Sights & Sounds
- As far as remasters go, it seems difficult to work with assets from the blocky early 3D period of the late 90s. Regardless of your skills, you're starting with awkwardly shaped polygons and muddy JPEG backgrounds
- That is to say, this remaster of the LucasArts classic Grim Fandango is visually uneven. The updated textures on the 3D models look pretty nice, but the conversion to 16:9 has stretched the character models a little bit. I probably wouldn't have noticed were I not looking at direct comparisons, but they are noticeably squished. The backgrounds appear to be mostly unchanged, but the lighting and shadows have been heavily revamped. Most indoor parts of the game are far darker than they used to be if there isn't a light source nearby
- The voicework is as spectacular as ever. It was my favorite thing about the game when I played the original way back in the early 2000s, and it's still a collection of standout performances. Manny, Glottis, and Meche are all of course excellently voiced, but even the side characters are great. I still like to parrot the French accent of the roulette table's croupier
- Setting my nostalgia glasses aside, it's evident that the game still looks very dated, and even the remaster doesn't really do much to update it. Thankfully, the strong art direction and setting still look good after all this time. The Land of the Dead and all its Dia de los Muertos inspired populace look great, whether you're milling about your office or trying to hide from monsters at the bottom of the sea
- The jazzy soundtrack is also a highlight, and Year 2's music is particularly great. The less boisterous tracks sound like background music for The Maltese Falcon

Story & Vibes
- The narrative is extremely good; with all the time skips and varied settings you traverse, it actually feels like you're going on an adventure. The plot follows Manuel "Manny" Calavera, a travel agent in the Land of the Dead. In this version of the afterlife, the dead are required to embark on a treacherous journey before their soul can finally move on. The wicked may only get a walking cane to assist them, but the most righteous score a "double-N" ticket for the No. 9, a luxury train that allows them to skip the whole ordeal
- (Skip this bullet if you don't want spoilers for the set-up) Although Manny was formerly a consistent employee-of-the-month, he's recently been outshined by his colleague, Domino Hurley, who seems to be extremely shady and appears to have connections to the realm's seedy criminal underbelly. The plot kicks off after you find that Hector has stolen the ticket of Mercedes "Meche" Colomar, a virtuous soul who spent the majority of her life doing charity work for children. Meche sets off on her journey anyway, forcing Manny to try to track her down on a world-spanning adventure to ensure her path across the land of the dead is safe and successful. Along the way, you'll find yourself in the middle of a huge conspiracy, so you should probably see about tidying that up, too
- One of the highlights of the narrative has to be the variety in the settings you traverse. You'll guide Manny through mundane offices, the tops of tall skyscrapers, spider-infested woods, secret underground tunnels, and beatnick jazz clubs. And that's just the first half of the game
- All the while, you'll be accompanied by the friendly demon, Glottis. In a game full of comic relief, he's the comic relief-iest--a constant source of eye-rolling gags and physical comedy that will probably annoy you at first, but will eventually become endearing. As far as sidekicks go, he's one of the best. I'd place him just a spot below Disco Elysium's Kim Kitsuragi
- There's some great emotional range going on here. In spite of the ubiquity of death and its prominent place in the plot, the humor is constant and often very funny. Corny, but still capable of eliciting some chuckles. In other moments, the game is very contemplative and soulful. As you'd imagine, the fact that there's an afterlife gives you plenty of time to regret your former life's actions

Playability & Replayability
- Although LucasArts point-and-clicks had traditionally been fixed camera, front-on, 2D affairs, Grim Fandango was their first departure from that perspective. Unfortunately, expanding to fill a new dimension came with some growing pains, specifically in terms of how you navigate. Like early Resident Evil games, LucasArts opted for tank controls as your main mode of locomotion. These have always been annoying, and it wasn't any better in Grim Fandango. Luckily, the Remaster only features these as a settings menu option, but note that you'll need to endure them if you want to 100% the game. Turn them on before leaving your office at the beginning if you want to suffer for that unlock
- Due to playing so many point-and-clicks over the years, I have a high tolerance for unintuitive or seemingly random puzzle solutions. That said, Grim Fandango is obtuse enough in this regard to test a saint's patience. I was able to remember many of the more ridiculous solutions from the original, but I still had to consult a guide. The GameFAQs walkthrough I used was published in 1998, and part of me wonders if it's the same one I used back in middle school
- Retreading these puzzles has given me a bit of a new perspective: they're largely bad. The setting, art, and story of Grim Fandango may all be world-class, but the puzzles are nonsensical even by LucasArts standards. If you insist on beating this one blind, be prepared to not know what you're supposed to do roughly 95% of your playthrough
- If you can stomach the gameplay, this is definitely a game worth replaying. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking, but Grim Fandango's narrative, characters, and art design basically guarantee that this will be a game I come back to every now and then

