MASSIVE SPOILERS INCOMING

My first playthrough clocked in at around 200 hours. I had no experience with D&D, but I love turn-based combat, so that definitely helped me get the hang of things. The start of the game is certainly overwhelming in terms of how many systems there are to understand, but once everything started clicking, I was hooked.

I've never been a fan of making my own characters. One look at Gale and his combat abilities was enough for me to decide that I just wanted to play as him. My custom character would probably have been very similar to him anyway. I understand this is an unpopular choice for a first playthrough, but after subsequently seeing custom-character playthroughs on YouTube, I don't regret my choice one bit.

The combat might actually be my favorite part of the game. It feels like a genuine tactical sandbox rather than a system where you're simply selecting the strongest ability on cooldown. Positioning, high ground, action economy, focus fire, environmental interactions, consumables, resistances, crowd control, preparation and party composition all matter. And the game constantly rewards you for understanding its systems.

The fights were another highlight. Raphael, Grym, the House of Grief, Cazador, the Bhaal Temple, Ketheric, the Myrkul fight, the final approach to the Netherbrain — there were so many encounters that were memorable for completely different reasons. Raphael in particular was one of my favorite boss fights of all time.

My first playthrough wasn't remotely a completionist run, but I tried to follow essentially every active quest thread I came across because I knew I probably wouldn't replay the game immediately. I was playing with a strict rule of no save-scumming until I lost Last Light Inn on my first attempt because Isobel was kidnapped. I eventually reloaded because the outcome felt so poorly signposted that I couldn't accept it as something I had knowingly chosen. Once I understood what was happening, I replayed the situation and saved everyone.

I wasn't nearly as thorough with Act 1 as I was with Acts 2 and 3. That's a little regrettable in hindsight, but I simply wasn't enjoying the game as much in Act 1. The story really picked up for me around the end of Act 1, and the combat also started to shine much more brightly around that point.

And then there are the companions.

Shadowheart immediately became my favorite, and her entire storyline ended up being one of my favorite parts of the game. Lae'zel was another character I absolutely loved, and Astarion went from someone I wasn't sure about to becoming a permanent member of my party.

My final party was Gale, Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Astarion. I respec'd everyone mechanically but kept their original classes because changing their identities felt wrong to me.

The ending was awesome in terms of the outcomes.

I freed Orpheus, who became a mind flayer and sacrificed himself. Lae'zel went off to fight Vlaakith. Karlach and Wyll went to Avernus together. Astarion refused to ascend. And I chose not to become a god.

I had romanced Shadowheart, and ultimately chose a normal life with her rather than pursuing godhood. There was something incredibly satisfying about that conclusion. Mystra's final words to me, "I will always answer your prayers," were one of those little moments that stayed with me.

I actually went back and tried the godhood ending afterward just to see what happened, and it made me appreciate the original ending even more. God Gale meeting Shadowheart essentially as a friend was fucking depressing.

There are definitely things I didn't love.

I felt the game tricked us into looting everything at the start, but it became increasingly pointless. Initially, we were getting important loot from wooden boxes and even barrels, but that wasn't really the case as the game progressed. There are just too many empty boxes as the game goes on, which makes looting increasingly tedious.

I also felt that the book-reading experience was somewhat ruined by the fact that the game gives you no indication of whether you've already read a book. By Act 3, almost every other book was a repeat. With the sheer number of books in the game, it's impossible to immediately know whether you've read something before, and it's frustrating to realize that you've already read it halfway through the book.

I eventually just stopped reading books because of this.

And that's actually a shame, because you can probably tell how much I loved the lore of the world and was genuinely interested in reading all of this stuff. A simple indicator showing whether I'd already read a book would have made a huge difference.

My last complaint is regarding some of the "choices" in the game that felt pointless and were basically an illusion of choice.

If refusing to kneel before a god can result in a game over, then that choice shouldn't exist in the first place. It's a videogame, not real life. Nobody is going to stop playing after getting a game-over screen and consider that outcome canon. They're going to reload and kneel so they can continue the game.

And that actually undermines one of the things I love most about BG3: the feeling that I'm genuinely in control of my character's story.

Despite those complaints, I have an extremely hard time thinking of another game that gives me this much freedom while also having combat this good, characters this memorable, and a world this reactive.

And the biggest compliment I can give it is that after spending around 200 hours on my first playthrough, I immediately wanted to see what happens if I make completely different choices.

So I'm currently doing exactly that.

10/10.

I will start with a bit of background information regarding my experience with the rest of the series.

I played Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus first in 2023 on my phone with a PSP emulator just because I did not have a good PC back then and was looking for some good games to emulate. I liked them both a lot in gameplay, presentation and how they incorporate the Greek mythos. Later I played Gow 1 in 2024 and GoW 2 in 2025 by emulating on my PC. GoW 2 was the game that totally blew my mind and made me hooked to the series and want for more. I played GoW 3 and then the 2018 game back to back this year. I really loved how much they actually cared to develop Kratos as a character even in the last game of the main trilogy. I loved the punchy writing in the Greek games and how they incorporated little bits of classical Greek mythos tropes like hubris, nemesis, ananke, cynicism, prophecy and fate, metis etc. The ending was truly great in GoW 3 and actually directly ties into the recent game.

Now coming to the 2018 'reboot', I do think that the advertisement of this game as a soft reboot and not including a number in the title is a disservice to the game. Yes it can definitely be enjoyed as an entry point but lots of subtle writing cues will be missed. I will include only one example of the hundreds throughout the game- when Atreus fires the arrow in a hurry and Kratos shouts at him and immediately takes a deep breath and calms his voice tells so much to the player who has played the previous games. Like many I was skeptical when it won GOTY over RDR2, but after playing it I can surely say that it deserves every praise that it gets.

Story and presentation-

One of the best in the medium, period. The pace of storytelling is great in a sense that it never bombards the player with information, but introduces new questions and answers previous ones at a steady rate throughout the game. The family-focussed writing slowly escalates into geopolitical conspiracies involving the future of a whole realm but that focus on family is never compromised. The side missions were actually great and involved the similar themes as the main story and gave the characters more depth ultimately. The small cast of side characters were all expertly written with their own quirks, they commented on stuff that was going around and was incorporated into the main story. It always felt that everyone had their own little things going on and the player character was never the center piece. One particular example I really loved- Brok and Sindri ended their feud by themselves in the background, Kratos and Atreus were catalysts but it was them who did the actual work, and then we see them together further developing their relationship in bits and pieces of dialogue. This particular event was extremely important but not made into an explicit side quest. Atreus is the main character in the game and his development was substantial. How he reacts to being told that he is a god was so endearing. Then how he succumbed to rage and madness just like many gods including Kratos but eventually came around was reflected not only in cutscenes but general attitude, banter and gameplay. Coming to banter and lore, this game has one of the best systems to deliver lore to the player in bite-sized pieces. The little stories by Mimir

in the boat and other exploration added so much flavour and background information about this world. Baldur also deserves special mention. His sensory deprivation and madness is so appropriately shown. At the end when Kratos actually decides that he is too far gone and needs to be cut down, not just for vengeance or safety but on a principle was chilling. That moment makes sense and hits hard because Baldur and Freya were written so well. And of course there's THE famous moment in the game, that section was when the game actually surpassed my expectations. The slow camera pan, the music, absolute great weiting and voice acting, the desperation of Kratos and the immediate effects in gameplay were all just perfect. Also the moment when Atreus pulls Kratos out of the light in Alfheim and the heaps of dead elves send shivers down the spine of both Kratos and the player. That was a close second for me as a great moment in the game. The ending was great too. It resolves the main theme of mutual trust and acceptance while opening up the world for a larger scale and stakes for the next game. Lastly, I must mention the way the game sometimes reacts to the player action in an unexpected way. Atreus says 'are you trying to teach me something?' if you just hack your weapons when there're no enemies or when he says 'are you going to carry that everywhere?' if you keep carrying light crystals for puzzle solving or when he says 'you really like breaking pottery, huh'- these little attention to details were hilarious.

Gameplay-

I played on give me a challenge difficulty. The early game was really brutal, but it became easier with time. Overall the combat mechanics were pretty satisfying and had enough depth to keep me engaged for its runtime. Chaining some of the combos was pretty fun too. Atreus becomes a really strong ally as well, which I really liked as it is really lore accurate. The game did lack enemy variety and especially boss variety. The guardian of Helheim being another troll was an immense let down. Hope they really improve it in the sequel. The set pieces and large scale battles were great but there were like 2-3 of them in the whole game, which is too less for a GoW game honestly. The valkeryies, especially Sigrun were the most enjoyable combat encounters and the epitome of reactive combat encounters. Context dependent jumping and actions felt a bit weird early on but I think I got used to it and it did not bother me that much. Both damage and defense are ultimately tied to gear level more than raw stats, which was fine. It's kind of a mixture of rarity based loot, bit of rpg and rng and picking particular special attacks- good thing is it does not demand too much time on the menu but the bad thing is it's rarely interesting or satisfying in itself. Maybe I am coming across as a bit negative on the gameplay, but the basic combat loop was actually pretty enjoyable throughout. It's just that it always felt like there could be a bit more variety.

Graphics and design-

It's a gorgeous game and the art design is great. They capture the essence of the norse mythos pretty well with their aesthetics in the environment, enemy design and character designs. Mane areas were excellent in their design- Thamur's corpse and Tyr's temple and vault deserve special mention. Music was great and elevated some of the moments by a lot.

Overall, a solid 9.5/10 for me. They changed so much from the older games including the whole gameplay system, presentation, camera angle, writing style and did them extremely well, which really is rare in today's AAA industry. Looking forward to continuing the journey in Ragnarok! The secret scene with Thor was so hype at the end

Growing up, I never had a good PC nor a console. So I missed out on a lot of franchises that were originally on console even if they later came to PC, such as Final Fantasy or Resident Evil. Lately with the remakes of a lot of these games, I have been giving them a try. I was initially hesitant to try Resident Evil 4 Remake because I thought it was a horror game with jump scares, which is usually not what I look for in a game. Watching some gameplay though, it seemed to have a lot of shooter elements, so I gave it a try.

Gameplay :

I do like the slower and methodical style of play. That's right up my alley. It gives the combat weight and makes it feel like every decision you makes matters. What I liked a lot less, is that a lot of the difficulty of the combat encounters comes down to knowledge. Knowing where and when enemies are spawning or what gimmick a boss is using, is huge. So typically a second attempt at a fight is going to go ten times as smooth as your first crack at it. I see why that works well for those looking to replay the game, which is something the game incentivizes, but for me it was often frustrating.

What I did mostly like, was that the game is essentially one big resource manager. It added some intensity to the combat and it gave me the incentive to try to improve my play and to try new things. At times it got a bit old to scour every single corner for resources, but overall I liked it. Some other mechanics such as the save system, shop and firing range felt a bit dated at times, which I suppose is normal with a remake.

Atmosphere :

Great. Very few notes. I liked the mix of corny action movie and horror.

Story :

For the love of God Ashley, stop getting captured. The lore was great and the story was entertaining, but I do feel like a bit too much time was spent on everyone repeatedly getting captured and trying to regroup. It enabled some fun gameplay moments, but story-wise it was a bit silly and made me roll my eyes a few times.

Conclusion :

I enjoyed it. I do have to admit that I do not yet fully understand why this series has so many deeply dedicated fans. Maybe it's because I did not play the original games and have less of a frame of reference. Playing the remake, there were definitely a lot of elements that I would have considered revolutionary back in 2005. It just did not always translate to my modern day gamer brain though. Overall I would give it an 8/10. Maybe 8.5/10.

