I mean, it's... fine? Nothing particularly special or stand-out, about the same level of engaging as other side quests in the base game. The ending choice was a little frustrating, but it's supposed to be. If it wasn't a DLC, it would've been pretty forgettable.
To preface, this review is probably going to have more negative points than positive purely because I went into this with very high expectations after years of hearing everyone talk about the franchise, so I went into it expecting to have my mind blown and when I didn't I ended up picking it apart a little more. That said, this was still great, I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm sure a lot of my 'disappointments' (if you can even call them that) will be fixed once I play the rest of the series. The positives:- I love that the codex entries were read aloud. At the end of each main quest I'd just click through them and let the voice-over play while I checked notifications, got a drink etc. and it made it much more engaging.- I love that dialogue was phrased in a way that never made Shepard sound like they lacked obvious in-universe knowledge but still let the players familiarise themselves with new terms. For example, a character might mention X, something the player hasn't come across before, and there'll be a dialogue option to ask about it, but what Shephard will say will be closer to "Isn't X that one thing?" or "Oh yeah, X, what ever happened with that?" so you get a natural explanation while still having it be clear Shepard would have heard of these things before.- The Mako controls weren't as bad as I've always heard (I assume they were fixed a little with LE)! I didn't really struggle with it and got accustomed to it quickly - sometimes it would do a 180 spin or end up airborne for no particular reason just to keep things interesting, but it was never annoying.Some criticisms:- The graphics and sound design are a little janky; I giggled a little at scenes like Jenkins' death because it was so anticlimactic as a result. It was pretty obvious during the scene where Shepard rescues Ashley from the Beacon, too - it was basically just silence and every so often a misstimed impact sound.- I do kinda wish they'd gone harder on the alien designs. less Asari-type "human women but blue" and more designs like the Hanar or even the Salarians, though I do understand that they would probably want to keep the romance options at least somewhat humannoid. I am glad we got Garrus, at least.- I wish there was a way to mark quest locations as your destination from the journal rather than having to read the mission description, remember the location name, and go there/mark it yourself.- Dialogue options aren't always labelled well, which is a general Bioware issue but seemed more prevalent here than with the Dragon Age games. My Shepard was very kind but would often come off harsh because a dialogue option would be written to seem like a nice thing to say and then would turn out to be a blunt accusation or something. Sometimes, there also seemed little difference in options - for example, the dialogue options would be "What did you just say?" and "Explain yourself", and selecting the first would have Shepard say something like "You'd better start explaining", which seems identical to the second option. Later on, multiple dialogue options turned out to lead to the exact same voice-line being played. - I wanted some more variety in planets. The previews showed some really interesting and pretty worlds in a broad range of colours and environments, but most of the ones you could actually land on and explore were the same barren red deserts.- The game was a little tell-don't-show sometimes. There were a lot of long stretches of dialogue exposition where a character explains the plot to you while you stand there listening. Sometimes I got the impression some broad revelation with huge implications had just been dropped, but it was delivered so anticlimactically - e.g. what Sovereign was, the pre-Prothean civilisations - that I couldn't really see it as a big deal.- Speaking of anti-climaxes again, I played a paragon Shepard first playthrough so Saren ended up shooting himself and it was very abrupt with basically no lead-up. It felt like it went from 0-100, "I have no doubts I'm going to kill you all" to "I'm so sorry I was wrong I must die" over the course of a single click.- Ending on a random still shot of Shepard just superimposed on a picture of space was a weird choice.This is neither a positive nor a negative, more just a neutral note - I did feel very overpowered by the end. Pretty much every lesser enemy was a one-shot kill with a pistol, Sovereign-controlled Saren was dead within a minute, etc. I don't personally mind this, I play games for the story and have very little interest in combat or difficulty, but it did make some things feel a little rushed and underwhelming.I didn't feel very emotionally invested in any of the characters, but I do like them all fine, and I assume a) this is compounded by the fact that I didn't engage with any of the first-game romances as none of them clicked with this Shepard, and b) this will change as I progress through the series and get to know them over a longer period.
Do you know how difficult it is for a game to win me over with its gameplay alone? I'm a heavily story- and character-oriented gamer, and I'll happily favour a game with a fantastic plot and likeable characters but mediocre gameplay over the inverse any day. Split Fiction's story is very surface-level - its characters are cliche and not all that deep, a lot of it had me eye-rolling at the predictability, and the dialogue was so obvious and well-trodden that at one point I found myself making a game out of the fact that I could almost always guess exactly what someone was going to say next. But this is the first game in years where I've loved the gameplay so much that I wanted twenty more hours of that alone. It's varied, it's almost always exciting, it's fast-paced, it's surprising and refreshing and new. I'd seen everyone hyping up the end sequence in reviews I read beforehand, so I was waiting for that the whole game, and at first I was a little underwhelmed - but the longer it goes, the more jaw-dropping and just plain cool it gets, and it genuinely has to be played to be believed. I'm a fantasy guy, so I figured I'd like Zoe's worlds more, but I actually ended up really enjoying Mio's. The sci-fi stuff isn't something I lean towards consuming in my fiction, though it creeps in sometimes, but I found the speed and mechanics of those sections were more fun for me than the slower fantastical ones. Others have praised the story and underlying message for its significance in a currently generative AI-ridden world where corporations and people are utilising machines to stifle and mimic human creativity, but I hesitate to treat this as intentional when, if I recall correctly, the lead director has since stated he isn't particularly against AI. It's a shame if that's true, and it taints the message most take from it quite a bit to me. A personal **** I had as a writer myself is the fact that it's always been a pet peeve of mine when people speak as though writers always put a piece of themselves into their stories and characters. I pride myself on being able to create all kinds of characters, including those absolutely nothing like me and personalities I'd never be able to relate to, and every so often I get someone nudging me and going, "Okay, but they're like you a little, right? You wouldn't have created them if you weren't inserting yourself just a bit, right? Every character is a reflection of yourself in some way, right?" No! I create characters to explore writing about things and people outside of my real life, not to just put aspects of myself in there. This game is very heavy on "every story is connected to your life and problems in some way", with the characters (especially Zoe) often sort of giving each other that "oh, c'mon, it must be about your life, how's it connected?" ribbing and it always being true. That's a very personal and niche complaint, though, and I don't know how other writers feel about this, so it might resonate with them much more than it did me!It's a little trickier than It Takes Two - my fiancee struggled a little more and got frustrated occasionally, but it didn't hamper her overall enjoyment at all and she was right there with me when we finished wishing we had more of it to experience. I plan on replaying it with a friend who's less **** than my fiancee is, so I'll see how it pans out for someone with minimal experience.
Just finished playing this with my fiancee. This is definitely my favourite co-op game I've ever experienced. I was genuinely delighted by the sheer amount of variety in the gameplay and puzzles - every level is drastically different both in functionality and aesthetics, with Cody and May receiving different powers/abilities in each location that do completely different things. Even the fundamentals of how you're playing change sometimes - in one level, you switch from a 3D puzzle-platforming adventure to a top-down battle RPG. The writing skewed a little juvenile for me - it doesn't come across as 'for kids' or anything at all, it's clearly an adult-oriented game with its themes, but coming at it from the perspective of someone who generally enjoys more serious stories, it wore on me at first. The characters all have moments of insufferability, especially Dr. Hakim (seriously, **** that book, I hated every time he showed up), and there are some story beats where if you're taking this seriously you're going to have genuine issues (I've seen a lot of people ranting about the Cutie sequence). So I stopped taking it too seriously. Problem solved. I played it as a mostly fun, light-hearted, mechanically interesting multiplayer experience I could use to bond with my fiancee over, and had a pretty great time with it as a result. My fiancee did, however, get far more into it on an emotional level than I did and absolutely loved it - she got a little teary at the end - so your mileage may vary. The level of difficulty in the puzzles is just right for me - it was never frustrating, but there were still points we had to stop and think together. At one point, we got stuck badly enough that we had to break for the night and come back to it later, and I literally woke up in the morning with a flash of inspiration about it and pestered her until we could get back on the game. Moments like that were great. There wasn't a single level where I had a bad time or just wanted to get it over with. At one point relatively early on, my fiancee said something like, "If there's an obligatory underwater level like in every video game, I'm gonna hate it" - and then there was an underwater level, and we loved it, because they'd done enough to make the gameplay fun and engaging that it wasn't annoying or frustrating at all. The whole singing shtick in the last level was a bit out of left field and silly to me, but I still enjoyed myself and it was a pretty nice way to wrap the story up. I also loved that you could follow the evolution of Cody and May's dynamic, with them antagonistic and uncooperative at the beginning and then slowly beginning to compliment and thank one another, work together more seamlessly, take each other's feelings into account without prompting, etc. It felt natural and well-paced, which isn't always easy to achieve. We'll definitely be checking out Split Fiction and A Way Out - maybe the writing in those games will be more up my alley, but either way this was a great start.
