Recent reviews by myamai

An incredibly engaging game with an unbelievably low price tag. One of the must-haves of this platform.

A part of me kinda feels that reviewing through comparison - in a way - does a disservice to the thing being compared. It's that anxiety that instead of judging something on its own merits, I "taint" my review of it by leaving a reference point in the reader's head...

...but what should I do when the game does not shy away from its influences at all?

Indeed, if you've scrolled down to the review section, you probably will have seen that OTXO's store page mentions positive opinions comparing it to Hotline Miami. Hell, knowing the impact that HM had on the gaming industry, you probably didn't even need anyone to tell you that this is a similar game. But simply drawing the comparison doesn't really describe what makes OTXO stand out from its inspiration. And oh boy, there is a lot of stuff to go over – and unfortunately I myself will have to fall for that trap and talk for a bit about the other game as I discuss this one.

Suffice to say, we are never getting another Hotline Miami game from its creators. Though Dennaton have struck gold with the gameplay formula of being a glass cannon and having your reflexes tested alongside your ability to strategize on the fly, the plot of the games never glorified that violence. Instead, the developers had made a point of portraying most of the main cast as pathetic creatures unleashing death and misery on the world for various selfish reasons, with violence itself leading only to a pitiful end for those who choose to take part in it.

And even though the core message chastised the bloodshed, the series took the gaming world by storm because its rendition of violence in gameplay and presentation was intoxicating. Divorced from the plot and the setting, Hotline Miami offered a very solid experience and a great challenge, with just about the only downside being its linear structure.
And so it didn't take long for OTXO to figure out what the good parts were and how to iterate upon them.

On a mechanical level, we're talking about another fast-paced top-down shooter which requires good reflexes from the player. However, the first immediate difference is the toolset available to the player.
One of the major elements in OTXO's gameplay are the drinks. Every few floors you will run into a bar, whose bartender will sell you liquors which carry different effects. What sets them apart from HM's masks is the fact that you can (and likely will) take various different drinks during a run in order to stack their benefits. A liquor which makes killing enemies with SMGs yield more coins? Neat, let's mix that with a drink which makes you dual-wield one-handed guns – which, conveniently, includes SMGs. Add a few more just for variety and you'll build up a truly formidable otxo.
Some of those drinks even interact with your Focus – another major mechanic. Much like Max Payne, you get the ability to slow down time. This allows you to correct positioning mistakes, react faster than your enemies, or even just get the buzz from seeing bullets cut through the air.
Another tool is the dodge-roll, which was also present in Hotline Miami for some characters, but OTXO escalates it to a regular gameplay mechanic. Rather predictably, this lets you reposition and dodge some of the projectiles flying your way, but also vault over furniture such as tables and chairs, unlike HM's static props cutting off movement but letting damage through.

All of this may sound like it's easy to become really powerful in this game. Make no mistake though, OTXO is no cakewalk. These tools are given to you because the enemies really do not forgive. As you proceed further through the Mansion, its guardian demons will have their own attributes augmented, perhaps most notoriously through shortening their already quick reaction times. Though the game gives you a health meter, letting yourself get caught off-guard and not checking your surroundings will probably cause the meter to deplete completely from an SMG-wielding enemy unloading an entire magazine into your back.

And once you die – because you highly likely will, even with prior experience with the genre – you will wake up back at the Beach in front of the Mansion again, with a reminder that the only way to get out and break the cycle is to destroy the Heart of the building. On your way you'll be able to talk to the Nun, who will let you select which weapons will appear during the run as part of the enemy arsenal, or the Girl inside the bar, who handles liquor imports and expands the inventory of drinks that the Bartender may offer.

In recent times I've discovered that I'm really fond of roguelite games – and here I found something that managed to scratch that exact itch that's been missing for all those years. Hotline Miami was already an excellent game, but OTXO looked at what worked, and decided to try to do it in its own style. The end result is a remarkable experience, lined by a distinct "red-accented monochrome" artstyle and a truly vicious soundtrack (composed by the one-man studio behind the game! Yes, all of this was made by one person!).
HM made me aware of many different artists and introduced me to some really energetic tracks that I still enjoy and listen to even outside of the game – but the soundtrack to OTXO, by the virtue of having one composer for all of its soundtrack instead of licensing different tracks not originally made for the game, feels a lot more cohesive, collected, and concise. And really damn good. ("Devil's Meat Grinder" is easily the most violent and vicious track I've heard in years, perfectly fitting the high octane bloodbath – and it's not even a boss theme or anything, it's a normal floor track!)

