Nylige anmeldelser av LegoRobot

Very polished, no jank, good puzzles, mostly good writing. But the guy on the phone sounds like Bluto, or Pete from Goof Troop. He's a little too hammy to be menacing, which slightly pulled me out of my immersion from time to time. Small complaint, over all a good time.

EDIT: Played a bit more, pretty darn kino. Cool artistic choices, innovative gameplay mechanics (some enemies form temporary shields where you first shot them so you cannot just bullet spam and must shoot them elsewhere) feels a lot like HL2 meets Alan Wake. Some writing tweaks and a new VA for mr spoopington skeleman are the only things holding this back from being a certified hood classics

Devil's Crush spiritual remaster. Superb. I'd like some filler graphics to the left and right so I can fullscreen this on my ultrawide monitor without stretching the picture but otherwise no complaints.

Some of the following may read like nitpicking, but atmosphere is a huge part of this game, and accurate details of the undersea environment and habitat technology contribute to the sense of being grounded in realism.

1. Submersibles do not burn fuel, they're battery operated. Change fuel icon to battery and dialogue referencing refueling to say recharging. If you're thinking "But what about diesel electric submarines?" those run their generators to recharge their battery banks only while surfaced. While submerged they operate purely on batteries.

2. Radio doesn't work underwater, save for ELF which is too low bandwidth for anything but Morse. Change references to radio in dialogue to "hydrophones" or "hydroaccoustic transmitters".

3. Add swishing noise synced to arm movement when walking, doesn't sound or move like he's underwater. Visual distortion effect behind him would add to this.

4. Add internal lighting to habitat as seen from outside. Internal lighting should appear red tinted, like the Moon submersible's internal lighting

5. Specify O2 bio generators contain algae. Terrestrial plants would not be used for such a purpose. Seems cribbed from Nemo's Garden, the purpose of which is growing food, not life support. Algae is 200 times more efficient than even trees at processing CO2 into O2. Can be as simple as internal green glow added to domes. Plants inside appear to be red algae, if this is already canon then disregard complaint #5.

6. I appreciate there's at least a lockout chamber on the Moon submersible to explain how you enter or exit while submerged. But it needs a pause during lockout cycling, and a sound effect for compressed air purging the water + some bubbles from the hatch. Still a step up over Subnautica.

7. "Life Module" (Habitat) has a lockout chamber the game refers to as an airlock. Airlocks lock air in, as in space stations. Lockout chambers lock water out.

8. The bathroom is positioned such that one must walk through it like a hallway to get to the bedroom. This is problematic in an undersea habitat as you want to confine humid air and bad smells as much as possible. Realistically the bathroom is always located in the wet porch area for this reason. At the very least the two sections should trade places so you only go into the bathroom when you need to use it, rather than whenever you need to reach your bedroom. Probably not fixable as the modeling is already done, but FIY. At least you included a sliding acrylic humidity barrier, but his bedroom would still constantly smell bad.

9. Minor gripe, but the protag wears his wetsuit to bed?

Please correct the easy to fix ones that only really require changes to the dialogue and minor sound design changes. That will be sufficient to change this review to a recommend.

-Narcosis technical consultant/writer, marine engineering autist

Absolutely superb. Brought tears to my eyes as an internet boomer who still fires up Robotron 2084 a few times a week. Nex Machina evolves and expands on that formula, modernizing it about as much as you possibly could without making it unrecognizable. Eye wateringly fast and beautiful, short but sweet. With you for a good time, if not for a long time.

Superb, great fun. Needs some alternate control schemes however, for those of us on Index. I want to turn with the right thumbstick and use the buttons to accelerate, rather than the reverse.

Hmm, yes, I see. I understand completely.

This game is a schizophrenia simulator. My buddy turned into a dog and bit me, so I took shrooms, grew wings and flew away. Only to be knocked out of the sky with enchanted baseballs by a guy who was then smitten by God.

Even if it wasn't in VR, just plain great game. Charming, fun, entertaining, in the way great games used to be. A lot of the mechanics felt like gimmicks that didn't make the best use of VR, like waggling the wiimote instead of pressing a button, But Dave the Diver shows you can survive on gimmicks as long as there's a lot of them, they're individually entertaining, and don't outstay their welcome.

