A silly little action game that I probably enjoy more than it’s worth purely due to the lack of good games on Android. But for what it’s worth, it’s entertaining enough and I kept wanting to come back to finish the level or try out another one.

Many of the weapons the different characters have do feel samey (usually it’s just best to take one of the most expensive ones) and I was hard-pressed finding a use for any other armour but the one that stops rifle fire, but there’s enough overall variety between the classes to keep it interesting. Plus there’s just something enjoyable about getting good with a class. The missions are usually challenging enough that even a maximum even character is no guarantee of victory.

The setting takes copaganda to the extreme of absurdity and the description of the hand grenade is just great (something along the lines of "Aren't we supposed to be the police?"). The game understands very well it's not supposed to be realistic, and is more fun for it. Some of the best moments are when you just let chaos reign, blowing in doors and blindly spraying with no care in the world for collateral damage. The game doesn’t really punish you for it, even if your conscience might later look back in horror. A solid little action game on the phone that I would never play on a PC or console (unless on co-op, I guess; which I didn't try).

Coming from the previous game to Space Marshals 3, a few changes are obvious. First of all, the game looks gorgeous. There's more detail and there are certain electrical and water effects that would feel at home on a bigger game. It might come at the expense of performance, but at least for me it wasn't that noticeable a hit and was definitely worth it, even if it did almost burn a hole in my phone.

Unfortunately, some of the other changes fare less well. The new upgrade system is especially problematic as getting better weapons is directly tied to one’s ability to complete the missions to near-perfection - something that should be reserved for those looking for an extra challenge, not as a requirement for progress. It’s also difficult to understand what weapon is worth choosing over another so you can end up digging yourself deeper into a hole with sub-par weapons and missions you can’t finish well enough.

Add to it that now the game likes to throw random ultra-difficult encounters your way and enjoyment can be very difficult indeed. It was especially infuriating when I discovered in the middle of a mission that I had taken the wrong weapons - e.g. taking stealth weapons against a finale where you have to fight a powerful flamethrower in small quarters and going from 0 deaths (and perfect score) to 15 (and no rewards) within a minute.

And when you do start getting those better weapons and items, there’s another limit on the gear forcing you to avoid using them in order to still be able to unlock the best reward for a successful mission - available only if you did it perfectly.

But once I had gotten some good weapons and stopped caring about unlocking new weapons and just equipped what I wanted and played how I wanted, with no care in the world how many times I might have to respawn, I really started enjoying this game. It’s no coincidence that the third chapter had most of my favourite maps, and I might have had even more pure fun doing the bonus action missions with my favourite weapons after the main game.

This series truly has surprised me with how much fun they can offer. The stealth is improved in this one, even if it sometimes flat-out refuses to let you use it. And the action can be very fun, once you get some cool weapons and learn to work with its slightly-sluggish aiming and chaotic violence and inputs (how many times I accidentally chose the wrong weapon for the job …). The map design also tends to be good and they're often a joy to explore. The writing is silly and doesn't take itself seriously at all, but there were still some laugh-out-loud moments. And whoever decided to put in that reference to 'Allo 'Allo!, a British sitcom about WW2 from the 80s, a childhood favourite (that for the most part held up pretty well in my 20s), thank you - you made my day. :D

I might have spent more time annoyed with the game than I’d like, especially in chapter 2 (where I even considered quitting the game), but in the end, I still found plenty to enjoy in it (and am glad I got to chapter 3). I still might not play it on anything but the phone, but eh, this wasn't released on anything else anyway :P

The first smartphone game I played and got really hooked on for a while. Until I figured out the optimal play and then once I went as far as I could go with it, got bored and uninstalled it in order to avoid wasting more time on its mindless movements.

Then a few days ago I decided to reinstall it to show to a friend and promptly got one of the highest scores I've ever had. But what I found out was that I didn't really care; however, there was something I did care about:

The simple zen-like activity of moving blocks around and getting these little pleasure shots from seeing them merge.

There's nothing much to the game, and it doesn't require much brainwork, but that's exactly what makes it kind of enjoyable when I'm feeling bad and just want to stare at something mindless, lightly lessening the pain in my soul with each box merged on a blandly colourful screen that suits its zen mood.

