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Morbid is a mid-game that is almost acceptable, but falters near the very end. TLDR: beautiful to look at, a chore to play

Let's be honest, it looks great -- the artstyle is detailed and consistent throughout, and there is enough variety in enemy designs and locations that you almost always know where you are and what kind of enemy you can expect to find there. The maps are nicely done, not showing everything but showing enough to keep you entertained. The sound design is generic but not objectively bad. And the designer intentionally keeps the lore cryptic, delivered through item descriptions, which at this point is an old trope, but kind of works here.

But that's the extent to which we can praise the game. The most important part of any action game is the gameplay. I wouldn't really mind the lack of a proper plot that interested me if the moment-to-moment gameplay was good, but alas, it is not. Combat is incredibly simple, to the point of being boring and repetitive. There's very little variation on what you do in combat. It usually is a game of positioning instead of a game of timing and reflexes. Attacks are very high commitment and, for the most part, incredibly slow, so you need to know where you are in relation to your enemy and how long will it take for it to reach you, in order to know whether you'll have enough wind-up to hit your foe before it retaliates. Writing it that way makes it sound acceptable and even fun, but playing it is anything but. Besides a strong attack, you have no variation in your arsenal.

You do get a lot of different weapons, but all play the same and feel the same. Even in terms of power creep, you end the game fighting like you did at the beginning, with your health similar to what you had at the beginning, with similar damage numbers you had at the beginning. Enemies get more health and stronger punches, but you hardly get stronger as the game progresses. Sure, you have Blessings to customize your build, but it's so hard to upgrade them and they are so generic that one can't help but wonder if the game wouldnt' be better without them. You have dodge and parry, but parry timing is not super easy to crack and I always tried to avoid it when I could, except in some enemies that absolutely need it to close the gap (like the ones that shoot missiles up and Lady Tristana). Attacks take too much stamina vs. running and dodging, so you'll be out of stamina more often than not

Add to it a small inventory that can be completely taken over by three or four weapons you find in the path, a lot of buffs that only stack up to 10 so you'll be constantly using things you don't need to be able to pick up more, or leaving loot behind. There's a sanity system that adds close to nothing to the whole ordeal, and a very linear map that tries to pretend it's super interconnected, but it's just a bit annoying to navigate.

I would be willing to overlook all of that if it wasn't for the last battle. Not only it's a 3-phase juggernaut, it's just too slow to begin with, and when it picks up pace you'll probably already be tired of it and depleted of resources, at which point the difficulty just ramps to 11. I almost dropped the game after literally 7 hours because of how much I struggled at the last boss. It's not a challenging fight, it's just annoying and boring. Lady Tristana was the only fight I genuinely enjoyed in the game and she would make a much better last boss than what we have here.

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Surprisingly fun, for how bad it looks. This is proof that if you got a solid gameplay mechanic, you can make it work even when your graphics look like AI slop.

I assume that for most people, your first run will end up with you doing the Deed with your bare hands (because you forgot to pick a weapon), and then being found guilty after failing to hide hahaha either way, the game really starts on your second run, once you understand how it works and can finally plan for it. I ended up doing two runs and feeling satisfied, and positively surprised at how well the whole thing worked given how poor everything looked hahaha

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Axiom Verge was a disappointment. Widely claimed as a great Metroidvania, which is my favorite genre, I assumed there would be no way not to enjoy this game, right? But it fails at the three things that makes Metroidvanias incredible for me - combat, movement, and exploration.

Starting with combat. Axiom Verge gives you one option: ranged combat. You're stuck to the 8-way directional for aiming your shots, and while you have a huge range of weapons (I beat the game with 12 or so), most are useless or incredibly situational. You'll frequently be unable to hit enemies a bit above or below you because of the odd angles the 8-way directional forces on you, and while I can see this being an aesthetic design choice ("Look, we're retro, let's emulate Metroid"), I'm sure retro games would have preferred free aiming if they had the tech to do so at the time. Axiom Verge does, decides to not use it, and it's a lesser game for it.

