Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Joe Spangle]

Finished Resident Evil 3



Good fun game. Continues the high standard set by RE2 although doesn't quite hit the same high notes, I still found it fun though. Same as LEANIJA said above I never played the original and so don't have that to compare to and to be honest I felt like it was complete enough, I like games that I can get through in short sessions and this took me about 4-5hrs (on easy).
Found the Nemesis a bit annoying, not quite as terrifying as Mr X from RE2. I had to install the squeaky shoes mod for Mr X to lighten him up a bit

Overall its a good game, It looks terrific (as all the modern RE games seem to). Jill was a great character and i liked Carlos and the cheesy bad guy/s.

7/10

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Roxy Raccoons Pinball Panic



Simple pinball game with a story mode. The story is actually worthless, but there are 10 different retro-based pinball tables and most of them are pretty fun. The physics are surprisingly good and I like the clean and colorful graphics.

There are a few annoyances: the ball goes faster down than the camera on certain tables after zooming in on a smaller playfield, and some of the slingshot sounds are really annoying. But all things considered this is a fun little game, and I'm really happy to see more devs doing pinball games.

Score: 7.0/10



Finished The life and suffering of Sir Brante



Why has no one told me how awesome this game is? Seriously, this must have been one of the best written games I've ever played. The story, dialogs and characters are so very well designed, and the choices you make have a significant impact on the events in the near and far future. I'm looking forward to replay this game and doing things completely different. Very, very recommend!

Score: 9.0/10



Retired A Little Golf Journey



Charming casual golf game with beautiful graphics. You have to try to get the golf ball in the holl in as little hits as possible. This requires a lot of trial and error, which is fine at first, but becomes frustrating after a while because of the aiming system. The exact position where your ball will land constantly rotates, making it extremely hard to predict the course of the ball after it hits the ground. There's also a lack of new gameplay elements throughout the game, only the environments are changing. Fun for a while, but not more than that.

Score: 5.2/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A decent fun game with fun exploration, but everything is basically deep as a puddle in many ways. So first of all the story is very weak and uninteresting, I skimmed read most of the dialogue. The characters are decent though.

The gameplay itself is fun, like mixing the different spells, using potions and items and such. The world itself is somewhat fun to explore, but many of the caves and dungeons and secrets are repetive and most of the same stuff. So exploring is fun, but get's a bit stale and repetive at times.

Im honestly not sure what else to write about the game, it does what it tries to do, well, but it is a very basic action adventure RPG in every way, I've already seen the gameplay, systems and mechanics in other games, often done even better, the game doesn't innovate in any way, but puts a Harry Potter lore skin on many things.

Overall I had fun with it, gameplay is overall fun, but stale and repetive at times and exploring is also fun, but stale and repetive at times. Story is uninteresting and boring. It is a very basic game in most ways. I did however enjoy riding the Broomstick and Hippogriff which you can use at any time when exploring outside the Hogwarts castle.

There is also challenges you can do which is how you level up your character which gives you talent points to upgrade your character, spells and abilities. To unlock spells you often have to do "side quest" assignments from your teacher, some are required to progress the story, others not. Lots of side quests and secrets to do, many are often the same though. To unlock dark arts spells like avada kadevra you have to do a certain side quest storyline.

Score: 8/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Emily is Away (Kyle Seeley, 2015)

A free and very short (< 1 hour) choose-your-own-adventure game, presented as a conversation in an early-2000s instant messenger program (complete with a Windows XP lookalike user interface). Pretty much guaranteed to generate some degree of nostalgia / upheaval of repressed memories for anybody in the right age bracket.

3.5/5




Also finished Aperture Desk Job (Valve, 2022)

This is more or less the official button tutorial for the Valve Steam Deck, made into a free and very short game (<1 hour) in the visual style of and with many references to Portal 2. The humor kind of misses the mark for me ever so slightly (just like Portal 2 did), but it's by no means bad or cringe. And, as far as button tutorials go, probably the best one out there.

3.5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.




Also finished Astrodogs (Dynamic Media Triad / Digital Tribe. 2021)

A Starfox-like spaceship-shooter with a cast of dogs. There's references to memes and puns galore, the levels are quite short and almost perfunctory, the level bosses are the real challenge and they are quite hard, especially if you try to get S-Rank level completions for getting collectibles and achievements, which I didn't bother with. Quite short, my playthrough took 3 hours, including dying to every boss multiple times.

Fans of the genre might enjoy, especially those with a taste for Doge memes and the general visual style.

2.5/5

 

[FunnyJay]

Finished

This one has been in my backlog since 2015, and I've attempted to finish it a few times before.
Played through the entire game on Steam Deck, and it worked perfectly!
Again proving my opinion that third person games are working really well on the Deck.

So, what can I say about the game?
The QoL improvements compared to DR1 are tremendous. The follower AI is a lot better, not getting stuck on a lot of zombies and they can actually defend themselves quite well. In some psycho fights it was actually beneficial to bring along a survivor that could distract the boss with a shotgun or two.

The story was fine, and the time limit was OK. I had things to do most of the time, and didn't miss any of the marked side quests. I missed a few unmarked sidequests but that doesn't bother me.
I had a few moments in the story when I just had to hang around a bit since there wasn't enough time to do anything before the next main quest trigger.