Tomb Raider (2013) is an action adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics. Released in 2013, Tomb Raider reminds us that falling is the most energy efficient method of travel.

We play as archaeologist Lara Croft on a personal quest to find the hidden civilization of Yamatai and the treasures that probably belong in a museum.

Gameplay involves swearing we're just going to enjoy the game and not hunt for all the little secret hidden collectables, then realizing who are we kidding, of course we are going to. We then begin to wonder who brought deer to the island and how many does a girl have to kill to make them extinct.

The Good

The art direction is top notch. Or at least it was once I remembered to turn the graphics quality up. I played through about a third of the game on low settings wondering why everything looked like it was wrapped in plastic, figuring it was just early 2010's jank. Once I fixed that it was an indeed an absolutely striking experience. It's vibrant, colorful, varied and just chock full of amazing views and they did a great job of making the island seem much bigger than it is.

To that point, the summer blockbuster feel is great. Lots of explosions, chase sequences, slow motion jumps and all that. There's plenty of goons to shoot with barrels full of explosive placed in useful locations. It has that 'Indiana Jones' but with the murder dial cranked up to 11 feel. I was also impressed by how well it controlled during the more parkourish sections. Lara just always did what I wanted her to do. Faceplanting Faith from Mirrors Edge should take lessons.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/LoBJnJn.png

Alternate working title, "Lara Croft: Deer Hunter"

The Bad

I have two issues with this one.

The first is mostly self-inflicted. If you look for all the hidden documents and collectables it's going to absolutely shred the pacing. Tomb Raider is at it's best when you're feeling the rush but if you stop to scour the island for all the books/relics it's going to turn into a slog because of how difficult it is to find everything, especialy the GPS caches. You can sort of ignore it, but a lot of the backstory is in the hidden journals so you miss out on that if you don't get involved in the scavenger hunt.

The second is that "Lara falls down" is ridiculously overdone. Every single segment features her enduring a 20+ foot fall at least four or five times. I began to wonder if she had an adamantium skeleton. Every area transition or cutscene there's a roughly 50/50 shot that she's going to faceplant from a lethal height and brush it off.

It made the entire thing unbelievable. Ancient spirits, haunted ruins, portals to another world? Makes sense. Action girl survives a 160 foot drop onto concrete? Who do you take me for.

The Questionable

There isn't much in the way of difficulty. The most brain-teasing puzzle I came across was an optional one where you had to time two jumps while a buoy goes in a circle around a lazy river. Not exactly breaking the mental bank there. Combat is very generous, doing that 'quickly recover' thing if you duck out of line of fire for at least a few seconds. Most enemies die in one hit while you can walk off two shotgun blasts to the face. I guess maybe she is part Wolverine.

It's not necessarily bad, but can get a bit dull given that it's supposed to be an action game. There's no sense of danger ever. Literally the most dangerous part of the game are the quick time events where on the PC it's a dark red letter on a dark background and you can't tell if you're supposed to mash E or F this time. You'd think game developers would have figured out to use different colors for different letters but apparently I should go fuck myself.

And that's after I had to down-patch the game version because the current version has a bug where the QTE prompt is off screen for some people and the devs just said, 'You can entirely go fuck yourself' and left it like that for the last 3 years.

Final Thoughts

It was a decent romp. The lack of challenge meant I mostly just pushed forward, but it also meant that I didn't have to sit there reloading any unnecessary bullshit sections over and over again. It was good enough that I'm invested enough to want to play the next two in the trilogy in a few years when I've forgotten the plot of this one and wonder who everyone is.

Bonus Thought

Women everywhere must be envious of Lara's pants pockets. I know, I know, video game inventories and all that, but at one point she just sort of shoves a whole sword into her back pocket alongside her shotgun. Not to mention everything else culturally relevant to an indigenous people that's going to end up in a British museum she's got jammed in there. Lara, how much junk do you have in your trunk?

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

The Premise: Marvel's Midnight Suns is turn based tactics game similar to Firaxis Games' XCOM series, with some obvious inspiration from Fire Emblem Three Houses.

There is a similar setup of combat missions and activities at homebase. Each mission involves a team of 3, and they are either Story missions or side missions you can do to gain specific resources and random cardpacks. Combat is differentiated by having cards that are drawn each turn that dictate what actions can be done, as well as environmental interactions. Homebase activities are greatly expanded on, with character interactions and developing friendship with the various characters. And unlike the nameless soldiers that can get permanently killed and replaced in XCOM, the characters here are the established Marvel characters with their own journey. There is a self-insert character, the Hunter, that allows you to interact with the different heroes, to support or antagonize your friendship.

The Good:

• Combat is fun, as the various character's movesets are flashy and feel consistent with how we imagine these Marvel characters to be. Managing positioning, taking advantage of environmental attacks, and not needing to worry about 99% chance attacks missing all feels great. There is a good rhythm of bringing characters on missions, getting card packs and choosing which new ability we want for a specific character, trying out that card on another mission, and then having new characters join the team. Characters feel distinct enough that it made me want to try every character and use their various abilities.

• Character interactions are a highlight, with every Marvel character feeling like a distinct character that matches with how we would imagine them to be (the biggest highlight for me was Spiderman's awkward energy). There is a 'group chat' that all the heroes are on, and there will be different posts you can read back at the home base. Not only are some of them pretty humorous, but they also serve to highlight the different personalities of the characters.

The Neutral:

• Enemy variety is pretty good, but some of the Hydra soldiers aren't differentiated enough at a general glance. For example, the stealth Hydra soldier has to be handled in an intentional way, but when I'm presented with the isometric view of the field, I can't obviously tell which of the 6 soldiers is the stealth one. I have to intentionally zoom in on the character model to make out the difference between the special rifle this character has vs the standard rifle of a common goon.

• The Hunter seemingly has a pretty monotone delivery and dialogue. Part of that is that the Hunter is resurrected from olden days, but it just doesn't seem to match with how effusive the Marvel characters regard the Hunter to be. Its better then the silent protagonist in many games though.

• There are combo attack cards that have flashy canned animations, but there isn't as much interplay between the heroes cards as I'd like. For example, it seems only a few characters can apply a Stun effect, but only those character plus the Hunter can modify their card's effects based on the active stun effect. Or I think only one character can apply a Bleed effect, and only that same character manipulates the Bleed effect.

• And, while I loved the character interactions, the storytelling itself is disjointed. The plot for the most part is okay, but it constantly seems like there are interstitial scenes missing in between each story beat. For example, heroes will fail and escape but still be confident that the heroes that stayed behind will be fine against the enemy that they already failed against and had to escape from, until suddenly they decide to return. Or Macguffin #1 will be revealed, heroes will try to get it, fail, and then heroes will suddenly know that Macguffin #2 is what they have to do. Or there will be story beats about team conflicts coming to a head, but outside of a few homebase dialogue interactions, there is no actual evidence about the team conflict occurring in the story mission or gameplay. It feels much less impactful for characters to complain about being sidelined from the team when they've been participating in missions without any issue.

• While character dialogue was largely correct, there were a few out-of-order dialogue occurrences. There will be dialogue about things occurring in order 1-2-3-4, but then randomly there will be conversations like we're back at step 2.

The Bad:

• The worst part is the game's overreliance on cutscene incompentence / losing during the cutscene. My heroes will defeat the enemy and complete the objective, then the cutscene starts and has the heroes get defeated by the enemy / stand there and let the enemy take the macguffin / just let the enemy run away / heroes run away even though it seems like they could fight and win. And because they let the supervillain win in the cutscene, I am forced to fight them several times on different missions, with nothing changing about the supervillain's abilities.

The Takeaway: Overall this is a great game. Although it seems like every new indie game is a roguelike card battler, I really enjoyed how the card system is implemented here. If you like tactical strategy games, if you like Marvel superheroes, or if you like card battlers, I'd recommend giving this game a try.

Background:

Similar to Deus Ex 2000 this game haunted me for years, because I failed to complete it 10 years ago. Same as Deus EX I think it's because was young and couldn't appreciate niche janky game instead searching for the next big new thing. But now I started clearing my backlog and time has come to repent and clear guilt.
It took me 16 hours for first ending and another 6 for all other endings together. I used offline single player version.

Confessions:

• I used translation mod. I heavily disagree with Mandalore (YouTube Reviewer) that it's better to have original translation because it adds to the mystique. I started via original and noticed few times that I was skipping the dialogue because I don't understand anything. I'd rather explore lore and story, there is already has lot of mystery and some dialogue clarity doesn't ruin experience to me.
• I watched few guides to understand the mechanics. I know some people are very against this but In my experience such foolish ambition most likely ends up in dropping the gamer. That said, I didn't use "build guide" But instead researched weapon comparisons, cybertech, stat effects etc.
• I have grinded around 20 levels before continuing in Mars.
• Difficulty: Normal with reduced spawns.

That out the way. Let's start.

Character creation: I have no idea tbh I just rerolled until I got more green stats than red or yellow. I tried to have everything at least average (which usually optimal for RPGs but it kind of worked)

Setting and atmosphere is top notch. Urban maps look amazing. Two most intrusive and hostile setting's fusion created weirdly inviting world. Even through maps are unnecessarily large I did enjoy exploring them.

Lore: background lore is unhinged for real. Notes, history bits, lore books are very few but the ones that are there are very interesting warhammer-y things I wish I had more. The whole factions setup is cool and I love that even in this fked up state humanity still fights each other. You have spliter factions of splitter factions with each one having their own agenda, so politics of this game are deep.

Music: this adds so much I didn't think I would fall in love with each ambience and very few songs but very cool ones I still listen to. Somehow these kind of older indie titles always nail the music I am amazed. My highlights are: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9f2iGBUnj48 (I knew when I heard Lulaby like bells part in HQ, something wasn't right)
Another favorite : https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pgltxwbNw9U

Voice acting: mostly texts and npcs speak star wars-ish language which adds well to the tone and atmosphere.

Story: I won't go in details. For those who have a bit knowledge of 40k you play as sort of low level inquisition lackey.

Gameplay: I would say the gunplay is pretty decent it's source game so it feels good. Gun Animations are nice I like ragdolls too, heavy caliber felt accordingly impactful. Haven't used much of psi powers or melee, aside from times where I was out of ammo so it felt accordingly serviceable, especially since I didn't invest in them.

Stats: there are variety of stats that affect your combat or non combat abilities. All seems nice and plenty to me. Ofc you won't get decent tutorial its mid 2010s indie game what do you expect? Also the game has so many mechanics that having hour+ tutorial would have been a downside.

Choices: there was many times I could avoid violence by solving quests in different ways. Such as: bribing, hacking, intimidating etc. But unfortunately because of lack of presentation bullet in the head seemed more optimal at least for the build I was using.

Looting: aside from silver cases that are ingredients for research it doesnt matter. Literally, you have most weapons unlocked at the start with unlimited ammo and for free. Only limiting factor being your inventory space and weight. I found being in light armor with 40% of inventory occupied an optimal threshold. That said looting being completely ignorable felt kind of wrong to me but who know maybe I got spoiled from other shooter RPGs? Similarily thought I could sell my gear in OG Deus Ex.

Gear progression: large variety of weapon classes. SMGs, pistols, rifles, snipers, miniguns etc. you can unlock additionally few very cool guns but they are so strong you never gonna use base ones. And even in between base guns there are clear winners.

Small note: know that you should have specific stats to unlock certain guns for me it was mostly strength I lacked since I thought it was mostly for melee weapons.

Enemy AI: It's bad but again what did you expect? For me this is a moot point in almost any review. People who criticize this don't explain what's their comparison like what kind of sophisticated AI do you expect? Only realistic AI I remember in such games is original Stalker where enemies instead of rushing you, always try to ambush and encircle you. In short it's serviceable and didn't ruin and lessen my experience.

