Recent reviews by jello ツ

Sweet and short little detective… ducktective?… deducktion!… game.

Bought and played this game on three platforms now [Switch, Xbox, Steam]. Simple premise and pretty great execution. Can get quite tricky and occasionally a bit too random, but if it flows it flows well.

One of the best detective games.

Of the two ‘Mini Mobility’ games [this should actually be this series’ compound name], ‘Motorways’ is probably the easier one, ultimately. After all, I’ve gotten all the achievements for it, whereas ‘Metro’s harder achievements elude me to this day. It’s got a bit of a steeper learning curve, though. But once you wrapped your head around all the new elements and rules, you’ll love this one as much as you do ‘Mini Metro’. A very good continuation without just doing the same thing again.

The best way to play the first ‘Half-Life’ these days. And probably the only way you should even bother.

Don’t. Just don’t. Especially the season pass!

If there’s a better example of wasted potential than this game, I don’t wanna know. From the fact that there are – apparently – six episodes planned, with the second being the last to be released five years on, to the seedy ’80s and conspiracy-theories setting being used only rather superficially, this game could – nay, should! – be so much better. Sure, everything the devs could think of was put into a bucket and the bucket spilt over a framework one could call a game, but coherent this is not.
The controls are awkward, with neither mouse-&-keyboard nor gamepad feeling particularly good. And the bugs! There are instances where you can simply get stuck in a level which you have to remedy by reloading [or completely restarting a chapter, if you’re unlucky]. Level progress and achievements don’t necessarily trigger when they should. And it gets worse from chapter to chapter, which given Chapter 0 seems nigh impossible.

I’ve paid around 3 or 4 € for both released episodes and even at that price it’s barely not worth it. So, yeah, don’t buy this. Don’t play it. As it stands in 2020, it’s not worth it. Quadruply so for the season pass, since four sixths of it aren’t even released after all these years [and it’s questionable whether it will ever happen].

If you liked the first ‘OFDP’, it should be a no-brainer whether you want this game or not. You do.

If you haven’t played the first one, I’m not entirely sure whether it’d be better to start with the first one or this. Some of the new elements in ‘OFDP2’ could be a bit overwhelming, but it’s also a bit more streamlined, so you can get into the game more easily. That doesn’t mean the game’s easy, though.

In the level “High Rise”, you can throw people out of the windows of the titular high rise. GotY!

Telltale’s best work to date. If you’re fatigued by their “formula”, this will renew your enthusiasm for episodic games. Mixing the drama you’d expect [and lo, does it have that!] with the ‘Borderlands’ series’ humour and adding unreliable narrators was a stroke of genius.

Do yourself a favour and play it.

On a technical level, this game might be bad. Its controls are clunky with neither gamepad nor mouse/keyboard feeling particularly good; workable, yes, but not at all good. Its collision detection bugs out every now and then, getting the player character stuck in level geometry or having you miss a jump that you really didn’t miss. [Although, the other way around as well, so… yay?] Add the odd crash to the mix and you’d have a game I cannot recommend.

Yet: It’s a good game. And I’d even go as far as to say: an important game. When was the last time you played a game about something, anything related to Alaskan indigenous people? Never? Thought so. Having a window -- as small as it might be -- into a culture you probably don’t think about that often, if at all, is important in a medium and an industry which too often relies on the same viewpoints.

It’s a re-telling of an Iñupiat myth in form of a difficult [as mentioned, sometimes for the wrong reasons], not too difficult, and charming puzzle-platformer that has so much heart put into it. In short: It’s a flawed gem.
Also, one look at Nuna’s and the fox’s animations will put the biggest smile on your face and make you forget the game’s shortcomings. Promise.