This is the kind of game that scratches a very specific itch - you want to get creeped out without fully committing to horror, or you want a game that messes with liminality and uncanny valley weirdess but you also kind of want to be done with it before your tea gets cold. The looping subway hallway is sterile but also surreal, and it becomes increasingly disorienting as you start paying more and more attention to every flickering light and oddly-placed sign, scanning for the next anomaly and wondering if that poster is different, or if that door was always closed, or if that man just looked at you. It's fun while it lasts, and it's even more fun if you go into it blind - I genuinely enjoyed testing my memory and perception, trying to clock every subtle or bizarre incident like I was auditioning for a **** up version of spot the difference. But once you've seen them all - and you will, probably in under an hour - there's not much reason to replay it. Still, the experience is neatly contained and satisfying, and it's neat enough to be worth the price of admission.
Okay, so off the bat - I've never played the original. That's probably a cardinal sin or something in the gaming world, but I did know the story, or at least the broad strokes of it (the fog, the twists, the monsters), so walking into the remake felt sort of like returning to an eerie, familiar, half-remembered dream. And I think that actually worked in the game's favour. For someone like me - emotionally prepared, but mechanically fresh - this was a haunting, melancholic, and at times surprisingly elegant experience. Not flawless, obviously, not even particularly scary in the traditional sense (though I suspect that might be the point). What grabbed me wasn't the horror, but the atmosphere, that sticky, creeping feeling that you've stepped into a town that's been holding its breath for decades, waiting for someone like you to arrive and exhale all the pain you didn't realise you were carrying. There's something genuinely impressive about the world design, the way the fog doesn't just hide things but suggests them, the way every creaking hallway and peeling wall seem like they're watching you back. It leans into this oppressive sort of beauty, and I wandered through it all not just with tension but fascination. I wanted to poke around in every decrepit corner, read every scrap of paper, piece together every lingering ghost of what happened here and why it still matters. And honestly? That's the magic of it. The horror is deeply psychological, less about the monsters in the halls and more about the ones in James' head. The town just gives them shape. I can't compare this to the original, obviously, but I can say that, while the combat feels kind of clunky and stiff, that stiffness sort of works, because it keeps you grounded in the skin **** who's not a soldier, not a fighter, just someone stumbling around in the dark trying not to fall apart. It's frustrating in parts, sure - some enemies feel more like inconveniences than threats, and some camera angles have minds of their own - but that slight awkwardness feels authentic to the world somehow, like you're never supposed to feel comfortable here. The story is devastating, even when you already know the big twists. Watching it unfold in this updated format gave it a new weight, like seeing an old play restaged with modern lighting. It's not subtle (it never was), but it is sad, and sincere, and strangely beautiful. The ending I got sat heavy in my chest for a while after, even though it was probably the most optimistic I could get - and, really, that's the mark of good storytelling. Not that it shocks you, but that it sticks with you. The remake isn't perfect - there were moments where the pacing dragged or the tension kinda fizzled out, and some of the voice performances lacked a raw, jagged edge that I think it needed - but even in its missteps there's something admirable about it, a deep respect for the source material paired with just enough modern polish to make it accessible to someone like me who came late to the party (but still left haunted by it). I don't know if I'll ever go back (maybe I'll delve into the rest of the series sometime), but I'll be thinking about Silent Hill for a while.
Man. It's Minecraft. Me and my high school friends, from around ages 12 to 15, would play this together for hours every day after school, and I still to this day have so many fond memories. It's not a game that immediately comes to mind when I think about my all-time favourites, but after some consideration I believe it warrants a place on that list for its longevity, its sentimental value, how easy it is as a method of bringing people together, and how broad and full of possibilities it is as an avenue for almost any kind of world or game-within-a-game you can think of.
Graphics are clean and fitting for the setting, with some moments of genuine surprising beauty such as the first sighting of the overgrown testing facility. Glados is as iconic as ever, and Wheatley is a great new addition. Chell continues to be a typical silent protagonist with no real personality of her own, but it's not an issue with a game of this type. All of the voice actors included, particularly the two major VAs behind Glados and Wheatley, are top-notch. Some great delivery of comedic lines adds to the humour. There are two separate storylines for single-player campaign and co-op, which is a great touch. Both are fun, engaging, and genuinely funny. There's up to 2-person co-op available, with its own specially designed multiplayer puzzles. I would heavily advise you to play with someone over call and not with a stranger - communication methods without having a Discord voice chat or something similar up are pretty lacking and could be frustrating.
Gorgeous graphics, obviously. Do these need to be commented on? It's well-known to be one of the most graphically beautiful and detailed games ever made, and it holds up as such to this day. Arthur is widely regarded as one of the best video game characters of all time, and for the most part I have to concur. I'm a John Marston kind of guy myself, but I grew to love Arthur more than I ever could've expected, and he and his writing and development certainly deserve the love and praise they received. I could write you an essay on how vital and important it was for RDR2's protagonist to be a gentle, fundamentally kind-hearted and artistic man in a world of game protagonists who take pride in being violent and "gritty" and apathetic. I loved all of the other characters, too, with some obvious meant-to-be-hated exceptions -- personal favourites are Sean, Karen, Hosea, and (a less popular pick) Molly. The dialogue and voice acting are great, charming, witty -- can't think of any duds in the major cast. The story takes a while to get going, but God when it does it blows you away. There's a reason this game had a lot of grown adult gamers crying. I had far fewer issues with the gameplay than others did. I'm accustomed to the sort of clunky RDR style of movement -- sure, sometimes I would try to turn and fall flat on my face over a small stone on the ground instead, but honestly that just added to the hilarity at times -- and I had no particular problem with the slow realism of looting, skinning, opening cupboards, etc. I found it appropriately weighted and immersive. There is an online mode to the game, but I haven't dabbled in it much myself. I hear it's not as active or well-maintained as GTA online (obviously), but from what I've seen of others playing it in videos and such it seemed much the same as single-player, just with more chaos. I seem to recall there is something of an Online mode storyline/'campaign' as well for those interested.
It's hard to get a full, active lobby going online with strangers in 2025 -- the game's popularity has definitely died a lot. However, if you can get a group of friends going (a full lobby of 10+ is best) this is SO much fun. Always worth playing a bit regardless because of how memetically impactful this game was (not many games have fundamentally changed language and slang like this one has), but otherwise it probably won't be engaging for long if you're just playing alone with strangers via the in-game chat. I always end up going back to this whenever I find people willing to play it with me - it's funny, addictive, and charming.
The graphics were breathtaking back at release, and still hold up pretty well today. There's nothing mind-blowing about the characters, but I do like the "each character represents a type of GTA player" concept. I never bought into the Trevor obsession and just found him kinda gross personally, but Michael and Franklin had their charming and funny moments. Background characters are all pretty one-dimensional and stereotypical, especially Michael's family, but that's par for the course with GTA. Can't complain about the voice actors, they all did their jobs admirably, though nothing stands out to me as notable. With the plot, again, nothing mind-blowing for me, but interesting and engaging enough to keep me playing through the story. The gameplay was a little awkward/clunky at times in that typical Rockstar way, but it didn't frustrate me overly much. It had and has a thriving online mode that is still being maintained to this day, and has a vast modding scene. The economy is absolutely screwed and it's difficult to get into now -- the griefers/hackers drain the fun out of it and unless you're playing with friends it gets boring fast when you can't really do anything because everything costs millions of in-game dollars in 2025. Overall, it's fine, but overrated. It's been a decade, they need to stop milking GTA V and focus on the actual next game. If they re-release V on yet another platform they'd better get the same amount of mockery as Bethesda re-releasing Skyrim a dozen times.
Very short and more of a tech demo or proof of concept for its later sequel, but obviously massively impactful on gaming as a whole and on gaming culture. Initial dawning realisation that GLaDOS is sentient and malevolent, and when you first escape the boundaries of the testing chamber, were amazing. I'll never understand why lines like "The cake is a lie" became the over-memed repeated jokes when there are infinitely funnier and cleverer pieces of dialogue in this game, but so it goes.
