I feel like I played this game at an incredibly fortunate time in my life. Struggling to commit to any game for more than a few hours I was burned out on most modern game genres such as shooters, platformers and RPGs. When I first saw this recommended to me on steam during a sale I was intrigued by the art-style and main gameplay mechanic. I didn't have particularly high hopes I just knew it was highly rated and had a unique aesthetic. If you had told me I was going to play through the game in one long 8 hour session whilst losing track of the time I'd have been shocked. This game is good. REALLY good.

Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-assess what in the actual fuck is happening.

Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.

This game and Outer Wilds are two games that completely changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.

A really good game that could have been a really great game. Nailed the aesthetics, tone and soundtrack. The music in particular really stood out to me and was a real highlight of the game. A few tracks such as the one that plays in the main castle made me stand still and just listen for a bit. This wasn't a one off encounter, but constantly throughout the game I just had to pause and think to myself, "nice". Really great stuff.

Where the game fell flat for me is in plot progression and characters. I think what was most frustrating to me was clearly he was able to write some fun dialogue and banter, as the two leads were enjoyable to read and watch interact. The rest of the cast just didn't work for me due to lack of proper development. It felt like a waste of what could have potentially been one of the best games I played this year. I say all this but I did give this game an 8/10. This game was a joy to play and I easily recommend it. Its cheap, its short, its a novel gaming experience. Go play it.

I played this game a back in 2022 for the first time and was utterly baffled at its quality. It controlled and played better than almost every single game that I'd ever played in my life. The fact that a game that came out before I was born AND was good enough to leave me constantly in awe of its quality should speak volumes. Rarely do I go back and play a game THIS old and enjoy it THIS much. Even on replays the game just works.

Sure there are some segments I don't love like controlling the missiles through hallways or the insanely long tower climb full of enemies, but god damn if this isn't one of the best games I've ever played.

Played just under 2 hours and while it certainly isn't terrible (really enjoyed the presentation and the guns felt good to shoot), there was something off about the gameplay. Surviving hordes of enemies at the end of a mission where they spawn in gradually with no real indicator of progress felt bad. You just had a mark at the top of the screen saying Purge the Heretics, and had to shoot the same enemies spawning in for what always felt like an excessive period of time. When I think back to why Doom worked for me it was frequently the level design that gripped me. In Boltgun, at least from what I played, it never felt all that fun to explore. Just walking down hallways shooting really easy to kill AI. If it gets better that's great, but after two short sessions I've felt no desire to revisit this game.

Ahhh trails. The definition of a game I needed EXACTLY when I needed it. Moving cities, going to university, not having a single close friend nearby. Feeling isolated and extremely lonely and finding this game on sale for dirt cheap on GOG I decided to give it a whirl. During that period of time the cast of Sky 1-3 became a fill in for a lot of the loneliness I was going through to such a degree that whenever I replay the game the title screen is enough to reduce me to tears. Thanks trails for helping me get through one of the worst periods of my life.

My favourite co-op game of all time. I have convinced 2 separate friends to play through this with me, one beat it twice with me on the ps3 back in the mid 2010's, and the other once through on PC in early 2020s. I have watched a fraction of the cutscenes from of this game through fully, most of which simply because one of us needed to pee (lets just say they were NOT a highlight). Despite having completed this game through to completion 3 times I could not tell you what the story is about, even with my newfound context of having played most of the games in the series. It's really not where this games strengths lie.

Resident Evil 5 is at its best early on, with probably my favourite segments being the very first mission where you need to hold out. The game definitely starts to lose steam when you start dealing with enemies who can shoot back with RPGS and machine guns. But that early game is peak co-op gameplay.

I have redone the horde segment on my own multiple times simply due to it being an incredibly fun sandbox to fight enemies in. I have farmed gems with the games airboat, memorizing all spawn locations of gems and treasures, finding a kind of zen state of mind trying to find the perfect line. When the regenator bugged out and would not die I KNEW where to easily grab an RPG. I to this day think about the sheer aggressiveness in which Chris yells "SHEVA, HURRY" and Sheva's "CHRIS, IM COMING" with the sound queue that plays as your friends spams the prompt.

