Despite having 70 hours played I'd never finished the story. My playthrough 6 years ago ended in Old World Blues of all the DLCs which turned out to be my favourite with the hilarious dialogue, and Muggy, the robot with the obsession for mugs. So enough time had passed for me to want to do a proper replay and actually reach the end, and despite redoing a lot of what I'd already done, like with Skyrim I enjoyed it just as much, and it adds a bit of excitement when you reach a part you especially enjoyed first time. It's as good as I remembered, the amount of choice is especially impressive, so many ways to do quests, your skills are always useful in someway and picking traits is such a tough task with so many useful ones available, all the different endings too with which faction to side, it just remains unmatched for me and deserves its reputation as one of the best RPGs, I'm looking forward to Obsidan's Outer Worlds to see if they've kept that standard.

Like seeing the Washington Monument from pretty much anywhere in FO3, seeing New Vegas lit up at night while you're out wandering the Mojave desert is special. It's a shame the Strip itself is disappointing but given the apparent technical limitations at the time that's forgivable. I used several graphical improvement mods, as well as an enb, which was definitely worth all that time installing, but maybe not for the crashes I had, I've got used to quick saving by now so I never really lost any progress but still it was a constant nuisance. The biggest negative I have is not with the game but one of the DLCs, Dead Money, it is genuinely one of my most hated experiences and replaying it didn't change that opinion, I disliked everything about it! I know Fallout 4 has its problems but it'll be good to finally play it having now beaten 3 and NV.

Wow what a game! It's rare for me to buy games so close to their release date but everything about it felt like something I had to play as soon as possible. The story telling is fantastic, it's full of emotional moments, tension, surprise, disgust, shock, and innocence. It does so much so well. In case you're afraid it's a 10-15 hour experience of hand holding and running away, it varies it up with levels where you're alone, or you're accompanied with someone else who has their own tricks up their sleeve to help you. It's mostly a stealth game with puzzle elements, as you have sections where you need to sneak past guards, using standard techniques like patrol movement watching and using items to create distractions, and more fast chased chase sequences, with the fantastic soundtrack complimenting the feelings of dread and urgency. From the very first chapter it's clear it's going to be a difficult journey, one that isn't afraid of making you uncomfortable, and it stays that way throughout, a lot of what I saw stuck with me after playing, some scenes made me nauseous. The star of the show, the rats, are incredibly unsettling, there's so many that fill your screen, the sheer number of them scurrying around, trying to get at you with a beam of light being your only protection is simply horrible, it's easy to relate to the fear your character feels after seeing what these rats do to people.

It also acts as a reminder I really need to play The Last of Us, given some of its similarities. The survival side is there with the feeling of always being outnumbered, limited resources that have to be scavenged, and the crafting to improve your equipment and weapon, the sling. Unfortunately it's the sling that I probably have the most problem with, it's way too overpowered even before you've upgraded it, it's easy to simply take out every guard and remove the challenge of sneaking by. I was going for all the achievements and found myself in situations where stealth didn't feel like an option to get myself to a place where this collectable was located, so I had to resort to killing, which didn't feel right for the character you play as. The patrol paths are incredibly basic compared with other stealth titles I've played, often they stand still facing away from you that never felt realistic, I guess they're just there as backup if you alert them, but the stealth definitely felt weak. But despite this, I wouldn't say it was too much of a negative, these sections didn't make up the whole game, they just could have been improved.

I don't think I've used photo mode so much when it's been an option, so many locations you visit are beautiful to look at, the sections where you're free to move around with no apparent threats are great just to take it all in slowly, there's so much detail to be admired. In these moments you're often accompanied by your younger brother, Hugo, who runs off, providing observations on things of note you pass, or wanting to put a flower in your hair. He's definitely more endearing than just being a burden on the player, which is a sign of a good game where they have to create these relationships from scratch. I'd strongly recommend Plague Tale, one of the best story games I've played, the atmosphere of it in particular deserves the highest praise.

I had a lot of fun with this for the most part. The sense of progression after getting stripped of your powers at the start, to being fully restored by the end was great, the abilities you gain allow you to reach areas that were previously inaccessible, and I liked the backtracking in this case going back to collect everything I couldn't do earlier, it's also a nice touch having the upgrades being actual visual additions to your equipment too. There's some platforming challenges which were a nice break from the combat, I think I preferred this to DMC as the only other in the genre I'd played at this point, which always felt like you had too many options to pick from in comparison to Darksiders where you can get comfortable using a few skills and didn't feel overly complicated. I thought playing as one of the four horsemen was interesting as something different, acting as this neutral in a war between angels and demons, with Earth as the battleground. When you return years later, as you're trying to work out how the war broke out, destruction is everywhere, and makes for some nice environments going through fallen skyscrapers and flooded ruins.

But there were two areas in particular I really didn't enjoy, one being a tedious section where you need to avoid this unkillable sand worm protecting where you need to go, and you have to trudge through the sand at walking pace and hope you've given yourself enough time to get past. The other was when I reached the Black Tower near the end, you're given this portal power to direct beams to a central chamber, solving mini puzzles along the way to create paths. It went on way too long, and required the same golem to be beaten three times with little variance, the enemy ambushes were the hardest yet and caused more trouble than most boss fights with certain enemies I grew to hate, like the wraiths, just making me groan when I got trapped in to fight, I was playing on the hardest difficulty but until this point hadn't been having any problems. These gauntlets provided the wonderful example of giving up in frustration, then beating them first time on my next attempt the day later. It's a tricky one to rate as I really disliked those two mentioned areas, but as a whole had a positive experience, the boss fights in particular were a highlight, and the execution moves you do were always satisfyingly brutal.

I've never played a game where a spider with a French accent sings to me while I have to dodge her brethren kamikaze themselves by dropping from the sky. It's an interesting game with creative levels representing different areas of the mind. As the minds courage you've grown weary and tired as you've not been needed, when a new threat emerges you need to stop sipping cocktails and fight these fears. I thought the main character and his sidekick were great, she acts as the perfect counter to your grumpiness, I don't think I've played a game with so many puns in the dialogue either. The puzzles and combat aren't designed to be challenging, and it's fine playing something that's just a nice gentle experience, the amount of battery retrieval to power things up was a bit repetitive though. The achievements were simple, there's one which encourages you to knock on every door you come across, which was often amusing not knowing what to expect.

Just a short update on the Heritages Puzzle Park, I saw they'd released this which I had to buy as they've never disappointed me. I think the new artworks they've released in these DLCs show a noticeable improvement to the ones in the base game back when it came out, I'm excited to see what they've put together in the sequel. There's about 2 hours of additional puzzles with the hardest ones with the most pieces taking me about 15 minutes, but thankfully there isn't a ticking clock as I always play these to relax and take no rush at all trying to finish them, I'd recommend it as a break from more intense games.

Pinstripe has been on my radar since seeing some of its screenshots when it got released, the art style is great and immediately made me interested in it. The creepiness level may have put me off if the game looked differently, but it was just the right level to put me on edge, while not scaring me away! Mr Pinstripe, his voice especially... it's done very well to make him sinister and make every encounter unnerving from your first meeting on the train. The visuals and voice acting are definitely its biggest strengths. The basic 2D platforming is alright, puzzles are there, backtracking is necessary to get enough currency to progress later on, and I wasn't a fan of locking off certain rooms unless you were on your second playthrough to see everything. Unfortunately the achievements glitched for me and none were unlocked despite being positive I should have got the Sherlock one at the very least, but looking at what's required for the 100% I'm glad as it didn't feel like one I'd want to replay despite the locked rooms. I'd give it a 3.5/5 overall, but feel it deserves to here rather than below.