There's little to recommend here, besides the first high and the following zen, but doesn't that actually sound like quite a lot? I do not know how long I'll be playing it for this time, but as there are enough bad things in one's life to often take one's mood down, I guess I'll soon find out. For now, I'll be doing and playing anything else when I can, and when I cannot, I'll be moving the boxes, each a tiny but potential step closer to peace.

And then, having written that, but before posting, I played a bit more and saw the number climbing higher and higher and found myself excited enough about it that I suddenly wanted to see how far I could go, and just like that, the zen was gone and instead it became a slightly anxious long slog towards every higher numbers where a few wrong moves can suddenly gridlock you to an annoying loss.

After a few days of occasional play, quite unexpectedly, after a few bad moves, that's exactly what happened, and I considered quitting the game for good. Again.

So much for zen.

I'm not even sure why I tried out this poor-looking game in the first place. Perhaps it was something in the mixture of Western imagery and isometric action that sparked my interest in its demo on the Switch. Playing the demo, I was reminded of mediocre games from 10+ years ago that you waste some time on and then forget for good. I still left it on my wishlist though, in case of a good deal. But good deals came and went, yet it remained unpurchased. And would have probably been deleted wholesale at one point if I hadn't discovered it on Google Play on my new Android and installed it. Why not, I thought.

My first impression was, oh boy, is it uncomfortable to play it on the phone. Luckily, the discomfort didn't stay for long (or at least I got better at managing the game, even if the shooting remained a bit fiddly), and by the time I finished the game, I had found myself quite liking it. Enough that I might even remember it in a few years, even if I'm in no hurry to add it to any list of favourite games. But it offers enough of a mixture of gunplay, stealth, challenging level design, and dumb humour to entertain. Ultimately, I'm glad I played it. Glad enough that I put the sequel on download right after finishing this, despite the bad reviews. If a mediocre-looking game can make me do that, I guess it wasn't that mediocre after all.

I don't think I like this game much, and yet I keep returning to it. A rather plain-looking game with open-world elements that add little to it, there's still something exhilarating in speeding down a mountainside or a dirt track with a cool bike, taking daring turns and death-defying jumps, barely making that front-flip or 360, just to then speed into a tree you didn't notice and break your biker's back.

The Ironman-like career mode is kind of fun in how it encourages playing carefully and building up to opening shortcuts to different worlds, but I still feel like it's a game I'll play for a while and then forget it existed.

I found the soundtrack horrible though. I'm a fan of electronic and all kinds of music that might sound similar to what the game presents, but I found it so repetitive and annoying here that I turned it off. It might just be a matter of taste, but that’s still something that rarely happens to me. And for a chillax game that can be the death-knell, if you're not bringing your own music.

I couldn't find the tutorial, but I feel the game could make good use of it. Also was disappointed that the forest, which is my favourite environment, isn't unlocked from the start.

I kind of liked it, it felt like a self-contained little story with a kinda dumb but appropriate enough twist in the line with the usual Bioshock endings, elevated by not getting into the insanities Part 2 entertained itself with. The action felt fun enough, though less enjoyable than I had remembered Bioshock Infinite to be. I guess the biggest disappointment was that after remembering people talking about the Burial at Sea duology as a kind of DLC high-mark, they both left me kind of disappointed, especially the second one. Oh well, this one was alright for what it is, and not an inch better.

Has a nice minimalist visual style and atmosphere, and I liked the growing relationship between the leading women (plus the fact that is is leading women, and bipoc!), but its adherence to the style of montage in movies quickly becomes a weakness that doesn't really work with the mechanisms of the game. Too often I found myself staring at something in the character's hand wondering why the camera was stuck on it before it cut to another scene where I was staring at another thing. An editing of continuity, it works beautifully in cinema, but here it's done too slowly and the first staring moment always takes long enough to make you think something is wrong.

Also the minimalism and lack of direction in the UI means that I was often confused as to what I was supposed to look at and click on, meaning the precision of the cinematic style was lost on me because there was no precision at all almost every time I got control of the character.

The story also goes off the rails in a way that feels like the game doesn't understand how bureaucracy and conspiracy actually work in real life. I did like the scenes with the lead’s father and how she reacts to his “gift”, but besides that by the final drug-fuelled montage I was just done with the game (and it’s just ludicrous that she does decide to take drugs there, but oh well).

