I'm sure it was a lot of fun to make all the Rube Goldberg things in this game as well as the puzzles, but I don't find it that much fun to play. Towards the start, I thought it would be more fun to play this with a kid, as there's lots of running back and forth and back and forth, but then the game gets more challenging, but the tedium doesn't relent. There was one segment where I just couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do, and had to look up a guide, and that was annoying. I regret buying it even though I got it on sale.
This is a lot like those logic (?) word puzzles where you get a story that has info like "Timmy's mother won't eat onions" and "Kathy brought onion rings to the picnic" and you have to figure out Timmy's mother's name. That's fine, although I feel like I don't have enough bookkeeping help available to me here, e.g., I know these two people have these two names, but I don't know which is which, so I'll have to just remember that. The people are mostly men, of course, and a lot of them end up looking sort of the same, which doesn't help anything. Although the game's mechanics are interesting, I'm finding this game super tedious to play. When you identify something of interest, there's a long delay before the game reacts, so you can think it's not actually of interest. The black and white graininess is kind of interesting and I know it deliberately obscures some things, but it's really hard to see what's going on sometimes. (WTH is a bosun? I didn't expect to need to know about sailing to play this game.) What does it mean when the bell chimes? I have no idea. The game thinks it explains itself, but it doesn't really. There are a few different modalities you might be in, but it's not always clear to me how to get out of one and I end up just mashing buttons till I can do what I'm trying to do. So many ways of people dying and it's not clear what happens if you pick the wrong verb. Unlike those word puzzles, you can't easily lay everything out in front of you here. Super annoying, and I'm unlikely to finish it.
It didn't cost much, but it's annoying to me that they often use six of the same tile when mahjong sets typically have four of each tile. The puzzles generally don't use all the tiles anyway (some tiles are there only twice). So it seems like they do this out of laziness or just to make some of the boards weirdly harder. I quickly got frustrated and am looking for another version.
Relatively easy Zelda knockoff, although I got clobbered in the first dungeon by not being properly leveled up and/or potioned up. (But there are checkpoints in the dungeons, and you can leave and come back, so I was just a dope.) I had a lot of fun playing this game and imaging replaying it at some point.
Somewhat wonky controls, including needing to hold down LZ and RZ for stretches of time while you're doing other things. I think this might be an enjoyable two-player experience as you work to coordinate the two brothers, screw up, and laugh about it, but I played single-player. The story is interesting but macabre in places and needs a warning for some about the violence and blood that the brothers encounter. But it's a beautiful fairytale world that you're navigating. I'm glad I played it, but was also glad to get to the end and move on to another game.
This game is missing a whole lot of polish, and isn't worth the full price. The music doesn't always play in the background, and it's just kind of weird to be walking around in silence. The use of voices is annoying, with a single word or phrase being voiced out of a blob of text (why bother?). And I've had the game just freeze at times (during battle), which requires a restart and lost work. I now save manually when I think of it. As for the game itself, it seems to be aimed at kids, which is probably fine and I shouldn't expect more from it. Sometimes games aimed at kids have a subtle line of something else for the adults, but I'm not finding that here. There's a wealth of tasks to be working on and a decent system for keeping track of those things, so you can decide, for example, whether you're going to try to get the next crystal (main quests), or open the next railway station (secondary, but obviously important), or even just collect resources you wish you had. Of course, along the way, you are collecting treasures and increasing your team's rank along those lines, and fighting monsters and increasing your level (gaining HP, MP, etc.) There's a reasonable story behind it all, but the gameplay just ends up feeling like drudgework because you can't stay out on an excursion for too long and need to return to base. The battle mechanic is somewhat annoying in that there seem to be too many different types of pellets to be able to manage them well, though I can imagine some players really enjoying switching pellets all the time. Another thing I find kind of weird is that as you get each of the crystals... nothing happens. Of course, they are added to you inventory, but no one seems to notice in game and there's no apparent incremental benefit besides adding to your treasure stash. I think I've played all the DQ games available on the Switch at this point, and I did delay getting this one till I was able to get it on sale, but it's just disappointing.
