doesn't have quite the same vibe going on as other Silent Hill games, but I did still enjoy the setting well enough.

As far as that combat goes, it's pretty hit or miss. There are some combat moments that are really awesome, some that had my jaw on the floor even, but a lot of the time the camera really works against you. When there is more than one enemy on the screen, that camera really does not work well. The FOV is very narrow, which makes sense for a horror game, and that leads to very frequently not being able to see the enemies or environment around you. Trying to dodge out of an enemy's attack only to get stuck on some railing or wall and then attacked does not feel great. It doesn't help that a lot of these areas are really cramped, as they are in horror games typically, and the camera is constantly sliding along walls and getting closer to your character which makes it even harder to see what's going on. This is why, beyond technical limitations, fixed camera angles can be REALLY good for horror games especially, but even action games if you want some fights to take place in a particular area and have an interesting setup for them. Leaving fixed camera angles behind entirely is a poor choice, and I vastly prefer the SH2/SH3 method of camera control where it strikes a great balance between the two modes.

There was a decent amount of enemy variety, with the enemies all having a second variation too. Most of the enemies I found kind of annoying to be honest, but I don't know if that's because the enemies were actually annoying or the combat was just annoying because of those camera issues and the fact that the enemies are all really spongy. I think enemy health pools could have easily been reduced by half and I would have been happy with it. I was playing on "Story" difficulty too, which is kind of funny because the only other difficulty is "Hard." I would not recommend playing on Hard if Story was already quite a slog. I feel kind of conflicted about the combat because like... I enjoyed playing the game, but I was also routinely annoyed by it. Kind of strange.

Weapons have durability, and there are only melee weapons. In basically every survival horror game out there, you have guns that have ammo and can be used at range with higher damage, and then you have some melee weapons that you'll use to conserve ammo but at a risk to your health. It is all about managing all of your resources. In Silent Hill ƒ, for a typical playthrough, you can carry 3 melee weapons and all of them can degrade and break. Nothing long range. It kind of removes the aspect of feeling like you're in control of how you survive, right? It feels like you're just along for the ride with whatever the game decides to give you. The biggest choice you'll ever have to make is whether you want to replace a certain weapon with another one you find, or what weapon you want to use a precious tool kit on to repair it slightly (of which I only found like, maybe 5 or 6 in the entire game). Even worse, when I ran into the only time all of my weapons actually broke, the game just spawned in two more for me. Is there even a point to having weapon degradation when you have no way for the player to engage in the combat without them, so you have to spawn in weapons anyway? It seems like an idea some guy had in a board room and then they never wanted to remove it. I'd highly recommend just playing with an infinite durability mod while making sure you don't equip any Omamori (the game's upgrade slot system) that give you boosts based on your weapon durability.

Where the actual survival management gameplay comes in is the upgrade system. You can trade items that replenish your Health, Sanity, and Stamina for Faith Points. Maybe that's what the ƒ stands for? Faith? Anyway, you use those faith points to upgrade your stats, upgrade how many Omamori slots you have (up to 3), and receive random Omamori that will give you a different special benefit. You will have to be really picky with which of these options you decide to upgrade at any given point, and you will have to forego some healing items in order to get the most out of it. I decided right from the beginning of the game, practically, that I wasn't going to use any of the Sanity features because it just didn't really interest me, so thankfully I was able to just pour all of my Sanity items into getting more Faith Points. I ended up with a pretty good kit. So there is a unique element to the "survival" aspect of survival horror in there, it just feels a little undercooked for the genre. This is much closer to an action horror game than a survival horror.

