Recent reviews by Alienhell

Much alike the base remake, Separate Ways is a faithful adaptation of the original material but with some well-served story beats making the most out of the action. Unsurprisingly (I'm a huge fan of the original and the remake's changes), this was a brilliant little DLC. It's nice to feel like you're actually getting your own mini story inside the base game, with a great repurposing of environments and small twists to make you feel like Ada truly is sneaking around while the broader story happens elsewhere. It's a nice synergy and the interplay with a largely absent character (in the main story) like Luis makes this a fun little romp.

Yes, it's a bit repetitive in story and there isn't as much detail as the main narrative, but Separate Ways keeps it short and sweet. There's more than enough content here for 8 hours, with unlockables and according challenges built into the product to keep you coming back for that S+ on Professional.

All-in-all, I loved it. A heartfelt addition to a terrific remake that brought back the very best memories of playing the original and the additional campaign in the 2005 original. Love the changes they made to really give Ada her own sense of story and struggle, along with some simple but great boss fights that make this a fun challenge. Capcom doing great work, as ever.

Bought this back in 2020, off a recommendation by the dev in some Facebook group we shared. There's a fun idea in here and some genuine passion put into the detail of the specific topics you can get into. Indeed, it's actually kinda fun to get into a flow and feel like you're doing a good job, but the rest of it leaves little staying power. Coupled with a chronic lack of updates (last was three years ago), there's no reason for you to pick this up. In the off chance you find it, unless you're a big fan of hip-hop and want to practice freestyling, stay away.

If the dev had sold this for £10 or less, it probably would have done numbers. Alas.

I don't really want to rate DTD negatively, as there's so much to like here: the art style, the initial gameplay loop, the characterisation, the comedic tone, the beautiful soundtrack. All of it makes the first half of the game a deeply enjoyable experience. However, simply put, the game evolves into a series of mini-games that simply aren't fun. There's not a lot of synergy between them and it pulls you consistently away from the central gameplay loop of catching fish and running the sushi restaurant. It's frustrating, for lack of a better word. I really loved much of the game, but there's no sense in the direction that it takes beyond having that initial sense of charm. It quickly becomes a slog and one that you won't feel compelled to see the end of. You end up fighting through un-fun sections of a game to get to the good bit: its central gameplay loop. But once that's taken away from you, it's basically impossible to get the spark back. A shame, there's a lot to like here (at least for the first act!).

Though I've rated HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL positively, I'd like to think of this as more of a neutral review. So, please read on if you're curious: there are pros and cons worth considering with this title. In short: I had fun, but with some serious drawbacks that mean you need to accept you're in the long haul with Early Access to get the most of this game. If you're fine with that, sign up. If not? Hold your fire.

I've just finished my first playthrough up to the end of "Act One" - 1947, wherein the game currently ends in its Early Access state. The game did just receive a Beta update (when I purchased the game), but it's yet to come through to the main branch for another 1-2 weeks. I didn't feel like Beta testing a game that was still EA, so I just played what was stable. The easiest comparable is THE MOVIES, though this is a very different experience that focuses partly on the stars and inter-studio/governmental conflict just as much as it does the mogul elements. There's little innate creativity to be given to the actual filmmaking process, insofar as one choosing what the story will be. That's still fun, but it can very quickly become a dull routine of filling out forms and sending off the next project to be shot (more on that later). For now, my brief history with the game:

My first studio ended in failure, largely because I couldn't get a handle on the multiple finance elements. I was too timid in banking on individual films and not ambitious enough in training my staff through new projects, or seeking out better staff, in order to better my prospects for the future. However, my second run was hugely successful - eventually putting out films with such commercial success that 1-2 titles would dwarf my competitors' gross earnings for the year from several releases. In this respect, the early game was a little bit more precarious: the game doesn't exactly give you the best indicator of what to do for success beyond some vague ideas of compatibility in story, production and distribution. You'll get a better feel for them as you go (I work in scripted development for a living, so story beats didn't take long to figure out). However, production is much more simple. Better crew ratings mean better results, with distribution seemingly vastly more complex: different elements, genres and ages of stars resulting in new audiences wanting to see the film. Pairing that with any one of the multiple distribution outlets is, frankly, a bit too vague for most people to determine. However, most of this can be simply trumped by having a project well-produced enough due to crew/cast ratings that anyone and everyone will want to see it. Combined with some brutal firing and hiring, you can easily save money to put towards new projects and, with a play made for buying up theatres, you're reducing distribution costs significantly. Even as the overheads increase, you'll eventually be making back 4-6x what you spent, if you're patient and constantly putting projects out. That's the kind of success HOLLYWOOD ANIMAL wants its players to strive for, even as it opens up into its specialised paths of Behemoth, Boutique and Trash King. As long as your financial base is steady, you can do what you want.

