Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

Paul · Oct 20, 2023

Finished Twin Mirror

Weakest Dontnod game. I still wouldn't call it bad, but it is barely above average. The story is ok, but does not manage to provoke any strong emotions. Characters are ok, but do not manage to evoke any strong emotions. You get the picture. Technically competent, fairly nice graphics...but even as a 7 hour game, I was glad when it ended.

6/10

Finished Beyond a Steel Sky

Sequel to classic adventure game from 1994. This one is 3D third person, but as far as gameplay goes, it is basically a point and click adventure. There are no gameplay mechanics aside from talking to people, rarely using some items, and "hacking" various in world objects to change their behavior, as a solution to puzzles. This one has a bit more interesting writing than Twin Mirror, and the world has potential (it takes place in dystopian future australia), but it is not really utilized much. I enjoyed first half of the game quite a bit, but then it starts overstaying its welcome, the puzzles are a bit boring. At about 11 hours, it would be probably better off if it was few hours shorter.

6/10

Retired Metal HellSinger

Only played 30 minutes. It is probably a fun shooter with cool music gimmick, for fans of these types of arena shooters. I am very clearly not one of them anymore (if I ever was). The endless shooting/slashing of monsters just bores me to tears. I will happily listen to the soundtrack though - outside of the game.

Mivey · Oct 20, 2023

Paul said:
Finished Beyond a Steel Sky

Sequel to classic adventure game from 1994. This one is 3D third person, but as far as gameplay goes, it is basically a point and click adventure. There are no gameplay mechanics aside from talking to people, rarely using some items, and "hacking" various in world objects to change their behavior, as a solution to puzzles. This one has a bit more interesting writing than Twin Mirror, and the world has potential (it takes place in dystopian future australia), but it is not really utilized much. I enjoyed first half of the game quite a bit, but then it starts overstaying its welcome, the puzzles are a bit boring. At about 11 hours, it would be probably better off if it was few hours shorter.

Been a while that I played this, but I remember really liking the hacking elements. It's true that it doesn't have much in terms of classical puzzles, but I also don't mind games looking at other ways to allow you to interact with the world, other than just combining items and using it on objects.

The visual presentation was also great and at least for me the length of the game was ok, but if the hacking part isn't to your liking then I can see your point of course.

fantomena · Oct 20, 2023

Finished

Great game with a ton of different gameplay elements, things to do and content. The main 2 things to do is diving after fish and other stuff and being a server at a sushi restaurant, but there is so much more stuff to do. A story to follow with main missions (7 chapters, took me 25 hours), side missions, activities, upgrading your characters tools, diving suit, weapons, farming for ingredients to the restaurant, serving, hiring people for the restaurant, finding correct ingredients, making the menus, just a lot of differeent and interesting stuff to do and the game is super variated with meaningful content and after the credits there are still stuff to do.

Only really negative is that the diving will feel a bit repetive and a "chore" at times, but otherwise, great game.

Score: 8.6/10

C-Dub · Oct 21, 2023

Just finished Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways DLC

If you liked Resident Evil 2 Remake, or 4 Remake, you probably already have Separate Ways. If you don't, it's probably the best £8 you can spend to get a mini campaign with more of the brilliant 4 remake gameplay.

It feels a bit disjointed compared to the RE4 remake campaign, with you hopping and bopping through a series of "best of RE4" locations. But that's fine because it's just meant to be a little extra on top of the game.

The coolest addition is probably Ada's grapple hook, that speeds up some of the gameplay and puts a nice new twist on RE4's action and stealth gameplay.

You're gonna get about 5-6 hours on your first play, and that's 5-6 hours of brilliance, but if you're a RE fanatic then you'll likely play this multiple times anyway.

In short, the value on offer here is quite incredible. If you're all done with RE4 and its free Mercenaries mode, an extra £8 is gonna give the game more life than its price would suggest.

9/10

fantomena · Oct 28, 2023

Finishjed

Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Ryujinx)

Very good and fun 2D plattformer.

First and foremost, Wonder has the best animations I have ever seen in a 2D game and especially a 2D Mario game. The graphics are also really good. Story is, well, it's Mario, save the kingdom from Bowser.

The game itself is again a lot of fun with a ton of creativity. There are 6 worlds (well 8 worlds if count the last boss area a world and the special world with more difficulty levels). Each world has a set of regular levels and a bunch of challenge levels.

In each level the goal is to collect the Wonder flowers, each level says how many there are and you will in the regular levels get 1 Wonder flower when you have compelted the level (reached the goal flag pole) and another Wonder flower which is more hidden that changes the level in different way which in the game's main new gameplay mechanic that sets the game apart from the other 2D Mario games. A wonder flower that is hidden can change the level you are playing for a short amount of time, like slow motion, fast motion, make the level somehow different, it changes the level in different ways.

The non-regular levels (challenge levels) also gives you a wonder flower, but only one. To reach the boss level in each world you have to collect a certain number of Wonder flowers, when you have finished the boss level you receive a Royal wonder flower which you need to unlock the boss "world".

My main negatives with the game is that I felt the game is shorter and "smaller" that the other 2D Mario games. The regular levels takes like 3-5 minutes to play through and there are like 6-9 of them in each world (4 of them in the "boss world) and many of f the levels you find are the challenge levels which are really short, most of them can be completed in under 1 minute.

The game is also a lot easier than expected, I found NSMBU to be too difficulty and Wonder is often too easy, like I could dash/sprint through the regular levels while picking up most of the collectibles at ease.

I was also kinda letdown by the Wonder flower gameplay, maybe I should have looked more into trailers and stuff, but I for some reason expected the wonder flowers to appear very early in the levels and change the whole level, so like each level is "2" levels, regular without the Wonder flower change and non-regular with Wonder flower change. Or that the Wonder flowers are permanent unlocks where you can activate them before going into a level. However each Wonder flower effect lastet only some seconds despite most of them being really cool and very creative.

There are also "stamps" that you can unlock by playing challenge levels or by buying them with purple coins you collect in the game, you can only have one stamp activated and each stamp gives Mario a new ability, like faster dash, "grappling hook", floaty jump, parachute etc, this was cool.

I saw on the world map that there are some "hidden" levels in certain worlds and of course the "special world" with some more difficulty levels, but I will tackle them another time.

Overall, a fun, good and enjoyable Mario game which was shorter and smaller in scale that I expected.

Score: 8.7/10

Virtual Ruminant · Nov 1, 2023

Finished Lacuna ( DigiTales Interactive / Assemble Entertainment, WhisperGames, Mayflower Entertainment, 2021)

A pixelart point and click adventure game with a strong focus on deductive criminal investigations - there is not much classic point and click here (you don't even have an object inventory), instead it's all about gathering facts, carefully taking in information from conversations, paying attention to news - and reviewing and organizing it all in a dedicated information management screen and then making the right calls and decisions at key points in the story.

The story is a sci-fi political thriller with more than one nod to Blade Runner, but the inspiration is mostly style and visuals, the world-building and plot is quite original and pretty good, too, culminating in no less than 8 different potential endings.

There is occasional voice-acting during cutscenes between chapters, but for the most part, this game is about reading and that includes the conversations, of which there are plenty and which are lengthy - but you get to listen to a pleasant smooth jazz-fusion soundtrack (of which the publisher commissioned an official Lo-Fi remix later on) while you are reading .