With the announcement the developers are working on Planet Zoo I had to play this having been meaning to for a while anyway, to check out their park management style in preparation. Before the era of Football Manager and MMOs, I played so much Zoo Tycoon 2 it must be one of my most played games if the numbers were tracked on Steam. I just loved it, creating these habitats for a huge range of species, keeping them happy with company, making sure their needs are met with the right housing and food, then hopping into first person mode to interact with them and walking around your zoo, it was absolutely fantastic, I'm more excited than I have been for a while for a good modern Zoo Tycoon, also have my eye on the Jurassic Park game although I'd rather wait for all the dinosaurs to be released instead of getting a complete package that doesn't include everything... So I don't have the same nostalgia for theme parks and creating roller coasters as I do looking after animals, but I still had a good time with it.

I've been working through the career mode, being given a premade park with some objectives to achieve, like making a certain amount of money each month, or raising the park rating, while having restrictions in place, or loans to be repaid, and it's been enjoyable. I like the amount of customisation possible, everything you place can be edited by attaching other objects to it, there are some great creations on Steam Workshop, not just for rides, but for shops and buildings to fit certain themes. I was disappointed with the lack of tutorial, the game does give you a list of controls, but there's no introduction, just points you in the direction of some videos instead which isn't the same as learning for yourself through a guided level I think is the norm, but it didn't take long to get used to the feel of it. As you can imagine my first coaster was a complete disaster, I somehow made it so fast that it caused too much fear for anyone to try it lol. It's been a fun experience I'd recommend especially if theme parks appeal to you, but I'll be much more interested in Planet Zoo when that comes out.

I bought a few games in the last Steam sale simply because of their overwhelmingly positive reviews I couldn't ignore. This turned out to be a great purchase and I'm eager to check out the rest of the series having played it. The box you have in front of you after you've entered The Room, is like a present you want to unwrap, there's all this mystery through the scraps of information you find, as you solve elaborate lock puzzles, it builds this intrigue as to what's inside it, I loved the feeling of going deeper with each chapter. I didn't require a walkthrough, just made good use of the hints when stuck as they always pointed me in the right direction.

I recently replayed this in coop having beaten it solo back in 2014, and it was a completely different experience, so much fun that I've added it to my top 3 this period, upping my rating from 3 stars to 4. I'd forgotten how beautiful it is, the scenery you run past is breathtaking, adds so much to the magical feel of the game with these gorgeous backgrounds. I remember having some difficulty with the final boss and the rising lava which soured the end of it for me, however we played on easy mode throughout which got rid of the time pressure, and was overall a more fun experience, just focusing on the "teamwork" side of it. I never did finish the 2nd game, but it's great to see a 4th announced after the backlash from the 3rd, I'm going to try and get up to date with this series before that release.

Have you ever put a game on hold, then months later wonder why it's taken you so long to finish it? I had this happen in Vermintide having taken what was meant to be a short break from it by mistakenly trying to beat the bonus levels as soon as they were unlocked early on, when I think they're meant to be tackled after the main story, and wondering why it suddenly got so hard. Returning and doing the story missions properly felt much better, and I wish I'd never taken the break, I had a much better time. I haven't played anything like it, I had to fight my exploration urges and stick with the group, despite all these side paths leading elsewhere to areas I never ended up seeing, as walking off leads to death, I learnt the hard way several times early on... it's not meant to be a game you find chests for loot (they're often empty), instead you need to get from one place to another, killing rats, and completing the level's objectives.

Once I became more familiar with it, I felt like the level quality improved as well, it seemed like mostly corridors during the majority of the early game, which later opened up to more interesting environments. I loved the personality of your party, there's Dragon Age like banter they have with each other, and it's cool seeing them all return for the sequel. There's a decent variety of playstyles available with bows, guns and magic making up your ranged, and swords, axes and daggers being melee, the fighting is usually very chaotic but there's some strategy in there with different vermin types to look out for, keeping formation and covering all flanks when you're being surrounded, and making use of items you pick up like bombs and bandages to keep everyone alive. I never expected to enjoy this as much as I did, I didn't think the genre would be for me but this is why I'm always open to recommendations. I absolutely loved the inn hub that acts as your base of operations too, the cosy feel of it was a wonderful contrast to the dark and unwelcoming levels you find yourself in. I'm looking forward to the next one which sounds more of the same but better polished, my one nitpick would be the item reward system which I hope has been improved.

During a big backlog clearout a couple of months ago I removed most hidden object games as they've always felt like perfect time wasters, which is fine if I didn't have 300 other unplayed games I'd prefer to play instead! I did keep Adam Wolfe though as it had this reputation of being than just a simple HoG. There's a good mix of puzzles in there, covered all the standard ones without any repetition and it was always clear what was required, meaning I could avoid hints and get all the achievements in one playthrough, it actually has the honour of being my 100th completed game. The story is decent and I liked the supernatural and mystery side to it, the voice acting varied in quality but overall it was fine. Some of the backgrounds look fantastic, others less so. And there seemed to be this strange mix of artistic style for cutscenes which was off-putting having no consistency there. During a few action sequences it made me laugh unintentionally at some of the animations and dialogue, but there were some good moments too with urgency that felt real. Overall I'd recommend it.

For what it is, Defender's Quest is exactly what you'd want. I've played a few in this genre from my days playing flash games on websites like Kongregate years ago, and they're just so easy to play and provide decent satisfaction as you wipe out waves by getting your strategies right. You use heroes as the towers that are recruited as you progress, and there's a good mix of classes to play with, it's fun finding placement combinations that work well together. There's a lot of replayability too, although I think it's required, as you get rewards like unique items for going for higher difficulties on earlier levels later on when you've got the heroes for the challenge. The reason I say required is you need to level up your party in order to stand a chance in the later levels, it felt like I was forced to grind for experience points to upgrade my skills to finish the story, it may have been because I was getting my strategies wrong but they felt impossible without upgrading everyone. It's a solid tower defence game.

First impressions were really good, I didn't know what to expect... so right from the start with the incredibly over the top action, with you hopping from missile to missile fired at you in slow motion to slice up a helicopter with your sword, I was blown away, it was so entertaining. However the reason it's down here and not higher up is because as the game went on and the enemies got tougher I started to find the combat less enjoyable, this is totally down to me being bad at it, but compared with the few other hack and slash games I've played like Darksiders and DmC Devil May Cry, I never felt comfortable playing it, which is a huge issue with the combat being such a big focus, and this was on normal difficulty. Parrying is absolutely key, getting hit is always costly, and thankfully most enemy types it's fairly easy to do so, but others, like the gorillas in particular I had trouble with, or just battles that felt so long and intense with no checkpoints, I'd lose my rhythm as I got overwhelmed and get frustrated as a result, watching a loop of my character getting thrown around.

Naturally the boss fights were incredible, and despite some problems eventually I learnt how to counter them, which you'd expect and made the victories satisfying. The final boss however was an absolute nightmare, being right at the end I'd ran out of the health boosts you can find that automatically refill your health when it drops to zero, these proved essential throughout the game with enemy attacks dealing so much damage, so running out and having to survive long enough to beat the toughest fight yet with no help for the initial stages before they eventually appeared, this really wasn't fun and was a huge relief when I finally managed to do it. Stealth was an option occasionally during missions to silently take out enemies without causing a big fight, or just sneaking past them, so I took that whenever I could, I'm looking forward to playing MGS:V for a normal Metal Gear experience where that's more encouraged.