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a classic, but not one that I would necessarily call "timeless". Game design has come a long, long, way since 1998
- I wouldn't be opposed to a full remake of this game (but keeping the original voicework) if such a thing were possible. Given Disney's track record of "vaulting" content that didn't sell well at release, I think this is the last official version of Grim Fandango we'll see, unfortunately
- After seeing that the remastered visuals weren't anything that would benefit from a larger screen, I wound up just playing this on the couch on the Steam Deck. It performed well, and the analog sticks made the tank controls a little more bearable

Final Verdict
- 8.5/10. Before playing the remaster, I was totally prepared to give this game something in the 9.5-10 range, but actually revisiting it has given me some pause. The story, art, and voice work are all still incredible and hold up, but I have less tolerance for the unintuitive puzzles than I used to. Some of them are actually pretty bad in retrospect. That said, this is absolutely a must-play for any point-and-click fan

Like writing reviews? Check out my free Steam game giveaway

After you're done trying this free game, maybe pick out another from my Perpetual Steam Key Giveaway

Sights & Sounds
- There's an unmistakable charm in the pixel art of this game. It evokes old memories of playing stuff like Monkey Island, Loom, and The Dig. If you've ever enjoyed the look of a LucasArts point-and-click, you're bound to find the detailed settings appealing
- At the same time, it feels distinct. It eschews the front-on 2D perspective for more of an isometric one. While this works favorably aesthetically speaking, it hampers the gameplay somewhat (more on that later)
- The music is excellent for the mood. Someone with a more refined palette will probably have a greater appreciation for the synthetically recreated waltzes and other melodies backing the scenery, but even a pleb like me can still appreciate the mood they help set

Story & Vibes
- The narrative is structured as a frame story encompassing three major acts. It's like The Canterbury Tales, but much shorter and stripped of the bawdy humor
- The frame, in this case, is a fancy masquerade aboard a luxury train populated by masked attendees who don't know quite how they wound up there
- Each act is a vignette in which a specific partygoer attempts to explain the events leading to their arrival to a (suspiciously casual) person sitting at one of the tables
- The pacing is excellent, and the ordering of the acts helps ramp up the unease and dread. Without delving into spoilers: the first act features a difficult social situation in a hotel room; the second, a severely depressed woman dealing with her problems using the most irresponsible laudanum that Victorian healthcare could provide; and the final act tells the tale of an oppressed doctor going to great lengths to increase his healing abilities
- The vibes are satisfyingly creepy and haunting. The whole experience has the air of acquaintances telling ghost stories around a campfire

Playability & Replayability
- From a mechanics standpoint, if you've played one point-and-click, you've played them all. You click on everything, you talk to everyone, and you try to crack unintuitive and sometimes frustrating puzzles with solutions that only make sense to the people who made them
- Remember how I said that all the beautiful pixel art had some downsides for the gameplay? Well, by imitating the visuals of a bygone time, a lot of features get lost. It's difficult to identify progression-vital items when most small objects look like various smears of color, and some items blend in so well with the sometimes muddy-looking floors and backgrounds that you'll spend several minutes pouring over the background for things to click on. Combine those negatives with the usual quirkiness of point-and-click puzzle design, and you have a recipe for multiple frustrating moments
- Not sure if I'll replay anytime soon, but part of me does want to revisit this on a chilly October evening sometime in the future to get the last achievement I missed

Overall Impressions & Performance
- It's a little 2-3 hour narrative-focused indie game, so it won't push your hardware too hard. Ran well on the Steam Deck
- I would be remiss to point out that this game is totally free on Steam. Absolutely worth a shot at that price
- Yet another game I've played that's a reference to one of Italo Calvino's works. I played Genesis Noir last year as well, and know it has a sequel coming out soon. Guess I need to start reading some of his stuff if it's this influential on developers

Final Verdict
- 7.5/10. An excellent point-and-click that manages to cram a surprising amount of story into a neat little package. The bow on top is the fact that you can experience it on any budget

Please don't read what this actually is, just play it. It's short (20-30m?) and one of the coolest things I've ever seen come out of romhacking. Patch over at the author's profile on smwcentral.

CW: Low effort review.