Taking in all this information takes time and slows down the pace and this slow pace somewhat clashes with the story, which wants to be an exciting, hard-boiled thriller - some dedication of the player is required. I started playing this game all the way back in 2021 and finished the first chapter and then only picked it back up this year, but I'm glad I did.

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

3.5/5

Also finished Adam Wolfe (Mad Head Games, 2016)

I had no idea what a "Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure" was when I started this game, but I'm glad my first game of this genre was a high-end entry. Subsequently I learned that this studio's games are apparently quite famous and well-liked in the casual mobile games space, of which I don't know too much about.

For the most part, this plays like a point and click adventure, only the elevated number of hidden object puzzles really gives it away.

But the production values blow 90% of actual contemporary point and clicks out of the water - gorgeous, digitally painted high-resolution images and animations, great music and a full voice-acting cast throughout with great performances. It's this great production and the breezy casual-player-focused gameplay. which takes great care to never frustrate the player - always be puzzling, but never be stuck - that really sucked me in and had me come back to this game every night for a week.

The story, a somewhat wild tale about a "detective of the supernatural" solving crime and looking for his missing sister, is nothing special, it's even a little silly at points, but it has just enough twists, turns and teases to keep things moving along smoothly.

Really good fun and evidence that casual gaming does not necessarily equal mindless or repetitive.

3.5/5

And finished Chicken Police - Paint it RED! (The Wild Gentlemen / HandyGames, 2020)

I found this game completely by accident (the cover image randomly caught my eye in a GOG sale newsletter) and what an amazing find it turned out to be.

It's a novelty visual novel that mixes a classic 20th century hard-boiled detective setting. a duo of main characters straight out of a buddy-cop movie, a highly stylized look, deep world-building, talking animals, an original jazz soundtrack and an amazing cast of voice-actors that deliver hours worth of lines peppered with zingers.

The world-building of this game is quite extraordinary - during its course, you even get a brief world history spanning multiple centuries and a good idea of the world's shape down to the details of continents, countries and their respective cultures. The design of the animal people that goes for a sort-of photorealistic egyptian-pantheon look is incredibly good (and sometimes incredibly odd at the same time, particularly for the bird-based characters).

But the best feature of this game is the voice acting. I often talk about voice acting in my posts here, but this game is really special. The amount and quality of lines in this game put AAA games like the Life is Strange series to shame. Almost every object that can be looked at in a scene gets up to four conversations between the main characters on repeat looks - and when you come back to the same scene later in the plot, there's new lines waiting for the same objects. But a player in a hurry is completely free to not even take a single look and miss all of them, if they so wish, so a breezy casual playthrough is still possible.

I absolutely loved this game and the only criticism I have is that I figured out the big plot pivot before the game meant to reveal it - and that it goes on for a tiny bit too long after the game's climax. While writing this post, I found out that a big sequel is apparently in the works and a small spin-off game due to be released this month, I'm very excited.

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

4.5/5

Virtual Ruminant · Nov 1, 2023

Just finished The Forest Quartet (Mads & Friends / Bedtime Digital Games, 2022)

You play as the ghost of the recently departed singer and saxophonist of eccentric jazz band The Forest Quartet - and help the remaining trio to get over their acute feelings of depression, anxiety and anger so they can make it to the tribute farewell concert in your honor in time - by solving puzzles in the forest all the band members live in.

Presentation is flawless, visuals, music, voice-acting and the light difficulty are all on point to create the perfect little (2.5 hours playtime) casual puzzle game to play on All Saints / All Souls Day - especially if you like Nordic jazz (and it's on sale right now as well).

4/5

fantomena · Nov 5, 2023

Finished Alan Wake 2 (Playstation 5)

I feared the game would let me down as I have waited for this game for 13 years, the first game is one of my favorite games of all time due to the story, lore and world building, but Im happy to write that the game didn't dissapoint.

First and foremost, AW2 is the most beautiful game I have ever played. Gorgeus graphics and gorgeus scenery. The game also has great sound and music, but doesn't reach the memorable music Poets of the Fall did for the first game.

The story is very intriguing, fascinating and interesting and the gameplay that is introduced with Saga Anderson worked way better than I expected. Throughout the game you play as both Alan and Saga and they both have their own chapters, Saga is in the real world and Alan is in the dark place (a nightmare-like dimension). Lots of nostalgia in the game based on background history, characters, lore and world building. I did miss not seeing

Barry Wheeler

though, liked him in the first game.

Main negative about the story is that it didn't countinue as much as I wanted it to do and I can clearly see an Alan Wake 3 being made at some point, it kinda has to unless the DLCs are long.

The gameplay is great and is more survival horror than many actual survival horror games. However I did feel like the resource management got a bit too much sometimes and sometimes got in the way of the combat and pacing of the game. Lots of exploration to do in the game which was interesting and you can find different things like dolls in the environment you use to solve nursery rhyme puzzles which gives Saga "charms" that she can use to upgrade herself, like a charm that increased her health, a charm that increased the quality and amount of resources she find, a charm that saves her from death and so on.

Saga also has a mind palace like Sherlock in the BBC series where she tracks and solves different cases on a board, in the mind palace she can also use weapon fragments to upgrade her weapons (found in the environment), watch television "tapes" she discovers, read manuscripts she finds, identity different people etc.

I did find there to be a lack of weapons (mostly a pistol/revoler, a rifle and 2 different shotguns that are very much alike) and a lack of enemy variety.

I did also find the gameplay with boosting flashlight to remove darkness from enemies to be more janky and worse than in the previous game. Like every battery for the flashlight has charges, removing darkness costs 1 or 2 charges and once you start boosting you can't stop the charge until it's done, so if you mistakengly press the boost button like I did a few times there's nothing you can do and batteries for the flashlight is quite scarce. In the first game Alan boosted the flashlight and could stop when he wanted to.

I also did feel a bit of repetiveness by the environments, the game is quite long, but there are sorta a few main areas, Bright Falls, Watery and Cauldron Lake for Saga and nightmare New York, a telvision studio and a hotel for Alan, they are all gorgeus and somewhat big, but that's where the game takes place and you backtrack often to places, but there are collectibles that you couldn't reach early in the game that you get access to later in the game, so that was probably part of the design for the backtracking.

Otherwise, the game is heavily story and narrative driven, so Im not gonna write more about that.

Overall, I had a really good time with the game and despite the flaws I just wrote about, it's a well-designed and well-crafted sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. I just hope the DLCs comes with answers or an Alan Wake 3 will be made at somepoint.

Score: 9/10

fantomena · Nov 8, 2023

Finished

This feels more like a Serious Sam game than Shadow Warrior. Good graphics, nice level design, many cool different weapons, but overall combat is really boring and uninteresting, enemies takes too long time to kill, you go from a to b and then theres waves of enemies in an "area" and after defeating them you platform a bit to c and a new area of waves of enemies. No replayability either.

Score: 6.8/10

Finished

Sorta letdown and dissapointed in the campaign. The old MW2 had an amazing campaign that I could giver like 8.8/10 to, but this was not all that well. Some great graphics, especially in night levels, some cool set pieces, but not many, story was too quick, full of things that doesn't make sense or was too convenient and lots of graphical bugs and other bugs. Took me 4-5 hours to play through it.

