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Jake Arias

Boulder, Colorado
OrganSolo
killaorgan
killapenguinreviews
SW-7165-4379-3992

Favorite Games:
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
  • Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
  • Chrono Trigger

216 games reviewed
64.4 average score
70 median score
49.5% of games recommended

Jake Arias's Reviews

Once upon a time.
Unscored - Starman
Jun 27, 2018

If you’ve never played an artsy mobile puzzle game before, Starman makes for a great crash course in what they’re like, as it shares all of the same intrinsic qualities you’ll find repeated in other such games.

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May 25, 2018

Much of Towards The Pantheon is strange like that, and yet these assorted pieces of genre-defying weirdness all coalesce into something that, against all odds, functions as a coherent whole. Its strangeness makes it difficult to compare with other titles, though it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it fits the Earthbound/Undertale mold to a certain extent in terms of presentation and tone.

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Unscored - Coffee Crisis
May 8, 2018

[Y]our chances of making it through Coffee Crisis without seeing a game over screen are frustratingly luck-dependent because of the way the game handles powerups.

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Unscored - Lost in Harmony
Jun 25, 2018

If you’d have told me that one of my favorite games of 2018 would be a rhythm game originally released as a freemium mobile title in 2016 and only now receiving a paid version on the PC and Nintendo Switch, I’d have laughed in your face. Lost in Harmony is that game, though, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that this game is playable art (for the most part, at least) now that there are no freemium currencies and ads trying to worm their way into the experience.

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Unscored - oOo: Ascension
Jun 2, 2018

Really, with a few tweaks this could become easily recommendable, but the inconsistency of the current experience, combined with some inexplicable slowdown that made carefully maneuvering around hazards more difficult and imprecise than it needed to be toward the end when levels would get busy, is just enough to cause me to hesitate.

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Jun 5, 2018

[I]t’s obvious that a lot of effort was put into addressing criticisms while keeping the core of the game intact for those who enjoy a little grinding. The end result is a charmingly chaotic pixel shooter with different modes designed to accommodate different types of players.

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Unscored - Safe House
May 19, 2018

Given a handful of patches, Safe House could become a bit of a flawed gem. Right now it requires dodging far too many random issues and complications to be recommendable.

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Unscored - Vampyr
Jun 10, 2018

Simple words can’t alter the fact that this game is irredeemably bad and so far beneath DONTNOD’s previous efforts that it’s hard to believe the same studio is responsible.

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Unscored - RPGolf
May 5, 2018

RPGolf doesn’t make a particularly memorable first impression, but this is one of those games that exerts a certain pull that sees you continuing to play despite not understanding exactly why that is.

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May 11, 2018

“Odium” is a remarkably accurate name for a game like this, as its inadequate controls and constant stream of cheap shots conspire to turn certain levels into a maddeningly Sisyphean experience bound to infuriate anyone who values their time.

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Unscored - Omensight
May 15, 2018

I have to reach back 18 years and invoke Majora’s Mask in order to have something to meaningfully compare Omensight to. Not only do the deep hues of Omensight’s art style invite such comparisons, but the time travel loop has you similarly exploring the the same few areas during different parts of the same day and finding new things as a result. Granted, the structure here is entirely different, but the focus on a small cast of characters who are subjected to surprising moments of darkness (made more palatable by a veneer of quirky animal companions) hits many of the same buttons that Majora did.

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Looking at it now, there’s no denying that the amount of quality, complementary content here is staggering.

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Unscored - Gone Fireflies
Mar 26, 2018

I was asked to review this, and while the results are exactly what you’d expect from throwing someone who’s dead inside at a tearjerker, it was at least interesting.

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Unscored - Vandals
Apr 19, 2018

Basically, it’s a movement-based puzzle game where you’re tasked with using distractions to vandalize a spot and get away from police. Things obviously become more complicated as you go, but the difficulty is all over the place, confusingly enough; I had more trouble in one of the earlier levels than any of the mid-game levels ever gave me, and there are numerous difficulty spikes that combine with player-unfriendly mechanics to suck the joy out of the gameplay.

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Unscored - Tempest Citadel
Apr 8, 2018

Tempest Citadel is a strategy game that defies a more detailed genre classification. In many ways it’s a 4X game, and yet it also infuses just enough XCOM elements into the end product that using either as an example of what to expect is ultimately misleading. There’s also a great deal of real-time strategy combat to take into consideration, though battles resolve automatically (by default—you can choose to jump in and micromanage at any point) based on the strategies you come up with beforehand. Other expectations you may have are likely to be similarly subverted.

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Mar 20, 2018

Suffice it to say that Omen Exitio is a surprisingly engrossing adventure that hits several different story beats without ever losing steam or outlasting its welcome, and it’s the kind of game that sees both you and main character Jake Huntington go from wide-eyed military camaraderie to constant paranoia at every single (in-game) knock on the door.

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Mar 17, 2018

This is game that makes random battles palatable (at least for the vast majority of the game) while simultaneously streamlining traditional jRPG mechanics and allowing new complexity to arise from those simplified parts of the game. It’s also incredibly player-friendly, with all party members gaining experience regardless of whether they participated in combat or not, but those who enjoy a challenge will be able to find it despite the early content being on the easy side. Really, this is a special game.

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Mar 9, 2018

If you go by looks, it’d be easy to say that this is a game where the primary goal is survival, and that’s not wholly inaccurate early on. Once you’ve built up your defenses enough that the nightly monster attacks no longer pose a serious threat, however, what’s left is instead gameplay reminiscent of those browser clicker games that are so easy to get sucked into. You start by clicking to slowly obtain wood, but then you build a bonfire to draw workers to your little village. It’s not long before someone gives you a cart ensuring that workers can bring back more resources than they would otherwise, with this being just one of several job-specific equippables you’ll be crafting to increase worker productivity. This is less a game about survival than one of constant escalation, then, with the challenge coming more from pairing workers to tasks they’re suited to while balancing resource production than one where you’re constantly at risk.

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Mar 29, 2018

That’s not to insinuate that my experience with Ash of Gods was anything resembling good, though, because this game is capable of disappointing entirely on its own merits. Everything about it fails in one way or another, from the confused analogies that read like a drunk Tolkien as performed by Google Translate to the combat alternating between being pointlessly easy and groan-inducingly tedious. The visuals and music are the only things that don’t disappoint in some way, but they alone can’t support this game’s full weight.

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Feb 27, 2018

There are numerous rough edges that can make learning how to play truly infuriating, and having to take certain things into consideration to avoid being killed by something stupid that shouldn’t be possible really isn’t fair to the player. That having been said, this is one of those “short burst” games designed in a way that’s ideal for speedrunning, and while I’ve never delved very far into that world outside of one or two exceptions, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi to Hellmut that pushed me to do a little better each time.

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