Recommended to me as a puzzle game along the lines of Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker, and maybe. It's inexpensive, especially on sale, so I think I got my money's worth. This is intended as a touch-screen game, and I'm playing on the TV with a Pro controller, FWIW. I usually don't find that that works well for touchscreen games, but it works okay for me here for many levels. It doesn't work well for the levels where timing is involved and you have to get to a certain space with a certain cadence. The D-pad doesn't help, even though there's a grid layout. Another frustrating thing for me is the limited rotation of the levels, so you can't always see whether a tunnel cuts through, for example. I guess the other thing that has been annoying is getting knocked off the playing area for no apparent reason at times (requiring a restart). I think both of these things might be intentional... I just find them frustrating. Good little game to play in small chunks. I do like that about it. Also a bit addictive; I was going to stop after 10 levels and kept going through 20 when I first played.
Recommended to me as a puzzle game along the lines of Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker, and maybe. It's inexpensive, especially on sale, so I think I got my money's worth. But the controls are wonky.. I play with a Pro Controller on the TV, and had to rotate my controller 90 degrees clockwise to be able to move around reasonably. After a few levels, this just got to be too annoying to continue. I can imagine picking it up here and there to do more levels to take a break from work or something, but I don't love this game. FYI: I spent a little time trying to figure out what was different about the "Director's Cut", and maybe I still don't know, but minimally, it includes some DLC, so I think it's the better option.
I don't usually like "farming" games, but I enjoyed this one. The story is touching. I got frustrated towards the beginning when it was hard to figure out what I was supposed to do to advance the story, and again at the end when I was clearly almost done but waiting for something to trigger. Oh, and there's a bug that hits some players that resulted in a third time when the game felt stuck (and in this case, actually stuck, though the solution is there for the googling). I did not expect this game to have platforming elements, which was frustrating when the game started stuttering during a block of more challenging platforming. So, the downsides are the bottlenecks to advancing the story and the performance issue. But the story is sweet, and I got the game on sale. Well worth the sale price.
Pretty, but I'm not sure who this game is for. Long stretches of running around somewhat awkwardly in the pretty world make you think it's a chill game meant for the atmosphere. But then it's got its platforming stretches which are a little harder than they should be. Not always clear where you're supposed to go, despite an occasional hint. I get a bit dizzy playing it at times, though I don't in other 3d games, so it's something about the way you move around in this game. Controls are sort of wonky, especially that you have to hold L and left joystick to run... not a comfortable combination. Divided into "chapters", but there's no way to save, so you have to finish a chapter, which is super annoying when you need a break from the awkward platforming, awkward controls, or awkward movement making you sick. Some of this game is puzzling about what you're supposed to do next and how, and those parts have some promise, but they get sort of lost with the other wonkiness.
I was surprised to learn that this is a new(ish) game because it plays like an older one (granted, with better graphics). The gameplay reminded me a lot of Gone Home (first released in 2013). Some of the mechanics are awkward; possibly more due to porting to the Switch than anything else. Like Gone Home, you are exploring a big empty house/hotel and trying to piece together 'what happened', and pick up clues along the way and gain access to more and more of the building as you go. As the title suggests, the story here is adult and heavy. I don't find that the overall story hangs together in a consistent way, and find that irksome. Overall, it was a fine way to spend a rainy afternoon, but I wouldn't go out of my way to play it.
I was enjoying this game, but as I approached the end game, it started crashing more and more. It just crashed during a boss fight I was most of the way through, and somehow took all my health/buff items when it crashed (I seriously don't think I used all of those). I don't think I'm good enough to get through this battle without some help, so at 92%, this might be the end of the game for me. (Other crashes meant I had a bunch of stuff to do over again, a drag, but not fatal.) More generally, I don't like that with this game, once you walk into a boss fight, you have no way out. If/when you die, you respawn into a locked area. So even without crashing, you can't decide you're not ready for this particular battle, either because you forgot to stock up or because it's a harder boss than you're ready for. Overall, it's a fun game with good music and a reasonable story. The battle and item mechanics are a little wonky, but you get used to it. There are some weird ways to get sort of trapped in walls and end up dying (so, a little bit of missing polish), but I was really enjoying the game till the repetitive crashing started. (I guess one way to deal with the 'getting stuck' would be to have an alternate save file, but I had only one save file I was using.)