Great, consistent graphics style. Environments are gorgeous, especially the purples and cherry blossoms of Inazuma, and the lakes and architecture of Liyue -- the first sighting of Liyue after leaving Mondstadt for the first time was genuinely breath-taking. Some character designs are great, personal favourites being Kaeya, Candace, Dehya, and Alhaitham. However, character designs are beginning to seem stale, repetitive, and uncreative by this point, and it makes it hard to get excited for new ones. There are, however, a pretty good variety of personalities and outlooks represented in the cast. Unfortunately, the protagonist is basically a void who doesn't speak, Paimon, your ever-present 'helper'/companion, is genuinely infuriating, and I don't care for the copy-pasted "sleepy girl" (Sayu, Layla) and "overworked woobie" (Jean, Ganyu) archetypes. The quality of the voice acting varies, but it's generally pretty great. Paimon's voice is like nails on a chalkboard and I would actively love an option to mute her and her alone. I love the lore and storyline, and I'm genuinely invested in seeing where it goes. I like the gameplay fine. Now that I've had a taste of Honkai: Star Rail's combat I'm not super into going back to Genshin's, but that's just me. The four-player co-op is useful and fun for domains and bosses, but there's a ton you can't do in multiplayer that just seems silly. Why can't you do any quests while in multiplayer? Why can't you talk to NPCs? Overall, I like it. It's gacha, so obviously don't play it if you're prone to gambling, FOMO, or have an addictive personality - if you're able to resist temptation, you should be able to grind for all the currency you need without spending anything. It definitely gets review-bombed and unfairly maligned because of sections of the community and immediate opposition to just the gacha aspect (understandably). If you don't participate in the gacha side of the game, then the amount of free content you get is INSANE and completely worth it. That said, unless you're really interested in the story, open world, and characters, I'd still recommend Star Rail over Genshin, and that's coming from someone who usually greatly prefers fantasy and real-time combat to sci-fi and turn-based. It's far, far more generous with its currencies, daily tasks are much quicker to get through, and it's much easier to get through without excessive grinding.
The graphics are cute, consistent, and charming. The character designs are varied and fitting for their personalities. The town is lovely and I'd move there in a heartbeat if I wasn't too damn lazy to put up with countryside. When it comes to the characters, there's a broad range of personalities and outlooks -- they're all pretty likeable to me, including less popular characters like Demetrius and Clint. Personal favourite is Sebastian, and I'll always have a soft spot for Leah who was my first romance route. Linus is endearing, too. Dialogue can get pretty repetitive. As someone usually aiming to talk to characters every day to build my relationships with them, I run into repeated chunks of dialogue within an in-game week, which is a pretty big deal when you can only have one individual conversation with each character per day, and has me losing motivation to check in with everyone. The storyline is far more character-driven than story-driven. Each major NPC has their own sort of mini character arc, especially if you romance them, and there are small storylines such as the Joja Mart vs. Community Center struggle, but ultimately you won't be playing this for any in-depth story. It's a game about the characters and about building your farm up from the ground. Gameplay is completely fine for what it is. I'm not a fan of the time limit, it feels like I barely have time to do anything before the day is over and I'm forced to sprint back to the house lest I collapse and pass out on the ground on the dot at 2AM and go into the next day with an energy level hit. It makes it hard to enjoy the game and its aesthetics as you play because you feel like you're rushing around and shoving all your objectives in before shops close and you get **** has up to four-player co-op. I've played it with one other player, but I do want to try it with a full game sometime. The co-op is fun, everyone gets their own relationships with NPCs, can marry characters, do all the usual stuff around town, etc. You share a farm, but other players get their own little guest houses on the land. As surprising as it might be with the high rating and the general praise, **** Valley really isn't subjectively for me. I'm not a fan of games where you have to live out every day doing tasks, where you're dropped into the game with little hand-holding and left to come up with your own objectives (you'll probably need to do some Googling first playthrough, because the game Will Not explain how to do anything to you), the time limit is stressful, the repetitive dialogue is tiring, and I've never been able to get past the second season in any solo game I've tried. And yet it's so damn endearing and charming that I can't justify giving it any less. The fact that this game was made by one guy - yeah, I know, everyone harps on about that in their reviews, but that **** is MIND-blowing. I almost want to give it five stars for that fact alone, because one person creating everything in this game is such a struggle to comprehend. As a side note, there's a great modding community for this game, including the well-known **** Valley Expanded which introduces entirely new characters, marriage candidates, and storylines.
The graphics were breathtaking upon release - anyone else remember how many times screenshots from Skyrim were mistaken for photographs of real-life scenery? Obviously aged now (at least in vanilla Skyrim), but still pretty gorgeous IMO. None of the characters are particularly deep - this isn't the game to go to if you want broad, complex character development and personalities. NPCs serve their purpose, they make the world feel relatively alive, and they're nicely varied role-wise. Personal favourites are Brynjolf the Scottish thief, J'zargo the Khajiit mage apprentice, and Farkas the hulking werewolf mercenary. The dialogue is fine - conversation options are generally numerous enough (though more would be nice, and they tend to be questions that prompt lore exposition etc. rather than any meaningful two-way interaction). Voice acting is fine in itself, but you'll notice pretty quickly that there's a small pool of voice actors that voice almost every character you come across, not all of whom bother to put on different voices. The plot is better than it's given credit for nowadays. I do, however, agree that the highlight of the game's writing is less the main quest and more the side quests and factions that surround it. Combat can be a little clunky, and I've had some friends who couldn't get used to it enough to stick with the game, but if you've played other Bethesda games (or some third-person RPGs in general), especially Fallout, you'll probably get the hang of it quick. I personally find archery far more intuitive and smooth to navigate than the slower, weightier movements of melee. Frankly, flaws and all, this is one of the best games ever released, not just on its own merit back when it first came out but for its impact on other games and on gaming culture in general. Honourary mention goes to the famous modding community - if you want to get into Skyrim and you own a PC, it's by far the best option to play it that way.
The graphics are pretty, particularly the character models. I loved the glowing reds and almost gory designs of the roots taking over the city. The characters are fun, charismatic, interesting, and if you've played the former DMC games they're endearingly familiar. My personal favourite is V, who neatly slots into character tropes I tend to enjoy, but I also liked (the sadly little we get of) Lady, and Dante was hilarious as always. I particularly enjoyed the Dante-and-Vergil **** voice acting is brilliant, particularly Dante's. Nico's accent grated on me a little, but that's entirely a me thing. The plot is nothing mind-blowing or unique, but you probably don't come to Devil May Cry for the complex story. It's interesting enough to service the game. It's genuinely fun to play through, and combat feels satisfying and flashy. I found V's combat style most fun to play, Dante's trickiest to do well at, and Nero's easy to master but not as engaging. I didn't focus on the multiplayer overly much during my playthrough, but it had a fairly interesting take on it from what I recall. In certain sections of the game, you can see other players controlling the other playable characters in the distance in their own sections of the map, and at the end you can give them a ranking on how well they did. I pretty much just gave everyone a Stylish rating, which grants them a gold orb, because why not? I'll have to delve more deeply into this aspect of the game when I replay.
The graphics are charming and genuinely pretty in places such as the sky/weather and the textures and designs of most of the villagers. It's easy to forget how good they are, but looking back at older games makes it clear that New Horizons is a massive graphical upgrade. Characters are appropriately adorable-looking, but completely devoid of personality. Villagers are the entire point of this franchise, as well as the bonds you form with yours, and yet in this game they've been reduced to window-dressing for your customised island who recite the same dozen generic lines identical to every other villager of the same type. A lot of my 'dream villagers' are of the same few types, and so I can be hitting nothing but repeated dialogues within literal minutes of opening the game. It's soulless. The gameplay is... fine. There are some good QoL improvements, such as the way clothes shopping now works at the Able Sisters and terraforming the land, but there are just... so many things that were a given in older games that have been cut out or have regressed in this one. The crafting system is awful and repetitive, DIY recipes are time-consuming to get and even then mostly just carbon copies of ones you already have, even golden tools (extremely difficult to construct) are now breakable, and shops have far fewer or no upgrades to uncover, just to name a few. You can have up to eight players on an island over online multiplayer, or up to four using local co-op. It's pretty much what you'd expect from Animal Crossing - you can run around together and visit each other's villagers (so you can experience their generic dialogue, too!) but aside from activities you can come up with and design yourself there's nothing to really do together. Overall, this game just... depresses me in a lot of ways. It's stripped back, sanitised, minimalised and "streamlined" in that corporate, modern game kind of way, where all the charm and heart is being lost in order to fit flashy new features to distract from all the ones that have been made worse. Sure, it was a nice refuge over lockdown, but it genuinely kind of angers me that that means this game is going down as a huge best-seller success when it's just... empty. It has the same kind of issue as Sims 4, to my mind, and the fact that so many players picked New Horizons up as their first Animal Crossing game means they don't even know what they're missing. I'll be returning to Wild World and perhaps even New Leaf, because playing this just reminds me I miss the old villagers.
I know it's blasphemous to say so, but this game is just... fine. For me personally, it's probably the most overrated game I can think of. The Road did the story first and better. Lee and Clementine from The Walking Dead did the 'badass father figure with questionable past and young girl who slowly become family' trope first and better. The gameplay was clunky and shots didn't feel weighty enough, and everything in here has just... been done before somewhere else. It's a fine game, even a good one, you won't find me claiming otherwise, but I just don't see the mind-blowing masterpiece everyone else seems to, and I genuinely don't understand the reputation this still has to this day. Have people just not played enough other games? The graphics were stunning at release (I remember at the time saying it was the most realistic-looking game I'd ever seen), characters are relatively believable as people, the acting is brilliant. As a video game, though, it's a strong "meh", and the more it's lauded as the best of all time the more resentful I grow toward it. There are just so many better games and so many better stories that are pushed to the side in favour of this trope-fest.