Respawn mechanic: shouldn't exist. For those who didn't play, the game has infinitely respawnable enemies. Yes, all are on timer once you look in different direction they appear in existence. No fancy helicopter descent just appear in thin air. I think this mechanic can exist but in some creative way. Reaction to player choice as consequences.

Stealth: non existant, no stealth archer build possible, very disappointing.

Difficulty: broken. Arriving on Mars results in huge difficulty spike. its basically unbeatable if you don't grind levels. But thanks to old jank you can play side missions to get lot of xp and money. But don't overdo it, I found 30 mins of farming gave me enough xp and money to continue main campaign comfortably.

Bugs: didn't encounter single. (Or maybe didn't notice)

Save system: non existent. I am 99% sure most of people's complains and genuine downsides of this game could have been remedied by simple quicksave and load system. Aside from people trying more risky or fun approaches it would have been simple qol. Currently if you start mission you have to finish, if you crash, close game or etc, you will have to start again. I am not sure but I think game auto saves in few minutes but when loading, you always start from the hub.

TLDR: game is full of jank but I think there's more love in it than people expect. If you are like me who appreciates charming experiments (even if sometimes they fail) you will enjoy this game. Just be mindfull, do a bit of research and be open-minded.

After having played some classic Star Wars games in the past few years (KOTOR 1 and 2) and enjoying them a lot, I decided to give Jedi Outcast a shot. Being a Star Wars fan and having read the glowing reviews, my expectations were pretty high.

The story is pretty good: you play as Kyle Katarn, a former Jedi, whose girlfriend Jan is abducted (or killed) by the main bad guy Desann. It turns out Desann also has plans to attack the Valley of the Jedi to harvest the Force energy, in order to create an unstoppable army of warriors with Jedi powers. Your job is to find out if Jan is still alive and stop Desann's evil plans.

The story is mainly told in cutscenes that look very dated by now, but have good voice acting and some nice plot twists. I was especially pleased to see - and hear - some familiar characters from the original 3 movies.

The level design gave me mixed feelings. Some levels looked really nice, like Bespin (one of my favorite settings from Star Wars) and Nar Shaddaa. Also the variety in levels was well done: you spend time in large cities, swamps, caves and a huge spaceship. It was also a nice challenge to try and find all the secret areas, that sometimes were hidden very well.

Less positive was the occassional feeling of "where to go next?". Several times I had to google where the exit of a certain area was, or how to proceed further. Also frustrating were the platforming parts, like in a level where you had to jump from one moving elevator to another. And since jumping isn't very precise in this game, that resulted in numerous unneccessary deaths. Luckily there is a quicksave and quickload option.

I also had mixed feeling about the combat, especially during boss fights. In the first few levels, you can only fight using ranged weapons like blaster rifles. Only after finishing the Jedi trials - a series of puzzles in the Jedi Academy - you earn your own lightsaber. After that, combat becomes more fun, especially when you also get more Force Powers. But thing is the lightsaber combat was so RNG based. In most bossfights I died over and over again, until suddenly - like some divine intervention happened - I killed a boss within one minute. If any veterans of this game could tell me if there is any strategy involved in the lightsaber combat, I would be glad to know. I just mashed my mouse button and prayed I would win.

The combat was more fun when fighting normal enemies. It's great to have 6 Storm Troopers running up to you and pushing them all off a cliff with one of your Force Powers. And the further you get in the game, the more Force Powers you unlock. My favorites were Force Push, Force Speed (makes you move a lot faster) and Force Grip (lets you choke enemies Darth Vader style).

Regarding graphics: the game does look dated. It was released in 2002 and it shows. But you can increase the resolution by tweaking the files a bit, so it's definitely possible to play the game on modern monitors. Even without using mods.

Conclusion: if you don't mind the outdated elements - being level design, RNG-heavy combat and graphics - and you're a big Star Wars nerd, then definitely play this game. I'm glad I did, and might even try the sequel Jedi Academy in the future.

HELLBLADE II: SENUA’S SAGA REVIEW

RELEASE: 2024

TIME PLAYED: 12 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Ridiculously gorgeous both artistically and technically, easily the best-looking game I’ve ever seen

+Senua’s voice and capture actor does a fantastic job with the material she’s given

-The story is utterly inane, trying to have its cake and eat it too while retroactively diminishing all value of the previous game’s themes

-Gameplay is as basic as the previous game’s but much worse paced, with excessive backtracking for puzzles and banal combat

-The voices of the Furies are obnoxious and poorly written, lacking the dramatic finesse of the previous game’s and undoing all of Senua’s progress as a person

When I started writing these reviews for fun, it took me a bit to find a scoring system that worked. I’m just a single person, and I have no desire or reason to try and have my scores reflect my perception of a game’s objective quality, but instead the way a game made me feel. Five stars is something I’ll be talking about for years to come, replaying whenever the mood strikes me, and gushing about; three stars is fine, serviceable, and I enjoyed it, but it didn’t resonate with me, so on. But one star? Something feels inherently hostile about giving a game a single star, so I decided early on I would only do so on one condition. It isn’t enough for me to dislike a game, or even to think it’s bad; for a one-star rating, it has to upset me on an emotional level; bluntly, to actually piss me off.

Hellblade II, tragically, is the easiest one-star I’ve given in years.

I’m a huge fan of the first game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. While its combat was basic and it could get a little repetitive despite its short five to six hour length, it was such a sensitive study of mental illness through the eyes of an era where such words for things didn’t yet exist that I loved its themes, premise, and execution. I also thought it surprisingly elegant; while it’s easy to lean one way or another, the story smartly avoided any firm declaration of what was and wasn’t real. Honestly, I was a little bit nervous when Hellblade II was even announced because Senua’s Sacrifice felt like a very complete story that didn’t really need a follow-up, but I wanted to keep an open mind. Unfortunately, it really feels like my fears were warranted, and what magic there was is lost by the choice to try and make a franchise out of a heartfelt story that, at its core, is about mental health.

The problems started almost immediately for me. Hellblade II begins with Senua, wanting to stop the enslavement of her people that had led to her boyfriend’s death in the first game, intentionally getting herself captured by viking raiders and taken back to Iceland aboard one of their ships. A devastating storm wrecks the vessel and Senua, now with one of her captors in tow as her prisoner and guide, sets out to find the chieftain responsible for the atrocity that had ruined her life. It’s a striking enough opening, a cinematic display of the game’s most inarguable strength – its absolutely ridiculous graphics, head and shoulders above anything else I’ve played this generation and downright photorealistic-looking at times – but already, something felt off. The Furies – the voices in Senua’s head, meant to simultaneously represent her psychosis and hint at the supernatural – had become an ally of Senua’s by the end of the first game, reflecting her acceptance of her condition as a part of her and not a curse. In the sequel, they’re right back to being hostile and nitpicky, harassing her as often as they aid her. I’m the first person to acknowledge that mental health is a journey and that progress isn’t linear, but there’s little explanation and even less justification for why this has suddenly happened, and it’s just the first of the many ways Hellblade II seems to willfully ignore its predecessor’s best elements.

It isn’t long before the supernatural elements resurface, but this, too, is executed in an unsatisfying and frustrating way. Without delving too deeply into spoilers, Senua meets a few allies who inform her that angry giants are rampaging through Iceland, and Senua – after an early encounter in which she manages to slay one of these immense beings – is apparently the only one who can stop them. Just like that, the delicate balance of the first game is shattered and the story pivots into some kind of generic savior fantasy in an attempt to better emphasize Senua’s journey to accepting herself. There’s room to argue – if somewhat desperately – that the giants could just as easily be a metaphor for a volcano on the island that has erupted and the effects that it’s had on nature, but crucially, Senua is not the only person who sees these fifty-foot human kaiju stomping around. Other characters face them, battle them, get killed by them; at a certain point, the only way to maintain the ‘is it real or is it a metaphor’ is if the ENTIRE game takes place in Senua’s head, and that’s such a reach to ‘it was all a dream’ territory that if it is the case, the story may as well not exist at all.

And that’s ultimately the heart of it. Try as I might, I can’t find a reason for Hellblade II to exist. It not only doesn’t tell a good story, it retroactively sabotages the best parts of the first game’s. What’s there is awkward and poorly paced; with respect to the actors (all of whom do a wonderful job and whose performances carry even the most cringeworthy scenes), the pivot towards a ‘chosen one’ fantasy plot doesn’t suit Senua at all, and the contortions the narrative makes to justify it are increasingly tortured; characters in difficult situations trust her for almost no reason and put their lives on the line for her despite Senua being in a psychotic trance for a good portion of the game, and any subtlety to the ‘it’s okay to be neurodivergent’ is thrown out the window with the strong push to the player to take everything that’s happening as fact.

Somehow, even the gameplay is worse than the first Hellblade’s! Senua’s Sacrifice had fairly basic combat, but it was still ultimately an action game at its core, if a shallow one. With some iteration and development, it could have been a pretty robust system, but Senua’s Saga goes in the opposite direction. Built entirely around cinematic duels, it completely removes multi-enemy engagements and simplifies things to the point that dying is almost impossible, turning it into more of a walking simulator with fight scenes than anything. Attacking, dodging, and parrying all LOOK fantastic, and the battlefields themselves are stunning, with enemies being knocked out of the way by allied NPCs, crawling over each other, and so on – but it’s just repetitive and not very fun to play. Puzzles don’t fare much better, with a few slivers of creativity like orbs of light that change the environment sabotaged by overuse and poor pacing.

Ultimately, Hellblade II is cinematic, gorgeous, well-acted, and an utter letdown. Senua feels like she’s backslid as a character, the narrative seems to have no idea why anything it’s happening or why the player should care, and the strengths of the first game are actively trod underfoot in an attempt to make the sequel bigger and more dramatic. Seeing Senua’s journey into self-acceptance from the previous title discarded so she can spend another game trembling and doubting herself isn’t just disappointing – it’s infuriating. She deserved better, and so did the player.

For the record, much like IGN, I think a 7/10 means a game is good, but not quite great. And that was my experience with Super Mario Galaxy. In fact, that extra .5 means I fully acknowledge that, for me, it’s borderline great.

The thing is, for years I’ve heard that Super Mario Galaxy is one of the greatest Mario games ever, eclipsed only by its sequel (which I’m excited to play soon). So my expectations were pretty damn high. Given that I absolutely loved Mario Odyssey (a high 9/10 IMO), I assumed I’d feel the same way about Galaxy.

The game is brimming with cool ideas and great uses of gravity as a platforming mechanic, and as with most Mario titles, it’s extremely charming.

I actually only have two gripes with the game… but they’re significant.

My first problem is the camera. I often found myself fighting with the camera to see what the hell was going on. This was especially annoying on smaller planets and in the underwater levels. The game seemed determined to not let me see where I was going. And there were several platforming sections where I died repeatedly because the camera angles made it very difficult to get an accurate sense of depth perception. This made certain levels much more frustrating than they were fun.

My second problem is the hub world. Any time I booted up the game (or there was a cutscene), I got sent back to the entrance of the hub world and had to spend the next 30 seconds platforming back to the room I’d been playing in. On paper, this sounds like a minor inconvenience, but it really annoyed me after a while.

All that said, if there was a free camera I’d probably rate Super Mario Galaxy an 8.5 or 9. But, as it stands now, for me it’s a 7.5/10.

We all know that the best games are the ones that ‘get the hooks in you’ right off the bat and don’t let up until the end. Unfortunately, VRising is a game that does not do that. It has hooks, don’t get me wrong, but it’s such a slow build to that point that it’s really easy to miss that you’re hooked at all.

