Brilliant sequel to the first, and just as funny. I’d suggest playing the first game if you haven’t yet, but it’s not strictly necessary.

Pros:

• The music was done well
• Good artwork
• None of the mini-game style puzzles were overly difficult
• Lots of funny moments

Cons:

• There’s definitely an element of try using random stuff until something sticks. Thankfully it’s usually fairly logical in hindsight, so it’s not as bad as a lot of point & click games.
• No hint system for if you get stuck, so don’t be surprised if you need to consult a walkthrough to get past certain parts

Definitely not your typical Artifiex Mundi game. It had plenty of funny moments which I thoroughly enjoyed. There weren’t that many mini-game style puzzles and there are weren’t difficult.

Pros:

• Pretty well written satirical story
• Funny dialogue & story moments
• Well voice acted
• Good animations
• Each area had a phone (or something similar) with a number you could call to get help. These were generally not difficult to find.

Cons:

• There were definitely elements of ‘try using random items with things and see what sticks’. I ended up using a walkthrough a few times when I got stuck.

If you’ve ever wondered why so many people seem to think of QTEs as inherently bad, games like this are why. It has way too many of them - they constitute 90% of the ‘gameplay’. If gameplay is what you’re more interested in, go buy one of those toys where you have to memorize and repeat the sequence of flashing lights. That’s 75% of the game right there. The story itself isn’t bad, but like many games it doesn’t do a good job of getting the player emotionally invested.

Pros:

• The music isn’t bad
• Well voice acted

Cons:

• The graphics aren’t great, but since it was originally released in 2005 that’s to be expected
• The controls are among the worst I’ve ever experienced in any game (at least on a controller)
• The camera angles are awful and frequently confusing. Sometimes the you can smoothly rotate it, other times it’s a 90 degree snap.
• Many of the QTEs are overly drawn out
• It turns out that some of the QTEs are meant to be failed - they’ll basically keep going until you fail
• The prophecy was vague at best
• There were several parts where it seems like the developers just stuck in laughably easy QTEs, perhaps to keep the player entertained during longer cutscenes
• For some reason interaction is done by pointing the control stick in a given direction. This means that if you don’t push it all the way your character may (for example) reach towards a door knob then pull back because you didn’t push the control stick far enough.
• At least one type of QTE (when you climb fences) seemed very error prone/overly picky in how well you do it, making these sequences the most frustrating in the game
• The nature of the most common QTE meant that you don’t really get to pay attention to what’s going on - the boss fight, what people talking are doing, etc,

Absolutely phenomenal game that IMO is well worth the full price. If you haven’t played the first it’s an puzzle/escape room type game that’s half James Bond, half Austin Powers. I’d suggest playing the first game before this, but it’s not strictly necessary.

Pros:

• I didn’t think it’s possible, but the intro cutscene for this game is even better than the first
• Great level variety
• Great voice acting
• Great music & graphics
• I loved some of the more random things you can do just for fun. Lots of stuff to play with and mischief to get up to.
• Plenty of “souvenirs” to find
• The speedrun times are challenging without being frustrating

Cons:
Honestly I can’t really think of any. I didn’t want it to end, but it did anyway.

Another brilliant puzzle game from Double Fine. It’s really funny and the puzzles are well balanced in terms of difficulty.

Pros:

• I really liked the silent movie style cutscenes
• Finding the dolls and playing with their abilities (read: using their abilities to torment other dolls) was a lot of fun
• Decent story with plenty of laughs
• Lots of entertaining side-mission type things to do (hi-jinks, collect the unique dolls)
• Good level variety
• Great hint system that gives you two increasingly significant hints before giving you the answer. This prevents you from ever getting frustrated. I wish more games had hint systems like this.

Cons:

• Having a vignette on the cutscenes makes sense, but why is there a vignette on by default in the actual gameplay? In fact, why is it even an option? It just blocks part of the screen without really adding anything.

I can see why these games are popular, but at the same time in hindsight it’s not really my thing. I wasn’t a fan of the platforming sections, but I’ve certainly experienced worse.

