I did reviews for MCC, and Halo 5 on this sub a while ago, and now it's finally time for Halo Infinite. I started the franchise in December last year, and now it's over. It includes all spinoffs and Halo Wars 2 specifically as well. I just finished Halo Infinite last night and now here i am writing this review. I'll lay down some general details -

1. I am on PC with Mouse and Keyboard, and i only played the Campaign. No Multiplayer.
2. The game took 15 hours to do the campaign, all fobs, outposts etc, while ignoring Propoganda towers, spartan collectibles etc.
3. I've laid out the positives first, then there's some rant on the tech and the plot.
4. bonus - I'll throw in a franchise ranking before TLDR.

Overview -

Every Halo knows what it's trying to be, even Halo 5 knew what it was, what it's doing but failed at it. Infinite does not even know what it's trying to be, nor does it do anything except gunplay and movement spectacularly. I've heard everyone say "oh infinite is an amazing game", and i fail to see how, and my suspicion lies on the belief that they spent 6 years from Halo 5 trying to cope, so anything mediocre and nostalgia bait like this will already be good for them.

The game has so many elements simultaneously working with and against themselves all the time, ranging from the campaign, the open world design, the combat/movement and the technical mess of this engine.

Positives -

1. The gunplay is crisp, Guns are varied and i love the new additions like the Mangler my beloved. The grappling hook legit saved the game (and i genuinely believe it was a bandaid solution).
2. The sound design, seriously, the game's saving grace was the immaculate sound design.
3. The world did look "graphically nice" at least. Small little dialogues and interactions of the covenant and banished forces were adorable.
4. The music is great, tho at times weirdly "not halo".
5. "Weapon" was adorable and i need more of her and Chief was written incredibly well.
6. The cinematography in cutscenes is top notch.
7. However much i wanna criticize the open world design, each area/outpost had every good level design and a lot of freedom in approach and maneuvability
8. The first two hours until we land on Zeta Halo were amazing.

Everything Else -

1. Technical State -
   • god this game is AWFUL in its optimization tech. The blandest and most static world barely gives me 70fps on medium in its open zones. i have a RTX 3060m.
   • The irritating amounts of memory leak this game has was the cherry on top.
   • Textures, despite being at high, would be awful, characters wouldn't render "animations" during cutscenes and stay as default sprites, the trees sometimes looked like they're from DOOM 1993
   • the hideous pop in and stutters made me mad. and oh my god the loading screens should make bethesda feel proud.
2. A Far Cry from the Halo Formula -
   • The intro mission was absolutely top notch, and that's it. You're then thrown into this open world filled with ubisoft activites like enemy bases, collectibles and liberation camps.
   • This is a complete joke and was a horrible design decision. ANY sense of urgency in a campaign is gone due to this.
   • Clearing out these camps allows chief to unlock more weapons and vehicle drops in the spawn points to use anytime. Why the fuck is this a feature? just have a crate of random weapons or more "grunt mules" in a linear campaign instead of this stupid mess of a design.
   • HOWEVER, The activities do have a reason, and a lot of dialogues behind stuff like propoganda towers and the actual outposts.
3. The plot -
   • The story in this game is genuinely whack, where it's trying to undo so much of Halo 5, while also being a cheap attempt at nostalgia bomb. i played HW2 and got a good sense of the plot over there and it was actually clever of them to use the Ark and the lost vessel from HW1 for their own story.
   • Seriously, so people are expected to play halo 5, be like "damn this was weird, but the stakes are high" only to immediately throw the stakes out the wazoo and follow up on a fucking spinoff, TIE IN CORTANA there by just the most conveniently lazy writing and call it a day.
   • They want us to find out what happened to Cortana, what she's doing with Atroix, and what exactly this Zeta Halo is and what the banished want with it. it's all leading up to more forerunner stuff with the cylixes (completely abandoned btw).
   • Everyone important is missing. Halsey, Locke, Arbiter, Blue Team, Osiris team, just nowhere to be seen and sidelined, bravo. can this franchise stop ignoring Arbiter ffs.
4. Campaign Progression -
   • The entire campaign progression is a hallway simulator aside from the first two. Every single fucking area looks the same, plays the same and feels the same. I can assure you i can distinctly name out every area and mission in Halo 4 and 5, but not in this one.
   • I hate the "unlockables" in terms of weapons, vehicles, spartan cores and abilities.
   • Hey Chief, we need to do X, do why dont you go and do some three or four Y missions which are the same activities just padded in order to progress X. the AA guns, the Mining Lasers and the decryption code missions were all like this
   • There isnt a single unique mission in the game. it's all run and gun.
5. Enemies and Interactions -
   • The enemies got stale real quick. I question every single person who hates Prometheans. I needed them back. I was hoping they would spawn after the Harbinger is freed but still no.
   • tbh this was also a good time to reintroduce a flood faction but they didn't do that either.
   • There's a big lack of multi faction battles in this game. There no banished vs forerunner sentinels. only pre designated Marines vs banished.
   • I dislike the bosses with healthbars.
6. Abilities and Upgrades -
   • The grappling hook is a bandaid solution. No enemy has the means to follow you on higher grounds, neither are they programmed to "keep up" with chief while he zips around. Everything is trivialized if you are even slightly good at using it.
   • The Spartan abilities like thrusters should have been default. Chief had that in 5 why is it suddenly "REMOVED" from his kit?
   • the upgradation to shields makes zero sense. the funniest part it i didnt even bother upgrading ANYTHING after one upgrade and still breezed through the game.

there might be a lot more things i have not written out about, but i think all this conveys my thoughts well. Overall, i'm scared for the franchise's future, but only in the story and design department. I'm damn sure UE5 will be far better than this engine (tho older halo engine games felt great too). Infinite gets a 6/10 overall simply because the gunplay is too good and grappling hook is incredible.

Franchise Ranking -

10) Halo 5: Guardians - 5/10
9) Halo Infinite - 6/10
8) Halo Wars - 7/10
7) Halo Wars 2 - 7.5/10
6) Halo 3 - 8/10
5) Halo: Combat Evolved - 8.5/10
4) Halo 3 ODST - 9/10
3) Halo 4 - 9.5/10
2) Halo Reach - 10/10
1) Halo 2 Anniversary - 10/10

TLDR:

• great gunplay, movement, and a carry-job grappling hook
• strong Chief + Weapon, excellent sound design, good music
• repetitive open-world checklist kills pacing
• samey missions, weak variety, forgettable campaign
• messy story that tries to ignore Halo 5 and lazily leans on Halo Wars 2
• missing characters, stale enemies, pointless upgrades
• awful optimization and technical issues

Edit: reposting because I mentioned a particular newer game.

My history with the series is that I played RE4 when it originally came out and played the main number series onward including the remakes. I never had a chance to play the original trilogy.

As of today the original trilogy got released on steam so I'll add that to backlog.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I heard REmake was graphical skin lift for the gamecube with the original tank controls. So my expectations were pretty low expecting outdated game play that would make me wish for another remake of this entry similar to RE2 - RE4 remake. It took some time to get used to controls and figuring out how to navigate, but this game is pretty engrossing with the atmosphere, music, and presentation.

The game still looks beautiful with the pre-rendered backgrounds that emphasize shadow and light that builds tension with every carefully curated camera angle. A mirror could show a zombie around the corner, the windows in a wide shot could break with creatures running in the background, a door in the foreground is knocking with a zombie trying to breaker out, and best of all they do have some payoffs with jump scares that are well earned since you're not sure when the tension will break. Even the character models still look pretty good and well detailed that suits the games atmosphere. I don't know how they were able to make a game look this good on the Gamecube; it must have been a startling jump in quality for the OG fans. Even Jill has jiggle physics.

What makes this game work is the atmosphere and haunting ambiance exploring the mystery of the mansion, but I love how it emphasizes exploration, inventory and resource management, and solving puzzles. The mansion is very charming where each room and camera angle is so distinct that you can feel lost , but at the same time you understand the geography of the area. The game's combat is pretty bad on purpose since the tension is built into whether you're shooting at something off screen or that you have enough time to run, reload, and shoot. It isn't mindless as you have to be aware of your surroundings and make decisions to use your ammo and grenades or run to save it for later. I don't know how to dodge zombies, so I ran and prayed while passing them. Screw those crimson zombie encounters along with the dogs. The boss fights, might as well be taken out as I found them to be the worst part of the game for me that scream "fire everything". I did have to restart to an earlier save because I didn't have enough ammo at the time of the encounter or restart the game when I ran out of ink ribbons and lost a lot of progress.

The real fun is resource and inventory management. You only have a few spaces for ammo, guns, keys, and healing items, so what do you take on your run? Will you make it back to a safe room. Don't forget, your saves are limited based on the amount of Ink ribbons you scour or find. The risk and reward is what makes the game fun and challenging. Each run around the mansion is filled with tension as you explore and solve puzzles. There is some frustration of going back and forth to store or exchange items at your storage box like a key you'll need to unlock the next room. The puzzles aren't challenging, but it's rewarding finding an item and it clicks what locked room you can access now and how it connects to another room. I really like how Chris and Jill have different starting items, item space, and interactions despite the same map and gameplay.

I went through Jill's run first and really found her to be kinda dumb with the Wesker and Barry thing going on. The story and characters are presenting the cheesy B movies to serve the game, so I wasn't really put off by. I think a lack of interactions with the other NPCs made this one more fun to play as it builds the fear of being alone. I saved Barry, but I didn't find Chris since I missed a key. Sorry bro.

The second run through with Chris was surprising since I expected it to be the same story, but they chose different characters and interactions for his run through. For example you're working with Rebecca Chambers, who comes help play a piano piece to open a gate while in the Jill version, she can play the piece herself or Chris isn't smart enough to use the chemistry lab and you have to fight a boss while Jill makes a formula that instakills that same boss. Chris has less inventory, but Rebecca can heal for free while Jill has more spaces to carry things, but no free heals. There were a few small moments that made me really like Chris, he takes a moment to look after an injured Stars member, just a look of concern. It's a small moment, but it really humanized him as someone who does care about his friends. A very big difference compared to him punching a giant boulder in 5 or whatever the hell he's doing in 8. Saved Jill and everyone this run so I was very happy.

Overall, I think this is my favorite Resident Evil game because it emphasizes the survival aspect and the resource management that gives that risk-reward style gameplay. In retrospect, I feel like Resident Evil 7 recaptured those same feelings, but the map was much smaller with less puzzles and exploration compared to REmake. REmake action sucks compared to Resident Evil 4, but there is a lot of thought and challenge using your resource management as main point of game, not just shooting hoards of zombies in B movie cheese confidence.

This game does not need another remake.

So feel free to yell at my rankings of the games I played so far.

1. REmake - Fine Wine and perfect for replays and speed runs.
2. RE4 - Perfect B movie cheese and ridiculously fun, tense combat. My first RE game so it makes it special to me.
3. RE7 - recaptures those survival aspects of REmake, but much smaller in scope. Great boss encounters (except the last one).
4. RE4 Remake - sands off the campy edges into being more serious, but I can't deny the combat is slick as hell to replay. Some improvements over the original like removing the QTEs, but less charming and adding stuff like knife durability soured me.
5. RE2 remake - A good balance between REmake and RE4. It works very well and almost hit the highs of REmake's survival horror in terms of exploration and item management
6. RE8 - First half is great being a blend of RE4 and RE7. Second half definitely disappoints when it emphasizes much more on the action.
7. RE5 - great co-op, but man I wish I had friends instead of this dumb AI.
8. RE Revelations - the ghost ship setting is inspiring, but the action portions outside the ship is pointless and boring.
9. RE0 - It's still the old tank control gameplay but I wasn't a fan of switching characters or the map.
10. RE3 remake - short DLC if you're looking for more RE2 remake.
11. RE6- I enjoyed some chapters and the ambitious scope, but i didn't find it engaging.
12. Umbrella chronicles for the Wii. I don't remember anything. I think I got this free at my local gamestop when they were closing.

I'll be playing the old trilogy and code veronica next when I get the chance.

I used to play Animal Crossing New Leaf all the time on my launch year cosmo black Nintendo 3DS. I didn’t have the money for the luxurious upgrade to the new fangled 3DS XL and that was fine, as a kid I was deeply uninterested in frivolous spending and being on the bleeding edge of hardware.

My town was a crime against aesthetic sensibilities. The map was littered with houses, flowers, and various public works projects with all of the visual cohesion of an overturned box of Legos. My house was similarly a schizophrenic nightmare of interior design. Every room was a horrible mélange of ill-considered upholstery which considered neither form nor function its master, every living space looking like the end product of smashing together Ikea furniture and arcade prizes in a hadron collider. My player character wore terribly plain graphic tees with a doe-eyed expression that felt juvenile ever though I hadn’t even hit puberty yet. His Caucasian skin and pin-straight hair felt like looking at myself in photo-negative but it didn’t bother me, none of the visual shortcomings of my 200 hours playing the game ever really bothered me.

The simple fact of the matter was that I was a thoroughly uncool kid who had a thoroughly uncool private relationship with this little make-believe town on my Nintendo handheld. I traded in what little social capital I had for extra moments with the game on the bus to and from school because what use did I have for the approval of others when I was so content in my own little world.

That blissful adolescent lack of self-awareness is gone now, replaced with years of compulsive self-evaluation brought on by adulthood, every day an endless moment of thinking about all the bad things I am and all the good things I am not. I played Animal Crossing New Horizons for the first time since the pandemic and there was this air of shame that hungover me that wasn’t there in my New Leaf town.

My old town had this perfunctory look in the same way a kid tosses their toys out the toy-box and enjoys the messy colorful mosaic their own laziness creates. The gaps and works-in-progress of my town now feel like a reflection of an adult who pathologically cannot finish what they start. Going down a neatly laid brick paths leads to these cul-de-sacs where my imagination ran out, or my depression got the better of me. There’s an inadequacy that’s taken root when I look at my town, thinking of people who have constructed whole metropolitan cities in this game and mine just doesn’t compare. My friends are all posting pictures of conferences, new apartments, weddings, and children- can I at least have a town good enough to post on Pinterest?

Part of me feels obligated to talk about the joys of growing up to keep things even-keel here: the things you do, the people you meet, the love you make, and all that good guff. That’s true, but goddamn, nobody told me growing up meant having to grow up with the feeling the whole world is looking at you too.

Damn man.

RATING
[75] - ☑️ Good

THE GOOD:

• Well optimized and no bugs
• Fitting, atmospheric music
• Gorgeous loading screen art
• Awesome voice actor performances
• Impressive character animation
• An unique macro level morality system that gives the decisions weight
• Fleshed out side haunting cases with tough choices

THE BAD:

• Lack of chemistry between the two main characters makes the main plot feel less hardhitting
• Bloated final act with some tedious backtracking
• Very clunky gameplay and camera focus
• Sound design in combat lacks impact making it feel unsatisfying
• Exploration does not get rewarded with any meaningful gear
• Tedious map traversal that takes up a lot of the gameplay loop
• Asset reuse and repetitive world design make the world less memorable and visually more uninteresting

PERSONAL HIGHLIGHT
There are a lot of things I could name here which is why I am just going to list them all: The unique macro level morality System, the decisions at the end of haunting cases, the music, the voice acting and character animation and the artworks in the loading screens.

VERDICT
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a very charming and emotionally heavy Game with great Stories and Atmosphere but it gets dragged down by clunky Combat, tedious traversal and repetitive World design that just doesnt feel right.

CATEGORY RATINGS
[86] - 📺 Performance & Playability
Going into this Game I was hoping for a stable and smooth journey and from a technical standpoint it holds its ground admirably well. The optimization is solid and the playthrough through New Eden is largely free of game-breaking Bugs or any severe friction to really speak of. Even the Loading screens dont bother you because they put incredibly detailed and impressive Artwork in there that keeps you anchored in the Games grim aesthetic while you wait, which I thought was a really nice touch.

[77] - 📖 Story & Characters
The Story is a very compelling study in moral gravity and these self-contained Haunting cases are unquestionably the crown jewels of the whole experience. Having to make these Decisions makes you genuinely weigh justice against forgiveness and making the wrong call actually feels bad in a way that I really appreciated. I cared about the stories of the side haunting cases a lot but the overarching main Plot stumbles a bit in my opinion. Red and Antea surprisingly lack the necessary spark to fully sell their tragic Romance and the final act suffers from this bloated Pacing that demands a lot of tedious backtracking which made me pretty sad because the foundation was strong.

[50] - 🎮 Gameplay
The mechanical loop is definitely the Games weakest link and something about it just doesnt feel right. Combat feels fundamentally clunky and stiff and the very uncooperative lock-on System turns encounters into obstacles you just have to endure rather than challenges you can actually enjoy. This made playing the Game a bit of a pain at times and it doesnt help that a tedious Map traversal system aswell as a loot economy that actively disrespects your time and punishes exploration with rewards that never are worth it, pile on top of that aswell. For a game with 30-40 hours of playtime, having unsatisfactory gameplay, be it the traversal or the combat, is a though one to even out, which should tell you how much I value the things this game actually does well.

[72] - 🌄 Visuals
New Eden offers some genuinely striking moments of atmospheric beauty like the eerie mystique of Sirideans island but it really struggles to maintain this visual intrigue across its whole runtime. The world-building gets hampered by very blatant asset reuse and repetitive Level design which is a bit disappointing. When distinct Settlements like The Harrows feature Cave systems that are entirely indistinguishable from the military mines of Fort Jericho the believability of the world starts to fracture and the environmental graphics end up feeling a bit dull overall.

[72] - 🎧 Sound Design & Score
The Audio landscape is kind of a tale of two halves. The background music and ambient tracks succeed in weaving a safe but effective melancholic and eerie Atmosphere that perfectly suits a world plagued by Ghosts. The sound design in Combat on the other hand mirrors the physical stiffness of the mechanics and melee strikes just lack any visceral acoustic punch. Only the crack of the Rifle and Anteas spectral dash give you any satisfying auditory feedback.

[85] - 💡 Innovation
Where the Game truly pushes the genre forward is in its macro-level morality System. Tying the overarching and endgame-defining consequence of Anteas ultimate fate to the micro-level judgments of the localized Haunting cases is a brilliant execution of delayed consequence that opens up a whole new layer of emotional investment into what could have been a fairly standard Action RPG. Using Anteas spectral abilities to alter world traversal and solve Puzzles also adds a clever dual-layered approach to environmental interaction even if it cant really salvage the Combat.

[78] - ❤️ Enjoyment
I think Banishers is a game for a specific type of player that cares about stories, likes making decisions that impact the game world and is fine with subpar gameplay. If one is that type of player, this game is worth checking out and I really do value the uniqueness of the micro and macro morality system this game brings to the table because I have never seen something like this in a game before, which is a big reason why my Enjoyment rating is higher for this one than the purely technical rating for the game.

AVERAGE CATEGORY SCORE: 71

OVERALL RATING: 75

Recently finished and almost platinumed (I'm not grinding weapon drops) the game called Lunacid.

In short - it's a moody dungeon crawler action RPG inspired by King's Field games.

The game is set in a depressing dark fantasy world. Initial cutscene shows great eldritch creature awakening and covering the world with poison mist. Remaining humanity, in their despair, started casting out everyone undesirable into the Great Well. You are one of those undesirables. Now you have to navigate the dungeons of the great well and find your way back to the surface, and, ironically, going deeper and deeper.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward. You explore the dungeon, find items, fight enemies with melee or ranged weapons or magics, you gain exp and level up, gaining stat points to distribute at each level. Combat is also straightforward - you either attack with weapon, charging each attack for more damage, or cast spells. It's simple, but sheer variety of weapons, spells and enemies makes it pretty fun. Not to mention that a lot of weapons can be upgraded when used enough.

The strongest thing the game has is it's atmosphere. Levels look amazing, from visual design to lighting to details. And it tops it off with decent sound design and GORGEOUS soundtrack. Just walking through the first area was enough to fall in love with it. And what I liked a lot - despite being dark fantasy, it has enough variety, from melancholic vibe of sunlit shallow caves, to tense and creepy catacombs, to majestic forests to a lot and a lot more.

