Some short thoughts on this one, while Lies of P is arguably too derivative of Bloodborne (being noticeably similar with its mechanics and aesthetics), a benefit of that is it’s just about the closest to feeling like one of From’s games that I’ve played from these soulslikes. That is to say I enjoyed it a lot despite its blatant influence

While it doesn’t quite match up to them in level design, it’s very well polished with great combat that does stand out on its own with the unique weapons and how its parry mechanic is used. I actually liked the world they made for it too, interesting take on a darker Pinocchio story with a steampunk style that did enough to distinguish itself for me. It’s also not too long either, finished it up at about 20 hours or so and it’s paced pretty well with the variety of its areas

Technically this is still in early access so can’t say it’s finished just yet, but with Act 5 out it seems mostly content complete as is. And what’s here is really good, very creative rhythm game that makes just tapping one button much more difficult than it would seem

The goal is to tap on the seventh beat of the song, but it tries its best to distract you from that with the visuals for each stage. Trying to pay attention to the beat while also looking at the level’s really cool, especially for certain ones throughout that caught me off guard. And as it goes it’ll start adding new beats to listen to that can quickly ramp up what you’ll need to keep track of. Hopefully there’s a bit more levels to look forward to before it’s officially released

I haven’t played Wario Land to say how it compares to this, but Pizza Tower’s really fun! Levels are short but very creative with all the different power ups you use to get around, and the bosses are enjoyable. Can see them having a lot of replayability to try and master them for higher scores (I mostly got B ranks and kept running into walls…)

The pixel art emulating that grimy 90s Nicktoons style like Rocko’s Modern Life or Ren and Stimpy is so cool too, has a ton of charm! And the music’s awesome

In Stars and Time’s seemingly about a group of adventurers on their final quest to defeat an evil king on top of his tower. But really it’s about the protagonist Siffrin, who after quickly dying on their way to the top realizes they can somehow loop back to the previous day with their memories and experience intact

Initially this works to their benefit, being able to keep the party from failing by returning each loop with the knowledge needed to advance. And eventually they actually succeed and defeat the king, seemingly saving everyone in the process and completing their goal. But when it seems like the game’s about to end here, the loop still happens inexplicably and brings Siffrin back to the start anyway. With no knowledge on how to break it or any idea why it’s even happening, they’re now forced to repeat the same thing over and over again

What stood out most about this game to me was how committed it was to being… repetitive. Siffrin (and by extension the player) will redo this loop, fight the same enemies, run through the same floors, mostly read the same dialogue, backtracking to the same rooms, searching for anything different to try and stop it, for hours on end. There are some things that make the loops less annoying, like being able to jump to different floors after dying or retaining memories for your party, but that’s basically the gist of it. Though as tedious as that obviously sounds, something about that structure still kept me glued to it all the way to the end

I guess it was the way it’s used narratively and how it affects the characters. Siffrin was compelling to play as and you’ll watch as their sanity gradually unravels with each loop from the constant monotony of it all. I liked that you’re basically sharing their struggle the longer you keep playing in a meta sort of way, they’ll get frustrated with it and so will you. The others, Mirabelle, Isabeau, Odile, and Bonnie, are all good as well. While you do spend much time reading their same dialogue over and over (mercifully can zone out and skip it at least), was sweet to see how much they bond with each other throughout and make up the game’s more emotional core

The turn based combat was… alright. Bit too simple, but I liked that it was based on Rock Paper Scissors with the enemy designs actually having one of the signs to show which they were weak to. But really I’d definitely say the appeal for this is in the story than the gameplay, past a certain point you’ll wish you can just ignore or skip past most fights

I do think this is a well made game, but also one that’s (albeit intentionally) frustrating to play. It is pretty long for what it is at about 20 hours for me, and you have to meet it halfway to click with the story it’s trying to tell. But I think it worked for me by the end and appreciate what it went for, even if I doubt it’ll be for everyone

Been meaning to get to this as I did play Chaos;Child a while ago and liked it quite a bit, though can’t actually remember if there were specifics about Chaos;Head’s story to spoil much about it at least. I also played this with the Committee of Zero PC patch, as the official version is apparently so poor it was highly recommended to have it installed as a fix before playing. But was easy enough to get working and didn’t notice any issues with it

This VN was uhhh… good I guess. I think this was definitely more horror esque than I recall from Chaos;Child, mainly due its focus on fear and paranoia. I can understand why this one is more divisive than others in the SciAdv series, as whether you like it or not probably depends on how much you can tolerate the main character Takumi, an immensely pathetic and delusional shut-in, and the game very much tries to make him as unlikable as possible. While I don’t mind the idea of a protag like this, I feel it goes too far with this to the point where it just got exhausting to follow him, and his frequently perverted delusions/dialogue was really not it for me. But will say it was compelling to watch how badly he falls apart as the story progresses