I was really in the Civ mood as you may have guessed seeing this and Beyond Earth in my played this month. I’ll cover what I thought on that one below, but while it quickly brought that trademark one more turn back to me, I much preferred the more familiar setting and famous world leaders instead it all being so… alien. According to the last Steam event Civ 5 was the first game in my library and became one of my most played games, I absolutely loved it, so I was always interested in what new ideas they had thought up. Having played a bit of Endless Legend I already had some experience dealing with districts, which add an extra level of strategy to your city planning being a lot more involved than just placing every building and wonder on the same tile, you now need to think about terrain and free space, as well as adjacency bonuses for what should be built next to each other, in order to get the best out of your cities to get the edge on your rivals. The art style and new look to the leaders took a bit of getting used to, but it’s undeniably an improvement, seeing how expressive the leaders are adds to the diplomacy and makes them feel more real. I’ve had a couple of victories and feel like I’ve got the basics down, but there’s still a lot I can improve on, I’ll keep it installed for a quick 20-30 hour match in between playing other games whenever I get that urge.

Like so many I post about, I feel like I should have played this way sooner. Although the warm sunlit forest you arrive in gives you a sense of peacefulness, you soon come across a trail of blood and a dismembered body. I was intrigued from the start, you become familiar with the group of people involved and I wanted to solve this mystery, the ending doesn't disappoint either. It has a great creepy atmosphere at times, while a lot of it takes place in daylight when you’re exploring, and during that time walking around it’s easy to admire the lakes and mountains in the background, the graphics look great, yet while doing your detective work the game switches to night time as you see how past events unfolded and suddenly the forest becomes a lot less inviting. I do want to try out more in this genre, LA Noire had some interesting cases, Murdered: Soul Suspect was enjoyable apart from the scary demons, Alan Wake kind of counts? The newish Sherlock Holmes games look like they might be fun.

This only took me almost 200 hours to finish so it's going to be a nice easy write-up going over everything I loved about it, right. As much as I liked the first and second in the series, which are both absolutely worth playing, they only improve with each entry and this was easily my favourite, the open world suits Geralt's monster hunting like the two swords on his back. I've never played a game with so much detail before, the city of Novigrad is simply breathtaking when you first see it in the distance, and then when you realise how much of it you can actually walk around, as well as all buildings you can go inside... I can't emphasise enough how much of a city it really feels like. You spend a lot of the game prior to this roaming around countryside and visiting peasant villages, so going through those city gates for the first time really does have a much better impact than if you'd have just started there. I can't leave out Oxenfurt either, while smaller it's even prettier, I wished there had been more quests to do there and was delighted when I found one of the DLCs has you return there. The quest quality stays consistently high throughout, and that includes the side quests, while Dragon Age Inquisition had an excellent main quest it was all the filler content designed to pad it out and fill the huge maps that stopped it from coming close to Origins' level, Witcher 3 managed to have the huge maps and tons of extras yet pulled off a miracle of making them worth doing more than just for the XP, they were actually interesting. It's rare I feel so much from games but I really got so immersed in the world and the main characters that I cared when the big moments happened and had tears in my eyes at other points, from laughing at the drunk Witchers at Kaer Morhen (best quest ever) or from the more emotional moments.

It's Witcher 3 so I'm going to have to use paragraphs here. It is the best RPG, and because I like RPGs, the best game I've ever played. But I can still find a few minor things to pick out, although Skellige is absolutely beautiful and I liked the sailing, I definitely didn't like those islands enough to get all those loot stashes out at sea. The horseriding worked fine most of the time using the roads, but taking shortcuts often leads you getting stuck in trees and rocks that make exploration a bit of a pain and sometimes meant I was running around on foot. Maybe there were too many detective missions, there was nothing you could really do wrong with these other than follow glowing red directions and have Geralt tell you what you need to know, although I'm not sure how they could have improved that. I played on the hardest difficulty but didn't find the combat too difficult, yet it was still more engaging than most I've played and it did mean I was consulting the bestiary and upgrading my oils and potions to have an easier time, fitting with the character to be prepared to make a tough fight with a monster easier.

To get the most out of the last expansion Blood and Wine I took a couple of weeks break after finishing Hearts of Stone as I often feel burnt out when it comes to DLC taking place after you're done with the story, but I enjoyed them both just as much as the main quest, if not more. I've mentioned how impressed I was with Novigrad and Oxenfurt, well Beauclair is perhaps the best of the three. A fresh new area to explore and quest in, and most importantly a new Gwent tournment and cards to collect, Toussaint was distinct enough to set it apart and keep things interesting, it was the perfect way to end.

With Anno 1800 out which I really liked the look of, I thought I'd try what's considered the best in the series to see if it's for me. It is. I really enjoyed playing through the campaign until the land combat mission, but the city building and trading is great, acquiring new exotic resources like spices and silks from the orient to meet the needs of your growing population with increasingly fussy tastes as they want more than just bread and fur coats was a fun challenge. It was satisfying to see your cities grow, with more buildings unlocked as your population hit milestones and higher class citizens moved in. Managing production was enjoyable, with the late game resources required to be produced with different industries working together to create the necessary goods. So I'm really excited to play 1800, and might look to give the futuristic ones a try even if I think I'll have the same opinion of them as I do Civ VI and Beyond Earth.

Reading the novel beforehand felt like I'd just read a 1000 page walkthrough. But it was still very enjoyable playing this, in particular looking out for changes to the story, which there were and meant there were some surprises in store. The art style was a real highlight, I took a lot of screenshots and liked revisiting the same locations after a number of years had passed to look out for new detail over time, like the construction of a cathedral. I haven't watched the TV series yet so this was my first time seeing all these characters visualised and thought they matched up well, the voice acting was great too, although in comparison the game didn't portray a certain villain as evil as he is, some of the more cruel and violent scenes are omitted which is understandable. It's a point and click so there's a lot of walking around, inspecting objects and picking things up, there's so much detail to look at in each chapter and your character can provide their opinion on most of it, but unlike most I've played it's all very straightforward and doable without a guide which is always welcome. If you've read the book you should like this, if you've enjoyed this you should read the book, they're both great!

If I'm honest I only decided to try out Beyond Earth because it didn't feel right to just skip from V to VI. I think it's a fair criticism to say there's not much different aside from the sci-fi setting with the game released four years before it, but that still means it's just as addictive even if finding rare resources with a name that looks like a cat walked over a keyboard doesn't have the same impact as having a rich deposit of uranium, or having some bland corporate named neighbour instead of warmongering Gandhi. The tech tree is also nightmare fuel when you first open it up, I had no idea where to start and what might be useful as it was so overwhelmingly unfamiliar what anything meant, it wasn't the same as seeing you've got some stone nearby and deciding to research mining early. Becoming more familiar as I played it became less of an issue and I imagine if I put as many hours as I did in V I'd figure out some good strategies, but I already feel like I've seen enough of it to know I'll never enjoy it as much, and having later played VI I much preferred that.

