South of Midnight (PC Game Pass)

First of all, this game was on the ropes even before it launched thanks to that doofus of an art director (or was he an animator?) publicly stating how all white males should be eradicated from gaming. You know, the demographic that spends the most the money on games. The last thing a small company needs is saboteurs working within them. Anyway, I hope Compulsion got the poor guy therapy or counselling, a prostitute, or whatever he needed.

Anyway, it's unfortunate because the game is actually an awesome game. It is basically an action adventure that plays a bit like a God of War style game but more linear and no Metroidvania aspects. It's a game that is paced near perfect, runs well, looks great, has its own art style and music and songs made specifically for the game and its levels. The characters are memorable and very well voiced- especially the Hazel as lead, but also some of the supports like poor Itchy.

The story is like a deep south Cajun fairy tale and the characters fit perfectly. The detractors are complaining about DEI...but this is where it is really well done- using another culture to make a game and story around it is DEI done perfectly. Despite the idiot art director, it is not some anti-white person game. I wish there were more games like this. DEI done wrong is where Ubi makes a Viking game and just drops in a black Viking leader for no particular reason other than to tick a box. Or race swapping an established character like Doctor Who, or the way Avowed inserted fake "strong modern women" into every single position of power to the point it became too predictable.

I really enjoyed it...I always try to think of any negatives as well, but I cannot really think of any- the closest I can come up with is the way that some enemies can just blindside you from off screen...but you quickly learn to handle it and it's just part of the combat in the end. The game isn't even being sold as a full price game.

It's going to be one of my games of the year...in a year where I've already enjoyed Sniper Elite Resistance, STALKER 2, Atomfall and even Avowed.

Since my last post I have finished:

The Neverhood
Pretty good and funny point n click adventure game with unique visuals. I found it to be pretty short though, finished it in like 3 days. To be fair the one puzzle everyone gets stuck at (the shrinking machine) I had the solution spoiled to me when my older brother played the game many years ago.

Gnomes
Looks simple but it's a pretty fun roguelite/tower defense released on Steam recently. I recommend everyone to give it a shot, there's a demo available. The campaign is rather short but the meat of the game is to beat day 30 with all 16 guilds on all 8 levels, and that will take hundreds of hours.

The Even More Incredible Machine
Attached to this post, picture proof that I cleared all 160 puzzles of the game. It was one of my childhood favorites, enjoyed revisiting it as an adult. At a later time I plan to also beat Incredible Machine 2 and 3.

Lies of P
Developer: Neowiz/Round 8 Studios

This game is the very definition of a Souls-like. It copies the formula better than any game not actually made by Fromsoft. And on top of that it adds its own flair. This game combines excellent, fluent and fdifficult combat with a mix-n-match weapon system to create weapons of different types for your smashing or stabbing pleasure.

You take on the role of Geppetto's puppet, awakened by a mysterious blue fairy on board a train, parked at the station in the city of Krat. Krat is the home of a mechanical revolution, "puppets" of all types perform menial labor and serve the people's every need. But the Puppet frenzy has caused something to go terribly wrong, and puppets have turned on people. You must make your way to Hotel Krat and find the holdouts of the puppet frenzy, find Geppetto, and try to stem the tide of dangerous robotic puppets who are raging rampantly across the city. Will you be a good puppet and tell the truth, or will you embrace your humanity and lie to those close to you?

Story: 8/10
The story is fairly straightforward at first, but as you progress through the game, you meet new characters and get new information that may color your view of already known acquaintences.

Graphics/ Level design: 8/10
The environments are stunning and beautiful. You feel like you're really in a town that has been shattered by rampaging machines, as the streets are littered with debris and mangled corpses, as well as disabled puppets and carcasses. Each area is pretty well defined by graphical style, even the different streets feel a bit different from each other. The areas are also quite linear; there is not a lot of exploring to be had here.

Combat: 9/10
The combat is superb if you like the Dark Souls/Bloodborne style of play. The parry windows are TIGHT, but the weapon choices are varied, wild, and you can combine the handle of one weapon with the blade/head of another weapon and have some interesting combinations.

Music: 8/10
This game has some very memorable pieces from "Someday" to "Feel," Though many of the boss themes are forgettable. The ambient music being played at different locations is great though. I love this soundtrack.

Overall: 9/10
If you like the Fromsoft games, you will probably love this one. If not, steer clear of it. It is my favorite game of the past few years not named Elden Ring. I recommend anyone who is on the fence about trying it to pick it up, it does not disappoint.

Include me.

1. The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav | post | Jan 1 - Apr 16 | time unknown | review pending

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Incomplete 2011 list. Add Tropico 3 Gold Edition (finished: Dec 16, review on blog and MobyGames) to it. Also played Forsaken World for a while earlier that year (review on blog and MobyGames), and briefly poked at Perfect World International again after the Genesis expansion launched.

The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav

I wonder if I'll ever write proper reviews again, with a year and a half since the last one, so with the three proper games I finished last year still pending. But until then, the usual jumble of quick comments...
I'm not exactly keen on the art style, and early on the few frames of choppy animation also bothered me, as did the voice acting, but after a while I got used to both. Scrolling through inventory with the mousewheel is a great feature. Hint features can also be useful, but I felt like cheating with them on so I struggled without, and actually made it without ever using any hints. So at least most puzzles were generally quite easy, and typically solved in the same area, even on the same screen, and it doesn't seem like you can get softlocked or in a loss condition no matter what you do, which is great. But getting that key in the swamp town stumped me for quite a while, and it did feel like they put less effort in the swamp town overall, just forcing a bunch of puzzles together, and some things may seem odd, maybe if not done in the "proper" sequence, but in some cases it seemed like something was just there for no reason. And it also took me a while to get rid of the eye of the beast, and I only managed it by just trying everything until something worked. But what really stumped me was after that, though that was because I had missed an item and it took me so, so long until I spotted and grabbed it, after which I could do the rest. And saving Olgierd seems to be basically random chance, I kept picking options and none seemed to work until I gave in and checked a guide, at which point I was certain that I had picked that combination of answers by then, and even when I tried to follow that guide I had to go in circles in that conversation a couple of times until it finally worked. Speaking of, in general conversations lead to the same outcome regardless of chosen path, but it definitely feels like I'm missing something when I get to the end of one without exhausting all options. Either way, the final part also seems rather rushed. And the romance seems darn forced. On the other hand, achievements in an adventure game are weird, and those that are mutually exclusive by playing normally add to the feeling of missing out. As for non-game stuff, the button to the game's folder in the user directory from the configuration tool is handy, if only to quickly see where it is, but it's unpleasant that the tool creates a couple more folders.

Ultima III. This isn't the best game in the series, but it's the one I'm most nostalgic about since it's the one I first played as a kid. It's a solid advancement over the previous one, with a more manageable world map that still incorporates teleportation through moon gates, and Apple II users who owned a Mockingboard got a well-rendered soundtrack. Not just one dinky song that plays on a loop either, but several nice pieces of music. The controls are a bit more flexible, allowing the use of special commands you can learn and use by hitting the "other" button, and the quest line is a bit easier to follow to me and it requires you to go into dungeons and do stuff beyond the "kill monster X" stuff that Akalabeth and Ultima I had. It's also nice to have the combat switch to a tactical view, even if the actual tactics usually don't amount to much beyond rushing at the enemies and attacking as soon as they're lined up in range.

It still has its share of tedious design in the sense that you need to raise A LOT of money to buy increases for your party's attribute scores, plus having to constantly get stuff like keys and food. It can get tough early on because the encounter spawning rate seems to vary and there's a very real risk of simply starving to death wandering around, hoping some monsters appear that you can get some money from. Then there's the repeat of having to wait for pirate ships to spawn so you can hijack them, and while sailing having to deal with wind changes that are sometimes so abrupt that you'd think the game included tornadoes. The game probably could have also used some method for restoring health besides either casting cleric spells or identifying a healing fountain in a dungeon; e.g., an inn as you see in so many later RPGs.

She Sees Red - Interactive Movie is very bleak, but atmospheric interactive movie. One playthrough takes about 30 minutes, but to understand more of the story it takes approximately one and a half hour. Different choices lead to different scenes and potential ending. Great for short relax evening.

Blue Prince, Apr 20 (Xbox Game Pass)-Rolled credits after 15 hours and 24 runs. There's still a bunch of mysteries so I'll keep playing it for now. Its a hard game to categorize. Its a puzzle game but the puzzles are more often meta puzzles rather than flip the switches in the correct order. But there are some of those too. It s a rogue like with the room drafting and opportunities for permanent upgrades. There are a lot of complaints about the rng of the drafting mechanic but I think that's focusing too narrowly on a single goal. There are so many puzzles that you don't even realize are puzzles that every run has clues to gather even if you didn't achieve the goal of getting to the 46th room. The first time I got to the antechamber I realized just how little of the game I had seen. The game can be frustrating with a lackluster run but I always feel a strange draw to try one more. I probably won't uncover all the mysteries but I'll keep playing a while longer to see some more. I haven't completed too many games this year but this one easily tops everything I've played so far.

