timmytime

Okay, I finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think someone in the thread was wondering how I would feel about its final hours - definitely stronger than a lot of what came before. It's at its best when its Uncharted-esque or better yet, having its own identity as a Tomb Raider game (the actual challenge tombs are some of the best parts) and at its worst when it tries to be an Ubisoft Assassin's Creed/Far Cry-esque game. I still think TR2013 is the most successful in this trilogy as a piece of work that stands on its own, and neither of the latter two games really did anything meaningful from there other than being 'bigger'. But they're not bad time-killers for someone who likes the core gameplay loop. Not quite on the level of anything Sony are doing first-party, though.

Very solid indie puzzle-platformer in the vein of Inside and Limbo. I don't think it quite reaches the heights of Inside, but it's a lot more colourful than that game (nice for variety!) and I enjoyed the companion mechanics and implementation. Definitely a success and I'm glad I was able to check it out on Gamepass.

Solid entry in the series. I like how it built off the previous prequel game. It was mostly logical about the next thing to try as well.

A wonderful experience from start to finish. Extremely well polished reimagining of a classic

Loved this one. A feat of smart level design, animation, lighting systems, and a moving story. I'd recommend this one to pretty much anyone, gamer or non-gamer alike.

Incredible game, great storytelling on every level, and well designed. 9 rather than 10 for me on minor gripes; felt like I was going through the motions in combat a bit towards the end, and the facial models and animation don't look as good as say, The Last of Us. But, this is still an incredible game with surprises at each turn.

Easily the best point and click adventure game I've ever played. Smart writing, interesting characters, funny moments, some mild and intuitive puzzling. The exact midpoint of Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium. You can get a bad ending if you miss a few things but, there is an autosave that you can reload to rectify it. This is on Gamepass so no reason to not check it out.

Enjoyed this one, really expanded on the ideas of the first. I think the original Little Nightmares suffered in comparison for me because I wanted it to be more like 'Inside' This one, I can accept as being stronger in its own vision - the Resident Evil Village of platformers!

I enjoyed this one, and it's superior to the first game. Some stronger character writing is going on and the interface is much improved (although part of me misses the detailed character face models). Storylines were more moving this time around overall. Kind of curious about the Developer Commentary although not in a rush to dive right in straight after finishing the game.

I don't regret playing it, and there are some clever things you can try that the game will respond to. Still, it could have done with a fast forward to certain segments button. I haven't reacted as negatively to the story as some others have, but it all feels like a conceit for the premise.... yet the game doesn't do as much with the premise as it could. It's worth a playthrough on GamePass but I wouldn't buy it, and I say that as someone who was really looking forward to this.

Spoiler free-tips; *Remember to right click on things as well - sometimes the 'look' option is different to the standard left-click use *If an 'obvious solution' isn't working, try combining things in your notebook. *If you're still not getting it, don't be ashamed to peek at a walkthrough for a hint... the game is never quite 'Moon Logic' but there are certain things which could have been better sign-posted or less fiddling with interface. It smells of "early in a designer's career" With those caveats... I liked this. I played because I enjoyed Unavowed and thought I'd dive into this series. I've heard the later ones are better. There is a fairly compelling story with some neat twists and surprises. I'll give the later ones a go too.

So, (free on Xbox GamePass, but can also be purchased on a bunch of platforms) is a really fantastic 'Telltale-like' Twilight Zone-esque game focusing on several characters from Variable State, the makers of Virginia, from a few years ago. There's no serious puzzles, the minigame interaction is quite minor and there's only a couple truly meaningful choices (although you're making dialogue choices all the time, they don't generally significantly alter the story). You're mainly walking around in an interactive film/interactive comic like storyline that is quite well-paced. There's not even really even many scenes where you walk around an environment and investigate objects - most walking around you're with another character and making dialogue choices. So think Telltale more in the sense of interactive character drama than, wildly branching paths. I liked that the game clearly had a focus on diversity in its character cast, and the writing was a top notch and very funny at times. It has genuine pathos and I did genuinely feel for our protagonist although they made the bold choice of making at least one of main three characters arguably quite unlikeable bordering on sociopathic. Some of the animation work is a little goofy (the running animation, which you see a lot always looked a little silly to me) but never took away from the game's charm. The only other issue I had, is the game doesn't seem to support Quick Resume on XBOX unlike most GamePass games, so I'd wait to finish any character's given chapter (which are never particularly long - 20 to 30 minutes at most) before taking breaks. The whole game is maybe a bit over five hours. Given it's free if you already have Gamepass, and goes down well since there's no real 'challenge' I'd recommend everyone give this one a shot.

