Recent reviews by okcomputing

Great frontend for emulation that's chock-full of features. It may not have inbuilt downloading of addons like the standalone version, but the ability to store all your saves and configurations in the cloud is a net positive trade-off for that, if you ask me. Absolutely delighted with this synergy.

Update: 300-something hours later, this may just be my favorite software on Steam.

N++ is easily among the greatest platformers. Its controls are simple yet shockingly deep and satisfying to master. There are an almost endless number of excellent levels, both for singleplayer and co-op. Great soundtrack. Clean and easy to read visuals. There's not a lot more to say about it. It does everything right where it matters. A game of this caliber demands to be played.

Still nice looking and some of the puzzles it presents are neat, but its momentum-driven platforming doesn't feel particularly good in your hands and introduces a degree of variability that I didn't find enjoyable for a game in this genre. In addition to that, the play is frequently marred by unclear visual language, leading to progress by trial and error. All this mixed with questionable checkpointing and long death scenes makes Limbo's short run time more tiring to get through than it should be.

So far, this update has been really cool, and I like many of the changes it brings to the game, both small and large. Still haven't seen everything it has to offer (there's a ton!), but I'm enjoying my time with it. Lots of fun nooks to explore, things learn and build choices to make. I'm not entirely sold on everything they've done to it, but I definitely feel that it makes the gameplay richer overall.

The things that keep me interested in jumping back in each time are the variety in environments, the feeling of controlling your character, the cleverly designed combat and environmental challenges as well as the boss fights, and slowly putting together and improving a build. Those are at the heart of what makes it easy to overlook the things like UI inconsistencies, a somewhat narrow selection of certain weapon types, the unreliable map screen and fast-travel unlocking too late when its world so large. Usually, things like that tend to eat away at my enjoyment over time, but with Afterlife the opposite seemed to happen. As the game opened up, the things I was enjoying kept piling on and surprising me. If it keeps up that trajectory, it'll likely even end up as one of my favorites in the genre.

I'm also really impressed with White Rabbit's commitment to this game. Depending on how much traction this big overhaul gets, that may not have been the greatest choice for them, but for people who give Afterlife a go, there's a wealth of game to (re-)explore now with lots of clever additions that will appeal to fans of Souls-likes as well as metroidvanias, I think. It's a risky and generous move that I hope pans out for the studio.

Transcendental.

Another one of those cases where there's a major disconnect between my experience with a game and its general reception. Bluntly, if you stumbled upon VA-11 Hall-A in search of a mature or human story, I'd advise you to keep on looking.

VA-11 Hall-A really feels like a product of late 2000s internet culture as well as the certain areas of anime fandom that I'm personally not big on, i.e. expect for it to be specified how stacked or flat every female character is. Very simply, I found a lot of the writing somewhat tasteless and oversexed, and at times it comes across as if it was written by a teen thinking this is how adults must talk.

More broadly, the game's central story lacks focus and any sort of tension or momentum for me. Even taken as a slice of life sort of story, there's just not a lot that happens over the nineteen days this game takes place. Its characters are painted in very broad strokes, and I couldn't really connect to any of them.

I'll grant it that the ending was very close to being touching and gestured at a level of emotional maturity I did not expect -- of course, until an off-color jokey contrivance involving masturbation was inserted out of nowhere. That pretty much sums up VA-11 Hall-A.

The bartending gameplay didn't really hook me either. You're just clicking on ingredients to make a drink listed on a reference sheet, and if you don't pick the right ones you get penalized. There's not really any space for player creativity. It's a cool theme that I wished had more to it.

The soundtrack is excellent though. Worth a listen.

Yep, it's as awesome as it seemed all these years. The audiovisual and tactile feedback is really something else. Wonderful. Seems like there are a bunch of modes as well! Pure Tetris bliss, so far.

I also like the part where you're a fish in space and you can see other players (who are space fish too). Very cute.

I appreciate The Silver Case, but it is a fundamentally difficult and impenetrable work that left me more frustrated than anything.

When you're not struggling through its stilted writing (a product of its translation perhaps?), you're sitting through unimaginably slow transition animations. Without exaggerating, those transitions probably make up at least 40% of the game's run time.

In a way, it's kind of cool how this game will inch you closer to madness with each additional chapter you play. But for everyone who doesn't care to explore that specific niche, The Silver Case will make for an exhausting and unfulfilling way to spend your time.

Having said that, maybe give it a try and shoot it a few gamerbux when it's on sale anyway, because more crushingly experimental stuff should be given a second chance to find its audience.

Do I recommend it or not? Well, you know what they say; a person's history depends on the acceleration of their growth.

You heard me.

Astalon is an exceptionally fun metroidvania. My favorite thing is probably how snackable it is. You're constantly discovering new pathways, getting a new upgrade or finding new items. So each time you start it back up, you're bound to make some kind of progress.

The death mechanic adds an interesting extra wrinkle because it gets you think about optimal routes and things to check out on your way back to where you died. Even though you're sent back to the beginning of the castle upon death, the game doesn't devolve into excessive backtracking due to a multitude of shortcuts that let you skip over large areas of the map. So, at best, it challenges you to think about how to efficiently navigate its world; at worst, you're just a few moments away from getting back to where you were. Conveniently, each boss encounter has a way to quickly return to it. So, it's not Dark Souls or Hollow Knight levels of boss runs, and it's not a rogue-like either where you're reset back to square one.

As you defeat enemies, you gain a currency that's used for acquiring various unlocks that'll ease your quest and let you upgrade the characters' stats. Even if you don't spend them all, they carry over when you respawn. It mostly feels like a way to let you make some micro progress each run, so even when you messed up you get to go back in a little bit more powerful. I expected this aspect of it to be a greater point of friction, but it really wasn't -- more comfy than it is punishing.

Astalon's platforming and combat are just right in terms of challenge, I feel. Overall, it's a relatively easygoing experience as long as you stay on your toes and pay attention to traps and enemy attack patterns. At a more basic level, the play simply feels really good in your hands. Animations are mostly quick and cancellable, and your characters are very maneuverable. So even though it has that retro look and you'd expect a more rigid-playing game like classic Castlevania, it actually is very responsive

The world is quite large but not overwhelmingly so. Aside from being filled with lots of neat little trinkets and upgrades to find, the process of navigating its maze-like levels and figuring out each room's little combat or platforming challenges is very satisfying. Astalon gets fundamentals like this really well. It feels like the designers spent a lot of time looking at other highlights in platforming and search-action games, and then put a great deal of thought and work into fine-tuning the framework that the rest of the game's built around.

So yeah, a fun game top to bottom that's well worth the time and money. Don't let this one pass you by.

An absolute joy of a game. The combat is satisfying, its soundtrack is understated but warm and pleasant, the setting has been interesting, and there are lots of fun little secrets to find around the world. While it draws inspiration from Souls aesthetically, the game's also got plenty of character of its own. The one mark against it so far is that many of the hidden stuff feeds into a lackluster and overly incremental upgrade system. But at least finding these is fun in and of itself! So far, a no-brainer if you're itching for an action-adventure in the style of 2D Zelda.