Score: 6.5/10

Finished

Pretty mediocre walking simulator. The graphics were somewhat good in most palces and the story you find reading papers and hearing radio tapes is somewhat decent, otherwise there's not the game does that feels great or innovative in any way, very little gameplay, super slow walking speed and the game is very janky to play. There is a "dot" that shows what you can interact with and to interact you have to line up with that "dot" somewhat perfectly to start the interaction and the janky gameplay made this difficulty at times.

Score: 6/10

dummmyy · Nov 9, 2023

fantomena said:
Finished

Fanto, I just wanted to say i aspire to play as much as you once i've settled into my job, and appreciate your posts. lol

AHA-Lambda · Nov 9, 2023

dummmyy said:
Fanto, I just wanted to say i aspire to play as much as you once i've settled into my job, and appreciate your posts. lol

Honestly I’m dumbfounded how

it’s one part impressive and one part terrifying

fantomena · Nov 9, 2023

dummmyy said:
Fanto, I just wanted to say i aspire to play as much as you once i've settled into my job, and appreciate your posts. lol

I actually don't really play that much, Im just really effective when I actually do have time. There can often be multiple days in a week I don't even touch games.

Stevey · Nov 11, 2023

Finished this again, no idea how many times I've played through HL2 and the episodes.
10/10
Still pissed off we never got Episode 3

FunnyJay · Nov 11, 2023

Finished

I played the entire game solo.
Finished all main missions. Upgraded the base 100%. Reached level 30 and unlocked world tier 1.
Did not do all side content. Did not visit the Dark zone much at all.

The game has a fantastic atmosphere and an interesting story. And especially so since it feels more "tangible" after COVID-19.

What I didn't like was the enemy elites that took the general bullet-spongy-ness of the enemies to entirely new levels.
An elite rushing you could kill you (when playing solo) and send you back 10 minutes to the latest checkpoint SO MANY TIMES.
An enemy should be able to take 5 clips to the face and not even flinch.

All in all, a pleasurable game, but maybe a bit long (IMO), but such is the nature of MMOs.

Virtual Ruminant · Nov 12, 2023

Finished Valiant Hearts - The Great War (Ubisoft, 2014)

A cartoon sidescrolling puzzle adventure telling the tale of the chaotic adventures of a young German farmer living in France married to a French woman, his father-in-law, a Belgian nurse, an American expat and a German army medical dog, whose lives get intermingled by a crazy random event outside their control that sends them down a path where they have to face danger, horror, cruelty and death.

That crazy random event of course is the outbreak of what we now know as Word War I, in 1914.

The story involves the characters in various key events of the war between 1914 and 1917. The game includes an ample amount of factual historical information, including images from the documentary series "Apocalypse - World War I', that puts the events of each chapter of the game in their actual historical context and - at least for me - also increases the emotional impact of the action on screen by supplying the horrifying details of early 20th century weapons technology, field medicine and casualty numbers that the actual gameplay is unable to depict.

I enjoyed the story - or rather, was impressed and moved by the story - but I have to note while the game takes care to include some often underrepresented aspects of World War I (such as the involvement of troops recruited from the colonies of the European powers), it is still entirely and exclusively concerned with the Western Front - the only mentions of Russia are in the initial declarations of war and in one collectible unlocking a historic fact about the identification tags of Russian soldiers.

The gameplay itself is a mix of classic puzzle platforming mechanics (excluding jumping), occasionally lobbing a grenade or a stick of dynamite, and a few bits of stealth and even casual rhythm gaming thrown in - the overriding design objective quite clearly having been compatibility with touch screens as well as traditional video game controls. There is shooting, too, but only in a few rare set pieces, and it's always artillery rather than guns.

Generally the gameplay works best when it sticks to the basics, too - whenever the game tries something fancy, like obscuring the visibility in a room the player is supposed to solve a puzzle in, or making the player hit a target using artillery and targeting instructions told to the player character through a field telephone, I often found myself confused and eventually resorting to the built-in hint function which will, after some mandatory waiting period, tell the player what to do so there's no chance of getting stuck.

I put off playing this game for almost ten years because I was afraid it would either be bad, inappropriate or just too emotionally harrowing, but I'm glad I finally have and I will probably give it a replay or two as well - it's a good one to put in the calendar for Armistice Day.

However, the ESRB Teen / PEGI 12 rating is on a knife edge - I would not give this game to the average 12 year old - even though it has real educational value. Then again, if your 12 year old already has all the achievements in Battlefield 1, this might offset some of the incurred brain damage.

3.5/5

fantomena · Nov 12, 2023

Finished

Short (like 1 hour max) puzzle game, but a very good puzzle game using the concept of electricity where your character is the electricity. Game feels really smooth to play, remidns me of Vvvvvvvvv is some ways, graphically good looking too despite the game overall being very basic, but still really hood.
Score: 8.5/10

Finished

A Portal-like game involving time rewing and moving of boxes that has different characteristics like a box that spaws a laser, a box that spawns a bridge etc. Graphically a very good looking game. There is some combat in the game, but not much, but I didn't like the combat. Story was okay, but quickly got very predictable. Some puzzles were too much a like and too many different boxes to use in later acts made the game too confusing and a chore to play.

Score: 8/10

Paul · Nov 13, 2023

Do you guys keep a record of games you finished etc?

For example, incl. bundle games, retail games etc I:

own 1573 games
played and rated 580 games
finished (to ending credits) 523 games

Virtual Ruminant · Nov 13, 2023

Paul said:
Do you guys keep a record of games you finished etc?

I use HowLongToBeat to keep track now, but I only started using it two years ago and though I made an effort to get my 7th & 8th gen old console gaming history in there (reconstructed from achievements), too, some of my ancient pre-Steam PC and pre-PC gaming history is beyond recovering.

435 Backlogs
384 Beat
53.1% Remaining
5.7% Retired

Mivey · Nov 15, 2023

I finished Alan Wake 2, a bit earlier this week.

I was really looking forward to this game in the months ahead and even revisited Alan Wake 1 (via the Remaster, which was at a super low sale at some point) and American Nightmare, which I actually finished for the first time earlier last month.

The Remedy Verse that was established with Control and that also includes the setting of Alan Wake really drew me into this game, and at least for me, all the inter-connections between the two series are really great. I think it is ultimately handled in a way where even if you have not played Control at all, you'll still be able to play this one easily. It presents the elements from Control to you as an outsider, so things appearing weird and strange is pretty much the intended effect. Though I would overall recommend to play Control before Alan Wake 2, as I think the connection make it ultimately a richer experience.

As for Alan Wake 2 itself, I'm pretty impressed with this title. On the visual side, this is easily Remedies best game yet and arguably one of the most beautiful games of all time. Especially the vegetation is just amazing. It play in the American Pacific Northwest, where you have dense, ridiculously big forests, with nary a sign of human civilisation and this game captures that look like nothing I have seen. The grass, the trees, the leaves, it all looks incredibly detailed. There is fog, clouds, mists, leaves on the ground and so many details that just look stunning. I am amazing what this game achieves on my 2080 TI. True next generation graphics and in every sense deserving of the high specs.
The human animations looks, as usual for Remedy, a bit awkward and strange but I think it actually helps with this title, as it amps up the "Twin Peaks"-ness of everything.

