Recent reviews by SpikeTheBear

Damn hit me in the feels

CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS

The story is a ride, i did not expect such a fleshed out story with such satisfying moments along with my
favorite villain from any Indiana Jones medium to come from this game.

I was cautiously optimistic about this game since i grew up on the movies and have loved the idea of going on Indys adventures for many years. But i am pleasantly surprised how much effort actually went into the story. Considering how the story for the latest movie was a lot worse in my opinion.

The voice actors did a GREAT job. Especially Sturmbandfuhrer Emmerich Voss (With TWO m's and S's)
I loved this character, the way he articulates himself is so imposing at every moment. The way he can loose his temper but always keeps it in check JUST enough to be even scarier. Especially the scene where he gets threatened by his superior. He is seemingly getting tossed around but he still somehow is in control. Just planting the seeds to eventually come out on top even if it means getting threatened and insulted right now.

The story as a whole had everything i want from a indiana jones movie and i personally really enjoy when they lean into the supernatural side of things. The order and locations were satisfying to me.

The visuals were great, but i am not a fan of being forced to use raytracing. The performance was still quite good in the first half of the game (90fps avg). But the second half my gpu had a lot more trouble keeping up (60fps avg)(6800xt maxed settings first half, down to medium second half of the game).

The locations looked amazing and i think all of them had their place. The exploration and design of the dungeons and maps was no issue to me. I think ghiza was a lot of running but that was the only thing i really thought about.

Now after singing all its praises the time comes for the not as great things. The gameplay portion. The combat is servicable, and you can get some neat percs that you find by exploring but this was nothing that got me personally very interested. I could spam myself though most encounters with regular enemies and it was not bad. But not something i love. The stealth portions were fun, but they suffer from the usual amnesia and dumb npc's as many other stealth games and it is quite difficult to get away from without making the experience frustrating so i cut them some slack there. I tried to mainly stick to stealth but i had quite the body count in the end still as i did not have the patience to do everything stealthely.

Now while they had a few puzzles that were interesting. I think most of them suffer from being too simple. They did not require going back for things or remembering things. They were basically all one room things where you had everything in front of you and most of the time it was not very difficult or obscure to figure out what. For ancient dungeons that noone has figured out for hundreds or thousands of years i would have loved for there to be a lot more involved and challenging puzzles. This is my main complaining point that together with the rest of the not super engaging gameplay implementations docks one star form this game.

Back to some things i loved. The ice ship location was absolutely genious. That is the most insane video game location i have seen in a while. The snake temple was absolutley amazing and the most fun dungeon i think.

Overall bug wise it was not that bad. I had a few visual glitches and charakters moving in awkward ways in the early game but nothing major. However during the plane section of the game i flew off the plane a bunch and had to restart the game because it would just fly me into the water where i died repeatedly. Admittedly quite frustrating but it was fixed with a reboot so not the worst. I had a lot of objects fly around randomly at times in some areas. A bit random but like before nothing that ruined the experience.

There seems to be a decent amount of side content aswell but i didnt dive into it that much. I did some side things and stuck mostly to the main story. Finished in about 20h

Now i think i have talked about all the major things i wanted to mention after just beating the game. Final thoughts, an amazing game that could have been even greater with more focus put on the gameplay side of things. But it is a must play for any indiana jones enthusiasts out there, and if you havent played the game i kinda hope you didn't read all this because thats a lot of spoilers haha.

Thanks for reading my rambling and Happy new year :)

If you like dodging stuff or liked helltaker give it a try.

If i find that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ playing this game with me im gonna go to his house and punc... hug him

Dead god or no balls

Lone fungus!
Tldr: Fun platforming challenges, great exploration and abilites, lacking bosses and skill expression in combat.
PS: If you don't like bosses rolling over start on hard mode instead of normal.

An enjoyable metroidvania that focuses a lot on exploration, freedom and collecting a bunch of items. There are bosses but personally i think they are one of the weaker aspects of the game. The progression basically allows you to just go any way you like at any point with very few hindrances. You'll come across items you cannot collect and the occasional dead end but it really felt like i could just wander and get lost basically wherever my heart desired.

It has little structure except some hints of where to find mushrooms that can help guide you on your way. And i quite liked that honestly. The story is told by talking to mushroom statues or reading tablets around the world. Story wise it is very basic and i think the reason for that is to complement the very open ended nature of the game. I personally would have liked some more story events as at times it felt like i was exploring for the sake of exploring. Kind of loosing my purpose and drive if i wandered too much. There were some reminders when talking to statues where they would tell you but there was no real feel of urgency at any point. That can be both a good and a bad thing i suppose. It made many things more relaxed but also slightly less meaningful.

However there are a TON of items scattered across the map and it is packed to the brim with stuff to find. So the large map never felt empty to me. One of the most fun things to find are these teleportation gates that take you into the loopyland dimension where there is an obstacle course to complete to grab some type of shard(still don't know what they are for after the first ending) These are some of the most fun i had in the game because they can actually get challenging and they use the movement abilities you collect in unique ways. I have not beaten all of them yet but they let you combine and use most of your abilities maybe not to the fullest. But far enough for me to be pretty satisfied. And i think the genius part about them being in a different dimension is that the obstacle courses do not clutter up the map. If they were laid out across the map then backtracking would become much more of a tedium i believe. So these are great!

Now for some of the things i did not like as much. The bosses, there are quite a few bosses scattered around the map and finding one was always a positive interaction. The problem i have with the bosses is that they are too easy and too similar to each other. Now that they were too easy is a very subjective statement and im not trying to boast that im the ultimate gamer or something here but the problem is that you get a ton of really creative abilities and movement options. But the bosses barely challenge you to use any of them. You can beat most of the bosses with your basic loadout at the start of the game. And this is a huge missed opportunity i think. The warp gates with obstacle courses did a much better job of pushing the movement abilities then the bosses did pushing the combat abilities. And i think this is a huge opportunity to improve the next game that is in development. Some of the arenas had some platforms and spikes. But so many of the bosses ended up being a blob that you can pogo on that shoots a few bullets your way in a half assed attempt to kill you. In my opinion they need to get a lot more agressive, intimidating, and varied. (like the last boss, that one was actually great) I understand that i am asking for impossible standards from a solo developer here. But just a step in the right direction could make a huge difference in how satisfying it is to beat that boss. Another note is that i played on the normal(recommended) difficulty. If you plan on playing this game and think hollow knight has a good difficulty i would highly recommend starting with the hard difficulty instead. This is something i regret and might have changed my opinion on the bosses a bit. The issues about them being similar and not promoting the use of the new abilities and charms(sorry relics) still persists however and i think that this is the games biggest major weakpoint.

I liked the music, it was nice to listen too. Most of the tracks did not get tedious even after listening to them for a while and they fit the mushroomy cozy low threat enviroment of the game. One nitpick i have is that the music for sitting at a savepoint is amazing, BUT it cuts off after you leave the save point. If i got to hear the full save jingle even if i just stopped by a save for 1 second to heal. That would make my brain do many happy chemical.

Some of the dialogue did not flow as part of the world and felt like "go grab item x because reason y" and that is hard to avoid completely but i always like when games mask this well.
In conclusion i loved this game. I had a great time and i am excited to see what the developer decides to do with the second game.

Good game

Fun

Really fun game. Im not good with words, but the voiceacting, visuals and gameplay combine into this really nice concoction of goodness. They recommend a controller but personally what brought this game to life for me even more was the mouse and keyboard controls. Allowing you to hit one way and run the other makes so much sense in my head.

Really fun game. If you enjoy pixel art and a good metroidvania i highly recommend this game