(I only played a handful of hours, so, y'know, grain of salt for all the rest of this)

While I think there's a lot of interesting lore in the background here, the game itself wasn't doing much to actually keep me interested in what was going on. The characters weren't particularly endearing, the factions weren't interesting or fun to be around, and the bit of the setting I saw didn't do much for me either.

I also had this problem where it felt like the game was expecting me to have fully read the in-game encyclopedia. I'd have conversations and things would be referenced in a way that they weren't directly explained but in most games I'd be able to figure out what's going on via context clues but Tyranny didn't seem to do that nearly as often as it should. And while playing a CRPG is agreeing to a certain amount of reading massive blocks of text, making me feel like I needed to read reams of text before I could really do anything felt like too bit an ask.

Also, as far as I got, this game's idea of 'evil' seems very... boring. This game is supposed to be about being evil and yet seemingly every choice the game asked me to make was "will you kill this group of people or enslave them?" and after the twelfth time of making that exact choice it just gets boring. There is such a wide swathe of opportunity for what 'evil' can be, especially in a fantasy setting, and yet this game seems to be very stuck on this one specific idea of being evil.

Nothing I encountered was very compelling and the mechanics of the game didn't seem to be doing anything interesting enough to keep me engaged on that front either. Maybe I'll give this another shot some day but it seems pretty unlikely.

I really wanted to like this game. A roadtrip through 70s Italy, picking up hitchhikers, chatting with strangers, and seeing where life takes you is such a strong pitch for a game. But when I tried to play it, it all felt a little too messy. The conversations had an odd flow to them and constantly interrupted each other as every person in your car wanted to talk to you but when you spoke to one the others had to quietly sit and wait there turn. Some of the conversations were actually pretty good, some were interesting ideas that lacked execution. Probably the game's biggest issue was how bad the driving felt. You can leave it to auto-drive the whole time (which I did as much as possible) but getting prompted to do races with people or tailing missions meant having to manually drive which felt miserable and oftentimes it wasn't even clear which other car on the road I was following or racing. The good parts of this game just weren't worth the frustration of the bad bits.

The base idea here is solid. "Eat small things to get bigger so you can eat bigger things" is a tried-and-true idea that has stood the test of time. I just wish I liked anything else about this. I think it feels kinda bad to control, the ui isn't terribly intuitive, it's not always clear where to go, and the ending felt a bit nonsensical. Maybe the most tragic thing is that the art didn't really do anything for me. It's trying to be a little bit gross and weird but it just doesn't land for me. It's not gross in a repulsive way like Binding of Isaac is and it's not gross in an interesting way like Nidhogg 2 is. It somehow manages to be a very bland type of gross. Oh, that fish has a human face? Yeah I played Seaman, that's nothing new.

But all that said: it's free and there's certainly worse ways to spend ten minutes, so maybe just give it a shot anyway.

This game absolutely whips ass. It's got a powerful aesthetic, a beautiful low-poly style, a moody soundtrack, and overall immaculate vibes. The card game combat is fun and the progression of unlocking more cards made it fun to occasionally re-tune my deck.

I can't say enough good things about this game's style. It looks and sounds amazing and has an aesthetic that you don't see a lot - there just aren't enough games set in mid-to-late 1800s rural Russia centered around the local folklore and mythology. Both the 3d and 2d art of the game is striking and evocative but I feel like the game really shines in its environments. Each place feels so specially crafted and the camera so carefully placed. The developers clearly have a strong sense of cinematography and that comes through the most during the cutscenes which are, across the board, gorgeous.

The difficulty spikes from time-to-time in a way that sometimes feels like I would need to go back and customize my deck to prepare for a specific fight but other times just felt like an encounter's numbers were just too high to deal with. The options menu does allow changing the difficulty at any time so I was able to drop it down to Easy when necessary, and it even has a Skip Battle button for when something got to be too frustrating (and it doesn't punish you for using that - a mistake that I feel a lot of games would've made).

Don't sleep on this game, I think it's a genuinely incredible thing that deserves way more attention than what it's gotten so far. And, hey, at the time of review it's getting to be Halloween season and I think this would be the perfect game for that time of year.

Also there's a card game in this card game so you can card game while you card game.

I'm glad I finally went back to give this game another shot because it's really great! It gets slightly experimental with the immersive sim genre and that can be a little bit hit-or-miss at times and I think the final section of the game drags a bit but overall it's a well-thought out and well executed game.

I ran into some problems at first because I went in with my usual approach to immersive sims where I tried to sneak past everything and avoid combat whenever I could but it felt like Prey simply isn't built for that. Stealth feels like a way to kick off combat and not a way to circumvent it. Crouch and sneak up behind an enemy for bonus damage on an attack but after that combat pops off the same as it would as if you ran in guns blazing. You can try to sneak by things but you don't have many tools in your toolset to do much actual stealth which is then exasperated when, later in the game, you run back and forth through the areas several times over which would make stealth time-intensive and tedious. It's not necessarily an issue with the game itself because the game it absolutely designed with this in mind, but it meant that I had trouble getting a handle on things. But once I got past that and figured out how the game wanted me to approach it, I had a great time. Exploring and clearing an area of enemies and loot and information is still a very fun experience. Finding all the little nooks and crannies in an area never stopped being enjoyable and all the short stories I uncovered in emails and notes and whatnot were fun to piece together.

The open world(ish) design of this is an interesting choice when most any other immersive sim (as far as I've played, at least) goes with discreet levels. It does help to make the world feel like a singular place and I think it achieves that age old thing of "the location is a character unto itself" which isn't necessarily something games are good at. I feel like that aspect of the design did get in the way a bit when I was completing all the optional objectives and was just sprinting through areas that I already knew to be clear of enemies and items.

