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“You say tomato, I say tomuerto.” The Walking Dead enters it’s third season and the cracks are starting to show. While substituting found-family for actual blood relatives is technically a shift in stakes, the same themes and character dynamics bubble to the surface. Themes of abuse, of family and loyalty, of forgiveness - all have been explored in previous seasons - arguably to greater effect - and make A New Frontier feel like a retread. I still like the cast of characters for the most part. Having Clem around does help alleviate some of the strain from “The Brothers” story-arc which feels a bit cartoonish in it’s coincidental meet-up, self-importance, and eye-rolling love triangle dynamic. Mechanically, combat sections have been simplified. You no longer need to aim at a zombie, instead just pressing the prompt that appears on screen. This is s a largely inconsequential change but also an unnecessary one. Gun to my head, I would argue it worsened the experience by simplifying one of the few instances of player interaction. A New Frontier is also the most bombastic and action focused of Telltale’s Walking Dead entries so far. The quiet dread and moments of introspection are traded in for scenes where the cast mows down armies of man and muerto alike. Between repeated story elements and a traded focus on action over character, this series is starting to fray at the seams. I’m now worried Telltale won’t stick the landing with their final season, and who knows what Michone is going to offer. An “Uh-oh we are still falling” 6 out of 10.

“You gonna eat that kid?” There is an expectation of diminishing returns when making a sequel that utilizes the same basic formula, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 2 is not immune to this. Still, it captures most of the same highs of the original - enough to justify it’s existence. Season 2 comes with tightened controls and a more polished UI. There is a slight iteration in the core gameplay loop including using directional controls to interact with certain sequences. But all of that is very low priority compared to the primary draw, which is the games story telling. There isn’t a single relationship that reaches the heights of what Lee and Clem had. Instead we have an ever rotating cast of interesting character dynamics. Mostly focused on themes of abuse and the the consequences of said abuse. The first half of the season positions Clem as “ The New Guy” while the second half has her placed as the central adhesive of the group. Even as I missed the strength of an ever present bond like Lee, I found the constant shifting of dynamics and explorations of different character archetypes enjoyable. While I tend not to prioritize “plot holes” there was one decision that I made, that the game registered that I made, that the writing didn’t seem to take much into account. It’s hard to get into details without spoilers, but it felt like there was a slip in writing around a decision that needed to happen in order to push the plot forward in episode 4. It was the only time I really felt like my choices were butting up against the limitations of the illusory magic that makes these games what they are. A solid sequel that is worth a play if you were invested in Clem, and wanted to see her continue to grow as a character. A respectable 7 out of 10

“Excuse me, Stewardess? I speak Beaver.” Sakaguchi and Co. deserve nothing but respect for trying to re-invent Final Fantasy with each new entry. While I think this kept the franchise feeling fresh, the end result was not always positive. In the case of Final Fantasy II, it does indeed feel like one step forward, two steps back. The good news is that the party is no longer a group of empty shells, upgrading from zero-dimensional characters to a whole one-dimension. Maria cares about her brother. Firion is bashful around ladies. Guy speaks beaver. Complete with a complement of rotating side characters who also have “A Thing”, and we are already leagues above where Final Fantasy I’s character writing was. The world, while generic and lifted from common mono-myths such as Star Wars (young rebels led by older mentors fight against an evil empire, complete with an emperor who - somehow - returns) is much more fleshed out than it’s predecessor. Perhaps more important to what the franchise would become is the heightened melodrama with not just party members but entire towns being destroyed in the wake of the empire’s charge against the rebel’s forces. Real consequence and stakes are a quick way to get the players invested in a way the original lacked. The bad news is Final Fantasy II’s approach to mechanics. Opting for a one-to-one action-to-experience makes sense on paper. You swing a sword so you’re skill with sword increases. You took a hit, so you’re HP increases. We’ve had games, such as The Elder Scrolls, use this approach with mixed success and that tracks here as well. Where it runs into a brick wall is with skills that require a certain level be reached in order to be effective. Esuna for example needs to be level 3 to cure the amnesia status. In order to get to level 3, your best bet is to spam-cast Esuna each round on party members who don’t need it, gaining a modicum of XP in the process. Not only is this grinding, it feels bad. It feels like wasting your characters turn while achieving very little - literally nothing, in the short-term. More questionable decisions were made to balance out the prior. To make grinding a more natural part of progress, the encounter rate is increased. On top of this, dungeons are laid out with a ton of dead end rooms, leading the player into even more encounters. While this allows the player more time to level up different skills and spells, - a necessity of the game’s aforementioned design - it is exhausting. When you are greeted with the odd treasure room, there’s only a small chance the rewards are something worth your time, and not just an antidote, or a common tier weapon. Truly, FFII’s design feels like the ur-example of what every JRPG hater thinks a JRPG is. Constant random encounters, unavoidable grinding for experience, and useless treasures at dead end hallways. I want to like FFII more than I truly do. The bigger emphasis on story and world-building in development is very much a good choice on part of Square’s team. But they created a gameplay loop that begs you not to see those efforts fulfilled. A very rocky 5 out of 10.

Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season I takes the developers tried and true “point-and-click” formula and elevates it with excellent character writing, relationships, and drama. While the game wants you to believe that choices matter more than they do, it’s execution and presentation is what sells what could easily have been a fumbled gimmick. Lee is a well written character in his own right - a former history teacher with a sarcastic edge and a violent streak - but it’s his relationship with found-daughter-figure, Clementine, that solidifies his place as a top tier protagonist. After finding her in the first days of the pandemic, Clementine quickly becomes both a sense of purpose and moral compass for Lee and by extension, the player. There are very few times where I have personally become so invested in a characters safety than how Lee is with Clementine. Telltale knows exactly how to take advantage of such investment and tugs on the heartstrings until they nearly snap. An ever rotating cast of characters surround the duo with most offering a mix of personalities and qualities that help them feel complex - even if they lack dimensionality. Kenny for instance is more affable than the more hard-assed de facto leader Lily, but is every bit as much a screw-up as Ben who he offers little to no leeway. Telltale executes a well balanced see-saw never letting you get too comfortable with a characters predictability, without falling off the edge into absurdity. While the gameplay is little more than fetch-quest puzzles and quick time events, in comparison to my thoughts on AER, Telltale’s TWD ensures these events are surrounded by drama, incident, and consequence to justify their existence. That being said, there are a couple longer puzzles that can feel a drag, stretching their objectives out between long, backtracking walks between interactables. I did experience some minor jank throughout the game, with the worst appearing in the first episode. Occasionally a character’s model would glitch during an animation, or disappear entirely. Frequently, sound mixing would be off, with one voice line being extremely loud and the next being so soft you could barely make it out over the ambience. I’m not sure how common this issue is so you’re experience may vary. TWD Season I’s OST is not the most diverse batch of songs but is a well crafted grouping. Clementine’s Suite could easily be seen as the game’s thematic center and earns its role in quality as well as its association to the central character herself.While not without flaws, and not high art, Telltale achieved something unique here. There are very few examples of character relationships that I would hold as strong as that between Lee and Clem, and fewer still that climax as strongly as Season I does. Depending on who you ask, this is the strongest of Telltale’s offerings, but I gotta play the rest to know for sure. Even if they end up half as good as TWD Season I, I think it will be worth the time investment. An infectious 8 out of 10

The way I see it, there are two reasons to play the first of the finals of the fantasies. Either you’re an old-head making a trip down nostalgia lane, or you’re a fan of the later entries and want to make the pilgrimage to the series origin. Both are valid, but it’s debatable which version of Final Fantasy I is the “most correct” to play in the year 2026. The Pixel Remaster is the version in my Steam library and thus, that is the one I have chosen. I will also be judging Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster as a singular and fully representative product as opposed to making comparison between versions. FF I’s world is downright spartan. The player-characters are empty, voiceless shells, and NPCs are utilitarian, offering little more than hints to lead the player to the next key item. The quests themselves are equally sparse. I’m reminded of old one-shot adventure module synopses you might find in a Dungeons and Dragons magazine. “The Elf Prince has fallen into a magical sleep! Brave the lair of the Dark Elf Astos and retrieve the Jolt Tonic to awaken the rightful heir!”, fully encompasses all the flavor the game will give you for that specific quest. Saving this from being a vorpal flaw is the context that this was originally an 80’s Famicom game, thus limited in scope, as well as an overall charming