Honestly, I like the graphics way more than other people seem to. I don't have any issues with the character models and I don't care about the maps supposedly lacking detail, it's never bothered me and everything does as it's meant to. There's some pop-up sometimes around the monastery/NPCs appearing out of nowhere when they load, but I can easily ignore that. There are so many characters that I'd be surprised if you can't find a solid few you really enjoy. They're very varied in personality and appearance, though the character writing varies from "complex and in-depth" (Edelgard, Dimitri, Rhea) to "basically one major personality trait" (Raphael, Bernadetta, Cyril). My personal favourites are Claude, Sylvain, Hilda, Lorenz, Leonie, Yuri, Manuela, Hanneman, and Raphael (sure, I listed him as an example of objectively one-note writing, but I could still write you a whole essay on this guy). I love the Golden Deer as a collective, though. I really like the combat in this game. It's the first time I've played anything like this, and it's one of very very few games where I go out of my way to participate in fights because I want to, or where I find myself thinking "man I feel like doing some combat in that video game right now". The dialogue options outside of battle are silly, though - it's the most blatant case of "two options that are just reworded ways to say the exact same thing and get the exact same response" I've ever seen. Multiplayer is functionally non-existent. All it is is that if you have your online mode turned on, glowing circles will appear on battlefields signifying where other players have died or killed a unit often and granting you some XP or basic items if you stand on those spots, as well as giving you stat pages in loading screens that show things like who the most popular character for players to take to tea that month or what the most frequently fed animal at the Monastery is. Overall, this is a great game. I've played through Golden Deer 4 times so far (one for each gender of Byleth so I could S-support everyone in it, then starting over and doing the same again to refresh myself after ages of not playing), 2 runs of Blue Lions, and I'm currently finishing up my second go at Silver Snow before moving on to Edelgard's route. Taking a point off because White Clouds is mind-numbingly annoying to get through if you're replaying it often like I am since it doesn't vary by route, the romantic M/M options are pretty trash (one single gay romance option in the base-game before two more were added with paid DLC, one of those being route-specific, is crazy in a game with dozen and dozens of straight ones) and for more minor issues like the dialogue options thing, but I can't justify rating it lower - I still really like it and it's definitely one of my favourite games.
It was pretty fun to dip into every now and then and play with friends. I would get burnt out after a couple hours of playing so I could never do it more intensively, but I enjoyed it casually. It **** that it's no longer playable and I frankly can't comprehend the decision to do the 'sequel' this way at all, but so it goes I guess. Lucio was great, graphics were sleek, the diversity in character ethnicities etc. was refreshing, and I liked the medal system post-game. Was getting sick of the fact that most of the Overwatch women had the same face by the end of it though. How the same company that can come up with both Roadhog and Torbjorn can't break out of their copy-pasted skinny hourglass girls I have no clue.
Pretty charming graphics with a nice style, though the character models can be a bit awkward/plastic-y in appearance and stilted in movement. Everything has a sort of sepia-toned air to it, which fits with the atmosphere of the game. The characters are all pretty stereotypical. Side characters are one-note, but the main characters were likeable enough to me, though I know a couple of them are a little divisive among players (read: Chloe). My personal favourites were Kate and Nathan; I think they're interesting depictions of two very different responses to mental illness and trauma, one who directs their hatred inward towards themselves and one who directs it outward towards others. I generally hate to use the term "cringe-worthy", but the writing in this game is so bad it's sometimes painful. "Ready for the moshpit, shaka brah" and "Go **** your-selfie" are two immediate examples that come to mind. It's very clearly a script written by grown men trying to emulate how they think teenage girls talk and falling very, very short. It's bearable if you don't take it too seriously. The gameplay is pretty Telltale-esque. Walk around, point at and click on objects, some very light puzzles. Dialogue options as per usual, though with the pretty neat twist that you can go through a conversation, rewind time, and use information you gained from that future to unlock new dialogue choices. It's a fine game, though definitely overrated IMO. Telltale does everything it does better and with an interface I like better, and the ending pretty much disregards all of your choices even moreso than Telltale games are often criticised for doing. However, it fills a niche, it has a lovely atmosphere and a gorgeous and fitting soundtrack, and the characters fit the setting well. Again, if you don't take things too seriously, this is good for what it is -- and, if you're a teenager, particularly a teenage girl, I think you'll find a lot to like and relate to in parts of it.
Interesting, colour-poppy, and eye-catching art style. The 2D character models on 3D backgrounds and how they incorporated that was actually pretty cool. Character models have a lot of fun variety, ranging from pretty average little dudes (Makoto and Toko), to conventionally attractive model-types (Junko and Sayaka), to genuinely unconventional and unique (Sakura, Hifumi - though honestly most of them have some unique visual trait about them). The colour scheme and pink blood gives the whole thing a kind of bubblegum splatterpunk vibe that I'm super into. There's a great range of personalities in the cast, and their different 'Ultimate Talents' lends some more differences between their backgrounds. You have the fashionista model, the jock, the stoic one, the prep, all those cliches - and then they often turn out to be nothing like you'd expect from those cliches. Everyone kind of acknowledges the writing in this game can get pretty wacky, and, I mean, yeah. There's a talking robot bear who sometimes speaks aloud in emoticons for the hell of it. Don't take it too seriously and you'll probably have a fun time. The plot twists are genuinely great if you go in at least partly blind like I did - I knew Junko would have some greater significance (can't really avoid that with how ever-present she is online) and I kind of got the general gist as to what that significance would be, and I was able to figure out some cases fairly easily, but others caught me genuinely off-guard, and it was super fun to play through them with my fiancee watching me as we both tried to guess what would be revealed. It's a visual novel, so expect a lot of clicking, a lot of reading, some dialogue options, and not a lot of physical gameplay. I enjoy visual novels, so the gameplay was enjoyable for me.
The graphics are dated now for sure, but gorgeous when I first played in my childhood/early teens. Not so bad now that it takes away from my enjoyment of the game, but I'm fueled by nostalgia and a general preference for story > graphics anyway, so your mileage may vary. The characters are genuinely iconic and full of life. John is beloved in gaming history for a reason, and I've loved Bonnie since I first played. Even characters with less obvious depth, like Bill and Javier, are seen through a completely different lens if you go back to this after playing RDR2. Gameplay is typically Rockstar - a little clunky, LR + aim to shoot, ride around on a horse. Using the clunk to throw John around on the floor when he's drunk entertained younger me for longer than it should have. That moment when you first ride into Mexico to the sound of Far Away is beautiful.
Gorgeous and consistent visuals, realistic character designs, impressive mo-cap animation and facial expressions. The characters are all solid, though they vary in quality. Connor's story is widely regarded as the best part of the game, while Kara's and Markus' are more divisive. Side characters are endearing when meant to be, infuriating when meant to be, and a broad range between. My personal favourites were Connor and Hank and their found family buddy cop dynamic, Simon and his quiet support, and Ralph and his zany unpredictability. I think the writing is overhated. Sure, the racism allegories are clumsy and obvious, but I'll take well-meaning in-your-face anti-racism sentiments over none at all. The branching paths are incredible, and the flowcharts after each chapter make it clear to see how much work has gone into diverging playthroughs and choices. I do think some things that were cut are a shame, though, such as the Markus/Simon relationship, especially as they left certain scenes leading up to it in which can be jarring. In the same vein, the fact that meeting North on the rooftop and being vaguely friendly to her (as in, literally any response that isn't straight-up leaving before the conversation begins) immediately shoots you to "Lovers" status even if you were rivals or mere acquaintances before was bizarre at best. If you're not a fan of QTE sequences and Telltale-esque gameplay loops, you probably won't be a fan of it here, but fortunately I am so I enjoyed it. The beginning of Kara's story can be quite slow (though oddly doing chores in-game is way more **** than doing them in real life), but frankly the beginning of most games are slow on replays, so that's not all that surprising. Some of the QTE sequences are genuinely fast-paced and exciting -- a favourite that sticks out in my mind is a chase scene over the rooftops with Connor which was so fun to play I actually reloaded to do it again. I will say, though, that the plot twist with Alice was extremely stupid and completely ruined the entire point of her and Kara's story arc up to that point. No clue who thought that was a good idea.
A shorter and less serious review than usual, but I feel like this game's major sticking point to me is its potential. Even though I've long since gotten over the promise Versus XIII had, I still wonder what it would have entailed - and then there's the lost potential of what we did get, in Luna and Niflheim and Ravus and Regis, the relationships and characters and storylines that could have been so much more than they were. But we got Ignis. And him and his relationship with Noctis, as well as his DLC, are carrying four of these six stars on their backs for me. Love you team mom.
