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Once upon a time Epic gave away this game for free. I have come only briefly across this and got intrigued by the catchy graphics, but didn't really know what I'm getting into, and heck, this was free. It took me a while to get this over with and while I think it's objectively a good game, the experience was mixed with suffering and joy as this game is intentionally very challenging and not too noob-friendly. This is basically a hack-and-slash but intended to be a really fast-paced one. You kill most enemies with a single hit. You die with a single hit as well. The challenge is to be quicker than your enemies, and there's an impressive variety of those, each will have to be handled a bit differently. Being the noob that I am I have struggled to kill the very first enemies and was close to giving up right away. I have eventually modified some game setting which I think slows down things A LITTLE bit (forgot how it's called already), which made the difficulty more bearable for me, and by that point I have actually found the challenge rather satisfying, when getting it done. The game was still insanely difficult to me. Another outraging point was the lack of saves mid-level, while there ARE checkpoints mid-level, but if you exit, next time you'll have to restart a level. This is extremely problematic, as while the levels are generally not too long, being very challenging meant it may take me, the average player, a very long time to complete. Also not having much time to invest in gaming, I find it problematic to not know how much time I'm going to have to spend before I can save my progress. Putting technicalities aside, as I mentioned the gameplay (which is mainly combay and PARKOURING!) was actually pretty smooth, satisfying and awesome, albeit extremely frustrating at times. The world looks very flashy and kind of colorful in a cyberpunk-ish manner, although unfortunately it felt the levels start to look the same as time goes by, with the exception being some shorter outer segments where you kind of get into a "software-ish world" and have to do more sort of puzzle-solving, which was okay-ish and refreshing. The soundtrack consisted of electronic tracks which I found awesome and very fitting to the game and gameplay. The story... was very underwhelming IMO, and was also mainly told by around 2 characters talking to you over comm for THE ENTIRE GAME. I personally did not like this execution, moreover some of those dialogs took place in the middle of very intense parts of the level where you have to be quite focused and quick to not die, making me very unattentive to the blabbering in the background. I have still enjoyed very much the quick and smooth gameplay, it was nice for a change not to have a 10-seconds loading screen on every death, which is of course impossible in this game since most players are going to die a LOT. So, the whole experience is very smooth and quick on technical levels as well. Gameplay also consists of collectibles but again I found myself distracted from those most of the game due to the quick pacing. I think the story could be better, but anyway, would have given it a higher rating if they had let me SAVE THE GAME WHENEVER I WANT, not once in a I-don't-know-how-long-am-I-going-to-sit-here-until-I-can-save.

I may be extremely biased towards the base game but I feel this was a great conclusion to the game as far as DLC can get. Unlike the previous one which I liked as well but was a bit more on the hypothetical scale, this one feels like it has some actual impact on the big story. Same as previous DLCs including ones of the first game, and American Nightmare, this is very much a side piece - but still a very nicely told addition in this case. We get to play another side character from the main game which is a cool idea in itself, but here the game mechanics are mostly back to basics, but in a more structured and self contained form. We're going to traverse a certain lab as a FBC agent, it's relatively smaller than other areas of the main game, but - there are more than enough investigative material, puzzles, combat, and a good scare here and there to be busy with, with an eerie and creepy environment to get us in the mood. If you liked the original game there's not much NOT to like here. I have personally had much fun and completed it in around 3 hours. Very quick players could get it done in half the time, I guess. Perhaps the only complaints I could think of are that there was a bit too much of a reading in a bit unbalanced matter, felt a bit like Control in that sense, but cramming that much reading material can be tiring in such a short game content. Also, it does feel like there's relatively more combat than in the base game, which I did enjoy but still felt was a bit too much towards the end, especially given this wasn't the most polished aspect of the game (wasn't bad either, but combat could get clunky at times). Anyway, wasn't too much of a hassle most of the time. So... yes, it's been fun, having played the entire series throughout the last ~1-2 years, my journey with Alan Wake is done for now (will hopefully come back for replay though). I'm waiting eagerly for more stuff to come, Remedy!

All in all this was a truly awesome experience, especially if you're into Remedy's storytelling in this game and in general. If you're about to play this, do yourself a favor and avoid at all cost spoilers and screentshots, just get in there, you're in for a nice surprise if you're familiar with Remedy stuff. As a game, the mechanisms and environments are same as the base game and are smartly utilized to actually give a tiny bit of a different experience rather than just more of the original game. There are some mild puzzles and otherwise they're a bit more action-oriented, with the combat being a lot quicker and ammunition & items are very generously given away at any possible moment, so resource management and survival aren't really a challenge, at least on Normal. They're also relatively linear and short (I'd say the quicker players could get everything done with in ~1.5hr perhaps, slower maybe 2-2.5). But, as I've implied, the true experience here is the storytelling, the crossovers of some less expected characters, the whole quirky atmosphere to be expected of playable "Night Springs" episodes, which in itself is a tremendously original idea. Plus, purchasing this gives a few more cosmetics to the main game (not that interesting) and access to another DLC which is yet to be released and will probably have content of around the same length, so it's not even that costly.

Played 4 out of 5 episodes and I'm allowing myself to already review the entire season because I feel I've got the gist of it. I found the game very good, but you must know what you're getting into and set your expectations accordingly. This is technically defined as "Adventure" game but has an irregular gaming scheme, you could say the game consists mainly of three parts: Watching cutscenes, "Exploration", and Minigames. The game's plot unfolds as a type of a sitcom-ish vibe thing. It's not as watching a TV comedy show but personally I found the writing to be alright and entertaining enough. Characters are funnily relatable enough for a rather short game (each episode would take around 0.5 hrs, summing to ~2-3 hours of gameplay). So, cutscenes are ok. As for the exploration part, this would theoretically remind you of classing point and click adventures, but in fact there aren't really any puzzles so this is more about wondering small amounts of environment, talking to some characters (i.e. more short cutscenes), and hearing comments, possibly looking up for something to keep the plot going. These parts are short, concise and sweet so I thought this actually worked ok too. Now, during cutscenes or exploration you'd come across minigames. This may sound lame but I actually felt this part was also well executed. The minigames are very diverse and varied so you won't feel like you're repetitively doing the same thing over and over. Each has different control scheme but they're simple enough to grasp immediately. The games are challenging enough if you want to 100% them but are light enough if you simply wish to pass them. You could also, at any time, just skip a minigame altogether if you are bothered by a specific one (which may happen from time to time), which is a design choice I appreciate. All in all, if you're ok casual gaming for short sessions consisting mainly of minigames an an entertaining enough case of characters and comedy plot, definitely give it a try, it's even free of charge.

So bits of mixed feeling over this one. I must say I'm mostly disappointed but this is probably my bad, since I didn't understand 100% what to expect. I did think this was some sort of Myst-like game with possibly lighter and more focused puzzles. This part is actually mostly true. However, this game looks pretty much like a smartphone port to PC, and feels accordingly, and this part I have not realized before starting to actually play. Why it matter? Well,it felt the graphics were nice but a bit dull for PC. I guess I would have been more impressed playing the game entirely on my smartphone rather than on PC, but oh well. That's how it goes. There was some sort of story, but it felt a bit thin especially when it mainly goes as scattered notes, which I did not like much and lost patience to go over. Navigating the environment was a bit confusing and cumbersome and again would have probably worked better on smartphone rather than on PC. You basically click randomly on the screen and hope the camera floats to the direction you intended. This mostly works ok because the rooms are not that big, but still felt clunky. This is actually a bit similar to older Myst games I've mentioned but I recall it working better. So, the actual meat is the puzzles which are not inherently bad but felt much like random hit and miss. Some felt very good and rewarding, others felt either stupid or nonsensical, or just too bothering. Still, up to this point I would have probably find some joy and give this game a 6 or 7, but what kind of broke me was that MANY of the puzzles actually rely on you finding random wheels, levers, cogwheels, keys, hexagons, whatever, all forms of shapes, and having to remember where have you seen a similar slot where this item could fit. It could be right nearby and it could be very far away. As THIS specific type of puzzle happened again and again I have increasingly lost patience and mainly wanted to get this over with rather than enjoying the game. There should be more in life and in video games than rotating wheels and cranks. Also this is obviously another type of puzzles which goes much more smoothly with touch screen and not so fluid with a PC and a mouse. As there were also nicer puzzles I may still peek at the other two games in the series, but potentially this could have been a neater experience than this, imo.

