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Legend · Jun 12, 2025, 06:48 AM

Quote from: kitler53 on Jun 04, 2025, 12:17 PMi finished the entropy center last night.

not great. the mood and writing were pretty good even if highly adjacent to portal 2. but the puzzles were just not great. the core mechanic was to rewind time on an object. i feel like literally every puzzle had the same answer:
- place object in reverse order of need
- rewind object

i had some puzzles that took me a long time (easy to know since they put a timer into the game). but it was never because i didn't figure out what to do quickly. i had a lot of trouble with:
- over rewinding an object just a smidge
- missing the jump pad

in both cases it meant i needed to start the entire puzzle again since puzzles are so order dependent.

Just finished the game. Huh, I had the exact opposite feelings.

I saw you didn't think it was great but I avoided the rest of your post. For me the puzzles were better than the story. The puzzles were almost all pretty simple, I think only two I actually paused and really thought about things, but they were enjoyable. I also didn't expect the combat and that made it overall have a good pace.

Fully agree about the reverse order solutions. My favorite puzzles, the ones that slowed me down, were when the rewind timer wasn't long enough for the first solution my brain jumped to.

The story I thought was building to something and then...

Spoiler for Hidden:

7 or 8/10 for me. I enjoyed it a fair bit more than lots of other first person puzzle games, even if it wasn't great. Maybe just because your post lowered my expectations.

8.1 hours, 70 out of 76 hidden logs.

kitler53 · Jun 12, 2025, 12:31 PM

Quote from: Legend on Jun 12, 2025, 06:48 AMJust finished the game. Huh, I had the exact opposite feelings.

I saw you didn't think it was great but I avoided the rest of your post. For me the puzzles were better than the story. The puzzles were almost all pretty simple, I think only two I actually paused and really thought about things, but they were enjoyable. I also didn't expect the combat and that made it overall have a good pace.

Fully agree about the reverse order solutions. My favorite puzzles, the ones that slowed me down, were when the rewind timer wasn't long enough for the first solution my brain jumped to.

The story I thought was building to something and then...
Spoiler for Hidden:
What the fudge was that ending lol. I thought it was a great false ending, and then the "continue" playthrough just felt exactly like a real new game.

I know the whole concept of the game was that it's a stuck time loop but that is so incredibly unsatisfying. And it just makes no bloody sense.

7 or 8/10 for me. I enjoyed it a fair bit more than lots of other first person puzzle games, even if it wasn't great. Maybe just because your post lowered my expectations.

8.1 hours, 70 out of 76 hidden logs.

i feel like we're not saying the exact opposite. i feel like we're reasonably close.

firstly,... i said "not great" which is not the same as "bad". it was mid and 7/10 feels right to me too.

secondly,.. i didn't say "story" i said "writing" and "mood". for the writing i was mostly referring to the banter with Astra. it wasn't portal 2 good but i thought it was done well enough to keep me engaged even though i was kind of bored of the puzzles. for mood i just mean aesthetics.

with respect to the puzzles it was more than just how simple it was. at first they give you a box and switches. you learn the mechanics and then they introduce new puzzle elements. my issue is that the jump pad wasn't meaningfully different than the box. nor was the laser or they bridge. fundamentally they were all just a means to progress and every puzzle was only about putting those objects in revers order.

Legend · Jun 12, 2025, 03:11 PM

Quote from: kitler53 on Jun 12, 2025, 12:31 PMi feel like we're not saying the exact opposite. i feel like we're reasonably close.

firstly,... i said "not great" which is not the same as "bad". it was mid and 7/10 feels right to me too.

secondly,.. i didn't say "story" i said "writing" and "mood". for the writing i was mostly referring to the banter with Astra. it wasn't portal 2 good but i thought it was done well enough to keep me engaged even though i was kind of bored of the puzzles. for mood i just mean aesthetics.

with respect to the puzzles it was more than just how simple it was. at first they give you a box and switches. you learn the mechanics and then they introduce new puzzle elements. my issue is that the jump pad wasn't meaningfully different than the box. nor was the laser or they bridge. fundamentally they were all just a means to progress and every puzzle was only about putting those objects in revers order.

Exact opposite in the very small sense of I prefered the gameplay over the rest while you prefered the rest over the gameplay. I should have worded it better.

The crumple box was a bit unique because it couldn't be reversed, but they needed more unique things like that. Stuff that changed the "just walk each item through the course backwards" solution.

The interesting puzzles imo were when the entropy gun couldn't rewind enough for that simple solution. I think that was under utilized. And yeah a self rewind would have been great because even though I made almost every jump, it sure was lame having to resolve them.

Still though, I can't off the top of my head think of a portal like puzzle game I liked more. This was better than lightmatter, turing test, and qube imo. Better than superliminal if that counts.

Polars has better puzzles, I played an alpha years ago, so maybe that'll top this if the rest of it is good.

Edt

Spoiler for Hidden: