Reviews Rate the game you finished/retired

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Frank and Drake (Appnormals Team / Chorus Worldwide Games, 2023)

An unconventional point and click adventure with branching story paths, different endings and puzzle mini-games.

The story is that of two unlikely roommates, one of which suffers from some mysterious sickness that has left him with amnesia for a year and who is physically so weak that he barely makes it through the day - the other is a strange guy who lives a completely nocturnal lifestyle, has a fatal "allergy" to sunlight and a strange diet that consists mostly of animal blood or medical blood products. During the course of a week, both of their lives unravel in strange ways and they find themselves confronted with strange things happening all around the town they live in - and somehow, they themselves seem to be connected with them.

The way the story ends is determined by two factors: The choice of activities for each of the two main characters for each day and the development of the relationship between them.

The game features a plain, yet distinctive background art style and rotoscoped character animations, the sum of which makes it look a bit like a 2000s Richard Linklater film - a great visual style rarely seen in video games. The soundtrack alternates between somber and jazzy moods and is really good as well. The story-telling is deliberately slow and relies a lot on text in found objects, the writing is some of the least videogamey I have seen in a long time, very literary.

I enjoyed my first play-through very much, but, as is so often the case with video games that really want you to play multiple times to get the "full experience" (i.e. every story branch and every ending), it forces too much repetition on the player and what was novel and interesting the first time becomes unskipable tedium on repeat playthroughs.

I managed to complete a second playthrough and then could not find the motivation to play more.



3/5

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Best Month Ever! (Warsaw Film School Video Game & Film Production Studio / Klabater, 2022)

Me: Copilot, write a script for a choose-an-adventure without a single puzzle, with a story that's just a sequence of stereotypical late 1960s Americana held together by a threadbare plot-device, a bit like Forrest Gump, but edgy, like if Quentin Tarantino wrote it.

Copilot: Ok, here's a story about a road-trip of single white mom and her young mixed-race son, set in 1969, whose black dad skipped out on he-. I am sorry, but I cannot discuss this further, let's move on. However, if you are still interested, I hear some guys from Poland are quite ready to write such a script, if you really think that's a good idea.

This game tracks three scores for the kid character over the course of the game, righteousness, confidence and relationship (to the kid's mother, the other main character of the game). Those scores are influenced by player choices and ultimately determine at which of the nine possible endings the game arrives.

I could only stomach the experience once and found the other endings on YouTube, but even that felt like a waste of time afterwards.

Might be enjoyable if approached with a mindset of expecting something quite trashy and janky, with the occasional nice-looking scene, a more-than-decent soundtrack and a fully voice-acted dialogue and narration. Anybody looking for something authentic or emotionally engaging should avoid.



2.5/5

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Anomaly Collapse


If you like turn-based strategy games, don't sleep on Anomaly Collapse. This charming indie game combines the tile-based tactical gameplay of Into the Breach with the 1D turn-based combat of Darkest Dungeon. There are 8 different characters and hundreds of perks and skills to make each run unique. Definitely one of my favorite games of the year so far!

Score: 8.9/10


Finished Arcade Spirits


Very well-written interactive visual novel about a guy/girl who didn't had much luck in life so far, but finds something to live for when they get a job in a retro arcade hall. You'll meet a bunch of great/crazy/funny/charming people, become close friends with some of them and you can even romance the one you like most. A few decent plot twists keep the story interesting until the end. Very recommended, I even purchased the sequel right after finishing this one.

Score: 8.8/10


Finished Tomb Raider Unfinished Business Remastered


The only expansion for the original Tomb Raider that I never played before, but not a very good one. Especially the Atlantis levels are filled with annoying invisible traps, timed doors and WAY too much combat. I ended up saving (and dying) every 15 seconds, giving me more frustration than fun. Only the last level of the expansion is actually worth playing, but not worth the frustration you'll get in order to reach that level.

Score: 5.2/10


Finished Dead Space (2023)


Excellent remake of one of my favorite games of all time. The game truly looks and sounds amazing, and the combat is still very enjoyable nowadays. I can't recommend it enough!

I regret that it didn't sell enough to justify a Dead Space 2 remake as well. But like probably many other people, I found it hard to pay full price for a visual upgrade of a game I already finished several times. I hope EA will consider a brand new sequel or reboot some day.

Score: 9.2/10


Finished The Saboteur


One of my favorite games of all time, and damn, even today The Saboteur is so much fun to play! The story is excellent, the combination of stealth and 3rd person combat works really well and being able to climb almost every building in Paris is nothing but amazing. The only negative is that enemies seem to be telepathic, they all immediately start shooting at you when you're being discovered. But hey, it's still fun.

Score: 9.0/10


Finished Sable


Charming open-world game with a great setting and story, but sadly also with mediocre gameplay. The open world is rather empty, with only a few points of interest to discover in each area. Therefore you're wasting way too much time driving around on your bike. There's also no combat so you won't encounter any enemies to beat up. Major perk of this game is that you can climb almost everything, but because of the very simple graphics, it's often hard to see how steep a surface is. This makes it hard to predict if your characters will climb or slide down after a jump, which can be very frustrating when you're falling down to the bottom once again. Some of the puzzles are fun though, despite being rather easy. Mediocre, but again, very charming.

Score: 7.6/10)


Retired Alina of the arena


Another roguelike deckbuilding game, but sadly not a very good one. You're fighting in an arena, and at the start of every turn you can move your character one single step. This makes it problematic to avoid being hit by AoE attacks and to avoid begin surrounded when there are many enemies on the playfield. There are a few cards and items that let you move as well, but getting these is a matter of luck. I wasn't able to beat the second boss after many tries, and while I like a good challenge, dying often felt unfair to me so I quit.

 

[spiel]

Completed A Little to the Left

7.5/10

Some of the later levels got too abstract for my liking, and I thought the number of puzzles could have been trimmed down for a tighter experience (I would have given 8/10). But it was indeed very satisfying when a puzzle did click.

 

[didamangi]

Finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown 10/10

Played on the Immortal difficulty, it's the best Prince of Persia game for me, replacing The Sands of Time. The Lost Crown > Sands of Time > PoP 2008.

Fluid combat and platforming, satisfyingly hard and cool and fun boss fights with some good puzzles. Also good pacing with the power progression, and surprisingly interesting story with good VA. I'm slightly let down by the graphical quality of the game (subjectively) and some minor weird bugs.

I'm glad it's sold enough (maybe?) to warrant a story DLC, they've given some free updates along the way too, adding boss rushes, and extra hard challenge rooms (combat, platform). Will double dip on Steam for sure.

 

[Mivey]

FInished Judgment the other day

On its surface, this is a pretty straightforward spin-off to the Yakuza games. Instead of Kiryu, a goody-two-shoes former Yakuza, we play a former attorney turned private investigator. We of course return to Kamurocho, and the game tells one long mystery story, that begins with a couple of murders of low-life Yakuzas and end up becoming a nationwide conspiracy of the highest order -- the usual Yakuza stuff. The big difference to Yakuza is how the story is told. Whereas Kiryu just stumbles into everything, without understanding much of anything, just fumbling from one brawl to the next until he's punching the head of some corporation or secret underground organisation, instead we have to figure stuff out slowly as a detective. Lots of collecting clues, tailing people secretly to find out their secrets and so on. It's a slow burn that grew on me and gives the game ultimatley a very different vibe.

Part of that is how Yagami, our detective protagonist, and Kaito, a former Yakuza who acts as his side-kick, have a great bromance going on that allows the narrative to build in a way that classic Yakuza usually doesn't, in those game the plot usually just pisses around just until the vey end when everything happens at once, usually involving a big brawl. Well, ok, Judgment also ends on a big brawl, but it feels more earned here. Yagami feels in control in a way that Kiryu never did. I loved the story, the characters and the story progression in this one.

