Recent reviews by Lummy

As much as I tried to like Wildfrost as it definitely has a lot of cool ideas, ultimately it's done nothing but frustrate me and not in a good way.

I'll start with the positives as there's definitely good things here. For one, I do like that the game has a different approach to turns where, instead of having a resource to spend or simply playing all units at the end of each turn, you instead have units activate after their cooldown expires and this is a large part of where the balancing of unit strengths lies. It may not exactly work that well which I'll get into later, but I appreciate the different approach from other games. Another thing I like is the sheer amount of effects that can be applied which does offer up a lot of build diversity, and they can be combo'd pretty well if you get a decent bit of luck on which cards/buffs you get. And I'd also say the game has a solid aesthetic to it, with nice and cutesy card arts that are quite appealing even if they do kind of mask how brutal the gameplay is lol.

Now, onto why I've unfortunately had to give a negative review overall as the game has pretty glaring issues that really hampered the fun. The biggest gripe I have with the game has got to be the clarity (or lack thereof). It is incredibly difficult to parse what's going on for each given turn and the game doesn't give you any indication of the consequences of your actions, something that most other games like this don't have an issue with. I genuinely have gotten multiple headaches playing trying to wrap my head around all the keywords, damage numbers, status effects, ally and enemy effects, cooldowns, charms, reactions, undrawn cards, etc, and a lot of the time it is so much to take in that you will lose from simply not taking into account a single thing, and that is genuinely infuriating when it happens.

Another key issue I have is probably something that I'd imagine is more of a personal thing, but I do not like how this game handles its different factions. In other games in the genre you get to select different factions as well, but they more often than not have a particular niche or playstyle that drives them forward, and even if you do try to put a twist on it throughout the run they will still have a fundamental gameplan that you follow. This is not the case for Wildfrost, as no matter what faction you pick your run and entire build are decided by what you get in the run, and while the game has a ton of effects you can go for there very rarely is a clear synergy between them that allows you to have a somewhat consistent gameplan to execute. Again, this is probably something more personal as I know other people might enjoy simply being able to build their own experience from scratch, but I personally don't see the point in even having different factions if they don't actually change how you play the game.

And finally, I'm just not a fan of how leaders are handled (i.e., the main card you start with that if it dies will end the run). There isn't really a form of "attrition" you feel throughout the run due to this, as no matter how low everyone gets or how many of your secondary units die, it all becomes irrelevant so long as you win the fight as everyone comes back with full resources afterwards. At the same time, because health works like this it also necessitates that the health numbers are low to prevent the game from being a cakewalk, so the point I mentioned earlier about losing off of one mistake happens way too often as even just the slightest damage is enough to lose the run. This is made worse by certain effects such as barrage which can hit all units in a row which is just not fun to play against, especially if your leader unit is being used to tank for you.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. It had its moments here and there, but the majority of the time I just was not having fun due to the issues mentioned above. I'd be interested to see a sequel with different mechanics and systems for sure, but as it stands I just find this game too much of a headache to play.

Going to preface this by saying that I've not really played Tekken 8 for a while so I haven't really experienced the new season. That being said, I've had the game since it came out and I stopped playing after around 60 hours at the time as I was genuinely not happy with one thing: how overly aggressive the game is.

Heat is an awful mechanic that gives you BS options and access to a bunch of mix-ups and chip damage that is exhausting to play with due to being given each round. Side-stepping while seemingly buffed this last patch I don't think will ever feel good anyway, as I'd imagine there's still a ton of arbitrary rules to side-step each move that is simply impossible to be able to incorporate into your game plan and thus makes it feel random when it does work. And characters didn't really seem to have a clear identity either, with the system mechanics and framedata resulting in a lot of homogenous gameplay across the cast, with this recent patch seemingly doubling down on that and turning everyone into rushdown with forced 50/50s as part of their winning strategy.

Despite all the issues I had which did make me stop playing at the time, I've always hoped that the devs would listen to the feedback and improve the game, as their design philosophy for it has been bad and something that most players did not agree with since the game came out. But once I saw this season's patch and the uproar surrounding it, I've kind of lost all hope of that happening. They didn't listen throughout the last year, and are now doubling down on the hyper aggressive gameplay that just doesn't feel like what Tekken should be about.

