Immortals of Aveum is a somewhat fresh take on First Person Shooters. Instead of guns you use spells that function similarly to different types of guns.

IoA has an aesthetic that I like to call “MagiPunk”. Medieval or High Fantasy with Steampunk/Cyberpunk elements and influences, instead of science or technology, everything is the result of extremely advanced (often vibrant) magic. From character design to writing styles and themes to even the soundtrack, the influences are obvious and blend together pretty well.

Combat gameplay is fun and fast paced, with some puzzle elements. Although some fights can be overwhelming, with a few too many enemies (with some having annoying shields that are always up), and the fights end up being just red, green, and blue lights flashing all over the screen, which can be disorienting.

The story is basic, with almost MCU levels of writing, including a “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?” Almost every character refuse to be upfront about their feelings and goals, constantly flip-flopping their relationships and ideals, and keeping even the smallest of information a secret from the protag, in an attempt to make 5-D chess plays for… reasons. If even just one character took the time to explain things to the protag, there wouldn’t be as many problems. Instead it’s just a mess, filled with gaslighting and “I don’t have time to explain, just do it!”.

Definitely check it out for the gameplay when it’s on sale.

Biomutant is a game that tries to be a lot of different things, but also doesn’t try hard enough to commit to be any of them.

It’s an open world 3rd person shooter action adventure puzzle platforming rpg.

The open world is fine enough, with beautiful and mostly interesting environments, although some area can look very samey (all sewers look almost exactly the same, for example).

Biomutant claims to focus on ‘kung-fu’ combat, but is so inefficient that you’re better off using anything else. Finding or making a halfway decent gun will get you get through the game just fine.

The ‘puzzles’ aren’t even worth being called puzzles. For the most part you just rotate knobs until the yellow and white parts face in the direction of the matching color. You also have to be lucky to get a puzzle that can be solved within 10 moves. The game also tells you that increasing your intellect stat will increase the number of moves for these puzzles, but I saw no such thing happen in my playthrough.

The platforming elements are slippery, for lack of a better word. Constantly getting stuck in a rock or something, accidentally activating glide which just makes you fall down almost instantly, etc.

The story, what little of it there is, is basic. Which would be fine, but every single line of dialogue is a rough translation of they are saying. Which leads to you hearing the narrator say the same 5 or so lines over and over.

Biomutant is not as bad as people say it is. The game is kind of a fun ‘turn your brain off and shoot things’ type of game.

Vampyr is a vampire action game from the same people that are responsible for the popular/infamous Zoomer simulator Life is Strange.

Despite Vampyr having many interesting themes and ideas, it is somehow one of the most boring action games I’ve ever played.

Nearly everyone speaks in monotone. The environments are all dull, dark, drab and gloomy, with many of the areas looking very samey. Most of the characters aren’t interesting, and the few that are don’t really get to do much.

The biggest issue is that despite being a game about being a vampire, the game punishes you for doing the vampire related mechanics. You can feed on civilians for experience, but doing so can make the district they live in worse, potentially losing the ability to feed on other civilians. Story choices that are in favor of vampires are usually presented as a bad choice.

There are better vampire games to play…

Toem is a very cute and relaxing puzzle game. The puzzles aren’t super difficult, but they aren’t supposed to be.

I only wish there was a tiny bit more color in the game, as the monochrome starts to hurt my eyes after a while.

If you need a palette cleanser type game, definitely consider Toem.

Galak-Z tries to be an arcade shooter with rougelike elements, while also taking inspiration from ‘retro’ action cartoons like Voltron.

The problem is that ‘rougelike elements’ actually just means that progress is heavily based on good luck and prayers. Missions and map layouts are randomized, which is fine. Weapon and ship upgrades are also random, but usually you’ll go deep into a season before finding something actually useful for you.

What’s not fine however, is that healing items are not guaranteed. In my playthrough, I had an unlucky encounter early on in a season, leaving me with one health. At this point I thought the shop would sell one health after every episode, but nope. Enemies refused to drop health, supply boxes refused to give me anything other than missiles I can’t carry. No one should have to go through an entire playthrough without being able to heal, unless it’s a difficulty option you can toggle.

The gameplay is great, though the controls can take some getting used to, and the mech does move a bit awkwardly. There’s a decent variety of upgrades to choose from, assuming you can find them. I once went through 3 or 4 episodes only finding different muzzles…

The story is basic, but not in a bad way, considering the types of shows it’s trying to emulate. However it does end on a cliffhanger, and the developers currently have no plans to continue it, as most people tend to stop playing after reaching the of Season 3, and didn’t see a point in making something only a few people will see. It sucks, but it’s understandable. Having played the end of Season 3, I also understand why so many people quit at this point, it’s such an unfair and infuriating experience, no matter what upgrades you have.

