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Borderlands …. is a series that took me so long to get into, probably because I played it solo. So take everything I'll write here with a grain of salt, as it's the solo experience.

Now, let's start with the good. It's a game that looks as good today as it looked back in the day. The ultra-stylized cel-shaded visuals are refreshing and always good to look at. It has this rhythm where you're always close to achieving something new, be it getting a new level, starting a new quest, or turning in a recently finished one. Once the ball gets rolling, you're always getting more powerful, getting closer to your objectives, and it has that looter beat really well done. Reminds me of the last time I booted Torchlight 2, just to play it for close to 30 hours just because the gameplay loop is so addictive. That's all really well done here. Boss fights are typically pretty good - not always challenging, but always thrilling.

Now, the bad and the ugly. If there's a plot here, it's bad and hard to follow. Mostly because exposition is made via quest logs, but those are super easy to skip and miss, and even hard to read since they require Page Up and Page Down, two keys that are hard to access on my laptop and that are used nowhere else in the game. Like, they could have used W and S to move the text. Why use Page Up and Page Down?

Exploration takes a huge hit here, since everything you must do is always present on your map and on your bearings. It's impossible to get lost at the game, for good and for ill. I never had the urge to go and explore corners, because I knew that if they were important, a mission marker would eventually send me there.

Also, for all that the visuals are good, they are super repetitive. You'll be fighting five generic guys all throughout the game. In rusted deserts that are inspired by Mad Max, and some generic shanty towns and caves. You'll also find some critters, but they usually look the same with minor variations between them. It's so boring to see the same enemies and settings after 30 hours of play, and it kind of defeats the beauty brought by the stylized visuals. Quests are also super repetitive - maybe because they all consist of going somewhere, shooting some monsters, sometimes a prop, sometimes getting an item, and then traveling back. It's kind of old.

The shooting itself is also not so good. Enemies are sponges, and sometimes you pummel them with bullets and they barely finch. It doesn't feel good to be honest. I don't like games where damage is a number popping up from the enemy, regardless of where you hit them or with what, and Borderlands relies heavily on the former. I was also very sick of the voice lines and taunts from my character by the end, as well as from aimlessly driving from Point A to Point B to start or turn in a quest.

Let me also say - it's a buggy mess. I had so many crashes and got stuck in geometry so many times during my playthrough. Enemies are highly cheeseable.

With all that said, would I still recommend it? Yes. Because the freaking basic gameplay loop is so fun, you can overlook most of the flaws and just have fun with this. If you have a buddy for co-op, I can imagine that being 10x better.

My Steam Review - Consider leaving a thumbs up, it means a lot to me :)

Restless Soul is a like a book of jokes, but you have to walk between each one, interact, and wait slowly while it unfolds on the screen. It gets so old so quickly, but at least the game recognizes that and allows you to fast-forward dialogue. In a game primarily about dialogue. That's how self-aware it is of how bad its jokes are.

The problem is - if you're buying this game for the jokes, it gets old too quickly. But if you're buying it for anything other than the jokes, there's barely one hour of gameplay here, which varies between really poor twin stick shooting and menial puzzles that change from town to town, like mini-Sokoban puzzles, jumping puzzles, or top-down obstacle dodging. The visual style, while charming at first, becomes monotonous around the halfway mark.

I feel I still had a decent hour and a half of game left if I kept playing the way the devs intended - reading every line of dialogue. But I was so tired of the meta-contextual jokes, of the 1st grade humor, and of EVERY LITTLE INTERACTION trying to be funny that I simply held the Run button, skipped all optional dialogue and fast-forwarded all obligatory dialogue, and finished the remainder of the game in 10-15 minutes. And surprisingly, skipping the dialogue made it more bearable.

I can't find any reason why someone would pay to play this. This is like Turnip Boy, but bad.

