Really delightful. I was wondering how they were going to make a rock climbing game fun but Jusant has just enough mechanics to make traversal feel like a puzzle in itself, tense at times but mostly a chill-out game where you cruise up cliffs and slowly make progress toward the top.

Jusant has a vague storyline that is detailed through artifacts you can pick up and read, but I didn't need much more story than trying to get to the top. I liked how the environments changed throughout the climb and added new challenges, like limiting stamina or changing wind patterns. The physics of swinging on ropes across chasms is a lot of fun too and I liked seeing what shortcuts the game would allow me to get away with.

Jusant comes super highly recommended from me as a GamePass title and one players will be remiss not to check out.

I was totally under the impression while playing this that was a new for 2023 release, but then I find out that it was actually a Stadia exclusive at launch (and therefore buried from public knowledge or care). Finally the game has a shot at a second life now that it's more readily available on platforms people actually use.

GYLT reminded me a bit of Alan Wake, but with a much more cartoonish style. Like that game, you're combatting with some dark kind of mirror-verse and searching for somebody. Even the combat is kind of similar to Alan Wake with you shining your flashlight at monsters' weak points to destroy them. It was fun to sneak around and solve the various puzzles across GYLT's speedy campaign. It's a very fun one sitting sort of adventure that never asks too much of you.

I definitely think that you're too well equipped in this game to make the monsters ever seem like a major threat. I pretty much always had plenty of resources to take out anything in my path and cruised right through. The climax of the game actually takes away your abilities and reverts you back to stealth, so they definitely knew this was a bit of a balancing issue.

However, the small environments are still fun to explore and it's fun to unlock new abilities over time and get to new areas that were previously blocked off. I wasn't a fan of the good ending getting locked behind finding all of the collectibles- but overall GYLT was a satisfying, if short, experience.

Cal Kestis returns with the sequel to Jedi Fallen Order, and while this game has had its fair share of criticisms (particularly with the poorly ported PC version), on PS5 I didn't have any issues. For me this smoothed out a lot of the issues I had with the first game and built on what made that one enjoyable.

While this game starts off on Coruscant for its opening, I can still appreciate how these Star Wars Jedi games aren't leaning too heavily into previously established characters and coming up with their own lore. You'll see all of Cal's surviving friends return like Greez, Merrin, and Cere along with some new ones like the mercenary buddy Bode Akuna. The story of the first game sort of slipped out of mind over the last few years but whenever a familiar face popped up I'd go "oh yeahhhhh I remember you".

Gameplay is that familiar mix of From Software-lite inspired open areas where you'll be coming across random enemies to spar off with along with the more cinematic set piece moments right out of a modern Sony game. It all blends together to make for a fun AAA experience. I especially liked the world design this time around, and it was so much easier for me to get my bearings and not get totally lost just trying to find my way forward. The planets and various areas on them are just better designed this time out.

Jedi Survivor can still be pretty challenging which I can appreciate as the combat will keep you on your toes all the way through. In the end I had a really good time with this game and I look forward to playing the next one a few years down the line- it's good to see Star Wars finally being treated with respect and care in the video game space after a rough era.

Outlast II blew me away when I checked it out on GamePass a couple years ago, and I was very enticed by the promise of Outlast gameplay with friends. For the first several hours, The Outlast Trials is just as breathless and exciting as you could hope, with the terrifying cat-and-mouse gameplay totally intact even with friends at your side. Completing objectives is often a super tense scramble.

Where Outlast Trials didn't work so well for me was the gameplay loop. Instead of being a linear adventure that you play to credits, this game instead encourages you to replay the same missions over and over with increasing difficulty levels. This extends the runtime for sure, but it also makes it feel like the game wears out its welcome much too quickly. I got over 16 hours out of this which is double the length you'd get out of the second Outlast game, but the diminishing returns made the whole experience feel less satisfying unfortunately.

I can say confidently that this game is super well polished and fun to play with a whole crew of friends. It's not a revelation in horror or anything but it's a good step forward for the genre in terms of co-op.

The Backrooms have definitely had their moment in video games over the last few years. Escape the Backrooms is definitely coming from a place of love, especially if you sit down and watch Fancy's various YouTube videos breaking down the development. The game itself is a hodgepodge of loosely strung together ideas- some of which are really fun and others aren't the best designed and might give you a bit of a headache. Overall though, there's so much variety here that with a friend we were always discovering something new and having a good time overall as we made our way through each of the levels. This game is still expanding so I'm curious how it will evolve over the next few years and how it will ultimately shape up. For now it's a very soft recommendation.

