Glic2003

A stellar presentation unfortunately saddles itself with derivative, shallow gameplay. While the arcade feel is spot on, repeating the earlier, easy levels quickly becomes tiresome, and a couple of the levels (sadly, some of the most memorable scenes from T2) are just bad. The soundtrack is so good, it almost justifies the purchase on its own.

I knew exactly what kind of game Mouthwashing was going to be before I played it. Wandering down dark hallways until something happens: check. Low-polygon Playstation aesthetic: check. Long stretches of "walking simulator" gameplay: check. Yep. It's one of those. I can't help but feel like every time someone insists a game has a "great story" it also has to have - by implication - bad gameplay. And the gameplay in Mouthwashing is indeed, really bad. It's the perfect example of why I prefer horror movies to horror video games. My recommendation? Just watch a youtube playthrough.

Super fun game with a very richly-developed world. Excellent controls and mechanics. My only real gripe is the bosses; the developers seem to have gone out of their way to make the bosses as annoying as possible. Combine this with some cases where you have to walk a long way to get back to the boss and the game can feel like a bit of a chore at times. I still prefer the original DS but this is an excellent sequel.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Very disappointed with this DLC after all the glowing reviews. I found the characters tedious and grating, and the main quest derivative and linear. The new area is small and uninteresting to explore.

I was a fan of The Forest, back in the day, but SOTF blows it away with so many visceral thrills it's honestly made me lose interest in other games. Whether you're hang gliding, cave diving, zip lining, riding an EUC, hacking up bodies to cook stew or hacking up logs to build a cabin, this game is just ridiculous, insane fun. And it looks fantastic as well. There are certainly some weak points: the building system can be glitchy and frustrating, the story has too many ideas to really feel satisfying, and the enemies have a nasty habit of just appearing out of nowhere, breaking the immersive spell. But the whole thing is just such an entertaining horror sandbox, budget priced at $30, it's hard not to recommend.

I honestly don't know if this is a good game or not, as I couldn't get through the tutorial. At one point I was supposed to pick up items that did not appear in the room - apparently this is a bug. Okay, so I figure I'll just restart the tutorial....except the last saved game is half an hour ago and there's no way to manually save. So I'd have to repeat the last half hour, which is very long-winded and very boring. I've heard other people say the game's pretty buggy so I don't know if I'll bother.

Just okay, as a sequel to House Flipper. While some things have improved, some elements are a step backward, and overall it just feels tedious and not very fun. Perhaps House Flipper never actually needed a sequel. There are also a few glaring omissions in the content, so expect DLC.

A surprisingly bland, clunky shooter with a thin veneer of RPG elements which are mostly poorly-explained, in a generic sci-fi setting with unlikable characters.

This is one of the few, rare games that seemed to give me motion sickness after a while. So, I didn't get too far in it, and I have to say my first impressions of it were pretty underwhelming.

A pretty good remaster of a classic game. But in a modern context, it's hard to recommend. The biggest problem being that, while the graphics were updated, almost nothing about the gameplay was. It's still a confusing mess at times, and the combat is still far from enjoyable.

As a follow-up to Darkest Dungeon - one of my favourite games ever - this is just okay. It feels rather like a spin off game than a true sequel. The animations are exquisite, and the combat is definitely **** everything else feels somehow worse. There's a distinct lack of new characters, abilities and enemies, such that things start to feel repetitive almost immediately. Even worse, very little content is unlocked right from the start, facilitating the need to constantly grind to get new content. You won't be putting together your favourite parties of four characters either: the four you start with are basically the four you finish with, eliminating one of my favourite aspects of the game. And the stagecoach? It just feels bad. Boring, clunky, ****'s probably the biggest misstep the game makes. I appreciate the attempt at trying something new, but as a follow up to Darkest Dungeon, this just doesn't really work.

As a fan of Frictional's previous games, I was expecting something great after the brilliant SOMA. Sadly, Rebirth falls back on the lamest horror cliches: walking through endless dark hallways, enemies that are basically zombies, spooky images popping out of nowhere. The puzzles are very mundane and frustrating. For example, in one area I couldn't figure out how to progress; the solution was to pick up an object in a dark room that didn't look like it could be picked up and use that. It's never very clear what details in your surroundings are important. The main gameplay mechanic is collecting matches to activate light fixtures, so the protagonist doesn't get too "scared." But unlike real life, you can't use a light source that's already burning to light other light sources. There's also a lantern, but it runs out of oil so quickly and its light is dimmer than a single lit match. So it quickly feels very silly and contrived. The game is fairly immersive, and the voice acting is great. It's just so monotonous to actually play. And as a final slap in the face, you'll probably get the "bad" ending unless you have fore knowledge of what you're supposed to actually do. If you're curious about this game, just watch it on youtube; it's one of the worst games I've ever played to completion.