Pros: +Remedy has once again created an anomaly in video gaming and AW2 is definitely a new, original experience, like it or not. +Awesome story, writing, acting. +Awesome collectibles. +Polished combat. If that's your cup of tea: +/- Branched narrative, can switch between two antagonists. +/- Borrows greatly survival-horror elements. +/- More of a 'use a map and completely salvage each door in each corridor' mechanics. +/- Less combat focused than previous game, IMO great balance between action and investigation segments. Cons: - Inventory mechanisms are kinda annoying. - Combat gets a bit clunky at times, especially in tight spaces, camera can go crazy and make you die easily (but mostly that wasn't the case). Longer review: AW2 is possible the best game I've ever played, at least so far, and while I could point out a few minor misshaps in it I feel just fine with giving it a subjective 10 of 10. Possibly at this point one had already played the first game since it feels more right, though there's some background on the story I really felt good I've played AW1 first to know what's going **** storytelling is kept of very high quality and even surpasses the first game, with an amazing, mysterious plot, amazing actors and scripts, and some live-action sequences to accompany the story, and idea which I truly appreciated back in Quantum Break as well and that is intertwined with the current story absolutely **** a game the sequel also improved greatly upon the first game (well, we'd be very disappointed if it wouldn't have, given the 10-year gap). First off, graphics look pretty darn good. One thing that bothered me on the first game was how the "environments" looked basically the same and cloned off each other, on AW2 we get several locations which feel a lot more varied and interesting to explore.Basic mechanics remained from the first game BUT in here we have a lot more investigation segments, which unfortunately weren't the most challenging and pretty straightforward, but were still very immersive and gave good pacing into the **** combat can be clunky at times, but still feels much crispier and **** have two antagonists here which we can switch between back and forth, which is another great notion in itself. The gameplay is similar yet still feels unique and refreshing for each, making it easy to switch and change the experience a bit if you're tired of playing Alan or Saga for a moment.Soundtrack rocks as expected and beside the game's cool and fitting score Remedy did some true effort to interleave some actual songs within the game which is mostly done pretty great, and some of the songs are real good.What else? This game took a turn towards the survival-horror genre, while the first game may have had bits of horrors in it truly wasn't that scary. AW2 managed to have quite a few freaky moments, including jump scares just in the right amount, creepy environment and tense moments. However, this does not get AmnesiaOutlast-scary kind of thing, which I actually found perfect, because personally that felt like a more "manageable" levels of horror to me (yup, I'm a coward).There's much more usages of maps here and this is probably another throw back to survival horror, fans of mythological games such as Silent Hill and RE would probably recognize the whole going through all the doors in a map thingy, but personally I feel this was well crafted in here.While the combat is much more polished this game is definitely less combat heavy then the previous. I'd say you could even avoid ~40 percent of encounters if you really preferred to. I guess that's not everyone's cup of tea but I personally found this combination of combataction-ey moments along with the more chillinvestigative moments perfect as **** terms of difficulty, playing on Normal felt just right for me, with the game being challenging enough but not so much to a point of frustration. In terms of gathering resources the game seems to fit greatly to the player's status, keeping you on edge at times but you truly get enough ammohealing stuff etc to pass through the game. Perfectly balanced again.Probably the only true complaint I have about this game is the new inventory management thingy, I get it's a thing in survival-horror inspired games but here it really felt more of an annoyance and got me backtracking a whole lot without feeling too **** really, that's nothing compared to the many great things about this game. Definitely go play

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The game is weirdly satisfying yet quite boring, it's basically is a good and short example of how and why video games can end up being a chore of harvesting achievements, but it seems like it's doing so intentionally. Not a must but ok to give it a try if you ever come across

In short: +Revamped graphics & animations +Cool soundtrack as usual +Finally choices have *some* actual consequences. Even ones from previous season. +Clementine is a grown up badass +/- Clementine is mostly not playable +/- New characters, not as strong as the ones we knew +/- Overall story is hit and miss +/- Story involves a lot of flashbacks, which is a new method for the series. It has its ups and downs. +/- Too much interactive movie, too little game - Writing can be rather weak and inconsistent - Underwhelming ending So if I could I would give this game around 6.5, but went for 7. I have personally enjoyed it for the most part, even though there were many mediocre parts. I've tried to keep in mind that it's fairly hard to compete with Season 1, and indeed this one doesn't reach the same heights. Luckily, although I've ran a lot into the opinion that this is the worst game of the series, I personally felt that this was a major improvement over Season 2. For The New Frontier, seemed to me like they've tried to get back to basics, in a way, to the formula of season 1: Clementine is no longer a controllable character (although she's probably the most interesting one), and we've got a lot of 'family' stuff going on. Without spoiling too much, I could say that a lot of this story revolves around family and taking care of each other in a zombie-apocalypse era, and Clementine gets to some extent a new "Father figure", although now she's more of a teenage girl.. Anyway, this works OK for the most part, but the new characters can really be unlikable or uninteresting at times, although they all had their moments and I've ended up caring about them after all, in a way. Whether they've tried to be more like season 1 or not, this game is definitely not perfect - but I'll actually go first over what I think this game did well and way better than season 2: Graphics & animations had been revamped and I personally liked it. It all felt a bit more like a movie. Soundtrack is good as ever. Clementine is as cool as ever, and all grown up. After season 2 had a rather meaningless choices & consequences, season 3 did some better job at giving us a feeling our choices actually control something. No, it's not anything revolutionary, BUT things actually can go somewhat differently depending on your choices, and I think it's even worth more than one playthrough. The choices you made on Season 2 are mostly carried over by a series of flashbacks, which I guess was an easy way to not over-complicate stuff, but it was mostly ok and rather satisfying to watch things unfold. They do feel like they get in the way of the story at some points, though. What went wrong, still? As I've already hinted, the characters and writings aren't as strong as we were used to by TellTale standards. The attempt to make a somewhat convulted scenes according to our choices sometimes turned out in an inconsistent writing, and characters could say things which are ridiculous and really out of context or simply wouldn't be said by a human being in such situation. Additionally, The New Frontier took one step further into making this series purely an interactive movie and nothing else. I've personally liked to have SOME gameplay elements to still feel this is actually a game, but here I felt rather passive most of the time. Last but not least, while the story had some strong moments here and there, unfortunately they didn't save it for the end. The last episode was mostly underwhelming, what was possibly the best thing about it was that there were actually plenty of possible scenarios according to your past choices. Also it was nice having a hopeful ending for a change, and not as dark as in previous two seasons. But besides that, it felt very meeh, mostly a big zombie fight with way too many qtes. Still much better than season 2, though. But this had potential to be something more.

So, a little disclaimer here: I really loved the original book series by Dan Brown including The Da Vinci Code. I also really liked the various movie adaptations even though they didn't get the most positive reception. As for this game, I remembered starting playing it when I was way younger and being really hooked by the first level. For some reason my computer back then simply didn't get past a certain part at the very beginning of the 2nd level. But I've always wanted to put some time and go back to this game. Took me some time! But I did. And here's the review: Unfortunately, this game is not good. I bet they really tried. It doesn't feel like a lazy attempt, but the result is just not fun and also barely playable nowadays. First of all, the graphics aren't that good, even for a 2006 game - some earlier games have looked better than this. This still applies after begging the game to run on high resolution and widescreen (which is not supported natively). The game is relatively story-driven, but the writing is just completely out of place, with the characters saying things you wouldn't believe human beings actually say in a conversation. The worst of it is heard on the weird remarks they say while in combat. And the combat, oh the combat! It's absolutely disastrous. Based mostly on quick time events, but they still tried to add some meat to it. Can't really explain, but the result is not good. Also, I guess since the game got old it also won't properly recognise some of your actions in time, which makes the combat even more of a nightmare, even on the easiest difficulty. I've applied some god mode cheats to get around the combat and still beat the game.. The save checkpoints are not so generous as well, and the game somehow stricts you to a certain checkpoints but it won't actually save for you - so that you have to save manually, but you can never really be sure what's going to be saved. Now for the stuff which actually make the game partially decent - The soundtrack is actually a nice attempt, although at many times it doesn't go well when it scrambles with other tracks, other sfx, or just the characters talking, in a highly non-elegant way. The MAIN storyline is nice, I mean the parts which are actually based on the original book. As I said earlier this is also not a complete win since you really have to see through the writing. And, probably the best feature in the game - the puzzles. The game tries to be a mix of action-adventure, with addition of puzzles to the "Action". Puzzles are either inventory based like old times, or stuff like "mini-games" and code deciphering stuff. For some of the puzzles you have to do some reading and find clues in poems and tales. The main idea is good and some of the puzzles are actually pretty neat. This is definitely the strongest feature of the game and the reason I came back to it in the first place, and the reason I kept push through to the end. Unfortunately this is also not without its flaws, as the puzzles quality ranges between really good to really... uhm, not good. Some of the puzzles are either a non-brainer or just too obscure. Luckily, I felt the really bad ones come in the middle of the game, most of the 1st and 3rd thirds of the game actually consist of fun puzzles. You may need to have a walkthrough, though. If you even try to play, that is.

If you happened to come across the developers' previous title - Limbo - then this title is pretty much move of the same experience, perhaps with a very revamped graphics. I even went back to look at my Limbo review and honestly think that most stuff I wrote there apply to Inside as well: Pros: +Overall, a great physics-based puzzle game +Puzzles are just enough challenging to feel satisfying and not insanely hard (or easy) +Generous save points +Great for quick sessions Only if it's your cup of tea: +- Short and linear +- Like many other game of the genre, it does not get away from plenty (but not only) time-based or reflex-based puzzles +- Very simplistic mechanics & controls +- No actual story(?) Now, in comparison with Limbo, Inside takes the eerie and frightful ambience of Limbo and takes all the notches one level up. The 3D graphics look fantastic. The quality of the puzzles is about the same, with some being rather easy, some being very challenging and make you scratch your head for some time, and some just based on reflexes, but the overall experience is fun and challenging just enough without making you want to give up already. The "No actual story" point may be a bit wrong for both Limbo and Inside, as both titles do have some sort of a story, but it seems that most of it is intentionally left for the players to theorize. In Inside, there are some more clues to an actual explainable "story", you can make some sense of some of the events but all in all it's all still intentionally very ambiguous and not straightforward, which is fine for whoever that's their cup of tea. The only thing that was "bad" for me was perhaps that I've played this straight after playing Limbo. The two games are VERY similar gameplay-wise, and going to this right after finishing Limbo had also had a bit of a "ugh... there it goes all over again" as the two games are very different on the surface but have a very similar core experience, I believe. So, all in all, INSIDE is a truly great game for lovers of physics based puzzled tied with creepy atmosphere, and those who do not care about short, linear, and not very self-explaining experiences. If someone ever thinks about playing Limbo & INSIDE one after another, then perhaps it may be best to take a break first, and only go back to the other title after some time, to be able to fully appreciate both games without the (maybe unjustified) feeling that they outstayed their welcome.