art design. Sprite work is great, taking concepts by Yoshitaka Amano and doing a surprisingly good job at translating his illustrative and loose water colors into pixelated monsters. Even the more simply designed playable characters have an iconic appeal. The Black Mage is a design that will always stick with me, and others, to the point where it would come back in subsequent titles. A fantastic score by Nobuo Uematsu captures the grand high fantasy flavor of this world-traveling adventure. From peaceful town themes, to triumphant victory fanfare, to moody dungeons, everything is well-composed, catchy and on message. I was disappointed that the final boss did not come with his own track, at least on the original score setting that I was playing on - a feature I had come to expect as a staple from playing the sequels. But, on the whole, the FFI’s OST is truly beautiful, and it’s no wonder so many of it’s melodies remain present and iterated on in subsequent entries to the franchise. Lacking in traps and puzzles - with the exception of the Citadel of Trials - gameplay is restricted solely to turn-based combat. Solid in design but limited in player choice, your main focus will be deciding which spells to use and how often as in this Final Fantasy, spells are divided into charges by level, again, similar to Dungeons and Dragons. This resource management however is obviated by about two-thirds into the game as the character will be bestowed an embarrassment of riches from dungeons, including items that can be used indefinitely and without consequence to cast mid-tier but still powerful spells. You can enter a comforting flow state while playing the game, but don’t expect a challenge. Attempting to judge the original Final Fantasy in the wake of it’s sequels and almost 40 years of time since passed, is a difficult task. This is a JRPG in it’s most base and primordial form, begging to be expanded and iterated on. In many ways, from monster designs to gameplay mechanics, FFI feels more like an off-brand D&D game than the Final Fantasy we know of today. If you’re a fan, give it a shot. But I can’t see traveling back in time being worth it to someone who is lacking in the greater context of the Final Fantasy franchise. A “limited by the technology of my time” 6 out of 10.

AER Memories Of Old is a non-violent exploration game set on a series of sky-islands. You play as Auk, a human with the power to shape-shift into a bird, on a pilgrimage to learn more about the land’s history, its Gods, as well as the cataclysm that plagues it. The player accomplishes this by using their ability of flight to travel between islands, and their ability of basic pattern recognition to solve rudimentary puzzles. The player is then rewarded with items used to unlock further areas of the game as well as fragments of lore. There is not much to be said about AER’s gameplay. While in a dungeon, your verb-set is limited to jumping and interacting with switches. Puzzles range from basic platforming, to selecting the correct symbol out **** of four - with the answer key but a few steps away. From a mechanical perspective, the singular highlight is traversing from island to island via flight. This is where the games atmosphere, music, and art design coalesce into an ethereal, comforting experience. In hindsight, I wish this game leaned more into this strength, with a larger map and more flight based puzzles. But I believe Forgotten Key placed a higher priority on aesthetics, and in this regard they did succeed. The high saturation, low-poly look lends itself well to flying amongst the clouds. The temples are appropriately somber and moody. A personal highlight is the presentation of the Old Gods, which were evocative, at times stunning, while still matching the restrained nature of the game’s art design. I still debate whether AER is understated or undercooked. I lean toward the latter. The game makes gestures toward ideas of imperialism and the destruction of culture, as well as the idea of nurturing hope and compassion as an aspirational ethos. But without a strong narrative pull, I felt aimless and had trouble feeling engaged - despite my best efforts. I do feel like if I step back and squint my eyes, I can appreciate this work of art more than when I try to get up close and analyze its details. Perhaps that's the point. A hesitant 5 out of 10.

