Brainstrain

A big step up from their debut game. Playtonic feels MUCH more confident in the 2.5D space. The overworld is fun and packed with secrets. Every level is unique and bursting with charm. And the challenge is nicely portioned. Check pointing (and losing all your collectibles on death) can feel a bit harsh and arbitrary. It's just a good, fun game with the right amount of challenge. Recommended for all platformer fans.

Full of heart and tons of fun. Exploration is a joy. The areas are visually distinct and filled with treasures that give you plenty of reason to find every little secret. And they have a clever kind of platforming that's more about aim; it works well for the game's perspective. The dungeons are surprisingly fleshed-out. Puzzles you can sink your teeth into, and awesome boss battles. There is just so much content in this game. Combat is chaotic and a click-heavy like an ARPG, which gives me trouble. But there are two difficulty sliders that let me keep things reasonable. I ended up loving the story. It surprises you several times just when you think you've got it figured out. All in all, a fun and polished indie gem. If you've ever loved an RPG, I think you'll love Crosscode.

RuneScape was my first love, and it will always have a special place in my heart. But that doesn't mean I can't see how far downhill we have rolled together. And we're picking up speed... Monetization is out of control in this game. There are loot boxes, a cash shop, weekly promotions, and regular events with premium currency. And, what's is really insane, is that most of these directly reward experience. The whole point of RS is leveling up, but you can get max levels by spending money. It's despicable. Jagex, despite being a sizable company these days, struggles terribly to deliver regular and quality updates. There's clearly a management issue. It's not getting better. The community, though smaller than in the past, is good. People are willing to help each other and cooperate. It's a fun game to be part of. I couldn't recommend picking up RS as a new player, but if it was ever part of your childhood, it's worth taking a look. It's not always pretty, but the game we loved is still in there.

I'm very glad that Hello Games has stuck by this game and improved it so much. But they will never, and should never, live down the false advertising that resulted in people like me paying $60 for a game that was years away from having all the promised features.

It strives for greatness, but runs out of steam real quick. I think it was aiming for something like Journey, communicating story and emotion with no words or dialogue. But that requires brilliant and focused design, which Fe... lacks. The result is you never have much idea of what the story is, and thus what the point of anything is. Some abilities, like tree climbing, are used to their full potential and enable lots of fun exploration. Others feel like gimmicks. Back tracking starts to feel like a chore very quickly. Especially since there's no in-game map. Despite the outward charm, and a few great moments, Fe feels a bit soulless.

A remarkable and memorable experience. It distinguishes itself from other narrative- focused game by actually allowing the player to explore, and having unique gameplay in each chapter. This creates the feeling, not **** that wishes it were a film, but **** reveling in being a game. Highly recommended.

A redemption story that isn't quite finished being written. BFA at launch was bad. Questing was fun, as always, but the new endgame systems were terrible. And the returning endgame systems had not been changed or innovated in the slightest. Even the War Campaign, which Blizz described as Suramar-like story progression, was horribly disappointing and clearly rushed. Even if the War Campaign had been given the time it needed, the story itself was frustrating from the start. No one wanted another expac with the Horde as the villain. It doesn't matter that they had lots of pretty cinematics planned, or a fist-pumping twist - no one wanted this! In patches, however, Blizz has done their best to redeem that terribly rocky start. By now, in 8.2.5, the game feels pretty good to play. Island expeditions are actually fun. Azerite armor is.... less terrible. The Essence system is fun, although a nightmare for alts. And 8.3 looks to be even better. This expansion shook players confidence in Blizzard's ability to learn from the past. No one expected such a massive regression. But in the time since, Blizz has shown they can, sometimes, just a little, learn from their mistakes. Only time will tell if we remember this as the expansion where WoW finally jumped the shark. But for the moment, I'm having fun.

The platonic ideal of a Harvest Moon game. Part farming sim, part time management, part RPG, part dungeon crawler. Everything about **** Valley is charming. The music, the graphics, the townsfolk, the gameplay loop. It's constantly inviting you back for just one more day. It's impossible to describe what is so compelling about a game like this without playing it. To start from nothing, grow some crops, struggle in the dungeon, make some friends, and end up a wealthy dungeon master with a wife and kid a few game-years later is an experience few other genres can match. Though there have been several big updates since launch, it's taken until VERY recently for anything meaty to be added to the endgame. But it's a minor gripe with one of my favorite games of the decade.

Never has a puzzle game felt more like a job. It's incredibly clever, but not fun at all.

This is an incredible, gorgeously innovative game. I didn't expect an open-world stealth game to have such a focus on story. But it's a great story, with fascinating characters, and the focus pays off handsomely. The game is hard to put down as you approach the finale. The optional Cauldron challenges are a ton of fun, and feel fantastic to complete. Exploration is always satisfying. There's a lot of ways to approach combat, all of them fun and powerful. The pacing of the story can be a bit slow, and load times excessive. But honestly, this is one of the best games of this generation.