Short review: +Wonderful presentation - graphics, soundtrack, atmosphere +Rather good story +Lasts 10-40 hours depending on difficulty and how completionist you are +Combat is mostly fun and fluid +For a souls-like - rather forgiving and accessible +For a linear game - rather big maps to explore +Has some UnchartedTR vibes, in a good way +-Very cinematic vibe, if that's your kind of thing +-Rather linear +-Perhaps too little story overall, and too much of it towards the last third of the game (although it's really a matter of taste). -Relies on backtracking -Lackluster collectibles -Combat can have a very frustrating moments due to camera angles and cornering, not an actual challenge -Using the map can be a serious headache Longer review: Although not without faults, this is a great game. I'd note that I'm a complete newcomer to Star Wars - I have played no other video game, and watched none of the films (I did get interested and watched New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, so far, thanks to this game :) ). So, does one need background in SW to enjoy this game? Not really, I'm sure old fans would enjoy more context - but this game still stands quite alright on its own. So, from gameplay aspect - what we get here is relatively classic 3rd person action-adventure, with some Uncharted vibes. You progress through the world with the story pretty much moving you forward. You may hunt for collectibles, if you wish. The game presents some rather vast maps (for a LINEAR game that it is). You'll also fight enemies on the way, of course. I would start with the few complaints I have: Story - as a person who likes story-driven, I felt there was not enough of it here for the most part. The game turns very cinematic towards the last third, but before it's mostly very thin. As many others indicate, the main character is not as interesting as the supporting cast, which is slightly disappointing. Collectibles - exploring for them is much more satisfying than the content itself. What you may collect is mostly "notes" which I didn't feel gave much, and cosmetic changes to your character and starship. It's alright, but rather shallow, and I felt I've collected everything mostly for the satisfaction of 100% it and not for the content. Backtracking - the game relies on it heavily, and while I think it's not as bad as other reviews suggest, this is still a little lackluster. When it's enforced on you because of the story, it is still kept somewhat interesting as the same way will be experienced differently, with some more paths accessible, etc, but backtracking for the sake of completing all collectibles is painful in a non-fun way. Combat - is actually very fun, but can be very punishing in a very unfair way, on certain situations where the space is just too tight and you'll find yourself cornered with no ability to see anything again and again. Putting those aside, this is still a very worthwhile experience. Traversing the wonderfully created worlds of Fallen Order is a real pleasure to the eye. The maps are very versatile and interesting and the cinematic phases are absolutely gorgeous. The combat, besides the faults I've raised above, is very fun and fluid, and while at first it feels a bit limited it gets increasingly more satisfying as you improve your skills and gain new attacks. For a souls-like game, this game is rather accessible for newcomers new to the genre. It's fairly tough but also has an easier difficulty you can switch to whenever you wish, and is mostly very forgiving in the sense of checkpoints locations and getting back your progress once you die. It does take a bit getting used to, mind you, but after a couple of hours I felt the difficulty was quite alright - with just enough challenge. It's also worth mentioning there's a respectable amount of enemy types, so it surely doesn't get boring. The story (once you get to it) is nothing revolutionary but is good and relatable. Thinking Star-Wars-wise, after watching two of the original trilogy movies I have also got the impression that the game is very loyal to the general lore and vibe of the franchise, including the enemies design and the wonderful soundtrack which wonderfully taps the cues from the films' soundtracks.

Being a game from 1997, it's rather unfair to judge it by standards and perspective of 2022(!), but it's hard to completely ignore. I'll admit I did not play it back in the day, and actually got into the Blade Runner universe by the latest movie, which led me to watch the original movie as well (Which I loved!) - and in turn led me to check out the video game. The good news is that the game is honestly a great addition to the Blade Runner universe. It's not strictly based on the movie, but rather tells a side story, BUT it captured beautifully the movie's vibe - be it the soundtrack, the visual style of Blade Runner's futuristic take on the world, the characters and the writing, it's all very high quality, even up to this day - which is great. I was specifically impressed by the graphics and the backgrounds. While this is obviously a very old game and you should probably lower your expectations on that aspect, I personally still went ahead and gave the game a shot on my TV screen, and I think it actually looks beautiful even when scaled up on ScummVM. The character models are understandable rather ugly, but the entire environment and places you explore totally make up for it, in my opinion. The main problem is that the gameplay did not age well. This is a semi-traditional point&click, in the sense that there the (in)famous inventory puzzles are not really there. You do collect evidence, but to progress you usually just have to have to right item at the right time. This leaves us primarily focused on walking and talking to people. I think this is a good thing since it simplifies gameplay a bit. While Blade Runner is not a necessarily difficult game, it suffers like many games of that time&genre of the need to pixel hunt, which is never really fun in my opinion. You'll also have to save often because you CAN die and can, on rare occasions, reach a dead end. The gameplay has also nice gimmicks to it which are the opportunities to run Voigt Kumpf (excuse my spelling) test and use the "image enhancer" seen in the movie to find clues within images. These are actually great additions and are very well done, but still has the same problem with the main gameplay, which is, that at many times you won't actually have any idea what to look for. As I said, the game is not so hard, in the sense that the puzzles are rather logical and there aren't crazy and illogical puzzles. Still, pixel hunting and random events make it still very hard to progress on you on, from time to time. Last point to mention is that the game has a very impressive set of random events and multiple outcomes (for a game of the late nineties). This would have greatly increased replayability value considering you have the time and patience to play the game again and actually look for the content. Unfortunately, for reasons I mentioned above the game ends up to be more of a chore, in my opinion, and therefore this does not save the game, at least when looking at it from the perspective of years after. Gave it 7 since this is still a very high quality content on many other aspects.

I've always been a big fan of the old-school Rayman series (i.e. 1, 2, and 3) and specifically the third one used to be my favorite. It's been awhile since I've touched these games and have decided lately to revisit the entire series, including the latest Origins and Legends which I have never played, in fact. So Rayman 3, here it goes: I remember never understanding why this game was received less positively than the second installment, but playing it again years after, with more "critical eyes" made me realize why. The series went a long way from the original two titles and it seems Ubisoft was trying to experiment with the direction everything was going to. Rayman 3 is another (and unfortunately the last) 3D platforming title of the series, but it managed to be a lot more different than Rayman 2 in many aspects. Technically, Rayman 3's graphics have been raised up by a notch, it all seems very lush and colorful as ever but sharper and crisper than its predecessor. I personally think the PC version looks very good even nowadays, and even compared to the HD remake (putting aside the horrible compressed cutscenes..). While this is still a platformer, it does feel the gameplay has been radically changed - R3 is WAY more combat-focused than the previous games. This, along with the new scoring+combo system, gave the game a much more arcade-ish feeling. This is not a bad thing, but you really gotta like it. While the entire movement and controls feel more smooth and polished than Rayman 2, platforming somehow feels clunkier at times and the movement feels less precise. The uncomfortable camera positions also contribute to this. Still, this is nothing horribly wrong, and while there's a large share of platforming, there's even a larger share of combat, so you'd probably won't have much time to notice the downsides of the platforming :) Another nice point is that the actual "platforming" is in fact incorporated very well into the combat itself, meaning you would not just smash the "fire" key but will have a lot of movement involved to dodge enemies and get the right angles, etc. So the combat itself is indeed quite fun, and feels very acrobatic compared to other titles. It gets slightly irritating at times thanks to the problematic camera controls mentioned earlier. Eventually, though, the main 'issue' is not the combat itself but the fact that as mentioned, it changes the series' characteristics greatly. If you love combat you'll be just fine, but I can see how this loses a bit the appeal and magic of the original two games. Another change was to the "spirit" of the series, I would say, as the entire cast and story are in a much more comical mood, which is very different than R1&2's storylines which were relatively grimmer and more serious. While it does not matter THAT much in games like these, I feel like I preferred more the serious take of the series, especially since the whole comical atmosphere does not work 100% of the time. It's not 100% either, but more of a hit and miss kind of feeling. In conclusion, while being very different, this is still a rather good game and a worthy title of the series. It seems, unfortunately, that the Rabbids thingy which followed later pretty much ended things for Rayman in 3D, and after Ubisoft pretty much concluding the series with Origins & Legends, it's a shame we won't see any more titles like this.

I have started playing the game for some time and about halfway got the Final Cut update. It's essentially still the same game, but I would refer to the Final Cut mostly. Now, this game is a unique and peculiar take on RPG. In fact, I personally felt this is more like a point and click adventure with only *some* RPG elements. In short, you have plenty of personality traits and those are your "stats" where you'd spread your skill points. Skill points would be gained by exploring the world, advancing with the main story but also for many, MANY other things you can find out and discover around you while exploring and talking with people. Many of the actions in the course of these explorations actually depend on those traits, and so your personality will have an effect on a large part of the story. Now, describing it like this may make it sound a bit laconic, and it really isn't. But what it does reflect correctly is that this game is not about being purely RPG but it is really all about the story. If you're into stories - you'll be fine. You'll be walking around, talking with people and finding out the bizzarre stories and characters of Revachol. The game has even much more to it, BUT - if you're lost when it's too much story oriented then this is probably not the game for you. The conversations are very lengthy and I think it's not an overstatement to claim these are the main contents of the game. The original version had it all in piles and piles of text, which made it rather tiring. The Final Cut had it all voiced-over, which I personally found much easier. Still, Disco Elysium is not easy to digest. It required your attention and patience. It took me quite some time to finish the game, more than a few months actually, and not because of its length - but because it can be hard to actually take the time to invest in this game when you have a busy schedule and just want a light gaming session at the end of the day, Still, once I DID take the time, I was never bored, and the world and environment were always intriguing and made me want to go on with the game some more. Speaking of length, this may vary a lot according to your playstyle. I don't think I played more than 30 hours overall. The true "meat" of the game is that you may restart it with different statspersonality, and while the main story is always the same - the way the world around you reacts may change significantly (or so I've heard, as I'm yet to try a second playthrough). What's beautiful about Disco Elysium is that you may truly do what you want and feel is best (or worst) for your characters. While there are a few "game over" occasions, I personally didn't hit that many while playing rather spontaneously. You may fail some (or many) of the tasks and challenges given to you, and this would still develop the story in an interesting way, sometimes even better than expected. At any rate, the autosave system will save you of most troubles. So, as stated, along with being a masterpiece it's one of the sort which may be tiring at once and need some of your patience and faith in it. The game is not perfect, but it is very close to it. Few irritating points which you may need to overlook - first, without any spoilers, early in the game if you're not careful you MAY make mistakes which would leave you stuck at the end of the day without a way to advance. As mentioned there are plenty of autosaves and manual saves are possible as well, so this shouldn't really be game-breaking, and as I mentioned I didn't encounter such points while playing very spontaneously and not reading too much walkthroughs, etc. Still, not completely player-friendly. Speaking of that, the game is generally not player-friendly. Many of the mechanics aren't really explained to you, and as this is a detective game, I'm guessing this is somewhat intentional. There IS some magic in figuring stuff on your own, yet some basic stuff are simply never explained. One technical issue is that loading times can be irritating and completely non-proportional to the content being loaded, whether you're moving to a full scale-city or a tiny room, you'll be encountered by a loading screen of around 10 seconds. This usually doesn't occur THAT much, but there are some points where it's really annoying, especially in a game which is based on exploring and traveling around. No one is perfect though, right? and this are really the very few downsides I found. This is, again, very story oriented. In terms of production values, the game is rather top-notch, and while not having the super advanced graphics of AAA titles, it has a just-enough top-down vibe with terrific surroundings, soundtrack, and superb voice-overs, and has a highly complex story which is worth the ride.