Pros:

• I liked the graphics
• Well voice acted
• Great music
• The style system adds an extra element of challenge for those who want it
• The story is fairly decent, with plenty of good cutscenes (which can be skipped for subsequent playthroughs)
• Missions are always repeatable, and you’re encouraged by ‘secret’ areas that require weapons you don’t have on the first playthrough

Cons:

• Personally I found the speed at which you’re given new weapons too fast. I hadn’t had time to get used to one weapon and use it’s abilities before I was given another, then another. This resulted in me really never getting ‘good’ at one weapon.
• As much as the style system can be ignored, it means a lower score so less frequent upgrades, so you’re kind of pressured into it. This is made worse due to the above complaint since in order to get a good score you really need to know each weapon and it’s moves fairly well.
• Some of the smaller cutscenes (and opening sequences) are unskippable, which I found frustrating at times
• I found the ending sort of came out of left field. It wasn’t a huge deal, but if there were more hints it would have made more sense
• I extremely dislike that you are punished for using healing items, and that they get prohibitively expensive very quickly since buying one significantly increases the price of the next one. This effectively punishes people for being bad at the game, which is an all around awful practice.
• There are a lot of moves/combos - way too much to remember if you’re not a really dedicated fan. Personally as someone who wanted to enjoy the game but wasn’t interested in spending lots of time memorizing the huge list of moves, it seemed excessive. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from ignoring a lot of them, but it may put SSS style rankings out of reach
• Achievement progress for number achievements (e.g. kill 1000 demons) is tracked in game and pops up every so often, but it’s not visible manually either in game or via Steam achievement page

This was a really great game that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys atmospheric games. The story was good and it was incredibly cute.

Pros:

• Very atmospheric
• Great story with some interesting world-building background
• Great music
• The main character is very cute
• Not too much hand holding - you’re told what to do and that’s it, hopefully you were listening to the instructions
• If you have trouble finding something/solving a puzzle, you can always pay the blacksmith to help (and you won’t be short of money since this is it’s primary use)
• I liked having a real map you had to refer to instead of a mini-map

Cons:

• Numerous bugs. Fortunately only one caused me problems, and I had an earlier save I could load to get around it.
• The music tracks that start when you enter an area seem quite short and don’t play enough. I’d love them to play more often.

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It’s very casual and laid back - a great way to relax.

Pros:

• Cute graphics
• Characters all have their own personality
• Well voice acted
• You can put some strategy into combat, or you can just button mash - it’s very casual
• As you advance and need more materials, you unlock material delivery through the story so you don’t have to spend huge amounts of time resource gathering
• Lots of characters have personal quests that trigger as you improve your relationship with them
• When events occur (story related, holidays, etc) NPCs often have interesting things to say about it
• I like how good relationships with characters can have side benefits (like discounts), and how prices for things fluctuate over time
• I found building system and how it got more complicated with more machines available and various other upgrades to make it easier very satisfying
• You can reset your skill points in-game at any time for a very reasonable price

Cons:

• Not all lines are voice acted
• Audio quality of voice acting is poor - lots of pops, sounds like they used very cheap audio equipment
• A lot of the mini game related achievements are grindy
• Talking to characters on dates/play dates quickly becomes repetitive
• No NPC reactions to having children was quite disappointing
• Given how NPC chatting quickly becomes repetitive due to having heard all lines, it was a strange decision to have NPC reactions to story, etc, not count as chatting (thus giving relationship points)
• Cooking could be improved. E.g. in a recipe that requires ‘any vegetable’, every vegetable counts as a different recipe, which gets annoying if you want to have someone cook a lot of a recipe and happen to have a different vegetable, it counts as not knowing the recipe.
• You reach a certain mission and it considers it ‘the end of the story’ and gives you a cutscene, credits, etc. You can keep playing but it implies there’s no more story. Strangely, there actually are quite a few story missions that take place after this though.

The trailer for this game gave me major Stanley Parable vibes so I was excited to play it. Unfortunately the trailer is pretty misleading. The narrator reads out your choices and the results in a normal voice. There’s no emotion (confusion, anger, exasperation, etc), and there’s no additional comments. The only similarities with Stanley Parable are that playthroughs can unlock additional options for the next playthrough. As far as humour goes, it had the odd funny moment but most of it was just stupid, and not in a funny way IMO. Humour is very subjective though so I can understand some people liking it.

