Recent reviews by MegaLobsterFace

Reeks of a game taking advantage of a long-trusted IP instead of trying to be a fun video game. Had to go through an actual hour of walking around the most boring, standard MMO town hub I've ever seen, having endless text windows shoved in my face as if that can practically teach the player anything at all, with absolutely nothing of narrative or mechanical importance happening whatsoever.

After that first hour, I finally got to hit the attack button for the first time, and it felt awful. This series has always been talked about like this deep action game, but every button I press feels clunky, nothing seems to combo with anything else, and the animations are all so long I never even felt in control of the character once an attack started.

Maybe the game gets phenomenal after the first hour, but I have, like, work to do? I have a life, and I'm not sinking 50 hours into a game that starts THIS bad. This is one of the worst first hours of a video game I've ever played, for a game that clearly doesn't respect the player's time or engagement. Seeing 250 DLC items on the storepage doesn't exactly make me regret my choice to refund, either.

Maybe when the series starts being a video game instead of a bland cash grab I'll give it another try. Not this one, though.

A fighting game without a training mode is basically a fighting game that does not want you to play it.

It's just not very good, is it?

Overly verbose and dripping with meta progression that needlessly hobbles all characters at the start of the game, this feels like less of a fun game and more of a boring chore to maybe at some point unlock something resembling fun. And the entire time you are constantly being interrupted by the blandest, stalest narration of the most boring, mundane parts of this fantasy story. This is trying so hard to be Bastion, but it's not even Wall.

The problem is not difficulty. If the problem was difficulty, people would not be playing this game. They wouldn't be playing anything Fromsoft has ever made, and the company would've gone bankrupt after DS1.

The problem is quality. A boss fight like Malenia is hard in a fun way, because you can learn from it, adjust, and strategize on how to make your build viable against it. Messing up can be punishing, but it never crosses the line, it is fun to learn and overcome. In that vein, there ARE fun bosses in this DLC that are also hard. Rellana, Midra, and Messmer are all hard, some players take hours to beat just those fights, but that doesn't mean they're Bad.

But this DLC is also full of bad fights. The Dancing Lion is bad. Bayle is bad. The final boss is very, very, very bad. People are not upset because they are hard, because one of those wasn't even difficult, just frustrating. People are upset because they are bad. They are poorly designed, take away player agency, make certain builds unviable, incentivize level grinding or overpowered summoning instead of learning the movesets and getting good at the fight.

When I learn a boss's attack pattern, I should be rewarded. I should be able to use that understanding to progress faster. I should not be punished by only getting to attack every 3 minutes while slowly whittling away at a monotonous fight where one mistake means starting over and with the constant thrum of poor-taste, left-field, GRRM-style incest constantly taunting me. It's Bad Design. People are mad because it is weird and bad, not because it is hard.

Not to mention the egregious transphobia present in this game for literally no reason. They put an old man in a dress, put a woman's corpse in his attic, and then had him say he'd get rid of all the mothers in the world so he can be the only mother. Then phallic fingers started pouring out of his gown. The story is the worst its ever been from this company, the gameplay is the worst its ever been from this company, it's ♥♥♥♥. It does not deserve your time or money.

After laying a few of these retro-inspired 3D platformers, Cavern of Dreams stands above basically all of them by heads and shoulders. It doesn't set out to frustrate you for no reason, its world is well-thought out and appropriately mixes the whimsy with the darkness in a way I can actually compare with some of those old N64 games, the controls feel great and progressively get better as you unlock continuous upgrades, and there's plenty of option stuff to explore once you finish the main bulk of the game.

The only complaint I have is that it's a pretty short game. I only wish there was more of it. Every individual level is packed with charm and care, and I'm anxious to see what comes next from the dev.

This is just a single Conker level someone's charging $7 for.

