Postplay : Dear Esther

Dear Esther, it took me a few moments to realize where I was after I had opened my eyes. I could hear the waves breaking on the rocks behind me while I watched the lighthouse and a cold onshore breeze played with my clothes. The loud call of a gull made me turn my head and in the distance I saw a blinking red light that grabbed my attention. It was somehow calling me, so I put my left foot in front of my right and started my hike towards its bright, flickering promise.

The chinese room's Dear Esther is a hard thing to talk about for multiple reasons.
First of it's difficult to say anything meaningful about the game or show screenshots without getting into spoiler territory. The value of Dear Esther relies solely on atmosphere and story, so giving away anything about it could have an impact on your experience. I believe this is the reason why most reviews remain vague about what Dear Esther actually is and I'm afraid I'll have to do the same.

Another difficulty lies in the nature of the beast. As mentioned in my preplay, calling Dear Esther a game is debatable. It's difficult to say whether or not Dear Esther is a game because it's very hard to define what a game is. Personally I tend to go with the definition Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have offered in their book Rules of play.

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that result in a quantifiable outcome.

By this definition Dear Esther wouldn't be a game because if we take this definition apart it says that, in order to be a game, software needs a player, a conflict or challenge to overcome, a set of rules that has been conveyed to the player and a quantifiable outcome to determine whether or not a player has won. If these conditions aren't met than you are just playing, not playing a game.
I like to use the example of throwing a ball to differentiate between playing and a game. If you aimlessly throw a ball, you are playing. If you however try to throw a ball through a hoop and state that you win if you get the ball through the hoop in three or less tries, you are playing a game. You have created a set of rules, a series of obstacles and a winning condition that elevates playing with a ball to playing a game that involves throwing a ball.

I won't go any deeper into this because a lot of people have their own ideas about what is or isn't a game and a lot of examples can be given that don't exactly fit the definition I tend to go with but could still be considered games. Dear Esther is one of those fringe cases and thereby it is hard to talk about it with other gamers without getting into a discussion about the meaning of the word game. Throughout the game there's no interaction with your environment, items or NPC's. You go forward without a clear goal and there never is any real obstacle in your way to overcome. To make things simple I'll refer to Dear Esther as a game throughout this post but feel free to think of it as a piece of entertainment software instead.

The weird thing about Dear Esther though is that being a game is one of its biggest flaws. I have seldom played or seen anything as immersive as Dear Esther. The environments are fantastical but believable. The sound design is phenomenal and the music ties it all together.
I've been to Iceland last summer and one of the things I loved most about that country is the feeling you get when you turn a corner and find yourself looking at something hauntingly beautiful. It's a rare feeling and to my amazement Dear Esther succeeds in recreating it from time to time.
But this immersion gets broken as soon as you realize that you are playing a game. At one point I wanted to have a look at the environment from the top of a hill. I started walking towards it but found myself stuck on a small rock that acted as an invisible wall. All of a sudden I was pulled out of the world Dear Esther had created for me and found myself behind my computer playing a game. That's what I mean when I say that being a game is one of Dear Esther's problems.

When going over my notes I can clearly see the moment where I stopped looking at Dear Esther as a piece of software. I start out writing about technicalities like how many chapters are in the game, how the controls work or invisible walls. At one point though, my notes change and I'm talking about the sound, the music, the feeling I get when walking into a cave. That's when the game starts shining, the moment you forget that you are playing it and just start experiencing what it has to offer.

As I said in the beginning of this post, Dear Esther relies solely on atmosphere and story. By now I think I've made clear that I found the atmosphere astonishing so let's talk about the story.
Dear Esther's story is told by a narrator and progresses as you reach certain points in the environment. It's style is rather poetic and don't expect to have all the answers by the time the credits roll. It is a story meant to make you think long after you're done playing the game and it's open to interpretation and debate.
I'm not going to pretend that I understood everything the game wanted to tell me and I'm honestly left rather confused than anything else, but the story does fit the atmosphere of the game perfectly and adds to the feeling of wonder you get while playing.

