And to think, I thought I was done with Celeste this month. I heard this got released yesterday, and it's free, so I had to go and play it. For only being made in a week, this is very impressive. Celeste transitions surprisingly well into 3D. You lose your upward dash in this game but everything else is here. Yes even your grab which I stupidly didn't realize was a thing until 2/3rds into my playthrough. Once I did, it definitely clicked way more since I was infinitely wall-jumping to do stuff before I learned grabbing was part of her moveset. I really like the implementation of the camera and it having a big part with the various puzzles. The early 3D atmosphere was also really nice. It never got crazy difficult like Celeste but what was here was fun. It's only like an hour long so there really isn't much content, but this could be a good stepping stone into something greater. Either way, fun game..just wish it was longer.

Also, I got all 30 strawberries, that last cassette tape under Badeline was definitely the hardest part of the game but it was very cool.

Treating the 2 parts of Another Code: Recollection as one game, it is an absolutely incredible story to experience and a decently fun game to play. the gameplay is pretty simple and is mainly just running around solving puzzle after puzzle, but the story is what really makes this game shine. While near the ends of both parts there can be some high stakes and exciting moments, for the most part its very calm, slow, and mundane, but in the best way possible. The game takes a lot of time to really make you understand Ashley's point of view on her situation, and what is going on in her life. It is very interesting to watch the subtle differences in how she acts over the course of the 2 years the story takes place over. Watching such a young kid go through such hard situations was really heartbreaking to watch at times, and it made progressing through and solving the mysteries in Ashley's life so much more satisfying. Ashley is not the only character in this game however, the game has plenty of fully realized and charming characters, many of which you'll never forget by the end of your play-through. The calm nature of the game really helps to bring out the personalities of each character, and makes them much easier to relate to. Every character feels like a human, rather than a plot device. The game is also not afraid to touch on difficult subjects, though it never makes them its entire focus. Despite some occasionally awkward voice acting and lower budget (but stylized) graphics, this is one of the few games I've played that has successfully made me tear up, and every bit of occasionally dull gameplay was fully worth playing through to get to the end. If your a fan of storytelling in video games, id definitely recommend giving this game a try.

Mass effect is an incredibly ambitious game that feels so grand and huge it can be overwhelming at times. as soon as you complete the tutorial area, you are thrown out into open space and can follow the main story or explore different planets as you choose. most non essential planets only contain a few side quests, but they feel incredibly cool to explore. The game has fully realized what a world with such advanced technology could look like, and the world feels so alive to explore for it.

Mass effect contains many great characters with their own personalities and stories, most of which you might never see. You could play this game over and over and over again and still have completely different cutscenes and dialogue with different characters. Speaking of dialogue, part of what makes this game so special is the massive amount of custom dialogue you can say as the main character, each piece by piece showing you more bits of the story as if you were actually talking to these npcs to figure out what is going on. This may just be one of the best RPG's ever in terms of its character writing.

The Story of mass effect gets more and more interesting the more you play; its better than i ever could have expected, and the world building is absolutely incredible. every small detail and place in this game seems to have a fully realized backstory behind it, which brings me to the locations. Every place and planet in this game explores a completely different possibility for what a future world could look like, all of them are incredible. they also pretty good for the amount of places you can explore and the Xbox 360's hardware limits.

The combat in this game can be fun, but doesn't deserve quite as much praise as the other aspects. using your abilities on a scroll wheel feels a little but clunky the auto cover system will often fail to work when its supposed to, and the movement is a bit awkward, making for some clunky encounters with enemies. It is fun but nothing crazy.

There is one issue i did have with this game, and that was its performance issues. during combat when there was a lot of enemies around, the frame rate would freeze up and slow to a crawl, and the same during cutscenes. the game pauses quite frequently to save or load, and there are some glitches i ran into such as my character being unable to move making me have to restart the game to progress. I'm not sure if these issues are specific to the Xbox 360 version or not but they are not too big of a deal as the game is still very enjoyable despite them.

Mass effect is a very special game that i feel more people should definitely play. i highly recommend it.

tl;dr: wait for Larian's inevitable Definitive Edition. I was enamored with the first 2 acts of this game but as things progressed and Larian pushed out patches that somehow made things functionally worse I've just become so disappointed. The entire finale of the game became a buggy mess with broken textures, bugged quests and poor performance compared to the first. Up until Act 3 performance was pretty stable but at this point I can't actually talk about the state of the first two acts because of the changes post launch patches have made. This doesn't even address the multiple lackluster writing decisions that very visibly weren't thought out or were stitched together based on poor decisions during development. At the end of the day I cannot recommend this game to people in it's current state, especially given the years of Early Access before being released Early in such a janky and unpolished state. This game may as well still be in Early Access as long as Larian has to keep updating the game until we get the most likely DOS2 style Definitive Edition.

Very nice effort but not executed right.

Warhammer 40k - Kill Team is another effort to leech on the success of the franchise. It is a third person shooter indie game where you can play solo or co-op on an Orc cruiser. It has five story missions and five survival missions.

I must say that all the Orc and Tyranid units look good and reminds me of Dawn of War II, the way it is supposed to. The sound effects are nice, the classic weapons are all there and the bullet cases stay on the ground when you shoot.

But despite all this, the gameplay is horrendous. Cheap deaths by sudden pit falls and Orc Shoota Boyz that kill you faster than a Orc Melee Nob. But that is not the worst, oh no sir, the worst thing in this game is the camera. The game camera is so freaking bad, it made me cry. It is always in a awkward angle, does not rotate with you and sometimes glitches so you get your ass handed to you by enemies of the screen.

One other thing that made me furious is the unskippable cutscenes. There is a lot of them and they take forever. They show you a certain switch you must activate and then the screen stays locked on that switch for 10 seconds. Also, when you die, you need to watch the whole movie again. It made my skin crawl, i pressed every damn button on my keyboard and hoped it worked but no.

So in conclusion, the effort is nice, the Warhammer 40 000 theme is there, the units, weapons and bosses are nice but the way it is played with the drunk camera and the cutscenes you can't skip made it a real chore to finish for me.