I needed something short & chill in order to relax, and this horror game caught my eyes with its beautiful ray tracing. It's a Backroom type of game where you explore liminal spaces with swimming pools aesthetics.

The game has an unsettling atmosphere. You can subtly hear breathing behind vents, sometimes the sound of footsteps around you, and you often mistake different kinds of harmless objects for strange silhouettes. I kept expecting a jumpscare that never came.

Pools doesn't have any music and is very quiet. Most of the sound effects come from all the water surrounding you. There are also some eerie echos & other reverberating sounds on rare occasions.
The game is supposed to be creepy, but I was never scared at any point. Maybe slightly uneasy at times?
And I say that while being a huge pussy when it comes to horror games 😅

It's going to be really divisive, as many people will find it boring for having nothing to offer other than walking around aimlessly (I don't blame them). While others will find it charming because they're able to find joy in the little things, taking in the atmosphere & environments while trying to find their way through the mazes.

I enjoyed going through something so different from what I usually play, but at the end of the day, it was still a lacking experience. It's the ultimate walking simulator.
And like I said, there is no jumpscare at any point, no story, no characters, nothing... I wouldn't even say that the story is cryptic, because there is just no story at all.
The game ended abruptly and I don't know what to think of it.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Played on 15th July 2024]
Playtime: 3 hours
Game finished with 11/16 achievements unlocked.

It has become one of my favorite indie games along with Phoenotopia Awakening and Hollow Knight. I highly recommand it, but keep in mind that CrossCode is a huge game that necessitates a lot of time & investment from you!

CrossCode is an action RPG taking place in a fictional MMORPG, with a focus on puzzles & exploration.
Because of its premise, the game is often meta, and the characters keep using gaming slang within the story.
For example, they mention areas being accessible in an upcoming update; the protagonist is using a class that is allegedly hard to master; some NPCs are already seasoned players, while others are still rookies; the party joins a guild at some point and partakes in a raid; and characters regularly need to log off because of IRL duties.
Because of this MMO setting, the World feels really alive, with all the "players" roaming around, living their own adventure.

The World is full of topological puzzles. It makes the exploration very intricate. You'll often see treasures on seemingly unattainable platforms, and you'll need to find a way to the chests by jumping from platform to platform, spanning across several screens. Adding to that, the game is top-down 2D, but most of the platforms have a different height, so it's never obvious how you're supposed to reach the place you want.

The dungeons were masterfully designed.
There is a good balance of combat & puzzles throughout each dungeon that manages to keep the player involved, no matter how long they are.
Most of the puzzles are skill-shot based and require a lot of thinking and precision.
For example, there are rooms where you gotta lead a projectile throughout different obstacles by triggering several contraptions back-to-back. You need to act fast and understand in which order you gotta trigger each mechanism. You also need to make use of different elements (heat, cold, shock or wave) in several rooms, adding another layer of thoughts to each puzzle.

All the enemies have elaborate attack patterns, so fighting them is really entertaining. It's not just "duhhh spam the same attack until it's dead, gg". No, you'll always need to recognize their patterns, figure out which element they're weak to, and seize the best opportunity to counterattack. The combat is very engaging!
Not to mention all the abilities you can unlock in the skill tree, whether it's arts to upgrade your melee attacks, ranged attacks, your guard or even your dash. There are dozens of spells available, and you can switch between each of your 4 elements whenever you want in combat, going from a defensive approach to a more offensive one.

The game has a well documented Bestiary that shows where each enemy spawns, their weaknesses, what resources they drop, and the drop percentage. It's such a great QoL feature that more games should have.

It was funny following the plot with Lea's speech issues. Due to a module malfunction, she starts off the adventure completely mute (I let you imagine how inconvenient this is when you're playing a MMO), but as the story progresses, she can say more & more words thanks to her programmer friend, and it gives way to hilarious situations 😄

Following the relations between the characters was so wholesome. The writing is down-to-earth, and they all behave in believable ways, so I was really invested in their adventure.
Plus, the character's illustrations add so much charm to the game, with all their different facial expressions that help us sympathize with them. I never got tired of the interactions between Lea & Émilie. Those two girls share a lot of touching moments together. Their friendship is so wholesome! 🧡

Despite all the praise I gave to this game, there are still minor flaws that bothered me. Remember what I said about the enemies having elaborate mechanics? Well, the way to defeat some of them was really far-fetched, to the point where I had to check the wiki to understand what to do. It didn't happen often, maybe 1 or 2 times in my 50 hours playthrough, but still annoying nonetheless.