There are some more obvious story beats that give you a basic understanding of what is going on and these are often told by elements in the environment rather than speech. One big WTF moment in particular gives you a big clue to what is actually happening over the course of the game but you'll have to fill in the gaps yourself. Some of these elements are randomized making it so that you'll never get the full story when only going through the experience once and this opens the story line up for even more discussion.

Overall I think The chinese room has made exactly what they intended to with Dear Esther. It's an interesting approach to gaming that could be an inspiration for many developers if nothing else.
I have to warn you if you're interested in trying it though, it's very short. I finished it in just over 70 minutes and I was taking my sweet time writing down notes and searching for good spots to take screenshots.
Despite the fact that some parts of the story are randomized I don't suspect many people go through it twice. This makes it hard to justify the €7,99 price tag. The game has been on sale many times before so I suspect that it will be again in the future. When it does I recommend anyone who's into gaming to give it a go. Dear Esther is something unique and it will give you a new look at our much beloved medium for sure.

You can find my Preplay for Dear Esther here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition

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Postplay : Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

In 2012 developer Robomodo released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (THPS HD), a game that set out to celebrate the heydays of the Tony Hawk series. If you've read my preplay for this game then you'll know that I have warm memories of those early THPS games. This made me a bit anxious to start playing THPS HD. You'll find out if my fears were grounded when you read on, but one thing is for sure, my love for the source material made this game one of the hardest for me to review so far. This has resulted in a longer post than usual, please keep in mind that everything is written from the viewpoint of an avid THPS 1, 2, 3, 4 & Underground 1 fan.

Career and single run are the only two modes available when you first start the game. I went into career because that's where the crux of the game has always been in the past. While going through the skater selection, I expected to find a custom skater option but to my surprise there wasn't any. It's kind of a shame as this has always been a fun part when starting out with a new THPS game and these series are one of few where you actually get to see your avatar from all angles during gameplay.
But I suppose a custom skater isn't that crucial to the experience so I went on choosing Tony Hawk as my partner in crime. Being that his name is on the main menu I guessed he's the guy to go with.

The first map on my plate was Warehouse, the very first level of THPS1. It only took me one run to achieve enough of the goals to go on to the next level. This told me that the controls of the game are solid and that 13 year old muscle memory is still hidden somewhere in my body. I was amazed at how quickly I picked up all of my old tricks and after just one run I was already landing decent combo's. THPS HD was off to a good start. 

Speaking of unlocking, there's been a crucial change to how this works. In THPS 2 you unlocked levels by spending cash earned by completing goals and collecting dollar notes spread throughout the maps. This was a cool system because it allowed you to spend more time in your favorite levels, collecting every last dollar note, while being able to get through your least favorite maps fast as it didn't matter in which level you collected the cash.

In THPS HD however, levels are unlocked by completing a set amount of goals in the previous level. These goals do not add up so it doesn't matter if you complete 4 or 10 goals in Warehouse, you'll unlock School II and that's it. You'll earn more cash if you complete more goals of course but that's only going to buy you stats and skateboards.
Marseille has always been in my top five of THPS maps and it happens to be the last one you unlock in THPS HD. I had to complete 6 goals in Downhill Jam to unlock it, which is one of my least favorite maps of THPS 2. I don't really get why the original system had to be changed but again, this doesn't ruin the experience.

Perhaps I'm only picking these systems apart because my nostalgia is getting in the way so let's sum up things that did satisfy the thirteen year old fanboy in me.

One of my favorite things in THPS games was the way collectibles were laid out. If you were collecting the letters of SKATE, spray cans or liberty bells they were always put in place in such a way that you could get them all by following a specific line of tricks throughout the level. This was a great way to learn how to perform big combo's while traversing the map. The same thing still applies to THPS HD because all the collectibles can be found where they originally were. This means that veterans will have very little challenge with these goals but new players are still getting the same benefits as of old and that's for the best in my opinion.
A smaller touch that I really appreciated was replacing the secret tapes by secret DVD's. To me that's proof that Robomodo really loved the original games as well.