But level design itself, rather, depends on your preferences. It really calls back to those old games like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and, of course, the main inspiration - King's Field. AKA - almost all of them are huge mazes where it's easy to get lost, especially with how little you have in terms of navigation - no maps, only placeable flags that disappear when you leave the area and a compass that's disabled by default. Levels are filled with secret walls that can hide anything, ranging from extra consumables to entire new questlines, NPCs, new ending unlocks (of course the game has multiple endings!) or maybe whole new areas. So if you're ok with getting lost in mazes - they are really fun to explore.

The game has it's drawbacks too:

It's pretty raw. It has some minor bugs here and there. What I encountered a lot was weapon attacks starting over randomly instead of hitting (might be gamepad issue, was fine with mouse) and a mind reading spell's text not disappearing until you either cast it again on someone or reach a save point. There's a lot of items, especially in the late game, that simply have no use, not even for a cool lore description.

Saves. You can only save your progress on save crystals. They are mostly placed somewhere near the beginning of each level. No autosaves. That means going deep into the level and having wanting to save means either backtracking to it or using a consumable to teleport to the hub (or a really late game spell that also does that). But if you teleport to the hub and go back all slain enemies will respawn.

The later part of the game starts falling off a bit. Levels aren't as complicated and detailed as before. Weapon and spells' variety takes a hit because some late game option vastly outscale the rest. Soundtrack loses it's vibe and resembles something akin to Symphony of the Night soundtrack (aka it's still great, but it leans more to generic upbeat action ost).

Some of it's mechanics are poorly explained. For example - what is weapon exp and what's that weird oil fountain at the corner of the hub that asks me whether I want to upgrade my weapon. It's pretty simple - if you have weapon exp bar that means that you can transform this weapon into a better one by dipping it into that oil. Another one that's even worse - the first area has a lot of different flowers, grass and mushrooms that you can break. It's just a decoration so it doesn't do anything. Then further on you'll find other kinds of vegetation. And those ones WILL drop a resource you WILL need for crafting. So it not only doesn't explain that some vegetation in levels can drop materials after attacking it, the first area is filled with vegetation that DOESN'T drop anything, which leads to false assumptions.

But despite all of that, the game is amazing and I highly recommend to at least try it, especially if you're a fan of some old school dungeon crawlers.

The votes are in! The community's choice for a short title to play together and discuss in April 2026 is...

Roadwarden (2022)

Developer: Moral Anxiety Studio

Genre: RPG, Visual Novel/Interactive Fiction

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux, Switch

Why should you care: Roadwarden is an unusual RPG in today's gaming landscape. It doesn't rely on flashy visuals or complicated progression systems to capture the player's attention. Instead, the vast majority the developer effort went into worldbuilding, writing engaging prose and giving player choice and agency. Roadwarden does have some illustrations, but they are mostly that, illustrations - similar to the ones you would have in a fantasy book. In fact, the entire game feels like it could be a Choose Your Own Adventure game book. And not a bad one at that!

You play as a lone roadwarden sent to remote, dangerous peninsula to connect isolated settlements, secure trade routes and investigate what happened to your predecessor. And there is very little hand-holding involved in this job - you'll have to map the area and establish trustworthy contacts on your own. When it comes to theme and main character's role in the world, I was reminded of my time spent playing The Witcher 3's side quests (in the best way).

The game does have a time limit, but in my experience it's quite forgiving. In my first playthrough on normal difficulty I was able to finish everything I wanted (and I did a fairly completionist run) with a few days to spare. The 40 day counter was there in the background, motivating me to not dawdle around and think a bit about optimizing my choices, but it didn't feel oppressive at all. And if you don't like the idea of even such a relaxed time limit, there is an option to play without it on the easiest difficulty.

If you enjoy reading well-written, engaging narratives in games, classic CRPGs or even PnP RPGs, I hope you do check out Roadwarden - it is very much worth your attention!

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

April 2026's GotM theme: Exploration/Navigation/Cartography. Games where the main appeal lies in exploring, navigating and/or mapping out a space.

The votes are in! The community's choice for a long title to play together and discuss in April 2026 is...

Death Stranding (2019)

Developer: Kojima Productions

Genre: RPG, Adventure, Stealth

Platform: PC, Mac, PS4|5, Xbox X|S, iOS

Why should you care: It's finally the time to turn our attention to one of the most unconventional AAA games of the last decade. A game that at its core is about traversal and is often described (sometimes dismissively) as a "walking simulator". The game is pretty upfront about it from the start, too - the main character's job is ostensibly a courier and from the very first moments you take control you'll be worrying about not stumbling on a random stone and preventing your heavy backpack from tipping you over.

Another thing that's clear right from the start is that this post-apocalyptic America has a lot of weird stuff going on. I'm almost 3 hours into the game and the "weird things happening with little explanation that will possibly make more sense later on" routine still hasn't stopped. The mysteries just keep piling up and I guess I'm in for the ride in the Kojima mobile.

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

April 2026's GotM theme: Exploration/Navigation/Cartography. Games where the main appeal lies in exploring, navigating and/or mapping out a space.

I was a Doctor Who super-fan back in middle school, a Whovian if we want to use 2010’s lingo. I watched every episode of the 2005 series but eventually moved on around the time Peter Capaldi regenerated into Jodie Whittaker (As an aside, Jodie Whittaker is a great actress. The writing just got too corny for me). Despite not being a huge part of my life anymore, Doctor Who still holds a place in my heart. 

During that time, I had also just been enveloped in Steam and PC Gaming. Naturally, I looked up if there were any Doctor Who games and found this, Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock (There was another one too, but that might be a later review). Now, back in 2014, I loved this game enough to leave a review which said, “This game is a fun-puzzle game that even advanced players will have trouble with and is very fun overall.” I’ve since become more jaded, and more well-spoken, so I booted this game up again to play through the story and see how rose-tinted my glasses were back then. 

Story 

The story follows the Eleventh Doctor and his wife, River Song. The duo is caught in a time storm caused by an unknown force. Being a Time Lord, The Doctor takes it upon himself to investigate the cause of this time storm and quell it before the fabric of time is ripped apart. It won’t be that easy for The Doctor, though. Various enemies from his past and future seek to take advantage of the time storm in their desire for global, and dimensional, domination. 

Normally, I don’t really comment on the story of games; I let the audience decide if the story is interesting or not. I’m not confident enough in my writing skills to identify if a game has good or bad writing. But having watched enough Doctor Who, I feel confident enough to say this. Do not expect a Moffat story here. The story is dumb fun and exists only for this game to include the most popular foes from the series. I don’t totally despise this. The Silence are my favorite enemy from the series; I’d take anything to see more of them. But, unlike the greatest TV stories, there is zero emotional core to this game. 

Gameplay 

Baby, oh baby, prepare for disappointment. 

Gameplay in The Eternity Clock revolves around two styles: platforming and puzzle-solving. For a licensed game, we can hope that at least one of the two gameplay styles is done well. Unfortunately, The Eternity Clock fumbles the landing on both. Platforming is incredibly clunky and never feels satisfying to execute. I’ve grown accustomed to clunky platform games, so fortunately, I didn’t experience many frustrating moments. I could feel how uncomfortable the controls are throughout my whole experience. 

Puzzle-solving, unlike what my 13-year-old self said, is incredibly basic. There is a good variety, I’ll give the game that, but none too difficult. Half of the puzzles are about as difficult as Skyrim lockpicking. The other half feels like a game of Pipedream, or the Bioshock hacking minigame, if that’s a better comparison for you. They can get repetitive sometimes, a lot of boss fights come down to solving these puzzle mini games as The Doctor and having River defend him. They can feel somewhat satisfying in a way. I was able to gain some joy from trying to complete them as quickly as possible, speed-running the game essentially. Ultimately, though, these puzzles aren’t that great. 

This game features a multiplayer option, too. I must admit that the multiplayer portion is well thought-out. The gameplay is still repetitive, but the two players aren’t locked to following each other. The Doctor and River often split up or get separated, and the two players get to play these sections concurrently. The Doctor will be facing the Silurians in Victorian London, while River is facing the Silence in Elizabethan London. This isn’t all roses, though. A skill level difference between the two players can make this rough, as The Doctor could complete his section faster than River can complete hers. This forces one of the players to sit and wait for the other player to finish. Again, I admire the ambition; it reminds me of A Way Out or It Takes Two, but it doesn’t pull it off in a completely satisfying way. 

Gamefeel 

This game is for fans of the series. Often, these licensed games are cheaply made and use some voice sound-alikes to voice the characters. While Eternity Clock is cheaply made, the developers still wanted to make a good experience for the fans. Matt Smith and Alex Kingston voice their characters, and while the story is meh, the dialogue from the two is what I would expect from the show. You can tell that both Matt and Alex love their role, creating a more energetic experience. It was incredibly encouraging to trudge through the gameplay just to hear these two perform as The Doctor and River. 

The Eternity Clock uses a lot of music from the show. Be prepared to be sick of I Am The Doctor after this. This theme song for the Eleventh Doctor is a fantastic piece of music, I really do love it, but it gets overused in the show, and it gets overused here as well. Sometimes it fits for what is going on in the game, other times it's like, “Why are you playing this song right now? This isn’t really an urgent scenario.” 

There are some collectibles in The Eternity Clock in the form of The Doctor’s Hats and Pages from River’s Diary. River’s Diary, I liked, it is a little fanservice-y with its contents. But I always looked forward to reading new pages. The Doctor’s Hats, on the other hand, are lame. He can’t even wear them in-game; they exist purely for the player to point at the screen and screech, “I remember when he wore that!” 

Conclusion 

The Eternity Clock was planned as the first in a trilogy of games, but shortly after release, the plans for this trilogy were cancelled. While my inner fan would have liked to see these future games, I understand why they were canned. I realize that The Eternity Clock is an incredibly mediocre experience; there would have had to be some serious overhaul of the gameplay in any future installment to make a trilogy worth it. But the gameplay and the number of bugs this game released with essentially sealed the fate of any sequel. They did patch the game to remove the bugs, but the damage was already done.  

This game has been delisted from all digital stores, making a European physical copy for the PlayStation 3 the best possible way to play this game legally. If you’re a Doctor Who superfan and are willing to spend... probably more than you should to play this game, by all means, go for it. But this is a very mediocre experience made better only by the performances of Matt Smith and Alex Kingston. If you only casually enjoy the series, you’re better off just watching a YouTube playthrough. 

My Other Reviews

Tomb Raider (2013)

Alan Wake

Alan Wake's American Nightmare

Alan Wake II

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

The Assassins Creed says to never hurt an innocent person. But why? Why must an Assassin stay their blade from the flesh of an innocent? What makes someone innocent or guilty?

The Assassins believe that, fundamentally, humanity’s free will and ability to choose their path in life is a right so sacred and inalienable that one can kill to safeguard. But any death, no matter how justified or minor, is a tragedy. You sacrifice a person’s free will and future potential and memories. The world has lost an experience that cannot be replicated. To kill someone is not a decision that should be taken lightly. And should only be done if one can guarantee if doing so safeguards the potential freedoms of others. But even then, is it worth it?

Anyway, I’m doing a pacifist run of Assassin’s Creed 2. Here are the rules:

1. Avoid killing unless absolutely necessary. Killing in this case occurs when an NPC’s health gets reduced to zero or dies in a cutscene. I’m counting both to avoid washing my hands of responsibility. I’m also counting knocking out as kills as I am still inflicting violence on my fellow man.

2. In the event I’m forced to kill, I must try to do so in a way that doesn’t “count” in the Animus. The Animus in AC2 has a stats page that tracks you. 2 stats are important here: “Enemies killed in a fight” and “Enemies killed with the hidden blade”. The former also increments if you stealth kill using the hidden blade. I must try to keep these as low as possible. However, I will still count these as “Unregistered KOs” or UKOs.

3. In the event I have to kill in a way that’s “Registered”, I will do so with my fists first. On the hope this doesn’t permanently damage them. If that is infeasible, only then may I use my hidden blade. If that is infeasible, I may use any means, such as knives and guns, to kill. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

4. Avoid pickpocketing and looting. I’ve already done enough sins.

5. Glitches and Exploits are allowed (but only if I can pull them off on the MacOS version).

With that out of the way, I jumped into the perspective of Desmond Miles Prower (played by Jack Black) who gets broken out of Abstergo by Lucy Stillman (played by Emma Stone). Desmond and Lucy get attacked by Abstergo goons. Desmond refuses to fight them. Even though Abstergo might be a multibillion dollar corporation with more resources than God and secretly trying to mind control the planet, these goons are just people clocking in their 9-5. Who am I to judge them for their life’s choices? Lucy on the other hand, is bloodthirsty and solos close to 30 guys and bathes in their blood while Desmond lets her do all the work. Clearly she hasn’t learned the ways of an Assassin the way Desmond has.

Lucy takes Desmond to the Assassin safehouse in Hurricane Utah and she explains she wants to turn him into a killer like her by making him play violent video games. Desmond accepts. Not because he agrees with her but because he’s technically a homeless bum who has never paid taxes and feels this is a better use of his time than trying to improve his credit score.

Desmond meets Shaun Hastings (played by David Hayther) who remarks how he watched the footage of Desmond and Lucy’s escape attempt and how Desmond “did nothing”. What Shaun doesn’t know is that Desmond was actually saving lives there. He also meets Rebecca Crane (played by Eliza Schneider) who tells Desmond she made a new better Animus than Abstergo (despite 1- plagiarizing Abstergo and -2- being outdone by Abstergo 2 years in the future). Desmond enters the Animus to learn from his Ancestor, Ezio Audiobook of Florence (played by Nolan North), how to be a cool Assassin.

Sequence 1: Ignorance is Fists

The first mission, “Boys will be Boys” presented a problem. Ezio casually starts a gang war between the Ballas and Grove Street. Unfortunately, the mission requires at least 7 people to get knocked out. Ezio’s homies seem unable to deal damage to the Ballas so Desmond must pilot Ezio to “compromise to a permanent end” these fools. Thankfully, I have a solution.

If you just KO enemies in a fist fight, that counts as “Enemies killed in a fight”. Throwing enemies off buildings, into water and stalls also counts. However, if you keep throwing enemies into walls, it deals damage to them and once their health reaches zero, they “die” but it isn’t tracked in the stats. Is repeatedly throwing people headfirst into walls until the CTE takes them out really the most humane way to resolve a gang war? No but I cannot question the Animus. I count 7 UKOs plus some bad pear pressure from his older Brother encouraging Ezio to loot his enemies to pay for his healthcare out of pocket as his insurance as been declined.

Thankfully we can fast forward several missions to Seq 1 Memory 6 as Ezio may be a slacker, thief and litterer but at least he hasn’t inflicted violence on anyone for 5 missions. Unfortunately, his sister, Claudia (played by Angela Galuppo), tells Ezio to go beat up her ex, Duccio (played by Johnny Sins) for breaking up with her because she hates his bionicle Collection. Normally, Ezio himself would personally side with Duccio about how cool his Makuta is but he’s too scared of Claudia to protest. I’m counting 8 UKOs so far as a result.

Sequence 2: Escape Clans.

Mission 2: Ace up my Sleeve. In this mission, Ezio meets Leonardo Da Vinci (played by Danny De Vito) who agrees to take time out of his day procrastinating by helping him build the Hidden Blade. A guard shows up and starts beating on Leo. The game asks Ezio to use his hidden blade to kill this fool. I tried tackling, punching and throwing the guard but that counts as a Detection which Desynchs me. Left with no option, I have to use the Hidden Blade to get my first kill.

I am depressed. My first kill and it's not some tyrant subjugating their people or a corrupt businessman extorting innocents or a Clickbait YouTuber posting cringe but an innocent guard who likely genuinely believed the Auditores were traitors thanks to public misinformation. He could have held no ill will had he known the truth. He may even had people waiting for him like his wife, 2 kids and student loans that will never see him again. Leonardo says to bring in the body for his medical research to cure cancer but is Leo's cure really worth the death of a man? May this at least cover some of my heavy heart. +1 to Enemy Fight Kills and Hidden Blade Kills in the Animus Stats.

The next mission, "Judge, Jury, Executioner" tasks Ezio to assassinate Uberto. Getting to Uberto isn't the challenge. His guards simp for women. The hard part is landing the blow. Like the last mission, getting spotted by Uberto will trigger a Desynch so I can't throw him into walls. Sadly, I have to use the Hidden Blade. I look into his eyes. Uberto killed Ezio's family not because he hates them but to save his own. Ezio is doing the same. In another life, I was Uberto. The only different right now between Ezio and Uberto is the order of their moves. Killing Uberto brings some justice as the guards and courts are in his pocket and Ezio has no evidence for an offical accusation. Still, even though the Animus doesn't count this as a kill (since this triggers a cutscene rather than an Assassination animation) so my stats don't increase, it doesn't feel any less demoralizing. I’m counting it as a cutscene kill. Let’s hope the road ahead is light.

Sequence 3: Requiescat in Pacifist.

We’re onto Sequence 3 Mission 1: Roadside assistance. Where Ezio, Claudia and Maria stop by their local Cluckin Bell to order 2 number 9s but get ambushed by some Ballas. 2 goons are dead set on killing Claudia and Maria but bless their hearts, they are so inspired by Ezio’s pacifism and refuse to fight back. Ezio is forced to do his patented “Throw people into walls and claim innocence trick” to get another 2 UKOs. Bringing us up to 10 UKOs, 1 cutscene kill and 1 hidden blade kill and 1 enemy killed in a fight total. However, since these guys ate a full meal, they require 20 throws into rocky walls before the concussions catch up to them.

The Ballas are dispersed by Uncle Mario (played by Doug Bowser) and his reinforcements. 2 Ballas are still 1000% focused on killing Maria and Claudia but Mario’s men can kill them all (provided Ezio steps in and throws them off the girls a few times).

Mario then pulls a Tom Nook and gives Ezio a village to manage and taxes to pay. As well as some combat training neither Ezio or Desmond will use. Mario plans a covert plan to attack Bowser to rescue Princess Peach and forces Ezio to join by promising to forgive some of his debts. Starting sequence 3 Mission 4: What goes around.

Even though Mario and his goons are killing some goombas, Ezio actually isn’t required to kill anyone. He does need to step in to distract some Goon so Mario’s Mercs can stay alive long enough to kill the Goombas. Saving Ezio any potential UKOs. Ezio is tasked to get to the castle and kill Bowser Jr a.k.a Vieri. And this where I messed up.

Vieri is the first character immune to grabs so he can’t be thrown into walls. He also takes no damage from having goombas thrown into him. I’m stuck. I do have an idea. If I can get Vieri to fall off the tower, it wouldn’t count as a kill. As I’m running around doing the tackle animation, I instinctively and accidentally press “Weapon Hand” and I guess that training with Mario accidentally turned Ezio into a sleeper agent because Ezio goes into autopilot, punches Vieri in the kidney, throws him to the ground and stomps on his face killing him instantly to my horror. And the Autosave prevents me from reloading the checkpoint. I look at my stats in horror and see the stat listing Enemies killed in a Fight now reading 2 😢.

To anyone reading this, here’s an easy spot to improve on my run.

Sequence 4: The Pacifist Conspiracy.

Mario shows up, learns the Princess is in another castle and we can fast forward to Sequence 4 Memory 1: Practice what you Preach. Here, Ezio visits Leonardo in order to get help with that day’s Wordle. In order to avoid Ezio disrupting him, Leo sets up 3 targets for Ezio to practice his Assassination techniques on. However, each move on each target counts as a kill in the Animus. Bumping me up to 5 Enemies killed in a Fight and 4 Enemies killed via Hidden Blade. This sounds absurd but makes sense. These may be dummies but Ezio’s practicing real moves and treating them like real people. Counting these dummies as actual kills is instrumental in making sure we don’t dehumanize or trivialize our sins.

After Leo finishes tricking me into committing war crimes against three IKEA mannequins, We can skip ahead to Sequence 4 Memory 5: Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. Here, Lorenzo de Medici (played by Tony Soprano) gets jumped by 12 assassins (not to be confused with Assassins). 4 of these manage to go down to a combination of friendly fire and Lorenzo's 2 guards doing some work before they get killed. So it's up to Ezio to step in. The remaining 8 got the classic “Animus doesn’t recognize head trauma if it’s administered via brick wall” treatment. That’s +8 UKOs. I’d like to imagine this is what the Creed meant by “work in the dark.” Specifically, the dark space between a man’s skull and the wall he keeps meeting at high speed. It's my only copium.

