Recent reviews by Azba

For what it is, Minit is short and sweet with minimal frustration points - though it"s very easy to get lost for what to do at certain parts of the game. If you can get this for cheap, I recommend it as a good, fun little adventure that kinda reminds me of the oldest Zelda games.
Likely won"t take you more than a couple hours if not less to complete.

IMPORTANT: This game requires Games For Windows LIVE (GFWL).
YOU CAN STILL PLAY THE GAME ONLINE. IT STILL WORKS ON WINDOWS 10 WITH SOME EFFORT. GUIDES ARE OUT THERE TO HELP, USE GOOGLE OR THE FORUMS.
Note: I"ve played this on Xbox360, GFWL, and only recently bought it on Steam, please disregard the comparatively low hour count.

SHORT REVIEW UP FRONT, PROS & CONS AT THE BOTTOM:
Once you"ve gotten past the GFWL barrier, this game is among my favourite games of all time and I strongly recommend it as a coop game experience.
If you like games like Monster Hunter, but also like Third Person Shooters, this game is for you! Alternatively, if you played and enjoyed Vanquish, you"ll likely find a place for this game in your heart!
I would not recommend this game to the kinds of people who get easily frustrated by losing - not to talk down on such people, but this game takes a lot of learning before you start getting good, despite its appearances. Many people complain that the first boss kicks their butt to the kerb several times like something out of Dark Souls, but by the time you get to the end of the game you"ll find him a cakewalk.

I strongly recommend playing this game with friends - there are different perspectives to some missions and most cutscenes per player!

LONG REVIEW, PROS & CONS:
Lost Planet 2 has earned a place in my list of top games of all time and is unlikely to shift from that position. Similar to say, Metal Gear, the game has a ostensibly serious premise with a layer of intense silliness under the surface and a whole lot of huge and fun boss battles.
The game is not easy and many will find that the control take some getting used to - those who have played Monster Hunter or Vanquish will absolutely understand. However, they are more than adequate once you get adjusted to their nuances, unlike a lot of professional reviewers who started whining that they couldn"t just push buttons and cancel out of animations at will rather than learning how the game works (sorry, pet peeve of mine).

The story is a little lackluster and just "kind of there", but the game"s primary selling point for me is just how absolutely over-the-top and fun the game is from start to finish - I"d even go so far as to compare it to a Platinum game (Bayonetta, Vanquish, Metal Gear Rising) in sheer awe factor!

Gameplay wise and as I have mentioned, it takes some getting used to. On foot, it"s somewhat basic for a TPS with the addition of a grappling hook (which always adds fun to any game). You can shoot, melee, jump and dodge-roll (for i-frames) and these actions may change depending on the weapon you have equipped.
A big part of the game are the mecha (called Vital Suits or VS), which all come with mecha-sized weapons that you can also use on foot WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Every VS in the game has different controls and can perform different actions with manuals accessible at any time from the pause menu.
Toward the start of the game you will encounter and use clunky, old mecha with poor controls, turn speed and armor. As you progress through the game you"ll start using newer models of those old mecha, and the new features and mechanics are extremely noticeable!

The game puts heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay, to the point that playing solo will make certain levels much harder on you. I STRONGLY recommend playing this with at least one friend - you"ll not likely find anyone in public lobbies in this day and age.
This game includes some of the best coop gameplay I"ve seen in my life, from such small features as being able to provide each other with energy (heals/ammo) or help out a stuck player to much, MUCH more important roles like piloting a multi-person VS or in some of the most important (and fun) sections, helping to control, load and fire an enormous vehicle that requires multiple "drivers" for boss battles!
There are also a number of secrets that can only be achieved through coop actions which I will not spoil here. Suffice to say that there is a button combination that is barely mentioned anywhere that activates "the fun stuff" with certain equipment - you"ll know it when you see it.

PROS:
+ The game is exceedingly fun once you get your bearings and is one of my top, most recommend games of all time.
+ Includes solid mecha combat including mecha vs mecha, mecha vs ground troops, and mecha vs giant alien monsters.
+ The game has a reasonably high skill ceiling, especially with regards to VS piloting and boss fights
+ There"s an in-game achievement system to work towards called "Good Jobs" - there are some global ones, and some specific ones per stage.
+ The game is reasonably long and you may not be able to play through it in one sitting - especially not on your first run through.
+ The game is full of over-the-top action from start to finish
+ There is a heavy emphasis on coop gameplay and the game is best enjoyed with at least one friend. The game goes as far as to offer different perspectives per player slot in most missions!
+ Supports high frame rates - though some models have animations that were obviously sampled at 30fps which is pretty amusing to see.