The actual story is pretty slow going at first, and arguably a bit lop-sided to the last hour or so of the game, where a ton of stuff gets suddenly revealed. I personally took a big shine to Saga's mind place. It helps you follow her thinking and understanding of the case and all its assets, small and big. For 90% of the time, it's pretty simple stuff, but I found it especially useful near the end of the game when things get ever more complicated. And there is also a great twist near the end that really makes great use of the mind place (which I won't spoil here). The similar thing in Alan's side of the story is also great, where it lets you change parts of the world as you write various drafts of you story.

I am strangely satisfied with this game, despite the fact that it's ending is ultimately not changing things too drastically and it's mostly about letting us know why it was that Alan took 13 years to try to resolve what happened to him after the first game. I think the main reason is that I simply loved every second of the journey and the second thing, is that I think the resolution opens up so many more interesting questions to explore in the future.

On the surface, it mimics, and even mocks, the ending of the first game, where we get the new line "it's not a loop it's a spiral" instead of the (in)famous, "it's not a lake, it's an ocean". But I find the idea that both Alan and Alice are now together in the Dark Place and working towards "ascending" this spiral to be a really great premise. My personal guess is that ascension in this context does not mean to try to leave the Dark Place, but instead use it as a starting point towards something else.

Overall, I'm happy that this game exists and I hope Remedy will pick up on its story beats in future RCU games. I personally doubt that we will ever see an Alan Wake 3, unless Remedy can somehow finance it themselves, which I really don't see happening.

fantomena · Nov 18, 2023

Finished

Very good and interesting puzzle game, uses logic on basically every puzzle. Liked the puzzles a lot. Negatives are that I foudn the graphics (style) to be quite ugly, didn't like the performance of the game and didn't like that I actually could die.

8.3/10

Finished

Suprisingly interesting story, a ton of cutscenes where many cutscenes went on for too long time, choices that actually mattered, a lot of backtracking (you are in the same "palace" thoughout the whole game. The game is episode based with 5 episodes, spanning like 10 hours of playtime or so.

Score: 8/10

Finished

Not the best boomer shooter I've plyaed, but it was decent fun. Good level design for the most part, decent gunplay and cool weapons, but too many enemies, felt like a wave shooter too often which I didn't like and the gameplay didn't "feel" as good as other, better, boomer shooters. Not sure what is wrong, but the game didn't click for me as well as games like Ultrakill, Dusk, Amid Evil and Ion Fury. The gameplay loop in each level felt too repetive and Overall, a somewhat fun decent game, but I didn't have all that much fun with it.

Score: 7.5/10

Mivey · Nov 19, 2023

I retired Pillars of the Earth
As a point and click, this just isn't doing anything remotely interesting and the story of this priory in England in the 13th century is boring me to tears, so I called it quit after an hour or so. I think this might have been Daedalic's last attempt at a regular point and click adventure and I can kinda see why it must have bombed hard. It's just such an oddly specific book to pick for an adaptation. From what I gather, it tells a story spanning multiple generations and I'm sure that's something that works well in a book where the reader can get slowly invested in things, but it really does not work well here, at least for me it didn't.

Durante · Nov 21, 2023

I finished Lords of the Fallen (2023), and wrote a rather detailed review on Steam specifically since I really can't agree with its current rating. Here it is:

I strongly feel like this game is currently underrated.

For some background, I've played all From Software "Souls" games (and Elden Ring) since Demon's Souls at their respective launches, and completed most of them 100%. My playstyle usually emphasizes magic, and I also do a lot of cooperative and competitive multiplayer.

I'll compare Lords of the Fallen to Dark Souls 3, since I think that's the closest point of comparison among From's games. I'd say the games are quite comparable in their overall size, and in character build variety. I also think things like NPC quest arcs are actually quite similar: both feature some needlessly obtuse conditions, though LoTF might go a bit further in arbitrary NPC location placement. To me, both also suffer from a bit of a samey-grim-dark area syndrome, at least throughout large parts of the game -- DS3 was a low point for From Software in that aspect.

There are certainly some aspects in which LoTF falls flat compared to DS3. Perhaps the most significant one are boss fights. The number of truly memorable boss fights in LoTF is lower, mostly constrained to maybe one boss with unique moves and mechanics per major region. I'd say that this is one of the biggest weaknesses of the game.

However, there are also some areas in which I believe that it genuinely does much better than Dark Souls 3 in particular. One of them is the interconnected and many-branched world structure. At any point starting from the mid-game of either title, it feels like you have more genuine options on how to proceed in LoTF than you have in DS3. The areas are also more interconnected, but still in ways that make physical sense.

Finally, the mirror world (called "Umbral" in LoTF) could be considered a gimmick, but it was more well-integrated into various aspects of the game design than I expected when I started playing it. It serves to make exploration more interesting and varied; enables some new traversal puzzle mechanics; allows for adding visual interest and environmental storytelling in some areas; and finally also provides an interesting risk/reward mechanic in terms of combat.

On the technical side of things, one aspect that is certainly nice -- speaking as a PC gamer -- is playing one of these games with full Ultrawide monitor support, and without the arbitrary 60 FPS cap that From Software still enforces. I didn't experience any particular performance or crashing issues, but I also play on a rather high-end PC.

fantomena · Nov 24, 2023

Finished

Liked it a lot actually. The story is weird as hell and the cutscenes not particularly interesting. I really liked the janky gameplay and the shooting, especially with the shotgun, felt great. Some enemies though take too much to kill and there were often too many enemies at once. Nice upgrades and suprisingly good graphics in many areas. Game was short though, 5 chapters taking 3-4 hours to finish. Some annoyances with the UI.

Otherwise, I actually liked it a lot.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished

Really good game where you explore different parts of an "ancient technological" world and finding it's secrets and lore. there is a somewhat "big" map and your goal is to travel to 4 different areas and unlocking it's "modules". Very little hand holding, you have to find out what to do and where to go yourself, but the world is very self explanatory. Liked the world a lot, liked the graphics style a lot and liked exploring. Combat was decent, but nothign spectacular. Finding certain paths and where I am actually allowed to go was sometimes annyoing as there often paths that looked liked a path, but it wasn't.

Score: 8.4/10

d00d3n · Nov 26, 2023

I just finished Astlibra Revision.

The game has a very addictive and compelling structure if you are the type of player who likes to explore thoroughly and grind a bit to stay ahead of the curve in your RPGs.

Basically, most gear in the game is constructed from materials dropped by enemies, and repeatedly using said gear unlocks most of your important magical abilities. There are two separate systems for gaining better stats by killing enemies: from gaining experience and leveling up, and from collecting colored orbs and using them on a Final Fantasy X type grid, where the latter system also unlocks some magical abilities and some items/gear. Additionally, stats are also modified by placing items on the pans of a magical scale, where you have to balance item specific bonuses and getting the weight balance right. There is also a crafting system where you can create a variety of items from several magical recipe books. The 8 hour postgame/postscript adds additional systems that are beyond the scope of this review.

