The latest of these is already two years old since I mostly just review games on my blog now, and the oldest is from over ten years ago, so these are not fresh takes. I might not even agree with all of them any more. I'm just putting them here for completeness.
Some of them might seem to be out of order: those were edited on the dates indicated. I don't think there's any way to see the original version or see what was changed or added, so what you see is what you get.
Puzzle Dimension (November 2010)
This is a pretty fun puzzle game.
OK, I stand by that one. It is.
TrackMania Nations Forever (December 2010)
This is how racing games should be. No realism, no complexity, just here's a car, drive like a maniac on tracks that could never exist in the real world. Super easy to just jump in and start playing, but difficult enough that you want to keep trying over and over again to get that gold medal. Plus it's free, so you can just grab a copy to try on the off chance that you might enjoy it.
I don't know about "should be", but yeah.
Deus Ex: Invisible War (January 2011)
I think a lot of people see Deus Ex through rose-tinted glasses, and this game gets a lot of flak from people who liked the first one. I'll grant you, this game has its problems, but that doesn't stop it from being fun.
Now that Human Revolution exists, this is basically just a worse version of that, but if you don't mind the step back in technology and you can overlook some bugs, this is still a fun game.
If anything, my opinion of this game has actually improved.
Saints Row 2 (January 2011)
Like GTA only better in every way. Everything fun you can do in the GTA games has been improved in SR2 and most of the unfun ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ has been removed. No "drive this fragile car halfway across town without getting it damaged" missions, for example. And if you're doing a mission where you have a friend helping you, you don't automatically fail if they die. You have 30 seconds to go revive them.
Plus, they don't try to pretend that your character is anything but a violent psychopath. You are not playing the good guy. You are unquestionably the villain. Or at least a villain. So a mission in which you slaughter a dozen innocent bystanders won't be followed by a cutscene in which everyone acts like you're the heroes.
But as well as not doing things wrong, they do so many things right. The game is just damn fun.
I hadn't even seen some of the worst GTA mission when I wrote this. GTA is terrible.
STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast™ (January 2011)
The first part of this game is somewhat disappointing at first, because you start with no light sabre or force powers, but if you can get past that, it's actually a lot of fun. The storm troopers are actually really fun enemies to fight, because they use their environment and superior numbers in quite clever ways, ducking into doorways or behind crates and firing on you from cover, using both fire modes of their weapons when appropriate, and attempting to surround you or attack from multiple directions.
And then after a few levels you get your light sabre and force powers and an already fun game just takes a huge step up. There's nothing like grabbing a storm trooper with your mind and throwing him off a bridge, or dueling with light sabres and force powers. That ♥♥♥♥ just never gets old.
When I last replayed this game, I actually enjoyed the first bit more than the lightsabre duels.
STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy™ (January 2011)
This game is just like Jedi Outcast only better. Not only do you start with a light sabre, but you can now do more with it. Your force powers are also improved from the previous game. Light sabre duelling is even more fun than before, and this time you can pick which force powers you want to gain or improve after each level, so you can go straight for Force Grip and start choking people with your mind very early on. And Force Grip just never stops being fun. Picking up stormtroopers and dropping them off cliffs, roofs, walkways, etc. is just the best.
Yep.
Toki Tori (May 2011)
This is a pretty fun puzzle game.
Yep.
Hydrophobia: Prophecy (May 2011)
If you like the sort of games that involve running, climbing, swimming, jumping and shooting, you should get this one, because that's what it's about. And it is pretty fun.
You might think you see some really negative reviews about this game, but it's important to distinguish between Hydrophobia and Hydrophobia: Prophecy. The latter is the version available on Steam and it is, by all accounts, much less shit. Not that it's universally beloved or anything, but its flaws are fairly minor. It's not great, but it's decent. I haven't played the original Hydrophobia but it looks like hot garbage.
RUSH (May 2011)
Another fun puzzle game, and not nearly as chaotic and confusing as it might at first seem.
I don't even remember what this game is.
Unreal Tournament (June 2011)
Still the best deathmatch game ever made.
Haven't played it in years, but I stand by that statement.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (April 2015)
This is a deeply flawed game, but that said, a lot of it is very good. The problems really set in in the second half and the ending just devolves into a series of combat scenes, but the early parts of the game are well worth the price on their own. If you want to finish it, you'll need to put a lot of your xp into making yourself a better fighter, but rather than do that I'd suggest just playing up until you get to the point where combat becomes impossible then watching a Let's Play or looking up the (terrible) endings on YouTube.
