Honestly this is a game I can barely recommend. Pretty much only play this if you are really curious about the AC franchise and really want to try out the game that started it all. If that’s not you, I’m tempted to recommend skipping it altogether. It’s pretty cheap on a discount, so feel free to try it out though.

The PC port is not good. It isn´t unplayable, but it’s really not good. Mostly in terms of compatibility with newer setups and overall controller input. It’s already a game with janky elements, made even jankier by this port.
It’s an interesting game and I can see why it became so popular when it released. The setting is awesome and one we basically never see in games. It kinda tries to be historical fiction, which I appreciate. There’s also this flow that the game falls into when everything is working properly that is quite engaging. The problem is that it everything doesn’t work properly all of the time.

There’s a lot here that is impressive for its time, but there also is a lot of jank. Some that comes with age, some that I’m pretty sure was always there. Platforming and free running are cool in concept, but rapidly becomes extremely unprecise and unwieldy. The auto-jumping has a tendency to go nuts and the character likes to get stuck at times, completely breaking the flow the game is trying to maintain in these sequences. I was rather impressed by the physics simulation and the NPC density and reactions though.

Combat is button-mashy, very simple in terms of options available to engage enemies, and stealth options are also rather limited, making the non-engagement of enemies pretty much unviable in the long term.

In terms of the gameplay loop, there really isn´t much more to it. The latter half of the game gets a bit more varied in the structure of its main missions. You’ll always end up going to a new section of a city map, unlock a couple of towers by climbing them, dispel the fog of war and unlock some side activities, repeat a couple of these activities (which are all basically the same objectives, repeated over and over), unlock the main assassination, complete it and do this again and again and again. It’s the same exact structure all the time, and as I said, there is some variation in the missions later on, but during it’s first half all main assassinations are pretty similar, and all side activities are the same.

In terms of narrative, it isn’t all that interesting either. Both the ‘present day’ framing device and the main Altair plot are very shallow and by the numbers. The Altair story has its interesting setting and occasional compelling moments going for it. The framing device has nothing, a really uninteresting and convoluted concept that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Altair is a bland protagonist though; the side characters shine a bit more. I would have loved if the PC version included subtitles, alas it doesn´t.

An interesting piece of gaming history, the point of origin for a massive videogame franchise, I think I appreciate it more in that context than as a game I played this year. But, it’s a short game, and I think that there is plenty here to be entertained and appreciate for the length of its main story. If curious check it out, if it seems dull don’t feel bad about dropping it and booting up some of its more accomplished successors.

After not really enjoying the original trilogy all that much, I was really surprised by how much fun I had playing these two. I can appreciate the Nathan Drake collection for its place in gaming history, and they are well made linear action-adventure games with a middle of the road story and so-so characters. These new ones do follow in the originals’ footsteps, but also add so much more to the previously established blueprint, shaking it up just enough to turn it into something truly enjoyable and engaging at all times.

It's more than clear by now that making The Last of Us changed Naughty Dog for the better. Here we have Uncharted with actual character development and real emotional stakes. Nathan Drake has an arc, Sam has an arc, even Elena has an arc. The bad guy is a charismatic and threatening presence. For the first time I can say that an Uncharted story is a delight to play through.

In terms of presentation, it is pretty much unmatched. It still looks gorgeous, nearly photorealistic at times. Character models look great, the animation is dynamic and seemingly limitless in its variations, and the scenery work is outstanding. So many scenic vistas, I can only imagine the work this team put into them.

The overall structure follows the same pre-established mold. Cutscene, some platforming, combat arena, rinse and repeat. It doesn’t innovate in that sense, but what it does is innovate in each individual element of that structure, avoiding completely the tedium that it generated for me in the previous three games. As I said, cutscenes here have weight and are compelling to watch. Platforming isn’t just jumping from handhold to handhold anymore as some additions, especially the new rope, have added a layer of dynamism that was much needed to make these sections enjoyable for a longer gaming experience. And combat is now an even more polished experience, with smarter and more varied enemies, a larger arsenal of weapons, and a completely overhauled stealth option, that while it still isn’t my preferred form of engagement, it has become a very valid approach to combat sequences.

The Lost Legacy keeps everything that makes Uncharted 4 great and condenses it into a shorter and more contained experience, that still makes for some of the best the series has to offer. It can easily stand next to A Thief’s End without feeling overshadowed.