That said,
the final boss of the main campaign (not overtime mode, because why would I give zombrex to TK?), Sullivan, was a cheating scumbag.
I had the knife gloves that he cannot disarm, but a lot of clear hits on him did just not connect, and he was quick as hell with countering.
And at the same time, missiles are blowing holes in the ceiling, sending the few health items there flying so you can't find them.

Jokes on him though, since I managed to get him down to his last sliver if health, then he was hit by the impact of a missile nearby and that actually killed him!

 

[DeleteMe]

Finished Energy Survivors



Gameplay:
Basic bullet heaven gameplay with auto aim/shoot and a reloading mechanic.
Collect energy from 4 different spots on the map to win.

Controls: Good
Graphics: Good
Audio: Decent
Story: None
Achievements: Easy

Content:
1 map, 3 characters, 3 weapons, 1 boss type, Basic stat progression

Thoughts:
Its a decent but basic bullet heaven

Score: Ok

 

[Paul]

Finished: Ghostwire: Tokyo



I liked Evil Within and its sequel very much.
And this is nothing like it.
In fact, Ghostwire: Tokyo's high concept design is quite similar to a modern Far Cry game. You have your open map, you have your hundreds of icons, you have your sidequests and towers (here, gates). You have your collectibles and repetitive bullshit.

And yet..I enjoyed Ghostwire: Tokyo.

There are few reasons for that. First, the setting. I have never been to Tokyo, but I liked its virtual recreation here and enjoyed exploring it. It has no people in it, only ghosts, apparations and monsters, with weird magical rain and amazing raytraced neon reflections wherever you look. It's great.
Second, the protagonist Akito and his ghostly sidekick KK have good chemistry and great japanese voice acting. I enjoyed their interplay throughout. Story itself isn't bad, I am a sucker for "save your sibling" type of stories since I have sister I would do anything for.
Third, the combat is actually pretty spectacular. It does get old eventually, but the spells look cool and ripping out cores (hearts) from enemies, sometimes five at a time - satisfying.
Next, we have some really great sidequests. Lot of them are short, but still fun, but there are few really extensive and interesting ones - like the one in haunted school. I recommend ignoring the collectible bullshit, but storydriven sidequests are fun.
And last but not least, the soundtrack is good, with couple melancholic piano pieces that are particular standouts, playing near the end of the game.

Tech-wise, I didn't encounter any bugs or crashes and the game ran at stable 60 with everything incl. raytracing maxed out. Only technical flaw was horrible default setting for controller sensitivity and controller input lag. Bit annoying, but I got used to it.

8/10

 

[Yoshi]

Finished Ghostrunner (thanks again for the game, jads653!)



Ghostrunner took me by surprise. I was expecting a decent cyberpunk action game, but it turned out to be so much more, and that's mostly thanks to its excellent combat and movement system. Everything felt so fluid and smooth.

This is a challenging game, and you will likely die a lot. However, nothing ever felt impossible. None of the deaths I experienced felt cheap. If I died, then it was a mistake on my part. It was satisfying to replay each scenario and approach things differently until I found a way to succeed. I was constantly learning from my mistakes which felt rewarding.

All in all, if you're a fan of fast-paced and skill-based action games, then you'll likely love Ghostrunner.

4.5/5

 

[Paul]

This is a challenging game, and you will likely die a lot. However, nothing ever felt impossible.

Played with mouse or gamepad?
I tried it with gamepad (I play on TV) and found it too frustrating/timewasting so I stopped after few hours. Didn't have patience to gitgud. Maybe with mouse it would be more doable for me.

 

[fantomena]

Played with mouse or gamepad?
I tried it with gamepad (I play on TV) and found it too frustrating/timewasting so I stopped after few hours. Didn't have patience to gitgud. Maybe with mouse it would be more doable for me.

Ghostrunner felt like it was made for kb/m, playing with a gamepad is a mistake.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Found the first game to be better in many ways, especially the open world was better in the first game, feels like the devs had a lot of interesting and good ideas that they didn't finish or flesh out. The story was interesting and missions were decent, the game itself was intriguing and interesting enough to finish it, but didn't do much of the side activites. Honestly, I found the zombie ascepect of the game to be lacking as I felt humans were a bigger treat than zombies. If that was the point, I don't know.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished



Liked it a lot, had a lot of fun with it, not sure if it's better, worse or equal to Blands 3 which I feel I enjoyed more than a lot of people. It's a much shorter game than Bland 3, but that was expected. Lots of cool new ideas here with the overworld which replaced the open world aspect of the previous games. The missions are well-designed and well-paced. Story is funny, cool and self-aware. Didn't do many side quests, but might get back to the game in the future. Didn't find the gunplay as good as in Blands 3 though.

Score: 8.3/10

 

[fantomena]

Both of these I played a bit off long time ago, but got stuck/uninterested in, so I quit, but they were still in my curated backlog, so decided to finish them up.

Finished



Loved the art style, loved the gameplay, story was interesting, heavily disliked the way progressing the game worked with finding clues, having to restart the loop so many times to find a particular place in a particular time to progress a single clue/lead. Found the way clue/lead system worked to be confusing and tiresome, so I ended up cheating my way through parts of the game. I have played a ton of great puzzle/clue/detective games, but I didn't like how it worked here.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished



It's a decent open world shooter, but I liked the first game a lot more. Gunplay/gameplay was fun and good, story was just okay, some good looking environments. Otherwise, I was suprised at how few main story missions there were, but discovering in order to progress through the game at some point, I had to do a ton of uninteresting side activties killed the pacing and fun for me, so I cheated my way through some side activties with speedhack in Cheat Engine to make it more bearable. The open world itself is boring and completely uninteresting. If the gameplay wasn't as fun as it was, I wouldn't have finished the game.

