7. Needy Streamer Overload (2022)
Solid concept. Awful, bumbling execution. It avoids saying anything meaningful about mental health or escapism. It's only interested in mental illness as an 𝒶𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓉𝒾𝒸 which makes every other attempted aspect run in tiny circles before it decides the "route" is over.
Solid concept. Awful, bumbling execution. It avoids saying anything meaningful about mental health or escapism. It's only interested in mental illness as an 𝒶𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓉𝒾𝒸 which makes every other attempted aspect run in tiny circles before it decides the "route" is over.
Comments
Very forgettable. The only thing I wrote in my notes is "it's odd that a game with (allegedly) several thousand collectibles regularly trips over itself when you go through a dungeon a second time to get things you missed".
Cute slice of life episode that I enjoyed even though I can't personally relate to it. Somehow Jade continues to have my favorite scenes even when she doesn't physically appear.
There's so much going on here and it's all great. I didn't try survival horror for so long because the only thing that scares me in games was losing my progress. Eventually I realized games are designed 𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗳 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗲 around this fear.
The setting and aesthetics are great but the story itself seemed really unfinished and under-realized; I'm talking a whole Zero Time Dilemma. The evil company's evil plan was putting a bunch of concrete blocks in an empty plot of land and teaching the cops how to do parkour.
Mechanically it's shabby (jumps completely change depending on the environment, most of the collectibles are invisible and placed with little to no hint) but I really like that the story itself works as a puzzle. If you play this I recommend taking notes, that's the real game here.
Solid metroidvania. I thought it was a very odd choice to let you forever warp to any room in the game at any point (with rare exceptions). I think this decision resulted in more repetitive level design patterns than necessary, but the formula works enough to handle it.