The unassuming name wouldn't lead you to believe it won the Questionable Level Design Contest '23, but from the way things are phrased it, it's as if it were an easy pick! And it's not really hard to see why!

Spoilers below here.

How is this possible? LOL, absolutely genius concept, this is the kinda stuff I play video games for. How one came up with the idea of the entire game being just the map movement (with occasional bits of hybrid normal and map platforming) is beyond me; or at least I feel like it is. The individual texts for a lot of squares were humorous and some of the level design just a bit mean.

And yet, something about reaching the end of it, with the long walk and ever so faintly sarcastic text, still felt sincere. Like "yea, here's my thing." Awesome.

Years have passed since I’ve played my beloved Hyper Light Drifter. I wanna say I played this in 2016(?), a shrimple 14 year old girl who only knew it from a 20 second twitter clip that was rlly emotionally evocative. Didn’t know one thing about the gameplay, went fuck it we ball mode and played it. It was, back then, one of my favorite games ever, and over the years I began to doubt that. It’s no-dialogue story gimmick, good music, and catchy title were the only bits that stuck with me as years passed. I thought I’d been duped a bit emotionally by some easily marketable ideas, and that I wss some kinda ‘cool games poser’.

Do you know how happy I am to report that I was right in this case? I’ve been right a lot in this way recently- replaying Soul Hackers and Bastion lately showed me that I actually underrated or didn’t fully grasp how good some of these games were, and I’m really glad I hissed away my initial urge to avoid childhood joys out of embarrassment.

Here’s some history I think is an interesting little primer: I like three of the Zelda games. Played most of em. Like 15 of them probably? I genuinely hate all but three: Zelda 1, Minish Cap, and Four Swords (I’m a bit of a Game Boy Bitch it seems. Never had one growing up but I am!). Zelda 1 is like- one of the first games I recall playing. My dad’s parents sold their childhood SNES and it’s games but I did grow up using their old NES for some reason. They amassed a pretty good selection I think given the fact some weird poor kid from the middle of nowhere was making the buying decisions: Zelda 1 and 2, Blades of Steel, NES Golf, Final Fantasy 1, and Mario 2. I played the hell outta Zelda 2 the most I think. It was kinda infuriating! I wanted all the answers!

Later on in life, I really took a liking to Zelda 1. It’s simple, everything’s pretty to the point, and there ain’t many games like Just Zelda 1 made today. Like- you’ll have kinda similar things, right? But then there’ll be an extended segment that makes you go “….Oh. That’s Link To The Past, right.” and it kills the enjoyment I have, genuinely! Just think of LttP- ugh! What a- what a fucking specific and weird and unapproachable dull thing. Link to the Past.

Anyway- what I like in Z1 is it’s specificity and simultaneous lack thereof. Every time I get an item in Zelda 1, I know what it does immediately. If it’s long enough since I’ve upgraded a piece of equipment, I can feel a hankering for the eventual upgrade of it. If I ain’t seen a secret area in a bit, my mind tunes to look for them effectively.

Most importantly, though: the plot (however simple it is in Zelda 1) is a transfer of information. You don’t make a lot of active plot progress until the end of the game in Zelda 1. You have the NES game’s manual to tell you what is happening, and you have whatever story clues are contained in the individual moments. What’s happening here, though, is a structured pattern of plot-by-learning. Not exposition, really. Just other people having info, and the story forming as you’re given more context for how it all concludes. Nothing is ‘happening’, though. However, this is story a type of story I find universally compelling. Especially once you get into the nitty-gritty- who else knows that thing you just learned, and why didn’t they tell you before?

Zelda 1’s story isn’t that interesting, really. Like let’s be honest- I’m not gonna call it the masterclass in simple plot communication. But like…..I certainly remember it more fondly today than anything that happened in Ocarina looking back. Hyper Light Drifter takes the addicting and lovely parts of this structure to the extreme: information is conveyed through pure emotional connection. You see images, hear some tone-setting music, your heart does the rest of the work. You really do not need to hear words, you just need to understand at the base level what is most important in each individual scene.

Heck, it’s even got the hyperfocus on an underground dungeon world!

There’s a tendency to call this game cryptic that I really despise, though. It’s not. There’s this stupid thing where you can get the story of the game by obtaining these tablets that translate everything about the backstory and uh…you don’t need that. I’m the Hyper Light Hypewoman and I’m probably never doing it, honestly! Each part of this game is perfectly communicated. If you think there’s something missing it’s likely not that you misunderstood anything- it’s just That Simple, and your brain expects more.