Combat is the usual fighting game affair, with a few twists to keep things fresh. Enemies can inflict "injuries", reducing parts of the health bar permanently, and requiring special, expensive health items to repair. THis ends up addding some flavour, but overall it's not too important. The game never reduces more than 40% of your health and it is often easy to avoid the telegraphed attacks that cause this in the first place.

One complaint I have is the "gang" mechanic: every once in a while a gang that Yagami pisses of starts to cause trouble all over Kamurocho, requiring you to beat their bosses (or wait for a long time for them to pass). While this is going on, the enounter rate on the map goes up the roof, and you will basically fight people all the time. This gets old very quick, but sadly the game never stops this nonsense, even after you defeat the gang in story. Bad choice.

Other than than that, I don't think I have anything I could complain about. Judgment feels like the perfect spin-off game for this series.

 

[spiel]

Tinykins completed

10/10

This game is just bursting with joy. Traversal is really fun with a surprising depth to it to discover if you play the time trials. Your dash mechanic is sliding on a bar of soap and it (appropriately enough) controls slippery but never in a frustrating way. There's a wonderful amount of variety in the environments that makes exploring every nook and cranny a delight. Even though the fetch quests got samey eventually, the game's short length helps to mask this issue.

It's a shame that the devs never added a collectible tracker. Trying to 100% the game by aimlessly combing through the levels again drains the fun right out. So I'll stop while the game's ended on a high note.

 

[spiel]

Death and Taxes completed

9/10

A nice little Papers Please-like that makes you briefly question your mortality and the concept of fate and free will. At one point I stopped, sat back and thought, "This is just so senseless and unfair." The presentation is excellent - great visuals and voice acting, really sells the whole grim reaper bureaucracy aesthetic.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun 2D plattformer with lots of secrets, beautiful and well-crafted world and fun story. Really enjoyed this game, also finished it a few years ago on Ps5.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished


Decent fun zombie game. Very good looking game with fun combat with a really good "gore" system. Does however get quickly repetive and the story missions are very mediocre, the story itself is nothing to write home about. Still, decent fun.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished


Liked the first game better, but this was still fun. This game's main problem is the more "open-world" like levels, especially the ones where you use a motorcycle, didn't like those levels at all. The game is at it's best with those same "linear" levels as the previous game consisted off. Other than than, great rang of different abilities and upgrades you can buy with the credits you receive for killing enemies quickly (and in combo), lots of different collectibles and secrets in the environments. Fun plattforming and fun combat.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished


Very mediocre boomer shooter, first level was fun, then it got quickly repetive and boring. Basically you don't kill enemies, but you give them better clothes by using different guns for different enemies. Water gun, shotgun, machine gun, every gun is for a specific "fashion" problem and every gun also has a secondary mode you have to use. You know when you use the wrong gun on an enemy as the health bar on the enemy shows you that you need to use a different gun. However, this combat system didn't work for me on the later levels as it sorta became this big puzzle frustration when many different enemies were shooting at you at the same time and you need to remember what gun is used for which enemy and often you need to use multiple guns on one enemy because that one enemy has different fashion problems. The game quickly becomes unfun due to this.

There are 13 story levels and 3 side levels, only did the 13 story levels. Some of the story levels were too long for it's own good.

Score: 7/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very good walking sim. Good looking game, different paths to take with different choices that leads to different consequences, multiple endings, some interactivity with the environment, different characters to meet.

Main negative is that the start has some bad pacing and the walking can often be too slow.

Can see myself replaying it in the future.

Score: 8/10

Finished

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 (PC Game Pass)

Was rough to play on my 8 year old PC, but did manage it. All around a worse sequel with the exception of the graphics, landscapes, cinematography and sound design. Very slow walking, boring and extreme simple combat, nothing I haven't seen before, very simple and repetive puzzles, short (6 hours), a story that was hard to follow. Very good acting my Melina Juergens and the other people who carried the game together with the graphics.

Expected a lot better with MS backing.

Score: 6/10

Finished


Short, but very fun puzzle shooter. Great art style and fun gameplay. Basically oyu are a sniper with one bullet, you walk to the sides to mark all the enemies oyu can see (enemies are marked in yellow) and you use one bullet to try to hit all the enemies, if you miss one enemy, you restart the level, but with all the enemies marked (so you don't have to do it again). As you progress though the game, you learn how to make a bullet powerful (speed up the bullet) to kill armored enemies and hit enemies on blue-marked weakspots on their body so you can change the direction of the bullet. Short game (1.5 hours for me), but very fun.

Score: 8.3/10

 

[spiel]

Giving a shout to Cookard, which is apparently similar to Stacklands (that I've never played) but themed around cooking. It's free!

Basically you build up a bakery and unlock more complex recipes and equipment over time, It has that addictive incremental gameplay loop. I sunk a good 2-3 hours into this game to completion and I would have gladly paid for it.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished F.I.S.T. - Forged in Shadow Torch (TiGames / Bilibili, 2021)

This scintillating 2.5D-metroidvania has very few flaws indeed, so here's the short list:

• The ambitious storytelling and world-building is held back by a clunky translation. The voice actors try their best to perform around the flaws of the script, but you get a strong sense throughout that this game is best enjoyed in its original Chinese.
• High system requirements for a metroidvania: RTX 2080 or better and a fast NVME SSD are required for a hitch-free experience. The PS4 port is effectively unplayable in parts (combo-challenges, certain boss-fights) due to bad performance.
• The game's deep combo system is underutilized - normal enemies are easily overcome with simple combos and most bosses do not give an opportunity to use deeper combos on them.
• The final two boss fights do not align with the game's difficulty curve and will (on normal difficulty, which can be dropped down mid-game) present an unreasonable challenge even for players who did their due diligence and got every possible upgrade for the player character. There's no extra rewards or satisfaction to be gained from overcoming the challenge either: The game more or less cuts straight to credits after the last boss fight, and there's no achievements for beating them on normal rather than easy. I strongly recommend players to not bother with these fights on normal difficulty, unless they really want to.

Everything else about this game is just incredibly good, the character designs, the cutscene animations, the music, effects and ambience, the level design, the huge map, the scenario and world-building, all top-notch, a real showcase of the quality that mainland Chinese studios can produce on the rare occasion they are given the funding to make an all-original console/PC game rather than producing clones aimed at Chinese and global mobile markets.

Despite its flaws, this game immediately went into my personal top 5 for 2.5D-metroidvanias.


4/5

Previously reviewed in this thread here and here.

 

[Mivey]

Last week I finished Horizon Forbidden West™ Complete Edition


The second Horizon game, releasing about two years after the first one did on PC. From a technical side, I found this port to be nearly flawless. Getting smooth frametimes was a bit tricky, but after a couple patches it was much improved. The visuals are amazing, at 4K and using HDR on an OLED monitor, this game is well and truly stunning. A couple of strange visual quirks that Guerilla chose mar the presentation a bit (such as the choice of having fake theatre lighting on at all times that very often makes no sense whatsoever and look incredibly cheap in most dialogue scenes, like you are looking a cheap theatre production and lighting), but actual world and surrounding is absolutely superb, as are the giant robots roaming around in it.