Speaking of, delusions are basically the main mechanic of the game and you choose between a positive or negative one. Though for the most part didn’t really care for this, as for the first playthrough it has no bearing on the story aside for seeing some minor scene changes (Chaos;Child was like this also I think). This changes after you finish the first time and I think leads to the different endings depending on what you choose (though I don’t see how you can get those without a guide tbh), but note to get the true ending of the game you have to get every other ending first, which basically means you’ll be restarting the game and fast forwarding through over and over. The skipped text will also keep getting interrupted by the delusion prompts each time which got tedious

As of now I think I prefer Chaos;Child, but I might get around to replaying it to better compare and use the PC patch it has also. Chaos;Head’s an interesting horror VN, but do feel as the first in the series you can tell where its successors refine on it a bit more

Should’ve finished this months ago but got a bit burnt out and distracted with other games for a while. Overall I enjoyed it a lot and prefer it to FF15, but somewhat conflicted as a few things did keep it from being a favorite of mine by the end

The coolest thing about FF16’s definitely the sheer spectacle of its boss fights and set pieces, which is probably the best I’ve ever seen? It doesn’t really let up at all from start to finish either, would highly recommend it for that alone honestly. That said while those very high points are consistently spread throughout the main story, the moment to moment gameplay in between is… less impressive

The action combat’s really fun, but past a point it started to wear itself out for me with how much you fight the same mobs of enemies and not much variation with Clive’s weapons and Eikon abilities. And areas to explore are fairly empty save for the side quests which are just kinda there, mostly inoffensive and I didn’t mind how there were just a few at a time between main missions (at least til the end when they start dropping a lot at once), but not a highlight either

I did like the story for the most part, though it’s one where I feel it has an amazing start then kinda settles once it opens up, which wasn’t bad but wish it kept that kind of momentum for it. The darker world-building was interesting and Clive was a good character, but I think the last 1/4 of it stretched on a bit too long. And I also definitely felt the lack of more party members, there are temporary followers like Jill but most of the game is just Clive and Torgal on their own and felt they could’ve done more with the cast there

What an awesome game! While I thought the first Alan Wake was fine combat aside, this is easily among the biggest jumps in quality I’ve seen for a game sequel. Shifting the genre to true survival horror (more akin to The Evil Within or recent RE remakes with gameplay) while still confidently maintaining its surreal David Lynch vibes is the coolest thing they could’ve done with the series, their execution is a dramatic improvement and you can really feel how passionate of a project it is. There can be a few bugs that may hinder it a bit though and wish there was just a bit more polish for the PS5 version, but hopefully those are ironed out over time. Definitely one of my top favorites this year

At this point everyone knows that Cyberpunk’s had an infamously disastrous launch. It’s taken CDPR nearly 3 years of updates (and probably a lot of help repairing the IP’s reputation with the anime) to even get it in the state it should’ve been in the first place. How it was released in 2020 wasn’t acceptable, but I decided to replay it fully with the new 2.0 update and DLC out and credit where it’s due, they did put a lot of work into correcting its faults. There’s still some jank here and there and Night City is still not quite the liveliest cityscape it was promised to be, but the complete revamp of its systems along with improvements on a technical level finally puts it in a state where I’d call it a pretty great game. Especially now that what Cyberpunk does well the most (its story, quests, and character detail/animations) can be more appreciated without the endless bugs and crashes every few moments

That goes for the base game but of course there’s also Cyberpunk’s new expansion Phantom Liberty. The Witcher 3 set an immense standard with Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, both of which are among the best DLC there is in my opinion. I’m still more a fan of TW3 in general so personally would rank those a bit higher, but PL continues their streak of high quality expansions and is a really strong addition to the game. Telling a different but no less engrossing spy story that directly ties with V’s struggle to survive in the main game, with expectedly great performances throughout (including Idris Elba) and more difficult choices than before with two different ending paths

The new area Dogtown slots seamlessly into Night City’s Pacifica district. It’s not as sprawling compared to say TW3’s Toussaint, but it’s dense and very detailed with most of the content there being a step up from the main game. Along with the story quests there are 9 new side gigs that are more fleshed out than the usual filler ones, and with the new gear and 2.0 abilities in combat it’s much more fun to actually play. And the music is still great, especially that ending song by Dawid Podsiadło. Fantastic stuff and was perfect with the credits sequence

So overall with the improvements since launch and DLC, Cyberpunk’s been rough to start but in a good place now. l’m actually looking forward to what they’ll do next with Orion some day, though with CDPR’s switch from REDengine to UE5 here’s hoping they won’t have more development issues with that one

Really liked this. A well made game about browsing an early 2000s gaming forum that’s close to being shut down, getting to know the users there through their posts and talking with them over DMs while trying to make the community a better place. Primarily though it’s focused on a user named Vivi, an artist you gradually get to know and bond with as the game progresses

The presentation and writing really does a great job making the Shark console and Videoverse feel convincing, and the focus on how positively affecting these awkward but sincere online friendships can be was sweet

So Starfield… everyone knows what this is and everyone knows how Bethesda RPGs usually turn out, so will just give thoughts on what their new IP supposedly “25 years in the making” does well and what it falls short on compared to their other games. I’ve done all the main and faction quests in my playthrough, and pretty much got my fill of it aside for NG+