This is the gameplay equivalent of having a migraine and being unable to tell if you're awake or not. Was immediately able to tell that it was an awful attempt at a 3D platformer and an even awfuller attempt at being a souls-like action game. Hard pass.

this is one of the worst games i ever accidentally owned

This feels less like a farming sim and more like an MMO that someone didn't want to finish and just pivoted into something else. All of the villagers are cookie cutter, most of the quests are radiant busy work instead of being engaging or even unique to what NPC you get them from, and they don't even let you name your farmer. If your steam profile isn't a normal name, there is no immersion to be had. Bad controls, menus that don't even pause the day's clock, grindy RNG for progression, it's not a satisfying game in this genre, and I don't think tacked-on multiplayer fixes anything. The festivals take place passively in a single room and just lock off shop items with no event or reward tied to them. The crops you can buy don't even change with the seasons, you have to go through an extra step that just wastes time and money to feel like anything is different. This is inferior in basically every way to almost any other game in the genre.

This is not a racing game. This is a rage game. This is I Wanna Be The Guy but with cars. This is Getting Over It with an esports division. This is what a middle schooler with a Newgrounds account would do with a AAA budget. This game is not for normal people. It has a subscription model.

The game itself will not teach you how to play it. There are a hundred hidden and unexplained mechanics you will never even know about, let alone understand how to implement, without hours upon hours of youtube tutorials. No in-game tutorial exists whatsoever. They have 'training maps' you'll be unable to complete without doing homework first. Some of these mechanics come across as niche speedrunning tricks at first, the kind of stuff you'd assume the casual player would never be expected to bother with, but you will soon find that they are 100% required to get anything beyond silver medals in any given track. Half of the things you need to even play the game at a base-line level are user-made plugins you need third-party software to gain access to. I'm talking about a Speedomoter on the UI. I'm talking about being able to see gear shifts. None of that is in the game without mods. This game is cross-platform. Console players do not have access to mods.

I have 250 hours and I still don't understand drifting. There are around 5 types of drifts in this game with 4 buttons, and you will never know which one is coming out until you hit the button for them. Sometimes you'll do an actual drift, sometimes you'll just stay on the same trajectory without slowing down, and sometimes you'll slide out and go shooting off the track. There's a special drift that makes you go 1% faster that you will literally never pull off correctly, but you need to perform perfectly to get anything above bronze on track of the day. At times it feels like Mario Kart levels of RNG, but without anyone ever actually benefiting from any of it.

There are ice physics in this game that require you to drive sideways in order to go as fast as the game wants you to, and this is a major mechanic you have to learn in order to play at all. Sometimes you drive on ice walls that you need an exact angle on, or you'll go so slow that you might as well be restarting. This angle is not explained or marked anywhere, and the difference is imperceptible to the naked eye. You need the angle, even for the vanilla campaign. The ice physics change every 6 months to prevent people from getting used to them. Any tracks with ice made from before 6 months ago are now impossible to complete, but are still available to try and struggle against anyway.

There's such a disparity between keyboard and controller that they have 5 extra buttons that increment your steering percentage by 20% and expect you to be able to use that well in the heat of the moment, on top of 7 more buttons for camera controls. You either use a controller or you learn brain surgery, there's really no in-between for people without enough USB ports for a controller and a mouse at the same time. You need at least two of those buttons to get the ice wall angle.

Users can purposefully break the game's physics in their maps. Some maps will feel more sluggish than normal. Others will be slipperier than normal. Most of the time they will not tell you they did this, gaslighting you into thinking you did something wrong somehow. You can only make maps in-game with preset minecraft blocks. Other people can model whole racetracks in Blender, but you will use minecraft blocks. In order to change the colors of the minecraft blocks, you need to alter each individual vertex of the block one by one over the course of 5 minutes per block. Or learn Blender. For in-game mapmaking. Everyone always chooses Blender. You will use minecraft blocks.

The game lags at the strangest times, mostly when opening menus, like the ones that open at the start and end of every single race. Sometime you'll be starting a new round of a race and start 3 seconds behind every other racer because the game couldn't load properly. You'll lag at the finish line and finish a second and a half behind when you actually crossed it, losing you the finals of the in-game tournament you were playing. This happens to the game's most popular influencers OFTEN and has not been fixed after three full years.

Despite all of these horrendous, mind-boggling issues, you will never be able to stop playing it. Turn away now and never look back. This was made by the devil. Why does it have a subscription model?