The character progression systems are wonderfully complex and interlocking, but still easy to grasp early in the game. The game makes great use of an act system and restrictions on how far you can progress on the grid to restrict the current possibility space to make short term goals achievable and clear. When I got to a new act, I could not wait to grind the new enemy types for the materials/items, build all available gear, get the corresponding magical abilities and advancing on the grid system until the next hard lock.

The game has a quite convoluted story focused on time travel. I personally liked most of it, but at times I mashed the progress button hoping to get along to the next farming spot ... The quality of the story varies a lot between different segments. Looking back at the game, the best and worst segments were sometimes contained in the same act.

The graphics seemed off-putting at first, like a botched up-resing job of a game that may have looked better with a more pixelated look, but I got used to the visual style.

The 2d traversal and combat feel great and contribute to how addictive it is to collect materials/items for the character progression systems.

In conclusion, this is a well structured and frankly pretty addictive action RPG. The game is great for people who have a hard time getting into games and remaining interested in them, where the clarity of the game's structure and your short term goals are a big part of this.

fantomena · Nov 26, 2023

Finished Assassin's Creed Mirage (PC)

I liked it more than Valhalla. A much smaller game in terms of scale and going more back to it's roots formula, but still having some of the new-AC elements like looting and skills to unlock. Baghdad looks great in the game, story was pretty decent despite being confused by the ending. Gameplay remains the same, felt very outdated, especially the climbing and parkour. Took me 8-9 hours to finish the game, so the shortest AC I have played in many years, but I liked that. Game didn't feel bloated.

Score: 8/10

spiel · Dec 2, 2023

Finished Unpacking

It's weird, the game didn't do much for me while playing. I was so focused on the compulsion to unpack ALL the boxes and line up all the items. But when the end credits rolled everything kind of sank in and I was totally charmed by the whole experience. A few moments did make me widen my eyes in realisation. Pretty clever environmental storytelling.

Score: 8/10

Finished Backspace Bouken

It's a dungeon crawler where your only way to attack is to type. The exploration was somewhat frustrating for me, as there was no way to see the full map and the layouts require a lot of backtracking. I wish there were more mechanics involved. It got pretty repetitive towards the end. Only buy this on sale if you desperately want a typing game. For a few bucks I got a couple hours of entertainment out of it.

Giving a +1 solely for the terrible puns throughout.

Score: 6/10

fantomena · Dec 3, 2023

Finished

Suprisingly decent. It's in many ways like a janky and a bit less polished Returnal without the roguelike elements. Story was better than I expected, nice looking environments for the most part. Combat was decent, many different weapons, okay puzzles. Certain parts of the game dragged on a bit too long and some of the level design could have been better as I sometimes found myself walking back the way I came without knowing until later.

Score: 7.8/10

Finished

This game is difficulty to give a score because I found it to be an uneven game in terms of quality.

First and foremost, it's a really beautiful game, the scale of the areas in the game is large. In some areas of the game, the level design is great, other areas are very confusing and downright annoying level design in where to actually and what to actually do, there are some tutorial pop up windows in the game, but a lot go unexplained.

Basically there is a "hub" in the game, an evil "god" has killed of spirits and put in demons into humans and called them "devouers". You play as this anime-looking girl and your job is to travel to different areas in this world and free their vessels to make them a spirit. It's the journey to these vessels that is the game. You have to find the path towards them yourself even though there are some signs like "this way to the quarry" or "this way to the ocean". Like the vessel for the whale is in the ocean area.

The game is a sort of fast paces platformer where you glide and dash, but the platforming is often very frustrating and annoying. Defeating enemies is often also annoying, but sometimes a bit fun. There are smaller spirits you can find and free in the game and you press a button to make your character sing which sends of smaller birds that let you find these spirits. There are also memories which are basically concept arts you can find.

This is Piccolos studios biggest game so far, it's a much bigger game than Arise which I also liked. But I feel like they took on too much. There are many good ideas with the gameplay, but how they work in the gam varies, in some areas they work well, in other they don't. Some areas have fun plattforming and combat, other areas don't. So overall an uneven game in terms of fun and quality. However, I will give the devs props for trying out new things.

Score: 7.9/10

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 5, 2023

Finished The Bunker (Splendy Interactive / Wales Interactive, 2016)

FMV game / interactive movie set in an alternate history where England gets hit with multiple nuclear bomb strikes in 1986 and set in a nuclear shelter for government personnel. One woman in the facility is pregnant at the time of the attack and gives birth there - the game's protagonist is her son, 30 years later and now an adult and the game starts with his mother dying of old age - leaving him the only living inhabitant of the shelter. The game then slowly unravels the how and why through a series of flashbacks that occur while the protagonist needs to do maintenance tasks on the automated life support systems of the facility.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit. It does a good job of conveying the oppressive atmosphere of the setting and the severe psychological issues of the protagonist - and the mystery that slowly unravels is pretty good and not too obvious either. Interactivity is quite low and gameplay is basic - very straightforward click-to-do-this mechanics, no real puzzles, a few collectibles, optional documents to read. There's no real replay value either, but if you like it, there is rewatch-value - but you really do have to like watching it, because fast-forwarding through scenes is not possible.

What I did not like very much was most of the soundtrack, which is pretty generic synth stuff that noodles along and occasionally gets outright annoying when it swells up in tense scenes. A good musical score could have enhanced the mood of the whole game a lot more.

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

3.5/5

Finished Stardrop (Joure Visser, 2019)

A kickstarted first-person narrative exploration (i.e. walking simulator) game with light puzzling and occasional light stealth gameplay about a two-person space salvage operation who happen upon a derelict ship over a hundred years old - and when they board it, they receive a message from a crew member who should by all accounts be dead ...

Quite impressive game relative to development team size, both with regards to quality of presentation and game length - I spent 6.5 hours to see the credits roll. A nice, moody soundtrack makes up for the sometimes a little overly sterile visuals. The story is solid, but quite predictable.

I ran into a few bugs, all of which could be worked around by resetting to the last save (saving happens manually at save-stations throughout the game).

3/5

Finished The Shapeshifting Detective (D'Avekki Studios Ltd / Wales Interactive, 2018)

FMV / interactive movie detective game, where the protagonist (for largely unexplained reasons) can shapeshift into people he has talked to to impersonate them. The whole game is face to face interviews in first-person perspective with very flat dialogue-trees.

Most of the acting is quite bad and the story is so nonsensical and full of supernatural esoteric stuff that trying to figure out the murder mystery quickly becomes tedious and playing the game devolves into linearly shapeshifting into every possible character and talking to every other possible character until the game decides that the player has heard enough and advances the plot by one hour (of in-game time), thereby unlocking new conversations.

The camera work is boring as well and the soundtrack is nothing special either, making this whole thing a quite boring way to kill roughly four hours. Replays are required for all achievements and possible endings, but at least scenes can be skipped/fast-forwarded on repeat playthroughs.

