RoboCop: Rogue City (2023)
Now this is how you start a list! With the future of law enforcement voiced by the OG RoboCop himself Peter Weller. A first person shooter in a pretty pitch perfect recreation of Old Detroit as depicted in the original movie. Blast criminals, blast walking tanks, take on OCP, hallucinate as a machine hallucinates as he wonders who he really is...Existential crises aside, from the point of sheer presentation this game pretty much nailed it. All the little details are just right with the 1980's vision of the future left fully intact.
Clearly a lot of love went into the art direction. From the point of gameplay and story, it's decent, often good but rarely excellent. It's a rare example in the modern age of the AA game that has slightly more modest ambitions but delivers on them very well indeed. Now whilst some elements were great, the dark satire that is such a hallmark of RoboCop was a little underwhelming here for my taste but it's just about the only area where this game falls down in my estimation. So not a game that excelled my expectations but it did pretty well for itself regardless. A robust three and three quarter prime directives out of five!
Frostpunk (2018)
Moving on to a different time, place and genre entirely with this one. A top down city management type game based in an alternate history steampunk Victorian era where the Ice Age is making a mysterious comeback and no one is quite ready for it. Cue a desperate struggle for survival with limited resources and hard choices to be made as you try to ensure the survival of your people in the barren frozen wastes.
Heat is the all important resource as you build up your settlement in preparation for the mother of all big freezes. Along the way you have to negotiate labour disputes, make choices for the 'greater good' that will almost certainly come back to haunt you later and keep the machine of industry running. It was quite engrossing this game, and really atmospheric for a genre that doesn't always prioritise mood and tone. It was also extremely difficult and once failure sets in, it usually cascades towards disaster, underlining the thin line between survival and death. Overall it was a demanding game but an involving one nonetheless. So it's a steadfast four out of five supply chain disputes!
Dead by Daylight (2016)
Assymetric hide and seek next as you play as either killer or potential victim, activating generators in a bid to escape the level as the killer tries to end you in the process. It's a genre that seems to have taken off on the near decade since this game came out but not one I'd had a huge amount of experience with. So how did I find it?
It's engaging and not without its charms to be sure. Got a kick out of playing as a number of famous horror movie killers because this is yet another live service game that's all in on the cross promotional synergy. Playing as Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger or Pinhead you get a feel for the different ability sets on offer. Alternatively playing as either a generic teen survivor or as one of the heroes from various horror franchises I got a sense of the neat cat and mouse dynamic that's been crafted here.
Whilst the gameplay balance between killer and survivor was mostly well judged, at times it could also be widely off depending on which character and ability set you were using. Still its a nicely atmospheric multiplayer game that has carved out a distinct niche for itself in a crowded live service space. I enjoyed it but I don't think I will return to it. Three fatal trips to the generator out of five!
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition (2019)
So it begins... I say this because the Baldur's Gate collection of the original games remastered for modern formats would end up taking up quite a lot of my gaming time in 2025. I'm sure it doesn't need an introduction but here I go anyway. It's a top down RPG of the variety that used to be everywhere in gaming once upon the turn of the century before falling out of fashion and disappearing for a while. Then the age of Kickstarter essentially revived the genre for modern audiences.
Having never played the OG games myself but having heard just how darn good Baldur's Gate III is, I thought I would finally cross out one of the major titles on my to-play list and actually make my way through the short verdict is yes, this was good. The long version is yes it was good but disclaimers abound... Not going to say I didn't enjoy it but even with the game being polished for the likes of Johnny come latelies like myself, there was no disguising the age of it and all the little frustrations contained within.
Sudden jarring difficulty spikes aside though there is a lot to like about the world, the people and the plots contained therein. It's just a question of whether you can tolerate sudden, unexpected roadblocks to progress that may require a great deal of re-apecxing and re-tooling in order to overcome them. I can see how this game wowed many back then but now it feels very much like the historical artifact it is. Three cursed bloodlines out of five!
Balatro (2024)
Now this was something! A curious mix of poker and rogue-like with multipliers aplenty and power-ups for good measure. You play the computer as you aim to build a hand of better and better scoring poker hands. Once you meet your target score you proceed to the next round where you have to meet a higher score threshold and so on. You spend money on special cards and card enhancementa to ensure those score multipliers keep going up and every so often you face off against a boss with some devious tricks of their own up their sleeve.
To look at the deliberately throwback visuals and sounds, you'd almost think you were playing something from the Windows 95 era here but it drew me in with well crafted gameplay mechanics that strike the sweet spot between skill and luck. It's a game that works beautifully well when you get all the pieces in notion. I don't play card games very often but this was the exception that deserved all the hype it was getting out there on the interwebs. As for a rating, let's not mess around here. It's a full five out of five foil cards!
Arcade Paradise (2022)
A first person sim where you play as someone with low expectations thrust upon them as they attempt to turn their dad's laundromat into the next big video game arcade! I don't often go in for these kind of games but this one had a hefty dose of mid to late 90's nostalgia about it so that caught my eye and got me to give it a go. Also all the arcade machines are actually playable recreations of classic games remade with legally distinct IP so thats a fun touch as well.
So the basic loop has you doing everything one would do when running a washateria but on the side you're trying to low-key change the business into the far more exciting and lucrative enterprise of arcade video gaming. It was alright but I think the sense of repetition kicked in a little too early for me. There was no disguising the feeling of grind in the early going and even when the games start coming, there's precious little time to get into them before the daily demands come calling upon you.
The 90's nostalgia is riffed on nicely enough with knock-off period appropriate advertising and music but it's not quite enough to distract you from sense that you are being rushed off your feet with precious little time to enjoy anything until you get to the end. It's two and a half most radical business ideas out of five from me!
The Expanse: A Telltale Series (2023)
I do love my sci-fi and if I had to list my top two favourite TV shows of recent decades it would be the reimagined Battlestar Galactica in first place with The Expanse coming up behind as a very close second. It was a very good show and so it was with some curiosity that I approached this effort from the Telltale Games studio that rose from the ashes after the original Telltale closed some time back.
Taking its cue and it's main star from the TV show, the focus is very much on choices and branching storylines. The grounded physics and zero gravity sections were a highlight and there's some great dialogue and interaction between the characters as you navigate the back story of Camina Drummer prior to her televisual introduction. It manages to be all very Telltale and very consistent with the TV show itself.
I feel like it was a touch too short and under-developed though even with the extra DLC chapter featuring Avarasala. Short and sweet is the final verdict from me with the hope it gets a follow up at some point. Three misadventures by airlock out of five!
Braid, Anniversary Edition (2024)
This games reputation precedes itself somewhat, what with it being the indie darling that made waves and broke ground at the very start of indie gaming's rise to prominence in the early noughties. A puzzle platformer with a time rewind mechanic and a plot that isn't quite what it appears to be at first glance. Having never played it on its original release, this spruced up edition caught my eye so I decided to give it a go.
It's unique I'll give it that. It's also surprisingly demanding in terms of timing and execution. Perhaps a little too much for my tastes but I can certainly see how his game stood out in the gaming scene of 2008. Alas these days I think there's now been a number of games in his vein subverting expectations whilst providing a new twist on old mechanics. So perhaps it doesn't stick out quite so much now. Not a game I think I'll ever return to but it's one I think everyone should try at least once. That is to say it's three and a quarter non-linear story developments out of five!
Deathchron (2024)
A boy and his mecha robot suit next as we indulge in a little action platforming inspired by the games of the same vein from the early 90's. Shoot, jump and navigate your way to progress through increasingly challenging levels. Solve the odd puzzle, beat the odd boss, admire the retro pixel artwork and occasionally plunge to your death.
Nothing too revolutionary or mold-breaking in the design going on here. Not that such things need to happen to make a great game but here I feel like it was almost required here. It's not that this game doesn't mix things up from the games that inspired it, there's definitely a few touches here that weren't featured in those games from way back when. It still felt a bit basic though, a touch too sincere in the inspiration it took from those earlier games. It's an okay experience, I just don't see it lingering in the memory for too long after completion. Two rocket powered missile strikes out of five!
Coffee Talk (2020)
You know what this list is missing? Coffee shops! But do you know what coffee shops are missing? Elves! Orcs! All manner of fantasy tropes in fact, all transplanted into a world that is otherwise very much like this one. You own a late night coffee shop, you brew coffee for your customers as they unwind and unload their worries. You try to figure out how to make more unusual drinks requested of you as your clientele draw you in to the personal drama unfolding all around.
I think they call this cosy gaming! It's all very chill and low-stakes as you try to dish out hot drinks and sensible life advice to the strangers coming in off the street. Not without its charm certainly and figuring out how to make a hot drink has rarely been as engaging as it is here. I can't say all the stories were as equally engaging here though, never boring as such but certainly I found my attention wandering off at times. It has a pleasing anime style aesthetic with a lofi soundtrack though which reinforcea the refreshingly chill atmosphere going on here. I'm possibly not the target audience for this game but still, it gets three and a quarter matcha lattes out of five!
Baldur's Gate Siege Of Dragonspear (2019)
Back to Baldur's Gate and the OG game collection I started earlier in the year. This one begs the question: if it looks and sounds like an old Baldur's Gate game from the late 90's but it was actually made and released within the last decade to fill the narrative gap in-between the two original games, what is it exactly? More pressingly, is it any good?
It's a strange one this, someone clearly went to a lot of effort to fill in some previously absent narrative but I am not entirely convinced it was necessary here. There's not much to complain about to be clear but not much that distinguishes itself either. The big bad of Baldur's Gate II gets a little more time to shine but it still largely an elusive figure in the main story. There's a nice sense of scale and activity in the world here that they probably couldn't have pulled off back when the original games were released but that's about it. One for the completionists and D&D hardcore's out there I suspect. Two and a half vengeful wizards out of five!
The Silver Case (2017)
So this game and the next one were both highly memorable experiences. They just weren't memorable in any positive way whatsoever. Well they both had a potentially interesting plot with an ending so I suppose there's something to be said for that but in almost every other respect I did not have a good time with these games. You may have inferred this from my earlier post on the subject. This game is a crime thriller based in a future Japanese city where a central mystery involving a killer from a notable past case is coming back to haunt the members of a specialist team unit who once stopped him. There's factions at war, there's conspiracies, there's conspiracies within conspiracies...
Least I think that's an accurate summary. As the plot unfolds it becomes clear that the killer is not who they appear to be but neither are the cops either. There's a little non-linear storytelling, an attempt at hard boiled dialogue that succeeds as often as it fails and one of the most God awkward ways of moving through/interacting with the game world that I have ever come across in a 3D game. Just to remind the reader that this originally came out in 1999, the first Unreal Tournament came out this year and I can safely say we had mastered hassle-free movement through a 3D space by this point. It very quickly began to feel like the basic act of playing the game required far more effort than what it was worth. In case I am being too subtle here, I'm giving it one inevitable betrayal out of five
The 25th Ward: The Silver Case (2018)
You read the above? Well it's that but more of it...
What's that you say? You want me to elaborate? So this one originally came out in 2005 and would get intermittent re-releases on various formats for years after. Taking place after the events of the first game, it has some improvement in presentation and movement but still manages to feel like a game created at the dawn of 3D gaming with all the awkward fiddliness you might expect of such an effort.
As for the plot it is more intrigues within intrigues that end up feeling not very intriguing at all. Basically no one is who they appear to be, everyone is revealed to be aligned with someone by the end and honestly nothing about it redeemed it's frustrations in the least. Somehow these games are cult classics revered by some people and I cannot understand it for the life of me. For the miniscule improvements on offer here I'll give it one and a quarter over-baked plot twists out of five!
Deep Sky Derelicts (2018)
With an art style that made me think 'Hellboy but dilapidated sci-fi' and a gameplay loop that reminded me of Darkest Dungeon, I was genuinely curious about Deep Sky Derelicts at the outset of the experience. A rogue like dungeon crawler where the dungeons are derelict space ships with forbidden secrets and lucrative spoils for those willing to brave entry. Naturally the ships are populated with hostile aliens, hostile robots and a range of characters both friendly and hostile.
You take turns in battle playing randomly drawn cards to attack your foes. You got an oxygen supply you need to keep an eye on. There is the irregular jump in difficulty that you are rarely prepared for. All the hallmarks of this type of game are spoken for. It all feels and looks like a pulp comic book come to life and for the first few hours at least I had a lot of fun with it. It did struggle to hold off the sense of grindy repetition after that however and I didn't stick with it for long after that point. Perhaps a slightly more involving mid-game might have helped here. Anyway it's three out of five hasty retreats to the airlock from me.
The Swindle (2015)
Back to all things steampunk again in an alternate history vision of Victorian Britain where a new upcoming home security system is about to put all the villains and burglers of old London out of business for good! The only answer? Break into as many homes as you can until you level up to the point that you can steal said security system out of the hands of the authorities themselves!
This was a charming if challenging game. A side-on platformer puzzler stealth game where you have to pick your point of entry, overcome the various security systems installed in each residence and escape the notice of the various patrolling robots that will make short work of you if discovered. That difficulty spikes could be a little too harsh and often death can come from enemies off-screen in ways you could not fairly anticipate. But overall I was very much a fan of this one. That is all to say this was four over-zealous murder bots out of five!
Lumines Remastered (2018)
Switching genres again to puzzle games and the match three mode of lining things up to make them disappear. As the name says this is the remastered version of Lumines: Puzzle Fusion, something of an acclaimed darling back on its original release for the PSP in 2004. Think puzzle game but played within the environment of an overstimulating night club with trippy visuals and pulsating beats.
So visually it's quite the experience and it plays like a well crafted puzzle game for the most part even if it hits the steep end of the difficulty curve a little sooner than I would like. Personal preferences around difficulty aside, I'd say this was a good if not great experience for me. More a victory for presentation as much as anything else but that's not to say there isn't a great deal of substance to it as well. For those more into their puzzle games I dare wager it's a home run even if it didn't quite nail the landing for me. Final verdict: this was a well deserved four non-chemically based hallucinogenic experiences out of five!
Party Hard (2015)
Next up is a retro-styled top down sneak em up where you play as a serial killer cutting his way through the guest list at a series of house parties in the 1980's. Try to avoid detection but if you do get detected go into hiding before the cops are called on you. Prince and repeat until you clear out the party and move onto the next one.
Wasn't altogether on board with this one. I have a lot of time for the retro throwback with an extra touch of added ultra violence. If Hotline Miami was the archetypal example of this done right then Party Hard feels like it's missing a certain something. There is the slower pace that one might expect of a stealth game but there is also the fiddliness of it when it comes time to make a sharp exit or get out of dodge. It doesn't feel quite as smooth or as polished as I think it ought to be. Just a little too awkward for what it's trying to be, so I'm giving it two yacht party massacres out of five!
FragPunk (2025)
We're back in live service territory with a game launched earlier in the year. Part-cyberpunk with a touch of magic and a splash of other blended genres. Competitive multiplayer first person shooter with a bright colour palette, a high energy soundtrack and an array of wild and wacky characters. These are not the only qualities borrowed from more successful games of this type. Gameplay wise it feels very Valorant but then again Valorant felt very much like Counter-Strike but with a high energy aesthetic. So by several times removed this games influences go way back.
I enjoyed it though, pretty much in exactly the same terms as I enjoyed Valorant when I played it last year. The various characters and power-sets all play well, there is a decent ebb and flow to the action which moves more swiftly than it does in Valorant. It also has a hefty deal of the usual monetisation that drives the whole free to play genre but it doesn't feel.any more over-bearing here than it does for some of the worst culprits in the genre (looking at you Apex Legends). I'll give it three and a half technomantic polar bears out of five!
Art of Fighting Anthology (2017)
Another year, another collection of classic SNK beat'em ups played for my cultural fulfillment. This collection includes Art of Fighting 1, 2 and 3 all originally released between 1992 and 1993, This anthology was originally collected in 2006 for the esteemed PS2 and then re-re-released for the PS4 in modern times. After such an odyssey from the game creators mind all the way to my controller. What did I actually make of it?
In short, it played smoothly, it got loads of that neat 90's beat em up aesthetic with expressive character designs and cool background stages. Can't say it distinguished itself much against other games I've played in this niche but it does generally speak to how high the quality threshold was for these games back then. It also wasn't as difficult as The King of Fighters which is a huge plus for me. Don't think I needed to cheese my way through the single player campaign in any case. In short it's two and three quarter Mr. Big's out of five!
While We Wait Here (2024)
A random one here as it caught my eye during a PSN store sale in a rare case of me buying a game and playing it almost straight away. A first person story about a guy who owns a diner out in the middle of the desert along with his wife and their usual array of customers who all get stuck there during a storm one night. But nothing is quite as it appears to be and through a series of curious events we come to learn the dark truth about this storm and the diner.
Did my impulsive buy result pay off here? Yeah kinda sorta! I always have a soft spot for off-kilter weird stories with a touch of the sinister and the other-worldy about them. Unfortunately here it all felt a little too under-developed and too short to really get under my skin. It felt fairly ambitious for what seemed to be a modest production budget so it's got that going for it but by the end it falls a little short of where it needs to be. Two disconcerting flash forwards out of five!
Oxenfree II: Lost Signals (2023)
Regulars around here may recall that I was quite the fan of the original Oxenfree when I played it back in 2022. So I have been meaning to get around to playing the sequel for a while now. It's the tale of another plucky yet personable heroine drawn into weird interdimensional time and space anomalies so it all starts to feel very familiar from the get go. Familiar faces appear, time loops may occur and the bridge between life and death may not be so distant as you might think.
It's a side scrolling platform game with some puzzle elements but what really works here is the excellent character work and performance from everyone involved alongside the beautifully expressive art and design. Not to mention another superb soundtrack full of analogue fuzziness and old world radio static from scntfc who I'm firmly a fan of after playing these games. In short it's another home run from Night School Studio. If there are any shortcomings here, it's that the plot isn't as standalone as claimed and I'd say you really need to have played he first game to fully get the plot of the sequel but that feels like splitting hairs here. Five potential futures out of five!
The Council (2018)
This is one of those rare things in modern times, a popular episodic narrative not in any way associated with Telltale Games in either it's old or new form but instead from a developer called Big Bad Wolf. Set in the late 18th century, we follow a detective/occult investigator as he searches for his mother who has gone missing on a mysterious island. Said island also happens to be the meeting place for the many prominent real life historical figures of the era who also happen to be part of a Masonic secret society shaping the history and destiny of the human race.
Cue much serriptitious creeping around in search of the truth as you interact with George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte and the like whilst you try to figure out the deal with the even more mysterious owner of the island and his role in your mother's disappearance. For the most part I found this game pretty engaging and atmospheric with the usual choice based branching storyline and unexpected consequences thereof. The plot does lose a little steam when the big revelation happens and things start to feel a little too coincidental and everyone left is in on the big reveal or centrally involved in a way that seems too lucky. Overall though it's three shadowy secret societies out of five!
Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (2019)
The third part of my 2025 saga with the Baldur's Gate series arrived and apart from anything else, I felt like I had bitten off distinctly more than I could chew with this collection. Despite the gaps in-between playing them the fatigue had definitely set in by this point so this game has its work cut out for it. Your hero wakes up as the prisoner of the evil wizard for reasons I totally unknown, you escape and embark upon your quest to get said wizard and get some answers.
This is commonly cited as the height of the series before it's modern resurgence. The plot is better with some twists and curve balls thrown in here and there. The main core gameplay is still very much of its time but modernized here as much as it can be. The character work sticks out as a plus point and all in all it very much lived up to my expectations the odd absurd difficulty spike notwithstanding. Peak gaming archeology then given a respectful coat of paint for those wishing to visit or revisit the original games. The add-on pack Throne of Bhaal can, however, go do one for having an increasingly impossible set of boss fights within. Three and three quarter save game reloads out of five!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)
I have a lot of warm nostalgia for the Modern Warfare series. For the most part I find most Call of Duty games to be samey even if the big blockbuster action sequences in the story campaigns always land well. Modern Warfare though, in its original release was something special and remains the high point of the series for me. That and that Black Ops multiplayer mode where John F. Kennedy and Che Guevara fight off waves of zombies but I digress. I played the Modern Warfare remake pre-COVID and thought it a respectable effort that couldn't quite capture the highs of the original but could it's sequel improve on this?