Overall, these two games are some of the best work Naught Dog has ever released, and the best the Uncharted franchise has to offer. I’d even encourage people to avoid the original three and dive into this one as soon as possible.

It’s an easy recommendation to anyone who’s into the whole Harry Potter/Hogwarts world. As long as you know what to expect I don’t think anyone could be really disappointed with it.

With that said, I was disappointed with many aspects of this game. I’ll first start with the positives I got out of it, and I can say that I mostly had a positive experience playing it. It’s pretty spectacular in terms of art design. It’s a very pretty game that nails the aesthetics parameters set by the movies, with some of the wackier elements of the books mixed in as well.

As it stands right now it’s the definitive Hogwarts exploration experience. The castle is recreated to perfection, inch by inch of what was shown in previous material with some much-needed connective tissue included. Same goes for Hogsmeade and other areas that are recreated here.

In terms of its combat, I feel like they did well in going for a hack n slash combo-based approach to the magic spells. It’s simple enough to not alienate possible players and complex enough to not get extremely stale immediately, allowing you to shake up combat encounters a bit if needed.

The story has some nice sequences and set pieces, a few of which border on breathtaking, and some compelling characters and side quests. Players could appreciate the adventure they are being set upon, Harry Potter fans might enjoy the soy face “remember that” moments, but I felt that it lacked the friendship and teen hijinks element that I always enjoyed the most in Harry Potter books.

Maybe the single biggest issue I have with the game’s story is how bland the protagonist is. I get that the fantasy of making your own character is key for a Hogwarts game to succeed, and I agree that the option should be present, but here there is no real roleplay opportunities to make your character interesting on your own and the narrative doesn’t do the issue any favors. What makes rpg narratives in videogames where you create your own character truly memorable is mostly the strength of its side characters and the possibility of shaping your experience, and Hogwarts Leagacy has neither. I don´t think I´ll remember the names of the main cast in a week.

The problem with Hogwarts Legacy is that it is a shallow game. A game that so clearly tried to cram everything that is remotely popular in mainstream western open world rpg-lite games that it forgot to actually develop and dive deep into any of its parts. It’s a game that looks pretty but doesn´t have much underneath.

The castle, that looks great and is huge, has virtually nothing to do in it. Yes, there are hidden collectibles, tiny puzzles that allow you to get some gear or a micro lore page to tick off the box, but you’ll never do anything more interesting than following the marker to the next quest. The castle doesn´t change, there´s no interaction with it, no real reason to explore or spend time there, it’s set dressing. I can only imagine what that space could have been if not for the inclusion of a humongous open world that feels even duller to explore than the castle is.

This open world environment is filled with tiny map markers, comprised of repetitive activities that I’m sure not even the developers have any interest in completing. I can understand wanting to include Hogsmeade or other iconic locations in the game, but there really is no further justification for it otherwise. It’s crystal-clear padding. Padding for runtime, padding to give players something to do, padding to easily justify the AAA tag, because bigger is better always, right?

Pretty much the whole story could have taken place in Hogwarts and its immediate surroundings. You just go to a place that you’ve seen before, enter a cave, fight some baddies, rinse and repeat. There’s no real sense of exploration nor wonder here, and for a game about magic this kinda sucks.

I’m convinced that this would have been a much better game if it were a more linear experience and the whole open world fluff was cut out of it.

In terms of its combat, the basic spell mechanics are fun enough and don’t get old all that fast, but the rest of the adjacent systems are superfluous. At least while playing in normal difficulty, I never felt the need to engage with the potions or combat plants at all. The whole gear system is also truly unnecessary and unengaging, it feels like it’s only there to give players something to loot when going out into the world or solving puzzles to get to chests. You can technically improve the gear, but once again, never felt the need to do it and I doubt most players even touched that possibility. Some talent upgrades have cool effects, but they never shake up the gameplay loop enough to actually become invested in leveling your character up. It’s another underbaked and underdeveloped system that in its current form has no reason for being there at all.

The Room of Requirement also falls under the same umbrella. Several of these underbaked gameplay systems are connected to it. The only real ‘magical’ and interactable place in Hogwarts really gives you no reason to spend time in it and interact with it. Everything you can do here is completely pointless and disconnected from the rest of the game both in terms of gameplay and narrative.