What happens, as I see it- is incredibly simple. Our main character, THEE Hyper Light Drifter, awakens to find a disease they’ve had for a while worsening. They start blacking out for portions, seeing these visions of a beast killing them and sparking the end of humanity. Usually, at the end of these visions, a scary ass dog appears leading them in different directions. The Drifter trusts this dog for no good reason. Really, they shouldn’t based on the facts: these visions of the future they start getting feature the dog adjacent to themselves drowning within another creature’s maw, and civilization as a whole getting blown the fuck up.

We get context for the creature that will kill us and it’s supercomputer papaw throughout 4 episodic chapters. Universally, people are hurt by it after thinking they could approach it like any other situation. Not even the computer in some cases: just other species of lil peoples that suddenly get possessed by murderous ideology. These people have NO reason to trust others. Neither do you, kinda!

Another driftin’ sick fellow, though, dies shortly after risking life and limb to protect you. This reaffirms the Drifter’s inherent trust in others, and once the time comes, their trust is rewarded. They defeat the beast and escape alive and healthier after the scary ass dogthing leads them to safety. They’ve protected the world, but disabled their method of escape (the supercomputer that controlled the elevator system between the lower world and the surface). They will die, but alone with the dog and no one else now. Not from their painful sickness. It’s not perfect, but it could be considered better. And not to mention, life-affirming: it’s so difficult to trust others. I’ve been burned basically every time I’ve done it. It’s nice to consider this impulse still might not be worthless.

Hyper Light Drifter, overall, is a game about constant trust. It is a game full of secrets, where the artist's touches prompt you and reward you for trusting them. There's a universal Secret Symbol: you see it, you know something's there. Sometimes it's just a room with a key for ya to take. Isn't that nice? A lot of the times you land in a three-screen dungeon leading up to, you guessed it, a key. Sometimes it feels like you're being tricked. Could be a trick, even, honestly. But you always get a lil treat for your efforts. A reward for handing over your trust. There's a lot more about the game's design I think supports this philosophy but like- number one, I'm just gonna be repeating my words for like six more paragraphs if I do that, and number two: you don't want that at all. Like duh. That would blow. Not sure if what's about to follow is better, but like you'd hate it either way so I'll take those odds.

Okay, we already toyed with doing some Tim Rogers self-obsessed storytime bullshit during the Zelda Talk, but like- you either closed this review cuz of that or you’re itching for more. Ya want more? Oh, I got more.

In 2019 I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I have never told my family this, and I didnt tell a single person in my life until 2023. It's like- a fairly well known fact now. In my everyday life, things have gotten harder to manage vis-a-vis that, but y’know, back then it was simple: my inner monologue was hateful towards myself, and I would sometimes say things out loud and immediately recognize I was having a vivid memory-hallucination so strong I forgot where I was. Between then and now, we’ve got one major difference: trust issues. It’s about to get a little heavy so y’know. Trigger warnings and what not. There’s like- usually two or three things people talk about when they say that, so I hope you know to save this tab for later if that hurts right now.

In the years between then and now, I’ve lost every person I trusted for the most part. Most of my childhood friends killed themselves or were killed by their families. One of these particular suicides, which happened in 2017, I walked in on after it had happened. Which was a lot to work with as a teen. There were things I promised them I’d do I never got to, and vice versa. Obviously I dont like- blame any of them. Thats a really unfair thing to do, I think. But it really hurt my ability to trust others. Still, though, I had to actively try to trust people when I could regardless of how much it was hurting me to do so. I've always been a hopeful little soul, and people looked to me constantly for inspiration or to uplift their mood. When you're met with all that, you can't let that crack at all. You have to be this perfect emblem for others, even though it sucks. For a long ass time, I did trust like- one particular person a lot (genuinely!) and that isn’t true any more. You’ll remember when I threw out 2023 earlier? They helped me a lot starting in like- 2022 to help me get past a lot of this shit. We talked nearly every day for like a year. They were kind in the moment when I tried to talk about the symptoms of my schizophrenic disorder which was like- pretty new to me! Hadn't had much of a chance to talk about it before, but now here's someone who knows all the terminology that I'm having to use right now!

So, early 2024 rolls around and I have a crazy schizophrenia hallucination episode. I live alone with no in-person support network at this point. I try to kill myself the same way my old best friend did back in 2017, just in a public park at night instead of a house. At some point shortly after I tell them this, they just never talk to me again. I shouldn’t say never- I still text them sometimes, they might respond with a simple sentence once every month. If I try and ask how they’re doing or if we can talk soon, it’s left on read. If I say “Hey I watched that movie you mentioned.” there’s a one in five chance they say “Cool, that one’s good.”