Score: 7/10

 

[Yoshi]

Played with mouse or gamepad?
I tried it with gamepad (I play on TV) and found it too frustrating/timewasting so I stopped after few hours. Didn't have patience to gitgud. Maybe with mouse it would be more doable for me.

For games that require quick reflexes and precise movement such as Ghostrunner, I feel more comfortable with mouse & keyboard. I can't imagine playing it on anything else.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A letdown from the first game, pretty much only the graphics (style) and cutscene remains good. Story is meh, some interesting moments, but otherwise very uninteresting compared to the first game that had a very interesting story. The turn-based combat system that I liked a lot in the first game is replaced with a standard real time action rpg combat system, but it's really basic here where you use your weapons and equipment to kill enemies. The kingdom building system which you are required to do in order to progress the story feels like it has no point and only is there to "be a thing" and drag out the game. In order to progress the story you also have to do a lot of side quests too, many are quite boring. At least the environments are still pretty.

Score: 5/10.

 

[DesolationStone]

Finished

Despite being a fan of the Half Life franchise, I'd never actually finished Half Life 1 until two days ago lol.
I've been playing it with this mod, which improves and modernises the look in the same way as a brutal mod for Doom. Of course 10/10, it's just history despite the meh chapters of Xen.

Finished in a couple of hours. Nice ideas and presentation for a 20 year old game.

I am now playing Black Mesa and Blue Shift, so I will finally have played and finished the entire Half Life series.

 

[DesolationStone]

Finished


aaaand the Half Life series it's done

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Decent fun JRPG with some negatives. Design is really interesting and fascinating, the world and story is also quite interesting, gameplay is pretty cool with all the different abilities and the level design is okay. My main negatives are that the characters are not all that interesting and there's a ton of backtracking and locations you revisit, which made the game quite stale and uninteresting at times. Still, really great design and world building and respect to the devs for trying something new.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished



Didn't like it as much as Nier Automata as I felt the world itself was more boring to explore. Story was however very interesting and the combat was pretty good, although not as good as automata. Side quests were really uninteresting and I still don't like the multiple endings setup which made the game quite stale and repetive.

Score: 7.3/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished Atelier Totori today.



Overall, this game does not change too much in the formula coming from Rorona. The biggest change is the "adventurer" system that Totori introduces. Instead of the general tasks that Rorona got, Totori simply has to upgrade her adventuring license via achieving various goals, performing certain exploration goals, battle goals, or alchemy tasks. It gives you somewhat more freedom, but is ultimately not a big deviation from the previous game.

The story overall was okay, but Totori felt a bit less enjoyable due to the pretty strict requirements and the even more stringent time limits you have. I played it without a guide, but still managed to get the normal ending. The combat system in this one is a bit annoying, until one can unlock the higher-level equipment , but overall also not a big deviation from the previous game.

Overall a step down from Rorona, just because it lends itself less for the very casual playstyle I had in that one, where I could just jump in from time to time and not have to think or plan to far in advance on what to do.

 

[Mivey]

I retire Deathloop.


Probably the only Arkane game so far that doesn't really do it for me. I get wanting to experiment with the ideas behind immersive sims, but I don't think mixing it with ideas from rogue likes is really all that fruitful, and the final nail in the coffin for me are missions that require you to do the same thing in the build-up multiple times in different loops. It's not interesting, it's not all that challenging once you unlocked a few powers, it's just tedious. This is a logical outcome when you experiment with something that wasn't broken. Some things work, and some things don't. I feel Deathloop falls mostly on the "not working" side for me. This wouldn't annoy me this much, if there wasn't a non-zero chance that this is the last game with even light immersive sim elements that Arkane might ever work on. I would loved to get a Prey 2 or Dishonored game instead of Deathloop.

 

[MomoVideo]

I finished Eastward yesterday. Very charming game, but it was not what I was expecting. From screenshots, I could see big inspiration from Zelda games, especially Link to the Past, so I expected a big, open world to explore. Eastward was everything but open. It was a completely linear, on-rail experience. Took me about 20 hours to beat, but there was a very long section in the middle of the game where this game was a slog to play. Fortunately, after this part ended it was fun again. Why it was a slog? Because this part of the game was ultimately irrelevant. It didn't push the story forward in any meaningful way and most of it was just reading conversations and going from point A to point B, it was mostly a filler. A few hours long filler. I played it on Switch so I have to point out that the port is mediocre. It's playable but there are annoying quirks, for example, this game runs very smoothly, but when you are in combat and use your gun, the game stutters almost every time you fire it. Also, this game crashed a dozen times, but fortunately, there is a pretty good save system in place, so most of the time I actually didn't lose any progress at all.
Going on from negatives to positives, I really loved the graphics and the art style. It has one of the best looking water I have seen in a 2D game. The music is great, although it's reused too much, but when a new song comes up it's always a banger. I liked the cast, the game overall was written well. I also liked that this game can be both heartwarming and depressing at times.