I think one can't help being disappointed once they get this after the first three Rayman titles. This is completely different, not too bad, yet you can't get away from the fact it's eventually a bunch of mini-games. Still, it manages to be fun and entertaining. It's very clear the game was intended for Wii, I think they've ported it to PC the best way you possibly can, but you could easily tell it's just not meant for mouse & keyboard. That's possibly the reason the next games in this spinoff are no longer on the PC territory. Anyway, it is an OK casual game. It's relatively easy to go through "story mode" which is actually going through all the mini-games with minimum score requirements. If you want to truly achieve all rewards, etc.. (Which don't really worth it, I think) this is going to take some more effort, up to some insanely difficult score threshold. Probably worth it if you're a hard core Rayman fan or want to possibly play something short lived with kids.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A game approaching war in a very unique and unusual way, much unlike many modern video games. It's very indie-ish and not top of video game technology, its gameplay is not without its flaws, but what it's best for is capturing an essence of WWI, which is actually much more of the emotional & human side of things, and let about the run-and-shoot paradigm, and it does so very well while still remaining minimalistic, simple, yet beautiful. The characters are likeable and the story is nice, having moments of sadness but also of joy, so basically it's really worth a try in my opinion. As for the gameplay itself, it's mainly puzzles and very minimal 'action' sequences. It could be slow at times, but as one who likes logic puzzles - they were actually pretty nice and with difficulty which is just right: there were some challenging bits here and there, but mostly it flows and you'd figure it out soon enough before you're getting too tired of trial and error..

Screen7 usually presents titles with irregular themes and interesting ideas. This one indeed has a nice premise and foundation, and could make a sweet title. But even as a point&click fan, I found the puzzles too obtuse, the mechanics too tiring, and the whole experience was a bit dull. Perhaps this one is for you only if you're a real hard-core fan of classic adventure titles or want to go through the full catalog of Screen7.

Hard not to compare this to Supergiant's previous title (Bastion) even though they're not connected. There's definitely the vibe and style of Bastion, but in fact - they made quite an impressive turn of events and the mechanics are not at all like Bastion, and bring something fresh and new. Why did Bastion keep sitting at the back of my mind? Being a story hog, I have that tendency to really look for games with a good plot, writing, etc. While I found Bastion's settings and characters compelling enough to feel comfortable with, I somehow didn't really get the same feeling for Transistor. Actually, I felt the story wasn't actually THAT original, and the general lines of the whole atmosphere felt as if they were borrowed from Bastion on some level, but not in such a good way. To sum it up, I didn't really get half of the story, I didn't really like the sidekick (He's the one doing most of the talking), I didn't really enjoy all the side-content which tells more of the story, and your main hero never ever speaks. Oh, well. Why still an 8, though? I actually found the mechanics themselves fantastic. Unlike Bastion, this game is more about strategy and planning, so it's a bit slower in terms of the general pace, but still exciting enough. Strategy lovers may still mock this game, because - to be honest - it's a rather simplified form of "strategy". You basically have a set of "functions" which are, in fact, attacks. You may combine the different functions in a lot of ways to alter your fighting style, and most of the game is moving from one fight to another while progressing through the story. It is overly simplified, but personally I found it light and fun to play after a long day. It was really fun to experiment with the different possibilities, and this is one of the only games where I went straight to a second playthrough after finishing it once.

Bottom line: +Good horror title +Good level and sound design +The aliens are gross +OK story +- Mostly a generic third person shooter horror gameplay +- Combat-driven -BAD controls -Unfixed clunkiness or bugs on certain modern systems -The aliens are gross Dead Space is a good game. If you're into violent alien horrors, then you got it. It's all in there, and it even aged relatively well, I'd say the game still looks nice even more than 10 years(!) after release. The atmosphere is truly creepy, level design is claustrophobic, sound effect are just right and there are chilly soundtrack cues to run along with it. And it's very violent, if that's your kind of thing. But like other games of this type - that means it fundamentally relies on jump scares. And those aliens are gross! Why the low score then? Well, those aliens are gross! But to be serious, I didn't enjoy much Dead Space. I guess this is largely because I'm more into story-driven titles and this was much of a combat-driven. The story is there, alright, and it's even original, BUT there's very little emphasis on it, and towards the ending it turned towards the cliche-side. Sure, for a truly good game - that's not enough to give a 6 out of 10. Well, unfortunately, I found the controls to be clunky and uncomfortable. Not sure if this was intentional or not, since horror-wise it did help a lot - I kept hearing my enemies and had a very hard time to aim at them or even find them. Creepy, yeah, but at some point it felt more like a nuisance. The controls are simply not good. The entire movement felt a bit clunky as well. I've found out this is a known issue, and seems the fix only partially fixes it. Also, that annoying bug where your difficulty setting changes and there's NO WAY within the game to change it back, was absolutely annoying and didn't add much to the experience. So, unfortunately, no.

Bottom line: +Superb storytelling, well crafted scenes +Great conclusion of Ezio and Altair 's stories +Well done aesthetics, soundtrack, atmosphere, as expected +- Weird portal-ish platformer stages +- Thin content, small world map +- VERY cinematic. Some may enjoy, some may feel this is just a bunch of cutscenes thrown together +- relatively short - Bad tutorial system - Doesn't really add any substance to previous games So getting quite late to the series, I'm playing the games by order and lately I've finished Revelations. Being a stogy hog - I've always felt the AC series is a wasted opportunity for a good medium of storytelling. Though many won't agree, I felt the original 2008's AC presented possibly the strongest chunk of the plot, although - the presentation itself was dull and boring. AC2 and Brotherhood had many improvements but Story-wise, to me, they also felt quite dull, repetitive, just chasing villains for revenge, with possibly only the beginning and ending of each game being some key moments of the plot. Revelation took matters to a whole new level, in my opinion. I've always liked intertwining plots and here you get the stories of Ezio, Altair, Desmond, and even bits of Subject 16 - all tied up together nicely. The cinematic level of the game is really ramped up here, with every scene crafted well, a story which actually had some impact, the Soundtrack was very strong and better than ever, and this game has possibly the most film-ish vibe of the entire series. That's what made me, at least, experience it as an 8 out of 10, But I can definitely see why this game is panned by many others. As a GAME, Revelations doesn't do that well: While each of the previous entries of the series had some vast improvements to the series and to the genre in general, Revelations doesn't really do much. It MOSTLY plays as the previous two games. I felt some cool features were removed since Brotherhood. The new additions just weren't that good - Den Defense turned out as a very weak addition. The Bombs craft were OK-ish, but didn't really feel like anything meaningful, and the Desmons Portal-ish sequences are questionable (I've personally enjoyed them, and thought they were a nice break from the core game, but I see why many won't. Fortunately, it's quite optional). Also - the Tutorial system is pretty horrible this time, with Tutorial messages disappearing within seconds when you barely have time to read them, never to appear again, or to appear in the most inconvenient of times. Many features are not introduced at all, and it seems the developers just figured you've played and already know how things work since Brotherhood. Even if that IS true, I think after taking a year off the AC series I'd deserve some reminders. Last thing I'd point out - which I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing - the game felt VERY short. I usually take my time with video games but here I've ended the story in no time. It felt the game was much thinner in content, there were awfully less side quests than the previous games, and it was all mostly straightforward. I didn't even feel the game TRIES to make me do other stuff other than just blasting through the story and get it over with. Knowing Ubi's tendency to (sometimes) just cram their games with repetitive content, this may actually be a good thing. Still, it is a little surprising. Which leads me to my last point - Constantinople was WAY smaller than ALL previous areas we got to visit in ALL previous games. Seriously, it was tiny. Which is also surprising. While the graphics were awesome and got tweaked and improves since last game, the world around me didn't feel like anything new, and besides some turkish-vibes, I could swear I was still wondering the streets of Rome. So, seems like many complaints, but I did actually really enjoyed this game, mainly due to the superb storytelling, which is enough to satisfy me. Unfortunately, that's not the case for a major part of the gaming community, and it seems the series has taken off to different directions ever since.

I wouldn't say this game is bad, but unfortunately despite the good intentions, it's also not that good ****. It's a classic point and click game with mot many surprises. It's worth mentioning though, that one of the things that are done best here (IMO) is the puzzles - I found them to be relatively diverse and original. The difficulty was also close to perfect - it goes on gradually from easy to harder and harder ones. It also gets to "nonsense hard" at SOME points, but not constantly, and it's not nonsense of the annoying kind in my opinion, but good kind of nonsense. Nonsense that's usually fun to discover. Now unfortunately although this is a very strong point of the game, rest of the aspects doesn't stick too well together. The graphics are bright, lush, and nice to look at. Sadly this does not make up for all the rest: despite the Monkey Island vibes, the story is rather banal, the humour is mehh, the voiceovers range from OK to rather bad, and there's just so much of it, where the script just isn't that interesting, if I'd try to put it gently. To be less gentle, it gets rather boring quickly enough, and adds up to a rather dull, forgettable experience. This is a bit sad because I think this game would have been OK if it had been shortened, but this was just WAY too much for me. About halfway through the game I've started feeling there were more and more moments I just wished this game would end rather than actually enjoying it. And that's a shame. I have to say again that this game isn't THAT BAD, it's not as forgettable as other modern attempts of adventure games such as the Art of Murder series (Sorry) but it still doesn't quite hit the right points, or alternatively - it hits some of them, but the same ones, for over 13 long and tiring chapters - which makes it mainly a tiring experience.

