Mancheg00bfusc8r
2008
atmosphere and combat mechanics are great, but level/encounter/mission design are awfully repetitive (Kendra tells you to go somewhere to do something, but you soon discover that it's broken, so instead you have to go somewhere else to flip four switches or whatever, each of which spawn necromorphs after being flipped); would have worked as a 5-6 hour game, but it's twice that length. didn't finish
honestly, I loved almost everything about this game. wish it had fast travel and fewer useless cosmetic collectibles, but it delivers on an expansive, fun, and not-bloated Star Wars action/adventure with a surprisingly decent story
2019
decent little 3D horror/puzzle/stealth game, definitely not worth a Stadia subscription though
solid blend of 2.5D platforming and vaguely Zelda-esque top-down overworld exploration that unfortunately falls prey to one of my least favorite platformer design tropes, making "optional" collectibles that aren't required to complete any particular level mandatory to unlock new levels. just finishing each stage should be enough of a challenge; if you want to hide bonus levels behind collectibles, fine, but effectively requiring that you replay previously completed levels to get tricky collectibles is just a cheap, artificial way to increase playtime and difficulty
2019
doesn't do anything new for Bloober Team, but a decent enough horror walking sim provided you play on Safe Mode and skip the chase/stealth sequences that nobody seems to like
2010
Gears of War with manually controllable Witch Time and a lot more mobility. Story kinda sucks and the level design isn't up to par with Platinum's best action games, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun
Fun game with some rough edges up until the cheap-ass Bolt Cutter boss
TBD
I love a good narrative game and the visuals are at least interesting, but walking slooooooooowly across big maps while a drunken man curses at you is just not how I want to spend an hour
another delightfully cute and chill little narrative game from Grace Bruxner
2013
if you ignore the hype leading up to its release and just go into it expecting a dumb linear FPS with a dumb story that thinks it's much smarter than it actually is and has terrible horseshoe-theory politics... it's actually not half bad
that final battle sucks though
that final battle sucks though
2021
short and sweet first-person puzzle game set inside a giant mechanical puzzle box. wish it did a bit more with its mechanics, but it's a free student game developed in only a few months so by those standards it's well above average
2019
a brilliantly designed and crafted game that I admired more than I actually enjoyed playing, at least past the early hours. some people love having a thick layer of friction between them and the game world, some people love being harshly punished for failure by having to repeat a whole long-ass sequence of timed steps over and over, but I don’t
2018
Interesting hybrid of a Journey-style abstract narrative game with a much more purely abstract walking sim like Proteus. Can’t say it’s entirely successful - it would benefit from some combination of more varied gameplay, an (even) shorter length, or more of a narrative to give it a greater sense of structure and progression - but it’s a chill and trippy experience while it lasts.
2019
Perhaps a bit too long for such a mechanically simple game (it feels a bit like the Lego games tbh), but the sheer charm of the story and art direction count for a lot
as a walking simulator, it's competent, despite some questionable design decisions (infrequent autosave points, too many points where you have to stand around waiting for lengthy dialogue to end before you can continue to move forward), but if you're going to tackle such weighty issues in a game, you need to do a far better job than this. found the ending to be particularly distasteful