Recent reviews by Girth Control

Katana Zero is a fast-paced action platformer where everything dies in one hit, including you.

The gameplay is smooth as butter. Combat is fluid and flowing, often feeling like a well choreographed dance of death. Your ability to slow time makes difficult sections less about being fast and more about being smart. The real-time replay after each level is a neat addition as you get to see your character from the enemy's perspective, dodging attacks, throwing weapons, and reflecting bullets with pin-point accuracy and inhuman reaction time.

My only real complaint is the length, I beat Katana ZERO in just a little over two hours but considering the asking price it's hard to complain. Replay value is limited, there are some secrets to find, but due to the relatively simple gameplay replaying levels is mostly as fun as your first time, if not more due to your improved skills.

TL;DR - A genuine 10/10 from someone who's not into Touhou or Metroidvanias

I've never had any interest in Touhou, it's just not my kind of thing. I don't particularly like anime, vertical shooters aren't engaging enough for me, and my brain is too feeble to comprehend the number of projectiles in a bullet hell game.

I've never had any interest in Metroidvanias, either. I don't particularly like Metroid or Castlevania, backtracking isn't engaging enough for me, and my brain is too feeble to remember the locations of previously unobtainable items.

So with seemingly all odds against it, what got me to buy this game? The auto-play trailer - seriously, whoever made it deserves a raise. You tease me with a bangin' soundtrack, epic looking boss fights, and time control? Alright then, sign me up.

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Touhou Luna Nights is first and foremost an action platformer. It has RPG elements, but won't bore or inundate you with skill point assignment or inventory management, as it's focus remains firmly on fluid movement and combat. Leveling up is automatic and interestingly enough your stats are based on how much money you're carrying. Buying items can be helpful, but you're effectively selling your strength. But other than that, in classic Metroidvania fashion your movement and combat will constantly improve by collecting new items and upgrades, as each serves a unique purpose. Combat does feel shallow early on as your default attacks lack combos or variety, but abilities once obtained solve that. Both consume mana except for during stop-time, in which they consume stop-time instead.

Controlling time is often seen as a defensive maneuver, an opportunity to dodge, reposition, or retreat. Now it can be used much more offensively as it allows you to attack without expending mana, including your most expensive, powerful attacks. From a game design perspective, this is brilliant; it encourages players to experiment, try different abilities, use them more often, and learn how they work risk-free. You also can slow-time (or "Snail Time" in-game), which doesn't consume any resources but your attacks will continue to use mana. It's used most for solving puzzles, dodging, and grazing.

Both mana and stop-time refill slowly, but health doesn't. If you're in desperate need of any you'll have to learn how to graze, which is done by narrowly dodging enemy attacks. The more risks you take, the more you'll be rewarded. Slow-time makes grazing easier, but stop-time changes it dramatically - enemies and projectiles will now have a finite amount of graze points to give, and they almost exclusively refill stop-time. Again from a game design perspective, this is brilliant; it teaches players to not be afraid of combat, makes stop-time last longer around danger, provides safer movement practice, then rewards you during real-time or slow-time. It gives you a reason to improve your movement, secretly gives you practice, then rewards you for doing so.

And the more you improve your movement, the more you'll want to be moving. Backtracking never feels like a chore because rooms feel like playgrounds more than obstructions. Enemies and obstacles often feel precisely placed to reward players for skilled movement and time management. By late game, you'll find yourself running room to room without even having to exit stop-time. Weaving in out and around combat, gracefully dodging enemies and their attacks, bypassing almost all danger while constantly refilling your resources. Your acrobatics are only enhanced by the soundtrack that's keeping you moving, keeping you progressing - just to reach the boss and hear the next song.

The boss fights are extremely well done, and try to incorporate some of the bullet hell action Touhou is known for. The environments look great, characters are well animated, attacks are clearly telegraphed so you can learn the patterns, lots of opportunities to graze - they can still be difficult, they're just not punishing. Mistakes are forgiven and skill is rewarded. Before every boss your resources are refilled, your game saves, and their introductory dialogue is only shown the first time around, making successive attempts far more bearable. Not that you'd want to see the dialogue more than once, because... it sucks.

