MCmetacritic

At a certain point, one has to accept that no matter how pretty the pixels are, there has to more to a game than brainlessly grinding into eternity. Loop Hero isn't even close to fun enough to justify its absurd grind.

There is an interesting gameplay mechanic at the core of Maquette, though it's executed rather poorly. The challenge as a player is to get the maximum enjoyment out of this interesting mechanic while tuning out the narrative as much as possible. The voice talent makes a valiant effort to breathe some life into the script, but there's just nothing there. What we're left to experience is something like a very sweaty, uneventful scene at an amateur improv theater. Except in the case of Maquette, we must live with the knowledge that this is a fully scripted disaster. I mean this without exaggeration: it is not possible to create gameplay sufficiently enjoyable to counterbalance Maqeutte's voiceover scenes in which two flat characters quip tritely as a coloring book picture slowly fills in like a loading screen from the pits of hell. This is a game which would well and truly benefit from a complete excising of its narrative.

Bugs and optimization aside, this game is truly mediocre. I think spending so many years in development is what put Cyberpunk 2077 so many years behind the curve in terms of its approach to gameplay and storytelling. It feels dated. It is dated. The silver lining is that these qualities weren't evident until the game was released, long after it had become a financial and critical success.

While there are probably worse games out there, I haven't played any of them. Unto The End feels like that failed 10 years ago on Newgrounds.

I suspect there is a good game somewhere in here, but there is way too much mediocre grindy nonsense to get much of a view of the better game that could have been. It's also worth noting that there is no single-player option - you've got to rope a few friends in for this very not-fun ride.

There . . . is no gameplay. I truly, honestly, cannot imagine a person living on this planet for whom this game could be fun. To the game review websites giving the game something around 70/100 . . . maybe consider a different line of work.

It's almost impressive how boring this game is. It's not well-designed or well-written. It does the exact same boring **** that every other game has been doing for decades, and it does it all the exact same way. The story is so boring and paint-by-numbers that I'm pretty sure an algorithm could have written it. How many times do I need to fish through desk drawers for scrap metal or blindly click through bloated dialogue options to get to a conclusion with no impact on anything? Too many times, Obsidian. I came ready and hoping to be surprised by anything that wasn't a watered-down version of Fallout, a stale point of reference to begin with. Everybody who touted this game as something new ought to feel pretty frickin stupid right about now.

This game starts out so well that it's almost impressive how quickly it turns into an unredeemable pile of steaming mess. The most basic mechanics of the game aren't just poorly-communicated or glitchy beyond repair (though they are). They're so ill-considered that once it's time to do something (ANYTHING!) beyond climbing and jumping around on trees, the game immediately becomes a frustrating, pointless, sloppy mess of mechanics that never seem to have gotten a first round of playtesting. I'm not kidding when I say this game would have been ten times better and maybe even worth playing if it had instead been called "Trees: The Jumping Around Odyssey" because that is dang well the only thing this game got right.

I'd like to say that this game is an object lesson in the importance of not hiring bad voice actors to perform good dialogue. Unfortunately, it's an object lesson in the importance of not hiring the worst voice actors on the planet to perform very mediocre dialogue.

Never before has such lazy writing been delivered in the form of such mediocre voice acting. It's hard to imagine that there was ever a second attempt at a single line of dialogue. It feels like a high school theater production, but with even more self-involved performers.

The saddest thing about Supergiant's boringest game yet is that it's enjoying such success that they might do another like it. The voice acting is great, but the gameplay is the grindiest, dullest, most visual-cluttery waste of time I've tried in recent memory. If you enjoyed Bastion, get ready for something with half of the gameplay, a third of the writing quality, and ten times the grind length. Oh, and although the dialogue is good when you look at any individual interaction, the overarching story is complete butt.

Maybe the worst video game I've ever played? I don't think I've ever seen clumsier writing or less ambitious execution. Let me get this out of the way - there is basically no gameplay. The platforming is so bad that I'm being generous when I say "Let's just pretend that doesn't exist." Same for the puzzles. Mostly, this is a visual novel with very, very poor writing. But perhaps worst of all, even if you were to LIKE this game (and my friend, I don't think you will), it doesn't have an ending. It's not a game awaiting a sequel. It literally stops right when the story gets going, right when it's got like 60% of its storytelling duties unfinished, and drops a big ol' "To Be Continued" on the sorry ass of any fool foolish enough to hope that there is anything - ANYTHING redeemable here. Sadly, there really isn't.

Although no part of this game is in any way fun or successful, it's an interesting thought experiment. What if Deep Silver developed 30% **** and stopped there? Would the result be worth $30 dollars? Unfortunately, no. $3 would be a pretty steep price for this deeply unfinished shadow ****.

For posterity's sake, this DLC deserves the same review that the base game deserves: If you loved X-COM so much that you'd play a hollow, ugly, glitchy shell of an X-COM clone, you might just be able to tolerate this hollow, ugly, glitchy shell of an X-COM clone.

If you loved X-COM so much that you'd play a hollow, ugly, glitchy shell of an X-COM clone, you might just be able to tolerate this hollow, ugly, glitchy shell of an X-COM clone.

This DLC delivers more of the boring mess that made the base game such a waste of time.

What if Dark Souls had bad combat and even worse level design? This game, that's what.