I've seen a lot of complaining about this game's poor technical performance, but I've found that to be overshadowed by the miserable gameplay. They've somehow managed to expand on everything I disliked about the first game. Roughly 50% of the game is just a walking simulator. Most of the time the "run" button is disabled, to really drag these scenes out. The combat is some of the most awkward I've ever seen in a video game. Enemies will knock Amicia out, then stand there for a moment while she gets up to retaliate. Sometimes Amicia will die in a fire, even though the fire isn't even touching her, which looks very silly. The other gameplay element is the "puzzles", which usually amounts to scrubbing the environment for the one specific thing you're supposed to shoot with your sling. The only parts of the game I found enjoyable are the "stealth" scenes, in which you have to sneak around and figure out how to fight or disable the guards. But these scenes are rare. Most of the time, you're either in Walking Simulator, Obnoxious Forced Combat or Inane Puzzle mode. Everything is so scripted; you can't jump over a ledge or through a window unless it's one of the Special Windows that are scripted for it. There are invisible walls everywhere, so you're never sure where you're allowed to progress until you bump into it. Not that it matters as the game is totally linear anyway. The story makes no sense as a follow up to A Plague Tale Innocence. It seems to just retcon much of what happened in that game, and quickly becomes grating and tedious, with Amicia almost constantly yelling about how she has to save Hugo, etc. The only reason to play this game is for the graphics, which are truly beautiful, except for the face animations. Naturally the game insists on zooming in up close on their faces, so you can see how bad it looks. Overall, not recommended. If you're interested in the game, just watch someone else play it on YouTube.

I was reluctant to play this game because I was such a huge fan of FTL and assumed there was no way this game could be as good as that. Well, unfortunately, I was right. While the core game is very solid and engaging, it doesn't feel like something special and unique like FTL. Instead, it feels like a generic turn-based combat game. You've got three units to work with, and each gets a move-and-attack per round. It's a proven formula, but the early game quickly becomes dull and repetitive, as upgrades to the units seem to be very few and far between. I'm hoping it'll get more interesting with more unlocks, but I'm afraid I may just quit playing before then.

Stray is a fairly short, but thoroughly entertaining action adventure about a cat lost in a mysterious city of robots. The game oozes charm and cozy atmosphere, while combining that with a spooky cyber-city vibe. The game mechanics are wonderfully cat-like and almost always engaging. There are some frustrating bits later on, but the game is short enough that most anyone could play through it eventually. Add to this some excellent, poignant storytelling and Stray is a real winner. It's a unique and charming game that doesn't over complicate its mechanics or overstay its welcome. I honestly wish there were more games like this.

For those who were wondering: is Elden Ring Dark Souls 4? The short answer is, yes, everything is basically Dark Souls. There's a new coat of paint, the world has expanded, the names have **** everything is essentially the same. The combat is the same. The animations are the same. There are bonfires. There's souls. The biggest change is, they switched the jump button to A and the 'use' button to Y. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's still a good game but if you were hoping for a fresh, revolutionary experience, this is really, really not it.

This game has two big problems: it's boring and ugly. The effect is somewhat reminiscent of a low budget System Shock 2 - sterile, grey environments and "ghostly" crew members - with all of the gameplay stripped out. There's no inventory or combat, so your primary method of interaction is tediously picking up objects, looking at them, and then putting them back down. There's no way to tell which items are significant, so you need to pretty much look at everything, just in case it's important. The space station has a deliberately maze-like layout, presumably so you won't finish the game too quickly. I suppose this comes as no surprise as the game is from the developers of Gone Home, and the space station is just as unconvincing as the enormous, sprawling house in that game. But unlike the grounded setting and emotional storytelling in Gone Home, Tacoma's bland, poorly-realized sci-fi setting never really grabbed me.

Truly one of the worst open-world games I've ever played. Gameplay consists of drive to location, watch cutscene, then sometimes engage in a gunfight with some of the worst controls I've ever seen. There is SO MUCH driving in this game. Hours and hours of it. It just never ends. In some missions you have to follow a car - very slowly - without getting too close. In other missions, you have to make sure the target car doesn't get too far away. Neither type of mission is fun, as it's not like you can really tell how close/far you need to be. There's traffic EVERYWHERE and everyone drives SO SLOWLY. Your best bet is to just drive on the sidewalk. Even if you drive perfectly, you'll still get in accidents because there are so many unmarked intersections, and the other drivers don't really follow the rules of the road. It's like the developers of this game saw a city in a movie, but have never actually been to a city in real life. The story and characters are complete cringe, like there was a quota for the number of F-bombs they had to include so it would seem like a tough gangster story. The game also looks like muddy crap, and does that awkward thing where it zooms in close to the characters' horrible-looking faces. It doesn't even have anti-aliasing, unless you manually force it on. I did enjoy driving the cars. The car physics are great, and smashing them up is very satisfying. I recommend doing that instead of the story missions, because they're terrible. I know this game is fourteen years old but it feels like it's forty years old.