In short, no. If the remake of the original sits firmly within its shadow, the same is very much true of the sequel. Oh it all feels a little more gritty and detailed, the motion capture and character performances are superb but it all feels a little aimless and incidental. Neither word could really be applied to the original Modern Warfare 2 with the 'No Russian' sequence and the fake out nuclear launch. This felt like a sequel made to fit a release window, not a sequel that needed to happen. Fun while it lasts but forgotten swiftly once done. Two and three quarter prison breaks out of five!
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun (2023)
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only late 90's styled first person shooters inspired by the classic Build engine. You know, like they always say in 40K circles? No? Well that's what we got here by way of a PS+ freebie so I thought I'd give it a go. You are an Ultramarine, a well balanced young man determined to purge an alien planet of mutants, heretics, xenos and the like. To do so you employ the art of subtlety and gentle persuasion. Which is to say you shoot, dismember and generally blast your way through hordes of enemies coming at you from all directions.
For the most part this was a lot of fun and a sincere love letter to the classic games that inspired it and the retro style visuals do a pretty good job at capturing the world of 40K as it would have looked had someone made a game like this back then. It all moves pretty fast and the violence is plentiful and suitably crunchy. It is somewhat repetitive however with the feeling that you have seen 99% of what the game offers by the time you reach the halfway point. The difficulty and the enemy count increases but it did start to feel somewhat like a slog to get to the end. Nonetheless it's a solid four ruinous powers out of five!
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter (2020)
Down memory lane and going back in time a decade or two for this one. The first Serious Sam in its original for released in... *checks notes* oh that's right, it released in 2001! Dear almighty god in heaven Serious Sam is two and a half decades old and I feel so much older now that I realise this. Yes its a game I played before and even completed but I don't recall giving the HD version my full attention so I rectified that here as part of the Serious Sam Collection released for consoles a few years ago. Its classic boomer shooter stuff from a time when that style of game was going out of fashion in the early noughties. You are a veritable one man army taking on an actual army of more on-screen enemies than you would have thought possible or indeed sensible.
Shooting, blasting and generally making a mess out of Ancient Egypt, it still holds up as an excellent example of this type of game. A challenging and often steep difficulty curve will put off some but there is no doubt that that this game delivers where it matters. The high number of enemies charging at you from all directions was definitely a novelty back in the day and it still works impeccably well as part of the overall game design here. The screams of headless bombers will forever live rent-free in my head. It's not the deepest story, Serious Sam himself is barely a character beyond some one liners that rarely reach the level of anything heard in Duke Nukem 3D and when I say some of those difficulty spikes are absurd I am understating it if anything. Nonetheless the first one gets four exploding alien frog mobs out of five!
Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter (2020)
Moving on the immediate sequel again collected as part of the Serious Sam Collection, this is where the Serious Sam series really excelled in my view. A sequel that addresses most of the shortcomings of the original whilst providing more variety in terms of locations, levels, weapons and enemies. Initially the game lands you in an ancient Mayan city but through a series of plot developments best left unexplained you end up on a quest for the Holy Grail because really this game, much like the first one, isn't about story at all. Best not to think about the why and just enjoy a lot more of the same from the first game albeit with a lot of the rough edges smoothed down for a better overall experience. It basically means you get a greater variety of backdrops for the unfolding carnage when compared to the first game's atmospheric rendering of ancient Egypt.
Personally I feel this game just flows a whole lot better than the first one. In its original release it came out a year after the first one in 2002 and developers Croteam really must have paid a lot of attention to the shortcomings of the first game in order to address as many of them as they did in the sequel. For the time, this is another lovely looking game. More hordes of enemies charging you en-masse, more headless bombers screaming at you, more biomechnical bipeds hunting you down. I feel like I should also point out that this game has one of the best sniper rifles ever featured in a first person shooter as well. It's rare I even remember individual weapons in such games, but that sniper rifle was just perfection to play. It's a steadfast four and a half charging skeletal horrors out of five!
Serious Sam 3: BFE (2020)
The third and final part of the Serious Sam Collection and apparently we are skipping Serious Sam 2 as it had a different publisher or its not considered canonical to the series for whatever reason? Note to self I think I have it in my Steam library so may correct this in 2026. To the third one then and this was one I have never played before apart from a brief few minutes playing it after a Steam sale impulse purchase. It's prequel territory as the previously untold tale of what happened before the first game is now... well it's told innit? I can't say I was chomping at the bit to find out what happened in the immediate events before the first game but then again, completionism isn't just a name around these here parts but a lifestyle as well. It's the 'modern' day and Sam is part of the Earth forces unsuccessfully repelling the attack of Mental and his many, many minions.
It's all going pear shaped in a hurry and as we know, humanity has discovered a way to send someone back in time to help defeat Minion. What follows was an interesting experience in some ways. In retrospect Croteam pulled off something specifal with The First Encounter and its immediate sequel. They are scrappy efforts that play well, look great and go against the grain of the popular trends of the day. Not perfect to be sure but special in a way. Serious Sam 3 feels a little less special in some ways. It's a more polished game, I might say its a game that conforms more typically to the standards of most first person shooters. It has its moments, the enemy designs are nicely tweaked for more modern tech and a few of the levels here would feel right at home in previous games. I do feel like some of the charm was lost in the translation here and whilst that's a shame, it does not make for a bad game, just a less remarkable one. Three and three quarter over-sized boss battles out of five!
Space Invaders Forever (2020)
Random change of pace here as move onto this retro collection of three somewhat obscure versions of Space Invaders that I had never played before. The three games being Space Invaders Extreme, Space Invader Gigamax 4 SE and Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders. I didn't end up spending a whole lot of time on all three games so they're not getting separate entries here. It was Space Invaders Extreme that probably got the most attention here as it married the classic formula to pulsating, flashing lights and music in a manner that happens to most classic arcade puzzle games at some point or another. It's an agreeable formula that works well for Space Incaders and I enjoyed it even if I wasn't destined to come back to it for the long term.
Gigamax and Arkanoid were less impressive efforts overall. Space Invaders Gigamax 4 SE felt like a very, very throwback effort aimed at the multiplayer crowd and as such a crowd was not forthcoming I don't feel like I played this in ideal circumstances. If anyone out there has done so then please let me know if this was any good. Meanwhile Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders was a port of a mobile game that attempts to mash up the mechanics of both games but yet feel less than the sum of its parts. As a momentary mobile game distraction this may have worked but as part of a collection on console this did not work so well. Tastes may vary but for me the gold standard of classic Space Invaders re-imagined is the 2009 release of Space Invaders Infinity Gene which remains, for me at least, the perfect example of how to do this type of game right. Alas all three games in this collection fall some way short of it, Space Invaders Extreme was fun though. Two and a half horizontally aligned alien hordes out of five!