The main story is ultimately a bit weaker than in the first game, but perhaps that is also an unfair comparison. The first game was entirely built on the suspense behind how the world of Horizon could exist in its current form. It was very effectively in drip feeding you new pieces of information, giving you just enough info each time that every new answer would lead to many more questions. it was very well done and not something you can follow up on in the same vein. Instead, a good sequel would provide stronger world building and dramatic tension by way of interesting new challenges. Forbidden West succeeds at this, for the most part, but the execution is not always very well handled. The big twist (this will be a spoiler so don't continue reading if you want to play the game) in this game is that the spaceship we heard about in the last game did not actually explode. It travelled the stars, carrying a small number of super rich elitist through the stars and it turns out they returned to Earth and are in fact the reason the mysterious signal from the first game was send. This is combined with a big threat of ecological collapse from the fact that the AI that controlled the Earths biosphere shut itself off in the aftermath of that signal. So the two big story points are about 1) staving off the destruction of all live by rebuilding GAIA (the AI in question) and 2) somehow winning against the tech elitist from Earths past, who want to destroy everything.
The actual resolution of this is deals well with point 2, but we do not actually get the full AI back. This is understandable, since doing so would undermine a key pillar of the two games (the dangerous roaming dino bots would no longer be a thing if GAIA can take full control of everything), but also a bit frustrating since it does not feel as if Horizon 2 is really moving the needle enough. It's keeping things a bit too safe and predictable to my liking. The big bad that is being teased for a third game (another evil AI) is also really not super interesting.
So a bit mixed on the main story

While the main story is a bit weak, I really enjoyed the game's 28 or so side stories. Each of these was given enough care and writing to make them interesting and help flesh out the various factions and groups in the game. We get a sense of how diverse and complex a place the Forbidden West is, for the beliefs of the Tenakth, the warrior people who live in most of its territory, we get to understand the peace loving Utaro and experience how - far from home - there are still many Oseram delvers who look for look in the ruins of Nevada and California. Great stuff. This was one of my biggest issues with the first game and its great that Guerilla managed to address this so effectively.

From a gameplay perspective, Horizon 2 is not doing anything new, really. Elements play more of a role, but you also don't get access to most elemental weapons until fairly late into the game. This means for the most part, you still have to fight the dino bots the same way you did in the first game, find weak points and hit them. This is still fun, but I will say that it does start to get a bit old. Guerilla attempts to fix this by providing new weapons, but these do not really change the pace of combat that much. I hope they will use the third game to make something truly novel here. Why can't we ride dinos and actually fight other dinosaurs that way? There are so many obvious ideas one could explore here instead of just sticking to bow and arrows (and other simple weapons).

The DLC area Burning Shores was pretty nice. The big technical novelty are the new water bird dinos which allow you to not only fly, but swim under water at rapid speeds. Visually and technically very impressive. The greatest part about the DLC is the story, though, where our hero Aloy finally gets to meet someone they can choose to romance. This was handled incredibly well by Guerilla and ended up being a personal highlight for me, in particualr how natural and effortless it feels. Nothing forced, the chemistry between the two was portrayed very well by the voice actors. The story of this area beyond that (one of the evil tech wizards escaped and wants to escape and leave behind a toxic wasteland) was not super interesting, but the other things I listed made up for that. Also visually great, they really captured the idea of a beauitful post-apocalyptic LA.

Overall a good game. Not perfect, and I hope guerilla can use the better hardware of the PS5 to make something truly stunning for the third game.

 

[spiel]

Ticking a few games off my Steam wishlist:

Completed Alt-Frequencies

You're listening to radio stations and recording/sending snippets to uncover a political conspiracy. An interesting concept for sure. The ending was kind of underwhelming but I'd give kudos for the experimental mechanics and great sound design.

Retired Down In Bermuda

I was looking for more of a traditional point n click adventure and this wasn't it. 50% of the puzzles involve clicking on interactive points until something happened, which wasn't very interesting.

Retired shapez

It's super addictive but got pretty grindy 8 hours in. I'm not going to put myself through my painful Autonauts experience again, so I'll stop here, thank you very much.

 

[FunnyJay]

Retired shapez

It's super addictive but got pretty grindy 8 hours in. I'm not going to put myself through my painful Autonauts experience again, so I'll stop here, thank you very much.

I find it really funny to click back and read your Autonauts review and discovering that the first post after yours is one of mine that looks supercreepy!

 

[spiel]

I find it really funny to click back and read your Autonauts review and discovering that the first post after yours is one of mine that looks supercreepy!

And I didn't actually dig into the genre afterwards aha. Factorio was too intimidating. Surviving Mars (which is more of a colony building sim tbf) had some light automation elements but the tutorial made me snooze. Got my eye on Word Factori now as it seems to have a similar structure to shapez, but again I'm not sure about the progression grind/tedium.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Mia and the Dragon Princess (Good Gate Media, Dead Pixel Productions / Wales Interactive, 2023)

Interactive movie that somehow throws together fictional 18th century pirates Marshanda Damayandi (the "Dragon Princess" from the game's title) and Red Kat Morgan and the ragtag staff (among them server & barmaid "Mia") and patrons of a present-day London dive-bar into a tense stand-off over long-lost treasure. Great story that doesn't care too much about plausibility and just focuses on producing good moments from scene to scene - there's a bit of everything here, comedy, Kung-fu and Indiana-Jones-esque adventure. Very fun to play and for once in a Wales Interactive game, the story does not turn out too ambitious for the production budget. Already visited scenes can be skipped on repeat playthroughs and a story map that lays out the scene connections is provided after the first playthrough for easy and efficient hunting for alternate routes.



3.5/5


Retired The Looker (Subcreation Studio, 2022)

Free to play parody of The Witness that takes aim to deflate both the difficulty and the high-brow attitude of the famous 2016 puzzle game. However, I did not think the jokes were particularly funny and some of the puzzles were quite on par with The Witness when it came to the leaps of logic required to solve them - and I didn't feel like looking up a guide for a joke game.



No score.

 

[fantomena]

Back from travel, here are a a super short review for the games I finished.

Finished


Very well-made game that feels outdated in some ways. Still, had fun with it and liked it a lot.

Score: 8.1/10

Finished


Loved it, super fun 2D drilling plattforming game. Main negative is some frustration sections in the later levels and it being very short (2-3 hours), wanted more.

Sore: 8.6/10

Finished



Very fun and good "finnicky" plattformer where you can control a taxi car. Hard game to master, but feels really good to play, suprisingly long too (still some endgame content I haven't finished after 13 hours). Can sometimes be pain and a drag in how you progress in the game (finding collectibles).

Score: 8.4/10

Finished


Fantastic metroidvania, still lots of secrets to find and paths to explore after the credits.

Score: 8.8/10

Finished


Cool coming-of-age-story. Great art style, interesting story, really badly pacing a tmes, like a slow start.

Score: 7.8/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished the Night Springs DLC of Alan Wake 2, as part of my Final Draft run (basically this game's NG+).

The DLC is pretty fun, consisting of three goofy stories that stem from Alan's failed escape attempts. In this regard the game strongly resembles American Nightmare, but on a much smaller scale. As DLC on its own it's probably not a lot of bang for buck, but the way I got to experience the episodes was when playing the Final Draft replay, and there these just pop up organically during Alan's sections in the game. As small distractions from the overall story, these work very well. The final Night Springs episodes drops some very interesting hints about the larger Remedy Universe and Alan's role in it, which pare very well with the new ending from The Final Draft.

