In the face of quicker, louder rivals, PUBG offers a slow and meditative experience. It's not, I would imagine, unlike sitting in a deer blind waiting for an unlucky whitetail to pass below. While PUBG's technical issues are ever-present, they rarely spoil this core experience. This is a buggy game, but they aren't game breaking bugs. They're bugs that make you laugh at best and curse under your breath and reboot the game at worst. You hope they get better. But, you know that, with each game, at the very least, you are.
That's what Monster Boy's final hours feel like. They're a clunky conclusion clogging up an otherwise slimy sleek progression. Usually in Metroidvanias, your progress stops because you're missing something you need. In Monster Boy, progress slows because The Game Atelier and FDG Entertainment have given you far too much.
In short, Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics has some new ideas, but mostly retreads familiar territory. The game invokes unknowable forces beyond our comprehension. But, it does so with mechanics that are, by and large, known quantities. Who would have suspected that scaling the mountains of madness could be this rote?
Essentially, Steel Rats answers the question it sets out to ask. Cool as it sounds, if you stuck a circular saw on the front wheel of a motorcycle, it might slash the tire, or sever the brake line, or spark through the spokes. As good as Steel Rats is at world-building, it often fails when it lets you take control. Sometimes the answer it finds isn't the answer it needs.
If you want a game that captures the fantasy cowboy life, let me point you in a different direction.
Dontnod is capturing the mood of a powerful country in the midst of a crisis of identity. If they can stick the landing, Life is Strange 2 has the potential to be a masterpiece.