I had considered several times checking this out while waiting for Baldur's Gate 3 to drop. It boasts a full DND game system with classes, spells and dice rolls, etc. Very enjoyable if you like DnD, or are interested in learning how to play it. Definitely not as polished in the animations or story department when comparing to BG3, but the UI and combat is quite good. There seems to be several DLC that was not in the gamepass version that expands on the original campaign, but I didn't have a chance to play any of them. The DLC is actually somewhat brutal, in that if you don't have any, then you are locked out of several races and classes (like my preferred half-orc barbarian). I suppose in the future, if the game were on super sale with all the DLC, I'd consider checking out the additional campaigns locked behind the paywall.

This game was slightly interesting, but also feels like it misses the mark. As the title is moons of Madness, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it starts off with a dream sequence, and then has you doing some work on Mars. Then spooky stuff happens, and it's another dream sequence. The game makes you feel like the character is going crazy and possibly seeing things that are not there. As when you wake from the dreams, you are in places you don't expect. I was hoping that your dreams were dreams, but your actions were real, but eventually the dreams aren't dreams any longer and everything is getting fucked up. Then there's a plotline of mass conspiracy, bigger than you could imagine, but as soon as the plotline is introduced, it moves to an occult element and then the game is done. I honestly didn't dislike any of those things, but it moves through them so fast that I just felt disappointed. I feel like I would have preferred any one of these plots fully explored instead of all three. This was all in the span of a five hour long game.

Jeez, third ressy game in a month. This was easily the best of the three with the most coherent stand alone story. Technically a spin-off, but better than some of the mainline games for sure in both story and gameplay. Has a "buddy" system that is pretty decent in that one partner is like a scouter/item spotter that can do helpful things during combat, but can't actually fire any weapons. The other is a normal gun shooting person, but you can swap between the two characters at any time. Even better is that the support characters are very difficult to kill when you are not controlling them, which is great since they have little combat ability. The game brings back two characters from the series that I definitely thought one of which was already dead. Definitely recommend if you want something like 4, but different.

It’s a Mario game. . . but has some really cool creative stuff going on in it. You get a wonder seed in each level which makes you I guess get high and have crazy shit happen where the levels will change to something that is not mario at all. Such as having you walk on the walls like Gauntlet 1 & 2 style, or have a long body, have everything become rhythm based, etc. It’s a good time, but fairly short in all if you’re looking to just beat every level. Certainly there is enough to go back and play continuously, but I think I got my fill just playing through without collecting every single thing in every single level to get all the medals for my completion screen.

Another Rogue-like that I’m sure has a dozen endings and is incredibly replayable, but it didn’t really quite make me interested in continuing the adventure. It is a nice turn off and play sort of game, but I felt accomplished enough after a single full play through to the ending, that I don’t think I’ll bother a revisit. Odd, as I feel like I used to enjoy these arcadey type of games in the past, but now I prefer to just have a single full experience that I can complete and move on. Not to say that this game wasn’t good or anything of the sort, I quite enjoyed it, but I don’t feel like I have the need to play continuously forever until I die, or unlock all the achievements.

One of my favorite games I had when I was younger was Mario Tennis on the GBA, where if you only ever played the console version on N64, you’d think, “Why?” Well, because on the GBA, it was an RPG where you play Tennis through a bunch of story stuff, and it’s awesome. I’d always wanted a remake or a way to play them on something modern. Enter Golf Story. This is pretty much what I always liked about Mario Tennis (again I never played Mario Golf on GBA), and it’s great. The writing is funny, and the game is quite fun, with lots of different things to do and unlock. I found it more interesting as I’ve been working on a golf broadcast recently, so I understood a lot more Golf jokes that I would have normally.

This is a big game. You have 5 playable characters, all with their own sub-stories (15 each minimum), unique side stories (pertaining to jobs like taxi driver, baseball player, pop idol, etc), and they all have their own fully explorable areas, on top of shared location. I did almost all those things, and the game said I completed 25% of what it has to offer. Normally, if I enjoy a game a lot, I might actually do these extra things, but just doing what I listed above, this game becomes tedious. Some of the characters are fun to play, but some are not, and your progression really feels bad when you have to unlock basic things with new characters by doing things like restaurant reviews that are just not fun. This is the last of the PS3 era games, and it will be nice to move on to the more modern ones. I think I'd give this one a C+, just because it has some good stuff, but it gets drowned out by overstaying far too long.

This was a pretty decent souls like, that felt close to the From style, but added unique features. For instance, weapons are split into a hilt and a “blade” that each has unique abilities that can be swapped around by changing blades and hilts. The hilt even dictates what kind of attack you might do, so you can make crazy weapons by just testing and combining as you'd like. The story was also pretty interesting, and sorry if you didn't already know, it is based on Pinocchio. There is a whole lot more as well, that builds a unique world for itself and the story even teases other classic stories within this game. I will say that I am somewhat worried the game might get convoluted with characters and shit like kingdom hearts if the series goes too long, and they don't keep the games grounded.

I Kickstarted this game like 6 years ago or something, as a guy I was in the military with did some of the soundtrack (gyms, obviously not his real name). So I've known about this project for like 10 years, and was the wait worth it? Honestly, yeah. I was very happy with the final product. I can imagine it being the next undertail with how charming and unique the gameplay is. I actually looked forward to battling new enemies to see how the combat might change, and what abilities I might encounter. I wish I had changed my name in the credits from, but oh well. It's long enough to pick out when it happens.

I was not really sure what to expect from this game. It was very Earthbound/Undertale inspired, with the goofy and silly interactions you can have with characters, and battles. Like you can fight a tree that doesn’t attack, and you can do no damage to. There’s an enemy called Reverse Mermaid where it’s a fish on top and legs on the bottom, but even the name is written in reverse, as well as the health bar. It’s got a lot of fun moments like that, and a good cast that makes you care about them in a low stakes world. Then it turns out there is a real world, with the same characters, but you are all grown up, and one person is missing. It turns out you and the other characters are dealing with the death of your older sister, and the real segments have you deal with the trauma, and how it affects each person. This was a good game, with multiple play-through options, that I don’t think I’ll do, but very cool for those who are interested. Great game, great story.

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to play this game. I did look to see i had system shock 2 installed on my computer, and was curious if I happened to also own the first one. I did. I'd always heard this series inspired a bunch of games like BioShock, hell they both have shock in the name. The game came out in 1994, and I played the enhanced version, but I really enjoyed how kind of “un-handholdy” it was. It plays a simple cutscene and drops you into the game. Since it is 30 years old, the controls are not modern at all, and very unique, as you have to grab items, by clicking on them and dragging to your inventory, but the game is also an fps. So you can swap between a menu mode and fps mode, and you have dozens of ability menus all available in real time as well. The game makes you work for figuring out what to do, but it's very enjoyable the whole way through. Especially on the enhanced version, there is no load times or level separation, so it's difficult to stop playing, as it's just so rewarding to keep exploring. One thing I do want to point out, the soundtrack is so strange, just odd almost non-musical sounds playing several times throughout. It's intriguing.