This game is absolutely dear to me, I've played through it three times through completely, twice through partially, and done my favourite missions solo many times through. There is a lot wrong with this game but it is easily the co-op game I have the fondest memories with specifically playing splitscreen on the ps3 back in early high school. I would literally lug my ps3 in a backpack to my friends house, grabbing a 2L of Coke Zero and some chips from the convenience store along the way. Macking down chips while raging that about the rail shooter segments being bullshit (especially against el gigante on higher difficulties).

No one else (not even the friends I forced to play this game with me) liked this game even half as much as I do. I am incapable of being objective with it. This isn't just a game to me, but warm memories from a simpler time. Really really really love this game. I can't wait to eventually convince another friend (victim) to experience it with me.

This fucking game man. If I told you I immediately fell in love with it I'd be lying. This game has so many elements that, to the uninitiated, will seem like cons that its no wonder myself and others quit this game in the first act. All you need is a shift in opinion. Is Rex's battle shouts awful, or are you watching one of the funniest cutscenes you've seen in a jrpg? Does the lack of synching for english VA taking you out of the scene, or are you giggling to yourself when the lips move and no sound? I've got to say though when this game clicks, it fucking clicks.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game that took me the better part of 4 months to complete, sometimes not playing for weeks, sometimes hours each day. This is not to say the game is particularly boring, its just that I really wanted to take my time with it. The sheer amount of random shit you can do (all very optional at least for my non-completionist brain) really allows for both short sessions before bed (levelling a blades affinity/doing side quests) or a big meaty session such as exploring a new area/progressing the main story.

The music alone carries whatever damage the awkward voice direction and occasional bad voice acting takes away from a scene. This is perhaps the single greatest soundtrack I've ever heard in a game, taking the place of my former favourites, the Nier franchise. No game has been shuffled and played in my day to day life quite as much as the Xenoblade franchise, and out of the I've played, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's is just unfathomably good. Nothing but the sweet promise of good music kept me from continuously loading up the game again. That first cutscene of the game, where you hear the orchestral soundtrack paired with the cloud visuals is, for the brief few moments before Rex opens his mouth, one of the most enchanting starts to a game for me.

After completing this game I just sat there for at least 10 minutes just kinda numb. A 4 month endeavour, finished. When something is such a constant in your life like this game is, the void left behind is palpable. For some reason despite having done side quests/blade affinity grinding in bed almost every day for 4 months (20 minutes here and there after work, or before bed) I knew I was done. Sure there were more generic fetch quests to grind, and yeah, I could farm core crystals and get all the blades. But when those credits rolled I knew I was done. So I sat there, tearing up just thinking about what a fucking ride it had been. I'm glad I played this game, I'm glad it has a stupidly large amount of content and has perhaps the GREATEST SOUNDTRACK of any game I've ever played. I'm glad I got to play one of the most enjoyable combat systems in a jrpg and an incredibly strong story (once it gets going). Really great game.

Only real complaint I have is pacing, which is my gripe with most jrpg's. One that immediately pops into mind is in Gormott, you can't just hop on a boat, you need to first find the titan and feed it. Or the implementation of field skills requiring you to menu just to open a chest/barrier. Just little blips in the matrix that take me out of the experience. Not a perfect game, but still insanely enjoyable.

Basically once you take all the cons (lip synching, questionable voice directions/acting, cringe anime tropes) into pros (this game is fucking hilarious), it really becomes something special. You just gotta fucking dive in and embrace the game in all its cringey and goofy glory.

Shockingly good. This is only an 8 out of 10 due to a few levels (mostly in the later half of the game) that really annoyed me, particularly e4m2 (fuck the platforming) and e4m6 (fuck lava floors), which felt designed that upon first run through you'd be out of heals and die. While e2m6 has the benefit of once you know what to do its fine, e4m2 really just...sucked.

I definitely plan on replying this one day with a secrets guide, and could easily see myself trying to beat levels faster and faster. The fact that a game from the early 90s is better than most games coming out today blows my mind.

Worse lethal company. In concept this game is fun. In practice it is also fun...for about an hour or two. This game is as entertaining as the group playing it. Actually going on the drop to the old world played second fiddle to whatever manic shit my friends were cooking up in their video. Realizing that he spent the first 60 percent of the footage posing next to backdrops in the starting zone before immediately cutting to us screaming and dying will forever be a massive plus in this games favour.

