Recent reviews by josh

Has temp issues with certain Ryzen CPUs (specifically the 5800/5900/5950). None of my games reach such a high temp other than this one. Has been posted on the forum but I guess it was never fixed. Seems like Intel CPUs are fine though. Normally I wouldn't comment on it if it was just a bit high, but since it's making my laptop run at 100c (the throttle temp for the CPU), there's definitely an optimization issue. Turning settings down/off doesn't seem to affect it much.

This will only be a review of the port itself, since I've spent a decent amount of time messing around with it but haven't played much of the game yet.

First off, it's capped at 60 fps. It runs fine but there is some minor stuttering that happens frequently. The framerate cap can be overriden by using Universal Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker but when I unlocked the framerate it introduced even more stuttering. I ended up just dealing with the default cap because the stuttering was much more bearable and I got used to it after a bit.

Now the other issue.. upscaling is half-broken. I say half because it does work effectively, but only on "low" settings. I can confirm this being the case for DLSS and I've heard the other upscaling methods are broken in the same way but I can't confirm that. DLSS works perfectly fine on low though, and does improve framerate.
Medium and high settings completely tank the framerate and I couldn't see any benefit. Normally I'd expect a patch to fix it but this is Square Enix we're talking about, so don't expect anything.

Other than that, I'd say it's an acceptable port but not perfect. There's enough graphic settings to choose from so it's not bare bones and it runs well enough. It's just a little disappointing that there's some stuttering and broken DLSS support. But I guess it wouldn't be Square Enix if something wasn't broken

I wish I could give Corpse Factory a neutral review, but my feelings toward it lean more toward the negative so I'll go with that.

To start with, I really like the theme and the insanity that goes with it, but I ended up not caring much about any of the characters in particular because none of them were really fleshed out.. which is disappointing because I absolutely think every character could've had more depth. There were various times where the past of a character was mentioned but barely any details were given. There are hints as to why these characters are the way they are but they either aren't elaborated on enough or they are in a way that feels kind of superficial which makes me fail to relate to any of them.

When it comes to the story, I was entertained throughout the entire experience and it kept me wanting more. I do wish they would've paced it a bit differently though and given more focus to other characters' perspectives than Noriko's. Noriko has the biggest act, while the other 2 feel kind of condensed, which is connected to the issue I mentioned earlier, not enough is fleshed out. There was also the potential of a "detective" route that the story could've gone, but it never did which was disappointing. Most of the twists were predictable to me, but not in a way that I really minded. I thought the twists were interesting enough that it didn't bother me even though I knew they were coming.

The voice acting was decent. We're at the point where more and more western VNs are adding English voice acting and I love that it's becoming more common, but I can't say that it blew me away or anything. I think the voices fit all of the characters pretty well, but it was neither good nor bad. I did end up liking Tomoe's acting more by the end though, something about the hilarious way she talks lifted the mood a bit. She's kind of the comedic relief, or was for me anyway.

There are 3 choices you can make which lead to 3 different endings. I think I saw one review call Corpse Factory a kinetic VN which isn't entirely true. There aren't many choices or endings, and the choices don't really affect the plot much, but the endings you get are entirely dependant on them. Personally I was hoping they incorporated dead ends or bad endings that would make the story end abruptly. I think it would've worked well with how crazy the story is and has worked well for other VNs, like Corpse Party or the Zero Escape series, but I guess the dev wanted to keep everything simple.

There's enough content here that made me feel like I got what I paid for, and I wish I could recommend it.. but I don't suggest it unless you've run out of horror VNs to play and need a fix. I think Corpse Factory has a lot of potential and I really hope VNs with similar unique horror themes continue to get released. I'm looking forward to anything River Crow Studio makes. They've certainly put themselves in the spotlight

Dead by Daylight is a hard game to recommend or recommend against because I consider it to be a constant "work in progress". New content gets added every 3 months, and in between that time the balancing is adjusted as the devs see fit. The upside to this is it's in a very healthy state with a huge playerbase and there are always tons of new killers/survivors to choose from. The downside is that with every new addition comes new bugs that won't get fixed until weeks after the new DLCs are released, because the devs' main focus is content and not patching up the game so that it's in a more stable state.