The new theme for Night Springs is also really great. Channeling the Ghostbusters theme there, great disco song


And as for the The Final Draft of Alan Wake 2, well, it basically answers the most important open question, namely the one about Alan's fate. It's pretty much the definitive ending, and if you haven't played then you haven't really finished Alan Wake 2. This is a pretty ballsy move, Remedy is clearly pulling a Nier Automata here, but it fits thematically so well. The entire game is about Alan being stuck in an endless seeming loop, everything repeating and yet changing each time. So story wise it makes total sense, but you still need to replay everything to ending. Some people will (justifiably) not like this, but I kinda respect it. Small changes here and there in The Final Draft to keep things intersting, but I would recomend that people have a lenghty break and do the replay at a later time, to avoid burning out. Worked well for me.

Overall, the first DLC and the revised ending really changed my impression of Alan Wake 2 to the better. This might very well be Remedy's best game yet, espcially if the upcoming Lake House DLC can serve as an effective tease for Control 2.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun 2D fast paced plattformer with controls that are hard to master, focuses a lot of collectibles and secrets while being fast.

Score: 8.6/10

Finished


Really cool art style and design, very nice short (1 hour) point and click game.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished


Very short and basic adventure game where you control a wolf with one joystiq and a deer with the other joystiq. Good ending and nice art style.

7/10

Finished


Very good rhythm game with gorgeus art style and interesting story.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished


Cool and interesting twin stick shooter where you control a "ghost" than can haunt different things and use it to progress. Very nice art style.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished


Very interesting, but short "walking" sim about a nun and her journey. Liked it more than I expected, but it quite short and the world and lore could have been better explored.

Score: 8.3/10

 

[MegaApple]

Finished
Great Attorney Chronicles: Adventures (Part 1)

​

Fun adventure game on its own, but as Ace Attorney game, I found it lacking IMO.

What it does well

• Nice all round story​
• Great setup for leads to entrenched in.​
• Nice artstyle and 3D modelling​
• As a Sherlock Holmes reader, so many good references​

Where is falters for me (IMO)

• Characters aside from Naruhodo are not that interesting. Esp compared to rest of the series.
• Underwhelming and rather predictable conclusion, even if it is wrapped up well.
• Very formulaic AA story structure (inital cases lay groundwork for the final case, with fill in between), just over-stretched.
• Unless GAA2 has something, Van Zeiks was meh "opponent" to Naruhodo. More intereactions were needed to flesh out his character.
• Judicial Examination mechanics just overstretches the Trials.
• Music is meh to decent. Was not a fan personally.
• Whole game is so... brown...

Rating - Its 6.5 to 7 outta 10

My personal Ace Attorney Rankings

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very fun, but short game where you play a bear who destroys all man-made objects to make the environment better.

Score: 8.1/10

Finished


Short plattformer, 50 levels, fun at the start, but got kinda repetive, still, very well built game.

Score: 7. 4/10

Finished


Short game, but with quite a lot of replay value, felt luck had too much to say wherever you lose or not.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished


Fun, short game, but get's repetive at times, it helps that you have a lot of different things you can use as a weapon, it is a really fast-paced game.

Score: 8/10

 

[spiel]

Touhou Mystia's Izakaya complete!

Thumbs up/10

It's a restaurant sim/cooking game in the vein of Diner Dash/Papa's Pizzeria. The cooking works on a system of tags, with each guest having their own preferences and dislikes. I think it's really clever and wouldn't mind seeing it in more games.

Most of the lore got lost on me, but the art was cute and everything had a wholesome genki vibe to it.

The nature of such games is that the gameplay loop is really addictive but a few hours in and you've pretty much seen it all. I got pretty burnt out towards the end, so I'll try out the DLC in about 3 years maybe.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Fun game, but combat got stale after a while. Good looking game and overall good gameplay.

Score: 7.5/10

Finished


Good looking game with great art style, okay story, gameplay is mediocre with some very frustrating platforming sections.

Score: 7/10

Finished


Very "on the nose" horror game where you wander around in a scary looking house, solving puzzles and finding out what happened. Good looking game with decent gameplay, not particularly scary though.

Score: 7.8/10

Finished


Very fun game. Super fast-paced, great gameplay, great gunplay, main negatives are that the game would have needed more environment variation and more guns. Other, really enjoyed it.

Score: 8.3/10

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Liked it more than the first game, nice graphic style, interesting stories, interesitng world.

Score: 8.2/10

Finished


Better than I expected. Really liked the "style" of the game, enjoyed the story, liked the gameplay.

Score: 8/10

Finished


Enjoyed this one a lot, gorgeus game in many areas, fun gameplay, decent story.

Score: 7.9/10

Finished


Not as good and creative as the previous games, but still had fun with it.

Score: 7/10

Finished


Also not as fun and creative as the previous games, story could also have been better, puzzles were too long and difficulty.

Score: 7.7/10

Finished


Suprisingly good game, good gameplay, interesting story, great use of the environment, had a really good time with it. Reminded me of Outlast and Resident Evil. Short game though (2.5 hours).

Score: 8.3/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Completed Treasures of the Aegean (Undercoders / Numskull Games, 2021)

Found this game during Steam Next Fest October 2021 and loved the demo. Just under three years later ( ) I finally got around to playing it.

The game is an eccentric take on the metroidvania/rogue-lite genre, adding a time-loop mechanic to the usual platforming, collecting and map-exploration - the player only gets between 15 and 25 minutes per loop to explore (finding collectibles extends the loop-time), but retains information and the map from the previous runs. The starting location on the map is randomized for each loop (within the parts of the map that have already been explored / uncovered). For the first ten loops, there are also special stages, which are not connected to the main game map and serve to illustrate a part of the story, which is largely told in flashback sequences.

The map is very large and detailed, with 110 unique collectibles to find and dozens of puzzles to solve, some of which require finding and carrying items from one part of the map to another. To make this fun, the game implements a wonderfully smooth and flowing movement system that lets the player-character run, climb and jump their way through the map really fast with really easy controls (on game controllers, haven't tried with mouse/kb).

There are a enemies on the map, but they are few and far between and really only serve to slow the player down on occasion - the player character cannot actually die either and brushes off both getting shot (thanks to a bullet-proof vest) or falling too large a distance (because ... they're just a badass?) with ease. But recovering does cost a whole minute on the loop timer and that becomes significant as the game progresses and some of the puzzles require quite a bit of time and travel to solve - and it needs to be done before the loop strikes and resets the puzzle state.

The game's art-style deserves a special mention for successfully adapting the "Ligne Claire" style of Franco-Belgian 20th century comic albums into a video game. Here's a screenshot of the title screen, and for comparison, the cover of a Blake & Mortimer comic book:

And here's an actual in-game screenshot:

Due to its unique design choices, this game might not be for everyone. Among the things that will irritate anybody looking for either a traditional metroidvania or a linear platformer:

• Forced non-linear exploration due to the "time-loop", which really is a time-limit plus a randomized starting location
• A huge map without any metroidvania-style skill-gates. Exploring the entire place first and then remembering where to go to do what is an explicit part of the challenge in this game.
• A "semi-automatic" mapping system, which does reveal the game's world as the player explores it and saves the state across loops, but does not automatically mark collectibles, items and locations. Instead, the mapping screen provides a plethora of symbols that the player can use to make their own marks on the map, which are also preserved through loops.
• Complete focus on exploration, navigation and puzzle-solving: The player character is unarmed and can neither shoot nor fight.

However, I had an absolute blast with this game and 100%-ed it immediately on the first playthrough (in roughly 12 hours of playtime).