Very disappointed in this game. A nice idea that they didn’t manage to make work.

A pretty-looking and smooth-riding experience, it lacks the thrills of a first-/third person camera due to its isometric view, but amply makes up for it in other regards. The only reason my grade is so “low” is that I quickly found out that these kinds of storyless repetitive sports games aren't really quite for me (I prefer different kinds of repetitive games, e.g. first-person shooters :p ). It also means I haven't made it far into the game and considering I haven't played it once in months, it felt weird to keep it under my actively playing games. But for what it's worth, I still have it installed so I might return to it for a ride or two now and then. That too is a recommendation of a kind.

At first it seemed unbeatable. Then I found a character I clicked with and beat it twice in a row. And then I got bored.

A nifty little thing with very short legs, I thought. After beating it twice I didn't feel much pull back, nor any interest in trying out the higher difficulty. I felt like there weren't enough interesting decisions to make during play; before deciding to shelve the game, I did think that I had tipped my toe in too little, but eh, life is short.

That’s what I thought after a few hours with the game - and then spent the next few weeks of occasional play to 99% the game.

And I came so damn close to a 100%.

It's just that finding those last items is a bit too much trouble than I care for. But oh boy, slowly moving from failing every run to completing every run to balancing somewhere between them, with dips towards one or the other side depending on the character, difficulty (and luck), and finally arriving at a place where I'm playing with some truly bonkers strategies, this game managed to slip near my heart and make itself home there (for a while).

The simple and seemingly luck-based gameplay slowly gave way to a more nuanced understanding of the game and its characters. I still can't tell you what a good strategy would be or what I do differently now from when I started the game (and got whooped every run), but I sure am doing something differently, enough to even tackle some expert courses. The random dial can still sometimes swing so cruelly that there truly is no way of coming back, but you can prepare for it (to a degree) and the game does offer moments of sweet calculation as you’re trying to figure out the best course of action considering your limited choices (and oh how sweet it is to then come out on top). Though perhaps the sweetest thing might still be a clean run of few enemies and shields all the way. Arriving at the final boss with 99 shield and a big sword is a moment of delicious OP; even more delicious is killing him before he can even touch you (or running through the game with 999 stealth, cackling madly at the fools incapable of doing anything - and it wasn’t even nearly my wildest run).

So, at first a disappointment, blossomed into a game I spent more time with than I could have imagined (and definitely is worth more money than the game costs). Delicious.

(Played on Android, actually, but there's no choice for that ...)

Seems like a perfectly acceptable Devil May Cry, but I don't think I really have any room in my life for these games any more.

I loved DMC3 (though when I discovered the penultimate (?) level was just all the previous bosses again, I quit without even bothering), played most of DMC4, and enjoyed DMC (the remake), but there’s just something about the gameplay and feel of DMC5 (and probably dmc overall by now) that leaves me cold. Perhaps it's the clean yet fumbling gameplay, crisp yet unexciting visual direction, or the extensive yet meaningless writing.

I liked that there seems to be a nice variety to the moves and enemies, but it wasn't enough to call me back when there are so many other games vying for my attention (partly coming down to preference because the game I'm playing instead, Evil West, really isn't better, but hey, it works for me).

The female sidekick also has some problems, as expected. She is cool, fast-talking and arrogant in an entertaining way, her dynamic with Nero rife with amusement. But she still confirms it's men making the game, the male gaze for example when she bends to pick up new items in her workshop being rather annoying, and while I cannot deny that it works as titillation, it also works to undermine her character (and my respect for the game).

It doesn't help that every male character also feels like he was written by a 15 year old, typing out their “cool” fantasies.

10-15 years ago I might have loved it, but now it's another series that I just don't have the time for. It's not bad enough for me to be sure I'll never try it again, but since it's leaving PSN, and I have no intention of ever buying it, well the chances are not great. I don't mind much.

