Mismatch found - Papers, Please:

Contraband Police, in its structure and most of its execution, is a clone of Papers, Please. If you liked the former, you will almost certainly have no qualms playing through the entirety of the campaign here.

Not surprisingly, the aspects of the game clearly inspired by PP are where the game shines. The basic puzzle gameplay loop of searching for inconsistencies in prospective entrants is similarly fun in this game, with some expansions that work great, primarily relating to the namesake; contraband. Cutting up car interiors and busting open fake bumpers is a ton of fun, and this alone mixed with PP's gameplay makes at least the core gameplay loop enjoyable. I'm not entirely convinced the devs really understood what made Papers, Please a masterpiece however.

The inclusion of base building, side missions, driving and actual gun combat seem nice in concept, but none are done well enough to really justify anywhere close to the amount of praise of its predecessor. PP's charm comes from the entire atmosphere built around the core loop: The music, the artstyle, the aesthetic, the moral quandaries— all things together that make PP's whole greater than the sum of its parts. Contraband Police, despite being a painfully bland Unity asset homologation, technically does contain a lot of what made PP fantastic. There is 'branching' storyline giving you the option to side with your soviet overlords, or to engage in rebellious sabotage, but it just doesn't have the same gravity to it. I'm honestly not even sure what's wrong with it, but it just feels like something is missing. Maybe its because the lightning in the bottle has diminished, or maybe I just missed it entirely. Either way, my experience in Contraband Police just left me disappointed in what could have been an actually full-fledged spiritual successor to Papers, Please.

Reading this blurb over, I considered scrapping it entirely because of how much I reference Papers, Please (as has everyone else), but I've decided to leave it as is based on the not so subtle fact that the devs are far too closely trying to replicate its effect, and to varying degrees of success. It's not by any means bad (despite being pretty jank) and is absolutely still worth playing, but nothing here is going to surprise or inspire you if you've already experienced its far more accomplished big brother before.

Maybe the most organic exploration game I've ever played. I didn't even find out about the copious amount of radio signals/waypoints until the very end of the game, and I was pretty disappointed when I found out that you needed to do those in order to properly finish the story. It feels like the game was designed around having absolutely zero waypoints (self-made ones notwithstanding) and uses excellent map design and nonverbal storytelling to guide you towards the next objective or points of interest. This is done by several really well planned methods, such as new unlocks like depth upgrades for your vehicles prompting you to use them to reach deeper parts of established caves, keys that are used to unlock areas from different story areas, and enemy types/ attributes and light levels forcing you to approach areas the 'recommended' way. The only thing I came away wanting from Subnautica was more of a reason to spend significant amounts of time building a base, but I'm not really sure that was ever the intention, and I may have just got caught up in it based on my own gaming preferences. Overall a fantastic experience that holds your hand a lot less than I was expecting.

A surprisingly novel way to approach AVP in a game, as the two non-human campaigns (particularly Alien) are actually a decent time. I don't think there's really enough here to justify writing a full review, but if you can play it for a few bucks and you like Aliens/Predator, might as well give it a shot. Can't say anything about multiplayer since its deader than the horse that is Ellen Ripley in Alien Resurrection, but I assume it was pretty unique for its time given the asymmetrical nature of the campaigns.

Its a Kojima game stripped down to the most fundamental gameplay experience possible. Everything works exactly like you think it should in a Kojima game, and the narrative is astronomically better than the competitors in its field.

Whether you enjoy this or not will entirely depend on how much you enjoy the core of the almost immersive sim-like gameplay. It isn't nearly as much of a hollywood movie as metal gear, but very intentionally so. This is by far Kojima's most artistic game to date, and I'd seriously urge anyone to at least give it a try. I used to be one of the people that thought that Kojima games were like the "film snobs" of video games, and while its hard to deny he certainly has an ego on him, his games truly are an incredible achievement in storytelling by proxy of intentional gameplay design, and Death Stranding is by far the most 'connected' in that regard.

I can't say I loved it more than Snake Eater, but Death Stranding might be the most objectively beautiful game Kojima has ever produced.