So, unless there's a massive turnaround from the devs at some point (there won't be in my opinion), I would say if you were ever interested in getting into Tekken to not bother with this version. Maybe pick up Tekken 7 and see how that feels, or even try out one of the more legacy ones. They may not be getting updates like T8 is, but considering how destructive the changes have been to it I don't see that as a bad thing at all.

This is not a review about the game itself, I actually really enjoyed playing this game. But I felt I had to leave a negative review to show that I'm quite pissed after recently finding out that my previous 100% achievements for this game was removed from me, all because the developers decided to not only add more to the game, but to also lock those behind paid DLC that is apparently a) not like the rest of the game, and b) not very well-made.

You can call me petty all you want, but it's not often I actually beat games these days, let alone go for 100% in them. And to get it for this game I had to do some pretty damn grindy things that were not that enjoyable for hours at a time, given the sheer amount of collectibles there are in this game. So me losing that status for this game is not something I'm happy with at all and, to be completely honest, should not be something that's allowed to happen. Steam really needs to do what they do on consoles and add separate categories for base game achievements and post-launch/DLC achievements. Until then, devs need to not be stupid like this and sour on players who put the effort in to get all achievements.

A fun but incredibly unbalanced game. It's basically like a Chinese version of Hades which the game isn't really trying that hard to hide, but it's quite well-made and does do its own things at least.

For an action game, you need solid combat and I think this game definitely has that. Some minor issues aside such as wonky hitboxes on some things or lacking sound effects, it feels good to throw out attacks on your character, and there are quite a lot of different "weapons" to choose from that all have different attacks and even unique upgrades you can get per run (like the hammers in Hades).

I also like the amount of content already in the game. There's quite a lot of items you can get, the ink gems (AKA the abilities you can acquire) fit a wide variety of playstyles and offer decent synergies, there are a lot of different pets you can acquire with their own unique attacks, and the game has basically the full run experience already including the final boss which is nice.

The game's visuals I wasn't so sure on. Technically it looks very nice, but the art style for me just feels a bit bland and colourless, with a lot of greys to be honest throughout the zones besides maybe one of them. Character models look a tad bit low poly as well, but this is kind of the case in Hades as well and it's not a huge deal considering they are also portayed in a more detailed 2D form as well when engaging with them.

The biggest issue with this game for me is balance. Wow, it is very unbalanced. Even on the highest difficulty I have been able to pretty easily come up with builds that basically three-shot the final boss, which as much as I think being OP can be fun it just happens way too easily in this game. Part of the issue might be due to a lot of the upgrades you are offered come in the form of raw stats, so towards the end of a run you'll just have such a high stat increase that you are doing way too much damage. I also kind of wish that instead of just giving enemies more HP and damage for harder difficulties, we could choose to add actual modifiers to make the game harder in more interesting ways (e.g., enemies attack faster, AoEs are bigger, enemies do more damage to shields, etc).

I also really don't like the game's permanent metaprogression, which is your standard talent tree. In Hades this also existed, but in that game you were offered way less than in this game, a lot of them weren't simply just more stats, and you also had to make a choice between multiple talents so you couldn't just have everything unlocked. I don't mind giving more power permanently for putting in the time, but I just wish it didn't simply give you a massive stat boost from the get-go which will only makes it harder to balance the game I feel.

Finally, as mentioned before briefly I did say some sound effects were lacking, but it does seem to me like some SFX just doesn't play at all which can really mess with you in combat. Not being able to hear a specific attack coming has often lead to me getting hit which is rather annoying.

Overall though, Realm of Ink is a pretty fun game still. If you are looking for something very similar to Hades to sink your teeth into (especially considering we are still waiting for more content in Hades 2), this is a solid game and will hopefully only get better throughout early access.

Despite being in early access, Hades 2 is already shaping up to be an even better game than its predecessor. It's expanded on pretty much everything the original had in interesting ways, is already teeming with content and unique dialogue, and with a bit of Time will eventually have its minor missteps addressed.

