Vaughn Demont legutóbbi értékelései

Industry jokes, easter eggs, glitchy content, typos galore, sections with artificial difficuty, and a lot of scenes that drift into preachiness, sometimes literally, Almost Sometimes Monsters is, well, an indie game. Leaning on retro graphics from the SNES era, ASM relies primarily on its story to get you hooked, opening with a choice that'll either end the game as soon as it began, or drop you into a tutorial-free experience (as, the creators tell you in game, Life has no tutorials) to choose your protagonist from an array of partygoers and then pick their significant other, suffer an off-camera (for the moment) break-up, and set you on a quest to break up a wedding and try to win them back.
ASM touts the power of choice in the game, with some conversations literally meaning life or death, while others are borderline-transparent attempts at character development. The freedom to be LGBT is definitely one of its selling points, normalizing LGBT relationships by showing they're just as fraught with difficulty, though racism plays an element as well, as picking a Latino or African-American character will definitely get you a different gaming experience than a white male. All of the phobic comments are casually made, with the player given no option to refute or call people out on them, likely to simulate the day-to-day casual comments that are made that minorites are forced to suffer through to make their way in society.
But for myself, the career scenes hit pretty close to home. While I'm not qualified to speak on the experience anything other than a white male playing this game, I can definitely attest that the concerns and insecurities of being a writer, and how they affect relationships will cause some players to feel as if they're watching a scene from their lives play out on the small screen. Reading the text of my in-game boyfriend dumping me because he was tired of seeing our relationship written on the page, well, a LOT of writers, particularly creative non-fiction writers, know all too well the inspiration and danger of mining their relationships for material.
It was these scenes that carried me through the tougher sections, and by tougher, I mean artificially tougher. Some missions will be enormously aggravating and send players running to the forums to shatter immersion because they can't figure out the most convoluted vent system in North America, or because they find themselves losing precious days to a wedged in fighting game that will find some players shouting at their screens, "CAN'T I JUST *BUY* THE STUPID TIRES!?!" Sections in the 4th act will require save-scumming to make any reasonable progress, and the angstier scenes that bookend the story will sometimes find your cursor lingering over "Shoot" longer than it probably should.
So, it's not a masterpiece, not quite a diamond in the rough, more a cubic zirconia in the gravel, but there are still scenes that will drive you to the next, questions to the story that will make you want to find the answers, and conflict jarring just enough to make you ignore the cheesiness. Going back through to try different choices is always an option for replayability, but personally, I found it a one-and-done.
Still, as Marla Singer said, "It's cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee."

Much like its predecessor, the only downside is the opening slog before they turn you loose. Doesn't have the jaw-dropping twist, but in my opinion, it didn't need it. We'll never get KotOR III, but one more trip on the Ebon Hawk always makes for a fun weekend.

A faithful redux of the SNES game with a huge library of community-created add-ons to keep the adventure going. Pretty good cyberpunk-noir writing, at least in the official adventures. Just don't pick up Unlimited if you've got anything to do that day.

A definite classic, engrossing story, and a third act that won't let you leave until it's done with you. The only gripe is, well, "Oh god, I gotta go through Taris AGAIN!?!"

Definitely not accurate, I get it, but it's a great game to play when you just want to veg, relax, and solve a couple problems that won't result in a $9000 repair bill.

I still don't get why people say this game is addictive.