stevenz
2019
A gorgeous sort of weird western procedural tactics game. I save-scummed until I won because starting over would suck, and the game was very friendly to that. My party members died, I met new ones, we made it to the west coast. Quite memorable.
Very pretty, with great writing and in-the-moment-being. Characters are fantastic.
I played 11 hours, which is frankly way too long. Interesting stuff was very rare after 6. I didn't want to go to the moon and I thought I would see it out, so maybe that's my fault. They basically say "living here will be boring". It sure is.
I might have stuck with it if the game didn't teleport me back home right before the year 3 moon-watching get-together because I was 10 feet from the mountaintop when the clock struck. What's the point of that? It really hurt.
I played 11 hours, which is frankly way too long. Interesting stuff was very rare after 6. I didn't want to go to the moon and I thought I would see it out, so maybe that's my fault. They basically say "living here will be boring". It sure is.
I might have stuck with it if the game didn't teleport me back home right before the year 3 moon-watching get-together because I was 10 feet from the mountaintop when the clock struck. What's the point of that? It really hurt.
2015
Incredible. Short and to the point. Vibrant looking and creative use of 3D.
2023
Junk food but damn I do love it. Insanely fun imsim-adjacent fps. Played almost to the end.
It's hard to explain what I think of the story, but it rocks. It gives the impression of being really thoughtless satire, but the fool protagonist is actually a really well-constructed narrative devices - almost a socratic figure - who over time comes to engage very seriously with concepts of soviet goodness vs. soviet bureaucratic corruption with his trusty sentient glove in a surprisingly intellectual way.
The robot-shooting combat is great. The representations of women are BAD. If you play it, don't be put off by the weird intro to the open world, it's very hard for no reason and becomes super smooth afterwards.
The horny fridge is honestly very funny and playful.
It's hard to explain what I think of the story, but it rocks. It gives the impression of being really thoughtless satire, but the fool protagonist is actually a really well-constructed narrative devices - almost a socratic figure - who over time comes to engage very seriously with concepts of soviet goodness vs. soviet bureaucratic corruption with his trusty sentient glove in a surprisingly intellectual way.
The robot-shooting combat is great. The representations of women are BAD. If you play it, don't be put off by the weird intro to the open world, it's very hard for no reason and becomes super smooth afterwards.
The horny fridge is honestly very funny and playful.
2023
like sugary cereal for kids
Best one yet, fuck cops. Seriously a great example of color and writing and completeness of a small game without over-polishing or overdoing anything really. Very cute.
2022
Quite liked this little scavenger hunt, but the sentimentality totally missed for me.
Unreal use of non-pbr techniques, really pushes boundaries of mixing light and flat/gradiented color.
Overpolished in an Twitter Indie way but that's a very personal and stupid bugbear. The text is just too bouncy to read!!
Unreal use of non-pbr techniques, really pushes boundaries of mixing light and flat/gradiented color.
Overpolished in an Twitter Indie way but that's a very personal and stupid bugbear. The text is just too bouncy to read!!
2022
I think it's a great idea but ultimately sorta boring. I love weird experiments, and it's by a teenager, but yeah. Didn't work for me.
2021
Self-serious. Pretty enough to earn that, but structurally disappointing. The tutorial is very long and the exploration is very rigid and vibeless.
2022
A year and a half later, I might say that I still think From has taken too combat-heavy of an approach to their games, but. It's the most expansive and rendered and well-designed adventure dungeon-crawler ever made. Surprisingly thoughtful narrative refuses any easy answers has many representations and feelings about rotten power.
I wrote thousands of words about this on my blog: https://stevenzwahl.com/2022/08/26/ecology-review-elden-ring/
I wrote thousands of words about this on my blog: https://stevenzwahl.com/2022/08/26/ecology-review-elden-ring/
2022
A world-wonder curiosity-object. I can't click with it, but I like feeling it in my hands, trying to understand it. I will surely pick it up again some day, study it, and put it down until the next time.
2022
The game opens up with a powerful, atavistic scene: screaming in the frigid dark. Nothing that simple or emotive ever happens again. It's over-explanatory, rigid, mechanically excessive, and extremely unable to dramatize. Hopelessly over-designed.
2011
I bought this at a gamestop a few months after it came out and never really stopped playing it. Extremely formative, irreplacably special. I do it fast sometimes, and casually completionist other times. I wrote a physical diary on a 10y anniversary playthrough where I role-played and read every item description again and I cried at the ending all over. This is my favorite game.
A few notes: It is more colorful than any of their other games. The textures are dense and expressive in a way they haven't reached again (via photo sourcing?) (Who puts purple and green in an asylum wall? Amazing). The slowness is ideal. The shape of the layered world and its intersections is unrivaled. The whole thing is very good and very dear to me.
A few notes: It is more colorful than any of their other games. The textures are dense and expressive in a way they haven't reached again (via photo sourcing?) (Who puts purple and green in an asylum wall? Amazing). The slowness is ideal. The shape of the layered world and its intersections is unrivaled. The whole thing is very good and very dear to me.
2014
Full of great ideas but not very good. Haven't been able to play more than an hour since 2014.
2016
Feels contractually obligated, but frenzied about it. They hate having to make it, and they love it too. A surreal mess of dark fantasy architecture and entities bent together and cranked up to 11.