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Анон

Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Анон всех знакомых заебал простынями и нытьём про игры, что он проходит. А в стим, как делал раньше, их не запостишь, потому что играю сейчас через гейпасс. По неведомой причине анонов мозг предпочитает выражать эмоции и бомбёж на английском, поэтому все обзоры и похвалы будут на нём.
Буду максимально нерегулярен. Играю я медленно, не спеша, обожаю заглядывать во все углы. Иногда мне нечего сказать про игру, кроме "было хорошо/плохо", а иногда просто заёбывает писать.
Всегда рад послушать другое мнение, поговорить за игры и посраться.

Let the shitshow begin!

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

The Last Case of Benedict Fox

I liked the premises and screenshots before the release. I thought it'll be an awesome game, much to my liking. But when I saw system requirements my enthusiasm died out and suspicions grew. Well, anyway it's on the game pass so why not give it a shot?

The cover—the visuals—are great, everyone could see this for themselves on trailers and screenshots. But the inside— Now, there'll be a rant.

The enemies on medium difficulty are bloody bullet sponges. The character has only 4 HP and enemies have more. So obviously I'm playing on low difficulty where almost all enemies die from a single blow. And with the optional box for immortality checked, cause fuck this. And even now the combat is terrible. I actually need only one button - [x] melee. The range weapon - the pistol - is fucking useless. It takes a bloody eternity to aim it, and I can't aim freely, it moves along some arc. Every enemy's attack throws me kilometres away. Very handy. Thank you very much... Companion's abilities are almost useless unless you need them to open doors and passages. And also slow and inconvenient. And the block is awful too. It lasts way too short. For, like, a second or two. I abhorred lame and clumsy chase scenes, all three of them, that appeared out of the blue every damn time. They ruined the pace, were unnecessarily long and looked simply alien to the rest of the gameplay.

Double jumps are total fuckery. I cannot do it wherever I want, only where the devs allowed me to, where the ceiling is of the correct type. And if an enemy is camping on a ledge that allows you to double jump then fuck you, you'll jump no fucking where. Lately, I had found myself cornered by an invincible enemy. I couldn't walk past it, couldn't jump over it, couldn't kill it and couldn't kick it away from me. Nice play, devs...

There's even a map difficulty setting for absolute idiots - no markers at all, including the player's pin. As everyone might've expected I chose the map mod with all markers and colour highlights for uncompleted areas. And I also chose the easiest mod for puzzles - the one that allows me to skip any one of them I won't fancy solving myself. And, gods, there are annoying puzzles here. Like, the piano one. It's really lame to input notes using a stick. And I don't even have a full glance at the notes, they're showing one by one on a rotating cylinder. Or doors with teeth. I have to very quickly press buttons that are drawn on its teeth. Drawn with thin, as spider web, lines. Half of which are barely visible from afar and the other half aren't properly visible even from a short distance.

The map is good though. It's big and complicated and has a ton of passageways and shortcuts. If I face a dead-end, I know that there're other corridors I can explore.

And the graphics are amazing. But not for RTX3060, for fucks sake! Are you fucking kidding me?! At first, I only occasionally had stutters discovering new portals. But the more I played the more it lagged. Stutters occurred every damn time I went near the portal or the game autosaved.

The story is empty as my whiskey glass and makes no fucking sense. Devs hide in darkness much too much of the plot. I know nothing - I care for nothing. It's that simple. What do I know about side characters? Nothing, except their names. Do I care about them? Of course, not. What do I know about the main character? Nothing, except for his name and a connection to some otherworldly entity. Do I care for him? How the fuck do you think?! I don't give a damn fuck about a cardboard cutout without a single trait or a past! And whatever item with a "lore" description I find or as the main story progresses they didn't answer any bloody questions, only ask new ones. The so-called story throws concept after concept never telling what's all this fuzz about. "There's a pure being in this house, it's very important for the ritual". Why? What is this "pure being"? And what the fuck is this goddamned ritual you were blabbering about the whole bloody game for?! Right till the ending credits the plot didn't get any clearer, remaining just as a bunch of tattered bits of story and lore suspended in nothingness. And that post-credit scene... That was the stupidest thing I've seen in months.