Helldivers 2 (2024)
Ricocheting from the past all the way to the near-present as I play one of them there modern live service games that everyone loved upon its release last year. It's Starship Troopers in all but name and as someone who adores that film, I was all over this once I got the opportunity. Third person squad based PVE as you blast hostile alien bugs whilst completing objectives across a visually impressive array of hostile and barren alien planets in the name of Super Earth. This game very quickly became a huge success story upon its release for some slick gunplay and its emphasis on teamwork under pressure. All wrapped up in a package that doesn't lay it on too thick with the monetisation and the micro-transactions.
I'm in that subset of players that spent some time with the original Helldivers a decade ago. That was a very different game set in the same universe, a top down multiplayer shoot em up that shared much of the same DNA as this one, just not in as polished a package. This feels like an altogether upgraded experience from the ground up and its impressive how this game made the leap to the modern live service model as I don't recall much if any of it in the original. As of the time of writing I probably haven't spent nearly enough time exploring all the content this game has to offer. Will aim to get some more time in with this one next year but for the moment I will give it four space fascists out of five!
Ether One (2014)
It's low key walking through a quiet, rural and possibly deserted British town as you explore the memories of someone with dementia as you help a scientist find a cure for them. It's all very chill and low-stakes for the most part with some mild puzzle solving and the odd detour into some surreal products of the human imagination as it succumbs to terminal illness. Throw in some drama about what is happening back in the 'real' world with the the threat of research funding being pulled, add an eleventh hour twist about the truth behind the whole thing and presto, we have a game that is mild mannered Inception. Kinda, sorta, no wait not really...
A little bit more involved than your typical walking simulator but not by much. This game, like a lot of games in this genre, is atmospheric and engaging in its own way. I just didn't find myself getting overly interested in what was happening on-screen for much of the playtime. There's a nice sense of time and place with an earnest effort to explore a difficult topic here, it just doesn't result in an overly memorable experience. For me it felt like this game could have used a gentle splash of more plot and character in order to really get its point across in a way that grabs attention. There are certainly moments where it tries to do so but by the end I feel it just fell short of the mark. Two collectable red ribbons out of five!
Night Trap - 25th Anniversary Edition (2017)
The start of my Halloween month of horror gaming! Join me as we journey into a time of madness and strife, or as we like to call... the early 90's. Its not a controversial thing to say that some periods of gaming history have aged better than others no? The classics of the late 70's, the stone-cold classics of the 80's and the rise of CD gaming in the mid 90#s and beyond are all examples of gaming history where we have filtered out the bad and have chosen to remember the good. Which brings me back to the early 90's and what was a somewhat strange, awkward period from gaming as it transitioned from the popular hits of the mid and late 80's into the new fangled age of interactive entertainment.
Night Trap was and is an example of this, some might say THE example of it because whilst it wasn't a good game it was at least a memorable one. Monitoring security cam footage as a bunch of would-be teen horror movie victims stay over at a house owned by vampires could be a fun game. There is almost a sense of this game being an ancient distant relative of something like Five Night's at Freddy's here. Ninja vampires clad in all black creep into the house as festivities unfold and you have to switch to the right camera feed and press the button to trap them in a very brief window of opportunity. There is a plot going on but I'm not sure how you can follow it and keep everyone safe at the same time. There is the germ of a fun game here or there is a flavour of a shlock-horror ironic good time but fused together, it just doesn't work. The behind the scenes stuff here wasn't half bad though. One and a half ninja vampires out of five!
Tokyo Dark - Remembrance (2020)
Hitting the mean streets of Tokyo now with an anime flavoured dash of the hard boiled mixed in with some supernatural touches of the other side. Seem to recall coming across this one in a list of underappreciated gems available on the PlayStation store as it seemed to garner some praise online. It's a side scrolling effort with lots of character interaction and some gentle puzzle solving as your Detective Ayami seems to be losing her marbles whilst dealing with guilt and grief over the death of her partner. Various otherworldly shenannigans intervene in the course of her current investigation which may be getting perpetrated by someone no longer in the world of the living. Ancient Japanese folklore may have a thing or two to say about it and well, I think you get the overall thing they were going for here.
It's decently atmospheric I will give it that with a general sense of unease permeating the various events that unfold over the course of the game. The art style compliments the tone and the conversations flow well. The soundtrack also has a pseudo Silent Hill feel to it, not quite Akira Yamaoka but their heart was in the right place for the type of story being told here. I don't know if I am entirely on board with this game, it was good for what it was but there wasn't much of it to draw me in any further. It's probably destined to one of them there cult classics that will fall on just the right side of obscurity, remembered by some but not a major hit by anyone's estimation. A curious little tale worthy of your attention then but perhaps temper those expectations accordingly. Three improbably dressed cosplay killers out of five!
The Exit 8 (2024)
Picture if you will the hallways of your typical metropolitan subway or underground train system. White tiles everywhere, pristine and clinical in its presentation. Now picture walking down them only to realise that the hallways repeat on themselves indefinitely. They are your typical in-between space, transitory and illusive. A liminal meme turned into a game. Random things will happen in these hallways depending on your actions and which point of the loop you find yourself in. Your only real instruction at the start is to run away from anything weird should it happen. So say if you turn a corner and find two emotionless people standing still only to burst into pursuit without warning then you better run as fast as you can. Same if the walls come to life. Same if the man who walks past you on every loop suddenly looks at you. You get the idea.
A strange little experience this was but it was short and sweet. For the most part you find yourself staring at empty tiled hallways expecting to come across something but not finding it most of the time. Sometimes a door might change, or the pattern of the light fixtures above you. It's all a bit inscrutable and incomprehensible but I guess that is very much the idea here. At its heart its a game of spot the subtle difference crossed with one of those horror games where you can't fight back and can only run away from those who pursue you. It does have a decent air of ambivalent uncertainty to it when you are not scratching your head wondering what you may have missed as the same part of the same loop keeps repeating itself. Not an amazing game but it does what it does fairly well for the short time it lasts, so let's say it's three infinite hallways out of five!
Killer Frequency (2023)
It's the 1980's and you are a DJ on the graveyard shift at a local radio station. Your glory days are seemingly behind you and now all you have is this gig and the company of your producer as you play vinyl records and take call-ins from the few locals still awake at this late hour. Then you get the call from the only 911 dispatcher working right now who says she has found the sheriff dead and that the killer may still be in the vicinity. Cue some fun back and forth dialogue and light detective work to get her out of the area so she can go and get help from the next town over. Oh and she is also routing all 911 calls through to you so you can help anyone in need of escaping this killer in the meantime. This is the core experience of Killer Frequency and I for one, really enjoyed this game.