I'll start with the best part which is the gameplay. It's both very familiar and quite different at the same time, but overall I would say Hades 2 is an improvement. Mainly because it adds a number of new moves such as the omega moves which are very powerful but also require keeping track of Magick (a new resource), and encounters feel a bit more tuned due to the lack of extra dashes - you will get punished for trying to spam-dash like in Hades 1. There's also new abilities called Hexes that you get to use once you've spent enough Magick, which are about as powerful as the Calls in Hades 1, which have their own unique upgrade paths to go through in a run. Returning from Hades 1 as well are weapon aspects, which significantly change how each weapon plays. I won't spoil any specific ones, but having unlocked them all and tried them out, the majority of them feel very nice to use.

One aspect of the gameplay I'm still a bit conflicted with however would be the new sprint mechanic. Basically you can hold the dash button down after dashing and you will continue to move at a fast speed so long as the button is kept held. This does feel nice when using it to position around the battlefield, but in its current iteration it does feel a bit slippery and hard to wield (especially on mouse and keyboard which is what I'm using to play). There are also unique boons you can get that require the use of sprinting which are cool in concept, but often feel awkward to use and leave you questioning why bother holding sprint when you could be using your normal attacks instead. I believe they said they are looking into ways to make sprint feel smoother however, so this might become a non-issue in a future patch.

The other big plus I have for this game would be its narrative elements. There's just so much dialogue in this game, even for the most random things that the devs knew players would do lol. The cast outside of the returning Olympian gods is pretty much all new and they're for the most part all quite interesting and very well-written. And much like in the first game, you can give them gifts and hang out with them to learn more about them and build your relationship which is quite satisfying. I'd say for me, the only real downsides for the narrative are the main protagonist Melinoë -- I like her a fair bit mind you, but not as much as Zagreus -- and the fact that the game like Hades 1 in early access is lacking a proper conclusion.

Overall, I'd say my only real gripes with the game are that it does need some balancing and some tweaks to certain enemies which are definitely overtuned and frustrating to fight against, and that while it has a good amount of endgame stuff put in place already, it doesn't feel that well tied into the overall progression system of the game and thus can feel a bit grindy and same-y.

But yeah, Hades 2 is simply amazing and I cannot wait to see how the game changes as it comes closer to full release.

Roboquest is a damn fun game whether you're choosing to play solo or with someone else. It manages to nail a high-octane FPS game feel with a good variety of weapons, a lot of skill expression such as through sliding, head stomping, grinding, and rocket-jumping, and just enough randomness to make each run feel different without becoming too much of a roguelite. It's basically an FPS game with some roguelike elements tacked on, so the former genre is still the key one.

If I were to describe the combat in this game, it'd be with the following words:
- Fast: This is not a weighty game at all; you will be zipping about at high speeds with running, jumping, and sliding, and this works great as the enemies will really punish you for being stationary. If I were to compare to other games, I'd say it's probably faster than the recent Doom games, but not quite as fast as something like Ultrakill. So it's still plenty fast and enjoyable to play.

- Impactful: I'm very impressed with the degree of impact the weapons have for an indie game. Most of the weapons feel amazing to use and offer a lot of visual and audio feedback to let you know how much damage you're pumping out, with the obvious standout probably being the random cartoon onomatopoeia appearing whenever you fire them.

- Varied: The game has plenty of different ways to approach it, mainly through being able to choose from six classes each with their own unique upgrades that you can find in each run; they all have well-designed kits that fulfil different niches such as one focused on summons, one focused on melee, one focused on elements, etc. There are plenty of weapons to pick up and, with the latest update, can be kept for as long as you want and still be totally viable.

If you are into your FPS games then definitely look to pick this one up. While the roguelike elements can understandably be a turn-off for some, I think this game strikes the best balance where those elements do exist but are kept to a minimum, so you can just enjoy it like any ordinary FPS game.

While the game starts off fairly strong with an appealing presentation and fairly competent combat, it sadly becomes very tedious to keep playing due to very poorly-implemented RPG elements and frustrating combat elements. I'll try to explain why the game fails at both...

The game at its core follows a pretty standard system of providing you with stats that do things like increase your HP, damage, magic capacity, etc. It's not really this that's the issue, but rather the way in which you attain extra stats and progress your character's strength. There are three main ways to buff your stats: you eat food for temporary buffs, finish harvesting your rice for permanent stats, and put on equipment with spirit boughs (basically gems that augment certain buffs to your character for having them equipped).