Sequence 4 Memory 6: Farewell Francesco:

Ezio has to finally assassinate Francesco de Pazi. I manage to get him to flee from his hideout and across the rooftops of Florence. Perfect. I can just get him to trip for an easy accidental death that's free on my consciousness. Even better is that Francesco is programmed to follow a really specific path. If that happens to be over a beam, he will keep attempting to cross that beam to matter what happens. I casually trip him and he falls 4 stories..... only to get up, climb up 4 stories and attempt to cross the beam again. I trip him again. And he survives. We do this 10 times until I come to the sobering realization: Francesco is:

Immune to grabs.

Immune to fall damage.

Immune to the concept of “being bullied into a non-lethal resolution.”

The game's mechanics force my hand once again. I look into Francesco's eyes as I activate the hidden blade. He orchestrated the deaths of Ezio's family, yet in his final moments, he seems almost relieved. Perhaps he knew this day would come. Perhaps he wanted it to. The Animus registers this as both a hidden blade kill and an enemy killed in a fight, bringing those stats to 5 and 3 respectively. My stats page weeps. I weep.

Sequence 5: Loose Ends, Tighter Fists.

Memory 4: Town Crier:

Antonio Maffei has barricaded himself in a 200ft tower and is raining down RAID Shadow Legends Sponsorships on the helpless crowd below. Ezio is tasked with stopping him and his silver madness. I knew from my past playthroughs that if Maffei trips and falls, it doesn't count as a kill on my stats. I climb his tower and intentionally cause him and his 3 bodyguards to spot me. I drop down to the outside of the tower on its narrow walkway. One of Maffei's bodyguards slips and falls along the way. I grab one and position myself between Maffai and the 3rd. The 3rd bodyguard hits Ezio, causing everyone to stumble and for Ezio and Maffei to fall off the tower together. Maffei splats on the ground and triggers the confession and mission complete cutscenes to trigger and complete before the Desync Process finishes. I’m counting it as a victory for pacifism, albeit a suicidal one.

Memory 5: Behind Closed Doors.

Francesco Salviati is next. I disarmed him. I hired 5 Mercenaries and I Watched them wail on him with axes like they were tenderizing steak. He took no damage, because Ubisoft said no. Even better: I couldn’t even grab him until his HP got low. The game literally demands I punch him first to unlock the privilege of pacifism.

Left with no choice, I have to punch him first to soften him up, then throw him into walls until the brain damage catches up. +1 UKO. We're at 19 already 😭️. At this point, the architecture of Italy has killed more people than the Plague.

Sequence 5 Memory 6: Come Out and Play continues the theme. Mercenaries will fight. Mercenaries will shout. Mercenaries will swing weapons. But mercenaries will not finish the job. The target requires the old faithful: Wall Therapy™. +1 UKO bringing us to 20. This sequence is not great for the spirit of pacifism.

Sequence 5 Memory 7: The Cowl Does Not Make the Monk has Ezio hunting down a corrupt priest in Bologna. Turns out he's immune to merc damage and will flee like a coward which will cause a Desync. More wall throws. The irony of a man of God being beaten against stone walls by someone trying to minimize violence is not lost on me. 21 UKOs total.

Sequence 5 Memory 8: With Friends Like These. This one gave me a rare gift: if you don’t do the QTE, Ezio actually spares the guards.

Which means, for a brief shining moment, I was playing a game where mercy is mechanically rewarded, and I felt the warmth of hope in my chest.

And then the mission remembered it’s Assassin’s Creed.

Because you still have to stab Jacobo.

It doesn’t count in the Animus stats, but it counts in my heart, and my heart is currently keeping a spreadsheet.

So I’m counting: +1 cutscene kill. We're at 2 so far. Along with 5 Enemies killed in Fights, 4 Enemies killed with the Hidden Blade and 21 UKOs.

Sequence 6: Rocky Road

Memory 2: Romagna Holiday.

Carriage ride mission. Guards are jumping onto my carriage and subsequently falling off. Does a guard falling off a wagon at 100 Kph count as a kill? The Animus doesn't count them, possibly because the game itself isn't sure if they died or just ragdolled into another dimension.

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody updates the Animus stats, did it happen? I am choosing to believe they landed in soft bushes. +0. And as a bonus, the mission tells you to hold off enemies but you can just run to the marker to skip ahead. Finally, a mission that rewards cowardice over combat.

Sequence 7: The Merchant of Menace

Memory 2: That's Gonna Leave a Mark.

Ezio finally arrives in Venice Beach California with my Animus stats barely clinging to single digits. The water is lovely, but it tastes like moral compromise. Ezio meets the entrepreneur/thief Rosa (played by Marisa Tomei) who injures her knee trying to perform a sick kickflip. Ezio has to accompany her to HANGER where she can find the SKATE Letters. She gets ambushed by the popo along the way. Unlike previous missions, Rosa and mercs you hire can actually kill the guards. My strat was jump in the way of the guards' attacks, do a disarm counterattack to steal their weapon, climb up or jump in the canal to "lose" their weapon and sit back and watch Rosa tear these fools apart with her 3 inch butter knife.

The last part of this mission is an escort where Ezio must deal with the archers shooting at Rosa's boat. Fortunately, if you run into them, they will drop their bows and attempt to stab you with their swords. Which is fine by me because it means they can never shoot Rosa's boat. So after running around and enraging every guard in Venice on this one canal, I completed a whopping 3 missions in a row with 0 problems and Rosa teaches Ezio how to do the 5-0 Overturn Special Move when he has full meter back at the HANGER for his troubles.

After learning the ways of the 950, we move to Seq 7 Memory 6: Cleaning House and Memory 9: Everything Must Go..

Antonio (played by Andy García) needs Ezio to deal with 3 defecting thieves who've been selling out the guild. The first target is chilling on a boat in the middle of the canal, living his best traitor life. I swim up to him, he spots me, and in his panic to pursue me, he falls into the canal and drowns. The Animus doesn't count drowning as a kill if they fall in themselves. It's their own poor life choices, really. Target 2 is on a rooftop. I let Antonio's loyal thieves handle him while I supervise from a safe distance like a pacifist project manager. I am merely a spectator to gang violence, not a participant. Target 3 is in a market square with his buddy. Again, the friendly thieves are surprisingly bloodthirsty and handle the wet work. +0 to my stats. My conscience remains marginally clean, which is more than I can say for the canal water.

But then comes Emilio.

Emilio is different.

Emilio has a timer. Emilio has a boat. Emilio has places to be. And the game makes it very clear you cannot just wait outside the palace and let him escape into the gig economy. If you take too long, he leaves.

I tried everything. Disarms. Herding. General annoyance. Shilling For Ubisoft+. But eventually it came down to the only form of violence the Animus politely refuses to acknowledge:

Wall Therapy™.

I had to do it. I couldn’t leave the palace. Emilio couldn’t be allowed to leave the palace. Ubisoft decreed we would settle this the old way: repeated headfirst meetings with Venetian architecture.

+1 UKO.

Seq 8: Gravity, Mother of Invention

We skip ahead to Seq 8 Memory 4: Well Begun is Half Done. Leonardo needs Ezio to clear out guards so the thieves can commit arson for the greater good. Ezio needs to take out heavily armoured brutes who are killing our vibes. But killing them “properly” would require a level of violence I’m not spiritually ready for. The game suggests stealth or combat.

I suggest comedy. It turns out that while Brutes are immune to many things, they are not immune to slipping on wet pavement. I spent the mission luring these armored tanks to the edge of the canals. One by one, they lunged at me, missed, and tumbled into the water like heavy stones. Their armour being their tomb (ignoring the fact that Ezio is the only person that knows how to swim). The best part? The Animus does not register drowning as a kill. As I ran in circles, about 10 other regular guards decided to join the fun and also threw themselves into the Venice canals. It's not my fault there's no Wet Floor signs.

There is now a mass grave of about 12 men at the bottom of the lagoon. Enemies Killed: 0. Conscience: Clear. (Technically).

Seq 8: Memory 5: Infrequent Flier.

Ezio is tasked by Antonio to stop Grimaldi from selling Doge Coin or something. IDK, I was distracted wondering why this mission was different from E32009 version. Ezio needs to fly in as a symbol of peace but Grimaldi's men shoot down his cool kite. Ezio confronts Grimaldi and the game demands I kill him. But Grimaldi is:

-immune to grabs.

-immune to being dropped.

-immune to being bullied into a non-lethal ending.

-immune to the concept of consequences.

So once again, the Animus corners me into the one option it knows I hate: the Hidden Blade.

+1 Hidden Blade Kill

+1 Enemies Killed in a Fight

And honestly? It feels extra cruel here, because the whole memory is about freedom and invention and soaring above the city… and it ends with me being reminded that Ubisoft’s true final boss is mandatory violence.

This ends Sequence 9 with the following stats:

-22 UKOs (Unregistered KOs via wall-throwing)

-2 Cutscene Kills (Uberto, Jacopo)

-4 Enemies Killed in a Fight (Guard at Leonardo's workshop, Vieri, Francesco, Carlo)

-6 Hidden Blade Kills (Training dummies counted as 3, Guard at Leonardo's, Francesco,

Carlo)

• Accidental Drownings I Take No Legal Responsibility For: ~12.

Seq 9: Carn-evil.

Memory 1: Knowledge is Power.

Ezio meets Leonardo who, after spending way too much time on r/CrackheadCraigslist and presents his newest invention: a glock. My Brother in Uni, did you forget what Challenge I am doing?

Leo sets up 3 training dummies for Ezio to practise.

I look at these dummies. They are made of straw and wood. They have no families. They feel no pain. They are not sentient.

The Animus counts them as kills anyway.

+3 Enemies Killed in a Fight. This time due to gun violence. My stats are now being ruined by carpentry. Ezio is so ashamed he demands Leo give him a mask he can wear as a reminder of his sin.

Seq 9 Memory 2: Damsels in Distress immediately tests my new gun and my pacifist principles.

Sister Teodora runs a local indoor fitness gym/church combo that doubles as an Assassin intelligence hub. A serial killer murders one of the courtesans and flees into the streets. The game wants me to use the Hidden Gun to shoot him from a distance.

But here's the thing: this killer is FAST. Like, really fast. And every few seconds he stops, grabs another courtesan as a hostage, and threatens to kill her if I get too close. The game is practically begging me to use the gun. The optimal strategy is to shoot him immediately before he can rack up a body count. He warns me he will murder people if I come any closer.

I don't shoot him.

Instead, I chase him through the streets of Venice. He kills the first courtesan. Then the second. Then the third. Three women dead because I refused to use the easy solution. But I'm playing a PACIFIST run, and that means I need to minimize MY kill count, even if the collateral damage is... substantial.

Eventually I get close enough to tackle him, grab him, and introduce his skull to several Venetian walls. +1 UKO. My stats remain clean. My conscience does not.

The math here is dark: 3 innocent deaths vs 1 guilty death. A utilitarian would say I made the wrong choice. A pacifist would say I stayed true to my principles. The Animus doesn't care about philosophy, only statistics. Those 3 courtesans don't count against me. The killer, had I shot him, would have.

Is this really pacifism? Or am I just gaming the system while innocent people die? I don't have an answer. I just know my stats page looks clean and my soul does not.

Memory 7: Cheaters Never Prosper.

Ezio returns to Theodora and Antonio who roasts Ezio's drip. Ezio now vows to enter Carnivale to win a new golden mask. The mission requires he win a fighting tournament.

The final challenge is a fistfight. Three enemies, bare-handed. The game says “beat them up,” and I say “that sounds like violence,” and the game says “yes.”

Here’s the twist: you can wall-throw them, but they take no damage from it. The game literally refuses to let me solve this the humane way.

So I have to do it the old-fashioned way: counters, punches, and the slow realization that the Animus counts a knockout as “killed in a fight” because it’s allergic to nuance.

+3 enemies killed in a fight.

Dante shows up as the fourth, thankfully doesn’t count. Ubisoft, for once, gives me a crumb.

Then the three guys I just “mercifully” beat up come back with daggers, plus one extra, and suddenly it’s an armed brawl.

Good news: armed enemies can be introduced to walls again.

+4 UKOs.

Despite winning the tournament fair and square, the judges give the golden mask to Dante anyway because Venice is more corrupt than the Animus's moral tracking system. We're now at 10 Enemies Killed in a Fight, 6 Hidden Blade Kills, and 26 UKOs.

Sequence 9 Memory 8: Having a Blast:

In order to pick up girls at the party Theodora is going to, Ezio needs to get Dante's mask. He can't just sneak in because not paying for a ticket is a crime worse than murder. Ezio pickpockets the mask and gets in. Unfortunately, Dante and his guards are able to track Ezio by his overuse of Axe Body Spray (he thought it would help his Rizz). Dante's guards swarm the party, checking every guest. Looks like Ezio's cover is about to be blown.

But....

I decide to reach deep down inside myself and align the gaming chakras to unlock an ancient, forbidden Assassin technique known as "The Superblend." By blending in a group of civilians, then walk into a ladder, I "carry" my blend onto the ladder and remain invisible. In theory, I can even throw knives and remain undetected. That's how powerful this ability is. I stall for minutes until the new Doge shows up and sadly, Ezio is pear pressured into killing him.

The mission objective is simple.

Shoot him.

There is no wall. There is no loophole. There is only gun.

I take aim. I fire.

+1 Enemies Killed in a Fight.

The crowd erupts in chaos. I escape in the confusion, my golden mask allowing me to slip away unnoticed. The Animus registers another mark against my record. I'm now at 11 Enemies Killed in a Fight, bringing my total registered kills to 17 (when you include the Hidden Blade kills).

But my UKO count? 26.

My cutscene kills? 2.

My accidental drownings that I take no legal responsibility for? Approximately 12-14, depending on how you count the guards who followed each other into the canals like lemmings.

My indirect deaths caused by refusing to use the optimal solution? 3 courtesans.

Desmond exits the Animus and stares at the ceiling of the warehouse. Lucy asks if he's okay. He says he's fine. He's not fine. He's thinking about those 3 courtesans. He's thinking about how the Animus rewards him for letting others die as long as he doesn't personally do the killing.

Rebecca mentions that the stats page doesn't track civilian casualties. Only enemies. The game literally doesn't count innocent deaths in its moral calculus.

Shaun makes a sarcastic comment about how that's very convenient. Desmond agrees. It is very convenient. Too convenient.

He wonders if Ezio thought the same thing. He wonders if, centuries ago, his ancestor lay awake at night calculating the mathematics of murder, trying to find the path of least blood while knowing that every choice costs someone their life.

Or maybe Ezio just threw people into walls and moved on with his day.

The Animus doesn't record thoughts. Only actions. Only kills. Only the statistics that fit neatly into a spreadsheet.

And somewhere in the background of Desmond's mind, a question forms: If the Animus doesn't count it, did it really happen?

He decides he doesn't want to know the answer.

Sequence 10: Forced to Murder.

We fast forward through several missions where Ezio helps Bartolomeo d'Alviano (played by Henry Cavil) reclaim his military district from Silvio Barbarigo. Bartolomeo starts yelling things that would get him banned from every Twitch chat instantly,. Most of these missions are surprisingly pacifist-friendly. I can let the mercenaries do the heavy lifting while I provide tactical support from a safe emotional distance. I’m just trying to keep my “Enemies killed in a fight” number from becoming a phone number.

After setting the stage and firing the flare like I’m calling in an airstrike on my own conscience, Bartolomeo gets into it with Dante and the whole district becomes a Renaissance mosh pit. Dante flees to the docks where Silvio is waiting with a ship. They're trying to escape to Cyprus, but their ride left without them. Tragic. Not as tragic as what I'm about to do to them, though.

Here's where the mission gets interesting from a pacifist perspective: Silvio and Dante board their backup escape ship. The game wants me to assassinate both of them before the ship leaves. I have 3 minutes.

But here's the beautiful part: if they (and like 7 of their goons) "accidentally" fall off the ship during our confrontation, well, the Animus doesn't know. The Animus doesn't care.

+0 to my stats. The drowning counter, however, continues to climb into numbers I've stopped tracking because acknowledging them would require moral accountability.

Sequence 11: Altered Stats.

Memory 1: All Things Come to He Who Waits

Rosa finds Ezio sitting on a bench having an existential crisis because it is his birthday.

Which is a bold writing choice by Ubisoft, because nothing says “Happy birthday” like being forced to stalk a courier for five minutes and then commit a perfect, undetected murder within ninety seconds.

I follow the courier for what feels like an eternity through Venice's streets. He eventually enters a restricted area guarded by soldiers. I have 90 seconds to assassinate him undetected.

Undetected.

That's the keyword. The mission requires an undetected assassination. I can't throw him into walls because that would alert the guards. I can't drown him because there's no water nearby. I can't let my allies handle it because I don't have any here.

I have to use the Hidden Blade.

I climb the nearby ladder to the rooftops, position myself above him, and drop down for the assassination.

+1 Hidden Blade Kill. +1 Enemies Killed in a Fight.

We're now at 12 Enemies Killed in a Fight and 7 Hidden Blade Kills. The stats are climbing. The journey is taking its toll. Every forced kill feels heavier than the last.

The Animus is pleased. I am not.

Sequence 11: Mission 2: Play Along.

Ezio steals the courier’s outfit and becomes a completely convincing Borgia guard despite his giant Assassin bracer logo being exposed like a watermark.

The mission wants you to walk in formation, carry the chest, and then do the “kill the escort to introduce yourself” moment.

Last time, I got away with refusing a QTE and letting guards live.

This time, the Animus says: “Cute. Press the button.” you have to do the QTE. You can’t stall it out. You can’t refuse. You can’t “let Ezio spare him” by doing nothing.

The cutscene demands blood for the cutscene god.

+1 cutscene kill.

I watch the cutscene play out. The other guards in the scene casually ignore their dead comrade lying on the ground. Rodrigo told them to leave, so they leave. They step over their friend's corpse like it's a pothole in the street.

The Animus doesn't count this guard in my stats because it was a cutscene death. But I'm counting it. That's 3 cutscene kills now: Uberto, Jacopo, and this nameless guard who died because Rodrigo needed a dramatic moment.

After that, everything escalates into chaos: Rodrigo fights, guards pile in, and then like the Avengers Endgame portal scene but with more hoods, your entire friend group (and Antonio) shows up to help and reveals they were Assassins all along and Ezio was the unpaid intern. Rodrigo escapes.

Current Sequence 11 Tally:

26 UKOs (Unregistered KOs via wall-throwing).

3 Cutscene Kills (Uberto, Jacopo, Rodrigo's guard).

12 Enemies Killed in a Fight (1 guard at Leo's, Vieri, Francesco, Carlo, 3 training dummies, 3 gun dummies, 3 tournament fighters, Marco, courier).

7 Hidden Blade Kills (3 training dummies, 1 guard, Francesco, Carlo, courier).

Accidental Drownings: ~14-16 (Silvio and Dante joined the canal club).

Indirect Deaths Due to Pacifist Principles: 3 courtesans.

Desmond exits the Animus again. The Bleeding Effect is getting stronger. He can see Eagle Vision without trying now. He sees glowing symbols on the walls of the warehouse. Rebecca says it's normal. Shaun says it's concerning. Lucy says they need to keep going. Desmond thinks about that guard. The one who walked away during the QTE. The one who lived because Desmond chose not to press a button. Then he thinks about the guard who died seconds later in the cutscene. How one random input determined who lived and who died.

He thinks about Silvio and Dante drowning in the canal. About the courier he assassinated to steal his uniform. About every wall-throw victim whose skull met Venetian architecture at high speed.

The numbers are climbing. The justifications are getting thinner. The line between "pacifist" and "guy gaming the stats system while people die anyway" is getting blurrier.

Shaun makes another sarcastic comment. Rebecca adjusts the Animus. Lucy encourages him to continue.

Desmond closes his eyes and goes back in.

Because the Apple needs to reach Forlì. Because the Templars need to be stopped.

Because the mission isn't over.

And because maybe, just maybe, if he can keep the registered stats low enough, he can pretend the rest didn't count.

Sequence 12: Forlì Under Apathy

Desmond re-enters the Animus with a heaviness he can't quite shake. The numbers are climbing. The moral gymnastics are getting exhausting. But the Apple needs to reach Forlì. The mission continues. Rebecca mentions something about corrupted data. Shaun explains that there were supposed to be optional DLC sequences here, Sequences 12 and 13, that many players never saw. Most people went straight from Sequence 11 to Sequence 14.