The voice actors are doing their job poorly too. None of them plays a glimpse of emotions. And I especially dislike the work of whoever narrated Mrs Floyd's recording. The lines clearly show that the speaker was contented or depressed or outraged. But the voice actor read everything in a  blank, impassive voice as if it was a grocery list.

TLDR: it's a game for a game pass. I'm so glad I didn't pay for this piece of crap. My old laptop and arse-headed devs who don't know the word "optimisation" saved me from buying this on Steam. Aesthetics - awesome, gameplay - shitty.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

The game below I finished two weeks ago, so my impressions might have been fading for days now.

Ravenlok

I was amazed by the Ravenlok's title cover in the game pass library. And that was the sole reason why I jumped into the rabbit hole. I wasn't thrilled by the starting location (The House) but decided to continue nevertheless. And never regretted this decision.

First of all, I want to complement the visuals even though I don't fully comprehend the idea behind them. Why some models are just low-poly with pixel-art textures and others are fully voxel? But overall the graphics look pretty, vibrant and fairytale-ish.  It's a feast for the eyes. I frequently stopped to make screenshots. And the aesthetics are charming. I see how hugely it was inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice. As you go deeper and deeper into the gameplay, the design gets curiouser and curiouser.

Combat is fairly easy: just swing a sword and off with those cunts' heads and dash out from their attacks. The block is clumsy, though. You need to hold Y pressed to block and anyway, it takes a few seconds for the hero to raise a shield. A range of bombs you can throw at enemies adds a variety to the battles. Different foes use different attack patterns so you won't get bored and bosses have more cards up their sleeves to bury you six feet in the ground than the mobs.

There's only one thing that will challenge your patience from time to time. Behold! The greatest foe of this game - the camera. Every now the then it really felt like all this time it was the main antagonist. Don't get me wrong, it was doing its job okay-ish but, sometimes— sometimes I wanted to catch it a smash it into the ground.

The story never lost me and kept me interested. Though, it felt a bit rushed out after I got the first out of three keys. The path to the last two keys was shorter than the long and twisting way to the first one. But anyway, the whole journey was smooth as a gentle flat river that softly carries you along the picturesque banks. It is a weird and surreal tale, just like the original Alice. The characters are cute and bizarre. And I definitely have a few questions for the rabbit piano player about the number of his limbs.

By and large, I thoroughly recommend this game to everyone who wants to chill after a long hard day and enjoy a little masterpiece of the video game industry.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Rumu

It's a cute little game. The more you dive into the story the more it turns out to be some sort of mystery/thriller. Obviously, I tried to solve it on my own but got to deep into finding hidden meanings that I completely lost the truth that was on the surface. I've outplayed myself. Which is good as it actually kept me interested up until the end. And the story itself was good. Some people may even consider it being sad. Our main character Rumu is pretty lovable and the only other character — Sabrina — gives me GLaDOS vibes. Their interactions are convincing as a conversation between a stupid vacuum cleaner and a highly functional AI.

There are no puzzles or anything that would involve hard thinking or thinking at all. All obstacles between you and the story can be managed by the spinal cord. It's more like a walking sim with stupendously clumsy controls. No, seriously, it's almost unplayable on a keyboard, with a mouse it is bearable yet still uncomfortable. It's such a shame that dialogues cannot be skipped or speeded up. And the checkpoints could be more frequent too. It's pretty boring to listen to the whole beginning of the day Sabrina's soliloquy again because yesterday you exited the game in the middle of the chapter and today upon loading the game started it anew.