Needless to say- much of my day now is spent grappling with trust issues. Like most of the day. It’s my fulltime job type shit. caused not exclusively by this new issue. But it's certainly not helping, right? I do not trust any one which, y’know, sucks! That used to be like- easy to do! However stupid it might be, though, if someone asks me to trust them with something I do as asked. Always.

I am a quitter in a lot of ways, and a real self-aware idiot, but let one thing be known: I try the hell outta it when I do that shit. I have crazy trust issues that make me think that every kind act done to me is part of some larger ploy. That they only intend to use and betray my trust later. Every time I’ve ever had the “oh this person’s playing nice they Actually Hate You” alarm ring, I’ve been correct.

But like- it feels stupid to let the Brain Disease Currently Putting Me Down win, right? That’s my Real Fucking Life Vow to the world right there: I will never stop trusting people no matter how hard this shit gets. That’s what the got damn game is about. #HyperLightMentality #AntiHaterLifestyle

I guess the conclusion I want you to draw from all this info is: talk to people in your life, even if it hurts or sucks to do. Ya gotta trust people, I think, maybe. And uh- Hyper Light Drifter is a really great piece on how the power of trust extends beyond logical reason sometimes. Not in a like- sometimes you just gotta have faith bullshit happy ending way. More like- you'll have these self-aware moments where you recognize your trust in something is illogical or really unfair towards yourself, but you live with it regardless. Shouts out Heart Machine, heard they're making a weird spiritual sequel roguelike to this now? Kinda weird, right? I'm super down for whatever that is.

played pretty much just for the novelty factor of it having a YTPMV song as well as some bizarre theming juxtapositions, but WOW this is hard.

admittedly i havent played much othello before this, but I was able to get past the tutorial and world 1 just by intuiting some of the strategies. however once I hit world 2, even 30 minutes of othello strategy videos on youtube couldn't save me lmao.

it's still othello at the end of the day, and I can tell I like the core of it enough to search for another version of it, but it's probably a bad idea to keep trying to learn on this one instead of whatever the othello equivalent of chess.com is lol

Insufferably terrible Chthon fight. I went to both the left and right teleporters trying to find the activation button, only to realize it was blending into the ground in front of Chthon. To make matters worse, these teleporters altered themselves to no longer give access to the side paths to reach the pillar buttons. Meaning I had to wade through lava or rocket jump over and over to get the pillars into position. I did not have enough resources to do this, and kept getting instagibbed by Chthon so many times that I activated godmode for the first time in my gaming career. Fucking terrible way to end an already more frustrating than usual mapset. I can't be bothered to find the secret level. This would be a neat couple of levels if the bossfight wasn't godawful.

I have no clue why but I guess you can play a fuckton of shitty mobile games with no ads in your browser now through YouTube??? Maybe these are supposed to have ads, this feels like a game that only exists to serve you ads, but my adblocker seems to have caught them anyways. So brave of Google to step up their game and give you keys jingling in an environment even more interactive than YouTube Shorts.

At level 20 the sky changes from blue to orange, and then at 40 it just alternates back. I locked into this for 30 minutes for a third color, God damn it

as vezes a gente nem percebe que as raízes são fortes... dragon's dogma, em 2012, junto com dark souls deve ter afetado a maneira que meu cérebro funciona ao jogar video game de formas irreparáveis. eu não estava armado nessa época, eu não tinha vocabulário, eu não sabia o que pensar durante o jogo além de "diversão" e as percepções básicas. dark souls me acompanhou a vida toda depois disso - a primeira vez que eu escrevi foi justamente dele! mas dragon's dogma ficou lá no cantinho escondido -não joguei dark arisen!- passei 200 horas nele e sendo sincero nunca pensei a fundo no porquê.

e agora depois de uma jornada de 68 horas e 139 dias (in-game) eu entendo tudo, é óbvio que DD foi feito pra mim, todas as Decisões que eu sou obcecado são feitas com a maior confiança do mundo, eu amo jogo de andar por aí, de se planejar e sair numa caminhada que só deus sabe o que vai acontecer, eu amo gerenciamento de recursos como o poder de teleportar, eu amo limites de tempo e quando achei que não iria criar um vínculo com a história "principal" (não conte para o pessoal da página do jogo que a verdadeira história principal são momentos que acontecem enquanto você está caminhando) ela também é uma história que brinca com meus temas favoritos. agora vou descansar por uns meses, deixar marinar e jogar o dark arisen sabendo que dessa vez estou armado com as palavras certas pra dar o carinho que ele merece.

