ความคิดเห็น

• gamedeal user

  Oct 16, 2019

  Editing this review now that I've finished the game and I can say it's one of my favorites in a long time. Pros: -The game gives the player many mechanics to master so it never gets boring, and paces it well so they have a chance to learn them all before they need to have them mastered. -It feels massively vast but in a way that's not overwhelming. It reminds me somewhat of Hollow Knight when it opens up, areas are similar in size or even larger, with lots of options for where you can go at any one time. For the sake of pacing it also makes sure the previous parts are thoroughly explored before introducing anything especially open. -It reminds me of the 2D Metroids moreso than any other non-Metroid game, but in a way that is very distinctive and definitely not copying those games. There are some abilities that are similar to the ones in Metroid, but then there are also a lot of abilities that manipulate the environment or give it a unique feel in other ways. (The steam dash in particular is a great touch.) In addition, some people didn't like some of the controls for these abilities but they were just patched to be more intuitive and now I don't have any gripes with those things. -It's beautiful overall, the story's interesting and easy to follow even if you don't get too deep into it, but still complex and interesting enough to have substance for those who do want to really get into it. -The boss design is some of my favorite of any metroidvania ever. They're designed to take many attempts, but feel like you're making progress with each attempt so it never feels unfair. The final boss in particular is exactly what a final boss should be, a true test of the skills you've picked up over the course of the game in a really fair, even way rather than just throwing everything at the player. 2 particular bosses are unfortunately not intuitive at all but hopefully that will be fixed in an upcoming update as well, and once you do figure them out it's a nice aha moment. Cons: -Some parts can be a little bit confusing and hard to follow. It's mostly intuitive, so as long as you don't second guess yourself you're probably on the right track. Most of the time this isn't an issue. And even if you do go the wrong way once or twice that's part of the fun of it I think, and there are lots of ways it's made non-tedious. -The art can be a little bit samey because of the palette and the size of areas. Same thing with the music but I think it's more of an issue with the music because a single track is used across an entire area and if you're in that area for an hour or more then it can get monotonous. This was a bit frustrating to me as someone who tends to focus on the music but it's definitely not game-ruining. (UPDATE: After looking at the art on the kickstarter which was originally more varied but updated to be more consistent and stylized, and after finishing the game, I realize that the idea is for the art and music to set a tone that's carried and expanded upon as you progress. This works to great effect at a couple of points in particular but it mostly gives the game that feeling of being miles under the ocean and feels like it's in a distinctive world of its own. Both aspects grew on me a lot.) If you're a fan of 2D Metroids or Axiom Verge, or even other metroidvanias such as Hollow Knight, definitely check it out!
• gamedeal user

  Oct 21, 2019

  Outbuddies is a wonderful metroidvania game that takes inspiration both from metroid and Lovecraftian lore. As a great fan of both of these, I was initially drawn to the game because of that, but I stayed for the incredible exploration, gameplay and atmosphere. My favorite part of this game is that you are encouraged to go your own way: there are so many paths to take, often times even "unintentional" ones - you can use every ability in your arsenal to get to areas you otherwise would not currently be able to. This opens up a great deal of possibility of exploration, making the world feel vast, and sometimes, engulfing - the perfect feel for a metroidvania.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 21, 2021

  Impressive for a game mostly created by a single person. However, I didn't enjoy this one as much as I'd hoped. I liked: + Fresh lovecraftian, steam-punk underwater setting. + Soundtrack for the last sector, the ending sequence and the credit roll. + Colorful environments. + Oh, this moustache. So much gentleman. Such manly. So wow. I disliked: - Many gameplay elements have been lifted directly from other games (e. g. Metroid, Axiom Verge), but feel less snappy and polished here. - Where Outbuddies does something original (e. g. Buddy Mechanics, Underwater Strafing, Shoot-To-Morph, Steam Consumption), mechanics feel clumsy and even less sophisticated. For instance, asymmetric co-op means the Buddy Robot player has little to do apart from hacking an enemy here and there - while as a single player, you tediously need to switch between both characters where necessary. - Laggy, unresponsive controls with inconsistent cancel rules (e. g. turning vs jumping vs charging vs shooting) and little feedback (e. g. no sound on empty steam tank). - One-hit death traps that ignore i-frames. - Secrets are boring. It's just the occasional missile tank hidden behind a bomb-up wall that can only be revealed by tedious scanning. No creative hiding places. - Drab level design. Each room looks the same. There is no structure or sense of purpose to the levels or to individual rooms, just floating platforms and meandering cavern walls. Layout, in general, could be more tight, which would also remove the bland bridge sectors. - Backtracking is no fun: Connectivity is not great, so you end up replaying entire corridors multiple times. Every now and then, level design even actively keeps you from short-cutting with later powerups (e. g. spikes at ceilings keep you from skipping a room by morph ball). - Uninspired general soundtrack. - Several tedious bosses with heavy RNG influence, mainly the bullet sponge ones. The final boss takes around a hundred missiles to kill. - For a story that supposedly plays out under the sea, there are suprisingly few water mechanics: No flooding passages, no limited oxygen, no underwater currents.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 24, 2021