That's a minor gripe anyway when the bottom line is that this is exactly what VR needs more of, even if nothing in this game requires, or vindicates, VR as a medium: Great, charming, fun videogames that happen to be VR exclusive! Oh and the disco remix of the title theme slaps harder than it has any right to. I can't find it on Youtube, you're gonna make me buy the OST aren't you.

The expanded gameplay was risky. I mean the "walk around, solve simple puzzles, shoot enemies" bits. There was none of that in PR95, you were stationary throughout. I'm reminded of when Sega added on foot platforming to NiGHTS 2. But they didn't really bother to make it any good, it was there just to have it, since NiGHTS got dinged in reviews for not being a platformer, perceived to be in competition with Mario 64. That's the wrong way to expand gameplay. Nothing extra that isn't fun, all muscle no fat.

PR78 expands gameplay in the right way. The player feels less constrained than in PR95. We can actually explore Far Of a Land! We can inhabit the game worlds and play them, as Dot. The combat is basic, but not too repetitive because thank goodness, Arvore thought to switch it up as the game progresses. Enemies start using different attacks. Shooting targets to open gates gets more complex, with hidden or moving targets. The bug killing portions are slightly different each time, with a new game theme, even if you still slap them out of the air. This is something Nintendo always does when you fight Bowser or any other boss more than once. Something's always different each time. That's essential.

The environmental factors like heavy monoliths you can tip over onto enemies, or turrets you can activate, brings to mind Bioshock. There's still not quite as much sophistication to these free roam, shooting sections as I'd like. I would have appreciated permanent health and weapon upgrades for instance.

But for a first, tentative, experimental foray, introducing this sort of gameplay into the Pixel Ripped series, it went...pretty good! Certainly not bad, room for improvement, but it was a big ambitious step. It could have gone badly but it didn't. It went alright. This does set high expectations for the next Pixel Ripped game though, which should have more going on in the free movement areas and more sophisticated combat. Maybe even some light metroidvania type stuff?

Incidentally, what a masterstroke it was to partner with Atari. This is probably the best press, gamer goodwill and overall relevance they have enjoyed in thirty, maybe forty years. Some of their recent offerings like Mr. Jump & Run and the new Haunted House are actually...good?? And their new console is...not bad?? It's like a fever dream, what is this bizarro timeline where Atari no longer reliably makes poor decisions? What a difference it makes to be free of Jack Tramiel, who hopefully is dead now, though I haven't checked as of this writing.

Superb game. Actually fun, a rarity now and a showcase for indie games being where the action's at these days. Unbelievable amount of content! Even up to late game, it's STILL introducing new mechanics! Lots of soul and goofy charm, also often missing from AAA games which are bland because they're designed by committee. I will say this needs an underwater habitat to facilitate saturation diving. That would break the 2 dive per day limit. Maybe in a DLC where you meet bargain brand Jacques Cousteau in his little yellow Conshelf 2 lab? Also expanded underwater farming would be cool

Frictional deserves the accolades. This is a return to form. I compare it loosely to RE7 in that it limits the focus to a single setting but fleshes it out as completely as possible. The basic gameplay loop is a metroidvania, but Mr X from RE2 is always chasing you. There's even the RE item box. The other obvious influence is Alien Isolation, and here Frictional demonstrates an impressive understanding of what made that title compelling.

Frictional clearly learned a vital lesson about story telling from the backlash against the force-fed story of ReBirth (a tragedy, as it was well written) which is that you must entice the player to read the story, to get information they need to advance, rather than chasing them down with the story and making them pay attention. Even the voice acting was optional. Bravo! I wound up reading most of the entries looking for clues, and it never once felt tedious.

Everything seemed simplified, for the better in some cases and for the worse in others. My only two gripes are first that the monster is extremely aggressive and active, I often couldn't go five minutes without being killed, he finds me wherever I am. Difficulty levels that make the monster less sensitive would've made for a less frustrating time.

The second small gripe is that the puzzles were nonexistent, Penumbra had some pretty advanced puzzles, everything you do in The Bunker is just obtain codes or items that let you access more lockers or more of the bunker. This is not a huge drawback, I sense Frictional was rattled by the critical reception of ReBirth and so went back to basics, with a very conservative take on their classic formula, and it works. They're back in peak form.

I just hope they don't take this to mean they should never get a little experimental or go out on any limbs ever again. Bunker, plus Penumbra's puzzles, would've been even better than what we got. And what we got is already pretty special.