Now, movement. It starts bad, like any other Metroidvania, but barely improves. There's no running, double jumping, wall climbing or hanging, dash, or any of the actual cool movement abilities you would expect. Instead, you get a janky-as-hell grappling hook that barely functions, yet is required to progress into many frustrating areas of the game; you get a teleport that also decides to work whenever it wants, not when you want it to; and finally, a spider drone, that half the time fails to launch and your character launches the hook instead. Not only is mobility limited, the limited mobility you have is also bad. Considering the absurd amount of backtracking and verticality on display here, it's wild they decide this was good enough. With poor combat and poor movement, you cannot create memorable boss fights or gauntlets, so the game doesn't have the same oomph that the Mantis Lords in Hollow Knight, Elsom the Oger in Ghost Song, or Granfaloon in Castlevania SOTN.

And finally, exploration. I didn't mind the lore at first, but it mostly went nowhere. I think my biggest issue here is that the world is uninteresting - it's very samey and barren. There are little to no NPC's, only the giant sleeping heads telepathically talking to you that I found very hard to empathize. You hear of the villain but don't see it or it's actions until the last 3 minutes of the game. There is little to interact with, no one to talk to, and all areas are kind of generic and similar, so it feels you're going around in circles while playing the game.

Sincerely, I have a very high bar for Metroidvanias, and Axiom Verge is far from what I would consider a good one. At least I also got Blasphemous, so let's see what it is all about shall we

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A short little game that manages to squeeze a lot of heart during it's short runtime.

It's visually appealing, with a simple, coloring book aesthetic focusing on pastel colors reflecting the tone of the scene. It has a simple soundscape, but that helps to keep the whole thing going without distracting or overpowering the rest of the scenes.

The main puzzle mechanic is simple enough that you can just pick it and play with it without tutorials or extensive guides, but there is enough depth that even by the end of the game the puzzles never become obvious, although they lean a bit on the easier side of the things - which is not a bad thing in itself. If they were much harder, they would start impacting the narrative, and I'm glad they don't go all the way.

The narrative itself is compact but smartly told. Pacing-wise, it's great, it's the kind of game that refuses to be put down once you start it. I probably won't be thinking about it for ages the way I did with Elden Ring or RDR2, but it was a game that was very enjoyable for the short time I spent with it and I'd recommend it to anyone (particularly on a deal, given the short playtime and lack of replayability)

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A decent, competent couch multiplayer game. The star of the show here is movement, which is surprisingly well-executed. Building on this foundation, the game introduces several modes, some based on combat and some based more on movement mastery. Add mines, shields and boosts to your arsenal and you're in for a good time.

It's one of those arcade games that are very easy to pick but has an absurd high skill ceiling. Visuals, sounds and UI are nothign ground-breaking but work well enough. This is great to play with friends, but tough luck going against the AI.

Probably I wouldn't pay the full price based on how thin the singleplayer experience is, but it's very worth on a sale or if you plan to play a lot in local multiplayer

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Children of Silentown is one of those mid-games that you just wish were a bit better - there's not much wrong with it, but for the most part it's really unremarkable.

I mean, the artstyle is probably it's best element, very reminiscent of Broken Age, but with slightly worse animations. It's still consistent and enjoayble all throughout the game's runtime, which feels great. I also imagine it costed 100x less to illustrate and animate than Broken Age, so one must wonder what Tim Schaefer and the gang were doing with their Kickstarter, but I digress. The music is unobtrusive and not bad, but also unremarkable. Sound effects for the most part work well, but you really wish dialogue was voice acted -- I think it would help to elevate this game from mid to solid.

Speaking of dialogue, it's mostly good - I never got tired of reading what they had to say, and the jokes / humor / tone landed pretty well. The problem is that this dialogue does not connect with an overarching satisfying plot. From a pacing perspective, the game spends a lot of time with setup and not enough with delivery. It hints and teases at a lot of psychological horror possibilities, but lands with nothing. The beginning of the game drags and the end rushes. It's just a weird pacing.