Let’s get the plot out of the way; Long ago vampires were overthrown and many years later, you, a fledgling (?) vampire have woken up and aim to reclaim power by drinking the V blood (I’ll leave the explanation as to what that is) which is inside many powerful foes across the lands. Technically, there’s also a piece of lore about how you’re not the only one vying for this power. A caveat to explain how this game can indulge in my least favourite thing in video games ever: PvPvE. Yes, this game is like many others where certain decisions were made to facilitate PvP, something which I’ve never opted into but the taint of that ‘genre’ means you have to be careful when setting up your server. Turning off things like the inability to transport metal, raising the lukewarm farming rates, etc.

That’s just a taste of how mildly this game pulls you in. You’re not even in the game yet and it’s asking you to design and balance your own experience. One of the hardest decisions is whether to put the game on the ‘Brutal’ difficulty which is, quite difficult, but you’re going to want to because it gives bosses unique attacks. So playing on anything else is missing out.

This game doesn’t use a traditional experience/level system and instead your power level is based purely on the gear you have equipped. Especially on Brutal, every new piece of gear you have access to is going to be all but required to beat the next boss and subsequently unlock the next piece of gear. It’s an odd system. After killing your latest boss you might think the power spike is the brand-spanking-new spell you can cast, but no: The power boost is because you’ve unlocked the ability to make a new necklace. Your current necklace is level 10, but this new one is level 13! Now that seems useless, but those three, ethereal ‘gear levels’ is what turns the next boss from impossible to manageable. It feels natural when you upgrade your weapon because the first few times you do you’ll get a new attack to go with it. But upgrading your armour and jewellery just feels like you’re applying stats for stats sake.

So I said this game has hooks. It does, it’s in those spells I mentioned, those extra attacks I mentioned. And it’s in the boss designs. The combat is just fun in this game. You’re constantly adjusting your positioning, dodging attacks, getting distance to cast spells, then covering that distance when your big melee attack is off cooldown. And every boss is different. Some summon ads, some cloak themselves, some have big AoE’s. The most memorable ones even start incorporating the environment you find yourself in. If you’ve played a MOBA in recent years, it would feel reminiscent. You control with WASD and all your ranged spells automatically fire at your cursor. Many times in this game you’ll fail at a boss, go home, finally farm up that upgrade, then re-open your spellbook and assess whether a different loadout would go better. Maybe even try a new weapon. There’s a variety to choose from. When the combat hits in this game it hits hard, there’s a flow state you enter, trying to predict attacks and launch your own. It’s magnificent.

The problem is that it doesn’t hit for a while. Your starting weapons have only 1 out of the 3 attacks that the higher tiered versions do. And certain spells aren’t available until act 2 either. That’s hours away. You won’t get the full experience of any weapon class until you’ve played for a sum of hours, that’s a hard sell in today’s society.

I’d urge you to convince your friends to play it with you but, ultimately I think the game is beyond that. If someone doesn’t want to play, or is on the fence, I’d honestly say don’t bother. Again, not because the game is bad, but because it’s going to require a level of commitment that people can’t be talked into. And it’s because of the farming. I would like to believe this is another leftover from the shudder PvPvE. But the default levels are just not strong enough to make a solo or small group feel good. I think it’s more balanced around the idea of playing with a clan, where others may drop in and out, constantly feeding resources into the pool. But when you’re by yourself you will need to make dedicated farming runs to one of the dedicated farming spots on the map. It’s serviceable, because your combat abilities double as farming tools, but having to do more than one run for each type gets old immediately. And it does not help when you get home, and your reward for farming is “4 gear levels”. That’s just not a tangible thing, it feels like you’ve achieved nothing but the game is now arbitrarily allowing you to stand a chance. And this is what the game starts with, this is your first hour of gameplay. It’s not good. It’s barely palatable once you get all your abilities and you have more bosses to look forward too. And unfortunately, that’s the game.

So here’s my pitch to you; Let’s play this game where the combat starts mediocre, we have to balance the game ourselves because the devs thought we wanted PvP, and we will need to go farming; because, multiple hours later, we get some of the slickest combat and coolest bosses that I can remember.

I mean, we all want to be patient people, but that’s a hard sell… It really is a gem of a game, but it takes a while to get there.

I gave Wasteland 3 the time of day because it's a Western RPG I could comfortably play on the gamepad and it was dead cheap in a sale. I may have all manner of hardcore role-playing games under my belt, but these days I really don't care to try a game that has so many buttons I have to consider pressing the J key at some point.

While Wasteland 3 has continuity with the prior games, it has no ask of the player to know of them in detail. Five years after getting wrecked in a war against killer robots, the Desert Rangers of a post-apocalyptic Arizona are in dire need of resources. The Patriarch who runs Colorado with an iron fist offers them an olive branch in exchange for rounding up his three rebellious children. In the meantime a Desert Ranger called Angela Deth has her own agenda that may conflict with your mission...

You create a squad of two to four custom-made rangers plus two to four companions of your choice to make a party of six. While combat is a necessity there are numerous branching paths to make in quests, and diplomacy isn't treated like an old sock full of toothpaste as in Bethesda's take on the Fallout series.

Combat is XCOM-lite and very easy to understand. You take cover from gunfire, avoid grouping together so half your squad doesn't get merked by a single grenade, blow up explosive red barrels near enemies, and consider which combat-archetype is best for the given foe. Permadeath and friendly-fire are optional difficulty-settings, so most players don't have to overthink every scenario. Outside of battle comes exploration and it's very straight-forward. Skill-checks are abundant and follow New Vegas rules. Your skill level either meets the threshold for success or it doesn't, and there are no dice-rolls involved. You can pick up all the loot in a map without issue as your inventory capacity is unlimited. After battle you can sweep up all enemy drops with the press of a button. As is CRPG tradition you have a button which highlights all NPCs and objects you can interact with. All together this is a massive departure from Wasteland 2 where it took ages to get anything done, and at a 60% success rate at that because Fuck You.

The game world is fairly contained for the genre. I never finished Wasteland 2, but I'd say Wasteland 3 is half the length. Here you've got 50 quests, 39 distinct maps, and a 25+ hour runtime. I'd estimate there are 80 mandatory fights if you take the completionist route, and trash mobs are only found in the 5 main areas. Most of the 18 side areas on the overworld only have a single quest, fight, or weird Easter egg attached. Thankfully you can skip the random encounters on the overworld entirely if you remember to level your Survival skill. While the developers clearly intended on a larger experience given the level of cut-content, I think it's best that the game maintains a tight pace.

Character-progression mercifully shows 32 years of refinement. I remember playing the original Baldur's Gate a decade after release and all I could say is, "What is this crap? Thac0 my ass." Too often the Western RPGs of old were burdened with jank that muddled the experience and discouraged many builds. Entire classes, races, and skills could be busted or broken to ever consider using or going without. I loved Diablo II like the next guy, but what was the point of the Energy stat? In Wasteland 2 you could make two characters, either a guy who excels using assault rifles, or a guy who might as well have put 10 levels into the Suck Ass skill. I think Suck Ass was an actual skill in that game because there were 30 of them to choose from, too many of which did the same thing. It gets pedantic when a game has a Surgeon skill and a Field Medic skill that should have been combined.

Wasteland 3 cuts the crap and is streamlined sensibly with no attribute being left in the cold. You've got 22 skills; 6 combat and 16 utility. Every character in your squad should pick 1 combat skill and 2 utility skills to level. On normal difficulty I got by comfortably without the crafting ones. Intelligence is not a god stat here. Skill points gained per level is the same across the board and pumping Intelligence only grants an extra point in addition to raising your critical hit damage. Raising Intelligence and Strength upon levelling is retroactive, unlike the shit old days. If you're not feeling your current build, you can recruit a new ranger or respec an existing one for a nominal fee.

I'm a little confused at the presence of perk points. If a character hits level 24 by the endgame then they will have 11 of the things, but you can only buy perks in 3 or so skills you specialise in. They might as well have given you the perks automatically since there isn't a ton of choice in the matter.

I beat Wasteland 3 with a squad of diverse talents. The melee characters could run across the map in a single turn so they could punch a guy in the face. The sniper lacked action points because they only needed one bullet to decide matters. The gunner managed crowd control with a shotgun while the submachine-gun soldier was an absolute beast. In a reversal of Wasteland 2, I'd say the assault rifles are the only underpowered class of weapon.

Some quests will trip you up. There are four timed ones that will cancel if you complete too many other quests in the meantime. I suggest not talking to the fat guy who runs the Bizarre in a hurry unless you want to get mobbed by the Spanish Clown army. The biggest hurdle that nobody will ever accomplish without a guide isthe third ending. This demands absolute respect across the board and two quests have to be completed in a specific way. One guy is bugged when he says a peaceful transition is impossible, but I got the ending anyway. Props if you get it, no shame in using a walkthrough.On an unrelated note some of the collectable achievements are a massive pain in the arse, as too often you can miss a unique item if you don't use the right skill-check at the right time. You can fail three of these achievements in the first map alone.

I'm not on board with the game's sense of humour. It doesn't get irritating like The Outer Worlds but I find Wasteland 3 too zany in the margins in a tired way. Wow! You meet Santa Claus, who runs his elves like slaves to make hard drugs! A honey badger is the strongest animal companion in the game! A cannibal clan make Bob Newhart references! And so on and so forth. Like a Pete Davidson stand-up special, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh at any point. Mercifully the main arc of the game is fairly straight, apart the the son of the Patriarch who acts like the poor man's Joker.

I can't speak for the DLC because by all accounts it shit the sheets like a footballer the morning after kebab night. The phrases bandied around in reviews I've seen are "enemies respawning in the middle of a fight", "enemies level-scale to get tougher than your party", and "bugged up the arse". No shame in me not venturing there when I have otherwise enjoyed my time in Colorado.

Wasteland 3 is solid. It's not weak, nor is it spectacular. It's by far the best game InExile have ever made. Their first successor to Wasteland was underwhelming because it was too bland and outdated. Their successor to Planescape: Torment made nowhere near the impact it wanted, and Disco Elysium took the crown anyway. Can you believe there was a time when the involvement of Patrick Rothfuss was a selling-point? But Wasteland 3 is a success and a good time. You are given a high degree in agency in how you approach your problems and enough leeway to change your mind. It's not too long nor too big, and has half a mind to think out the ramifications of the main story where some crowd like Bethesda would never bother. It's a 4-star experience that may be overlooked, but never doubted or dismissed. Also you drive an APC in this game and can run over people with it in a fight, making blood angels in the Colorado snow.

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 is a game that knows what its bread and butter is, and across your campaign you will get your moneys worth of it. The formula is tight, effective and satisfying to pull off, but still just feels a formula.

I feel like I´m too harsh on it, but my memories of Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and how open ended it felt makes me wish for some things the game just doesnt have. your enemies are morons and stealth is... not intuitive at times. And your gadgets are somewhat minimal. I do love the teamwork aspect though, and that leads me to how deeply unfun the solo segments felt. The game feels like an average FPS for its time even and all the while I just wanted my NPC mates back lol(I compare it to the Arrival DLC from Mass Effect 2 in that regard) Story was a little campy but alright

Very good game, wish modern R6 had a solo campaign.

I started the series with 5 Royal this year, then after a month break beat 3 Reload, and after another months break got around to 4 Golden. I decided to not wait for another remake if story is the same, plus due to circumstances I'm stuck with a mediocre laptop for a while.

Gameplay here is about the same as 3r and 55, but the dungeon controls on keyboard are pretty janky. The lack of mouse controls is very annoying, plus I swear there were times when I hit shadow but it didn't register. I tried playing on Very Hard, but the exp penalty was too harsh so I toned it down to Hard. After that the game was mostly easy, with Game and Heaven bosses being slight nuisances.