Much like with Oxenfree, there is some great characterisation and dialogue here coupled with a decent sense of place, time and atmosphere. The tone is more horror comedy than outright horror but it works really well here. You take calls both urgent and non-urgent, you play records, run your ads and explore the radio station in search of hints and clues to help out the would-be victims of The Whistling Man. The game is both knowing and sincere at the same time and finds that sweet spot where it gets a little over the top but not so much as to break the suspension of disbelief. In a nutshell this worked beautifully for me and was definitely one of my standout gaming experiences of the year. Four Halloween pranks gone tragically wrong out of five!
Phasmophobia (2020)
A first person multiplayer co-operative ghost hunting game where you need to use an assortment of equipment to detect and determine exactly what type of ghost is haunting any given location you find yourself in. This all must be done within an indeterminate time limit before said ghost comes hunting for you. There are many different types of paranormal entity too, some more hostile than others, some rather more difficult to identify than others. You place your equipment and wait for a reading or the lack of one then you go back to your van and get another ghost-detecting tool. Tick off what you get until, in theory, you have your ghost or the ghost has you.
This was something a little different for horror season as whilst multiplayer horror games are not unheard of (see Dead by Daylight above) they aren't exactly everywhere and anywhere to be found. This was that rarest of things for me, a multiplayer experience that felt a bit different and in a good way too. The co-operative element could vary depending on how co-operative your fellow players are being but when it works, it works really well in terms of building the tension and driving the game forward. The entire thing has the mood and tone of a found footage Paranormal Activity film or at least one of the good ones at any rate and when it all goes to pot it does so with drama and urgency. Four strange voices on the radio out of five!
The Bunker (2016)
One of them there FMV throwback games with multiple choices and whatnot. You play a man born in a nuclear fallout shelter somewhere in Britain. It's the immediate aftermath of a nuclear strike and probably the end of humanity itself save for those who fled underground. You get the ominous time and date stamp with a population count of the bunker itself after a dramatic opening. You then cut to some time later where the population count is in the lower single digits. Fairly heavy, dramatic stuff which is all shot and acted really well for what I suspect was a modest budget. As you go about your daily tasks in the bunker things go all non-linear as we flash back to the early days of the shelter and all the difficult and horrible choices that await those who run the place. Naturally disaster and betrayal await...
So the game portion of these type of games tends to be somewhat limited and deliberately so by design. You watch clips, you make choices when presented with them, sometimes on a very brief blink and you miss it window of opportunity. Anyone reading past blog entries may know I am quite fond of these type of games as the output of D'avekki Studios have featured quite prominently in these lists over the past few years. This particular game was developed by Splendy Games and despite this game garnering some significant praise in the games media, it was not enough to save the company which closed in 2018 or thereabouts. Shame really as I think this genre is on something of an upswing this decade and whilst I am fond of D'avekki's various titles, I would appreciate some more variety in this type of game. Anyhow as good as this was it's perhaps a touch on the short side for my tastes so I think I will give it three and a half worrying Geiger counter readings out of five!
ARC Raiders (2025)
Well, well, well... wouldn't you know it? Embark Studios, the developers behind The Finals, the game which has probably taken up the most of my gaming time since it came out in 2023. Well they have only gone and done it again? This is an 'extraction shooter', which is to say you are in a multiplayer live service game of a variety somewhat similar to the battle royale but with a few differences. In this game its a retro-future post-apocalypse where the machines have taken over the surface of the Earth. Humanity has retreated to its own city underground. To get supplies, it sends raiders up to the surface to scavenge for resources, all while fending off other raiders and the ever present machine menace. Whether played solo or in a group, this is an atmospheric tense affair that requires you to be always on your guard with one eye on your surroundings and the other on your limited time window for extraction. You die, anything you have on your person is lost. Those are the breaks...
It's not often I go day one on games these days, it often pays not to. On the strength of The Finals alone though I just had to go and check this one out. I had never played this type of game before. I had heard of Escape From Tarkov but it looked a little generic for my tastes. This game though works like a charm with some finely tuned risk and reward that keeps you playing even when you should perhaps head for your extraction point nice and early. The social element here is tremendous as every encounter with another player could result in immediate or delayed betrayal, or they might even just team up with you. It makes for a tense, dynamic experience that changes things up on you frequently. I am impressed with just how well this all works and that it worked so well from the start. It has of course attracted some of the controversy over the use of AI in video game development, with Eurogamer making this game an example for what appears to be its zero tolerance stance on generative AI in game development. I don't know if that's a cause with legs to it and I don't know if singling out a rather excellent game on this basis is going to resonate with most people? I may deliberate on this some more in a future blog entry, for now I am just going to die on this hill and give this five murderous machine drones out of five!
PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017)
Another game here that I have already spent some time with but not for quite some time and not in its current form. This is of course the godfather of the battle royale game, the one that launched and popularised an entire genre before Epic came along and appropriated all the best bits for its own game in Fortnite, making it the gaming behemoth it is today. Anyway back to PUBG, how does it go in 2025? The short answer is, it seems to be going pretty well. PUBG Studios released the native PS5 version a few months ago so it seemed as good a time as any to check it out again. Its the usual deal, a whole load of players air-drop onto an island, gather weapons, armour and the like. Everyone goes to war with each other whilst the playable area gets increasingly smaller over time. Of course in this game it's all rendered in an realistic style that does away with the more cartoony or fantastical stylings of other popular battle royale games.
It certainly plays smoother, not quite Fortnite smooth but there is a lot less jank to be sure. Weirdly I think Fortnite may have made me a better player of these type of games because upon coming back to PUBG I found myself actually getting kills and wins and the like. This didn't happen a whole lot back in the day. I used to find this game way more difficult but whether its due to the game engine being less creaky or me being somewhat better at it, I now found the PUBG experience a hell of a lot more immersive than I did before. The grounded aesthetic still stands out in a crowded marker and I may have to spend some more time with this next year. On the flip side this game is competing with Apex Legends for having an obnoxiously overbearing monetisation model. I swear the micro-transactions in this game literally weigh down the main menu itself. Anyway let's say its three and three quarter blue circles of death out of five!
System Shock (2023)
The original System Shock was released in 1994 and is regarded as a breakthrough in game design. First person shooting, exploration and puzzle solving in a world rich in atmosphere and full of allusions to the wider story being told. Now that might not sound like a big deal to the readers of 2025 but in a world where the original Doom was blowing people's minds, System Shock and System Shock 2 in particular took things further. The tale of an anonymous hacker wandering an abandoned space station whilst surviving the machinations of the evil artificial intelligence SHODAN is one that looms large in gamer history and influenced much of what was to come after. Now that all said, I played the original System Shock a while back after a Steam sale and well, I didn't enjoy it. I tried, I really did but I found it to be a slow moving, awkward, fiddly experience that has not aged well. It was just on the wrong side of retro for me, where the experience of just playing it was just a little too much work on its own before you even considered the main challenges within.
