Report #67

A small free game about matching sounds with different objects. Made with a lot of love, really nice little game.

A free VN about a small village in the Netherlands and its dark past. Soundtrack is great, the story is okay, but some smaller things bugged me. I think the language was way too convoluted or as a Steam review put it: "The author should have put the thesaurus down from time to time."

Another free VN. 14 people are trapped in a time anomaly, doomed to relive the same day again and again. You try to break the circle by solving smaller riddles and interacting with the different characters.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy the game at all. Neither the graphical nor the musical representation were to my liking. The background stories of the different characters were really fleshed out, alas to a point where I did not bother reading everything anymore. And it takes forever. I can see some people enjoying this game, I did not however.

Age of Mythology is the last of the classic Microsoft RTS games I had not finished (not counting remasters and stuff). It's basically an Age of Empires with mythical units added to it. Think Minotaurs, Centaurs and so on. Those added an interesting new side to the gameplay and I greatly enjoyed the variety of different units. Every faction plays much more different in Age of Mythology than in the classic Age of Empires, another nice change of pace. And last but not least, the campaigns…those were really really good, had a lot of different ideas incorporated and told a rich and convincing story (well at least for an RTS!). Whilst Age of Mythology cannot hide the fact that it's an old game missing some Quality of Life features, I had a great time with it and really enjoyed playing it. In case you care about achievements: Those are really grindy and boring, but doable.

Fallout 3 changed a lot compared to previous Fallout games. Some people hated it, some loved it. I'm in the middle. Fallout 3 is a mix between Shooter and RPG. It offers a great open world with tons of stuff to discover, a lot of quests to solve and colorful characters in typical Fallout fashion. Adding in the expansions, this is even more true. Overall I enjoyed the game, but it has its flaws. I'm sure a lot of people have written about it better than I could, so to keep it brief: Mixing Shooter and RPG leads to some unsatisfying results. Gunplay is not good enough for a Shooter, the story is not good enough for a RPG.

But the real kicker in my eyes? Fallout 3 was released around the same time as the first Mass Effect and Dragon Age. And compared to those two games, Fallout 3 looses out in every aspect -- technical, visually, soundtrack, story, gameplay, you name it. Hence only an average rating for Fallout 3 in my book.

Figment was free as a promotion for the sequel. Cheap as I am, I of course could not resist getting the game despite it not looking like something I usually enjoy playing. Boy, was I in for a pleasant surprise! The game is great! The artistic realization is stunning. The graphical art style is really cute and has great ideas incorporated in the world building. The soundtrack is even better and each enemy has kind of an own theme song. The gameplay itself is nice as well. I was really impressed by the game. I can only recommend playing it.