I found this game to have many moments of brilliance with a lot of tedium in between. Animal Well obviously takes a lot of influence from classic NES platformers and the Metroidvania genre, but I think it falls short of the best of those kinds of games and ends up just being okay at both. It's tough to strike the right balance of difficulty and fun, but a good deal of the difficulty in this game just felt tiresome to me. There were only a few sections that felt truly challenging, and everything else was just a test of my patience. In particular, exploration beyond the endgame felt like hitting my head against the wall constantly. That being said, when the game shines, it really shines. There are some clever moments here, particularly with the way items can be used, and the world of the animal well itself is full of interesting interactions with hostile, friendly, and even mischievous animals. Overall, I think the game mostly succeeds at what it wants to do, and I'm giving it a half-star boost because of the moments where it wowed me, but I hesitate to call it a truly great experience.

I admire what this game wanted to do. Having enjoyed the first one quite a lot, I think the basic "found footage" concept could be applied to any number of settings. A haunting rural landscape overtaken by a religious cult? I'm sold. The end result was not bad, but maybe not quite as satisfying as the first installment. The story gets a little muddled when it starts diverting from the main narrative. No spoilers, but there are several interludes that are sufficiently frightening and have plenty of thematic significance, but they feel a little far afield of your overall mission. Overall it just feels like an uneven experience that could have been more streamlined like the first. But, it's got plenty of frights, thrills, and heart-pounding chases if that's what you're looking for!

I know some people don't care for the walk-run-hide loop in games like this. You don't have any ways to actively defend yourself or really interact with the world in a meaningful way. But, something about this game just grabs me. Maybe it's the eerie setting, maybe the eccentric and frightening characters, or maybe just the bizarre mystery at the heart of it all. Honestly, it's all of that. I think this game has the perfect combination of those elements that kept me wanting to creep further and further into the demented asylum, despite having to constantly flee and navigate pitchblack corridors while dodging insane people. That, coupled with the resource management of your camcorder's battery made for a tense and sometimes terrifying experience.

An excellent example of keeping what works in a previous installment and fleshing out the world around it. This follow-up has the familiar puzzle elements of the first game, but adds a much more in-depth story and a cast of interesting characters that ties it all together. It continues to expand upon the philosophical questions of the original while not forcing the player to get too bogged down in it all. I think the puzzles may have been a little easier this time around, which is neither good nor bad, but I do feel like I had to sit with the first game a little longer. My one complaint is the lack of real fast travel options--walking around the different areas does get a little tedious when you're really just moving from puzzle to puzzle. Overall, though, if you like the first game then you'll probably dig this follow up.

I was so ready to love this game when I started, and I gave it two earnest, lengthy attempts years apart from each other... and I just couldn't keep my patience with it. There's a lot of good here: the historical setting is vibrant and informative, the variety of skills and activities offers diverse gameplay options, and the promise of a rags-to-riches story sets you off on a path to claim your place in this world. But it all just feels so tedious to me. The game has an intentional difficulty curve that represents your character's inexperience, and it takes a lot of practical work to become even mildly competent at the skills you need to progress. I'm certainly not opposed to challenging games, but I also want to have fun taking on those challenges. This game just feels like a chore throughout. It could just be a skill issue, but I'd rather work through something that feels more worthwhile to me and my limited time for gaming.

The game plays like an interactive novel with some light RPG elements. You get a character class with attributes that help with dice-based skill checks. It has a fascinating far-future setting aboard a kind of cyberpunk space station, and you have to navigate your way as a second-class citizen of sorts. Overall, I think the execution is solid, particularly in the storytelling and interactions with the characters on the station. I do feel like the gameplay loop gets a little stale near the end, but I was truly riveted for a good portion of my playthrough. Overall, an engaging experience that is worth playing through at least once!

For a game that predates the heights of the survival horror genre, I'm impressed at how well it holds up. It's certainly held back by the limitations of the hardware and the point-and-click gameplay, but it manages to tell a haunting, shocking, and compelling story nonetheless. It does become a little less challenging after your first go through, since not a whole lot of it is variable... but if you're a fan of horror, it's worth a look and worth playing more than once to see the different possible endings.

