Recent reviews by K3W3L

A challenging take on the standard DDR rhythm genre
Charming, low requirement artstyle
Cheeky fun minigames
DannyB, FamilyJules and friends never disappoint

The twist on the genre will stump even the most hardened DDR veterans so know what you are getting into

I can never get the calibration to feel right

My 4-year old PC is starting to really show its age. High-graphic requirement games I could no longer play without having to endure crashes and freezes that would force me to restart my PC. Thank goodness games like Rift of the NecroDancer exist.

The original Crypt of the NecroDancer was an absolute masterclass in game design, fusing together the traditional roguelike trappings with a rhythm gameplay feel and effectively making it real-time. This sequel goes all in on the Dance Dance Revolution style, but with their own spin on things. Instead of just merely reading notes as they come in, you have to remember the enemy attack patterns as they come right at you.

Rift makes for an incredibly challenging, but fun prospect. It can get really challenging at the higher difficulties, and even on Medium as you progress through the song list (I would recommend doing it via the story, which is pretty light-hearted and nice to get to know some of the characters you would have otherwise encountered in CotN) things ramp up fast and serious. Even I, as a veteran of multiple rhythm games of various types, struggle on Medium charts (God help me for anything harder), so it definitely takes some learning, but nailing a full combo can never not feel good.

Needless to say, the soundtrack is the star of the show. The ever-reliable Danny Baranowsky and Jules Conroy, along with other composers new to the NecroDancer universe, really knock it out of the park with immensely catchy tunes, and I always love the references to the motifs from CotN's soundtrack. Even the slightly-less-serious minigame songs are incredibly fun.

10% launch discount that can be stacked with other bundle discounts if you already own CotN or some other specific games. Well worth the money, really. It's a good thing BYG/Klei are keeping the demo up so you can try it out, if you are on the fence regarding the gameplay feel.

The crossover I never knew I wanted until it existed.

Kinda wild to be a part of gaming history playing Steam's newest worst-rated game.

Apart from the gameplay (I will vigorously defend the 5v5 pivot and Push mode) it's sad to see the game sink to these depths. Godawful monetisation, new heroes stuck behind battle passes, battle pass implementation itself (no coins from battle pass tiers but just credits? How stingy can they get?) and the original promise with which OW2 was initially pitched - a full-fledged PvE mode which I was sorely looking forward to given my exhaustion with the PvP aspect - all but broken.

If you're willing to overlook the negative aspects you'll have some fun for a while. The gameplay still feels great! It's an unbelievably fast FPS compared to almost everything else. It's just a shame that Activision Blizzard has completely sunk in the years since OW1's release, paralleling the downturn that would happen here.



EDIT, 29/11/23: My negative review is not me telling you not to play it, just a warning to know what you're getting into. I will still continue to play this because of battle pass FOMO and because I've already invested almost 1000 hours on BNet. It just means I do not agree with a lot that has been done.

Absurd hilarity at every turn
Distinctive pixel art style
Ridiculously catchy soundtrack
Excellent price-to-hours ratio

Some of the gags may not land
Limited replayability

August 2013. I was beginning to learn about the existence of game bundles, allowing you to grow your library with multiple games for cheap. The largest YouTuber in the world at the time, some guy called PewDiePie, curated one such bundle for Humble, and it had the original McPixel in it. It was a hit with me, with its utterly crass humour and absurd jokes. (I was immature. I still am.)

November 2022. PewDiePie was dethroned as the largest YouTuber in the world, MrBeast took over, and we now have McPixel 3. (Wait, what.) I'd been eagerly following its announcement earlier that year - more of its wacky WarioWare-like minigames where you have to save the day in the most absurd and unexplainable manners? Yes please.

I don't necessarily think this will convert detractors of the original, since it's more of the same, but better. But if you enjoyed the original like me, you'll lap this up. I know I did.

Honestly I was shocked it's this cheap. Grab it in the bundle that also includes the first McPixel if you don't already have that. No reason not to. (There's a demo to try if you're on the fence.)

File Format: MP3 (320kbps) and FLAC.

It's only natural that with a new DLC expansion comes even more music, and once again Chris blows my mind. There are far more prominent references to past soundtracks over here, but the soundtrack still has a vibe all its own.

