I’ve only done the first couple of missions after the prologue, but I’m really loving it so far.
I replayed 30 Flights… that was great again. So 4-5 hours in that kind of Blendo games world is more than enough. Initially I thought it would be too short, but 30 Flights is short but satisfiying.
I played again about a year ago that uses the same visual style… Jazzpunk. I had not heard of any of these games when I picked that one up, but since I enjoyed that so much I think I’m gonna pick this came up and 30 Flights and Gravity Bone when I get a chance.
Yeah, I’ve had the Blendo games website up in another tab since I started looking into this. Today’s the day!
this game feels a bit like work… I mean the hacking part, opening telnet, disabling lasers etc. I hope the pacing is ramping up ( I am in the second tutorial mission Satsuma something… ). I like the many details of world building
I just finished it and holy crap does the pace ramp up. Hard to talk about without spoilers, but it’s a really amazing journey. I also loved Tom’s review! But would recommend reading it after finishing the game. The ending hit hard and I really appreciated having someone else’s thoughts on it after it did so.
Side note, Tom, why do you think the music fits? To me it just feels like a another steampunk aesthetic point, but your review made it sound like there may be a better reason?
Steam tells me this one is also on sale but only 20% off so the temptation is less. I also have this nagging feeling that the instant I buy this game it will be sold as part of a Humble Bundle. But I have enjoyed all the other Blendo games and I know I’ll want to play it so … I don’t know where I’m going with this.
I’ve had that exact same thought process, if it counts for anything. I’m sure I’d like the game, but can’t muster the will to pay $16 for it for some reason.
I am extremely stingy about spending for games: I always consider whether I’d like to spend any given amounts (even if it’s a couple of bucks), because I hate the feeling of having wasted money. I hate that feeling about as much as money itself.
I thought a bit about it before getting the game, but then went “oh well”. Never once had money again in my mind while playing the game (whether thinking in a semi-patronizing way it was “well spent”, or considering “oh wait, maybe i need to refund this”).
If the game speaks to you, you won’t put that sort of value like on other games, maybe. To me, it is the closest thing to a book (the physical item, not the collection of typed characters) in my game library. It has that same sort of “warmth”. If it doesn’t speak to you… Well, I guess that is why there were all those negative feedbacks I couldn’t relate to on Steam!
Spoiler: fanboyfanboyfanboy
The catch is that I have to spend the money to find out if the game was worth the money. Unless you’re suggesting I could take advantage of Steam’s refund policy? Which I mean, sure I guess. Just looking for the path of least resistance.
For me it’s less about feeling like I’ve wasted money, as such. I’ve got a sort of threshold that any given purchase needs to meet to feel worthwhile. I’ll pay full price for stuff that’s right up my alley, like Andromeda. I’ll pay $20 for something I haven’t tried myself but have a good feeling about - Rogue Galaxy was $20 well spent. And for $5 I’m totally willing to roll the dice. So where does QC fall? Not sure - it’s not like other games I’ve played, so I don’t necessarily feel comfortable throwing down $20. But I’m interested, on the strength of their other games. I’d probably go $10, but $15.99? I just don’t know.
I feel hurt you thought that is what I was trying to convey.
I’ll go put myself in a corner now.
Aw now hey, no need for corners. Just a misunderstanding, have a pat on the back.
I so wish I had the GIF skills to escalate this properly (I would have done it from my previous post, probably).
It’s totally worth the money. If you have any interest in first person puzzle games, let alone other Blendo games, it’s worth the money at full AAA price.
How long does it take to play through, priority in the past few years has been on family and if I’m going to finish a game it needs to be shorter form. Inside was perfect, my GOTY last year. Other shorter form games I’ve enjoyed have been Journey (and ABZU) and Brothers.
That depends entirely on how good you are at the puzzles (both physically and in working out how to program them). It definitely pushes harder against you than any of the games you mentioned, but it’s not as tough as, say SpaceChem or Infinifactory. Also it helps if you don’t manage to lose your save progress halfway through like I did. I still haven’t finished.
That said, it’s all packaged into discrete bite-sized levels.
It is very time friendly. Also, a whole playthrough will take about 4 or 5 hours I’d say (which is another reason Quadrilateral Cowboy got some flak, as it was estimated it should draw on its lovely mechanics).
So the lovely @Left_Empty picked this up for me recently and I’ve been on a bit of a ‘short games’ spree so it was perfectly timed. Straight up: I wasn’t a big fan of Gravity Bone and much preferred Thirty Flights of Loving.