Truly an achievement in gaming, and worthy of its many accolades. Baldur's Gate 3 provides a robust experience with good storytelling and gameplay, and it offers many choices that feel more influential on the story than they might in other RPGs. I do have some qualms with the game--mostly some quibbles with frustrating mechanics and a bloated final act--but even after a long 130+ hours of playing, I was ultimately satisfied by the end. It's not flawless, but I don't think I ever got bored with it. It is also the kind of game that (hopefully) sets a good example for those to come.

If you're a fan of Jurassic Park or Resident Evil, have I got a game for you! Dino Crisis is a killer idea. What better threat to humanity than resurrected dinosaurs and questionable scientific practices? The execution is also mostly satisfying. Yes, the tank controls have not aged well at all, but the thrills and intrigue of the narrative make for a classic in the survival horror genre. It has a complex level design with limited resources and threats around every corner, and DINOSAURS! This is a game sorely in need of a remake, much like its sister series, Resident Evil.

I could barely tell you a thing about the story and the lore of this game. I know that there are bad aliens doing bad things and we have to shoot them. So, where the game didn't grip me from a story perspective, it made up for it with some interesting gameplay elements combining the first-person shooter with the MMORPG. Most of what I enjoyed consisted of the game's multiplayer modes. Some of it you can do solo, but my favorite activities were the competitive matches and the raids, so it helps to have a good group of friends to play with! After a while, it kind of devolves into standard looter shooter territory, but that's essentially the nature of the game once you run out of content.

I was ready to really love this game the way I did Remake. I suppose I did overall enjoy it, but there was a lot that frustrated me about this game that led to massive disappointment in the end. I think the most egregious thing for me (and others, as I've seen) is the oversaturation of minigames. My goodness, I thought the original overdid it, and yet they found a way to just make nearly everything into some kind of minigame. Yes, many of them are optional, but I like doing side content in an RPG! I don't like having to learn a new set of rules or a control scheme to do said content. Also, a lot of these are worse versions of already good games (Mario Kart and Rocket League, for example). So there's that. Then there's the exploration aspect. I like that they wanted to make the open world feel wild and expansive, but it just got so tedious to explore certain areas the further along you got. After a while it started to feel like a chore and less like I was playing a fun video game. And my final complaint is something I won't go in-depth on to avoid spoilers... but the ending of this game is an absolute mess. From the final battles to the implications for the story, it's just kind of all over the place and not very cohesive. And yeah, that's saying something compared to the original. Now, despite all of that, there are things I loved. The combat is incredibly satisfying, and revisiting the familiar sights and characters from the original is delightful, and of course the music is absolutely wonderful. A lot of that was enough to keep me invested, but I think there are definitely some missed opportunities, especially as a follow-up to one of the very best games of the decade.

Contemporary CRPGs are certainly more polished and robust today, but boy did this game set the bar for everything that came after it. The first Fallout was a good introduction to this new post-apocalyptic setting, and it established some fundamental aspects of the series... then Fallout 2 came along and improved on the experience immensely. It keeps what works, changes what doesn't, and provides a robust RPG experience that can vary from run to run. One of the strengths of the series is balancing fun gameplay with an interesting story and ideas, along with clever, dark humor. Fallout winks and nods to popular culture while also being a staple of popular culture today, and that could not have happened without Fallout 2 declaring itself as the best of its kind. Sure, the series thrived under Bethesda, but that only happens within the framework of Interplay's original concept, and it's no coincidence that the best modern Fallout game (New Vegas, don't @ me) draws heavily on the influence of this game.

As someone who didn't really get into the show or the cards, this was my true exposure to Pokémon. I was a Digimon kid. Still, this game was amazing for a little kid that was just getting into RPGs at the time. Getting to form a unique team from a huge roster of creatures makes for a flexible experience, and the mechanics are simple enough to provide a gateway into the genre without being overwhelming. The game also has very clear progression as you travel around Kanto, with a few optional paths along the way. Also worth noting that Yellow version in particular lets you field a roster of all the starters if you wish, and it has the recognizable art style that the series has maintained since. All in all, it's a perfect game for having on the go.