Recent reviews by Kayin

I was originally skeptical of SFV but lately gameplay has looked excellent and a friend offered me a copy of the game they got from humble monthly. The game asks me to set my keyboard buttons without giving me a chance to configure my stick. I then try and go to the option menu so I can make the game windows and figure out how to configure my stick but it gives me a forced tutorial I have to skip through it. I try to get to the title screen but then I get an info prompt for ONLINE BATTLE that I cannot exit out of. I can scroll to different pages but no page on the keyboard gets past it.

I restart the game 3 times with no luck. I unplug my stick and start the game up again and I get through. I am also greeted with 30 million pop up messages for every little thing on the screen. I just want to find the option menu. Because of how cluttered the main screen is I start to doubt the option menu is even there. It's placement defies basically all video game UI design trends of the last 20 years. But hey, it exists, so maybe that one is on me.

Finally I get the game windowed so I can at least easily google stuff while trying to figure it. Where is joystick config?? All I see is keyboard config. The game -wouldn't let me get past menus- until I unplugged my stick so it surely recognized it! I google -- oh the game HAD directinput support, but REMOVED it. Oh wow awesome. Oh wow, you want me to use the Steam Controller menu, the only thing that might possibly have worse User Experience than SFV? I try to configure my controller through that. Still no controller config. Maybe I can only access it in game. I go into training mode. During the loading screen I am greeted with a full screen ad. Not like a little bar at the bottom of the screen advertising the CPT, like a full screen image add that just hangs there for just 5 seconds. Ah finally, joystick config. It doesn't work. I consider: Do I really want to play SFV this bad? Absolutely not.

I then read I have to edit text files to un-configure my controller through steam (because god only knows I don't want Steam to mess with any controllers I don't need it to). This is technically Valve's fault and not Capcom's, but they're telling me to use it so they at least get a little blame.

This was like the worst UX I've experienced in any game, let alone a game from a big dev. So screw this, I'm going back to playing Guilty Gear.

play guilty gear

edit: Y'all this is a an ancient review. Gungeon is not the same game it was on 2016. A lot of the changes to the game from there almost seemed to directly address many of these complaints. Maybe one day I'll go back to it and write a new review but lol this has no value outside of a historic footnote.

I'll even swap it to a positive review. The fact that Gungeons and Dragons seemed to directly address the points below is super cool and I respect the devs a lot for it, even if I haven't gotten around to play it.

----- 2016 Gungeon Negative Review Below ------

There is so much love and joy and care put into so much of this game but it is perhaps, gameplay wise, the stingiest game like this I've ever played. The game is afraid to let the player have fun. The game will let you play for 40 minutes without cutting you any slack of the RNG before you realize the whole run was a hopeless waste of time. And it will do this a lot. Large stretches of the game become rote, yet if you try and casually go through them, your mistakes will have rippling effects into the later bit of the game. The game feels hard not because hard is fun, but hard because the developers were afraid of their game being too easy. It also doesn't help that so many of the items are boring and very situational and its super easy to get nothing but gag guns for entire runs. The characters are (outside their personality and very cooly stories and specialized ending bosses) really really boring. Of the starting classes, only Pilot is mechanically interesting, so changing classes doesn't give a reprieve from the monotony the is 'actually playing through the first half of the game'.

People like this game for a reason. The backhalf can be very fun and skill intensive in a way that doesn't feel punitive for the sake of being punitive. This, and the charm of the game surrounding the actual gungeoneering (the NPCs and goals and all that) makes me REALLY REALLY REALLY want to like it. And there is times I, for some glimmering moments, have a lot of fun. But where in Nuclear Throne, being screwed by the RNG is a small cost, in Gungeon it is a devestating waste of time. If any of these complaints sound like things you can live with, maybe you'll be one of the many many people who love this game

Don't let my play time fool you, I bought this game months ago from the humble store and have put hella hours into it. The game is everything you should be. A hard but fair skill based action game that only increases in fun as you get better. If you like games modern brawlers like DMC, Bayonetta or Rising, this is probably up your alley. It's all that, in 2d format, but even more set apart by an amazing aerial combat system. You can practically fly in the game and fighting gravity becomes a fun part of many of the games later stages. I can't recommend this game enough.