Recent reviews by Rubycario

Haven't played a Ratchet and Clank game since "Size Matters" on the PSP, this game was one of the reasons I wanted to buy a PS5, but it thankfully came to Steam.

Overall, it's a lot of fun. Reminds me a lot of old school platformers/arcade shooters. The level design, characters, and graphics are all really well handled, and I enjoyed it from start to finish, even gaining all the achievements.

The only con I can really think of is that it seemed like the sped through some story beats. Sometimes it felt like a character would gain a change of tune as a split second decision, and it's like, all right I guess we're moving to the next thing. Not enough to take the enjoyment out of it, but it was something worth noting. Aside from that, I think enemy variety could've been better.

It's worth playing. Had a lot of fun with it.

This game sounds like a fine enough story on paper, but the writing and characters really just sours the entire experience. Like, it's really just abysmal at times, especially in the final episode. Really, there's a lot wrong with it, but it can be seen primarily in the three main characters.

Anu is the main character of this game. It's not a three way split between the three, like how the main characters in Tales 1 were both Rhys AND Fiona. Anu is the clear standout of the group, as we follow her more thoroughly. She's an anxiety ridden character who seems to have been written by someone who doesn't have anxiety, but thinks, "Ah, she's quirky, you see? Look at her have an anxiety attack. Are you laughing at how quirky anxiety is?" Aside from that, she's bland. She's somewhat believably anxious at times but it always feels hollow at best and forced at worse. She has a semi touching story about learning to not be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but it's very bare bones.

Fran is the best of the main three. She fits the setting of the game (Borderlands) pretty decently. She's rage filled, but trying to control her anger, and really horny. Like, REALLY horny. All of these are things are what I come to expect from Borderlands, and her attitude, ego, and overall bombastic character plays well off the stupidity of Octavio, and whatever Anu is doing. All she wants is to beat up the antagonist, it's not overly preachy or anything, she just wants to punch a ♥♥♥♥♥.

Octavio is just the worst. This franchise has had some stinky characters, but man, he's written like one person in the office looked at a reddit meme about how millennials are all obsessed with tacos and made that his entire personality. He's seemingly supposed to be the haha funny guy of the group, but he's just annoying.

Genuinely the best character in the game is the face of the game, LOU13. His cold responses to things can be genuinely funny at times, and he seems more grounded than the three main characters with his trying to find a place in the world arc. I can see why they shoved him on the box art.

Side characters and even main characters have their moments where I'd chuckle a bit, but then it's right back to business as usual.

The humor is bad, and this story relies on it too much. Even when a moment is supposed to be serious or somber, they throw some haha quirkiness into it. Episode 5 is filled to the brim with moments where you're just sitting there wondering what is even going on. Which is REALLY sad because the ending of episode 4 is when they actually had me interested in it. Only to go back to bad jokes and tone deaf interruptions to the current situation they're in. Tales 1 had a few moments like that, but they were very few and far between and the humor felt better paced 9 times out of 10.

Don't play this game. I would recommend just watching a run on Youtube or just reading a Wiki page if you really want to know what happens. I played through it twice and got the good ending both times, and both times I just sat back and groaned more often than not.

To this game's credit, it's visually really well done. The camera work, models, animations, lighting and environments all look like direct upgrades from Borderlands 3.

To start off, I'm generally not really a fan of this type of game. There's not really much in terms of gameplay outside of quick time events and mild walking around in rare instances, so it never really classified as a game imho. However, the gameplay isn't the point, really, it's the story, and that's really what this is, an interactive story, and TellTale gave us arguably the best story this franchise has ever seen, and considering how 3 and New Tales went, probably the best the series is ever gonna see.

This game is more like a really good TV show. The characters range from absolutely great, to whatever is going on with Vaughn, and outside of being a little slow paced at the start of Chapter 3, it really keeps you wanting to know more about what happens next.

Most of the new characters are great, and they handled ALL the returning faces extremely well. It's a good show that's worth watching, and I wish these characters were handled better in 3 and New Tales.

If you're a Portal fan, and want more Portal fun, then this is a good mod. It wasn't without its fair share of issues, however.

Most importantly for me, the test chambers themselves were pretty fun. You spent a lot of time running around with only one portal to work with, and that's something I enjoy a lot given my Portal map making resume. However, none of the tests were really all that difficult. Pretty straightforward point A to B conclusions for most of them. The few times I got stuck, I was either missing something obvious that was tucked away in a corner, or I tried to cheese a chamber instead of solving it "the right way" because it's more fun otherwise. I don't think I'd call any single test chamber in this entire mod hard, but they were fun in most cases.