I think this might be the most under-rated game I've ever played. It was simply genius. The tactical puzzles, the characters, the dogs, the monster designs. It does take some patience, and some trial and error, but it's very rewarding when it all clicks. It was also a surprisingly emotional experience.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that's trying to do everything, and it's a bit worse for it. The ambition here is clear, but the actual gameplay is Fallout 4 plus Watch_Dogs. But while it's not revolutionary, I can't stop playing it. Cyberpunk's compelling world and wonderfully realized characters elevate its familiar gameplay to something truly special. It's a game that's greater than the sum of its parts, and holy crap, does this game have a lot of parts. Hacking, shooting, sneaking, driving, talking, swimming - it's all here. If you tried to describe all the stuff this game has to someone who hasn't played it, they probably wouldn't believe you. A more focused experience probably would've been more polished, but the sheer amount of STUFF in CP2077 is impressive. It's a ridiculous, sprawling game, and I love it. 60 hours in and the only bugs I've seen have been visual glitches - nothing game-breaking. And it plays pretty well on my older PC: around 45 FPS on high detail and 60 on low. If you're reluctant to jump in now, give it a few months. People will be talking about this game like it's the next Skyrim.

It's good, certainly, but the first area is very similar to Spelunky, except much more difficult. This makes the early game feel redundant and exhausting. I think I played the original Spelunky too much to really enjoy this. I'll change this review if I make it to the later areas, but frankly I don't think I ever will.

A very interesting twist on Prey. A bit confusing and repetitive at first, but it gets very compelling with each bit that you gradually unlock. The areas are also very large and interesting to explore.

Prey is essentially what I wanted System Shock 3 to be: a sprawling, thought-provoking, non-linear game that rewards player curiosity and ingenuity. When I arrived at the ending, all I wanted to do was start over again at the beginning, eager to see how the opening levels could unfold differently if I made different choices. It is that rare game that gets better the more I play it. It's best played with a mouse and keyboard and installed on an SSD (to alleviate the loading times. Prey goes beyond what initially appears to be Dishonored-in-space and proves Arkane Studios is a developer in a league of their own, at the top of their game.

Let's see, where to begin? For starters, the game has nothing to do with Ultima Underworld. The Kickstarter was basically a bunch of lies and crazy promises. The game isn't even finished: most of the later levels have holes and glitches everywhere (you can clip right through to the last level and beat the game in 20 minutes). UA is extremely buggy in general. When it does work as intended, it's not much fun, thanks to boring quests, empty environments, no NPC interactions and awkward physics-based gameplay. There's basically only one type of enemy (skeletons) because they didn't have enough of a budget to animate anything else, I guess, and their AI is prone to glitching out. To be fair, the environments do look pretty nice and messing around with the physics can be fun, but that's not nearly enough to recommend it, especially if you were hoping for a new RPG in the Ultima Underworld style.

The Sims 4 has always been about finding new ways to re-work and re-sell old content at a higher price, and this trend continues with The Sims 4: Pets - whoops - I mean Cats & Dogs. I suppose the inevitable Horses game pack will cost another $20. When asked if the pets would be playable, one of the producers said "define playable". Excuse me? Playable like they were in the previous game you worked on, a$$hole! Naturally, they said because of the way the pets' AI works, there was no way they could make them playable. Okay.. well, how did they make the Sims themselves playable then? Excuses: it's always about excuses with this franchise now. I know it's not fair to "review" a product without playing it, but The Sims 4 has been such a huge slap in the face to its fans, I felt the need to say something, especially as things seem to have only gotten worse since its inception.