Somehow I managed to avoid most of the spoilers regarding this third person shooter since it came out in 2012, apart from it being a game that made you feel like a terrible person. Well it certainly delivered that, this is another one with a great story that should be experienced. I do think the cover based shooting brought it down a level though, as in the actual gameplay, it wasn’t bad but even on the normal difficulty I thought it was too punishing, maybe I need to play more in this genre. I wasn’t running around like an idiot out in the open, but you need to move in order to avoid getting flanked, as well as getting better aim on your targets, and in those sprints your health drops rapidly with their pin point accuracy. The juggernauts were the biggest nuisance, these human tanks with all their armour made for a menacing sight as they slowly waddled their way towards you absorbing every bullet you shot at them, until eventually they topple over. Unlike Bulletstorm I didn’t hate the characters in this one, there was no face palming dialogue every time the fighting stopped which I was grateful for, and as well as your squad being worthwhile additions to the story, their usefulness in combat as you direct them to take out key enemies was a huge help. The graphics looked a bit dated but not enough to make the environments look ugly, the interiors were also nice which you often find yourself in while taking shelter from the sandstorms outside. Overall I’d definitely recommend it, the combat can be a pain at times but it’s worth it for the memorable story.

I think Lego games are fantastic but this is easily the weakest one I've played. I've always felt that finishing story mode only counts as an intro and you miss out on the real game when you've got the maps opened up to explore, trying to unlock all the characters and find every secret. But while I would recommend it, I'd have been happy to have just beaten this. Everything about it simply feels inferior to Lego Marvel Superheroes, it was several years ago I played that one but I never remember getting tired going backwards and forwards doing quests around Manhattan. Finding what character to use was often a challenge given that I'm unfamiliar with most of the comic book characters, it would have been handy to have a way of telling who could do what. The voice lines of the main cast are pulled straight from the films and often sound very awkward, you'll hear a lot of the same lines enough times to make you want to mute them, except for some reason there's only audio options for music and sound effects, yes I checked!!!!! I thought it was the perfect time for it with Endgame out, but it was disappointing.

This may have been better suited on phones but I don't play mobile games, I quickly lost interest in Reigns. It’s a game about getting balances right between four different factions by swiping left or right, making decisions while ruling your kingdom and trying to avoid those faction bars reaching the top and bottom to avoid a game over, the best part is getting all these funny deaths as a result of making one group too happy or angry and feeling deceived when you misjudge a decision for the first time. Having achieved an ending, the worst one, I looked up what I needed to do to actually properly beat it, and found solutions I doubt I'd have stumbled across even if I spent hours playing it, maybe I'd have got there by mistake. It was kind of enjoyable but it didn’t take long before I’d seen most of the cards and it lost its charm as soon as it started to feel repetitive. I might have felt like I was having a good reign, and then a couple of bad decision cards and I’d die and need to start again, it was sometimes frustrating when it felt out of your hands no matter what you chose.

It's very rare for me to buy games close to their launch but I'd been a big fan of Oblivion and got caught up in the excitement surrounding the release. It didn't disappoint. I've fully played through the original version twice, in 2011 and 2014, and must have had a few extra playthroughs during that period as well. So I've had a 5 year gap, I've since played a few other newer and well reviewed open world games and managed to get into Fallout as well (still need to play 4), and I was worried it might not be as good as I remembered. Maybe it's easier to see some of its issues but honestly I still had a incredibly good time returning to Skyrim.

The remastered graphics are a huge improvement looking at some comparisons in my older screenshots of the original, I did download a few mods of course just to try and make it that bit better as well. The world is beautiful, I tried to avoid fast travel at least at the start when I was rediscovering the game just to take it all in again, I was regularly pausing to pan the camera around and admire the landscapes. The map size feels right too, it might not take an entire day to get from one end to the other, but each hold is distinct enough to separate it from the others, and it means you don't need a horse to get everywhere, running around is best for finding everything hidden away and another map marker is never far away. The issues would be the huge amount of quests you gather that you quickly forget about and it just becomes a long checklist of things to do, there's not much complexity either with the combat being hit things with my two handed hammer before they hit me, it's easy to become overpowered and have more coin than you know what to do with meaning the looting loses its value, and while each hold is distinct enough most of the cities feel more like villages, I've also realised how basic the factions are with the exception of the Dark Brotherhood just how quickly you rise through their ranks. When I reached the end of my playthrough it did feel like a final goodbye, it's unlikely I'll replay it again unless they remaster the remaster in a few years... but I'm really happy to have gone back to it, there's a reason it's still talked about so long after its release, it's well worth playing again.

There's so many positives to talk about Firewatch but the main one has to be the art style, I took so many screenshots, and the setting is great too, it's awesome to have this national park which is yours to look around, there are places off limits to begin with but you get some equipment later on that opens it all up, the soundtrack works well with its sparse use, it's often just outdoors and nature sounds while you're walking around. The map has to be mentioned as well, it's an actual physical one your character takes out while hiking that updates based off dialogue choices that stays and later gets referred to as such for the rest of the game, there's so many neat touches like that. The conversations between you and Delilah who is stationed nearby are great, the voice acting is perfect, plenty of chemistry there, the story telling is fantastic, there's a real feeling of investigating and calling in discoveries you find, it reminded me of INFRA except I much preferred this to the underground crumbling concrete structures. It has some funny moments too, kind of like Tales from the Borderlands I'd just pick the most amusing option possible where possible, and it also has some emotional moments as you deal with backstories and uncovering mysteries. It's been three years since it came out and as often is the case when I'm only just getting around to playing these popular games, yes I agree with everyone else, it's great.

This is so impressively creative. It's a puzzle game that takes place on a 4 tile grid, usually at least 2 tiles are in use and you need to zoom in and out of these artworks, take them apart, combine them with one another, place them next to another tile, usually in an effort to look for something that your character requires in another tile or to move them forwards by creating a path for them. It's absolutely wonderful to look at, I never knew what to expect whenever I was looking around, the solutions to the puzzles tended to make me shake my head in disbelief just how well it all fits together. There's a few hints in the form of visual clues and notes but it does get quite difficult as it goes on as you might expect from a puzzle game. I wish it was clearer when you could disassemble a title and create a new one as that tended to be what I got stuck on the most. It is quite short but it's such a quality experience that there's been clearly so much effort put into it that the price doesn't seem unreasonable. I've not played anything like it before and I'd highly recommend it.

I remember a lot of positive reviews back when Gravity Ghost came out and seeing it get plenty of coverage but it feels like since then it's just been forgotten about which is a huge shame, does this tend to happen to indie games that don't reach a certain status? I've only just bought and played it myself so I guess I'm also guilty having had it on my wishlist since its release, due to its short length I'd been holding out for a higher discount or a bundle that never came so I finally caved in and got it. It's totally worth it and a true gem! I'd been drawn to it by just how beautiful it looks, every level had me pausing to take it all in, the water planets are my favourite. The objective is always simple, you start a level, collect a star, then exit through a door which the star opens. However you're jumping around, orbiting planets, and using gravity to pull you where you need to go. It's a bit awkward to get used at at first but as the game goes on you get more familiar with the controls and how each planet type feels, and you gain new abilities through optional levels that can make things more easy or convenient, like not using up any of your hair (which grows when you collect flowers) when you terraform planets, yes, what a sentence! There's quite an emotional story told through cutscenes that I wasn't expecting at all, and has a nice soundtrack that helps build that relaxing feeling while you're floating around in space. I absolutely love these kind of games.