  Eeeugh this one's just really frustrating because I see the attempt at a good game here but it misses the mark so consistently it because frustrating and exhausting. Most notably I just don't like how many decisions were made to intentionally slow down the game; there's a run button, for one, which is completely unnecessary and only serves to mess with the platforming; the co-op mechanics bog down single player as you basically have to come to a complete stop, and then there's the block puzzles where, for literally no reason, blocks can rotate 360 degrees... and get stuck in places because of that. And... why is there SO MUCH SWIMMING and why is it SO SLOW, augh. There's a mid-game powerup that basically mandates you move at a snail's pace to not get instakilled. Early on the game also has a tendency to let you get far down a linear path only to gate you from progressing further with a door you can't get past, requiring you backtrack to find a different path instead - if it blocked you off a lot sooner it'd feel like a lot less time was wasted. As for other, non-timewastig issues I had... the bosses are inconsistent, some of them are fun but there's a few puzzle bosses where the puzzle is just not clear at all and even then when you figure it out the boss still doesn't feel fair - the moxan sheep and nocturne in particular are the biggest offenders, though the latter also has the problem of feeling like there's always one too many things on screen at once, an issue buluc also shares. Oddly the final boss was one of the most satisfying to fight because it didn't fall into any of those traps and actually required learning patterns, when to attack, how to dodge stuff etc. I also felt like the bubble mechanic went a bit underused - I got it and then used it for the rest of its area, then promptly never needed to use it ever again after that because any utility it gives is outclassed by the time you get the weapon that lets you climb walls. This is also minor, but the game feels weirdly zoomed-in? Going to look at youtube videos of the pre-DX version you had a -lot- more screen space which helped with platforming, bosses, etc. (and the map, too, is very, very zoomed in - and kind of arcane to understand at times, though 100% collection is not at all required for any reason regardless. I also felt the escape sequence was.... kinda lame, considering about 66% of it is done by literally touching no buttons. The graphics are... nice but suffer from the same problem as axiom verge where they're all kind of just pixel gibberish in different colors, there's not a great sense of atmosphere (and the music barely changed up between areas, it felt like - swear I was hearing the same three or so songs the entire game). There's some minor lore in the game but I'll be honest I still have no clue what the actual plot is, and neither of the two protagonists get even a shred of personality after the opening cutscenes either. There's definitely things this game does that I did like - the scan feature is cool for both looking ahead and finding secrets, the game avoids a damage creep scenario by straight up never altering your health meter - everything is either instakill or deals one damage, you will always have 5 health max, health refills are plentiful & exploration grants you more health refills in bosses, etc. - and all the different weapons have their utilities in combat, though the mechanism for switching between them can feel a bit clunky at times. The game also feels just the right size - a pretty big map that never feels overwhelming or drawn out, enough side-branches to feel explorative though it ultimately does end up kind of linear overall - and the wall climb powerup in particular feels -really- good without completely breaking the game's platforming either. While I do think the game has enough flaws and frustrations such that I can't really recommend it, especially over other, better metroidvanias in a similar vein - check out Environmental Station Alpha in particular for the same kind of very metroid-esque experience done much, much better - I don't think it's among the worst metroidvanias or even a particularly bad game in general, just that it felt kind of mediocre overall? Ehh. Check it out if you're desperate for metroidvanias, I guess.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 6, 2022

  Absolutely ruined by a misleading, inaccurate and at best barely-legible map. Outbuddies ensures you'll spend hours looking for pickups the game tells you you've already found, missing tiny rooms indiscernible amongst obnoxiously-placed map icons, and a mini-map drawn to a baffling and unreadable scale. Avoid.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 20, 2020

  It started out pretty fun. The controls felt a little stiff, but the gameplay made up for it. I love this genre. This game however about halfway through just became really tedious. As the map got bigger and bigger, you never knew which way you were supposed to go. You get an ability that allows you to progress to the next area, so you look at your map and see the paths you could not take before. One out of five possibilities could be the right way. Since there is not objective marker, you pick one that seems right and move out across the map. It takes you a while to get there, but you finally arrive and...you picked incorrectly. The power up you obtained doesn't help you through that obstacle. Try again. So now you have to pick another potential path and travel all the way over there. It's a whole lot of backtracking. They tried to mediate this annoying gameplay feature by implementing portals, but they were scattered in weird places and rarely were actually useful at shortening the distance you needed to cross. For this reason alone, I cannot recommend it. EDIT: I will admit that the art style was very nice in this game. I really enjoyed the Lovecraftian aesthetic all the bosses had. Definitely very well done in the visuals department. 5/10
• gamedeal user