The reason I give it a recommendation is because there's no other horror game that replicates the gameplay, and none have as much licensed content in them as DBD. Other games have tried to compete that are in the same asymmetrical genre, but none have been as popular nor have any stayed alive as long as DBD has. If you enjoy playing as a horror villain or being chased by one, DBD has every other game beat despite its balancing issues and bugs.

EDIT: Updating for the badge cuz I'm lazy
EDIT 2: Updating for another badge cuz I'm lazy

Tokyo Dark is categorized as an Aventure/Visual Novel hybrid but in actuality it's mostly point & click and text without much adventure. There's one very simple puzzle in the entire game and the rest of the gameplay consists of going back and forth talking to people, along with interacting with or picking up a few objects along the way. This doesn't necessarily make the game bad, but it doesn't require much thought to progress in the game, so if you buy the game don't put your thinking cap on cuz you likely won't need it.

With as much text this game has, you think it would appeal more to fans of visual novels, but I can't recommend it for that. The story and character interactions are ultimately dull and the quality is on par with just about any generic horror movie. I think it could've been more enjoyable if it had full voice acting, which I was surprised to find that it didn't have. There was a voice acting stretch goal for the Kickstarter which was met, plus $225k canadian dollars were pledged for the project in total, so they definitely should have had the funding for full voice acting. $225k for this game alone is overkill considering the lack of quality put into it, which leaves me wondering what most of that money went into. As the game is now, it barely has any voice overs, and they're all for Detective Ito. The lack of voice acting was a major disappointment for me, being a Kickstarter backer.

The "Beautifully animated sequences produced by Graphinica" are quite short and forgettable. I appreciate that there are animated scenes in the game, but it doesn't add much substance to it. It's kind of like a "special feature" added to lure people in, but when you try the product you hardly even notice it. The soundtrack is well made fitting the horror vibe well enough, and the art quality is decent. I would have preferred a better UI design. The settings menu is lazily designed, not letting you adjust voice/sound effects/music volumes individually is slightly annoying.

The S.P.I.N (Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, Neurosis) system seems like it would have more consequences in concept, but it ends up being more of a gimmick. It's required to manipulate your SPIN stats to get a few endings so there is some use to it, though I've gotten 6 endings (including the true ending) without paying much attention to the choices I've made. Despite what the store page says, I don't remember encountering any different character dialogue/reactions based on what my stats were. I can't speak for all of the endings, but the endings that I played through were uninteresting and predictable. Nothing shocked me, no twists or anything, just boring. The ending branches aren't sophisticated so you can probably get all of them in 2 or 3 complete playthroughs (a lot of them branch at 2 choices near the end of the game) using a guide without too much hassle. New Game+ is unlocked after your first playthrough which enables you to skip some previously read text (but not all) and unlocks save slots making endings more accessible.

Each ending route will take about 6 hours to finish initially, with each additional route being much shorter once you skip text in NG+. At a total of 11 endings, there is a fair amount of replayability, but not much content. IMO the endings don't warrant multiple playthroughs, they weren't interesting enough to me and they artificially inflate the small amount of content available. I'd expect more quality at $18 than this, especially after the amount of funding they got from Kickstarter. If you're dead set on buying it I suggest waiting for it to go on sale for $5 or an eventual Humble bundle (which will likely happen since it's published by Square Enix).

Trash game that has no redeeming qualities. It fails at everything it attempts to do. Not worth playing for the nudity, story, dialogue, characters, gameplay, or anything else.

Super Star is more management sim than it is a regular visual novel, you'll mostly be leveling your girl's stats up so that you can complete "events". The problem with this is there's no sense of accomplishment to justify the repetition. You don't feel like you're rewarded for doing anything and the characters are very generic/soulless. You'll come across some nude pics (with the uncensor patch) as you progress through the story, but they're not seamlessly integrated with the pacing of the "story". If it's nudity you're after, you can do much better than this game. The nudity content is subpar at best.

The translation is abysmal, and not the kind that makes you laugh at how bad it is.. it's just bad period. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to fix, the script probably isn't very long, but there's nothing interesting about it so maybe they shouldn't bother. I could get past the bad translation if there was anything else enjoyable in the game, but there's not.

