i feel like when god descended from heaven to create Portal and time came for the sequel, he made a game truly worthy of bearing the torch. so worthy, that he deemed us unfit for only one, and so split it into two. he took the charm, the wit, the humor and the presentation, and gave it to Portal 2. then, he took the extremely intelligent puzzle design and gave it all to The Talos Principle.

like i said in so many words, this game doesnt have a whole lot in the way of a soul, and yet the strange themes and presentation maintain interesting enough to keep my attention alongside the true appeal: the puzzles.

this is a very standard puzzle game with the laser puzzles and block puzzles and fucking clone puzzles, but theyre used in a way that makes it very satisfying to complete regardless. i kept coming back to this game not to see what the story had to offer or to keep getting good boy points from God, but just to get more tetris pieces.

despite the complete lack of replayability or charm, The Talos Principle is a very smart game that knows exactly what it is and offers exactly what you want, and im very very happy i played it.

and i only had to look up THREE solutions because im a smart boy

i'll always be a huge advocate for Telltale. their style of game might not be traditional, or really even always work, but it's still a valuable interpretation of what this medium is capable of. telltale in their heyday gave us some of the most well written and charming narratives this industry has gotten.

and when people mention telltale's heyday, this is the second one they mention after Walking Dead. and considering the pure excellence of that story, that's high praise. The Wolf Among Us holds such a reputation for a good reason, too: the writing and style of it's strange noir fantasy world.

it may not have any character as three dimensional as Lee Everett but the characters that are here all have tons of characterization and nuance in what they say and how they act; the world of TWAU feels incredibly lived in.

as far as writing goes, i really only have one problem. when people criticize Telltale they usually say that "they should just make movies," and while that's an incredibly short-sighted argument there are some aspects of it that hold true. the player (at times) can feel like a bit of an afterthought. in The Walking Dead (season one) every choice the player made affected everything: from small things to who does and doesnt like Lee to even who is alive by the end, and they all changed the story drastically. there are still some heavy choices in this game, but some of them feel more inconsequential than others, which is a shame.

aside from that small complaint, this is still Telltale at their best. which is saying something, because their engine still sucks ass. like, the mouse cursor is a physical object that's moved around by the camera. what the fuck telltale

this game is ridiculous. these kinds of infinite, randomly generated indie games have been hugely important to me for a long time and this is one that i just missed, for some reason or another. thanks to unreal, i got it for free, and oh my god im so happy i did.

this game scratched an itch ive had for a very long time. binding of isaac will always be one of my favorites, but with Rebirth and especially Afterbirth, rounds just kept getting longer and longer and items got less inventive and rooms got significantly worse (especially with those shitty spawners) but nuclear throne takes it right back to basics.

snappy, ten minute rounds full of pulse-pounding action with extremely satisfying visuals and sound design makes this feel like bliss. after playing ruiner, i feel like i just died and went to a heaven where shit actually responds to my inputs. everything about this game is quick, and snappy, and precise.

and i love it. it brings me back to a simpler time, when indie games were starting to get really big and spelunky and BoI are takin' the world by storm. playing nuclear throne feels like wrapping up in a warm blanket i forgot about. its probably a bad sign that my comfort zone is hyper-violent indie games about dying repeatedly.

the visual and sound design of this game is absolutely killer but unfortunately the gameplay is too much of a slog — intentional or otherwise — to recommend playing alone and you’d have to play with someone as pretentious as you to appreciate its best aspects in co-op. i love what this game is going for but maybe this era of muddy third person shooters wasnt equipped to handle what this game tried to deliver, and nobody has the balls to try something like this ever again. i dont ever want to play kane and lynch 2 again but god damn if im not gonna think about it for a long time