This is missing the charm of the original, and I'm so disappointed. I'm only a couple of hours in, so will play a bit more to see if things change, but so far this is an enormously linear game and all about battle, battle, battle.... and it's the button-mashing style of battle, and I don't love that. The story so far is entirely ho-hum. Maybe something is going to change here, but I was fond of the last game with villages here and there on the map and the very open other parts of the map where you could engage to level up or try to avoid to get to your next destination. Instead here, there seems to be twisty mazy paths to be followed and lots of teleports so that you can get back later, and just ugh. Update: I guess I'm near the end of the game now, and I really wouldn't recommend this to anyone. So many things are repetitive, including lots of the world, shrines and caves, where they just repeat the same visual elements over and over again. Every facet of this game is grindy. Regular fighting, skirmishes, managing your country, and the different types of quests. The only thing good I can say for it is that if I have to put it down for a stretch, there's a bunch of reminders of what needs to be done. Might forget some out-of-the-way places, but overall, it's easy enough to stay on track after a break.
Got it on sale, but still not worth it. Not only are the puzzles frustrating and annoying in their stupidity, but also the game is buggy and has nonwords included (SETG?) You can try a word one time and it's wrong and later it's right. Makes no sense. Lots of three-letter words. No 'clues' as with a crossword puzzle, so it's just try, try again for the word they're thinking of when many could fit. Wish I had checked here before buying.
Biggest downer: It's like paying money to play a beta release. It's as if this game was released as soon as they got to an MVP (minimum viable product) and decided to work on the nits later, and... that just doesn't work so well for a game. I can imagine in a year or so, it will solidify and this complaint will go away. It's a bit like Animal Crossing, in terms of a 24-hour cycle and things to be done each day, and sort of a limit on how much can be done each day. Also like Animal Crossing in that you are farming things and can make things and decorate your world. Not currently networked / multi-player; I don't know if that's in the plan. The interesting thing about this vs. Animal Crossing is that it is interleaved with the stories of the bears, and the tasks you're given each day help advance those stories. If you are here for the Animal Crossing vibe, and decorating the world and changing your clothes, it's all good. If you want to learn the bears' stories, be prepared to wait... they take a really long time to unfold. One good thing: you don't have to play consecutive days, so you could put this down for a while and come back later. Not great for younger kids because the bears have adult problems. I think there was an interesting ambition here of adding the stories to the farming-/grinding-type game, but it didn't quite (yet?) make it to the level of polish that would have made that idea shine.
Carto is an enjoyable little puzzle game. I was deceived by the illustration style that looks like a children's book... this is not a game for young kids because the puzzles are too drawn out. (Meaning that as you advance, there's a series of steps to be taken that can be hard to keep track of.) OTOH, the story is still sort of childlike, ¯_(ツ)_/¯ . You definitely need to enjoy spatial puzzles to enjoy this game, and that style won't be for everyone. Also, I had a rough start because I didn't understand the puzzle mechanics and the task I was given; I think there could have been a better lead-in to understanding how to play. Once i understood the style of play, it was all fine, and I enjoyed the game.
Story-driven game, with relatively easy platforming and a few puzzles. There were times when I could not begin to guess what I was supposed to do to solve a puzzle, and had to resort to youtube (and was still scratching my head), and there were times when I couldn't get an action to work and had to resort to youtube to convince myself to keep trying it (e.g., Why can't I go down these stairs? Oh, I can). Not often, but these things are nits in the game. I also found it frustrating that saving was not up to me. There are a generous number of save points that happen automatically, but since the autosaves seldom call attention to themselves, you don't know how far back you might be cast if you have to stop NOW. (OTOH, they are in pretty good spots when you're going to have to try a puzzle multiple times; sometimes, you've done the wrong thing and can't fix it.) Good diversion for a rainy weekend, and worth the on-sale price.