There are 3 endings. You're expected to play through the game more than once so that you get "diamonds" that let you buy in-game cheats that will help you to 100% complete the game in the time allotted. My first playthrough was so boring that I didn't have it in me to play through it a 2nd time.

I feel like the devs should be paying you to play this, it's a waste of time. If you got this for "free", idle it for cards and be done with it. That's about the only value there is to it. There are so many better VNs out there with much higher quality stories, or better porn content, so please don't waste your time with this garbage.

EDIT: As of July 29th a custom "patch" is required to remove censorship, you can find info on it by searching the forum or guide section.

House Party caught my attention for being the first completely uncensored sex game on Steam without the need of applying a mod or patch. If this wasn't an oversight by Valve, it might be a sign of more of these games to come.

WARNING: I comment on the sexual attributes of the game, so be aware of that before proceeding

Pros:

+ Great voice acting
+ Attractive/well designed character models
+ Jiggle physics
+ Funny dialogue, the entertainment value isn't entirely sexual
+ Good variety, all but one female character has a full quest line that you can play through
+ Ability to create your own campaign or play campaigns made by other people

Cons:

- Buggy, but I was lucky during my playthrough and only encountered minor bugs, nothing gamebreaking.
- Max limit of 10 save slots. The most annoying part of the game for me, as I had to constantly keep deleting saves so I could reach all of the endings without having to completely start over
- UI is a bit sloppy, scrolling through the quest menu is broken and item appearances are glitchy in the inventory. Needs an overhaul
- While the voice acting is good, the quality of the moans and sounds while sucking are lacking
- Limited camera view during sex scenes, experience could be greatly improved with multiple added camera angles
- j1zz effect is too plain, needs improvement during comeshots
- One song to listen to, gets old after a while so you may end up turning the in-game speakers off. Srsly, stop dancing to dat crap Stephanie!
- Minor microstutter effect when moving around, easy enough to get used to but hopefully it'll get fixed
- Hard to play without a guide or forum help, quest items are unobtrusive and hard to find at times
- Some of the quest lines aren't all that satisfying, especially Stephanie and Brittany's. I wish there were more alternate endings
- Lesbian character (Or rumored to be? Not sure if confirmed) with no nudity or sex scene and only one quest, I like her voice acting but she's a pointless inclusion currently
- Pathfinding needs work, characters get stuck when moving around occasionally and have trouble rerouting
+/- No gay sex and the men only seem to be there to progress the female stories

In its current state the game is severely lacking polish, but for being just released into early access I think there's a lot of potential for improvement. Despite the amount of cons I listed, there's enough quality content here that it met my expectations. There's about $5 worth of content right now, $15 seems like a price more suited for the final version if they fix the bugs, overhaul the UI, implement additional stories, flesh out Stephanie/Brittany, and let you interact more with the male characters. You can make your own campaign to try to compensate for this, but the main problem with custom campaigns is that you can't add more voiced dialogue, and the voice acting is one of the best things about the game so you're taking that feature away from it.

As far as EA games go, I think this is showing good progress. I'm optimistic for the full release. If you want a silly porn game or something to d1ck around with, I recommend House Party.

Tacopocalypse is a taco delivery game inspired by games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio. I was lured into playing this by the fancy graphics in the trailer, but you can get the most out of this game by watching the trailer than actually playing it. The art style is fantastic, and the sounds + punk soundtrack really flow well with it.

My main disappointment was with the lack of content. There's one mode (two if you count the local multiplayer), with only one objective. Your objective is to deliver tacos (within a time limit), and get style points by doing stunts during the process. With the cash you make from delivering tacos you can buy 2 new cars and customize them but that's about it. You can collect hidden songs along the way which I thought was a nice touch, but there's just not enough incentive to play this. It doesn't help that there's no guidance system to tell you where you need to deliver the tacos, which is odd cuz they do point you in the direction of where you can stock back up on tacos after you've run out.

There are 4 levels, which is a small amount but they're big and intricate enough to where you can pull off some neat tricks and grinds while being visually flashy. There aren't enough collectibles or objectives, so this makes them feel a bit too empty. The controls/physics were a little too over the top for my taste, there's too much freedom here with the ability to flip that I end up losing control, but I think this may be personal preference because the game is meant to be over the top and ridiculous. If you can get used them you may have more fun performing sunts than I did. There didn't seem to be much depth to the stunts you can do, you do flips by rotating your car and grind rails but that's all I noticed.