I liked it fine, though I really don't understand the hype around the ending. I played it because everyone around me kept raving about this iconic, shocking, jaw-dropping ending, and then I got there and I was just like... this is it? Surely, something else must happen. Nope, the camera's zooming out. The credits are rolling. That was seriously it. Well, okay. I found myself looking up explanations of the end not because I was genuinely hooked on theories and possibilities like I enjoy being, but because I assumed I must have missed something massive, because it was so jarring and random and out-of-place that I figured there had to be more to it. Nope, it was just that. I'd still recommend it, though. Everyone else seems to think it's something special, so I'm inclined to accept I'm one of the odd ones out here. It's short, and a fun experience to actually play through, so why not?
The graphics are horrifying where they need to be and beautiful where they need to be. A genuinely unique and characteristic style that does exactly what it's meant to. There's no spoken dialogue in this game, so you won't be getting to know characters' personalities that way, but you grow fond of them regardless. I wanted to protect Six (and then I was proud of her, and then I was a little freaked out by her), the Lady is eerily beautiful, the Chefs are perfectly revolting, and the first time I saw the Janitor was a shock to the system in the best way possible in a horror game. Controls can be a little finicky sometimes, but it was never enough to bother me -- only in the sense that some jumps may take a few tries to get the timing and angle right. I never found the 2.5D perspective unfair or misleading when it came to making leaps or deciphering where surfaces were, but a lot of people have complained about that so your mileage may vary; keep it in mind before you play. Overall, I prefer the sequel story-wise, but this game has a little place in my heart. Additionally, note that the game only takes ~3 hours to complete, so I would personally feel a little cheated paying the current Steam price of £15.99 for it. I'd advise picking it up on sale.
The graphics have definitely aged even by Telltale standards, but they're absolutely not what's important here. I'd also say they're not bad by any means. The characters are the best part of the experience. You will, most likely, grow emotionally connected to these people in a way you may not expect. Lee is iconic as a protagonist and one of the most beloved leading men in gaming for a reason, Clementine is adorable and from what I can tell a good emotional anchor for most players, Kenny is lauded by gamers (even if I find him overrated myself), and the various side and minor characters are well-written and serve a purpose. I could write you an embarrassingly long essay in defense of Ben even years after I last played. Gameplay is the typical Telltale fare - QTE sequences, timed dialogue choices, moral decisions, walking around, some scattered environmental puzzles. If you don't like Telltale's usual style of gameplay, it does nothing different here, but I do, so I enjoyed it. It's really, really hard to express how much this game means to me. Not only my first Telltale game (to this day one of my favourite studios), when it released in 2012 this was my first choice-based/interactive fiction type game ever, and it catapulted me headfirst into possibly my absolute most-played genre ever. There is a reason people still talk about this game and its characters over a decade later, there is a reason people uploaded videos of themselves sobbing at the ending, there is a reason this won so many GOTY awards. If you're going to play one Telltale game, make it this one. Even if you don't like gameplay-light experiences like this, try it. I don't think there's a single person I wouldn't recommend this to with my entire soul. I've lost count of the number of times I've played this - on Xbox 360, on Xbox One, on PS4, on computer - but it's absolutely in the double digits. As an aside, the horror of Episode 2 impacted me so deeply as a child that aspects of it formed and affected my fears to this day. "See where he is now" is a phrase that haunts my damn mind. If you know, you know. (Sidenote I include with all Telltale reviews: Telltale's games often get a bad rap for having your choices not influence the story, but to me this misses the point of what they do. Variant endings are a nice bonus in games, and I enjoy them when they do pop up in Telltale's stories, but for the most part your choices aren't here to change where you go. They're there to change how you get there, who you are when you get there, and often who you get there with. They influence and change your relationships with the characters around you. The joy of replaying these games is to experience the different dialogue, the different reactions to you, the different routes you can take on the way, the different bonds you can evolve with people - not to have a wildly different ending. I think this aspect is overhated and sadly misunderstood by a lot of players, so if huge, game-changing differences are what you're looking for, I'd temper your expectations.)
I have a massive fear of the ocean/open water and giant creatures IN the ocean, and somehow that only accentuates my fascination with this game. I wouldn't call it horror, but if you're anything like me you'll for sure be horrified while playing anyway. Gorgeous survival and exploration game with a storyline to uncover and varied, interesting creatures, both hostile and friendly.
Considering I've always preferred fantasy to sci-fi and real-time combat to turn-based, you'd think I'd be a Genshin person more than a Star Rail person, but now that I've played this going back to Genshin means I'm spending my entire time thinking "Man, I wish this was more like Star Rail." The QoL improvements are genuinely and massively appreciated - off the top of my head, the dailies are so much faster to get through and have actual mini storylines rather than just "Go here and kill 10 hilichurls", you got more Trailblaze Power right off the bat than you ever did Resin (AND this just recently updated to be even more and to give you a reserve amount so you don't have to deplete it daily), you get far more free currency for events and missions (going back to Genshin makes this discrepancy very obvious, I'm usually pulling teeth to get 20 primogems at the end of a longass questline vs. Star Rail where I'm getting 60 jades for every part of one), grinding is so much easier because you can get exactly the material you need from everywhere whenever you want unlike Genshin's "this domain is only open on Wednesdays and you might get some random other item instead" shtick, the pity is much more generous and the Standard banner lets you manually choose a character you want after a certain number of pulls, etc. On top of that, you can absolutely play this completely free with the characters you get from the beginning. The characters you get for free just from the early storyline are the Trailblazer (Physical damage, later optional Fire support/shield), March (Ice shield), Dan Heng (Wind DPS), Natasha (Physical healer), Asta (Fire buff support), **** (Quantum damage), Yukong (Imaginary damage/support), Serval (Electric damage), and Herta (Ice damage). On top of that, so far off the top of my head events have freely given you Sushang (Physical damage) and Dr. Ratio (Imaginary damage), as well as additional instances of Yukong and ****. I've been playing for several months now, and Trailblazer and March are still absolutely mainstays in my team and very rarely leave it. They've carried me through most fights. Asta is also my go-to Fire element despite me having pulled several others by now, and Dan Heng was always in my team until recently too. I still use Dr. Ratio pretty regularly. You can absolutely build a core team of purely F2P characters and get through the current storyline just fine. I personally don't play daily anymore, I don't feel pressured to grind for currencies unless there's a specific upcoming character I want to pull for, and I don't feel a need to grind for levelling/ascension resources unless I have a particular goal in mind for a character which only takes a few days to complete, if that. This helps me avoid burnout so I'd recommend doing the same if you're prone to that. The only dip in story quality has been the Xianzhou trips - when I was playing through Belobog and Penacony I found myself actively and constantly wanting to play to progress the story, while with the first trip to the Xianzhou I enjoyed it but could easily go weeks without feeling the urge to continue, and the second time around I actively dreaded having to get through it. The characters are varied and pretty engaging, and it hasn't quite yet fallen into the Genshin trap of a ton of the new characters looking the same as pre-existing ones because they're just recycling the same generic cute girl designs. My personal favourite characters so far are Sampo (and I really hope some of the theories about him are right because that'd be fascinating), Welt, Blade, and Aventurine. I actually also really enjoy the main character, Caelus/Stelle - both their design and colour scheme, and their personality. They're not a silent protagonist like Genshin's Aether/Lumine, and I love that - they have some genuinely hilarious dialogue and moments. I honestly look forward to seeing where this story is going. Shoutout to the music, too - the Belobog final boss fight theme is now on repeat in the Astral Express.
I'm disabled, so I can't really partake in a lot of this game's features. I also happen to live in a super small town, which is a terrible combination for it. All I can get from here is basically the same 5-10 Pokemon appearing, and I can't reach any Pokestops without walking, which is difficult for me to do. They ramped up the prices of remote play, which **** for people like me, so :') On the rare occasions I find myself in a city it's pretty fun, but I'll never be able to play it properly or fully enjoy it because it wasn't made for disabled people, and their perspective is that accommodating us would go against their aims with the game.
Fascinating concept, gorgeous visuals and atmosphere, mind-blowing twists. The combat is a little clunky sometimes, but no more than a lot of other FPS games I've played, especially older ones. I do maintain that the game would have been much stronger had it ended with the Atlas twist and Ryan confrontation - it built up and up to this well sketched-out, shocking climax, and then it just... kept going afterwards when the moment was ripe for rolling credits and leaving you with those emotions. It just kind of makes things peter out and lose that high. The game also loses a lot of its shine once you realise it was less intentionally intelligent and political and more an accidental stumble into profundity by a guy who had no clue what he was implying. That said, I thought the good ending was appropriately emotional and sweet. I feel no particular incentive to continue with the other Bioshock games, though I'm sure I'll get to them someday, but I enjoyed this and the lore surrounding it.