The visuals are nice: minimalistic and captivating. The music is fine as it didn't annoy me and I actually paid a bit of attention to it, which is quite an achievement on its own.

I definitely recommend this short game despite all its flaws as the story is solid and well worth your attention.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Garden Story

I've played this game for three hours. Three fucking hours of getting fucking nowhere! Three hours of grinding resources and doing stupid daily quests! How far did I get into the story? Well, I assume I just finished the tutorial and jumped into the very first story quest. Or maybe second at best. It's hard to keep track of stuff when you have no tools for that. You can't even keep track of progress for fucking daily quests! You have to come back to the bloody board every damn time to see what you've forgotten again. And the variety of them is so astonishing. Kill N enemies, grind N resources and hit buttons in the correct order to activate a damn bridge you've fixed the day before! I have nothing to say about the story as I soon lost track of it because of the tedious dialogue system. All dialogues appear in textboxes and there's nothing bad in that. What makes it so enraging is that you have to wait until the text will slowly write itself word by word with remarkably long pauses at full stops or three dots. I almost instantly gave up speaking to anyone who doesn't have a quest mark above their head. Controls are clumsy and uncomfortable. The only two-three stamina points you have in the beginning make any combat a chore. Hit three times — wait two seconds for SP to recharge. Sprint and roll dodge are using the same SP as attack. And it takes an eternity to drink a bloody health potion. And the soundtrack pretty soon becomes annoying as it plays the same song (or very similar songs, I didn't pay much attention to it) over and over again.

I won't recommend this game to anyone. Pixel graphics are nice and cute. But believe me, this game doesn't worth your attention at all.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

I've finished it almost a week ago, but my thoughts about it didn't want to dress themselves in word-clothes.

F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch

I have mixed feelings about this game. As soon as I jumped into this game I loved everything in it (except for the cat from the opening cutscene) but the longer I played the more bored and sometimes enraged I became.

The art is great. It truly nailed the diesel-punk (steam-punk?) atmosphere. Not that I wanted to stop every few steps to take screenshots, but some areas were pretty picturesque.

Gameplay-vice it's a typical medroidvania. It has a huge map with secret passages and shortcuts locked behind skill-related doors. Although you have to be that one maniac who cannot live without collecting every item and exploring every corner as the game won't really encourage you to come back for them. Once the plot leaves a zone to move further, it's done with it, it'll never come back there again. And even if it will need to return there to lead you to another zone it'll be more convenient for the player to use a teleport station right near the new zone. And even I that one kleptomaniac who loves to stick their nose behind every locked door found fast travel points much more useful than intended shortcuts. And in the end, I got a bit bored doing this. This game is pretty much linear for a metroidvania. It's more like an action platformer, actually.

Fights are cool. While you're still at the beginning. But mobs got harder pretty fast and you won't become any stronger. There's no way to upgrade your weapons to deal more damage. All you have at hand are combos that you'll have to unlock and memorise. And I doubt that anyone will make an effort to do the latter. Only a handful of them are useful in actual combat. Some of them are too niche, come too slow and some are too damn timing sensitive. And it won't get better after unlocking the other two weapons. And there's one extremely annoying challenge about all those pesky combos - Combat training. It'll ask you to use combos you'll never use in a fight and do them in a way too strict timing, some animations take longer to play than this goddamned timing allow you to wait. And mid-air combos are additional pain in the arse. Gladfully, these shitty trainings are fully optional. You just won't unlock the last few combos in the upgrade tree and won't get a key fragment to open a secret door. And that's actually not a big deal. I've suffered through four levels of fight challenges for this last fragment I needed to open the bloody door and get what? A stupid skill of doubtful usefulness in the endgame? Are you fucking kidding me?! My disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined.

The story is fine. It keeps you mildly interested and gives some sense to your adventure. But the storytelling is far from great. It was never fully revealed what was all that fuss with the spark about. Or with Iron Dogs. Why furries were at war with them? Why did this fraction want apart from turning everyone into an immortal machine? Where are the "gods" who gave the spark to animals? And why the fuck does this game have a horrible open ending?!