The audio is probably the only thing that is recognizably "Silent Hill" other than like, there being a lot of fog and "trauma" or whatever. The sound design is FANTASTIC and the soundtrack is done by Kensuke Inage and, of course, Akira Yamaoka. You can 100% hear his Silent Hill stylings in there all the time. It's great too because it's like a blend of the Silent Hill style and traditional Japanese folk music. Hearing those smooth guitar riffs right alongside koto, taiko, and Japanese choirs is awesome. I felt like Mr. Yamaoka might be losing his touch a bit because SH2's remade soundtrack seemed really stiff, but ƒ's soundtrack is proof that's not the case. This might partially be due to the collaboration as well, but either way I'm very happy with the soundtrack. I do still prefer the soundtracks for the original games because there is something just entirely otherworldly about them, but this one is still fantastic.

Now, for the story. It is wild. It is absolutely insane. I think I understand the main plot, but I'll probably have to go searching through a few explanation posts and videos to fully grasp all of the intricacies. What's on display for your first playthrough is honestly confusing as fuck and doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a lot of parts, but you can sort of piece a few things together. There are 4 endings (plus one joke UFO ending, also a good Silent Hill nod), and you can only get the first one on your first playthrough. The second and third you can get on your subsequent playthroughs, and you can only get the fourth if you have achieved the second or third on yet another playthrough. So it does require four playthroughs to get every single ending, which is asking quite a lot of the player to be honest. The game is about 10 hours long on a first run, but I suppose that subsequent ones would be a good deal shorter. I do wish that you could achieve endings 1, 2, or 3 on your first playthrough, and that the conditions for getting them didn't revolve around only a couple of items, but I do still understand what they were going for. I ended up just watching the endings on YouTube, but I do think I'll play through the game again regardless, which is saying a lot honestly because I don't often do that with games.

Without spoiling much, the worry about the game being feminist propaganda or something like that is pretty unfounded. The game does take place in an era where, especially in Japan, women obviously didn't have as many rights and still had to fall in line with very strict roles, but also during a time where things were beginning to change. It's interesting to get a little glimpse into that time period here. On top of that, though, Hinako's family is just pretty fucked in general so it isn't just all about "boooo men bad, feminism!" especially because there is a strong male character here with Shu, Hinako's best friend since childhood. Every character is pretty heavily flawed in some way or another though, so yeah... I never felt like I was being talked down to or anything like that.

Beyond that, though, I think Hinako's core struggle is something pretty much everybody can relate to. Having a lot of societal expectations and navigating all of it while growing up and then entering adulthood is really hard to do, especially if you lose people who were your rocks as a result of those societal expectations, and you aren't wanting to just play along. I certainly related to that feeling quite a lot. The story that they wanted to tell does really seem like it pretty naturally fit within the time period they chose, it didn't feel forced at all. It does make me really interested in what something like this would be like in the modern era, though. It would probably be extremely political though, so I don't expect any AAA studio to touch something like that and even if an indie did, they would get a lot of pushback I'm sure.

Anyway, all of that is to say that I did really enjoy the story. I haven't ever read Higurashi, but from the Japanese horror media I have experienced I can tell that there is a lot of that sort of vibe going on here too. It's extremely mystical and symbolic. It is exactly what I like from Japanese games, for them to actually be Japanese games.

All of that being said, of course this still isn't really what I want out of Silent Hill. I'm really hoping that Townfall brings back the classic Silent Hill experience and setting in an awesome way, because so far the series is in an even weirder place than it was once Konami started giving the development rights away to western studios in the late 2000s and early 2010s. You have a remake of a lightning in a bottle game that is still good, but not anywhere close to what the original was. The rest of it just doesn't really relate to Silent Hill at all, and ranges from shit quality to meh quality to great quality. If I'm recommending any Silent Hill games to anyone, it is still going to be 1-3 and then they can explore the rest of the franchise if they want, because this is not what Silent Hill is. My roommate said "I don't know anything about Silent Hill" and I told him that he could play ƒ and still know nothing about Silent Hill. Unfortunately, that does impact my score of the game a little bit, and I can't really help that. I can't look at a game that is called "Silent Hill" and just not take into account the fact that it has nothing to do with what I love so much about Silent Hill.