“It’s time to Duel.” It’s odd to review a game that is all at once outdated in it’s meta, unavailable on major storefronts, and contains content forever locked behind no longer existing DLC. But it’s on my backlog so here I go in spite of it all. Magic DotP 2013 is a video game adaptation of the Magic The Gathering TCG built around the release of the M13 core set. As a digital adaptation of the card game, DotP 2013 is very successful. All mechanics act as expected, and more experienced players have options for holding priority, manually assigning damage and allowing for a fuller range of targeting options, while newer players can stick to simplified, more autonomous settings. The largest feature missing from this game of battling custom built decks is… freedom to build custom decks. Players choose from a list of deck templates and are limited to up to 30 extra unlocked cards that they can swap from. I imagine this limitation was designed to create a more structured and abuse-resistant meta, but deck building is so core to what makes MtG fun that it really feels like a vorpal flaw. Digging the knife deeper is the conceit that you must unlock these 30 extra cards, one at a time, per deck, per duel win. With 10+ decks at 30 cards each, experimentation gets tossed aside in favor of grinding the same deck over and over to unlock its stronger cards. This, too, feels antithetical to MtG, which I always found to be a game that persuaded its players to try new things. If there is one selling point for this version of DotP, it would be the Planechase format. A 4-player free-for-all whose gimmick relies on an ever changing ‘field effect’. The game starts with a Planechase card on the field that has a global effect on the board state. Players can spend resources to roll a die that can either do nothing, trigger a secondary effect, or flip over a new Planechase card for an entirely new set of effects. This adds an element of chance and spices things up, especially for a seasoned group of players looking to try something new. With DotP 2013 being little more than a forgotten relic it’s hard to recommend. But outside of it’s limited deck building, it does right by its premise as a video adaptation of the decades old TCG. 6 out of 10. +1 if you are a new player looking to learn / +1 if you enjoy the thrill of the Planechase format.

“Where are they sticking those fishing tails?” Dragonball Z Kakarot makes good on a promise originally made by Dragonball Budokai for the PS2. To create a faithful and complete video game adaptation of the entire Dragonball Z saga. Since the Budokai sequels made the economical decision to cut down on narrative, and eschew cutscenes in lieu of text box summaries, many have been waiting over two decades for a game like Kakarot to pick up the mantle. But this wish came with a Monkey Paw-esque caveat. By taking an easily digestible but lengthy 300+ chapter manga that is (while not entirely absent of world building and character development) single-mindedly focused on fights, and faithfully adapting it into a long form adventure game, CyberConnect2 has created a product that succeeds in it’s goals yet bends under it’s own weight. The meat of Kakarot involves going through each of the Dragonball Z sagas (Sayian, Frieza, Androids / Cell, and Buu) and participating in every fight and plot point covered in the original material. Kakarot discards a more hardline fighting game approach in favor of a more casual beat-em up style with super-moves being activated with a single button press rather than a combo of inputs. RPG elements such as leveling up and using resources in order to unlock sills attempt to add depth, but I never found myself lacking in resources to the point where I had to make decisions based around a specific build. This means the majority of your time will be spent in the creatively limited and repetitive combat for dozens upon dozens of hours. Outside of main plot fights, Kakarot offers two side activities. Side quests, and mini-games. Side quests involve either fighting one of a small subsection of enemy types, or flying around the open world collecting items whose locations are typically marked on your map. It’s true that you can be reductive with all adventure games and conclude that their side quests involve either fighting dudes, or fetching a thing. But a good game makes up for this limitation by creating an interesting narrative or context around the objective. However, in the Dragonball world the most that can be mustered is either an exhale worthy joke, or a charming nod at nostalgia. Both if you’re lucky. As for the mini-games, they lack substance. A fishing game that requires but a couple inputs. An underbaked driving game that awards you resources. Shooting ki blasts at dinosaurs or punching deer for resources. A baseball timing game where you can obtain resources. Shooting ki blasts at enemy structures for resources. Collecting the titular Dragonballs which involves flying to marked locations on the map. Once collected you can use these to unlock new fights or… collect resources. All these activities are a charming nostalgic reference to the source material but are pure tedium in their execution. To shift gears, a pure highlight is the game’s ability to capture the feeling of Dragonball Z, it’s world and it’s most memorable moments. Every location feels lovingly recreated from the manga / anime and creates a vortex of nostalgia that is inescapable for fans. Outside of the more typical “characters talk to each other while looping a stock animation and mouth movement” sections, high quality cutscenes show off highlights from the anime with style and quality that can pierce through a jaded heart. Truly the issue is that this aesthetic level nostalgic charm can’t last for the entire playthrough that Kakarot asks of you. 30 hours in and you’ll become desensitized to the charm of it’s faithfully rendered world and the creeping thoughts set in. “How many more robots will I fight? Are these side quests worth the extra time investment if I’m not having fun? Am I harming my own experience by engaging with the DLC, thus further diluting the nostalgia that brought me to this game in the first place?” This is the most conflicted I have been in reviewing a game. What can you say about a game that set out to accomplish it’s goal, a goal demanded by fans for years, succeeded in that goal, but still resulted in a flawed product. I think CyberConnect2 made the best game possible in terms of adapting a manga, it’s that the source material did not have enough on offer to justify such a faithful adaptation. Truly, CC2 were stuck between a rock and a spirit bomb. A perplexing 6 out of 10. +2 if you’re a bigger Dragonball fan than me / -2 if you’re less of a Dragonball fan than me.