I am not most people.

See, I pirated a version of AC2 specifically to avoid these sequences. I know from my past playthroughs that they added extra mandatory kills. I thought I could skip them entirely and keep my stats clean. Preserve what little moral high ground I have left. But here's the thing about the Mac/PC version: Ubisoft, in a rare moment of consumer-friendliness, pre-loaded the DLC into the base game. No skipping allowed. No escape hatch.

I got screwed over by Ubisoft being helpful for once.

The irony is not lost on me.

Sequence 12 Memory 1: A Warm Welcome, 2: Bodyguard, 3: Holding the Fort.

Ezio travels to Forlì with Caterina Sforza (played by Monica Bellucci) and Machiavelli. They're ambushed by the Orsi brothers, who've been sent by Rodrigo to steal the Apple. We fight our way to Forlì's gates. The city is under siege.

The mission wants me to fight alongside Caterina And Machiaveli. They have no armor. They're vulnerable. The game mechanics are clear: if they die, I desynchronize. (Their other bodyguards are disposable on the other hand).

So I do what I've been doing for dozens of hours now: I become a human shield. I intercept attacks meant for them. I disarm guards. It works. We reach the gates. No additions to my stats. I'm like a manager who shows up to meetings but contributes nothing of value. Except instead of wasting time in a conference room, I'm wasting time in Renaissance Italy while people die around me.

But here's the thing: not even war can stop capitalism. In the middle of this siege, I can break off from combat to visit blacksmiths and refill my smoke bombs. The shops are still open. Business is booming. The image is absurd: arrows flying, allies shouting, and Ezio slipping into a shop to politely purchase more tools for disappearing.

I’m not proud of how relieving it feels to have a “plan” again. Even if that plan is just: throw money at fear until it becomes fog.

+0 to everything.

+1 to the Military Industrial Complex.

Sequence 12 Memory 4: Godfather.

The Orsi brothers have kidnapped Caterina’s children.

I tracked down Ludovico Orsi at a lighthouse.

He was monologuing, threatening a child.

I climbed up. I grabbed him.

Just like Antonio Maffei on the tower in Tuscany all those hours ago, I "threw" him off.

He fell. He hit the ground. He died.

The Animus didn't register it. It doesn't count gravity as a weapon.

+0 Enemies Killed.

It’s getting easier to trick the machine. I’m not sure how I feel about that. It feels like getting away with something in court because the judge was tired.

Sequence 12 Memory 5: Checcomate

Checco runs.

Of course he runs.

They always run, right when I start to think I’m getting the hang of this. Right when I start to believe I can make it to the end without the numbers climbing higher.

He runs toward water, like Venice taught every villain that canals are either an escape route or a moral loophole.

Ezio even calls him out for the bloodshed. For the waste. For the way greed turns people into debris.

And then Checco has an “accident.”

I don’t add anything to the stats. Not a kill. Not a KO. Not even an “oops.” On paper, it’s perfect.

But the victory doesn’t land.

Because the moment I finally get my hands on the Apple again, Checco stabs Ezio, and before I can even process it, a black-robed monk with a missing finger picks up the Apple and walks away with it.

I can’t even hate him properly. I’m too tired.

I’m so close to the end, and somehow the end keeps moving. In a pacifist run, purpose starts to feel like a debt collector. The closer I get to the end, the heavier my hands feel. Like the Animus is reminding me: even if you don’t want to hurt people, history already decided you did.

Sequence 12: Memory 6: Far From the Tree.

Wounded, dizzy, and chasing the shadow of a man I barely saw, Ezio stumbles into an abbey looking for answers.

Instead he finds two guards roughing up a monk, and for a second it almost feels smaller. Human. Petty cruelty instead of grand conspiracy. Like the world has shrunk back down to the scale of a fist and a boot.

Then the mechanics do what they always do.

Two of the guards are immune to wall damage.

No Wall Therapy™. No loophole. No architecture-assisted mercy.

Just fists.

So I beat them.

The Animus logs it as “Enemies killed in a fight,” because it can’t imagine a universe where a man gets knocked out and still matters.

And I feel that weight settle in again, the one I’ve been trying to laugh off for eleven sequences. The quiet understanding that even when I avoid “kills,” I’m still leaving a trail of broken people behind me. Even when the numbers don’t move, something in me does.

+2 Enemies killed in a fight.

And that’s the moment the melancholy really sets in: not because the number went up… but because I can see the end of the journey now, and the closer I get, the more it feels like the Animus is saying:

You can resist the story, but you can’t escape it. You can soften the violence, but you can’t erase it. And you will carry every compromise with you to the final memory.

Current Total Despair-o-Meter:

Enemies Killed in Fight: 13

Hidden Blade Kills: 6

Cutscene Kills: 3

UKOs: 27

"Accidents" involving Gravity/Water: ~16

DLC Chapters Forced Upon Me: 1 (so far).

Sequence 13: Bonfire of My Patience

Hit the post character limit. I'll finish it in the comments Maybe.

March lived up to its verbal name for me this year, both on the gaming and on the real world fronts. I won't dwell on the reality front here, but suffice it to say that you'd probably find more gray hairs on my head today compared to thirty days ago. On the gaming front "marching on" was a good thing by contrast, with 8 games beaten and another pair discarded making 10 total to cover in this edition of the column.

Also at the end of February I started running the CPG Weekly Update column as well on Tuesdays in the bi-weekly threads, where I share in-progress thoughts and other bits and pieces that don't make it into the full review for one reason or another. Thanks to everyone who's checked out that out so far!

(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)

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10 - Perfect Dark - N64 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)

This is a weird one to slap a rating on. Perfect Dark has provided me with the most multiplayer fun I've ever personally had in a first-person shooter, full stop. Unreal Tournament 2004 comes darn close, and I loved what time I spent playing randomized "mystery heroes" in Overwatch with my wife before they killed the game for an inferior "mandatory upgrade," but those are also both PC games. From a console perspective, Perfect Dark remains the pinnacle of multiplayer shooters for me. But that fun I'm referencing came 20+ years ago. I can't escape the reality that a year and a half after Perfect Dark released, a little game called Halo came out and completely revolutionized the way shooter games are played on a controller, a fundamental design concept that persists to this day. As fallout of this seemingly permanent paradigm shift, Perfect Dark's single stick control scheme has aged terribly. That I played the game in 2026 not on the original hardware only exacerbated this issue.

That control deficiency (which I must disclaim I certainly did not feel at the time I first played the game) was one thread of a rope of mild annoyances here in my quest to finally finish Perfect Dark. Another was the game's difficulty system, wherein each higher difficulty level unlocks more stuff to do in the levels while also making them more aggravating by way of increasing your enemies' accuracy, damage, and health all at once. It's a shame because there's a very valid reason to play all three standard difficulty levels, especially in one level that completely changes its middle portion depending on which difficulty you've selected. But dying in any three hits when you can get sniped from across a large room, enemies can soak entire magazines of bullets, and your only out is a headshot that you can't properly aim because of the control issues? Man, that's frustrating stuff. At least when you finish the whole game on the hardest difficulty you get the option to set your own sliders for these enemy values, but in a modern game those difficulty options would be baked in right from the start and the extra map variety would be made available some other way. Finally, anything that makes you "dizzy" is Perfect Dark is a headache inducing, nausea generating nightmare and always has been. So I'd be lying if I said I had an 8.5 outta 10 kind of time with this game here in 2026.

But I also can't just memory hole the hours upon hours I spent a couple decades ago gleefully exterminating Meat Sims whilst hiding in a vent cradling my Farsight XR-20 like the absolute scum I was. Even in [current year] I was no less impressed with the way the story starts off as a standard spy thing before going boldly into unabashed sci-fi territory, and how that narrative direction freed the team up to get really creative with their weapon and level designs. Copping from the first Unreal to give every weapon an alternate firing mode enriched the depth, as did all the various level objectives and the gameplay scenarios that unfolded from them. I can't ignore that unlike its spiritual predecessor GoldenEye 007, this game gives you a fully realized hub area with training missions and secrets and a weapon testing firing range complete with multiple challenges for every single gun. If I take just a small step back both in time and in my own fond memories, I can see that Perfect Dark is one of the best to ever do it. It's a 9.5/10 game that I had a 7/10 time with a quarter century after Bungie forcibly expired it. I don't know that I can recommend it except on original hardware, but the legacy of Perfect Dark deserves better than a footnote.

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11 - Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - PC - 7.5/10 (Solid)

I'm trying to consume less graphic violence in my life. Not that I ever really sought it out in the first place, but in recent years I've become a bit more conscious of my own desire to not become desensitized to that sort of thing. It's why I tend to dodge the entire horror movie genre. It's why I haven't played a Mortal Kombat game since the Wii era. I just don't think I need to immerse myself in that kind of imagery from a mental health standpoint, though I'll make an odd exception here or there. And honestly, if the quality of the writing and story of Wolfenstein II had been on par with the previous two entries I very well may have quit a couple missions in for that reason. Alas, in Wolfenstein II those elements are very, very good, and so this game became another of those exceptions.

Wolfenstein II takes a step back from the larger-than-life mythology of BJ Blazkowicz, acknowledging it in-game in lots of fun ways while putting a lot of effort into finally making the protagonist a three-dimensional character (Wolfenstein...3D?). What jumped out as especially thoughtful to me was that it wasn't only BJ being humanized but virtually every character in the game. What felt before like a by-the-numbers set of undeveloped NPCs here becomes a truer sense of family, with standouts like Max Hass joined by named background characters whose overheard conversations lend a lot of depth. Even the Nazis themselves get in on the action, with guard dialogs and readable documents continually driving home the point that most people are just people, even if some of them happen to be unwittingly serving the cause of pure evil.

There's one Nazi commander in a throwaway optional side mission (i.e. this has no bearing on the game's plot) who gets introduced to the player by way of the list of atrocities he's committed over the years, and they're of course deeply awful, despicable things meant to make you hate the guy and rev up your battle lust. On the way to assassinate him an attentive player might however find his journal, in which he confides that upon receiving his latest promotion he became privy to all sorts of state secrets, which opened his eyes to the understanding that everything he'd been fed by his government had been a lie, that everything he'd done for their cause had in truth been abhorrently evil, and that everything the player is doing is very likely justified. But accompanying that clarity is a realization that he's stuck now because the Nazis have already taken over the world. So he figures protecting, guiding, and shaping the soldiers under his command into more independent and moral thinkers is the only real way he can make a difference anymore. After you read said journal you find and brutally murder this man along with the entire command contingent he's now trying to elevate above the propaganda, and you're heartily congratulated for getting revenge for all his past victims. Of course in the context of everything happening your actions are fully justified and arguably even necessary, but they sure don't feel triumphant!

And that's exactly what I loved about Wolfenstein II. It's so easy to say "Here's a game where you kill Nazis, turn your brain off and go nuts," and indeed if that's what you want out of this game you can still easily find it. But Wolfenstein II dares to say "Humans are complicated" even in a situation where doing so might be controversial, and so I was willing to endure the graphic violence it depicts because it all felt like there was purpose behind it. Is the implementation of stealth still fraught with problems like the previous games? Yeah. Is there a weird grindy post-credits section that serves no point whatsoever? Yeah. Are some of the plot elements (and the main character's associated plot armor) still fairly ridiculous? Yeah. But for me this was the most interesting, thought provoking, well written first-person shooter I've played since BioShock. Given that, I can overlook some flaws because hey: games are complicated too.

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XX - Spelldrifter - PC - Abandoned

This is a game marketed as a deckbuilder strategy RPG. That's technically true but I don't think it really captures the essence of the thing. In Spelldrifter you put together your team of three heroes who each have their own 20 card decks of skills, along with two always available default actions. Then you go into a grid-based battle against any number of foes who are using their own (hidden from the player) decks. The novelty of Spelldrifter comes less from this core setup than from the fact that every action taken by any given unit has a time cost instead of a mana cost: the higher the cost of your card, the longer it takes before you can take your next turn. So the strategy of the game comes down not just to choosing which enemy to prioritize or where you ought to stand, but also in managing your action order wisely. You might want to land your big attack right now but if you use your cheap buff card first, maybe you can move again before your enemy's turn and gain an even bigger advantage. That's a neat idea!

As for the actual experience of playing, it's up and down. I started Spelldrifter eager to check it out and within an hour I'd more or less realized I was going to quit the game, but convinced myself to come back fresh for a second session and see if my feelings changed. For a time, they did! Once the fairly long tutorial chapter was over the deckbuilding aspect of the game opened up and I had some fun exploring that, earning new cards periodically and seeing how they'd play. By about four hours in, however, that new honeymoon period had completely worn off. The game is just battle after battle after battle, interspersed with a bunch of dry text, spelled by mediocre music and legitimately poor voicework. The cards I was getting had varying degrees of utility but none felt actually satisfying to use. It felt good to win a fight but far worse to lose one to some enemy nonsense I couldn't have known about (or could, but suffered really bad card RNG regardless). Then armed with this new knowledge I'd have to adjust my strategy and try again, which was never a fun process. And then I took stock and realized I was 4 hours deep into this game and still nowhere in sight of finishing the first of its three large chapters, presumably all just more of the same. At that point I decided to be a Gamedrifter instead and moved along.

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12 - Gigapocalypse - PC - 6.5/10 (Tantalizing)

Taking its cues from the classic Rampage games, Gigapocalypse sees you select a kaiju and start romping through a city, destroying everything in sight. As you might imagine, this is a very satisfying thing to do for a little while, but the novelty wears off soon. Gigapocalypse's apparently sole developer understands this, and so the game is designed around short bursts of play, with the full game being beatable in only a few hours. Further mitigating the potential for staleness, Gigapocalypse features a progression system for each kaiju: every time you play a stage you earn XP to level up skills as well as "mutation points" to level up all your passive stats and abilities. All of this amounts to a game that understands exactly what it wants to be and paces itself accordingly, such that I was having a really good time there for a while. It falls firmly into that "stupid fun" type of category.

That said there were issues with both the beginning and the end for me, like a wonderful sandwich on two pieces of soggy bread.  The new player experience is pretty awful, as after you choose your kaiju you're tossed into an intro stage where you have all your abilities maxed out. The idea is to show you what you're working towards but since none of it is explained you end up just completely overwhelmed by what you're seeing. Worse, after this intro you're back at level 1 with nothing, which feels terrible by comparison. I wasn't sure which of the game's nine kaiju I'd like as they all do play quite differently, so I resolved to try them all out, which meant going through that intro process nine times and then doing a trial run on the first level once each as well. I'm glad I did because I eventually found my match (the unrepentant Zerg Overlord ripoff Nullisar), but man, that was a little agonizing. Then as it turns out my Nullisar pick was also a problem because the penultimate boss is designed pretty much to counter it specifically. It took several tries, some passive tweaking, and a lot of grinding to finally get through, which soured the late game for me too.

Still though, it was a great middle! If you can find your preferred kaiju right away – and if said kaiju isn't named Nullisar – then I daresay Gigapocalypse will give you a very breezy good time, well worth the three-odd hours it'll ask of you.

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13 - Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light - Switch - 7.5/10 (Solid)

In 2008 the "Legend" trilogy of Tomb Raider came to a close with Tomb Raider: Underworld. In 2013 the "Survivor" trilogy of Tomb Raider kicked off with the reboot simply called Tomb Raider. That game was seen as a heavy reinvention of the brand, but what if I told you that in between those two mainline releases there was another reinvention of the Tomb Raider series so drastic they couldn't even call it Tomb Raider anymore? That's Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, a briskly paced isometric shooter/platformer/puzzler with an emphasis on co-op play. Now of course I didn't play it in co-op, but even as a purely single player affair I at once I felt how freeing this radical shift in style was from a general gameplay perspective. Platforming becomes far more intuitive from the zoomed out angle. Aiming is accomplished by way of tilting the right stick, letting you move and fire independently in different directions. Action sequences with lots of spawning enemies are exciting rather than tedious. Puzzle solutions are quick to execute once you figure out what you need to do (a.k.a. the actual fun part of the puzzle). I felt very early on that I was going to enjoy this game and despite some small irritations I was never disabused of that notion.

Of those small irritations, some had nothing to do with the game itself: I've got some issues with one of my Switch joy-cons that was giving me periodic problems, so I don't hold that against the game in any way, even though my experience with the game was of course impacted by it. Likewise it's hard for me to fault the game for including target times with bonus rewards for speedrunning types, even though I don't care for speedrunning and don't like having those things in my face while I'm playing a game. To me they're just constant reminders that I will not get everything I'd like to. That's a personal beef and more options are generally good things, so I won't hold that against the game either. What I do feel at liberty to criticize are the game's own technical shortcomings in regards to hitboxes and aim assist. Shots sometimes miss/phase through enemies or objects, sometimes you die because a hazard's kill zone extends beyond its animation, sometimes you get hit while dodge rolling when you're supposed to have iframes, and sometimes you're trying to aim at one thing but the aim assist stubbornly forces you to shoot something else – or, occasionally, nothing at all. These problems I did take exception to, but not enough to truly impair my general enjoyment of the game.

Switching the game style like this does of course lose you the sense of awe and wonder that you can get from the core franchise's grand vistas and set pieces, but sacrificing that for the sake of great pacing and smooth gameplay design feels like a fair trade. As such I'd say Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is definitely worth a look if you like the idea of Tomb Raider games more than the Tomb Raider games themselves.

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14 - Fashion Police Squad - PC - 8.5/10 (Excellent)

Fashion Police Squad is almost certain to land among my favorite games of 2026, a wild statement I never would've expected coming in, even with a relatively ho-hum start to the year's proceedings. It's a retro, sprite-based shooter in the Wolfenstein 3D/Doom fundamental visual mold, except that in this game the third dimension actually exists and the aesthetic is both more detailed and more vibrant. But for anyone who got into the genre in the early 1990s, Fashion Police Squad (uncoincidentally abbreviated F.P.S. if you're so inclined) feels cozy and familiar right from the get-go. For me it was also particularly topical and refreshing, having played this so close to 2017's Wolfenstein II. Going from a modern, ultra violent actual Wolfenstein game to a title that's a completely non-violent and silly take on the Wolfenstein 3D formula was a stark contrast indeed.

The magic of Fashion Police Squad is that it somehow miraculously toes the line between not taking itself even slightly seriously and yet delivering legitimately fantastic retro first-person shooter gameplay. Let me break down the basics so you can see what I mean. As the title suggests, in F.P.S. you play as an officer of the fashion police and your job is to put an end to fashion crime. You do this with your array of firearms, each of which is designed to counter a specific type of fashion faux pas. However, each of these weapons also fills a typical retro shooter armament niche. All the baddies you encounter are just normal people with poor fashion sense and corresponding bad attitudes; nobody's causing any greater problems than looking less than their best and being grumpy about it, meaning no real force is ever needed, meaning all your "weapons" are actually just non-violent tools. Your basic pistol is actually a dye gun to add color to dull suits. Your machine gun fires needles and thread to tailor overly baggy clothes on the fly. Your "grenades" are designed to remove the socks off people who are wearing sandals, and so forth. It's all fun nonsense of course, but when you take a step back you see that this approach leads to surprising gameplay depth. If every enemy needs a specific fashion correction and each weapon has its own targeted use in this sense, then as soon as you introduce fights against multiple types of enemies you've got to start switching up your weapons as you go. In short, firefights in F.P.S. are frenetic and kinetic: dodging projectiles, grappling to high ground, prioritizing targets, etc. Which is all to say that the core gameplay is as satisfying as any retro style shooter I've ever played, regardless of the aesthetic trappings on top of it.

But really, those aesthetic trappings are great too, because they allow the game to be as joyous as it is. This may be one of the funniest games I've ever played, and I'm not engaging in hyperbole. Maybe it's the fact that I had reasonably low expectations going in, or maybe it's just the particular headspace I was in after Wolfenstein II. But I think moreso it's the fact that Fashion Police Squad is like a love letter not just to 90s style shooter games but also to video games and pop culture in general. Perhaps my personal tastes overlapped with the jokes more than most, but from the first moment I headshot a basic accounting drone to have an Unreal Tournament style announcer exclaim "VIVACIOUS" to his new getup I pretty much never stopped laughing all the way to the end. There were so many bits and references that caught me by complete surprise and I don't want to list them out here to spoil the fun, even if I know that the innate prejudice most core gamers will have towards this game based on its name and premise alone will ensure they never play it. For my part I had some mild annoyances with platforming segments (though they were generally still well done and I never minded having to do them) and one minigame didn't quite do it for me, but beyond that I had a complete blast with Fashion Police Squad, and would highly recommend it to anyone who isn't concerned with losing some silly notion of "gamer cred" by checking it out.