4.5/5

 

[Paul]

Finished

Outcast: New Beginning


8.5/10

I already assumed from the nice Digital Foundry video that I would like the second Outcast. First of all, it is almost unbelievable that it was created at all. The first game became a classic, but during the development of the sequel, the studio went bankrupt and closed shop. A decade later, the kickstarter of the remake failed to raise the target amount. A few years later, thanks to Big Ben's financing, it came out anyway (and was pretty good), but it was a commercial failure. And it still didn't mean the end. Yves Grolet somehow managed to convince THQ Nordic that a sequel was a good idea. He put together a new Appeal, got to work, and four years later, here we are. And again, it's a commercial bomb.

Deservedly? I don't think so. I spent a very pleasant 40 hours with the middle-aged returnee Cutter Slade. He is newly dubbed by the lovely Luke Roberts of Black Sails fame and his sense of humor and pop culture references suited me. From the Talan Yods (replace the Y with a G), he received immortality and the ability to speak Talan language (although we players can hear English) on his return to Adelpha, which in practice means perhaps too "human-like" dialogues, although filled with misunderstandings because the Talans don't understand Cutter's idioms (not to mention pop culture references). So in New Beginning, Cutter travels around Adelpha, helps the Talans with their problems (fighting back against humans, organizing a sex festival, raising flying whales...), explores Adelpha, and sometimes checks off some open world filler when he feels like it. That alien whale can be ridden, by the way.

Immortality plays a role in the story here, but paradoxically, it is not reflected in the gameplay itself (reload follows after death). I quite enjoyed the story itself, but it has one significant drawback for those who remember the first game - it changes the relationship between Cutter and Marion in retrospect, so much so that it smells like a retcon - not sure why devs felt the need to do this. I finished the first game (well, its remake) only once and I didn't remember much of its plot, so this aspect of the story only mildly annoyed me after finishing the game, while reading the plot of the first game. Second slight annoyance was that the central mystery (who are the Yods, how did they revive Cutter..?) is not clarified in any way (not even a hint). But that's actually probably a good thing.

However, despite these criticisms, I give a high rating and there is a reason for that. I really enjoyed my stay on Adelpha. This time, it is constructed as one continuous map with a huge emphasis on verticality (and the word huge doesn't quite describe it in places). There are beautiful forests, villages, alien ruins, deserts, mountain passes, all underlined by perfectly atmospheric music from the returning Lennie Moore, and Cutter now has a jetpack that can be used to jump and fly, on land, under water or in the air, according to levels of upgrades unlocked. This is an aspect that is worth mentioning, the progression here is quite pleasant and the gameplay is refreshed every now and then with a new skill that Cutter can unlock. Battles against the Adelpha's fauna and human robotic helpers are fought here with a pistol and a rifle, both of which can be radically changed depending on the installed modules, of which there are several dozen. It is possible to turn them into a shotgun, or perhaps a tesla coil combined with a grenade launcher. It's a bit of a shame that the fights are not particularly tactical, the game is quite easy on medium difficulty and it's not even possible for Cutter to accidentally shoot a civilian - combat zones are quite strictly separated from civilian ones.

Eventhough it looks like, based on the commercial failure, that the New Beginning will be the Definitive End, I'm glad that it was created. It was a nice adventure. And who knows, maybe Yves Grolet will do the impossible a third time.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Dungeons of Hinterberg


Dungeons of Hinterberg is the suprise of the year for me so far. Playing as a lovely young woman, you arrive in an alpine village where 25 magical dungeons appeared, filled with monsters, puzzles and other challenges.

These dungeons are located in several different regions that you can explore freely. Each region gives you unique magical powers, which you can use to defeat monsters, solve puzzles and to discover new paths and loot. The design of the dungeons is truly excellent, with lots of variation and clever ideas. Both the combat and puzzles are never frustrating, making this game a blast to play on a lazy summer evening.

But there's more: each night you visit Hinterberg, where you can meet the locals and other monster slayers. By helping htem with their personal problems, you gain their friendship which is rewarded with new abilities, upgrades and skills. If you don't feel like socializing, you can go to the cinema or relax in the local welness facilities to imrpove some of your stats. And there are plenty of shops to buy potions, weapons and armor, gifts for your friends, enchant your equipment and so much more.

It's incredible how a small team can make such an extensive game with so many lovely details. I enjoyed every minute of it and can't recommend it enough. Well done Microbird Games!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[Mivey]

Steam keeps bugging me about God of War (2018), and so I decided on a whim to play the old God of War trilogy, both to understand the plot but mostly to understand a bit better what the original games brought to the table and then how the new game modernises the franchise.

So far I finished God of War I & II for the PS2.

These are some pretty strange games in my mind. On the one hand, I thought the actual combat and its mechanics was excellent. The presentation is superb and once you are in the zone, it's almost easy to forget about how many enemies you are killing and just mow down the never ending waves of enemies. So combat is excellent and understandably was something many other games copied near verbatim.
However, a game that was only focused on unique combat encounters and boss fights would maybe be 3 hours long, so instead Santa Monica had the brilliant idea to pad the game by having you walk through barren levels, solve increasingly annoying, breaindead "puzzles" and waste 80% of the "plot" not about building up why Kratos is so set up on beating this or that due, but about finding a McGuffin in order to do the beating. Find the Box of Pandora, Find the Sisters of Fate, blah, blah, blah.

It's kinda hard to hate these games, but I also can't help that the devs just did not feel confident in just making a game with combat only, even if it might lead to an overall shorter experience.

 

[Durante]

I just finished Animal Well.


It really pulls off a unique pixel art style, it controls well, it has some neat puzzles, the environments and mood are interesting... and yet, I am somehow slightly disappointed. With the unanimous praise it received I guess I expected even more. That is not to say that I wouldn't recommend it, which probably explains why it has such high ratings in the recommendation-based Steam review system.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Very good and addictive side scroller JRPG. Great combat, lots of weapons, lots of combos etc. Main negative is that the story can be hard to follow and the art style is ugly.

Score: 8.4/10

Finished


Very mediocre and janky story driven game with reallly bad combat, characters are sorta interesting, the world itself is quite interesting and the story is okay.

Score: 5.5/10

Finished


Very good walking simulator/visual novel, very interesting story, characters and world building. Not entirely a big fan of the art style, especially on the characters.

Score: 8.5/10

Finished


Quite a borting game with dull combat that is saved by aa mostly gorgeus looking game and somewhat okay world design, gameplay is mediocre, but held my interest till the end. Didn't do any side missions and the world itself is quite barren and not all that interesting to explore

Score: 5.3/10

Finished


Liked this a lot. Gorgeus looking game, interesting story, decent level design and good world building. Combat could have been better though.

Score: 8/10

 

[didamangi]

Finally finished The Callisto Protocol on Maximum Security difficulty.


Repetitive is the word I'd used for this game. From the combat, jump scares, to the "level design". It's all a big loop of linear corridor/vents, enemy jump scares and punch out like combat which, while enjoyable for the first hour, doesn't go anywhere.

They tried to tacked on the dead space stasis to add strategy/variety, and with ranged combat as an aftertought, you'll pretty much see what the gameplay has to offer in the first hour.

Phenomenal production value and graphics though, and now only with minimal traversal stutter after the disaster launch. 6/10. OG Dead Space did it way better. In gameplay, story, and horror build up.

Still gonna buy the story DLC on sale, just because of the graphics

Maybe I'll try the Dead Space remake next, it's on game pass/ea play anyway, so why not.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Stray (BlueTwelve Studio / Annapurna Interactive, 2022)

It does not take too much effort to find a lot of small things that this game could do better:

The world-building could be a little less vague, the main protagonist (an ordinary, non-cartoon, non-talking cat with bright orange fur) could behave - or given the opportunity to behave - a little more cat-like rather than a very well trained dog, there could be more freedom of movement (the player character can only jump when a prompt appears and once the prompt appears, success is guaranteed), the reward for completing the optional collectible-hunt could be much better.

