I watched part of this game on YouTube. I cried a little.

I played it myself. I cried a lot.

I got a friend to play it while I watched. We cried a lot.

I watched other people play it on YouTube. I still cry.

But it's always a good kind of cry.

I'll preface this by saying that if you're the child of a single parent, or a single parent yourself, this game might have far more impact on you than it did me.

That being said, I can't really recommend this... experience. I have very little bad to say about it, but almost nothing good to say about it either. It's a decent if not basic story about a girl reflecting on her relationship with her mother, but it's not exactly in-depth or anything. The story is broken into basic interactive segments, like clicking on lights to play an animation showing where the relationship is at in the given time. There's not really any merit to this being an interactive experience rather than just like, a short YouTube video. For example, at one point the girl and her mother take a train ride, and the gameplay for the segment is inserting the coins into the machine, hitting the ticket buttons, dragging the tickets over to stamp them, then putting them in the slot. That's it. There's no real benefit to that being interactive beyond the simple entertainment of being able to fling the coins around the screen.

The story is not particularly interesting either, as it kind of just is a very simple life story. I can even sum up the story in a single sentence if I tried. The biggest compliment I can give this game is that it's told very well visually even if there's little to no point in it being interactive. If you're interested in seeing this story, go watch a YouTube playthrough that's over in like 45 minutes, then play it yourself if you think the experience is worth giving your money towards. Otherwise, there's no point.

Only Episode One is out as of writing this, might update in the future.

The only way I can think to describe this game is simple yet satisfying. I can't think of anything that Cultic tries to do that it doesn't succeed at. Exploration is fun, combat is engaging and satisfying, the horror is incredibly effective. I think if I had to say anything negative about it, I'd say the soundtrack can get repetitive and the final boss is too chaotic for my tastes and makes it hard to really know what's going on without some trial and error. But this game is an excellent blend of action and horror, with some crunchy and visceral sound design, punchy weapons, satisfying enemy variety and more. I've never been a fan of fire-based weapons in shooters before, but Cultic makes them some of the most fun.

If an action-horror FPS game sounds like something you're interested in, pick this up. You won't be disappointed.

I recently beat Resident Evil 4. Now, my PC isn't the best, but it's not bad either. I got a solid 60fps all the way through on Medium settings, and even managed to keep it around 60ish with high settings. It ran incredibly well, and looked great while doing it.

But THIS game? This game is so poorly optimized it barely functions. After an hour of compiling shaders on the menu and letting it finish, I was still getting 22fps. On the main menu. Which is just a window. I set the settings to as low as they will go, and the game looks awful for it, and still runs like garbage. 32 FPS at its peak.

If your game looks worse AND performs worse than games releasing the same week, maybe your game just is worse.

This game was everything I could have asked it to be. As someone who never really touched the original, and bounced off every time I tried to play it, I finally got to experience RE4 in a new-yet-faithful way that made me go, "Oh, I get it now." If this is how the original made people feel when they played it, I totally understand why it's so beloved now. I don't have to fight ancient controls, strange and campy writing that feels like people only like it ironically, or weird and incredibly movie-theater-arcade-machine button prompts and controls. I actually get it now. And I love it.

Left 4 Dead 2 is one of those quintessential PC games, the kind that everyone touches at least a little bit. This is one of those Valve games that's actually very basic in design and doesn't have a lot of content to offer, but what is there are the fundamentals polished to perfection, creating a game that never leaves you. Between the workshop content and the number of people always willing to play it, there's a chance you'll never uninstall it. It's one of the go-to games for my friends and I when we're looking for something to play together for a reason.

I never really liked Resident Evil that much. I never touched it growing up, and once I was old enough to be interested in it, it always seemed like this weird joke of a franchise where it sucked but people loved it ironically or because they grew up with it. Between stilted dialogue, nonsensical plots, weird and asinine game design choices, and the most recent games I was aware of being awful, I had no interest in it.

At least until I saw footage of this game. I tried the demo and I was in love. I love the exploration and the unlockables, I love the challenges and the way the game handles horror. This game is amazing, and if this is how people saw the original when it came out, I can understand why they hold the original in such high regards despite its flaws. But this game? This feels like the original without those weird quirks that make it so hard to appreciate as a newcomer. No fighting with tank controls, no muddy backgrounds or strange mechanics, no bad B movie writing. Just everything I ever wanted to appreciate with the original but never could. And now I can, thanks to this game.

This game tried some new things, and I respect it for that, but not all of them worked for me. I get what they were going for with no regenerating health and leaning on team supplied medkits instead, but it still fell into the CoD trapping of "cinematic" running sequences where people shoot at you and you can't really avoid damage. The two vehicle sections in the campaign have me torn. On one hand, they're interesting variety, and the tank section was really impressive and engaging. On the other, both sections felt really awkward to control and kicked my ass on Hardened. The plane sequence especially felt bad, as I had so little idea of where to shoot and a loose grasp on the controls. I also had a minor bug where the screen goes black and white when you check your objective, which it's supposed to do, but then it does it every time you crouch or uncrouch, and it got really annoying. I know some other people had the same issue, and apparently the only fix is to just not use the check objective feature at all.

The story was nothing special, but I respect the fact they tried something new with it. It's not that great, but it's not what I would expect from a CoD game. It was sort of interesting, but it almost felt like it didn't really amount to much.

Overall a decent experience, and something new to check out if you're into the Call of Duty franchise, but nothing to really seek out.

The only reason this game was actually tolerable was because I deleted the dialogue files. Which, (while the writing is god awful too, don't get me wrong) is less about the quality of writing and more about the sheer quantity of it. If you mute the dialogue, you'll still be standing around FOREVER and it's absolutely painful. The gunplay is solid, easily the best in the series, but the balance is completely whacked. Legendaries drop like candy and the loot is rarely rewarding. For reference, I picked up a legendary shotgun called the Hellwalker at level 6, and it was basically oneshotting everything up to level 36, when I finally had to switch to a different gun that did a better job oneshotting high level enemies.

Overall, stay away unless you're dying to see what the fuss is about. This is a hard game to love.