God, this was brilliant though. So much better than I was expecting. It’s been a long time since a game has so consistently surprised me mechanically, but it’s not just the mechanics: it’s the personality, intimacy and, yeah, as @Left_Empty said, the ‘warmth’ of the experience and the environments. This is way more game-y than Gravity Bone and Flights but it hasn’t lost those cool cuts and time shifts and the clever hands-off narrative. It’s so lean.
Spoilers from here on out.
The structure of the game is wonderful with the VR simulated rehearsals of each heist. You never actually do the real heists yourself and I love that so much. This means that things like noclip and determining insertion and extraction points, quickly exiting and restarting are liberating but make sense, and dying and triggering alarms don’t come with the usual disappointing baggage of other heist/stealth games. It’s a great way to integrate time leaderboards too because why wouldn’t you try to get the job done as quickly as possible? It’s training.
The VR environment also meant that all the bugs I encountered made some sort of sense as well (you name them, I had 'em. Items disappearing through the floor, my character getting stuck, black screens, bizarre deck behaviour when cycling commands, stickynote glitches, missing scores, catastrophic falls I didn’t make and couldn’t overwrite, respawn bugs, full blown crashes, warping across levels, achievements failing to trigger (apparently I didn’t complete the first two heists)). This is one of the buggiest games I’ve played in a while and I’m thankful that the homebrew software simulation within the fiction sort of framed it all.
Fix those bugs Maisy and Lou!
Despite some of the clunk, it’s such a beautifully and elegantly designed game. I saw a Steam review saying there was a narrative hole about why they were heisting but if you look at the chalkboard in their computer room where they brainstormed company names (‘Impala’), the computer science/engineering qualifications on the wall and the year’s worth of failed client/job applications to big firms pinned next to the sink… you don’t get a more cyberpunk premise. Their career starts in 1979 and in the carriage at the end you find the same failed applications pinned to the wall next to the column of decks.
The way the ending reflects the beginning as you approach the train on your hoverbike, to Clair De Lune again, only this time without Lou and Maisy, is so sad when you realise when you are in the mirror. The drugs on the side, the photos showing them all aging together, the gear covered in cobwebs in the roof space (Nell being the first weever) and you interacting with the pictures straightening them up (how’s that for intimacy?). Clair De Lune is a beautiful piece anyway and makes me well up at the best of times, but the ending here hit me harder than any game I can remember. It’s that Up and The House of Small Cubes thing, y’know? Reflecting on good times – perhaps the best times – always gets me. Few games can stick the landing but Quadrilateral Cowboy’s finale was so good I had no desire to go back to some of the earlier missions to improve my times as I intended. It’s funny because when I was doing the heists I was thoroughly enjoying and totally focused on them but by the end I didn’t want to do more; the ending slammed that deck shut. The story shifts your focus so irrevocably from the job to your life and critically your friends. Wonderful. That carriage sure seemed lonely without them.
I don’t know Tom, that last mission, with the weever magnet and the lasers, was some Impossible Mission shit! It wasn’t dizzying or epic exactly, but the pre-heist planning on the deck of the Farfig and the scale and complexity of the level itself definitely seemed a lot grander than anything that came before it. I thought it was a really great mission to end on and the celebratory clinking of the ramen noodle bowls was lovely. I’ve seen a lot of folk say that Quadrilateral Cowboy isn’t long enough but honestly, I thought it was perfect. It took me about 9-10 hours give or take some AFK pausing and bug replaying.
The gadgets and command-line interfacing with things was just inspired and made me feel more badass than any other espionage game, and the thing is: that feeling is totally earned because you have to work these things out yourself and actually execute them. Using getpos and setpos with a set of blinks to shoot buttons and turn off lasers? Choreographing Maisy and Lou to launch onto a security truck, cut and jellybone into it and nab a safe? Weever magnets and perfectly timed blinking? Downloading brains via 56K modem? So so cool.
Also, badminton is the only sport I play, and this is the first game I’ve ever played to feature it, let alone swing a racket and a hit a shuttlecock. Admittedly, shuttlecocks are super sensitive to moving air so playing on top of a building sounds crazy but… badminton-playing cyberpunks. I’ll take it.
So… yeah, Quadrilateral Cowboy was awesome. Thanks @tomchick for the recommendation (and the stickynote) and thanks again @Left_Empty. One of, if not my favourite, gaming experience of the year.
Dang, it sounds like the updates may have broken more than they did fix (I remember later Mr. Chung introduced workshops and custom levels loading, to try to appease the crowd I guess).
I absolutely share this view, to this day. It’s a game I’d love to replay, but I feel like I would violate that unwritten contract between me and Quadrilateral Cowboy and something may break if I did.