Wow what an experience! This is easily one of the best games I've played. The graphics frequently amazed me, the motion capture for Senua's cutscenes is perfect, the voice acting is great which makes the emotional moments more real, the soundtrack is fantastic (absolutely love the music that plays in the final fight, goosebumps), the story feels like a journey that you want to see to the end, and the atmosphere is often so chilling that it made me shiver. It's not for the fainthearted, it's gruesome at times, and the voices the character hears in her head have to be mentioned, it only adds to struggles she has to overcome fighting these inner demons. The combat was decent enough, I died a few times but that's only because I'm bad at countering, it shouldn't put you off playing as it's not too difficult. The puzzles slowed things down but that's not much of a bad thing, sometimes they were welcome breaks, I liked the trials section in particular. The game's collectables are lorestones that each tell interesting stories about Norse mythology that make finding them all worthwhile, my only other knowledge of Ragnarok was that Thor film so it was nice to build on that... Hellblade is just such a memorable game, one that I'd recommend to anyone.

I won't say too much about this until I've beaten it, however it has already left in me in no doubt as to what a great game it is. I did give it a try almost exactly a year ago but I just wasn't in the right mood it, I did everything in White Orchard, and during a story cutscene the game crashed and I never went back to it. I'd built my new PC, finished Dragon Age Inquisition that took over 100 hours and decided to jump straight into Witcher 3 next having been so excited to play it as well, and I couldn't get into it. I was worried I'd made the same mistake again with Skyrim but a month's recovery period for huge games like these seems to work okay for me, I'm having a much better time! I'm also playing it on the Death March difficulty which hasn't been too bad so far...

This is an easy one to recommend, there's just so much style and humour to it, the writing is witty and entertaining, there's so many unnecessary details that only make it better, like the level up screen and the rewards page for your donut delivering, or your phone texting and how you can spam a duck to people. It may be one of the most easy games I've played, there's no challenge to it, you have a small hole that you move around which grows the more you drop things down it, you start with small furniture and later you're bringing down cars and buildings. It does get a bit more involved later on with a catapult that allows you to shoot things back up like frogs to catch flies, but it's very simple to play, which makes it a nice relaxing break if you're looking for a game to calm you down from something less so. Unfortunately it doesn't take long to finish however it keeps its fun factor high throughout and there's some secret achievements that you'll most likely have to go back to replay a few sections. The soundtrack is fantastic too, it sets the tone perfectly, my favourite track is Birds of Paradise, so chill! You can buy it in the Annapurna Interactive Bundle on Steam, which includes What Remains of Edith Finch, Gorogoa and Flower, Donut County deserves to be in such company.

This was another emotional one with a good story. While I've got a few complaints about it, like the big open levels and slow movement speed of your character that makes exploring a bit of a chore, and the controls awkward enough to make the platforming more of a nuisance than it should have been, in the commentary you can switch on (absolutely worthwhile to listen to) the developer explains his need to prioritise when making the game and his focus on delivering a great story and that's fine, it does that. I was initially going to try and find everything, there's loads of secrets hidden away that the developer says is one of his favourite parts of adventure games, but the chapters aren't clearly marked when the story will progress so I made a mistake of going too far in one direction and got forced into a loading screen with no way of going back, no level select once you've beaten it either, I don't think I've got the patience to try and 100% it. But those small issues aside it is quite charming, the fox you play as is adorable, the art style is nice to look at, the environments are lovely, the relaxing music fits well, as mentioned the story is an emotional one which I won't spoil, and it has an absolutely fantastic final level that delivers a couple of surprises I found quite cool.

I’d been meaning to play Hidden Folks for a while now after seeing a few people recommend it. It’s a hidden object game where you need to locate people and objects in these often huge black and white levels. Just like Under Leaves I found this surprisingly difficult, never underestimate hidden object games! I don’t think the colours, or lack of colour, helped at all, as it was sometimes hard to tell certain characters apart that I was looking for, and there’s often just so much going on at once, there’s so much movement, for instance there’s a city level and you have people walking by on the streets, cars going past, all these windows for apartments you need to check with things going on in them, it is quite hard to find what you’re looking for. At least something like Where's Wally which this is clearly inspired by is just a still image making the task much more simple! And unlike Hidden Paws you don’t have any cats meowing to help in your search, instead there’s a row of icons showing everything you need to find and if you click on them there’s a text hint which could have been more useful at times. I was often a bit intimidated at the beginning of each of the main levels with so much going on, but equally keen to look around and start finding everything. I did have a lot of fun with it, my complaints aren't really complaints I just had a bit of trouble at times, it's got a lot of charm to it and plenty of little details to admire and secrets to discover, that DLC beach level is totally worth it too, the ship battle at the end was a highlight, however the snowy one with the ski slopes and winter sports was my favourite.

I've marked this as beaten as I've had a few victories but there's still a lot left I need to try out, there's so much replayability with all the different squads you unlock that each have their own abilities that change the way you play. It's easy to see why it's so well regarded, it's fairly simple to understand but if you want to be perfect at saving all the citizens, fulfilling objectives, killing all the bug things, without losing someone from your squad, then you're going to need to spend plenty of time planning out moves like you're playing chess every turn to make sure you don't make your situation even worse in the next round. The odds tend to be stacked against you and I was regularly thinking how I'm going get my squad out of this in one piece, but there's almost always a solution if you look for it. It feels very rewarding to play when you manage to get your strategy right and I mean to go back to it to give the other squads a try. Fantastic soundtrack too by Ben Prunty, if I was to given the task of making music for mechs punching and exploding bugs it would sound like this.

I got this in the last humble monthly and wasn’t sure what to expect, I haven’t played anything like it aside from maybe Telltale games. Of course I was expecting it all to be filmed on a mobile phone, vertically shot with black bars, with the camera man’s hand shaking, so I was really impressed by its cinematic quality, I thought it might make me cringe but the dialogue and actors were great, the special effects were solid and I was gripped from start to finish. There’s several different endings depending on your choices that encourage a few replays even if it is inevitably a bit tedious going over the beginning each time, based on your choices your character is put in different scenarios that you’d miss if you only played it once. Really enjoyable, I’ll have to keep an eye out for other worthwhile FMV games.

There is so much charm in this game it made me smile while playing it. It's an easy to finish point and click that only takes a couple of hours, but it uses that time well to create a nice story with some great characters, I especially liked the ultimate rescue dog who was adorable in its efforts to prevent you coming to harm from your character's own clumsiness, I don't think I've wanted to hug something so much since Spot from The Whispered World! I might replay it for the 100% with the help of a great guide written by tsupertsundere that helped me get most of the achievements, thanks for that!

Having enjoyed this one so much I'll be sure to play the sequel soon as I've heard that's even better. I've not played a tower defence game like it where you actually drop down and take part in the fighting, it's a lot of fun setting up your traps and then ensuring no sneaky orc manages to break through them, it also allows you to orchestrate your defences in the midst of battle and correct any flaws you see develop, like if you've got a few surprise ogres to deal with then some extra swords from your paladins always helped turn the tide. There's usually something different to keep an eye on in each level and you're always treated to a new trap, there's tons to choose from towards the end of the game so it feels like you have the freedom to find some combinations that work for you, all have their uses. The character you play as feels nice to control, it's all very smooth with decent movement speed which is important considering you need to be on the move a lot covering all the enemy spawn points, he does have a personality that I thought would get on my nerves but somehow it managed to stay amusing. Recommended!

I added this to wishlist just based off the screenshots alone, if I'm honest I wasn't sure what I was in for when I bought it other than it caught my eye. Thankfully it was fun! It's quite short, however the time to play through all the levels is entirely up to you, you start up a new area that tends to be quite empty and quiet, and then you're free to just mess around manipulating settings to create new visuals and sounds by combining the two, there's a lot of options and it's unlikely you'll ever be able to produce the same thing again if you went back to it, I also found it very relaxing to play and I think it has good replay value because of that. There's so many possibilities in each world to change the look to something completely different, whether you're using different shapes, quantities, colours, angles, sizes, speeds, there's a lot you can tweak until you're happy with your creation. The best way to describe it is like creating your own effects for windows media player!