Coming at this one as a guy who never played the first Forest title and jumped right into the sequel. This open-world survival horror sandbox makes a pretty strong first impression as you try to survive the mutant freaks around you with little supplies and get your bearings. Unfortunately, the game quickly lost its luster for us.

I think my main issue with this game is that it's actually too easy, because your backpack is just ridiculously big. There's no real motivation to make a fort. I get that in a lot of survival sandboxes, the base-building is a "make your own fun" sort of feature, but in a game like Sons of the Forest I was hoping for it to actually have some utility, where I'd need to store stuff there and pick it up later. I realized how undangerous this world felt when I randomly decided to make a trek across the map and the mountains at its center without a care in the world. Why spend time building a shelter or managing your resources when you can just carry everything on your back and build a makeshift tarp tent with a clicks and survive the night that way.

Sons of the Forest is at its best when you're exploring the caves to find new items, or the secret lab bunkers spread across the map. I liked exploring these areas that give such a stark contrast to the look of the rest of the game, but they are all very linear. There's nothing stopping you from just going all the way to the back of the cave, finding your item, and leaving. The progression is simple and after a while my friends just said screw the survival element and made a beeline to the end.

The climax is rather poorly designed since there was nothing stopping us from running by the enemies and not engaging with them at all, and then you get an utterly wacky final reveal that didn't make any sense at all and I can only assume is teasing lore for a third game, and credits.

Sons of the Forest looks great and has moments where a really quality survival title shines through, but it is ultimately just too easy and forgiving since I could just carry everything I could ever need at any time, and generally didn't feel at peril out and about in the world. Just didn't really get into this one.

In rougher times for Alan Wake, fans were left with this downloadable chapter that feels somewhere in between a tacked-on expansion and a sequel. The tone is a lot different for one thing as this is even more action-oriented for the first game, but more disappointingly it relies on a time loop conceit to reuse sections across an already very short runtime.

The story is absolute nonsense at this point and I couldn't find myself caring about Alan's evil alter ego Mr. Scratch because it was impossible to put together what even was happening in the Alan Wake lore at this point. With Alan Wake II coming out, I'm not even sure if American Nightmare is canon or just a weird alternate world hallucination or what.

I still had some fun with this because the combat is still pretty fun and this game gives you some really powerful weapons that let you tear through enemies like never before. It feels like a combat victory lap more than anything and ignoring the story it was fun just for that. Definitely skippable except for the biggest Wake/Remedy fans.

It's interesting that Alan Wake didn't sell well. I remember back when this game was relatively new, I was pretty jealous of it as a PS3 owner and really felt that exclusive jealousy for that game and not too many others. Alan Wake finally did make it over to PlayStation a solid decade later in preparation for the sequel, but I ended up playing it on PC anyway. This game has its faults for sure but I still had a blast with it despite all that waiting and high expectations.

Alan Wake borrows from a bit from Stephen King and a lot from Twin Peaks for inspiration in its storytelling, about an author who fights the literal darkness plaguing the town of Bright Falls. It gets fantastical quickly and blurs the line of reality in somewhat confusing ways, but if you kind of roll with the loose mythology it's a pretty fun thrill ride.

Alan Wake is more of an action thriller than survivor horror, with the gameplay having you manage crowds of enemies by using various tools- stunning them with your flashlight and picking them off with a rifle, shotgun, or pistol- using flares to get them to back off, or just running like hell toward a light source and safety. I ended up really enjoying the combat loop on offer, which comprises the majority of the gameplay.

This being a Remedy title, there are plenty of collectibles to find- my favorite being these weird Twilight Zone esque mini-episodes of a show called Night Springs. It didn't feel worth my time to find all the coffee thermoses, but the more substantial lore collectibles were more interesting to uncover.

Alan Wake moves at a great clip that makes it pretty difficult to put down and I ended up finishing it in just a few sittings. I had a great time playing sections of it at my friend Shane's beach house- honestly some of the best gaming memories of this year. I'm super excited to play the sequel to this- it ends on a major cliffhanger that fans have been waiting for answers to for years and years. You can consider me right there with them now.