Don't get me wrong, this game is still fantastic and I did really like it, but is it Silent Hill? Does it still give me the same feeling to play? Hell no. It is probably the farthest removed the series has ever been and I really wish it would have been called something else. I got more of a Silent Hill feeling playing The Evil Within 2, honestly.

Oh, I almost forgot about the puzzles! Yeah, they are actually really forgettable and are definitely not the main focus of this game at all. The fact it has puzzles period is kind of funny actually, because at least half of them are the exact same puzzle with a different riddle attached. You basically run around and find amulets and then shove the amulets into a door in the right spots and then something opens up. If they aren't amulets, they're keys or keepsakes or something like that. The structure is the exact same thing every time. There are a few puzzles that REALLY stuck out to me in the school section of the game, being a slide box puzzle and a locker puzzle which actually had me writing down and decoding cyphers on a piece of paper. It wasn't anything CRAZY, but it did feel really good to write down puzzle stuff like that. Other than those, though, honestly the "puzzles" were laughable at best and felt like they were mostly only included so that the game could more justify being called "Silent Hill." This is nothing compared to some of the highly memorable puzzles in the other games, or even other games in the genre. It did also seem like the puzzles really just completely fell off in the latter half of the game, because there were much more unique ones earlier on and I thought they would continue in that fashion but as soon as you reach that halfway point it's pretty much all action from there on out.

Anyway, yeah, good game, not a Silent Hill game though. Wait for a sale, because by then hopefully the awful graphics bugs will be fixed and maybe there will be some mods to help enhance your gameplay a little bit. If some coding wizard came down from the skies and put fixed camera angles in the game, I also think that would elevate this to a 9/10. Seriously, the camera is rough and does NOT work for this kind of game. Maybe if they dialed up the action more and showed prompts when enemies were attacking off-screen and decreased health pools for enemies and bla bla bla... yeah just not this game.

If you read this whole thing... thanks, you're cool. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have or answer questions about the game. If you've played it, let me know what your favorite part was.

#beardgamereview

Where to start? This game was incredible! I ended the game with just over 500 of the 777 bananas to collect. There were plenty of them that were just "dig terrain, find banana" but the majority were found in bonus levels or in the main world with unique challenges. There were a lot of those challenges that repeated a similar theme, such as "collect all the puzzle pieces" but they all had their own twists to help them feel like they belonged in the current level you were playing or for a specific transformation.

Speaking of the transformations, they were all super unique and really fun! Definitely weird seeing Donkey Kong turn into all these Sub-Saharan animals, but they all had abilities that completely transformed the way you play the game. The only real exception to that was the Kong transformation, which is basically just "DK but stronger." That one being so simple is a great introduction to the transformations, though, and it is one I found myself using the most often because of how it compliments the game's main gameplay loop.

Which is, of course, terrain destruction and manipulation. This is a platformer through and through, and most of the other transformations certainly compliment that aspect, but Kong and one other one play into the terrain stuff perfectly. It is way more fun than I thought it would be to blast your way through terrain, especially because a lot of it isn't just for show... all of the different terrain types have different properties that will interact with other terrain types and various other gadgets/gizmos differently. They get really creative with the terrain in the later levels, too!

The amazing thing about this game as opposed to, admittedly, a lot of other Nintendo titles is that every single collectible is meaningful. You aren't just collecting things to collect them. It's really FUN to collect them, which certainly helps push you to always be on the hunt for more (and that hunt is extremely well paced, too!), you are collecting things because they meaningfully play into the game's "economy."

Banana gems give you skill points, which let you unlock more things that DK can do with and without the Bananza transformations. Banana chips can be accumulated and then traded for banana gems. Each level (called layers) have their own unique fossils, and you can use those fossils to unlock new outfits and accessories which also give you extra benefits. The last collectible is gold, which you can use to buy things like power-ups, unlock shortcuts, and open up little safehouses where you can sleep and get some temporary bonus hearts depending on how many safehouses you have on a layer.

