Lucas Pope doesn't miss. An extremely charming and light-hearted take on a Papers Please style gameplay loop with a small narrative that builds over the campaign. It's simultaneously short and longer than you'd expect. I think it sticks around exactly long enough to not overstay it's welcome. I didn't expect to get emotionally attached to your silly robot friend and his little bit of character growth.

This isn't worth the price of a Playdate, but if you own a Playdate I think you need to play this. It's fantastic.

Another controversial playdate season opinion, but I'm not having much fun with this one. I'm 19 stages in and found out there's a whopping 50 STAGES. I think I've done enough to have an opinion.

I appreciate the weird aesthetic and really fun animation, and the way the game makes a unique use for the crank is really charming. I just find the actual puzzles often really frustrating. It's a lot more trial and error than actual puzzle solving.

I'm gonna keep trying here and there, but I feel like I'll end up abandoning this before the end.

This is held up as one of the best VR experiences currently and I feel like I'm being gaslit by the community at large by this sentiment. Maybe I just had the worst possible impression?

So this game is meant to be a rougelite. You're supposed to die pretty quick and then through repeated attempts unlock new gear and upgrades and learn how to play better until eventually you get the satisfaction of a perfect run to the end.

I uh, I beat it on my first run. Default rifle. It was really easy. Frustratingly so. It all looked and felt cool but had absolutely zero observable depth.

The first boss fight was okay. A big guy floating in the air and you shoot him a bunch and take cover. Sure. The second boss fight? One of the worst I've experienced in VR. So frustrating that by the time I was done with it I wanted to stop playing. I kept going though because I couldn't find a means to save and resume later.

Then I just went right to the third boss and won that one too. I felt nothing. Honestly the whole time I was tired because it was late and I was DESPERATE for something to kill me so I could hop out of VR and go to bed. This game was annoying.

I ended up refunding it. I don't get it.

I think outside of Half-Life: Alyx, this is the best VR game so far. Believe me, I think that's just as weird as you do. A Walking Dead spin-off should not be the most compelling VR experience you can buy but it really is.

This is actually my second full playthrough, originally on the HTC Vive and this time on a Meta Quest 2 and both runs have been fantastic experiences. Great combat, a fun gameplay loop of exploring and looting materials to craft and upgrade better gear, and a really engaging story that offers a surprising amount of room for roleplaying. It's fantastic. Hits just the right spot between 'too scary for me' and 'exactly scary enough' too.

Gameplay-wise it lives up as a worthwhile Valve-quality new entre in the Portal franchise. It felt really good to be playing high quality test chambers again and getting to see a few mechanics that were scrapped from Portal 2 fully realized was cool.

Narratively? Very disappointing. Almost a beat-for-beat retread of Portal 2 with weaker characters. It introduces cool ideas with lots of potential and doesn't really do anything with them, and then ends on a miserable anti-climax. Huge bummer that really soured this in my mind.

I still think it's worth your time if you're a fan of Portal, especially considering it's free.

Technically this is only a review of the Overcooked 1 content as me and my girlfriend finished the original version of 2 before rolling back to this to play the original game and the DLCs. This collection is fantastic and absolutely what you should buy if you're interested in playing Overcooked.

Switch port did experience a few stages with notable slowdowns that made the already hectic gameplay kind of annoying, but it happened in maybe 2 stages out of the 60 or so we probably cleared. Still worth picking up.