Nice for Scotland to be getting some recognition (I myself am scottish). It's a short and kinda janky horror game that also happens to not be scary, but it's got a cool Lovecraftian theme, great visuals and fantastic voice acting. There's only about 3 actual monster encounter areas (not including "chases") so it's pretty easy and the gameplay can sometimes get stale. Far too short for the £20 asking price, so play it on Game Pass.

Overall: Not bad but still pretty mid all things considered. A cool concept that could have been done better but didn't disappoint me.

”Get to fuck, and when you come back, fuck off again”

Finally playing a game that isn’t voice-acted by Americans feels like surfacing from water for air.
Enjoyed this so much I played it in one sitting, probably because my favourite genre is “Guy In a Crumbling Facility”, to an extent where I’m certain they copied the homework of not only Infra but the HBO Chernobyl TV show in the game’s opening hours. Easy to bemoan the incredibly 2010’s cat-and-mouse horror gameplay during the moments you’re skirting around an enemy - as well as the fact that the entire game is hyper linear with a constant throughline of the game design yellow paint carrot-on-stick. There were certainly points where I went ah fuck this again when met with another Uncharted climbing sequence, but I felt that the entire game was paced very consistently, and the dialogue was pitch-perfect I love Roy and Caz.

Still Wakes the Deep really is only a short hop away from The Chinese Room’s prior A Machine For Pigs in schema, it feels to me that they were able to put what they learned from that project to task and lean into their strengths to make something that comes across as more whole, even if it took them surrendering A:AMFP’s fun thematics for something closer to a BBC One Original Drama.

Small notes:
-A shame that they couldn’t get Jessica Curry back on the soundtrack, which only ended up kind of middling here if I’m honest!!!!
-The rig was incredibly well-realised, I loved that you could see it bend and warp and shake in the wind and against the waves
-When the Horrific Otherworldly Entity is kind of beautiful to look at I really like dat.
-Maybe it’s just because I got motion sickness a few times, but the game feels like it could have been a VR game? The way the character’s arms respond to the environment was so Boneworks
-Enjoyed seeing real 70’s health and safety posters dotted around, they go so dumb hard
-It's not funny but I find it very funny that oil rigs have a "Mud Handling" facility

I loved this game as a kid. Back in 2004, when this game released, I was a huge Spider-Man fan. I hadn’t read any comics at the time but the Sam Raimi movies were among my favorites, especially Spider-Man 2. I remember watching this movie in a cinema with my dad when we were on vacation in Austria, good times, man, good times.

Since I only knew the live action movies and had watched some episodes of the cartoon that aired at the time, my knowledge of the Spidey universe was rather limited. I was really delighted to learn about all the different characters and villains of the Spideyverse, that were previously unknown to me. Because this game, and I think that is such a cool thing to do, is not only a one-to-one recreation of the eponymous movie. It does follow the story of the movie for the most part, but offers so much side-content and additional glances into this rich universe, it blew my mind as a kid. Characters like Shocker, Black Cat, Rhino, or Mysterio were all in this game even though they didn’t have any role in the movie. This was pretty uncommon for the time where video game adaptations of movies were basically just retelling the already known stories depicted in those movies. It definitely made me curious to find out more about my favorite super hero at the time and I will always be grateful for that.

Most players will remember this game for its gameplay, in particular for the way you move around in Spider-Man 2. Swinging through the cityscape of New York never felt this good. The way this mechanic was implemented truly felt like magic to me back then. Anywhere you looked, you could swing there in a matter of seconds. Movement felt so fluid and fast, I would sometimes just swing around for like 20 minutes without doing any story stuff or taking on side missions. With increasing speed, the game would introduce wind sounds and slightly distort its visuals so it seemed like you were going at a really high pace. It was the best.

Then there was the fighting. Admittedly, from today’s standards, combat in this game probably looks and feels kinda clunky and dated. Sometimes fights can get really messy and it becomes hard to keep an eye on everything that’s happening on screen. It’s also super weird to see bullets flying at such a low speed, even as a kid, I found that really strange. But the OOMPH it makes when you hit an enemy, feels so weighty and good. Seeing them rag-dolling around in the air and on the ground will never be not funny to me. Dodging attacks after your spider-sense warned you in the form of a white blink above your head, keeps fights interesting and fresh, and it truly tested my reaction speed. Looking back now, I feel like the developers of the Arkham games took strong inspiration from Spider-Man 2. And who can blame them? Even though fights would become somewhat monotonous, I always had a good time engaging with them. Shooting gross spider-balls to paralyze enemies or hanging guys from traffic lights was just cool and it always will be cool.