“From guilt, acceptance. From grief, love.” Dear Esther is, if not the progenitor, then the popularizer of the term “Walking Sim”. A genre in an interactive medium paradoxically defined by its lack of interactivity. Dear Esther is a brief, melancholic tale about accepting responsibility and contending with ones grief in a land that is more metaphor than reality. I put the Source-mod-turned-standalone-title through two playthroughs. One, blind. The other, with the developer commentary on. While there was some fluff, I did gleam new insight or at the very least, authorial intent from the commentary. This is a feature I wish more games implemented, as I personally love peaking behind the curtain of creation. This option alone gains an extra point from me. Not much can be said about the game without spoilers. The game is minimal, and sparse. You trek across an island while the narrator recites nonlinear fragments of a story. There is zero interaction in the game outside of walking from point A to B but this is in itself not a criticism, just an uncommon approach in the medium of games. One could argue that it is bold to throw away one of the largest advantages of games, interactivity, in the creation of a work. But I reject that any art should be arbitrarily limited or otherwise enforced by precedent or cultural norms. The closest analog from another medium to compare would be a Tarkovsky film such as Stalker. Long stints of down time between narrative and dialogue, where you will be left to digest what you have experienced with little more than the gorgeously built but tarnished setting to stimulate you. The voice work is good and when music and sound design do come into play, they are well executed. The piano and violin lift the ambient loneliness. Winds rustling through the vegetation creating a tense climax as you ascend to the peak of the island. I think the biggest critique that can be leveled at Dear Esther is that, like many ‘firsts” in a genre, it is downright restrained and sparse in comparison to it’s contemporaries. Take a Stanley Parable, an Edith Finch, a Firewatch - these games have so built on the foundation Dear Esther has provided as to make Dear Esther feel absolutely scant by comparison. This does not invalidate what The Chinese Room has created but does provide a level of friction when going back to enjoy “The Classic”. Returning to the Tarkovsky metaphor, Dear Esther is similarly hard to recommend. It comes with a caveat that it may not be for you, it may not do what you want. You may prefer games where you shoot-dudes and grind-level. You may want a more directly told story or higher fidelity. But eat your vegetables and find out if you like it. It’s a micro-game in length and scope, and beautiful in it’s own right. A tentative 7 out of 10, -4 if you really can’t get into walking sims.