A decent over-the-top shooter with plenty of action and lots of gore.

Pros:

• Interesting variety of guns, including some unusual ones and some pretty neat secondary charged shots
• The leash was really unique and fun to use
• Well voice acted
• The skillshots added an interesting challenge to the game

Cons:

• The story was pretty forgettable (not that games like this are played for their story)
• Some of the cutscenes are unskippable even on subsequent playthroughs
• The humour didn’t do anything for me. I’ve enjoyed several games like this in the past, but this particular one I didn’t find funny at all. This was the biggest issue for me personally .

Verdict: 7/10

I went into this hoping for something vaguely comparable to AER: Memories of Old, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately it very much fell flat. I started the game, spent ages flying around, was convinced I went too far and irreparably screwed up my save, then restarted (by manually deleting save files) only to find out that in fact Act 1 was so incredibly large that it just took several minutes of flying to get anywhere at all. I ended up using a walkthrough for the whole thing. Subsequent acts weren’t quite as excessively large, but I still think playing without a guide would be an exercise in frustration due partly to the area size, the frequently slow move speed, and the frequently small things you’re trying to find.

Pros:

• The graphics are unique. Some people my like them, but they didn’t do much for me personally.

Cons:

• Excessively large areas
• Your move speed is frequently slow, especially as a child, even more so in Act 3
• Supposedly there’s supposed to be some sort of story here? If there was, it went completely above my head
• Act 3 was a buggy mess, with me frequently falling through the floor and having to restart a checkpoint
• There are 2 endings (requiring you to replay Act 4 to get). There really didn’t need to be, Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if I actually understood the story though.

Verdict: 4/10

I quite enjoyed the first 3 episodes of this game, but it was downhill from there. Unfortunately the last 2 episodes put me off the game too much to recommend it.

Pros:

• Well voice acted
• I really liked the concept - actually playing ‘myself’ and looking through cameras to see what was happening worked better than expected
• When you’re in ‘look for electronics’ view, time is paused so you can take time and look around
• Getting caught isn’t that big of a problem as holding cells are common enough that there’s never an overly frustrating amount of progress lost, but you do lose most of your items so it’s not inconsequential either
• The alternative clothes make running through the game a second time for achievements much easier (though IMO they should have been unlocked after beating the game the first time)
• You get the VR version free too, though I opted not to play it as I don’t think this game would really benefit from VR.

Cons:

• Achievements for looking through every camera are pointless and frustrating given that you have to be in ‘normal’ vision in order for it to register
• The episode 1 achievement for looking through every camera can’t be completed until episode 2
• Episode 4 presented some relevant story information but largely felt like filler, and the ending was frustrating
• Who thought it was a good idea having pin pads where the order you enter numbers in is random, the numbers shown change every half second such that the number you need may not even be an option, AND there’s a timeout? Thankfully these are episode 4 only.
• Episode 5 had a significant spike in difficulty with some changes to enemies only discovered the hard way
• The ending was very disappointing

Verdict: 5/10

I was looking forward to playing this game since the themes sounded interesting, but honestly it wasn’t really worth it. It’s not bad per se, and I’m sure many people would like it, but for me there were too many faults to enjoy it. The story took quite a while to get me interested in it. The premise is that the main character is looking for his missing wife and son. Presumably you’re supposed to empathize with him. This is made much more difficult due to the fact that he’s… not very likeable. This doesn’t even seem to serve a story purpose as far as I can tell.

Pros:

• The story isn’t bad once you finally get into it
• Well voice acted

Cons:

• I didn’t find either of the endings particularly satisfying
• I wasn’t impressed with the graphics. They didn’t feel like they were done in a unique style so much as badly dated (at least when it game to people & robots).
• The movement controls were really bad. This was the biggest issue for me. If it wasn’t for this I probably would have given the game a hesitant thumbs up. Maybe it’s better with mouse and keyboard but with a controller it’s a nightmare.
• No manual saves, and the autosaves aren’t frequent enough. I found myself losing some progress when I resumed playing a few times.
• Unskippable cutscenes. I don’t have any issue with this on the first playthrough - for an interactive movie game like this it’s a good thing - but they remain unskippable on subsequent playthroughts, which are necessary to get all achievements.
• There are only a few things you can change in the last section of the game, making replay value up until the end pretty non-existent, despite needing to replay it to get all achievements.
• The auto saves appear to remain usable and thus useful for collecting missed achievements, but it seems that under certain circumstances (presumably if you change something significant) future ones get wiped. So if you’re planning to use them to get missed achievements, work from the last achievements backwards or you may find yourself needing to replay everything.