Consequently, getting into a greatly successful groove can become a real albatross around your neck (as far as fun is concerned). No sooner had I arrived at this grand success by simply playing quite aggressively, I quickly found myself in a vicious routine of producing new projects constantly, ensuring I always had something in production. At the same time, I constantly palmed off the police raids with the experience I gained from enabling them to raid my studios for illegal immigrants. Without any external threats, beyond the occasional beating of a crew/cast member, I was raking it in, year after year, improving my business over time. With a huge bank of influence, I even decided to turn against the academy of studios I was partnered with: overturning the content code and then the annual "Pollux" awards ceremony. However, this didn't didn't function as intended and the awards continued regardless, with the content code annoyingly failing to show up on films I had already produced until I was ready to release them. Point being: once things get going, there's very little to complicate matters in an interesting way, despite all that promise being there in the opening.

Now, I do think there's a whole element of the game that I chose to not engage with: illegal activities. I did order the occasional beating or murder, but most of them failed and the secrets were easy to cover up. Moreover, the game doesn't really incentivize that kind of play. If you're making money and your studio is doing well, with your stars and vital crew protected, there's nothing to stop the good times rolling. However, you don't need illegal elements to get there in the first place - I never once blackmailed any of my characters because I didn't need to seek out those elements. Instead, the barrenness of that central loop makes much of the game feel like a bit of a chore - filling out production forms in the same manner each time, earning money which was only really spent on increasing research in half-finished trees and the occasional visual bug that meant I couldn't tell what I was spending my money on ("EVENT NOT FOUND").

I appreciate that this review is a bit of a mess, but it very much reflects my conflicted feelings on the game. I do want the devs to make a success out of this, as I think it glimpses, and may yet capture, the deep complexities of its depicted era. However, so much of the game feels able to be cheesed and one-directional in a way that gradually reduces it to a bore. The events are potentially quite exciting, but don't currently offer nearly enough challenge that feels consequential or seriously risky. As the old writing adage goes: conflict is key!

I wish I had played more of this when it was still active. Now truly dead, a lot of of the gamemodes are rendered useless - even with bots. A shame, as it had a very entertaining twist on the Insurgency-style of class-based combat and weapon customisation, coupled with the hardcore gameplay that made it a nice middle ground for a lot of players.

Good memories, but a relic of a time gone by.

On my first playthrough with my fiancée, I learned that PEAK transforms surprisingly fast from a quest to climb a mountain into a quest to resurrect my true love (and then again at the next campfire...and again after that).

A really fantastic little game, especially for the (introductory offer) price. Imaginative and fun gameplay transforms this into a silly spectacle with a bunch of friends, but also a serious endeavour when you want it to be. Think of it like CHAINED TOGETHER, except not asset flip garbage. There's a goofy aesthetic but some surprising depth to its, at first, relatively simple gameplay. Something I'll happily come back to again and again (thanks to the shifting maps), both solo and with friends!

Very much looking forward to getting back in. Here's a little wishlist though:
- Improved performance - both on desktop and Steam Deck, I'd appreciate it being a little less taxing. For the latter in particular - my partner found the controls a big laggy/unresponsive + when we reached the final biome, her game because unplayable. A real shame! Hoping it can become verified.
- Working on bugs. Mostly that's the proximity of physical objects and inconsistencies. It's not a great feeling to trigger a poison trap when you're making a conscious effort to avoid it. There's also been a handful of times where what appears like a climbable object is actually concealing an invisible wall. It's a bit wonky and not great at times, though I'd wager that's just a byproduct of procedural generation.
- More gamemodes and biomes - something for the future, I'd love to see this get even more customisable or challenging.
- Checkpoints - in the vein of my last comment; it's not something that every player needs, but a lot will certainly appreciate having a chance to save and return to the climb. More accessibility options is always a good thing.

But none of this is significant enough for me to say anything other than GET IT! A really fantastic little title from Landcrab/Landfall/Aggro Crab - looking forward to seeing more updates to PEAK and games together!

SHOULDERMEN had been in my wishlist for probably six months or more when I noticed it was on sale and I finally decided to see what it was all about. The promise of an AI-powered game intrigued me, largely because this is the promised-land frontier of new, character-driven gameplay that may offer the next big innovation to our beloved medium. Now, while SHOULDERMEN doesn't necessarily promise all that in its pitch, it does have a unique one regardless: convince both an angel and a devil, via voice or by text, to say a password that will free them from an otherworldly prison (which is haunted by a wonderfully cheerful, intentionally nagging repetitive jingle). Being able to have some kind of cohesive, unscripted back and forth with two characters is something that a lot of people would like to do in a game. Even if just a simple exercise, that's worth trying out - right? Well, having spent what I feel is enough time with SHOULDERMEN, I'm not so sure.

