Receiver 2

Wouldve been nice if the devs finished the game instead shooting themselves in the foot and killing their studio. But its really just half a game with a slapped together "ending" that really just increases the playtime. still cool tho

You have a mental illness but instead of fighting monsters in le head you gotta collect tapes about said mental illness while wandering the same map and shooting the same 3 drones over and over for hours The gun handling mechanics are really cool, shame they were wasted on such an impressively shallow game, twice The compound was pretty fun tho

The rotting core of this game is its progression system. In my opinion, all its problems stem from that. In brief: You move between rungs on a sliding scale from asleep to awake. If you listen to 5 tapes in a level, you move up a rung to a harder level. If you die, you move down a rung to an easier level. On one hand, it's kind of rich for me to criticize this, since my favorite game is Rain World, which features a very similar system. On the other hand, I think it provides a good point of comparison. For instance, Rain World has the decency to provide checkpoints; get to a harder area and the door locks behind you, letting you die as many times as you want while you get used to the new challenges. In Receiver 2, I have probably 30 minutes of interaction with the killdrones over 30 hours of play, because the time you spend interacting with new challenges is dwarfed over an order of magnitude by twiddling your thumbs listening to tapes. Dying in Rain World punishes you with more difficu...

this game makes me feel unfathomable seething rage

An excellent game if you really like detailed gun handling, but the game does go through some pretty hardcore mental health themes, i can't recommend it if you're not entirely 100% sound of mind. Or if you're just not patient with unconventional controls.

Arguably one of the best meshes of narrative with gameplay ever. Intrigued me with its fascinating commitment to firearm handling and keeps me coming back thanks to its really great tapes about mental health, and what it means to overcome something. Basically forces you to take breaks lest you lose over an hour of progress at times from getting impatient, and really encourages you to learn its mechanics top to bottom and then master them. My wishlist is some extra modes with different enemies and maybe a few more room layouts so that it doesn't get so repetitive, but otherwise it's an excellent shooter without really any peers. Hoping to finish this soon as I've gotten very close a few times now, I just need to learn to walk away when I make a mistake so I can take the time to learn from it. Amazing stuff.

Thinking back on it, I played this game a lot in the past and it has done a lot for my mental health, more then I realized. Planting ideas like patience, self-control and recognizing dangers to my mental health. Which has genuinely impacted my life for the better. Also the gameplay itself is very well paced and punishes mistakes like rushing. (And of course the beautifully modelled guns for weapon nerds like myself) Its the perfect relaxing game for me and it might be yours too.

'Just put my body in the trash...'

Detailed, decisive, and deliberate handgun operation simulator. A minor but ever-present nitpick: despite gun safety forming a central theme in the game, and the intention behind deliberate control, the holstering/unholstering mechanic needs to be done away with. IRL, no proficient shooter has to slow down that much to ensure safe trigger finger placement during these actions. A good compromise would be to enable this as an option, much like the flinch mechanic. Even better, allow the user to set a float value for the minimum time the holster/unholster key has to be held.

[i]"In the face of regret, understand that there was no other way that events could have played out. All you can do is learn from the experience, and move on."[/i]