Questionable controls, some bad voice acting, uninspired gameplay - under all of this lies a game that could have been awesome.

Unfortunately, it takes itself incredibly seriously (unless you reach the ending, at least), even though the story itself is nothing more than mediocre, often times confusing.
Some sequences can only described as boring, a few times even tedious.

Yet, Alone in the Dark has a great atmosphere and honestly, wonderful level and environmental design. I did quite like the transitions between places, they looked amazing.
My favourite part was, in truth, the ending. It felt like it was written by a completely different team and seemed truly exciting and fun.

Really wish the entire game was like that.

Played this with friends and it was absolutely iconic.
For starters, I'm actually not sure what the game is called - the steam page suggests both "TryAndLove" and "I Have a Date with a Beauty".

This game suffers (or benefits) from a horrible translation which made the plot nearly incomprehensible. You had to kinda guess what each dialogue option could mean and even with context clues, it was hard to tell. The Dark Souls of dating games, if you will.

Here's what I think I know:
Our best bro is either an escort or some kind of e-sports player. We also might be his sugar daddy.
One of the love interests might be a news anchor or a dancer on a streaming platform. She's talking about getting PKs a lot, which I interpreted as player kills.
Our childhood best friend might want to fight us in a park. I think we were also in a fake relationship to appease her father?
Another lady is our former teacher and she has a brother. You can touch her brother's leg for no reason and she loves it. At some point, the brother turns into your brother. The family dynamics are pretty confusing with this one.

The comedic value of this game is immense, although I don't think this was planned by the devs.

Had I played this when it came out in 2010, I would have rated it much higher. At the time, it must have been quite impressive, certainly unique in a way. Sadly, it hasn't aged well.

The graphics might be a bit dated but they're still holding up in my opinion. I didn't even mind the gameplay mechanics. No, I was just very, very disappointed with the writing.

The narrative is pretty silly: It has plot holes, misplaced sex scenes and characters behaving rather weirdly in general. All of this wouldn't be much of an issue if the game didn't take itself so seriously but it just does.

I got the feeling that it was trying to tell me something important about society's structure but whatever point it had got overshadowed by its rather lazy writing and its awful conclusion.

What is going on in this game? The plot is completely nonsensical: There's a morgue under the school for some reason, students just hang out at the school at night, enemies have the worst AI I've ever seen in a video game.

And the dub. Oh god, the dub. How this managed to get released is a mystery to me. No shade to the voice actors (who are probably really lovely people) but the script isn't giving them much to work with.

Let's be honest, the first game was, despite its popularity back in the day, not a master piece. And still, the sequel seems like a horrible insult to the original.

Wasted potential - the video game.

The premise of the game is one that is absolutely dear to me: The power of stories, how they connect us, how they can change our lives a little bit. Personally, I believe that humans were made to tell and share stories, it's in our blood. They're something really sacred.

It pains me even more to admit that almost everything about Where the Water Tastes Like Wine felt pretty undercooked. From the practically useless map to its weird approach to plot progression, nothing really clicked with me.

Although I found some of the stories in the game rather beautiful, they felt also very shallow. I grew tired of the whole concept after playing for a bit, mostly because some of the tales you hear were quite similar to each other and never felt unique enough to actually be rememberable.

That being sad, I appreciate what the devs were trying to do. Just wish they would have thought about this a bit more before releasing it. The soundtrack is wonderful, though.

This isn't really my kind of game. I found the gameplay to be a bit boring, the combat too repetitive. Honestly, I wish horror game devs would stop putting loops in every. single. game. While it was exciting when P.T. did it, it never really hit the mark after that.

Yet I still acknowledge that this is an amazing game. It's experimental in a sense, yes, but I admire its willingness to try out new things. I loved the FMV elements, I adored the voice acting and most of the time, I even enjoyed having no idea what the fuck was going on.

And let's face it, the musical sequence was one of the best things I've ever seen in a video game.

Let's start with this: This game is dealing with an incredibly important subject matter and it handles it with great care and gentleness. I did really appreciate it for just that, there's so much empathy and love stored in this one.

Unfortunately, it is extremely underdeveloped. A predicable, shallow plot mixed with a short playtime. Interesting gameplay that is never really utilized, simple puzzles that left me unsatisfied.

All in all, A Normal Lost Phone is the very example of a game with so much potential and little payoff. It doesn't concern itself with details at all, instead focuses on just the basics of its own narrative.

I've read that it still means so much to many people and I get why. I'm sad to say that it didn't really leave any profound impression on me, even though I might have a lot in common with the protagonist.

I wish more people were talking about this game. It is a wonderful exploration of loss, grief and self-reflexion and utterly, utterly beautiful to look at. The art style fits the uncanny atmosphere of the narrative perfectly - this is the first visual novel that ever got me excited to unlock new images in the game's gallery, simply because each one of them is a piece of art.

Sure, the game isn't without faults, far from it. There's very little replay value to be found, some endings are incredibly hard to find and require a few, rather repetitive playthroughs.

I'd still highly recommend it - it is a lovely experience with wonderful symbolism and refreshing art direction.

I love Rusty Lake's games with the passion of ten thousand burning suns. There's something uniquely charming about them, from the characteristic art style to the intricate story lines. While they may not always be the best puzzle games available, they're certainly something else.

That being said, The Cave is my least favourite entry in the series for a number of reasons. In my opinion, most of the puzzles are absolutely tedious (bordering on nonsensical), to the point where I stopped playing for a while because I simply didn't have fun. Navigating through the game often felt like a chore and I had to force myself to finish it.

Unfortunately, this is also the part where they really expanded on the lore. It adds so much context to the way the Rusty Lake universe works and I would actually consider playing it essential to fully understand what's going on with the recurring characters.

Listen. Hidden object games are my guilty pleasure. There's something about turning your head off and squinting at the screen like a 70-year-old woman who just discovered the wonders of video games.

This is one of the worst of the bunch and I'm 100% here for it. The voice acting is abysmal, the puzzles nonsensical and the plot (?) incomprehensible.

I mostly did what the vaguely Eastern European man on screen told me to do - such as throwing holy water on a crocodile in the Mississippi River and destroying priceless cultural heritage sites (to get to a skull that was hidden in a wall?).

Coppola could never.