Full List

Monkey Island 2. A bigger, more complicated game than the original, and rather more difficult because of that. Since you have more space to play in, that means puzzles can span multiple islands that each have several locations to visit. Despite that, I think the game's logic is more or less in line with the first one, with solutions generally making some degree of sense with some moon logic exceptions. The climax is really annoying, though, as you have to figure out a solution while LeChuck keeps chasing you and teleporting you to different rooms, and it seems like you only have time for maybe one action before he finds you and teleports you again.

The game generally looks nice, although I prefer the look of the first one. The first game had bolder colors, while this one goes for more of a faded watercolor-ish style, almost like the graphics got sunburnt.

The writing is top notch all around. Since Guybrush is now an official pirate hero, he's a bit more of a shit-talker than he used to be, which opens the game to a ton of hilarious dialogue options and generally sociopathic adventure game hero behavior. Even without playing the next few games, I would say this is the funniest game in the series.

Steelrising (Steam)

Played this twice last year when I had a current PSN subscription for a while. It was a monthly account bound game. I liked it enough to buy it on sale for PC, it sells for under $10 and is a bargain- since I have no plans to subscribe again to PSN Plus any time soon.

Whilst the game isn't in the same league as Lies of P or From Software games, it is amongst the best of the next tier. It's a really good game and definitely the best game from Spiders. It's one of the easiest games that you would classify as a "Soulslike" and has an interesting setting. Weird how both Lies of P and Steelrising both came out close together, both are set in Paris and in both games, you play as an automaton/puppet in a Soulslike game shell. They play quite differently though.

Anyway, because of its price and easier difficulty, Steelrising is a good choice for someone that isn't sure if they want to play this type of game. At some point the developers even added a separate mode that removes things like possibly losing currency upon death- or settings to turn it into just a normal RPG. Personally, I don't see the point- it's like taking Grand Prix Legends and having a setting to turn it into Mario Kart...so just play Mario Kart. Anyway, the game isn't very difficult, give it a try.

Nuff said. Great game.

Beaten Settlers 2 gold main 10 missions only, gotta try the world conquest mission cd some day.

Finished Fallout 1 and it was a really great game. It offers a lot of possibilites for exploration and for quests resolution. It has a big balance problem though as I got a few difficulty spikes that could have been avoided. But I needed to restart a game and be more careful when leveling up. I cheated and used a character editor to increase some stats. And I used a walkthrough sometimes. I liked the game but I do not have the time to restart the game a few times :)

Full list here.

Return to Monkey Island. I'd skipped over replaying the games between 2 and this one because I'd heard that they aren't relevant to it, but as it happens the game does acknowledge those games to some degree, most notably in Murray returning. The game picks up on 2's notoriously divisive ending, although it immediately twists on it and reveals that the game is set years later with Guybrush telling a story to his son while hanging out at the amusement park. The story is about Guybrush finally trying to find out what the actual secret of Monkey Island is. He's racing LeChuck to it while also dealing with some new and mean-spirited pirate leaders who want to screw over Guybrush and LeChuck.

Since I haven't replaced Curse through Tales lately, I won't say how this falls within the whole series, but I would say it's definitely not as good as the first two games. I still had a good time, overall. Most of the game is really easy - it doesn't get kind of hard until you get to the lengthy part 4 (out of 5), at which point the game opens up a lot more, similar to 2, and the puzzles start getting a bit more complicated. The game engine isn't SCUMM-like, but more left or right clicking on stuff and getting the result the game tells you, so a lot of puzzles come down to using items in the right places or in combinations.

The writing is pretty laidback. There are some really funny bits (e.g., the mop tree), but most of the game is more "gently chuckling" compared to LOL. The dialogue doesn't hit anywhere near as hard or as often as it did in 2. There's a post-script in which Gilbert and Grossman talk about the games reflecting the passage of time and this game does feel like the product of people who are older and mellower than they used to be. I do think it's hilarious that they went with the ending that they did. I won't spoil it, but people who dislike how 2 ended presumably aren't or won't be happy with this one either. I just think it's funny that after all these years, Gilbert and Grossman doubled down instead of playing nice. These games are farces, after all.

As for the controversial graphics, l won't say I hated them, but I wasn't wild about them either. I'm not opposed to different styles and I can see what they were going for. I just don't think they pulled off the effect especially well. The characters aren't very expressive and the style didn't strike me as conducive to interesting animation.