NUBBY’S NUMBER FACTORY
DEMETRI: You know exactly what Nubby’s Number Factory is from the moment you look at some gameplay. It’s not subtle, and that’s by design. Peggle + 2048 + [INSERT ITEM-BASED ROGUELIKE HERE] isn’t even a reductive formula, it’s exactly what you’re in for. Launch ball. Goopy Edutainment Casino go BRRRRRRRRRR. Make big number. Get widgets that allow you to make the big number even bigger. Game demands bigger number. Repeat until heat death.
The thing is, it’s significantly better at what it does than most. Where Peglin and Ballionaire kind of sucked, Nubby emphatically does not. Fortunately its deficiencies can be easily fixed in updates. Hell, a big one just happened recently. It didn’t resolve its assorted stumbles, but it did add some items and make unlock conditions a bit more lenient. That counts for something!
Those stumbles really do hurt it though. Regular runs are fun if a bit easy, in part because item variety is low to the point where it’s fairly easy to force combos that’ll rocket you into at least the billions. There is no difficulty scaling of any kind here. Instead there are bespoke challenges, preset restrictions that you need to get through, and they suck almost to a fault. Rather than challenge you in interesting ways, almost all of them are an exercise in identifying The Winning Build and then rolling well enough to assemble it. They aren’t the fun kind of hard, they’re the sort of challenge that has you muttering “this fucking game I swear” under your breath before clicking the retry button. If runs weren’t so mercifully short some of these would be untenable, as any random speedbump can and will kill you dead.
Wins earn you stars, which you can spend on new supervisors that give you busted powers. Which you can only bring on standard runs, not challenges. What? Why? I don’t need help there! Those are already incredibly breakable! I guess it’s neat that I can play the game without bothering to try now, but what’s the point?
Look, I like Nubby. It’s the most cracked out entry the Number Go Up genre has seen since Cookie Clicker, and this one’s an actual game! It’s no Peggle, not that it’s trying to be, and I’m glad it’s seeing success. I just want it to be a little better than it is, and it seems like the dev is working towards that bit by bit.. Also, like, even if he took his newfound Nubbillions and ghosted, the game’s a whole $5 and came out of nowhere. How much is there to complain about, really?
6/10
MONSTER HUNTER WILDS
DEMETRI: Wait, what? Not only is this decidedly not indie, surely the newest entry in the critically acclaimed Monster Hunter franchise doesn’t belong here?
Come on, I wouldn’t have added the images and all the tags as a bit. MHW may currently be well received by the new playerbase Capcom went out of their way to court, but for returning veterans this is one of the most disappointing entries in the entire series.
In Capcom’s efforts to streamline and sand down rough edges, MHW has lost a tremendous amount of its decision space. Gone is any significant preparation before each hunt beyond choosing which weapon you want to embarrass the monster with, replaced with automatically restocked supplies accessed on your bird and on-demand campfire meals. Monster tracking? Completely removed, simply press the Bird Uber button to be delivered to your quarry. Run out of items due to sloppy play or poor preparation? No worries, the environment is replete with free collectables that auto-craft into exactly what you need which can be grabbed without even getting off your bird. If you couldn’t tell, a lot of my problems center on all of the functions that’ve been outsourced to your poor beast of burden. The problem isn’t having a mount – MH Rise made that work perfectly well – but as implemented, the correct answer to every non-combat problem is “get on the bird, dummy”.
The hope would be that the game could make up for it by purely focusing on combat, but the monsters are flimsier than they’ve ever been. As of the most recent update there are 30 distinct encounters. I’d say maybe 4 and a half of them are “good”: strong visual and auditory identity, fully fleshed out kits, capable of offering a challenge, the works. The half point is for Xu Wu, because while it’s as easy as the majority of the roster it’s at least a creative design with a cool trick or two. Every other fight is trivialized by a combination of massively buffed weapons, reduced monster movesets, and jarringly short encounters. In a franchise characterized by lengthy brawls across the entire map that could take the better part of an hour, we’re now chaining 5-10 minute hunts that drop several times the materials. Frenzied monsters are particularly pathetic, exploding like a Cybertruck upon so much as grazing them. These are weak fights, y’all.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight some positives. The game looks lovely, assuming your machine can run it. The weapons are arguably the best they’ve ever been. The combat, despite being constantly cut short, is still Monster Hunter at its core. If anything that’s kind of the problem. The bones of an excellent game remain, but they’re fractured and incomplete. In their efforts to fully convert what was previously a niche franchise into a AAA megahit post-MH World, Capcom has inadvertently made a shallow game that fails to provide a reason to return once you beat every high rank monster up a couple times. The financial success of Wilds despite its state has me fearing for the future of a franchise I’ve loved for 20 years. If this is where we’re going, I want off this bird.