There are mods that make the gameplay less bad, but yeah. The ending sucks.
And Yet It Moves (August 2011)
This game is a nifty mixture of platforming and puzzles. The gravity shifting mechanism takes a little bit to get used to, and sometimes it can be tricky to see where you're supposed to go, but because of the freedom you have to fly around the place you can find the way pretty easily. You'll die, but it's not like that's a major setback. The biggest problem I've had playing it is that I found myself overthinking some puzzles, assuming there was a tricky solution without trying the simple one first, but I can't really say that's a flaw in the game.
Yep.
Defy Gravity (August 2011)
I'm beginning to think that any platform game featuring gravity manipulation is a guaranteed winner, and along with VVVVVV and And Yet It Moves I would have to recommend this game, because they are all great.
I think AYIM is actually the only one of those I actually finished. I'm pretty sure I did come close with VVVVVV though.
LIMBO (August 2011)
The first half of this game is brilliant. The second half, where you go from forest to city, is less good, but still fun. The final puzzle
makes me wish cancer upon whoever came up with it. But a few minor irritations aside, a pretty fun game.
Oof. I'm going to edit that one. I don't remember what the final puzzle is, btw. Probably something with a timer, if I know me.
Sid Meier's Civilization V (September 2011)
I could never get into Civ 3 or 4, but with 5 it goes back to being the brilliant game it used to be. Having played through a couple of games now, my only complaints would be a couple of minor things: Technology seems to be way too important. No matter what victory condition you're going for, the easiest way to get it is to prioritise technological advancement. Also, the AI is still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy and will hate you no reason and will almost never agree to a fair trade, demanding far more from you than they offer. But those aren't exactly new to this version.
City states are awesome, combat and war work really well, diplomacy is actually useful, the cultural policies are really useful, and I was skeptical about the lack of unit stacking, but it actually is a vast improvement. This game is just fantastic.
I don't think I ever played it again after writing this. It just takes too long.
Saints Row: The Third (April 2015)
At the time it came out, I wholeheartedly endorsed this game, but now things have changed. Now Saints Row IV and Gat Out of Hell exist, and either of those is a better choice than this one. And if you want something more grounded than those two, Sleeping Dogs is a good choice. Or Saints Row 2 if you can put up with the bugginess and general poor design. Which you should because Saints Row 2 is still awesome, but it's understandable to skip it these days.
If you're a fan of the series and want more, this is still a fun game, it's just not as good as the other games in the series.
I've said more about this elsewhere, but in short, SR3 is... bad.
The Blackwell Legacy (January 2012)
This series is excellent. This game less so. I'd recommend either playing this one or watching a Let's Play though rather than just skipping it, because it does set up the story and the characters. Besides, it's still better than most adventure games.
True.
Blackwell Unbound (January 2012)
In many ways the gameplay in this second Blackwell game is improved over the first, though there are still some bits I wasn't keen on, like having to type people's names to look them up in the phone book, but what really stands out is that the characters and story in this one are just vastly better than the first.
Joey and Rosa, in the first game, don't know each other yet, whereas Lauren and Joey here have been together a while, so the dynamic is a lot friendlier and more fun, and I just love Lauren as a character. I'd actually really like to play more games focused on her rather than Rosa (although I do like Rosa too).
The main issue I have with this game is the voice acting. The old women are played by young women, and it shows. That's the only issue though, the other characters are fine, but young women trying to sound old just never works.
But apart from that it's a fantastic game.
Weird gripe, but accurate.
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter (February 2021)
It's fun like Doom!
It's not!
Mortal Kombat Kollection (February 2012)
These games are super-hard. You can really tell that their primary purpose was to have you put all of your money into the machine as quickly as possible,. But they're still fun.
Just get the Mortal Kombat (2011) instead.
NightSky (February 2012)
Incredibly frustrating, but in a fun way. Sometimes the checkpoints are placed in slightly irritating spots, so you have to redo a bit you don't want to because you failed the next bit, but that's pretty rare, it's usually not a problem. And even when it is, it shouldn't take you too many retries to get the solutions.
All in all, pretty fun and just the right level of challenge to keep you interested.
I do not remember this game at all.