Which brings me to the 21st century, Nightdive Studios and the remake. This game was a fascinating experience for me and an excellent example of game preservation in action. The game now looks great by modern standards, it plays well and all the main story elements are left intact. They even brought back the original voice actor for SHODAN and she gives a magnificently spiteful performance. More crucially they have preserved the essential character of a game released in the mid 90's. This is a game that has little time for hand-holding or pointing things out in the HUD or giving you a nice list of objectives to follow on your map screen. No, this is a game where you have to actually figure everything out. This is a game where it is important to read the diaries and listen to the audio logs of the dead crew because this is where you find out what you need to do next and how you need to do it. It shouldn't have taken me aback in the way it did but we have all been playing games that do provide such aid to the player that it was genuinely refreshing to play a game that did not and in such a polished way as well.
I could have probably done a whole blog entry on this game alone and I may yet still do so. This was a unique experience that deserves the many accolades it has received. It's a vindication of much of the original game's design which may have worked well by the standards of mid 90's technology. In the mid 2020's however this game works exceptionally well in my opinion. Not the easiest or most welcoming game but it is one that will immerse you given the chance. If I ever wanted to give someone an idea of what games used to be like but I didn't want to give them the awkwardness of early 3D gaming, I would recommend this remake as a sincere window into another time. Everything has been updated but the core ideas were left intact. Five SHODAN's out of five!
Delta Force (2025)
Approaching the final leg of the year here with a another brief stopover in the free-to-play live service genre. As with any game titled Delta Force this is a first person shooter that's mostly based in a contemporary setting but with a few elements that are a bit more sleek and sci-fi. To look at it, it all plays and feels like Call of Duty minus some of the bells and whistles that now come with that series. Twitchy reactions and good aim are naturally quite important here and there are of course the battle passes and progression bars that are standard in these games.
If the above reads like not much stands out about this game then yeah, that would probably be right. I spent a few hours with it as whilst I am not the biggest COD fan, the odd bit of high paced gunplay in that vein can still be pretty fun in moderation. On that end it mostly delivered but I don't know, much of what this game offered just didn't grab me. I blame the crowded market on this as the bar is so high in terms of expectation and delivery these days. This is a perfectly competent shooter but it doesn't really distinguish itself. It's the kinda game that makes me wish XDefiant had gotten its act together and not gotten shut down due to lack of numbers. As I said when I talked about XDefiant before, I feel like there is a market for a COD-like game minus the huge install and superfluous extras that now come with that series. Delta Force certainly feels like an attempt to fill that void but I don't know if it distinguishes itself very well within it. Two and a half cyberwarfare suites out of five!
FantaVision (2000)
I still remember the old local independent gaming shop I used to frequent during my teen years. Much of my PS1 and PS2 game collection came from that shop now that I think about it. In the era of digital distribution and online shopping there really aren't many of those kind of shops around anymore. The reason I remember this shop now is because they had the old demo units that used to be quite common where you could sample a game or a console you had not played before. It's where I first saw a PS2 up close, for that matter I think it's also where I saw the original Xbox up close as well. For the purposes of this paragraph however, it was where I saw FantaVision for the first time. A visually striking chain puzzle game where you had to chain up fireworks in sequence as they rose into the sky but before detonation. The more successful the chain, the more point you get.
Playing the current re-release of it on the PlayStation store, much of the nostalgia does fade away rather quickly. It's not a bad game or an overly easy one but it does feel like the kind of thing that catches the eye of a would-be PS2 player from back in the day. Part puzzle game, part tech demo then. Not tremendously deep but it did feel a little surreal at times. It has a pretty random intro movie with a family sitting around a screen smiling in a way that feels like they are sitting at gunpoint and pretty much no connection to the game at all that I could see. As I say the visual presentation is nice even if the allure has faded with age and the music is decent too. I just don't see it as being much more than a fleeting distraction in the here and now. Two surreal opening cinematics out of five!
Resident Evil Revelations 2 (2015)
It speaks much to Capcom's credit how well they have managed the Resident Evil series. Over multiple decades its been mostly hits with very, very few misses. To my mind the only game I outright disliked was Resident Evil 6 and that was more due to it being an over-long, bloated, inconsistent experience rather than it being an outright bad game. The first Resident Evil Revelations was, on the surface of it, one of those random spin-off's that no one really asked for but which turned out to be rather a good game that successfully merged elements of both old and new RE games. Much of the same thoughts come to mind when playing Resident Evil Revelations 2, where Claire Redfield and newcomer Moira Burton find themselves on a derelict post-Soviet island of questionable scientific ethics. Also Barry Burton is here, because Barry is the man!
Unquestionable truth bombs aside, this is structured in episodic fashion which was the style for a period in the last decade where binge-watching TV box-sets on Netflix and HBO was all the rage and someone thought this would be a natural fit for single player games. It works fine here, I'm not convinced this couldn't be structured like a typical single player narrative but we got what we got and it works. The plot flashes back and forth in time between the arrival of various people at the island. The dead don't stay dead, the human body does things it was never designed to do, there are monsters, mutations and boss fights. The Resident Evil lore gets a new sinister antagonist, the word 'bioterrorist' gets flung around a little but not too much. It was an atmospheric and often challenging experience that flowed pretty well and avoided some of the more convoluted pitfalls of the series. Four green herbs out of five!
Twisted Metal (1995)
So for Black Friday this year I treated myself to the yearly PS store promotion where you can upgrade the remainder of your PS+ subscription to one of the more expensive tiers at a discount and so I became a PS+ Premium subscriber for the first time. I did this because this year I also bought myself the PS Portal which can now do full proper cloud gaming at the Premium tier and I wondered how good it would be. The short answer is, it's very good, surprisingly smooth and responsive on my internet connection at least. The top tier also gives access to the 'Classics' collection of retro titles emulated for modern systems and so did I end up returning to the Twisted Metal series. You may recall I played Twisted Metal Black a few years back and loved the thing, so what would I make of the original entry and the ridiculous levels of vehicular carnage contained therein?
The short answer is I rather enjoyed it, maybe not so much as the latter title but for an original PS1 title, the first Twisted Metal does hold up rather well. You drive around a series of levels with your chosen driver and vehicle, you shoot and blast enemies with a variety of power ups you can pick up across the level. The entire thing has an erratic, unhinged air to it that you would expect of a game featuring a killer clown driving an armed ice-cream truck. You eliminate your enemies and progress to the next level with more of the same. It's a straightforward game that does away with complications for more immediate thrills. The how and why of all of it are left somewhat under-explained but basically some sinister supernatural force is behind it and you should be careful what you ask for. On the flip side there were some absurd difficulty spikes in this game which made me glad for the emulator's rewind feature and some of those later levels require some really cheesing to get anywhere with them. This was a good example of the cloud gaming service in action though. Three and a half onboard rocket launchers out of five!