The variety of this game is incredible. They switch up mechanics around every corner, and you explore so many different environments. They really rely on the co-op mechanics. I had a wonderful time.

Pretty cool mash up of classic point and click adventure game with "Bioware" companion and dialogue choice mechanics. I really enjoyed it and it modernises the old school formula a lot.

incredibly boring, dry and uninspired. design choices are poor and hark back to the ps2 era. characters unlikeable

A little bit of jank and poor checkpointing but certainly a good game. The second half is more varied than the first. AA rather than AAA effort for sure but still impressive

File GRIS on my "wanted to like it more than I did" list. It's a beautiful game, but some of the later levels relied a lot more on backtracking and pixel hunting than I expected. A lot of progression was about interacting with things you could miss and I found myself running around the levels a lot. So, frustrating but not much of a sense of accomplishment when you figure it out. INSIDE is still the gold standard for character puzzle platformers for me and I liked it's environmental puzzles a lot more. Meanwhile GOROGOA is the Rolls Royce of beautiful indie puzzle games with its subtle feedback when you're heading in the right direction. I'd recommend either of those games before Gris, but it's still worth a play.

Whoa GOROGOA rules! I was so proud of beating this one without a walkthrough. Playing games like this must be how people who like games like Myst feel, except way more streamlined so even impatient people like me can enjoy it.

Text speed is too slow. Interesting premise but not as good as subsurface puzzle or story wise. I got a bad ending for two minor choices

Great little handheld story that has some good writing and puzzles as well as food for thought

This is my favourite video game of all time. The plot mirrors the fallacy of endless retaliation in foreign policy. It expands on the themes of the first game while being its own thing as well. This game constantly surprised me despite what has been said in the leaks.

Back in the PS2 days, as a youth, I played Jak: The Precursor Legacy and loved it, but never tried any of the sequels. The Jak Collection was on sale for the PS4 and I've played the first few hours of Jak II and boy... this game has not aged well. While I appreciate there's a decent bit of mission variety and some of them actually have quite exciting setpieces, it's brought down by a couple of major things: ​ (1) Terrible checkpointing - many missions will take you right back to the beginning of the level if you fail at the end, leaving you with a lot of repetition. ​ (2) Boring hub world. I understand why people might have been excited by the "Grand Theft Jak" concept at the time, but driving between missions just feels like padding because there really isn't anything to do in the world. This feature actually removes one of the things that made the first game so interesting - ironically despite this game moving to a more modern "open world" hub design, the first Jak actually felt a lot more "open world" because the spaces were all cleverly interconnected. Here, there is no sense of discovery or connection - the city just feels like a bloated "warp room" with "loading doors" between them to get into any of the missions. ​ Should I persevere? I'm pretty early in the game, after getting the first gun, destroying turrets in the sewers. Everything I hear about it seems like there's many more frustrating missions to come and that it may not be worth it it. I imagine Jak 1 has probably aged a lot better and is still fun and more tightly designed. Is there any reason to skip to Jak 3 if I'm not feeling this game? Does it improve upon things?

I teared up at the end of a video game and I never do that. This was a wonderful game.

I actually kind of wish this had more gimmicky co-op sections but nonetheless this is a very fun experience and we need more couch co-op games. Josef Fares seems like a sweet guy and I hope he keeps getting money to make whatever the **** he wants.