The story, writing, and translation aren't great. Other than that, there's not a lot of negatives, certainly nothing game ruining. Some attacks are difficult to see, some don't give graze points for some reason, and 100% completion on my first playthrough only took 6 hours.

All in all, Touhou Luna Nights provided me with an exciting experience that was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish and left me wanting more. It feels expertly crafted, has brilliant game design that subconsciously pushes you to improve your skills, and a bangin' soundtrack. It's biggest flaw is its length, but the additional stage coming in an update will probably round the game up to a much more respectable 7-8 hours.

At that point, from the perspective of someone who had no interest in Touhou or Metroidvanias, I'd honestly give this game a 10/10. It ain't perfect, but nothing ever is. Why reserve 10/10 for something that will never exist?

Edit: STAND OUT has just left Early Access. Look at the state that game is in, and you'll quickly realize why you shouldn't by WAR DUST.

I believe in second chances. Even though Raptor Lab's previous title STAND OUT was one the worst games I've ever played, I gave them a second chance and bought their latest title, WAR DUST.

I don't think I'll be giving Raptor Lab a third chance.

Much like STAND OUT, this game is in such early phases of development that asking money for it should be considered an insult to the consumer. I have to wonder, does the development team (or single developer) behind Raptor Lab even own a virtual reality headset to test their game with? There's a myriad of issues plaguing even the simpliest aspects of this game, but for the sake of the review I'll focus on the worst: the controls.

When you remove the magazine from your gun, your grab is a toggle, but grabbing a fresh magazine from your vest isn't. Why would I want to toggle grip an empty magazine, but not toggle grip a full one?

To open the parachute you have to pull both triggers at the same time, and even then sometimes it just doesn't work. Problem is, right trigger fires your gun. If you jump out of a helicopter or jet above enemy territory, you're going to be firing wildly in the air all the way down, alerting everyone in the area of your position and reach the ground with an empty magazine, leaving you completely defenseless.

Your stats are located underneath your left controller, so to check your kills or points you'll have to rotate the controller upside down. Movement is based on your controller's direction, so rotating the controller causes you to run in a different direction than you intended. This also happens every single time you do anything other than point a gun; change weapons, reload, throw a grenade, etc., etc.. I get that some people prefer controller-based movement over head-based movement, but you NEED to either default to head-based movement or let players choose for themselves. Everyone can play with head-based movement, but not everyone can play with controller-based movement.

Even though this game shows official support for Windows Mixed Reality on it's store page, and loading screens show guides for Windows Mixed Reality controllers, the analog sticks go completely unused. Since the game doesn't assign a deadzone to its touchpads, you can't even use the SteamVR Controller Binding menu to swap them because without a deadzone the game thinks you're constantly moving the analog sticks.

These are just a few of the problems with the game's controls. There's far more to share, but I'd be here all day. The ONLY reason I might not be refunding this game is because it's so bad that it can be fun sometimes. Let me be very clear, this game does not succeed at anything it sets out to do. The enjoyment I get from this game is exclusively from experiencing how bad it is. It's almost like a puzzle game, even the most menial of tasks involve complex problem solving. How do I pick up a gun? How do I enter a vehicle? How do I reload the rocket launcher? Driving vehicles can be a blast because of unexpected physics anomalies. Exploring the maps can be exciting because not even the developer(s) have explored them yet. You can walk through walls, fall through floors, climb mountains, walk in midair, jump out of the map... it's beautiful.

This very well might be The Room of video games, a game that fails so miserably that it's genuinely fun to watch it crumble. Seeing the quality of STAND OUT, I have absolutely zero faith in this game ever reaching a playable or complete state. Don't buy this game. It's bad now, and it will be bad forever. Sorry, Raptor Lab. Maybe you're trying your hardest, and I can give you points for that, but your hardest just isn't enough to warrant any kind of price tag. You're far too ambitious for your own good.

Todd Howard must have really dropped the ball on this one because this time, it doesn't "just work". Fallout 4 VR doesn't feel like a VR game, it feels more like a Wii game. You stand in the middle of your room like a jackass, gaze about like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and point at things you want dead. Compared to normal Fallout 4 the graphics have not been improved at all, performance is abysmal, proportions are all wack, anti-aliasing is so bad that the game looks like it's being rendered on a vaseline covered Motorola RAZR, and the shooting sucks too.