It's a simple but surprisingly messy experience. The characters frequently contort to face the moving camera angles, awkwardly drifting in and out of frame with no consistency. I frequently found myself typing my questions to them, as the voice recognition bugs out just as frequently and fails to pick up on sentences (and I'm using a Shure SM7B with an interface/filter, no background noise on my end). But that didn't stop me accidentally opening the console by pressing the apostrophe key, apologies for my insistence on good grammar. That's not even to mention the surprisingly hefty performance toll the game has due to its Unreal Engine basis, the uninspired asset usage and the general lack of personality to the aesthetics of SHOULDERMEN.

Is this latter point a fair critique? Well, maybe it's best described as a tech demo, rather than a "game". There's a couple of reasons for that. Firstly - it's so simple and one-dimensional in your mission and interaction with the characters that it's hard to feel this is a skill-based endeavour that requires that level of investment from the player. Sure, SHOULDERMEN doesn't have all that much going for it, but beyond a woman with a halo, dressed in gold and a man in a suit, with horns, there's no real way to relate to these characters as anything more than the AI models they actually are. It's not so much a puzzle game as it is a conversation with an LLM, thinly veiled with bought-asset aesthetics. But would changing said aesthetics affect that much here? I don't really think so. At first, you score an easy win with the angel character, easily coaxing them into stating your password. But then you're left with the "HARD" mode character: the devil, who dances around the password with glee (admittedly, it's quite funny!). Even in times when I purposefully addressed him first, rather than the angel character, I found myself more bored and infuriated than I was driven to get him to relent. And that's not because there's a lack of progression or content here, with a reloading of the one level SHOULDERMEN has offering the same fundamental experience whether you win or give up (but with a new password). Nor was it down to an expectation of ease - I think it's good that there's a considerable challenge here, contrasting the promise of success (even without a reward).

Ultimately, I think the problem that SHOULDERMEN has is that it's just not really fun. I managed to "trick" the devil character twice into saying the password, but both times I got there, I didn't feel like it happened from the encouragement of a unique gameplay system, or from my own ingenuity. Rather, I felt like I got lucky with the draw - I banged my head against the wall and then a sudden dent appeared. The second time was particularly silly, repeating random words from my prior questions, only for him to repeat them back to me with the password attached. No rhyme or reason, just a seemingly random confession. Therein lies the biggest flaw: unpredictability. Rather than a sense of gradual progress, like you're at least getting slightly more familiar with the characters and the methodology of coaxing them towards a particular statement, as a consequence of asking questions, the greater feeling is one of somehow finding a light switch in the dark. Yes, the lights are on, but you didn't expect it, so now you're temporarily blinded. Good, basic games can work with player skill - Donkey Kong's cabinet relied on your ability to time jumps over barrels, climb ladders and user power-ups to your advantage. You knew what was coming, so you could deal with it as and when, growing more adept with practice. If there is such a system for player growth built into SHOULDERMEN, it's not at all apparent in a way that the game's tutorial clues about "context and intuition" meaningfully hint towards as much as they vaguely shrug at the suggestion - you'll figure it out, maybe.

It's a shame because, truthfully, my expectations were not that high for a title that cost me £0.47. But I think there's much more nuance and finesse needed to really make this game feel the way it should, to draw players back into its repetitive and simple structure and invite them into a challenge that feels fun, rather than infuriating, to engage with.

I knew it was truly a unique gaming experience when my fiancée and I were screaming expletives at my monitor about mushrooms and bananas. Genuinely the Balatro of cooking games - saw this on the Wholesome Direct and had to pick up, well worth your time.

It's still a bit buggy though, keep that in mind, but there's built-in report function that gives me a lot of hope for this project's development.

Full of classic and contemporary references, DGGWare is a delightful riff on Destiny's career through a surprisingly wide range of mini games! Also relatively tough, still trying to match that rhythm game perfectly.

While I'm still not done with Satisfactory, I've got to say that I never once imagined a game like this would suck me in as it did. Of all the games of this type that I chose to play, I'm deeply glad this was the one that I chose.

A rich world, some genuinely funny writing, simple-to-understand but engrossing mechanics and a relaxed atmosphere mean you can take a lot of Satisfactory as you'd like, rather than how other games might force you to.

Whether that's creating a neatly organised factory, or a sprawling mess of spaghetti lines - the choice is yours and it's a joy to face the challenges of supply, productivity and power. And that's not even getting into the arachnophobia mode that saved me from the terror of some spooky arachnids, but made them look like cat JPEGs instead.

Well worth your time, so much fun.

Can't recommend it enough.