Overall a solid game, but I am still sour about that long, boring section in the middle of the game. If I had to rate it I would give it a 7/10.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A good and enjoable game with some flaws. First and foremost, I did not find the story to be any interesting at all, however the characters themselves were interesting. The combat is not as fun and good as the tactical combat from the Xcom games, but as someone who really enjoys games like Slay the Spyre, I still found the combat in the game to be quite fun and addictive. The hub/social aspect of the game in the Abbey was more fun and interesting than I expected, read many negative things about it, but I actually quite liked it.

Score: 8/10

 

[LEANIJA]

I retire Deathloop.

Probably the only Arkane game so far that doesn't really do it for me. I get wanting to experiment with the ideas behind immersive sims, but I don't think mixing it with ideas from rogue likes is really all that fruitful, and the final nail in the coffin for me are missions that require you to do the same thing in the build-up multiple times in different loops. It's not interesting, it's not all that challenging once you unlocked a few powers, it's just tedious. This is a logical outcome when you experiment with something that wasn't broken. Some things work, and some things don't. I feel Deathloop falls mostly on the "not working" side for me. This wouldn't annoy me this much, if there wasn't a non-zero chance that this is the last game with even light immersive sim elements that Arkane might ever work on. I would loved to get a Prey 2 or Dishonored game instead of Deathloop.

Yeah I felt very similar about this game, it didnt click at all with me and I also abandoned it at some point (after giving it a fair chance).

But at least I guess I anticipated something like this was coming after Arkane did Prey Mooncrash (the roguelike DLC that also didnt work for me) and Wolfenstein YB (which was a collab with MachineGames, and more of a GAAS-type game, but nevertheless a huge letdown, I talked about it several times how much that game disappointed me ).

Like you, I dont think Immersive Sims work with roguelike-stuff (at all) but I assume some devs want to hammer it in – because as you say, they seemingly wanted to experiment with something that isnt broken.

 

[C-Dub]

Like it or hate it, I don’t think Deathloop is a roguelike or lite.

That’s like saying Groundhog Day is a rougelike movie.

 

[didamangi]

Finished: Ghostwire: Tokyo

Too bad I've finished the game before the Spider’s Thread update because it looks like they enhance the combat somewhat.

When I was playing it, the combat was one of the weakest aspect. Arrows, talismans , the "pistol" "grenade launcher" and the "Shotgun" hand spells gets kinda boring real fast.

Maybe I'll visit it again one day since you said the side quest are pretty entertaining. One of the reason I rushed the main quest was again because of the combat.

 

[LEANIJA]

Like it or hate it, I don’t think Deathloop is a roguelike or lite.

That’s like saying Groundhog Day is a rougelike movie.

I mean, a movie cant exactly be a roguelike but I know what you mean, it doesnt really fulfill the requirements for "rogue-like" or "rogue-lite" but it feels like one anyways, at least to me, because it has the thing I dislike the most about rogue-likes: it makes you start at the beginning when you die and doesnt let you restart from a save. I know this is by design because its a timeloop etc, but Im personally not a fan and it didnt work for me.
And it contradicts how I play Immersive sim games usually: exploring everything stealthily and carefully, saving often, reloading often when making mistakes. Deathloop didnt allow for that playstyle. So I played it much more like an action game and in turn it just became uninteresting way faster than I had hoped for. But hey, thats okay, not everybody has to like every game.

 

[Mivey]

Like it or hate it, I don’t think Deathloop is a roguelike or lite.

That’s like saying Groundhog Day is a rougelike movie.

I said it's taking up ideas from that genre, and it's clear to me that they are doing that. I also want to say that I have no issue with experimental games, my gripe is mostly that I would like Arkane to still continue their big series like Dishonored or Prey. I personally assume there's still plenty of people there who would like to work on those experiences, but they are pitching new ideas to Bethesda in order to get funding when their old games haven't been selling very well.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home (Enjoy Studio / Longterm Games, 2022)

I learned about this game in some thread on this forum, but for the life of me I cannot find the actual post (or my reply to it) .

It is a 2D puzzle platformer with a couple of features that makes it stand out in the sea of indie puzzle platformers out there:

• The player character is an actual dog, walking on four legs
• You communicate with NPCs using dog body-language
• You navigate the levels using visual approximations of senses: Smell (colored lines) guides you towards near objectives and extras, hearing (colored blips on the edge of the screen) alerts you of enemies and distant objectives, and sight lets you see through walls and detect electrical connections between switches and objects such as enemy turrets, doors, traps, etc.

All of this comes with a story that quickly reveals a universe with a surprisingly deep lore, lush visuals that combine inspirations from European visual novels as well as other games with colorful and rich level designs such as the Ori games and a grandiose cinematic soundtrack.

There's a couple of flaws however that keep this game from truly shining:

The player character controls in a very old-school fashion - there's almost no inertia to its movement at all, and you can (and are expected to) change direction mid-jump in mid-air a lot. It's fine once you get used to it, but it feels out of step with the rest of the game - enemy projectiles and objects all have pretty convincing physics properties, against which the player character's movements just seem jarring. This unnatural movement also clashes with the great and detailed character animation which works great as long as you move in a realistic way and then completely doesn't as soon as you're required to do any actual platforming.