I found this to be a fun fast paced action game, with a lot of weapon variety and plenty of creative ways to explode enemies, the environments were quite impressive on this vibrant post-apocalyptic touristy alien planet, and the gameplay was rather satisfying with the grapple you can use to pull objects and enemies towards you, then kicking them away triggering slow motion to get your aiming right. The weapons are all rather impressive, the sniper especially was cool with its control of each individual shot that you takes you on a ride to guide the bullet into bandit skulls while they run away... it's all very silly and there's no realism to be found here, just mindless slaughter. The reason I've got it down here is I wasn't a fan at all of the group of characters you're forced to spend time with, nobody is likeable and there's a lot of dialogue and story cutscenes that were painful to watch and listen to. The "banter" between them is so weak and feels like its just trying to be controversial and cool for people that are entertained by them having the "balls" to say that. It doesn't take long to finish and I'd recommend it for the action, but there were sections that got repetitive and the characters got on my nerves a lot.

I have quite mixed feelings about whether to recommend this one, there’s really not much of a game to play here, you’re moving these three burly men at sea, that you can tell apart by their beard colour, by sliding the screen left or right, and occasionally clicking on things. The biggest complaint is replaying it to go through all the different paths which was way too repetitive for it to be fun. It also felt like it had the potential to be much better if the paths you took branched out more in a way that avoiding revisiting the same places, having the same scenes play out with some slightly different dialogue. But the minimalist art style is nice, the soundtrack is rather pleasant, and it’s got a few quite literally magical moments and creatures to discover that was nice enough to at least make some of the playthroughs interesting when I found them for the first time. Just a shame there isn’t a pay off at the end for all the repetition, it’s strange to me in an adventure game that encourages you to see its other endings, surely the developers would have made more of an effort to make multiple playthroughs more interesting and worthwhile. Why you have to walk along that island each time where nothing changes I don’t understand, maybe they could have added new wildlife to at least freshen it up, to accompany that moose and those birds. It barely gets a recommendation but it’s short and the issues only really get bothersome if you’re going for 100% like I did.

Although it's a very different type of hidden object game (it's 3D) to Hidden Folks, if I were to make a comparison I'd have to say I didn't like it as much. You're looking for cats and yarn balls in these snowy levels, they're often very well hidden as it makes good use of different breeds and their colours to blend them into the environments. I spent a lot of time fighting with the camera while I was looking which is my biggest complaint as it just never felt natural, there's so much zooming in and out required, panning around, looking under trees and around corners, it felt very awkward to use and no matter how long I played I couldn't get used to it, eventually it started to make me feel ill so I ended up having to take some short breaks. Taking it more slower paced helped with the nausea and I still found it enjoyable overall, it felt like the perfect time to play it with its winter theme, and there's always that satisfying feeling once you've managed to find everything.

You're a leader of a group of nomads struggling to survive in this ICY post-apocalyptic wilderness, you're also wandering from place to place looking to find and free the rest of your group that had been taken captive, while recruiting help along the way. The cold isn't the only thing to worry about, there's varied enemy encounters like mutants, bandits, savage wildlife, you know the usual stuff when the world falls apart. There's a lot of reading involved so thankfully it gets that right, it has lots of text options in conversations for different responses and then some more meaningful choices to make with a few different endings that makes saving at a key point worth it to go through them all. But it's not just a visual novel, it has RPG elements too, you get XP for completing quests that you can spend on level ups improving weapon skills, speechcraft, and more luck based attributes for better looting. You've got big map to click around to visit locations that have buildings to scavenge if you're in an abandoned village, or forests to hunt in if you're low on food. Like most survival games the start is always the most interesting period for me where it's all about prioritising inventory space to get the essentials and that relief when you find something when things are truly dire that can keep you going, when it starts to get comfortable, when your party is geared up with guns and combat armour instead of makeshift spears and winter coats, the survival element disappears and you're instead just wrapping up (that was intentional) the story by following the objectives to get where you need to go, the enemy encounters become trivial after a while with the exception of a couple of final fights that were more of a challenge. In the end it was enjoyable enough for me to recommend it.

As it's a game about discovery and piecing together information I'll keep it short, mainly because of spoilers and also because there's not much gameplay to talk about! You spend the game clicking on mobile apps, browsing forums, reading text messages, trying to make sense of what happened to the owner of the phone you're in possession of, the story unravels itself as you become more familiar with the characters as they go from just being names into people you recognise and figure out why that's significant they're talking about something to that person at that place during that time. It reminded me of Orwell in that respect, I liked the investigating you do to figure out passwords and working out what's important and what's not using all the information available... at your fingertips, because you're using a phone! It's best knowing absolutely nothing about it, I had no idea what this was going to be about and I think that's ideal for the mystery and impact the game gives you in key moments and when you work it all out.

There's not much I can really say about this one, it's a poker game! Your opponents are Tycho from Penny Arcade webcomic, Max from Sam & Max, the Heavy from Team Fortress 2, and Strong Bad from Homestar Runner. I only really knew about the Heavy having played TF2 for quite a bit a few years ago and he did make me laugh with some of his incredibly graphic and detailed war stories that break up play every so often as the characters chat amongst themselves, unfortunately I can't really say the others left much of an impression on me and hearing the same lines repeated got tiring fast, thankfully there's some settings to reduce chatter. I played the sequel back in 2016 and preferred that, I'll have to replay it to be sure but I remember the AI being less braindead going all in with the worst cards possible, unless that was just incredibly advanced bluffing, I'd recommend that one over this but I still enjoyed it.

If I'm honest I'm shocked how positive the reviews are for Fumiko. I really didn't enjoy this. The visuals and music are nice enough but it failed the most important aspect, it wasn't fun, and I had that dreaded feeling of reluctance whenever I pushed myself to continue, which I did because it was a gift. Thankfully it's short, the story starts quite strongly and I was intrigued, you're broken free from your shackles after being told things aren't what they seem, and you gain new abilities as you regain your powers as the game goes on. But I lost interest the more I played and longer I had to deal with the gameplay. The platforming just felt incredibly awkward, everything is so weightless, you're almost flying around towards the end once you have unlimited jumps and boosts, but the movement was a nightmare to control, like having to land precisely on small objects to collect powerups, or trying to duck under moving laser beams that destroy you if you make contact. I died quite a lot and unlike something like Dark Souls where the fault is usually on you, it felt instead like the game was to blame for just being poorly designed and it didn't feel fair, things tended to get frustrating quickly. Maybe you'll have a better time with it but it wasn't for me.

In my mission to get through the shortest games in my library I played this. My initial thoughts were positive, I quite liked the main gameplay mechanic, using a scanner you find to light up the cave system you’re exploring, the longer you linger on an area the more detailed it becomes, the more warmer the colours, and there's a few upgrades from packages you find conveniently left around to improve your scanning. But while this is quite cool and likely more so in VR, the novelty wears off and it just turns into find the path that takes you to the next path. It starts quite supernatural and spooky which I think would suit it much better if it kept that way, but then you go on a tranquil boat ride and the threat disappears for the rest of the game. Usually the further in and deeper down you go, the creepier it gets, Scanner Sombre felt the opposite. I also thought it was weird how there wasn't much to scan, you're meant to be exploring but there's not much to see, surely that could have been more of a feature. I just didn’t find it enjoyable, and if it was any longer then I probably would have abandoned it. It’s a missed opportunity for a decent horror game, instead it became boring and a relief when it ended.

