Recent reviews by Pastor of Muppets

Awesome game so far. The dev has made a lot of very good design decisions that really move things along and make the experience fun instead of frustrating.

I like the idea, but the game is just too easy as it stands today. Concentrate on constructing a long train of rooms to the Heart with as many multiple exit rooms as possible and you will buy enough time to defeat the intruders 9 times out of 10. The ability to send even the Stonemasons to random rooms can force them to make the long trek twice, which is basically a death sentence for them if you have any idea what you're doing (again, only 9 out of 10 times, since there's always a chance that the random room chosen by the game will be close by, or the Heart itself, whereas that chance is minimized if you have lots of rooms).

And that's the problem: the game comes down to a roll of the die. If you beat the odds, which are excellent if you play properly, you'll win. If not, you'll lose, and it won't really be your fault because you only lost to a die roll. It's just a matter of designing the house properly and making sure you don't kill any intruders in rooms close to the front door in order to maximize your chances. In fact, deliberately killing someone in the room right before the Heart is an excellent thing to do, as it makes anyone who sees them turn around and trudge all the way back to the front door instead.

But this is a demo and not the full game, so things may improve by the time it's released. There's fun to be had for awhile even in its current state, so at a low enough price point many may find it worthwhile. That's why I'm giving it a thumb's up even though it has serious problems: I did enjoy myself, and that's the whole point of gaming, right?

If you were to run across a computer screen in Rapture, this is the game you'd find on it. Great little keep-all-the-factions-happy urban puzzler for your five bucks, the best part being that you can't really lose. You never feel like you're under crazy pressure to be perfect. I'm a big fan of games like that, because Lord, am I a dumb*ss. Five thumbs up.

I really like the game, but there's not enough Cthulhu stuff. I mean, there are all the usual cut scenes, splash screens, and flavor text when something significant happens, and that's all great, but during the long stretches of normal gameplay there's very little other than a few of the building designs and the audio to remind you that you're governing a colony of weirdo cultists. I'd like to be able to zoom in and see my cultists acting strangely, for example, but for the most part they act like any other laborers in any other builder, which invites the criticism some are offering that this is just a reskinned Anno. I'm far from concluding that myself because I'm only 5 hours in, but the fact remains that I would like to feel more of the Cthulhu vibe in the regular game environment.

I'm also disappointed that my terrifying, seagoing eldritch horrors can be punked by sailboats...

If you enjoy games like X-COM and Warhammer, good for you. This game is nothing like them.

This game is an unnerving, unsettling philosophical encounter with reality itself--a kind of Hegelian struggle between tower and man, resulting (not to give too much away) in a quasi-Nietzchean synthesis of the "Towerman". Yeah, I know, it's a lot to wrap your head around, but it's worth it 'cause your head's shaped funny anyway. Trust me, this game will stay with you long after you've tried to lock it out of the house. (I already tried throwing my bucket of water at it...)

Needless to say, I found the thirty or so hours I invested in Cloud Climber deeply satisfying, as I find hallways confusing. The stairs posed a significant challenge for me. True mind giants will likely not need to consult a walkthrough, but I'm working on one anyway in order to help out the less gifted, like myself. (Note: in order to open doors, you need to point at them and click. Ok? It's not as hard as it sounds once you see the principle.)

I would recommend this game to everybody, because I don't know them. Just be prepared to have your brain turned into a pretzel with mustard by the insane twists and turns of the plot. This game seems like it was written by a dozen wizened lawn gnomes dancing on the head of a school janitor, all the while collecting the stream of 0's and 1's issuing from his twisted, lifeless mouth. Seriously. It's that good.

10 1/2 stars. (I'm taking a half star off for the f*** of it)

If you can stomach doing nothing but walking around triggering pseudo-cutscenes and turning on radios (OMG are there radios...), then this is the game for you. It is stunningly beautiful --think The Vanishing of Ethan Carter--and the voice-acting is the best I think I've every heard. It's true acting, not just somebody rotely reciting lines into a microphone. The music quality is great, although some of it seemed a bit mismatched to the segment it accompanied. The story for me started veeery slowly, then ramped up considerably midgame and got interesting, and then...well, you'll probably either really like the ending or feel a little underwhelmed, as I did. As for the length, it took me six hourse, but trust me, it felt like 20. I kinda doubt your mileage will vary...

There's not much else to tell, other than that you'll want to enable the Beta patch so you can manually save at every ingame map instead of fighting the original nightmare of a save system. Oh, and you can run, but keep in mind that it takes a few slow seconds to get up to speed, something I kind of liked since it made running seem more realistic.

The most important thing to take away from this lilttle review: I gave it a thumbs-up because of what I, personally, like, but if you're an action fan, DO NOT even consider buying this game. Your word processor features more action than this thing does.