One of the saddest of all things - a game that deserves mechanics and execution as good as its design and art style. Almost throughout, this game is the pinnacle of "good ideas, poor execution". Anyone who played Inside and came to this looking for something to scratch that itch is going to be disappointed - this is way more repetitive, fiddly controls, less cohesive and interesting narrative. Also, there's surprisingly few "puzzles" in the game - it is really just a series of finnicky chase sequences.

Improves on Human Revolution in pretty much every way, though still never matches the wonder and mystery of the original Deus Ex - the game is never really more than the sum of its parts as a "Deus ex prequel with modern graphics" though, those parts are pretty good on their all! I appreciated the approach to the depth over breadth open world as Mark Brown has also highlighted.

Different, very bleak tone to the other Dishonored games. Some fantastic immersive sim moments like the creepy taxidermist in the first level and the entirety of the bank heist level. I like the chaos system in the other games but it works well here to remove it.

Beaten on Hard Low Chaos Run as Emily. This game is better than the first. The world feels alive and there's an impressive amount of choice and novelty in each level. It does have a bit of a steep learning curve and the load times are a bit long, but the actual moment-to-moment gameplay, when you get into the groove of it, is awesome. A must play for anyone who enjoys single player narrative games.

An astongishgly beautifutful game that bears its lineage all the way back to spyro on the PS1. Very varied levels. Some lements of combat get a bit repeitive but ovralll good

Yeah, just a 7 out of 10 for me. There are moments of brilliance in this game, and in particular, I actually enjoyed a lot of the Challenge Tombs. The other open world stuff though was pretty lame and bloated, and at times this game just feels unsure of whether it wants to be an Ubisoft Open World Game, an Uncharted Game, or to actually have an identity of it's own. I preferred the first one to this.

Is there anyone making single-player, narrative driven FPS games on the level of MachineGames right now? Great characters, fun gameplay, good design. There's character work and plotting of this that no one is able to compete with right now other than, maybe, Naughty Dog, which is a different tone and style. Since there's no Half Life sequels coming any time soon, Wolfenstein has picked up the torch. Loved it guys.

Proves that the Uncharted series has viability beyond Nathan Drake. The best puzzles in the series yet, some great combat encounters that feel fresh, and interesting use of "Semi-open world" in some sections which I think fits neatly in the franchise. I know they're focusing on The Last of Us II now (and oh boy, I can't wait) but I hope this isn't the last thing Naughty Dog ever do with Uncharted.

I loved this one - tells a story with a lot of depth despite being wordless and pushes the medium. The only reason I haven't given it 10/10 is I think it goes on 2 or 3 minutes too long, which may seem silly on such a short game. I think they just went a bit overboard in the non-linearity and metaphor at the end, which I understand while important and obviously part of the experiment the game is going for, made it a little less tight and focused than it could be.

Many of this game's core missions, and many of its optional missions too, are quite fun and satisfying. However, there is simply way too much open world bloat - there are like, seven types of collectibles, and none of them are particularly interesting.

Two years after its release, I can ensure you that Infamous Second Son is a very fun game to play. It is a competent and solid open world third person action game and has a better sense of personality than the preceding two games. Nonetheless much of the open world mini games are enjoyable to unwind to, but quite repetitive. Looks great, and good voice work and the different powers switch up the game play. Also, very clear interface. Delsin isn't super fleshed out as a character though.

Simply one of the most considered and perfectly crafted games ever made. LIMBO was one of my favourite games six years ago, but now it honestly just feels like a prototype for THIS game. Tells a convincing atmospheric narrative entirely wordlessly. The puzzles are intimately related to the narrative and balance the difficulty that you'll have to think without getting a walkthrough. Everyone needs to play this.

Saints Row IV was already glorified DLC for SR3, and this is glorified DLC for Saints Row 3. The flying controls are actually pretty cool, but the superpowers are not meaningful or interesting for the most part. You can blaze through the main story in a couple hours. Not a huge fan of the side missions other than the flying.