I didn't remember any soundtrack composition at all. Except for the one that plays on Geoffrey Street. Because it annoyed the hell out of me. And I have a huge question about voice acting. Why the hell some dialogues were completely silent? And even more. Why were some individual lines in fully narrated dialogues left without narration? And sometimes audio doesn't match the subtitles or a few lines are switched in order.

I'd say it's a so-so game, above average. The visuals and design are stunning as well as the first few hours of gameplay, but close to middlegame it became more and more tiresome and combats get too repetitive.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Chicory

It's a cute little game about artists' struggles and their desire to make the world a better place.

Something dreadful happened in a magical world and all colours had vanished. And we, amateur artist, have to repaint the blank canvas of the universe back. On a surface level it's an interesting fantasy story, but look just one layer deeper and you'll see how real it is to almost anyone in the world. How scary a white sheet of paper looks for a novices, how people are doubting themselves, how they're looking up to their idols, how they may be crushed by not living up to their own expectations and so on and so on. The characters are quite lovely. Some of them have depth and some are just fillers, but cool fillers.

The gameplay is fairly simple and entertaining. Colour the world to your liking using various brush shapes and effects and to solve puzzles and overcome challenges on your way. Casual and relaxing. Up until the boss battles. Those are kind of intense, although you cannot die and lose anyway. You won't even have to restart the battle if you take too much damage. There's a huge pile of clothing gift boxes and litter (this game's currency) scattered all around the map for hamster hoarders and collectors like me. Some of those are pretty tricky to find or get. Oh, and you can also decorate literally any place here not just by painting over it, but placing furniture and plants wherever you want. And NPCs will sometimes stop there to sit on your chairs or otherwise notice and comment on your investment into beautifying the lands of Picnic.

I highly recommend this little masterpiece to everyone. And especially to those who feel down and need a cheering up and a friendly pan on the shoulder.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

I've actually finished this game a while ago, but I was struggling with expressing my emotions about it. And actually, I still do. It's that weird arse state of mind when I love something unconditionally and can't explain why.

Beacon Pines

This game is a masterpiece. The art is very lovely and charming, scenes and characters are cute as hell. It's simply gorgeous. The music is nice too. But that's not what I want to talk about.

It is a visual novel of a unique kind. It mimics a book that's read to you by a deeply invested in a story narrator. And does it perfectly. Every chapter opens and closes with a book page with some title illustration you dive in or out of. As the narrator reads all text from this "page". Dialogues between characters aren't voiced (those voice-imitating sound effects don't count) but from time to time the narrator chimes in with some "author's lines" to explain what we couldn't see due to the game's limitations. Like character emotions, for example. But it's so-o-o organic. Like someone's actually reading you a book!

From the store page and trailers, it may look like your choices matter here but they do not. Almost every time you end up at the crossroads, you'll find yourself with only one card in your hand. And you'll have to play it to the bitter end. Don't worry, it won't be long and along the way you'll find another card to use on this or other crossroad. And all this is to find the one and only true ending that'll trigger the credits scene. In the end, it's a pretty linear story about the player's journey, not the character's. You, the player, are trying to figure out what's going on and how to make everything right. The narrator will be wondering about those same things with you too. And that's an awesome experience. All timelines have logical stories that don't crumble under close examination as the characters don't get hindsight about stuff from different branches. And the story itself is neat. Not so a trivial sci-fi mystery.

Through and through that's an amazing experience that'll bring you back the joy and wonder of a curious reader captivated by the story and atmosphere. It is a must-play game.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

I'm alive! Well, kind of. Anyway, here'll be the review.

Starfield

Let's make this clear from the beginning: I like this game. So if you were expecting to see yet another bomb review, look somewhere else. There are a shit ton of them already on the internet.

