Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Nebulys]

I finished Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector earlier this week.



I think, ultimately, I preferred this one, but some people may not like the tradeoffs versus the original.

Citizen Sleeper 2 has a linear story, whereas the first one has several endings.

Exploring the belt loses some of the intimacy of being on the single space station in the first game.

But that ability to explore opens the door to tell more stories, get more experiences and feel like you're "part of something", which I think is one of the game's strongest selling points.

What I didn't like was the glitch and dice breaking mechanics, which make the game very stressful in its opening 2-3 hours. But it's narratively important, so I let it slide.

Also, the push mechanic feels kind of pointless, and I preferred to spend my "level ups" boosting my skills rather than strengthening this mechanic.

But neither of those things take significantly away from what is possibly 2025's first game of the year contender.

If you haven't played either or both of these games, I'd recommend starting with the first one and graduating to its sequel. Both are incredible games!

 

[spiel]

Got all achievements in Dragonsweeper

Fantastic RPG spin on Minesweeper. There are hidden rules of monster placement that help you deduce the tile number, and you're supposed to figure them out as you keep playing. I do miss the original version of the game which was really elegant in its simplicity; it had the right balance of contemplation and guesswork in the early parts. But the new version is still fun in its own right and comes with many QoL improvements.

Completed Type Help

Highly recommend this if you're a fan of the investigative/deductive process in Obra Dinn and Golden Idol. I adore the increasingly sinister tone of the entire case and the lo-fi interface (reminiscent of IF games). Played with a partner and it was super fun piecing the clues together on a board with post-its.

These two games are easily going on my GOTY candidate list. And more incredibly, they're free! I've sunk so much time into Dragonsweeper that I happily dropped a tip, but sadly I couldn't find any donate button for Type Help.

 

[STHX]

Dynasty Warriors: Origins
A very well made game and a massive improvement over the disappointing DW9. Similar to SW5 the game is a "reboot" that focuses on the early parts of the Three Kingdoms storyline and ends at Chibi, but unlike SW5 instead of completely changing the artstyle and the characters they kept the DW8 artstyle and characterization (outside of a few like Zhang Jiao and Dong Zhuo, who were made more serious and interesting, especially ZhanG Jiao, what a glow up). Battles have never felt so good and the player really needs to be careful at all times (at least on the 2 harder difficulty levels). Unfortunately this all came with the game having a single playable character which is absolutely an issue, but all the weapon movesets are varied and unique (and greatly expanded) at least
The game stars an unnamed protagonist (let's call it Ziluan as other characters refer to him in the game) that starts as a mercenary during the Yellow Turban Rebellion but eventually joins one of the warlords of the era. Ziluan is kinda like a Persona protagonist: one expression for the entire game, never speaks a word, has "social links" with the various officers of the era which amount to nothing, and can occasionally pick a choice that ranges from "Yes" to "Sarcastic yes". So without beating around the bush Ziluan is a big disappointment and the first clear negative of the game. The worst part is how everyone, and I mean everyone just loves sucking him off: he is always the bestest, greatest, most impressivest and the sole reason every game battle is won. The series has always been famous for the 1vs1000 gameplay but at least past games pretended the character you were using wasn't the only reason a faction won. The only positive I can think about Ziluan is that it has extremely good animations during battle no matter what weapon type he uses. For the rest Ziluan is a total and complete failure, and let's not even talk about his "OC story" which amounts to nothing at all by the end of the game
On the story side, the early part of the RotTK story has been greatly expanded. Like the Yellow Turban Rebellion which in most games is solved in a single battle is now a whole chapter which includes 5 battles and multiple cutscenes, and the following chapter focusing on Dong Zhuo is even longer. The voice acting is the right balance of good and "hammy" which is exactly what DW should be, and this focus also allows the DW cast to be better developed (although all are not equal on this side). Too bad the actual cutscenes suck. Every one is the same "a few dudes standing still or sitting still while they look at the camera and talk". Nothing happens during these cutscenes, almost zero animations. The only true cutscenes are the CG ones but those are few and very sparse. Past DW games had cutscenes where people at least moved, or fought, or just did something. But here they're just... standing there doing nothing
The actual gameplay is amazing, but a particular focus should be given to the new "large armies" mechanic. A large army is a big clump of enemy and allied officers clumped together and behaving like a single unit. The player needs to continue stop the enemy army from using tactics (which change depending on the battle) while protecting their own strategists until the enemy army breaks, causing a massive morale loss to the enemy (and morale is probably one of the most important mechanic in this game). Even if you play good (and there are many ways to play good, like parrying, perfect dodges, counterattacks) having the morale advantage greatly decreases the time it takes to win and there is a certain satisfaction in seeing how all the efforts during a battle pay off in the end
Returning to the story, I picked the Wei side for the first run and I have to say the DWO Wei story is one of the best I ever saw in a DW game. Not only it's the most realized, but it somehow manages to give all the in-game Wei officers their time to shine. There is a great focus of explaining every battle and how it's supposed to go before even starting the prebattle war council. Every step of Cao Cao's plan is discussed and analyzed, every important RotTK event is adapted. It also doesn't forget to integrates in the later parts of the story the 2 officers which can be saved from their canonical death. It's also the only story where Ziluan's bond to the rest of the Wei officers feels like it has an actual significance, expecially in the normal end which has probably one of the best battles in the series where after the canonical defeat at Chibi Ziluan (and the player specifically) manages to regroup and reinvigorate the fleeing Wei troops in turning a battle for their survival in a massive curbstomp victory where every officers you met in the route has it's own unique dialogue and role to ensure victory. It's almost a shame the Wei True end skips this battle because, well it just ends with a victory at Chibi. Truly incredible
And the illusion shattered when playing the other 2 routes. Now now, I think the Wu normal route is still very good and it's also very unique since it has almost no battles in common with the 2 other routes. But for the Wu True route the writers basically didn't even try in doing someting with the 2 officers you can save (both just end up the same way: they got hurt badly so let's pretend they died for no reason at all). Yeah I know their death is really hard to write away but it's such a cop out, and the "True" end is barely different to the normal one (you even fight the same final battle with 0 changes). And Shu's route, oh boy. This game made me realize why most DW skip all these early parts to quickly get to the post Chibi events. The entire route is just Liu Bei and its 2 sworn brothers just casually getting involved in random things, made even worse by Liu Bei being such a crybaby with zero willingness to do anything at all. The last chapter at leasts adds a few more characters but it's too little too late. And because the game ends at Chibi there is literally nothing the writers could do to have a separate "True" route so the Shu true route is literally the same as the normal route with zero changes. It truly feels like the game originally only had a Wei route and the devs had to scramble to add 2 other routes in a year or something
Oh yeah, let's talk about the "affinity scenes" a bit more. Honestly they're not bad but they're also not that good. The real problem is how to get them: the officer you want to bond gives you some "tasks" which in 80% of the time amount to insanely boring grind like "kill 300 enemies using this weapon and this specific attack" which are on the level of random daily quests from a gacha. These only exist to waste the player time, and there are like 300 of them to do if you want to max all the affinity levels (or get all the achievements). DW games have been pretty bad with random things to grind for for the past games but this system beats them all. This grind is terrible, awful. And even with the map being a small "JRPG-style" world map there are still moments where the player has to waste time by walking from one tip of the map to the other. It's insane how good this game is during battles and how bad it's outside of battles
For the final part, despite the high parts this game ultimately feels incomplete. Ending at Chibi simply doesn't work in RotTK, especially for non-Wei factions. But the worst part is that even accepting Chibi as an end the game still feels "incomplete". Remember what I said about affinity scenes with the cast? Even "villains" or simply characters you can't join get them. And most of those are some variation of "oh Ziluan, I really want to recruit you, you're so strong and I want you all for me. Too bad the developers didn't add a route for my faction" and then it dawned on me: the game is basically set up to have some sort of Xtreme Legends expansion which will obviously add more routes to the story (because it would take much less time than writing the game up to Wuzhang Plains). And hey, nothing bad with expanding a game, but the problem is this game is 80€. And for this price you get underwhelming cutscenes, massive unnecessary grind, various stories that go nowhere, a terrible protagonist, and maybe even a 40 bucks or more "expansion"being sold in a year that will make this costly package slightly less incomplete. And this shit is unacceptable
Make no mistake, this game is good, but what started as a 9/10 eventually ended up at a 8, 7.5 out of ten. I have no problem with giving this game a thumbs up, but in no way is this game worth 80 euros. Do not buy it at this price. KT needs to understand if they want their games to cost so much they also need to put an 80 bucks level of effort in them

 

[TrishaKit]

I just finished Atelier Meruru
From a gameplay standpoint this one is easily the best of the original Arland trilogy. Seeing environments actually change, including what you can collect and explore there as you complete quests gives incentive to complete goals beyond just "you have to do this". Now you want to complete them because they'll help you find better materials for your alchemy! Plus its just fun seeing things change, and I like how this shows even on the world map. I can't say I was held as strongly story/theme wise though. I feel Totori was better in that regard with her story of trying to find her mother. Seeing her grow was also more endearing. But Meruru was still really fun! Seeing a much grown Sterk use his special attacks to finish off some bosses was also wicked cool.
Time to move on to Lulua.