There's not MUCH to say, Bad Blood pretty much sums up to MORE Watch Dogs. There are very slight additions to game mechanics (They're cool though), a new system of missions and collectibles which is also just a tiny little different from the ones can be seen in Watch Dogs, and yet it manages to be somewhat refreshing after playing the original game. While Watch Dogs itself isn't perfection, if you liked it - no reason to not like the DLC, also - possibly the main strong point of it - is that it lets you play as T-Bone, who turns out as an outstanding protagonist in my opinion - which I'm a bit sad I would probably never hear from again - in an exciting, straight to the point story arc.

After having received this for free when Ubisoft gave it away, and quite some time after release, I do believe Watch Dogs is great. It is also horrible, in some ways. But all in all, it is great - with the main problem being that, at the time of release - Ubisoft has promised some kind of gaming revolution but all we got was another title of the worrying franchise "Hey Look We've Made An Open World". And though it seems the game was panned partially due to the serious antagonist and somewhat grim storyline, I actually found it to be one of the strong points of the game. I liked the main narrative and the dynamics between the characters, the opening was well crafted to get you into the atmosphere and there were some pretty well built moments throughout the rest of the game as well, Unfortunately, they were very few. Watch Dogs obviously *TRIED* to put more effort into the "open-world" theme with "tons" of side missions and collectibles. While I felt enthusiast at first and was keen to get to 100% completion, by the end of the first act (out of 5!) I started to grow tired of the side missions which are essentially all quite the same. Drive car from point X to Y, go kill some criminal gang or interfere a convoy. There was just way too much of it. And on top of it, driving control was quite awful - and while eventually I got used to it, and I admit - the police chases actually didn't get old for me for one second, there's no denying this was not the strong part of the game. A bit sad, because the final result is a game which feels like it's trying to be some Assassins Creed and GTA in one game instead of trying to be something new and original. And again, the game is *NOT BAD* and I ended up enjoying most of it, it was challenging just enough, not feeling impossible to complete, and at most of the missions there's some freedom to choose the 'stealthy' approach vs. the 'just kill everyone' approach, which I liked. Bottom line is - With its current content, I feel this game would have been better if it was more story-driven and had a more-than-solid 10-15 hours campaign, instead of ~40-80 hours filled of the same stuff over and over. Would have given 7 out of 10, but I really feel this game certainly doesn't deserve the low users' score it currently has. +1 for that!

I would actually say this game is about 8 - 9 out of 10, but I believe it deserves way more than its current metascore, so giving it a 10! :) Disclaimer which is also a pretty good bottom line - If you ever happened to play Dreamfall or Dreamfall Chapters, and enjoyed it, there's a very high probability you're going to like this title as well. All mentioned games share the same good aspects: Great storytelling, mild futuristic andor sci-fi vibes, you get to play multiple characters who are mainly interesting and likeable, and it all generally has a nice cinematic view. The graphics and soundtrack also has a nice touch to them, and fit very well to the game's atmosphere. Unfortunately they all also share the same bad aspects: this product usually feels much more like a film trying to be a game, and doing to by plenty of mildly challenging puzzles mini games go-fetch-come-back sequences. This can definitely become a nuisance and a letdown for plenty of players. While I didn't suffer from those, I did find them slightly out of place or annoying at times, but there were also some good ones, too. This game certainly isn't perfect as an actual game, yet the plot kept me totally gripped and wanting more, and I felt that for this type of games, there was an OK balance between "plot moments" and "gameplay moments" , plus the overall experience and story were totally worth it. I hope to see more of this from Daedalic, and totally recommend this title!

Not sure why the low scores, this is NOT the perfect game but it's just fine. Seems Ubisoft tried to make an interesting cut of racing with Rayman. The result isn't perfect (and perhaps that's also why this game is not completely compatible with modern systems), but it's an OK racingarcade title, which is certainly ok as a time filler and some short gaming sessions, especially if you're a fan of the series (Yes, even close to 20 years after release - assuming you manage to make it run properly on you computer)

Technically this seems like a good port to PC (I believe the problems lie in the original product and not the port) The graphics & actors look great in-game. There were some nice cues on the soundtrack. There were *some* moments done well cinematically. It's a cool feature to have two different orders to play throughout the story. Plus Elaine Page rocks. Unfortunately this is where the good stuff ends, and she's ending up being wasted on this mess of a thing. I think the main problem was playing this after Heavy Rain, which lifted up the expectations quite high in my opinion. While on Heavy Rain I felt every chapter had a meaning to the big scheme of things, and felt I was getting more and more involved in the story & with the characters, in here I felt nothing like it. Although there is an attempt of clever storytelling when you're playing the "Original" order which is actually travelling back and forth along the timeline (a concept which I actaully really like) In Beyond Two Souls it felt there were plenty more of time fillers and inconsistency of vibe and inner sence. At plenty of times seems like Beyond Two Souls isn't not really sure what it tries to be. Is it a Game? a Movie? An action-thriller themed thing? Supernatural fiction? Horror? Mystery? An Aliens&Predator tribute? Teenage drama? Feminist-thingy? Not really sure what to think when you're playing Spy-girl and also watching her get abused as a teenager at the same storyline. The former is, specifically, not necessarily a wrong idea in itself, but in here it's done extremely cliche'd and really actually feels like this product simply scattered around in various directions in a journey of a self discovery. This game is indeed quite ambitious, I'll give QD that, but while the previous games were also ambitious & never without flaws - that's the first one which managed to truly disappoint me, even though it has much potential. The story just felt mediocre at best, some of the dialogues were just.. just... not good. Some of the scenes didn't make much sense. With the various "action phases" (which, by the way, felt much more frequent here than in previous games) I felt it was usually not too clear where to go next, the controls and camera were "artistically" clunky, and at many of the QTE it wasn't clear what was expected of me to do, hence I missed plenty of them, and guess what - it didn't even matter that much. Which leads me to the next point - for a company such as Quantic Dream which is known for making interactive movies, with various paths, where your choices have consequences, etc.. Beyond Two Souls is extremely linear along its script. There are plenty of chapters throughout the game and where it feels *most* of your actions' consequences are confined within the very same chapter and nowhere else later. I'm about 90% through the game and I have a feeling this is definitely not about to chage, and not any of the other things I've said.

Bottom line: This is a game for people who care about storytelling, end of story. It's definitely not without flaws, but story-wise is was a very good experience. Very short and to the point but still very well done in my opinion. It also gives you a taste of text-based adventure games, which is quite antique by nowadays and barely done anywhere, with not much gamers left with the patience to go through it. In Stories Untold though, it is done just fine. I'd say it's a fine integration of text-based and point n' click, although, eventually - the "gameplay" itself is quite light and limited. Which bring me to the probably only downside in here - the gameplay is indeed very limited. There's not much of a "game" here, actually. And in what there IS, no spoiling anything, but you usually should do some VERY SPECIFIC actions, usually it would be obvious WHAT, but not always. At times it's not too clear what to do next, the game can be slightly frustrating. Although, I guess that in a way this is also a taste of classic adventure games. Still, being very linear and with thin gameplay, Stories Untold ends with a very low replayability value. It's a great one-timer, the story and tension is very well built. I may come around to play this again someday, when I get nostalgic. Besides that, not anytime soon.

In short: +Splendid game. Everything about it is well +Gameplay is even more diverse than before +Revamps almost everything that AC2 did well -Though, it ends up being way too similar to AC2 -Story execution is weak IMO -Some (though not many at all) levels seem to be designed to just be unfairly difficult, just because of "Artistic" e.g. bad camera angles which drove me crazy at times. -Multiplayer is dead, but.. Oh well, it's been 8 years. Brotherhood is a terrific game. No arguing there. Only reason, for me at least, that it gets 9 and not 10 is the somewhat lack of originality. What I mean by that is the Brotherhood looks pretty much like AC2 Revamped - in both good and bad ways - It takes everything that AC2 did well, keeps it, and makes better the tiny rough edges that were there. Graphics feel slightly upgraded, combat is more fluid (though simple), and there are plenty of stuff to do and engage yourself in besides the main story. Still, it really all feels like been there-done that, in almost every aspect. The story is essentially the same as in AC2, in my opinion, and for me it was the weakest point of the game. While the "Big" story is to my likings (the whole Abstergo stuff and intertwining the the past etc), the execution is extremely mundane, as you can easily lose grip on what's actually happening between one killing and the other, and the whole bit that actually matters only comes in the very end of the game... Speaking of story, while it is cool that Desmond can parkour too now, the out-of-the-animus moments became redundant and more like a chore, as you go running around doing the same thing over and over for quite some time each time there was such sequence and or optionally getting out of the animus deliberately to "read emails" which turned out to be mostly boring and not too exciting or informative. (I still believe that the FIRST AC did very well the out-of-the-animus phases and that the entire series probably ditched completely the concept of making those phases actually relevant, storywise, besides the very ending or beginning of each game). The ending, by the way, was very much to my liking as well although it was somehow banned by many from the little I've seen, but I really think it what keeps me still motivated to go on to Revelations and find out what's next. That's a lot of digging around the probably most least cared for point in the game, but really, I think that matters and this only shows that story is slowly ditched in order to make a mainstream game. Brotherhood, like its predecessor, becomes quite repetitive towards the end and just makes you want to get it over with. What was done way better than AC2, is that there's much more diversity this time. There are many different kinds of missions or memories, and they're usually quite versatile - for example, the "tomb-raider" like levels from AC2 which felt pretty much all the same now feel a bit more unique and stand for themselves, each level has a somewhat different way of playing, etc.. So better job with diversifying gameplay. In short - this could've been a great AC 2 remagination.

