Recent reviews by Faustian Man

Outline: To be honest I'm pretty torn on this review. The game and puzzle structure, particularly in the first two thirds of the game or so, is outstanding. All pretty logical without being simple, with an excellent atmosphere to get in to. It's tight, and there's some great little additions and mechanics. It's really a classic adventure game brought in to modern times.

But...

- The game sets up a great sense of a somewhat grounded, murder mystery tale to be uncovered. But that tone is quite quickly undercut, and eventually totally abandoned and by the end of the game it's just farcical.

- The writing mostly fell flat for me. The story gets phoned in and has very little, to no sense or payoff. The comedy is underwhelming, there's very little wit or edge to any of the humour. It feels overly safe and sanitised, too self-aware, self referential, with constant fourth wall breaking, cheap attempts at humour, with very few actual jokes, verbal or otherwise. Monkey Island or Grim Fandango this ain't.
Kind of pathetically ironic though how the game rips on Sierra titles throughout, and then ends up pulling a Leisure Suit Larry 3 and Space Quest 3 ending.
Oh, and there's quite a bit of ludo-narrative dissonance between the characters and puzzle solutions later on, which is off putting as the first half of the game was so tight.

- The characters are okay to begin with, though some are very annoying. The big issue is that there's pretty much no development or growth for any of them. They're all shallow or just opaque. The voice acting, the delivery, choice of voice actors are often a bit off and jarring. This was probably what put me off the most, and partly responsible for the poor comedy delivery.

- The art is quite nice, but not great for a modern pixel game, at least not for me anyway as there are no resolution settings. So I either had to play it all blown out on my 4k monitor or squint at a minuscule window.

- The audio is pretty poor overall. Sound effects are fine, but the music is really quite lame. A few good tracks that fit and are good to listen to and build a solid mood, but many others sound amateur, digital and lifeless, contrived and tonally odd for the setting and situations they accompany.
Also the voicelines are totally dry, no colour or reverb was added depending on the space the characters are in. It always just sounds like the voice actors are doing ASMR, talking inches from your ears, and with the vocals qualities of some of their voices it can be quite unpleasant.

- The puzzle structure/progress breaks down quite a bit toward the end and arbitrary roadblocks start occurring.

- The achievements were a bit of a let down. Two are kind of nonsense grind achievements, but that's no big deal. The issue is more that there just aren't many for digging in to the conversations, exploring and so on. They were mostly just progression related.


Verdict: On balance I recommend it. I enjoyed my time with the game for the most part, as I think any adventure game veteran will. Most of my complaints are easily over-looked for the quality of the puzzles and so on. It's just such a shame that more care was not taken with the artistic elements. Just a little more refinement and this could have been up there with the legendary classics. Still, this is a really solid adventure title.

Outline: This is a really nice, chill little game. I don't recommend it as a proper game to sit down and play in the day and get stuck in to. It's not that kind of game. But it's a pleasant, gentle little experience I've enjoyed falling asleep to late in the evenings. It has fun and somewhat unusual exploratory gameplay, with nice atmosphere and no nonsense achievements. Can't fault it.

Verdict: It's hard to know who to recommend this to, but suffice to say, if you're at all interested in it, I recommend you try it out.

Outline: This game does everything it is does just right. The movement, the gameplay, the enemies, the art style, the atmosphere, the level design, the music, the sound. Everything has been crafted with incredible care to detail. As a retro-shooter it takes par and runs with it. No nonsense achievements either.

Verdict: Totally recommended. If you're looking for, or have never played a boomer-shooter, this is a great one to try out.

Outline: I was gifted this game by my best friend not long before he died. A few years on and I've finally brought myself to play it, and needless to say I wanted to love it, just for that fact...

But sadly, Orion Trail is a bare bones, fairly unimaginative Oregon Trail clone, with a deceptively slick graphical skin. Yes, the art is great and there's some solid writing and gags, but that's about it. The game is thin on gameplay. It's essentially all RNG based. There is no strategy to puzzle over. A drinking bird could play the game perfectly effectively. Which, I might add, will come in handy for those of you who'd like to 100% the game, as there are some ludicrously nonsense achievements of the 'artificial life extension' variety. Of both the luck based and grind based varieties. You can see, more or less, everything the game has to offer in under a dozen games. Which is roughly a few hours. But the 100% will take many, many more. Technically, depending on your luck, infinite.

Verdict: Despite my issues, I give this game a soft recommendation due to what it does well. The writing and presentation. If you're not a 100% freak and you just fancy spending the odd 15 minutes on a funny 'trail' game with a sci-fi twist. It's decent enough. Though maybe on sale. That this game is the same price as Terraria boggles my mind.

Outline: Probably the best game ever made. Combining insane magnifying glass mechanics, an epic tale as old as time, and a frog that really knows how to wear a pair of pants.

Verdict: Totally Recommended.

Outline: If you've played XCOM: EU & XCOM: 2, and just want more XCOM, get it. For the price you'll get your moneys worth, but bare in mind that it radically changes the formula. Don't expect the XCOM you know. There are lots of fun new things but mostly it strays far away from what XCOM really is. It's not XCOM 3. It's good and it's bad. The tone, the gameplay etc. But at the end of the day, it's just a little spin-off, it's the Majora's Mask to XCOM: 2's Ocarina of Time. Albeit that is to insult Major'a Mask.

The issues being, that the difficulty curve is even worse than previous games, overall being easier but relatively being harder at the start and just laughable by the mid-game. You can literally close your eyes and spam the '1' key to fire and get through the game at this point.
Not to mention a lot of the changes made, make the replayability very low. Yet they chose to include an achievement that requires you to play 3 total playthroughs minimum. I had to complete 5 play throughs to 100% it. This kind of artificial longevity in place of real content is a disgrace.
This would be bad enough, but this game, the developers, have absolutely no respect for your time. In game the camera control is taken from you constantly, sometimes multiple times in a single turn for 'reaction shots' and so on, just so you know exactly what is going on I guess? Very 'hand holdy', which has no place in an XCOM game and further more is just an infuriating waste of time. There are countless unskippable, "skippable" dialogue sections.

All this amounts to incredibly tedious replays and a very unfulfilling 100%.

Verdict: I recommend it eitherway, but if you're going for a 100%, buyer beware.

Outline: The original, the OG, where the series started. There are some rough edges and the game is definitely showing it's age a little, but it is still, hands down, one of the best tower defence games ever made.

Verdict: Absolutely worth the price.

(100% Completion Review)

A good puzzle game with lots levels and a mostly linear difficulty curve. Gets tough as nails, a lot of patience and determination needed for later levels. Would have liked a nice soundtrack over the plinky-plonky atmosphere. One secret achievement you basically have to look up which sucks. Otherwise, definitely worth the price.

(100% Completion Review)

A short, sometimes challenging, little puzzle/platformer. Ultimately more style than substance. But for what it is, it is enjoyable for the short spell is takes to complete. In my opinion it's definitely not worth full price (£14 at time of review). I think that's beyond ridiculous given other games at that price point. Playing very casually I got 100% in 4.5 hours. Terraria is a third of the price and is hundreds of hours for most. Come on now, we're trying to have a society here.

Fun platforming, nice little puzzles, lovely artsyle, some cool visuals, fun to 100%, no BS achievements. Get on sale.

(100% Completion Review)

It's Grim Fandango. The best adventure game ever made. A wonderful and weird little reality to get completely lost in. All you need to know. If you haven't played it, you should.