 

[fantomena]

Finished Alan Wake 2 + Expansions (PC)

Still a fantastic game that got itself hampere down due to no physical + EGS exclusivity. Fantastic gameplay, good story, great world building, most beautiful game I have played so far (with path tracing enabled). Played and looked better than on my PS5. The story isn't as good as in the first game, feels like everything about the story except for the story involing Alan himself progressed. Lots of interesting wouldw building on the side, but I wish the story had progressed more as who knows if Alan Wake 3 will ever be released.

Story expansions were decent and fun too.

Score: 8.9/10

 

[Mivey]

Lots of interesting wouldw building on the side, but I wish the story had progressed more as who knows if Alan Wake 3 will ever be released.

I think the progression is pretty good (with Final Draft ending). There's still some open questions, but some of those connect fairly organically with other parts of the Remedy Connected Universe, and can be addressed in a Control 2. If it's clear that there won't be an Alan Wake 3, then they could probably easily provide an epilogue via expansions packs ala AWE in Control or other future Remedy games.

 

[STHX]

There isn't much to say about Suikoden I since it's a game from 1995. Like with many "firsts" the game has many archaic systems (especially inventory management) that have been refined or removed from its sequels. But considering this is a game from 1995 (it was a Playstation game yes, but it came out the same year as Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest VI and Terranigma, all SNES rpgs so it took a big gamble by releasing on PS1) it's still a very interesting experience. It features interesting subversions considering the era it came out but nothing to extreme. All in all replaying it was a nice experience and I will gladly move to II when it's time
But 2 things in particular stand out: 1) the remaster added an auto-save feature. I mean nice, if the autosave also "saved" every screen or something ismilar, instead it only saves when there is a save crystal in the current "room", except the game has maybe 8-10 save crystals in total so it's completely useless. Boy does this game love to starve the player while exploring dungeons, which combined with 2) this game has one of the most insane paces I can remember. There are people that argue Chrono Trigger is a very fast paced game since a lot of things happen one after another but at least CT has some moments of "calm". In Suikoden you literally can't go 20 minutes without something happening, from the beginning until the end. There is a part where you just finished exploring a dungeon, barely walk to the next destination and are instantly thrown into the first "major battle", and as soon as you clear it you're thrown into a dungeon which ends on the first 1vs1 duel all without save points (unless you intentionally exit the dungeon and walk back to the nearest save point). I can't think of another rpg like this

 

[MegaApple]

Finished : Spider-Man Miles Morales (PC)

Swinging is still the best part (even if it feels, designers can make it more complex, but chose to keep it simple), expanded a bit from SM2018. Combat was nice, Venom abilities were decent addition. Visual presentation (details, animations, effects) are industry leading.

Rest of the game left me "meh".
Painfully meh story (I like the idea - "friend turned foe", bad execution), disappointing after rather decent SM2018 story and excellent Spider-Verse movies. Ubisoft-like open-world activities felt worse here than in SM2018; good for passing time and de-stressing but didn't feel worthwhile.

Rating - 2.5/5 (C-tier)

 

[Mivey]

I finished Pillars of Eternity 3 sorry, I meant Avowed.

Coming into this, I expected an RPG with amazing combat, some great side quests (the kind they are famous for), lots of great roleplaying opportunities and perhaps a good story, that likely was not going to touch too many of the deeper topics of the setting, in order to ease people into it.

What I got was a story that feels more like a direct sequel to Pillars 2 than I imagined. Like, sure, the Watcher isn't here and the direct consequences of the ending of Pillars 2 isn't touched here, though clearly referenced and the events we witness in the Living Lands feel every much as world shattering than what happened there. To the point where I do not know how they will make future games in this setting that reference the events of Avowed. You can take the plot in so many wildly different directions by the end.

The combat is an absolute delight. I have never played an RPG where magic felt so snappy and useful. There are magic systems where you are more OP by the end, but it's often a struggle to get there, but it feels like a joy here in Avowed. By the end you are still deeply rewarded for strategic thinking and crowd control mechanisms, but even as a mage you can mix and match things as you want. Want to focus more on melee combat with sword, spears or daggers? Sure, go for it. You find great weapons throughout the game and it will still be highly viable.

The game is visually stunning. I loved how this game looked at 4K and (trigger warning for Derrick01 ) with DLSS and FrameGen I got a constant 100+ FPS throughout that still felt super responsive. This might as well be the best Unreal Engine 5 game in that respect I played. I do not recall any major stuttering or bad "camera feel" throughout. Obsidian has some amazing, world class engineers, on it for such a feat.

My only complains about this experience, the few warts to this otherwise beautiful game, would be about the side quest design. The writing for many of them is great, but very often there is a lack of "paypack". You rescue someone, or make some kind of important choice for someone, and there is very often no meaningful reaction. You often do not have to go back to see what the quest giver is saying, and even when you do, it feels like an afterthought. Clearly a budget thing, this feels like the kind of thing Obsidian is usually quite good at. Another more minor thing is that the choice to split the game into parts also makes it feel like a lesser experience, compared to their previous open world title New Vegas. I get why they did this, it must make devoplment so much more manageable, but you also lose out on so much cool interactivity and without it.

That said, overally I loved my time wi th Avowed and was really happy by the time the credits rolled. It's just nice to see the traditional epilogue slides explaining the consequences of your choice to you.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Great, fun game. Is more of a exploration-puzzle game than an action game, was actually suprised at how little shooting there was, you could easily finish the game without firing a shot. One of the most beautiful games Ive ever played (path tracing enabled). Great story, great environments, great world building, fun to explore, interesting characters. I did find that they could have explored parts of the story more, as I felt the ending came abit abrupt.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished



Nice game (6 hours) about a man doing a job underwater, exploringa and fixing things in the midst while he is having a crisis about his emotions due to loss. Some bad pacing, but the story was nice and the environments were nice. Nice looking game too.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished



Good, fun game. Great graphics, great looking environments, interesting story, lots of combat moves, abilities you can upgrade and buy. However, I did find it dissapointing that there were a ton of invisible walls, the money not being able to climb of different trees, rocks and such and how little impack the combat often felt when using the regular "stick". Very slow running too.

Score: 8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finally finished Yakuza: Like A Dragon. The first main line game without Kiryu as the protagonist. Instead the game introduces Ichiban Kasuga. Himself a two-bit Yakuza underling, who similar to Kiryu accepts a long prison sentence for a murder he did not commit. So right out of the bat, RGG Studio did not exactly re invent the wheel here. Ichiban shares a lot with Kiryu: the aforementioned prison term, they both hang on to an old fashioned, honour based view of the Yakuza, they are both fairly naive and have a fairly simple world view. What differentiates them is mostly personality. Where Kiryu was mostly aloof, almost shy, Ichiban is a lot more extroverted and emotional. It also helps that fundamentally, he likes being a Yakuza, in way that never really worked for Kiryu. The kinds of tasks that he had to do, like beating up people for money, where clearly not things he ever enjoyed doing, as we see in Yakuza 0. Ichiban feels more suited to a life where you don't need more than understanding who your friends are, and the ability to solve problems with your fists.

