In 2006 Her Interactive finally caved to the ravenous and unquenchable bloodthirst of gamers everywhere and added combat to Nancy Drew. The context of this is a joke but the fact that this game has a final boss fight is not, it is one its few redeeming qualities.

In Danger By Design Nancy finds herself in Paris working undercover as an assistant to an up-and-coming haute couture designer who has a reputation for being difficult to work with and has been acting particularly unstable lately, flying into terrible moods at the drop of a hat, making extremely unreasonable demands like to only work out of an antique windmill and refusing to remove a porcelain mask that she recently took to wearing at all times. Her investor, a friend of Nancy’s RICH DAD OBVIOUSLY, is worried that she won’t get a return on her investment and is considering pulling her funding and has asked Nancy to check in and see if the designer (whose name is Minette) can be trusted to finish her work at all, much less deliver a product that will sell. Nancy is absolutely down to clown because she loves narcing on people and taking unpaid vacations, so this shit is right up her alley.

This is easily one of the worst games in the series so far, a nonsensical mish mash of garbage elements, nothing characters, puzzles that are JUST okay, a truly baffling aversion to the use of the word nazi, and a complete failure to stitch any of many disparate elements at play into anything remotely resembling a coherent narrative between or across either of the two main plots on a character or thematic level. TRULY weak shit all around.

I believe I’ve mentioned once or twice that Nancy Does Chores is my least favorite default mode for these games to lock into, but I’ve accepted that Chores are a core part of these games’ DNA, and I really don’t mind them under a few circumstances. When they’re brief detours, the associated minigames are fun, or they’re well-integrated into the story or vibe, it’s fine I’ll deal with it. UNLESS of course the story is flimsy shit like “you are a professional gopher” and the chores are literally the entire first half of the game in an unbroken chain before anything else happens. Typically no matter what else is going on, these sequences still find ways to weave in foreshadowing, clues, important interactions, soooomething. In the first hour and a half of Danger By Design I made tea, went shopping, baked cookies, fetched a model, went to retrieve prints and then printed them when it turned out the guy hadn't had time to do it, and gossiped with several people about the high fashion industry but at no point in any of that did anything really happen that would come up later beyond “I met some people I would have to talk to again.” It’s just so out of step with a series that, even at its worst, is usually pretty good about this.

As is the norm, the game splits time between two plots, a present day and a historical, although unusually they half basically nothing at all to do with each other except for one very small and entirely coincidental connection that, like everything else in this game, just does not matter. One guy in the modern day storyline is the great nephew of the Sympathetic Nazi from the historical story (lmao yeah dude I know) and he has a clue you need to uncovering the obligatory treasure but he’s so far removed from the actual action of that plot that even when you discover a literal secret passageway in his personal office leading to further clues only minutes after he gifts you the puzzle necessary to uncover it, he’s so disinterested that he doesn’t even come out of his dark room to check it out. He just keep developing his photos and says “yeah man poke around all you want I literally do not care.”

So literally all of the actual puzzle solving and adventuring and stuff is siloed off into that story chunk, while over in Nancy Drew Is An Unpaid Intern Town nothing after nothing continues to happen. Every once in a while someone will leave a bomb at the door of the windmill workshop or you’ll get a threatening phone call but it doesn’t amount to anything, and Nancy herself doesn’t even seem to care! She doesn’t tell Minette, she doesn’t call the police, she doesn’t even investigate things herself, she literally defuses a bomb and then just continues to go about her day until she gets a free enough moment to fuck around in the catacombs in pursuit of her own personal quest for historical loot.

When things finally DO “come together,” as generously as you could describe that to be what happens at the end of this game, it’s literally only because the treasure is located in a secret basement of the Windmill where Minette works, and Nancy happens to be in there when two German spies come in to loudly reveal that they’ve both paid Minette to put surveillance technology in the dress she’s making for the German First Lady AND that they’re the people who have been threatening her as “incentive” for her to finish her work on time. When Nancy exits the basement the men have gone, but Minette is still there, and she attacks Nancy in an indescribably baffling action sequence where you…guess where she’s going to hit you and click on one of the nine squares the screen has been divided into with the correct timing, until she gets too tired to keep wailing on you and gives up? I think that’s the best way to describe it but you should look it up, people have played through this game on youtube it’s fucking wild man. And that’s it the game’s over Nancy thwarted perhaps the most high profile crime she ever will in this series and she did it completely by accident, it’s very funny.

