izigame.me

"A delayed game is slurp gurp durp, but a rushed game is yoinky doinky sploinky" - an obviously very wise man
Thanks to the incredible modern advancements in data distribution, there's now also a third way out - keep patching a botched game until it's sort of okay!!
...but to be honest, when I got word that Cookie Cutter received a big update focused on fixing what didn't work, I wouldn't have given the game a second chance if I didn't see potential in it. In the previous version of this review, I wrote that I really WANTED it to be good. I mean, did you see all the cool finishers?? You get to play as a freakin' thunder thigh pissed off killer machine punk babe!! Truth be told, I may be biased because the artstyle is so up my alley and I'm a filthy completionist, so usually when I start a game - especially a metroidvania - it's very hard for me to give up on it...
But enough with the intros; let's start by rephrasing my old criticism that still holds up. Cookie Cutter plays a lot like the indie classic Guacamelee - but where that game had a central mechanic with two worlds, this one has... uh... nothing, really. You explore 2D maps, you punch things, you obtain abilities that, chances are, you've seen before in some similar form. Cookie Cutter is carried tirelessly on the back of its art, story and attitude, and if you strip away the pretty skin and look at the mechanical insides, you won't find anything unique or even all that exciting there. Movement in the Overkill Edition is slightly more precise, but it's still noticeably floaty and has some weird hiccups in stuff like dodging or walljumping. This is especially apparent in the final area, which is designed like a Super Meat Boy level, especially with all the freaking insta-death spikes. Except, in SMB, death is quick and levels are bite-sized. You don't DO insta-death spikes in a metroidvania, it's the LAW. Cherry is supposed to be a killer robot, yet she can't so much as a graze a bunch of spikes with her fingers? Please. Actually, it might just be a bug. Sure, Overkill fixed a lot of these and combat feels smoother, but there were still times when I fell out of bounds, void nodes stopped working, map didn't update, etc. etc. Slap the QA team around with a large trout from me, please.
And going back to the subject of Cherry's formidability, for a vicious murderbot she's not too handy with her weapons. Most of the heavy attacks (Y) and special attacks (RB) feel delayed, imprecise and they're just a pain to chain into combos. Maybe it's that I'm not a good fighting game player, but I found that the earliest tools remain the most useful all the way through. As soon as I had the ground slam and the electric guitar, I used these for like 95% of the rest of the game. It sucks, cuz every time I got a new ability or weapon I thought "woah, that looks cool" - only to be really disappointed most of the time. I mean god damn it, I spent all this time to put together a motorbike and I can't even ride around on it? What's the point, then??
Speaking of spending time, I'm not a big fan of requiring randomly dropped items for buying upgrades in shops. Yeah, there's another shop that sells SOME of them, but you still have to grind for the rest. Also, I've invested a good couple hours into running back and forth to 100% everything without a guide, and even though I usually killed everything in the way I still had to grind a bit to get the regular cash for the purchases - even with an upgrade that makes enemies drop more. Perhaps this is balanced for eventual DLCs since it appears there's a few of them already planned, but I dunno, it doesn't seem okay to me to just assume it's gonna happen in advance.
The world of the Megastructure seems very interesting at first, but the more I explored the more I felt there wasn't anything standout in it. There's clearly a lot of great artwork done - you'll often come across big rooms with sprawling setpieces in the background - but as a whole, I can't help but feel it all kinda blends together. Decorations are cool, and it's cool that they're all destructible, but once you do destroy them it's even more visible how bland and samey the tilesets themselves are. Like I said, I like the artstyle and general direction, you don't often see this kind of full HD indie metroidvania, but maybe the game could benefit from a more stylized, blocky look like say, Spelunky? Especially when optimization seems to suffer so much from all the fancy lighting and stuff. It's even harder to pull off combos when this 2D sidescroller performs worse on my PC than ie. Borderlands 3.
Music feels rather bland, too, but it gets the job done. But to start on the positives, most sounds are meaty and satisfying.
And yes, the main selling point of CC are the character animations. They're full of life and feel fittingly punky. When the camera zooms in closer, the game can almost look like one of the more daring 90's cartoons, especially with all the crazy fantastical gore. Frankly, to me the various finishers (I wish there was more than one per each enemy...) felt the most striking, but your mileage may vary. I hear people in the West are much more offended by lots of swearing, sexual innuendos and STRONGLY suggestive imagery, than by slicing a guy perfectly in two. But hey, that's punk for you. But even as a forever 90's kid edgelord, I sometimes felt that Cookie Cutter tried TOO hard to subvert and/or shock. There's lots, LOTS of references here, and they tend to get so on the nose that I seriously can't tell if they're affectionate or plain spits in the face. Yeah, I admit, this is mostly about the Undertale thing... (which is also punk as hell imo, just very differently) At the very least, it's nice to know the creators like a lot of the same things that I do, I guess?
In the end, I'm turning this review from negative to positive. After the Overkill patch, I got invested in Cookie Cutter enough to 100% it, and I can't say it was a bad time. But there were some painful lows, and the highs weren't really that high. I'd say it's something like a 5/10 - if you happen to get this game in your possession somehow, I suggest you give it a go and put in some effort to be patient with it - if only just for the visuals and vibes. There's plenty better similar games out there, but that doesn't make this one all that bad. And hey, maybe the devs will do some big patch again and it'll then climb to 6/10 or so!