I really ended up liking Ichiban, to the point that I think he makes Kiryu retroactively look bad.

The story in this one is about as convoluted and complex as you can expect. I don't think it is quite at Yakuza 5 levels, it's far more straight forward than that, with a few, relatively predictable twists, and one surprising but also really clever one right at the end. Not going into details here (mostly because I'm lazy), but YLAD has easily one of the best narratives in the series to me. This feels like what Yakuza 1 wanted to be, a compelling villain who shares a close connection to our hero. Great, great villain and resolution at the end.

The party that accompanies Ichiban is also a big new thing: since YLAD is one big tribute to Dragon Quest, Ichiban has his "party". I loved this addition to the story as well. It makes this game so much more interesting, as you hear the characters talk with each other about stuff you find in the world and you have bonding events that you unlock as your level up their friendship levels (mostly by having them in your party during fights).

My only big negative about YLAD is the combat. I get that RGG Studio wanted this game to be a callback to old Dragon Quest, but I hate how restrictive and unimaginative their take on classic JRPG combat is. They really should have made use of positioning and introduce a few more mechanics to introduce more complex tactics. As it stands, this really feels old at hour 10, and it never really gets interesting. Level up to a certain point, use the enemies weaknesses, quickly find a healer, and then you are set for the entire game. It never, ever expects more from you. I really hope Yakuza Infinite Wealth introduces some new ideas here. Of course, there are still the spin off titles, like Lost Judgment, who retain action combat, but it would be neat if the big meaty main line games had good combat too.

overall, though, I still really liked YLAD. Combat woes aside, this feels like a fresh new take on the series and I am looking forward where Ichiban's story goes from here.

 

[spiel]

I’ve finally completed My Time At Sandrock after 4 starts in early access. I guess that speaks to the gameplay loop if I wasn’t bored replaying the same early game sections.

This is a sequel to My Time at Portia, a charming but janky farm sim-adjacent cosy game released in 2019. The series stands out from other games in the genre with the post-apocalyptic setting and a heavier focus on crafting. This entry is an incredible refinement and I think the devs managed to execute their vision this time. Everything has been polished here - the art style, writing, gameplay systems.

Introduction: Sandrock is a town built around an oasis in the middle of the desert. Decades back, the discovery that it sat on valuable old world technology led to a gold rush. Folks descended upon the region and stripped the place of its resources and greenery. Now it’s a dying community, buffeted by dangerous desert storms, and the water in the oasis is running out. You’re a new builder in town, going around fulfilling commissions.

The premise frames your entire gameplay.

• You’re salvaging junk from the old world ruins and recycling them for materials
• Water is a scarce resource
• You need water to cool down your machines which are your main source of production and therefore income
• You can gather water painstakingly or buy rationed water for $$$
• Sometimes there are scary sandstorms that make the wildlife angry and blow away your stuff
• Farming is hard - you need to plant straw grids to protect crops against the sand and it uses up a LOT of water (my heart hurt after the mandatory tutorial quest to teach you farming, it wiped out my supply )

Right from the start it feels deliberately hostile and I LOVE IT. You can tell that the devs did a lot of research on real life desertification and weaved that into the quest design. Like, this is the total opposite of ludonarrative dissonance or whatever fancy term. And it makes it so much sweeter when the friction falls away in the later half of the game.

The story pushes the themes of conservation, regrowth and community without coming across hamfisted or grossly saccharine. We earned our progress, dammit.

If I had to complain, the game was maybe 10% too long and the third act could feel slow and relatively uneventful after the incredible climax of the second act. But seriously, it was a wonderful, solid 80 hours all the way.

Side note, I played in English a couple of times, but my latest playthrough was in Chinese. The English script leans hard on the memes and wackiness, while the Chinese text is more even-handed. I think I prefer the Chinese voices but the English script has the edge for sheer hilarity.

10/10, it's really something special

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Plays and looks a lot better on PC. Fun gameplay and interesting world to explore, still not fond of the amount of mini games, uninteresting side quests and side activities and how the story was told.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Enjoyed it more than I expected, played it with full ray tracing and the game looked in many palces stunning. Gameplay was decent fun, but got repetive at times, story is mediocre, characters were okay, dialogue was meh, the world was however fun to explore. Got the "bad" ending as getting the "best" ending required to do all factions and companion qests, companion quests were not a problem, but the factions quest were too uninteresting right now, so maybe in the future.

Score: 7.8/10

Finished



Fun, beautiful looking game. Fun gameplay and interesting story. Story campaign was suprisingly short and the last story mission dragged on for far too long. Apparently the operations coop mode is recommended to be played and the game seems to be built around coop. However a friend who I usually play coop isn't available atm, so gotta wait for that.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Liked it a lot more than I expected. Interesting story, interesting characters, fun gameplay, main negative is that the open world is very boring, empty and uninteresting. Game reminded me off Uncharted and Tomb Raider.

Score: 8.2/10

 

[MegaApple]

Finished Journey PS4​

WHAT A JOURNEY.
Everyone reading this has to play it once in their lifetime. I'm not kidding. This game has the same special quality as my own "important" games - Shadow Of The Colossus PS2 and Okami.

I had literal chills in many moments of the game. Soundtrack and sound engineering is out of this world. And the anonymous companion I played with made my adventure so much more memorable.

 

[Joe Spangle]

Finished the SP campaign of COD:MW2 (newest version)



Got it in a sale. Standard Coddy stuff. Shooty bang bang. Its alright. No where near as good as the original Modern Warfare games. Those seem to just have a bit more style and substance than these new versions. For example the characters, Soap, Ghost, Cptn Price just feel a bit off in the new games. Since finishing this game I've re-played the re-master of COD4:MW and it is just much better at presenting everything. There are a few good missions though and so if you like shooty COD then pick this up on a sale. Its not worth £60.

Crashed quite a few times. Also I don't like the bullshit launcher stuff.

6.5 stay frostys / 10

 

[MegaApple]

Finished Space Marine 1 (Apr 16)
Good campaign that reaches some greatness at the end. Good to blow off some steam.
Coop mode is amazing, greatly enjoyed for someone who never gets into coop horde mode type games.

 

[MegaApple]

Finished : Half Life (plus expansions)​

• HL1 is a stone cold classic.
  I say this without nostalgia, this is still an incredible game. Such a tightly designed game, that STILL HOLDS UP. Combat dance is satisfying, setpieces are peak creativity. Tension is palpable, you feel the stakes because there are little safeguards to protect you.
  And it is damn immersive, feels like a "sense of place", despite looking blockier than apartment in East Europe.
• HL Blue Shift is a regular expansion pack. Same gameplay, creative puzzles. Some cheap encounters here and there.
• HL Opposing Force is a great expansion - despite being the bad guy - you feel the like crawling through an impossible situation. Fighting both advanced aliens and black ops, you feel the true "stuck between rock and hard place".

 

[spiel]

Completed Beacon Pines

A short, narrative adventure that plays out like a CYOA book. The fourth-wall breaking nature of the narrator didn't always work for me, but she had a lovely voice and delivered the emotional lines beautifully. On one hand I wish the word branching mechanic was more expansive and puzzle-y, on the other, it worked for the scope of the game, and made the experience tighter. At least you don't have run around chasing red herrings.

The story has the vibes of Stranger Things season 1. Fun, nostalgic, dark, a little nerdy.

Score: 8/10

edit: +0.5 for one of the minigames that was delightfully creative.

Completed En Garde

Almost rhythmic slash and parry system that makes use of the environment, kind of like... Sleeping Dogs with swords? But your enjoyment really depends on how well you can flow with what combat throws at you. If I was a bit better at the game, it would be a solid 8/10. However, the final boss fight was extremely frustrating for me and ended up dragging my experience down. I finished it out of spite. Great presentation and fun performances by the voice actors at least.

Score: 7/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished The Last Show of Mr. Chardish (Punk Notion / Anshar Publishing, 2020)

A narrative adventure game that tells a story about a rural theater in 1950s England, its ambitious and brilliant but selfish founder, playwright and main actor Robert Chardish, and his relationship to the game's protagonist, an ex-member of the theater's troupe who went on to become a successful Hollywood film actress, as she returns to the site some 20 years later, shortly after Chardish's death.