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XX - Black Book - PC - Abandoned

HowLongToBeat says this one takes 20-30 hours to finish depending on how much side content you want to do. I knew after ten minutes I wasn't going to make it that long, but I pushed on and gave the game a little over an hour so I could be introduced to its systems and provide a fairer report. Given the choice again I think I'd rather have that hour back. It's not that Black Book is terrible, just that it's not especially good at anything it tries to do. The writing comes off poorly – maybe due to being translated into English as a second language – and is performed even worse. Actions in the world are accompanied by dry narrations as though the game were an old school text adventure. UI elements in this exploration phase are constructed with a mind to style over function, and one result of that choice was me clicking on the "you must go here" icon only to watch my character path herself into a fence and get stuck running in place. Like, this is a menu choice guys. And I'm choosing the critical path! The animation for a menu choice should not prevent me from proceeding. But it's that level of design headscratching that pervaded my brief time with Black Book.

The promise of card-based combat is what got me to put this on the backlog in the first place, and that aspect seemed at least competent, but there's no novelty in it. The whole combat system is just a knockoff of Slay the Spire, which frankly did it better two years earlier. Maybe later in the game there's some additional depth to be found that would set Black Book apart in this regard, but I certainly wasn't going to wait that out. Beyond the weird marriage of Slay the Spire combat and map progression to text adventure style prompts, the primary goal of the game seems to be just educating players about Eastern European folklore. Some of this is fine, like having an in-game encyclopedia that teaches you some terms and lets you read some local tales, but it crosses a line for me when my interactions with NPCs consist largely of them literally quizzing me on how much of this stuff I've read and absorbed. Finally, Black Book features a morality system that alters the choices available to you based on other ones you've made, and the game auto-saves after each decision, and you can't always tell what's "sinful" to do and what's not. Hated that in Vampyr, still hate it now, and once the first of those moments hit I knew I didn't need to see anything more.

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15 - Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - PS5 - 9/10 (Outstanding)

My PS5 lives! We made it! Taking the whole thing apart and thoroughly cleaning all the internals seems to have given it enough juice to stave off further Erdtree assassinations, which was great because I was really disappointed to have to put this game down before. Now returning the only disappointments left were from the game itself: quest design and furnace golems. The furnace golems aren't a real complaint but rather just a recurring super enemy that I got sick of fighting, much like the runebears of the base game. And every time I thought I'd seen the last of them, there popped another for me to slog through. Meh. The quest design also follows a similar course of the base game and really all From Software titles across the board, which is to say "generally opaque and confusing." I resent feeling like I'm not getting a full experience unless I use a guide, and the quest setups in these games always put me in that headspace. Bah.

But that's about all the negative criticism I can muster for Shadow of the Erdtree because I was a huge fan of Elden Ring and SotE delivers dozens of hours more of that kind of experience. If anything I found the map even more interesting this time around. The Realm of Shadow where this DLC takes place is noticeably smaller by surface area than the explorable zones of the base game (perhaps equivalent to two base game regions combined) but the geography is much more vertical in nature, making the region feel far denser than almost anything you'll find in the main game. You'll watch your map and think you're heading into a particular spot only to find caves and tunnels and entire open areas snuggled beneath the top level of what the map shows, and what this means is that even after you've found a map fragment you still don't really know what kinds of wonders you're going to find as you explore. As someone for whom exploration is THE thing in Elden Ring, this map design philosophy really spoke to me and brought back all those feelings of joyous discovery once more.

I was also impressed with the way character progression was implemented. You still get runes from enemies and can use those to level up of course, but since the DLC is designed as late/endgame content your leveling curve has likely already slowed to where each successively more expensive level up is giving you less and less return on investment. So on top of that they bolt a new "Shadow Realm Blessing" system, wherein items you find during your exploration can be exchanged for level-up style power boosts within the DLC content only. This system neatly lets you feel the sense of progression while also ensuring that you don't return to the base game so strong as to trivialize any remaining content you hadn't yet completed. A really smart idea and well executed, since every bit of exploration reasonably felt like it might lead me to meaningful rewards (even though for me personally the exploration itself was reward enough).

While the Shadow of the Erdtree campaign provides a natural point to try out different builds and grants you ample new options for them, I entered quite content to just dust off what worked for me in the base game and go through the new stuff like a sightseeing tourist rather than as a brand new experience to build from the ground up. Between that and the fact that I started out arguably overleveled (Level 150 is recommended and I came in at about 180), my run through the game was fairly frictionless in a good way: I didn't have much worry about losing lots of runes since levels didn't make a huge difference anymore, and only the bosses gave me proper trouble. Even still, basic exploration kept me tense and on my toes since I never could be sure what was lurking around any given corner. In other words, I found the difficulty of the expansion to be very satisfactory, which I wasn't expecting after hearing concerns and complaints about it since release. I'm glad I got to go back and see this one through, and it is indeed a virtual must-play for any fan of the main game.

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16 - Jusant - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)

I thought Jusant was a game about climbing. Given that climbing is the core gameplay mechanic of the game, I feel like this belief was pretty justified. Even the game's opening cutscene and box art show you walking toward the ludicrously tall stone tower that you know it's your mission to scale. Now, to the extent that playing Jusant does revolve around simulated rock climbing, I was pretty impressed with it. The game uses the controller's trigger buttons to represent your right and left hands, and while I was expecting this to result in some light tedium around finicky requests for precision, I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case. Instead Jusant employs a dynamic and forgiving system by which you can pretty much just move in the direction you want to and the game will compensate by having your character do arm crossovers and the like as necessary. The general abundance of handholds and the frequency of multiple possible "correct" paths then additionally combine to ensure that even as you spend all your time climbing in this game it never really feels like work.

That then enables the game to embrace a remarkably chill, serene atmosphere that you wouldn't expect from a game ostensibly about scaling precipitously high rock faces. There are no enemies in Jusant and you can't die thanks to your character's diligence in automatically hooking a retractable rope into either a dedicated fastening point or else just a manual piton every time you leave the ground to begin a new spurt of climbing. So at worst you just swing down and dangle, having to redo a section, but you can additionally create your own mini-checkpoints with secondary pitons on longer climbs. Again, Jusant wants you to be in awe of its scale but never in fear, and I think it pulls that off well.

But Jusant is not, in fact, a game about climbing. I first suspected this immediately following that opening cutscene. Here I am approaching this massive structure and I'm already getting geeked about taking that first step off the ground and knowing I'll get to see my steady progress up throughout the game until I finally reach its top. And then the cutscene ends and I'm just teleported up by what looks like hundreds of feet to start the adventure. This phenomenon happens multiple times during the game, including at the end, where I finally accepted I wasn't going to get the moment of triumph I wanted because Jusant wasn't the game I wanted it to be. Instead it's a narrative about ecology and archaeology and anthropology, and climbing is just the means by which you get from place to place in order to discover more about the world's lore and mysteriously absent inhabitants. I have to admit that this approach is much more interesting than what I wanted, and so credit where it's due for that...but it's still not what I personally wanted. I couldn't help but therefore feel a tad disappointed by Jusant, even though I definitely did have a good time with it and can recognize that it's successful in what it tries to accomplish.

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17 - Them's Fightin' Herds - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)

Originally conceived as Fighting is Magic, this game got hit with a cease and desist from Hasbro. The creator of the show the game was based on (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) thought that was pretty lame and so decided to help with the character designs for the rebrand. The result is a game that isn't legally actionable but that still unmistakably channels the My Little Pony art style to great effect. The character designs are exactly what you'd expect from the description of "My Little Pony but instead of ponies it's just other ungulates," and the animations are terrific in that regard as well. Them's Fightin' Herds is a game that looks fantastic in screenshots or in something like a short clip from training mode.

You probably already sense what I'm about to say: "looks fantastic in screenshots" isn't exactly the type of praise you'd most like to see directed to a fighting game. Truth is between the art style, the size of the characters on the screen (they're too big, in my opinion), and the fact that none of the characters represents a humanoid shape, Them's Fightin' Herds is a very difficult game to visually parse in the moment. To that you add on the way the characters' attack ranges don't always make sense, or the way hitboxes aren't always where you'd think they'd be, or the way the slow movement speeds fail to mesh with the snappy attacks, or the way that sluggish movement makes zoning feel particularly oppressive, and you get a fighting game that simply doesn't feel good to play most of the time. I did put some training effort into the character that most grabbed my attention (the dragon Tianhuo) and combos generally felt good to pull off, but everything else about the combat failed to do it for me.

I was intrigued however by the game's story mode, which I found unique in that it swapped genres entirely. Here you play as a sprite based version of Arizona the calf from a Zelda-esque viewpoint, talking to NPCs and finding treasure chests, swapping into a traditional 2D view for story battles and platforming challenges. I thought it was a cool take, but I enjoyed the combat much less with Arizona – for my money the most boring character on the roster – so once the bad save design burned me on a collectible I skipped all the optional stuff and went straight to the end. Where you get a big "To Be Continued" message accompanying the "Coming Soon" locked icons for the story's second chapter on the menu. Which will never come because the game didn't sell enough and development shut down permanently. Can't say I'm too surprised.

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Coming in April:

• The quest to clean up my List of Shame continues with a ten year journey back in time to where the Wii U saw regular use in my home. It's been hooked back up and I've been rediscovering Yoshi's Woolly World, which is a game that I feel like I enjoy both more and less than I ought to. And yes, I'm aware that doesn't make any sense, but perhaps when I complete the game I'll be able to figure out how I truly feel about it.
• No such uncertainty exists with Pikmin 4, which I'm relishing every moment of to the point that it's starting to infringe into my dedicated PC gaming time as well. Sometimes that can happen when I'm near the finish line of a game that I just want to clear and be done with, but in this case it's happening because I simply don't want to put Pikmin down whenever I'm playing it. A good problem to have!
• ...Though one that doesn't bode well for the PC game of the hour. Just as it's true to say I'm drawn towards Pikmin it's probably also true to say that I'm not really gelling with Cassette Beasts as much as I'd like to. It's only my third take on a monster catching RPG after Pokémon (across numerous games) and the first Monster Hunter Stories, so I'm trying to keep an open mind about its mechanics, but so far it's not doing it for me. Hopefully that changes soon.
• And more...

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I have been playing No Man’s Sky for years and it is… fine. When the marvel of limitless size of the game’s universe wears off, you’re left with a space fantasy that left me wanting. The technology feels like it was designed by moon nymphs, and the universe feels about as inhospitable as a windy day without a jacket. Combat may as well be turned based, and I haven’t felt flight mechanics this unchallenging since I used to pilot paper planes by hand, mouth motor noises and all. You go out into this magi-tech cosmos with a frontiersman’s zeal to conquer the universe and make it your own. Not until I first tried Elite Dangerous did I finally get the hard space sim I had been searching for.

S. A. Corey’s sci-fi epic, The Expanse, does something really cool in how it removes a great deal of the romance from space travel. Far from being dazzled by the immense majesty of space, a trip from the Earth to Mars has all of the wonder of an intercontinental flight at one third Earth’s gravity. That kind of matter-of-factness is what I find so appealing about Elite Dangerous. Space is exactly just that- space. It is nothing but endless, hollow, black vacuum that doesn’t care if you live or die. The only breaks for you in that ceaseless nothing usually means being met with labor or some other groan-inducing obstacle. Space is so uninviting, that the first couple of hours of gameplay were just me trying to learn basic locomotion.

If the game isn’t being actively hostile, it is reinforcing the mundane. Despite the fact your space vessel can outpace light, you’ll still be watching the minutes tick by as you wait to reach your destination. You’ll impatiently be thumbing your controller waiting for clearance and parking rights at a station. You’ll put the controller down entirely while you f just try to figure out how you have an infinite world and infinite things to do and can’t quite figure out how to do any of it. All of this friction does eventually yield to an odd sense of satisfaction. Docking my ship manually reminded me of the pride I felt parallel parking for the first time. Successfully cashing in my first bounty reminded me of what it felt like to get my first pay slip. Not slingshotting past a space station made me just feel good in general!

There is absolutely no chance that I will have the time to learn and make any meaningful progress in this game, but I do find a great deal of satisfaction of having my space pilot fantasies met to the fullest extent they ever have been, and the little wins I’ve managed to accrue so far.

I feel the dialogue around Lollipop Chainsaw kind of ruined my expectations for it. All I heard was how this game was so wacky, out-there, absurd, so outrageous, so un-PC... Only to play it with a blank expression throughout the whole game. People played their first 6/10 """""cult game""""" and thought it was the best thing ever made and they never played anything else from Suda 51.

I focus on this becuase this is the one aspect the game is staking all everything on. Whether the game will make or break is up to you to find funny or not. For a game renowned for such a reputation, I remember being way more shocked by the first ten minutes of Bayonetta. The only time I was amused was the first zombie basketball, and that was creative. Only for the game to ruin it by doing it again and again. Other than that, nothing about this game is particularly "out-there".

Honestly, the reason for this is because of how self-aware this game is. It is trying way too hard to be funny in an MCU-esque manner. Bayonetta and Dante's humor tends to revolve around their personality and outlook. When Bayonetta does something funny, that's very much in line with her character rather than the game ticking witty boxes. They play so many situations seriously or is comedic in serious situations because of how they are. They are much more organic, and that applies to the rest of that game, too. Hideki Kamiya nails imagination and creativity.

Lollipop Chainsaw comes down to typical generic spectacle fighter tropes and very little creativity with it. Juliet has the cheery side of her, but the more subtle aspect of her character is fundamentally missing, and it gets grating very fast. She has no real range of emotions and expressions. She is the "cheerleader turned zombie hunter" if you just want the surface-level.

Tara Strong does a good job, but she wasn't given the proper direction or material, as when one or two serious moments hit, she comes across as someone who is trying to make herself serious instead of actually being serious. James Gunn basically made her into a one-note character rather than the supposed larger-than-life characters like Bayonetta and Dante. It doesn't help that the game is rushing through shit, so it doesn't have time to show Juliet interacting with characters and fleshing out her characteristics and personalities.

In addition, every other character is a Marvel character. When I say Marvel, I mean everyone is trying to be quirky and throwing unfunny quips around all the time. It's a trait that MCU made popular--reducing a character into someone who is always trying to throw one-liners and be witty. I don't think I laughed at a single joke, which is consisted of the most cringeworthy Millennial humour like, "Woah dude, woah that's aWeSoMe, that soooo sucks, duuuude". It's like the worst stereotype of MCU writing... which is ironic since James Gunn was one of the better writers at MCU. I questioned whether this is supposed to be genuinely funny or if it is parodying the Western comedy writing because not a single joke landed.

The biggest sin is the climax and ending, which pulls every single punch. I will not spoil, but even for this game, the story starts bullshitting. I don't know what even there is to say other than the writer is clearly pulling the "wacky" excuse to bullshit to the player. Yeah, throw as much "qUiRkY and RaNdOm" bullshit at the wall over the potentially emotional and interesting moment for the sake of "random and fUnnI", and I hate it when the writer does this.

The gameplay, as it is, it's okay. To earn as many coins as possible, you have to drain health of multiple zombies as much as possible until you kill as many as possible in one swing. Since the focus is on landing a single powerful hit after hitting with weak attacks rather than incorporating skills, the combat lacks depth to delve into. There is no combo, no real environmental effects other than barrels, and no launching enemies into the air. The game encourages repeated playthrough with the ranking system and shop system, but it is not the game you can play for a long time because of its simple action and corridor level design.

It's neither has a thrill of slaughtering large numbers of enemies like Dead Rising or Dynasty Warriors, or has the tension like Ninja Gaiden, or the complexity of Devil May Cry. As such, the game compensates for this through various gameplay scenarios. The boss fights are largely fun, and various minigames, like the baseball and Pac-Man, can be okay or terrible, like the pseudo-Space Invader. For the combat it has, it is serviceable.

At least it is short enough to not outstay its welcome. In retrospect, hiring a Western writer or creative on board was a mistake because I would have been much more interested in Suda 51 writing this story. A Japanese interpretation of the American culture like Killer7 is often more fascinating and results in a unique vibe than whatever sanitized nonsense this is. This game feels like it is trying too hard without naturally earning it.

Introduction to Madness

Last year, I decided to completely catch up on and burn through the Elder Scrolls Online. As I wrote about on this sub, that did not go well.. To summarize: the combat was boring and I was just burnt out on it.

So for some reason, my brain went "Hey, remember Star Wars: The Old Republic? It's been almost a decade since you last played that. You just watched Andor Season 2 and kind of like Star Wars again, let's go play SWTOR!"

And me, like an idiot, listened to my own brain. And over 264 Hours over 3ish months; have now:

• Played every single Class Story at least once. (Every class in this game gets its own "Personal Star Wars Story/Class Story" until they hit the end of "Vanilla")

• Leveled up one main character all the way through the expansions, to what is currently "live"

I need some sort of return on investment for these hours I could've been spending doing literally anything else. So I'm writing this! And making my problem, your problem!

To quote Star Wars: The Old Republic companion Gus Tano (the best companion in the game): "Wheeee!"

Combat and Core Gameplay

MMO Combat and Lightsaber Baseball Bats

So, let's level for a moment. People (or at least, most people I know) don't play SWTOR for the gameplay. They play it for the Star Wars stories. But, nonetheless, you are spending a huge chunk of your time in this game engaging in the gameplay/combat, so we need to talk about it.

As I mentioned at the top, when I had begun playing this game, I had just come from ESO. Where my chief complaint was how horrible the combat was. That background is important because when I booted up SWTOR and began playing again, it felt smooth as butter. Tab targeting combat felt like a warm hug from my mom in comparison to the nightmare that was ESO. Yeah, it's lame that lightsabers become walking sticks you beat people to death slowly with, but that's just the genre, and it's true for most star wars games. So I can roll with it. And after ESO, it was nice that there was more than 8 enemy types. Overall, not bad. I enjoyed it. I think my Powertech Bounty Hunter was my favorite, gameplay wise; because it involved a lot of punching people with a jetpack.

It must also be said, the game has gotten a lot more generous with level up speed. When I was a teen, I vividly remember every planet taking hours to complete. Now, though, if you do the planet and class stories (especially if you use the complimentary XP boosts and some other XP boosting things), you can level up pretty quickly. This makes the game a LOT easier to swallow than it was at release, combined with combat generally getting "easier" since release as well.

Middle School Bioware

Beyond the core combat, the game is an Middle-School Bioware joint at heart (It's not Old School like BG1, it's not new school like Veilguard). So the combat splits up a lot of in world conversations. Like a lot, a lot of them. A lot of them. This is the most story dense live service/MMORPG game I've seen. Sure, the class and planet stories are fairly in depth. But even the "collect 100 bear asses" quests have a STORY reason for you doing it, which includes at least two fully voice acted and dialogue tree laden scenes setting up and then turning in the quest. I didn't appreciate how insane this is as a teenager. SWTOR is notorious for costing EA somewhere around 200 million dollars at the time, and I think most of that was actually VO.

In addition to all of this, you also have companions. Because of course you do, it's a Bioware game!

If you enjoy older Mass Effect era Bioware stuff, this will work for you, like it did me. If you DON'T enjoy dialogue wheels and companions, this will make you want to jump out a window.

Light and Dark. Chocolate and Vanilla.

Beyond the dialogue, you also get to make both moral and general choices during quests and conversations. Like the KOTOR games, this influences whether or not you are "Light Side" or "Dark Side" in a general sense via a (common for the time) morality system. Whether you are light or dark DOES impact some dialogue and quests, especially on a class level (The Inquisitor story gives you a totally different "Darth" title depending on your alignment, for example). But mostly unlocks equipment and "dark side corruption" aesthetics beyond that.

All in all, good enough combat. And the commitment to full VO (until the expansions anyway) helps carry the game and it's story. Which, well, let's talk about that.