Galak-Z is like that cartoon you really loved watching as a kid, then you grew out of it as you older. Then years later, you start getting nostalgic for those days and you want to rewatch it. You buy the box set, binge watch it to the end, filled with childlike wonder the whole time. Then you get to the last episode, you’re wondering how everything is going to tie together, and it just ends. The last episode was a cliffhanger, setting up for the next season. A season that never happened.

Foamstars is an attempt at trying to be the next hot multiplayer game by combining aspects of Splatoon and OverWatch.

The atmosphere is very chill and relaxing, but in order to earn rewards from the Battle Pass you have to continuously grind the multiplayer modes, which can be stressful. It doesn’t help that the player base is very small, so it can take several minutes to even get a match.

The combat is very fun though. Gameplay is tied to characters rather than weapons, with each character having their own playstyle. The problem is, as of writing this, there are only eight characters (six care available at the beginning, one is unlocked through leveling up, and another you have to buy). Only one person on each team can be each character, so if someone locks in a character you’re good at before you do, you have to choose another one.

The “Story Mode” really only exists to serve as an extended tutorial for the starting characters. Which would be fine, but there is an actual plot that was built up, expanded upon a tiny bit, and zero resolution to any of it. I thought that there would be a seventh story mode that unlocks after doing the others, but nope.

The in game shop is all cosmetics that you buy with real money. They are all super expensive though, and not really worth it.

Foamstars had some potential, but it was ultimately kinda wasted in my opinion. I think it would be better if the developers focused on making a full fledged story mode with fun levels and bosses, while making multiplayer secondary.

When I originally downloaded Gunhouse I thought it was going to be a colorful, wacky arcade shooter. I did not expect it to be a matching puzzle tower defense game…

You rearrange blocks of the same color to combine them and then move to the left or right to turn them into weapons. You also only get a few seconds at a time to do this. Despite knowing the mechanics and how they work, I constantly felt like I had no idea what I was doing, or if I was even doing it correctly. Perhaps it’s because of the short time limit to form your defenses, giving a sense of panic, making it easy to make mistakes.

I personally really liked the art style and aesthetic. In my opinion this is Gunhouse’s strongest point.

If you like puzzle games, maybe give this a try?

Uncanny Valley is a side scrolling horror game with nice pixel art. Unfortunately the pixel art is the good thing about this game…

It sets itself up as some super scary in-depth survival horror game where every single action you take can change the story with multiple possible endings to see. But it delivers on none of these things.

You just walk from room to room occasionally picking up an item or talking to someone until a confusing ‘nightmare’ cutscene happens. The story barely exists and what little story you get doesn’t really make sense.

Uncanny Valley demands a lot of work from the player with no satisfying rewards. You’re better off just watching a playthrough…

Onrush was a somewhat fresh take on arcade racing games. Instead of racing to the finish line, you compete in teams to compete different objectives.

However the servers shut down as of late 2022, making only solo gameplay possible. However, for some reason solo progression is locked behind being connected to the servers. Meaning you can’t increase your player rank (you can still get exp for it though?) or be able to unlock nearly all of the customization options.

General gameplay is fine for the most part, you have different vehicles to choose from with each of them having different but situational abilities. My two biggest issues are: 1. Vehicle durability can be a bit strange. Sometimes you can tank multiple hits from enemy vehicles, and other times you instantly explode if you look at a wall the wrong way.

The music and voice clips are fine, but are extremely repetitive. I personally got tired of it after around 3 matches.

Onrush was probably pretty fun online or with friends, but otherwise I wouldn’t recommend playing it beyond short bursts.

It should be stated that Interaction Isn’t Explicit isn’t a video game first and foremost, but rather an attempt at being an interactive educational art piece about game design.

It is very impressive visually, but since almost everything is in black and white it can difficult to understand what you’re even looking at sometimes. The sound design is great, and is accompanied by a beautiful synthwave style soundtrack.

The game goes into detail about various game design mechanics and philosophies, even citing games that supposedly do these the best. But at the same time it usually fails to uphold these same philosophies, having clunky controls, messy combat and often confusing level design.

The developer’s biases towards which games are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad’ become more pronounced as you progress. In a project like this, having such obvious biases are unnecessary and does more harm than if you were to take a neutral stance.

The developer claims that Shadow of the Colossus is the greatest game ever made that nothing released since even compares to it. That is not true at all and is merely a subjective opinion.

If you are interested in learning about basic game design philosophies being applied in a more practical (yet clunky and somewhat pretentious) context rather than reading about it in a book, definitely consider playing this.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a mess when it was first released, but as of 2024 almost everything has fixed with only minor bugs and glitches remaining.