The game also has some pacing issues, mainly due to the length of the dungeons. It's honestly a challenge to complete an entire dungeon in one go. You can count 3 or 4 hours for three of the dungeons, and maybe 2 hours for each of the three remaining dungeons. I often took breaks because of how demanding they are. My brain was fuming every time I was getting closer to the end of one 😅
Because of that, it takes quite some time to reach the most interesting parts of the story.

There is a moment I loved, when the game took advantage of its MMO setting and literally broke the rules. At some point, Lea will face a Boss with a ridiculously high amount of HP (in the quadrillions), and so her programmer friend will modify the files of the game to give Lea an ever bigger amount of attack damage, allowing her to overcome the situation. That was such a cool twist, and a clever use of the game's premise.

In the end, I enjoyed the story's conclusion, but I'm kinda frustrated about Lea's fate.
I was hoping for some sort of Pinocchio scenario type of shit... If you don't understand what I'm saying, well it's because I don't want to spoil everything. Go play the game!

I'm not gonna do the DLC right away, I had enough with CrossCode for now.
This was an unforgettable adventure, and I really hope I convinced some of you to play it!

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on June 26th & finished on July 6th 2024]
Playtime: 53 hours
Main story complete. I got the bad ending first, but I was able to reload to get the good ending right away.

My first Batman game, and what an adventure! I loved it!

For a long time, I considered going straight to the 3rd game of the trilogy: Batman Arkham Knight. I'm glad I ultimately decided to do Asylum first, because it would have been a shame to skip this one.

The world design is excellent. The navigation between the main hub and the different areas was very convenient. Wherever I went, I was never far from the main area.
Adding to that, you can backtrack once you get more gadgets, by opening new paths in previously explored areas. Each gadget is really meaningful, and they add a lot to your movement abilities.
You have the grappling hook from the get go, and you later get the batclaw, and eventually the line launcher. Each one feels great to use.

The combat felt pretty mashy at first, but you need good timing on the counter, and you can mix up your attacks with the batclaw & batarangs to make the combat a bit more stylish.
Taking on dozens of goons in melee is exhilarating. Batman really feels like a badass in those situations, especially in the aftermath when all of them are K.O on the ground.

You can also take a more stealthy approach. I mean, isn't that what Batman is all about? Taking down each goon one by one without getting noticed is really satisfying. You can:
- crouch behind an enemy and do a silent takedown
- lure enemies with the help of batarangs or dead bodies, and activate your explosives once they're close enough.
- do inverted takedowns while hanging from a gargoyle.
- glide kick enemies after jumping from a high place. (Btw I like the different camera angle when you glide kick from really far, it adds more epicness to the scene)
Taking advantage of all these mechanics makes the combats extra special, and it really makes you feel like Batman.

The Boss fights were very fun. Many of them require more or less the same actions (incapacitate the Boss with a batarang before he lands his attack > use this occasion to deal damage > rinse & repeat).
But despite those similarities, it was still very engaging. The fight against Poison Ivy was my favorite !

Great roster of vilains. Almost all of them were here. My favorites were Poison Ivy & Harley Quinn (excellent voice acting btw).
Two-Face, Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul & Mr. Freeze are missing, but I bet they show up in the next entries 😁

Later in the game, Ivy's plants appear everywhere in the Asylum. I love this idea of level design, where they change the layout of areas you've already visited. It makes the exploration less monotonous.
It's like in Hollow Knight when the Forgotten Crossroads change into the Infected Crossroads, after beating the Broken Vessel.

The encounters with Scarecrow were pretty cool. They did a great job portraying Batman's nightmares. The sequence in the morgue with Bruce's parents was really haunting. And there is also that scene when Batman relives the day of their death. That was a powerful moment.
The game sure has a really oppressive atmosphere at times! Which reminds me of the segment in Killer Croc's Lair that was quite stressful, but very solid gameplay-wise. It had me on my toes the whole way.

Btw, I feel like saying it since I'm reviewing a Batman game, but I've always hated batman's rule of not killing. "This psychopath just murdered 150 children inside an orphanage, but jeez I would really be a dick if I killed him!" This is so dumb lol, it's hard to sympathize with him sometimes.
I love the stories where Batman is older and stops giving a shit, killing criminals without remorse!

Anyway, it's a really good game that aged perfectly. Pretty much my only grip is the reliance on Batvision. Constantly switching it on & off to spot breakable walls or hidden items was a bit cumbersome.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on June 24th & finished on June 25th 2024]
Playtime: 15 hours
Main story complete.
100/240 riddles found. 16/42 character bios unlocked.