The game is divided into several chapters, each with different gameplay mechanics, which represent different plays written by Chardish during his residence at the theater, held together by a walking-simulator-style exploration game, in which the game's protagonists explores the empty and derelict theater.

The concept and story are ambitious, the environments and artwork (a lot of it hand-painted in VR) are beautiful, but the overall execution is very much We-have-The-Unfinished-Swan-at-Home, with somewhat haphazard controls, a quite short playtime and none of the individual chapters offering any particular excitement or in any way challenging gameplay.


6/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Trials of Mana.

A remake of the SNES game Seiken Densetsu 3, which I had actually played years ago using fan translations and emulators. So in a strange way a very nostalgic title for me. even if I never had it on the actual console.

I was surprised how effective this game translated into 3D. Each and every map is as I remember it from the original, each time of the same size if not increased in many places. Lots more dialogue to sketch out the world, though it does not compare to story heavy games like the Trails series where the NPCs feel much closer to actual people. Still, I love how traditional the writing is, replete with town greeter NPCs in every single locale.

The graphics are really nice, if played on a small screen, I found. I couldn't quite stand the look of this on 4K on a big monitor. It just highlights the bad texture work, which was still made with PS4 consoles in mind. But on a Steam Deck, running at 1080p (and hence downsampled to 720p) it was amazingly clean and nice. Almost looking like a CG movie at times. I have no idea how expensive this game was back then, but I recall that Squenix like its sale enough to greenlight a new Mana game, Visions of Mana (which then completely flopped, of course).

The music is great, but I think that's mostly the nostalgia. Each track has been carefully remastered, with improved instrument work, though with a focus on keeping true to the old melodies. Plus the exact original tunes are still there, and indeed the game defaults to the old soundtrack. Real dedication there to preserve the feel of the original.

The characters and the overall plot is as cliche as can be. Super one-dimensional heroes and villains, but I kinda like the charm of the game. It doesn't try to be something else than a callback to simpler times. I get that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I really liked my time with Trials of mana.

Not sure if non-fans of the old game will like this one, but if you have dabbled with the old SNES game like me and still have some fond impressions of it, then this is a must have.

 

[MegaApple]

Finished (one run) - Into The Breach (2018)

Intimidated at first, I got sucked in. I didn't think too hard and just went along for the ride. Easy difficulty, because Subset Games are not at all easy. Movement manipulation reminded me of Radiant Historia, except more strict.

Impression (not hard rating) - Great (solid 7 or 8) from first playthrough.

 

[STHX]

What an insane result for a "dev's first game"
In the last years I have seen so many devs fumble their games, so many big names trying to start on their own and imploding before even releasing their first title. But even this gen you can still find hope. I love that this game exists, I love that the director's previous presence online is a bunch of DMC combo videos, I love the composer was discovered through posts on Soundcloud, I love that the "game" first presence online was a few posts on reddit about suggestions, I love that a game that is so "french" was made by a french team
I love it
Now now, this game still has issues, especially "budget issues". There is a clear jankiness especially with walking/running animations, one time I managed to make a character fall through the floor (but after a bit it simply teleported back on solid floor), and the more you look, the more you start to notice "reused" assets sprinkled a bit everywhere. And those damn Gestral beach minigames... But you know what, I don't really care about those things. The game is phenomenal. It's very obvious to recongnize which games inspired it but everything has been done with its own style and it manages to stand on its own against other "JRPGs"
The biggest inspiration however it's not Final Fantasy or Persona (although they clearly leave their mark on this game) but Dark Souls. Estus, Bonfires that respawn enemies, and obviously the parry system. Even the dungeons, and enemy design and animations feels straight at home in a DS game. There is always something to find in the game dungeons, a new passive, a new optional boss, and even quests by "cryptic NPCs" that leaves the player to piece together the game's background
The soundtrack is insane, Each area has its own exploration and battle themes, and they all flow into each other. There must be at least 10 songs that play intermittently between each other in every dungeon. And it's so perfectly "period piece"
Story and npc dialogues is great. Like a real rpg it combines both serious and funny moments without overdoing it. But I do have a few issues with the main story
First we have 2 cases where you can very clearly see the "filler". Without spoilers, in the first Act at one point a characters tells your party to find a "rock", to which one of your guys says "let me guess, it's in a dungeon filled with dangerous monsters". The joke is the answer that goes "actually my neighborhood has it, he is over there". And it would be a joke if not for the fact that in the end the rock is in a dungeon filled with monsters. But the second case is even more egregious because suddenly in Act 2 the progression stops because the party needs to pass a barrier, and to pass the barrier you need to randomly kill 2 bosses just because. The 2 dungeon you have to visit are so "fillery" you don't even (spoiler for and endgame area) see them again inside the monolith, which is made of pieces and enemies taken from every story dungeon
Act 3 also suffers from a typical FF problem: the only main dungeon is the last one, but on the other hand it's filled with optional side areas, including superbosses. Except this time some of this optional content feels very story significant. Not a big issue but it completely tanks the normal plot progression
Some optional areas are also very obviously filler. A single room having a single item with no enemies, no quests, no landmarks. I guess the map had to be filled in some way
I won't discuss the full story here (no reason to spoil beyond a few vague things) but I found it very interesting and well directed
But in the end, the best thing about this game is that... it's only 50 bucks. As nickel and diming is becoming the industry favorite past time, seeing something coming out at this price point and still looking and playing so well is the true win for Sandfall
And yes, there was no catch in the end

 

[MegaApple]

Good mindless shooter giving me same dopamine as Vampire Survivor type games

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Fantastic game, great story, great world building, nice looking environments, addicting gameplay, all around a well built game game. Negative is that I sometime felt the game being too long for it's own good, finding resources by opening all those specific drawers and lockers etc. got tiresome after a while (due to how long the game is).

Score: 8.9/10

Finished



Fun, decent game, that doesn't do anything new really, it's a Spider-Man game alright. Nice looking game with a mediocre story.

Score: 7/10

Finished



Enjoyed this one a lot. Beautiful game, stylish combat style, great unpredictable story, fun combat, interesting world and lore to explore. The combat did get repetive at times though. Fantastic music.

Score: 8.7/10

Finished



Okay soulslike. Nice looking environments and okay level design. Sadly the umbra (different dimension) mechanic that is one of the main gameplay elements of the game got quite tiresome after a while and I wish the combat felt better. Lots of different weapons and armor to choose from and upgrades to do. Story was just okay.

Score: 7/10

 

[d00d3n]

I completed the game and all achievements in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 yesterday.

It is one of the best JRPG style games I have played, and it is very surprising to see a game with so many strengths coming from a new developer with no track record.

The story and characters are simply better than in most other games in the genre. I am quite good at losing interest in games and disappearing them in my massive queue of things to do later, but after a brief opening section with slightly annoying city exploration content, the game delivers one of the most enticing and one of the most well paced main story progressions that I have experienced in a role playing game. Despite the strong drive forward in the story, the game is at the same time subtle in how it fleshes out the world building and the character back stories. The voice acting and the ending(s) are incredible as well. There are no weaknesses in the story department in this game!

The gameplay is great as well, but has some minor frustrations. Basically, the gameplay systems are maximalist in the vein of a main line Final Fantasy game. You can except an old school world map system, loads of side quests, loads of optional areas, and a complex combat system that synergises with a lot of items that you will find through the extensive exploration content that the game has to offer. The combat system is turn-based, but includes timing based button prompts that have to be used defensively, and can also be used to enhance offensive abilities. It is a quite interesting system, but it mostly comes off as a well made turn based JPRG combat system. The frustrations in the system consist of a lot of really difficult enemy encounters that are placed near the main path of areas, and it is often unclear if you should tackle the challenges right away or if you should leave them for endgame cleanup duties. A couple of such encounters throughout the game would have been fine, but in this game most areas have one or two of them ...

The graphics and music are fantastic, and perfectly complement the great story that the game has to offer. I played the game in 4k DLSS quality mode with DLSS4 forced through the Nvidia app, and the graphics never disappointed.