Verdict: 5/10

Definitely worth playing if you enjoy RPGs. The story is decent for the most part, though the last half of the game does get to be a bit of a slog at times as the main story is just ‘find the guy’ and doesn’t really go much of anywhere. There are plenty of sidequests to do though which have stories of their own and tell you more about the world.

Pros:

• What parts are voice acted are done well
• The random chatter between party members can be quite entertaining
• Party members will often give their thoughts during dialogue. This could keep things interesting during replays since you may hear something different if you have a different party
• Autosaves in new areas are very helpful
• There’s a hard autosave right before the point of no return
• The ending was pretty good and unexpected
• The leveling system is good - it lets you go in different directions so even with the same party members, replays can still be quite different
• You can always rebuild you character (stats and all levels) for a price, which is great if you realize you made a mistake
• The various auto-pause options can really help out

Cons:

• Not everything is voice acted
• You can decrease difficulty during gameplay, but it only takes effect in unexplored maps. Since the primary reason to decrease difficulty is because of a specific battle, it’s often too late to do so by the time you realize you want to. Unless of course you have an early enough save and are willing to lose some progress.
• Saves are not ordered by type, not time, which is inconvenient
• You can’t remove or change enchantments
• The auto-pause on ineffective weapon option also pauses if the secondary damage type is ineffective, which makes it too frustrating to use later in the game when all of your weapons have secondary damage type enchantments on them
• The ‘master below’ questline is a major side-quest to add an extra challenge. I’m not a fan of the ending. There’s basically the ‘bad but easy’ solution and the ‘impossibly difficult but good’ solution. The latter is way too difficult. I like a challenge, but it’s excessive.

Verdict: 7/10

Overall a relaxing exploration game that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Pros:

• Gorgeous graphics
• Great background music
• No threats - enemies, ability to fall or otherwise die, etc
• All areas are immediately accessible - no tools or upgrades required, etc
• No missable achievements, and you can go back and explore after beating the game to finish getting achievements
• Getting collectibles on large buildings is often puzzle like, but it’s never overly difficult to figure out how to one

Cons:

• Does get boring after a while - a lot of the small climbable buildings are very similar. Thankfully the game doesn’t outstay its welcome

Verdict: 7/10

Overall this is a very good game and IMO better than the first. Warning though: despite the appearance from the steam store, this game does not support VR, it only supports VR in one small DLC.

Pros:

• Decent story
• Great graphics
• Good voice acting
• Good evolution and variety of new weapons/abilities/upgrades
• The constant sliding from the first game don’t exist here
• You don’t have to play the first game to understand this game - despite being a sequel they don’t seem terribly related
• The chapter replay modes and challenges provides some replayability for those who don’t mind repeating the same areas/levels

Cons:

• Some areas force you into a fight without an opportunity to stealth at all
• I encountered some bugs. In chapter replay, restarting level causes a crash. Also,
• I found certain parts of the Baba Yaga DLC too challenging after playing for 30+ hours I had a weird thing start where the screen would randomly go black but the game keeps going (sound is there, menus work, but I can’t see anything in game). I haven’t seen anyone else reporting similar issues though.
• I don’t like the whole ‘cards’ for upgrades bit in chapter replay. More importantly, I really don’t like the fact that you can apparently buy card packs (many of which are one time use) with real money. It’s gambling and has no place in games.
• You have to wait a few seconds to skip cutscenes - find in the main game but a nuisance in chapter replay

Verdict: 8/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It has a great story will lots of exploration that slowly unravels the past. There’s always more to discover. After my first playthrough I’m tempted to start a new game right away to see what happens if I do things differently, and to answer questions I didn’t get to answer the first time around.