Obsidian has a long history of creating some of the most interesting evil factions that you can align with, so it’s only natural that they would one day tackle a world where evil is the de facto mode of play. In Tyranny you are a peon to The Overlord Kyros. A Fatebinder, part judge, part soldier, sent to deliver Kyros’ specific form of justice in the Tiers - the last free lands of Terratus. Obsidian had been developing Tyranny for almost a decade and not a day was wasted when it came to fleshing out Terratus and it’s inhabitants. Not content with simply creating an “evil has won” setting, Tyranny includes multiple shades of evil and contests them against each other both directly and philosophically. Another quirk is that this campaign is set during the end of a bronze age. It’s not often I play a game of swords and sandals, where iron is valued more than gold, and in that decision Tyranny offers a unique aesthetic, appropriately bringing some Ancient Greek God influence. This is extended in the form of The Archons, powerful god-like beings who carry mortal flaws. The story matches the world building in quality and sees the player traveling across the Tiers delivering judgement, assisting in a civil war, uncovering mysteries behind The Oldwalls and its Spires, and growing in influence. The player will need to use any knowledge they uncover to decide who best to ally with, and just how freely they can act while under the authoritarian rule of The Overlord. The companions you collect offer their own perspectives and insights to the mysteries surrounding Terratus, the Oldwalls, and Kyros themselves. The companions are a grab-bag of mostly well realized and memorable characters. Combat is where we fall out of my typical wheelhouse. Real Time w/ Pause is not my forte and I’d [glare silently] for a turn-based option. However, for the RTwP freaks out there, there is additional mechanical depth that I imagine would elevate this game over it’s decade old predecessors. Companion abilities have two players syncing up their actions to massive effect. Magic is not learned so much as created through crafting and skill checks. To reward this extra effort, magic is appropriately powerful and feared in Terratus. The secret sauce of Tyranny is how well the narrative, themes, and systems intersect. The aforementioned companion abilities are unlocked by mustering either Loyalty or Fear with your companions. Instead of a positive / negative binary that other developers may lean into, both earning your companions respect or cowing them into subjugation rewards the player with new skills and benefits. This approach also extends to the many in-game factions in the form of Favor and Wrath, with each offering its own buffs. All of this to ask the central theme: What is power but influence manifest? While music has an appropriate “evil is triumphant” sound, the voice acting does not always match this tone. Truthfully I find the voice acting serviceable to not good. I noticed this primarily with characters related to the Scarlet Chorus faction which may have been intentional as the Chorus are largely made up of citizen-conscripts - folks who lived normal lives before meeting Kyros’ Peace. But their casual, everyman VA direction was a bit jarring in a world full of Evil and Might. A harsher critique is the dungeon crawling of the Oldwalls. You’ll spend a good amount of your middle hours crawling through same-y looking dungeons, fight after fight, with little reprieve. It’s when combat is at it’s heaviest and the story at its lightest, and as I mentioned, RTwP is just not my bag - making me weak to this particular grind. Those who enjoy this style of combat will be more immune to the onslaught of battles, and those don’t can always throw the game into an easier difficulty. There’s a couple factors that also offset my critique on fatigue. One, is that Acts 1 and 3 offer a lot in story, decision making, and are on a greased rail in comparison to the middle chunk of the game. The other is that Tyranny is quite short - for a CRPG. I clocked in 30hrs to complete my campaign. This is beneficial not just for my short attention span but also because Tyranny has a lot to offer in the way of alternative paths. I can easily see myself returning to this game for a second play-through to try for a different political approach, a more magic focused build, and to utilize the companions that I neglected during my first go round. Tyranny is an easy recommend for fans of CRPGs, easier so if you can stomach RTwP. I hope one day we can see another game set in Terratus. Perhaps even a sequel based around what the conclusion of Tyranny teases. I only hope that it includes an option for turn-based combat, which is my specific flavor of freak. An easy 8 out of 10 recommend, +1 if you are a Real Time w/ Pause freak.

“My conscience is minty-fresh.” Mouthwashing is a fantastically written piece of drama contained within a decent horror walking sim. Note that this game is best enjoyed blind, and I will be vague in order to avoid spoilers. The short of it is - you should play it. Mouthwashing is not unique in it’s setting, themes, or ideas. I suspect we are all familiar with the “dystopian corpo-world”, the “horror fueled mind-palace” and the PSX-esque graphical stylings that have become ubiquitous in the indie space. But novelty is not synonymous with quality and Wrong Organ utilizes these comfortable, familiar spaces with aplomb. What truly sets Mouthwashing apart is its writing. In a medium where story is graded on a bell-curve, where “- for a video game” is a common qualifier, Wrong Organ sloughs off the handicap and successfully tells a story that could rival a piece of cinema or a beloved short-story. The player’s hand is not held, and themes intertwine with multiple