NEUTRAL:
= The game has QTEs - but they are largely inconsequential.
= There"s an equipment unlock mechanic with a reasonably large amount of content but it"s tied to a slot machine. While it"s nice to feel like you"re always working toward unlocking new stuff, it can get irritating to pour all your hard earned cash into the machine and get nothing but basically useless player titles and maybe one weapon.
= Some missions are a lot more frustrating without friends to help, but these are few and far between. However, in missions where coop assistance is almost necessary, the AI will endeavour to do their best to help rather than sitting around like lemons.
= The graphics are pretty good for the time but are starting to look just a little bit dated now.

CONS:
- You have to use Games for Windows Live to play this game. Unlike LP1, this was never updated for Steamworks for some reason. It still works though, somehow.
- The playerbase has long departed. You"ll need to play this with your friends if you want the coop or versus experience.
- The controls and animations are initially a bit stiff and take a lot of getting used to which will definitely put some people off - though much like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter or other high quality Japanese video games, once you "git gud" they"re absolutely fine.
- If you"re playing with high latency to your coop partners, certain parts of the game will be extremely janky and hard to play through. Specifically an underwater section, and riding on certain VSs.

Hoo boy, where to start.
So, to preface I DO recommend this game - barely. It will appeal to a certain niche of gamers and not to the others who might be expecting something closer to the Batman/Assassin"s Creed games or Mass Effect.
What I will say is that you played and enjoyed the combat of Witcher 2, this game is very similar.
However, unlike Witcher 2 it has some pretty big flaws which I will get into later.

Do note my hour count. I obviously haven"t finished the game yet but I feel I"m deep in enough to give a good review.
Also I"m putting an entire separate section about the game"s combat because it"s a pretty complex issue.

_PROS__
+ The game looks amazing. I"ve read a few comments saying it looks bad and I have no idea what they"re on about. It"s one of the prettiest looking games I"ve ever seen, even if the colour palette is pretty dark and most places are either grey or brown.
+ There"s A LOT of side quests. More important than this is that NONE of them so far have been "collect 20 fly butts" or so, and that most of them have multiple approaches to completion.
+ There"s a very interesting reputation system which I haven"t quite noticed the effects of yet. There"s basically a lot of different factions you can have a reputation with, and alongside the side quests I mentioned above, how you handle certain quests can have an effect on your reputation with any of these factions and more importantly it seems to be very difficult if not impossible to please them all, which makes the relevant decisions all the more interesting. Some quests will increase your reputation with one faction and lower it with another.
+ The setting is pretty cool. Dystopian Mars colonies where resources are scarce and there"s a very rigid class system in place and murmurs of rebellion against the government. Every colony is pretty patriotic and they appear to be fighting each other for resources. If you"ve played Freedom Wars and/or Red Faction, it"s somewhat of a combination of the two, with the exception that you"re near top of the class chain rather than the bottom.
+ Story-wise you"re pretty much dropped in on your head. Your character knows most of the backstory, but you yourself will have to piece it all together by paying attention and asking questions in-game. I like this style of storytelling, others might not.
+ There"s something of a crafting system to complement Diablo-esque equipment drops. Each piece of equipment has stats and bonuses, and these can be further bolstered by crafting addons which are slapped onto "slots" and are actually visually represented on your actual character model!
+ There"s 3 different "super skill trees" which have several sub-skill trees beneath them. The first 2 are linear: the first influences what equipment you can use OR your total carry weight in addition to small bonuses. The second influences technical skills for use (mostly) out of combat, such as making you better at convincing people (there"s 3 types of "convince" dialogs) picking locks, or solving quests in unique ways such as using your Science level to convince someone to hand over some research documents. The last skill tree is combat, inside which are 4 separate branches which themselves branch out even further. They"re for the 4 main styles of combat and all introduce interesting bonuses, rather than being mostly dull filler.
+ There"s just-guard (perfect guard/parry) mechanics - I like this mechanic a lot in any game it"s present in though so that"s just my personal preference.