The feature of communicating with NPCs in order to change their mood so they will become neutral or even allies to you seems like a stroke of genius at first, but it turns out it is really only a very simple mini-game where you have to push a dot into one of eight directions and you have to figure out which way the axes along which it responds to your inputs (on the dog-body language selection wheel) are flipped. The story or level context of the NPC does not matter at all. So the most intriguing feature on paper turns into the most videogamey one in practice.

Then there's the very clunky English translation of this game, which the game's narrator voice actor tries to deliver as best as he can, but ultimately could not save from taking me out of the story every time.

And finally, the difficulty curve of the game turns into a veritable staircase with a bunch of steps missing towards the end, leading to the one thing that probably nobody who initially falls in love with this very cute and quite wholesome doggo-based platformer was waiting for or expecting: Seeing the cute doggo die over and over and over with a pitiful "yelp".

So it's unfortunately not the best indie platformer out there that nobody's heard about or played (at the time of writing this post, it has all of 34 reviews on Steam after more than six months since its release) - it's a diamond in the rough.

But it's still probably the best four-legged dog platformer out there by a large margin. There's a free playable demo called Space Tail: Lost in the Sands on Steam, in case you want to give this good girl some test walkies.


3.5/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Actually my 2nd plathrough, finished it once when it released, but can't remember if it was an EGS promo code or pirate copy.

The Steam version did fix some minor flaws I had with the game, so it is actually better than when it released back then. First, game is still gorgeus, took many screenshots, especially in sunny areas, game looks a bit worse during night time/dark areas. Combat is difficulty, fun, but basic, yet still liked the combat and the upgrades and abilities. Great level design, great music. Platform jumping can be a bit annoying at times. Cute and interesting story. The game is sorta like an "open world", but a small one and it is very fun to explore and find stuff. The rot is fun and collecting them is fun.

Overall a very fun, beautiful game, with some basic, yet fun combat and a nice world to explore.

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished



Actually my 2nd plathrough, finished it once when it released, but can't remember if it was an EGS promo code or pirate copy.

Looks like it was EGS

 

[fantomena]

Looks like it was EGS

One of the last EGS promo codes I received. Then I stopped caring. Things sure have changed.

 

[DesolationStone]

Finished



More than a remake, I see it as a brand new game in the Half Life series. Personally, I think some parts of the game have been cut too much and some have been expanded too much. The work on Xen is wonderful and amazing, but I believe they should have added more new enemies in that area to compensate for the disappearance of the human ones. By the way, it's better than a lot of AAA FPS released in these years.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



This one is kinda hard to give a score or review because it's overall a really well made game. The story and dialogues are fun, the level design is really cool and fun, the weapons and it's abilities are fun and interesting, the world itself is interesting and many places looks good. The game focuses a lot of weird humor, a humor that I liked. However the gunplay isn't the best, it feels like shooting with a plastic water bottle often and the hitboxes feels often kinda bad, which drags it down. The guns themself are vary variated, fun and greatly designed, but the feeling of shooting and killing enemies feels weak and not fun. It drags the whole game down which is a shame cause the rest of the game is really good and fun.

Score: 7.9/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A positive suprise. A quite long and fun game. Great art design, interesting story, nice characters, great world building. Really enjoyed the rhythm-based gameplay and it wasn't as difficulty to find the rhythm and get the game to "click" for me as I thought it would be. Lots of combos, attacks and "special abilities" that sometimes made me feel like I was playing a Devil May Cry game. Fun to explore the environment for collectibles despite being a very linear game. Negatives are that I felt some of the leves/tracks might be too long for it's own good and some of the QTEs were a bit frustrating.

Score: 8.7/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A basic, but very fun retro-plattformer. Great retro-graphical style, great level design, good music and oveall a joy to play. My negative is the camera that can make it difficulty to see where to land at times. It is also very short, 6-7 world, 2 levels in each world lasting 2-10 min depending how fast you are. But there are collectibles you can find and finding them is quite fun.

Score: 8.3/10

Finished



Very fun 2D sidescroller plattformer where the concept is that you can only run in one direction and in order to change direction you have to run into a wall or jump into a wall. Concept works great and there are 7 worlds with 15 levels each, some of them has this super fast and weird boss battle too that actually only lasts like a few seconds, really weird. Anyways, good difficulty curve and each level is variated with nice art style and cute characters and okay story. Lots of collectibles to find and if you find a certain amount of one type of collectible you unlock the true ending (didn't bother with this though). The game is also self-aware with satire about the game's medium (it jokes that you have to find collectibles to get the true ending). Main negatives is that there are some "puzzles" in this really fast paced game that are not that obvious and requires a lot of annoying trial and error. Certain levels are also a bit too long, making the game feel a bit stale and overdue at times.

Score: 8.2/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A very good 2D-detective game in the same vein as Obra Dinn where you find clues by clicking in the environments and having to put things together. There are 2 "modes", exploration where you find clues and look in the environments, thinking where you put sentences together to find out what happened, like a mind palace. Great art design, nice music, interesting story and well-written characters. My main negatives are that the game is a bit short and there is quite high jumps in difficulty, I quickly got overwhelmed by all the info an clues I picked up and not everything was always needed.

Have not bought the DLC yet.

Score: 8.5/10

 

[fantomena]

Retired



Great art style and great sound, good weapons and interesting story. The first half of the game is pretty fun, but goes downhill in world 3 (I think there are 5-6 worlds, each world has a bunch of levels). The level design quickly becomes boring, stale and uninteresting, just somewhat big areas with doors and you have to keep finding keys for doors. I just got tired and decided to quit. Great level design is extremely important for a boomer shooter, so is good shooting feeling of course. Also, some of the enemies were too tough for no good reason.