Chock full of all the growing pains and nagging annoyances of both the title that preceded it as well as that of the open world genre at large, DDII offers a satisfying moment to moment exploration experience and a fulfilling conclusion only earnt after a poorly structured main story quest. Familiar narrative elements line your path like markers illuminating the way forward as this title exists as a simultaneous remake and sequel; there is a Dragon who threatens a far away kingdom, there is an Arisen who must rise to His challenge, and there is a Pawn conjured of pure thought at their side, all as the infernal chain demands of this world. The unique roleplaying capabilities the Arisen storytelling model provides remains a captivating experience just as it did in the first entry, further explored with the underdog nature of this iteration's Arisen and their place of weakness as a victim of stolen valour, and once again the dynamic between master and Pawn invite many interpretations to the nature of their relationship beyond surface level character customisations available ingame.

A reader would note I place a lot of bearing on the narrative of the Dogma titles and it's because I see it as their strength, there's little I can constructively say about the vocation-based combat that hasn't already been said by those better written than I. Of course all games which allow character customisation to some capacity leave wriggle room for roleplay on the player's part, to explore regarding individual reactions to events and splinter canons or endings, and the Arisen/Pawn dynamic illustrates this potential stronger than other titles. It is purely because of DD's vagueities and space between major quests (especially utilising the breathing room of methodical travel) that allows one to fill in their own blanks and organically develop characteristics through gameplay.

I acknowledge mine is a special case as my sentimental tie to DD extends beyond mere rose tinted glasses or nostalgia. My family was homeless and hotel/sharehouse-hopping for an extended length of time during my teenage formative years, a period hazy even to myself as I still underestimate its effects on my current personhood and mental condition. It was a special and difficult circumstance in which my brother and I kept our heads down while my mother worked the hardest years in her life, and the video games I had the opportunity to play during this period endure as those closest to me: NieR, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dragon's Dogma. The destined heroism of the Arisen and having their fate so clearly etched into the very order of reality proved an escape from my own unmoored existence, kicking off the most artistically inspired years of my time drawing and seeing the creation of numerous individual original characters all brought to life from the same narrative device, their scribbled intricacies lost to sketchbooks long gone. DD was so much more than just a jank open world game to me then, it was where I first explored my own transgenderism without a prior outlet and where I could receive acknowledgement of my being alive from strangers across the Pawn network. I was here and existed, and I could aid others even if in an insignificant way.

I've yet to see a similar burst of unabashed creativity following this period not even seen during my exploration of FFXIV character development, and while DDII couldn't possibly foster a child's productivity in me, I feel the inkling of potential within once again. Yeah that one Nadinia quest bothered me, yes the pacing felt really off at times, yes the loss gauge is abysmally unfair, but it's more Dragon's Dogma. How could I not love it? Thank you to my partner for allowing me to use his PC with far better specifications than mine.

certainly plenty of dumb bullshit present, especially as it goes on, but that doesn't really change it into not being one of the most fun to control FPSes of all time...

really makes you wonder if the outsized influence of the cinematic leanings of half-life resulted in the medium worse in the end, with the entire big budget space not content to finetune and speed up their games, instead opting to re-do ideas from hollywood but worse. there's very much been a push in the indie sphere to get back to this sort of thing and there's always gonna be a market for it, but the overwhelming decline in popularity of singleplayer fps campaigns (combined with the continued floppage of every comp-focused movement shooter) shows that it will probably be many years before we again see the year's biggest shooter be this snappy and transparent.*

---

*doom doesn't count. doom has a press to lock on and kill enemy button which changes the flow greatly, with eternal especially completely ignoring the aspect of quick environment traversal present here instead opting to lock you in big kill rooms until it decides to let you move on. games like ultrakill are the real continuations of this style

Far and away the best Obra Dinn-like that isn't Obra Dinn.

Obviously loses some points on the presentation side of things but gets them right back for being just, like, a free game you can play in your browser literally right now. Kinda difficult to really get mad at the AI photos, no matter how ugly they may be, when the dev's not charging admission and is also working on a Steam upmake with actual art instead.

Sat down with it yesterday night and it hooked me harder than any game has for several months. If you loved Obra Dinn and have played any number of Outer Wilds or Golden Idols trying to chase that high (both of which are good, but not quite scratching that same itch), I'm happy to say that this is the best attempt anyone's made yet.