Recent reviews by Duke Jukem

Lmfao it's funny how they found a way to give out a free trial and I still feel scammed out of my money

Let's play "when will I get to see a single square inch of the map?"
Seriously, why are there 600 active smoke grenades? Why do most maps have next to no vertical usage? Why am I FORCED to run straight through the million smokes in one of the 3 choke points to hopefully maybe possibly see an enemy before becoming Swiss cheese from the 20 people all watching the same smoke?
The maps simultaneously feel like there's too many players and too few players, probably because I can never SEE them. And then of course on the rare occasion where I do actually get into a real 1v1, it's a coin flip with the hitreg because the game decided to put me in a 300+ ping server.

Fun

This is definitely one of those games that you can only ever experience once. I recommend not watching any videos on this, and just going into this blind. It is one giant puzzle that you get the pieces to bit by bit, and every new piece you get makes you go "OH! I KNOW WHERE TO USE THIS!" Even after exploring an area to what you think is it's limit, you'll wind up finding some key information somewhere else that unlocks an entire separate branch of exploration.

That said, the problems come up once you've found 95% of the pieces. Because this is a game of exploration and experimentation, if you missed something in an area you already explored, or simply did something wrong and you think "ok, well that's not how you do it I guess" then you can be set back by a LOT, and wind up wasting loops trying to grasp at straws for that last 5%.


***This part will contain spoilers***
There were 3 main sections that I got stuck on.
-First, the jellyfish. I figured out how to get under the current WAYYY before finding the dude in the Dark, and I know his area gives you the hints on how to get under the electricity, but I had already spent about 2 or 3 loops trying to get in and even tried using the jellyfish. Even without the hint it seemed like a safe bet that the jellyfish were the way in, but since every part of them seemed to hurt me to touch (even towards the bottom) it felt ♥♥♥♥♥♥ finding out later that I was correct, but just didn't have the PERFECT angle to get inside. I think there should have been more of a visual distinction, like having wider jellyfish that have a clear opening you can swim into, or even just having a different solution entirely. Just something to either reward the exploration or else make it obvious there's another hint yet to be found. Finding out about the tornado to get under the current was REALLY cool though.
-The Ash Twin tp. I get that you can't have people accidentally stumbling onto the end of the puzzle early on, but I had already TRIED using that tp multiple times while the storm came, using the hint that the twins shared a central point, and kept getting flung away. It felt like the implication was that the tp was broken and I had to find another planet to tp from, so I spent a good hour checking other places and trying a million other things. I don't like having to look up answers to a puzzle in a game, but it's infinitely more frustrating when you already HAD the answer but just got unlucky and wasted time finding another solution that didn't exist.
-And finally, the Vessel; this one I'll split blame on 50/50. I did have the coordinates, I finally had the core (which I will admit, my initial attempt at solving this involved taking the black/white holes from the Ember Twin one at a time to the Vessel to try to power it, because this was during the time I was stuck trying to figure out the Ash Twin tp and I thought maybe the Vessel might have had some key information. But anyways, back on track) my problem came with inputting the coordinates. I know now they come up on the HUD, but it's small, down in a corner, and I had a lot more to be worried about (ya know, since the sun was exploding in a few seconds.) It would have helped if I knew wtf the console was even for, but as far as I could tell there was no indication that it was for inputting coordinates. I feel like this could have easily been improved by either adding some describing text telling you what each of the three parts of the ship were for (which at least the warp drive did visually) or else have the coordinates show up center screen and THEN move to the corner, or have it flashing, just something to make it more visible. This made it two separate things I had to look up back to back at the very end of the game, which really soiled the whole experience.

I know I'm not the only one to have these things happen, but maybe I'm just a little dumb and it shouldn't have been an issue.



Either way, great game even with those few instances of frustration, incredibly cool mechanics and unique puzzles, great soundtrack and visuals, and a good 20 hours of fun.

Great story, fun characters, hilarious dialog. Beautiful game

Still great aim practice after all these years.

Great game

Welp, after all these years it's still impossible to find a game that can even come close. At this point there are many games that do something similar, but no game that does it quite as well.