As briefly mentioned before the board shop is back as well. It isn't as elaborate as in some of the previous games but it's a nice touch and it introduces at least a minimum amount of customization. 

Another familiar screen is the stats screen where you can trade your hard earned cash to enhance your skater's abilities and of course you're also able to buy tricks and map them to whichever button combination you want. This allows you to configure the skater towards your own play style. If you're someone like me that likes to string together huge combo's using manuals and rails then you'll want to invest in your balance instead of your air time and spend money on rail tricks instead of grabs.

I also got a big hit of nostalgia from the music. I still have the THPS2 soundtrack stuck in my head and whenever I hear any of those songs, my instant reaction is calling out that it's a song from that soundtrack. This game includes a lot of those old songs but introduces some new ones as well and for the better part I enjoyed them.

The choice of maps is the most important thing for an old THPS fan of course. School 2, Marseille, Warehouse and Venice Beach shine as they have always done and it was great kickflipping TC's roof gap and ollieing the magic bum again.

Some of the choices are a bit weird. Warehouse and Hanger are both included while the latter is essentially an updated version of the first. There also are a couple of downhill maps and while I'm sure there's someone out there that loves these, I never really enjoyed those.

As I feared I'm already over 1000 words in and I barely said a thing about what's new in THPS HD.

For starters, it's HD and it shows. I like the way this game looks and the changes made to the HUD are for the better. Every now and then the environment doesn't look 100% sharp but unless you're looking for it you mostly won't notice this while you're planning your next jump.

What you will notice is that there are some physics bugs from time to time. Luckily they tend not to occur while riding but when you bail, your skater often flies off at high speeds. This happened once every few minutes but as it doesn't really affect your score I found it rather amusing.

It can't be all good though and THPS HD makes a big error in my book. There is nothing in the game that tries to increase its replay value. Every once in a while there's a hint on the loading screen that informs you that "stuff" will be unlocked once you complete every single goal in the game with every single skater. But even when ignoring the fact that "stuff" is awfully vague, this is a lazy way to get your players to grind out the career over and over again. This can only lead to a group of bored and frustrated players and unless that "stuff" is an actual pot of gold that's being dropped of in your back yard those players will be lost forever to the THPS franchise.

Another thing that made me come back to the older games over and over again was competing with my friends. There were a lot of split screen modes like tag, horse or score runs that kept the game interesting and gave you a reason to get better at it. Later on this was even enhanced when the online mode was introduced on the PS2. I remember buying an external network adapter so I could play THPU online.

In THPS HD however there's no form of multiplayer to be found, not even locally. For me this is simply unexplainable. There's only so much to be done in single player until you want to test your skills against other human players.
When you wanted to practice in the old games you would do this in single run by trying to beat your own high score. This was a great way to track your progress. It's baffling to me that even this local leaderboard isn't present. THPS HD uses Steam achievements and I would have suspected that I could see how well I was doing in relation to other players worldwide. As it turns out I can't even see if I'm doing any better than yesterday unless I write down my scores on a post-it.

This lack of multiplayer and leaderboards has resulted in me not knowing what to do after playing the game for four hours. Of course this has to do with me knowing every map by heart and unlocking all of them within an hour and a half, but this has always been the case when replaying THPS games and it never got in the way of having fun before. 

THPS HD provides some additional single player modes like hawkman and big head survival that add a bit of fun, but these won't grab you for hours on end. I ended up achievement hunting to get to my five hour mark and I must admit I had some fun with that.There are a couple of creative achievements but I can imagine that this would have only lasted me an hour more before it ran dry as well.

This has been a long post and it's still not easy for me to give my definite opinion about the game. It is by all means a well done homage to THPS and I believe Robomodo has done the franchise justice. But the lack of replay value makes this a hard sell. Fans of the series will probably have a fun night or two with this game and I believe new players will get more hours out of career mode than I did.
I'm just not sure if this is enough to justify the €11,99 it's going for on Steam though. If you have the game in your library it is certainly worth a play and I believe that, should it drop to €5 during a sale, this would be a better price for what's in this product.
The THPS series was a product of it's time and this remake gives a little taste of that for sure, but i'm left hungry for more while the game has nothing more to offer.