2.5/5

fantomena · Dec 8, 2023

Finished

Liked it a lot. Very cool concept of using photographs to change the design of the levels. Liked the puzzles, liked the art style, liked the level design, but the difficulty often felt very uneven, suddenly very easy puzzles, suddenly very difficulty puzzles and certain things could have been explained better.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished

Also a very good puzzle game, short though (like 3-4 hours), but good. Great level design, great environmental design, it's a gorgeus game in many palces, but other places had an "art style" I didn't like all that much. Game felt great to play. The puzzle design with the different colored orbs that has it's own world and you can put a world into another world was really cool and worked well and it got more complicated in the later part. Overall I enjoyed it a lot.

Score: 8.6/10

Finished

Another great puzzle game, a long game too, took me 8+ hours to finish, also got the "real" ending which was a cool twist to the game. It's a puzzle game based around language, letters and symbols, you have to find symbols and decypher them to progress in the game. There are basically 5 areas, each area has it's own language that you have to find out, like a symbol can mean "go/pass", another symbol can mean "music" and the game puzzles evovled around completing sentences by decypphering which symbol means what word. Good level design and nice art style.

Score: 8.5/10

Mivey · Dec 10, 2023

Couple games I finished a while back:

I finished Axiom Verge 2

Due to EGS shenanigans, I played this one years and years after the first one and really barely remember the story of that one. Luckily, the plot in Axiom Verge 2 does not require you to have played the first one. In fact, the plot is pretty superficial, in the sense that you only get brief bits of dialogue every couple hours, and most of the time is just spent playing a pretty grand MetroidVania title. Pretty amazing game, feels like a big step up from the first one. Having two different worlds that you can warp between, allowing you to get to locations that you would not be able to without this back and forth teleportation is pretty neat. The absolute star of the show is the music, though. The world we play in is clearly inspired by ancient Babylonia, and so the music too is taking in some cues from that and it's just sublime
Could listen to this for hours. Great game, and I recommend it to every fan of the genre.

Robotics;Notes Dash

A follow-up game to Robotics;Notes, the third title in the Science Adventure series. This is a pretty strange game. I initially expected this to merely be a romance focused follow-up that doesn't do much to advance the plot of the larger series. And for about 90% of it, it's just that. Then you unlock the "true ending" and the game just goes of the rails and has arguably some of the most lasting consequences in this series. Like, literally world shattering stuff. Will be funny when the next games then proceed to completely ignore this (or only mention it in passing).

Also, cannot recommend this game at all. The port is a hot mess that is unstable and crashes near constantly in the second half of it. This happens on Windows and on Linux via Proton, so clearly something terribly wrong with the port. Given how stable it is in the fist half, I kinda wonder if they just tested the first half of the game and called it a day.

Baldur's Gate 3

Not sure I have much to say about this monumental game that hasn't been already written about, here and virtually everywhere else on the internet. As someone who has been following Larian's games since Divinity II, for about the last 10 years or more, it's incredibly how they evolved from a tiny indie studio that made incredibly ambitious eurojank titles to the world's premiere RPG studio that is basically beyond compare at this point. I kinda hope we see them returning to the Divinity series, as DnD mechanics can be a bit cumbersome. I remember the simpler element based damage system of DOS1 and 2
to be ultimately easier to grasp and master.

The Stillness of the Wind

Not sure I really finished this title, or whether I quit early and there is an actual ending. The game is about the life of an old woman, who maintains a farm on her own, getting eggs from her chicken coop and milk from her goats, to produce cheese. And that's pretty much it from the mechanical side. The real focus is of course to get to know more about her pasts, via the letters she receives from her children and friends. Ultimately just a bit too boring for me to continue playing this over an hour. I think what annoys me most is the incredibly slow movement speed, combined with a day and night cycle that lasts about 5 minutes. Having more time and clearer defined and explained mechanics would have made this far more interesting a game.

fantomena · Dec 10, 2023

Finished

Pretty game, cute story, okay gameplay. It's like a point and click game with some mroe interactivity, like actually moving around. Game looks pretty, like an oil painting (?). There is voice acting i nthe game and you can find stickers and different stuff to collecting in the environments. Short game, lasts like 3 hours.

Score: 8/10

Finished

Very dark, gritty and brutal game with an interesting and mysterious story. Gameplay remijnds me off Little Nightmares, butt a bit more janky. Okay level design, but sometimes finding the correct path can be confusing and lead to dumb deaths. There are figurines in the environment you can collect which I think is a way for the developers to ge tthe players to try to explore a bit in an otherwise very linear game.

Score: 8.3/10

Finished

First time I finished Guacamelee. Fun game overall, decent level design and nice art style, combat was super frustrating, felt janky and when you got hit by something, your character really flies long away which was very frustrating.

Score: 7/10

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 15, 2023

Finished Cats and the Other Lives (Cultic Games / Maple Whispering Limited, 2022)

When the patriarch of a once-powerful and rich mining dynasty passes away, his family reunites at his decaying mansion for the wake and to sort his affairs - and soon old conflicts and long-standing rifts between the family members crack open again.

In a brilliant inversion of the classic 2D point-and-click genre, the player controls the family pet, a house cat called "Aspen", instead of the actual people that the story centers on. As the cat, the player roams the mansion, follows people and listens in on their conversations - and in between, does typical cat things like chasing mice, pestering the humans for food, trying to hunt birds in the yard, etc.

While it all feels very organic and exploratory, it's not actually open - the game is very precisely scripted out and the doors and windows in the house open and close with the comings and goings of the human inhabitants, so that the path forward is never ambiguous. Sometimes, the cat's senses engage as well and the player will get visual guides for a smell or a noise to follow, leading to the next story events.

The story and characters are brilliantly written and right on the level with any big screen, ensemble cast dysfunctional-family-reunion-drama - think Osage County or The Royal Tenenbaums - and the game really indulges in the drama and does not shy away from loaded subjects that are quite uncommon in video game stories -

the widow of the dead patriarch, suffering from dementia, roams the mansion and sometimes attacks the player character, one alcoholic family member attempts suicide and there is a graphic scene where the player character literally has to step in blood, then run in the path of another family member to get rescue efforts underway

- I can honestly say that outside certain Japanese genre games, I cannot remember a video game with a story that quite "goes there" as this game does and at the same time feels very mature and without pandering to a particular demographic and audience - like certain Dontnod games occasionally do.

The roughly 7 hour game is divided into three chapters, following the three days the family meets at the mansion and I played it all on three consecutive nights in early December - which incidentally fit the mood and setting of the game exceptionally well, as it also takes place during that time of the year - and I was glued to the screen the whole way through.

The biggest weakness of the game are the little action mini-games centered around typical cat-activities.
Conceptually they are great, and they are very nicely embedded in the story, too, but the mouse-controls (no controller support in the PC release as of yet) are awkward and the difficulty is tuned to actually make them somewhat challenging and most players will require a couple of attempts to beat them - and beating them is required to progress with the story.

The other weak part is the music, which seems to take inspiration from classic 90s point-and-click MIDI soundtracks and somewhat emulates the sound of those early Adlib and Soundblaster chips. It does this well enough, but I feel like a less Lo-Fi production could have really elevated the drama in some parts of the game even more.

Probably the biggest surprise of the year for me - I genuinely do not even remember how this game made it onto my wishlist in the first place, but wow, am I glad it did!

Future cult-classic game? I hope so!