Cute idea and an interesting world, but somehow didn't fully gel, so it's a bit tedious to play. I like the notion of needing to remake yourself in order to have different skills, and (of course) collecting those skills/parts along the way. Simply moving around in this game gets tedious fairly quickly, and some of the actions (like jumping) are super tedious. Some of the puzzles are good and some of them don't feel logical, so it's annoying to try to figure out what you're supposed to do. Some of the 'gateways' to get through require overly precise positioning to work, so it can seem that you've tried something and it was the wrong idea, but after trying many other things, you try it again, and now it works. Super annoying. I also find the narration annoying. Sometimes because the spoken words can be ahead of the displayed words. Sometimes because when sort of nothing's going on, a phrase is spoken -- one from a relatively small set. These can warn of danger when there isn't any, which is annoying, but also get annoying because they get repetitive. And sometimes just because the forced rhymes of the unfolding story are, yeah, forced. I did finish the game, and I don't totally hate it, but it's not one I'd suggest to others or ever play again.
I bought this game because of the stellar reviews, and I am disappointed. The mechanics are awkward. Moving around feels slow, and sometimes things that should work don't, till you try them again. The style of the game is back and forth and back and forth to get a new item which enables you to get another item, run over here, run over there, run back here again. It got old pretty fast for me. This became almost tedious in the second phase of the game. Also, some of the puzzles have weird solutions (as opposed to clever). However, the mechanics shift a bit in the third phase of the game, and I enjoyed that much more. OTOH, I do appreciate the overall story and the graphics. The gameplay style and level of the puzzles, and even the fairytale quality of this lend itself to playing with kids (or a game FOR kids), but... there are some scary parts that would not be good for some kids, including monsters that come after you. I finished this in a day, FWIW, though it was a longish day. Update: I've thought about this more and here's a relevant facet for me about not quite enjoying the game. I tend to prefer an adventure game when there are different sorts of tasks that you can work on when you're in a different mood. In a lot of games, you can run around gathering things, or you can focus on leveling up, or there are sometimes "big tasks" and "little tasks". This game is mostly the running around little tasks, to my mind (and the puzzles are not especially fun), and that's my issue here.
I love the Pikmin series, but -- maybe 'cause I'm older now -- this was not as much fun. Some of the puzzles are interesting and some get sort of tedious. The ratio of time running around the world and time with blah-blah-blah and the spaceship is off. There's a way to play this game where you're trying to do everything fast vs. poking around and sort of enjoying the scenery, and I prefer to poke around. Mostly, the game lets you play either way, but at the end, you're really pushed to be a speed player, and I found the ending annoying on that level. I suspect this game is more fun as multiplayer, but haven't had a chance to try that out yet. Overall, a fun game, but pretty short, and not really worth the full price of $60.
I don't know why there's so much hate for this little game. It's a fun little adventure game, stealing a lot from Zelda ideas, but of course no where near as excellent as Zelda. It's fairly easy, which means that it's more accessible for younger folks, and the bosses are unbelievably dorky. The twisty mazes of the worlds are well designed, and the puzzles are relatively easy. But it's a fun dorky little game, so it's all about expectations. FWIW: I got stuck in a wall a few times, though going back to the title screen will pop you out. I got really stuck on how to make progress a few times, along the lines of things that you can't usually do, except when you can. I sometimes have a hard time finding bombing sites, which often don't have a visual clue, the way they do in Zelda. And I wish there was a radar that would help you out to find chests or heart pieces. Shooting arrows ****... the mechanics of that are just off. But whatever. Good little game.