Here's a weird one we gave a shot recently. This is a VR player vs. regular old PC players asymmetric game that was pretty fun for a short bit. I don't have a VR so I only tried the free Knight's Pass side of things, but the movement and with the grapple was really fun to use and I liked how much control you have over balancing things out between the two teams. Couldn't tell you how the VR plays but it's a really good idea to have a multiplayer game for VR owners, where non-VR people can play with them, since not that many people have one.

When you first start Leon's campaign in Resident Evil 6, it isn't initially apparent why fans rejected this game. With much more movement options, cinematic action, and the right spooky vibes, it all gets off to a great start. Unfortunately, this game slowly loses that early momentum with an overlong and repetitious action shooter that loses any of the tension that marks Resident Evil games at their best.

RE6 is split across four campaigns- three of which you can play co-op and the fourth you have to play by yourself. The game is sort of a crossover with Leon and Chris teaming up in an exciting way, but there are too many characters missing to make it feel like a true big Resident Evil event title. Too much time is spent with new characters we don't care about like Wesker's son Jake and his companion Sherry. With every duo I felt like one of the characters was much cooler than the other which is unfortunate for co-op.

RE6 completely ditches the inventory management of the last game. You'll never be at all at risk of running out of ammo and before long it becomes a really mindless shooter with some QTE set pieces for good measure. The production values are there, but the game is too long, padding out its runtime with repeated sections.

There's a funny mode where you can intrude on other players' games as an infected, but you're too underpowered for it too be any fun. At one juncture, I was actually chasing around this poor guy when it should've been the other way. I also didn't like how the campaigns don't build to anything special. They all kind of retell the same climax so there's no good rise and fall to any of it. The structure is just off here and it leads to a forgettable game.

This wasn't terrible to play through with a friend but it definitely veers too far from Resident Evil at its best. I would proceed with caution.

No huge affinity for Resident Evil going into this- my friend Shane and I were just looking for a fun co-op campaign to go through together and RE5 absolutely fit the bill. Chris Redfield teams up with Sheva Alomar as they make their way across West Africa, which has been totally invaded by zombies. The story is ridiculous but more major payoff when it comes to long-standing Resident Evil characters than you might be expecting going in.

I've heard this game is absolutely miserable in single player, where your AI companion will steal your ammo and then shoot a whole clip into a wall. You share ammo with your co-op companion but there's just enough of it to make smart choices between the two of you without being too stressful.

RE5 obviously has more movement than earlier titles, but it still feels somewhat tank-like by today's standards and that takes some getting used to. Once you get used to it, I ended up not minding the more restricted movement here compared to other action games because it feels somewhat more tactical in a sense at times.

RE5 isn't perfect. For one, the setting feels a little problematic. I think it's odd for Chris Redfield to be raiding these African villages of treasures and selling them for cash so he can buy weapons. Why was it never looked at this way in development? There are also some annoying bullet sponge bosses along the way- there's a rocket launcher which can instant-kill any boss and it's too tempting not to use at times because the bosses can get pretty tedious.

Resident Evil 5 is mostly a zombie-killing good time with a friend and while I see why this game disappointed fans at launch, we definitely had a good time with it with some truly entertaining marathon sessions to reach the conclusion.

Co-Op Only thoughts: I played through this with my friend Shane and he totally carried us through every puzzle. I guess my brain just doesn't work very fast when it comes to Portal puzzles. This was extremely challenging and consistently gave me a headache, but it was really fun with a buddy and I can respect all of the crazy puzzle set-ups they were able to craft with double the portals and all the gizmos and contraptions from the single-player campaign. I might get around to the rest of Portal 2 but still recovering from the doozy of the multiplayer.

While I'm not the biggest puzzle game guy, Portal is just one of those titles that feels so essential to gaming history that everybody needs to give it a spin once. This title is such a part of gaming culture that there were no major surprises here, but it was still really fun to see Chell take on GLaDOS for the first time.

I played this after Portal 2's co-op mode which had a number of huge head-scratchers that made my brain spin. Compared to that, and already wrapping my head around Portal's puzzle language, this wasn't hard for me to get through at all. The physics are all very intuitive and fair and I was surprised that I never got really stumped in this. It really walks you through its mechanics rather slowly and never throws you over the deep end which I really appreciate about it. GLaDOS of course is an extremely memorable, funny, and threatening villain and foiling her evil robot plans is so satisfying. It's crazy that such a groundbreaking and beloved game started as a student project and made by a tiny team at Valve. Fun and worth it even for those who don't love puzzle games.