Recent reviews by shrewdlogarithm

It's a video game - an actual video game - in 2022""

Moreover, it's fun, challenging and topped with a layer of deep, sugary bonkers (which is skippable if you don't like bonkers but it's so bonkers it's actually fun!)

Stop reading, pay up, play the thing

It's an OK idea which looks quite nice but it's MASSIVELY frustrating to play because it lacks basic features you'd expect of a game and that makes it unfun to play.

Biggest problem - you cannot save! If you leave a puzzle your solution is wiped (completed or not) - I don't even know where to start with how silly that is...

There are high-scores for each level (when you find them - like many things they're not really obvious) - but as your solution is wiped forever when you move-on, why would you bother?

Laying pieces is frustrating - there are some hotkeys (which it tells you ONCE in the tutorial and never mentions them again/they can't be customised either) but picking and laying pieces is LOTS of clicking which makes solving puzzles slow and not that much fun

The rules for how vehicles find routes aren't really that clear and require some experimentation (and even then the 'ghost' tiles in junctions don't really make sense)

Basically it needs a TONNE of quality-of-life features to make it fun to play - until it gets those, I'd maybe give it a miss...

You don't need me to tell you it's GoTY 2022 and - frankly - in any year you choose...

This game is mostly fun and enjoyable but a couple of things keep driving me away from playing it/make it hard to recommend

1 - Boss fights can spawn in "impossible" locations - which is REALLY frustrating - they could throw a warning to help you avoid this but they don't and that sucks...

2 - the upgrade tree is a mess which gets harder and harder to navigate as you progress - there's no respec - some things are more harm than good - it's just weird...

3 - challenges exist which are fun BUT they are often made impossible by RNG - the way upgrades roll is weird in a "5 heads and no tails" kinda way e.g. it's random but it's also crap...

So it's a good game but it could be better and as it's released I guess it is what it is now...

Whilst this is a polished-looking Pool game, it's weirdly unfinished and not really much fun-to-play.

Ball aiming/firing/movement is 'treacle' slow and you have to wait for the ball to trickle to a halt after each shot - like no-one bothered PLAYING the game after making it?

Controls are keyboard or joypad and cannot be customised - only keyboard controls are shown on-screen that I noticed.

No graphics options whatsoever and it lacks any sort of fps control so you'll cook your GPU playing 800fps Pool (you can force VSync in the nVidia Control Panel - not sure for AMD??)

I cannot work-out how you make such a slick-LOOKING game but fail to put any - erm - GAME into it?

I really, really wanted to like this but it just misses the mark in too many ways.

I've used Regex for decades so I wasn't impressed to discover useful functions gated behind a "do it the hard way first" system

Who then decided to not sync the scrolling - WHY WOULD YOU NOT DO THAT!?

Who decided to use a non-fixed-space font and/or not offer some highlighted for whitespace?????!

The puzzles go south really quickly too - I think it's the 4th puzzle in (the Heart) which starts the rot - it's impossible to see spaces, \s behaves erratically (removing carriage returns 'sometimes??'

In the end the solution is a mix of "counting characters" and guessing - zero sense of satisfaction in that - and the puzzles generally fall into "way too easy" and "fiddly and awkward".

Note: I also notice questions and issues in discussions are met with "we've asked a developer to take a look at that" and no response ever comes back - so we can assume it's dead at this point and therefore it's a "Not Recommended" from me

It starts-out pretty simple and you - as I did - MIGHT think it's a bit basic BUT as you advance (and realize how the tiered requirements work) it gets a LOT more interesting...

It's a 100% 'pure optimisation' factory game and I really like it - you might also!!

Insomniac have made some AMAZING games - this isn't one of them...

Even if you ignore the "XBOX Brah"' style (and it's EVERYWHERE) the game is wonky with an unhelpful camera, wobbly movement and a general feeling of 'just throw loads of things in and hope they all stick"

It's also prone to frequent crashes and savefile corruption as well as not being short of bugs inbetween those events.

I got it for <$5 and I reckon I barely got my money's worth before I gave-up at the third savefile-corruption

Do Microsoft really think this is what every gamer wants - a noise/overbright mess of a game which needed another month of QA at least?

I love Mini Metro but it is a bit "Slowwww - Quick - Quickerrrrr - DEAD" and I was hoping this might be a bit more 'strategic'

Good News - it is, there's a definite "planning stage - execution stage - repeat" thing going-on in the midgame - you can SOMETIMES see problems before they happen and you have a few more tools to work with...

This mean it's more "Slow(*) - Plan-Execute-Plan-Execute - Get confused - DEAD!"

It's fun - it really needs a 'zoom' tool for some bits (esp junctions under motorways) and the traffic sometimes does silly things which can quickly scupper you

It's better than MM as a game - if not being a 'living map' tho!

(*) I'd pay for faster startup on some maps - it really does take 1-2 mins before anything happens...

Too many recent 'sim' or 'tycoon' games have favoured graphics and 'realism' over actual gameplay - this game doesn't and I really appreciate that...

Progression here is 'do jobs to earn money to get better jobs' but the world itself is just nice to explore and the train feels "just right"

There's some stuff missing still but that's EA for you - the VR elements whereby manuals and jobs are sheets of paper/books actually works even without VR - the non-VR controls are a LITTLE clunky but you get-the-hang soon enough

Lovely thing just to potter around in on a Sunday afternoon!