I think Legion will be remembered as the peak of World of Warcraft. It introduced several new systems - world quests in particular - that were so instantly and massively successful that they couldn't find any way to improve them for years afterward. Artifact weapons felt amazing. So much power and flavor packed into one item. I can't imagine how Blizz will ever surpass them. The Broken Isles themselves were phenomenal, filled with story and gorgeously realized. Suramar in particular is another remarkable achievement. The entire zone is packed with story and things to do, that all tie together into an amazing journey once you hit max level. It has already become a talking point for Blizzard, like the phenomenal story progression in Escalation, patch 5.1 - and just like 5.1, Blizz has repeatedly revealed that they have no idea what made Suramar so successful. And then 7.3 was the biggest patch ever, packed to bursting with unbelievably cool story moments. Legion was incredible. It's sad to look back now, and realize how little Blizzard learned. But I'm grateful we got it all.

Practically perfect. As a platformer, as a souls-like, and as a metroidvania,, Hollow Knight succeeds wildly. Combat is tight, and you will be amazed what you're capable of by the end of the game. Platforming is wove into the map seamlessly, with true challenges hidden in many nooks and corners. And, of course, it is a brilliantly laid out metroidvania, filled with interesting powers and upgrades that send you combing through old areas to see what new secrets await - and there are a LOT of secrets. There will be moments when you think you are lost, or stuck, and the game can be pretty obtuse about showing you the way forward. But in a non-linear game I think that's inevitable, and it adds to the atmosphere tremendously. I could go on forever. It's a phenomenal game for anyone who likes games and enjoys the feeling of rising to a challenge.

I love the Darksiders series. D3 is, once again, different from its predecessors, but retains the core of combat and exploration. The main new mechanics are Hollows, elemental powers that you use in combat and puzzle solving. I found these to be extremely fun and well implemented. I appreciated the difficulty settings - dark souls style unforgiving combat is insanely tedious. Easy mode was perfect for me (and you can still die pretty easily, though tear through enemies in return). The growth of Fury's character as she hunts down the seven sins is a lot of fun to watch. The writing quality is not super consistent, but it gets the job done. And there's some legitimately laugh-out-loud moments. It has very noticeable performance issues on PS4 - frame drops, stuttering, and an occasional crash. This port needed more work. Even with all that, I really enjoyed my time with Fury.

I had fun for a good few hours, figuring out the mechanics of the different playable characters, strategies for defeating different enemies, and getting the hang of card interactions. But at a certain point the sheer number of variable I had to juggle was too much, and I started making decision at random. The merchant means you have *some* control over the randomness, but not very much. Making a deck themed after any particular mechanic feels impossible. It's an inherent problem to the roguelike formula, I think. It's fun for a while, but not my cup of tea.

Cute and clever, but VERY frustrating. This is a platformer where you spend most of your time fighting against the controls. If that sounds like a nightmare... yeah, it is. Brutal check-pointing (lose all your pickups if you die) adds insult to injury. The graphics are cute, levels are fairly well designed, and they introduce new mechanics at a reasonable pace. But there's just too much working against it for me to call this game good.

Jotun is a fun romp through Norse myth. Bosses are impressively animated and have some fun mechanics. For most of the game I thought the challenge struck a perfect balance - most bosses took a few tries, but nothing was too frustrating. Unfortunately the last boss is ridiculously hard, and it hurt my enjoyment of the game a lot. The hand-drawn environments are nice in some places, and ugly in others. Getting around the maps can be tedious, and some are quite large. It's a good but not great game - wait for a sale.

Path of Fire is the best GW2 has been since it first launched. It's taken a long time for the game to find its footing, and there's still issues, but this is a seriously good MMO expansion. Mounts are fantastic. They handle well, have cool abilities, and are gorgeously animated. ANet has wisely moved away from multi-million xp mastery tracks, and you instead unlock most mount abilities fairly quickly. The difference is huge. There are no new dungeons. ANet appears to be wary of that type of content, after many failed attempts to balance rewards of its existing dungeons. They are focusing instead on Raids, which is a strange choice for a game with such enduringly poor profession balance. In a game like WoW, dps differences of 5% are seen as huge. Some GW2 professions can differ by more than 25% - it's a total farce. The new zones are expansive, and an absolute joy to explore. Exploration has always been what GW2 does best, and they fully committed to it in Path of Fire. The new elite specs are fun, although balance (of course) varies wildly. I haven't finished the story, but it's been great so far. At this point, Heart of Thorns was wrapping up, but Path of Fire is only in its second act. Much more satisfying. All around, it's the best MMO without a subscription you'll find.

The latest in a stream of games trying to ride the wave of Hearthstone's massive success, Chronicle nonetheless sets itself apart. I doubt it invented the mechanics it employs, but I've never see anything like it before, and have enjoyed learning my way around and figuring out new strategies. It really doesn't play like anything else, and as this genre becomes more and more saturated, that uniqueness is and will continue to be a big advantage.