Finished



Fun game, a quite jokey/humor/satirical game like High on Life. Great world and level design, ncie art style, doesn't take itself too seriously, fun gameplay, but the gunplay isn't particuarly great which drags the experience down. Also finished the DLC which was nice. A decent amount of exploration to do and I enjoyeed scanning the environments for info and finding collectibles.

Score: 8/10.

Finished



A decent fun shooter with a lot of flaws, but that doesn't drags the experience down. Great graphics, good sound, decent gunplay that does get stale. Missions are okay. Story is pretty good. Doesn't do anything new, but it does an decent job at what it tries to do. Havenn't played the DLC.

Score. 7.5/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Planet of Lana (Wishfully / Thunderful Publishing, 2023)

A side-scrolling puzzle platformer with heavy emphasis on story and ambience. For large parts of the game, the player character gets assistance from a cute little sidekick that can be given commands to help with getting past enemy NPCs and platforming obstacles and obstructions.

In many ways, this game feels like a throwback - it is completely linear with no backtracking. Encounters and puzzles have exactly one solution and apart from getting to the end, there is just a handful of collectible items to find and an achievement to beat the game without dying for (not much) objective replay value.

But the superb quality of the presentation - flawless character animations, lush backgrounds that are always in motion and come with lovely little hand-animated details, a cinematic orchestral music score and rich, constantly evolving ambient sound - sets it apart from the average indie platformer and, combined with tight and responsive controls and a story that easily pulls you in but does not ever break the flow of the game, puts this right at the top end of the genre.

Imagine Playdead's "Inside", but bright, optimistic and wholesome instead of dark, weird and creepy.


4/5

 

[spiel]

Completed Supraland Six Inches Under

I place the first game with the all-time puzzle greats like Portal and The Talos Principle, so I went into SIU with pretty high expectations. I'd say it met 80% of them. The main campaign is still a lot of fun and its highs can match Supraland's, but there were also stretches where it felt like I was waiting for mechanics to come together. Overall I think the first game still has better map interconnectivity and tighter puzzle design. I had an itch to scratch after SIU so I'm actually replaying Supraland right now.

Score: 7.5/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Pretty decent rhythm-aciton game in the same style as the Bit.Trip games from the same developer, sadly I didn't like this as much. Too hard to get thee rhythm right (latency problem) and too much visual clutter made the game harder than it should have been. Also quite short (2-3 hours).

Score: 7/10

Finished



Very fun Tony-Hawk-like game involving roller skates and guns You play though a bunch of levels, progressing through the levels let's you unlock neew combos and weapons you can use (there are 4 different guns). Each level has a bunch of challenges, each challenge gives you star, in order to unlock the new bunch of levels you need a certain amount of stars. Very fun and enjoyable game with quite a lot of replayability. Great sound and great art style. A bit too short (2-3 hours) and certain enemies can be very frustrating to defeat. After the campaign is finished you get access to another campaign, same style, but harder.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished



Very fun, yet basic platformer where you play as a mole and the gameplay is basically that you crawl right underneat the ground, then you jump up and you can dash and smash down when you ar ein the air to destroy crates. Lots of levels, took me 4 hours to finish. It did get a bit stale at times due to the basic gameplay and some of the platforming was a bit annoying, but noneless, a fun game.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[C-Dub]

Abandoned Harmony: The Fall of Reverie


This is an interesting but ultimately disappointing one.

The production values are mostly great, the voice acting is all brilliant and I love a bit of diversity. However, ambition meets reality and the game kind of falls apart after Act 3. But it wasn't great getting there, either.

As a visual novel, the game is only visual in certain ways. It does a lot of telling you what happens instead of showing. For example, the major climax point in Act 3 happens offscreen while you're playing silly games with the godlike characters in another world. But this kind of thing happens all the time, and the game does an absolutely abysmal job of describing anything to you.

It's just constantly telling me shit.

Oh hey we went into some old ruins. Why can't I see them (other than some vague cave background mocked up by an artist in a couple of hours)? An underground illicit newspaper printing facility? Yeah, game, I wanted to see that place.

I was already lukewarm on the game up to Act 3, and then it just becomes a torrent of incoherent shite in Act 4. Characters become one-dimensional, the plot grinds to a halt, the egregore mcguffin mechanic kind of just takes on a mind of its own and paths seem to lock themselves arbitrarily.

I gave up playing. The post-Act 3 portion of this game turned out to be a disaster. I'm starting to reconcile with the fact that Don't Nod might've accidentally caught lightning in a bottle with Life is Strange and spent the following decade trying to do it again.

6/10

 

[Ge0force]

I need some catching-up to do with reviews, so here we go!

Finished Sludge Life



Another game I totally missed because of EGS exclusivity, but I got it for free later. Sludge life is really weird but also very funny. You travel around small islands, while filling empty billboards with graffiti and discovering people doing the weirdest things. There's no handholding but it's lots of fun to explore the islands by yourself. There's something funny to be found behind each door or corner. The graphics are a bit rough and the platforming/jumping in 1st person view can be very frustrating. But the experience is great for a few hours.