Pros:

• Good graphics
• Very well voice acted
• Excellent story that keeps you guessing and leaves you with questions to answer and theories about what happened
• Lots to discover and explore
• New Game + lets you replay but keep the translations you have so far
• Depending on your responses and actions you can learn different information and I think have some people act differently

Cons:

• You can’t go back to places that you’ve been to unless you have a reason. This can be an advantage because it prevents you from exploring unnecessary places if you get stuck (unlikely IMO), but if you miss something or want to explore it more you can’t.
• Six constantly asks if you want to leave a place. It makes you feel rushed. IMO you should be able to ask it to take you back, and only have it ask if you actually find all there is to find.
• The walking speed is fairly slow. Granted this is briefly explained in game, but it’s still frustrating and can effectively discourage exploration, which is the whole point of the game.
• In some circumstances - especially when flying - it’s not always clear who’s talking until something is said to give you a clue.
• Once you leave a moon you can’t go back down (even if it’s a place you can always revisit) without going somewhere else and going back.

Verdict: 9/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It’s very artistic and open to interpretation to a certain extent. The gameplay is a mix of platforming and puzzles, neither of which are particularly difficult. I generally don’t like platformers because I’m very bad at them, but I didn’t really have a problem with it.

Pros:

• Graphically gorgeous
• Platforming sections aren’t difficult
• Puzzles are provide a bit of a challenge but are not difficult
• Enjoyable music, very atmospheric
• After you beat the game you can go back and replay any chapter, including from checkpoints throughout the chapter. This makes getting missed achievements/collectibles significantly less painful than they could be

Cons:

• The memento collectibles don’t seem to serve any purpose. It seems like it may have been a ‘most other games have collectibles so maybe we should too’ sort of decision.

Verdict: 9/10

I quite enjoyed this game overall, but there were several issues that prevented it from being great. I didn’t enjoy the DLC as much as the main game, though it did like the ending.

Pros:

• The graphics (once fixed) are quite good, with some gorgeous scenery
• Decent story
• Likeable characters
• Good voice acting
• Doesn’t suffer from the Assassin’s Creed problem of randomly jumping to your death. If you try to jump, you’ll either make it or you’ll not jump - no accidental deaths.
• I liked the ‘cheats’ that unlock when you beat the game - it makes subsequent playthroughs (for achievements, difficulties, etc) much easier and doesn’t lock you out of achievements like most games with cheats do.

Cons:

• My main complaint is the camera. Quite a few games take the approach this game does, and it almost never works well. I’ll be going in one direction and the camera will suddenly turn and I’ll now be running in a different direction. It’s confusing and frustrating. While you can control the camera to some extent, you can’t always rotate to the view you want.
• One graphics issue - grey banding on characters in cutscenes. There’s a fix for it in a guide, I’m not sure if it works or not though.
• I found counterattacking very difficult - getting the timing right was too tricky for me
• There are costumes that unlock after beating the game - one for Trip and 2 for Monkey, but you can only use one at a time (without a manual hack). It’s not possible to have both Trip and Monkey changed at the same time. This is probably because the costumes are combined with the aforementioned cheats - you can’t only apply a costume without the cheat.

Verdict: 8/10

Definitely unusual but quite enjoyable.

Pros:

• Definitely has some funny moments
• Interesting art style
• Among the best puzzle difficulty I’ve come across - they’re challenging but don’t get frustrating
• I liked the unique nod/head shake used to answer questions

Verdict: 8/10

This has the potential to be an enjoyable game for anyone who enjoys games like House Flipper. Unfortunately in its current state I cannot recommend it.

Pros:

• Variety of stations for renovation
• in addition to the usual ‘clean up garbage and add appropriate furniture’ each station has other unique goals to complete, which I like (and which could be expanded on)
• A scanner helps you find any trash you’ve missed, making it much easier to get 100% completion
• There’s some leeway - you can get 100% completion even if you’ve missed one or two pieces of trash

Cons:

• Controls could be better - they don’t feel as natural and as easy as House Flipper
• It was in a Humble Choice bundle despite it having numerous bugs that made it largely unplayable
• The bugs rendering it unplayable have been fixed, but there are still numerous bugs
• Achievements are broken
• Levels can’t be replayed, so you can’t go back and get 100% completion on previous levels without restarting the game
• The furniture/item requirements for various areas frequently don’t make sense
• Once you put trash in a dumpster it can’t be moved, which can be an issue with the recycling dumpster if you get a piece stuck at the front, forcing you to pay to have it emptied before putting anything else in it