The level design was super clean, and really does a lot of heavy lifting for the entire mod. Minor visuals also help in a lot of cases, like having 3 separate Portal Device models throughout the game, one of those having something aside from the standard blue/orange colors, and the UI changes on loading screens. Visually, these environments are really well thought out, the puzzles just flew by sometimes, so I wasn't really able to take it in without artificially extending my playtime.

The worst takeaway from this mod was unfortunately the story. In a lot of ways, it lifts the story from Portal 2 and reworks it. Mild spoilers, but they all come from a mile away, so take of that what you will. Robot wakes you up, you go through ruined facility with robot, robot betrays you, you work with other robot to defeat the one that woke you up, big reveal, they know each other, big battle, moon. That's practically paraphrasing Portal 2's story with some slight changes.

Some small nitpicky things, one character mentions Roombas, which weren't invented until 2002. It's dumb to get hung up on, but it practically deleted my immersion in that specific moment for about 10 seconds. I had the same issue with the "Wi-Fi" joke in Mel, so it's probably entirely a me thing. Again, it's dumb, but the fact I remember a throwaway line like that at all is telling of how bad it was. Secondly, why "Revolution" for the title? Nothing about the plot was even a little bit about a revolution. Is it just to sound edgy? Attention grabbing? Why? The title relating to the main mcguffin of the game, would've made a lot more sense, and considering what that thing is, there's a lot they could've done with it. Revolution just doesn't fit.

Overall, this is essentially just a really well done bunch of maps that would've probably been more at home on the workshop if you could sift through everything to find it. It's a mod worth playing, but it doesn't really make an impact or do anything new.

Small edit, realized the store page says 8 hours of gameplay. I didn't break 4, so expect it to be around 4 to 5 hours, not 8.

I installed this game to get my achievements off of Battle.net on my Steam account. That's really about it.

There's nothing more I can really say that hasn't already been said, but I can't recommend this game even a little bit. The company and the devs behind it have made so many blunders with Overwatch, even before they slapped a 2 on it, that it's just become a shell of its former self.

This game isn't worth your time. It's nothing but watered down systems the first game had at launch and failed systems that never saw the light of day.

As someone who's poured countless hours into it, this game was fun at one point, amazing even, but that game died a very, very long time ago.

I'm really not sure what I was expecting from this game when I started it, aside from puzzles, I mean, kind of the selling point, but I still somehow got more than I was expecting.

To get it out of the way, Portal. Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal Portal PORTAL. That's a selling point for me on games like this, but this game honestly feels like more of a cross between not just Portal, but the Turing Test as well, and manages to do things arguably better than both of them; in terms of narrative, at least. Doing these tests have a clear cut purpose. You're not just trying to escape or survive while being vaguely led on by a disembodied computer voice, you have an objective, and even though you're working out what happened at the Entropy Centre with context clues and long forgotten emails, you have a goal, and it's pretty interesting one at that.

That out of the way, it's not a Portal clone. Puzzles in a room isn't a Portal exclusive idea, and because of the narrative behind the game it never feels like I'm playing Portal. It always feels like I'm playing the Entropy Centre, despite me constantly referring to things by Portal names, like Fizzlers and Faith Plates. Point is, it's not worth writing off as another Portal clone, it's doing its own thing. There's clear inspirations from it, but doesn't feel like it needs to fall back on familiarity to get people invested.

The puzzles themselves never felt overwhelmingly difficult, even when Astra stated that the next few courses would be, or when an email said that the upcoming test was SUPER HARD, I ended up completing most of them in under 5 minutes, and there are monitors that'll tell you how fast you completed each test after completion. Weird way to help me keep up the pace, but it worked. Each course consisted of about 5 tests, and each course introduced some new test element. There are a lot of them, but the main ones are the different cube types, which never really felt overwhelming.

Aside from that, the Entropy Device is a really interesting gimmick to get behind. Rewinding things opens the door for a lot of critical thinking, and once you figure out not only how to solve each test, but the order you need to solve it in so rewinding works, it's super enjoyable.

A few small cons, though. The physics is a bit jank. I found myself having issues going from a conveyor belt to a jump cube in one test despite following the guidelines on the floor, and aiming a jump so you land on the jump cube can be difficult at times, and frustrating if it's like, step 5 in your rewind so you need to redo your steps so they rewind properly. The last con is that some test elements blend in with the environment too much, namely the launchpads, catapults, Aerial Faith Plates, whatever you want to call them. They're floor colored. It took me 30 minutes to complete a test chamber because I couldn't see one of the Faith Plates huddled in a corner because it was floor colored.