You can find my Preplay for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Dear Esther

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Postplay : Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge

As we all know some animals don't get along. Mice and elephants, cats and dogs and Rihanna and Chris Brown are just some examples. Another one is rats and cats.
While humans might have a tendancy to favor the latter, making them the heroes of the internet and giving them all the cheeseburgers, it's understandable that rats' aren't so keen on our four legged overlords, given their tendency to kill and eat them.
In Bad Rats: the Rat's Revenge (BRTRR) by invent4 we get a peak at the rats' side of the fight and learn that it mostly consists of sloppy attempts to kill their enemies one cat at a time.

But let's not jump the gun here. Allow me to explain what BRTRR is.
Bad rats is a physics game in which your goal is to hit a murdering device with a ball. In order to do this you place different rats and objects in the level. Each rat has it's own function. One hits the ball with a bat, another pulls it towards him with a vacuum cleaner and some simply blow up to lift the ball upwards. When the ball reaches the device, it switches on and kills the unfortunate cat standing next to it. These devices vary from chainsaws to microwaves, heavy weights, guns and so on. On occasion the animation associated with killing the cat can be funny but overall it's really goofy and over the top.

The basic premise reminds me of Armadillo Run, a game I played a few years ago and that I absolutely loved. In Armadillo Run you have to get a curled up armadillo into a blue circle and it has to stay within that circle for a couple of seconds. You create a path by building structures out of metal, rope, suspensions and so on. What's great about Armadillo Run is that the physics engine is 100% reliable and after a few levels you've got a good sense of what will work. This allows the game to focus on finding the solution to a problem and makes it easy to implement that solution.

It's a shame the same can't be said about BRTRR. Most puzzles are easy enough to see a possible solution as soon as the level is loaded. You place the rats and objects and try out your setup and you get all smug when you see that you're nearly there in just one try. Only the final rat didn't blow up quiet as you envisioned it so you move him a couple of inches and try again. To your surprise the first rat misses it's swing this time and the ball doesn't even get halfway the level. You don't change a thing and try this setup another 15 times, getting 15 different results and eventually the ball hits the chainsaw, the cat dies and a small part of you has died with it. On to the next level!

Sadly enough this is the norm rather than the exception while playing BRTRR and it's easily my number one frustration with the game. Physics engines are dangerous beasts. Even big developers like Bethesda can't prevent a mammoth from flying of now and again. That being said, when your entire game concept revolves around physics you'd better make damn sure they aren't a hindrance to the player.
In a game like BRTRR it isn't important if physics behave 100% accurate to the real world. The crucial part is that you as a player know what you can expect in order to be able to solve levels within those expectations. Part of the fun in games like Armadillo Run or even Line Rider is creating your setup piece by piece, testing it in various phases and making adjustments when needed, knowing that the parts that worked the first time will still work the 100th time assuming that you don't change anything preceding those parts.
After playing a couple of levels of BRTRR however, you expect things to behave random, taking away the temptation to find creative solutions.

On top of that BRTRR suffers from a varied assortment of bugs and mistakes. I'm sure I didn't catch 'em all but allow me to list those that I did.

• I accidentally closed the tutorial and wasn't able to restart it
• After finishing a level, the same level was loaded again
• When finishing the level again, the level I normally had to play was skipped and I went on to the next one
• A level was loaded without the HUD making it impossible to play. I couldn't access the menu using Esc and had to forcefully shutdown the game
• By lack of autosaves I had to replay a bunch of levels following that shutdown
• A wooden board got stuck in the floor making it impossible to complete the level

But there's one bug in particular that I want to give special attention to. Even though  all gameplay happens on a 2D plane, the ball often falls in front of the level for no apparent reason. I can only assume Invent4 made this game in a 3D engine using its default physics engine and has tried to limit that physics engine to a 2D plane. This might also explain why the gameplay is so unreliable.