The game that possibly marked the first signs of Ubisoft's tendency to sometimes release unfinished **** quite rough around the edges products. This game is highly unpopular (Barely any reviews even, shame) and was probably just a sound check and preparation for Rayman 2. Nowadays it is quite difficult to run this game on modern systems, and the PC is considered the better version... After some fighting with the game I did manage to run it on Windows 10 but seems after the latest update it somehow broke my attempts as I was about 70% throughout the game. While Tonic is not at all a bad game, and seems like it is filled with good intentions, it ended up being not too fun and sometimes felt to me more like a chore rather than a game so spend my leisure time on (As I usually prefer to finish what I'm playing). One could say it's too old to be good nowadays and Yet I've finished and enjoyed Rayman 2 plenty of times by now, and can still enjoy it. Perhaps it would have been a better idea to finish with this game back before Rayman 2 was released, but really, after playing Rayman 1&2 It's pretty hard to miss that this is a huge tech demo to Rayman 2. The whole atmosphere is very Raymanish, and yet this game just feels very unpolished. Controls are not 100% responsible and pretty clunky, causing you to fall to your death over and over (perhaps that's why the game is quite easy and so generous with extra lives etc?) and that unfortunately impacts the entire experience. Otherwise this might have been a bearable playthrough, but add the controls to the so-so graphics, music, story, not too likeable characters, and level design which is actually OK but really nothing compared to any of Ubi's Rayman series, I repeat - this game felt more like a chore at times, as much as it's painful to say. There actually WERE couple of interesting ideas and game mechanics, some originality and some moments of fun, so this game actually had a potential. Fact that Ubi never revived this game - it isn't really sold anywhere and never maintained support to more modern systems - shows that it really did fell flat, unfortunately! I ended up thanking Microsoft for apparently setting me free of this game because of changes in the OS which made the game stop running on my machine. Possibly it's fixable (andor one can easily play the N64 version nowadays) but at this stage I figured I'd pass.

So I got really excited that all Quantic Dream titles are coming to PC and immediately grabbed Heavy Rain. To get into the feel of it I've played shortly before its release an earlier title of Quanic - Fahrenheit, which I had for quite some time lying in my library, and that wasn't necessarily the best decision - This is just to say that feels a lot like Fahrenheit re-imagination. That's not necessarily bad, and the result is not bad at all, but seriously, there were just too many aspects of imagination between the titles. Bottom line: +Choices! That's the main praise for Heavy Rain - your choices quite much matter, there are plenty of endings and outcomes for each +Graphics look good even today +Solid PC Port (not sure why all the hatred) +Likeable characters for a change +Relateable story +Satisfying length +Plot is mainly good, BUT (see negative points) +- Quick-time events gameplay -Same soundtrack segments repetitively played during the game resulting a lacking & tiring soundtrack -Some major plot hole(s), story doesn's always make sense -At many times - BAD dialogues -Not the best voice acting So that pretty much says it all. As I played it with Fahrenheit in mind, I was glad the characters are actually likeable, and the game made me care about them and relate to them (didn't happen in previous title). Even along the somewhat mediocre voice-acting and bad script, I wanted everyone to get a happy ending. The QTE gameplay does get on your nerves from time to time, but well, we know that's how Quantic like it. For an interactive movie this is way beyond solid experience, especially since there are not many video games done this way out there. I know games are known to be a bit clunky on reviews but still hoping they get even better (Definitely going to try Beyond & Detroit on PC).

Great game! So glad it came out to PC In an era of quick-satisfaction-games and plenty of beat-em-upshoot-em-up titles it's nice to find some pieces of art here and there. Bottom line: +Amazing atmosphere, graphics, music, and general feel +Very "arty" experience if you're into that kind of thing +Great PC port, works well technically +Collectibles +You can fly +-Slow pace -Quite short -Not really for "mainstream" players, I'd say -Not much replay value While the terminology for "game" can be debated in this case, if you know what you're going into, you shouldn't be disappointed. It's one of those games which are more like a (relatively) long walking sim (and a rather short game). The story in Journey in a wordless one, so everything that remains is the atmosphere (which is great) and your imagination, I guess. Now, if you're into this kind of think - you'd surely enjoy Journey. This game is mostly about exploration in a few beautifully visualized landscapes. The game's great soundtrack makes up for an awesome, usually relaxing and chilled experience (with some specific moments which are out of the ordinary). Game also contains few collectibles and secrets, probably to add some more intrigue & gameplay value. Personally I wanted to collect everything, so I've used a guide once in a while and in fact I feel it kind of ruined the immersion in the game. Also one major con I found in Journey is that - even if you like those type of games - it's incredibly SLOW. You may still finish it all within 2 hours, I believe, but the pace of the character is just pretty slow. I think it worked best for me to play the game one chapter at a time and let the experience "sink" a bit. Another main bad thing is that there's not much of a replay value. I might play the game again someday but not anytime soon.. It's a quite one-time shortie.

(This is mainly a comparison to the original Rayman 2) Sort of a Rayman 2 Remaster before remasters were in fashion, which means it's actually quite good (although not necessarily better), As I have been a fan of the Rayman series for years, and have already finished The Great Escape more than once (way more than once (; ) I've always wanted to give a try to Revolution, because I figured it has a different content and also the whole texts were dubbed... So , curiosity got over me. Unlike present 'remasters' the graphics here are identical but the title is purely focused on the actual content of the game. Revolution makes plenty of changes to the original game although the main essence is still the same. Many of the original levels are still here but have one change or another, some are almost identical but some are almost completely different. There are some new levels as well and tiny number of sections which were removed completely from Revolution. Some new gameplay aspects: There are many new Bonus levels which can grant you more health, you can now "purchase" "upgrades" to your current powers (very optional and I totally beat the game without it), the worlds hub is now an "open world" unlike the linear one in the original version, where you can roam around and find even more lums hanging around to collect, Oh, there's also a Lums Detector in a late stage of the game for your use. Also there seemed to be an attempt to be slightly more combat focused on this version, since there are much more Boss levels, and when you encounter Pirates you'd usually encounter a couple and not just one or two, also, there are many more "types" of enemies than in the original game. This is all very well and nice, mostly. You could notice choppy FPS at some sections of the game which is a shame. The combat focused gameplay isn't necessarily essential to this game which has a lot of focus on platforming already, boos fights could be rather out of context in here, the tweaked soundtrack is at times pretty good but sometimes is just a strange mix of noises andor tracks from the original version. Also, the voice overs didn't actually add much to the game's spirit and weren't so good, and some would probably say the game is better off with the "Raymanian" mumblings instead of actual speech. Oh well, so Revolution does have some faults. But as you may have noticed I'd still given it a 9, because even with some minor faults it is still one of the most brilliant platformers ever made in my opinion, it doesn't fail to be fun and to be a worthy title of the series to stand on its own rather than being a simple 'remake' My recommendation is to play this as well as TGE PCPS1GC versions for a complete experience, because they pretty much complete each other, each version presents different variations and aspects of the game, and both are awesome!

I've just finished Saw and that was shortly after reaching a point where I COULDN'T WAIT to finish it already. And it wasn't in a good way. OK So, Saw wasn't all that bad. Some of its features are a nice throwback to the days of the classic survival horror games (e.g. Silent Hill), did you like rummaging through cabinets for items? Looking desperately for health itemsweapons? Walking through countless of lockedunlocked doors to progress? This game has it, and is seldom making a good use of the survival horror elements. It would mostly not manage to be nearly as fun as the aforementioned titles did, unfortunately. But let's get back to the beginning. Being a fan of the Saw series (and having watched the seven of them lately), I was really curious about the video game. How can anyone capture the essence of the movies in a video game? I figured that was a good question with a bizarre, although anticipated answer. Since no one can really torture you (as with deadly traps, and not as with playing not-so-good video games and making you spend your time&money on them), the procedure would usually sound like 'Match the corresponding photos or this man dies ...' 'Finish that pipes-puzzle-thingy or you die of toxic gas....' 'Solve puzzle X or something Y will happen', basically. Which is a tiny bit funny but as least it works, much better than the COMBAT. Now, the combat was the weakest point of this game, with a primitive combat system which is barely responsive to your key strokes, you would pray to never encounter a combat in this game (which you may luckily avoid at many times in some creative ways). Now that I've finished with the impulsive stuff let's talk some business, what Saw DOES deliver well? Since I've said it wasn't all that bad, there's got to be some good in it. And there is. Saw manages to capture the atmosphere well, the dark asylum environment made me uneasy at many times and there were some tense moments. The various traps present throughout the game were partially inspired by the movies but there were also some creative stuff here and there. The game won't let you save on your own but fortunately has plenty of auto-save checkpoints which were mostly put there thoughtfully just at the right moments, when something 'bad' might make you die and start over from your last checkpoint. Which is not so obvious, because many video games don't even get that right. Luckily, Saw did, or otherwise I'd probably not be able to finish it at all due to so much frustration. There were also some nice puzzle moments, and some puzzles were actually fun. As you progress through the game, though, you'd see that over time it has less and less to offer and you start do again and again things you had already done. Deja vu anyone? Well yes. Sorry to say that even the fun and good aspects of the game get really tiring and REPETITIVE over time. You'd wander through the asylum feeling you're going through some very similar corridors, over and over again, fighting similar enemies, solving similar puzzles, going through similar scenarios with each 'victim' you'd have to save throughout the story, and really, at some point it just loses its value. Add it to a mediocre story which doesn't really add up that much to the franchise, mediocre game mechanics, HORRIBLE combat system, and you get a fairly tiring, long, torturous game. And maybe that was actually the whole idea in creating a Saw game? who knows.

