Recent reviews by Hamumu

Super short, super fun, super clicker. While it's not technically an idle game, as you do interact during the gameplay (but by the end you can ignore that if you want, you just won't collect as many goodies), it definitely falls right into the idle game category, with massive upgrades being earned as you grow from nothing to insane power, and prestige levels (although in this game you never reset, you just choose to play a harder battle).

With the exception of a boring grindy bit at the end which could definitely have been balanced better, this is phenomenally addictive. It takes about 3 hours to win and I did it in 2 sittings which is probably an above average number of sittings. Tons of interesting upgrades to consider and just juicy mindless boxsplosions. I know I won't go back to this in the future, but I could totally see doing it. Like a yearly christmas movie, have your yearly Nodebuster bash.

Five thumbs up, my favorite ARPG.

Ratchet & Clank is always fun. The older games are clearly better, as it feels like the more modern they get, the shallower and simpler they become. They now feel almost like a demo of a game - you just get to dip your toe into each of the systems, never really fully engaging with any of them. New abilities are just thrown at you with no fanfare, and then you only need them 3 times, and it never asks you to combine them in new ways. Everything feels underwhelming and tossed aside shortly after being introduced. That's almost the theme of the game - they even have Ratchet meeting a fellow Lombax for the first time ever, the thing he has been focused on since game 1, and it's pretty much just "hi, let's go do the next thing." The series has been casualized, just as neutered as their formerly innuendo-laden titles.

But it's still fun to play, it's just lacking the magic it used to have.

This is a very easy puzzle game. If you like escape rooms and that sort of thing, this is right up your alley! Manipulate levers and switches and weird devices to make stuff happen. None of it makes any sense, like you might rotate a knob which makes an entire new box materialize out of thin air, but it makes sense in video-game logic. One nice feature is that it is extremely liberal with very clear hints, and they are completely optional. If you don't accomplish anything for about a minute, a "?" pops up you can click on for a hint. It's very tempting, and I used it a few more times than I should. It's just very nice to not have to resort to google like in most games.

I heard all the bad stuff about this game but knew it was for me just from the trailer. To me, all the bad stuff is immensely exaggerated (surprise, in a game starring a Black woman?? NO!). It is flawed for sure, and feels rushed - there's a point in the game where it suddenly feels like they cut off development and there was supposed to be several more 'cycles' of what you had been doing previously but it just jumps to the ending battle (after a very long and agonizing series of "walk here and listen to this exposition, then this, then this" which could've all been one brief cutscene).

But interestingly, even after you win the game, there's a significant amount of legitimate content still to do. Not just swiping up all the dots on the map like in any open-world game, but several more quests and story beats.

And speaking of those dots, I heard there was a super empty world, but this is easily 3x as dense as any Far Cry game, and the things you encounter are far more interesting than another bag of money. I have zero complaints about the open world content.

It does have too much hand-holding, exposition, and forced cutscenes. But again on this front it contradicts itself too - it's the only game I've seen that has a special treasure chest opening animation if you are dashing. Like most games, triggering a chest is slow, but if you dash up to one in this game, you flip-kick it open and are done instantly. Stuff like that is all through the game (like how you can actually skip the dialogue in cutscenes and it just immediately jumps ahead to the next line, something almost NO game offers).

Spell-swapping is clunky, it takes a long time to really get going, and again has all that hand-holding and too many cutscenes, and WAY too many comments from your buddy Cuff (turn it down to "rarely" because that's about the level "constantly" should've been), but I give it a solid two thumbs up. It is a great game with a ton of fun spells, a good story, and an overwhelming amount of content even if it feels like the story was cut short. I won the game probably 10-15 play-hours ago and I'm still playing every day, hoovering up those dots. I still haven't finished all the post-story quests either. Recommended by Hamumu!

Fan-fugu-tastic. Tons of fun and highly addictive. The negatives I heard about before playing are just... not what they're cracked up to be. Yeah, it's a little weird to be passing notes in class with Blade, but it's handled well and the whole thing is very well-written and it all serves a larger theme. Not saying it's not heavy-handed and cheesy, but it's a comic book story, it's fun.

Roaming around the abbey finding things is highly reminiscent of Mortal Kombat's various graveyard modes, with little surprises everywhere.

The actual combat is amazingly fun, both simple and quite deep. It's highly random, it's far from chess, but it's always fun to have that lucky combo of cards that just works out to wipe out all the enemies at once. Knocking enemies into each other is really the main mechanic of the game, making this almost a cross between Hearthstone and billiards. Which makes me realize it's a real shame the Hulk doesn't have any abilities (that I came across yet!) that continue the knockback over multiple targets so I can set up trick shots. The Hunter's Bladestorm ultimate feels like that - if positioned just right, you can control where 5 different guys end up. In my final battle, I used it to throw two guys into explosives that stun them, kill 3 or 4 others, and use the remaining 2 or 3 as projectiles to kill other minions, all in one shot.

Two thumbs up.

Better than the original Spider-Man game, but I would recommend that if you only get one anyway. This is a much smaller game, probably 1/3 the size, which is great for me - that's exactly what I want. But it really does feel (at least from the perspective of somebody who played the original first) that this is meant to continue that story, not be a game in its own right. It feels like it doesn't introduce the gameplay nearly as well, just assuming you can do most of it. What makes this one superior is that it cleans up all the rough edges of the original (except perhaps technically: I ran into some weird graphical bugs and got physically stuck a few times, and never had problems in the first one), with much less grindy challenges and completion. No more wandering aimlessly hoping for crime to happen this time! Miles also has better moves available that really feel powerful, and the enemies less often resort to really cheap annoying tactics with lots of off-screen killshots like the first game. Or maybe I just got better after 40 hours of that.

Either one is a great game, and I'd recommend them. Open-world collectathon without too much grinding. Just choose the grande or the pico.

Really solid. I saw many reviews saying the bosses are really a slog and there are too many, but I found them to feel really fair and fun. I died several times on every boss, and every time, my first run was "how do they expect anybody to do this?" then by my third try I was like "okay, this is totally reasonable, it's not even requiring that much skill/timing/execution". Every boss. Which feels really good. That's on normal difficulty, I'm sure hard would be way too hard for me.

I would change only four things about this game:
* you take way too much damage when hit
* you can't teleport to a waypoint from anywhere (you have to run to a waypoint first which can be a real pain)
* you can't interrupt other actions with a dodge roll
* you lose lock-on of enemies at the drop of a hat (like just about every game with lock-on)

It's that inability to dodge at will that makes the game feel clunky initially, but I got comfortable with it quickly.

It's about what you'd expect, fun good spidermanning. My only real complaint here is that the fights quickly become hectic to the point where you are getting slapped around from random directions by things you can't see ALL the time. It's Arkham combat, but not nearly as refined. It's still fun, but it can definitely feel unfair pretty regularly. Most of the time, you plow right through everybody, but as soon as something goes wrong you just explode and die.

Just a lotta fun, quick play. I wish there were more different powerups, but the ones that are there provide a ton of variety.