It's hard to separate what the games is and what I hope it was. I really wish that the devs looked more towards games like Persona or Fire Emblem Three Houses for inspiration rather than to The Witcher 3 if they wanted to produce a rpg experience. I would have been fine with a bombastic AAA linear experience if that meant not getting this middle of the road, meandering attempt at a fully-fledged AAA rpg. For a Hogwarts themed game, I would assume that the magical high-school experience that most kids actually fantasized with when reading those books would have been their north star. It clearly wasn´t and I don’t really understand why.

I’m pretty negative about the game, but it’s mostly because I expected something more out of it. There’s plenty of hours of entertainment here, in a beautifully detailed setting, with some compelling story beats sprinkled about and fun combo-based combat. Just focus on the main quest and you’ll have a nice time. There’s a strong core here that I hope can be further developed once sequels or spinoffs start coming out. As it stands it´s an average game with potential. And now it doesn´t run all that bad on PC.

A real delight of a game. I tend to suck ass at action games, even more when I need a minimum of coordination to get the best scores, but I had an absolute blast making my way through this nonetheless. The combat is engaging and deep enough to never get stale, all while allowing the player to engage with as many of the systems as one is comfortable with, so all the possible combinations never get overwhelming to deal with.

Really funny stuff as well, from the dialogue to the overall presentation, I can´t remember the last time I was laughing so consistently while playing a game. The art design is really cool, the game looks really pretty all the time. The music is just perfect, never repetitive, never dull, with some excellent licensed needle drops as a treat every now and then.

A true must play if it looks even remotely interesting, and easily one of the best games of the year. I didn´t really try out the post game levels and the collect-athon approach because that isn´t really my jam, but I’m sure that gamers interested in that type of gameplay will get dozens of hours of top tier entertainment on top of a hilarious, tight, really enjoyable, 10 hour main campaign.

In terms of art design, environment design, and just overall graphical fidelity it’s an impeccable work of art. In terms of gameplay, it’s an exceedingly frustrating experience. It’s an experience that really needs to be streamlined and focused on what works. The addition of half baked gameplay systems like combat and puzzles feel added because they are things people expect out of videogames rather than being stuff that the team felt should be there and would enhance the gameplay experience. Combat is straight up terrible, and best avoided when possible, and even when it should be possible to avoid these encounters hit boxes tend to work in such a way where this avoidance isn´t even possible. Puzzles range from extremely obtuse to mind numbingly stupid, there is no real in between there. Same happens with exploration, some levels are extremely confusing to traverse through, while most are just linear hallways that look gnarly. The only consistent aspect of the game is how fucking gnarly it is. The gore and just crazy shit that you’ll be looking at all the time is what made push ahead and reach credits. If it wasn´t for that and for the mercifully short length, I would have quit and uninstalled plenty of times before.

It’s kind of crazy that I ended up playing this right after finishing Silent Hill 2. I have yet to play another game that feels as close of a survival horror successor and a straight up contender to the crown of not only best survival horror game, but most disturbing and thought provocative horror game ever.

An experience that isn’t just expertly crafted from a gameplay and structure perspective, where every encounter felt purposeful, tense and dangerous, and it manages to avoid being obtuse in it’s puzzle and exploration design. It’s also beautiful in terms of writing and thematic nuance, every artistic element is just perfectly pitched in this truly haunting way, where as I was saying, its only match right now is Silent Hill 2. A game I’ll surely return to, a game that I won´t forget about easily, a game that should have way more eyes on it and that will be remembered as an all time classic.

Truly a fascinating approach to a sequel to the original Silent Hill. It does away with the direct cult shenanigans centric narrative of the first one and focuses instead on a purely internal and personal psyche-based plot. And honestly there isn´t much of plot here, which works in favor of what the game is trying to do and say.

Right now I feel like I like this approach to Silent Hill better. Here the surrealism and insanity doesn´t just come from a supernatural presence, it´s internal and more up in the air with its reasoning and motivations. More obtuse I would say, and doesn´t really want to give answers to its events, which I like and appreciate. It’s through this approach that it clearly becomes a more mature experience than its predecessor.
The David Lynch inspiration comes easily. There´s this uncanny sheen to every element of this game’s story and overall structure. An uncanniness that I tend to associate with the surreal and zany elements of Lynch’s oeuvre. But because of its nature as a digital interactive medium, the ‘videogame-ness’ of it all adds an extra, very particular, layer of weirdness and surrealism to the experience.