It took me nearly two months to finish all faction quest lines and all other side quests I could find. And I can say with full confidence that the main quest line is the worst. And because it is the main quest I'm gonna spit on it the most. The story is boring as hell, and the gameplay could've been much better. Only one quest in this line is truly excellent—Entangled. Switching between different universes is awesome. Almost as awesome as that one magnificent mission in Titanfall 2 where you switch between two timelines. "Almost" is because it'd be much cooler if I could change universes on the fly rather than at fixed-in-place anomalies. But anyway, it was incredible.  And the fact that you can save both universes even though the log doesn't say that you can (you just have to be observant) makes it so much better. And I also want to praise whoever added the NASA museum in one mission and slap in the face whoever decided to cut my access to it at the end of that same mission. It was so cool and atmospheric. I could spend hours in there wandering around the remnants of NASA stuff. Oh, boy. And there're those temples that give you powers... Although they're not necessary to finish the MQ, you'll probably do them for cool spells. If you saw one temple, you've seen them all. As they all are the same. And all are boring to death. First, you have to use your scanner to find it, then once inside you have to fly in zero-G and catch at least 5 sparks. Sometimes it got bugged and I found myself catching shiny dots for ten minutes straight to no avail. And some temples can bug so hard that they won't spawn at all. Well, enough about that.

Let's talk about the quartet of judgemental pricks, or—as Bethesda calls them—companions from the Constellation. In Fallout 4, we had a heap of interesting and diverse companions, both by personality and by moral standards. But here, we have four absolutely boring jerks. How could the devs fall so low? Yes, they have different backgrounds, and yes, they have different senses of humour. But apart from that, they are the same. They are all idiots who will rant about every decision you make, as if they know everything better, and sometimes even grumble about you not living up to their high moral expectations. Those cunts... I would gladly forget them all in the Lodge, but they're the only companions who comment on your dialogues with other NPCs. And I liked that feature in Fo4. Their personal quests are also meh, without any good conclusions. It feels like the devs said to themselves, "Well, we don't have time, so we'll cut this crap to a bare minimum". Other NPCs from the Constellation are a bit better. However, I had very limited interactions with them during the MQ, so perhaps they are jerks who simply didn't have a chance to show that clearly. Non-Constellation companions are much more lively and interesting, but they play a small role and therefore have little character development. But even so, they have more varying personalities than the quartet.

Alright. Back to the quests. United Colonies and Crimson Fleet/SysDef quest lines are top-notch. Their stories are the most interesting in the whole game. One is a horror story where you unravel the truth about the monsters and long-forgotten past. And the other is a treasure hunt adventure where you need to use your wits and crafts to reach the prize. And characters in there are also good and believable. Unlike that quartet of douchebags I talked about earlier. And I hated Naeva and Delgado with all my heart for being such cunts as I would expect pirates would be. Which is also a good thing, in a way. All that morally complicated stuff about Vae Victis really helps you immerse yourself in the story. Also, these quest lines have some unique and interesting locations, such as spaceships and stations in CF quests, or Londinion in UC quests. The gameplay somewhat varies from just blasting your way through hostile NPCs. You have to use stealth, the environment, your surroundings, and of course, your silver tongue. Ryujin is the next good quest line. It's a good old cyberpunk story about a greedy corporation. Even though it can be frustrating with all its (bugged) stealth missions, but you can shoot everyone on your way if you don't mind killing innocents and getting a lower reward. Corporates are corporates, so you can guess how "charming" they can be, all in line with the genre. And the list of faction quest lines ends with Freestar Collective—the worst faction quest line in my opinion. All characters are annoying fucks for no reason, the story itself ends pretty much abruptly and brings almost no satisfaction. It could've been better. Much better. It's supposed to be a mystery story, but there's not much detective work involved and it wasn't developed well. There're a handful of notable side quests that do not belong to any faction plotlines. And some of them notable mainly for their length. Especially the Constants's quest. It's so bad that it can even compete with the MQ for the title of the most badly written quest in the entire game. But there're plenty on other better quests. Like, the one with clones. Interesting story and a choice between different evils. I also find good the short UC Sec quest line. Being a police officer and doing just normal police work is fun. I wish there would be more of that. The quest with the miners in Cydonia, where you mischievously act for a greater good, is also in my heart. Well, I can go on for some time with the list of side quests I enjoyed. So I better stop now.

