inFamous was pretty mindblowing way back when it was released: a fast-paced open world superhero game with great action. It wasn't free of problems, though... for one, it featured the single worst morality system in history, that might as well have been replaced with a yes-no "are you evil" question at the start of the game. Also, to achieve the scale of the world, the developers did a lot of copying and pasting, which means the map is pretty boring.

Still, inFamous is fun for a casual playthrough.

Now, there are franchises for which I -- and many other people -- would kill to have a what-if scenario involving vampires. AO3 stands as living proof of that. inFamous wasn't exactly on my list, but I took what I could get, and you know what? It was enjoyable.

The game features a what-if scenario where Cole gets turned into a vampire. The script is pretty derpy, so adjust your expectations for that, but his new vampire powers are pretty fun to play around with.

Issues with the game can be summarized by it not being fleshed out enough, which, I guess standalone expansions might have been considered a huge risk at the time. It needed to be longer, and more challenging. But hey, to its credit, "I wanted more of it" is a pretty great detriment to have.

Regret. The only thing that comes to my mind looking at this game is regret.

So this game was really popular in trophy hunting circles for a brief moment because it offered 19 trophies -- mind you, not many games had trophies this early on -- and it cost like $0.99. And I mean, it's a quiz game, I guess. It works, if you're up to it and have brushed up on your American trivia. Myself, just the fact that I had to go online to boost the last trophy was already much more trouble than it was worth.

Thank Arceus I'm out of that obsessive trophy hunting phase.

So, I know what you're thinking, and it stands for "Extra Dimension". Okay? Is that cleared up? Okay. On to the review, then.

A direct sequel to Pokémon Colosseum, Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is one of the most underrated games in the franchise. For two reasons: one, it was released near the very end of the GameCube's life, a console which, as we all know, got destroyed by the competition and not many people owned; and also, because of the nature of its predecessor.

See, as good as it was, Colosseum's story mode was more of an extra mode than a main game. The game, as its name suggest, was meant more as 3rd gen analogue to Pokémon Stadium, a game that allowed you to bring your creatures over to the console and battle in full 3D. Even though XD was meant to be the exact opposite, that is, RPG with extra Stadium content, a lot of people gave up on the game as soon as they heard it described as a sequel to Pokémon Colosseum.

Which is a shame -- XD was as close as we would get to a full-fledged mainline 3D Pokémon game until X came along. It's story was fleshed out and complete, and while it did not offer a Pokédex and the usual catch 'em all shenanigans, that absence was hard to notice, seeing how much of a well-rounded game it was.

The game takes place five years after the original Colosseum, with Wes and Rui nowhere to be found, and Orre having largely recovered from the Shadow Pokémon crisis. You play as a child living in a research facility for Pokémon purification, its scientists intent on never letting such a disaster befall their region again. Their research, however, ends up making them a target for nefarious forces intent on creating the perfect, unpurifiable Shadow Pokémon.

The game plays just like Colosseum did, with Double Battles by default and your character having the ability to steal Shadow Pokémon from their adversaries. This time around, due to the recovery of Orre's ecosystems, you can even catch Wild Pokémon, but it's a minor mechanic that it goes largely unused.

Aside from janky Gen III mechanics -- no Physical/Special split, for instance -- the game has aged near perfectly: Orre is a completely different region from anything we'd seen, and Shadow Pokémon remain a memory from this era (unless you count Pokémon GO, and you shouldn't). It's a perfect example of how small twists in the main series' formula can generate completely different games, and why the experiments going on with the franchise recently have me so excited.

Absolutely play this gem. Do Colosseum first, though, it possible.

When I originally wrote a review for Beyond: Two Souls back in 2015, I remember calling Quantic Dream "polarizing". Well, I don't have to do that anymore, as they were exposed as cretins in front of the entire world! Who will ever forget such incredible lines as "I'm not under oath, so can I lie?", and "In my games, all women are whores!"? But when it comes to Beyond, I have conflicting feelings, as here, Cage somehow managed to write something that's not complete drivel. Maybe it was the presence of high-profile actors turning more pairs of eyes to the script, or maybe it's the man's broken clock moment. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed what came out of it.

Beyond is a narrative-based game that follows the life of Jodie Holmes, played (exceptionally well) by Elliot Page, from the moment her attunement with the supernatural begins to show to the resolution she finds in her adult life. Sharing the stage with Page is none other than Willem Dafoe playing Nathan Dawkins, a researcher who is close to Jodie since her childhood, and whose influence on her life drives much of the plot.

The narrative revolves around themes of loss and the afterlife: the Infraworld is the game's sci-fi take on the afterlife, and Jodie was born with an entity attached to her about whom nothing is known but his name, Aiden, and his origins in that other world. With no way to undo the link, Jodie has to learn how to live with the invisible presence, who has a will of his own and isn't always on her side. As Jodie matures and more attention gets drawn to her and Aiden, the two will have to get by multiple encounters with beings from the Infraworld.

Gameplay involves switching between these two characters: Aiden is technically the one with the supernatural powers, but is unable to talk or show himself to anyone but Jodie, nor can he move too far away from her. This means that there’s a lot of things Jodie has to handle for herself, such as traversing environments or conversing and fighting with people. The relationship between her and the entity -- cooperative or uncooperative -- is felt through the various scenarios the duo finds themselves in.