Verdict: 6/10

There are definitely some good aspects of this game, but unfortunately I can’t recommend it. The way it’s split into 2 parts is… different. It definitely has the potential to be an interesting game mechanic, but some other unfortunate design choices prevent me from being able to appreciate it. The biggest flaw is the mechanics. It’s built purely as an FPS. There are a variety of unlockable weapons, melee takedowns are lethal, and apart from crouching there are no stealth mechanics to speak of. Given that you are supposed to be stealthy and kill as few people as possible, this is a very big problem.

Pros:

• Very good voice acting
• For most of the game you have a phone which shows you where enemies are as well as their field of vision, which partly compensates for the lack of stealth options
• The idea of the story taking place in your memories was a really neat idea
• All chapters can be replayed
• Cutscenes are still unskippable during subsequent viewings
• Despite the difficulty getting to it, the good ending is very well done

Cons:

• Previously mentioned lack of stealth mechanics are a problem if you want the good ending
• Most of the ‘evidence’ you can collect seems entirely pointless
• The asylum sections felt like little more than padding
• Until you’ve beaten the first part of the game, not all chapters are replayable
• I found subtitles kept turning off for some reason
• The story failed to keep me interested, though was due in part to my frustration around the game mechanics
• There seems to be little to no difference between the two difficulties

Verdict: 5/10

Entertaining point & click game with plenty of funny moments.

Pros:

• Excellent voice acting
• Good artwork
• Very funny
• Decent story

Cons:

• Has several moments where I restored to using random things together to see what happened
• The last chapter was difficult enough that I ended up using a walkthrough for most of it

Verdict: 9/10

Very cute adventure game with a very good art style that’s well worth playing for point & click fans, though it is perhaps a bit expensive given the short play time.

Pros:

• Beautiful art style
• Very well voice acted
• Puzzle difficulty is very good
• Had quite a few funny moments
• Good story

Cons:

• I wasn’t a big fan of the ending
• Most P&C games have a double-click to run/instantly move to the next screen feature. This doesn’t. While I definitely appreciate the very well done scene transitions, there is enough back and forth that the speed of the scene transitions can get unfortunate.
• Mutually exclusive achievements despite no replay value

Verdict: 9/10

Honestly I was disappointed in this game. It was more depressing than I expected, and not as humorous. My main complaint though is that the puzzles were quite difficult.

Pros:

• I liked how the story was told
• You can interact with the AI to get hints
• The space station the game takes place on is very ‘busy’, there’s lots of stuff lying around and it generally looks realistically lived in

Cons:

• It’s not obvious you can get hints; I found this out by accident
• I found the hints were often just ‘how to get started on the puzzle’, rather than helping with specific parts I was stumped on
• Most of the humour fell flat for me
• The down side of there being so much stuff on the space station is that there’s so many things you can interact with that it’s very easy to miss the one or two things that are actually useful
• The puzzles really are technical, but the in-game technical manual doesn’t always do a great job of explaining systems, some of which are quite complex. It’s easy to get intimidated/frustrated.

Verdict: 6/10

I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It was a wild ride, with lots of unexpected twists and turns. If you enjoy VNs and a good story, I recommend giving this a try. My biggest complaint was the grinding required to get all scenes etc. As much as it’s tempting to ignore this, it did reveal some interesting parts I’d missed and answered questions I had with the story.

Pros:

• Interesting story that has lots of unexpected twists, keeping you guessing until the end
• The characters were well done and all had their own personalities that came through well
• I didn’t come across any translation/grammar/spelling errors with the translation
• Repeated playthroughs using different options can reveal different parts of the story
• I was impressed how well the different parts fit together. With such a complicated story inconsistencies wouldn’t be surprising, but this game did not have any. Even the small details were well done.