5/10
BAKERU
KYLE: Bakeru is an interesting enigma, especially speaking from someone who did not play much of the Goemon games which this is very clearly derived from. What plays, feels, and looks like a remastered PS2 title, you’re tasked with beating the living Hell out of demons to the beat of your own drums to restore peace to the country land. You’ll acquire various powerups called Henge that will allow you to hit from far distances, shrink down to access small passageways, and many others. Your gameplay loop is platformer to the core with collectables strewn about the levels to find, coins and energy dropped from enemies you spam light attacks against, and stumbling across secret Scoops with various facts and, uh, “facts.”
The issue falls primarily on if you don’t fuck with the loop, you’re going to lose yourself wanting to progress, because if you’ve played 45 minutes of Bakeru you’ve played 10 hours of Bakeru. Even with all the additional power-ups and doodads that you find along the way, almost all enemies are handled with spamming light attacks and the occasional heavy attack to break guard. Bosses are pedestrian, with very little resistance to just pummeling them to death without consequence. Bakeru just feels stretched so thin to provide maximum value that its amount of levels are more of a hindrance than benefit. They just start throwing characters that need to be saved in the middle of the game and I could feel myself withering away knowing they just added 15 more levels with that plot addition.
Bakeru isn’t a bad game per se, it’s just painfully unaware that a platformer of this caliber can be short and sweet without having to try everything in the wheelhouse to garner its popcorn moments. I put the game down a few months ago hoping some time away would spark some interest, but nothing is drumming up the desire to get back into it.
DNF/10
MERCHANT 64
DEMETRI: Uncle Ted was right. The N64 and its consequences have been a disaster for the gamer race.
I enjoy Merchant Simulators, especially if they hew a bit closer to Dope Wars or The Wizard’s Apprentice. More involved capitalism sims like Recettear are fine but not typically what I’m looking for. I want to get in, make some spicy deals, and see if I win or not. To its credit Merchant 64 is short, but that doesn’t mean it won’t waste your time.
Let’s set the tone with a fun fact: Merchant 64 has a No Refunds achievement if you play it for over 2 hours. My playthrough, which was admittedly not going to be posted on speedrun dot com, barely crossed that line on account of the slow ass walk speed. In that time I think I made a difficult decision exactly once.
Nothing ever fucking happens. There are no events, no altercations, no time limits, no antagonistic force beyond the dread setting in. I played it with a friend along for the ride and we had to make our own fun on this otherwise dry road trip, coming up with stories to explain why Beechtown’s citizens consistently offered the worst trades (it’s because they all accidentally moved there instead of Beachtown) or why the only commodities in this country are named Junk, Stuff, and Goods (because who cares, no one cares, it doesn’t matter).
This game is 2+ hours of waking up, checking prices, buying/selling, walking to the town with the best rates, buying/selling, and going to sleep. It speeds up once you buy the boots that let you walk to two whole places before sleeping. I apologize to those with weak constitutions who may have gotten a bit too excited there. I’d offer you something for the palpitations, but all I have is 40 bags of Stuff.
Is the trading at least decent? No! Fuck no! Townspeople offer you deals but after the first half hour or so they’re too small or shitty to warrant your attention. You can also buy an upgrade that lets you buy junk from people then immediately sell 100 of it back to them for twice what they paid. Everyone in this world is fucking stupid except for you. I had hoped the wilderness area would change literally at all over the course of the game, but no, it just exists to give you free junk so you can claw your way out of financial mismanagement and provide the only safe place to sleep.
I lied earlier. There is exactly 1 negative influence: rampant invisible thievery. If you try to sleep outside instead of paying for the inn the game warns you that you may get robbed. This is not true. You will get robbed every time, because they want you to buy an upgrade to reduce your robbableness. No, it’s not a gun. I wish it was a gun. Just pay your rent, you’ll be rich anyway.
So the poor are left with the woods as their sole refuge. Nature provides. Nature doesn’t take from you. Nature is the one good thing in this crapsack world, no matter how much the lil diorama towns and single screen endings try to convince you otherwise. I’d say Merchant 64 is trying to make a point there, but if I agree I’m going to end up on another watchlist.
Reviews as Fair as a Die Roll 