Well worth the $4.50 I paid for it on sale in the Nintendo store. Walk and float around through the levels, collect goodies and team-mates, battle bad guys (turn-based battle, FWIW). Some blah-blah-blah dialog to click through in places that sometimes intersect with the story and are sometimes more tedious. Beautiful graphics and music make this a dreamy low-key adventure.
This game is clever and definitely worth the $2 I paid for it on sale at the Nintendo store. Despite the blurb about the game, I don't think it would have any appeal for someone who hadn't worked in machine code before, but if you have, this is geeky entertainment. On the one hand, you're navigating a maze of 1's and 0's, to try to escape. On the other hand, those 8-bit blocks are ASCII characters, so there's a second panel displayed simultaneously that is the maze rendered (in old-time green characters on black). The rendered maze has walls, but also text that explains a bit about what's going on and/or offers some hints (though the hints are not super helpful). Sometimes, a third panel appears, where you have to pay attention to the machine code and what's happening there... and that's where this game will lose all but the devoted geeks. I haven't finished the game yet, 'cause I'm stuck in a machine code loop that I lacked the interest to hammer through late at night. But it's interesting enough for me that I'll go back to it. I admire the cleverness of this game, but suspect there's a relatively small audience for it.
You're a goose. You're a jerk. You have things to check off your be-a-jerk list. So, get to it. You have to poke around a wee bit with each new level to figure out what you have to work with to complete your checklist, but then for the most part it's clear what you have to do, and it's just a bit of try, try again to get it done. Very nice music. The huge appeal of this game is that you're a goose and you're a jerk, and it's funny. Everything is well done, and the game runs smoothly; there was only one time I hit a glitchy spot where characters were stuck and I had to move deliberately to get them unstuck. Goose fans will probably hate me for saying this, but this game reminded me a lot of Pan-Pan. It's better than Pan-Pan, but it's similarly small, similar in the repeated-small-puzzles playing style, and there's even a sort of similarity in the animation style. This would be fun to play with others kibbitzing, including with kids. (Probably just a few spots might be too tedious for younger kids to complete on their own, and there's just a few places where you have to get the timing just right that might also be too annoying for younger kids.) There are several more post-game checklist challenges if you want to spend more time in this world (including basically 'do it faster'), and I'll probably work on those in spare moments here and there. Aside from this, I don't see myself playing this game again in the future (including the playing through fast challenges), though it would still be fun to watch others play. Playing through again just doesn't seem to be in the cards for me because a lot of the puzzling involves a form of learning how the world works, and the game unfolds too linearly for a new game to hold anything interesting. It's cute, it's clever, it's well done... but it should be more like 10 bucks.
Excellent puzzle game with about 3-4 hours of play (so, on the short side). The two characters work together to solve the puzzle, though they move in tandem in the sense that the controller moves them forward or back together (though sometimes they move at different paces and over different terrain). The characters move backward and forward in time, and can at times move parts of the environment forward and backward in time, so there are sort of two things to focus on while solving the puzzles. Beautiful game, including the music, and a sweet little background story. The puzzles are reasonably challenging while also being constrained... there's only so many actions you can take. Although I played it through, it's also a game where you could just work on one puzzle and then put it aside for another day. (There's not a lot to remember about how this world works.)
I generally enjoy story games, and this (as you know) has a touching story. I like the notion of the intertwined stories; I like the mashup of Groundhog Day / DK64-we-each-have-different-skills / try-to-get-this-Rube-Goldberg-machine-working ideas; and of course, it's all visually beautiful. It's fairly tedious to play, though, and just generally not terribly well crafted as a game. Some really great ideas that didn't quite gel.
