This game has interested me for a while, but I just wasn't really buying new games much last year. It's taken me a while to really get to it, but I'm damn happy I did! This is a brilliant SRPG and is probably now my favorite in the genre. The writing, music, gameplay, design; everything is just so fantastically woven together for a fantastic whole. For the record, I completed every level and challenge, getting gold on nearly every level and never trying easy mode (also was never able to try out the co-op stages).
The conceit is certainly an odd one: Rabbids get meshed into the Mario universe and the ensuing mayhem needs to be cleaned up by a team of Mario-themed Rabbids and their Mario gang counterparts in a modern X-com-style gunplay bonanza. That said, this game had me giggling to myself all the time with how funny it makes the Rabbids in this context. As someone who never really cared for them in the past, this was a very pleasant surprise The mechanics are really unlike any other SRPG I've played, but they allow for a lot of really clever stuff. Like an X-com, it has both full and partial cover your character can hop into, but the percentages are absolute. In full cover, you cannot be hit from behind it, while partial cover is a 50/50 chance, and no cover is a 100% hit. Of the 8 characters, each has a combination of abilities that makes then well suited for different play styles with an according skill tree you can use to upgrade or alter abilities in addition to new weapons you can find and buy. But even though I played through the game mostly never deviating from my team of Mario, Luigi, and one other (who eventually was permanently Rabbid Yoshi), I never felt cornered into a mission that felt like it required a certain character's ability set to complete it, even for the gold. Each member of your 3-man team can do 3 moves a turn in their main fire (of which they have a standard gun which they can fire any time as well as an AOE-focused sub-weapon with a cooldown), movement (which can be used to both slide-dash enemies for an extra bit of damage as well as to team-jump on a team mate to get across the map), and a buff/debuff which both have cooldowns (such as drawing in or pushing away enemies, raising your team's power, or having that character go on overwatch (i.e. they fire when an enemy enters their line of sight) to name but a few). To add to this, while there is a movement allowance, they can move and do any number of things within that range. For example, if you want to dash-attack 3 enemies (if that player has that upgrade) all in opposite directions, then go a 4th direction to launch a team jump, that's totally okay. Given that many enemies have these same capabilities, it makes for a really tense atmosphere. The biggest problems the game has are in player information and quality of life departments. A Fire Emblem-style toggle to show the maximum attack range of enemies would be REALLY nice compared to the existing system of hovering over one to see that individual enemy's maximum attack or movement range /from their current location/. Add on top of that the fact that where exactly tiles on the game-grid are is pretty difficult to suss out, and it's an immense chore, often totally impossible, to tell if you're going to be safe in a bit of cover you're about to move into. Another big problem is the lack of an undo-button for movement. While the game does tell you if you have line of sight against enemies to the tile you're about to move to, for Luigi and Rabbid Peach's chasing, explosive sentry-bot (imo, the best weapon in the game), it doesn't. This leads to glass cannon Luigi often getting into places you think he can wipe out an enemy group from when in fact they are out of range of the sentry. This combined with how there is no movement confirmation can lead you often into mis-clicking the space next to where you wanted to go, placing you right in a line of fire. An undo-button would've been a god-send for this game, or at least the option for one. This said, these are but minor complaints on an otherwise fantastic game. With the addition of the easy mode, the stated problems won't be an issue for someone unless they're trying to complete EVERYTHING on the standard difficulty while trying for a gold-rank (as I did). Verdict: Highly recommended. I'm not usually a fan of SRPG's, but this one is freaking brilliant. The small 3-man teams combined with the simple level-up trees and weapon upgrades make it very accessible to get into, but the very clever combat system makes it an easy-to-learn but tough-to-master game system that had me legitimately upset when the whole game was said and done. I basically never go back to games for DLC's, but when the new Donkey Kong-based story DLC comes out in a few months for this, I very well likely will come back to this fantastical adventure
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I've been meaning to play through this game since it came out and finally got around to it. I certainly can't say I was dissapointed! It's a puzzle game where you use each joystick to control a different brother through an adventure to save their dad. The story is by far the best part, but it's also just a really solid puzzle adventure game. I'd been told it was a masterpiece in storytelling through mechanics, and damn if that ain't true.
Verdict: Highly recommended. I don't really have much to say on this that hasn't already been said. If you want a game that blends its story and mechanics like no other, this is it. I really hadn't had my fill of Hotline Miami yet, so I decided to hop into the first one again.
My hankering when I played the 2nd game was correct: The first entry did control differently. I'd say I'd prefer the way the more fluid and zany way the first game controls, but I'd also say I prefer just about everything about the first game. A story far less bogged down with dialogue, keeping things just vague enough to keep you guessing; a weapons system that's randomized so sometimes a death isn't just a learning experience but a chance to try something totally different the next time; It has far far more masks so way more styles of play to tackle each level with; and yeah, I just really prefer how this game controls compared to the first one. There are still some annoyingly set up levels, but it's great fun all the same. The one notable thing is that I did notice that just about EVERY character who shows up in the 2nd game has some role in the first game, but damn if you'd EVER recognize them in the 2nd game unless you were playing it immediately after, just because of Hotline Miami's severe aversion to actually naming characters. Verdict: Highly recommended. Still an amazing fun and fast paced action game. A wonderful way to get that score attack or power-fantasy itch pretty quick. Hotline Miami was a game I absolutely adored and was soooo excited when I heard a sequel was coming out. Here we are 3 years later and I've FINALLY gotten around to playing it, and it's alright. Hotline Miami 2 was originally just going to be DLC for the first game, but the project ended up expanding in scope so significantly that they just decided to call it a sequel. However, with the way this expands upon the original, I think this does fit far better with the first game when viewed as an expansion rather than a sequel.