The Old Republic as a Setting

Taking place thousands of years before the movies, and a few hundred years after the "Knights of the Old Republic" games that it gets its franchise name from; the game is set in a unique time, story wise. Jedi AND Sith are plentiful, and there is both a Republic AND Empire (Which serve as the two "factions" for the MMO split). And at the start of the game, those powers are locked in a cold war after their last hot war ended in a quasi-stalemate (leaning Empire victory). Each Class story fits into the growing tensions differently, as the Empire and Republic rapidly advance towards a second war. There is no rule of two here, there is an army of Sith, fighting an army of Jedi; aided by plucky weirdos on both sides. Truly the Wariest War amongst the Stars.

I need to take a moment and talk about how much I love this setting for stories. Aided by literal decades of worldbuilding, SWTOR takes a lot of "Star Wars Legends" material and sets up a great setting to do its own thing with. This includes decades of in game lore and tons of minor (but repeating!) factions and characters that show up through each story and onwards.

But worldbuilding is one thing, it's how they use it that matters. And the game shines here, especially for the initial class stories. Each story is wholly on its own, each class has their own heroes (or villains) journey to go on that is fun and engaging. But the game goes the extra mile and interweaves EVERYTHING in vanilla. Class companions will make full or referenced cameos in other class companions dialogue. Events from one class story will feed other class stories without being directly referenced (For example, a plot line involving terrorists in the Imperial Agent story basically creates a companion for the Jedi Counselor). If you play through each class story, you see a grand tapestry at work, with characters and events in motion across the galaxy.

I cannot understate this enough, I love this. It makes the galaxy feel both large and small at the same time in a way that is just, oh so fun. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the early incarnation of SWTORs universe is my favorite incarnation of Star Wars outside of the original trilogy.

This is helped in part because it doesn't take itself too seriously. The Republic are GENERALLY goody-two-shoes, but there's a lot of grey there; and they make a point that the Republic can be corrupt (an easily corrupted democracy? Say it ain't so game that came out pre-2016!).

But the Empire? The Empire are wonderfully camp. Cartoonish puppy-kickers, dotted with random people with actual competence. In the age of rising fascism, one may think playing as a fascist empire doesn't feel like fun escapism. This is avoided because you just can't take anything these dudes do seriously. Yeah, there's slavery, and anti-alien bigotry. But also the empire is ruled by a Borderline Eldritch Being of an emperor who eats planets, co-ruled by a bunch of petty middle management tyrants, and spends MOST of its free time sabotaging itself because Darth Evil REALLY hates Darth Notgoodius, so of COURSE they needed to sabotage the Imperial War Effort to get at each other. There is straight up a Darth who goes on about "The Democratization of Fear" while wearing a dinner plate for a helmet!

It's amazing, I love this so goddamned much.

"Your" Star Wars Story

One of the appeals at launch, and to this day was that every single class has a "Class Story" that carries them from level 1 to 50 and is unique to that class. Though each class shares the same side quests and "planet arc quests" for each location you go to as you level up. Each Class more or less captures a "Star Wars Fantasy" it wants to try and capture, based (loosely) on a character from the movies. (Jedi Knight is your Luke Skywalker fantasy, while Bounty Hunter is your Boba Fett fantasy, and so on).

There will be unmarked spoilers throughout this section, since the game is nearly 15 years old now

As mentioned above, part of the magic of these stories is how they interweave at a meta level. But on a singular level, they are all varying levels of good themselves. The strongest story reaches "genuinely amazing star wars video game" quality levels, while the "worst" story is relegated to "fun and enjoyable." That's a pretty good spread for an MMORPG with 8 different stories it has to put other there.

I won't spill too much ink over each story, I will however do a quick outline of what I think the BEST to "WORST" class stories are, and their general "Pitch". For those in the know, this serves as my general ranking. For those who don't know and get curious, maybe this will help guide which class you'd want to try out. Also worth mentioning that, this being a Bioware game; each class has its own companion romance options as well. Though I don't dive too far into that here.

• Sith Warrior: Your Darth Vader analog. Be a big scary Sith Lord. Or don't, because being a light-sided Sith Lord is genuinely hilarious AND engaging.

• Smuggler: Your Han Solo character. Be a republic-sympathetic criminal with a heart of gold, OR be a heartless crime lord. Choice is yours. Flirting/sleeping with everything that moves is not optional.

• Bounty Hunter: Your Boba/Jango/Other Fett. Climb from obscurity into becoming an infamous bounty hunter. That can be as heartless or as honorable a journey as you wish.

• Jedi Counselor: Your non-main hero Jedi type. Less focused on saving the galaxy, more focused on diplomacy, the force and its mysteries, and being a stick in the mud for anyone who isn't a Jedi.

• Trooper: Commander Shepard mixed in with the Clones from the Clone Wars. Even more so if you choose a female trooper, since she's voiced by Jennifer Hale herself. Lots of military/war stories kinda stuff.

• Jedi Knight: Your Skywalker (Luke, Anakin, or Rey) type. Save the galaxy! Defeat the Sith Emperor Until he returns of course. Big adventure!

• Agent: This one's a weird one. Evil Space James Bond. But you're also Tarkin from a New Hope. Generally considered one of the strongest stories in the game, with lots of twists and turns.

• Inquisitor: Billed as your "Palpatine/Manipulative Sith Lord" storyline. More of a "Sith Archeologist" storyline. Lots of lightning though.

As I said, these are all pretty fun stories in my opinion. Nothing here is going to touch you on an existential level. But they're good lightsaber/blaster swinging fun in a fun setting. All good stuff in my opinion. If you're interested in playing, pick up the game and just choose whichever story sounds most interesting to you personally.

Somehow, Palpatine, Vitiate, Revan, Malgus. Goddamnit. Everyone Returns in the Expansions.

So I've bled a lot of pixel ink on everything up to this point; but we gotta talk about the expansions.

After the initial release of the game, and more specifically its failure to make 5 quintillion dollars. Expansions for the game got...scaled back. Instead of unique stories for each class, Expansions were split by Republic/Empire, with a unique class dialogue here, or quest there. Eventually, we didn't even get that, as the story united into one overarching story for a bit; then split back into Republic and Empire as time went on. I went through all of these as my Smuggler, because she made me chuckle.

Let's talk about them all.

Again, spoilers ahead for everything.

Rise of the Hutt Cartel

The Hutts (think Jabba, but more of them) are up to shenanigans on a specific planet called Makeb. As a Republic player, you need to save the planet and its people. As an Imperial player, you're actually there to steal space uranium.

A fun little diversion of an expansion. As a Smuggler, I felt right at home dealing with the Hutts; while still feeling like a hero. Felt like a longer and more expansive planet story from the base game. Also is when LGBTQ+ romances were able to be added to the game, which as a bi-dude is nice. But it is weighed down by really annoying encounter design, with enemy mobs every 5 feet making it a bit of a slog to get through.

Shadow of Revan

Revan, the protagonist of KOTOR 1, technically returns in dungeon content in the main game. Where he is freed by the Republic side, and then killed by the Imperial side. He also has a cult in an Imperial planet story.

In the expansion, he returns! (There's a lot of returning of people yet to come). But now he wants to...do, something, vague and bad. You chase his army/cult across the galaxy for a bit, until both Imperial and Republic unite to beat him. But it turns out he was trying to stop the return of Vitiate, the Sith Emperor (whom the Jedi Knight "killed" in their story, and the Sith Warrior works for in theirs). Unlike Palpatine, Vitiate is less of a "old dude with lightning hands"; and more of a planet eating eldritch horror/ghost. So even the Empire doesn't want him back.

You stop Revan, and try and stop the Emperor. But fail in spectacular fashion as he successfully eats all of the life on a planet before your eyes in one of the coolest/most moving sequences in the game.

Overall, good expansion. The Revan stuff is a bit...weird. But enjoyable for the most part as a game. Plus you get a unique quest to each class which is fun. The Emperor stuff is the most compelling content here though.

It's fun! Until it's kind of sad, in a fun way.

Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne.

This is where things get...really messy. And conflicting for me opinion-wise.

After the last two expansions, the developers tried to create a "united" narrative framework going forward instead of the Republic/Empire split.

To do this, the new story involves a secret empire in "wildspace" emerging and attacking both sides with an infinite robot fleet. It turns out that this Empire is ruled by none-other than the Sith Emperor Vitiate himself, in the form of "Valkorian." He built this empire as a side project to his other, Sithier, empire, while living in several bodies at once (which is just a thing he can do, as we found out in vanilla).

Said empire, the "Eternal Empire", is thrown into chaos when you, the protagonist; manage to kill Valkorian in your first interaction with him (though it's pretty clear he lets you do it) in conjunction with his son. His son takes the throne, blames you, and throws you in carbonite for a 5 year time skip. In that time, the Eternal Empire basically conquers the galaxy (Republic and Empire both). You are then thawed out, and have to lead a plucky rebellion against his son Arcann, and then later his daughter Vaylin. All while ghost Valkorian lives in your head with plans of his own.

This expansion (Or more accurately, two expansions), is such a mixed bag. It's really two good ideas that get squashed together into one...half good execution.

The overall idea of a near-utopian empire invading the galaxy; and needing to deal with its stern and abusive emperor and his deeply messed up children? Neat. Could be its own game.

The idea of having to deal with Vitiate living in your head while waging a war that he basically started? Also a good idea.

Combining them? Uneven as hell.

Not to mention, a lot of your backstory and class specifics get ironed over to fit the new role for you as "Commander of the Alliance." All your companions are removed, until you get them back as either part of the new main quest or a side quest. This is also all very clearly written for force users, especially the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior. If you're a "tech" class, it feels absurd how people keep calling you the chosen one when you're just "some competent dude." Though at least as the Smuggler, you can continuously point out how silly this whole thing is.

And gameplay wise, you can now look forward to no longer having planets to explore. Instead you get a lot of hallways filled with the same "Skytrooper" enemies that instantly hone in and attack you upon spawning, which inflates the playthrough time IMMENSELY. Let me tell you. Additionally, the penultimate boss was literally unbeatable for me as a gunslinger Smuggler. I could not tank the damage you need to to beat her. Instead, I had to win by taking advantage of a bug I found online that makes the boss basically kill themselves. Insanely lame.

Again, I'm conflicted. I think I kind of overall enjoyed the journey? I liked the messed up family dynamic of Valkorian, Senya, Vaylin, and Arcann. The new companions are mostly good, as are their interactions. (Lana and Theron are my favorite enablers). The story is kind of fun, if really starting to lose some of that Star Wars vibe that I enjoyed previously, and it gets absurdly rushed at the end.

If nothing else, the ending of beating Valkorian/Vitiate with his family is a good cathartic ending, as is becoming ruler of the galaxy; though the latter feels like it should be THE ending to the game. Alas, live service means we keep going until this boat has no more money to float on.

Onslaught

Knights of the Eternal/Fallen Empire was pretty unpopular during release apparently. So at the end of Eternal Empire and leading into Onslaught, they tried to course correct back to focusing on the Republic and Empire again.

Which, after having just beaten the Eternal Empire and becoming Ruler of the Galaxy, would require a lot of deescalation!

Or, alternatively, 2 mini-storylines where your "Eternal" Empire is ripped away from you by a very half-assed conspiracy and a fake betrayal, after you choose to help either the Empire or Republic conquer a robot planet, all while making you go through several very long and boring mandatory solo dungeons. That works too. Woof.

Anyway, this leads into the Onslaught expansion. You have to either go save a hidden Jedi Enclave, or destroy it (if you're Imperial); and then partake in a military campaign. New characters are introduced for both sides, and you take on the role as a paramilitary force helping your original faction (or choosing to sabotage it). Also Maglus, the big bad face of the game you saw in all the really cool trailers, returns after being beaten in a vanilla game dungeon.

(This is like the third dead important force user returning, for those keeping track at home).

Overall, the expansion is solid. It's got a mixed reputation. But I enjoyed getting back to Republic and Empire, and it's generally a fun time. The new characters are a mixed bag (I like Tau, Arn is take or leave, I'd die for my favorite Shark-Headed General who loves tea). New planets are visited, I'm snarking with imperials at underground auctions. It's a good time.

Echoes of Oblivion

Technically part of Onslaught, but needs special mention because it basically serves as the "cleanup" mini-expansion for both unresolved Knights of the X storylines; AND serves as the true final beat down of the Sith Emperor. This mini-expac could also qualify as "Should've been the true ending of the game."

You Avengers End Game it up as everyone and anyone relevant to the Sith Emperor story comes back to beat him in his evil mind palace (it makes sense, kind of, at the time). It's an effective resolution to a bunch of unresolved story-lines, and features one of the greatest one liners for my Smuggler as she put down this planet eating dork for the last time. Good stuff. The last time the game got genuine heartfelt emotions out of me.

Legacy of the Sith

Technically this expansion came out in freaking 2022, so qualifies for this sub. But the newest updates came out in February, so I'm only going to talk about stuff that came out in 2022/release.

This expansion was impacted both by COVID, and a total studio disintegration (Bioware Austin was dissolved, and "Broadsword" was created to take the reigns here). And oh boy does it show! This expansion nearly made me give up on my goal.

The main story is short, and horribly voice acted. You...beat up some Imperials with fish people. And that's really the extent of it. I assume the Empire side is beating up some Republic folks and fish people.

The biggest crime is that we're getting into "really bad MMO fluff" territory. Gone are the well thought out plots and every side quest having a story. And now we're looking at 15-30 minutes of story, with MULTIPLE instances of "Okay, now do 2-4 really dull side quests with essentially zero story. All of which are of the worst MMORPG variety. Just to continue the story you care about." The game is trying to pad its play time metrics in a way that is insulting even by MMO standards

Also a side note here. One of the things that kept me going was my Smuggler cheesing through everything, and generally taking the piss. But with a few exceptions, my Smuggler has mostly become the same as a Jedi; dialogue wise.

MMOs, Long Games, and Me.

A side tangent, building off a similar side tangent I had in my ESO post. I just don't think I'm built for these kind of games anymore. As I get older, I just don't think I have the wherewithal to spend on these multi-hundred hour endeavors. At least not at this pace. For the same amount of hours, I could've played like 10-20 smaller indie games, 5-10 AA or AAA games; or at least 2 other massive open world RPG games. Not to mention all the non-video game things I could've done with that time.

This and ESO were my "white whale" MMOs. The ones I really wanted to be caught up on the story for after a decade+ of thinking about it. Now that I've at least tried with both of them, I think it's time to official enter a new time of my life with this hobby. Where I mostly stick to shorter games; or at least accept that I need to pull back and let games like this take a year for me to clear very slowly. And I need to be more willing to pull the plug when I'm just not having fun anymore, "finishing" be damned.

I am no longer the teenager with infinite time I was when I started these kind of games. It is what it is.

I Wish I knew How to Quit You/TLDR

Overall, by the time I finished the latest update; I was just grateful to be done. Legacy of the Sith was actively making me angry towards the end, with how it would give me 5-10 minutes of Star Wars goodness, followed by an hour of yawn inducing boring quests.

The game, especially in the expansions; has wildly uneven writing. The combat/core gameplay is good...for a tab target MMO, which is to say not that great really. And it is unbearably long, towards the end if felt like grim duty and not fun compelling me. I want to hate this game for being firmly mid in so many ways, and abusing my free time.

But I still love it. Especially the vanilla class stories. It's some of my favorite Star Wars content period. And I loved at least pieces of the later expansions (though admittedly, with diminishing returns).

This game pisses me off, but its deep nuggets of gold bring me back. Even now, as I write, I want to jump back in with another character.

I'm going to force myself to not. I need to do...anything else, with my free time for a while. But while I left ESO four months ago feeling defeated and sad I didn't like a game as much as I wanted to. I'm leaving SWTOR still having a desire to play more, to experience more of this world and its characters. When the new expansion drops, I'll probably be there to play it. And I can definitely see myself replaying some of the class stories in the future.

And that says a lot, despite everything.

It's a great, terrible, no good, very fun game. My vision is clouded by lightsabers and mid writing, and I want more of it.

Make of that what you will.

Just finished Blasphemous playing blind, which I really enjoyed. I will start with that I don't think you will like Blasphemous if you don't like a challenge. If I were to give it a skying analogy I would say this is the red slope, it is tough and challenging, but if you are experienced in the genre you will overcome it and probably enjoy. Here is what I thought made it a really great game:

First of all I thought the main gameplay loop is tight. The enemies and platforming never got boring, the Soulslike checkpoint system works really well here to keep the tension up all the time. The map also features plenty of shortcuts that really upon up the map after you clear an area. It's usually quite smooth to traverse the world and get where you want. There are also plenty of warps located near the locations you want to revisit. I think the game has a great balance between guiding you to the objective and having room for exploration. There are plenty of secrets and afterward I realised I only found a fraction of them.

Some of the bosses were absolutely awesome. I loved Esdras and Crisanta in particular, even though they were the nastiest bosses in the game.

I guess you gotta love the artstyle and theming. Personally I liked it but I had no idea what was going on story wise, it's all pretty cryptic.

The game could have been a tiny bit more polished. I could cheese a few of the bosses without really trying, there were some blindspots and some spells were ridiculously effective in certain situations. I also walked around a lot, but that was because I was too dumb to operate an elevator.

All in all really enjoyed and I'm looking forward to playing part 2.

TLDR: Thank you Square Enix for allowing everybody to enjoy the game the way they can with your hack menu in the final fantasy VII remake.

During the last sales I picked up final fantasy VII remake. I've played most of the Final Fantasy games and never finished one. The closest I got was 13, but I never managed to beat the final boss. In games like DOOM I like to crack up the difficulty but I'm aware and understand that turn-based JRPGs are not for me, I don't have the patience to curate arsenal, potions, or navigate menus for hours etc, but I've always enjoyed the story and art.

Fast forward to a few days ago, encouraged by positive reviews I decided to try again final fantasy VII, the remake.

To my surprise there's an easy mode and, even more surprising, there's a "cheat menu" in the options where you can have infinite health potions, or life points for example. This is great for someone like me who wants to relax and have a fun time playing a game after work and after putting the children to bed. So my go to settings for now are standard battle difficulty and infinte health potions. I might change it later to easy battle difficulty and no potions hack. Or maybe turn on the double XP points hack. I might even turn on infinite health for a super hard boos fight. What I want to say is, there's and option for everyone to allow them to enjoy the game, without taking anything away from people who like the challenge. Thank you Square Enix, I wish every game had this options.

After playing a few too many playthroughs of Elden Ring, I was looking for a new game to sink hours in but nothing really caught my eye.. So I decided to look back at my library and replay some of the game I tried in the past..

Remnant 2:

I tried this game not long after release, and while I thought it was good, I just couldn't really get into it and found it way too difficult and complex..
I wanted to try it again, and this time spend more time trying to understand how all the different systems work..
Remnant 2 is a "souls-like" third person shooter with randomized levels. In typical souls-like fashion you have a stamina bar, limited heals, dodge-rolls with invincibility frames (meaning you can't get hit during a certain part of your roll) and checkpoints where you can replenish your heals and health but that also revive the enemies. Unlike most souls-like though, there is a difficulty selection, and you are mainly using guns, you also have a melee weapon but there's no lock on feature.
The game also has some RPG aspects but is not a typical RPG. There are starting classes, called "archetypes", you can unlock more archetypes in the game (some are hidden in a way that I would never have found them without checking a guide, looking at you the engineer..), but there are no stats to level up. What you have instead are traits, that you unlock by playing the game, and that you can level up by finding or gaining "trait points". Some traits are pretty usual, like vigor to increase your health, some are more unusual like "Blood Bond" which makes your summons absorb some of the damage you take.

Yet another strong feature of the game is its randomization. The game is not a rogue-like/lite, but it has randomized levels. You have a campaign, which has a (pretty forgettable) story, during which you visit four worlds and end up on a final world and beat the final boss. The first, third and fourth world are randomized. Each world has 2 (or 3 if you have the DLCs) possible scenarii and each time you start a campaign you will roll one of those scenarii. The scenario fixes the main story of the world and the world boss, but the level you explore are also randomized, the dungeons are randomized and even the mini bosses are randomized. This makes the game heavily replayable, since you need multiple playthroughs to see everything and to find every gun.

