Member Game Reviews 2023

[Brian Boru]

Wordle 3

Nice stuff dev, the Wordle Word Search games keep improving! This one pulled me in more and became more of a regular game than a filler game. Again, UI and mechanics are same as in my Wordle 1 review. Some additions:

W3 is a bigger game than W1 or 2, mainly because the final grids are bigger—it ends with 24 7x7 grids, there are ~97 puzzles in total across 15 categories. Some categories have 3-4 puzzles, others 10 or more.

With the larger grids, small things became bigger things worth noting:

Pros

You can quit the game any time in the middle of a puzzle—click the back arrow top left until you reach the main menu with Exit—and when you relaunch and click Continue, you'll be right back where you left off with your half-complete level. Nice.

There are no stats or stars, just a tick mark on the title of levels you've solved. But I just checked and there are Achievements.

There is a hint system with over 100 available. Each hint fills in one letter in the answer section for words you haven't solved yet—repeated hint clicking gets you the first letter of each word left to right, then moves onto the second letter, etc. I probably used about 30 hints in the Flowers category—never mind not being able to figure them out, there were a lot I'd never heard of, and probably never will again

Cons

Cursor movement is a bit over-sensitive. You drag your cursor across the letters to make a word, and it's too easy to 'stray' onto a nearby letter. The bad part is that unlike other similar games I've played, you can't just back off a letter or two and correct your path—you have to start over. Annoying with long words—and there are plenty of those over 8 or 10 letters.

Of the ~500 words in all, there were 3-4 that didn't obviously fit the category—wasn't an issue.

Summary

A very basic bare-bones game which is very well done. Not a hint of a story in sight, it's all pure gameplay—such a relief

I got the second of the two offers below, which is truly exceptional value, even for a Patient Gamer!

 

[Brian Boru]

Wordle 4 or 5

Nice stuff dev, the Wordle Word Search games keep improving!

I take that back, with a vengeance. I won't be reviewing Wordle 4 or 5, cos I have 7 minutes total play in 5, none in 4 since it didn't come with my bundle.

I was curious why the bundles skipped 4, but the Steam reviews explain it—gameplay changed, not for the better.

Fired up 5, and… I'm kinda lost for words. This is not a good thing for a word game to make happen It's like someone new took over after Wordle 3, without a clue why the first 3 games worked. Some Steam review quotes:

"Buggy as hell. The game randomly deletes all your progress so you have to start over, but without the initial set of hints you originally started the game with"

"Many spelling mistakes. Categories and answers don't make sense"

"the gameplay itself is horribly frustrating as a large number of words are misspelled as well as just not matching the category they are in"

"this one is too buggy. It has deleted the save file on multiple occasions"

Enjoy 1, 2, 3 and avoid 4 & 5.

 

[ZedClampet]

Surprisingly, a little over 50% of players have the achievement that comes with finishing the main story for this game!

That's genuinely amazing.

 

[ZedClampet]

Weed Shop 3

This is not a joke game no matter how hard the devs tried to make it one. Despite the ridiculous dialogue, the urge to stay stoned at all times, the hallucinatory events, the strip clubs, the talking animals and missile shooting Thanksgiving turkeys, the production and retail sim portions of the game are just too strong to move this into the "joke game" category.

If you are like me, and that's incredibly unlikely, you will want to skip all the nonsense and concentrate on the production and retail side. Fortunately, this is easily done, as there are options in the settings to turn all this off, as well as other handy settings. This is particularly good since the developers don't allow modding. But if you the type of person who spent hours with Goat Simulator or Unnamed Goose Game, you'll have a lot of extra content to play.

Working the farms, the lab and the store was where it was at for me, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed creating products and placing them just right in my store. You'll need employees to help you with all the work, and the NPC mates do a pretty good job with it. They gain experience and go up levels as they work, and you distribute where this experience goes. As they go up levels, they become better and better employees. It's a bit of a grind, but it's all worth it when they reach the tipping point and start doing everything right. Watching my merchandise manager running from display to display to refill them with the correct products felt very rewarding. Other employee jobs include running the registers, street marketing, security, and growing weed.

Economically, the game is a bit of a grind, but it's a necessary grind that gates new player toys and merchandise behind a lot of hard work. The unlocks are generally very enjoyable and add a lot to the game.

I didn't really follow the story, but there's a wisp of one that culminates in more absurdity if you are willing to go there. It's very much a "play your own way" type of game, and I applaud the developers for thinking that way.

Many of the jokes are okay, but I suspect they are even better if you have some weed handy. Overall, I found the writing to be pretty good, if ridiculous. The first meeting with many of the characters you meet is generally pretty funny.

This is very much a niche game, and I can't really just blanket recommend it. If you like production and retail sims with a pile of stoner humor, I'd say go for it.

 

[ZedClampet]

It's way too late to edit my Super Mega Baseball 4 review, but a month or two after I wrote that review and mentioned all the multiplayer performance problems, a patch fixed everything.

IMO it's the best sports game on PC.