I would highly recommend the game to fans of the JRPG genre.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Jusant (Don't Nod, 2023)

Stunningly beautiful game and a genuinely new take on the walking simulator genre - shifting the perspective to third person, mixing up the walking with alpine climbing (complete with rope and piton mechanics and individual limb control), while keeping the focus squarely on exploring, observing, finding the collectible objects, reading documents and slowly puzzling together a picture about the place, the world, the obvious apocalypse it has been through and the player character's place in it.

The game rigorously adheres to show-rather-then-tell when it comes to the story and world-building (there is no voice acting, no narrator in any way, shape or form, and there are no NPCs other than the player character's little critter-sidekick) and for players who take the time to look and read, will slowly unfold a melancholic vibe that, near the end, just from reading a collectible document, had me in genuine tears, something that video-game writing manages to do very, very rarely with me.

However, all of that is optional - you do not need to read or collect a single thing to progress, and the game can also be enjoyed as a pure climbing game, which players with speed-running ambitions will appreciate.

The only weak point of the whole game is the rope physics system, which tends to glitch out in quite immersion-breaking ways if you push it just a bit.


9/10


Also finished American Arcadia (Out of the Blue Games / Raw Fury, 2023)

Out of the Blue games does it again, after their stunning first-person puzzle-adventure debut Call of the Sea (which is referenced aplenty in American Arcadia, along with all sorts of other late 20th century pop-culture), this game expands the gameplay with side-scrolling puzzle-platforming as well as first-person exploring and puzzling, and sometimes mixes the two in some initially quite challenging perspective-shifting twin-stick action.

However, the game takes great care to always put the narrative and the story ahead of the pure video-gaming action, which is great if that's what you're looking for, but people hoping for a pure cinematic platformer will be slightly irritated by the frequent interruptions from cut-scenes and voice-over monologues.

Visuals, audio, direction, pacing, voice-acting are all top notch, just like they were in Call of the Sea, and while I was able to guess the game's final twist one chapter ahead of the ending, the story was still satisfying and enjoyable to follow right through to the end.


8/10




Both games are also notable for being Unreal Engine 5 titles that do not require a ridiculously high-spec PC to run well and also do not, for the most part, suffer from the plethora of awful visual artifacts that a lot of UE5 titles that have come out since have become quite infamous for.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Mediocre game, a barren open waste land where little is to discover, mediocre and uninteresting story for the most part, fun combat and traversal, suprisingly short (9 hours).

Score: 6/10

Finished



Super fun action-adventure 3D plattformer. Gorgeus looking game, great level design, mediocre story, fun "rift dimension" gameplay, but very strict (you can only use the rift dimension at already decided parts in the game. Short game though, wish it was longer.

Score: 8.9/10

Finished



Decent fun game, but didn't do anything amazing. Fun combat, okay world to explore, mediocre story, boring side missions (did some), okay characters. Really liked the UI. Also enjoyed the different Eikon abilities. Will buy the DLCs at some point.

Score: 8/10

 

[spiel]

Completed Islets

A cozy Metroidvania. Lovely art, controls well, and there's enough variety in combat, enemies and biomes to keep you entertained for 8-10 hours. The difficulty is on the gentler side in the genre, even though I still died a lot of times (because I suck at video games). My least favourite part was perishing after completing a particularly tough section and having to redo several screens because there wasn't a nearby save point. At such times, I wished the game had the Hollow Knight heal ability. Thankfully there are no insta-kill spikes or pits.

Anyway I really enjoyed the game. It had little flourishes here and there that made me smile.

Score: 9/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Tomb Raider: Legend (Crystal Dynamics / Eidos Interactive, 2006)

The first game in the first reboot series of Tomb Raider, after Crystal Dynamics took over the franchise from Core Design. I bought this game after I played the second game of this series, Tomb Raider Anniversary, which massively exceeded all my expectations and was a 9/10 for me.

Well, this game unfortunately, even though it shares a lot of personnel, the game engine and even a bunch of assets with Tomb Raider Anniversary, is much, much worse. Looks worse, controls worse, level design is worse (some of it is downright absurd, in one level in the second half of the game, there is a long section of Lara having to operate a forklift(!) to progress), QA is worse (lots of bugs and glitches, some potentially game breaking) and the game length is only about a third (!) of that of Anniversary.

I get the strong feeling that this game must have been rushed to make the 2006 release deadline. A lot of sections feel like desparate filler - there are a bunch of shooting gallery sections and two vehicle sections, one of which is exceedingly long and boring.

I cannot help but note however, that the Lara Croft in this game, particularly in the first half, shows the most skin compared to any other Tomb Raider game, and half of the game's triangle budget at any point is spent on Lara's character models, which feature plenty of tight-fitting (and short) pants and tops with deep, deep Vs and, yes, some jiggle in both of those areas as well. And that is pretty much the only selling point this game had.

The music also deserves a special mention for being a worst-of-2000s videogame soundtrack medley, every single track apart from the menu music (which it shares with Anniversary) is some degree of awful and does not match the mood of the game at all.


6/10

 

[FunnyJay]

Finished Mass Effect 1 in Mass Effect Legendary Edition yesterday!
My first finished game in months.

I think the latest time I played Mass Effect 1 was back in 2011 or 2012, were I took a Renegade male-Shep through the entire trilogy. (I remember playing Mass Effect 3 in Origin but through Steam so I could take screenshots and post them to my Steam profile). Before that I played Mass Effect 1 and 2 as paragon fem-Shep back in 2010.
So it's been a long time since I played any of these games. I picked up both the Legendary edition and Andromeda (which I have yet to start) a month or so ago dirt cheap.

What a ride this was! Just an excellent adventure, with at least some of the clunkiness of the first game removed. It still was an inventory fest galore (almost looter-shooter levels which is fun to consider) and the powers were really clunky and not of much use.
But I played it on casual difficulty as well, which made all firefights trivial, and brought the story to the forefront.

I did quite a few of the side quests this time around, and it felt like Admiral Hackett phoned in a lot more with side quests than I actually remember. I mostly remember the rogue VI on Luna from before, but he showed up with quite a few side quests this time around.
This was also the first time that I actually managed to trigger Wrex's side quest (which finished comically abruptly), since I have pretty much only managed to trigger Garrus side quest before. Didn't manage to trigger Tali's side quest though.

But I really like how the game has some great pacing, and you really don't need to trudge along that much with the Mako (even though I visited quite a few of the uncharted worlds anyway). The small adjustments to the Mako, like the boost, was a welcome addition as well.

Next up will probably be Mass Effect 2, which is an even better ride, and I will be upping the difficulty of the combat at least a bit for that one.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Moss (Polyarc, 2018)

A third-person puzzle platformer with action elements, designed exclusively for VR. The player not only controls the player character and takes over the role of the camera, the game's story also breaks the fourth wall and explicitly acknowledges the player as a protagonist of the story, along with the player's (other) character, a very cute anthropomorphic mouse.

The VR effect makes every scene of the game incredibly immersive despite the abstraction necessary for a platformer and the level of detail on display when leaning in and looking closely is surprisingly high, especially for a relatively early VR title such as this. Even though the game is meant to be played seated (which the game explicitly states right at the beginning), it's perfectly happy for the player to get up from their seat and take a good look around the scene - and in fact, doing so helps with finding some of the collectibles in the game.

The biggest weakness of the game is the actual platforming - as it turns out, 3D platforming has many of the same problems in actual 3D as it does when projected on a 2D screen - plus the fact that VR controllers might have the same elements as a traditional game controller, but none of them are quite as precise. The last chapter of the game is one long speed-platforming challenge where the mousy heroine of the game gets constantly harassed by a level boss, and it's more annoying than challenging. That's just 20 minutes of the game however, the rest was pure delight.


8/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished Styx Shards of Shadows today and a couple weeks ago the first one, Styx Master of Shadows. The news about the new Styx game (plus a deep sale at the time) led me to finally have a look at the Styx games from developer Cyanide.

