Recent reviews by assbutt420

games like this make me wish steam had a "mixed opinion" option for reviews.


very very minor spoilers ahead:

portal: revolution is a collection of amazing and challenging puzzles strung together by a mediocre story carried by unnatural characters that seem to kinda just do things because "that's what the story needs to progress right now", i guess.

the new puzzles really make you think, and can be super rewarding as a result. the environment design is extremely well-detailed and looks absolutely stunning. the new puzzle elements are interesting and fun to experiment with... and this is really where the positives end for me.

the story is incredibly underwhelming. the concept of bridging the gap between portal 1 and 2 is already a compelling idea, and would be an excellent opportunity to clear up discrepancies between the two games (like the sudden design change of GLaDOS, for example). for some reason, portal: revolution does almost nothing with this and instead has this rather vague idea of resurrecting GLaDOS and rebuilding aperture to its former glory.

while the puzzles themselves are great, they mostly seem to serve almost no purpose in relation to the story. the disconnect is honestly so massive i found myself wondering "what is actually happening right now?" at both the start and end of a startling amount of levels throughout the game. there are many long periods where it feels like the story isn't progressing in any way and you're just navigating test chambers for seemingly no reason. in fact, there were several points during gameplay where i felt like this was originally designed to be a collection of random, well-designed puzzles that are just good on their own, but were then connected to loosely fit some kind of narrative.

the new puzzle elements are also great, but they aren't used in many chambers. in fact, i don't think a *single one* of the new elements are ever used in the finale. there's also no explanation given as to why these new elements don't appear in portal 2 (apart from the obvious real-life reasons). this last thing might be a bit of a nitpick, but if you're gonna write a story that takes place before an existing one, i don't think it's too much to ask to be prepared to explain what happens to the new things you introduce in relation to that existing media.

as for the characters... well, frankly, they are incredibly one-dimensional and have virtually zero character development throughout the game (outside of *incredibly* basic background stories, anyway). both characters and their arcs could easily be described in one or two sentences each. little more (if anything) can be extracted from their dialog beyond what's being said directly. not to say the voice acting is bad (because the actors are clearly talented), but rather, i think it's really mostly the writing at fault here. the only good thing i can say is that emilia's personality is really fun and cute.

despite this mostly negative review, i would like to say i still greatly appreciate the incredible work that went into this project. what second face software accomplished here is extraordinary, especially considering this was entirely done by volunteers. despite the shortcomings, this game truly looks and feels nearly AAA quality, and i honestly wish them nothing but the best in whatever projects they pursue going forward.

legend of zelda if it was good

wilson my beloved

it's the OG. right up there with the likes of DOOM and Quake. what else must be said?

really nice, but short visual novel. around 4-5 hours of gameplay, assuming you aren't looking for 100% completion. i do wish it was a lot longer, though... the story kinda abruptly ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger, leaving many questions unanswered. that said, it's still a fairly compelling visual novel that leaves you with a multitude of difficult choices to make throughout, and expands upon the tron universe in a small, but really nice way. the only real complaints i have are that the "identity disc puzzles" are kinda boring, and it doesn't seem like you can go back if you decide you don't like a certain dialog choice you made. otherwise, if you're a fan of tron, i'd absolutely give this a try.

i hope we can see more :)

fully open source 3d creative goodness. ive used blender for well over 10 years. my hours might say otherwise, but i only semi-recently discovered blender was on steam. up til that point, i was downloading it manually straight from their website. take that as you will, but this is still an incredibly powerful creative suite. love it.

oh, and for the love of GOD, make sure you disable auto-updates by selecting a version via the betas tab. you're welcome.

You can put a bucket on your head.

10/10

Early access done right. Seriously fantastic game

i have a dream that one day valve will remember this game exists

EDIT 2024-06-03: i am updating this review as part of the #FixTF2/#SaveTF2 movement. as much as i love this game to death, i cannot recommend playing it in it's current state, even if you only stuck with community servers since almost none of them will give you the true, vanilla TF2 experience. Fix this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game, Valve. Please.