  Sep 20, 2021

  There's immaculate emulation of the early age of metroidvania on display and the love is evident. However, I think this is the kind of game that gets a lot of its difficulty from dodgy controls. There's a visible trend in indie game to add in purposefully poor controls or menus in order to stay true to the inspirations, but there's better ways to nod to the giants upon whose shoulders you stand and it's always writing. I understand that there's an audience for this, but I lived through terrible ghosting, cheap controller boards, and menus that you needed the instruction manual to understand. And I know they understand that some things were not to be saved from the old catalogs as you instantly respawn after death at the door of the room in which you died. Ultimately, this game is not something I will continue playing, which grieves me some as the pixel art is delightful, but the traversal is really boring and the monster fights aren't much fun.
• gamedeal user

  May 24, 2020

  Can't really recommend Outbuddies. Only gave it a half hour but I was thoroughly lost with the number of controls and button combinations dumped on me within the first few minutes of gameplay. It's got a neat atmosphere but there was too much wrong with it for me to put more time into it. For a platformer, the controls feel very stiff for no appreciable reason. Clicking the button to fire your weapon usually fired it but sometimes just wouldn’t or would fire a half second late. Jump air control exists but its clunky; changing direction, again, felt clunky like I needed to be pushing the button a half second earlier. 'Buddy' is a neat concept but, in practice, it's just a bad break in the flow of the game to switch to an entirely different camera and set of controls to move blocks around or scan around a room. The game isn’t all that readable either, there are lots of games I've played and liked with the simplistic pixilated art style but this one in particular is very muddled and easy to get lost in. The menu isn’t good, the text has translation/tensing problems, some of the tutorials were confusing… it's just overall lacking a couple months of polish to make it playable. It's got some charm and potential but can't say you should spend your money on it.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 29, 2021

  [h1] 𝕊𝕥𝕖𝕒𝕞 𝕄𝕖𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕚𝕕 𝕚𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕝𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝕠𝕗 "𝕨𝕙𝕠𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕠𝕞𝕖". [/h1] If you're looking for a metroidvania, in the real sense of the word, then look no further than Outbuddies DX. This metroid clone will you bring all of your childhood memories back into focus as you slide, jump, double jump and jetpack burst your way into the unknown. Prepare yourselves, however, as this is no mere stroll in the park. The game puts you in the shoes of Nikolay, a scientist who was travelling on his "cruise-looking" plane when he was suddenly struck down by lightning. After drowning in the vast ocean, Nikolay gets resurrected by the BUDDY... The BUDDY is a bio-mechanical engineering unit that's attached to Nikolay's brain and organs, which allows him to resurrect when nothing too major has been inflincted to his physique. The thing is, after resurrecting, Nikolay finds himself stranded in an underwater facility called Bahlam... a place inhabited by mutant creatures who are in a perpetual battle against the Wozan, a tribe of weird looking ninjas who do nothing but hide and/or are enslaved to work in mines. The Wozan prophecy states that one creature from the surface world (that'd be you) will come to liberate the Wozan from the shackles of enslavement and release Bahlam into oblivion. The gameplay is amazing... you'll soon enough find yourself feeding the Metroid-hungry 10 year old inside of you all the exploration he or she might crave. This 7 hours long game will have you hooked. The bosses are quite unique (each of them has a different way to defeat, like Uncle Topa that you have to redirect his bombs back to, by double jumping into them), the different gadgets you get throughout Bahlam are very reminiscent of Sammus' old tools and the level design is breathtaking. The BUDDY is also a huge mechanic of the game as it can hack, explore, find hidden treasures, carry objects into levers etc... which makes him exponontially indispensable. A partner can also plug in a controller to control the BUDDY; I did so with my brother and we had so much fun... I would run and gun and he would run out to solve puzzles and find Missile upgrades. This is a MUST-BUY for all Metroid fans. It's a 9.8/10 Indie game that was clearly made out of love for Sammus' fans... and although Nikolay doesn't talk much and the lore isn't as expanded as Metroid's, the game offers a fun adventure for a couple of hours for you and your friends to enjoy. Moreover, if you're feeling hardcore, you can also try your hands at the Boss Rush mode after you finish the game (which will make you cry, I promise you that lol).
• gamedeal user

  Dec 31, 2022

  The visuals are great, the controls are fine and something you can get used to, but the game punishes you for doing stuff out of order. You fall down one pit to discover two missing tiles on the map and then you have to repeat an hour-long journey to grab a third orb that levels up your hacking. You should've grabbed it BEFORE you decided to drop down that hole. You probably remember water levels and clunky and slow movement underwater in other metroidvanias right? Well there's a lot of that here. The game simply becomes tedious. I really wanted to like it but I simply cannot, nor recommend it.