_CONFLICTED/NEUTRAL__
= The voice acting in the game is not top-notch, but it"s not awful either.
= There"s some character creation but it"s pretty limited. This is mostly because you"re playing a defined, named, male character for the sake of the story. They could"ve gotten away with no character creation at all, I think.
= There"s a karma system, which is good. However, it"s quite clear that working toward "good" karma is the way to go. It takes exponentially higher levels of effort to gain 1 karma whereas losing karma is as easy as killing a person. I have not seen the effects yet but my gut instinct is that with the way it"s designed there will not be any benefits to having negative karma - it"s not a character development stat like in say, Fallout.
= There"s i-frames on dodges that will let you phase through an attack even if it makes contact with your body. This is bad though because it"s lazy - it lasts for the entire duration of the animation and both yourself and enemies are very unlikely to be punished for spamming dodge since by the time you"re vulnerable again you can dodge again almost immediately. Certain enemies such as the bugs abuse the hell out of this and it"s very frustrating.


_CONS__
- It seems as though they put a lot of effort into animating the lower half of someone"s face for cutscenes and conversations while leaving the upper face completely rigid like everyone"s on botox. The effort put into the mouth animations isn"t great either so people end up looking like robots trying to imitate humans, or alternatively horrible snake people with dislocated jaws.
- At the time of writing I have encountered a few bugs and glitches, such as the tutorial refusing to continue since I had rebound some controls, and a few instances where the wrong dialogue line played during a cutscene.
- Even though there"s 3 weapon styles to pick from there are at least 2 styles that are unique to NPCs or enemies for no real good reason I can think of since they obviously have their own set of abilities and equipment. These two that I have seen are 2-handed guns and 2-handed polearms/clubs.
- THE COMBAT. Overall, it really brings the game down. However I do see potential beneath its chunky, unpolished exterior. I"ll expand on that now.


_THE COMBAT__
*UPDATED July 2nd*
**Having played the game even more, I have since "got gud" and learned the ins and outs of how to make the game do what you want. My points still stand, but know that it is possible to learn to work around the game"s questionable combat design choices and still have the game be fun. I"m enjoying combat a LOT more. Trust me, once you figure out what triggers the "100% dodge counterattack" the game becomes easier - remember to use ALL your attack types and actions. There"s still frustrating elements and things still hit like trucks but I find combat much more rewarding now.**

Combat! The core part of any good Action RPG.
Like I said, this game is like Witcher 2. Difference is, Witcher 2 knew a little about how to make combat fun and harsh but fair. This game left out the "fair" part.

I"ll start with the positives just because.
For one, I really like the combat. There"s 3 styles you can swap through at will and they"re all fairly interesting. It features "disruption" as a mechanic, which is a percentage chance modified by your equipment that your enemy will be staggered when hit, letting you get a free hit or two in. The abilities and passives are all substantial and fun to use.

Now the negatives.
If there"s ANYTHING in any game with melee combat that"ll make me 200% mad immediately, it"s enemies being able to sit there and phase through an attack for no damage while in the middle of launching an attack of their own. And this game has that in spades.

Further than this every enemy has the ability to immediately cancel whatever they"re doing (except for staggering) into a block, dodge, OR 100% INVINCIBLE COUNTER ATTACK. This is somewhat balanced out by the fact that you yourself can do the same with the exception of 100% invincible counter attack.
The only way to guarantee a hit is to stagger (which itself involves landing a hit that can be insta-blocked/dodged), parry an attack or use something unblockable like bombs or technomancy.

If the combat was polished more I would wholeheartedly recommend this game, but I cannot in good faith the way it is. Only for the determined.

Let me preface this review by saying it"s going to be very heavily weighted towards negative points. That said, I would still recommend the game for its price, especially on sale. I got it for $1 and I"m more than confident I got my money"s worth out of this game. It is FAR better than many other free or $1 games I"ve played.

bit Dungeon II is what I"d describe as an action-roguelite. It"s halfway between a twinstick shooter and an RPG with roguelike elements tacked on (most prominently, permadeath.)
The game immediately throws you in the deep end. First you see the title screen, then from the moment you hit "play game" you"re more or less on your own aside from some short instructions if you figure out how to pause the game (ESC key.) NOTHING is explained clearly. You have to figure it out on your own. In a way I feel like this was sorta a good thing, since many roguelikes do the same, giving you nothing but a list of key binds and maybe a general overview of your objective.