While most locations didn´t necessarily feel as fresh or shocking as they are fairly similar to what is to be found in the previous game (excepting some really fascinating ones in the latter section of this one), the characters are a clear standout. They feel developed, interesting and memorable in a way no character in Silent Hill 1 felt. Obviously, this is all the more clear with the player controlled character. Here James is a real protagonist, with an arc, and actual three dimensionality as a person. Even Mary, the fridged wife, has more of a personality than any character in SH1.

In terms of gameplay, it´s very simple and pretty much identical to SH1, you’ll walk around, read clues, pick up useful items, check your map, solve a puzzle here, solve a riddle there, kill a monstrous abomination with a steel pipe or a gun, stomp on it a little to really make sure its dead. Not hard per se, just kind of obtuse like pretty much every other game of this type that released around this time. But exploration is fun, and spooky and the environments are so rich and detailed that it’s worth it.

You are mostly here for the story, the scary atmosphere, the truly fucked up designs and environments, and I must make special mention of the musical score, which absolutely fucks hard. It’s some insanely good music, some of the best ever written for the medium, and an album that now listen to often.
A horror game that knows how to deliver a proper gut punch. I loved the ending I got this time around, and the final letter that plays before the credits just destroyed me.

‘Born from a wish’ is short, so play it too, but it doesn’t really add anything all that interesting. I guess it worked as a bonus for certain game editions at the time of its release, but pretty much non essential.

I played the Enhanced Edition on PC, at 60 fps, and it plays and looks flawlessly. It feels like a modern port pretty much, this must be the best way to play this game today. I’m extremely curious about this new remake that is being developed by Bloober Team, as I truly do not understand how you remake this game for modern audiences without changing plenty of stuff that make it special and would fundamentally alter any experience one could have with it. I’m not saying it would be bad, I just don´t believe that it would be a superior experience, nor the definitive one as with the Resident Evil 2 Remake, just a very different one that I’m very much looking forward to trying out.

Very much my thing, this felt like the southern gothic lovechild of Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium. I love when games try dare to try weird and out there things without fear of alienating the audience.

A mix of visual novel and point and click gameplay elements, its real hook is its writing and visuals. It boasts some of the most moving and evocative writing I’ve read in a videogame probably since playing Disco Elysium last year. It’s hard to wrap my head around how a team gets to write and actually design such an experience. It’s also comprised of beautifully crafted pixel art. There’s a particular frame that instantly became my new desktop wallpaper. And the music, what a surprise. Just a terrific moody score that goes so hard.

There’s just so much depth and thematic nuance here, enough to think about for a long time after playing. It oozes creativity and artistry, and a certain kind of weird earnestness and sincerity.

It’s hard not to play and think about this game in relation to Sam Barlow’s other superior directorial efforts in the FMV space, Her Story and Immortality. Telling Lies sits as the awkward middle child, bigger and more convoluted than the first one, but not as groundbreaking nor sophisticated as the latter. Clearly a necessary creative steppingstone for the team, it sadly isn´t nearly as compelling, surprising nor artful as the other two games.

it keeps the same basic method of interaction as Her Story, but fails in truly understanding what makes the clip watching and investigation move forward. I’ve read the same complaint over and over again, the videos are too long, with too many spaces without relevant information because of the nature of them being secretly recorded, one-sided, phone conversations, and the fast forwarding is too slow. And I have the same complaints. I’ve also read that the intention of the developers was to make that ‘scrolling’ intentionally cumbersome in order to force players to search through keywords and locate the beginning, or at least the important part of each conversation clip. There’s an issue here, and it is that that aspect of the investigation is never compelling at all. There’s no real incentive in making the effort of trying to figure out where the relevant part of each conversation begins other than scrolling through the clips being a pain in the ass. There’s not much else in terms of gameplay to talk about, it’s the same as in Her Story, only made duller because of the addition of unnecessary complexity.

The story is solid enough. Fairly basic in terms of narrative, we’ve seen similar stuff before, and the style of narration and succession of events feels closer to a traditional movie or narrative than Her Story and Immortality. In my case I felt like it started fairly slow and dully, and wasn´t truly engaged until I reached around 2 hours of playtime. Maybe it’s because it felt familiar or annoying to play, but it managed to offer enough twists and reveals to keep me engaged the rest of the way. There’s a point where you just get what is going on and the story doesn’t offer much new going forward.