elements of the plot, smartly layering itself. If I had a nitpick, it would be in a specific visual flourish. The frequent Evangelion-styled text flashes that literally state the primary theme to the players face. As subtle as a brick, that. This writing is primarily illustrated through dialogue from the games small cast. Five characters, each fulfilling a role to the games central theme. Strikingly designed, whether being an homage to a horror star legend, or a character who is more corpse than man. Each is fully realized in personality, history, and their part to play during the games brief time. The gameplay elements, however, are where the flaws begin to show, like cracks in a ship’s hull. I’ve never been one to enjoy the “do some mundane collecting and combining of items to feel like you’re part of the setting” style of adventure game. Not quite a puzzle, but not something that can be accomplished on auto-pilot either. Busy work. A time waster. One aspect I would never ask to be stripped away however, is the medication scenes. That is the highlight of interactivity - what justifies the medium of video game for Mouthwashing. Part of me wishes it was the only interactive piece, outside of walking and talking, as it is such an outstanding image that deserves focus. The other flaw is in the final sections, where the horrors of the mind-palace sell past the close. I had garnered what the game wanted to tell me long before it stopped showing me routine scares pulled from its bag of horror-tricks. The most unforgivable sin is a shooting segment that felt largely disconnected aesthetically and in gameplay from the rest of the experience. Worse, it was not revealing any new information about the story or character. Like gilding a lily twice over. Music is well done. Haunting, ethereal, and appropriately synthy. Martin Halldin’s approach is perfectly complimentary to the lonely, hopeless setting. Many tracks utilize this noise like a pitch shifted oscillating wail. Other tracks might play a beautiful piano score, or an ironically uplifting beat when appropriate. It’s good stuff. What stops any flaws from feeling fatal is how amazing the writing is at the core of this drama. If you stripped all the horror segments away, there would still be an excellent story being told here. One that I highly recommend experiencing for its small asking price in both money and time. A strong 8 out of 10 experience.

“Babyface isn’t even that bad, f*** the critics.” Layers of Fear is a Haunted House romp in the key of House of Leaves with inspiration drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray among others beyond my artistic grasp. The player spends their time walking through the impossible, ever-shifting geometry of the manor, contending with the protagonists psychosis while uncovering the history of his family and the tragedy therein. All while attempting to complete his magnum opus. On the pantheon of psycho-horror walking sims, Layers of Fear deserves a place, but perhaps on a lower rung. It’s not perfect - fatty around the edges, short in its list of spooky-tricks. Still, it’s a theme park ride I would recommend, at least once. Presentation and atmosphere are what excels for as long as the player is enthralled by its spell. Exploring the manors surreal spaces, uncovering clues to the past - there’s a good story being told well here. Thematically, the world, and narrative make a nice tight knot. Voice performances are solid, and music, when used, is beautiful and effective. Gameplay consists of walking, opening containers and collecting notes. Occasionally a simple puzzle will rear its head. It’s not noteworthy, nor should it be for the genre Layers of Fear aims for. The term “walking-sim” is not an immediate death sentence for me. However I was a bit dismayed at the ratio of opened containers to missing notes by the end of the game. I think the games length is its primary flaw. Layers of Fear eventually runs out of new spooks, and the story is so revealed as to piece together the full narrative well before the climactic ending. With no additional twists, in either gameplay or story, the game begins to outstay its welcome. A problem which perplexes me, as the game asks you to double-down and play it again, making obscure choices, in order to reach a “true”, “conclusive” ending. Imagine going through a haunted house attraction and then immediately going back in a second time, with none of the scares changed. With a game that is so singularly focused in setting and theme, I think slicing an hour off would be to its benefit, as well as nixing the multiple endings. Make it more concise. Keep the magic from running out early. I dare say the Inheritance DLC is an all around upgrade compared to the main game. It serves as both a new perspective and an epilogue. Some of the scares are familiar but the presentation, its setting, its use of the main cast, are all excellent and kept me hooked. A combination of presentation and shortened length ensured I remained interested, avoiding my aforementioned problems with the base game. Additionally there’s a Halloween season specific mini-episode of content that exists in the Basement. I had no idea and unintentionally stumbled into this bit. Another fun bite-sized vignette which strengthens my belief that the shorter these pieces are, the more enjoyable they become. The more pure they stay in my memory. On the whole, Layers of Fear is a haunted house theme park ride. A solid ride but one that lasts maybe a bit too long, spread a bit too thin. But theres a lot of good at its core and I look forward to experiencing the next Bloober project whenever I get around to it. If The Inheritance DLC is any indicator of their new direction, then I won’t be disappointed. A play-it-once enjoyable 7 out of 10