All sorts of moods are conveyed here. The spacey, ethereal and uncertain nature of the new Void biomes is effortlessly matched by A Placid Island of Ignorance. The somewhat mellow mood of the Aphelian Sanctuary is paired well with Once in a Lullaby. The frantic, challenging, and chaotic nature of the new final Planetarium boss? The Face of the Deep is equally riveting, technically challenging and is probably the most complex song Chris has put to record (featuring his Dream Theater influences on full display as well). Hell, even the soundtrack album being bookended with his unique arrangements on Chopin's Raindrop Prelude immediately bring to mind Dream Theater's Systematic Chaos, being bookended with two parts of the same song.

As with past Risk of Rain soundtracks, I have double-dipped both here and on Bandcamp[chrischristodoulou.bandcamp.com]. I ended up expediting this one however due to the somewhat uncertainty surrounding Epic's acquisition of Bandcamp, combined with the reassurance that purchasing the soundtrack here still supported Chris (despite it being the worse option, for a few reasons) and enabling him to compose more incredible music.

Track picks:
A Placid Island of Ignorance (Void Locus, The Planetarium)
Having Fallen, It Was Blood (Siphoned Forest, Aphelian Sanctuary)
Out of Whose Womb Came the Ice? (Siphoned Forest)
They Might As Well Be Dead (Sundered Grove)

...yet again, given the option I'd just pick everything from the album.

Two new survivors including the Sniper's spiritual successor
Interesting new Void items
Even more bangin' Chris Christodoulou music
Simulacrum mode a neat alternative mode
Easily able to enable or disable SotV content

Various new aspects that feel unfair and RNG-dependent, and/or require balancing

After sinking more than a hundred hours into the amazing base game throughout the duration of Early Access and beyond, supporting Hopoo by purchasing additional content is a no-brainer considering the immense value-for-money proposition of the base game. As of writing, I have not unlocked the Void Fiend, but the Railgunner is an absolute delight - even if I just can't aim to save my life.

There are definitely some teething issues at the moment, though. I've played for a while and some of the content and undocumented changes feels a little bit too punishing to deal with, especially on characters with poor mobility (case in point, Void Fields and Void Seeds). The new Needletick debuff is especially brutal if you're unluckily afflicted by it, and the only real way to circumvent it is to magically get 1 of 2 possible items that clean/prevent debuffs.

This is still an easy recommend from me, but do prepare to be a bit frustrated with the game mechanics all but killing you out of nowhere at times.

A rather hefty 35% launch discount is all it took to seal the deal for me.

You can play it with one hand
Simplistic to learn but utterly addicting
Wide range of weaponry and evolutions
Wry sense of humour
Secrets galore

Probably the grind at this point, I guess
Some weapons more objectively worthwhile than others

Criminally cheap and regularly received a large amount of updates during Early Access to flesh it out. Rather simplistic to pick up (easy control schemes that you literally only need one hand to play, easy but strategical gameplay where you carefully pick up upgrades to let you survive for longer until you hit the 30 minute cap), and you do need to play a while to really get things going, but it gets more fun the more you sink time into it, power up your stats and unlock new characters. When you get a powerful build going, the catharsis sets in.

It's not hard to see how this game exploded in popularity, first with content creators and then with the general populace. Even after leaving Early Access, the price point relative to what you get is a terrific ratio. Man, I wish I was back in the Early Access era, learning about the joy that is this game, and thinking that the lion wheels(?) were bizarre propeller monsters.

The secrets in this game are pretty fun as well.

...dude it's literally $5 what are you waiting for. Come on now.

The famed progenitor of idle games is finally on Steam. It's just as addictive now as it was back in the day, and is sprinkled with bits of wry humour. The best part is, it runs like a dream too.

You're always free to play it ad-supported on the net[orteil.dashnet.org]. See what features the Steam version affords you (C418 soundtrack, cloud saving, hundreds of achievements) before deciding whether you want to buy it; or you can just try out the web version before buying.

Send help, I can't stop clicking cookies.

(0.5 knocked off only because I currently can't dunk the cookie in milk. Else, I would have deemed it 'classic' enough for a perfect 10.)
Cookie can now be dunked in milk as of v2.042.