Fallout 4 is already a pretty mediocre game, but this is so much worse. Don't bother.

Simple and satisfying. Gracefully combines classic shooter elements with modern mechanics, it's like a mix between Quake and Call of Duty. Fast paced and intense, but still casual enough to be played with friends. The servers are anything but populated, but there's bot support.

This game gets a lot of stuff right and it's free. What do you have to lose?

First (?) came Dance Dance Revolution, then Guitar Hero, then Rock Band, and finally Beat Saber. It shares little in common with it's supposed predecessors, but it's undeniably the latest step in mainstream rhythm game evolution.

While it's included tracklist is rather lackluster, the modding community for this game is massive so there's already an ever-expanding library of free tracks to download. This is just my opinion, but as someone who spent many hours with games like Guitar Hero I found Beat Saber to be a hell of a lot more fun.

If you are a fan of rhythm games (even just casually), Beat Saber is a must own. It's extremely intuitive, an absolute blast, and a great workout to boot. But it must be made extremely clear that the included tracklist is nothing special, and I would go as far as to say that downloading custom levels is absolutely mandatory.

One of the worst games I've ever played. I got it for free and still feel ripped off. This isn't early access, this is prehistoric access.

There's really not much else to say. It's ugly, buggy, glitchy, and lazy. A blatant cash grab. I don't like being extremely critical or rude to independent developers, but this game isn't even remotely close to an early access launch on Steam. I understand requiring additional funding to continue development, but this game plays like it was made in a 24 hour game jam. Could you seriously not spend any more time on this game before asking for money? There are free games made by literal 10 year olds on itch.io that are a million light-years ahead of this.

Aim assist / crosshair magnetism is always enabled even when turned off, and there are no mods or tweaks you can do to remove it. This makes the game extremely frustrating to play (at least for me) because you're constantly fighting with the camera.

This is probably a really fun game. It was on my wishlist for the longest time. Shame, but I suppose properly implemented control schemes were too much to ask for in 2017.

Edit: Changing my review to a "Not Recommended". The developers added a toggle to "skip disturbing scenes", which does nothing but make the game more accessible. Then for some reason they decided to remove that option and remove the "disturbing scenes" entirely. I don't understand the choice behind this, especially when the scenes in question are not anything I would consider substantially disturbing. Slightly uncomfortable at best.

In the game, you use a VR headset to enter a heavily stylized world. Dying or being defeated in this world causes the VR headset to pop off of your head, which happens several times in scripted sequences. In one sequence a helicopter crashes into you which causes the headset to pop off. In another, you shoot yourself in the head with a very clearly heavily stylized virtual pistol. It doesn't resemble a real gun, you don't die, the VR headset simply pops off (as expected) and you continue the game. There is no blood, no corpse, no screams, no nothing. You shoot the gun and the headset pops off, and the game continues.

Murdering hundreds of people when you have no confirmation they're evil is totally acceptable. Exiting a video game by shooting yourself isn't, apparently.

Original review below.

SUPERHOT works so well in VR that it makes the original game feel like a port.

At launch, it was an unforgettable experience that satisfied in a way that no game was capable of before. Combining the unique movement-controls-time mechanics from SUPERHOT with the entirely movement-based controls of VR created something borderline magical.

SUPERHOT VR is easily up there with some of the best VR games to date. There's only one catch. It's short. Extremely short. I completed my first playthrough in 37 minutes.

I recommend this game wholeheartedly. Just not at full price.

The game is about 10 minutes long, just play it. You have nothing to lose.

I really don't know how to review this. I feel as if giving this game a negative review is unfair, of course it's not perfect, but it accomplishes everything it sets out to do. It's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to make a point. The mechanic is the message.

This is the most depressing and relatable video game I have ever played. I don't consider myself an artist, let alone a "tortured" one, but I was honestly shocked at some of the dialogue as most (if not all) of it were things I have absolutely said to myself. I can't tell if this game has given or taken away my motivation.

It doesn't matter. If you create things, and have ever felt doubt towards your creations, please play this game.

I really like the fact that the poem you hear during your dreams, the only escape from the uncomfortable background music and annoying sound effects, eventually stops playing... Your own dreams stop being entertaining.