The game looks great graphically and for the most part aesthetically as well. My only problem is that outside of a few fancy buildings, the environments are all very… dirty. Nobody in Cyberpunk knows how to clean or take out the garbage apparently, and there’s abandoned cars and landfills galore. It feels less like a futuristic cyberpunk city and more like a post apocalyptic wasteland with an infinite population trying to act like everything is normal.

Combat isn’t particularly hard, but is very fun with a variety of playstyles. With the right build you can cheese through just about anything.

The music is fantastic. And the radio has a great variety of genres to listen too. My only issue is that it’s hard to enjoy the radio, as combat constantly interrupts it, even when you’re just driving around minding your own business.

Minor NPCs all have the same personalities, they’re either rude, aggressive, psychotic killers, or all of the above. Major named NPCs aren’t much better. Most of them will be friendly or try to be friendly with you… until you just one small thing that they didn’t like, after which they’ll usually hate your guts for the rest of the game. I liked most of them, but I didn’t find myself too attached to them.

Then there’s Johnny Silverhand. As a player, it makes sense why people like him. He’s a mostly lovable asshole, and often offers his perspective on different quests whether you want it or not. But as the player character, the friendship between the two is really forced, as V has zero reason to want to be friends with him.

As for V, the player character, although you can customize them in any way you want, they still have a mostly set personality. You’re not playing as yourself inserted into this world, you’re playing an already built character with their own personality, you just decide how they look and their reactions to some dialogues. V also has four or five love interests, but these are restricted depending on V appearance. Which I think is a shame, since one of biggest draws of Cyberpunk is it’s progressiveness towards topics like self-expression, gender identity and sexuality, yet the romance options are severely limited…

The story is fine, after the opening sequences everything is just planning out the big mission at the end, you just need to decide on the who, what and how.

If you were put off by Cyberpunk’s original reception, or you were one of those people who abandoned after launch and never went back, I’d recommend giving Cyberpunk 2077 a second chance.

Callisto Protocol is a Dead Space knockoff from the original creators of Dead Space. The idea behind making a spiritual successor to a fan favorite series makes sense, but the developers seemed to have forgotten what it is that made Dead Space so good in the first place.

The plot is kinda everywhere, and nothing ties together until the last hour or two. A lot of the dialogue exists only as buildup for a cheap jumpscare.

I found the concept of the combat to be somewhat interesting. It revolves around dodging attacks, melee when you get an opportunity, and shooting once their defenses are down. But honestly you can just stealth kill or melee all of the enemies except the one boss and the 4-ish mini bosses.

The ‘horror’ aspect relies a little too much on cheap jumpscares (a common problem of modern horror), and the actually impressive amount of gory death scenes.

Not the worst game I’ve ever played, but I think it would be a really solid game if they leaned in more on the survival horror side instead of action, focusing on stealth and melee combat (with only one gun instead of the five unnecessary ones you can unlock).

If you’ve never played Dead Space are interested in it, at least give it a shot. Otherwise just play Dead Space.

Alan Wake is a very creative game in a genre where creativity was sparse at the time of its release.

The combat revolves around making enemies vulnerable with a light source, primarily your flashlight, and then taking them with the gun of choice. However combat can get rough when packs of enemies are swarming you all at once, especially if you don’t have a flare on you.

Character models look fine, except for the facial movement, which can be off putting.

There’s lots of characters in the plot, but none of them do much nor does anyone really get any growth or development.

The level design is fine and the environments themselves look great, when you can actually see them. Levels can get very dark, and even with the flashlight it can be frustrating trying to figure out where you are and where to go.

The plot doesn’t make sense most of the time, but it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense? No spoilers, just trust me.

While not a perfect game, if the concepts behind Alan Wake interest you, I’d definitely recommend a playthrough.

Bugsnax a very cute and… unique monster catching game. Instead of using these creatures for battle, you feed them to islanders.

The islanders are a group of dog/frog people called “Grumps”. They all have unique personalities and most of them (not Cromdo) are very likable. You help them with their problems and catch Bugsnax for them, and sometimes feed them those Bugsnax, which will change a part of their body.

The story is character driven, with the cast getting lots of development, but the main plot left me with more questions than answers. But in a good way.

The Bunsnax themselves are all adorable, with clever designs, and I will kill and die for Bunger. There are, in my opinion, a few too many reskins/recolors of some Bugsnax.

My only complaint is that there really isn’t a ‘final boss’ at the end, but it’s not that big of deal.

All in all, Bugsnax is a very chill and cute game, and I hope it gets a sequel soon!