Cogs
(It could've been worse.) I could've called this the Cog Blog, you know. But I didn't. Be thankful for my infinite mercy. Oddly enough, you will never hear these words coming from Cogs, mainly because its mercy is very finite and used up very, very quickly. Play it for long enough (like, say, into a single puzzle), and it's going to mock you for your utter lack of intelligence. Maybe I utterly hate myself, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
In fact, I have no choice but to go with the self-hatred, given what's going on in this game. "What are you talking about", you say as you've clearly hijacked my blog. "Penis penis penis penis." Well, that was certainly mature of you, but I get what you're saying. What about living in a cuckoo clock could make you loathe yourself so? I've news for you: that wonderful mechanical aesthetic? It's all a front for some Saw-ass shit. And I mean that quite literally. Each of these puzzles has you crafting what you believe to be the tools to your freedom, but turn out to be the instruments of your demise. That music box, for instance? Turns out that tune sets off a bomb attached to your jaw that goes off at juuust the right frequency. Those stars aren't a mere reward for doing so well, but what you see as you ascend to the heavens. Or something like that. I don't know; there's no real explicit plot, and Dear Esther has taught me to over-analyze the fuck out of everything.
Good thing, too, given what type of game this is. It's a puzzle game where you rotate things until you're told to stop rotating things. But to be fair, there's more to Cogs than simply shuffling pieces about.....OK, there isn't, but there's a very good reason for that. It manages to get a lot out of simply rotating shit around. Balloons, music, steam, and everything else that can kill you horribly! Assuming, of course, that you actually manage to solve some of these puzzles, because they can be immensely difficult. So difficult, in fact, that I could only describe them using a word that had "MENSA" in it, if you careful readers picked up on that. (My own idiocy certainly wasn't helping.) I'm fine with it, though. They're nothing more than logic puzzles, so working them out on your own after hours of careful thought turns you into the Supreme Logic Master of the Cosmos....Or at least that's how it's gonna make you feel. The only exception would be puzzles that require you to flip the board around, which are less challenging fun and more mean-spirited taunts.
But on that note, the game could still use a bit of minor polishing to appease the over-analyzing dicks it creates. Control could use some refining oddly enough. I'm aware of how strange it is for a game to fuck up clicking around, but that's not the issue. Instead, the game doesn't teach you certain techniques that are absolutely necessary to solving these puzzles. I know that sounds like pointless whining, but given how often you find yourself trying to figure out these techniques, you'd think the game would inform you in some capacity as to how to perform them. Doesn't happen, though. I also wish you had the ability to undo moves in case you've fucked up. I'm aware of stars you get for finishing a puzzle in a certain number of moves, but the time stars are there to balance things out just fine. Even if that's not the case, you could still limit how many undos you get in one puzzle, somehow. Unfortunately, you'll never get to undo your mistakes. You must live with them for the rest of your bleak existence....Wow, what a mean way to end this blog. Maybe I should end it by praising the puzzle design or something like that?.....Nah. Enjoy your nihilistic decline, folks!
Review Synopsis
- It's a well built puzzle game. That's really all I need to say about it.
Man, that game would've been so much easier if I was an Airbender. And if I could've told it to suck my dick.
The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper
(Wait, I've already done that.)
Money Puzzle Exchanger
(That's better.) I'm guessing. Reading over my blog for it that I'm certainly not linking you to, turns out Cogswell's Caper was actually an OK game. Who knew? Anyway, Money Puzzle Exchanger. You have to exchange money in this puzzle game. I'd say more, but that's really all there is to it. Throw in some anime girls and me flailing about, hoping I'll actually get good at it, and you have the Money Puzzle Exchanger experience.
But let's pretend that this is a regular blog, for humor's sake. That means starting off with the story, which is...anime catgirls running past sunsets. Joy. Sadly, that's pretty much the entire game's aesthetic: animes and cute. Normally, I wouldn't be complaining about something this small, but it's really in your face about it. There's literally nowhere you can look in this game that isn't just utterly saturated with cute anime girls given vaguely money related names. (And a guy.) I mean, if you enjoy this type of thing, all the more power to you, but even for someone like me (meeeeee), this was too much.
I'd say that fortunately, the gameplay's here to make up for that, but it's just so hard to focus on that when you have the entire Sailor Bleach Evangelion cast breathing down your neck. But gameplay I shall focus on! You start things off by choosing from one of two entirely identical characters you'll never get a good look at, making you wonder why you'd ever bother. And then you get into things, and find out that it's just like every oth-OK, time to stop being so damn dismissive. Somehow, this game manages to be both relaxing and fast-paced. You're just matching up moneys into groups of two or five, but man, there can be a rhythm to it. It's the type of oddly satisfying thing where you can't enjoy all those cools moves you're pulling because that would leave less time to perform other cool moves. And then you execute a combo, watching your pair of anime tits become SHIVA, LORD OF ALL DESTRUCTION! ALL SHALL BE DESTROYED IN MY W-
Wait, I got that mixed up: turns out the other anime was Shiva. And so my ass has been kicked, an experience repeated many times over the course of Money Puzzle Exchanger. (Man, it sure is surprising how well this game conforms to Hindu lore.) This game does not fuck around. If you don't know what you're doing, this game is gonna chew you up and continue chewing you up, because it won't even allow you the satisfaction of a conclusion. You can avoid this by learning decent arrangements and speed the hell up, but the learning curve on this game sure is steep. It certainly doesn't help that the computer cheats on the later levels (there's no way they can move that fast without black magic). Look, do you want to have fun with this game? Get somebody else (preferably around your level) and pop it in for ten minutes of a quick match. That's what this game was made for. Anything except how I handled it. I mean, did you see all the irrelevant mythological references? DON'T END UP LIKE MEEEEEEE!!!!!
Review Synopsis
- Words fail to describe how aggressively anime this thing is.
- There's nothing more fun than moving between time.
- Provided you can reach such a plane of existence.
- Wait, did I just write the same blog twice in a row?
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