I'll start off by saying that Star Wars is probably the single most important franchise to me. It's been my favorite for basically as long as I can remember, and was a big part of growing up. I love Star Wars to death, but the last few years have been a pretty rough patch. The first fallen order, Clone Wars S7 and Rogue One, there really isn't anything to come out of Disney's Star Wars that I really felt was special. Jedi Survivor is easily the best piece of Star Wars media in recent memory, and maybe since Revenge of the Sith.

So why 3 stars? Well, you know why, and its painfully obvious. I want to give this 5 stars, and if I purely judged it from the intended experience, it would be. I know my recent logs are filled with 5 star ratings, but I seriously think this is probably the best year for gaming in a decade, while also foreshadowing a worrying trend that seems to be increasing in frequency with every AAA release.

This game is just flat out unfinished. Every single part of the experience outside of the actual gameplay is broken, almost disgustingly so. After the patches the game was at least playable, but its embarrassing how poorly this game at release was, and its easily the worst game for it to happen to that I've ever played. This game DESERVED a working product, and shame on EA for launching it in its horrendous state.

If and when Jedi Survivor reaches a state worthy of its legacy namesake, It will without a doubt be 5 stars.

Just played this again for the first time since launch, and wow what a totally different experience. Maybe I just ignored the side activities because the game was a broken pile of shit the first time, or maybe they added a lot more, but this game is a serious heavyweight now. It still isn't terribly well optimized, but I had a great time playing through this again, and I spent nearly three times as much as the launch playthrough.

This is absolutely worth playing now, the charm was always there but with the polish and extended content Cyberpunk is an excellent time.

Well, it took me a little bit after beating this to objectively analyze my thoughts, and yep, its still perfect. I can't believe I'm saying this blasphemy but this might be better than the original. The original Resident Evil 4 is my favorite game of all time. I played it over a decade after its release and during a particularly difficult time in my life, and it was some of the purest escapism I've ever gotten out of a video game. The entire experience was just a phenomenal journey, and it likely will remain as my favorite game. But RE4 2023 honestly might be the objectively better package. All of the quirks are still there, but the 'annoying' parts are much more polished.

The combat, while intentionally less clunky and threatening than its predecessor, is balanced by a wider variety of more challenging enemy types, none of which feel like they contradict the spirit of the original. RE423 also supplements its modern engine with an actual stealth system, mimicking the consumable knives of TLoU, and is hands down the best way they could have implemented it. Stealth is now just another aspect of your resource management, deciding when and what enemies to use it on, or whether to save your knives for defense.

The atmosphere is definitely more shifted towards modern JP horror, and is probably the best way they could have modernized the game. One of my favorite parts of the original was the old, almost simple/dreamlike aura of the game, which is obviously an aspect of being a product of its time. As a horror fan in general however, the newer, 'grittier' (I hate to use that word, but it essentially is) pallet does help raise the stakes, and will definitely cater to the more visceral horror fans.

The pacing and map design is still perfect, and the leader in its class. I was worried when I found out that some of the areas had been significantly redesigned, but literally none of the new additions felt like they minimized the original setpieces. All of the iconic moments are still here, just with bits and pieces of modern game design meticulously spliced in, a process that excellently avoids any jarring time-relative meta outliers.

I guess the only real negative I have to say about it is the new VA cast, but I understand the reason why they altered it to align with the cinematic cast. Everyone still does a great job, and if you aren't in love with the original to a fault then this won't even be a blip on your radar.

Even though RE is my all time favorite franchise and I loved the previous remakes, I was not expecting anywhere near this level of craftsmanship or care to be put into a "remake", but I came out appreciating that capcom recognizes how important the original RE4 was. They put sincere effort into recapturing that lightning in a bottle, and came out with an incredible result. This game is seriously a work of art. Just play it.

This is seriously the closest thing you could get to an Edgar Wright directed game. I loved this for a lot of the same reasons why Scott Pilgrim is in my top 5 favorite movies, and its an absolute must play. Never ever ever would have expected something this unique to come out of Bethesda, but fuck me this was a welcome surprise.

I don't even need to explain why this is so unbelievably good, just go play it. GOTY frontrunner by a country mile and we're not even a third of the way through the year.

This is pretty much as close to perfect it could possibly get for a "non-Kojima Metal Gear". I wasn't expecting it to even come close to the highs of snake eater or the phantom pain, but Revengeance turned out to be an absolute blast.