My Steam Review - Consider leaving a thumbs up, it means a lot to me :)
It's hard to fault Little Inferno. It looks great, has awesome animations, menus are all polished, sound generally is really good, and the game has a very specific and well developed aesthetic style, which remains consistent all throughout the game. It's writing is mostly good, although it dives head first in a style of humor that might not appeal everyone, so it could be hit or miss.

And I get the kind of statement the game is trying to make, about consumerism, capitalism, lonely, environmental degradation, so on and so forth. But in trying too hard to make a statement, it starts to fail a bit as a game. I realized I was disengaging with the game when I started Alt-Tabbing to do other stuff while I waited my items to "ship". I actually like the gated progression of catalogs and items within catalogs, forcing you to experiment with everything and focus on combos, but the inflated prices and ever-rising shipping times start to become an annoyance really quickly, and that's where the game lost me. Also, some combos rely on English-centric puns and idioms, making them inacessible for ESL folks.

Overall, a game made by a competent team, but that misses its mark when it comes to gameplay and actually being enjoyable to play

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Slick, groovy, fluid. I had low expectation about Lethal League, but this is one of the crispest multiplayer games I've played in the last few months. It's also the second SG Win I beat this month, thank you Mudkip! :)

First of all, it has style. The graphics are kind of low-res, the animations are simple, and while each character has very few voice lines and art, they are all memorable and have their own personality. The sountrack, sound effects and levels all contribute to that. They mostly play the same, but different hitboxes, specials, jump heights and shooting angles all end up differentiating the roster enough for you to pick favorites (mine being Candyman and Latch).

Now, the gameplay. It is so simple, yet requires so much skill, mastery, finesse, nuance, quick reflexes and strategic thinking to do well in this game. I lost count on how many times I fell to very easy baits from the enemy, only to deliver them the same. Or how many times I thought I was irredeemably lost to a speed ball, only to bunt or counter it straight to their faces. For such a simple system, it is so deep and provide so much fun in couch co-op sessions.

I can easily see why the devs went for a sequel - while all the basics are here and they proved they can make an incredibly fun and challenging multiplayer game, they had all the room to grow in terms of art, sound, and overall game mechanics. What's here is enough to make a good game that's fun to play for a long time, but I'm sure the sequel (which I won but haven't played yet) will be everything this one has, but more. Looking forward to it!

My Steam Review - Consider leaving a thumbs up, it means a lot to me :)

You know you're in trouble when you clip through the geometry a minute into the game, and from that point on, you're afraid of WALKING. On a WALKING simulator.

While I've played several of the most famous walking sims of the last few years, Dear Esther was the first that … was unremarkable in all ways. Beautiful, yes, but also unmemorable and uneventful.

If you're thinking of playing this game, my only recommendation would be to watch someone else play instead. You're practically missing nothing.

My Steam Review - Consider leaving a thumbs up, it means a lot to me :)

I had a blast playing Metal Unit. While the movement and combat can be janky at times (this is no Hollow Knight), it works enough to keep you entertained. The game rewards you for trying different weapon/accessory combos, meaning each run you probably will be running a different build, and you keep doing that pretty much until you beat the game. I definitely had favorite setups, but I ended up almost never using them because I was always trying out new stuff.

Difficulty wise, this is no walk in the park. Before I got upgrades/accessories that healed me after fights, I was struggling to reach bosses, and naturally died to them pretty quickly. Once I fixed that, I started reaching bosses more consistently, but they still pose a challenge. The roguelike element of randomized screens with monsters keep runs fresh, and there's enough meta-progression to keep you going if you die. The last gauntlet of bosses felt a bit easier than the rest, but still super fun to fight.

There is a plot, but it's all over the place and mostly a device for gameplay. I didn't love it, it was just meh.
If you're over the fence whether getting this game or not, but love 2D action games or metroidvanias, this could be a good fit. Definitely no sense of progression like traditional metroidvanias, but the roguelike elements keep it fresh and enjoyable. Also there's a free DLC for you to enjoy. Great work by the devs