Aside from those things, good game. Not worth sleeping on if you like puzzle games.

Bought this game on a whim because I was recommended the song Avarice on Spotify. Did not fail to deliver at all.

Going into it, I expected it to be another Indie title with a fairly loose story line that didn't really affect much in terms of, I guess, anything, but this game is surprisingly entirely story driven and it's actually a pretty solid narrative, too. I can't really delve into it too much because it's hard to talk about without spoiling anything, but it's good. It's also a secret sequel to Titan Souls, a game developed by this same studio previously. It's not blatantly apparent until you get to the true ending, though. I like it when a game can pull something like that off, even if I've never played Titan Souls to compare things to.

The gameplay itself doesn't disappoint either. To compare it to a newer title, it's similar in terms of gameplay to Tunic, similar dodge mechanics, same engine, similar difficulty curves, yada yada. So if you've played Tunic then you'll probably enjoy Death's Door as well, and vice versa. That being said, the combat is more varied, you've got a few different weapon choices to better suit your playstyle, and a few ranged skills you can make use of as well. The dungeons and hidden secrets are also really well designed, and without a mini map I often found myself getting lost, which added a lot to the game, imho.

Then ofc, there's the music. Top ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ notch. Every track is a banger, and I wouldn't even have heard of this game or cared about it if the music hadn't come across my Spotify list and absolutely slapped.

Overall, good game, it's not expensive so just play it already, what are you doing?

Look, I'm a massive Portal nerd. I care way too much about this game and am a shill for anything related to it. It's my favorite game, and I'll die on that hill. That being said, Portal RTX is not good, and I can't recommend it at all over the original game that released back in 2007.


-Visuals-
So, let's start with the most immediate things. The visuals. I like a lot of what they're trying to do here, I think the brown metal walls, the light travelling through portals and the overall reflectivity of things like glass are a nice visual upgrade from the Source Engine from 2007. A lot of the model upgrades look great, too. Namely the camera model looks fantastic, I love the details added to the Fizzlers and Elevators, and the personality spheres more resemble those in Portal 2, which I'm okay with.

However, there's inconsistent use of dynamic shadow effects. For example, the final chapter of this game has giant fans, some produce nice moving shadows if they hit the fan, and some do not. This wasn't really an issue for the original because none of the fans were really capable of it. But when it's a mix of, will they won't they, it becomes really noticeable. Then there's an overuse of volumetric lighting in those same finale areas. It becomes a bit much to bear at times.

Then there's the actual test chambers, the real meat of the game. Like I said, I like the brown walls a lot, they could do with slightly less reflectivity, but I'm digging those. The concrete walls of the original on the other hand were replaced with the white ceramic walls of Portal 2, which doesn't really fit with these test chambers or the engine as a whole. The textures themselves look great, but when paired with the Portal 1 metal walls, you were better off just leaving them as concrete, or even changing the brown walls to black. You have this clash of styles here that doesn't really work as well as I think they thought it would.

The Energy Balls are another killing blow for me. Having them produce light is nice, but they're sometimes too bright. I'm pretty sure this was to make them more noticeable when travelling directly in front of a portal, but tone it down by 50%. I'm also not sure why they went with making the buttons look like a piece of hard cherry candy you had in your mouth for about 5 minutes and spat out either.

-Performance-
For full disclosure, these are my specs
GPU: 3060Ti
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core
RAM: 16 GB
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
As you can see, I'm hitting most things pretty decently, my Ram could use an upgrade, but I'm hitting the minimum requirements. I even made sure that all my drivers were properly updated, and yet, I'm still lagging like hell even when toning down some of my settings. It doesn't matter what I do, unless I'm basically playing at the lowest settings, I will lag, which at that point I may as well go back and play the original game. So disregarding anything I mentioned about the visuals, which should be the main draw to Portal RTX, good luck getting it to run at a smooth framerate and still set out to do what it was intending to do.

Like I said, I love Portal, and I'll still probably end up getting all achievements on this one, too. However, this is a weird experiment. I wasn't looking for Portal remastered or anything like that, but I was hoping this'd be a fun and stable little test on my favorite game. If they can get it to run smoothly, I'll make an edit to this, as of right now, just go play the original game.