Cons:

• It felt like there were a few too many bad endings
• Unlocking all of the tips, scenes, etc to get all achievements is a nightmare, especially if you don’t follow a guide for your first playthrough (which I highly recommend)
• I had a hard time with SSS. I found it often wasn’t obvious how different values would affect the outcome. There were times were I wanted to get or to avoid a specific outcome, and even after finding the correct values via trial and error it still wasn’t obvious why those values worked. Answer mode had the same problem.
• Most of the tips seemed a little pointless since it just repeated explanations given in game
• I came across some points where skipping didn’t want to skip scenes I’d seen before. This was especially true in the xtend episode.
• This game is supposed to be set in the near future, but I found both of the male characters sexist, as well as some of the writing. For example, some of the girls being ‘naturally frail’, but not having any health concerns? That’s just BS.
• The skipping is not fast enough given how much you have to skip when doing repeat playthroughs. I’d often start skipping then go and do something else while I waited.

Verdict: 7/10

Decent FPS that’s very retro. If you enjoy FPSs or want to relive some of the older ones this is worth playing.

Pros:

• Really great music
• Good weapon, level, and enemy variety
• If you find most/all of the secrets you’re unlikely to run out of lives
• The pause menu shows you how many secrets you still have to find on the current stage
• As long as you don’t accidentally go to the next stage it’s generally not too difficult to find all of the secrets
• I liked the choice of weapon upgrades, allowing for different play styles

Cons:

• As much as it is faithful to the era, I’m not a fan of limited lives since it means you have to start the game from the beginning if you run out. Even if it’s unlikely I don’t enjoy the added pressure.
• It’s easy to accidentally go to the next stage before you’re ready (i.e. before you finish finding the secrets)
• If you proceed to the next stage without getting all of the secrets, your only option is to return to the workshop at the cost of one life, since levels can’t be replayed
• On some levels the secrets are next to impossible to notice, leaving you no option but to run around trying to interact with all of the walls

Verdict: 8/10

Partially Experienced on Oculus Rift

First things first, don’t play this on VR. VR mode has been abandoned in beta. It mostly works, but there are parts when you have to make a selection but cannot choose. Additionally, there are some parts that don’t work well in VR, or which make much more sense playing the game flat.

The game itself is depressing and very disturbing. Be aware of that, and if it’s not your thing give this game a pass.

Pros:

• Good sound effects
• Good voice acting
• The graphics are pretty good
• They did a very good job of making the hospital feel abandoned and decaying
• The story keeps you trying to figure out what’s going on
• Collectable diary entries are easy to find as long as you visit every room

Cons:

• The walking speed is frustratingly slow, and there’s no running
• VR abandoned in beta
• In one chapter you are in a more violent ward and are hearing screaming, but if you go to other parts of the hospital that should be quiet, the screaming continues.
• Even after playing through all of the routes, I’m still not entirely sure what actually happened Renée, though to be fair this is probably by design
• It’s never made clear who you are playing as. This is actually referenced in the story so is probably also on purpose, but personally I would have preferred it to at least be a bit more obvious.

Verdict: 7/10

Clearly designed for co-op, but works well solo. Definitely worth buying if you enjoyed the base game.

Pros:

• Adds 4 new prequel chapters to play that explains some more of the backstory
• Adds some new weapons/techniques
• I expect this would be great to play co-op
• works well solo, and you can call in the other assassin in solo as well

Cons:

• If you finish a chapter and quit, then next time you start the game press ‘continue’ it will default to normal difficulty, even if you were on a different difficulty when you played the previous chapter. NOT EFFING COOL!

Verdict: 8/10

This game doesn’t start out well, but it does get better and the story seems promising enough that I think I’ll try the next game.

Pros:

• Pretty good voice acting
• Promising start to the story

Cons:

• Default resolution is awful, and it’s not clear how to change it (go to the install folder, there an exe there, change it to 4x)
• Feels short, more like an introduction to a story. Thankfully the price reflects the length.
• Crashed a few times, and opening the steam overlay breaks the dialogue
• The first puzzle followed by an info dump was bad. In fact I almost refunded it because of this. Thankfully it gets better, and even the developer has said it wasn’t a good start.
• Why is there an achievement for listening to developer commentary?! Thankfully it can be skipped as it comes up. On the plus side, some of it was interesting and has convinced me to try the next game since he’s clearly learned from mistakes made in this game.

Verdict: 6/10