Despite all of these comparisons to Hotline Miami and the amount of times it's been mentioned in this review, I feel like out of respect for both of these IPs I cannot say that one is flat out better than the other. What I will say, though, is that OTXO – despite being iterative upon concepts we've already seen – manages to stand for itself and carve out its own identity. My very first session in the game, despite me having gotten my butt handed back to me multiple times, had me feeling like I, too, was becoming a prisoner of the Mansion. There was that urge to go for one more run, be the star of another action movie shootout sequence, push onward and conquer the Mansion.

And if a game manages to make me crave more hours from just the first few minutes, I feel like it more than deserves a positive review from me.

This review unfortunately will not break new ground or reveal anything that the game's description doesn't say. Rainy Day Racer is a game which lays its cards on the table in the first turn and asks "you gonna play or what?" with such remarkable bluntness that you'd be hard pressed not to at least sit down for a moment and reply "alright, I'll bite".

The game does not offer too much and it does not ask for much in the money department – but honestly, if you asked me for the best example of quality over quantity (or ratio of content to price) on the Steam Store, this would probably be one of my first picks. Championing a very matter-of-fact approach to its presentation, Rainy Day Racer presents you with a minimalistic menu and does not waste time on plot or tutorials. It's a racing game, and most of the time those don't require a doctorate to enjoy. You pick a car (either a hatchback, a saloon/sedan, or a van) and the track you want to drive it on (the game offers three layouts, each with a reverse variant), optionally with a ghost of your preference to race against - and off you go!

The formula is basic: you are given a par time for each track, which is the target for an individual lap time. If you're going for a high spot on the leaderboards, each attempt takes you for three laps (notably, you start a bit before the actual lap line to let you build up speed and start the first lap's timer at a more fair pace), giving you ample opportunity to refine your records. If you're purely in it for completion, you do not need to finish all three laps for the record to count - beating the par time and quitting still counts.
Beating the par time on all six tracks actually unlocks the Shine mode, in which it doesn't rain like a bastard (and the Flag Girl actually ditches the raincoat for a more casual outfit!). Same six tracks, albeit with a different, non-rainy atmosphere. Beat the par times again in Shine mode and you get your 100% achievement score (and a peculiar thank-you from the Flag Girl).

What I've described above is pretty much it. And despite the short length, it is all still worth it. There's something strangely charming about bolting forward through the ambience of the rain. It's something that I cannot quite put into words, but can cherish and enjoy.

Know what you're getting into, don't expect much more or much else than racing in the weirdly comfy atmosphere of a Scottish coastal town on a rainy day with just two introverted friends to keep you company (the mute Flag Girl holding up signs with record times, and the unseen narrator keeping track of your split times), and you'll probably walk away from Rainy Day Racer with a feeling of satisfaction. The game knows it isn't much and thus it is not asking for much - but it proves that sometimes you don't need a treasure trove of content to enjoy things. For what it is and for how little it costs, Rainy Day Racer easily proves itself to be one of those unseen gems of the Steam storefront that are ultimately worth a lap or two.

I always find it harder to review games that I enjoyed, as opposed to titles that I was disappointed by, or bought out of sheer curiosity behind their infamy (I believe the right term would be ”bile fascination”?). Criticism is easier than praise, and I think that – in a way – good games speak for themselves, while bad games snitch on themselves. It’s easy to whip out a list of shortcomings when they’re immediately visible and practically handed to you on a silver platter, but in order to be able to praise a game, you need to listen to what it has to say.

All of which is to say that Spark the Electric Jester 3 is a very solid title, which makes it all the more difficult to pinpoint the specific things that make it great.

Is it the graphics? The game has a really flexible artstyle, knowing what colours and atmosphere to go for depending on the level we’re in. Over the course of its levels you go through varied landscapes, starting in villages built upon mountains, going through jungles (though stop for a moment and you may notice they’re in some part overgrown nuclear plants) and airfields, and finishing at descents into depths way below the sea level. All of these locales look and feel like a part of a greater world, always coming in with the right presentation to sell Spark’s world as a living, breathing place.