Solar Ash initially caught my eye with its cover art, and reeled me in when I learned it was by the same developers as Hyper Light Drifter (a game I’ve yet to play myself but have heard good things about). Seeing as it was on Xbox Game Pass I had no reason not to try it out and from an audio/visual aspects alone, it delivered. I love how the game looks and sounds. The gameplay however took a bit more for me to really come to grips with. This game is more of a puzzle platformer than action game, and I am relatively bad at the genre. This meant early on I failed at a lot of the easier puzzles (like really easy). What I liked however, was that the game will give you a task that is unachievable unless you learn certain mechanics of the game. For example, a boss fight where no matter what I did I couldn’t make it to the next spike (the spots you have to hit to fight the boss). I was forced to do something I hadn’t really felt the need to do before; I dashed to build up enough initial speed. While it seems simple enough (really should have been doing it earlier), I had no reason to do this prior so I simply... hadn’t. Same with using the slowing down time mechanic. It can extend your grapple range, allowing you to draw closer to monsters and grapple points. While yes, it's obvious this would simply be useful, I was instead just running forward and hacking away. It wasn’t until I HAD to grapple enemies to effectively kill them (high up enemies shooting projectiles), that I started to truly add it to my kit. It's these kinds of lessons, explained and then immediately being required that made me start to enjoy this game from a gameplay perspective as well.

The main objective of this game is to clear a series of mini platforming puzzles to unlock the boss, and then defeat the boss to unlock the next area. Usually these mini puzzles are designed to familiarize yourself enough with the mechanics that will soon be required to fight the boss. I appreciate that instead a wall of text telling me what to do, I had to instead realize what wasn't working and then change my gameplay. (As an aside, skating on top of giant creatures while it squirms around just felt insanely cool. The way the music changes when the boss is about to be defeated coupled with the spectacle of riding up them lead to an incredibly memorable experience).

There are also several side objectives, one of which offers a reward and the end and the other seemingly just for story reasons. The former offers a new suit as a reward, which will give perks such as letting you slow down time more frequently, letting you acquire more plasma (the games currency) and letting you have less cooldown on your dash to name a few. While none are necessary to progress the game, I found they added enough draw to make me fully explore the nooks of the map which in turn, progressed the more narrative driven side content as well.

One criticism I have in this game is the characters and writing not being strong enough for me to care about anyone/thing going on. In particular a man in the Mushroom region and these journals you can find on the ground completely had my eyes glazing over upon reading/listening to them.

Another gripe I had was that the game doesn’t control as nicely as I’d want it to, especially when it rips control of the camera out of my hands. While the only particularly egregious example was when it forced me to do one of the mini platforming puzzles at a static far away angle, frequently during boss encounters your camera gets forcibly tugged in a direction the game wants you to head, but counter to what was intended I’d frequently get disoriented and fall off, leading me to have to restart that particular encounter. Nothing too bad, maybe got genuinely annoyed at the game 3 times in its entire runtime.

The real worst aspect of this game is its combat. It feels awful, I felt that I was forced to take trade damage with the enemies I was fighting at times, and I think the game knew this would happen due to the insane amounts of health packs they have littered around the place. There isn’t really much to it other than walking into said monster and whacking it a few times. The issue stems from how bad whacking things feels. You can hit a monster twice then need a cooldown, and can also slow down time to close the distance. I however felt that doing the attacks left me always open to being hit due to the awkward dodging mechanics, and that the range of your tether grab move was never long enough to be truly as useful as I think the developers were hoping. I wonder if the range was nerfed in the hopes to not use monsters to skip parts of the platforming but that's just speculation. I think the game would have been significantly more enjoyable if I could platform in peace.

Overall I’d recommend this game if it was heavily on sale, or if you can play it on game pass such as I did. The beautiful visuals alone were what kept me invested, as well as a few really amazing tracks of music. Give it a whirl.

As someone who was very disappointed by Cold Steel IV this game managed to rekindle a lot of my love for this franchise. I went into it with extremely low expectations and ended up playing over 10 hours a day (on my days off). My enjoyment stemmed in part due to having taken the first real break from the game (having caught up a few days before cold steel IV), and also because of the different structure the game.