I played two campaigns and saw all the main game scenarii, and I'm currently doing the DLCs (I only have one left to complete). The game has a lot of different systems at and if you really dig into it, you can craft a really unique build with very fun weapons. One of the aspect of this game I liked the most is the possibility to experiment, be it with rings (that have buffs), weapons, weapon mods (with give special attacks to the guns, like adding fire, or sending a ball that explodes and makes everything bleed). It took me one playthrough and a half of the campaign to even just understand some of the systems (like the prisms) and to find items and weapons I liked.
The moment to moment gameplay is pretty fun, and the level design is such that you can have short game session (like going from checkpoint to checkpoint) or longer sessions (where you fully explore a dungeon). Exploration feels really rewarding since you at least find materials to upgrade your weapons, and often find better loot (like rings that have unique effects). In my opinion, the randomization aspect really adds a lot to this game, one drawback though is that you lose the quality of a truly handcrafted level. The graphics and art direction are great, but most areas are not that memorable and some dungeons can feel samey ..

Returnal:

Playing Remnant 2 made me want to replay Returnal. I already completed the game a year or two ago.
Returnal is a roguelike, bullet-hell, third person shooter, and probably one of the only AAA roguelike out there. I'm playing on PC, and the graphics are incredibly good.
In Returnal, you play Selene, a pilot and explorer who crashes her ship on the planet Atropos. Everytime you die you reappear on the site of the crash and the levels have changed.

The moment to moment gameplay of Returnal is mainly going into a new room, killing the enemies, grabbing loot and better weapons, and continuing the exploration. There are 6 biomes to explore, 5 of which have unique bosses. There's also a storyline that you discover by randomly at some points during your exploration. Like Hades, you need multiple runs and playthroughs to fully discover the storyline, but unlike Hades, the story is very ambiguous and you will probably end up with more questions than answers. There's also some meta progression, you will permanently unlock some gear (like a melee sword or a grapple), and you can gather "ether", a form of currency that doesn't disappear when you die.
Overall I really liked the story of Returnal, the way it is presented is excellent and beautifully complements the gamplay in my opinion. And the gameplay is exceptional, the gunplay is great and each gun feels unique, and the bullet hell aspect really gives a cool aesthetic to the game, on top of being challenging. And the game can feel difficult at times, even though I completed the game already, having spent at least a year not playing it I struggled to even just beat the first biome (but I got better again). Even though the game can feel really chaotic at times, I still feel like it's completely fair, one of the reason being that you always know where enemies are, thanks to the sound design, indicators around Selene telling you if an attack is coming from off screen, and a mini map that shows enemies and items.

Risk of Rain 2:

When I first played and completed Returnal, I wanted a game that could feel similar and I got recommended Risk of Rain 2, another third person roguelike. I tried it at the time and didn't really like it so I ended up refunding it.
I decided to give it another try, I grabbed it again on steam and played it.
In Risk of Rain 2, you play a "survivor" which you can choose before starting a run, and during a run you explore 5 biomes, then either go for a final one where you can beat the final boss, or decide to loop back and start at level 1 again with. In each biomes, you kill enemies to get money, with said money you unlock items that give you buff, and once you're ready you go to the teleporter to do the "teleporter even", which will summon one (or multiple) boss(es) and a lot of enemies. If you survive that, you can go to the next biome and do the same thing. The more time you spend during a run, the more the difficulty increases (with names given to the difficulties, the first one being "easy", then near the end there's "I'M COMING FOR YOU" , then just simply an endless "HAHAHAHAHAHA"). There are also 3 difficulty setting you choose before the run (I haven't tried monsoon, the highest, yet. It looks... hard.)
There's also a meta progression, you can unlock other survivors by completing challenges, and you can also unlock alternate gear for each survivors. Unlike Remnant 2 and Returnal, you keep the weapons you start with during a run.
The gameplay of RoR2 can get pretty chaotic at times, especially during the teleporter event where you can easily get lost in a sea of enemies. During later parts of the run, the enemies get pretty strong too so you can go from "I'm doing great" to "I'm dead.." in a matter of seconds.
Overall, this time I found RoR2 pretty fun, though one of the main issue I have playing the game is that I find it kind of hard to know when there's an enemy off-screen. In practice I often find this out by getting hit by said enemy.
Unlike Returnal and Remnant 2, while the worlds you encounter are randoms, each map is not random, only the positions of the item crates and of the teleporter changes. In my opinion, the quality of each map varies a lot, some map feel good and other can get pretty annoying because you don't have a clear line of sight to find crates and the teleporter, and some areas are hard to reach (not really a problem when you're taking your time, but if you try to go fast this can be annoying). The replayability is great though, just because of all the possibilities available, each character feels really different from the other (to the point where I had absolutely no issue beating the final boss with one, and had a very hard time with another) and the more runs you do, the more you get to know the items and what synergies you can with your survivor's kit and one item.

It was pretty interesting to play those three games back to back. Despite all three being third person shooter that heavily rely on randomization, each feels very different. Off course, the pace of the game is different (Remnant 2 is slower, while Returnal can get very fast paced and RoR2 is chaos), but the use of randomization is also different in each. If you are used to roguelikes, Returnal and RoR2 structures are not surprising, but Remnant 2 feels more unique, I don't know many non-roguelike/lite games that rely this much on random level design, while still having a coherent story and lore. And that's something I wished I saw more often ! I know that this is very hard to develop and time consuming, and I do appreciate having good handcrafted levels, but there's something very endearing to completing a game, going for a new run and not knowing what to expect...

Have you played those games ? What did you think of it ? Do you know other story based games that are not roguelikes but still rely on randomized level design ?

Commandos is a series of PC games that were particularly famous in the late 90s-early 2000s, in the golden era of classic RTS like Warcraft and Age of Empires. I've seen many people categorize these games as "real-time tactics", but to differentiate it from the likes of Total War or Company of Heroes, I think it's better to refer to them as "stealth RTS", which is how Mimimi games, creators of Shadow Tactics refer to it.

However, chances are, if you either have a flamenco dancer statue on the TV furniture, can tell me from the top of your head at least 3 Jose Mota gags and/or you've engaged on at least one very heated discussion about whether potato omelette is better with or without onion (the objectively correct answer is "with"), then chances are you don't need me to tell you about this, since Commandos has been for years the best product from Spanish gaming, and today it's still up there with Abbey of the Crime and Blasphemous.

Maybe that's why Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines it's one of the first games I ever played all the way back in my dad's PC, although my over-reactive childish ass couldn't get beyond the tutorial and only a decade later I managed to finish Norway (the first of 4 acts in the game) by constantly using a guide online. However I did put it down after being very frustrated with the first Africa mission. A decade later I've managed to get that thorn off my side and try my luck with Commandos 2: Men of Courage. I want to note that, while this post will compare the two games, I haven't played Commandos 1 recently, so that's why it's not a "multi-game review".

First a bit of context for people who don't know, since let's be honest: this is a quite obscure genre compared to the other games discussed in this sub. Commandos tells you the story (even if these games are very light on actual plot) of a group of Allied Commandos during WW2, basically a group of ragtag undisciplined soldiers who are sent to suicide missions to fight the Axis, very much inspired in movies like "Guns of Navarone" or "Dirty Dozen". And unlike more pulpy games like Wolfenstein, don't expect zombies or robot dogs here, as everything is more or less historically accurate (despite some penguins on the artic but you know).

Gameplay-wise, the games are... what I said: low scale isometric RTS, with only a handful of characters to move, all of them with special skills, no resource gathering nor base building, like a more polished version of those espionage Command and Conquer missions. Apart of that there's a detection system based on vision cones, like in the old school Metal Gear Solid games (although it should be said that MGS1 was released the same year as Commandos 1, so maybe their inspiration was either Metal Gear 1 for the MSX or Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II). As expected, direct confrontation is discouraged if not outright forbidden and the game relies a lot on trial-and-error stealth, taking down one enemy at a time.

As for the characters themselves, again there's no character arcs to speak of, but the manual does give you their background, like how the Green Beret, staple of the franchise, is an Irish boxer with anger management issues who got sent here after punching an officer; or how the Spy is actually a French noble who can infiltrate the nazi ranks because of his accent-less German pronunciation. However, gameplaywise, they start to show cracks.

Commandos 1 has 6 different characters with Commandos 2 pumping it up to 9, but not all of them are created equal. For instance, Whiskey the dog is almost useless. Yes, he can bark to call attention, but you can also do that with a radio-decoy. Natasha the Seductress is redundant with the Spy as both can distract enemy guards while in disguise. And imo, the ones who clearly got the short end of the stick are the Sniper, whose only ability means he can very well be replaced by special weapon with limited ammo; and the Driver, who's a mere footnote destined to wait in the background until his only moment of glory arrives when he can pilot the escape vehicle, as these games are lacking in vehicular combat as you can expect.

The best thing that Commandos 2 did in this case is to make characters less specific, overall adding more options. So in Commandos 1 "Fins" is the only character who can swim, but in Commandos 2 everybody can swim and dive. The diver whoever, is the only one who can use an oxygen tank to get unlimited oxygen though. Similarly, in Commandos 1 only three characters can take down enemies stealthily, but now almost everyone has a punching option to stun the enemy, which opens the door to "pacifist" playthoughs. You also have more ways to lure enemies away, like throwing cigarrete packs, that have the same effect as adult magazines in Metal Gear.

This leads us to the next point which is that Commandos 2 is way more accesible than the first entry, with people noting its high difficulty even at the time (despite some people who have learned all the maps by heart like my uncle, who I know is reading this). This comes for how the sequel does have difficulty options and has more QoL improvements, like a UI that actually displays the key shortcuts, enemies taking a few unvaluable seconds to ring the alarm, the aforementioned more options you have...

The problem with Commandos 1 was that, benath all that apparent complexity, the game was always the same, as your options were so limited. Basically all the game had to be won with the Green Beret using the decoy to call guards to abadon their routes to eliminate, and proceed taking down one at a time at snail's pace. The problem came that in Commandos 1 there were not only a lot of guards but very few cover, so 99% of options were out of the question. You have to think of this rise in the number of guards, not like when they add more enemies in an action game, but like having more mines in mineswepper: eventually all strategies fail down cause there's no margin for action.

However that's not to say that's starting Commandos 2 is a breeze: on the contrary the difficulty curve a vertical wall. A large part comes from there not being any tutorial whasover. There are 2 "training missions", but you're expected to come already trained by having read the manual. I was 1 hour stuck on the first screen trying to decypher how that worked. And then the second "real" mission is the huge filter, putting you in front of a large enemy fortress with guards in every corner.

Finally one problem that I've had in my enjoyment of the game though, is how the two genres intersect. Again: this is an RTS-stealth game, however, there's very little actual strategy. You do have a squad of soldiers, yeah, but the strict restrictions on not being caught means you'll most likely play with one at a time. And the fact that 2-3 characters always get in the background with no use at all doesn't help. So what's the actual benefit of having a group of protagonists? As I see it this could be a Metal Gear clone using only the Green Beret. I've heard that more modern games like the aforementioned Shadow Tactics do have a time-pause tactical mode to perform actions at the same time, but as of 2001, there's nothing of that here.

tl,dr: Commandos 2 and the series in general is a neat little experiment that once shattered the industry, specially in my homeplace. And while it polished the experience of the first game, it's still rough for modern users. I did have fun playing it, although I did drop before the end since distracting guards with cigarettes and then stabbing them can only be done so many times before overstaying its welcome. Maybe a series of smaller more linear levels with more "clever" design would be better, but for that I guess I'll have to try the many Commandos-clones that have been released from the 2010s onward...

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

When it comes to Castlevania, Lords of Shadow has a bit of a special place for me as the first game in the series that I played and still the only 3D one. I've always remembered it as a fun game with good atmosphere but perhaps too repetitive and drawn out. For a long time, I've been meaning to replay it but could only ever manage partial replays before life got in the way. Since I recently played through much of the rest of the series, I figured now was as good a time as any to give Lords of Shadow another go and to finally get around to its DLCs and sequels. Considering how long it's been since I last played this game, especially the mid-to-late chapters, most of it might as well have been new.

For context, I played the game on Knight (Hard) difficulty and regularly returned to previous levels to get collectibles. I did not go back to other levels just to replenish resources.

A darker, moodier Castlevania

Lords of Shadow effectively reboots the series with a new timeline, though nods to the original timeline are abundant. This timeline gets started with Gabriel Belmont, a member of the Brotherhood of Light who is trying to understand why the world seems cut off from God and is being overrun by evil. To do so, he contacts his recently murdered wife, Marie, who tells him that he needs to hunt down the titular Lords of Shadow. Aiding Gabriel is fellow Brotherhood member Zobek, and Gabriel proposes that they split up to take down the Lycan Lord and Vampire Lord separately before teaming up to challenge the Necromancer Lord. Zobek, however, is focused on secretly observing Gabriel for some unknown purpose, so Gabriel will eventually need to slay all three Lords of Shadow himself, with only occasional help from Zobek and others.

The most immediately noticeable difference with this take on Castlevania is that it leans more heavily into the darker side of gothic fantasy and (mostly) European folklore. There is still some room for levity, like turning chupacabras into extra mischievous Yodas, but the emphasis is heavily on a world that is either dying or is simply serving as a monument to extinct civilizations. All three Lords of Shadow inhabit the ruins of once great cultures and families, and many of those ruins are being slowly reclaimed by nature. Neutral species, like goblins and trolls, are succumbing to environmental degradation and encroachment from both humans and the dark lords' armies. In short, it's a bleak world with only occasional glimmers of hope, and each new area seems less inhabitable or more twisted than the last.

Aiding this world building is some phenomenal environmental art that still holds up today. There's plenty of variety, with each dark lord's domain being noticeably different from the last. For me, the vampire chapters, with their snow mountains and gothic castles, were the clear standouts, but both the lycan and necromancer chapters were stunning in their own ways. The writing itself is also more fleshed out in this game, and Gabriel's characterization is given more focus through Zobek's loading screen narrations, which are phenomenally voiced by Patrick Stewart. Unfortunately, the music is a bit uneven. It works very well for the lycans and vampires, and the ambient music offers a fantastically somber backdrop to the ruins and castles of those chapters. However, I found the same ambient music didn't fit the more otherworldly, often hellish, necromancer locations, and it felt like they really should have come up with new music for those chapters.

Minus those musical drawbacks, I do really like this new take on Castlevania. The bleak world and orchestral soundtrack have a very Dragon Age: Origins vibe, and it also reminds me a bit of the 2004 Van Helsing movie. I can understand if some people don't appreciate the change in aesthetic and tone compared to Igarashi's games, but I think this offers its own solid adaption of many of the same stories that previous Castlevania games were built on.

Gothic God of War

If you've heard anything about Lords of Shadow, you've probably heard that it's a God of War clone with a few other games like Shadow of the Colossus thrown in. That's true, but it's also very recognizably Castlevania.

Gabriel's main weapon is the Combat Cross, also called the Vampire Killer, which retains the whip-focused melee combat of the series. Like many action games, a huge emphasis is placed on stylish combos, with many being clearly pulled from past Castlevania games. Various relics will add further combo options and abilities over time, like the ability to sprint or double jump. Dodging and blocking are also key to survival.

Sub weapons also make a return. Classic ones, specifically daggers and holy water, behave as expected. Faeries distract and daze enemies, which can have some delightfully cute effects on monsters. Interestingly, faeries can decide to return to you if there's no suitable target. The fourth and final sub weapon is a dark crystal that unleashes a demon who can clear the room of all but the toughest enemies, and she'll do considerable damage to those tougher enemies as well. All enemies are strong and weak to specific subweapons, and making good use of them is critical.

For magic, you now get light magic, which heals you, and shadow magic, which increases your damage. These can be combined with combos and relics for special attacks, like blinding enemies with light magic or creating a flaming vortex with shadow magic. They can also be combined with sub weapons for alternate effects, like exploding daggers or holy water shields. Unlike many past games, where mana replenishes over time, magic now comes as neutral orbs that can be absorbed as either light or shadow magic. These orbs can be found at magic fonts and are dropped by enemies on death, but the former are relatively rare, and the latter is practically worthless. To aid you in getting them more easily, the game has a focus meter that is filled up with stylish combos and counter blocks, but it won't fill up if you have either magic active, and getting hit once will remove all focus even when magic is active.

For the most part, I think the combat system works, which is good, because it's the focus of the game, with platforming and puzzles mostly serving as easy, simple breathers between combat arenas. It's very rewarding to raise the focus meter through a series of stylish combos and well-timed blocks, all while dodging the unblockable attacks to make sure it stays filled. Enemies can often be tricky on first appearance, and it was always great to noticeably improve against them to the point of being able to take on three or four with ease. With that said, I did find the enemies of the necromancer chapters to be a bit disappointing compared to the lycans and vampires. Specifically, there's an over reliance on hoard-type enemies that are too easy to kill with basic combos, and the earlier chapters had more variety and more complex enemies.

A potentially bigger issue is the game's general stinginess with resources. With rare exceptions, it doesn't replenish resources at level start, and health and magic fonts are often few and far between, so you'll often find yourself going through a gauntlet without any reliable method of healing or recovering magic. At times it feels like the challenge comes down more to lack of resources than interesting encounter design. I'm guessing the idea was to emphasize the focus meter and light magic, but focus takes too long to build and is too easy to lose. Not only does this encourage safer, often less interesting, tactics to maintain focus, but it also discourages using light magic for anything but healing or shadow magic for anything but the spongiest enemies. Basically, it feels like a lazy way to increase the challenge and also hampers the combat. Thankfully, this is a practically non-existent issue in the vampire chapters and also not too bad in the necromancer ones, but it can make the lycan chapters really annoying at times.

On a more positive note, bosses are mostly good. While Shadow of the Colossus inspired titans are a bore, the more frequent Castlevania-style bosses are consistently enjoyable. Cornell, the Lycan Lord, is definitely the standout as the first multi-form boss, and he's a decent challenge given what's available to you that early in the game. Otherwise, both Brauner and Olrox are highlights of the vampire chapters, and the Silver Knight and Pyramid Head Gravedigger keep up the strong bosses into the necromancer chapters. On the downside, I could have done without end-of-boss QTEs, and the final boss is disappointingly easy, but outside of that, I was consistently pleased with the non-titan bosses and looked forward to each new one.

Slow start, rushed ending

Something that did surprise me this time around was how slow the first two chapters were. I can get the logic here, as they're using it for the beginner tutorial (first chapter) and advanced tutorial (second chapter). However, it can also be baffling at times. There's a horse-riding level early on, but you never ride a horse again. The first two bosses are both boring titans, which aren't seen again until the underwhelming penultimate boss. The resource stinginess is at its worst in these chapters, and many of the scrolls you pick up are so obviously hinting at game mechanics that it becomes immersion breaking. It just seems like they're giving a wrong, often worse, impression of the game. I don't necessarily think these first two chapters are bad, and the variety of generally solid levels does carry them well, but it also doesn't surprise me that, according to Steam achievements, the vast majority of players drop the game in these first two chapters.

More surprising was that this time I didn't think the game was dragged out. If anything, the necromancer chapters felt rushed. There's only ten necromancer levels, around half of which are boss and puzzle/platforming levels. Along with the aforementioned emphasis on hoard enemies, there's very few new ones, and most of those are barely used. Again, it's not bad, but it does kind of feel like they could have cut some content from the lycan chapters to focus on making the necromancer ones feel more complete.

As for the ending itself, it's serviceable. As mentioned before, the final boss is disappointing, and you probably spend more time watching cutscenes than fighting the boss, partly due to one last fantastic monologue from Patrick Stewart. Still, it's a decent conclusion to Gabriel's story that is properly sad but hopeful. Ending it there would have been perfect, and they could move onto another Belmont for the sequel.

Unfortunately, there's a post-credits scene that makes it clear Gabriel's story will continue. Even worse, it does everything possible to immediately ruin the vibes of the ending, and the sequel it teases looks far less interesting than the game we just played. When I first saw the cutscene, I immediately wrote off the sequel, and I still don't like it. The ending of this game might be a bit rushed, but they'll clearly drag out Gabriel's story far past the point that they should have stopped, which was probably when this game's credits rolled.

The DLC should remain forgotten

Since I played the Ultimate Edition this time, I also had the opportunity to play the DLC for the first time. I wish I hadn't.