Is it the audio? Each chapter – though occasionally this will also apply to individual levels – comes with its own soundtrack, setting the mood for what’s needed at the moment. The rush through a burning prison is set to an energetic rock backdrop. Going through an area that almost feels like an otherworldly art gallery is set to a futuristic-sounding liquid DnB track. Bits of exposition are accompanied by slower and more somber tracks to let the plot take the spotlight for a moment. Whichever mood is needed, the soundtrack – a fantastic assortment composed by various artists – more than delivers.

Is it the design of the game? Most levels, if they are not rushing you along to the end through a time limit, will contain plenty of alternate routes and hidden secrets. The game encourages exploration and repeating levels for better times and better scores, rewarding you with bits, which you can then spend on upgrades which will let you go even faster and give you more freedom of movement. An interesting aspect of it, to me, was how before the final stretch the game serves you up with one more tutorial regarding... how to circumvent its usual fall damage mechanic, letting you fall almost three times the distance. It’s that one little push that encourages you to revise what you already know and look for new ways to break what you once thought to be hard boundaries.

Is it the plot? Well, talking about this one lends itself to spoilers, so I’ll try to avoid talking about the specifics. The game’s plot does not interfere with gameplay, opting to occupy the spaces in between. Every so often a level will be followed by a cutscene, which either moves the plot along or elaborates upon the threads established by the previous games in the series. Though you would be entirely justified in expecting that a game starring such a weird combination of words (an electric jester; particularly strange considering jesters are not known to have much to do with electricity) would be over the top and cheesy, it still manages to treat itself with self-respect and it’s so genuine with and to itself that it’s able to pull off a surprising twist in its climax. The big reveal left me in awe and it’s left such an impact that every time I think back to it I’m still impressed by it and its ramifications.

Is it a sum of all of its parts? Absolutely. The game knows what it does well and it wears it with pride, much like our protagonist Spark rocks that new jacket of his. (Seriously, it’s so much better than his previous jacketless design.) Spark 3 fills in the shoes of the ambassador of the series, and to that effect it feels brave enough to include the levels from its direct predecessor, Spark the Electric Jester 2, as a reward for finishing its main plot. It’s both a love letter to fans of the series and an invitation to revisit the already traversed lands with a different set of tools at your disposal.

And if you’re still hesitating, there is a free demo available, which lets you play through the first few levels of the game, to get a taste of what you’ll be treated to if you give the full version a shot.

All of these things combined make for a game that, if picked up after seeing its Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, won’t take long to make you go “yeah I see why”.

Do yourself a favour.
Go play Spark 3.

MetaWare High School (Demo) wears its metacommentary with pride, like a badge of honour on its chest. It does not shy away from letting you know just from the promotional material that it's going to kick into sixth gear as it rides head-first into metafiction.

However, to go into detail about the specifics is to spoil the (admittedly quite short, even if padded with silence) experience.

All that being said...

It will contain being carefree with friends.
It will contain moments of silence that let the dread wash over you.
It will contain reflecting upon predestination and how to approach thinking about it.
It will contain way less eyes than there statistically should be on a cast of five characters.

And hey, it's a free demo. Those are hard to come by these days. Hidden value and all that. ;)

(Game was gifted to me by a friend, hence why I'm tagging it as having received the game for free.)

Having the (dis)honour of being one of few items on the Steam storefront to hold an "Overwhelmingly Negative" review score among Steam users, FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction is an absolute travesty of a FlatOut game, if not of a video game in general. One does not even need previous experience with the preceding titles in the series; even outside of comparisons to its vastly superior predecessors, FlatOut 3 falls flatout on its face.

The key distinction that needs to be made here is that the creators of the FlatOut series, Bugbear Entertainment, had nothing to do with this title. After the release of FlatOut 2, they were asked by Bandai Namco to develop Ridge Racer Unbounded, and to make up for their "absence", the publisher Strategy First assigned development of the third title in the FlatOut series to Team6 Game Studios.

This is an important detail, because not only it absolves Bugbear of the shame related to the reputation of the series being tarnished, it also gives us information on what we can expect from this title. Team6 are a Dutch game development company with plenty of racing games under their belt... most of them being remarkably low quality bug fiestas with clunky mechanics, no plot or poorly written plot, and unpleasant to the eye in terms of their visuals.