Like Heavy Rain, Beyond plays by the idea of not having explicit failure states. There is no game over screen here, no matter what you do, with bad decisions or failures to complete a sequence only leading to different outcomes, which may include a bad ending for the chapter you’re in, and a worse ending for the game, way later on. Succeed or fail, however, the game itself never stops.

There's a large variety of scenarios, exploring multiple situations and emotions felt by the protagonist. One chapter features things as mundane as exploring around Jodie's parents' house; another centers the tense reclamation of a destroyed science facility that was overtaken by the Infraworld's denizens. Some stages feature multiple branches and allow you to take things really far if you so desire. Inducing suicide? Attempting murder? Arson? You name it. Be as nice or as terrible as you feel like it.

In this, Jodie becomes an incredibly well-developed character, the polar opposite of other Quantic Dream female characters to date. There's maybe a couple chapters that are a disservice to the overall narrative, "Like Other Girls" instantly coming to mind as Cage manifesting his inability to let female characters not be assaulted (it's an optional scene, thankfully). The big picture, however, the image of Jodie formed by the bits and pieces of her life and the people she interacts with along the way, is that of a nuanced and multidimensional character, a person who's special, but by no means perfect or invulnerable. And it bears repeating, Page did a fantastic job on the role, selling that character exceptionally well.

Another notable aspect of Jodie's development, and maybe this is a bit sillier, but I remember being very surprised on my first playthrough that Jodie is portrayed as heterosexual and the game actually lets you be involved in romantic relationships with men. Cute men, too! Among high-profile releases (not counting those who let you pick the PC's gender), playing as a man who gets involved with women happens a lot, but when it comes to female protagonists, I can more easily think of queer women, implied and non-implied, than heterosexual ones, and it should be clear why that is. I did not expect Quantic Dream of all studios to deliver on this.

Again, I don't know how this happened, especially after going back to QD's older titles and witnessing how low the bar is, and also knowing that, good or bad, the game probably had a human cost that far outweighs its benefits, but Beyond actually turned out decent, and it remains a guilty pleasure in my library. If you're going to give Quantic Dream's games a chance, I say either go with this one or none at all.

In 1802, the East India Company’s Obra Dinn set sail from London headed to the Orient. The ship never made it to its destination, and was deemed lost at sea until five years later, when it resurged, drifting along the coast of Falmouth, back in England. This apparent miracle came with more questions than answers, however, as every person that boarded the ship in London lied either dead or missing.

It’s at this point that Papers, Please creator's Return of the Obra Dinn pulls you into its world. You play as an insurance agent from the EIC who boards the derelict ship, tasked with investigating the fate of the ship’s crew and passengers so to find out how much the Company owes each of their estates in insurance. Yep. Lucas Pope really likes using bureaucracy as a framing device.

Although you are alone in this task, you are equipped with a book containing information about the Obra Dinn, as well as a magic pocket watch that lets you rewind time back to key moments in the ship’s journey. These two elements form the core loop of the game: find a point of interest in the ship, time travel to an event, and jot down things of interest in the book, rinse and repeat until the mystery is solved.

Of course, if it was as simple as just finding each person in the ship, it would be an easy task. The catch is, you know the names and occupations of everyone in the ship, and the book contains sketches of all of their faces, but you don’t know who is who, nor are they nametagged in your visions of the past. You have to piece this information together as you explore the ship.

Furthermore, you have to enter information manually on the notebook. For each person, you must identify their fate; if it happens that they are dead, input how they died, and in case the death was a murder, point out who committed it. It’s a fantastic mechanical that prevents the game from devolving into a bunch of checklists, like many detective games do.

Return of the Obra Dinn has the makings of a masterpiece in it, but a couple of glaring issues hold it back. For one, there are some truly baffling UX decisions. The book is what you use to input the aforementioned deductions, as well as check the information you're given. It's pretty much where you will spend most of the time with the game, but is really clunky to mess around with. I get that this is a deliberate design decision, to make it feel like an actual book, but hours into the game, it doesn’t get any less annoying. A way to access visions from the map, or replay their audio, would also have been appreciated.

Furthermore, there is the matter of the game’s visual style. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous. The monochrome recreation of old Macintosh monitors looks crisp and unique, and it’s very nice to stare at. However, it feels like these visuals should be in a game other than an investigation one. Lots of mysteries rely on minute details to be untangled, but with simple visuals as this, it’s hard to tell what’s going on.

Is that a pipe? Is that sword unique? Does this person look like they might be of this nationality? Are those the same shoes as in that other scene? What is going on in this static vision? These and many other question sound trifling, but are at the core of many deductions you have to make. Not to mention, some inferences require you to take those details and make some wild assumptions about them, paramount to guessing, another design decision I don’t agree with.

Nevertheless, even though, to me, the game didn't quite live up to the masterpiece it set out to be, what it does achieve is simply brilliant, an amazing work in narrative design and on how detective stories can be expressed with game mechanics. Without a doubt, Return of the Obra Dinn is a must play for fans of the genre, as well as for everyone interested in game design.