PROS:
+The game is well polished for its price, and well worth it on sale.
+It features "8-bit" (note the quotes) graphics which look pretty nice for what they are. I"ve seen a lot worse in more highly priced games *cough*Teleglitch*cough*
+There"s a wide variety of equipment to be had, and there"s a lot of different designs for each piece. They are all represented correctly on your character sprite too, which I think is super neat. There"s a lot of games out there like this that don"t bother, or will only show weapons/shields on the character.
+I like the way the game starts with dropping you in the deep end of a story that is never really fully explained. You"ll have to make guesses as to what"s going on, which I personally find pretty interesting. I cannot say the same for the way the game drops you in the deep end of its mechanics though.
+There"s a few different classes of weapons which all have their own combat styles, more or less. Each relies on a certain stat (or two) which means you"ll have to decide what stats you want to focus on and can make it painful when you have to give up a rare weapon due to not having enough points in its particular stat.
+You can play this game one-handed, either one hand on the keyboard or one hand on the mouse. It"s pretty simple.
+Combat is fairly straightforward and easy to learn.
+It"s "open-world" so there"s some exploration to be had. Not sure if the map is somewhat randomized each time because I did literally everything there was to do in the game on my first run.
+The game scales as you progress story-wise, meaning that you can grind for the next dungeon if you want and it won"t scale until you"ve beaten the current dungeon. This, IMO, is a good thing unlike certain other games which continually scale to attempt to keep the game challenging and therefore defeating the purpose of levelling up to begin with.
+The game is infinitely playable, it loops and continues scaling until you die for real. Technically this is a good thing, I personally find that kind of replayability extremely dull but eh.
+Enemies are randomized every time you enter a room, and corpses are permanent in dungeons. This becomes pretty neat when certain corpse-eating enemies start appearing and getting stronger the more corpses you leave behind in a dungeon.

CONS:
-The game is too easy. I literally beat the whole game and got all the achievements in one run, my first run. It would be MUCH tougher if you did not have the "second chance" life token, but unfortunately you NEED to keep that on hand to beat the game properly.
-The game is pretty imbalanced.
--Some weapon types are clearly better than others, apparently due to how the damage is calculated which is never made clear. Weapons that use more than one stat to determine their damage always seem to be better. This also happens to coincide with the fact that you can use a shield or spellbook with the two weapon types that let you do that, which makes spears and knives much better overall, especially since they also hit faster than the two-handed weapons. Probably. I didn"t try staves.
--Some enemies are complete pushovers, whereas others will remain tanky no matter how far you get into the game. There"s not really much in between the two extremes. The tanky ones, as a result, also tend to be the ones that do the most damage.
--I found the majority of the bosses to be FAR easier than hacking through the dungeon to get to them. In most cases, the small bands of enemies and attrition from working your way through will wear you down much faster than the boss.
-The game drops you in the deep end and nothing is explained. You could well end your first run by not investigating the nearby cave at the spawn point and picking out a weapon, since you cannot fight without one.
-The combat is very simple, which makes it a little uninteresting. All you do is walk into enemies to auto-attack them, and you can press spacebar/left mouse to spend MP to attack at will. What this turns into for the melee weapons is "mash spacebar to win" except for a few enemies who will tank that.
--Holding the attack button is meant to charge up for a special attack, but it was pretty inconsistent and did not always work. That"s also the same command for blocking, which also did not seem to always work.
--Bows make a complete embarassment of most of the bosses, not least of all the final boss who lazily followed me around the room while I popped off shots until it died - it fired a grand total of 4 projectiles so clearly it was meant to be able to retaliate at range, but it didn"t try.
-There"s a few puzzles but they"re ALL really easy to solve.
--The mazes may initially be confusing but there"s a VERY obvious clue as to how to solve them in every single maze. On top of this there are NPCs who will outright tell you the solution.
--There"s a few "push the blocks onto the buttons" puzzles but none of them are actually challenging at all.
-The game makes a point of saying that you lose EVERYTHING when you die, equipment, levels, everything. However you get to keep your money, which can be used to buy some pretty strong equipment if you know where it is.
-No save function, so you have to beat the game in one sitting. The game is actually kinda lengthy so you"d have to leave it on when you"re busy.
-Enemies respawning every time you leave a screen and return can get annoying, especially when a lot of them can turn invisible and block your path/surprise attack you.

Carpe Diem is pretty much exactly as it describes itself. It"s a short VN with one non-critical decision and a pretty ok story and conclusion for its length. It won"t take you more than 10 or so minutes to give it a look, and considering it"s free and you"re probably reading this on its store page, why not?