The actual plot about Styx and its world is kinda basic, and whatever. There's a unique creature, the world first goblin and he loves Amber and whatever. It's all pretty ad-hoc and never matters much. The core is the stealth. You get a couple basic objectives, kill this, grab this, and so on, plus really nice levels with lots of verticality, enemies that react understandably and communicate their state well, and an increasing complexity in terms of enemy patterns, plus new tools as the game progress to keep things interesting.

Styx 2 improves the visual fidelity and brings larger levels to the fold, plus even more complex behaviours, but it is otherwise a very iterative sequel, which isn't a bad thing at all.


If you like stealth, especially when you aren't punished for being lethal plus stealthy, then these games are a strong recommendation. There's a fair bit of Eurojank feel to its look and controls, though, so one should be aware of that.

Will surely check out the 3rd game once it drops.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Super fun and enjoyable game where a yoyo is your main weapon. Decently big world to explore, nice looking "GBA-style" graphics, cool story, cool way of doing upgrades and the different upgrades are actually interesting, lots of places to explore. Main negative is that some of the puzzles and "plattforming" can be annoying at times, doesn't always fit with the pace of the game.

Might end up on my goty list.

Score: 9/10

Finished



Fun "immersive sim", cute story, interesting characters, a lot of ways to complete the objectives, good humour. Negatives are that it it is pretty much the same objectives in every level (find a certain number of cats and save them) and the levels mostly look the same. The cats are in "boxes" and you nee dto find keys to open themand sometimes finding those keys can be more annoying than fun.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Very good looking walking sim with a very interesting story and really cool design, didn't get my jaw to drop by the desaign as many other people based on what I've read of user impressions, but I liked it a lot. Very interesting world that could have been explored even more. Sadly, it's another walkign sim where the running is too slow.

Score: 8/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired A Space for the Unbound (Mojiken / Toge Productions, Chorus Worldwide, 2023)

Ultimately a point-and-click adventure game, albeit with direct, character-centric controls and the genre-typical mechanics mixed with various mini-games. Unfortunately the game lost me just about half-way in, with both the puzzles and the story becoming increasingly convoluted. I bailed out when I found myself repeatedly looking up solutions in a guide and watched a playthrough on YouTube instead, only to find that the story gradually veers more and more towards the melodramatic, something that the first half of the game did not suggest to me, and so much so that it ultimately would not have been for me anyway.

The first chapter / prologue of the game is available for free on Steam as a playable demo (but is also included in the full game).

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished The Gap (Label This, Crunching Koalas, 2024)

A first person narrative exploration game with some light puzzling, with a dramatic story centered around memory (and the loss of memory) and time-travel. The game starts right in the middle of things with pretty much no exposition and the player is left to figure out what's happening and who is who by looking at objects and exploring memories (and different timelines) associated with them.

This is a very late Unreal Engine 4 game and is styled in what now is fairly well known as Unreal-Engine-5-photo-realism, it even features backported optional support for ray-traced ambient occlusion and reflections. Quite impressive visuals, very good ambient sound and the entire game (including the player character) is extensively voice acted.

The game's story and characters are quite unusual relative to the genre in two ways: For a game involving (sort-of/kind-of) time travel, the continuity is relatively loose, and for a drama, and especially for a video game, all the characters in the game are quite flawed - there's no easy empathizing with any of them. I enjoyed this a lot, but others' mileages may vary.


7/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Played it in VR (Oculus Rift). Very good game, fantastic character and level design, cute, okay VR interactivity. Enjoyed it a lot.

Score: 8.7/10

Finished



Okay game, just above mediocre for me. It's like Left 4 Dead in VR, just worse than L4D. Very short game too and didn't find it to have much replayability at all.

6.8/10

Finished



Very fun roguelike in VR. Good gameplay, good gunplay, interesting upgrades, great UI, decent level design. However the areas you play through in order to get to all 3 bosses are too many and too long for it to be a great roguelike. Still liked the game a lot.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Yet another amazing game from Hazelight. Didn't reach the height of It Takes Two (gave it 9.1/10 I think), but it was very close and the game is fantastic. Great graphics, great sound, great level design, wish there were more mini games like in It Takes Two, fantastic pace, great variation interms of level design and gameplay mechanics, okay story.

Score: 8.9/10

Finished



Had a ton of fun with it, a lot more than I expected. Played it like a month after release due to waiting for the path tracing patch. Game looks great, plays great, loved the shield gameplay (however it did get repetive at times, using the shield I mean). Enjoyed it a lot more than Doom Eternal, even took me 31 hours to play though all 22 levels.

Score: 8.8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. This was made by MachineGames, the devs of the modern Wolfenstein games.


Wasn't expecting to be this hooked by this game. I know it was going to be good, since MachineGames rarely dissapoints (with one notable exception), but I wasn't expecting MachineGames to basically make an immersive sim. But that's exactly what playing Great Circle feels like. You are set into a world where enemies are following relatively simple routines. You can sneak around them, or find disguises that allow you to enter some areas, though you need to be careful around bigwig officers who will snuff out who you are if they get a good look. There is a big focus on exploration and puzzle solving, which is helped by how great traversal feels in this game and how you can use Indy's whip to get around. Combat is pretty easy, especially once you upgrade your abilities a bit. That works via books you find in the world, and you spent points them you get from solving quests or finding secrets.

The presentation of this game is also incredible. Troy Baker did an amazing job channeling Harrison Ford. The game does stumble a bit hard into Uncanney Valley, where some animations simply don't fit exactly with how I know Harrison would move, but aside from those moments, the illusion for the most part works very well. Many scenes in this game feels like something lifted from the films. The plot is ultimately kinda basic, Nazis are after a great mysterious power connected with some old religious myths, and Indy has to stop them. What sells it is the great portrayal of the villain, Emmerich Voss. Absolutely ham and over the top, but when it works, it works.

Looking forward to the DLC that will drop later this year.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Good game, not amazing, but I liked it. Nice levels design, nice graphics, okay combat, but the game felt too long, some parts dragged on too long and it felt very repetive to me. The dodge mechanic and parry mechanic were not good and core parts of the game.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished



Liked it a lot more than I expected. Cute and interesting story, great world design and world lore (wish they explored the world more), decent plattforming , mediocre combat.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Enjoyed it quite a lot, not as good as as the rest of the series, but still happy to be back in Max's world again and explore. Ending felt weird. Wish it was longer, many of the choices I did didn't seem to matter much in the end. Hoping for a sequel that includes

don't look if you haven't played the game yet

Chloe.

Score: 8/10

Finished



Short, but fun and satisfying game where you control a boat that cleans 8 areas of oil and what looked like plastic bottles. You get money for oil and stuff you remove from the water tha tyou can use to upgrade to a largher tank where you have the oil you remove and so on.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished



Very fun and gorgeus looking plattformer. Interesting story and world, howevr some of the plattforming and the difficulty sections ramped up so quickly I often got annoyed and frustrated, still, found the game to be quite fun.

Score: 8/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

The first game of developer Sandfall Interactive. Playing this game was a trip, from beginning to end, with few dull moments. I loved the amazing soundtrack and great vocals, the weird setting that is unlike any other game and even pretty unique outside of gaming, I would say. Visually quite striking, with clear references to Paris, though also quite clearly strange and otherwordly. Of course, in the course of the narrative, it becomes clear why the world is what it is, and I will not mention any spoilers here.

The other big star of this game is the combat. The most obvious inspiration point is Persona, at least in the visual layout of the UI. However, the actual system that really dominates the game is a dodge/parry system that is unlike anything I have seen in a turn-based game. While it seems easy enough, the game also builds on it in interesting ways, such as the jump and gradient mechanics in the course of the game. I think the system starts to feel a bit boring by the end of it, it is so easy to cheese most fights using parry or dodge that it makes most of the game a bit trivial. I think this system could use a bit more iteration and I am looking forward to what they opt to do in their next game.

Another thing that struck me about Clair Obscur is how it isn't afraid to take the story in very unexpected directions and this actually continued right up until the very ending, which gives you a great choice on how to affect the ending. Both options are enticing and horrible at the same time, while also being completely grounded, you understand each characters viewpoint perfectly.

Ultimately, I really loved how this game is so great at so many things at the same time. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think absolutely everyone should give this game at least a chance, it's quite unique for what it is.