The first one is annoying because food buffs run out fairly quickly due to how quickly each day seems to pass, and getting the buffs you want can be impossible to do over multiple days due to lack of ingredients. The second one is annoying because it takes a rather long time to make rice and, further still, you have to make a choice at the end between gaining rice for food buffs (brown rice) and gaining rice for permanent stat buffs (white rice), so you end up in this situation where permanent progression becomes too long to obtain and has a downside for choosing to go all-in on it. And the third one is annoying because you can't simply take spirit boughs from one piece of equipment to another -- they are fused together -- and upgrading them requires you to do rather tedious things that still will only upgrade it for that one piece. You can put general spirit boughs on anything, but they pale in comparison to the ones you find on equipment.

Now, the other main issue I have with the RPG elements is that it's quite hard to gauge how strong you actually are and what areas you are able to take on. The only number the game really gives is an "exploration" level, but it's not a reliable number to follow as even being 10+ levels above the number stated I feel like the enemies are still too spongey and deal too much damage. Night missions in particular are awful for this, the tuning for them is completely off in my opinion. There doesn't seem to be much incentive to even tackle missions at night outside of specific one-time quests for each area, so I usually just don't bother.

As someone who is quite pernicity when it comes to combat systems in games, I just find the combat in this game to be quite clunky and rather frustrating. The game pits you against two main types of enemies: grounded, and flying. These are a pain to fight together due to the awkward juggling system the game has where if you fail to keep an enemy airborne then you are unable to attack them on the ground without flinging them back up with your sash. You feel forced to do aerial moves in the majority of fights, and there are very few combos you can actually pull off in the air. And the couple I ended up rotating between became extremely repetitive and kind of just killed my desire to keep playing.

Another part of the combat that is simply not good is how the game handles stagger for the player. It feels like you are constantly getting mini-staggered by ranged enemies who shouldn't even be able to stagger to begin with, and if you do take a big hit then you are knocked down for a long time for no reason, which can lead to enemies hitting you as soon as you get up off the ground. It just feels needless for this type of punishment to exist as it kills the flow of combat.

Finally for combat, the bosses are very weak. They don't really have any different attacks from regular enemies, and their difficulty is artificially inflated by simply having them respawn normal enemies alongside to apply constant stagger/chip damage to you which is very frustrating.

Overall, while I did want to enjoy this game due to the idea behind it (mix of farming and action gameplay), I grew bored of it very quickly around about the time I was waiting for my second rice yield. The story didn't pull me in at all either, so I don't have that element to latch onto instead.

Never really played Spyro before, but I ended up quite enjoying this remastered trilogy. I was kind of expecting there to be a lot of outdated and unenjoyable parts to this considering the original games' age, but to my surprise the games hold up quite well. If you're looking for a nice and chill set of games to work through then I'd definitely recommend this trilogy. It all looks gorgeous as well with a lot of charm throughout all three games.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is a short and sweet platformer/metroidvania game with solid controls, satisfying progression, a good variety of locations to explore, and a whimsy charm to it all.

One thing I particularly liked about this game is that while it is technically a metroidvania, the way it handles navigation throughout the levels means that it's easier to backtrack and figure out where you should be going throughout a run, which is usually one of the things that puts me off of games like this - I just get lost and can't progress for ages which kills the fun really quick. The levels themselves are also pretty well made, although some of them suffer from unfair enemy placement,

The act of controlling Shantae is also just really enjoyable. She feels very responsive and only gets better as you unlock more power-ups, with some of the later ones being very fun to use and make backtracking much easier. You can upgrade a few things on her as well such as her hair's damage and attack speed, her pistol damage, or add new moves entirely like a backdash or a kick, and you can use a nice variety of consumable powers as well for when you're struggling with certain encounters. This leads to the overall progression feeling great as while there are some RPG elements to the game, the main increase in power you get is from new powers.

The overall theme and mood of the game is also something I rather enjoyed. The story doesn't take itself too seriously, more acting like an excuse to progress things and to give out dialogue (often delivered in a humorous manner), and the music while rather hit-and-miss did really add to the overall experience whenever it did hit. It's just a cozy game to play which was definitely something I was looking for.

If I were to point out some things that I wasn't so keen on, I already mentioned one before with unfair enemy placements - enemies can fly off screen or appear pretty much right on top of you at times, which was particularly annoying when I was going for all achievements. Another thing would be navigating to later parts of a level, as you have to pretty much run all the way there if you are missing anything - there's a quick way back to the start via a consumable, but not a quick way to the end which would have been much appreciated. And finally, there are a few sections throughout the game that unfortunately end up being really tedious or annoying to go through, such as one where you have to carry an NPC with no powers and enemies that will one-shot you, which did bring the game down a little.