I'm sorry to report I wasn't able to finish my no-death run uguleley was kind enough to challenge me in my previous post. I died, a lot. Yet here it is right at the top of the list, I never thought I'd be able to finish it. Like SOMA it was a very difficult game for me to play, I had to be in the right mood and I admit I ended up taking a break, which was partly responsible for the post delay. You require so much patience to fight your way back with every death, everything you've killed respawns, it happens so frequently and sometimes so unfairly that it's tempting to give up. But say you died thanks to some nasty trap, or some devious skeleton hiding around a corner, when you get back to that location you now know what to expect and can plan for it. That goes for the boss fights too, with the exception of one or two every time I got that giant health bar appear and some epic music started I knew I was going to die and just used that first fight to try and learn their moves for next time. Whenever I started to get overconfident I was quickly told no, that can't happen. I became a lot more cautious as I began to understand the game.

The world design and how everything links together is really impressive, it helps reinforce the idea of this being one huge map that you're unlocking shortcuts and connecting places together. There's obviously the joy of finding the bonfires that act as save points but finding a ladder you can kick down to allow you to skip a lengthy section feels much more rewarding than Victor Vran's loot drops. The game gives you such a feeling of accomplishment when you take down a boss that gave you so much trouble that you want to find the next one and experience it again. I was finding myself reading up lore and watching boss reaction videos at 2am in the morning. I did find things to get easier towards the end once I had enough stamina to equip the most damage resistant armour and could roll normally with it, that meant I could afford to make mistakes and made the game more forgiving because of it. But it's a long hard road to get to that point. It's too soon to even think about the sequels as I'll need a long recovery time but it's good to know they are beatable and I definitely won't be dreading them as much as I was the first game.

Just over 2 years ago I joined this site and one of my first updates was me beating Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut. Unfortunately I'd played the regular version of this game for a few hours back in 2013 and meant this had been awkwardly stuck at a low achievement percent since. The motivation to replay it came in the form of November's Play or Pay and I'm glad I did as it's just as good as I remembered. I also managed to get the pacifist and foxiest of hounds unlocked this time, for some reason I was previously under the impression the prologue didn't count, I was wrong... so it was a big relief to get the 100% after being so careful with alarms and sneaking around. Saving a certain someone proved too much of a challenge with no casualties (I ended up reloading) so I'm just going to pretend that never happened and stick with my director's cut ending lol. Just like the Dishonored series doing things lethally is an option but I think I'd have approached the game the same way even without the achievements as there's already plenty of action games out there, with all the paths you can take and ways to approach objectives I think going non-lethal and avoiding detections provides the most satisfying experience.

This has been the most recent game I've played, it was only fitting to play something with snow and people freezing to death to get me in the festive mood! I was immediately intrigued when I first heard about it, I loved This War of Mine and it reminded me of Banished which is another favourite. Unlike Banished you haven't been cast out and left to fend for yourself in some nice cosy wilderness (for most of the year), instead you're in charge of the last city on Earth in rapidly dropping temperatures with the main objective being to keep the heat generator going no matter what, the stakes simply feel much higher.

I've yet to play Cities Skylines however I imagine the city building to be more advanced than what Frostpunk offers, but also being a survival game there's more to it than just building placement with resource dilemmas, technology priorities, worker allocation, and challenges in the scenarios testing you like uprisings and what you're prepared to do to bring order, or whether to turn refugees away and condemn them to death, or let them in and accommodate them in situations which never come at the right time. There's also an exploration element too once a beacon has been built, you can scout the area and potentially find that invaluable stash of coal that might make it back in time to keep you alive for a few hours more, or perhaps other nice surprises, like hungry bears. And then there's the storm. You're given some advanced warning to get prepared if you're lucky, and you better because when it arrives there's nothing you can do other than wait it out and pray your generator can keep your houses above freezing with your citizens trapped inside. I've never received so many messages about frostbite and amputations.

It only took a few failed attempts to figure out where I was going wrong and since I've not had any real issues preventing problems from getting too far out of hand on the default difficulty but it can be adjusted to be harder once you've mastered it, I'm not sure I'm ready just yet. I found it quite overwhelming at the start with a lot of options to choose from especially in the tech tree but I think that's quite common in this genre. I have to give credit to the game's presentation, there's gorgeous artwork for each location and for story pop ups too. The graphics are impressive, I kept zooming in on new constructions just to admire all the details, I wish you could get even closer. It's a bit grim in case I haven't given that away but that only fitting given the situation. It's been a while (yes even in such company with others in this post) that I've been so eager to return to play it again after closing, and I don't think I've lost track of time so much as I have whilst playing this, a must play!

This has one of my all time favourite video game soundtracks, I'd been listening to this for a few years now without actually having played the game. So it was especially awesome to hear how it fit together, in particular during combat the music is dynamic and changes based on your attacks which is really cool. The game is set in Neo-Paris and the world more than matches the soundtrack, it feels alive and I love the mix of historic architecture and futurist skyscrapers, just like the use of classical and electronic music. It's quite linear and although there's a bit of exploration to find hidden collectables the levels aren't that big, if you wanted to you could rush through most of it but I think a large part of the game's value is the amount of effort that must have went into the exteriors, it's there to be admired, it looks great for a game released five years ago. I wish it had more of an open hub world as it felt almost wasteful to only see some of these locations once and spend so little time there. I wanted to 100% it which wasn't too difficult, I was worried I might struggle with the combat as looking at some gameplay beforehand I've never been great with combo action games, but there's only 4 you need to learn, and you customize them yourself using only 2 buttons to activate them, it has a good tutorial and new abilities get introduced as the game goes on so you aren't overwhelmed at the start. I finished it on the hardest difficulty and only had trouble in a handful of situations outside of boss fights, those were more challenging but you just need to learn the right strategy. Very memorable! :P

I'd been meaning to play this for a while having only heard good things about it, but honestly it's never easy convincing me to play anything horror related! So again Play or Pay came to the rescue and I'm glad I got that push as the story is fantastic, worth all the unease and discomfort the creepiness caused! I went with safe mode of course which may have helped knowing I could close my eyes and hold W to get past enemies but there is no option to brighten up the atmosphere, sometimes you walk around a corner and just see something watching you leap out of sight, or all the headless bodies you come across (not quite as nice as Headlander), or just the noises you hear while moving around. I hate that feeling of opening doors and not knowing what to expect on the other side, it's so rarely a good thing in these kind of games, but yet I'm so intrigued I want to open them anyway. Thankfully there are very few jump scares. But the story does make it all worthwhile, I liked the logs and audio tapes you find that give you an idea as to what happened in this underwater facility you're trapped in, you're put in difficult situations and it does a good job of shocking you, unlike Oxenfree I was gripped from start to finish and I always wanted to learn more, the voice acting is excellent and you meet up with a great companion that at least helps you feel not alone. Definitely one that stays with you long after finishing it.

I made sure to play the new DLC The Last Broadcast to get my 100% achievements back, and also to play more This War of Mine, because it's very good. Looking back about what I said about the last episode, Father's Promise, I thought they did a better job this time with it feeling like you had more freedom to choose what to build and what locations to visit like in the main game, but also unique enough and more story focused to feel different with one of the characters being a radio operator with a physical disability and his wife being the night time scavenger looking for news for him to report to listeners, or not, depending on whether you feel you should tell him. The story was engaging and has a few endings depending on your choices, there's one episode left, hopefully the wait won't be as long!