This was a hard call, but ultimately I felt the game was just too lazy to be fun. It seems like it was made by a team of talented graphic artists moonlighting as game developers.

It's not that the gameplay was bad. It was just mundane. You just run around a ship. Literally. Except when you're walking. And you don't do it freely, but only as you're directed to by the NPCs. I mean, there are huge areas that you can walk around in and look at things, but it's all pointless until the game directs you to do something. (That's not completely true of the first part of the game, but it is completely true of the latter part; it's as if the devs changed their minds halfway through about how they wanted to proceed.)

As for all the obligatory things lying around for you to read and look at: at first, you have the feeling that, just like with Bioshock and similar games, these are meant to unfold the plot for you. However, eventually you realize that all it's really meant to do is earn you (entirely optional) achievements. If you don't care about the achievements, about 90% of the crap you run across isn't worth wasting your time on (violating the initial spirit of the game--more on that in a moment).

The plot itself unfolds more or less in realtime around you, with your responsibility being mainly to flip switches and run footraces with electricity monsters and the occasional knife-wielding lunatic (don't ask). There are lots of footraces, and they are all exactly the same: if you've played the game Mafia and remember the infamous car race, you know exactly what to expect. Luckily, these are not as difficult or as long as the car race, but they are every bit as pointless and off-putting. No one bought Close To The Sun because they wanted to play Achilles vs. the Hare. But you'll be playing that a lot, and when you lose--as you will often--you'll be yawning through unskippable death cutscenes.

Now for the spirit of the game: in the end, the game fails because its main reason for existing is the (Bioshockesque, Tesla-inspired) environment, which (notably, in the later stages of the game) the devs end up forcing you to race through without giving you any time to stop and smell the electromagnetic coils. It's like inviting someone to a party and then rushing them out of the house. What exactly was the point? In this case, the point is that the devs seemed to run out of architectural ideas, so instead of putting any effort into designing several distinctive engine rooms and whatnot, they went with the one they had and relied on rushing you through it before you could realize that that was all there was.

As for the plot, I'm still not exactly sure what was going on with some of it--the whole mad slasher thing came across as just ridiculous--yet at the same time it ended up being so simplistic as to be almost insulting. There was no real mystery surrounding any of it, other than how Nikola Tesla acquired the billions of 19th century dollars it would have cost to build such a mammoth ship in the first place. The ending, which was supposed to be the big payoff for the player's endurance of the game's many sins, was especially terse and unrewarding...almost a slap in the fact after all the teasing that preceded it.

A word on the audio: the voice-acting was tolerable-to-good, but the volume level seemed to vary on its own at different points in the game. In the beginning, Rose can't whisper without hurting your ear drums, but then if you adjust the level in the options, you find yourself straining to hear her in the next section. I ended up surrendering and just taking the pain. The music, as little of it as there was, wasn't grating or intrusive, which is my gold standard for games, so chalk up a win here. And the graphics, of course, were...well, you've seen them, so you already know whether you'll like them or not. One thing to note, however: nothing much changes from what you've seen. In Bioshock, there was a general art deco theme, but different environments had their own visual "take" on it. In Close To The Sun, what you see at the beginning is pretty much what you'll see all the way through.

The controls were simple: WASD + space + mouse. That's it. And that's a good thing, because it's all you need (there's exactly one spot where the space bar--bunnyhop--is needed, and I'm not positive it's needed; I just never tried not using it there). I wish the game had gone full SOMA and featured sneaking, in which case other controls would be necessary, but since it didn't, these minimalist controls are ideal. No fuss, no muss. In most cases, tricky moves like edging along a balcony or shimmying under things are accomplished by clicking on an icon,

Okay, so that's all I can think of to tell you. I didn't hate the game, but it's not one I can unreservedly say was worth the time I spent on it. As always, YMMV.

Not my cup of tea. I would have been perfectly happy with a relatively calm game of "repair the space thingies" in zero G. But all of the timed crap turns me off. Others will love it. It's not like it's a bad game, it's just not something I'm particularly enjoying, so I'm moving on.

This game is a masterpiece, pure and simple. It's one of only a very, very few games I would give that title.

Is it perfect? No. As with any game, there will be things players can find to nitpick and complain about in the moment. I was no different while I was playing. But is there anything that should keep you from playing it to the end, or which will make you feel one bit angry or cheated if you do? NO. In fact, if you allow that to happen you will be cheating yourself of one of the greatest interactive experiences ever coded, if not the greatest.

I am not going to describe SOMA any further. The ideal way to play it is with no preconceived expectations, as I did. Unfortunately, it's obvious you already have some, since you're here reading player reviews, looking at screenshots, and reading the marketing blurbs. But if I had my way I'd rip all of that out of your head, tie you to your chair, and just hit PLAY. You only get one first chance at SOMA. Make it the best experience possible.

No matter what they're charging for it, go play it, right now. You can thank me later.