The game has flaws as every game does. Some of the side mission design is really uninspired. “Hey Spidey, someone stole my purse, you HAVE to catch the thief!!!” or “Oh no, I lost my balloon, will you help me, Spidey, pweeeaaaaase”… The first time that happens, it’s a fun distraction from the main game but after you caught 1000 balloons for all these clumsy kids of New York, you start wondering what you’re doing with your life. I also didn’t care for some of the collectibles as they felt tacked-on and not like they were a natural part of the gaming experience as a whole. Still, this game will always have a special place in my heart. It reinforced my love for Spider-Man and even introduced me to elements of the marvel universe, I hadn’t known before. In an ocean of lazy, cheap, uncreative, and barely-functional licensed games, Spider-Man 2 was a diamond in the rough.

Also, pizza side missions = best side missions…de deee de dip de dip de dip de dip deee de dip de deee de dip de deee…. :D

There are some interesting ideas here, but it's bogged down with annoying gameplay.
The survival mechanics just limit how much you can do and force you to clog your already annoyingly limited inventory space with food just to keep exploring.
Your spells are on a time limit and have to be added again via potions once that limit runs out. This is extremely annoying as you explore deeper in the miasma, you come to rely on the spells more.
Even something as simple as resource gathering is just time-consuming busywork that takes all day to complete coz some of the materials can't be grown on your personal farm, so you have to run to a particular area to gather them.
I wish the game had some quality-of-life improvements or accessibility options to remove things like this that annoy you, as the story seemed genuinely interesting from what I played. I doubt I'll return to this coz I was just stuck in a loop of having to gather ingredients to make a miasma run, only to die in the miasma and start all over again.

Wild Guns is a game I can remember seeing in arcades (I'm too old) but that I only played once. I thought it looked awesome and wanted to play so my parents gave me some change. I was young and this game is hard so hard that I played for 30 seconds, died, and didn't play again until last night.

Wild Guns is still an extremely difficult game but with practice you will find your rhythm. While you're finding your rhythm you will have an ok time. But once your rhythm you are in for a really good time. The gameplay is addicting, fast pace, crisp, and flat out extremely fun. The game is about the perfect length for this style of game and with its difficulty level. I love the aesthetics and feel of the western theme but with robots thrown in. It's very reminiscent of Contra where you're fighting humans then bam here aliens. Also, Annie is awesome and I'm not sure I can trust your judgement if you don't pick her. Also also, the soundtrack was surprisingly good which was helpful during that learning how to play phase.

This is an easy recommendation as long as your willing to take the time to struggle while learning the ins and outs of the game.

2024 ranked:

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

[SHELVED IN 2021: I WISH I COULD GET INTO ITTTT, I REALLY DO, IM SO MAD THAT I CANT GET INTO ITTTT
I LOVE IT VISUALLY AND HOW IT SOUNDS but i just think its really hard :( maybe its bc im really bad at shooting games]

FULL REVIEW:
Ahahaaaa... you Stupid. Bitch.

It finally clicked though. It really did. The first time I booted this up I was torn because I thought I was bad at FPS games
Then I wound up playing several FPS after the fact...
In a much better state of mind...
I was so glad
I nearly cried
I was smiling so big..

It wasn't that I sucked at a type of video game
It was because I just sucked at cruelty squad!!!! AND THEN KNOWING THIS, i kept dying and dying over and over pharmokinetics.. over and over.. wondering whyyy whyyyy
until it festered in my head

I became it's host and I saw it through. It was all just Pharmokinetiks btw, surprisingly enough. I rly was stuck on there because I knew i couldn't shoot like other games, I had to think about reloading diff and how quick the enemies can melt you just as you melt them(Except i mean its not like they all go for headshots and one shot you at first)..

The visual direction is so fucking good, its a great kind of stylized grime and ugliness that feels like chaos but it's so cohesive. I described the environments to a friend once that some interiors for places look like the word "Itchy." like physically eye watering and nasty feeling.

The weapons are all so fucking cool too, i love how they pretty much Mostly range through weapons that were discontinued in real life or some completely madeup horse shit