But this game, made by a team of (mostly) Ubisoft Montpellier veterans over the course of seven years, looks and sounds so good, is animated so well and just pulls you into a fantastic adventure right from the first minute with a great mix of exploration, light puzzling, action and stealth, dished out with near perfect pacing, all of those complaints above are just afterthoughts to an amazing experience that anybody should treat themselves to.


4.5/5
_{(Previously reviewed in this thread [here])}




Retired N.E.R.O.: Nothing Ever Remains Obscure (Storm in a Teacup, 2016)

I bought this game years and years ago under the mistaken assumption that this was a first-person puzzle game similar to XING: The Land Beyond, but it is not.

It is a walking simulator with some bare-bones interactive elements, some of which resemble puzzle games such as buttons or pressure plates, but barely any puzzling is ever required.

The game takes place in a ridiculously dark environment full of objects with way too much bloom and lens flare effects on them, so that this game is a pain to play with both the lights on or the lights off, tells a terribly schmaltzy, melodramatic and yet boring story through floating, glowy text blocks, full of awkward phrasing and typos in the English translation, which are strewn all over the map, plus some occasional, dull voice acting. I could not make it to the end even though the game is supposedly only 2-3 hours long.


1/5

 

[Mivey]

I retired A Plague Tale: Requiem. I was kinda looking forward to this since I had enjoyed the first game quite a bit. The stealth sections were fairly simple puzzles that were usually easy to read and required careful thinking. There were a few action sequences, but they mostly served to provide some diversity from just having slow stealth bits.
What really annoys me about this game is how they added a focus on combat and chase sequences that really does not work very well with the slow, clunky controls they designed. It's not a big issue in a stealth title, indeed it kinda helps since movement becomes more exciting. But in a combat game, it's just frustrating to no end. I'm now late in the game and need to flee from a boss I can't beat while having to solve dumb puzzles. It's such a dumb sequence. It doesn't help that it's pretty easy to see where the plot is going and how boring and two-dimensional virtually all characters are in this game.
Really feels like Asobi was desperate to make this into a copy of TLOU2 and just failed miserably at making an enjoyable game.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired Axiom Verge (Thomas Happ Games, 2015) and The Messenger (Sabotage Studio / Devolver Digital, 2018)

Two retro pixel-art metroidvanias that recreate the 8-bit/16-bit era a tad too authentically for me: Too little eye-candy and too much frustration as the difficulty ramps up too quickly and both games opt to reset you to fixed save-points that tend to be too far apart. In The Messenger, I also did not like the chiptune-style soundtrack at all.

I bailed out of both games pretty quickly (3 hours each), hence


No Score

Axiom Verge was previously reviewed in this thread [here].
The Messenger was previously reviewed in this thread [here], [here], [here] and [here].

 

[Mivey]

In an effort to catch up the God of War series, I finished God of War III. Played it on RPCS3 on an aging PC with a 3700X, and it ran mostly ok, though usually in the ~30 FPS range, so not great. Still enough to finish the game.

As for the game itself, it feels like the best title yet. Far more focus on the things the games are good at, which is combat and great boss fights, and far fewer time spent on tortured puzzles, though there are still some of those too.
As for the actual plot, I really don't get what this game adds that wasn't already there at the end of God of War 2, it all ends again with a fight against Zeus, Kratos wins again, but this time he actually gets to murder him. All of Greece is left destroyed husk, with probably most people dead, and in the meanwhile he killed more than half a dozen gods (by my count 8: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Helios, Hermes, Hades, Athena, Hephaestus).

Looking forward to the soft reboot in God of War 2018. Hope the shitty puzzles are no longer there, at least.

 

[Ge0force]

Finished Steamworld Heist


Another great game from the Steamworld series. Heist is a tactical 2D turn-based RPG with manual aiming and plenty of different characters to play with. New abilities for each character are unlocked when they level up and you can find new weapons and equipment in stores or by collecting crates in each level. Most of the levels are random generated, and while the objectives could have used a bit more variation, the gameplay is so much fun that this game is a blast to finish. Very recommended!

Score: 8.9/10


Finished Dome Keeper


In dome keeper you have to dig through a foreign planet to find the resources that you need to defend the dome on the surface and to upgrade your equipment. The deeper you go, the harder the stones become and the longer it takes to return to your dome. This is something you need to do regularly, to return the resources you found but also to defend your dome from waves of incoming enemies. Luckily you can buy and upgrade lots of different equipment to help you, like extra weapons, automatic drills or a lift that transports resources to the surface.

At first I felt like there was little strategy involved in winning the game, but that was before I unlocked new stuff like domes with other weapons, a new character to play with and a new game mode. The best part of the game came with the latest free (!) update, where you need top beat the game in specific situations or by performing unique tasks. It's amazing to see a small developer supporting a game for such a long time. Very recommended!

Score: 8.8/10


Retired Snake Pass


While I congratulate the devs for trying something unique, it didn't work out for me. I wasn't able to master the controls in combination with the rotating camera, resulting in lots of deaths when the snake did something else than I intended. There are only a few checkpoints in each level, so the game quickly became too frustrating for me. Too bad, since the graphics are great and there are many fresh ideas in the level design.


Finished Yakuza: Like a Dragon


Yakuza: Like a Dragon is exactly how I want an open-world game to be: a great and detailed story, amazing characters with personal quests that makes you really get to know them, well-designed combat, subquests that are actually worth playing and a huge amount of unique mini games instead of repetitive tasks. My only complaint is that there are too many extremely easy combat encounters during the first 10 chapters of the game. But everything else is near perfect for me. Very recommended!

Score: 8.9/10


Finished Griftlands


Griftlands is so much more than another deck-building game. KLEI added a unique story mode for each of the three playable characters, allowing you to complete quests and thereby making new friends or enemies. This works really well, and because there are lots of different choices to make in combination with random events, the replayability is very high.

The combat is special as well, since the game is using separate decks for physical combat and "mental" combat to convince the opponent of your opinion in a discussion. Buffs and perks are visible as targets on the screen, allowing you to attack them as well. This takes some time to get used to, but once you do it's so much fun! Well done KLEI, you guys proved once again why you are one of my favorite developers!

Score: 9.0/10

 

[Mivey]

Finished Alone in the Dark (2024).

Had my eyes on this game when it dropped in March, and some time on my hands in August so I could check it out this week. The game is a reimagining of the original Alone in the Dark from 1992, arguably the first true survival horror game. Gameplay wise it borrows a lot from Resi, like a ton. The devs aren't quite able to nail the polished combat from more recent Resi games, though. It feels more closer to the Revelations games, so pretty clunky. Didn't bother me much, but I can see how people expecting Resident Evil 2 (remake) style of polish will be disappointed.
The story is pretty interesting, where most of the horror comes from psychological side, our hero (or heroine) is being pulled into the manic visions of Jeremy Hartwood, the uncle of heroine Emily. This transitions between horror world and a (somewhat) mundane world gives it some vague Silent Hill vibes too. I can see the devs trying to find a place for Alone in the Dark with its own identity, which it doesn't quite manage. Seen as a first attempt, though, it was pretty good. Shame the devs won't be able to follow up on this game, since they were Embraced and the studio shuttered.

The music has a strong Jazz theme, that never quite manages to work for a horror game and it's also fairly inconsistent since a lot of more functional themes end up not working well with it. The presentation tries to evoke uneasiness and feels fairly theatrical during the NPC conversations. This borders on self parody in one particular scene, though the devs also seem aware of that. I think the team was trying a bit too hard to be weird and different here, and it falls a bit flat.

