Pixel Ripped 1978 Review (ajb1978)
The game itself, as in the core experience, is awesome. The meta-elements of how the real and virtual worlds merge are still here from first two, although this time you get to do some actual exploration of the virtual world yourself. You can find solutions to problems in that 3D virtual space that would've blocked you on a 2D computer screen. So switching back and forth between the real and virtual world is an active component of the game.
The real-world component of the game for the most part gives you a real good sense of what it's like to work in an office! You're trying to play this video game to debug it, and the phone keeps ringing, people keep stopping by to get you to rubber stamp stuff, etc. and you have to quickly find a safe spot in the game so you can take care of whatever needs to get done. Sometimes the monitor starts to fill with static and you have to physically smack it to fix it. It's surprisingly accurate and you can tell the devs drew on a ton of personal experience there. And there are some other really neat experiences, like playing from the perspective of a D&D token on a gameboard, looking up and seeing the players and DM constantly looming over you in the distance, and the skybox is the basement they're playing in.
The controls on the other hand, I take issue with. As an Index owner, during some of the heavy platforming button-mashing segments, the position of the System button causes my thumb to accidentally bump it. Imagine you're in the middle of some intense platforming, bullets everywhere, and then suddenly the screen goes black and the game is paused. Good luck not falling immediately to your death upon resuming. And it happens FREQUENTLY. Enough that the final boss took me about a half hour to finally finish, when at that level of difficulty on a gamepad it should've taken me 5 minutes. But I kept having to replay sections over, and over, and over. And all because of that stupid button. I don't know if it can be disabled somehow--I would assume it can--and on the right controller for this one game at least, that button should absolutely be turned off completely. We can use the left one.
Another issue is that it apparently has an extremely high threshold for analog stick input. Navigating menus, if your analog stick is only getting say 90% to the limit, it won't register. You need to have pristine, perfect analog sticks to play this game. If you don't, shooting a little WD-40 Specialist Contact Cleaner into the stick and wiggling it around can clean it enough to buy you a couple hours of good gameplay (that's how I had to do it), and then re-apply every couple hours when the stick starts acting goofy again. It's manageable in the 3D segments, the worst that happens is you won't be moving at full speed anymore. But anything 2D such as navigating menus or playing the Atari games, it's got such a high threshold you can be pulling back on the stick until your thumb gets sore and Dot will just be standing around at the top of a ladder all confused.
And finally, when you're at your desk you start accumulating objects that you have to physically interact with in the game. A cartridge you have to insert, a disk you have to put in the slot, a button you have to press, etc. but the object collision with those is just off in some way I can't quite put my finger on. You'll fail to grab things when your hand is literally clipping through them. You'll accidentally hit a button because your joystick in the game got slightly too close even though it never made contact. You'll be desperately trying to grab the joystick but one hand just won't latch on. Or the opposite, you're trying to let go and instead you're just swinging the joystick around hitting stuff. You try to throw something and it drops at your feet. Just stuff like that. That part feels a lot less polished than the previous two games. It's not awful, but it is present enough that you will notice, and it will get on your nerves.
But again, overall this was outstanding, and I intend to play through it again at least once. Definitely worth it, but just know about these issues ahead of time so you're not disappointed by them. I'd give it a good solid 80%.