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I enjoyed this little roller coaster ride of a journey and it had some real high points, however I went in with high expectations based on the acclaim it had received and found the whole experience a bit lacking. There''s some beautiful moments and some really smart storytelling but it was so brief and slight an experience I'm not sure I really got a lot out of it sadly.

Super disappointed in this game. The art style and the setup seemed really interesting. However over the course of the game it began to feel more like a poor man's Braid. I don't like to compare games to other so directly but this felt like it was living in Braid's shadow a little too closely and it was all the worse for it. Most of the puzzles ended up being more a matter of keep poking them until they were solved than me actually figuring them out and the storytelling just felt very lacking. A real shame.

This game came very highly recommended so I was sad to walk away with mixed feelings. My first couple of hours with the game were incredibly satisfying as I tried and succeeded to understand the bizarre mechanics. Learning how to play was the fun of the experience and it was satisfying when you finally make real progress. However once you run out of things to discover it becomes an increasingly difficult and repetitive to progress. I imagine a lot of people will relish the challenge at this point, for me it's where I lost interest. The first few hours were great though.

There's not a huge amount to Dear Esther but what there is genuinely touching and positively intriguing. It tells a slow and confusing story and I enjoye trying to piece together the elements as I made my ascent to an equally obscure climax. It's not going to be something for everyone as it lacks what most would consider gameplay elements but it was a game that I enjoyed my time with and that's all I was looking for.

Monaco is chaos, beautiful and organised chaos. I originally played it co-op with a friend and we had a great time trying to pick the perfect combination of characters to crack the missions. We thought with four of us it would be even easier, we were wrong. While four players gave us a wealth of skill it turned the whole thing into hilariously crazy and usually fatal attempts at the missions.

Kairo surprised me, from the trailer it looked like there wasn't a lot to the game but in fact it was a world filled with wonder and awe. The basic graphics allow it to instead shock you with the sense of scale and loneliness of architecture. It took me a while to understand what the puzzles were about but as you progress it slowly becomes clear you're fixing a broken world for a real purpose. The more I explored and took time to think about the things I'd seen the more sense the subtle story began to make and in the end it lead to what I found quite a touching climax.

Antichamber is a game that I really wanted to like a lot more than I actually did. That may sounds harsh but it's only because the early promise of the game is amazing. The time spend deciphering the early puzzles and understanding the workings of the early "guns" was truly mind bending and inspiring. However the later sections of the game became more of a chore and the ending anticlimactic. It is a truly great game, I just kind of expected it to be brilliant.

Unusually Journey is a game that lives up to the tremendous hype behind it. The game is astonishingly beautiful not only in the graphics but in the heart felt nature of it's word-less story. While interaction is limited, it never feels lacking like the game has just everything it needs in the right quantity. With enough variation in the places you visit to make you feel like you truly have been travelling a long way to get to your destination. It also manages to do something I never thought possible, get online gamers to work together without bickering and fighting. I will never forget the people I travelled with, even if I don't really know them.

Put aside all the politics of Phil Fish and the arguing over save bugs, if you're coming to Fez fresh now you're in for a treat. This is a game of two halves, the first about exploring a bizarre and vibrant world where your focus is not on combat but finding your way through. Once you've finished the game once it really begins to shine. The second play-through is all about unravelling some amazing and devious puzzles that will constantly surprise you. Fez is not just puzzle platformer it's more like an intricate layered puzzle box that just goes deeper and deeper.