Besides the pacing, the game flounders a bit on the gameplay. It's more of a classic point-and-click rather than a modern one. You'll need to pixel hunt quite often, combine items in unexpected (and dare I say, unfair) ways, and backtrack to non-obvious places to figure out the non-obvious solution the devs intended. Having just played some Wadjet Eye Games, it's kind of jarring to come back to this classic P&C issues that drag the game even further into mediocre territory. Had it highlighted interactables, for instance, would already make it way, way less frustrating and probably dismiss the need for a guide. The singing mechanic reminded me a lot of Acquaria and it's fine, nothing too bad. The puzzles that accompany it take some trial-and-error (particularly the rotating tiles one), but they are still mostly enjoyable and I feel could have been used more often.

Overall, a decent artstyle and good world-buildign that is marred by antiquated P&C gameplay, poor pacing and little story development. I still recommend it, but don't expect a remarkable experience after all

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Ugh, it's so painful to write this review. For 80% of my playtime, Thief was everything I hoped it would be: an atmospheric, balanced, interesting, dense stealth game with incredible level design, enemy AI, light and sound systems, and great variety of tools to approach any scenario. I was enjoying myself to no end, even though I was slightly annoyed by levels with a big number of undead enemies.

But then I hit "Return to the Cathedral", and it just became another game, a bad one at that. Suddenly it felt sneaking was barely a viable alternative anymore, with hyper-aggressive enemies that would track you down any corner and two-or-three hit you at most. I had to switch from my previous "hide, observe, plan, act" to "run, try to memorize the level, save-scum, run, try to hit all the objectives with the level memorized, save-scum if anything goes wrong", and I don't think I need to explain why this is not fun.

This last stretch of Thief was so jarring for me, turning one of the most enjoyable 20-odd hours I've had in recent gaming memory into a 5-hour stretch that was an absolute slog. I'm still reeling from the whiplash. If I could go back in time, I would just with that I could force myself to stop playing after "Undercover!" and tell myself the game was over, in which case Thief would still be one of my favorite games of all time. Having endured the last four missions, I almost feel like not recommending it, but the rest of the game is so solid that it would be a disservice to skip it

Steam Review - I'm not proud of that one, but also I'm not proud of this game …

Okay, I have nothing to say here. Asset flip, avoid like the plague.
To quote my Steam review: "I'll leave this review the same way the dev left the game - unfin"

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If someone tries to explain Genesis Noir to you, forget about it. There's no way one can convey the experience in a review, including myself. The short version of it is that this is an unique, haunting, profound artistic experience better experienced than described. It's not much in the sense of a traditional game, but that doesn't mean you should avoid it at all.

As a game, Genesis Noir is a straightforward point&click puzzle game. You mostly click on stuff, and hold the mouse button to navigate the environment, usually in a straight line. Sometimes there are 'tactile' puzzles that require you to push sliders, rotate knobs, that kind of stuff. It's pretty run-of-the-mill, nothing revolutionary in a gameplay sense, but fortunately, Genesis Noir is more than just gameplay. When it comes to presentation, narrative and setting, it's absolutely a mind-blowing masterpiece.

It's hard to break each of those elements, but I'll try my best. Visually, the game is stunning. It has a coherent artstyle that is utilized to it's fully extent here. "Everything looks gorgeous all the time" is a great way of describing it. It's hard to remember the last time I paused so often to take screenshots of my gaming session. It's a commitment to an artstyle that elevates it from a game towards an artpiece. Calling it anything other than art is undermining it's merits. To accompany such outstanding visual spectacle, we have a soundtrack that ebbs and flows between naturalistic background music to acid jazz in a heartbeat, but never separated from the vibe of the moment and the action on the screen. It's effortlessly enjoyable.

All of that is tied together by an incredible narrative arc that explores questions of human character and motivation, evolution, cosmology, astronomy, physics, fate, multiverses, and so much more that it's hard to even believe what I'm writing. I just finished playing it and I can barely believe how much ground it covers, and in such a grounded way. With everything else going on, it didn't need to go that hard on it's themes and narrative, but it does, and it's better for it.

So, if someone tells you Genesis Noir is an interactive, linear story with very little gameplay to boot, they are not lying. It's one way to interpret the game, that while not entirely wrong, is short-sighted. Don't use that as a reason to avoid this game. By all means, buy it, play it, and gawk at it. The regular price ($15) is fine, but it frequently is on sale ($3 as I write it), making it an absolute steal. Highly recommended.