One of the more fascinating games I’ve played in some time, really don’t think it’d hit right on anything but phone - made me uncomfortable and nervous and confused and weary and hopeful, that melange of shitty dating scene feelings punctuated by intermittent adrenaline. The writing was all good and distinct between different potential partners, could’ve been really easy to break the spell of the thing if not. So few games cover this ground with any subtlety, was a breath of fresh air I didn’t know I needed.

Also I accidentally ended the game not realizing that’s what I was doing by getting into a relationship, but you know what that’s pretty true-to-life. 🙃

What I still love most about this returning to it is the whimsical soundtrack and Palm Springs-hued purple orange color palette of the low-poly graphics.

Gameplay-wise, think I’ve discovered the original Spyro will always be my fav, the levels in this sequel are constructed with a bit less of a focus on the series’ unique headcharge-n-jump platforming to make room for tucking away characters to dole out minigames - I like the way the characters add unique flavor to each level but the minigames largely don’t hold up in 2022 and deflate the game’s pacing with their patience-testing repetitiveness.

Playing this as a launch title must have been revelatory, so much of the full-fledged SotN experience playable hanging out under some fruit trees in a backyard somewhere with enough light to see the screen. Amazing.

Playing it for the first time now, though, it felt a bit by the numbers seeing it through. The sharp pixel art, bangin’ soundtrack, and great mid-game boss battles were highlights, and I did enjoy the schtick of starting out dumped into the basement then working your way up and around the castle, the sections were linked at interesting points…

But a fair bit of tedium navigating back and forth within each section with same-y rooms. Getting more of the magic cards to play around with the effects of along the way would have helped me make my own variety across these sections but by the end I only had 5 or 6 of them and not a very enticing prospect to figure out how to farm them after all the exploration has already been dispensed with.

The Camilla fight’s great old-school gaming operatic soundtrack jumpin-n-slashing vibes earn this a half-star more than I was gonna give it.

Tbh I liked the focused combat and density of Sekiro better than the sprawl of this but the true feeling of otherworldliness I got soaking in the Lands Between for over a hundred hours is second-to-none. I love the matter-of-fact way the characters in FromSoft games take for granted the intensely odd, often grotesque specifics of their universe, that unfamiliarity married to self-seriousness feels like religion in a unique way, i.e. “of course you eat the body of the Son of the Father on Sundays”.

Stumbling on some of the discoveries was invigorating, and the flexibility of play styles offered made it super fun to talk about with other people - even if i did miss the way BOTW would force you to change things up all the time instead of encouraging you marry yourself to your build and the weapons you’ve painstakingly invested in.

Also, the shardbearer boss designs might be my favorite as a set of… any game ever?

V. good but went from “favorite game of all time!!!!” to “i’m pretty exhausted by this” by the end. Could’ve used some cutting down and editing of optional tombs and such, or conversely I could use some editing of my personality to be less OCD.

Totally respect and understand the 2⭐️ reviews on here tbh, but I had a great time with the intentionally repetitive, oddly meditative-amidst-the-onslaught nature of this thing. A two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance, eking out little extra bits of skill and muscle memory every couple runs to do better enough to give yourself another bit of edge on the next level and so on…. some things could have been better explained and I think you ought to somehow elegantly be able to choose which run gets solidified if you tie your existing age floor at the end of a level, but those are nitpicks.

And voice acting aside, I found the loving homage pastel ink brush pastiche of the world and the confident minimalism of the story pretty beautiful.

The sort of open-world game where you unfortunately end up trekking laboriously from map marker to map marker rather than looking around your environment and engaging with it in a way that truly feels like exploration (not very much my cup of tea), but my wife and sister loved it so I stuck through the opening frustrations and found a lot to love and engage with about the combat and writing in particular by the end.

Some great and novel high-concept sci-fi worldbuilding stuff imo, that’s dramatic and maybe more obvious than it realizes in its broad strokes but compelling in its details. The characters of the past whose logs you find are drawn with a perfect balance of tropiness and psychological complexity, as are Aloy/Sylens, making the main quest line by far my favorite part of the game, whereas the side quests got to feeling like work I had to power through.

Pretty excited that the sequel could build off the high highs of this and avoid the low lows to be more truly fantastic. 🤞

Went in with low expectations, which is probably why I enjoyed it so much, probably overlong and the even-numbered cases are non-essential, but I’m just a sucker for this series and after already swallowing the changes to the characters they made in Dual Destinies it was easier to go with the flow of what they chose to do with this one. The Divination Seance and new setting give it a breath of fresh air, too, and the culminating case came together for me better than the one in Dual Destinies.

Loses half a star for not letting the “magic panties” joke die. 😜

It PAINS me to give this anything less than a full 5🌟 rating. 😭

The ambition and wonder and intricate assemblage of this is in many ways the original Outer Wilds in microcosm, and once I was into it I was totally engrossed in the painstaking but emotionally rewarding process of pulling this new thing apart to get at its “core” in the same way I had the original. I loooove the way the game starts feeling like almost nothing has changed in the universe before it dawns on you what the experience will even be. I love the ambiguous malice that tinges the experience in a way that makes it feel unique from the original, and the bevy of new storytelling and mechanical ideas that don’t retread nearly anything from the original and thematically link to one another yet again. The music is again transcendent.

I can’t believe they pulled off this emotional/mechanical magic trick twice and yet…. one new mechanic is so frustrating and rough-edged when combined with the time-punishing nature of the loop it pulled me out of the experience entirely for a couple of hours, which was a supreme bummer. Stuck with it, though, and the highs are so high I’ll still carry it with me the way I do the original as something truly special.

Prolly shoulda done a spoiler-y review cuz attempting not to has had me talking in vague circles. 😜🦉

Had a blast with this one. Really audacious and ambitious design with a lot of moving parts that start to click into place in your brain, fun to come to grips with a convoluted system like that, at least with my personal taste. Weapons felt chunky and satisfying with a good diversity of strengths. I've also never played through an immersive sim before unless you count Bioshock (i don't) and I found the high-concept "endless nihilist party that's gone on so long it's become sad" setting perfect for the violent humor of the genre. Loved also this design where you are free to experiment in all different ways as you learn the levels/playgrounds through repetition. A less open-ended shooter design would get boring far more quickly when combined with the time loop schtick. The writing and lore and especially dialogue was flavorful throughout and I loved the tension and spark between Colt and Julianna.

However… the promise of open-endedness rings a bit hollow when you do your final run and realize it’s been funneling you towards a pretty scripted correct way to do things. I too often felt like I was following a compass to the next waypoint instead of truly exploring, andddd the ending after all the struggle was abrupt and left too many questions though, not in a satisfying artsy way but in an "i get the feeling the developers ran out of time to make it better" kind of way. Oh well, fun while it lasted, even if it didn't leave as lasting an impression as I thought it would.