4.5/5

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 17, 2023

Finished Inua - A Story in Ice and Time (The Pixel Hunt, IKO / ARTE France, 2022)

Interactive fiction (no puzzles, just keep clicking/tapping to complete the game) with an interesting setting, good voice acting and nice music, but too much weak filler text - the game could be 2 hours long instead of 4 and have more impact that way. Plays well on a tablet - mouse controls only on PC.

3/5

fantomena · Dec 20, 2023

Finished

Fun beat'em up that overstays it's welcome. Nice arts style, fun combat, for the first few levels, then the game becomes very repetive due to only having 23 ways to fight, using tools you find in the environment or picking up things from enemies makes it a bit better, but there is no combos or different ways to defeat enemies, you meain just just a button to beat them. There are 50 levels, each level varies a few min and many levels are too long for it's own good. So had to kinda drag myself to finish it up.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished

The best non-FromSoft soulslike I have played, reminds me a lot of Bloodborne, which is a very good thing. Great level design, great combat, really liked how you cna not only upgrade your weapons, but you can assemble weapon parts to make your own weapon. Lots of different tools to use from electicity or fire on your weapons to different throwing weapons. You can change your clothes, you yuse what's called Ergo your character up. Great enemy design, gorgeus game in many places. Gameplay feels smooth and good. The world itself was very intriguing and fascinating.

Negatives are that some parts dragged on too long and some levels were too confusing in it's level design. Tok me nearly 19 hours to finish with some afk hours, so I guess 15 hours or so. I also enjoyed the story and the different characters you meet. The "hub" place with all the different options with shops and secrets was nice.

Score: 8.9/10

d00d3n · Dec 21, 2023

I just completed the metroidvania game TEVI. It is a pretty good game. The pixel perfect graphics, precise 2d controls, a complex and interesting progression system and a decent combat system are the strengths of the game. Unfortunately, the combat does not remain balanced after you have activated synergistic combat abilities in the progression system, which will trivialize enemy and boss encounters (especially the bullet hell aspect) in the latter half of the game. The story felt pretty grating and irritating for me as a person who is not that into anime, but I guess it may come off better if you like that kind of stuff. The game is generously sized, but exploration is quite strictly tied to main story progress. In hindsight, I regret spending so many hours trying to find secrets and optional paths in early and mid game, knowing now that almost all of those aspects were locked behind late main story exploration items.

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 24, 2023

Finished FAR: Changing Tides (Okomotive / Frontier Foundry, 2022)

The sequel to 2018's FAR: Lone Sails faithfully mirrors the first game in more ways than one: Visual style, controls, vehicle mechanics, the soundtrack that fades in and out to beautifully score some parts of the journey while leaving others to the poignant silence and ambient sounds of a world left behind by its inhabitants, the puzzles with their mix of classic 2D puzzle platforming and physics-based solutions that require making use of your vehicle.

The vehicle, unlike in the first game, is a waterborne vessel this time, fitted with a steam engine but also wind-powered using sails, and gains the ability to dive like a submarine halfway through the game.

Fans of the first game, like me, will get exactly what they would want to see in a sequel here.

4.5/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here.

Durante · Dec 25, 2023

I just finished Afterimage (100%)

I played 45 hours in less than two weeks. Of course, part of that is having more time around the holidays, part of it is the convenience of playing stuff on the Steam Deck, but it also shows that the game really was motivating me to keep going. This is not something that too many single-player games manage to do these days, at least not consistently for over 30 hours.

Afterimage is basically just a massive, mostly very well-executed Metroidvania.

A standout quality of the game are the graphics and the variety on display. There are lots of areas in the game and they all have fundamentally distinct and beautiful graphics, and there's also a huge variety of enemies.
Both the basic and advanced movement and combat mechanics are also great, and everything flows and controls well. The variety extends to these gameplay aspects as well, with lots of different weapons and spells with unique movesets and even an array of special moves. There are also tons of build options, between the talent tree, "afterimage" system, and various equipment with special effects that benefit different playstyles.

Level and world design are also overall very good, with lots of different progression routes and a staggering amount of hidden paths and secrets. The game claims to be non-linear, and I've rarely seen this being as accurate in a Metroidvania as it is for this game.

From my perspective at least, there are really only two aspects which keep this from being an absolute classic greatest-of-all-time entry in the genre: translation and balance. Regarding the former, the main story dialogue translation is acceptable and sometimes even quite nice (note: I didn't play with English VA so I can't judge that). Sadly, all other text which is never spoken (i.e. item descriptions, quest log entries, and a lot more) is absolutely terrible in terms of translation quality, on the level that it is sometimes even hard to decipher the meaning.

Balance is more difficult to judge, and I personally am not too hard on the game regarding that. It is a Metroidvania that leans more heavily into the "RPG" aspect, in the tradition of Igavanias, and these games have a hard time being balanced simply by design. For me, as someone that like to explore everything and find all secrets as early as possible, given the ability to use various items in battle there were really only 2 or 3 fights in the game that presented any difficulty. This is mostly just a bit of a shame because the game has a huge amount of bosses with great design and interesting movesets, and I was able to facetank 75%+ of them on the first try.

Overall, if the idea of exploring a beautiful Metroidvania where you place literally 100+ map markers for things to return to later with new skills and then slowly work through them appeals to you, and if you can deal with some bad translation and balancing issues, then I can recommend Afterimage wholeheartedly.

d00d3n · Dec 25, 2023

I was slightly put off at first by the strong From software influences in this metroidvania. The area design in the first major area of the game is extremely reminiscent of Bloodborne, some gameplay elements such as the bullet combat seems to heavily reference Bloodborne as well, and some major NPCs seem to directly reference various From designs. In the end, I think that the game is good enough to stand above being a "fan game" or homage.

The translation of tactical and deliberate soulsborne combat from 3d to 2d is basically perfect from my perspective. The game introduces new enemies at a steady pace, which require new strategies to take down efficiently. You move quite slow to facilitate 2d soulsborne combat, but so do the enemies and most of them are good at telegraphing their attacks as well. Some bosses seem like unfair difficulty spikes at first, but the game is actually very fair about letting you avoid all that damage if you learn how attacks are telegraphed and their associated areas of effect. Some reviews on Steam seem to be bothered by how the slow character movement restricts exploration, but as a counter-point to this I think that the game has one of the nicest metroidvania maps I have seen and the amount of secrets is very reasonable as well (so there no need for directionless exploration).

Even the From software influences started to grow on my after a while. The game remains mysterious and laid-back about its story and setting. I tried the superficially similar Blasphemous a while ago, but I had to quit playing the game due to how it dwelled on its revolting, gory and provocative setting. The Last Faith strikes a better balance between presenting a thrilling and dangerous world and avoiding revulsion/oppression than most similar titles.

C-Dub · Dec 26, 2023

Finished Jusant

This game is brilliant.

I think Jusant is a hybrid between "walking experiences" like Abzu or Journey, and also a soft puzzler. Each climb you make is a problem you have to solve, carefully balancing the length of your wire while also judiciously inserting one of your three hooks into the wall to "save" your progress on that specific section of the tower.

The climbs are sometimes small, sometimes epic, but always satisfying.