Dragon Age: Origins (April 2015)
I really like the combat system in this game, the way it's almost turn-based (in that you're constantly pausing after everythign your character does to give new commands), and the story is decent enough. The romances are dumb and unnecessary, and I found the ending fairly weak, but mostly I liked it.
Too long though.
Mirror's Edge (July 2012)
This game is not as good as it should have been, but it's still pretty fun once you get the hang of it. It's hard not to imagine what could have been though, if they'd done what they obviously should have and made it an open-world sandbox with less combat, or even none at all.
The linearity of the levels and the annoying cops aside though, it's well executed. Even the first-person perspective works quite well, which was a pleasant surprise since this sort of game seems like it would have to be third-person to work at all.
The only negatives really stem from not living up to potential and being a little bit confusing and tricky to get to grips with initially. The instructions don't really help a lot and honestly it's best to just ignore them sometimes. I got stuck and incredibly frustrated because I kept trying to use the Alt key to find the way to go like it told me to, only to have that not work out for me at all. Once I realised what was going on there it was fine though.
Eventually the combat got too annoying and I quit.
Democracy 2 (January 2013)
This game looks way more complicated than it actually is, so don't be put off by the screenshots. And it's actually pretty fun, even if it is absurdly America-centric; for example, "teaching creationism or eveloution in schools" is always an issue and takes a ridiculous amount of effort to get rid of, even if you're playing as the country where most of the population are atheists. I guess Americans just can't imagine that not being an issue anywhere. Oh, and patriots are always in favour of reduced gun control, because that's how it works in America. Despite that though, it is a fun little game, though probably not one you'll spend a huge amount of time playing.
This is what Jennifer Government: NationStates should have been. And free would be the right price point for it. It is a fun little diversion, but it's not much of a game.
The Dream Machine (January 2013)
This is quite a decent adventure game. There are a few cases of "adventure game logic", like having to put ink on the unconscious man's hand then get his palm-print on a piece of paper to use with the palm-scanning door lock instead of just dragging the guy over to the door and pressing his hand to it, but most of the puzzles make sense (and the ones that don't are at least not difficult to figure out) and it doesn't make the common adventure game mistake of trying too hard to be funny.
It's not up to the standard of games like the Blackwell series or Hector: Badge of Carnage, but it's not bad.
IIRC the last episode of this got delayed for ages so I ended up forgetting about it. I keep meaning to go back and finish it but I just haven't.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine (January 2013)
Do you want to mow down wave after wave of orks? Do you want to charge into battle wildly swinging a chainsaw? If you answered no to either of those questions, you are broken. This game rules.
0.8 hours on record. It actually wasn't that great.
Gratuitous Space Battles (April 2013)
This game is pretty great. You design spaceships, set up your fleet, then watch them fight the enemy. There's a lot of information available to you if you want to get deeply involved with the numbers, but it doesn't penalise you too much for just trying ♥♥♥♥ out and seeing what happens.
Back when I used to play Magic: the Gathering, building the deck was my favourite part of the game, the actual playing bit wasn't nearly as good. It's just what you have to do to see how good your deck-building was. And this game seems to be designed specifically for people like me. It's all setup. Once you've desined your ships and put together your fleet, you just watch them fight it out with the enemy.
And then when it's over you get some detailed information on what you did wrong and get to try again. It's great.
I did enjoy this game. But it didn't have cloud saves so at some point I lost my progress and that really put me off going back to it.
Primordia (May 2013)
One of the better adventure games I've played. The puzzles generally make sense, the story's interesting enough to keep your attention and it's got Abe Goldfarb in it. A few gripes: There are some bits where it's not clear that you can travel further to the side of particular scenes (which stumped me for a while), and there are some items you need to pick up that are pretty hard to see, but the worst is that there are some things you can fail to do (or do incorrectly) that will lock you out of some of the content. But those are pretty minor. Even if you do miss the optional bits, you still get most of it and it's impossible to get stuck in an unwinnable state. This is definitely an example of how adventure games should be.
Not sure I'd 100% stand by that final sentence, but it was a decent game.
Saints Row IV (April 2015)
A vast improvement over Saints Row the Third, but still a step down in terms of story and customisation from Saints Row 2. The super powers are awesome (although not as good as Gat Out of Hell), the activities and targets are all fun, the dialogue is great, and the story missions are mostly decent. There are a couple of exceptions, but nothing as bad as the worst of SR3.