There’s a lot more to chew on from a thematic standpoint. There are some really interesting things being touched upon in terms of toxic masculinity, surveillance, activism, etc. And those are the things that I ended up appreciating more and the ones that kept me coming back to try and finish it. It's a short game, and if you liked Her Story I think you'll at least get some enjoyment out of this, just maybe don't expect the same level of engagement.

As expected by now with these Sam Barlow games, the performances are excellent. Some recognizable faces here just doing great work.

A solid Resident Evil experience. A clear step up from the previous Revelations game, it takes it central idea of being a simplified version of a core action-centric RE game and builds on that. I only played the Campaign and the DLC chapters, I don´t think the gameplay is solid enough to justify playing the Raid mode. The story is fun enough, and the chapter structure helps a lot with the pacing and with keeping it engaging. Extremely dumb as a Resident Evil story should be.

Gameplay isn´t great, but it´s fun enough to sustain a couple of hours of playtime, and it's a surprisingly polished experience overall.
I don´t think the DLC chapters are worth it if you aren´t really into the game as a whole, they don´t really add much of interest.

Really had a blast playing this one. Keeps what is great about the first game and goes ball to the wall with everything. Insane gore, truly gnarly stuff I haven´t seen in other games. The setting is immaculate and probably my favorite thing about it. I really like the Asylum setting of the first one, but this back-country southern gothic with a side of religious fervor is more my speed, and it doesn’t have that dip into sci-fi that I felt derailed the third act of the original Outlast. The art design is excellent, and the levels manage to offer more variety of setting, all while walking that line between a feeling of openness and being lost and of being entombed with no way out.

In terms of narrative, I also enjoyed this one more. It´s more ambiguous and doesn’t offer many answers in the end. It’s still fairly tropey, but it offers enough new stuff so as to feel consistently fresh and surprising. There’s also the novelty of having a sort of dual narrative that I loved. There are some clear Silent Hill influences, especially in that school-centric side story. It’s commentary on religion is fairly surface level, but I felt that it dared to go deeper than most games of the type are willing to go.

I still love the use of the camera in these games. The night vision gives it a particular aesthetic that has become iconic in gaming by now. In terms of gameplay it’s clearly less janky and more polished than the first Outlast, though it felt a bit more railroad-y. I tended to get lost way less, which I liked but I can see others disliking this direction. I’m sure that in harder difficulties stealth is more required and death comes more often, but playing in normal felt scary and tense enough.

It's good enough for what it's trying to be. Nothing really game changing here, just more Half-Life, which is cool. Really short and kinda uncompelling in the narrative department, while still managing to feel rather repetitive and dull at parts. Alyx is still great, and here you get to spend a bit more time with her through the story, and there are some cutscenes that offer some real spectacle and scale. I just don´t see how this adds anything of consequence to the Half-Life series as a whole. It´s not the next step, it´s a bit more of the same.

The music score goes insanely hard though.

Gloomy side-scrolling 2D platformer. Looks fantastically bleak and rounds up its ambiance with a haunting musical score. Its puzzles are very much based around trial and error, which can get grating after a while. There´s a sense of whimsy from the over the top deaths that this approach to puzzle-solving produces. It´s rather short so it never gets unbearably frustrating.

Very pretty, kinda weird, solid physics-based 2D platforming, short enough to finish in one sitting, with some optional hidden collectibles for completionists. I'm not sure how much I got out of it as a work of art apart from its art design, but it´s a fun couple of hours.

Fairly standard 7th gen third person shooter. Short enough to not feel extremely repetitive nor boring. There’s not that much variety in terms of gameplay or setting. And this aspect is probably the roughest. There´s nothing really special about combat, it´s rather uneven in its impact and weight. Same thing happens with traversal. Level design gets repetitive, there´s not many different enemies to fight and the checkpoints are frustrating. The narrative and characters are rather thin and uncompelling too. The novelty of its setting is its main draw for me. It still looks pretty solid, and the art design is awesome. I just wish there was more variety in terms of the places you fight and walk through. It does get very ‘samey’ after a couple hours. This was also my first real contact with the Warhammer universe, which I’m going to keep exploring as it looks insane. I assume that because of the fairly mainstream gameplay style this has been an entry point for many.

‘Fun, AA third person shooter from the early 2010´s’ is the best way to describe this one, and don’t go into it expecting much more than that. If you are okay with that or are a fan of the Warhammer universe, or want to get into it, or just have a few hours to kill and got this for cheap, I say try it out.