Each of these climbs is punctuated by some environmental and letter-based storytelling. You get logs and letters from the residents of the tower who lived there, and how they coped as the water dried up. You also see their homes, full of stuff, falling into disarray. They've been gone for a long, long time and the whole journey up the tower is quiet, contemplative and sometimes quite lonely.

These two aspects fuse together to make a compelling and enjoyable climb up the side of a forgotten settlement.

Definitely recommended - this game is worth both your money and your time.

9/10

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 27, 2023

Finished Oxenfree II - Lost Signals (Night School Studio / Netflix, 2023)

Former Camena resident Riley returns to town to work an odd job setting up radio equipment for local scientists monitoring bird migrations, and sets off to do so with the help of local handyman and outsider artist Jacob. Soon however they find their equipment taken over by forces beyond explanation and their control - and it seems they are not the only ones tapping into the supernatural on this strange night ...

The sequel to 2016's Oxenfree is a partial retcon of the first game's story, taking place mostly in and around the coast town of Camena, at an unspecified date some time after the events of the first game. The retconning even extends to the original game, which was patched in 2021 with new content that ties into the events of this sequel.

The sequel retains the art direction (plus somewhat more details and more post-processing effects) and mechanics of the original Oxenfree, including the dialogue system and pocket-radio and will immediately feel familar to anybody who played the first game, with only a slightly larger map and only slightly longer playtime. The collectible-hunt for notebook pages is back as well. A new addition is a multi-channel walkie-talkie, through which the main protagonist Riley can communicate with various Camena residents, some of which only become available by finding certain missable events and locations in the game.

Unfortunately I ended up strongly disliking this game, and it's all due to the writing and characters.

Whereas the first game very successfully builds tension and mystery, does a great job of getting the player invested in the main characters and delivers a satisfying climax with a little extra twist, this sequel just jumps right in and dumps all sorts of supernatural phenomena on the table and treats them as a given. By the end, all of this ends up in a very convoluted mess of alternate dimensions, time travel and a whole cast of ancillary characters that are hard to keep track of. The main characters of the game meanwhile were thoroughly unrelatable and sometimes outright annoying to me (Jacob, who ends up as the player character's semi-permanent sidekick is the worst offender here).

What all of this complexity provides is a bunch of decision points that slighly alter the outcomes at the end, and the game helpfully points that out by giving the player a Life-is-Strange-style Your-Choices-vs-Other-Players-Choices summary - complete with pie-charts. I ended up caring so little about the decisions I made however that at least for me, no replay value came out of that.

The claim on the Steam store page "Play it as a standalone story or dive deeper by playing the original – it's up to you" to me is blatantly false. Playing this game without the context of the original will inevitably leave players confused and have them missing references left and right. On the other hand, having knowledge of the first game almost makes the experience worse.

As it is, the first game itself is now, in a way, trapped between dimensions and timelines, at least as of now. This is because some releases have been updated (from what I could find out through research at least Steam, Xbox and Android/iOS), others haven't (for instance the GOG release, which I happen to own). The releases of the original Oxenfree that have been updated now feature a number of radio transmissions that are inexplicable without the context of the sequel and thus significantly alter the standalone experience of the first game.

For me, this game is a major disappointment and a showcase on how not to make a sequel to a title that theretofore was perfectly fine and self-contained. I'm hoping what happened here is not an indication of how Netflix intends to treat other gaming properties it might acquire in the future.

2.5/5

C-Dub · Dec 27, 2023

Glad I skipped Oxenfree II. Night School had a one-hit wonder with the first game and have struggled to do anything good since. The fact that they can't even go back to their cult classic without screwing it up speaks volumes.

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 27, 2023

C-Dub said:
Glad I skipped Oxenfree II. Night School had a one-hit wonder with the first game and have struggled to do anything good since. The fact that they can't even go back to their cult classic without screwing it up speaks volumes.

For what it's worth, I really liked Afterparty. Played it before this thread existed, solid 4/5 for me.

C-Dub · Dec 27, 2023

Virtual Ruminant said:
For what it's worth, I really liked Afterparty. Played it before this thread existed, solid 4/5 for me.

Ah, I hated that game too.

fantomena · Dec 27, 2023

Finished

Well, finished it about a week ago, but forgot to write about it here.

I liked it a lot, but it had some negative sides to it. I enjoyed the climbing mechanics, most of the time, but there were many times I felt they were quite janky and I fought to get the controls to actually "listen to me", like I wanted the character to stretch his arms to reach a certain place, but the game reached another place, very annoying. Performance could also have been better.

Other than that, the level design is great, the game looked gorgeus in many places, I enjoyed the notes I found in the game and the "secret" collectibles.

Scor: 8.5/10

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 28, 2023

Finished Dynopunk (Tomato Fantasy Games / 101XP, 2023)

Visual novel with light puzzling elements. The player inhabits Chris, a young T-Rex who has just arrived in the metropolis of Synth City to take over a small electronics repair shop. But on his first day he stumbles upon the blueprints of the former owner for what seems to be a design for a time machine - and the chance to undo the biggest tragedy in his life ...

Charming and quirky visual novel that has talking anthropomorphic dinosaurs for characters and mixes up the usual VN gameplay with a couple of mini-games where you need to disassemble, repair and decorate various electronic appliances. The quality of the job you do in these mini-games has consequences in the interactions with the other characters who come into your shop. Sometimes the story takes the player out of the surroundings of the shop, but the game-play stays the same regardless. A plethora of decision points and different endings make for good replay value.

The graphics and music are somewhat on the Lo-Fi side, but that's more style than anything else.

The initial playthrough took me about 8 hours, on a completed save file it's possible to jump directly to each individual chapter to try out alternative story paths more quickly.

3.5/5

Virtual Ruminant · Dec 29, 2023

Finished Late Shift (CtrlMovie / Wales Interactive, 2017)

Matt, mathematics-student and part-time night guard in a parking garage for luxury vehicles in London, after confronting a car thief, gets abducted at gun point and shanghaied into a criminal gang as a last minute replacement for an injured gang member, to assist in a heist of an auction house. And his night only gets more complicated from there ...

This is an FMV interactive movie that lets the player choose the main character's course of action at key points in the 12-14 chapters that the story unfolds over. The action does not pause long for making the selections, so the player has to be quick (although manually pausing the game is always possible) - if nothing is chosen, the game picks for the player (not sure if it's a preset choice or a random choice, I only watched the game once without making any inputs), so the game length is pretty reliably around 55 minutes for a complete playthrough up to one of the endings.

There are 7 different endings and lots of smaller branches that only change smaller aspects of the narrative - sometimes just different dialogue, sometimes a small detour through a different room, sometimes the main supporting character is there and other times she isn't - and unlike most interactive movie games I've played, this one was interesting enough for me to actually go back and replay it often enough (8 hours in total) to see every chapter and every ending (and getting 100% of the achievements in the process). The game also pretty much guarantees that the player will see a proper ending in each run - there are no dead-ends or sudden deaths.

What exactly made it so compelling to me I cannot quite tell - production, acting and writing are quite good, and certainly near the top end for interactive movie games, but compared to actual movies, this is on the level of a solid made-for-TV movie. Maybe it is because I just like thriller movies in general, maybe because at about 55 minutes for a single run, you can squeeze a quick playthrough even into a lunch break.

4/5

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