My first play through took me 14 hours, which going by HTLP is on the longer side, but I did try to find every secret and item that I could. I'm sure a breezier playstyle could finish this in under 10 hours easy, probably closer to 8. Combat gets a bit challenging near the end, had to attempt the final boss a couple times to nail it. But I also played on standard.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Forgotton Anne (Throughline Games / Square Enix Collective, 2018)

In the first 10 minutes after finishing I was ready to file this game into the 5/5-Tier, that's how much I enjoyed the unique setting, animated-feature-film-quality presentation and storytelling and the delightfully oddball cast of anthropomorphic object NPCs, but after calming down a little, I remembered there are a few significant flaws in this game that need to be mentioned.

First of all, the genre-mix of adventure game and slow side-scrolling platforming with very old-school controls - think original 8-bit Prince of Persia to get an idea just how old-school and slow - immediately resonated with me since I'm always up for something a little out of the ordinary, but is pretty much guaranteed to irritate others who want their adventures to be point-and-click and their platformers to be Super Mario. I personally often struggled to remember the eccentric button layout for the game controller, leading to a couple more missed jumps and accidental triggering of (in-game) buttons than I would have liked.

Then there's the inconsistent difficulty of the puzzles, all centered around engines and mechanisms encountered during the game and the player character's ability to either inject power or draw power from them across a short distance. Some are very straightforward, some require the player to correctly guess the exact mechanics behind them and if the player guesses wrong, there are no hints to get them unstuck.

The consistently gorgeous level design sometimes is so overloaded with detail that it becomes difficult to tell what is a platform or otherwise interactable object and what is part of the background. This is compounded by the fact that in some sections of the game, the levels extend to multiple side-scrolling layers, connected by things like stairs or bridges.

And finally there are problems with the game's sound mix: Individually, the voice acting, the sound effects and ambience and the music - performed by the Sjællands Symfoniorkester of Copenhagen, Denmark - are each top tier, but during the game they often end up stepping on each other, requiring the player to take a few trips to the settings menu to adjust the relative volumes, including during some dramatic key moments of the game.

Aside from these issues however, this game is the closest experience to an interactive top-tier anime in the magical realist style of Studio Ghibli I have had yet, and a scenario and story that match this vibe perfectly. There are two final endings, but many more branch points in the story that change dialogue and interactions with NPCs and yield one out of four possible tarot cards at the end (displayed in the save-game slot) that describe the personality that the player character exhibited in summary.

Another new personal all-time favorite and a strong


4/5

Previously reviewed in this thread [here].



Some impressions (all during regular gameplay, no cutscene stills):

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Retired How to say Goodbye (Florian Veltman, Baptiste Portefaix / ARTE France, 2022)

Small sliding puzzle++ game with a pastel-colored children's picture-book art-style. The game seems to be aimed at children as well and tells a story about overcoming grief over the loss of loved ones.



I played it just over half-way in, but the puzzles get a bit samey and the story is meandering here and there (which is fine, again it seems to try and tackle a very heavy topic and making it digestible for children) and I couldn't be bothered anymore.


3/5

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Webbed (Sbug Games, 2021)

Fantastic offbeat 2D pixel-art physics-heavy platformer where the player character is a lady-spider whose spider boyfriend gets kidnapped by a mean bird and she needs to enlist the help of other forest-dwelling insects to get him back.

The game is a bit metroidvania (map sections are interconnected and the player is free to backtrack as they like), a bit classic platformer, a bit bridge-builder and a bit QWOP. The story is divided into three main quests and an endgame section:

One quest is all about classic platforming but with the awesome spider-man-esque shooting-webs-and-swinging on them mechanic, another quest is about solving puzzles and reactivating mechanisms by building webs to haul bits of machinery into place, and the remaining quest is clearly inspired by mountain-climbing rage-bait games like Pogostuck or Getting over it with Bennett Foddy (but mercifully not nearly as brutal). There are multiple optional collectible-hunts as well.

The web-building quest and the mountain-climbing quest had me shouting at the screen a lot, but unlike true rage-bait games, I was never tempted to just stop playing and call it a day, the balance of challenge and reward in this game was exactly in the sweet spot for me.

The presentation is nearly perfect - the creatures are cute, the dialogue is cute and funny and the dynamic music that adapts to the player's traversal speed is great as well.

The only flaw of the game is that there is a non-zero chance of getting soft-locked due to the physics going haywire and that a collectible-hunt can become uncompleteable for the same reason.

I took my time with this game to explore and complete the collectible hunts and find some secrets - there is a particularly awesome one that is a cross-over with a different indie game I previously reviewed in this thread (don't click the link if you don't want to get spoiled) and that introduces a completely new optional game mechanic to the game when you find it - and so I spent 15 hours on this game, but most people will probably finish it in a third of that.



4/5

Previously reviewed in this thread [here] and [here].

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Excellent boomer shooter, on top as the best ones with games like Dusk, Amid Evil and Ion Fury. Wish it was longer though, I do know that chapter 1 will be paid DLC.

Score: 8.6/10

Finished


Very good walking sim with some interactivity. Enjoyed the story, characters and lore a lot, I do think they could have explored the mysteriousness of the infection more though. Gorgeus looking game. However, very basic gameplay and doesn't do much new.

Score: 8/10

Finished


Great looking game with an interesting story that isn't explorted more, lots of unansweres questions and very basic gameplay. Very short too, like 2.5 hours.

Score: 7/10

Finished


Fun, but short roguelike that could also have used more varation in terms of skills and weapons. I enjoyed that it tried something new with the roguelike genre in terms of it being turn-based.

Score: 7.4/10

 

[Mivey]

I finished The SInking City by Frogwares, famous for their Sherlock Holmes games.

This game first caught my attention from its trailer
(),
which depicted our hero in an abandoned city, seemingly on the run by some kind supernatural power and interesting set pieces. I was kinda expecting a survival horror game. Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Sinking City is nothing like that. It's "detective game", far closer to the cinematic puzzle games that Frogware has always done with the Sherlock Holmes series. There is combat, but it's clunky and fairly trivial if you just make sure to keep your inventory up (which is pretty trivial once you understand that every loot point in the game resets once you move away a bit and come back).

It's basically Sherlock Holmes, with a Lovecraft theme and a semi-open world. Oh yeah, instead linear levels, the city of Oakmont is pretty huge. The problem is that it's pretty obvious that large chunks have been procedurally generated and feel incredibly samey, plus the game refuses to just teleport you to places, you need to find a telephone booth and travel between them. Most of your time is not spend with combat or puzzle solving, but just finding spots on the map, getting to those spots and hunting for interaction spots to collect evidence. It's pretty boring and while I was in the mood for something horror related, the game kinda overstays its welcome. I ended up skipping most of the side quests. They aren't bad, but they just end up feeling like more busy work, running from point A to B, finding items, running back to A, rince and repeat.

From what I understand, Frogwares is planning a sequel and for that one they actually want to make a proper survival horror game. That could be something to keep an eye on. As for the first game, I'd recommend it to fans of the Sherlock Holmes games from Frogwares, it's basically that, but set in a large city and with Lovecraft vibes.

Another horror-adjacent title I finished is Draugen by Red Thread Games (devs of Dreamfall Chapters).

A short walking-simulator esque game, where our hero visits the fictional, remote Norwegian village of Graavik, set deep inside a fjord. He's on the search of his sister, who seemingly visited the town as part of her journalistic work, though it's not clear why exactly she picked this town. Our hero is accompanied by his very chatty ward Alice or "Lissie" as he calls her.
A short and interesting experience, but it kinda falls flat. Without going into spoiler territory, the game could have taken its concepts much further, and explored the darkness in human's psyche far better. As it stands it feels a bit too Saturday Morning Cartoon levels of safe and easy. Virtually every interesting idea is left half explored and you kinda end up wishing the game would commit a bit to something in the end.