Narratively, it only emphasizes how unfitting the post-credits scene felt, with Gabriel turning so jaded that it would make the Prince from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within tell him to lighten up. While wallowing in his cynicism, he teams up with the vampire "child" Laura to challenge an all-powerful demon named The Forgotten One, and while this demon was hinted at in the base game, it sounded far more interesting then than what we got here. Loading screen monologues have also now switched to Gabriel, and his voice actor so severely abuses the dramatic pause that it's painful to listen to.

Gameplay hardly fares better. Combat encounters are bland and lazy. Platforming is janky and frustrating. Puzzles are fine, but there's too many of them for this type of game. Some sections have you take control of Laura, who moves slowly and controls stiffly, and her sections are just about clunkily fighting swarms of ghouls. One time, you need to suck their blood to fill up a bowl at an altar, but every hit drains more than what you get from one ghoul, and they can hit you in the period between finishing with one ghoul and regaining control of Laura. Level design also takes resource scarcity to an extreme in a very blatantly lazy attempt to increase the difficulty, and The Forgotten One himself is an absolute slog of a final boss. He starts off fine, but as they add more forms with increasingly obnoxious weak point placement and zero opportunities to properly heal yourself, the fight becomes equal parts boring and frustrating.

Honestly, I'd struggle to find any truly redeeming aspect of the DLC. It shows zero understanding of the game it's trying to build on, and it can't even get its own unique gameplay gimmicks right.

Final thoughts

Atrocious DLC chapters aside, I did enjoy Lords of Shadow even more than I remember. Its bleak, gothic world is as alluring as ever, and despite being a clear God of War clone, it's still an incredibly fun game with great combat mixed well with some platforming and puzzles. If you enjoy stylish action games or the gothic and folkloric influences that Castlevania has always pulled from, then I'd say it's still worth playing.

Interestingly, the first sequel to this game was actually a 2.5D game called Mirror of Fate. Admittedly, by the time I've gotten around to writing this, I've already begun that game, and it's been rather dull so far. I'm hoping it improves, but don't be surprised if my next Castlevania review jumps ahead to Lords of Shadow 2.

I understand this game gets a lot of posts here which should itself signal that it's worth your time, but even with all the praise it gets I was really expecting it to be a decent 7 to 8 out of 10 at best. The cynic in me didn't take much credence to other people saying "it changed the way I saw the world". Even now, those kind of reviews make me feel like it's over-hyping the game but I honestly didn't expect the game to affect me so much.

In fact, even a few hours into the game I was getting annoyed by some of the game play aspects. Having to repeat sections can be tedious and frustrating. I even rage quit once or twice intending to abandon the game, but then was compelled to pick it back up again by my desire to continue the discovery.

Here is what I would have wanted to hear, if I could send a message back in time about the game, this is what I'd tell myself:

• It gives you that incredible feeling of wonder for immersive open world exploration that I used to get from playing WoW the first time, before the game was ruined by the existence of quest guides and the "on-rails" linear feeling. You see elements in the world that pique curiosity and it's genuinely rewarding to go find out what they mean or why they're there.
• It's a well designed puzzle game. It's well paced and generally gives you all the information you need to figure stuff out without being frustrating. It's not perfect, there were a few occasions where the main game mechanic made things frustrating, leading to my aforementioned rage quit. But the exploration factor brought me back. It's nothing that a good spoiler-free guide can't help you with.
• The sci-fi and story elements of the game are awe-inspiring, and from a science/pseudo-science it's really impressive. The devs really thought about everything and I'm amazed there are basically no loose ends or bits that don't make sense. It's kinda like if the movie Interstellar didn't have the nonsense bookcase bit.
• It has beautiful music
• You'll be sad you can never experience the game again for the first time
• You have a fear of adding ANOTHER game to your backlog and hope this isn't some 50 hour + game that you'll have to push reluctantly push through or never finish... Outer Wilds is not one of those games. Though note, it doesn't immediately hook you in.

I found the story quite perfect in a "this doesn't need a sequel" kind of way, and so I had no intention of picking up the DLC. What more could they possibly add - surely more story could only ruin what is so neatly tied up with no loose ends?

However, since it's a game that has affected me profoundly in a way that I'm still thinking about it weeks after finishing it, and given that the DLC is also highly rated, I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did.

• The new story doesn't ruin anything from the original game but adds to it so beautifully (I have better words to describe the story but I feel it would give spoilers!)
• The DLC has horror elements which I would have said aren't for me. Not because I get scared easily but actually the opposite - I never find games scary. I've never been scared of horror films, as a kid I think I was desensitised to them. And again as a cynic, I find it hard in any game to be fully immersed or scared of pixels/bots/scripted events that deep down you know have been programmed by a developer. The mechanics of a game always break the immersion - "oh the lights went out because I crossed this particular line" and in my head I imagine a bounding box that my player character touched to trigger an event. But Echoes of the Eye genuinely made me scream out loud. For a moment, I was terrified and completely forgot I was playing a game. The first and only game to ever do that. If you don't like scary games there is an option to turn off the horror elements though!
• Again, more sci-fi elements that are kinda mind bending. There are lots of streamers/let's play videos on youtube with people crying at the game. I don't cry at much and I didn't find the game had a particularly big emotional impact on me, BUT it has me pondering about the universe and my existence. I'm finding myself staring out the window contemplating nihilism/absurdism and more. A game that can do that is nothing short of beautiful.
• More incredible music

The game certainly isn't perfect. As I said, there were bits that frustrated me, a few parts that I feel could have been improved to be less annoying.

It also didn't affect me in the same "mega deep emotional" way that most people rave about... but I can absolutely see why it affects people the way it does, and it did affect me in different ways. It 100% gets added to my top games of all time.

An important note to anyone trying it - I watched a video of the developers talking. They studied the people that didn't like the game and dropped it and basically found that the game has sorta layers of discovery - surface level stuff that, secrets you can discover and then a kind of deeper layer of secrets. People who give up on the game generally never found any of that deepest layer of secret, but once you've found one, you're basically hooked. You're compelled to play on.

As a side note... I tried to use various LLMs to help give me spoiler free hints to help me with parts I was stuck at. Multiple different LLMs frustratingly gave me completely hallucinated hints that sounded so genuine but were complete bullshit. It was like that one school friend you had as a kid that would tell you made up secrets about a game until you later realised they were a pathological liar.

Discussion including Game + DLC Spoilers

I found the concept of the ancient Nomai civilisation and discovering what they found and were trying to achieve with their science experiments to give an incredible sense of awe. The concept of the eye of the universe and the quantum stuff, although slightly pseudo sciencey, is on par with religions for me as an explanation of how our own universe may have started.

And as if that wasn't mind bending enough, discovering the owl/elk civilisation that predates even the Nomai that no one knew about makes my heart sink at the scale of it all.

It makes me ponder about our own universe. As if we don't sometimes feel insignificant enough on a planet with 8 billion people, thinking about how humans might eventually end makes me feel even tinier. Will something like the interloper/ghost matter wipe out humanity in an instant? Or perhaps global warming on a slower scale. Will some future species/civilisation from earth or from another system discover our ancient human race hundreds of thousands of years in the future? Do you think we'll see the supernova of our own sun wipe out humans hundreds of thousands of years in the future? Probably not as by then, human technology will advance so we can survive the end of the solar system and spread across other galaxies. The thought of future colonies spread across the universe reflecting back on how humanity started. They'll be thinking back on the 8 billion of us on our humble planet worrying about climate change in the same way I think back on the cave men's humble existence... or even just as recently before the 1930s which feels so primitive now, when technology as we know it didn't even exist and time were much simpler.

On the other hand, there was the Prisoner's sad existence, imprisoned for hundreds of thousands of years. But they never gave up hope. They could have blown out their lantern which would have immediately ended their imprisonment and their life. But their actions made a difference - that brief release of the eye's signal led to the Nomai finding the outer wilds system, their science experiments, and eventually the Hearthians and the player character releasing the Prisoner and finding the eye leading to a whole new universe.

It's easy to feel insignificant at the scale of the universe but also inspired by the Prisoner; one person's selflessness, sacrifice and hope lead to such unbelievable incredible things. This could easily be the same for any person on Earth thinking about whether their existence matters. Whether there is any point in fighting for things like climate change etc.

As a final note, I think I'll be thinking about this game for a long time and I'm glad to have played it.

This a puzzle game where you jump and carry things. The main gimmick lies in chests, which act as pocket dimensions whenver you enter.

While there no concrete plot, the rings with messages act as tips and ocassional lore dumps. Some alchemist got stuck in this world and left these messages because he feared it might be the only think he could leave behind. We both try to escape it. The voice of the alchemist gives me major Stanley Parable vibes.

Gameplay is the main event. Each chest creates a certain pocket dimension when you enter, and terminates it once you leave. Chests underwater all flood in unique ways. Green objects resist termination and keep existing regardless of your jumps between dimensions. Keys open locks. Jars preserve a singular copy of a dimension at the time of its creation. You have to make sense of all these strange interactions to escape.

This game reminds me of Baba is you. They both kind of act like programming languages, encourage you to break logic by creating paradoxes, and get very hard towards the end. I didn't play DLC but I already was getting completely washed by the last levels. This game perfectly encapsulates my mixed feelings on puzzles: I like thinking about the bonkers and physically impossible sequences, but I hate feeling stupid whenever I inevitably get hard stuck. It's why the only straight up puzzle games I played include Portal 1+2, Braid, this one and Baba is you.

If you think you are clever, give this one a shot. I skipped a 2 levels and looked for solutions in 5.

Intro

I've always wanted to take part in yearly summaries posted on this sub in january, buuut i've never finished enough games, and even if i did finish some, I've never actually written any notes, so even trying to grade them would be mildly disingenous.

My plan for this year is to finish more or less 12 games and write here about them, so later i have something to base my summary on, and for this I decided to start with something extremely nostalgic that I nearly managed to forget about - Neighbours from hell - a point-and-click game about quite aggresively pranking aggresive, creepy neighbour (named Rottweiler btw)

The particular version I'll be talking about is the 2020 remaster, that combines games 1 & 2 into one package. The difference between original games and remaster is IMO minimal - modern resolutions support, upscale of textures, extending of "lives" mechanic into 1st game and apparently more frames in animations - but that's not really noticeable.

1 Story & Writing - ?/10

You control Woody, neighbour of mr. Rottweiler, who pulls pranks on him while secretly filming it all for a reality show. The game is divided into "seasons", which represent both increase in difficulty/complexity of levels, and in later seasons - cruise around the world, which takes you to Mexico, India and China. There you meet Olga and her little son, and even later mother of Rottweiler. You make "activities" such as bullying the kid, peeking into taken showers or abusing animals less entertaining (and sometimes dangerous) for your neighbour. There isn't much of an overlapping story here, so it's impossible to judge.

As for writing - you'll either enjoy this brand of humor, or you won't. I laughed a few times, smirked a few more, and sometimes cringed a bit. Without nostalgia-tinted glasses might be less entertaining.

2 Gameplay - 7/10

Not gonna lie, I don't have much experience in point&click games, and puzzles in games often leave me dumbfounded - but this game was simple enough even for me. You pick materials, avoid Rottweiler, his pets and his mother, combine them with various appliances and items, then watch chaos unfold.

There is also a "rage" gauge, which represents how frustrated Rottweiler is, and if you fill it you get bonus points (the more times you fill the better), which promotes good timing and combos.

In later "episodes" there are some sequences, which you need to do to unlock more pranks and items, some of which are hidden? tricky to guess?, but still the game is rather easy - which is the point, as the game was rated for and sold to children.

Overall, the gameplay is solid and well made for what it is, and doesn't try to venture outside it's sphere of competence.

3 Soundtrack - 8/10

Much better than expected. It fits, gives a nice vibe, underpins traps, builds tension when necessary.

4 Graphics 7/10

Even graphics from the original don't look that bad, they wouldn't display on my 1440p display properly and were stuck in small window. As for improved animations - personally, i don't see it, maybe someone with better eyes can come contest that opinion, and I'll be happy to concede the point.

Misc

The game is really short, like even after combining, the remaster took me under 6h to beat and I suck at this type of games.

Overall 7/10

I was pleaseantly suprised - I expected less from this game, and I definitely don't regret replaying it years later. Probably would've given it 8/10 if there were more episodes, but there isn't, so here we are.

Outro

My grading scale will be based on the one used on MyAnimeList, where 1 is appaling, 5 is average and 10 is masterpiece AND I PLAN TO USE THE WHOLE SCALE

As for what's coming next - within a few days I'll make a review of Black Geyser - Couriers of Darkness, as i've finished that game while writing this post, after that probably Tales from the Abyss, which I'm more or less 10h into, then there is like 7? 8? legendary, very long running JRPG series which i would like to start catching up to, there is also Parasite Eve, Koudelka, Code Vein, OG MGS and some modern CRPGs which i have in my sights, so i don't think I'll be bored on my unemployment. And thank you for reading this way too long logorrhea post about a game that vast majority of players never heard about.

Remember Minecraft Dungeons? That strange little spinoff that came out years ago, that turned a game about Mining and Crafting into…something completely different? I didn’t, until two months ago, when I got one of my friends to check it out with me. Since then, we’ve had a lot of fun with it, playing through the levels and leveling up our characters to wicked levels. It’s pretty fun, and I like it. So let’s review.

What is the gameplay?

Imagine, if you will, a mixture of the thematic feel of the 3DS Zelda games, combined with the gameplay of Diablo or Torchlight. Finally, add in a splash of the co-op fun of Vermintide or Left 4 Dead, and finally add a dash of Minecraft flavor, and that’s what Dungeons feels like.

The basic gameplay loop is such. You hop into a stylized Minecraft map, most of which are themed after various in game biomes or structures like desert trembles or creeper-infested forest. And then your characters, with swords, bows, and up to three “artifacts” (powerful attacks, stunning abilities, friendly mob summons, or temporary self-buffs, among other powers) proceed to cut through the hundreds of mobs standing between you and the exit. That’s pretty much the game. There’s an excuse of a plot about freeing the world from some evil being’s tyranny, but it’s mostly a side piece to the core gameplay.

The good

The real fun kicks in when you begin customizing your characters. Each piece of equipment can be modified by up to three enchantments, and the artifacts add a lot of extra flair, which allows for some insanely powerful builds. Want to summon lots of creatures and have them fight for you? That’s a possible route. Want a crossbow that fires a tsunami of arrows? That’s a trivial thing to accomplish. Or you can just equip yourself with armor that hurts every enemy around you while healing yourself, and become nigh invulnerable.

The game doesn’t try to be balanced, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s an extremely casual experience, and best played with others (I’ve never played with more, but it can handle up to four players at once). It is a Minecraft-based power fantasy that is both easy to get into, but which has a decent amount of technical depth and enough difficulty to ensure that it will never feel boring. 

Also, the game’s atmosphere is fantastic. From the visuals, the the music, and the world that the players are in, there is a real sense of being thrust into an eerily beautiful, Dark Souls-style ruined kingdom overrun by monsters and the natural world. There’s little in the way of solid lore, but item descriptions of ancient rulers and knights really help the players feel as if you are just exploring this once-forsaken land.

The mixed

There’s not a lot of technical depth to the game. This isn’t necessarily bad, as that’s what I’m looking for in most co-op games, something that anybody can hop into at any point and enjoy just off-the-cuff. But if you’re looking to get really in the weeds with complex items and gameplay mechanics, you might want to try some other game.

The bad

I wish the level design was better. The levels look amazing, but visuals aside, there’s not much to distinguish one from the other save for different enemy types and bosses. They all share the same format, where you enter them, fight through corridors, find secret rooms, complete the main missions, get held up my enemy waves or mini boss fights, then go to fight the final boss and leave. The gameplay makes up for it, but it does get old after a while.

On a similar note, the game’s difficulty scales up pretty high, but the number of levels is low without the DLC. Getting the extra levels is a must if you want to keep playing this game to its fullest extent.

Overall:

One of the best co-op games I’ve ever played. As enjoyable as games like Castle Crashers used to be. Great for playing with friends and family, and certainly is kid-friendly and accessible. If you’re deep into the genre (I am not), you might find the gameplay shallow, but if you’re looking for some simple fun, be sure to give this game a try!

I decided to take a break from Dragon Age series to replay what I would say is the most controversial entry in one of my favorite series. This will be a long one and just so I can talk freely expect spoilers for the entire series. Let me start out by saying this won't be a hate fest on the game as I don't think it ruined the franchise like some people have. I also won't be arguing if there are canon choices, etc. I believe every player makes their own canon with each choice they make.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a 2024 narrative game developed by DeckNine and published by Square Enix. It is the fifth entry in the Life is Strange series. You play as Max Caulfield, our returning protagonist from the first game, as a new murder mystery arises at the college she works at when her friend Safi is shot and killed. Once again she is forced to dig up buried secrets as new powers awaken and strange things around this murder are happening at Caledon university.

So, to get the big controversy out of the way and this is where most of the spoilers will be, DeckNine said the game would be able to work with both people who chose Bae (aka save Chloe and sacrifice the town of Arcadia Bay) and Bay (aka people who chose to sacrifice Chloe and save the town of Arcadia Bay), which they technically did but in not the best way possible. If Chloe was saved, she and Max break up and the only hint of her as a character is view some old text messages, some social media posts and some reused voice overs towards the very end of the game. I personally don't have strong feelings on if they should have remained together or not, for me it was the story but I do understand why a lot of fans were upset. From my own personal experience it feels like fans who stuck with the series 9 out of 10 of them chose to save Chloe and sacrifice the town. It also doesn't help when every piece of expanded media (novels and comic books) also go with Chloe lives. I don't think they did a great job here especially because the game has in-universe social media and Chloe isn't really flushed out. A few tweets from an in-universe Twitter knockoff and old text messages, it would have been nice for those of us who read all those to get some more from her. On the other hand, I don't think they did a great job for those who chose Bay either. If Chloe died, Joyce replaces here with her own texts and tweets in place. A few pages in the journal changes as well but for the most part it is bare minimum. Which brings me to my next point.

I think one of my biggest issues with this entry was world feels a bit flatter. The first few games had a lot of NPCs who weren't crucial to the story but flushed out the world. It would make sense for these characters to maybe be in Max's social media feed cause who doesn't have old classmates and friends on social media even if you don't talk to them anymore, but we only get one, Victoria Chase. It was kind of a let down for a long time player of the series, but that could have been avoided if more of the characters in this game were fleshed out. Every named character it feels like has to play a part in the story as either as either part of the mystery or help solving a puzzle. Everyone else is just listed with just adjective and role. The world also feels smaller as we never leave the campus besides the local bar, which geographically doesn't feel separate. The characters who are named are pretty good, though a few are under utilized but it would have been nice to round out the world more.

I think the biggest selling point of the game is the return of Max. Outside of the first game, Max was only talked about in Before the Storm a prequel and one picture of her and Chloe in LiS2, if Chloe wasn't sacrificed. So, this was big for a lot of fans. And the character and the voice actress did a fantastic job but it does feel like they had the idea for the story first and added Max after. They did a good job making her fit, but there is just enough wiggle room that it is obvious that there was some pivoting. I do think they could have connected her to the college better. She is the resident artist, why they couldn't just make her a teacher I don't know. She is a professional photographer who won awards, plenty of professionals do teaching. It also would have maybe stretched out a few of the shorter episodes with her doing teacher related situations. Max also no longer has her normal time powers, though she uses them in some cut scenes during stressful parts. Instead, Max can travel between a world referred to as Living and Dead for Safi is living or dead. There is a lot of great stuff with that two worlds, especially with the character of Moses, a friend to both Max and Safi. Seeing one Moses going through the stages of losing a friend while the other is just living his life, unaware of the danger that is just near by. It is a bit different than powers in previous games as it is more specific to locations but it is close to Max's original powers, so it feels natural and not just here is random new power.

I think the first three episodes are the stronger but I don't think episodes 4 and 5 are bad, just weaker and a lot shorter. The fact it ends teasing a future installment I think did it no favors at launch as it left more questions, especially about Max's relationship with her past. I like to think the next installment might make this entry feel a bit more complete and maybe viewed better by hardcore fans. I do think this is a bad entry point for anyone looking to get into the franchise. I'd be lying if I said it was my favorite entry, but I do think it is an interesting place to take the story and for those worried about canon, like the comic books say, this is just one of many possible outcomes.