Bottom line: +Big improvement over last installment +Decent story +Good gameplay, good difficulty +It ends exactly when it starts to get too tedious -Tedious voice overs, dull characters -Dated graphics, and the game generally didn't age that well -All in all, it's a decent, mediocre adventure game. I'm not really sure whether it's just the first installment of the series making this game look actually OK, or that the game itself it actually OK. I'd summarize it as mediocre, and not that bad, either way. Story, which is the main strength point of the adventure genre, it pretty decent. Felt a bit rushed at the end but it is fine if you lower your expectations a bit. Graphics are dated and at times rather drab, in a way you just can't ignore almost a decade after release. Music & sfx weren't bad but nothing special either, they came in and out when&how they should have. And perhaps that is the main problem of the game, that it simply offered nothing special with a rather low production value. It is fine to pass the time if your into the point and click genre already, and don't mind playing something decent. It did feel like some BIG improvement over the previous game, though. Along things that didn't improve, though, was the set of dull and uninteresting cast & characters, along with the rather monotonously voiced protagonist, and they just didn't do any good to the overall experience. The one thing which actually did feel much better for me was the GAMEPLAY, as this time around, the devs managed to combine the classic point'n'click features with the modern impatient players and will to progress without freaking over it too much. The difficulty was just right for me, not too easy and yet not too difficult, usually just enough to figure out after scratching my head a bit & not too long. The puzzles were also quite focused on several locations at a time, meaning you'd usually have around 5 locations to wander and solve the riddles with what you have, which was quite good for someone like me who doesn't like pixel hunting and going through tenths and hundreds of details in order to find the one thing that would move things forward.. Hopefully the next installment improves things even more and makes the series worthwhile.

So there I was, catching up on some sagas I've missed years ago, and there came The Matrix's turn. After finding it also has video games I just had to try out. And surprisingly, I managed to even have fun, 14 years after release. While this is not a 'game of the year' (any year), I felt it wasn't bad at all, and didn't get all the negativity towards the game. Sure, it's rough around the edges. It doesn't look close to how AAA budget games should look like, even back in 2003, and in those terms the game is rather mediocre. I did enjoy it still because I felt it captured greatly the atmosphere of The Matrix and for the any (and mainly) fans of the franchise should enjoy Enter The Matrix. At least a bit. I thought it was cool that they actually added a side story to the main movies and filmed some live footage for the game. The music stays loyal to The Matrix soundtracks and really gets you into the game, and also kicking enemies' butts with your Matrix powers felt really fun and intuitive to me, even though the controls were clunky at first (It's still 2003 we're talking about). But after you get used to them and just slightly lower your expectations, you can have some fun for a while.

Short review: Random stuff simulator 2016 Cool art Long(er) review: I always feel bad leaving negative reviews for games where I feel the dev actually tried to do something good and special. I do belive this is the case here, but in the end, I just didn't feel this game had any value to me at all and toward the end I got pretty impatient just to get it over with, unfortunately (and this game is pretty short). And just to make it clear, I'm the kind of guy who does enjoy those short, indie titles, but not here. I did appreciate the artistic style, it was interesting and original and surely required quite an imagination. But I just felt it goes nowhere, I just kept clicking stuff and waiting, listening to some rather irritating noises in the background.

Bioshock is awesome. Truly. I haven't played the remaster but the original one, and 10 years after release this game is still awesome, playable, relevant, looks great. If you're someone like me and took your time until trying this game, please do so now. If you appreciate a good story and can handle FPS, it should be worth it. It has great atmosphere, epic soundtrack, probably the best opening a video game has ever had, nice gameplay elements added to the ordinary Shooters recipe, and have I mentioned the good story? There are many (!) good reviews about Bioshock so there's no point in going on. And while I recommend it and think it totally deserves this positivity, I WOULD write a few (just a few) points which did bother me a little, and may be critical to other players: *Game is quite linear. It didn't bother me greatly, but I know some wouldn't like it at all. There are plenty of corners for you to explore and look around for resources and cool stuff you collect throughout the game, so it really bothered me only at the very end when I felt I didn't have much to find anymore. So, not 100% linear, but mostly linear. *Story is unfolded mostly with tape recordings. Actual happenings are really mostly at the very beginning and towards the end of the game. That one actually REALLY bothered me, I found it harder to concentrate and understand the story this way. It could also make things boring & repetitive at times. But all in all, the whole story of Bioshock is pretty much worth it. *Game is completely playable on modern machines despite being old, but nonetheless it's not innocent some bugs and glitches, personally I've encountered a tendency of the voice acting so suddenly disappear at some of the non-tape-recordings moments, which are the most crucial ones, leaving me only with the subtitles which I couldn't even finish reading at times. I couldn't find a solution to this problem and that really ruined a moment or two throughout the game. From trying to figure it out I found that there are plenty of others encountering the same issue and some others as well. Ah well. Just some technical bugs, but really, they're not that common. Go Play!

Captain Claw is an awesome classic and I'm surprised it's so underrated and unknown.. 20 years after initial release, it's still playable and looks quite alright for its time. (Not too sure about "playable" on modern system, my own is an low-end laptop with a 32-bit system). Claw is a platformer of old times and it got the magic of true classics. It doesn't have too much of a story or any fancy music & graphics, and while the game does not necessarily excel on all aspects, its addictive gameplay, diverse & creative levels are enough to make it worth a play, if you're fan of platform games. All in all there are 14 levels with increasing difficulty. Each level takes place in a different environment and varied enemies. The length and difficulty are rather flexible and can be adjusted to your gameplay style - you may swoop through the levels and complete them rather quickly if you're in for casual sessions (If that's the first time you play though, there'd be some challange of course), but you may also take your time and finding all secrets and bonuses lying around the levels in order to collect the entire "treasure" each level offers. That's about it, and it's as good and simple as it is. The gameplay mechanics are simple and easy to grasp, yet addictive and fun.

Well, Désiré was a rather strange experience. It wasn't at all bad and yet some flaws just kept it from being good, all the way through. It was still an interesting experience and it did invoke some feelings in me, so I guess the game deserves some credit for that. Désiré is a classic point and click type of game. No surprises there, plain and classic gameplay, nothing too innovative. What's special about Désiré is the atmosphere and the issues it reaches within the story. It engages with some serious issues like no other game did in the past, and along the list of those we can find - homosexuality, bullying, pedophilia, schizophrenia, mental and physical disabilities, and I'm probably missing some stuff there. The world that is seen in black and white (play the game to understand why), and the melancholic piano tunes in the background which would accompany you throughout the entire game (They were actually good). add to the general feeling of sadness and pain of the daily difficulties regular people may face in reality. So far so good, and I gave this game a '7' mainly because of these unusual qualities and because it made me FEEL things. And that's good. Yet, it certainly does not lack its flaws. The gameplay itself is usually very light and easy. You usually don't have many places to explore and not too many objects to examine, and the comments about the different environments can be sometimes laconic and dull. I actually preferred it that way, because I felt the game really flowed and I could fully concentrate in experiencing the story. I believe, though, that some people wouldn't like this lack of content and or challenge, and also that on the other hand, while most of the puzzles go by easily, some are incredibly vague and unclear, and you could just get stuck scratching your head over one of these few illogical puzzles for quite some time. Another thing is that, with all due respect to the game touching such sensitive issues and trying to be meaningful, at some point it feels Désiré just crams together many of humanity's disorders and doesn't really sure where to go next. Yes, there are some lectures about those subjects I mentioned above, and there are even plenty of clever sayings, but at the end I found myself asking what's the point? The game takes you from chapter to chapter in the protagonist's life and won't bother connecting the dots. It just leaves you wondering what the hell is going on. And along our hero's lectures and criticism about the people around him, you would ironically need to do some very immoral deeds in almost EVERY stage of the game in order to advance with the story. Which felt kinda weird. I specifically had some trouble with the idea of pouring detergent into someone's mouth (oh yes.). But, it could just be me. So, to summarize things up, Désiré is a rather bizarre experience which I'm glad I've been through, after all. It's a classic point and click game. It's mostly easy enough. Not at all casual because of the sensitive subjects and situations it brings itself to. It is very minimal on the technical aspect but that actually suits the game well and is part of its magic. Graphics are black and white, music is basic and melancholic. The game tries to be deep and meaningful and manages to do so only partially, the rest feels like a waste of time and potential. Still worth a try if you're into irregular experiences and a fan of point 'n' click.

Wanted to start and try out the entire Splinter Cell series, quite late, I know. Went ahead and tried the first game, and pretty much lowered my expectations as the game was released way back in 2003. 14 years ago! I was very surprised though, in a good way. I'll start by saying that Splinter Cell definitely passes the test of time. It's quite old but still stands as an awesome experience nowadays, and not only for nostalgia lovers. Of course, it shows that it's a game from 2003. But that somehow doesn't prevent it from being fun, from looking pretty neat and running on modern machines without much problem (at least in my experience). Splinter Cell shines with its gameplay, and I'm sure that back then it defined some new rules in the stealth gaming. Despite the AI can be slightly dumb at times, it really felt rather sophisticated to me. Plenty of gadgets to help you sneak your way through without getting bored or too tired by it. Plenty of ways to handle each level and each situation, and you're free to do it brutally or to try and keep most of your enemies alive. It's also pretty realistic and goes into small details for such an old game, which I found pretty impressive (Example - you can usually sneak past your enemies without them noticing, but if you'll step over shards of glass they might make some noise which would make you noticeable!). Some things are not explained to you in the tutorial, which I found a little frustrating, but eventually got over that. (I guess that back then developers relied more on players to actually read the manual, which I did, but just couldn't remember it all!) Graphics look just fine, very dated but for that time are very detailed and well designed, the different environments you'll sneak through are portrayed pretty well in Splinter Cell, and they manage to still look nice to the eye even today, if you consider it being from over a decade ago. Soundtrack and sound effects are also very well planned and designed, the music fits perfectly and creates tension and just the right atmosphere for such game. It can get quite repetitive though, and I generally like to see some more effort put in music in the games I play. But in this case it's forgivable. One thing that slightly disappointed me was the story, which wasn't bad at all, but also wasn't anything special and not too intriguing in my opinion. It was a little simple and banal, and still at some points I just didn't manage to follow, and later I pretty much lost interest. I personally care much about story in video game I play and expect for something interesting which would make me want to go on. Fortunately I felt the experience was worth it, overall, I enjoyed the game and am looking forward to try out the next installments.