In terms of graphics I can be brief. BRTRR doesn't look good, but its graphics fulfill their purpose. The game would not be more fun with better graphics. It's obvious BRTRR had to be made with a limited budget and I wouldn't be surprised if most of that budget was wasted on a failed attempt to fix the broken physics.
The low quality graphics aren't the only thing leading to this suspicion. I'm not a native English speaker and I'm sure a lot of what I write on this blog sounds awkward to those who are, but invent4 didn't even take the effort to use a spell checker. When releasing a game in a foreign language the least you can do is ask someone who speaks that language to correct your copy. I realize that this can be a costly affair but there's so little text in BRTRR that I can't imagine it to be too expensive.

I'm sure it's pretty obvious by now what my opinion on the game is. BRTRR is a foul piece of software and you shouldn't buy it, play it or gift it. If you do gift it to someone you are bad and you should feel bad.
Oddly enough I do see some lost potential in the game. Every now and then I got excited when a solution did work out the way I intended it on the first try. I often play games for Full Steam Ahead during lunch break and BRTRR was the first game to drum up a bunch of colleagues around my desk, proving that the basic concept has some merit to it. Saddly enough that's where all praise ends because this game was so poorly put together that invent4 should write a public apology.

You can find my Preplay for Bad Rats: the Rats' Revenge here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

Read more »

Postplay : Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45

22 June 1941.
The Germans wrecked our wire network to undermine our communications. Ninety-nine German divisions, including fourteen panzer divisions, have deployed against us from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
From now on we refer to those regions as the Western and Southwestern Fronts. In addition to the ground troops the Luftwaffe has attacked several airfields, destroying much of our air fleet.
I have received my orders a few minutes ago. I'm to go to the Western Front in an attempt to stop the Germans before they can reach our capital.
Many say our attempt will be futile, but I simply can't stand idle by while our country is under attack.

Despite the fact that I have put five hours into Tripwire Interactive's Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (ROO4145), I had to get that bit of back story from Wikipedia because not a single bit of story is included in the game. The only single player mode available is practice which is nothing more than the multiplayer mode with bots instead of humans. Remember when I said "I would love to try the multiplayer" in my preplay for this game? Well that's for the best because that's all there is to play.

Everybody knows that practice makes perfect, so in lack of a tutorial I got my feet wet in the practice mode. I randomly picked a team and went for the first class in the list. After spending some time adjusting the controls I arrived in an open field, standing next to some tanks. I was sure those tanks were just there for decoration so I looked around, spotted a town and started my hike towards it.
It was here that I first blew up. I couldn't have told anyone what had happened as all of a sudden I was flying through the air. It was suddenly clear that the tanks weren't there for decoration.
The rest of that first session included me trying to enter a tank but failing because I wasn't the right class. Trying to shoot the other tanks but failing because I needed to deploy my weapon but couldn't figure out how to. Trying to stay alive but failing because attempting to take down tanks with a handgun isn't a good plan of action as it turns out.

Practice wasn't doing me any good so I decided to jump into multiplayer. The first thing I saw upon spawning were tanks, tanks everywhere. This entire game seemed to only consist of chaos. Everyone was running around, randomly shooting at team mates or driving tanks through rivers without any clear purpose. I tried to join in on the fun and even made my first few kills during this match, but after ten minutes I had seen enough for one evening and shut down the game. When I noticed that it had only been 48 minutes since I started playing, I wondered how I would be able to play four more hours of this.

When I returned to ROO4145 the next day I went back into practice, determined to figure out what was what. Again I chose a map at random and to my surprise there wasn't a tank in sight. Instead I found myself on a hillside overlooking the area and soon I spotted enemy movement towards my position. I went into iron sight, took a second to track my enemy and went for the shot. I could see the man falling to his knees in the distance.
During the rest of this session I tried different maps and classes and things started to make a lot more sense. As long as I didn't stumble onto a tank filled map I was even having a decent amount of fun going against these bots. There wasn't a lot of challenge but handling the weapons in ROO4145 is fun on it's own. Everything handles very methodically making a missed shot something that matters. When you're using a rifle you have to prepare the gun after every shot before you can shoot again. I've put myself in a vulnerable position more than once because I instinctively reloaded my weapon after making a kill. When a reload is due, your best choice is to go into hiding because reloading your gun can take quite some time. This slow paced gameplay forces you to be careful and creates a feeling of tension that is surely one of the strong holds of this game.