If you're new to the series, you'll miss a lot of the jokes and call-backs, but there's enough there that doesn't require any background knowledge that you probably won't even notice most of the time. Ideally I'd say you should play in order starting from SR2, but realistically this or Gat Out of Hell is probably the best place to start.
Gat Out of Hell is better. SR2 or Gat Out of Hell is the best one to start with, depending on your tolerance for shitty old console ports.
Gunpoint (February 2014)
This is a short, but very fun puzzle platformer, with more emphasis on the puzzle and less on the platforming. You may have heard that you can tackle dudes to the ground and then punch them hundreds of times. You can. It's less useful than you might imagine. One punch is usually good enough, and a lot of the time you're going to want to take them out in other ways anyway. My favourite is knocking people out by slamming doors in their faces. Sorry, into their faces.
As well as the clever and fun puzzle design, the story actually changes depending on your decisions and the dialogue is great. Absolutely worth getting,
I don't think I did a great job of conveying just how good this game is.
Always Sometimes Monsters (April 2015)
I don't even know what the ♥♥♥♥ this is supposed to be. You start out as some guy who is apparently a contract killer, and he wants to retire but his boss won't let him. Then the two of them get held up at gunpoint by some homeless guy. You can shoot the homeless guy, but if you do you get an automatic game over. If you don't shoot him it transitions to some completely unrelated scene where you're now a different character and you're throwing a party.
This scene seems to be some sort of weird character select screen, because you can choose one of the characters on-screen to talk to and then you'll switch to playing as them. As this third character you have to go to the next room where you select a character to be your character's significant other, and then you get to name them. Then the scene changes again and it's apparently one year later.
Then you quit the game because what the ♥♥♥♥ is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?
I tried playing this one again more recently. I still have no idea what the fuck it's supposed to be.
The Swapper (April 2015)
Decent, but ultimately not particularly good or interesting. Worth buying on sale if you like puzzle platformers.
I do like puzzle platformers, but I never got very far with this one.
Shadowrun Returns (April 2015)
Pretty decent turn-based RPG, but let down a bit by some game mechanics not being explained properly and some skills being mostly useless. The story starts off well, and the dialogue is mostly decent, but the ending is a major let-down. After the cyberpunk/noir setup you're suddenly thrown into a generic fantasy adventure to save the world and then the game ends. I hear that Dragonfall is much better, so maybe give this one a miss and get that instead. Still, I enjoyed it, so maybe buy it on sale.
Dragonfall IS much better. Plus, if you get both then you can import this game's story into Dragonfall and get the best of both worlds.
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution (April 2015)
Basically Doom, but with huge infodumps on all the weapons, monsters, etc. Fun, but if you already own Doom then probably not worth getting.
It's crazy how many game reviews come down to "this is ok, but you could just play Doom instead".
Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (April 2015)
Seems like it might be decent as a board-game, but as a single-player video-game it's a little dull.
A lot of these tabletop-to-video game conversions don't seem to get that half the fun of tabletop games is the social aspect.
100% Orange Juice (April 2015)
Unbearable.
Succinct. But is it accurate? I have no idea.
Worms Crazy Golf (April 2015)
Fun for a while, but after the first course the difficulty suddenly spikes really hard.
Yeah, I gave up on it because it went from fun to pain-in-the-arse in an instant.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary (April 2015)
Pretty fun, but gets a bit repetitive after a while. Sometimes it can be a bit of a pain to figure out where you're supposed to go, some of the combat is a bit tedious, but mostly a fun game.
I think this review comes across as more negative than it should. I did like the game.
Sleeping Dogs (April 2015)
Like GTA only good.
Accurate.
Scribblenauts Unlimited (April 2015)
There's not really much to this game, but it's decently funny and is something you can just mess around with without much effort.
Would be excellent for kids learning to spell.
Remember Me (April 2015)
Neat concept, poor execution. The big thing dragging this game down is the combat, it's just really tedious and frequent. The plot is also pretty dumb, and the memory-stealing and "remixing" should have been a lot more prominent. Also, the level design would have benfitted from being a bit more open, giving multiple paths and making you think a bit rather than just having a linear route to follow. I like what they seemed to be going for, but I just can't recommend the game they actually made.
I don't think this was a controversial take.
Long Live the Queen (April 2015)
Kind of neat but gets annoyingly repetitive before long, because it's so easy to die and the events of the game seem to play out pretty much the same each time. Like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books where every other choice is death, and there are only one or two genuine paths through the story.
Yep.