A visually striking title on PC, once you mess with gamma curved and use Cheat Engine to enable proper FOV (seriously Red Thread Games, for something that released on PC first, your PC game feels so bare bones and borderline unplayable on large monitor, bleh)

 

[Joe Spangle]

Just finished Dying Light 2


It was alright. Pretty enjoyable first person parkour game with zombies. Combat can be fun, i mostly enjoyed the exploration and climbing up stuff. The mainline story was ok, fairly standard stuff. Some good characters. Overall a decent game. I did prefer the first game, just more complete and tighter but this one was fun for 30 odd hours.

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Some while ago. Liked it, not as good as Desperados 3, but enjoyed it a lot.

Score: 8/10

Finished

Astro Bot (Playstation 5)

Very good 3D plattformer. Finished it 100% (well, with 81% of trophies). Wished it even longer. Clear and great image quality, great graphics, great music, great and fun physics, uses DualSense great. 5 worlds with 1 secret world.

Rather an easy game with some challenging "side" levels.

Score: 8.7/10

 

[Mivey]

It took like half a year, but I finally beat all of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy


Loved to revisit Apollo Justice, they really did a great job there with the beautifully redrawn sprites. I kinda wished the first collection of AA1 to 3 had gotten such a treatment, the sprite work there looked downright amateurish compared to this.

And it was my first time playing AA5 and AA6. While AA5 does an impressive job in capturing the style and spirit of the 2D artwork, it lacks refinement and many details are clearly not meant to seen on a big screen, particularly fine details like hands. This is mostly true of AA6 as well, though it's clear the team did give the old models a new pass and was far more effective in creating 2D looking 3D animations.

As for the games story-wise, I felt AA5 was mostly mid. The focus away from Apollo by bringing back Phoenix as an active attorney was super weak and Athena just never felt more than a gimmicky character.
AA6 stands out for its nostalgia bombs. It's nice to see Maya back and the setting of "Kurain village, but as a country" and their hate of lawyers felt like a pretty obvious way to take the themes of the original trilogy (problems/corruption in the legal justice system, a sole attorney fighting against it) and taking it up to 11. The final case, Turnabout Revolution, is easily the most ridiculous and insane "case" there is in the series, and I won't go into details as to why, but in a series where you had various animals testify in court, assassin's directly threatening you while in court and the entire court blowing up, it is impressive to find ways to up the ante.
That said, I do hope that AA7 finds a way of modernising the series and perhaps make it a bit more relevant again, without just going for comedic relief.

Overall, a great package of 3 games, and well worth the asking price.

Also finished Space Marine 2 yesterday.



Visually amazing game, ran like a dream on my machine, usually around 140 FPFS, at 4K, DLSS quality, with no frametime spikes I could perceive (aside from very few loading stutters near the end of the game, and even those were of the "blink and you miss it" kind)

The actual story and and mission structure follows the old 2011 game to T, it feels like a time capsule of how game were designed back then, though I will say that the original was better at keeping the pace up, while Spare Marine 2 is a bit too reliant on moments where you just need to hold out until a percentage meter is high enough, or protect a certain structure. I wouldn't mind if this is done once or twice, but it happens way too often. There is also something a bit sluggish about he combat. To play most effectively, you basically have to evade and jump around a bit too much for my liking, the counter and evade system also felt a bit too simplistic. Given the success, I'm sure there will be a third one, so there's stuff they could work on there.

 

[LEANIJA]

I've finally seen Baldurs Gate 3 to its end.

I did not enjoy the combat one bit throughout the game. I enjoyed almost everything else. Those two facts made it a slog that was simultaneously hard to give up on... but recently I discovered a god mode mod that made combat trivial and let me focus on exploration and story instead. As before, Ive also used mods to let me control the camera freely and move my character with WASD.

Now there is also a real time combat mod in the works! If this ever works fully, I might just replay the game that way.
Buuut with the god mode mod; I might also replay it now, to see what an evil playthrough looks like (even though this playthrough I just did was FAR from pure good). AND to get a more coherent experience. A playthrough staggered over several months isnt ideal, and I hardly remember what happened in the beginning of the game.


I know what you might be thinking: why even bother if I hate turn based combat so much? Sometimes I am way more intrigued by the setting, story & character (the "everything else" I mentioned) that I'll give a game a chance despite turn-based combat (which I've never liked in games). Not every game can be 100% "my thing"; sometimes you gotta accept some downsides — or mod the game, if possible

BTW; I recently also played Tactical Breach Wizards (because I like Tom Francis's games and gave it the benefit of the doubt) and that implemented turn based combat in a way more enjoyable way, I thought. It gives you endless rewinds to undo mistakes, making it much more fun, in my opinion.

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished INFRA (Loiste Interactive, 2016)

Very unique first-person puzzle adventure game that puts the player in the shoes of a civil engineering consultant on an inspection field trip in the fictional Scandinavian city of Stålburg, where little by little, the devastating state of the city's infrastructure as well as outlines of deep corruption among the city's industrialists and politicians is revealed.

The game is made in Source 2 and sometimes the similarities to (and textures from) Portal 2 are quite noticeable, and it also means that the outdoor sections of the game look quite dated. But the atmosphere will capture anybody who enjoys urban exploration and tinkering with industrial infrastructure - and I've never played any first-person puzzle game where the puzzles are so tightly integrated into the game world.

For example, at one point in the game, you need to restore one of the city's waterworks plants back to working order, and you do that by opening and closing valves, diverting water flow and checking your progress on a SCADA diagram on the screens of the facility's computers. No arbitrary lasers or panels with 2D line-puzzles in this game!

And there's a lot of game here. The game takes place over the course of a single day, but my final playtime was 45 hours rather than 12. The two collectible hunts (finding and documenting flaws and hazards in the various bits of public infrastructure and finding pieces of evidence for the corruption scandal) directly influence which of the multiple possible endings will be revealed in a post-credits scene.

Unfortunately, towards the last chapters of the game, there are technical problems which cause frequent game crashes unless you employ a work-around that requires to lower the visual quality of the game significantly.

Still one of the best and most memorable games in the genre I've played in years.



4/5

 

[fantomena]

Finished


Including all the cheevos. Very fun and enjoyable game. A little bit slow start and now always as creative as What the Golf, but still had a really good time with it.

Score: 8.8/10

Finished


Well, by finished I mean completing the community centre. Fantastic game in every way, will probably play the expanded mod at some point. First plathrough took me 80 hours.

Score: 9/10

 

[Virtual Ruminant]

Finished Dead Secret (Robot Invader, 2016)

An early VR mystery game with light horror elements, but also playable on flat screens, which is how I played. The perspective is first person, but movement is only from fixed position to fixed position, Myst style (with animated transitions).

The gameplay is essentially a point and click adventure, but it's all very straight-forward and the risk of getting stuck is almost non-existent. The game has a few jump-scares, but dishes them out very sparingly, which makes them more effective.

There are multiple endings in the traditional S-D tier style, were D is dying prematurely, S is the perfect ending and A-D are determined by how well the player manages to solve the murder mystery if it's done less than perfectly.

The game is rather short, I took my time and read all the notes carefully and completed the game (with the S ending) in 4 hours.

While neither the gameplay nor the graphics are really anything special, I enjoyed the story and the general pacing of the game well enough and had a good time from start to finish.



3.5/5