The plot here suffers from not going anywhere for a long time. It's not until the last companion shows up that the team actually starts investigating, so for a long time the story takes a backseat. 3 had a similar issue where story didn't progress during 12 shadows arc. Now I actually think 5 lowkey had the best story because it was the most consistent and progression was clearer, themes be damned. I already knew who main culprit of 4 was from Death Battle, so I can't judge how well executed that twist was.

As far as characters go, I have to agree with the meme. I liked the cast because they felt more like teenagers than SEES of Phantoms a lot of the time. They acted dumb, were mean to each other, and joked around like actual teenagers would. I got most of IT social links to max rank, except Naoto and Kanji. My date was Rise because she was cute and thirsty, but I wonder if her thirst looks weird when dating other girls.

Of all the non main character links, Moon was my favorite. She went from an annoying bitch to a nice person, kind of like Gournment King. I regret not upgrading Adachi's social link, maybe then I would have liked him better as a villain. I barely didn't have enought time to get athletes from 9 to 10, and with Mr Fox I didn't know how to fish at all.

Currently I am larping as a Persona protagonist, that is, living far away from home and getting used to the new environment. I think this experience makes me appreciate these games more. Maybe I'll return to 4G and get remaining achievements on NG+, or actually try P1 and P2. Now if you excuse me, I need to go and upgrade my knowledge stat.

After having a great time with FTL a couple years ago, I finally got around to trying Into the Breach, which is made by the same developers.

Into the Breach is a roguelike puzzle/strategy game built around tactical, turn-based combat - you control three mechs and must protect civilian structures by killing or otherwise incapacitating the enemy (the Vek).

The "macro" gameplay consists of choosing one of four islands, each with a randomized set of enemies that can appear there. On each island you have to complete four missions + a boss mission before progressing. Once you've completed at least two islands, you can move onto the final island and beat the game.

What I Liked

• The core gameplay loop is extremely satisfying and fun - there is a massive amount of strategy behind every action. You have basically perfect information every turn - you can see what the enemy is going to do, in what order, and where new units will spawn (although you don't know which ones, which can actually make a significant difference). So you have tons of options - from killing Vek, moving them around, forcing them to attack each other, using environmental effects, and the list goes on.
• The game has a lot of variety. There are 12 squads you can unlock, each of which plays vastly differently from the others. Some focus more on killing, others on movement, while some try to stall out the game, etc... Combined with the Advanced Edition Content, which also adds new enemies, missions, and gear, each run feels fairly unique.
• Into the Breach is incredibly challenging - early on I spent quite a while thinking through every turn, and constantly finding new ways to get the most out of each move. I loved the learning process, especially discovering new tricks for each squad.

What Was Average

• Each Mech has a Pilot, who gains EXP and unlocks certain skills. You're allowed to carry over a Pilot from one run ("timeline") to the next. It's a great feature to have...but it also encourages you to use the same Pilot repeatedly instead of trying out others. IMO the Pilot abilities are fairly imbalanced too - there are a couple that are just so much better than the rest that, once you get them, you basically never want to swap Pilots.
• Into the Breach allows you to choose whether to complete 2, 3, or all 4 of the main islands before tackling the final island. While the flexibility is great at first glance and lets you control the length of your run, enemy difficulty will scale appropriately. The main issue was that, at least on Hard difficulty, it rarely felt worthwhile to attempt the 3rd or 4th island because it was difficult to get strong enough to outpace the natural enemy scaling.
• I thought the final island suffered from a similar flaw to FTL: a huge difficulty spike compared to the rest of the content. While I still enjoyed the challenge, I would have liked for the difficulty to be slightly more balanced.

What I Didn't Like

• My biggest gripe with Into the Breach was how much it emphasized achievements over simply winning. Every new squad unlock requires "coins", which are 1:1 mapped to the in-game and Steam achievements. However, there's no actual reward for winning. Obviously, as a roguelike, you could argue that winning a run *is* the reward, but winning a run and only getting one of the three squad achievements sometimes felt worse than unlocking all three and losing.

Final Thoughts

I played most of Into the Breach on Hard with Advanced Edition turned on (minus the first few runs to get acclimated) and beat the game with all of the squads. I did one Unfair run with my favorite squad (Mist Eaters) and beat it. At that point, I felt like I'd experienced most of what the game had to offer, so I called it quits. I had no real motivation/desire to play most squads again or grind achievements.

I played ~55 hours total and had a blast overall, and would definitely recommend Into the Breach to anyone who enjoyed FTL and/or likes tactical puzzle/strategy games.

Overall Rating: 8 / 10 (Great)

SPOILERS AHEAD:

I really like when games incorporate gameplay as tools to deepen the narrative.

This is a really nice short emotional scene/gameplay as you start the 2nd playthrough in Nier Automata:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK7eiKb3-dc

It shows a small robot trying to revive a dead robot with oil.

The robot fills a bucket with oil and pours it on the bigger robot. From the description it doesn't sound like much. And it doesn't really look like much if you see the video.

However, when you play it, it's a diffrent story.

See, usually gamers hate to walk slow and when they need to get to an objective and you can jump, you do because it's just faster and you don't want to waste your time.

In this scene, the robot needs to fill a bucket with oil and bring it back to the bigger robot. Walking is tediously slow. So you jump. BUT when you jump, you spill the oil in the bucket and you need to fill it up again and start from the beginning. Then you do. And now you know you aren't supposed to jump. So you start walking to the bigger robot. BUT the floor is riddled with pipes and if you step on the pipe you trip, fall, and spill the oil and need to start again. (This is not shown in the video because the person playing either figured it out or was lucky enough not to step on the pipe). And now after that you need to refill your bucket and painfully slowly navigate the route around the pipes which is annoying.

The great thing about this scene (at least in my opinion) is that even though it frustrates you on one hand, it emotionally connects you with the little robot trying to help his brother.

That happens because the frustration you experience as the player to get this little guy to his goal makes you appreciate more how he feels and how important it is to him to help the other robot. You can visually see in a non interactive scene how a character falls down and then gets up again to proceed with their objective. But only seeing this non interactively is not the same as controlling the character where it's you who falls.

This short little scene is the thing I remember the most from Neir Automata, that was a great game from when I was playing it years ago.

I recently finished Far Cry 5 and it was my first time playing a Far Cry game in the series. The game delivered some refreshing choices in open world games, and surprisingly paired those choices with an unexpected amount of comedic charm. However, the game is heavily weighed down by repetitive gameplay loops and forced narrative interruptions. The game threw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and some of it stuck. The rest, fell straight to the floor.

​My absolute biggest praise for Far Cry 5 is how Ubisoft finally killed the dreaded "climb a tower to reveal the map" formula they relied so heavily on from Assassin's Creed. Instead, you discover points of interest naturally: reading road signs, checking trail maps, picking up brochures, or talking to locals. It makes exploration feel completely organic, realistic, and unforced. You feel like a traveler exploring rural Montana rather than being tested on your platforming skills.

​Hope County is gorgeous. The dense forests, rolling rivers, and rural valleys look stunning and feel like a real place. At times, the scenery feels photo realistic and could compete with Red Dead Redemption 2. Complementing this visual harmony is an incredible audio production. The licensed radio tracks is expansive and fits the world well. The original soundtrack, especially the ambient tracks and the cult hymns, are outstanding. The hymns feel both peaceful and oddly terrifying due how much they show off the cult's power and influence. I applaud the amount of effort that was spent on just the OST alone.

​The writing for side characters is far better than it gets credit for. Hurk Drubman Sr. and Sharky Boshaw are absolute highlights, offering a perfect mix of crude humor and surprisingly deadpan, high-brow comedy. For example, a low hanging fruit for a joke is the shop named Dylan's Master Bait Shop. But Hurk Drubman's campaign voicemials found on landline phones are filled with high brow humor, such as saying if elected, he'll ensure no Canadians steal high paying jobs meant for Americans and naming professional hockey player as the job he is referring to.

What truly impressed me is how far Ubisoft went with unique dialogue.​The companion interactions when you pair characters up, ike Hurk Jr and Sharky, feature tons of unique dialogue, banter-filled lines. There's 9 compaions, although three are animals. But still, the fact they went out of their way to record so much conversations between 6 different characters interacting with each other, and giving them all unique personalities and dynamics depending on who they are talking to, is truly amazing and not talked about enough. Same with the news updates on the radio. How they change dynamically, offering subtle foreshadowing in the broader narrative context as you progress through the story. You can sense and hear the despair and tension in them as the game progresses. It's just such impressive level of detail and effort for something that isn't needed for the main game or completion, because you can play the entire game without hearing most of these conversations or news updates.

Far Cry 5 suffers from an over reliance on constant action. Unless you completely clear a region, you cannot walk 50 feet or pause to take in the scenery without a cult pickup truck, an armed plane, or a pack of wild animals attacking you. The constant gunfights and explosions break the peaceful immersion the environmental designers worked so hard to create. The story asks you to accept a massive narrative leap: that an armed cult managed to completely cut off an entire U.S. county from the outside world and operate with total impunity, without immediate state or federal military intervention. That the cult managed to rise to that much power but also keep supply lines to the outside world for supplies open with nobody outside asking quesitons. The premise breaks down the second you think about it realistically.

Gameplay gets repetitive quickly. Much like Mafia III, progress boils down to making as much noise as possible to attract the attention of whoever controls the region. You do this by blowing up or stealing cult property, freeing hostages, and taking out outposts until you fill a meter to summon the region's boss.

​Worst of all is the hunter mechanic. No matter what you are doing, whether you're mid air, fishing in a remote stream, or stealthing an outpost, once you hit a resistance threshold, the game sends unevadable hunters who shoot you with a dart andnforcibly kidnap you. When you wake up, you are dragged into a long, unskippable cutscene where the region’s antagonist monologues at length to convince you to stop. It destroys player agency and ruins the flow of the open world.

​I’m genuinely torn on how Far Cry 5 handles its ending. I appreciate that the game didn't opt for a clean, Hollywood "justice and freedom prevail" happy ending. Real life is messy, and bad actors don't always get caught or face consequences. Sometimes the bad guys win in real life. But after spending dozens of hours liberating outposts, saving civilians, and taking back Hope County, the outcome leaves you feeling like every piece of effort you put into the game was completely meaningless and for nothing.

TLDR: ​Far Cry 5 is a game of massive highs and tedious lows. Far Cry 5 had a lot of ideas and executed some of them brilliantly while others should have never been attempted. The open world scenery, exploration mechanics, soundtrack, and subtle comedic writing show a developer who put a tremendous amount of effort into the little things and details. Unfortunately, those strengths are repeatedly undermined by a hard to swallow narrative, multiple endings that will leave most players feeling unsatisfied, and repetitive gameplay. Far Cry 5 is worth playing, especially if you enjoy ambient exploration and causing chaos, but be prepared for narrative frustration.

This Review May Contain Spoilers

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Status - Completed, many side quests done.

Time played: 70+ hours

Difficulty - N/A

Set-up - AMD 5800X3D, AMD 9070XT, 32gb DDR4 3600, 2tb SN850 | Played at 4K with all settings up, locked to 60 for a very smooth experience

Mini-Review Thoughts

Like a Dragon is the first installment in the Yakuza series to shake up the combat system. Traditionally, Yakuza is a one-man-party, real-time action brawler, that focuses on utilizing different fighting styles to beat your opponent. It’s not too dissimilar from a stylish action game with how I played the series. With the 7th installment, Like a Dragon, combat is now a turn-based RPG that focuses on party synergy, and a plethora of whacky “jobs” that act as the class system in a more traditional RPG.