Goat Simulator (April 2015)
Dumb, and not much variety. It's fun while it lasts, but you get bored pretty quickly.
Much more fun when you're with someone else and taking turns to play while the other watches and offers "helpful" advice.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams (April 2015)
Decent platformer, but with some obnoxiously long levels that you can't save in the middle of. I enjoyed it for a while, but at some point the difficulty got too high and I couldn't finish the next level before I got too frustrated and wanted to quit, which (thanks to the lack of in-level saves) meant that I lost my progress. So the next time I tried playing, exactly the same thing happened. Still, it was fun up to that point.
Yep.
Contrast (April 2015)
This game is disappointingly short, but it's a neat concept executed well. There are a couple of places where it can get a bit frustrating, but mostly you can figure out what you're meant to be doing and do it without too much trouble. Definitely receommended to anyone who likes puzzle platformers.
Yeah, this game is cool.
Saints Row: Gat out of Hell (April 2015)
Like Saints Row IV, but better. Obviously it's a lot shorter, there's less to it, but what it is is basically more of SR4 but with a bunch of improvements. Flying around is amazing, the activities and missions are all fun, the cutscenes and dialogue are great, the weapons are mostly well-balanced and cool. There is no reason you should not buy this game.
True.
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition (April 2015)
It's like they remade Mortal Kombat Trilogy. All the characters anyone cares about back, in a better version of Mortal Kombat. The story is still dumb (in a good way), the characters look, sound, and behave like you expect them to, the violence is absurdly, cartoonishly brutal. The female characters are still dressed in riduculously revelaing outfits, and some stuff in the story (like Sonya's introduction being her beaing beaten and then rescued by Johnny Cage) is pretty terrible, but it is still a fun game though.
If you ever feel the urge to go back and replay one of the early Mortal Kombat games, get this one instead.
GRID (April 2015)
Like most racing games, this one is a little over-complicated for my taste, but it's pretty fun for all that. And you can do plenty of damage to your car without any repurcussions, so that's always fun.
I suspect that people who regularly play racing games would not describe this one as complicated.
Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy (April 2015)
Worse than Progress Quest.
I don't remember this game.
Alice: Madness Returns (April 2015)
As someone who loved American McGee's Alice, this game was a huge disappointment. The weapons (a highlight of the original) are ♥♥♥♥, the platforming is ♥♥♥♥, the enemies are annoying, just not what I was hoping for at all.
Plus, if you rebound the keys then you couldn't use the umbrella, and I don't know if they ever fixed that.
Alpha Protocol (April 2015)
By what people who've played it say, this game is amazing. The dialogue and story really change based on what you do and say. So it's just a pity that the actual gameplay is so terrible.
This game sounds so cool. I really wish it was even remotely playable.
Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition (April 2015)
Played the demo, really enjoyed it. Got the game, found I'd pretty much seen all there was to it and got bored fairly quickly.
Yep.
Huntsman - The Orphanage Halloween Edition (November 2015)
This game is garbage. Seems to rely entirely on jump scares, and is incredibly frustrating to play. The walk speed is ludicrously slow, and even the run speed takes forever to get anywhere. The darkness makes it hard to see anything, which also makes it hard to figure out where you are, so you spend a lot of time very slowly wandering around places you may or may not have already been over. And there's no clear objective - I guess you're meant to find each ghost's item and take it... somewhere, but it's not clear where. Also, you can only carry one thing at a time, so you'll probably have to remember where things are and come back for them. It's just really slow and dull.
I don't even remember this game, but it sounds awful.
Insurgency (November 2015)
Didn't even make it throguh the incredibly long and dull tutorial.
I don't remember this game either. Which is probably not surprising.
Dark Fall 1: The Journal (March 2016)
Obnoxious voice acting, dumb plot, and gameplay that seems to consist entirely of pixel-hunting to find the hotspot to click to progress. Oh, and when I tried to quit, it didn't shut down properly, so I had to reboot my computer. A+ effort all around.
Don't remember this one either.
Edna & Harvey: The Breakout (March 2016)
This game looks incredibly amateurish right from the outset and nothing I saw dissuaded me from that opinion. The visual are ugly, the UI is awkward, the dialogue and voice acting is grating, and I couldn't stand it for long enough to even solve the first puzzle.
Don't really remember it, but it looks bad.
Dracula: Origin (March 2016)
This game is really slow and dialogue-heavy, and makes you read a bunch of news articles, letters, etc. to slow it down even further. That and the fact that Dracula has been done to death, and I just don't see anything here worth bothering with.