First off since it’s likely to be the biggest point of contention about it for most, this isn’t much of an exploration game despite Todd’s unsurprisingly exaggerated marketing claims. In fact I’d even say that despite being set in space with “unparalleled freedom” to explore, this felt like the most constrained and segmented game Bethesda’s made so far. As unlike their previous titles, the gravitation toward just going out on your own and getting lost in their open world was very limited to me for a few reasons

For one there’s no actual overworld like in Elder Scrolls or Fallout, and space itself is not seamless like say No Man’s Sky. Planets you land on and space stations are broken up into hub areas, with central attention clearly going toward the various cities in the game. It may technically be true that there are over 1000 planets, but that’s pretty much meaningless to me as I’ve had little reason to ever venture away from the main systems. If you do decide to land on any procedurally generated planets that aren’t connected to quests, you’ll likely find little of interest on them other than sticking around for outpost building or resource gathering (both of wish I didn’t care for much)

You do own and control a ship which is cool, but it’s only used for dogfighting in zoned areas or docking onto stations. Thus you can’t actually use it to travel directly to planets without going into your starmap and selecting it in the menu. On land you also aren’t able to venture too far from your ship without hitting a map boundary, and obviously this means there are no land vehicles of any kind. Though this honestly didn’t come up enough to matter in my opinion

And on the topic of not being seamless, Bethesda’s made no advancement on limiting how frequent load screens are in their games. They’re still pretty much everywhere, from going into your ship to landing to just opening random small stores in the cities. It’s thankfully just a few seconds at least cause of the SSD, but would probably be unbearable otherwise. So sufficed to say it’s still very dated in this regard, and probably isn’t going to change as long as they stick with their everlasting Creation Engine

I guess a more accurate comparison for how this game actually is would be The Outer Worlds (albeit with a much bigger budget). I don’t exactly think this is a bad thing, but it’s also not really what it was advertised as either. Starfield’s universe tries to give off an impression of how vast in scale it is, but compared to before it ironically doesn’t feel anywhere near as sprawling

Having said all that, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy my time with it. What it actually does well is different than I expected, it’s kinda as if their focus flipped entirely from exploration to just taking quests. The majority of time I spent was just in dialogue talking to characters in the city areas, which are generally well done and surprisingly dense with a lot of side content. The game does make a pretty poor first impression (the intro especially is not good and jarring in how quickly it pushes you from being some random miner to a member of Constellation), but did get sucked into the game the longer I played once I started focusing on faction questlines or the smaller side ones

There are caveats to this, for one Bethesda’s writing can still be hit or miss and quest design itself is still behind the likes of other RPGs. The main story is… eh, the ideas it has are cool but feel it goes by too quickly to really leave much of an impression. For most of it though I think they’ve improved especially compared to Fallout 4 which bored me to tears with its quests. The Settled Systems is fairly interesting and while the lore isn’t quite as extensive next to Elder Scrolls, it’s solid enough as a sci-fi setting. In regard to companions there’s only 4 main ones, but they’re definitely better than before also. Especially since there’s an affinity system and how they can talk about your decisions often, I mostly stuck with Andreja in my playthrough and she had comments for basically every quest I’ve done which was cool

Starfield is still combat heavy of course, but it’s decent. If you were fine with Fallout 4 then this is pretty close to that with a few improvements in mobility. You get a boost pack and can actually climb ledges which is nice, plus combat slides if you unlock it. Few issues though, not sure if it’s just busted right now but stealth felt pretty worthless. Enemies always seem to detect you regardless of your stealth level or equipment, which got especially annoying when doing stealth focused missions and you can’t avoid getting caught. In those cases I just stopped trying after having to reload a bunch of times

Aside for that, third person combat remains supremely janky to control for me so I only used it just to look at my character. The enemy AI is also as you’d figure if you’ve played their other games (not good), little improvement’s been made there. I also didn’t like how clunky it was to browse the inventory and encumbrance which I’ll forever hate as a mechanic

In regard to visuals Starfield is… mixed? In general it’s a pretty great looking game, the art design for most locations is pronounced and lighting is strong especially with interiors. There are a lot of NPCs walking around in the cities which is cool, but they aren’t exactly detailed either. And when you look at faces (which is very often), it has Oblivion energy with the exact same close up zoom and dead stares when talking to NPCs. It’s an odd thing to still have when even Skyrim didn’t, but I guess has nostalgic charm somewhat

It was said that Starfield’s their most polished game and that’s mostly true in my case, though only relative to their standards. On Series X it’s only 30 FPS and there’s still a fair amount of minor bugs throughout with occasional slowdowns in the city areas. But for the most part it’s fine and not as bad as it could get before

I guess that’s about it for now (this review’s already super long). Ultimately I wouldn’t really say Starfield lives up to the hype it’s built all these years, as it still feels like not enough’s evolved with Bethesda’s formula compared to Fallout 4 almost a decade ago, which holds it back from impressing me more along with its general flaws. That said I did enjoy it more than F4 overall, and if you go in knowing what to expect it can still grab you if you let it, seeing as how I’ve managed to put in over 50 hours already lol