Mechanically this game continues the cold steel tradition of adding a new mechanic with united fronts being thrown into the mix. However the real enjoyment of this game for me came from the Reverie corridor and more specifically daydreams. By exploring the corridor you unlock orbs that will let you see flashbacks for members of your party (like the doors in sky 3rd). It was nice actually getting to sit in shoes of characters that normally the game wouldn't focus all its attention on, letting you see side stories from Sky, Crossbell and of course Cold Steel.

Structurally the game is unique compared to other trails games. It allow you to play as three separate parties where you get locked out of them and are forced to play the other parties until they are all caught up, before moving onto the next act. It works in some ways and falls flat in others. Some stories are significantly more interesting than others, leaving (for me) Rean's act to be a slog. C's route was the easy highlight for me.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by this game and at the time of finishing it (July 2023) its my GOTY. If you like modern trails games you should love this.

There are some games where after playing you can look back and say "man, there was a good game under all of that", but in exoprimals case, even after unlocking new games modes, several new characters, I was like "man, there is a completely bland game under all that padding and obtuse progression".

Intriguing in concept due to my enjoyment of the EDF franchise but really fell flat, with the friends I tried it out with tapping out after a bit over 1 hour. I was a bit more optimistic towards the game, but the fact of the matter is that the lobbies frequently take you into one map where you walk a few steps, kill dinos, walk a few steps, kill some more dinos, over and over until you get a PvP or PvE end scenario where you FINALLY learn if the match is going to be evenly matched or not. Thats a lot of down time to just get absolute diff'd in the final stretch.

When the game worked at its absolute best (two or three times in the 10 hours I played), the game was actually pretty fun. The problem was the enjoyment I experienced in-between all the other shit was less than playing any other online game that I enjoy. Hard pass on this one, especially with the length of matchmaking at the time I was trying it out (November 2023).

I'm sure there are other modes to unlock and new dino variants, but I have neither the free time nor the patience to unlock them. I honestly would have rated this game lower if I had bought the game instead of playing it on xbox game pass. I'd pass on this one.

This game had all the makings to be my favourite Ace Attorney game. No psychic shenanigans. The music being the best the series has ever produced (in the four games I've played thus far). Some absolute bangers are finding them straight into a spotify playlist ASAP. This game also has my favourite supporting character in an Ace Attorney game, a Mr. Herlock Sholmes. He is fucking hilarious and grew on me far more than I initially expected. By the end of the third case I was convinced that this would top Trials and Tribulations as my favourite game in the series. However it loses a lot of enjoyment in one place in particular; very slow pacing.

Thankfully once each case gets going my grievances tend to fade away, but there are some parts in the investigation periods particularly where I just wanted things to hurry along. Also during trials some of the solutions would be glaringly obvious but you had to spend 3 minutes to let the in game characters to come to very obvious conclusions. However when this game gets good, the case is in its final stretches, the music is blaring, objections reigning out from each side, the game really scratches that Ace Attorney itch.

Gameplay wise this game also felt a lot more engaging, being able to interact and spin around pieces of evidence to discover clues that actively would be used to turn trials around, most notably an ENTIRE FUCKIN' BUS being evidence in which you can explore. My only real grievance with the mechanic would be that you don't get an indicator to show you've examined a particular area when dealing with evidence. This means that at times during trials I would miss a clue thinking I'd already pressed on that particular prompt. There is also the deductions of Herlock Sholmes which conceptually interested me but often went on longer than I wanted them too. The jury system also was a surprising addition but one that added to the gameplay. Summation soundtrack SLAPPING also helped.

Overall I really liked the game. The music is really freaking good. If you can tolerate some pacing issues here and this game is well worth playing.

Visually and musically an absolute vibe. The tone is fairly bleak but was also shockingly funny. The gameplay is point and click adventure with some light turn based combat. Thankfully you aren't pixel hunting as by default everything you can interact with is highlighted. As for the combat, I really wish there was something more too it. It is so undemanding that I wonder why it was even added.

I would say that the visuals and soundtrack are what I'll remember this game for, rather than any particular parts of the narrative. Chex2Cash is going into a playlist ASAP.