Rich with gorgeous atmosphere, beautiful artwork, captivating audio and nail-bitingly tense combat, Darkest Dungeon is a superlative game. While it has the trappings of a rogue-like or an RPG, this is actually a fairly straightforward game of turn-based combat, akin to X-Com or Jagged Alliance, though with the perspective of a side-scroller. Recruit your heroes, assemble your party of four, then choose which randomly-generated dungeon you want to attempt. Victory often comes at a cost, and the best strategies are not always the most obvious. Creating a party of heroes that works together as efficiently as possible is not only immensely satisfying, but also absolutely critical to success later in the game. It's simple on the surface, but Darkest Dungeon has many devious tricks up its sleeve, and doesn't give up its secrets easily. Heroes won't even attempt quests deemed too easy for them, so over-levelling for a given quest doesn't help to alleviate the difficulty, thus the tension remains taught throughout. Experienced heroes gain quirks that give them specific bonuses in their endeavours, but also accumulate negative traits over time. Weighing the need to constantly patch up experienced adventurers or simply dismiss them in favour of fresh blood is a constant balancing act throughout the game. There are a few downsides with this formula. The late game can drag on for far too long: replacing experienced heroes can be not only expensive, but quite dull. The interface could use a few more shortcuts: I'm tired of clicking dozens of times just to buy provisions. And upgrading heroes just isn't that interesting: you pay some money, watch their stats go up a little, and that's all there is to it. There's little story to speak of, but the writing is superb throughout. The player's victories and failures are luxuriously narrated by Lovecraftian voice actor Wayne June, and his voice lingered in my mind long after the quests were completed and the foes vanquished. Much has been made of the difficulty level of Darkest Dungeon. While it is indeed very challenging - and extremely, agonizingly random at times - it must be said that there are options available to alleviate the difficulty to a great degree. Rather than offering generic "easy" "medium" or "hard" settings, the options menu permits a customized experience by allowing the player to simply toggle off some of the game's most egregious quirks. Darkest Dungeon does not always reward the player's efforts. This is a game about struggle, about mitigating the effects of loss and chaos until the scales finally tip and the player arrives – somewhat wiser, somewhat nearer insanity – at a place resembling victory. It's a game about battles that left me on the edge of my seat, and victories that had my hands shaking and tears welling up in my eyes. It is an absolute triumph, and a fiendishly well-designed game.

A one note experience, Devil Daggers is the sort of thing you either love or hate. Less skilled players will find themselves blasting the same three or four enemies over and over and over again. It's intense and stylish, but also singular and highly repetitive. It's fun for a while, but it's also the style of game I played to death twenty years ago.

It's not the train wreck that many fans were expecting, but it's clear where many corners were cut in rushing this game out. While the actual Sims are more realistic and better animated than in previous games, TS4 lacks many of the little details that made its predecessors so loved. Omitting toddlers - when many players were asking for more life stages - is simply inexcusable. Switching back to loading screens feels like a big step back. And decorating your Sims' clothes and houses is aggravating when you can't even choose from a decent selection of colours. While there is a lot to do in the game, much of it feels like busywork. You'll be constantly telling your Sims to perform actions to offset their negative emotions or performing repetitive actions to get your Sims skilled up or ready for job promotions. Or you can always collect things... lots of things. In one of the most egregious examples of content padding, TS4 is packed with collectibles. Still, it can only get better. Wait until the price drops or they include the first expansion pack for free and you won't be quite as disappointed.

Quite possibly the most unforgiving game I've ever experienced, The Castle Doctrine engages you in a high stakes game of multi-player breaking and entering. Design a house full of traps to protect your vault and family, then choose another player's house to rob. The slightest mistake (during a break in, or even during testing your own traps) results in a permanent death, necessitating a complete restart from scratch. During those brief moments when you succeed - at robbing another player's house, or successfully trapping someone in your own - The Castle Doctrine can be very rewarding, but those moments are so tragically few and far between, most players will give up before experiencing anything remotely close to entertainment. This aggravation is compounded by a clunky interface, no tutorial or tool tips, and depressingly minimal production values (low-res pixel art, no sound effects, and only a few ambient noises serving as "music"). The Castle Doctrine can only be recommended to the most patient (and masochistic) gamers looking for something radically different.