Thank Goodness You're Here! (2024)
The North of England ladies and gentlemen! For all of its fine people and quality culture, I can't recall many games set in it. Films, books and music abound based on this part of the world but when it comes to games I can't think of many points of comparison to this one. Thank Goodness You're Here! is a good natured and funny love letter to the North. A top-down exploration game where you wander the fictional town of Barnsworth as you await an appointment with the local Mayor to discuss planning permission for a local shop. What follows is a series of comically absurd vignettes as various locals call upon you for help in their own dilemmas.
Whether its fixing the fryer in the local chip shop, going on absurd fetch quests to retrieve lost items or unclogging the sewer pipes, it's not so much about the game as it is about the humour which is pretty good throughout. It feels like one of the more surreal comedy TV shows of the late 90's or early noughties. The punchline often doesn't land where you think it will and people will often say that you know what they mean when you frequently do not. It feels distinctly like the kind of game that a small independent developer would make as there is so much joyful idiosyncratic humour in it that probably wouldn't get past the committee stage in a larger company. There is not a huge amount of gameplay to this one but then again I'm not sure it needs it given the quality of the writing. Therefore I will settle on three and three quarter chip butties out of five!
FBC: Firebreak (2025)
Remedy Entertainment, you have given me a lot of joy over the years. Starting with the original Max Payne and continuing with Alan Wake and Control, you have made some excellent games that I will forever rate highly. I will admit that I wasn't sure what to think about this one when it was initially announced, a multiplayer PVE spin-off of Control where you play as one of their containment teams trying to shut down bizarre inter-dimensional anomalies breaking out across The Oldest House. I mean I'm not numb to the idea I think there is something to it. I just wasn't sure if the world was calling out for this when there is a surplus of behemoth games in the multiplayer space and an ever constant deficit of quality single player games. It was a curious direction to take is what I'm saying but did it work out for them? It's a mixed result I think. It does stand out as a unique experience, mainly on the strength of the lore and setting of Control but I think this is also where the main difficulty presents itself as well.
You see I played Control, I loved it, it was a great game that combined a great action game with the weird and off-kilter sensibilities of something David Lynch might have had a hand in. It was a great, unusual setting and I await the announced sequel with excitement but not even I can remember all the finer points of the setting. The what and the why of what you are doing in FBC: Firebreak is either barely explained or not at all. It kinda wants you to go with the flow as you take on sentient clouds of post-it notes or a malevolent heating system. Sometimes this is an approach that works but oftentimes it does not. Given the difficulty getting a playable party during my few hours with the game, I suspect it may not have worked in this instance. Hopefully it finds an audience but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work out here. It's a unique game that definitely needs the player numbers to get the most out of it. As it stands I can only give it three possessed instances of office furniture out of five!
Interaction Isn’t Explicit (2024)
Less a game and more a general thesis on game mechanics and player agency in gaming? Oh well, at least it was free. So this short little not-game-but-it-is-really was something different I guess. You traverse a series of levels where various points of interest prompt some text about the nature of gaming and player interaction. I am struggling to come up with many thoughts about this one. I mean its a novel work in practice to get your point across to your dissertation tutor but in almost every other respect its a fairly forgettable game experience. A proof of concept for something that will never go any further than that.
I can see a fair amount of time, effort and skill went into this but it feels more like something a budding game developer would put into their portfolio ahead of their first job interview. I struggle to see how this became a product for a wider audience who are not privy to any of the accompanying work that presumably bolsters the meagre content on offer here. Nothing too revelatory or mind-blowing is divulged here. It's just fairly dry academic stuff that deserves a good appraisal from an expert in the field, I just don't think its gaming product for a gaming audience, at least not in its current form. Two explicit interactions out of five!
God of War: Ascension (2013)
When I finally traded in my old PS3 sometime around the middle of the last decade I felt that I pretty much played everything on that system than I needed to. By this point if I hadn't played it I figured it can't be that essential and anything outstanding was already getting a PS4 version at that point so whatever. It was only some time after I realised there was in fact a bunch of games I had overlooked, chief among them being the prologue to the God of War series, one God of War Ascension. You are Kratos before you turn on Ares and go to town on all the major gods and monsters of Ancient Greece. You are looking to break your oath to Ares but to do so you must first take down the Furies that keep all would-be oath-breakers in their place. Cue a powerful parting of the way as all manner of fantastical beasts and mythical creatures are smashed, beaten and otherwise disembowelled on the road to vengeance.
This would be another one of those cloud streaming experiences and boy was it a good one. The God of War games are something special in that they provide some very immediate visceral thrills on a vast canvas of splendour, violence and scale. Taking on huge, towering creatures that you scale like mountains or chaining long sequences of attacks together I get a real appreciation for the work that goes into these games. Ascension was no exception and was a suitably epic send-off to this era in God of War before it moved on to a new setting. I can now finally move on to Scandinavian God of War and join everyone in the sunny climes of 2018, let's pencil that one in for next year. Five cases of poor anger management out of five!
Trek to Yomi (2022)
Picture an old Akira Kurosawa movie or any old example of a samurai movie complete with a black and white grainy film filter. You are a guy called upon to defend his village as enemy forces besiege the local area and make it their business to ruin the business of everyone else. Cue some 2.5D side-scrolling exploration and combat with strict timing based strikes, parries and blocks. A variety of enemies will assail you and each one will require their own optimal response in order to defeat them. Make your way through the game, auto-saving at the frequent shrines placed across the world and find yourself up against one of a small number of boss characters who mix things up some more. Many will die, hope will be lost, bloody vengeance will be pursued.
I did like the sense of place and atmosphere here, it did very much feel like I was partaking in an old film. The presentation, dialogue and use of the black and white filter really worked wonders for immersing me in the events that unfold. The combat is decent for the most part but does devolve into trial and error for much of the second half of the game. There is an uneven sense of difficulty and pacing generally throughout the game as well. In retrospect the boss fights were a highlight of the experience but there were relatively few of them to get stuck into and most of them were over fairly quickly once you figured out the best approach. I hate to damn with faint praise but this game made me think I really need to get around to playing Ghost of Tsushima next year so I will probably do that. Three visits to the afterlife out of five!
...
...and that folks, is that! If you actually read all of that then bless you. If you skim read the read then also bless you. If you scrolled through the entire thing only to read one or two of them then I cannot blame you in the least. Maybe next year I will go back to splitting these up into instalments or maybe keep some kind of tally across the year maybe? Questions for another time I think. As I said at the start it turned out to be quite the year in gaming and looking back at it I don't know how I made the time for all that. Technically there were two other games I could have added here but one is a single player game I haven't been able to complete as of the end of December and the other is an MMO I feel I should spend more time with before passing a verdict on it so I will leave those two for next year's list.
As for now its a belated Merry Christmas from me as well as earnest hopes for a good New Year for you all! Tally ho, farewell and so long, see you on the other side!
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