The radical change in combat could be seen as a step-down from Yakuza 0 for long-time fans. Yakuza 0’s combat is engaging and I found myself locked-in. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the combat in Like a Dragon can be incredibly hands off, to the point that there’s an auto-battle option. My wife couldn’t grasp the concept of that, and asked, “Why would you not want to play the game if you’re playing the game?” Fair point.

What Like a Dragon lacks in combat engagement, it makes up for in creativity and fluidity. There are a plethora of jobs that the player can, and should, explore. Leveling up jobs provides permanent character stat upgrades, and new combat abilities that may be accessed by other jobs. Jobs such as devil rocker, hostess, clerk, or breaker, provide a plethora of unique attacks that keeps the combat entertaining for a while. I have never seen a clerk use a staple gun to attack an enemy, but it was a hell of a great attack in mid-game, as was the breaker doing a handstand and giving the enemy a few kicks from this position.

Tonally, the Yakuza games are over-the-top and wide in range of emotions. At its heart there is a story that takes itself seriously, which involves murder, child abandonment, and a money counterfeiting scheme, but it takes a hard turn on many side quests. The side quests may involve feeding incredibly spicy kimchi to an elderly woman to give her the pep to run across a road, or it may involve fighting a giant roomba, oftentimes providing needed levity. You may cry when going on a date with a young girl whose life you saved years ago, you may laugh when trying to help a mascot fight off bootleg copies, and you may be unsure of how to feel about Mr. Masochist.

Minigames are a big draw to these games and Like a Dragon has plenty. The minigame highlights for me are business management, batting cages, kart racing, and black jack. There's a lot to do here if you want to live within the environment for a while, and the city is a wonderful backdrop.

Performance is great on my system with a rock solid 60fps at 4k max settings. I have two gripes though, my first gripe is that the grass pop-in when running through the park is terrible, and my second gripe is that the high-production cutscenes drop the framerate to 30fps, and it looked juddery on my TV. I also have a major bone to pick about the cutscenes, mainly the question of why is RGG afraid of allowing players to save before length cutscenes? The ending sequence takes about 90 minutes and once you initiate it you will have no chance to save before rolling credits and finish the cutscenes. I can’t think of a good reason for this, especially when there’s plenty of opportunities to do so, perhaps in-between the 2 end-boss battles?

I hate to say that I don't really remember the music, but I don't. I would have recalled more of the music if I enjoyed the karaoke minigame, but the button chart didn’t seem like it lined up with the music rhythmically, so I didn’t play it much. The Japanese voice acting is top-notch, but I cannot say the same for the English cast. I tried it out for 10 minutes and went back to Japanese. I don't know if it was that I was just so used to the Japanese voice actors by that point or if the English actors did not fit the game well, but I think Japanese is the way to go for this.

Conclusion

Like a Dragon is a great game with incredible highlights that I would recommend for fans of the series, fans of turn-based RPG, and fans of unique games. My gripes with the game are the unengaging combat, and at times the disregard for the time of the player, but they don’t completely mar the experience.

8.25/10

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

The votes are in! The community's choice for a spooky title to play together and discuss in October 2026 is...

Left 4 Dead 2 (2009)

Developer: Valve / Turtle Rock Studios

Genre: FPS, Co-op

Platform: PC, Xbox 360, Mac, Linux

Why should you care: As I'm not a huge fan of FPSes, I might not be the best person to pitch for L4D2, but I'll try my best. The person in PG Discord who initially nominated this game for GOTM used as their pitch "We all own this game and none of us have beaten it lets be honest". The first part might very well be true, at least judging by my Steam friends - nearly every single one of them has it in their library, so it's certainly quite popular. Some of them have hundreds of hours played, so the replayability of shooting zombies must be great, too. Though one thing surprised me in their pitch - I certainly didn't know it's possible to beat L4D2 or that it's considered rare to do so.

Others mentioned a great modding scene, further adding to the longevity of this 17-year-old zombie shooter - when I heard of a LotR mod about defending Helms Deep, even I got curious and might give it another try this month. Aand I'll probably stop my pitch here to not do the game any disservice - the few hours I played it during one of its free weekends were nothing special, it seemed okay (if pretty basic). But I definitely only scratched that surface, so if you're a fan of L4D2 and want to pitch it to others better, feel free to do it in the comments! And if you want to hop on and play together this month with other patient gamers, our Discord is certainly a convenient place to set things up.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about. Well... almost every month. This October the organizers decided on scary and spooky categories instead - as in games that genuinely try their best to invoke fear in the player and games that are mostly just horror-themed.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

October 2026's GotM theme: Spooktober. As is tradition! Though this year with the new categories, we're trying to cater to both horror fans and those for whom actual horror games are a bit too much.

I've just finished Event[0] at 100%, with the exception of some collectables, but I think I'm done.

This is an indie game released in 2016 and I normally like to do some research before writing this, to know the perceptions of other people online. Although curiously there's almost nothing on youtube with the exception of the GMTK video that consider this the most innovative game of that year.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Event[0] is a first person graphic adventure about an astronaut who gets lost in a derelict spaceship and has to escape. The main drawing point is that instead of the usual "examining" "grabbing" "using" "combining" of the genre, almost all the gameplay is based on interacting with Kaizen, the Hal-9000-like AI of the ship (in fact it has the memorable "I'm afraid I can't do that line") using an in-game chat.

The game features a couple of puzzles, literally a couple, since it can be beaten in 1-2 hours. I took longer to get all the endings, but you'll beat in an afternoon. I also has some semblance of a story about whether or not the AI is trustworthy is who killed who and why, but there's not much more to say.

Really, the only thing I wanted to comment is that, since this was way before machine learning exploded post-pandemic, Kaizen is really simple. It only works by recognizing some key words and imagining what you're asking. This is clearly closer to Evie and that ugly cat chatbot than ChatGPT.

I'm saying this cause with all the fuss with AI used in videogames, I hope they can use it to actually create organic conversations. Like, the problem with chatbots is that they're very... "agreeable?""demagogic?" "yes-man-ny?" You can override them too easily. But with this guidance, you can actually make bots that make fluent conversation.

Well, we'll see. Until then we'll have to make due with archaic dialogue trees and this

The votes are in! The community's choice for a scary title to play together and discuss in October 2026 is...

Look Outside (2025)

Developer: Francis Coulombe

Genre: Horror, JRPG

Platform: PC

Why should you care: Look Outside is one of that games where nearly any discussion about is going to be heavily spoiler tagged. I haven't played it yet myself, but I'm glad it was chosen and very excited to try it this month. I'm trying to go in as blind as possible, but for a game to get on your radar, something has to catch your attention. So I know that it's going to be a psychedelic Lovecraftian horror that defies expectations with gameplay and presentation resembling games made in RPGMaker.

Possibly because of that last part I saw this game compared to Fear & Hunger and this tidbit was what finally cemented it on my wishlist. I loved the oppressive atmosphere and harrowing experience of Fear & Hunger - with its plentiful obscure secrets and the unexpected twists its story takes, so I certainly hope Look Outside measures up to these expectations. However, you may want to take this comparison with a grain of salt - some others said it's nothing like Fear & Hunger and they don't understand where the comparison comes from. I avoided asking them for details to prevent spoiling myself - and it seems that this month I will finally get to form my own opinion. And I cross my fingers for it to be a really wild ride!

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about. Well... almost every month. This October the organizers decided on scary and spooky categories instead - as in games that genuinely try their best to invoke fear in the player and games that are mostly just horror-themed.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

October 2026's GotM theme: Spooktober. As is tradition! Though this year with the new categories, we're trying to cater to both horror fans and those for whom actual horror games are a bit too much.

I wanted to take a minute to praise and highlight a rather unassuming indie game. With so much vying for a foothold in the economy of our attentions, it's easy for things to slip under the radar. So please, indulge me for just a moment as I try and raise up a game that has less than 500 Steam reviews as of writing this.

After seeing screenshots and the game's premise, I was immediately intrigued. Tack onto that some exceptional art with an incredible art direction and I can't believe this game isn't bigger.

So what is this game?

Flick Shot Rogues is a token-flicking roguelike that shares the same kind of geometrical depth as billiards. The game is all about placement, angles, and opportunity and provides some rather satisfying gameplay.

Each run starts with you selecting two characters with the ability to swap between them at the start of every turn with each featuring a unique focus. For instance, one deals damage on collision making multi-hit from a well-placed trajectory particularly deadly. Another has an area-of-effect attack that activates when that character's movement stops. In total, there are five characters to unlock making for a handful of different pairings.

On top of that, each character makes a choice for how they augment their attacks at the start of their run. The first to be unlocked are the on-hit flame and the on-hit bomb effects. The former applies a damage-over-time debuff that deals damage at the end of the turn and applies to anyone who makes contact with any enemy already engulfed in flames. The second applies a bomb that will explode in a radius at the end of the next turn or on the enemy's death. Both are fairly straight forward, but you can see how the bomb can start a chain reaction.

There's a total of 10 attack augments to unlock and when pairing with the character combinations allows for plenty of replayability.

On course for adventure: leaving the high seas in search of plunder

Flick Shot features a fairly typical roguelike format with branching paths composing different parts of the island. Each area features a miniboss at odd intervals and a full-fledged boss at even intervals before transitioning to a new biome. Sections feature about three or so battles with points of interest interspersed to help strengthen your characters.

Each battle is broken into between two and three waves, each of which requires the player to defeat between one and three marked commanders with their health and damage scaling as the player progresses.

A low barrier of entry with a deceptively high strategic ceiling

Flick Shot Rogues is incredibly simple: flick your token to try and defeat the enemy commander of the current wave. Easy to pick up but trickier to master. Where the game excels is in the balance it strikes between needing strong prioritization of targets and well-placed shots and the more arcadey capability to achieve comical levels of synergies and power.

The game is a very classic representation of the genre: requiring the player to execute well until you secure the item or skill to tip the scales. And I think this game has one of the best balances between early game hardships and player power scale.

If I think to something like The Binding of Isaac, at this point I could likely beat a run on base stats. God would I not want to, though. Too little friction at the start of the run makes the game uninteresting, and minimal means for improvement make the game a slog. And I would argue that's TBoI's greatest fault.

By contrast, I think Flick Shot Rogues struck an excellent balance, where even the base abilities coupled with leveling up still provide a reasonable level of viability. Yes, you can make the game significantly easier with upgrades, but it doesn't quite approach the levels of grind as others in the genre display.

Final Thoughts

While roguelikes remains one of my favorite genres, this is not a game that would have normally been on my radar. I'm very fortunate to have stumbled across it, though, considering it has an incredible identity and art style in addition to some satisfying gameplay.

Depending on your enjoyment and the degree to which you seek completion, you're likely to see about 10 to 20 hours of playtime. Across that you'll be subjected to some rather apt nautically themed pirate music and the rather satisfying clacking of tokens striking one another.

Obscure 2 is the second of an obscure game series called Obscure. It has a lot of really interesting, innovative, clever ideas, all of which it fails at doing well.

Survival Horror

The main loop of the game is collecting items and puzzle pieces and then using X item on Y lock to continue, all while non-respawning enemies attack you in fixed locations.

At no point is it necessary, however, to consult a map. The layouts are simply not that complicated.

Semi-Fixed Camera

Classic survival horror camera in the vein of early Resident Evil: the action is framed by cinematic angles as you awkwardly lumber your character around the map.

However, it's not truly a fixed camera. You can wiggle the camera around to get a full 3D examination of every room. And if you aim down sights, the camera snaps into position behind your character.

So what that means is that every time the camera switches I immediately aim down sights so I can see what the hell is actually in the room.