(Bottom line - try this only if you're a REALLY die-hard fan of classic point and click games, and willing to approach the game with VERY low expectations and being very forgiving towards every moment of disappointment. Also, make sure you get it on a massive sale.) I'm sorry but this game is barely mediocre. Being a fan of point and click adventures, and being usually forgiving towards badaverage video games, I was happy to buy the bundle which contained this game along with 5 other games, 2 of them are also a part of the Art of Murder series. I do hope that the next games are better, because as cheap as it was, even my tolerance has its limits. It really does sadden me to write this negative review because the basic plot actually was potentially interesting. Too bad that this, along with the average graphics, were the only good things about the game. The presentation itself is just not good, and that ruins the entire story. Characters are extremely shallow and usually not dubbed that well, especially our protagonist which has the weird tendency to crack an unfunny joke every now and then, at the most inappropriate moments (Hey I just got fired - crack an unfunny joke - Hey someone just got killed - crack an unfunny joke). The game itself is pretty short (luckily, because I don't know if I could stand it any longer than it already lasted), and also pretty easy, most of the puzzles are extremely obvious EXCEPT the ones which are simply too vague for you to find out what to do next. Which doesn't really feel challenging but rather Not Fun. Still, this had somehow became a trilogy, so I really do hope that the next two games are better, because, as I had already bought them, I'm going to give them a try sometime.

Bottom line - not an amazing game, worth a few sittings if you're a Toy Story fan and can bear the antiqueness. This game's got a PC port as well in which I played and is not mentioned in Metacritic for some reason, but anyway it's pretty identical to the PS version except slightly enhanced graphics. This game is obviously not very relevant after about 16 years, but as a Toy Story fan I bothered to play it and will bother to write a review- A short one, mind you, as this game doesn't offer that much. Surprisingly enough the game ran just fine without much efforts on my laptop, which is not very new but was bought in 2009, which is still modern for this game. It's not bad but it lacks substance. It's some sort of a 'racing' game with shooting instead of vehicles and a boss fight in the end. And you do it again. And again. Over and over again. There are three 'modes' or challenge for each level but they all contain a rather similar concept. If you like Buzz Lightyear, if you don't mind playing antique games, if you can stand the repetitiveness, you may have SOME fun with this game, for some time. It has nothing special about it mostly, in all different aspects of the game, but it offers enough challenge for one to want and finish it, especially if you're a 'completionist', and even though it seems like a kids' game its difficulty is just enough, not too easy yet not too tough. And that's through just about most of the game, until one of the final levels which I found insanely difficult, and which made me ditch the game and leave it be.

Note- I played the PC version of the game, in which Pigsy's Perfect 10 is already integrated to the whole game and not coming as a standalone DLC. I wanted to review specifically Perfect 10. So, while I enjoyed the main game but wasn't completely satisfied with it, I came with very low expectations to this DLC. Moreover, I really didn't like that Pigsy guy. Surprisingly I really enjoyed this DLC, and found it pretty damn good! First of all, it takes a rather sharp turn from the main game and changes the gameplay significantly. What seems at first as a platformer becomes more of a stealth-shooter. It's still a platformer, but an extremely linear and limited one (even more (!) than the main game). It does take a while but it becomes much fun towards the middle of the game, which surprisingly was impressively long (for a DLC - it could take about 3-4 hours to complete which is like many "small", standalone games nowadays). The DLC slowly takes you through the game mechanics and teaches you about every option and 'device' Pigsy can use to defeat the mechs - and then the real fun begins. Perfect 10 keeps the quality of the main game regarding graphics and landscapes, you'll see many environments around Pigsy's swamp and the mechs factories which seem pretty good and detailed and fit perfectly the environment. Its soundtrack had taken another sharp turn as well as the gameplay, and is much more 'goofy' and uplifting rather than the dramatic soundtrack of the main game (Both soundtracks are amazing, though) - and it fits perfectly to the "Pigsy spirit". The story is a rather simple one but is also simply sweet and fun, and it made me like and appreciate more the character of Pigsy which I found more as an headache in the main game. The only thing that's a little bit annoying is that you'll be dying a lot. As I said earlier, this is more of a stealth oriented type of game and whenever you get shot just once or twice, or get into a face-to-face situation, you'd usually die, and that can be rather frustrating. If it was a full standalone game, I'd also complain about it being way too scripted and limited (The camera angles would usually point you into a very, and I mean VERY specific direction, and you'd have no possibility to explore around. There's usually only one path you can go). Also the very short length of the game which would leave you wanting more. But, this is a DLC, and not a full game, and as a DLC it gives more than enough content to be satisfied, and it made me look on the entire game differently and appreciate it more. Bottom line - highly recommended.

Bottom line: The Stanley Parable is an awesome piece of video gaming, A little tip - play the demo BEFORE playing the full game. The demo is not acctually a part of the game, but more like a standalone introductory chapter to the game, and it will give you the taste of what this game is all about. Which is necessary, because The Stanley Parable is probably unlike any other game you've played before. Not much puzzles in here, not much action, not much of a big, complex story. Not much characters, not much music, and not much of anything you'd expect from a standard video game. Without spoiling the experience too much (although, if you haven't played the game yet and reading through those reviews you're probably already spoiled!), I'd tell that the Stanley Parable explores the concepts of choices and consequences and narration in video games. And it does so very wittingly and and elegantly. The game has many secrets and things for you to reveal and find out, and therefore the experience is based mainly on your will to explore and try out new things. And while you can "complete" the game within 10 minutes or even less, each gameplay can and probably will look completely different. I've played the game for about 5 hours in total which I spread across many short "sessions" of playing the game, and I feel I haven't revealed the entire content of the game (even when using a walkthrough). Technically, there's not much to say, the game is built with the Source engine used in the famous HL games, which is highly stable and still looks good even after aging quite a bit. You'll find out that the game has plenty of "atmospheres" throughout the different paths you can take, and it seems there was much thought put into every detail of the game, It plays fantastically, but as I said before, this is not a usual game. I highly recommend it for anyone which can appreciate something a bit different, where the center is about how the story is told rather than the story itself, or rather than who's the next target to shoot

Mind you, this game is NOT a bad one. It's just that, for several reasons, I just can't recommend it fullheartedly. Bottom line: +Amazing, lush, beautiful, graphics. Incredible locations +A very interesting take on the book "Journey to the West" +Incredible soundtrack +Nice, fluid and somewhat fun combat and "parkouring-ish", assuming you managed to get the game run well enough. +An awesome WTF ending -Linear gameplay, and I mean VERY linear -Can get tedious and boring at times -Story is executed weakly -Characters barely develop. Relationships between them simply don't work and are growing awkwardly. -PC port is not optimized quite enough. I've encountered MANY technical difficulties before managing to make the game playable. -All in all, big portion of the game simply lacks substance, regarding depth of story and gameplay.

Star Sky is a game for people who, above all, can appreciate simple and short games, which don't really offer too much (which is just right in this specific case, because this game is VERY cheap, especially on a sale). No point to review it too much, because it may just take as much time as it takes to complete the game itself. You can read in the description exactly what this game is about... This is basically all about exploration (somewhat) and trying out things, discovering as much as possible along the way. As much as is simple is manages to create a nice, relaxing, magical (even if a bit gloomy) atmosphere, which is very nice to delve into, even if only for 5-10 minutes. This also requires some patience if you really want to find out everything by yourself, although it's not very hard to do, what makes Star Sky a nice casual entertainment. I discovered by myself a little more than half of the achievements, then got to a walkthrough for help. while trying to follow the walkthrough I accidently found out some other achievements I didn't yet achieve. So, bottom line, it's a very simplistic and nice casual experience, which gives you a sense of progression and interest. Try it if you like exploration and casual games.

My only real complaint about this game is it's length. I've got The Shivah quite some time ago and wanted to play this game for a while, I read about it a bit and it seemed rather interesting game, but I didn't prepare myself for a 1-2 hours experience, and somehow expected it to last longer. The game is rather simple and you'd like it if you're a fan of old and classic adventure games. (I guess that the 'remake' looks much better, haven't checked it yet.) The original version has the classic "pixelish" graphics done with the AGS engine. The soundtrack also feels as if it was done in the spirit of the 90's but it's catchy enough and fits the atmosphere well. The story is nice, and while it's not a big breakthrough in the field of storytelling through video games, it was good enough for me to want to know what happens next and to enjoy every bit of the plot. Puzzles are quite nice as well, you won't find here the "classic" annoyances of the old point-n'-click genre (eg. pixel hunting, tiring inventory puzzles) but mostly investigation work. A Rabbi Detective sorta thing. The difficulty of the game was just right in my opinion, not everything is just put straight out for you to find, but it's also not too hard to figure out what to do. It's all just about plain sense, but you still have to actually figure out what's going on. Also, you'll find a little originality in some 'puzzles' or gameplay elements in the game, including "rabbinical combat" which is based on spoken dialogue, and some clues combination puzzles instead of tedious inventory puzzles. As I said before, the only real problem is that it all ends so soon. Still, the game is rather cheap, and also has a "Kosher Edition" which is sort of a remake with improved graphics and sounds. And while I'm yet to play that version, I'm sure that it delivers an enhanced experience of the game. If you love classic adventure games and want some 'light' one which you can finish in one sitting, within an hour or two, definitely give it a try.