I loved DQB and looked forward to DQB2. I finished DQB2, but found the gameplay largely tedious. The game unrolls in a very linear fashion, and for the most part, you're given your errands one at a time and with specific instructions about how the errand can be completed. You 'build' very elaborate structures in this game, but you don't do most of the design or building in this game... instead they are done for you. They are clearly targeting younger players with these changes, and I dunno, overall maybe that's a good move. I guess I enjoyed this game enough to finish it, but it always felt at least a little bit annoying. I can't imagine playing it through again, unless I decide I just want to build things and not play the game. (I played DQB twice, and can imagine playing it again.) There's some shoddy game design and/or programming in play here, such as: 1. If you do something before you've been told to, the game gets tripped up, and a task can get stalled. It's not always 'go get the 10 things' again to get it out; sometimes there's an intermediate thing that you were expected to do along the way that has to be triggered. 2. The game crashed on me three times, though only once did I lose a hunk of time (about 20 minutes). 3. There are these randomly generated scavenger hunt islands that I kind of love (totally optional), but oh hey, it turns out that the island is not necessarily going to be generated with all the things on your list. (Possibly this is by design, but it's super annoying when you're searching high and low with a sort of trust that you can complete this task.... and you just can't. And then you have to go back and forth on the ship to reset the island, and it's just tedious.) 4. You get a vehicle late in the game, and you're able to drive it into a pit you can't drive out of. You need the vehicle to get back home, so, um, what? I had to dig the vehicle out. Maybe I deserved that or something, but I guess the thing is that it's just inconsistent with how hand-holding the rest of the game is. Every once in a while they forget to hold your hand. On the one hand, DQB had the weird chapters thing, where they didn't really connect to each other, and in DQB2, there's a solid backbone of a story. On the other hand, the story is fairly clumsily executed. At the core, it's the yin and yang of creation and destruction, and gosh in the right hands that could unfold beautifully... but alas, not here. There is also way too many blah blah blah blocks of text to click through, and really annoyingly, some of them are animations so you can't click through them and just have to wait for the words to scroll by. The pacing of the story is also enormously weird for each of the islands/chapters... you build up to a big thing that feels like a finale, and then there's another big thing, and another big thing. Just clumsy, to my mind. The battles are melee style, likely also to appeal to younger players. For the most part, if you have enough food and remember to eat, you'll be fine. Just a couple of times I didn't have enough companions or strong enough weapons or enough things to eat to make it through a battle. I suggest you play through the free demo before making a purchase. If you don't find that overly tedious, go for it.
Frustrating to have to run such long distances... run, run, run... I know it's deliberate, to set the mood and control the pacing of the game. And, right, it's quite beautiful, when you're running around. Some of the gestures/actions were kind of annoying, like gathering butterflies, and although I eventually got past the obsidian, it was never quite clear what the correct action was that enabled that. It's a relatively quick play, and it's beautiful and sweet and thoughtful. I'm glad I got it and played through, but I was swearing a lot.
Night in the Woods is barely a "game", to my mind, and is more like interactive fiction although I'm not sure there are actually any important forks in the story that unfolds. It all felt very linear, like I was being pushed to experience a specific next chapter of the story, and sometimes had to choose things I didn't want to choose. I found it very tedious most of the time to have to keep clicking through dialog and even though I had choices about what I said here and there, most of the choices didn't have any consequences. I should mention that I liked OxenFree, and in some ways the storytelling gameplay of that resembles Night in the Woods. It took me a little while to settle into / start enjoying OxenFree, so I wondered if this might be the same, but it's not in the sense that there are actual significant forks in the story in OxenFree, and your choices do have significant effects on the story. In playing Night in the Woods, I did eventually get into its sometimes trippy mojo and came to tolerate the load screen after load screen game play, and wanted to hear the story out. But if I'd known what this was before I bought it ("not really a game"), I probably wouldn't have. I do like the aesthetic of the game, including both music and visuals, and enjoyed the mini games that were the dream sequences. I don't think the controls were well mapped for playing on the Switch, and found "band practice" in particular very annoying (four strings, all A, B, X, Y keys). X is overloaded to be a game save and exit (why?!), but is also access to your journal. I really appreciate the creative effort that went into this game and the complex issues that were tackled in the story line (although I think the complexity and depth of that story ends up undermined by the weird backstory of what happened to Casey). There is a lot that's good here, just not what I was hoping for.