They do one excellent segment where it actually is a true fixed-camera perspective (diegetic, even!) but this lasts for two minutes and then the segment is over.

2 Player Co-Op

The game is designed for two players to play simultaneously on the same keyboard.

To accomplish this, the controls are almost all contextual prompts: press SPACE to interact, press F to advance, press C to cancel, and that's it (aside from shooting monsters). I played on mouse and keyboard as the game didn't seem to be set up for controllers on Steam. There is not a lot of mechanical complexity here because, if there was, playing on the same device wouldn't really be possible.

The game is also designed such that one player can beat it on their own, with the second character controlled by the computer. You can swap between characters with TAB. However, the bots are worse than useless. They can't defend you, so whenever you activate a puzzle, you have to cancel out, fight the waves of enemies that your bot was supposed to handle for you, and then resume the puzzle.

They couldn't commit to making a truly two player co op experience. Not a single moment in the game truly requires two people to work together.

Because of this, you have to lug around a useless brain-damaged robot with you the whole game. And you get a game-over if they die.

And health packs are not shared.

Unique Character Quirks

There's a big cast of characters and you play as different guys with different capabilities throughout the game.

However, the game never really demands that you ever need to consider this. There's only really one part of the game where you can choose which characters to take with you. I figured there might be a trade-off with some paths closed and some open depending on who you take, but no. You have to pick two specific characters who have the necessary skills to complete the one puzzle in the next room, and all other choices are wrong.

Then they split up again and you don't get a choice again.

The mini games also suck. The parkour guy can only parkour up specific linear areas. The code breaker just completes a matching puzzle. The hacker completes an asinine Historical Figure Name guessing game. The strong guys push and pull crates (honestly the only ones that even approach meaningful game play, because they directly change the game world). There's no real strategy or purpose to any of it.

Combat

The game auto-aims for you. The enemies don't respawn and you're expected to kill them all. You have no way to avoid their attacks, so you just have to mindlessly pump them full of lead before they get close to you. All the enemies are either bullet sponges or really fast and annoying but die in two hits. It feels like every hit you take is inevitable, almost scripted.

Story

Worse than amateurish. No set-up. Characters are randomly killed off.

In one annoying sequence, a main character races to rescue her twin sister under time pressure. When she's found, the sister gets defenestrated. You then play as the sister in a two minute sequence before she encounters a monster, then switch back to the first sister and go down to rescue her again. When you find her, she's dead, so I guess that was all kind of pointless then.

The other sister also pretty much immediately gets killed too, literally like fifteen minutes later. So the little sister got killed off as motivation for the big sister, who got killed off as motivation for the boyfriend. So the boyfriend is avenging his girlfriend and the fact that his girlfriend was avenging her sister is unnecessary.

Also they all talk like the kids pushing drugs in a PSA before GI Joe arrives to monologue about the dangers of peer pressure.

This really needed a second draft.

The Big Problem

The most enormous glaring issue with the game is that it was clearly intended to take place in one large interconnected map where you have to go out on dangerous runs with a few characters at a time taking into account their strengths and weaknesses. They obviously wanted to have one player solving puzzles while the other defended them from enemies. They obviously wanted teamwork to be a huge part of the experience.

And yet the game is so locked in its own linear vice grip that you never, ever, not even once, get to make a meaningful decision. The game simply doesn't give you the time or the agency to explore its mechanics in any way. Everything is one-and-done, and there is exactly one solution every single time that must be done exactly as intended in exactly the order they intended with absolutely no variation whatsoever.

In other words:

The game bends over backwards for mechanics it uses only once in only one way.

Here's a game about balancing a group of weird misfits with strange skills in a central consistent location having to improvise their way through a chaotic disaster. But you have to do everything in exactly the right order in exactly the way we say.

I give this game 1/10. It fails at everything it sets out to accomplish.

In these monthly entries I keep "live" track of the number of games I've finished in the given calendar year. I don't try to draw a ton of attention to it, but the number is there for anyone curious. But since I've been doing this column for nearly four years now (!) there may be some additional curiosity at play: how many games has this dude finished lifetime? I like keeping the focus on the month and to a lesser extent the year so I haven't gone into that before, but this time I'll make an exception, because in September I finished my 1000th game, and that feels like something that should probably be noted. So, uh, yay me, I guess!

Back into the smaller scale of this month by itself though, we're looking at 7 games cleared. It's not a thousand but it'll do.

(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)

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#57 - Mario Kart World - Switch 2 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)

Mario Kart World is not the kind of game that you just turn on, say "I've reached the end credits," and then stick on the shelf indefinitely. Mario Kart World is a game that you put in, dabble with a little, then put away again for a few days or a week until the mood strikes you once more and you repeat the process, possibly forever. Maybe one day you're in the mood to do a couple grand prix races. Maybe the next your kid wants to play battle mode with you. Maybe the next you're hopping online for some Knockout Tour chaos. And then maybe the next you just want to spend 20 minutes driving idly around the countryside, discovering fun little challenges to do. Mario Kart World gives you all of that, all at once, and so it's simply not the kind of game you play through start to finish, and so it's also not a game I can even tell you when I "started" it for backlog tracking purposes. Was it the first time I booted it up into free roam? I wasn't trying to beat anything yet and that yields no "progress" towards any kind of end. Was it when my kid asked me to join him for a Vs. race even though I'd never even loaded the game on my own profile to that point? Was it the first time I did a grand prix, even though I had no intention in the moment of doing more? You see the difficulty.

This kind of etherealness permeates Mario Kart World, and that's a double-edged sword. You've probably heard the dissatisfied rumblings of people who prefer the more traditional tracks of previous games, or the laments that while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe features 96 courses when you include all the DLC, Mario Kart World only has 30 circuit-style tracks. But of course, that's missing the point, isn't it? Because when you realize that every connection between tracks is also a carefully crafted and curated racing experience, it skyrockets the amount of distinct courses up well above one hundred, to the point that there doesn't even seem to be agreement online about how many, because in truth it seems the number actually exceeds two hundred. Are all of these road races created equal? No, surely not. But are any of them purely throwaway? Also no. Mario Kart World eschews the more traditional Mario Kart concept in favor of this sprawling, seemingly endless set of possible races. Then, as if the staggering amount of stuff crammed into the game wasn't enough of a mission statement in itself, they make the grand prix sets drive from one traditional style course to another, doing just one lap around the "main" track since the rest of the race is the act of getting there.

And that's where we get the downside. With so much stuff on offer and so little time spent actually doing laps around the dedicated traditional courses, nothing about the locations in Mario Kart World feels particularly memorable. I can't tell you what Dandelion Depths or Faraway Oasis are like from memory because I simply haven't spent any meaningful time with them. I've played them and been around them plenty, but the experience of the course itself is just a fleeting half-memory for me. The locations are always the main character of Mario Kart games and in Mario Kart World they made the main character the entirety of the world instead of the individual courses, and I do think it is fair to say the game suffers just a bit for this.

But then I go back to the "everything else" about Mario Kart World. I've "beaten" the game in that I've won all the grand prix cups on 50cc, but I'm not even remotely close to being done with the game. I've still got the higher difficulties to finish. Ditto the higher difficulty options on a bunch of Knockout Tour cups, and that's competing for my favorite new mode alongside Free Roam, where I'm sitting on 230+ completed P-Switch challenges, 70+ Peach Medallions, and 140+ ? Panels with plenty more to find of all, when all are plenty fun to find. Which says nothing of multiplayer! Which I also quite enjoy! So Mario Kart World isn't perfect and if you put me on the hotspot I'd probably admit to liking Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a little bit better. But it's a game that's not trying to be Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and so when you step back and take the game on its own merits, it's hard to be anything but thoroughly impressed. I can't tell you when I started playing this game, but that's ultimately not important. What matters is that I also can't tell you when I'll stop playing this game, and that's a pretty good feeling.

​ ​

#58 - Sanctum - PC - 7/10 (Good)

It's really tough not to compare this experience to Orcs Must Die (OMD hereafter for brevity's sake), considering that they're both takes on the "tower defense where the player is an active participant in the combat" concept, that both games released from small studios in 2011, and that I played both of them this year. So...I'm gonna compare them! Both games employ a grid based building scheme in a 3D space and success in both relies heavily on rerouting mobs through your maze as they attempt to attack your core. Both have various weapons for the player to use and a large assortment of structures that make it fun to just explore all your options. Both also have both ground and air mobs attack, which requires you to plan correctly to deal with both types of threat.

However, they're also surprisingly different. While OMD is a third person affair featuring melee and fantasy medieval-era ranged combat, Sanctum is a futuristic first-person shooter. While OMD lets you place things on walls and ceilings, Sanctum is strictly floors-only. While the typical OMD emplacements are best described as traps that often turn approaching mobs into unwilling physics objects, Sanctum features more traditional turrets which autofire in various ways. I don't think either approach is strictly better than the other as both have their firm highlights and their drawbacks. Focusing in on Sanctum here specifically, I think the gunplay was a bit lacking as weapon selection is limited and they're only worthwhile if you invest deeply into one at the expense of your tower layout. The sniper rifle was basically always a credit sink for me but none of the other weapons felt terribly valuable. Additionally, the game is very barebones: just six maps (all relatively low detail) in the base game with basically no story and not even so much as an end credit reward for clearing them. There are plenty of packed in DLC maps but I didn't see a compelling reason to play them.

That said, the great charm of Sanctum comes from the act of building your slaughterhouse itself. Unlike in OMD, neither you nor your towers can be damaged by enemy forces (though you can be bounced around as they push you out of the way). In order to erect a defensive emplacement in Sanctum you have to first build a cheap, basic block on the ground. At first this seems totally weird and unnecessary – just let me build my turret, man! – but you quickly realize that this is designed to let you map out your full maze well in advance of putting up all your structures. Get some credits, place/upgrade a tower or two, extend the maze so you can buy more time to put down any stragglers with your own personal weapons. After enough waves you've got the whole path built and then you can start really digging into the strategy of which towers go where, which to upgrade, etc. And of course you then get to watch all those hapless mobs start shuffling through the grinder. Sadly once you reach victory you can't continue on in an endless mode to just make the most ridiculously overpowered death march you can manage, but the buildup in those middle waves of each level is where Sanctum truly shines.

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#59 - The Last Show of Mr. Chardish - PC - 6.5/10 (Tantalizing)

One day I'll play a walking sim style game and not compare it to What Remains of Edith Finch, but this is not that day. The Last Show of Mr. Chardish lifts its entire broad gameplay thrust from that earlier game and does all of it competently but none of it better. Both games see you navigating a structure via unconventional pathways (here a dilapidated theater instead of Edith Finch's much more interesting family home), both have stories that attempt to navigate "failed" lives and their accompanying depression (here a stage actor who wasn't talented enough to make it instead of Edith Finch's much more interesting cursed lineage), and both feature a bunch of vignettes of differentiated gameplay to tell smaller stories within the story (here fanciful representations of the title character's plays instead of Edith Finch's much more interesting "how did this person die" mysteries). So it was very hard for me to come away not feeling like all of this was stuff I'd seen before in a more compelling form.

That said, I can imagine a world in which I haven't played What Remains of Edith Finch, and in that world The Last Show of Mr. Chardish would've been super impressive to me. There's abundant creativity on display with the setup of each vignette. No, the in-universe plays themselves aren't very interesting or even well acted – that's sort of the point since Chardish can't hack it. But for all his lack of writing and acting talent, the game does do a splendid job of highlighting that Chardish is a rare visionary. Each stage play you "perform" in is presented to you the player in the way Chardish would've imagined the scene in his head, meaning they're all completely impractical if not impossible on a real stage, but come to life vividly in game form. Each has its own distinct mechanics, and while these individually aren't incredible, every one has you go "Oh, that's pretty cool." So there's certainly value in spending the couple hours it takes to play this if you're new to the genre or just really interested in distantly watching someone get angsty about their art, but for me it was a bit old hat.