Decent variety of weapons
Gameplay feels fluid and fun for the most part
DLC packs add more purely cosmetic customisation options
Crossplatform parties/lobbies

The real-time style is a stark departure from the typical turn-based fare of the series

Alarmingly low playerbase
Imbalanced matchmaking (likely caused by the above)
Don't expect to have good ping unless you're based in EU
Large, but few maps
Online multiplayer only

Was the writing already on the wall at the time of the announcement? Hard to tell. Worms Rumble, announced for the series' 25th anniversary, eschews with the turn-based nature of its predecessors and shifts to a real-time style more akin to Liero and Soldat.

Honestly, it's way more fun than it would seem. I've been a Worms fan for as long as I remember, gaming with my cousins on a bootleg version of World Party, with my school mates on even more World Party, then finally amassing my Worms collection on Steam over the years. Suffice to say, I definitely miss the turn-based nature, and some of the wacky weapons we got in the past games (among my friend group, I was the undisputed Aqua Sheep king) - but Rumble does partly make up for it with a more concentrated variety of weapons that mostly still feel rather solid.

But let's take a look at the elephant in the room. You can tend to gauge how well a game has sold by the number of reviews, even if they only count Steam reviews. Fall Guys (with 320k+) massively took off, and even though the playerbase has obviously decreased since then, there are still thousands playing the game daily. The same cannot be said for Rumble, which is languishing on 1/356 of that amount, and a Steam player count of 2 digits. The only reason lobbies can still even be found are due to the PlayStation playerbase that got it from PS Plus, which at least is the one tactical masterstroke the game launched with.

This severely thin playerbase, I'm guessing, is what has led to the matchmaking being seemingly imbalanced. When I tried it out during the free weekend, I admit I criticised it too harshly, claiming it was programmed by "literal donkeys". In retrospect, that's a pretty unfair assessment, because what can you do when there's so few people playing it? You'll just get matched up against the same pros over and over again because there aren't too many players at a similar skill level rushing in to queue into matches; you're just thrown in at the deep end. And that's not including the fact that I can't even find matches for Last Squad/Worm Standing either.

Also, I'm based in the eastern side of the world - and searching for matches on the automatic setting just throws me into Europe games because there is no other playerbase; just the EU folk. This results in me having to play at a perpetual ping disadvantage. Fun, eh?

In actuality, I do find myself liking this game and wanting it to somehow succeed; this is still a pretty fun addition to the Worms series, despite this dramatic shakeup. It's just a shame that the abysmal playerbase is causing quite a lot of problems.

Unfortunately, I can only suggest to get this on any form of sale. Humble Choice June 2021 was an option (and where I got mine), but it now also goes on 90%-off discounts on Steam. There are too many questions regarding this game's longevity, and getting it at full-price is a questionable decision at best. If you were lucky enough to claim it for free on PS Plus back on launch day, there is no point to double-dipping; just enjoy your copy of the game from there.

You can finally pay people for making Antibirth[antibirth.com] and get a version that works with all DLCs
A lot of new items
Even the old items synergise better with each other
A crazy amount of secrets ("34", anyone?)
Ridiculon saved their best for last[ridiculon.bandcamp.com]

Veterans of hard mode from past DLCs will definitely get a rude shock with the large increase in difficulty, especially on some of the secrets

After 100%ing Afterbirth+ midway through June 2018, I would play it a bit for Eden streaks, but at some point I put it down, never really expecting to play it again. While I did drop down to Rebirth to experiment with the Antibirth mod a bit, there were some boss balance elements that I didn't feel were entirely fair, so that got shelved too. But finally, both worlds collide and Antibirth was turned into its own DLC after a significant amount of work porting all the cool tricks the Antibirth folk did in the mod.

My personal stance on the difficulty conundrum, the various nerfs, the massive rebalance changes, is it was probably needed. Sure, I struggled with relearning and getting the muscle memory down with some of the new stuff. I still am, at the moment. I am however enjoying the process all over again, trying to get better at the game with any build I get, instead of restarting runs until I get something particularly overpowered. I'm actually amazing myself by somehow squeaking through runs that I really had no business winning, either - just as much as the ones where I get a great combo and all but steamroll everything.

At this point it would make sense that the DLC is almost a sequel at this point, due to the general changes of things here and there, it's almost like a different game. If this is what we're going to get in terms of an Isaac 2, I'll gladly take it.

Every single Isaac game and DLC is always a steal for just how much it adds. Acquiring Dead God took me around 300 hours total. That's 20 hours for each dollar.

(Even if there are ultimately some flaws I don't care. This is as perfect a send-off as Isaac can get.)