Now that I was used to handling the weapons, I had to go back online. I joined a game that was taking place on a tankless map. The first thing I noticed was that I recognized a lot of the player names from practice mode. Turns out that even online most rooms are filled up with bots. This didn't take anything away from the fact that I was having fun though.
But whenever I got to a tank map, and there's quite a few of those, frustration took the upper hand. Even after figuring out how to get in a tank, operating it wasn't all that satisfying and the only thing the tanks add to the game play is a lot of imbalance. On these maps there's only a few classes that really have a chance of making an impact on the match. Other classes have no choice but to wait until they blow up. Perhaps if the maps were better adjusted towards this by creating corridors for these classes, allowing them to fight man to man and to surprise enemies from behind, it wouldn't be as much of an issue but unfortunately that's not the case.

Last thing that was on my to do list for this game was playing with a friend. Steam user and personal friend Imp had bought the recent Tripwire Humble Bundle including ROO4145 and joined me during my last hours with the game.
As with most multiplayer games it was more fun playing alongside someone you know. Especially the tank handling improves a lot when playing with a friend. In order to operate a tank in ROO4145 you have to have at least two players to do any damage. One player steers the tank while the other operates the gun. We had some fun trying to get the hang of this cooperation but didn't manage to score a kill.

While playing together we tried to jump around from server to server in between matches to get as much different experiences as we could. Our problem was that even though ROO4145 was part of the recent Humble Bundle there weren't a lot of people playing the game. Most servers were empty or filled with bots and the few that were populated had high ping resulting in laggy game play. This left us with three or four servers to cycle through. From those servers two were dedicated to tank maps and one was serving a big open map where everyone was throwing grenades at random resulting in pure chaos, leaving only one server to actually play the game and have fun.

This game is sold on Steam for €9,99. In my opinion that's a high price for a multiplayer only game with a small playerbase. If you already own the game and you have some friends to join you I would give it a go. There is some fun to be had, but not enough to play for hours on end by yourself.
The best way to play this game might be in an office space, playing LAN matches during lunch break. I can see how the proximity of the others players might result in a lot of fun. Being able to practice the different systems of the game with the same group of people for some time could really bring out the best that ROO4145 has to offer without the frustrating chaos and randomness that's going on in the online mode.

You can find my Preplay for Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 here

Not sure what Full Steam Ahead is all about? Read this introductory post and get up to speed

Next time I'll be playing Bad Rats

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Postplay : Blocks that matter

On June 6 1984 Alexey Pajitnov changed the world of video games forever by releasing Tetris. From that moment on blocks would always matter in my favorite form of entertainment, something that developer Swing swing submarine wants to celebrate with their 2011 release Blocks that matter (BTM).

It was up to me to find out if this celebration has turned out to be a party.

BTM is charming right from the get-go. The art is simple but effective and the story is delivered with a good sense of humor. Video game fans will pick up on a lot of references both in graphics (a lot of Minecraft influences) and in dialog. It is clear that Swing swing submarine is genuinely passionate about games and that this one is their attempt to put them on a pedestal.

The story starts with a classic video game premise, someone has been kidnapped and it's up to the hero to overcome a series of obstacles in order to save his loved ones. For once it isn't a lovely princess or an innocent child that's in need of rescue though. The game opens with the kidnapping of the game's developers and the only one who can save them is their own creation: Tetrobot. They manage to communicate with their little friend and guide him in their direction and towards upgrades needed to perform the task at hand while 'The Boss' tries to stop that from happening.