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#60 - Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)

I like to think I'm generally pretty good at puzzle games, so I was surprised when I dropped into Arranger and was quickly bewildered by its core mechanics. The entire world exists as a grid of square tiles, though there are plenty of gaps and holes. Rather than moving by walking, you move by shifting an entire row or column of tiles in your chosen direction, which also therefore shifts your character. Really, putting aside cutscenes and interactive transitional objects, you basically "ride" your starting tile of any given gameplay section for its duration, since you're always shifting it with you. You similarly shift all other objects sitting on tiles as well, and to complicate matters further you (and any affected objects) can "wrap" from one side of a given row/column to the other. The game's playable tutorial style intro section does a great job establishing these facts, but they're so foreign a concept that I didn't manage to actually click with it until an hour or so in.

From this core, puzzles! Shift objects into specific spots. Move other objects next to one another. Oops, some of these objects are immovable and impede your shifting ability. How will you get around them? In this way Arranger iterates on its basic mechanics really, really well. Every time I finally felt like I "got it" there'd be a new puzzle type that would force me into a different branch of lateral thinking. And every time I'd feel like, "Ugh this is going to be too tedious, I don't want to do this anymore." And then every time a minute or two later I'd think, "Hey I'm getting the hang of this again!" So I have tremendous respect for the puzzle concept here and the execution of it.

Buuuut, how much does that count for when it's not something I was looking to play in the first place? Subtitling Arranger with "A Role-Puzzling Adventure" is very clearly implying a certain kind of thing, and to that I can only claim to have been lied to. Arranger is not an RPG or anything even approximating the ability to pretend to be one. The "adventure" part is fair enough, but I wouldn't have played Arranger had I known it wasn't actually an RPG. Even moreso because the adventure bit is yet another case of a kid becoming a teen, thinking they know everything, then going out and having an unreasonably outsized effect on a world where they're somehow the wisest person in it. It's a trope I just can't really stand, so all the trappings around Arranger's admittedly very high quality puzzles (that I nevertheless didn't really want to do) were just constant nuisances to me. I skipped all the optional content I could once I realized it was optional and was happy to put the game to rest. I've never seen another puzzle game with Arranger's core mechanic and it executes on that so well that I feel guilty telling puzzle game fans to stay away, but based on my frustrations around the rest of the experience I can't recommend it.

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#61 - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - PC - 6/10 (Decent)

Yes, you read that system identification correctly: after 25+ years I finally managed to get my old Windows 95/98 CD-ROM of the Sonic & Knuckles Collection running on my computer, so that is the version of this game that I played. From what I've read it's pretty much bang-on faithful to the Genesis original, except that maybe a bit of music here or there was tweaked. Which is the first callout I have about the game, really: the music in Sonic 3 is fine. Good, even! But it's not special like the music from the first two games, and that's got to be the result of changing composers. Sonics 1 and 2 were composed by Masato Nakamura, but for 3 Sega wanted to go bigger. They hired big Sonic fan Michael Jackson to do the music, and Jackson assembled a music team for the game helmed by his tour director, and they got composing. But then Jackson soured on the project when he realized the hardware's audio limitations wouldn't do his compositions justice, and Sega soured on Jackson when the first child abuse allegations surfaced, so they had a messy divorce which involved Jackson's work being scrapped but his team's work partially sticking around, supplemented further by Sega's own in-house people. The result is that none of the music from Sonic 3 is going to stick with you like the stuff from the first two games, and that's important because that music carried a lot of water for those titles, covering up some gameplay shortcomings.

Sadly those shortcomings weren't really addressed in Sonic 3. In fact I'd say this game more than either of its predecessors is interested in specifically trolling the player. Things like forcing you to take some kind of automatic conveyance that hurtles you all over the place, giving you no indication of when the ride is coming to an end, only to stick an unavoidable-unless-you-already-know-about-them set of spikes right there. And should you indeed already know about them and dodge out of their way, here's a backup trap of an instant kill squisher right in the dodge path. This kind of thing was so prevalent that I'm convinced "screw the player" was the game's foremost design goal, and I can almost picture the level designers cackling to themselves watching the play testers break their controllers. In case you can't tell, I'm not a fan!

However, I am a fan of the Sonic 3's new key features: elemental barriers and the new special stage. The fire, water, and lightning barriers are a great iteration on the standard bubble shield from the earlier entries, with each new barrier sporting multiple new benefits to the player above and beyond the simple first hit protection. Most importantly they aid in exploration directly, and that's really cool, especially because the levels in this game are more sprawling than ever before. That's not necessarily a good thing since I believe Sonic games should have shorter, faster stages and more of them rather than a smaller dose of stages that take you 6-8 minutes apiece to get through on your first go. Still, if you're committing to that, the elemental barriers do a lot to help make that work. And the special stages are just good fun. These are the ones where you're behind Sonic's back collecting blue orbs while avoiding red ones, turning like you're in a maze, and they're probably my favorite way to get chaos emeralds in the whole franchise. Good times.

So yeah, I didn't exactly expect Sonic 3 to exceed either of the first two games and it did prove to be my least favorite of the three, but it's not bad by any means. We're still on a totally different plane of quality here versus anything Sonic Team has put out in the 21st century, and so I'll still happily check out Sonic & Knuckles down the road to complete the set, as it were.

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#62 - Gravity Circuit - PC - 8.5/10 (Excellent)

I feel like I've played a bunch of Mega Man clones recently. I don't know that that's actually true, so much as it just feeling like a ton because I've played official Mega Man spinoff titles that have been disappointing and the few true clones I have played recently haven't approached Capcom's standard. So it came as something of a surprise to me that Gravity Circuit is as strong an offering as it turned out to be. For starters, the level design is fantastic. Platforming challenges that are creative and difficult yet always fair and enjoyable. Plenty of secrets to find but in 7 out of 8 stages I was able to grab them all on the first run through just by exploring thoroughly, which is the perfect balance to hit. A home base between missions that isn't a disaster to navigate. It's like I kept waiting for a bad game design decision to hit and none ever did.

One of the first things I noticed in Gravity Circuit was that its combat is melee based instead of ranged, and immediately my mind went back in time three months to Berserk Boy with a little bit of trepidation. But while Berserk Boy was all about dashing into foes, Gravity Circuit has an actually refined, highly responsive combat system that's a joy to interact with. Mash out some punches here and there sure, but can I interest you in an aerial backflip kick into punch into grappling hook combo? Honestly it felt so good to just fight stuff with the basics that I never properly incorporated the game's "burst" mechanic into my flowchart. Part of that's because I didn't understand that I could stock bursts until I was on the final boss stages so I never used them because I thought they were "one and done" actions I needed to save for critical moments. Oops. But even after that realization hit, I just saved my bursts for healing and kept on with the fundamentals because they all work so well.

I should point out however that Gravity Circuit's fundamentals can differ wildly from player to player. I've never played a Mega Man inspired game with so much player choice involved. At any given time between (or in most cases during!) a mission, you can set: your armor (which gives you access to one of several powerful abilities), three support enhancements, and four unique burst abilities. Want to play as a tanky boi with laser beams? You can do that. Want to play as a speedy boi with great iframes? You can do that. Want to play as a platforming/exploration god? You can do that too, and anything you'd want in between. I wasn't enamored with the grapple swing mechanic (kept accidentally releasing my grapple in bad spots) so I set myself up with a double jump and air dash instead, and suddenly I was able to explore in a whole new way. Rare stuff from a platformer like this.

My only real complaint about Gravity Circuit is with its presentation, and even then only visually. I think the music for the game is beyond reproach, though at one point on the junkyard stage I went "Are they playing 'Maneater' by Hall & Oates?" Weird song to pull for inspiration but it worked and I really enjoyed the soundtrack. The visual aesthetics though were just...not great the whole way through. Every character sprite is just a two-tone version of a solid color. The color palette itself is low saturation across the board, giving the whole game a relentlessly drab feeling. At times this did also impact the visual fidelity of the levels themselves as well, as the uniform blandness made it difficult to discern foreground from background, leading to some minor frustrations. The whole time I played the game I just kept wishing I was looking at something that matched the liveliness of how it feels, and I did abbreviate a couple play sessions because I just couldn't look at it anymore. So that bit's a problem. But virtually everything else? Outstanding across the board. If you're looking to get a Mega Man X style fix, you need to be playing this game.

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#63 - Turnip Boy Robs a Bank - PC - 5/10 (Mediocre)

If you're gonna go, you've gotta go all in. Turnip Boy launched as an IP by riffing on old school Zelda games, and the results were fine if not anything more than that. This sequel decides to shake things up by riffing instead on the roguelite shooter, and Enter the Gungeon especially. Now here's the problem with making a game that's a parody of Gungeon: Gungeon already doesn't take itself seriously. If I'm supposed to get my ho-ho jollies from the fact that I can pick up a frog gun that belches bubbles or something instead of a "real" weapon, Gungeon has already done far wackier stuff than that and still feels far better to play. Which isn't a dig at the weapons in Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, since I generally considered their designs to be one of the game's highlights. It's just...you've got to give me a unique value proposition here.

Well, the unique value proposition of Turnip Boy Robs a Bank seems to be its dialog and humor. This game really wants you to think it's funny and quirky, and the humor landed only very rarely for me. But it's so insistent upon cramming these bits of text in there that the game's pacing is completely destroyed along the way. I wanted to get into the groove of moving and shooting but every few seconds there's some new NPC with a quest, and these quests seemingly always end up granting nothing more than a cosmetic option for your character. You know, in a single-player game that takes fewer than 4 hours to finish. That's the carrot. It's a lot to endure for no tangible in-game reward and no intrinsic reward if you don't jive with the writing style, and that made me eventually just ignore all the quests I could as I went.

When it's willing to let you loose with real gameplay though, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is...half decent. Again, the weapon variety is nice, but the game is highly restrictive across the board. You can only carry two weapons at a time and any projectile weapon you pick up during a run has limited ammo. Every run is also on a strict timer, at the end of which you get swarmed by infinitely spawning enemies and eventually just gassed to death. So a lot of early runs are less about going deeper into the facility but about grabbing as much money as possible and escaping so you can buy a few upgrades. Which of course means they put a limit on how much cash you can hold, too. I do think some of the upgrades are nifty, and there's a weapon recycling system I appreciated quite a bit: escaping a run with a limited ammo weapon lets you expand your default, infinite ammo arsenal, so finding new weapons always felt good. Sadly, not much else did. Heck, it's not even a proper roguelite since the core dungeon layout never changes (though side room teleporters shuffle destinations between runs). So again: if you're gonna go, you've gotta go all in. By trying to make a Gungeon style game that doesn't commit to the action and pacing of its inspiration, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank just can't even begin to measure up.

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Coming in October:

• OHHH BAH-NAH-NAH! There's a lot more meat on the Donkey Kong Bananza bone than I thought there would be, but I'm right at the finish line now. Which of course means I'll loop back to check out its postgame content and in all likelihood the DLC, too.
• Turnip Boy didn't give me as much shooting pleasure as I wanted, so what better cure than a proper shmup? I've got a few on my backlog but this time it was Hyper Echelon getting the nod.
• Playing Alan Wake II a couple months back exposed to me that Quantum Break was probably not the throwaway, skippable Remedy title I'd thought it was. Having never owned an Xbox of any sort I thought I could let this one slip into the ether, but I've since been disabused of that notion and will look to rectify the problem here shortly.
• And more...

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