Quite plainly an exhilarating, but thoughtful experience that pushes to the limit what an action game can be. Trust Naughty Dog. They've learnt a lot from this series and its a satisfying conclusion that builds on previous entries as well as the Last of Us.

One of the best interactive fiction games ever. Every playthrough was memorable. Minor complaint is that it's annoying to switch objects between suitcases.

Broken Age relies on its unique art-style, modernised adventure game interface, and likeable (but still somewhat dark!) story and characters to be so great. I'm so glad this was Kickstarted. Only one Act is out so far, and it's not especially long, but that doesn't matter when the quality is as high as this game. Admittedly, I needed to use a walkthrough at a few small points (moreso to find where an item is than to solve any of the puzzles, which are all fairly reasonable).

The story in the game is confusing and half-baked, there is no chemistry in the characterisations, and the gameplay - that is, the shooting - is not fun at all, and is a slog to get through points A and B of the story. It has some nice art direction, but it also represents a lot of what is wrong with AAA titles.

If you can get this for free in Playstation Plus, sure, give it a whirl with a friend. But don't pay for it, since it's not as good as either of the actual LBP games, and it's a fairly dull karting game in its own right.

Terrible DLC. Rushed out Christmas fare with a nonsensical and uninvolving plot. The gameplay missions are especially repetitive and uninvolving. Not recommended.

Quite bland. The meta stuff has some funny moments but it's very understandable why it was cut and cancelled. No particularly great gameplay sequences.

Honestly there's a lot of fun things about it, mostly the great characters and crazy activities. But the superpowers never feel as good as they should be, and a lot of the time the whole game just feels like it should have just been an expansion to Saints Row 3. The best in the series is still Saints Row 2.

Wanted to like it more than I actually did, especially because Heavy Rain is one of my favourite games of all time. But the non-linear storyline is weak and you feel as though your choices don't matter - the player is robbed of what makes games unique - agency - as they're just trying to get to the next scene. The QTE "flick the stick" is too streamlined and unsatisfying as well.

Tomb Raider needed to grow up, and I liked what they've done with the character, although the story itself is fairly bland and generic. The pre-rendered cutscene at the games beginning is ugly as well. It's a little too "AAA"-influenced by other games, but I liked the puzzles.

Fun, although not as insightful as it thinks it is, and not all players will appreciate the very frustrating and difficult puzzle game at its core. Play on easy mode...

Suffers in comparison to Uncharted 2, but it's still an incredibly polished game from a developer who never disappoints. The boat sequence especially is one of the most exciting setpieces ever made playable.

I really didn't like the dialogue in this game. A good example that summarises the problem is this; there is a character who has clocks in his house that never tick. Later on, you witness an earlier memory in which he asks to have a clock switched off because the ticking sound is annoying his girlfriend. Then, other characters, witnessing the memory, say "Oh, so that's why the clocks don't tick!" We didn't need that last bit of dialogue. I wish the game in general had been a lot more "show, don't tell" as the characters comment on literally everything. It could have been a more interesting game if it was more like something akin to Gone Home where the player is able to interpret and explore the objects, rather than having everything over-narrated by the player characters. It made the writing feel amateurish, and lacking in confidence. Also, the timeline of the game is confusing; all the clothes and objects seem to be intended to have this timeless quality, but then the dialogue is referencing things like Animorphs and Street Fighter. This in particular doesn't make any sense; the present era of the game is meant to be 60-70 years after Animorphs books were popular, but characters still reference things like Dragon Ball Z. Is anyone really going to care about DBZ and Street Fighter that long from now? It just feels like the writer inserted things from their own pop cultural frame of reference than really putting effort into the dialogue. It should have either stuck with that timeless quality and not have any pop culture references, or be more consistent about it. There are other things I didn't like, but I do want to admit that I did find some aspects of this game quite poignant and sweet, and it is only 4 hours long so you can burn through it in an afternoon. That's why I'm nitpicking it so much; I wanted to like it more than I did.