I love the augments and how many are utterly worthless and suck complete dick but you know somebody out there is using anyways or figured out how to get some unique niche out of it. I really grew partial to using the blast shield but also the gunk boosters were really useful too
everybody loves that grappendix
its funny like, i got the grappendix literally so fucking late like i got it during Bog Business when i know for sure some ppl would prioritize gettin it during Mall Madness or Apartment Atrocity, some ballpark of that shit
maybe even earlier
i don't even knkow
ive S ranked every fucking level
and there's still shit i dont know
ive seen countless secrets
im never gonna know it all
or maybe I will someday
but videos keep proving to me that this is something that there's so much joy 2 be had in with finding shit your own way and accepting the shitty gear and learning things for yourself with what works and what doesnt

and that bleeds into everything being so deliberate with the restarts and with the levels and how even when you beat this game youre never truly done because new things and new matter and new pieces reconstituting and reconfiguring, amalgamating and immulsifying all at once its all inevitable and its always going to happen no matter how much you peel away and tear away because there will always be something that remains that will make a New static
a New but also old form of being that grimly reaffirms that the conception of life, death and the everpressing march of greed and capitalism increasing until complete and utter disarray or collapse is inevitable for colossal big business and that even when uprooting and tearing entire concepts at their bare essentials its... s o g o o d
because its not even nihilistic in a way thats lame it just does not give a fuck, like this game is very nonsensical but there's a fine railing that keeps it all with sense all throughout and consistency with how things work from the lore to the locations to the corruption, AND THAT DOESNT EVEN GET INTO THE FISHING THAT MADE ME FEEL THE CLICK MOTION OF MY MOUSE IN MY SLEEP AND HEAR THE WATER NOISES IN MY HEAD WHEN GOING TO BED AT NIGHT AND I STILL HAVENT FOUND EVERY FISH THERE IS BUT I WILL!!!!!!!! I WILL!!! I GOT ALL THE ENDINGS I GOT ALL OF THEM AND I UNDERSTAND IT ALL!!!!!!!! I UNDERSTAND IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the blistering result of cerebral meringue compounded w/ undying scorch of the soul,you have a festering n eerily addictive game. It's deeply Beautiful to me
Without even directly touching on it in a spell-it-out talk to the audience hamfisted way but through the environment and dialogue off the targets- the potency of it all is brutal in themes, player expression & symphonied altogether in a decadent oil painting born from bile & persistence.

I love this game. And i will be back to this game a Fourth time. Faster. Stronger. Delete everything all over again. And walk through it like a 9-5 freezer breakdown like nothing happened.

this is my favorite fps by far atp, and im obviously looking forward to psycho patrol R (wheneeeever it drops, im aware its gonna be completely diff than cruelty squad but thats okay, because this really is one of those things that i don't think Can specifically be replicated the same way)

Amazing writing, story, quests and presentation. Overall an incredible world to explore.
The worldbuilding, characters and stories were a delight. The game at times has you make choices which are always difficult - they make you think about the problems of this world and its people, make you feel like you are part of it.
The reason this is an 8/10 instead of 10, is because of the gameplay mechanics and complete lack of polish.
At times I thought to myself that the developers never once bothered to play their own game. I understand that as indie devs making a game of such scale is quite a feat, so naturally they focus on what matters most to them (worldbuilding, atmosphere, writing). But they completely neglected the rest.
Now, I don't mind a story-based game with lackluster gameplay, but this is different. The combat mechanics, exploration gameplay, and RPG systems all play too large a role in this game as a whole for me to ignore how terrible they are.
And I have encountered a LOT of small bugs. Whether visual bugs, misplaced objects, spelling errors, audio glitches, performance issues, getting physically stuck, or just minor oversights - there are bugs aplenty. Nothing too big, just minor annoyances all throughout the game.
I'm not going to go into detail on exactly how the gameplay sucks. I could, but it would come out as 500 words of angry ranting. If you like how the game looks and want to experience this world you WILL enjoy the game. This is a great game.
I just wish they had the game be more focused on the things they put actual thought into.

Every once in a while I will get bored and play something off the wall. I got on the ole Switch and updated all of the retro systems since it had been a minute since I had. I flipped around through games for a minute bored and hovered over this atrocity of a cover art. I chose what I assumed would be a bad choice and booted up the game.

The first thing we get to do is pick our head…uhh character. By character I mean an Iguana head, a clown..? head, a Jack-o-lantern, or other equally stupid heads. Now that you’re a head of some sort it’s time to race… vertically. How vertically I hear you asking? Well you roll on a platform until you are under another platform and then somehow jump, even though you’re just a head, and use your tounge to grab the platform above you to vault you up. That’s it that’s the game. Oh but you also get to do it to some of the most sinful graphics and horrific sounds (I don’t dare consider it actual music) if all time. The fact this game is rated above a 2.5 is unbelievably to me.

Don’t play this unless you want to punish yourself.

I’ll save you time. It’s last on the list.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2024-ranked-1/

One of the most fascinating autopsies ever published. Project 06 envisions a world where Sonic 06 is a playable game and not a barely stable beta build, it's like imagining the full life someone could have lived if they weren't killed by flying space debris.