Pros:
+Art is pretty good, even if there"s not much to see.
+Delivers a message you might pay $5+ to see from some other indie game, for free and with less pretension in less time!
+Has a pretty fully fleshed out options menu for a 10 minute game. All your VN basics are there including saves and dialog skipping, skip only seen etc.
+Multiple language support.
+You can buy an extras pack DLC if you want to support the developer. It doesn"t contain content locked out from the main game so you won"t miss out on anything either.
?Easy perfect game for your steam achievements collection.

Neutral points:
=I guessed the twist before I started the game.
=The only choice in the game isn"t too important since each route can lead to at least one of the other locations you can pick from eventually. You will miss a few scenes if you don"t try them all though.
=The music isn"t great but I also didn"t find it annoying.
=No voice acting but I"d hardly expect that from a free game and let alone a dev"s first VN.

Cons:
-There"s quite a few grammatical errors, at least in English. I cannot speak for the other languages available. UPDATE: Eyzi has corrected the mistakes I spotted.
-The writing is a little stiff. Would have benefited from some creative writing techniques. It"s not all bad though, both Jung and Ai have some character to them. Some.

I"m doing my part

Preface: Notice my playtime. I have not finished the game yet, so this is based on my initial impressions. I will amend if need be later.

It would not be an unfair comparison to compare this game to Hotline Miami. It is similar in that it can be extremely fast paced and relies almost entirely on your skill and reaction times than anything else, yet it differs simply because a single mistake can be forgiven. Retries are also common per level, particularly if you are going for 100%.
The gameplay itself is very solid and each level has a set of challenges which are in fact challenging - something many games these days fail to offer. At its core I would say it is basically hotline miami as a cover shooter with optional cover and some leniency with getting hit.
It is very fun, and earns a solid A+ in the fun department, however I must say the game"s sense of humor is what I would call "borderlands tier" - that is to say if you liked borderlands" sense of humor you will love this game"s sense of humor, and if you did not you will seathe with hatred every time BunnyLord opens his mouth.

Pros:
*Fast paced, hectic cover shooter gameplay
*Relies mostly on reaction speed, skill, and planning to do well
*Along with the above, skillful or perhaps cuhrayzee play is rewarded accordingly and allows you to progress much faster than treating the game like a cover shooter with optional objectives
*Excellent sound direction and music
*Nice pixel graphics and animations, simple as they are
*Good variety of characters who all feel, act, and play differently - no one is a direct upgrade to anyone else, and no one is awful
*Good variety of challenges per level which are actually challenging and introduce replay value
*Power-ups are actually very useful and feel powerful!
*Unlike Hotline Miami, the game features more than just "go here and clear out all the dudes" as a map objective
*Fairly clever level design, with a lot of cheekiness evident you won"t notice until it"s too late
*Escort missions aren"t horrible exercises in patience!
*The voice acting is pretty damn good, way better than expected

Contentions:
*"Borderlands tier" sense of humor. That is to say the game"s sense of humor revolves around what I"d describe as "lolsorandom", references to pop culture, and memes. If you like that, you"ll love it. If not, you"ll hate it.
*The enemies are kinda dumb and predictable. While this can be good for planning an optimal route and playstyle, it detracts from keeping the game interesting as they will always act the same and can be defeated via the same tactics every time

Cons:
*If you don"t like the game"s sense of humor you"re going to be aggravated the whole way through
*The game can fall into "distract "em up" territory when there are numerous enemies present in a single area. That is to say it becomes too difficult to tell what is going on and how to react with so many bullets and debris flying around
*Making contact or even getting near an enemy results in immediate knockback with no windup on the enemy"s part. This can also pass through slides or other actions, and is EXTREMELY irritating especially in levels where enemies can throw you off ledges away from missable objectives or to your death. IMO enemies should exibit some sort of windup to give you a chance to react, even if that chance is tiny.
*Player HP is very forgiving. For a good part of the game you could simply sit uncovered in a hallway and spam the fire key until everything is dead. I think the game would benefit from a "Hotline Miami mode" in which 1 hit equals death on both sides - though I haven"t finished the game yet so I don"t know if this is already a feature.

Final Comments:
I would definitely recommend this game on sale. Despite the fact the game"s sense of humor did not stick with me, I found the gameplay extremely fun with mostly small annoyances. Would absolutely recommend if you can find it bundled or cheaper than its retail price.

Gunpoint at its core is a solid game. It has all the foundations in place to make a challenging stealth-action game - but I feel the campaign doesn"t make the most of them.
There is a lot of fluff content that does not mean anything or do anything tangible at all, and although the game offers "branching" dialogue choices in the end only one really matters.
However, Gunpoint is still fun and I recommend it as a cheap game you could knock off in a day that also happens to have a level editor to keep it interesting.