After several years and five expansion packs, it's clear that The Sims 3 may be reaching the end of its lifespan. While the sixth expansion pack, Showtime, adds a few new moments of fun to the series, it largely fails to capitalize on whatever potential TS3 may have had. As with most of the other expansions, Showtime adds a new town to play in, Starlight Shores. Clearly Holywood-inspired (right down to the Simlish "Hollywood" sign on the hills outside town), it's a nice-looking location with most of the standard amenities, including some of the facade style buildings (but no ****) first introduced in previous expansion, Late Night. It doesn't feel like a huge, bustling place (in fact, if there are no performances in progress, it can be quite the ghost town), but the venues are generally nice to look at and well-designed. While the number the number of new objects in Showtime is certainly huge, many of these remain decorative objects, and the best objects in Showtime were already featured in The Sims 2. Among these are the karaoke machine, pool tables, DJ booth and dance sphere. There's also a new mechanical bull, capable of whipping your Sims around at breakneck speeds with hilarious results. It's fun, competent stuff, but it's also familiar stuff if you're a long term fan of the series, and nothing that really revitalizes the game. Showtime does add a large number of great-looking animations to the game, mostly associated with its three new professions. These new jobs are the heart of Showtime, and they're a solid addition to the game. Unlike the mediocre band career in Late Night, Showtime makes working in the performing arts into a well-organized, practical career with a much better pay off. The new jobs available are singer, acrobat and magician, but they play out essentially the same way: you'll wander around town, performing in public for tips, or visiting a variety of venues around Starlight Shores for higher-paying gigs. Earning a gig means going through a brief audition for the venue's proprietor, then showing up on stage at the scheduled time. Working your way up from performing silly singing telegrams to performing in front of a large (though actually fake) audience can be rewarding, but it can also be a bit ****. The actual gigs are where the real fun takes place. Your Sim can set up the stage with a variety of props, then takes the stage and performs whatever actions you feel like queueing up. Reaching higher ranks in each profession unlocks new actions, and new outfits to wear on stage. Audiences will respond kindly or unkindly to the performance, even going as far as throwing food and other items onto the stage! While there is a bit of interactivity available in the shows, I never really felt like my input was having an effect on the outcome, and the whole process of finding jobs, then performing the onstage actions over and over eventually becomes dull. It's also possible to watch other Sims perform around town that aren't under your control, although with only three career paths to follow, it won't take that long to see all of them. Showtime also boasts a number of new "social" features, such as the ability to send and receive performing Sims from your online friends, or send and receive messages from your profile "wall." Unfortunately, even if you opt out of the online functionality, the game will still give your Sims wishes to "host a visiting performer" or otherwise encourage you to participate in the online features. It all has an annoying Facebook style feel to it, and it's something many players might not welcome in their games. It's also one of the glitchiest parts of this expansion, so you might want to wait until EA releases yet another patch to address it. Showtime also makes good use of the Celebrity system from previous expansion Late Night: each gig will reward your Sim with a few Celebrity points, making the whole Celebrity system much more meaningful than it was if you were playing Late Night on its own. Unfortunately, bands and singers are completely (and bafflingly) exclusive, so there's no way your band will ever have a lead singer, and no way your singer will ever be backed up with a proper trio of musicians. Design decisions like these really reduce the potential for fun in The Sims 3, and make the EP content feel tacked on, rather than smoothly integrated. Overall, Showtime is a decent expansion pack. The new town is nice, if unremarkable, the new jobs are fun for a little while, and the new objects will make your night clubs and bars a little less empty. But as with the other expansions, it's a lousy value overall and if you're not seriously interested in playing the three new professions, it's extremely difficult to justify the purchase. Show time is best left to only the most dedicated TS3 fans.

A couple of weeks after the release of The Binding of Isaac, it has become the game I love to hate. It's clunky, ugly and annoying, but there's something so irrisistible about it, I can't seem to stop playing. I really enjoy it, but I don't always understand why. Isaac is a very random game. That must be said right from the start. There will be times when you're struggling through room after room on your very last hit point, and then a sudden change of luck will allow you to progress straight on through the final boss. This same randomness that makes the game compelling can also be its most annoying characteristic. You'll have games when you luck into dozens of coins, and have nothing to spend them on. You'll have games in which you discover room after room of hearts you can't pick up, and nary a bomb or key in sight. The binding of Isaac is nicely balanced, however, and as long as you're willing to keep plugging away, you can be fairly certain your luck will eventually change. Battling through room after room of monsters can grow a bit tedious, and the controls don't exactly help in this regard. Isaac is a "dual-stick" shooter...without the sticks. You can use the keyboard or mouse for shooting, but movement requires the keyboard. It didn't bother me too much, as it apparently justified the hours I spent playing Robotron with a keyboard via MAME, but I could see this being a huge turn off to some players. Simply put, the lack of gamepad support is a bit baffling. The game's use of Flash as a development platform is also a bit odd, and results in regular slowdown, even with just a few enemies and objects on screen. Other technical issues plagued the game at launch, but thankfully those seemed to have been smoothed out, and the developers are even promising new (free) content in the near future. The Binding of Isaac's style is unique, to say the least. It's gross, cute, creepy and funny, and frankly, it did take me a while to warm up to it. There's just something so ...squishy...about all of it. But that same ugliness makes the game all the more satisfying to beat. It's like an ugly bug that you love stomping on...over and over again. It's addictiveness should not be underestimated. Despite a few minor issues, The Binding of Isaac is a fast, unique and strangely compelling game.