This was my first Final Fantasy as a kid, so maybe I'm biased, but you know what? I love this game, and I'll die on that hill despite everyone else hating it. I remember crying at the ending when I first finished it, so that says something. I fully accept that a lot of the criticism for Final Fantasy XIII is valid and understandable, but I maintain that a lot of it isn't - it became 'cool' to hate on XIII because everyone did back then, it was something you ragged on for Reddit upvotes, and the more it happened the less anyone was inclined to even give it a fair chance. They'll point to characters being insufferable with a complete lack of empathy - I remember the absolute brigade of loathing for Hope, a grieving child who just watched his mother die in front of him, and people calling him immature and annoying like the entire point of his arc wasn't to show him growing and healing past that. If I'd seen my mother violently killed in front of me at 14 years old, I highly doubt I'd have been as collected and capable as Hope is. I also remember everyone dragging Vanille's Australian accent and calling it fake, despite her VA being Australian. The graphics are gorgeous, the character designs are excellent (which includes the background NPCs - have you seen Yuj?), the soundtrack is beautiful. I don't find the story convoluted or hard to follow at all, and honestly I don't fully understand where that criticism comes from; I actively enjoyed going through all the datalog entries and seeing how they changed and updated as I progressed the plot, but I didn't feel that I needed to read them in order to follow the basic events happening in front of me. As for the linearity, sure, it's linear - but linear doesn't mean bad, and it's no more linear than Final Fantasy X was. The only difference is that FFXIII doesn't disguise it. If you worship FFX as the "last great mainline title" but dismiss FFXIII as a "hallway simulator"... The characters are perfectly likeable to me. My personal favourites were Sazh (I could talk for hours about how genuine and funny and paternal he is, and how much I love where his story goes throughout the game - that one scene with Vanille was chilling, even as I rationally knew he couldn't have done it), Snow (yes, I found his heroic bluster endearing), and Vanille (I think she's sweet and surprisingly complex). Another shoutout to Yuj, too - it may mostly be his character design that caught my eye, but I always enjoyed him popping up through the story. I love Serah, too, but that's mostly based on sequels, so I'll leave my thoughts on her for when I get to reviewing those. My only real criticisms of the game are the lack of hub towns and the inability to choose your own party members for the first portion of the story (I forget how many chapters it takes to unlock). As minor side notes, I love how the Crystarium level up screens look, and the sound design is great - I love the way your footsteps sound as you run across the crystal surface of Lake Bresha.
God, I love this game. As tired as the concept may be for some, the idea of taking fairytale/fantasy characters and putting them into modern cities and realistic situations has always been something I dug, and it was done wonderfully here. The setting is vivid and easy to immerse yourself in, the characters are varied, likeable, and charming, the mystery is suspenseful and gripping, the choices and consequences are satisfying, and the soundtrack is brilliant. The ending has one of the cliffhangers that have haunted me most through my time in gaming, and I am both excited for and terrified of the sequel. Hopefully it lives up to the first game's quality and ties up the loose ends it needs to. (Sidenote I include with all Telltale reviews: Telltale's games often get a bad rap for having your choices not influence the story, but to me this misses the point of what they do. Variant endings are a nice bonus in games, and I enjoy them when they do pop up in Telltale's stories, but for the most part your choices aren't here to change where you go. They're there to change how you get there, who you are when you get there, and often who you get there with. They influence and change your relationships with the characters around you. The joy of replaying these games is to experience the different dialogue, the different reactions to you, the different routes you can take on the way, the different bonds you can evolve with people - not to have a wildly different ending. I think this aspect is overhated and sadly misunderstood by a lot of players, so if huge, game-changing differences are what you're looking for, I'd temper your expectations.)
I genuinely enjoy this game. People say the community is toxic - maybe I've just been lucky, but I've never had a bad experience in the in-game chat so far. Honestly, people barely even use the chat minus a rare "GG" thrown out afterwards (but it's more likely that people just quietly leave once the game's over); my one interaction that I can remember beyond that was a time all four of us in-game loaded in as Claudette, I typed "squadette", and one of the others said "omg a squadette of claudettes", so that was all I needed. You will probably run into a bunch of campers, which can ruin the fun a bit when it's four games in a row of the killer hooking you and then just standing there until you die so no one can rescue you and you can't play, but in my personal experience it hasn't been toxic in the sense that anyone's saying anything to you. The gameplay loop is lowkey addicting - repairing generators is an absolute pain in the ass while you're doing it because of how slooooooowly that bar goes up (though Killers say they repair too fast, so what do I know), but then I'll find myself sitting around thinking "Man, I wish I was on DBD doing generators right now." I personally don't find the game scary at all, including back when I was a massive wimp about horror, so I wouldn't recommend it if that's your main draw to it. It's tense in the way any sort of violent hide and seek would be, with you sneaking around and trying to avoid being seen by a killer, and there might be some yelling if you're playing with friends over mic, but I wouldn't call it scary per se. The variety of characters is fun and keeps things relatively interesting - I have my favourites, as do most people, but I'll find myself playing most of them at least sometimes. They all come with unique personal perks, but you can always re-spec them once they're levelled enough for their perks to be in the general bloodweb and assign them to other characters if you'd prefer. My only complaints are the rework they did to the wriggle mechanic when you're picked up by a killer (it used to be the same as normal skill checks, which was still challenging to meet the threshold to escape but doable, whereas now it's its own thing that means you're absolutely not going to ever be able to wriggle out of the killer's hold unless a) the hook is all the way across the map and b) you hit every single one of the checks without fail, and often not even then), and the fact that the cosmetics are so expensive. Loading times also tend to be pretty slow, it's not uncommon at all to be waiting 5 minutes for a lobby. I'd definitely recommend to play it with friends - even just going into a public lobby with one or two friends can turn it from meh into a fun game with a lot of laughs and scares going on. I'll play it every so often by myself, and it's the only way I've played Killer, but all of the fun is in the group play for me. I've found while teaching friends new to the game that it can be a little hard to pick up and learn at first - there's no tutorial, so unless you want to jump into a public game and learn as you go, I'd advise getting a friend who plays to get into a custom game with you as a killer and teach you the ropes that way instead. It has great lore if that's something you're interested in - it's not gone into in much detail in-game beyond the TL;DR backstory pages and the tidbits you can glean from item/cosmetic descriptions, but if you dig into it out-of-game it's pretty interesting to learn about. Also, Nicolas Cage is in the game as himself, which I have to reluctantly admit is quite funny.
Man, this is one of my favourite horror games. I played it on Safe Mode, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that that's the superior way to play in order to experience the atmosphere and be able to take in the setting and details, so I concur and would recommend other players do the same. This isn't a jumpscare-y game, per se, especially with Safe Mode enabled, but it's horror in the psychological, pervading, keeps-you-up-at-night-having-an-existential-crisis way, which is my favourite flavour of horror. Even when I was at my absolute wimpiest and couldn't make myself watch five minutes of a horror movie, I loved psychological horror - plot twists, bendy narratives, eerie atmospheres, that feeling of something just under the surface being terribly, terribly wrong but not knowing what yet... SOMA has all of it and more. People rag on Simon for being unintelligent as a protagonist, but I think he's written realistically for someone whose entire arc revolves around the fact that he has brain trauma, as well as the fact that he's very clearly in deep denial about a lot of things right up until the ending of the game. I also understand why people criticise the ending for adding the post-credits sequence and say it ruins the emotions of the initial ending scene, but I wouldn't change it. The crushing, shocking despair of the first scene, only for that overwhelming relief when you find yourself on the ARK, and the brilliant way they re-incorporated the survey that they'd had you take earlier was great. I ended up with completely different answers to when I'd taken it the first time, and a huge part of that was because of that relief and gratitude I felt in comparison to being down there; I don't think it could've worked so well any other way.
I think Until Dawn is overrated and I personally greatly prefer The Quarry both in terms of characters and gameplay, but it is still massively superior to all of the Dark Pictures Anthology installments. The characters are shallow and stereotypical, but the game doesn't really pretend they're anything deeper than that - it's a campy B-movie "dumb teens stuck in a cabin" horror, and they all serve their purposes fine. You'll probably enjoy some and dislike others, which adds some nice stakes in who you're trying hardest to keep alive. I think the "it has so many endings!" note is overblown considering all of those 'endings' are just the same ending with different combinations of characters alive at the end and thus slightly different people having lines to say in the police interview montage at the end. For that reason, I wouldn't really expend too much energy on trying to get multiple endings unless you want to 100% it or you messed up first run and want to try an 'everyone survives' playthrough for the sake of it. Graphics are nice, and were very impressive at the time, but the facial expressions are janky to the point of unintentional hilarity (characters will smile and have it look more like a pained grimace, with Jess and Emily specifically coming to mind here). Still, it's fun for what it is. Just don't take it too seriously.