But make no mistake, no matter how functional Sonic 06 is: it fucking stinks. This is the horror though: it doesn't stink in any real outstanding way once the game can actually be played. I think it's actually significantly better than Sonic Heroes or Shadow the Hedgehog; but those games are hideous instruments of torture, anything is better than that!

Once you get a playable Sonic 06 you just get a very below average 3d platformer that is loaded with terrible gimmicks and bad level design. There are actual, genuine occasions where you can have fun playing Sonic 06. Crisis City was honest-to-gosh-in-heaven kind of exciting to play through here! But then you'll have to do an insipid sequence where you carry Elise around, or play as Tails and throw ring bombs at people, and you'll remember that Sonic Team has never met a good game design idea that they like. They are obsessed with gameplay diversions and will not focus on the one thing they are good at.

And once they figure out what it is they are good at, it's soooo over for Mario.

Shadow's stages are just more of the same, Silver's stages are MUCH better here, but once again, the Sonic 06 Acid Test means that being BETTER means that it just isn't completely fucking broken.

Many props though to the developer of this. I'm going to make a simile about football here in this Sonic game review if you'll allow: the Cincinnati Bengals were one of the most inept teams of the 90s, nicknamed the "Bungles" due to their crimes against football. In 2003, Marvin Lewis took over as coach and lead the team to back-to-back 8-8 seasons: their best two year stretch in literal years. He piloted them to a playoff berth right after that!

NFL writer Chris Wesseling dubbed Marvin Lewis "the man who raised the Titanic" in regards to this miraculous rescue of a shitty football team. That is what Project-06 feels like to me: lifting the Titanic from the bottom of the fucking ocean and getting it to work as boat again. The elongation of this Bengals metaphor doesn't end there though: as Marvin Lewis famously never won a playoff game in his almost 20 year tenure as head coach, despite winning a lot of games. He put it into neutral and the Bengals stayed there. But, given how BAD they were before that, neutral is surely better than shit? The same can be asked for Sonic Hedgehog. Sonic 06's identity is all based around being a piece of shit that is stuck to your shoe. Sonic 06 is one of the funniest games ever made because its so ill-advised in every aspect of design along with being a technical disasterclass. It feels like its identity has been sanded down to just another shitty Sonic game! We have plenty of those! Sonic Team can't stop making them! We want the freak show!!!

I still think Project 06 is an absolute MUST PLAY just to admire what the developer has done here. I truly think they deserve work for life due to the technical brilliance on display here, along with the gameplay tweaks they've made to render previously nigh unplayable sections actually functioning. They are clearly freakishly talented and "making Sonic 06 work" is like a doctor billing themselves as "bringing the dead back to life."

I admire the inclination toward crafting an open world that isn't relentlessly signposted, but most of the plot dungeons require near-complete traversal of the world to be unlocked anyway, so you'll most likely end up having to do three or four of them back to back. This is a bummer because every one of them is a terrible slog that relies heavily on the annoying Aflame status for difficulty. For the sake of your sanity, stack fire resistance!

Otherwise a delightful game with a rich sense of mystery, a lovely color palette, and an evocative soundtrack.

My rating is just the average rating for all the games.
Overall, it's great that almost the entire series is in one complete package. Without this, I would've never experienced Halo.

Halo CE: 6/10
Halo 2: 9/10
Halo 3: 8/10
ODST: 7/10
Reach: 10/10
Halo 4: 6/10

(2024 DEMO MARKED REVIEW BIT, SUBJECT TO CHANGE WHEN FULL GAME DROPS)
Not just a celebration of old games but old internet culture in a really specific way
its about those violent cartoonish crude flash games its about that old deviantart its about that how to draw anime hair its about those oval eyes its about newgrounds its about XD its about STICK FIGHT its about y2k its about that compressed mic and windows movie maker
I value that a hundred percent, a thousand percent
because to me thats the crux of joy with the internet and a digital hum of the soul

Quantifying how i feel about this game in feel is hard because its definitely one of those games where youre rewarded immensely for getting really good at it but I don't know if its Too hard or Too challenging to get everything or if its because im not very good at video games despite loving them and having beat a lotta difficult ones

It could b a lil of both! But idk ive seen ppl dog the fuck out of the green demon and do all the objectives of this demo slice ez pz
So it could just be a me thing,
It's funny like I can also appreciate how this game has Mario 64 inspiration, with the Odyssey way of not booting you out every time you gain a single hitmarker medal(kinda like a star in this game)
But the first moment I was playin I was like "holy shit.. this is almost Adventure era Sonic momentum gaining" until that thought came to a crashing halt when it clicked "ohh yeah wait.. thats a weighty lil dude this is definitely more suppose to be like mario"
All those mario with gun joke things came and went for this babe, all of them