Xenshin1231

Hogwarts Legacy is an action "role-playing" game that takes place in the Harry Potter universe. Despite being called Hogwarts Legacy most of the games main quest doesn't take place at Hogwarts but instead in the surrounding areas. This is one of my biggest gripes with the game. When I first got to start exploring Hogwarts I was so excited to see this perfect recreation of Hogwarts and how I was going to learn the locations of every class and how every hallway connects to one another and be fully immersed in Hogwarts. But the game doesn't really do that because you just fast travel everywhere in Hogwarts and you don't actually spend that much time in Hogwarts. A game called Hogwarts Legacy should use Hogwarts to its full advantage and really get the player to experience their semester there instead of just extending the map further and further away from Hogwarts. The game does use nostalgia very well as it hits many of the same important beats and locations that you experience from the movies/books. The mandrake scene, forbidden forest, room of requirement, fighting a troll, polyjuice potion, restricted area in the library, the deathly hallows are all in the game and they pull from the source material well, but it can often times just feel like they are making you remember the original. This game reminds me a lot of the Batman Arkham games, specifically Arkham City because thats my favorite one. The similarities are number one in the combat and number two in the puzzle elements of the game. The combat is like ranged Batman Arkham combat. The main elements are dodging, countering, attacking, and racking up your combo. The big difference is in Hogwarts Legacy you often times have to use spells to break an enemies barrier as well as being able to stagger them and do massive damage to them. In the Batman games the camera tends to be better as well as which enemy you have to lock onto where in Hogwarts legacy I can be looking at an enemy right in front of me and it will target an enemy 20 meters away. Having a huge arsenal of spells is super fun to use and it works really well. I played on the hard difficulty and it made the game much more enjoyable, but it did hinder my enjoyment in some of the higher level more tanky enemies like trolls where I would end up doing the same dodges and attacks for 3-4 minutes straight. The second part is how similar the Merlin Trials remind me of the Riddler trophies. You use some ability to solve a puzzle and get a small reward. Sometimes you may or may not have the ability unlocked at the time so you may have to come back. But in Hogwarts Legacy a lot of the puzzles are so simple they don't feel like puzzles, like when you just have to destroy the rocks that pop up. It's mostly about walking around trying to find all 5 of the rocks. The progression in the Merlin trials allows for you to hold more gear but by the end of the game I didn't feel any want or need to complete all of them. The flying in the game is okay, it is very convenient for getting to new locations but I feel like it makes you observe the world less. But maybe that is because the open world content of the game isn't much to actually do. I did a couple of side quests but they didn't intrigue me that much. I did a couple of broomstick trials and some merlin trials, found a couple of astronomy tables if they were on my way but I didn't really want to interact with the open world. It feels much different in how I would want to do every shrine in Tears of the Kingdom but skip over almost every bubble on my minimap. The story is just kinda meh. You're the chosen one and have to complete some trials. A couple characters you don't care about die along the way. The main quest progression is a lot more interesting. I really liked the assignments you would get from your classes. They required you to do some extra off the beaten path type things and rewarded you with a new spell. Some quests required some spells to complete them so completing these assignments was important and it was one of my favorite parts of the early game. The relationship quests are all kind of meh as well as the main story with one exception. I didn't care for Otai quest and I liked Poppy a little bit. They were all kinda generic quests with not very interesting themes. But Sebastian's questline is a different story. This questline elevates the game but it also makes me with the game was so much more. Sebastian's questline is Sebastians quest to reverse the curse that was placed on his twin sister, Anne. The quest revolves around the "Unforgivable Curses" that exist in the Harry Potter world. The unforgivable curses, specifically Avada Kedavra is one of the worst pieces of lore written into Harry Potter as it just gives all dark wizards something to constantly use; however, it ends up working much better in a video game where there are cooldowns between uses of spells. In one of the early quests in the questline, you or Sebastian must

The Mortuary Assistant was so scary I had to close my eyes while playing it. The game has a deliberate repetitive nature where you must embalm 3 bodies in a night while being scared **** While doing this you must figure out what the demon is based on some symbols it leaves. The game sounds extremely simple and it is, but your first time playing you will be too scared for it to seem simple. I tried to brave man the game at first just running through the apparitions, but as the game continued there were more and more surprising scares. Sure most of the games enjoyment comes from jump scares but is it really that bad. The game is incredibly short which is good but it might be a bit expensive for the length. I've never been so scared playing a game in such a short period of time and if you are looking for a scare, I recommend this game.

Somerville is weird. Much like Limbo and Inside, I don't like those games and Somerville is exactly the same as those games. Somerville is a third person puzzle adventure game where you're trying to find your family after aliens attack and you get alien powers that can be used for solving puzzles. No puzzle you solve in Somerville is ever that engaging and the game falls flat on the gameplay side. The story as always in these games is weird and is intentionally vague as to what is really happening at the end of the game. There are multiple endings, some which required some secrets to uncover, and this is the most engaging part of the game. But 90% of the game is just walking through solving puzzles until you get to the end. Overall the game is just meh but it was quick enough that it didn't feel I wasn't going to finish it.

