I was surprised by My Friendly Neighborhood: delighted to find an array of tightly-designed classic survival-horror systems that knocked me on my ass more than thrice. The attention to design detail took me back to the likes of Code Veronica, where Resident Evil placed a slightly higher priority on puzzle solving and multi-complex backtracking.

Played on the Survival difficulty — one step above normal — I found this precise level design that delivered a perfect blend of exploring every nook for ammo, piecing-together puzzles across the interlinking map, and the careful resource management of combat scenarios (where you ask if it’s better to shoot or run). I even got that sort of perverse-joy when I died after not saving for nearly an hour. Like, “Alright, let’s go!” Of course, I proceeded to make that same mistake a few more times at different intervals in a way that managed to elongate my five-hour run into nine hours, but I was happy (and very tense).

The Neighborhood might not make everybody want to be a neighbor, but the precise love for the “behind the scenes of Sesame Street” evoked a deep sense of affection for this lifelong Muppet fan. Each set piece evoked a unique sense of time and place just outside the margins of some of my oldest memories. It’s unlike anything I’ve played in another mascot horror game — or any other game at all. It’s not quite gonna earn a ton of nine-out-of-ten scores from most critics, but I think Destructoid got it right when they gave it an eight-point-five.

Any game I finished in one single session is one I have to like, immediately and passionately write about.

What a game. I mean, I don't have the full language to describe it. I suppose if I had to I would say it's a 'Tarot-Based Game That's About Grief, Loneliness And Connection' or something like that, but it's also about love and sisterhood and the end of reality and electioneering and sacrifice and also having tea with your friends.

Sometimes when the curtain falls on a game that ends up feeling this powerfully personal to my experience with it, I'm even more in awe than I was before, because of how wonderful the magic trick it played on me was done. I don't know how complex or how simple the branching choices and dialogues were, but I now simply cannot imagine the game playing out any differently.

I love this so much.

It's a genuinely affecting and beautiful game, and I'm begging you to play it.

My favorite thing a single-player game can do is make me feel like I’m not alone. It makes me feel like I’m in a community — where others care about me — and we make each others’ lives better. This is the opposite of what I expected from The Talos Principle 2, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop thinking about how it makes me feel more connected to humanity as a whole.

I just finished this thirty-hour puzzle game that blew-away any expectation I could have had for it.

I could have had my opinion colored on this as a part of the publishing team, yet my heart is clear on this: the Talos Principle 2 is a grand achievement for game design, full stop.

This game has fundamentally changed the way I view the world ever since I finished this game.

Disco Elysium fully encapsulates what it means to live in a cruel world with different ideologies that strive for the betterment of the people (or certain people), but ultimately contradicting itself. However, it is the people that live in this cruel world who end up suffering in the long run. The game focuses on the interactions of these individuals (NPCs), and how they manage in their lives. With their beliefs. With their perspective.

Contents of the game consists of very broad and rich language that delves deep into the smallest of details and has an approach towards the world in a very unorthodox way compared to other CRPGs in terms of details; ranging from describing a locker that has no inherent meaning to the absolute most grandiose of abstract concepts.

Mentioned before, the unorthodox method of how Disco Elysium approaches their world is not through combat encounters, but rather with dialogue and rolling a dice equalling to "speech checks" in order to progress a storyline or to do mundane tasks that may (or may not) play a huge role in future endeavors.

What lies in the heart of this game is the personification of your skills. They have their own narrative voices in dialogues, and depending on what skill you have more leniency towards to (through skillpoints), the stronger that voice will be in dialogues. They will often have their own input on choices you make or who you talk to, where you are in the environment or even tackling ideas and thoughts you may have; seemingly having influence on the choices you may or may not make.

The world building is fantastic. It takes heavy inspiration from post-Soviet countries from our world in order to present a semi-working society and a looming shadow of an idea that has waned from decades passed, further showcasing a tired and broken environment with buildings barely standing and worn down pavement from a history that is slowly fading into time. It effectively mirrors the same state of countries that we see in our real world.

There is a bunch of replayability with different endings and different choices that eloquently illustrates a world that reflects ours. A captivating and mysterious world ready to be unveiled with a really strong story about who our main protagonist really is.

I heavily recommend this to anyone who has the patience and time. A 5/5 masterpiece.