Now, about the visuals. Human-made locations look nice. I can't say they look next-gen, but they're beautiful nonetheless. I personally like New Atlantis. It's truly a futuristic city, somewhat utopian, straight out of good old sci-fi art. Even a bit weird-looking trees don't freak me out. Well, most POIs and stuff are sci-fi-ish enough and great. But then there's Akila... What in a goodness' name a generic cowboy town doing in my space adventure in the not-so-distant future? This place single-handedly ruins the whole atmosphere for me. It's not a subtle homage, it's plain arse late 19th century town! NPCs even speak like they're in a bloody Western movie! I'm not a fan of cyberpunk style but I even prefer Neon to that goddamn Akila! POIs have their own mini-stories told through notes and level design. They're really fascinating when you first visit them. But here's the catch: "cool on the first visit". And procedural generation puts a bunch of them everywhere you go. And there are only so many different POIs. They lose their novelty pretty fast. There's literally no point in exploring every dot on a map you see, unless you're farming for exp and credits. But I suggest visiting each one of them once in your entire playthrough, even if you're not planning to step in their direction ever again. Generated landscapes, on the other hand, are your typical generated landscapes. Bland, boring and soulless. But they're often beautiful, though. I've taken a ton of screenshots of cool scenery. But landscapes lack variety. If you've seen some biome on one planet, you've seen it on all other planets. Like, trees are the same almost everywhere. The same firs and birches on all planets with dense forests. Animals got luckier, though. There're more animal than plant species in the game.

I have nothing to say about the soundtrack as soon enough it became one never-ending unremarkable song somewhere in the background to my ears.

And I didn't complete or start NG+ at all because I didn't want to go near the MQ with a bargepole. I'll just wait for the DLCs and do them on my original playthrough with my one and only character. I see absolutely no reasons to get on the NG train to see a few new dialogue options and slightly different quest outcomes. Oh, and all your stuff will be gone in each iteration, only your skills and spells will remain. Which is a huge bummer and a dick move. It doesn't make this whole idea of new game plus more appealing to me. Man, I haven't collected all those precious little snow globes (no thanks to you, Bethesda, as two of them can't be found without either in-game console or help from some guides or YouTube videos) to lose them at once! And I also haven't decorated my flat to find it as a blank canvas again! And what if I had a carefully built outpost? It would be gone too! So, once again, that's why I don't like NG+ in Starfield.

In my 400+ hours playthrough, I've encountered a few bugs, but not that many. Like, some NPCs rejected the concept of clothes and walked the streets naked and some did even better—fuck around Venus without a spacesuit, Constant grav jumped the fuck out of the known universe, some temples were non-existent, freezes on autosaves, occasional crashes (less than 10 in total) and somehow Starfield managed to stall all uploads on the console while it was running.

Well, maybe it looks like a bomb review, but I really like Starfield despite its faults. It's a good space adventure sandbox if you do anything but the main quests. Space is huge. And there are so many things to see and activities to get lost in. Just don't touch the MQ unless you surely want to.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Dordogne

Let's start with the bright sides. Watercolour sprites and scenes are lovely. Although all of the characters creep me out. It's something about their faces straight out of the uncanny valley. Their little portraits in dialogues are nice, though, good-looking I may even say and they definitely don't look like they came from weird arse nightmares. But landscapes in this game— oh, my, my, they are beautifully crafted and simply amazing. I would often stop to take cool pictures of them for our character's album if those two features weren't that useless.