The way you progress is by drilling or breaking certain blocks in the environment. Once a block is destroyed it is stored in your inventory and by going into puzzle mode you are able to place them somewhere else. In order to place blocks however, you have to form a tetrimino and at least one of the blocks has to touch a solid object. If eight or more blocks form a line you can destroy that line while in puzzle mode.

These mechanics are a clever and refreshing mix of minecraft and tetris concepts that at the very least have a lot of potential for creative puzzles.

The puzzle mode is simple enough but it does take some getting used to. Numerous times I wanted to scroll through my block types but instead cancelled my building action or closed the mode entirely. This is of course mainly my own fault for not being attentive enough, but I believe the awkward keyboard layout that was chosen for this mode is at fault as well.

Besides the drilling and breaking of blocks, Tetrobot is also able to run and jump. The controls are tight enough to support decent platforming but the game never truly takes advantage of this, so navigating the levels isn't where the fun is at.

As most puzzle games BTM shines most while solving the puzzles. You try different approaches, take a few moments to observe the problem and when you finally do solve it you get a feeling of satisfaction that lasts until you hit the next road block. 

Performing the steps to actually execute the solution is mostly just a way to get to the next puzzle and shouldn't hold you back. It is here that BTM makes a crucial mistake in my opinion. Most levels consist of multiple puzzles following one another. More often than not puzzle one has no connection to puzzle two, puzzle two has no connection to puzzle three and so on. If you get stuck on puzzle four however, BTM resets the entire level making you go through the motions of the previous puzzles again. As said before, once a puzzle has been solved having to repeat it is nothing more than frustrating. Adding to this problem is the fact that you can get stuck very easily. One misplaced block is often all it takes for you to be doomed to start over.

This changes the way you play the game. Instead of experimenting with the puzzles, you spend a lot of time just staring at the screen, trying different approaches in your head before you make a move. When you do make a move and you realize you are stuck yet again all the fun gets drown out of the game very quickly.

This problem could have easily been solved by adding checkpoints after solving a particular part of a level that has no influence on what's to come, as many other puzzle games do. It just baffles met that the developers chose not to do this. 

At the risk of sounding whiny, this lack of checkpoints has turned my experience with a game that I would have enjoyed otherwise, mostly sour. I have a hard time forgiving a game that makes me repeat actions that aren't fun over and over again without any good justification other than to drag out the length of the game.

When my five hours were over I decided I had to at least have a look at the level editor before writing my postplay, as well as try out some of the community levels.
I can be short in regards to the editor. I opened it, looked at it, poked around a bit and closed it in confusion. I'm sure it is fully functional and not all too difficult if you're willing to spend some time figuring out what's what, but I wasn't willing to, so I can't get into any specifics about it.
As for the community levels, this might be one of the strong suits of the game. There's a voting system in place very similar to the one implemented on Reddit or Imgur. If you like a level you can upvote it, if you hate a level you can downvote it. This results in a neatly sorted list of most popular levels.
The couple of levels I played were fun and focused on the strong parts of the game. Although you still have to restart a level when you stuff up, a lot of these community levels seem to be better designed to prevent this from happening than the ones in the campaign itself.

So where does that leave things? BTM has made it real difficult for me to make up my mind about whether I like it or not. The game definitely has many things going for it and has exceeded my expectations in almost al regards, but the lack of checkpoints has gotten me frustrated enough to quit the game on more than one occasion. I am genuinely interested to see where the story goes and what gameplay elements the game has in store further down the campaign, but I just can't say for certain if I'll ever find the motivation to see it through till the end.

If you have this game in your library, be sure to check it out. It's definitely worth a shot and maybe you'll be better equipped to cope with the level resets or to avoid getting stuck than I am.
For those who don't own the game, I think it's worth the €4,99 it's going for on Steam considering the length of the game (I'm only 33% through the campaign at five hours in) and the quality of the story and art.
Be warned though, during the course of the game you will most probably love it and hate it all at the same time.

You can find my Preplay for Blocks that matter here

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Next time I'll be playing Red Orchestra Ostfront 1941-45

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