Score: 7.9/10


Finished ICEY



Interesting 2D action game with great combat, where a narrator is so kind to tell you what to do. Of course, most fun can be found by NOT doing what the narrator says. Becomes a bit repetitive in the 2nd half, but does so many things right that it's definitely recommended.

Score: 8.0/10

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Abandoned Harmony: The Fall of Reverie


This is an interesting but ultimately disappointing one.

The production values are mostly great, the voice acting is all brilliant and I love a bit of diversity. However, ambition meets reality and the game kind of falls apart after Act 3. But it wasn't great getting there, either.

As a visual novel, the game is only visual in certain ways. It does a lot of telling you what happens instead of showing. For example, the major climax point in Act 3 happens offscreen while you're playing silly games with the godlike characters in another world. But this kind of thing happens all the time, and the game does an absolutely abysmal job of describing anything to you.

It's just constantly telling me shit.

Oh hey we went into some old ruins. Why can't I see them (other than some vague cave background mocked up by an artist in a couple of hours)? An underground illicit newspaper printing facility? Yeah, game, I wanted to see that place.

I was already lukewarm on the game up to Act 3, and then it just becomes a torrent of incoherent shite in Act 4. Characters become one-dimensional, the plot grinds to a halt, the egregore mcguffin mechanic kind of just takes on a mind of its own and paths seem to lock themselves arbitrarily.

I gave up playing. The post-Act 3 portion of this game turned out to be a disaster. I'm starting to reconcile with the fact that Don't Nod might've accidentally caught lightning in a bottle with Life is Strange and spent the following decade trying to do it again.

6/10

Sad to hear

was holding out hope for this after the fairly high OC score given it’s zero marketing but then noticed the much softer lower scores on metacritic and from steam user reviews alongside your impressions now, so guess it’s going to be a skip

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Rollerdrome



Creative hybrid between a skate game and a 3rd person arena shooter. Your goal is to kill all opponents, but the get ammo to do so you need to perform special tricks with your skateboard. This sound like an interesting concept, but the execution is rather mediocre.

The arena's are rather small and to keep the game playable, only a few enemies are present at the same time. Once you kill a few enemies, new enemies are appearing out of thin air, which is something I really dislike in video games: clear a part of the arena, turn around and you get still shot in the back by an enemy that just spawned there. Another annoyance are the enemies with sniper rifles and AoE damage. their attacks are hard to dodge and to predict, since they can hit you from the other side of the arena. To solve this, the devs added limited "bullet time" that slows the time for everyone but you. This is very helpful, but also kills the pacing of the game. Last but not least, to unlock the next arena, you need to complete lots of secondary objectives, which can be very difficult and/or time-consuming. If there wasn't a built-in cheat to override this, I probable wouldn't have bothered to complete the game.

Tldr: very interesting concept, but also many flaws. Recommended on a sale.

Score: 6.9/10


Finished Metro Exodus



Metro and Metro LL are some of my favorite games ever, so my heart broke when Deep Silver pulled Metro Exodus from Steam because of a lame money hat. Thanks to Humble Monthly, I got this game anyway, but it took me another 2 years to find the courage to actually play it. Oh well, this way I could play the enhanced edition with ray tracing, which was a great showcase for my brand new RTX4070.

The game is a lot better than I expected. Unlike most other open world games, there are no boring and repetitive sidequests to increase the playtime. Every quest is well designed and there are plenty of linear missions that give you the amazing experience of the first two games. I also liked the story and characters, and exploring the excellent game world was so much fun! Last but not least: the graphics are truly amazing, I've paused playing many times to admire the scenery.

Well done 4A Games! Let's hope the next metro game won't be involved in such a worthless business deal.

Score: 9.0/10

 

[C-Dub]

Sad to hear

was holding out hope for this after the fairly high OC score given it’s zero marketing but then noticed the much softer lower scores on metacritic and from steam user reviews alongside your impressions now, so guess it’s going to be a skip

Yeah, sometimes a game is worth your time once the price is right.

This one honestly feels like a waste of your time, no matter the price. Just skip it.

 

[Ge0force]

Let's continue

Finished Anomaly Defenders



Great tower defense game from the creators of Frostpunk. Anomaly Defense doesn't add a lot of new things to the genre, but what is does is very well designed. There's a decent amount of towers and perks, which can be upgraded with points you earn during each mission. The money you need to build towers isn't only earned by killing enemies, but also by placing harvesters on resource locations on the playfield. Protecting these harvesters against enemy attacks is an important part of the gameplay. The replayability is rather low, but I had tons of fun with the many missions the game has to offer. Very recommended!

Score: 8.0/10


Finished Pineapple on Pizza



A short free game, that offers some basic fetch quests on a tropical island. What happens if you complete these quests is hilarious though, and makes it worth playing for everyone.

Score: 7.0/10


Retired Teslagrad Remastered



Well designed puzzle-platform game with interesting gravity puzzles and nice graphics. The every-hit-kills-you mechanic makes it way too frustrating for me though, especially during the (badly designed) boss fights and trial-and-error sections in the later parts of the game. I gave up in the section where you rise up in the blue vortex between the spikes. Not for me, this game is.

Score: 6.0/10


Finished Arietta of Spirits



Very charming 2D Zelda-like game, with colorful retro graphics and great characters and story. The environments and enemies are very repetitive, but the dungeons and boss fights are great. I'm looking forward to more games from this talented developer!