Overall, this game solidified my opinion that Arkane is one of the best and most interesting developers going. Every one of their games that I've been able to play has been a great time.

Spelunky 2 is a good game. It's biggest fault is that it's a sequel to a game that I consider to be perfect. How could they possibly have followed that up with anything other than something that was less-than? Disappointment seemed inevitable. And while I don't think Spelunky 2 is anywhere near a 'bad game' or anything like that, it did get to a point that I was tired of it and reinstalled Spelunky HD to play that instead.

My single biggest issue with Spelunky 2 is the path to the secret area and ending. Just like HD, 2 has you grab specific items and use them in specific places or in specific ways in order to unlock a door at the end of a "normal" run to get to an extra area (2 actually does this twice which is a fun change). In 2, the chain of events is much more complex meaning that it also becomes more restrictive. HD's secret ending used a lot of passive items (aka items that you pick up and show up in the HUD but you don't manually hold or activate) which left a lot of freedom in how you wanted to play. Use your whip everywhere or carry something like a shotgun or mattock or whatever. It didn't force you to play a certain way. Whereas in 2, because you so often have to actually carry an important item in your hands, the game forces you to play the way it wants you to play. And, to me, this is a significantly less fun way to play, especially because I've played enough Spelunky to always want to get to the secret ending, of course I'm going to go through this tedious chain of events to get there. And then, even if you go through all the required nonsense to get to the secret area, it feels like you've been additionally restricted just by elements of that secret area itself. Don't have good movement item on your back? No kapala? Don't have much equipment? Unless you're one of the best spelunkers in the world, you won't last long.

But there is a pretty good way around all the tedium: co-op. It allows you to split up the responsibilities of carrying the various items through levels makes it significantly more manageable. And with all the improvements to the co-op play, it's a much more feasible way to play the game. I've been playing with a friend who is over 5000 miles away from me and it's felt generally fine which has honestly been surprising!

I originally had a much longer and more thorough 'review' of the game in which I dissected lots of little bits of game design. Moles are bad. The way 2 plays with veteran players expectations is fun. This like that. But, honestly, this was all I really needed or wanted to say. Spelunky 2 is a great game. It's just too bad that it's the sequel to a perfect one.

Incredible vibes. I honestly love the tedium of this game: driving your car and operating your spotlight and interacting with the little bits of the world. It's just flipping switches and pushing buttons but something about following a specific order every time was satisfying to my lizard brain. Starting every mission and wondering what sort of giant creature I'd see next was always a treat. I love the little shitbox sedan with a spotlight strapped to the top of it. I love the weird mixtape of chill synth music and old radio plays. I love the dense fog and barely seeing the outline of something massive in the distance. It's a little janky at times (I got my car stuck in a ditch twice) but it's worth putting up with the little bits of weirdness.

This game is Cool and Has Some Vibes and I Like it but I'm not utterly bowled over by it the way just about everyone else seems to be. One thing in particular that I like about this game is how much it wants you to succeed. It wants you to win and it wants you to make progress so that you can uncover the story. Over time, it gives you cards that are more powerful to the point that some are clearly overpowered and can carry you through a run to a win and it's nice to have one of these deckbuilder roguelike-y games feel like it doesn't just want you to understand the mechanics and internalize how they work but it is actively cheering for you, even though the NPCs you talk to and the aesthetics of the game and everything else is in that traditional sort of "well you died. try again, fuck-o" sort of attitude. And I think that that is part of why I feel that this game is more successful in it "meta" aspect than the developer's previous games.

A beautiful game about anxiety, trauma, family, loss, and moving on. The art has a lovely if occasionally grotesque style to it that was always exciting to see what the game would show me next. The writing was moving and struck a good balance of leaving things for you to fill in some blanks but also being blatant and telling you what you need to hear when you need to hear it. It never once felt like it was clumsy or being too mysterious and I really appreciate that.

The platforming is pretty simple but I think that serves the game's goals well. The puzzle solving is similarly simple but, once again, I think that's for the best. If either of those aspects were too difficult it would just make the game a slog to get through and no one would want that.

It does drag a bit in the middle but for a game that's only five hours long what that amounts to is a 30-ish minute section in the middle somewhere that should've been 15 or 20 so overall that's a pretty minor complaint.

I love Mo and I want her to be happy.

Wildermyth is extremely cool and shows how a game can use procedural generation to craft strong stories and characters. I care more about some of these randomly assembled characters that I do the vast majority of other games. I love Hetty the witch who only says the weirdest things at the most serious times. And Marennen the warrior who constantly jumped into the midst of enemies to defend her wife. Or Pamelle, the human chimera who ended up with a wolf's head and arms, a raven's wings and legs, and a scorpion's tail.

But by the third campaign (out of five), I did start to see a handful of events start to repeat which is when the mechanical structure of the game started to be easier to see. The artifice fell away and I saw how functional each choice can be. And when I started to make each of the three classes largely the same because, even with the levelup skill selections being randomized, you can only make one warrior so different from another. But also, that was after something like 20 hours so maybe it's not so bad.

I also need to mention that I played this in co-op and while that was a really cool thing to get to do, it is extremely janky. Latency causes things to desync fairly regularly, sometimes events get skipped for one person but not the other, the text chat is borderline unusable because of how often it refreshes or clears what you were typing.

This game is so so so cool. I like it a lot. I don't have many issues with it but the issues I have feel pretty glaring. But despite that I still will hold this game dearly in my heart because the moments its produced have been so special.