I can't use the in-game camera to take photos wherever I want to, only where the devs allow me to. And same goes for sound samples, with an extra challenge of finding correct positions of those bloody sound sources. It's fairly easy to collect stickers, if you manage to see those small orange diamonds, of course. But keywords are actually somewhat harder to collect as they sometimes demand you to be on the very precise spot to press A button and add them to the album.

Notwithstanding this game has a chapter selection, but it's still a pain in the arse to collect all words and stickers and whatnot. As there's no fucking way to skip dialogues or cutscenes. Or in any other way speed the process up. Do missed collectables worth all that trouble of slow replaying? No. Better play something else instead. They're practically useless. All those collectables exist solely for an album, that's also useless and here's for few forced extra minutes of gameplay. And you cannot fully customise it: you can't add two pieces of something. One photo, one sound, one sticker and one "poem" of three keywords. Take it or leave it.

It took me many sittings to finish this game. I could play for five or ten minutes straight and then I got bored as fuck. The game itself is short, but, bloody hell, it took me a long time to finish it. The interactions with everything are so slow and sluggish. Sometimes it even made me want to throw my controller into the wall. It feels like a mobile game. The controls are way too clumsy on a controller. But they look natural for a touchscreen. Or mouse. No, thinking about that, I wouldn't want to make this ruddy much of unnecessary movements and clicks with a mouse either. But to play it on a tablet would be natural.

The plotline is more boring than sentimental as it wants to be. And the fact that I could take this game only in small doses at a time definitely didn't help with that. It's a story about people who cannot open up their mouths and speak to each other. All their troubles came from that. And from their general stupidity, of course. I didn't feel invested into it at all. It started with a glimpse of mystery "What had happened all those years ago that divided this family?" that died very soon. And left me wondering only about how long til the end is left. And to intensify my sufferings, all characters are dull cardboard cut-outs.

To sum this up, I don't recommend this game to anyone. Play something else. Anything else. Don't even touch this boring mobile game.

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

A Little to the Left

This game practically dragged me out of my gaming slump, forcing me to write a review. Not because it was mind-blowing, mind you.

It is a mobile game, even though it was made for desktops and consoles. Playing it with a mouse isn't very convenient, and a controller is just plain horrible. But the touchpad is perfect, so I ended up playing it via Game Pass Cloud on my tablet. The gameplay is simple drag-and-drop, so it's a natural fit for a tablet.
I jumped into this game as soon as I saw that it was on game pass because I really needed something wholesome and relaxing (just like the Steam tags promised). I hoped that I may wake up from my comatose and return to gaming again. The art is relaxing (also blurry and glitching as fuck thanks to Game Pass Cloud that can't even stream in fullHD like a champ). But gameplay—only partially. Yeah, I could play this game using only one brain cell, but sometimes I failed to see the logic behind some additional solutions. And the hint system shows only one solution. So it's not of great assistance on 2 and 3-solutions levels. Also, some levels are either bugged or require pinpoint accuracy, forcing me to restart and redo the exact same solution again. And the soundtrack is basically one song on repeat (or they're so bloody similar that they pass as one), driving me up the wall until I muted it. That's not very relaxing at all!
But the biggest letdown is the achievement system. Who the fuck thought adding achievements for completing one fucking hundred DAILY quests in a short single-player puzzle game was a good idea?! And who the fuck needs dailies in this game anyway?
Overall, I don't think this game is worth its price. £13 for five leisure hours of primitive gameplay is a bit much. Maybe at a 50% discount, the price would be more reasonable. I'm glad I didn't fork out a single penny for it, and the £4.5 DLC doesn't exactly tickle my fancy. Bloody hell.
BTW, this game had had me so hyped that I resubscribed to Game Pass after three months of playing practically nothing. Seemed like my cup of tea! I even considered buying it on Steam first. But that bloody price…

Анон

Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

I'm alive. Kind of. Thinking is hard and brain doesn't braining at the moment. So let's try to go back on track with this little review.