Score: 7.8/10


Finished Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown



Great air combat game with tight controls and plenty of unique missions. There are some minor annoyances (unclear objectives, lightning disabling your plane etc) but the overall experience is fantastic! I also likes the story sequences between the missions. Very recommended!

Score: 8.1/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished



Great game, lovelt art style, well-told story and good world building and characters. Main negatives are that sometimes there's too much text to read and I wish the environments were more interactive, the game is pretty much a point and click game.

Score: 8/10.

Retired



I really enjoyed the game except for the last "impossible lair" chapter/level which was more annoying and frustrating than fun, so I decided to retire the game for now, have so much else I wanna play, Im gonna get back to the game at some other point. Overall, a very fun sidescroller plattformer.

 

[Mivey]

I recently finished Dragon's Dogma


Bit of of a complicated story with this one. I had heard a lot of good word of mouth about this title for a long time, and I first tried it out last year. I opted for a mage, since I had heard so much about the game's magic system. And yeah, that choice did not go well. The initial hours as a mage were super gruelling, even the first fight against the Hydra was a culsterfuck. So I basically rage quit and did not look up.

But the game stuck in my mind, so I gave it another chance, this time with the intention of playing as a mystique knight, a hybrid class that's both spell caster and melee fighter. And had a much nicer time with that combo. Sure, you might not get as much into the spell crafting part, but you still get to toy around with it, while still having an effective option in the early parts of the game as well.

My impression of the game is overall pretty positive, but maybe I'm slightly disappointed. It's a good game, but I am not sure it lived up to the hype around it. The story is for the most part incredibly basic, it doesn't start being really interesting until basically the end, when they introduce some interesting ideas about how this world works. Quests were a mixed bag, with a few that felt really bespoke and memorable, and many that felt like something the Radiant Quest system in Skyrim would produce. The world of Gransys is .. pretty small? Like, sure, I don't need games to be super long, and even if they are, I generally skip most of the things, but despite playing in my usual non-competionist way, I feel I explored maybe 80% of the world. I got an achievement for visiting "100 locations" apparently. Not sure what the game means with "location", every road crossing? There sure were not 100 memorable locations there, maybe 10 at most.

Still, I liked the free form combat, like allowing you to pick up objects, enemies, and throwing them around. The freedom in customising your characters look is pretty impressive for a 2012 title and presentation and music is superb. No surprise with Inon Zur writing the score.

So overall an okay game, but not exactly a great game.

 

[Joe Spangle]

COD MW



Its COD. Shooty bang.
Very nice looking.
Thought the story was alright, couple of interesting characters plus the always charismatic proper geezer Capt. Price.
Its on sale so thought £16.50 is about as cheap as it'll get. Took 6ish hours to finish the campaign on normal.
I like it. If you like COD campaigns then its up there with the good ones. Not quite as good as maybe the original MW series or the excellent Infinite war but still had fun with it.

8 Stay Frostys out of 10.

 

[DrShrapnel]

I was really on the fence with this, as I was afraid I wouldn’t like it. Took a chance via great deal at GreenManGaming, and I’m glad I did.
While you only play as Star Lord, you’re also able to issue simple attack commands to your teammates during combat. These abilities, are unlocked as you progress through the game. You can also issue commands to your teammates to help with navigating the environment, as sometimes their abilities are needed to get to certain areas.
As Star Lord you’ve got two pea shooter pistols, which gain elemental abilities as the game progresses you can also have Rocket unlock abilities for you at work benches throughout the game by collecting doodads hidden in the levels. All in all it’s pretty standard, and straightforward stuff - and I really enjoyed my time with it.

A couple things I also liked is that certain choices you make can alter events in the game. Nothing drastic, but I appreciated it. Also the dialogue is fantastic, with loads of humor.

Seeing Avengers getting delisted, this might be one to pick up while you can if you’re interested. Also the fantastic selection of classic licensed music will likely get pulled at some point as well. If you’re going to experience this it’s probably best to do it sooner rather than later.

7/10


On a side note I did run into a game ending bug that wouldn’t allow me to progress in chapter 11. Game kept locking up badly at a boss fight, right after a cinematic played. I couldn’t find any solutions online so I wonder if it’s maybe not playing nice with my AMD GPU or perhaps Windows 11. Someone later mentioned on Steam that turning Ray tracing off helped them.
In any event I was able to bypass this glitch by installing the game on Steam Deck (it’s certified), playing through the glitched part, and then picking it back up on PC.

 

[fantomena]

Finished



A true hidden gem, more people need to play it. Great pixel art style, but sometimes the art style can make problems with where you need to go. Great fun gameplay, good combat, fun abilities/equipment, fun, but stressful metroidvania 2D level-design. Good music, interesting story and good characters.

Really good game overall despite the flaws I wrote.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished



Decided to go ahead and finish it and managed to beat the impossible lair chapter after quite many tries. Overall I liked the game a lot and had fun with it despite the last level/chapter and some platforming and enemy frustrations here and there. Did some exploration after the credits, but not much.

Score: 7.7/10

Finished



Really fun great game with the linear part of the game, but didn't like the other half of the game much, when the game opened up and become a metroidvania and finding where to go and what to do was a cryptic puzzle in itself. The pixel graphic style was great, sound was great and gameplay was solid and fun, despite being a bit basic.

Score: 7/10.

Would have given it a 8.5/10 if the whole game was linear like the first half of the game.