There were some minor bugs I encountered with my short time with the game, including getting a black screen on the first level I played after the tutorial, falling through the ground (not a big deal cuz you can reset your vehicle with ease), and music not playing. I don't know the success rate of the dev fixing bugs, but the dev does respond to bug submissions on the forum.

In its current state, I can't recommend Tacopocalypse. You might be able to get a few minutes of enjoyment out of it, but there's just not enough to do. This comes off more as a tech demo or art project than a game, which is unfortunate because I would love to see this art style, open world level design, and sound/music implemented into a game with a substantial amount of gameplay. I think it's a really cool concept, but not a good execution.

Decent Wii port, but marred by gamebreaking bugs along with issues causing the game to crash and lacks higher resolution settings. Would be nice if the dev could offer fixes, but I have my doubts that that will happen. This is a budget/bundle tier game that they probably make next to no money off of, therefore it's likely they don't have any motivation to fix the port but I would love to be proved wrong!

I imagine this would be a cooler experience on the Wii using a Wiimote and higher stability without the bugs, but this is still a casually fun experience on PC with some hilarious dialogue between the NPCs.

Unfortunately I can't recommend playing this version cuz there's a bug that causes you to be invincible to all forms of damage at all times. I don't know how many people this affects but there appears to be no solution and I've experienced it through my entire playthrough.

I had a bug occur on mission 6 which caused me to crash repeatedly. I believe it was caused by me not hitting switches in a certain order but I'm not entirely sure and haven't tested it thoroughly, but I did eventually resolve this by replaying the mission. I've also read about other bugs such as some of the sound effects being missing but I didn't experience those.

The resolution settings go up to 720p, you can force it to play in 1080p with the Universal Resolution Changer but this may introduce glitches with the shadows/lighting.

If it weren't for the bugs, I'd recommend the PC version. It's by no means a "good" game but it's a nice little time waster

EDIT: Managed to get it to launch in 1080p with the Universal Resolution Changer and editing an ini file. Info can be found here:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/549680/discussions/0/133259956004788036/

Yooka Laylee is a mixed bag. On one hand, it's a faithful spiritual successor to the Banjo Kazooie/Tooie games. On the other hand, it doesn't do much "succeeding" and in some cases it's worse or rougher around the edges. There are issues with the camera, controls, combat, level design, and overall gameplay mechanics. Many will forgive these faults and say that these issues are there because the developer was trying to remain as faithful as possible to the Banjo games or platformers in general of that time period, but the problem is that these issues come off as mere laziness or as lack of polish than faithfulness. For every good quality of Yooka Laylee, there's almost always a negative aspect to it to counteract it. While you may enjoy certain aspects one moment, the next moment you may end up being frustrated with it.

On the store page, the game is promoted as having "huge, beautiful worlds", and while it's true that the worlds are HUGE and there's a lot to explore, Yooka Laylee proves that bigger is not always better. Most of the worlds are designed in a way where it's easy to get lost due to the lack of NPCs or unique features/landmarks in the environment. After fully exploring and knowing exactly where I need to go to complete a quest or get a collectible, I still tend to roam around the level randomly in confusion until I get to where I want to be, which is a waste of time and a sign of poor level design. Reducing the size of the worlds (possibly adding more smaller worlds to compensate this) and adding more detail or making areas more distinctive/stand out more would have easily fixed this problem. I will say that the last world is significantly improved over the others with the added warp gates and has a more pleasing atmosphere and attention to detail added to it. I also didn't mind the casino world as much but that may be because I liked the concept of it more than the others rather than it being structurally different.

The camera is reminiscent of what you'd find in games of the late 90's or early 00's. It's not quite as bad as what you'd expect, but there are moments where you'll fall to your death or fail a challenge because you're either fighting with the repositioning of the auto-camera or you're not able to control it at all due to it being locked in place in certain areas. In one of the timed trials late in the game the camera shook in place while i was sliding down a ramp causing me to fail and have to start over which may have been a bug, but I'll use it as an extreme example. The controls possess a similar fault, I often felt like I wasn't being given the precision needed to climb ramps or navigate between platforms and I'd fall off as a consequence to this which can lead to restarting from the beginning of a route.