 

[xinek]

This may be the cutest game I've ever played. I didn't buy it for a long time due to the price, but it was low enough in the summer sale. The dialogue, the characters, the cute story, the awesome animations, omg. It exceeded my cuteness expectations in every way. It's definitely short, but I actually appreciate short games that aren't padded out or wear out their welcome. I'm looking forward to playing through this again even!

 

[Mivey]

Finished Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (2023)


A remake of one of Frogwares earliest Holmes games, a crossover between The Doyle novel and the works of Lovecraft, though more accurate to say the general idea of Lovecraftian horror, it does not really reference any single short story of his, from what I can tell.

The graphical presentation is superb, models, textures and animations are quite decent. Not the super high quality you might get from a Rockstar games, where you can almost see the millions and millions in the animation budget alone, but still an incredible achievement for a small indie dev.

The overall gameplay should be quite familiar to fans of recent Frogwares games. You stumble on a crime scene (or other place of interest), find clues and then connect them to answer questions. In addition you recreate events by deciding on the exact details of various scenes that make up the events. What was present, what kind of weapon did the murderer use, and so on. Once you get it right, the story moves on, and you can try as often as you want.



Also finshed 1000XResist recently.



This game is quite interesting. I first heard about it from the REMAP podcast, run by some of the people that ran Waypoint at Vice (before Vice put the kibosh in that, then very recently revived Waypoint, though apparently not allowing people to cover critical stories, games writing is a mess...).

From a pure gameplay perspective, there is not much to tell, you walk around, talk to people and make dialogue choices that drive the story forward. You get to explore memories in a unique visual way, literally jumping around an abstract representation of their mind, either literally or most of the time you get to jump forward and back in time, exploring various "chapters" of their lives, often needing to do things across time to get the full picture. It's really quite different from anything else I have seen in that regard.

But what really sets 1000XResist apart is how the game is not afraid to explore themes you don't really hear much in games media. In this case the complexities in the relationship between daughter and mother. And it explores the subject via a number of daughters and mothers, sometimes literal, sometimes figurative mother figures and jumps between perspectives wildly. It's quite beautiful and you can tell it's a subject that is very important to the writers, it makes it feel real in a way few stories in games are.

The game is also visually quite stunning. It's not so much that the production values are the best, though model quality is quite decent. What is rather impressive is how much time and thought is put into the composition of weird shots and striking visual, playing with contrast, of colour, of composition and so on.

Beautiful game that I can recommend to everyone.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Ghost Town (Fireproof Games, 2025)

A VR-exclusive first-person puzzle adventure "from the makers of The Room", as the ad-copy of the game likes to point out. Contrary to what you might expect however, this game is not at all about manipulating absurdly complex puzzle boxes for hours on end, but instead a very narrative-focused adventure that puts the player into a bunch of quite unusual and lovingly detailed realistic scenes - an abandoned theatre, a small fishing boat, a lighthouse, a greater London council housing tower block, and more.

The story and scenario are quite special - set in early 1980s England, supernatural phenomena and supernaturally gifted people are integrated into society (of course the British government has a department for them as well) and very much real, but so is the cold war. In this world, a freelancing witch (the player character) finds her brother suddenly gone missing and suspects that he got himself into trouble with forces that are beyond his power and understanding ...

As you might guess from this description, Ghostbusters is a clear influence for this game, but it's not a comedy - even if a major supporting character is very reminiscent of Egon Spengler -, it's not a horror game either (not a single jump scare to be found), it's an adventure. There is no combat, progress is gated by puzzles, often contained in puzzle boxes, but the puzzles are not difficult and mostly serve to support the narrative.

The game is available on standalone Quest as well as PCVR and PS5 and the standalone Quest release is responsible for a lot of the shortcomings of this game - there are way less interactable objects than I would have liked, especially since the level of detail of the locations approaches that of PCVR tentpoles such as Half-Life: Alyx, the game takes great care to never have more than one interactable NPC in a scene and in such interactions makes heavy use of invisible walls to keep the player within the boundaries of the scripted interactions.

It's also quite short: I took my sweet time to really explore every little last bit of every location (which was great fun) and still finished the game in just 6.5 hours. There's not much replay value either, there are only a few optional collectibles and they are not hard to find.

Since the game plays the supernatural bits of the story and scenario seriously, my enjoyment of the story fell away towards the end - above a certain threshold of hocus pocus, my suspension of disbelief reliably fails. That's not to say it's badly written, but I've read and seen it all before elsewhere.

The first 4 hours of the game though - great experience. Would recommend to anybody with a VR headset.


8/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished Atelier Ayesha: Alchemist of Dusk

My fourth Atelier game I finished, and the first in the Dusk series. Coming from the Arland game, this feels overall fairly familiar, the strict time limit to accomplish a major story beat and the fairly complex series of events you need to accomplish to get unlock the endings of all characters. That said, what really threw me and probably makes Ayesha the weakest game of the bunch is the complete lack of guidance in the first half of the game. You have no idea where to go, what to do. Which wouldn't be a problem at all, if the game didn't have a big story reason for you to try to hurry. And while this gets better, it never really goes away. Was the first game where I felt completely lost without looking up a guide and also led me to just forget about it for like a year until I picked it up again this month.
I know that the remaining games in the Dusk series have next to no real time limits, and I hope that makes this a bit easier. I don't m ind wandering about if I don't have to stress about an invisible timer running down.

The actual plot here reminds me mostly of Totori, with having to save a family member via alchemy. Of course, here it is your sister instead of your mother, and whereas Totori has to learn that her mother passed away while fighting a big bad monster, Ayesha of course rescues her little sister. I liked how Ayesha came from a different tradition of "alchemy" , simply thinking of herself as an apothecary taught from her grandfather. I loved her interactions with Keithgriff, and my personal favourite ending is the one where she basically becomes his apprentice.

Combat in Ayesha is virtually unchanged from the Arland games. It's basic, but functional. The alchemy mechanics get a slight revamp, but it is mostly just visuals and UI layout that is different. Underneath the hood, it is pretty much the same thing, though the UI streamlining does make things much easier to use.

When it comes to the graphical presentation, I was impressed by how big of a leap Ayesha is at times over the Arland games and while still running on the same console too, as this was a PS3 game. So clearly Gust was getting better at making use of the hardware.

Looking forward to playing the rest of the Dusk games eventually.

 

[STHX]