I haven't played enough h&s games to definitively compare this to other proverbial heavyweights of the genre, but I had a ton of fun playing through the game. Normal difficulty seemed a little bit too easy, but I was still challenged enough by the end that it wasn't a total cakewalk. I didn't see how much harder the "hard" setting was, but I'd imagine this game is probably best on that if you're a veteran of the genre.

Revengeance still has all the same quirks and charms of the mainline games, just in a more neatly presented package. All the lovable and iconic villains are still here, all still equipped with their very own philosophical monologue (and even some meta self awareness this time). While stealth is entirely an afterthought, it DOES exist, and yes, so do the cardboard boxes, but you won't want to stealth anyways with how good the combat is.

There are a lot of things to love about this game, but the crown jewel has undoubtedly got to be the soundtrack and how it interacts with the game/qte's. There isn't a single song in this game that isn't an absolute banger. The power metal themes that accompany each boss mixed with the obviously anime inspired visuals alone make this game worth playing, and doubly so if you're a metal gear fan. Its just a condensed, short version of all the things that made me fall in love with MGS, and I'm here for it.

Just don't ask Senator Armstrong for his sources (he made it the fuck up).

I honest to god don't understand why everyone is saying this game is so meh. I came in with extremely low expectations, and while the game is definitely a buggy pile of shit, its seriously a good time, and if nothing else different. Atomic Heart is pretty much a sim shooter split into equal parts wolfenstein, prey and bioshock, and I absolutely adored it. The open world is dogshit, the driving is dogshit, the map system is dogshit, but when the game worked (when you're in the actual linear areas) it was great. If you go into this thinking of it as an alt-history Prey, and you like that premise, this is absolutely worth playing.

Just finished a playthrough of the Resident Evil games and I was craving another survival horror series, and decided on a game that I have tried to block out of my memory for years. I distinctly remember playing the launch demo for Dead Space 2 with one of my friends at age 12, and I had nightmares for weeks about the absurdly grotesque baby monsters, and it is still to this day the only game that has ever done that to me, even at that age. Now that I've had a good decade to recover from my trauma, I figured its time that I give these beloved games a go.

The strongest part of Dead Space is by far the atmosphere. While the graphics do show its age and took me out of it a little bit, the game is still phenomenal at building a sense of loneliness, and pitting you against the monumental task of escaping from this massive USG Ishimura with no help save the few companions guiding you over your coms. While the game does rely on cheap jumpscares a little too much, especially at the beginning, the game still does an excellent job building tension just by method of design. There are scenarios where you have to complete complex tasks to progress through the levels while fighting off enemies that are genuinely brilliantly designed, and those were by far the highlights of the game. The game does give you breathers, but the constant bait-and-switch of the soundtrack pops keeps you at least somewhat cautious throughout even the slower parts.

The gameplay leaves a little to be desired though. The whole concept of fighting the Nechromorphs is that center mass shots are ineffective, and that you have to sever limbs to do any meaningful damage to them. The plasma cutter, the main "pistol" archetype weapon does a great job at encouraging this combat design, and it was definitely the most fun to use. The other weapons however just all felt kind of the same, where you just mag dump into any part of the enemies to kill them, so it kind of took away the constant pressure to aim at limbs while in close firefights. To be clear, I didn't try every single weapon so your mileage may vary, but I just didn't feel like there was a ton of thought put into the other weapons in regards to the way the game "wants" you to kill enemies.

The story provides a really interesting concept, but the actual writing and exposition of the story in this one wasn't anything special. It's my understanding from what I've picked up online that the other games (especially 2) delve a lot deeper into the actual lore behind the markers, so I expect to appreciate the story more after playing all of them. This is totally fine though, this one seemed more about the experience of playing it than really understanding it anyway.

Dead Space was honestly a lot more enjoyable than I figured it would be, and even though jump scares typically bother me, I didn't have a problem playing the game in longer sittings. I've seen that they are remaking/remastering the game in 2023, and with modern graphics (especially lighting), I bet this will be one of the most terrifying survival horror experiences out there. Dead Space is absolutely worth playing if you are a fan of horror, and I can see why it is one of the staple series in the genre.