PROS:
*It"s fun
*Controls are simple and very easy to get used to
*There is room for cheekiness and finesse with the controls despite this being a one-shot-you"re-dead stealth game
*You can skip all dialogue sequences if you want to even without experiencing them at least once
*All skill upgrades add variety to the ways you can navigate a level (except deathfluke which is a failsafe)
*Skills can be unlocked in whatever order you want (save one) and only 2 are required to beat the game (not counting one that is given to you for free)
*The base mechanics and level entities lend themselves very well to challenging level design and could be used to make clever maps
*You do not have to replay the game more than once to get all the achievements or perfect rankings - you can freely replay any mission including the opportunity to explore any alternative dialogue options at no penalty
*It"s reasonably lengthy for a small indie game. Once you"ve played through the game the first time though it"s likely you"ll be able to breeze through in less than an hour since you now know how all the levels work
*There are no viral achievements or social media tie-in achievements of any description. You can get them all without having to go out of your way to do anything but play the campaign (and fiddle with the level editor once)

MEHS:
*The game keeps a total of 3 autosaves a few seconds apart from each other as you"re playing. While this is handy if you mess up I can see others branding the feature as "challenge impairing". However you can instead decide to restart the mission from scratch if you want
*The games sense of humor might grate for some people. I personally thought the "funny" dialogue choices were a bit ham or dull - with a few exceptions
*Mission rankings mean absolutely nothing and have no effect on achievements or gameplay elements
*Similar to the above, the "titles" you get for meeting certain criteria in a mission mean nothing except for gaining a few achievements
*As with the above, clients will give you optional objectives that affect your ranking (e.g. minimal violence) but they mean nothing so there"s no point
*The plot isn"t great, but it isn"t terrible either. You can make of it what you want but it boils down to you being in the
wrong place at the wrong time and getting dragged into corporate espionage in order to clear your name
*I literally beat this game 100% in about 5 hours. Your mileage may vary, and there"s always workshop content to keep it fresh

CONS:
*The one important decision in the game makes exactly one minor change to the game - on the final level, a single extra enemy will appear. That"s it. No changes to stages or even objective or enemy layout
*Dialogue choices which you might assume would be important do not actually matter at all. Aside from getting some achievements (all of which you can get simply by replaying the mission and exploring all dialogue options) not a single dialogue choice makes a lick of difference to the plot, gameplay or ending
*You"ll have to replay the final mission at least 7 times (maybe 6?) to round up the last of the achievements if that"s your thing
*I would go so far as to say the campaign is too easy. The foundations laid for map design would lend themselves well to some very challenging level design but I do not feel the base campaign fully explores all of its options - while having multiple ways to complete a level is good, too many ways to complete it is not
*At some point there was an achievement for checking all the laptops in the game. Now that it is gone there is literally no need to get to them (most of which are harder to get to than the mission objectives) other than providing a little flavor text
*The game just kinda drops at the ending. No epilogue or nothing, just credit roll and a blog entry by the protagonist that does nothing to wrap up the plot

Hammerfight is a ludicrous physics game that is tough to get into, but rewarding once you get the hang of it. The story is convoluted and confusing, and is presented like the player is meant to know exactly what the hell everyone it jabbering about even though they do not - this is not necessarily a bad thing though.

Pros:
*The game is (usually) fun
*Physics combat is fun
*Campaign is decently long
*Branching storylines with varying rewards and endings
*Convoluted story that is neat, but takes a long time to get your head around
*Encourages experimentation with equipment and techniques
*Minigames are alright - though unlocking some involves playing against cheating AI (e.g. hammerball)

Cons:
*Game has a very steep learning curve
*Enemy choppers do not have to follow the laws of physics
*Enemies can do things you cannot (e.g. spin their weapons without momentum, manually aim their guns)
*Unlocking most minigames is a frustrating experience for first-time players
*Particle effects and smoke make it extremely hard to see what is going on at times
*Large HUD also gets in the way at times
*No new game+ options means starting from scratch every time you want to view the other story paths
*You need A LOT of room on your desk to be able to play effectively - clear out a wide area around your mouse or it will do it for you...

Pretty solid metroidvania game with satisfying, varied combat and contains a HORRENDOUS puzzle that"s even worse and more time consuming than that one in VVVVVV. You know the one.