To get the negatives out of the way, the things that keep me from rating it higher would be: 1.) The tedious and drawn-out podcast ending; genuinely, who thought that was the way to go? 2.) The weird and abrupt halt to the Ryan romance plotline, where you can build up a relationship with Dylan or Kaitlyn (especially Dylan) and then suddenly no matter what your choices he says "maybe neither" in favour of having a weird flirtation with Laura, who already has a boyfriend serving as her entire motivation. 3.) Shooting could be a little janky at times, though it only caused me issues once; almost at the end, in the final confrontation in the cabin, Kaitlyn ended up dying because the game didn't register that I shot the werewolf even though I did. Wasn't a huge deal because I have the Deluxe Edition so I used a rewind, but for someone who doesn't have that available on first playthrough it could be super frustrating. 4.) Some characters didn't get enough screentime, particularly Nick. 5.) The werewolves just looked like the wendigo from Until Dawn. No idea if that was a budget/reusing assets thing or what, but there's no way they didn't notice they were essentially using identical models. I want to see actual werewolves, damnit. That said, I actually really enjoyed this. I connected with the characters much more in this than Until Dawn, where my strongest feelings towards any protagonist were "they're fine" ranging to "vague annoyance". I felt genuinely invested in keeping my favourites alive - hell, I actually HAD favourites! - and that made it so much more tense and high-stakes. The graphics are gorgeous, the story was fun and campy, and the soundtrack was enjoyable.
I remember seeing a video showing this game off years ago over on Tumblr, and I was blown away by how creative and mind-trippy it all seemed. I completely forgot the name of it, but I always remembered the video, so a few years later I went hunting for what the game title was to play it for myself and found Superliminal. This was a genuinely super neat concept. I dig games like this, and it didn't overstay its welcome to the point that the puzzles and core mechanics lost their novelty for me. Might replay it on stream or something when it's been long enough that I've forgotten the solutions. This is the kind of game where seeing people's reactions to it all would be fun.
As long as I'm playing with a group of friends I find the actual gameplay fun enough while I'm actively in it, but overall I really did have to push myself to get through this one. The story is barely there, the combat is pretty clunky and dated, and it's just generally outclassed by its sequels in a number of ways.
The graphics are very dated and outright ugly in places, but it's not enjoyment-affecting at all IMO. I've played games that aged far worse, and everything does its job. If you're on PC, there are plenty of texture and cosmetic mods to modernise things a little. The characters don't stick with me as much as the DA2 and some of the Inquisition companions do, but they're varied and interesting nonetheless. Your romance options are Zevran, a seductive elven assassin; Leliana, a pious Chantry sister hiding dark secrets; Morrigan, a gothic and asocial swamp witch; and Alistair, a naive and humorous ex-Templar with royal blood. Additionally, you can recruit companions such as Wynne, an elderly healer who seems to be assisted by some mysterious force; Sten, a soldier from a foreign culture who's entirely new to Ferelden; Oghren, a dwarven berserker who's crude with a love of alcohol; and Loghain, a morally questionable but complex antagonist-turned-ally. The Stone Prisoner DLC will also give you Shale, a stone golem with a previously mortal identity. The voice acting is varied but generally good - Alistair's VA is endearingly awkward, Leliana's sounds stilted in places, and Zevran stands out as suitably suave and perpetually amused. The dialogue options you get as the protagonist are typically pretty extensive and easy to roleplay within; my biggest complaint is that I feel romance/flirt dialogues are not at all obvious enough, and very easily confused with platonically kind gestures, which means you more often than not end up 'stealth' romancing a character. The story is pretty generic, and overrated in my opinion - it's a cliche fantasy plot, there's an evil force threatening the world, you and your band of companions are the only ones who can stop it, and you have to travel around to individual locations in order to recruit factions for your army. The gameplay is clunky, and my least favourite part of the game. The combat is aggravating enough that by the time I've been playing for a few hours I'm usually using mods just to skip most of the non-significant battles. Overall, this game didn't connect with me as much as it seems to for most; I think nostalgia (and the "older = better" mindset among gaming elitists) is a huge factor in the favouritism for Origins, and I prefer the sequels in most respects. However, the extensive dialogue options and roleplaying opportunities keep me coming back to Origins regardless.
Graphics are perfectly fine. Nothing breathtaking (although the cityscapes at night with all the neon lights flashing are gorgeous), but there's nothing wrong with them. If you're the type of person who would get more enjoyment from more modernised graphics, there's a remastered version I haven't tried yet but hope to get around to that I'd suggest going for. It has a genuinely endearing and funny group of characters. Most are returning characters from the previous games, but there are some new faces thrown in there that add some more variety too. Shaundi is very different from her SR2 counterpart, which is explained in-game, but some players still dislike that change. The voice acting is great. The protagonist's voice options are all varied and each of them has distinctly different responses and personality traits, which adds some pretty neat replay value. Pierce is also a stand-out for me. The game managed to make me genuinely connect with my custom character to the point I liked him more than the actual NPCs. The plot technically carries on from the previous games, but it's pretty easy to jump into with this as your first and follow along, you'll just miss some references. It's still grounded in crime and gangs, which I vastly prefer to SR4's more bonkers sci-fi stuff. Some of the scripted moments are genuinely amazing, and the only mission I'd say sticks out as unengaging or annoying is the zombie horde one, which is unavoidable and something I dread getting to every time I replay. The gameplay holds up VERY well for a game from 2011. I found the combat and gunplay smooth and coherent, and movement works fine for me. I didn't experience any clunkiness or any mechanic that felt like it unfairly affected my chances at succeeding or winning encounters etc. I've only briefly played the multiplayer, but you can go through the campaign in co-op mode. Only the host's character will appear in cutscenes which is a bit of a bummer, but it works fine as some fun with friends.
It's a lot of fun with friends. I've virtually never been able to play a full 4-player game because our schedules are always clashing, but hopefully I'll be able to experience that soon because it seems like that would be where the peak fun is. It's a bummer that the game only has 5 boards, less than even the games that came out 20 years ago, so they get a little repetitive if you play the game often, but fortunately I only hop on when playing with friends and it helps that no two rounds of Mario Party are exactly the same. The minigames could be a little more spread out (if I remember correctly, there's 60-something from the N64 vs. 40-something from all 7 other games), but what is there is a good, pretty varied selection that I generally enjoy the majority of.
It's been a while, but I remember really liking this. There were a few points that I don't think were explained well, unless I really just wasn't paying attention - e.g. Cole's affair with Elsa being revealed, which I initially thought he was being framed for and was both confused and frustrated about why he was just accepting being fired over it. I also think it's silly to set that up as a reveal when the game never bothered to show us Cole's wife and family, or even really mention them, so there was zero investment in that relationship. Aside from that, though, I loved the atmosphere, the characters were interesting, most of the twists were engaging, and I actually had a lot of fun with the gameplay and the cases themselves. Even when it did get repetitive, I found it a pretty enjoyable little routine to fall into until the next plot swerve occurred. I'll need to replay this someday to get a clearer and more up-to-date impression of it, so watch this space.
Graphics are cohesively styled and nice to look at - somewhat typical ATLUS character designs. The colour schemes are pleasing to the eye and I overall enjoyed the aesthetics of the game a lot. The protagonist, Vincent, is a 30-something year old socially awkward deadbeat who's going nowhere in particular in life and has to decide whether he's going to stay that way or start getting his act together. He's an objectively bad person at first, and so he might be hard to like for a lot of players, but I personally found his character development fun to guide along, and the comedy he brings with his constant anxiety and horrified reactions to everything had me endeared. Your potential love interests are Katherine, an ambitious and diligent career woman who wants Vincent to settle down and start taking things more seriously; Catherine, a playful and uncommitted seductress who doesn't believe in love; and Rin, a sweet and mysterious neighbour who doesn't seem to remember much of his past. I enjoyed all three characters and their different dynamics with Vincent (and who he can become as a result of those dynamics), but my personal favourite is probably Rin thanks to what he represents - I believe as a partner he is the biggest catalyst for Vincent to grow as a person and to find genuine happiness. The supporting characters, primarily Vincent's group of friends and Erica, the waitress at the bar they all hang out at, are likeable and funny. I enjoyed all of the voice acting fine. Troy Baker as Vincent is on point and hits all of the comedic beats perfectly, and while my personal enjoyment can vary with the other characters' voices, none of them were bad. A surprisingly mature and nuanced take on relationships for a game like this, Catherine: Full Body deals with infidelity, commitment, sexuality, gender identity, and personal growth. I found it genuinely enjoyable to play through, and your ending can vary pretty wildly depending on your choices and route (if I remember correctly, there are 16 or 17 different possibilities). The game has two very different gameplay styles. During the day, it's a dating sim/visual novel; Vincent hangs out at the bar with his group of friends, answers texts on his phone and has conversations with his various romantic interests, and has cutscenes with other characters. At night, it turns into a genuinely challenging and fast-paced puzzle game, where you guide Vincent through a series of nightmares he finds himself cursed with where any death in his sleep means a death in reality. I was playing it more for the story and choices than I was for the puzzles, so I ended up utilising the new QoL/accessibility toggles in this edition to breeze past most of them. I believe there is a competitive multiplayer mode to the puzzle gameplay, but I've never tried it. To address the elephant in the room, I'm sure there's nothing I can say about the transphobia criticisms about this game that hasn't been said already. However, personally it all comes down to: I can look past it. For an ATLUS game in 2011, having a major and likeable trans woman character like Erica is progressive in itself, and while I completely stand by the fact that people's criticism of how her character is treated by other characters is valid, I do believe they genuinely improved with Full Body and showed growth in how they treat LGBT+ characters with the inclusion of Rin, the fact that sexuality and gender is directly addressed on Rin's route with Erica weighing in on it, and the toning-down of some of the more off-colour moments to do with Erica's gender from the original. I do think the 'alien reveal' was pretty silly and tonally off from the rest of the game. As some others have said in their own reviews, I would find Rin as an angel much more consistent and easy to digest, and a nice rounding-out of the love interest roster with Rin as an angelic figure, Catherine as a demonic figure, and Katherine as a grounded regular human. Frankly, I tend to just pretend that part of the ending didn't happen.