Is this the one Dracula game that Grim Beard hasn't reviewed (yet)?
Detective Grimoire (March 2016)
Some of the game mechanics here seem like they might be interesting, so it's a pity that the characters and story are so off-putting. I can't be sure from what I played so far, but it seems like it might be a bit pixel-hunty too.
"So far". Lol.
The Detail (March 2016)
I like the art style, but the characters and story seem terrible. I was immediately irritated by the prologue with its timed choices and the way the second cop seems to just vanish for no reason during the fight scene, and then back at the station it really annoyed me that it wasn't giving me the option to have the police do their job properly. And that the dialogue options were vague and didn't quite mean what I thought they should. Like, offering the guy a deal - I avoided it for a long time because I just knew it was going to really mean "offer him a genuine deal and actually follow through on it" rather than the much more reasonable option of just lying to get him to cooperate - and it did.
Don't remember this one.
The Book of Unwritten Tales (March 2016)
So, I watched the rather lengthy intro cutscene, in which a cartoony-looking goblin dude gets menaced by some orks or whatever, and then we cut to the actual gameplay in which I'm playing as some woman who, at first glance, seemed to be wearing crotchless underwear. And I'm out.
I can't blame me.
Gomo (March 2016)
I just played this, and my verdict is basically "Yes, if it's on sale." It's only $5 at full price anyway, but it's really short (took me less than an hour and a half from start to finish) and there's not a lot to it. The main impression I got was that they wanted to make a cartoon but for some reason they were forced to make video game instead. It's fairly whimsical and things don't really happen for any particular reason, but the puzzles are easy enough that that's not frustrating. There are a couple of sliding tile puzzles that don't really fit the style of the other puzzles in the game, but they're not randomised or anything so you can just use a walkthrough (which I did).
It reminded me a lot of Journey of a Roach, only not as good. The protagonist does speak, but rarely, and the dialogue is not important. Mostly you just press buttons and see what happens and then move on to the next screen. I was briefly stuck in a couple of places just because I couldn't work out what I was supposed to achieve, but most of the time there's not even really a puzzle, you just find the thing to click on. Sometimes you'll have to use an item from your inventory, but they're almost all one-use and given to you right where you'll need them. It's not a challenging game, there's not much story and very little characterisation, but the animation is nice and it doesn't take long to get through.
I finished this? I have no idea what this is.
King's Quest (May 2016)
Awful controls, seems like there's more quicktime events than actual puzzles, unskippable dialogue and cutscenes (some of them incredibly long). Dull and tedious, and Christopher Lloyd's voice is really annoying.
Had to look up who Christopher Lloyd is. Fair call.
Magnetic: Cage Closed (June 2016)
Pretty fun puzzle game. Quite short, and not too challenging, but on the other hand it's rarely frustrating and doesn't overstay its welcome. Maybe get it on sale though, because $15 seems a little pricey for what you get.
One of the many games I've thought "I should do a let's play of this" but never actually done it because, you know, effort.
Wolfenstein: The New Order (June 2016)
There are parts of this game that are pretty fun. Unfortunately they seem to be surrounded by endless bits that aren't. The main thing is, there's just way too much story. Look, you don't need to convince us that Nazis are bad, we can just take that as a basic assumption. Just let me go kill them please. And I don't need BJ Blazkowicz's melodramatic musings on the horrors of war or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ he keeps gonig on about. Just shut up and let me kill Nazis.
When the game does get out of its own way (and let you kill Nazis) it's pretty good, but these sections seem to be relatively short and disjointed, and it keeps taking away all your weapons just as you're beginning to build up a nice arsenal. And between these sections you get pointless cutscenes about characters you don't care about or irritating stealth sections.
Plus it makes you manually choose to pick up each weapon/ammo/health drop rather than just assuming that yes, no ♥♥♥♥, I want to pick up the ammo. The one advantage to this system is that it makes it harder to accidentally pick up health you don't need - because yes, you can pick up health you don't need. It does increase your health over 100%, but it ticks down again so fast that it's basically worthless. You're much better off not picking up the health until you're injured.
If you get this game for free, it's not entirly terrible. But don't waste any money on it.
Even for free, I'm not sure it's worth it.
Dark Echo (June 2016)
Interesting concept, but I found it more irritating than fun in execution.
I have only vague memories of this game.
Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition (July 2016)
I've played five hours of this in the last few days and I can't figure out if it's any good or not. A lot of things aren't explained (or are explained poorly) and there seem to be a lot of situations where consequences are totally unpredictable, so there's a lot of trial and error. The mix of real-time and turn-based gameplay is kind of irritating, as are the NPCs who have only two or three lines of dialogue but insist on repeating them every four seconds or so.
I think if it were better at communicating what to do and how things worked, I'd probably enjoy this game, but I've spent most of my time so far not really knowing what's going on, where I'm supposed to go next, or what actions to take. It's quite frustrating.
I played a little bit more of this, but eventually decided it wasn't worth the effort of trying to understand it.
Technobabylon (November 2016)
This game tries to do way more than it's capable of and ends up a bit of a mess. There are too many characters and the plot is too complicated for its length, the unique game mechanics are under-utilised, and I often found myself with no clear idea of what to do. Also, it's pretty buggy. At several points I resorted to a walkthrough only to be told to do exactly what I was already doing, and my only option being to just try it again and again until the game decided to work.
I like what they were going for, but not what they've actually achieved.
I barely remember this game. I think I finished it though?
A Golden Wake (November 2016)
This game is just incredibly boring. I finished chapter one, and that's all I could take.
Don't remember it.
Heroine's Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok (November 2016)
This is like a bad children's cartoon combined with a bad, old-fashioned RPG.
Don't remember it.
80 Days (November 2016)
I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing in this game. Nothing is explained and it's not clear what the goal is or why you should care about any of it.
I tried it again more recently and gave up just as quickly.
Broken Age (November 2016)
Maybe it gets better as it goes, but the beginning of this game is really bad. There's no exposition, which makes it impossible to understand character motivations or care about whatever is going on. Grandpa hid the knife because he doesn't like the maidens' feast? OK, cool, I don't care. I don't know what any of that means. Give me something to get a handle on here.
I have no patience for SFF stories that throw jargon at you and don't explain what anything means or why anyone cares about it.
Cibelle (November 2016)
I don't know how this game progresses, but it starts out with you eavesdropping on a conversation between two teenagers and playing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ fake MMO. Absolutely nothing about that is appealing in any way.
No memory of this game.
2064: Read Only Memories (November 2016)
This game looks and sounds terrible (the faux CGA and blip-bloop sounds are just obnoxious), the story is generic, and the dialogue is terrible.
Don't remember this game but it sounds awful.
Life is Strange™ (December 2016)
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this game is slow. If there was an option to skip through dialogue and a way to make your character walk at a decent speed (holding shift takes you from unbelievably slow to annoyingly slow) then it might just be playable, but as it is the 20 minutes I played almost put me into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coma.
But even speeding it up wouldn't do anything for the total lack of interactivity. Maybe it gets better later, but if so then the designers need to learn how to structure a game so as not to put your audience off before they get to the good bits. As far as I played, there was nothing that couldn't have been one incredibly dull cutscene. I didn't do anything but what I was prompted to do. No choices, no puzzles, no challenges, just "press button, receive tedious cutscene".
I know people love this game but it seems so fucking bad.
The Fall (December 2016)
This game seems designed to be as annoying as possible. Why is the torch not a toggle? Why do the info markers not show up unless you point the torch at them? Why are the controls making my hands cramp after ten minutes? Who would play this?
No memory of this one.
Odallus: The Dark Call (December 2016)
I've played games like this before. They have better ones here in the future.
Is this actually an old game or just "retro"? I don't remember or care!
Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered (January 2017)
This game is really unintuitive to play and very bad at telling you what you're doing wrong. There's a lot of complexity right off the bat and it's very difficult to get a handle on what you're supposed to do. I feel like the combat system is this weird mix of turn-based and quick-reflexes, which is incredibly awkward and often leaves you feeling harassed and irritated. I didn't get very far into it, so I can't really comment on the plot or anything about later gameplay, but that's kind of the problem, it's just a difficult game to get into.
The difficulty, at least, is consistent with many of the books.
The Cave (June 2019)
Disappointing. Seems like it should reward creativity but it doesn't. The characters' abilities are all pretty much useless except in certain, predetermined places and puzzles generally have only one solution - and many of them can only be solved by a specific character due to requiring that character's unique ability.
And the humour is painfully bad.
I keep thinking I should give this one another chance, but I played over three hours hours of it and it just wasn't good.
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