Botany Manor
That's a short and cosy little game. You can effectively finish it in one sitting. Not much can be said about this game as it's really short. Here you explore the cute manor with gardens, collect clues and grow pretty flowers. The story is entertaining and you can feel fury rising inside of you for our character Arabelle. 19th century was certainly not a good time to live—especially for women. The puzzles are fairly easy if you remember the clues. And here we have come to the only thing I don't like about this game: despite the fact that you add clues to your journal you can't review them from there and have to go and find them again when you need them. No flowers require identical conditions and so you won't be using the same tools twice. You can grow multiple instances of the same flower if you want to as long as there are enough free pots around. Except for one flower. You'll have only one special pot to grow that one specific flower. And that's quite tragic.
But £21?! For a game that I finished in 4 hours because I had to walk to already-found clues and I took screenshots—a lot of them actually. But still the price is way too steep.

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Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Bramble
Let's start with something good. This game is very beautiful. And that's all for good things to say.
I can't say much about story cause I couldn't fully grasp what the fuck is going on there. Yes, it's based on north folklore, and? What the fuck is happening in that fucked up world? How all those zones and characters are connected in a GAME STORY?
The controls are sluggish. The camera is the real enemy of this game. And its forced angles are the cancer of it. The gameplay isn't quite engaging—from one chase scene to another, barely giving me a chance to take a breath. All the while the character moves VERY FUCKING SLOWLY. And each time you fuck up you'll have to watch UNBEARABLY slow animations. I hate being helpless in games and I hated every second of helplessness here. And when I finally got a sword and fought a boss it somehow wasn't feeling rewarding all this suffering cause the fight was extremely tedious. I hated every second of it too.
And on that note I've put this game away to play newly released Starfield. And I never touched this game since. Not even a notification that it's leaving gamepass brought back my attention to it. The game has left gamepass library and so has left all the chances of it to be completed.

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Re: Crabby gamer[игры][обзоры][yes comments]

Cocoon
Yet another masterpiece that I do not see as such.
The art is—weird. Some areas were nice, some boring, and the majority of scenes in the second half of the game glued a mask of disgust to my face. I think I only kind of liked the very first area—the canyon. But somewhere in the middle new areas are just gory, like they're made of a cancerous tissue or something. Like, what the actual fuck?!
The story here—is there even a story? If so, it's presented even worse than in Souls games. There's literally no clue as to what the fuck is going on there, and the ending makes this even worse. There are no explanations given as to who the fuck we are, where the fuck we are, what the fuck are we doing, and what the fuck does this all mean. That's not an "alien" way of storytelling, that's a complete lack of storytelling.
But maybe at least the gameplay is good? No, it's not. It's a boring and repetitive button pressing/triggering and one orbs special power using for the most of it. Even these simple puzzle mechanics could be interesting if implemented correctly and more densely packed. But they weren't. And this goes on until the final stage of the game where you'll have not one but four orbs but you can carry only one still. So this same process becomes not just mind-numbing but extremely tedious. And most of the new puzzles you'll have to complete with very precise timing. Very precise. And the finishing part of each world will be a boss fight no one asked for. Each boss fight will have multiple stages with no checkpoints and the demand for precision of your timings will be raised to absolute.
Oh, and there are some hidden collectables that are quite tedious to get as it may not be clear that there IS a path somewhere there leading to them. What are those collectables? Achievements say that they're called "moon ancestors". What does that mean? The fuck I know. I don't understand why I even collected them and what changed (apart from a few statues of them in the final scene).
So when I watched the ending cutscene I instantly regretted wasting my time on this game. I was intrigued when I first launched it and was looking to have some quality time and entertainment. And all for nothing!
And it's way too pricey. £21 for this is much too much. Long live gamepass where I played it.