Recent reviews by samred

A fun and clever Mappy-like with a few crucial tweaks to make it worth a purchase and play. I like the game's application of variable surfaces, which the snakes can walk on but Annalynn can't, and I like that ladders abide by Donkey Kong Jr. rules. Plus, it's a very handsome example of good pixel-art and proper palettes for characters, foregrounds, and backgrounds.

...now can we pleeeeease get TATE mode support for Steam Deck? As in, let us rotate the display and modify the input accordingly? That'd be nifty.

I put up some content on the YouTube, URL = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qft-rLoIUvU , but short version: I've been testing Animal Well on and off for nearly two years. I've seen how it's evolved. And I've seen teases of puzzles that may take months for the community to figure out. I strongly urge you to get through the first 8-10 hours spoiler-free, because you'll have plenty of excuses to look online for hints and help once you reach the game's first "ending."

PC-specific notes:
* DualSense works really well, as far as vibrations and second-speaker compatibility. If you own a DualSense, use it.
* Ultrawide support doesn't exist, because the game blacks out rooms that you're not in anyway.
* Runs great on Steam Deck with all settings maxed out.
* I've seen at least one puzzle that seems to be easier to solve on PC than on other platforms. That's all I can say.

I got to interview Karateka creator Jordan Mechner about this project for GameDeveloper.com, and I'll slap a telling quote here:
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"Karateka was really the culmination of a six-year timeframe," Mechner says. "From getting my first Apple II in 1978 as a freshman in high school, I made games, and each time I kind of hoped that it would get published. All of those 'almosts,' each raised the bar a little bit. All that time, the industry was evolving very fast as I was trying to evolve as a game developer. So Karateka really brought together everything I’d learned on the previous attempts—and it makes the most sense in the context of those earlier games."

When pressed on this point, Mechner offers a rare tinge of regret: “Especially when I was a young developer, I would have loved to have an exhibit like [Making of Karateka] about any game I had played and liked! At age 16, 17, I was in the dark. Not just about the technical aspects, but also the human side of programming. How does it work? What’s your relationship like as an author with the publisher, with players, with other people? To see somebody else go through that, all the emotional ups and downs. The excitement, the disappointment, the blind alleys: I love that.”
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As far as a "review," Making of Karateka is a fantastic opening salvo from the Gold Master Series, and I hope it's indicative of much more to come. If you've seen Atari 50, the setup is similar, only instead of telling the story of an entire company, this collection uses old documentation, recent interviews, *and* freshly unearthed prototypes of prior games to focus its lens on a single masterwork game, Karateka. The approach does a great job showing how Jordan Mechner started as a teenager making Asteroids clones, only to mature rapidly to make a game unlike anything else of its time. Context matters when approaching older games, and that's why I love Digital Eclipse's approach here.

Not a ton of PC settings at launch, sadly, so you're maxing out at 1080p until further notice. Otherwise, the emulation is top-tier, especially for Lynx and Jaguar fare, and Atari's historical context is presented in a way that shames pretty much any other retro game collection ever released. Also, only here will you find documentary videos with titles like, "Did they do drugs at Atari?"--with fantastic documentary footage and interviews to match.

runs great on Steam Deck, and really compelling as a fusion of gaming, TV, music, and visual novel elements. on a first playthrough, you may think the game isn't that interactive, thanks to minimally invasive dialogue choices. but if you play/watch the whole series again and make new choices, the dialogue changes a lot more than you might expect, complete with clever callbacks to your choices in each episode. (and yes, I have enjoyed this "season" of episodes so much that I've already been through them twice.)

My feature-length, spoiler-free review can be found at Ars Technica, and while I won't hotlink it here, it's not hard to search for. A snippet from that piece:

Return to Monkey Island is nearly everything I'd hoped for in a modern return to the series. Its interface and controls split the difference between the expectations of hardcore genre fans and those of point-and-click novices. Its presentation and voice acting pair nicely to set an approachable and fiendishly hilarious tone. And the game's full journey, from bumpy waters to smooth, silly sailing, consistently feels personal, vulnerable, and reflective of its creators—which is to say, this is the opposite of a nostalgia-reeking cash-in.

My impressions from an Ars Technica article I wrote, based on the August 7 day-one patch: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/horizon-zero-dawn-on-pc-not-the-optimized-port-we-were-hoping-for/

"I'm a big fan of HZD, and on my most powerful PC, I can currently play a tolerable-if-blurry 4K version at a nearly locked 60fps (or a native 1440p version at around 68fps on a variable refresh rate monitor). And it's a great action game at 60fps and above, especially when you juggle hero Aloy's selection of weapons and traps to fake like a real robo-safari hunter. There's no modern action game quite like it.

There's a chance your specific combination of CPU and GPU will play nicely enough with the game at launch, as well, and if so, the HZD fanboy in me would suggest you take the plunge sooner than later. But from the look of things, a day-two, day-three, and even day-four patch may be in order before I can safely recommend that a majority of PC owners pick this over the PS4 version."

Cannot believe how much I've enjoyed this roguelite. There are way too many roguelites out there these days, but gosh, is Monolith nicely crafted.

From my Ars Technica review, written after four months of on-and-off play:

"The Witness juggles the seemingly contrary concepts of precision and ambiguity in ways I've never seen a game, nor a book or play or film, ever do. More than the beauty or the puzzles or the clever twists, that makes it one of the most impressive video games I've ever played."

Full text here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/the-witness-review-an-island-where-knowledge-mystery-are-the-treasures/

I have been a giant fan of Cannon Brawl for years, and I think it's the ultimate game for people who love the IDEA of Starcraft but want a quicker, more active take on the real-time strategy genre. It's very easy to learn, and in spite of the game's rough edges right now, it's already a balanced blast. Cannon Brawl wins at indie gaming competitions and judging events again and again, and for good reason. Get on this.