When you're sleeping in those safehouses, Pauline will wake up DK and have a little bit of cute dialogue. I always found what she had to say pretty charming. Pauline is a fantastic addition to the game and a super adorable companion character. It's great to see moments where DK cares about her almost as much as he cares about bananas! Really though, I loved both characters, they were super charming throughout the whole game, as was pretty much the whole cast!

The story is simple and sweet. Nothing too crazy, but it didn't really need to be anything crazy. I still don't know exactly where on the "timeline" it is supposed to be... it kind of hints at it being both pre and post Odyssey so I'm not really certain. To be honest, I don't really care though! Unlike Zelda, the story of Mario and Donkey Kong has never been something I think the vast majority of people have cared much about, including myself. As long as it is serviceable to get you from point A to point B, it's good enough! It even has a little bit of a post-game story that is a lot more simple, but fun nonetheless.

There are a couple of weak spots for the game that prevent it from getting a perfect score for me. For one, the frame rate is at a solid 60 FPS most of the time but usually drops whenever lots of voxels are being spawned in or destroyed at a quick rate. It wasn't anything that harmed my enjoyment of the game, but it was certainly noticeable. The second thing is that, by and large, the game is extremely easy. There are challenging moments to be had, namely the final boss fight and some of the post-game challenges, but I only had one game over and it was during that final boss fight. I think the difficulty was tuned mostly for a general audience because that's the kind of audience that is playing the game, but there does exist an easier difficulty so I was expecting at least some resistance.

Overall, I expect this game to win some Game of the Year awards and maybe even a couple soundtrack ones as well. It is heaps and bounds better than Mario Kart World, and I can only imagine MKW is priced the way it is and was the launch title for the Switch 2 solely because MK8DX is Nintendo's highest selling game of all time. Even still, I'm surprised that DK Bananza wasn't the game Nintendo tried to schmooze their way into the $80 price point with. It is better than MKW in literally every way except maybe the soundtrack. It feels like an actual, full fledged game instead of something a bit closer to a glorified cash grab, by Nintendo's quality standards.

I don't think it's going to beat out something like Expedition 33 for the vast majority of people who would be voting for game awards in the first place, and I can't really say if that's fair or not because I haven't played the competition. I do, however, think that just by way of the amount of people who can actually play E33 versus DK Bananza, due to it being on everything but Switch 2 while the opposite is true for Bananza, means that E33 is probably going to have a bit more of a cultural effect on the gaming landscape as a whole. Bananza is a great game, a brilliant one at that, but it is limited by its platform and potentially the fact that it really is a game for general audiences and not a more mature kind of gamer.

Anyway, awesome game. Took just over 30 hours to beat so that's a pretty long game in my book! I had a great time with the whole way through. Towards the end I was getting a little bit antsy just because I want to play other games, but that doesn't mean I wasn't still having fun. If you haven't bought a Switch 2 yet, hopefully by like next year there will be a decent amount of games for it and it will be more worth your cash to pick up. This one is a MUST PLAY whenever you do so.

#beardgamereview

This game is decent. It's hard enough on the normal difficulty and will require you to actually learn how to play the game and interact with all of its systems and weapons to survive. Nothing about the story is particularly groundbreaking. There are some weird graphics issues although it looks fine enough for the most part. The combat is pretty par for the course, with the ONLY unique aspect being that you can slow down time but even that's not wholly unique.

The best part about this game is the dialogue, man. I never understood what people meant when they said something was "gay coded" until I played this game. I don't know, something about what the characters talk about, especially the character Burns, just makes everything seem hella gay.

The ending was extremely unsatisfying. It definitely seems like they wanted to link it into a second game but that obviously never happened.

I don't know, if you want a 6-8 hour generic cover shooter with a generic story but some unintentionally funny characters, this is your game. Maybe worth getting on a steep sale.

#beardgamereview