Almost entirely gone are the new masks after every mission, and in its place is a far more coherent plot than the first game. Instead, around half the missions focus on folks who don't wear masks, or the same small group of mask users. Most of these other non-masks have "masks" in how they have different load-outs you unlock, but proportionally there are a lot of clone load-outs between characters. Some characters have no load-outs at all. The story is neat, but I definitely preferred the design philosophy of the original in comparison to this one. The limited load-outs for each level make them more specifically catered to those stages, but it removes the kind of min/maxing for the most optimal masks for each stage like the original had (or just finding your favorite and goin' to town with it). Mechanically the game is still as fun as it ever was, and they've really cranked up the stylistic flavors for this entry. Verdict: Recommended. It's definitely lesser than the first game for me, but it's still fun. If you liked the first game, I'd say check this one out, but if you haven't played the Hotline Miami 1, definitely give that a try before this one. This tried very hard to be a different, not so much better, experience than the first one, so if you go into this with the perspective that it's more of an expansion than a sequel, I think you'll dig it a lot more. SUPERHOT is a fairly short FPS (It took me like 90 minutes) where the main gimmick is that the enemies only move when you do (mostly. Time moves VERY slowly when you aren't moving, but it never actually completely stops). This all comes together to make an experience that's somewhere between a strategy game and an FPS, where you're constantly punching enemies, weaving around bullets, grabbing guns out of mid-air, hurling objects or shooting bullets out of the air with your own bullets. It's a really hectic environment that looks really cool when the replay plays it back at full speed.
The only real qualms I have with SUPERHOT are the things that are not those aciton bits. There's a story, but all it really succeeds in doing is killing the hectic mania of the shooting sections which are actually really good. You have those broken up with a (quite nicely stylized) DOS-esque interface that your player character accesses the game within a game that is SUPERHOT, as well as these really boring corridor segments. Given that the actual game is so incredibly short, these really felt to me like just padding out the game in an effort to justify the very steep $25 price tag. Unless you're SUPER into the endless mode and speedrun stuff you unlock once you beat the game, there is very little chance that price tag will justify the very short story mode. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. If you can get this in a Humble Bundle, or on sale for like $5, then I'd say it's worth a try. It has a fun, Hotline Miami feel to how crazy things can get, but the constant bullet-time makes it much more manageable. It's a fun game, but I absolutely do not understand that price tag. This was the next effort by Obsidian's team that brought us Pillars of Eternity, which was a flawed game which I really enjoyed, and I was very excited to see an evolution on that fantastically clever formula. That however, is not so much what you'll find here. Tyranny is so incredibly derivative on Pillars of Eternity, I could go find my old 2015 review of it, copy and paste it here, and it'd serve just as good of a purpose aside from the fact that Tyranny (in just about every way) feels like PoE but less.
As a feat of storytelling, Tyranny is absolutely fantastic, at least in its first (and mostly second) act. The way it manages to make factions that are objectively fascists and anarchists trying to work to subjugate a land in their own selfish ways come across as sympathetic and human (except when deliberately not) is masterfully done. The companions you meet during those times are well portrayed advocates of each side of the conflict and all bring very engaging voices to the table. However, that is where my praise of the narrative stops. Beat for beat, point for point, this game has virtually exactly the same pros and cons as Pillars of Eternity did with only a few very small exceptions: Cons: - This game had fantastic earlier companions with the latter half feeling mostly like underdeveloped and shoe-horned in afterthoughts, whose only real characterization is revealed through dedicated efforts of talking to them (the only actual dedicated companion quests are in the Bastard's Wound DLC, and that's only for the first half of the companions (who were the best written already, quite frankly)). - The game starts out with a great narrative but really peters out its pacing in the second act to just come to a screeching halt in the 3rd. Pros: - The writing for the plot and characters, as previously stated, is great! I just wish it were better fleshed out. - The combat engine and the way stats work are still the same fantastic evolution on the old DND CRPG's, where every stat is valuable for every character. I really, REALLY hate saying it, as this was a game I wanted to adore, but this game feels half-baked in almost a Double Fine fashion. If the game didn't have achievements, I woudln't've even known that there was a 3rd act with how short it was compared to act 2. It feels they pulled the name "act 3" out of their ass, slapped it onto the last quarter of act 2, and called it a day. It feels like there's a real act 3 that just never made it into the game, and that shouldn't be how a story leaves your audience feeling. On top of the other fault of pulling your character in a direction that (at least I) seemed totally contradictory up to that point in the narrative and forcing them down that path, assuming every player would want to do it. The game's even been out for damn near a year and there were 2 or 3 main-plot pieces of dialogue that just have dummy text or obviously missing parts (it's a NPC_texthere.txt type of message or literally says that it's dummy text). The game runs just fine, but for a game so focused on its story, I was very surprised on the number of unmissable errors still in it. This is a game I wanted to like so badly that just really threw itself away in the 3rd act. I really did not foresee my main narrative improvement on PoE for Tyranny being that it incorporates your Keep/Home Base thing better into the story. Verdict: Hesitantly recommended. This is probably the most halfhearted recommendation I've given for a review on this site (at least that I can remember). With all the new narrative hiccups this makes, there is really no reason to play Tyranny when Pillars of Eternity is a much more complete experience. At the very least, PoE gives you more time to settle into (and then out of) the narrative purely by virtue of being longer and having more party members. Unless you're really dying for another good CRPG and haven't played Pillars of Eternity, I'd say Tyranny is far from a must-play in the genre. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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