The racing aspect of the game - arguably the most important aspect given that it's, you know, a racing game - is bland and uninspired. The cars handle nowhere near comfortably enough to make the races enjoyable.

Before each race you can pick your character model from a variety of awful puns and pop culture references (Zario the Mechanic, Ufer Bull, Pete Saman (being phonetically similar to "pizza man"); also "Silen Einnor" which is the name of Team6's founder spelled backwards...), which changes absolutely nothing in gameplay.

As for the list of racing gamemodes...

• The "Race" gamemode is a collection of 6 environments with 13 tracks, each also existing in a reverse variant to pad out the length. You get the Steam achievement for completing the gamemode if you play all the races and their reverse variants. The tracks themselves are filled with many turns unsuited for this game's car mechanics; mountain environment races will often include uphills which the cars have massive difficulties surpassing without nitrous and a prior rolling start.
  
• "Speed" takes the player to 5 closed F1-like tracks with F1-like cars. The experience is often "spruced up" by poor visibility and sight obstructions in the form of uphills before sudden turns... or flames bursting from the ground and sudden cracks forming in the road in the final track of this mode. Nothing to write home about.
  
• The "Nightshift" mode is an interesting concept that perhaps could work better in a higher quality game... unfortunately, it's stuck in FlatOut 3. In this mode you race against only one opponent, and the weather in each track is set to a thunderstorm; it's meant to be "the ultimate test". Supposedly the rain is meant to worsen the handling of your car, but in my experience the cars have handled just as bad as in the rest of the game. Advertised as "the most difficult gamemode in the game", it's held back by technical limitations of goofy AI able to hold good racing lines but losing its head if it's sent off those lines even for a bit.

Aside from racing, the series is known for its stunt and destruction-focused gamemodes. FlatOut 3 of course couldn't fall behind... though looking at what we got, it probably would have been better if it had.

• "Stunt Man" is all of the crazy ragdoll launching from FlatOut 2 with none of the fun. Often the objective is to score a certain amount of points... which is only possible by hitting a specific target. A 1200 point goal in a "hit the target" mission doesn't mean you can potentially score more than that - 1200 is the bullseye, the middle ring is 600 points and the outer ring is 300 points.
  
• "Battle Arena" is a destruction derby with 12 participants. Destroying enemy cars is honestly harder to pull off than it really should be because the impacts barely ever seem to do anything and they sure as hell don't feel like you're actually crashing vehicles against each others.
  
• "Big Battle" is... the same thing but with 24 cars. No idea why they made it into a separate gamemode.
  
• "Monstertrucks" is a series of 5 events focused on monster trucks. Push objects into goals, run over props etc. If it sounds bland, that's because it is.
  
• The "Offroad" gamemode tasks you with driving through 2 courses and getting points through drifting, jumping, destroying enemy cars and breaking things in the environment.
  
• Splatout is FlatOut 3 at its most mindnumbing. You play through basically each map in the game as zombies keep spawning everywhere. You sit on the map for 3 minutes or so and try to run over as many zombies as you can to score points. There is no deeper meaning, no strategy factor, and practically no reason to devote your lifespan to... well, the game in general, but also this mode in particular.

FlatOut 3 also includes a Challenge gamemode, which is a series of 50 events taking the player through most of the game's content. I can only express my commiserations to those who have subjected themselves to the mode in its entirety. I felt the urge to tap out after the challenge which asked me to jump over a gap in a bus which, even with full nitrous power, cannot reach enough speed to pass the gap. The solution is to treat the track as less of a circuit and more of a horseshoe, driving back and forth between both sides of the river. I don't know what Team6 had in mind while designing that, but by that point I'd had enough.

All in all, I sincerely cannot recommend FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction to anyone. It's not one of those games that are so bad that they cycle over into being good because of how broken they are. It's just plain bad, with very few (if any) redeeming factors. No discount warrants the purchase of this game, and I will forever curse the name of the friend who gifted this game to me.

Seriously, don't buy it.

Even over a decade after its release, Left 4 Dead 2 remains one of the best four player co-op titles on the market. It's hard to say something that hasn't already been said by others in all those >340,000 reviews, not to mention the total positive:negative ratio of those reviews puts it in Steam's prestigious "Overwhelmingly Positive" category.