Inquisition is a very strange creature where I could rant for virtually hours about all of the facets of this game I genuinely dislike with a passion, and yet when it comes to it, I still enjoyed it. There's so much to be annoyed by. 1) Typical empty open-world RPG that gives me awful Ubisoft vibes and where "our map is so big and expansive!" really just means you'll be walking for 20 minutes through empty hills. 2.) Filler quests upon filler quests. I do not want objectives like "Collect 20 deer hides" in my Dragon Age games, particularly not as almost every single side quest. 3.) Say what you will about DA2, but it had genuinely original, creative ideas, and Inquisition throws them all out of the window. No more inventive, subversive plot; we're back to the generic Chosen One fantasy storyline. No more complex and nuanced politics and grey morality; we're back to clear-cut good guys and bad guys. 4.) The companions are good, some of them I even got genuinely attached to, but unlike DA2 I can never quite forget they're just characters on rails. DA2's companions felt like complicated people, people with emotions and conflict, a real core friend group that sticks around through the plot because they care about each other and that's what you do for your friends. Inquisition's companions, by comparison, feel like co-workers who are just there to pull the plot along. The fact that you can just skip recruiting multiple companions, or tell them to leave at any time, and have the story not feel different at all is very telling. 5.) I don't care about Solas, and the game hinges on you caring about Solas. In fact, it hinges on you caring about Solas so much that the entire sequel looks to also be hinged on you caring about Solas. 6.) They sold you the real ending of the game as paid DLC. 7.) Your race/background/class changes absolutely nothing about the game except for what essentially boils down to flavour text. 8.) It's nigh impossible to roleplay in this game. You could be an evil bastard in Origins and DA2. In Inquisition, your dialogue options boil down to "Good Guy", "Good Guy who jokes around", and "Good Guy who's blunt". You have absolutely no room to play around with any other motivations or personalities. 9.) There's so much grinding. So much. Plenty of people have compared this to MMO gameplay, and I concur; you have to put off the story quests all the time to run around doing your "Collect 20 deer hides", "Close 50 rifts", "Kill 10 darkspawn" type beats to gather enough Power points to progress with the next actually interesting thing. If it wasn't for the fact that I can mod that out on replays, I likely wouldn't have been able to force myself to get through the game more than once. 10.) The war table. Not the quests themselves, mind; a lot of the quests on there should have been full-fledged cutscenes with dialogue vs. text on a screen, and were clearly just relegated there due to a lack of effort, but they weren't unenjoyable to do. However, why are there arbitrary time limits in my single-player RPG? Why do I have to wait 12 real-life hours to progress with this war table mission in my single-player RPG? 11.) The animations are... questionable. The Inquisitor's "sad" and "scared" expressions just look like they're **** on a lemon. 12.) Combat feels clunky and clumsy. It's not as tactical as Origins, not as fast-paced and sharp as DA2, just... you firing arrow after arrow at someone, or very slowly swinging around a giant sword until something dies. I find it interesting that Inquisition was generally beloved upon release vs. Mass Effect: Andromeda being widely panned, because honestly I'd put them near enough in the same category when it comes to how they feel to play and the general quality. AND YET. After all that, I still like Inquisition. A disappointing Dragon Age game is still a good game. I've replayed it several times and enjoyed it, the soundtrack is beautiful, it has some of my favourite characters in fiction (Cole, Dorian, Josephine, and though I'm not quite as invested in him I found Blackwall's story arc genuinely fascinating and refreshing), and I cared about where everyone ended up and what ending I got. Like I said, a strange creature. Seriously, though, Bioware, start putting some damn effort into your hair selections in character creation. It's not difficult to add long hair. It's not. Every other company is managing it.
Not gonna give this one a proper long review because a) it's been too long since I played it so it's not fresh enough in my mind and b) I technically never finished it, but I did enjoy this one. The oppressive and mechanical atmosphere of London was amazing, I enjoyed the characters (very fond of Jacob's rogueish humour and I was genuinely interested in his little sub-plot with Maxwell Roth), and the gameplay was as fun as Assassin's Creed usually is; I could happily spend an hour just parkouring around the city as always. Also loved the concept of your base being in a moving train. Said gameplay was more engaging than the main plot for me, which is probably why I never completed it - I'm more of a story-driven gamer than a gameplay-oriented one. Maybe I'll get back to it someday, but I'm not planning on it.
Before anything else - play this with the Unofficial Patch (Plus). I'd go so far as to say it's a necessity. Additionally, the consensus is to avoid playing Clan Malkavian or Clan Nosferatu for your first playthrough. These two clans offer completely different experiences; Malkavians have visions of the future and are considered to be insane, which is reflected in their dialogue, and you're often given hints/story spoilers throughout your own options along the game because your character is seeing/sensing things that haven't happened yet. Nosferatu vampires are forced to basically stealth the whole game as they can't be seen by humans without violating the Masquerade, which means you won't be getting most dialogue and you'll be confined to the sewers for most of your run. Now that that's out of the way... God, I love this game. The graphics have aged terribly (the opening cutscene made me giggle when I first saw it because the movement of someone pouncing on another character was so bad), the combat is clunky, and it's undeniably a game from 2004 - but hell if I care. I can't even put into words how special this game is. It's brimming with character, with this thick, deep Gothic atmosphere, and it's one of the most immersive, path-varying RPGs I've ever experienced. VTM:B genuinely could have been made for me. My only slight complaint is that I wish there was a character creator, but you're playing most of it in first-person anyway, so I could ignore the preset appearances for each Clan. The fact that every Clan offers such a different experience offers so much replayability, I love the political intrigue and machinations of it all, the soundtrack is gorgeous, the quests are genuinely interesting, the characters are all fascinating, just... ugh. God. I love it, man.
Definite significant downgrade from the first game, and I have pretty mixed feelings looking back on it, but certainly not unenjoyable at the time or for my first run-through. It didn't single-handedly discourage me from continuing with the series afterwards, so it can't have been that bad. I was genuinely attached to several of the characters here, and though I know others didn't struggle as much with it, I was completely torn on the Kenny vs. Jane choice. To this day, a decade later, whenever I replay this I have to have a save file for each of them, because I just can't figure out which one I like better or even which one I'd personally go with. The 400 Days characters were utterly wasted, which is a shame. I recall Telltale hyping up that the DLC would be a bridge between Seasons One and Two and that the characters would be reappearing in the sequel's plot, and then... with the exception of Bonnie, who was my least favourite 400 Days character anyway, they make cursory two-second appearances to deliver one line of dialogue in the background (if that). They could've done a lot more. I think one of the major reasons I'm not so big on this one is that I don't really like playing as child protagonists, and I never really had that intense attachment to Clementine in Season One that a lot of other players did - still like her, still actively protect her, but nowhere near the degree I see from the fanbase as a whole. If you felt differently or you don't mind a smaller/younger protagonist, then you'll probably enjoy it more than I did. (Sidenote I include with all Telltale reviews: Telltale's games often get a bad rap for having your choices not influence the story, but to me this misses the point of what they do. Variant endings are a nice bonus in games, and I enjoy them when they do pop up in Telltale's stories, but for the most part your choices aren't here to change where you go. They're there to change how you get there, who you are when you get there, and often who you get there with. They influence and change your relationships with the characters around you. The joy of replaying these games is to experience the different dialogue, the different reactions to you, the different routes you can take on the way, the different bonds you can evolve with people - not to have a wildly different ending. I think this aspect is overhated and sadly misunderstood by a lot of players, so if huge, game-changing differences are what you're looking for, I'd temper your expectations.)