The combat in this is atrocious and probably the worst feature of the game. It's so bad that I'd almost think that removing enemies from the game entirely (except for bosses) would be a better alternative than having them in the game. To start with, there's no lock on or strafe controls for projectiles which makes targetting with projectiles a pain in the ass. You can zoom in to aim by pressing the left stick button as an alternative, but this doesn't do much good when you're getting attacked, especially for boss fights, and is really only useful when completing puzzles or quests so this makes projectiles nearly useless for regular enemies. The fact that the zoom controls aren't mentioned until you exit the first world is pretty lame, this game is deserving of a better tutorial.

Melee attacks feel either overpowered to the point where you're spamming the same thing over and over, or not very useful. The hit detection for the jump attack feels.. off. Maybe it's just the depth perception or positioning of the camera but it's harder to hit with jump attacks than it should be, so this sucks when you're against airborne enemies. The default spin attack doesn't have any inherent problems but taking out large groups with it isn't optimal and takes too long. Buddy slam (without tonic) has such a crappy range that makes it too weak for normal enemies, the tonic should have been a permanent upgrade for that move, or there should have been a lesser upgrade for it to make the base move not quite as useless. Meanwhile both buddy slam (with tonic) and sonar splosion completely wipe the floor. It just doesn't make sense to worsen combat and variety by screwing up the balance of attacks.

Most of the enemies are bland or reskins of enemies you'd find in previous worlds. There's not much variety to them so you'll be seeing the same ones in every world. Only the bosses were designed with a bit of creativity, and even then I found over half of the bosses uninspiring. I don't know if enemy design was a budget restriction or if it was a rush job, but there's very little emphasis given to them and you may find yourself ignoring/moving past them completely rather than attacking them as there's no point to a lot of the combat.

The quests/challenges and collectathon aspect are solid and I found myself enjoying that the most out of the content in the game, however this does have a downside. Playtonic thought it'd be a great idea to make most of the objects you need to break or manipulate to unlock areas/collectibles look extremely similar, so if you're like me you'll get confused as to which special move you're supposed to use to break an object (because each object is unique to each special move and the differences can be blurred). For example, ice can look exactly like glass and windows can require two different types of moves to break. This can also be a problem when you haven't obtained the move yet, leaving you confused for what you're supposed to do. Dumb decision that could have been corrected by making the objects more distinctive.. which ironically is the same issue the game has with level design. Blandness appears to be a major issue universally (worlds, enemies, and destructables).

Rextro's mini-games are tacked on and feel like a chore to complete. You have to complete them twice (once for basic completion, and the second time to get a high score) to obtain both pagies, which is nonsense when they could have made it so that you can get both pagies in one play. They seem more like a forced inclusion to stay faithful to the banjo games and to add a "multiplayer" experience, the quality is mediocre at best. The minecart challenges, similar to mini-games, even though I'm terrible at them I'll admit were competent and something you may expect out of a good standalone indie game (Joe Danger and Action Henk come to mind) so I was impressed with those. Neither Rextro's arcade games or the minecart levels give you an option to do a quick "restart" which is frustrating, and more annoying for the minecart ones because you can fail easily early on into the level so you're forced to complete it or run yourself off the track, unless you exit back to the game hub which is very inconvenient.

Yooka Laylee ran at a consistent 60 fps for me at 1080p/maxed settings with a 780gtx, and I didn't encounter any noticeable bugs. Takes about 20 hours to finish and took me 35 hours to collect everything and get 100% achievements. I was a kickstarter backer and paid $15ish for it. I would say that there's maybe $30 worth of content in this, max. $40 is a bit too high of an asking price when you factor in all of the frustrations that you might experience, and that's one reason I'm giving this a negative review. If you're a big fan of Rare platformers or the Banjo Kazooie games, I would suggest giving this game a chance and see if you can get past the flaws, for everyone else I would avoid it until it's much cheaper. You don't get 3D platformers like this anymore, so despite its flaws if you can take the good with the bad.. with enough patience, it might be worth a playthrough.