Overall though, I can definitely recommend this if you're looking for a nice and cozy platformer with some exploration sprinkled in that doesn't overstay its welcome. Also as a word of caution to those who do play this, if you have a monitor that goes above 60Hz then you have to use some form of external program to lock the game to 60fps manually (I used MSI Afterburner), otherwise the game will speed up due to game logic being tied to framerate.

Kind of wish Steam had a "mixed" rating for reviews. I've been playing the R&C games since the first one on PS2, and while I do have a special place in my heart for this series, I can safely say that Rift Apart is unfortunately quite middling in comparison to the older games.

I'll start with the positives. The gunplay is pretty stellar with tight controls and punchy feedback, and it feels about as good as you'd expect for a R&C game with you bouncing between multiple weapons while strafing and jumping around to avoid enemy fire. While I'd say weapon design isn't as wild as the other games, there is still a good variety of weapons to choose from with different purposes and the usual levelling up systems.

Presentation-wise, the game does look very nice even when playing on Medium, with some excellent animation work and character modelling as you'd expect from Insomniac, and loading is super fast as you'd hope for with the game focusing around using portals to bounce between different locations.

As for things I'd say I was mixed on, the game's length comes to mind. This is a rather short game - a 100% completion run for me took 14 hours, but a regular playthrough if you are simply looking for that would likely be closer to the 10-hour mark. Personally I'm not that fussed about game length, but given that this is a full-price title with honestly not much replay value, it makes it hard to say for sure that you're getting the best bang for your buck.

Another thing I wasn't so sure about was performance. My system according to system specs is able to handle 1440p at High assuming DLSS is turned on, and while the game did sit at above 60fps, there were definitely a lot of moments where this would drop noticeably during either combat or exploration, and it varied heavily from planet to planet. But, this is unfortunately with me running with most settings at Medium, as going to High (particularly for textures) made performance worse and introduced random stuttering. Overall it was definitely playable, but it left a lot to be desired as I was expecting my rig to run the game quite consistently at 60fps or above.

Finally for the mixed aspects, I'd say the story was just... OK. R&C was never really about the story to be fair, and while a lot of what is here kind of follows that (i.e., largely just an excuse for the gameplay), the game does sometimes take itself a bit too seriously for my liking. The voice acting was really good at least (shame about Qwark's VA retiring though), and while most of the humour kind of fell flat in my opinion, some of it did hit and got a chuckle out of me.

Now, onto the negative aspects of the game. The biggest complaint I have would be the enemy variety. For a game focused on shooting, there is a dire lack of different enemy types which lead to combat feeling very same-y throughout the majority of my playthrough. Most enemies are either normal guy with gun/melee weapon, flying guy with gun/laser, big robot with laser and slam attack, and then a bunch of melee-only medium/small enemies that are simply copy-pasted from other R&C games (sandsharks, amoeboids, robomutts, etc) that pose little-to-no threat. Some enemy types are simply a reskin of existing enemies as well to add insult to injury. It really does baffle me how this few enemy types made it into the game, with not even the bosses (which are often recycled as well) being able to make up for it.

The other main complaint I'd throw at the game is in its level design. The best parts of the game are when you get to fight in little arenas and just go ham on the enemies, and while these are regularly placed throughout the game, the rest is just incredibly boring. Puzzle sections are boring and laughably easy to solve, exploration feels less rewarding due to hidden things being too obvious as well as there being no real weapons/gadgets you can unlock via doing so like the original trilogy (besides the obvious RYNO), platforming and rail-grinding is super easy and bland, there's a gunner mini-game that feels really awkward to play and wasn't all that enjoyable, and just... none of the planets stood out for me. There are very few elements about them that made them memorable at all, which is a shame as the other games had super memorable planets.

So yeah, as you can see if you've read the whole review, it's a tough one to give a resounding recommendation for. I did like the game overall though, so I think what I'd say is perhaps wait on a decent sale before picking it up. By that time, the game will hopefully have also been patched a few more times to help with optimisation to make the experience more pleasant.