There's a lot to love here. The core gameplay is incredibly impressive, the sound and art are impeccable, and the puzzles just genuinely feel good. Think Journey meets Shadow of the Colossus. Where the game comes up short (sometimes VERY short) is in its combat and endgame content. Boss encounters and battles feel very plain, kinda wonky, and get repetitive almost immediately. Compared to the core gameplay, the boss battles and scripted encounters are so bad that they feel like parts of a different game. I'd have gotten past it without much issue, but the game loses a lot of steam in its final hours. The final levels are really thin on content, and the final encounter with the boss is beyond unsatisfying. Really, the thing this game needed were boss battles which actually incorporated the core gameplay. Most of the game is thrillingly "pathless" but the boss battles are scripted to hell, and as unsatisfying as the core game is satisfying. On top of that, each of the bosses is functionally the same. And, of course, a final level that didn't feel so disappointingly empty would have been nice. But with all of that said, it's a good game, with the spark of greatness flickering inside.

Krumit's Tale is a victim of its own brilliance. Its core gameplay couldn't be more perfect, but lack of content chokes its replayability (and Krumit's Tale begs to be replayed A LOT). Each character has only a few cards to unlock, and increasing levels of difficulty don't give rise to anything new. The devs keep putting out new 'mutations' or game modes, but it does little to nothing to address the root issue: that there is no sense of building toward anything, of persistent accomplishments, or of increasing difficulty yielding increasing (or ANY) rewards. Make no mistake, this is a very good game. A great game? It might not have that ambition.

Krumit's Tale is a victim of its own brilliance. Its core gameplay couldn't be more perfect, but lack of content chokes its replayability (and Krumit's Tale begs to be replayed A LOT). Each character has only a few cards to unlock, and increasing levels of difficulty don't give rise to anything new. The devs keep putting out new 'mutations' or game modes, but it does little to nothing to address the root issue: that there is no sense of building toward anything, of persistent accomplishments, or of increasing difficulty yielding increasing (or ANY) rewards. Make no mistake, this is a very good game. A great game? It might not have that ambition.

This whole game feels like DLC, which is to say the story is very pat and thin while maintaining an air of fullness and profundity. The gameplay isn't bad, but is a step back from the previous game. Simplicity gave way to needless complexity. Predictably, Betheseda let greatness give way to mediocrity.

Great gameplay is almost (but not quite) enough to save a game that's desperately thin on content, context, and replayability. Maybe this game is a few updates away from greatness. Probably not.

Nothing against Screen Rant, but this game does deserve a competent review. Gonner 2 is a challenging roguelite with plenty of platforming, inventive visuals, and extremely ill-considered gameplay. "Visual clutter" are words that could stand to be used here. With a limited palette, plenty of particles, and very unclear types of player interaction, Gonner 2 is a game that doesn't seem to want to be enjoyed. It recognizes that challenging CAN mean fun, but it doesn't know how to get it there. It doesn't just lack balance and variety (though it does), but more than anything it lacks incentives. No part of the game feels good enough to make playing the game worth it. But to use a sentence that means absolutely nothing, "GONNER2 is an excellent roguelite for fans of these kinds of games." -Screen Rant

The only thing not working in this roguelite is the gameplay. That aside, there's nothing to dislike. In fact, there's nothing else at all.

1990 called and they want their boring, melodramatic, underwritten and overwrought attempts at games back. Also, they say that even their puzzles didn't **** this bad.

To say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be to say this game is repetitive would be . . . a bit of an understatement.

"What if Dark Souls really, really ****?" seems to be the question that spawned this game. That's really all there is to it. Poor combat, movement, progression, level design, character design . . . I'll be honest, there is nothing at all to like about this game. It's a steaming pile of something worse than disappointment.

Going Under benefits from unique, vibrant visuals and fairly engaging gameplay. It comes up very short in the areas of needlessly wordy character dialogue that add nothing to the game and very, very unrewarding grinding. Too little time was spent developing the primary gameplay to sustain its necessary playtime, and too much hope was put into the bland, stock dialogue to carry the player through gameplay deadzones (which are too common and last too long). Oh, and there are plenty of gamecrashing bugs that like to come out to play right when you get to a boss.

Noita exists not to be played, but to be watched in trailer form. It may be thin and repetitive game with shockingly little polish and hundreds of examples of needless, fun-stopping complexity, but it does have some nice trailers. Loads of fun until you try to play it.

Beautiful, engaging, well-acted and well-written right up until the point where an ending would have been appropriate. But there isn't an ending. The game really spends time spinning up this idea of a bigger story, but right when the bigger story should reach some sort of conclusion, credits roll. If you make the mistake of getting invested, you'll be rewarded with a middle finger.

To write the review that VRFocus and GameSpace were too lazy and soft-hearted to write, Falcon Age is a thin shell **** that needed much, much more time in the oven before it was ready for release. Janky, buggy, and hollow at every turn, Falcon Age seems to have spent all of its resources on one or two trailers - and very little on the game itself. Every gameplay mechanic stutters, every map area is closer to empty than full, and every character in the game is so flat and poorly-written that a picket sign in the ground would have served for better exposition. This isn't a game - it's an expensive demo hungry for your disappointment.

A great concept with mostly excellent execution, really only marred by a complete lack of satisfactory ending. The tragedy of I Am Dead is that after so much careful and heartfelt build-up (underpinned by meticulously crafted gameplay), the game ends with less than a whimper. I'm more than a little disappointed that the game gave up on telling its story during the last few minutes. In short, a great experience tainted by a complete absence of resolution.

I loved the original Risk of Rain and really, really wanted to like the sequel. Unfortunately, the switch from 2D to 3D did no favors. The game looks generic and plays poorly. I didn't play until the full release and now that it's fully released I'm sad to say that it plays like a day 1 early access game. It's just a big, sloppy, janky mess of stuff that doesn't work together. This game that came out within the last 24 hours feels seriously dated, like something 10 years old or more. Again, huge fan of the original (and Deadbolt) but for me, this is a big swing and a bigger miss.