Review 1
Purchased!
Ctrl CV is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting
Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This one
is a very basic precision platformer slapped together with the GameMaker Studio
construction kit, although I will say this doesn't seem like an asset flip but a
genuinely made game. That doesn't mean it's good.
The gimmick here is the game is made more difficult by a slew of "clones" of
your own character than run around the screen and make the game confusing to
play. Well, it's different, anyway, but just because it's different doesn't mean
it was a good idea. Apart from that artificial difficulty, it's just a plain
boring platformer, although it does have a very large number of offputting
shortcomings and technical defects.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements
that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute
for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or
talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a
result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks.
There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your
display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of
this hamfisted design decision.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they
developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been
specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this
isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn
off the annoying background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop the music
using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why
the developers chose not to include this basic feature.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it
can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed
gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. To make
matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it
were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a
good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and
this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game.
While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console
game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge
graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve
only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of
PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video
game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the
GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset
favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of
development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you
can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if
you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro
pixel shovelware and cash grabs.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio
should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", ZPink has
done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the
basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around
with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real,
professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use
these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place.
This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern
PC game.
The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a
very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players
launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors
such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions
to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while
this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just
aren't using it.
Ctrl CV is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects
and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is
impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games
available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
Review 2
Purchased!
I got this game for free because it was in a bundle with some games I wanted and
it was still too expensive. When I read the reviews, I though, "There's no way
it's as bad as they said." It is. Don't play this piece of garbage. I didn't
even finish it, 2/10, and may god have mercy on my soul. Jesus.