In L4D2, you play as a member of a group of survivors during a virus outbreak which turned the vast majority of the population into zombie-like Infected. Your task is to plow your way through hordes of rabid flesh-eaters hellbent on killing you and move between saferooms on your way to an escape from the zombies. As this franchise's zombies don't belong to the "slow moving, slow thinking" kind, the gameplay experience is mostly a fast-paced slaughterfest occasionally interrupted by a fight against a boss-type Infected.

What I think is especially worthy of mention is the Versus mode, which allows you to play against the Survivors in an effort to stop them through the use of the Special Infected' abilities. Each map is played twice, with teams playing on both sides and trying to set a Survivor distance record for the other team to beat. Asymmetrical competition in multiplayer is fairly rare, and L4D2 manages to pull it off surprisingly well.

Don't be mistaken — despite all those years, the game still has an active playerbase. The game can be enjoyed both in multiplayer and in singleplayer, and for those who think they have exhausted all the content out of the game, the Steam Workshop is full of custom maps and campaigns created by the community, for the community. On that note, if you're looking to spruce up your gameplay even further, there's plenty of cosmetic mods which help with keeping the game fresh.

Since this game also integrates the content from its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is the complete experience and pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to zombie-slaying fun. Rarely do we get the pleasure of seeing a video game sequel be an improvement to its original installment in every single way; thankfully, L4D2 manages to pull that feat off with stellar results.

To put it short, Left 4 Dead 2 is an absolute must-have for all gamers looking for good first person shooters.

Describing small games by comparing them to bigger titles has always felt to me like a disservice towards the underdog; after all, we should be placing different expectations on small indie developers than on bigger studios with a greater budget. To Morning Never Comes, the nemesis is The Binding of Isaac, as should be evident to anyone who has run into Isaac before.

Everyone loves a good underdog story. It would be an honour to describe this game as secretly better than some titles with bigger recognition. Sadly, as you can see by the thumbs-down icon, this review of Morning Never Comes is not going to be one such story - and unfortunately, when put against its aforementioned nemesis, this game loses the fight before it even begins.

What you see in the promotional screenshots is, for better or worse, exactly what the game offers; nothing less, but also nothing more. You control a tiny cardboard character stuck in a dark room, running around in the only illuminated area as evil toys come marching towards you for whatever reason. Your method of fighting the malevolent dolls and ducks and robots (including the elusive I Can't Believe It's Not Chucky™!) are the projectiles shot out of the player character's face.
Every time you eradicate a set amount of enemies, you are given a box with an item inside it. The item will change some property of your bullets, ranging from simple damage-ups, through poison shots, to splitting in two once they hit the edge of the screen. This continues until your character dies to contact with something, be it an enemy's bullet or the enemy itself.

In a way, Morning Never Comes is an arcadey title at its purest. There is no deeper goal to pursue, maybe aside from getting all the achievements (which can easily be done in under an hour). There is no progression system or any goal to pursue beyond a new high score. This alone would sound good to score-grinders, but the title has some mechanical shortcomings which, for me, prevent it from being a cohesive experience.

• Hitboxes of the player character and enemy bullets are hard to read. Since it's very easy for the screen to get cluttered, oftentimes you can die to a bullet you could've sworn wasn't going to touch your character. Not to mention the only difference between your bullets and those shot by enemies is the colour (yellow and red, respectively), with no difference in shape or size, unless you were lucky enough to get items to modify that.
  
  
• You can only carry up to 3 items at a time and you have to pick up the item to initiate the next wave, even if it would be a downgrade to your loadout. The item will also replace the oldest one in your "bag". You are not given the option to discard the item given by the game and continue, nor are you given the choice of which one of your items gets swapped out.

Other than that... the experience is really underwhelming, even at such a small price tag. I wish I had some positive things to say about Morning Never Comes, but it doesn't offer me anything that The Binding of Isaac hasn't done better anyway.

If you're really hard-pressed for an arcade score-attack game that requires minimal thinking, you could give this a shot, given how inexpensive it is. Who knows, maybe you'll end up liking it more than I did?

It's very much one of those games that aren't top quality, but they aren't bad either. Kao the Kangaroo 2 offers a relatively short, but fun adventure - but at its price tag, I'd say it's worth it.