Kinda enjoyed the gameplay still, even if it did a hard left turn to stealth, but my goodness is the story absolute bollocks. Furthermore, it undermines any character Elizabeth had, turns Bioshock Infinite into an even worse clusterfuck than it already was, and adds nothing of actual value to the whole franchise; and since the last hour or so is just story, I was done with the game long before the credits rolled. Ultimately, I came away having an ever lower opinion of the original Bioshocks as well, well done. Oh, and the portrayal of the "Asian" character was just atrociously racist.

I like riding on the flying drone and sightseeing its vision of a slightly-futuristic gleaning London (it was especially fun to then visit actual London for the first time in a few months after playing the game), but the writing and its vision of a resistance movement is so juvenile and silly that it is impossible to take anything they do and say seriously. If they wanted to make it a goofy cartoon, fine, but there's just not enough juice in the characterless and empty story or bite in their social "criticism" (if there even is anything to take seriously) to keep one's interest going once the gameplay has exhausted itself, which will happen sooner rather than later with its 18+h gametime (according to HowLongToBeat). I might return to play a bit more just cause I like open-world games, but if I'm being quite honest with myself, chances are it's staying abandoned. Such a disappointment after loving Clint Hocking's Far Cry 2 to absolute bits (not that I blame him personally, game development is complicated).

A soothingly beautiful audio-visual experience that is lighter than it thinks.

The sound especially is very important to the experience. I played the first game approaching it like a puzzle game on buses and such without sound, but that’s a mistake - it’s more an experience than a puzzle game, especially considering the puzzles tend to be rather easy (which is good for a dumbass like me) and sometimes not even puzzles at all, just walk here and tap that.

More often than not, the puzzle you’re staring at is actually more impressive for the geometric trick they’ve come up with. Some moments made me go “how do they come up with this?”; and once I understood that I could decide myself the final symbol for the level, it became a small enjoyable thing I looked forward to (especially to see how the animation played with it then).

With its gorgeous visuals and calming music, it really is more noteworthy as an chill experience, especially as many of the puzzles aren’t intellectually involving.

It tells its story in short bursts of enigmatic fortune teller quotes which add to the ephemeral magical atmosphere, but little to anything else. As a parent, I was touched by the interaction between the parent and the child and the need to let go, but with its bonkers story in the other part it felt in service of little relevant and the game’s ambiguous finale obscures the potential emotional effect of the new meeting between the parent and child. It was surprisingly touching to see the old friend though.

Ultimately, it doesn’t have enough emotional or metaphorical resonance to really stick, and with puzzles that often left me bored, it falls just short of greatness. But I did use a screenshot I took from the game as the background for my phone, so there’s that.

Quite a fun and good-looking strategy game on a phone, but the lack of information (e.g. damage numbers) and fiddliness (perhaps an inevitability with any non-turn-based strategy game on a cellphone) makes it an occasionally difficult game to play.

Too many times I had troops run into death because I was having difficulty selecting them; or because I had selected both melee and ranged (whether by accident or not) and they ran into melee range with ranged first. The last one kept happening because the ranged units don't stop to shoot at an enemy when in range but instead run into where you directed them and only then start shooting, forcing you to micro them around or just let them take free fire (there might have been an option somewhere to change this, but I don't remember, nor why I didn't use it if there was).

I still enjoyed it, even though not enough to hurry with finishing it before my Play subscription ran out; I also wasn't in the mood to renew it for just this (and another game) that I wasn't that enthused about. However, I might still one day return to this one at least.

Having completed the tutorial and one level in coop and basically uninstalling it after my partner announced that they don't really like it, I can't really fault them.

While I, as an action-game fan, can see the potential here, and that it's not nearly the worst of its ilk, it's also just not good enough of an introduction for the uninitiated, with its weirdly off-centered character placement on its isometric camera, or how it lets you choose classes but then gives you no class-specific abilities in the first mission (instead overwhelming you with an upgrade screen afterwards), or how the guns feel so light that you can't even feel when they're running out of ammo and they're reloading again (which happens a lot - and the only good mechanic here, tap again to reload fast, was present in the much better Helldivers already), or how there doesn't feel to be any difference between how the guns shoot, or how godawful the writing is, or how the game just doesn't feel much fun and cohesive and you're just running around spraying, praying, and reloading.

Perhaps it gets better, but first of all it should have convinced us to continue. What a shame. I guess I'll try introducing my partner to Helldivers instead.