Cult of the Lamb was a game I was really looking forward to after all the great recommendations of the game, but the game ended up falling flat for me. The first two hours of the game just felt like a massive tutorial and then was just on this grind of cycle of beat level do stuff with followers. The combat in the dungeon areas was not super great but not terrible. I never came back to my cult and would think about how I really want to go back to the dungeon. The rest of the stuff felt tedious of collecting points, doing sermons, talking to followers, and doing their quests. The game just never resonated with me and I really wanted to enjoy it more.

Tunic is a combination of the best parts of The Legend of Zelda and Fez. While the game starts off as a standard action adventure Zelda-like game, it becomes something way more grand. The beginning of the game has you go on the standard hero's quest type game, get your sword, activate some towers, find some items and upgrades, and beat some bosses, and collect some keys. Then the game takes a turn, you turn into your ghost form self and must kill the final boss, but all your upgrades have been taken away. You then have to explain the same world you've been exploring except now it the ghost world to get your upgrades back. Once you get them back you can defeat the final boss way easier and beat the game. Sound pretty good, right? But that's not the turn in game that makes it so special. There is a secret in this game called the holy cross that elevates this game to a masterpiece. I won't explain what exactly it is but the secrets hidden underneath the games world that you don't even notice are incredible. The holy cross reminds me of the second half of Fez which is something I didn't think would have been able to be recreated again. For the combat the bosses are very fun and aren't total pushovers and take some effort. Uncovering the mysteries and secrets hidden in the game were an all time high experience in gaming in 2022 and I highly recommend this game to anyone who calls themselves a gamer.

Speed, accuracy, precision, big guns, and **** anime clichés are everything Neon White is about. Neon White is a level based speedrunning game where the goal is to kill all the demons and get to the end of the level. This is done with the gun cards which are found throughout the level. Each gun card has a special ability that can be used when the gun is discarded. While beating each level is important, there is a time based scoring system for each level. There are different medals based on the completion time of the level, and you need a certain amount of gold medals in order to progress the story. This makes it so you may have to replay levels in order to get a better time. While many levels have an obvious set path on how you should beat the level, there are many tips and shortcuts you learn throughout playing Neon White that will help improve your times. The game even has a shortcut hint feature which can guide you to a shortcut in order to help you get the best time possible. The story is just an average anime with your basic anime characters. The story and characters really only hinder the game from being an all time great. But the gameplay feels so fluid and being able to figure out the shortcuts then be able to actually perform it is amazing. After a session of playing Neon White my hands might be hurting as in some parts I would be putting in way more different inputs than I would any other game. Overall great game and one of my favorites of the year.

Stray is one of the most average games to come out in 2022. Stray is a linear adventure game where you play as a cat in a post human world. The game consists of you, the cat, trying to get to the surface to meet your cat friends by progressing through the game by solving a couple of basic puzzle platformer type puzzles. The puzzles aren't engaging and the world, while dominated by sentient robot people, is not very interesting. You can do a couple of cat things like jump up to certain ledges and scratch floors and purr but there really isn't much else to the game. No part of the gameplay feels engaging or rewarding and I never really felt like I wanted to see more. Even though the game is only 5 hours long it feels like it overstays its welcome.

Immortality is almost a good game. Immortality focuses on 3 movies that were made but never released all starring Marissa Marcel. Immortality is an interactive movie game from the developer of Her Story and Telling Lies. Immortality fits right in with both of those games, where the main "gameplay" comes from watching videos that are often times jumbled up and out of order and the player has to figure our the story for themselves. The game is like a puzzle game, but instead of the game making a "dadadada" noise when you complete a puzzle it is more of an "aha" moment for the player. The "aha" moments are the basis for why these games are so intriguing; however, Immortality is different from the other two games. The gameplay in Her Story and Telling Lies consists of searching for videos by typing in a keyword that exists in the dialogue in the scene. This make it so when you hear a name of someone or a place or an event you can search that word to see what other videos might unveil more information. In Immortality you get new videos by pausing the clip and clicking on whatever object or person that is in the frame and it will take you to a new video with the same object. Say if someone is holding a candle in one scene it might and it gets clicked on it may take you to a scene with a fire or a lighter. Seems like an interesting concept, except it doesn't create any good gameplay. The problem is it will take you to another scene with said object or person at random. So you just keep on clicking flames again until you think you see every scene. Or you just keep clicking on Marissa's face or the clapperboard over and over until you unlock everything. This is really the biggest issue towards the end of the game when you have no idea how to get to the remaining scenes because there really isn't an easy way to know what to click to get you something in the scene you are missing. While I liked the stories of the movies themselves and the overarching story, it just falls flat on a gameplay level. The interactivity with the secret scenes are good but that is about all the positives I have for the gameplay.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Escape Simulator is a simple yet fun escape room type game. The puzzles themselves are engaging and aren't too obtuse most of the time. Has a fun art style and objects are easy to move and manipulate. Objects in your inventory often bog you down trying to switch between important items and a lot of the useless junk you pick up. The hint system is nice to have, but has some issues when you've solved most of the puzzle and you just need the last piece of information, the game will print out each step individually and make you wait in-between getting each hint. The timer is a nice option where you aren't forced into a losing situation if you take your time, but it really feels like a nice accomplishment when you get under the time as the times aren't super easy to beat. The highlight of this game is coop which I have not tried but would be excited to give a shot. While not a lot of content when I first played it, I'm excited to see more coming to make the game even more full.