Let's get this out of the way. I don't think Shadow Labyrinth is a bad game. I played it fully and I had zero crashes, the game works out of the gate without issues, no bugs, no getting stuck or falling through the floor, no bugged cutscenes or any kind of visible error. But there is no way I could ever consider this game good either, and it's honestly a shame because it does have it's interesting parts. But some of the choices done by the dev team, an obviously experienced dev team by a big publisher are legitimally baffling, especially for a game that is, ultimately, so derivative. My mind honestly never though I would see some of the choices done in this game. I wouldn't sy that "Metroidvania" is a solved genre with defined rules that should never be broken, but Shadow Labyrinth really commits some of what I consider the "Metroidvania Deadly Sins", and I didn't even think these "sins" existed because... why? Why would the dev do this? What were they thinking?
Apparently this game has been in development since 2020, but regardless the Hollow Knight (and not only) inspiration is obvious. The way the protagonist (swordsman n°8) fight, the enemy patterns, and the most obvious one: the "charms" (called perks) which take slots (with some more powerful requiring more slots and which you can increase by finding extra "slots") that you get over the course of the game, with one of the first ones you can get allowing the swordsman to automatically gather the money (called aura) the enemies drop when killed, greatly helping in grinding especially since more often than not the aura ends up falling in hard to get places. So, games like Hollow Knight, Ender Lilies, Blasphemous (and many others) all came out before the game even started development (or slightly after it did). So why, why, why?
Why are there 2 types of "bonfires"? The standard one is the typical "bonfire". You touch it, you recover HP, you refill your "estus", your game is saved, and you can even fast travel between them. Perfect. Except that this game decided it needed a second, weaker type of bonfire which only recovers the HP, and does nothing else. Well it still saves your game, but it does not refill estus, it doesn't let you fast travel, and if you die and respawn you respawn with no estus at all! And obviously the "checkpoint bonfire" is much more common than the normal one, and sometimes the amount of rooms you have to walk before you find a real complete bonfire is so high you probably end up exploring more than half of a region (and the last area has no real bonfires at all!). This "choice", and boy it is a fucking choice, feels like it exists only to make the game harder, and to make exploration longer just to pad out the total playtime. What were they thinking?
Exploration in this game is baffling. Let's get this out of the way (again): the game has very few meaningful upgrades, and for the first 1/3 of the game the progression is basically linear. But that's fine, it's not the first metroidvania that starts linear and then opens up when you get a specific, critical, upgrade. It's also not the first metroidvania that focuses more on combat and bosses instead of discovery and exploration. No, the problem with this game is that the maps feel like they've been created by an actual madman. I have never seen such a badly designed map in a metroidvania in my entire life. The maps are gigantic, empty mess of badly drawn graphics and poorly though rooms and corridors. I have never felt ny kind of "direction" or guidance for the entire game. in every new area I simply explored randomly until I somehow stumbled on the boss room so I could kill it and get the next progression step which allowed me to reach the next area. The maps are filled with "splits" that serve no purpose (they're not shortcuts, there are no upgrades or special enemies in either of them) except to confuse the player. Well I guess it makes the regions feel more like a labyrinth? But the bigger problems are 1) the terrible samey blurry graphics that makes it impossible to figure out what room you're in unless you check the map every screen and 2) the fact almost all "items" you can find while exploring are diaries/reports (they're only lore dumps) or "shiny stones" that you may eventually be able to trade for very few upgrades. Real upgrades? Everyone is obtained from a boss. Perks? The vast majority is obtained from vendors. Damage upgrades? NPCs. Eventually you will start to find extra HP notches and a few extra estus (if you can actually use them because of the baffling fake bonfires the game is filled with!) but by that point you will be at least at the final third. By checking the Steam achievements you can clearly see a massive dropoff when th players reach the 3rd area, probably one of the worst examples (except later there is an even wors one, but I guess not many players reach that far). But this is nothing compared to the "deadly sin" I will describe now
On your way to the second boss you pass an area that is clearly impossible to walk through, and the boss room is only a few rooms later. When you kill the boss you get an upgrade and a quick tutorial movie which shows the player the new upgrade can let the player pass through that exact room you just passed a few rooms before. So, even if the game clearly tells you to keep walking onward, you as a metroidvania player obviously decide to "try" your new upgrade in that previous corridor as the tutorial showed you. So you do that, get into this new area and... you can't do shit here because you haven't progressed enough with the story. And there isn't even a real bonfire in this new place so it's not like you can at least teleport back to the normal progression path. But then why even show that tutorial?! Why not just have the room after the boss require the new upgrade so the player gets a hand on how to use it?! Why? What were they thinking?!? This isn't even the only time you get punished for "exploring". Another baffling one is the fact you may stumble upon a room with an upgrade for one of your special attacks, except if you don't have that specific special attack yet the room is... simply empty. Nothing to collect, nothing to get. Again, what were they thinking?
For the entire game I never felt like the way I fought the enemies, whether small or bosses, changed in any meaningful way. Your standard 3 hit combo is and will always be your only meaningful way of attacking. Grinding aura to buy damage upgrades does basically nothing, and buying MP (used for any special action, including dodging) upgrades doesn't feel like much either because of how much mp is used by any action. Almost every boss in the game was an exercise in tedium because of how long it takes to kill them compared to how many attacks they have. But the worst element is the one the entire game is build upon: eating. Yes, this game is technically based on Pac-Man so obviously eating enemies is a mechanic. Eating enemies reuires the enemy to be dead or stunned (bosses are eaten automatically). Oh, and it also requires MPs, so if you run out of them (because you used too many special attacks in a row to make fighting a bit faster) you can't eat shit. Except that, you know, devouring enemies is the most mportant element in the game. You see, enemies drop aura when they die, but if you eat them they will also drop materials. And, oh boy, I can see what you're thinking. Materials? You mean don't simply buy things with money alone? Of fucking course not. You craft them at vendors using money and materials. You have no idea how much backtracking is required if trying to get 100% in this game, and you have no idea how much of it will be simply to gather some more "tribal bones", "xevious fragments", or "galaga innards". Which makes the shitty exploration even shittier. Which, obviously, makes devouring the one thing you must always try to do to reduce unnecessary trecks. But doing so requires the player to basically never use any special attack, meaning every single battle will take the maximum possible time. What. Were. They. Thinking?
Now let's talk about Pac-Man himself. Or herself in this case. Your friendly companion Puck is used to explore certain areas in the game clearly inspired by the arcade pac-man games. These glowing walls will have the swordsman automatically trade places with Puck so she can "ride" on them like a standard pac-man game. The pac-man sections control quite badly, but you can get eventually used to it. The bigger issues is that the pac-man mode gets zero upgrades in the game, so these parts become boring and repetitive very quickly. But nothing really prepares you for the "labyrinths": the labyrinths are special stages you play which feel like Pac-Man Chapionship Edition on steroids. I will say these labyrinths are cool in concept and have nice level design and setpieces, especially for the boss parts. My problem is how these labyrinths are completely separated from everything else in the game. There is no explanation on what they are, there is no explanation on what purpose they serve in the game world, there is not a single line of dialogue that comments on them if you play them or not, and the only actual use of clearing them all is that one of the final boss phases gets its HP halved if you finish all 12 of them. Oh, and, obviously, if you want to complete the game 100% they are complete and utter bullshit. You have to play them perfectly, you have basically 0 margin of error otherwise you can kiss the final reward (materials needed to buy/craft one of the perks) goodbye. What should be a fun minigame, a neat distraction, ends up being another exercise in frustration, something that this game truly specializes in! Really, what can I say outside of what were they thinking?
And obviously I tried not to talk about it but you can't really ignore it because it's everywhere: the story. The game does take the story seriously, and I don't think it's bad honestly. It's not really an edgy pac-man either. The game opens with a scene that looks straight out of a completely unrelated game featuring a space battle against the Xevious army and their leader. It actually makes sense since the game is set into the UGSF world, an universe that combines most older (and not) Namco games into a single "timeline". Then the player (and I mean it literally) is summoned into the body of the swordsman by Puck, who is one of the commanders of that space battle in the opening because she needs and escort (and more importantly someone who has actual hands since she got reduced to a spherical bot) to activate a secret weapon capable of piercing the Xevious planet so you can reach and kill their mastermind. Long story short pac-man isn't really that much of a focus. Yes Puck is obviously pac-man, yes the 4 main underlings of the final boss are obviously stand-ins for the 4 ghosts, but the game has just an equal, if not more, amount of references to other Namco games: Xevious, Galaga, Dig Dug, Ace Combat, Baraduke, and more. Honestly, the story is probably the one good thing about the game. There is a lot of care that went into it, but the exposition leaves a lot to be desired. Critical info on the setting or the game world are stuck into the reports you find while exploring, and most cutscenes are very samey. The final boss gauntlet is the only cutscene in the game with a hgher "budget". The lack of voice acting (there are only grunts, no real voices) considering how much story there is (and the game price) is a clear negative however, but it's not worth a "what were they thinking", at least
The UGSF world is interesting and I hope Bamco eventually does something more interesting with it than this game. But regardless this game is truly baffling, the difficulty is all over the place, the exploration is terrible and repetitive, badly implemented fast travel, cheap ways to get damaged (including the final boss, a 4 boss fight gauntelt with no checkpoints you have to start from scratch if you die having a 1HKO move), poor checkpoints. And the funny thing is I can see why some o these choices were made: to make the game longer. You see the game is 30 bucks, which unfortunately is a lot for this genre. A player interested in the genre can spend half of that to get literally any other game, so to make the game feel "worthy" of the price point the devs made the game harder on purpose so it takes longer to beat. But then, why am I even wasting my time with this game? Why not just play literally anything else? The story alone and some of the few good enemy design can't carry a game that is so goddamn shitty especially in a genre that, somehow, has so many exceptional titles. If they though there was little "value" in making a metroidvania since they couldn't price it higher then... why even make this game
Or, to say it in another way: what were they thinking?