This is one of a few games I played in this period to try to balance all the gloom from the games above. It's all about the seven deadly sins and it's up to you to commit them all in order for some priests to forgive you which they can only do if they are performed in their parish... things didn't get off to the best start when I grabbed the forbidden apple, I forgot my controller was plugged in and there was this massive vibration on the table nearby causing me to leap out of my chair as if God had just struck a lightning bolt at me. Very immersive! It's been described as Monty Python-esque and had me regularly laughing as you go about offending people and doing your evil deeds. It's also a work of art, you're in these real renaissance era paintings that act as the background and characters you meet, there's musicians playing classical music, it's all just very lovely. I had a bit of difficulty finding the items that you can interact with as everything blends so well together but it's quite obvious what's required once you've travelled to all the locations. It's unlikely I'll ever forget this one, highly recommended.

I don't think it was coincidence I was so eager to play more Glass Masquerade alongside Dark Souls as sometimes I needed reminding not all games are so mean. This is one of the most relaxing games I've played and I love pretty much everything about it, the new DLC brings more locations to visit and more stained glass windows to piece together. I've also just discovered they released a Christmas update, yay! A sequel has been announced which is great news and I'm looking forward to more puzzles in the future.

As the name suggests this is all about landing your head in headless bodies. Nice right? Thankfully everyone is a robot and doesn't seem to mind that much when you force their head off. If you don't want a body then you can just fly your head around using a thrust rocket, allowing you to enter pipes and find secret rooms. It's certainly interesting, the doors speak to you when they open, you are red I will spread, there's a chess match warzone, you can press F to dance (there's at least 15 different ones) that serves no real purpose (aside from an achievement) other than being awesome, and it's all very 70s and chilled out. I thought I'd discovered a real favourite in the first few hours as it just had me laughing whenever I spoke to someone or something, but there's one thing I haven't mentioned, the combat, it just becomes a nuisance towards the end of the game, I was moving from room to room trying to avoid it, I wish there were less guard spawns, there's no XP, only upgrades you gain through finishing objectives and finding them hidden away, so the laser gun battles you're forced to engage in only serve to slow you down and get quite repetitive. I didn't expect much but it's still really fun, it's been a Steamgift win I'd put on hold way longer than I should have done, well worth playing.

I've been able to get all the achievements which is nice, I've not played it for a couple of months since my Rocket Pass expired which I guess I should be thankful for given the hours of quick chatting Nice Shot! and What a Save! I've instead used doing other things... still I'll keep it installed for when I next get that urge. It is a lot of fun when things are going right for you, it's provided plenty of good memories, my fondest being the time when I was playing with a friend (a witness) and was too slow cancelling the queue join and started a game with less than 5 minutes before kickoff for a football match I wanted to watch, so I somehow activated God Mode and scored 5 worldies out of nowhere in the first 30 seconds causing them to question the matchmaking, beg for mercy, and then forfeit. When I'm missing the most easy chances the majority of the time it's reassuring to know I'm capable of better, just only before my football team are about to play!

With the Spyro remaster coming out I wanted to play a 3D platformer to get me in the mood. I'd rank it lower than A Hat in Time but better than Yooka Laylee, the platforming takes a bit to get used to as you "unbox" your box (which you can customise of course) to jump around and gain height, and you have a limited number of boxes which you recharge at save points, which are never far away. The main collectable are golden tapes which all need to be found to reach 100% and while I love exploring to find these things I wasn't expected them to be so well hidden. The game itself isn't that difficult, it has a few boss fights against the Wildcards and Boss Wild... a box with an Elvis hairdo and a helicopter, and there are side challenges that rarely take more than one attempt to collect stamps that are also required that have you blowing things up, winning races and delivering letters. So having some difficulty locating the golden tapes was good in a way, even if it became a nightmare, you can speak to an NPC who provides a screenshot of their location, however a lot of the time these are useless as in the tropical island for instance there are hundreds of palm trees and beaches so there aren't any distinct features that might provide a clue. But it's enjoyable for most of the game before you're searching for the last ones, there are 3 different worlds, the mentioned island, snowy peaks and an Aztec rainforest, the snowy one was my favourite with the ice slides you can use to get around. There's something so satisfying about finding everything that made it all worthwhile and left a good impression overall.

It feels bad to say it but I found Old Man's Journey to be a bit underwhelming. The gameplay has you dragging terrain around to progress in this storybook style world and there's not much to the puzzles, however the story is well told through these absolutely breathtaking memories (the biggest highlight of the game) whenever you stop to rest that reveal why you're taking this journey and who you're visiting. The art style is nice to look at and despite not being too long it does give a good sense of an adventure with a variety of locations and means of transport. I'd recommend it but I think I'd have been disappointed if it wasn't bundled.

I'm now feeling especially guilty saying this twice in a row given its reputation but again this was a bit underwhelming. I liked it enough overall to give it a positive review. It gets points for it's writing, some of the dialogue really made me laugh which is always a good thing, the voice acting is great and I liked how your relationship with the other characters changes depending on your choices. But I don't think there were enough meaningful ones, the story never really felt like there was an escalation and despite there being some supposed urgency I never felt like there was any hurry or sense of danger. It takes a few playthroughs to get all the achievements and I'm actually dreading a replay with the slow pace and torturous walk speed, it's probably best played over several sessions as it got quite tedious at times for me. I never had that thrilling feeling like when you're reading a book that you can't put down because you're desperate to find out what happens next, there aren't really any dramatic revelations that left me desperate to get to the next destination. And interrupting conversations whenever you spoke felt rather rude too. Quite a few complaints looking back, and I didn't find it that scary or creepy either which is a shock given how easy that normally is!

This is a Steamgift win that I'd previously played, beat the first few bosses and cleared the early maps, and then never played again for some reason. Having been challenged to play it again in Play or Pay as an option I thought I'd give it a second shot. This time I managed to reach the end but I think I know why I previously abandoned it, I'm not sure how much of a fan I am of this genre. My only other experience is Torchlight 2 which despite it's many positive reviews I never enjoyed that much, Victor Vran is different with an annoying narrator, being able to jump and reach hidden areas through some basic platforming, and not having a class system, you can wield any weapon which gives you different skills to use, and can further customise your build through your outfits and cards that give bonuses to certain attributes like critical hit chance or armour penetration. The main issue I have is I don't find the focus on loot and stat comparing that compelling, sure it's awesome when you find a legendary weapon, but most of the time my inventory was filled with rubbish and I was stuck with the same weapons for a large portion of the game. It's not bad and I liked some of the locations you visit, but I didn't find the combat that interesting and that is the majority of the gameplay. I've got Grim Dawn in my backlog which I've been led to believe has a few interesting features that set it apart so hopefully I'll finally have a good ARPG experience.

Oh wow you're reading this! I'm not sure how to explain this one, perhaps it would be best if you check the steam store page and watch the trailer... yeah, that was my first impression of it as well! I promised someone new to Steamgifts I'd buy and play it if they did so as well having won it and we both had a surprisingly good time. It's very funny with these FMV cutscenes that separate the chapters, everything is way over the top, the audio isn't in sync, nothing makes much sense, the costumes are hilarious and it's just incredibly silly really. You can tell the developer had a great time making it and honestly we've both been quoting the game for weeks after finishing it. I haven't got the nostalgia to appreciate the retro gameplay but I managed to finish it and it wasn't too bad, worth checking out!