Gonna start by being as transparent as possible, when I say this game is a Portal clone I don't mean that negatively. That being said, this is a Portal clone, but it's doing its own things. It's not a Portal clone in terms of the Portal Device and the overall puzzle solving mechanics, but in terms of the test chambers, signage, overall tone, etc. It's wearing its inspirations blatantly on its sleeves. If you slapped an Aperture logo on the Cyclone Cannon, then it'd blend right in.

All that said, I love that. So many games that want to do what Portal did are too afraid to go all in on it, and this game goes all in on it. This game was made by a Portal fan, seemingly for Portal fans, and that's great. At the same time, it feels unique to Portal. It's easy to draw comparisons, but taking notice of the differences there's a different, yet familiar feel to it. It's like Portal if it was made in a parallel universe and somehow got launched into ours.

With those comments out of the way, the gameplay is pretty straightforward. You use the Cyclone Cannon to launch yourself, cubes, balls, murder spheres, etc. around the test chambers to solve puzzles. The way you can go about using the Cyclone Cannon to solve these puzzles is genuinely pretty interesting. I don't want to spoil any potential solutions here, so I'm just gonna end it off on that.

This is the part where the Early Access portion of the review kicks in.

At the time of writing, the Cyclone Cannon feels a little jank. Especially when trying to launch yourself with angled panels, or jumping into a cyclone that is attached to a wall without launching yourself from the floor first. Made getting the timing for a few jumps a little frustrating, but not impossible. It's Early Access, though, so I won't really look too much into it. Just needs a little more fine tuning.

I noticed that when you die in a test chamber, things don't seem to reset. You die and start back at the beginning of the room, but buttons you pressed, cube placements, etc. all seem to remain where they were before you died. This can feel a little exploitable at times. In the final chamber in particular where I did make a mistake and felt like I should've been punished for it, the test chamber was still solved.

Final note is that it's possible to soft lock yourself in Chamber 5 . Not a huge thing, but it does require you to restart the level.

That's about it for the moment, and I'll update this review as more updates get released for this game. Been a fan of Reep's work since Blue Portals, even to an admittedly obsessively cringy degree at times, and this feels like a good accumulation of everything that came before it. It's got the best ideas from Blue Portals, PUNT, and Vectronic all in one pretty entertaining package. Can't wait to climb the achievement ladder with this game, and see what the future of it holds. I'll make it plain and simple, If you like Portal, you'll like this game as well, so pick it up.

I went into this game expecting something on par with top down Zelda titles I've played, like A Link to the Past, the Oracle games, and Minish Cap, what I ended up getting was a game that blew my expectations out of the water.

People are saying it's "Souls-like" but as someone who's never played a Souls game, I can't really account for that. The game does have a significant spike in difficulty after the "tutorial" phase ends, and ramps up exponentially as you work your way through the first half of the game. Where this really shined was the boss fights, with each boss feeling like whiplash when comparing them to the difficulty of the goons you just stabbed a few minutes prior. So the game is difficult, but it's difficult in all the right ways.

As for the second half of the game, the RPG elements take a back seat after getting one of the two endings. It's hard to call one good and one bad, but there are multiple endings. Regardless, to get one instead of the other, TUNIC becomes an extremely cryptic puzzle game, and the game doesn't really offer much of a guiding light for the player on how to solve these riddles outside of the in-game user manual. A user manual that is 95% the game's own fictional language, so good luck trying to really read any of it. There's plenty of clues to what you need to do, and once you end up knowing how the game truly wants you to play it, things start coming more naturally to you. If you want to solve these puzzles yourself, I'd recommend a good old fashioned notebook and pen, helped me through a lot of it. Or, if you're really not into that stuff, there's plenty of guides on Steam and the internet in general for you to look into.

Graphically, the game isn't too impressive, but it's like it knows it and works with that in mind to still create an overall charming aesthetic.

I absolutely adored the in-game instruction booklet. To side track this for a moment, I would always read those things when I was a kid for every game I played, so to be constantly flipping the virtual pages of TUNIC's manual just to find as many of the secrets out as I could on my own was extremely nostalgic, and my favorite part of this entire game. It was always a delight to find a new page for it and interpret what it was trying to tell me, or even to just get a good look at some of the artwork.

TUNIC is great. It's honestly the best game I've played up to this point in 2022. If you're a fan of pretty difficult RPGs, cryptic puzzle games, or both, you'll more than probably enjoy this game. It wears its Zelda inspirations on its sleeves, but it never once felt the need to be limited by them or be afraid to do its own thing.

I'm looking forward to seeing what, if anything, further comes in the future for TUNIC. Because judging by the final puzzle, there may be more to come.

Do you fear the eyes of the far shore?