Also we need to finally have the return of my least favorite feature for these reviews, the NANCY DREW COP WATCH:

1. Nancy agrees to spy on Minette, who she doesn’t know and who hasn’t done anything actually wrong besides be kind of a weirdo, for FREE, because a rich person asked her to

2. At one point in the game you find out that one of the threatening letters Minette receives was fake and came from Heather, her actual non-spy assistant, who is sick of working for this asshole and is venting frustration. Nancy can RAT HER OUT and I don’t know what happens if you do because I’m NOT A FUCKING COP but in my heart of hearts I know it’s Nancy’s true character to do it.

So that’s it this game is a mess. I actually had a good time with a lot of the puzzles here and I like that they brought back the free exploration and money management from Secret of the Old Clock, but the actual spaces you have to navigate kind of suck shit and despite some fun characters at play they’re just not here in service of anything. I like talking to a lot of these guys but at the end of it all there’s not a story here to support them and it blows. Bad game!

PREVIOUSLY: LAST TRAIN TO BLUE MOON CANYON
NEXT TIME: CREATURE OF KAPU CAVE

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES

One of the most lastingly interesting core concepts any driving game has ever had - a competitive arcade racer where you indirectly attack your opponents by triggering explosive stage events of increasing levels of large-scale Bayhem. It leaves you with a wonderfully unique ebb and flow where the rewards you trigger with hard-earned resources come with their own risks. Clutch moments where you dare to drift dangerously close to an idle wrecking ball or gas station for a little more speed, unsure whether an opponent is going to pull the trigger. Track-wrending power plays that act as an activatable Uncharted setpiece will make short work of the opponents in front before barreling towards the enabler themselves. Big sweaty teeth-shattering adrenaline mill incarnated as a game. Surprisingly true to its name is the sheer level of difficulty offered here. To place 1st on many of these missions feels deviously tempered by the rubber-banding for it to always come down to the last second. Compliments to the chefs on the ones and twos for some absolutely stellar sound design too.

The PC port is rough; locked to 30, no living online mode, controller support is present but you'll have to navigate the menus with the keyboard, and there is an autosave issue that can corrupt your racing profile. It's also missing one of the DLC tracks, but one of the most popular Steam guides has an easy method to mod it in.
Overall my enjoyment of the game feels a little hamstrung by the slippery controls and low content variety overall. Truly feels blistering with potential, and I hope it gets realised some day by someone willing to take up the mantle.

changed my mind on a third go of it - although i cant stress enough how utterly alien it feels if youre playing it after outrun, especially on your first attempt. a lot of the mechanical additions and alterations here admittedly do make sense from a design point of view, especially if one was looking to produce an economical sequel to outrun. why don't we introduce a rival? why don't we introduce a boost? why don't we double down on visual effects? why don't we introduce upgrades? textbook stuff.

unfortunately, while the game can offer small doses of fun, i think it tampers with a sacrosanct formula - one centered largely around purity - far too much for its own good. if i had to chalk it up to a design maxim, i would say the goal in turbo outrun is to 'try to feel cool', whereas in outrun the goal is 'being cool'. crucial difference there. outrun is a skill-based, meditative game that asks you to feel breezy wind pass through your hair and to soak up locales, and it accomplishes this by offering three distinct tone-changing tracks to set whatever mood you feel you can groove to. in turbo outrun's railroaded experience (both mechanically and sonically, you don't get to pick music or routes this time) you're chased by cops, deal with oil slicks, and are harrassed by some punk loser who can steal your girlfriend if youre not driving faster than him. this is madness, sega. she's my girl.

If Curse of Blackmoor Manor is an example of a Nancy Drew game stabbing at unconventional, expansive new structural ideas whilst simultaneously spinning its narrative and thematic wheels and ultimately failing at amounting to anything really worthwhile, Secret of the Old Clock is its good-aligned counterpart; I could apply that same description to this game, but here it’s endlessly charming, well-paced, and plain fun in a way that is turning out to be the secret sauce for the best of these games in my estimation, if not always the most interesting of them.

First thing’s first Secret of the Old Clock is a PERIOD PIECE set in 1930 which shares a name and year with the first ever Nancy Drew story, along with some other trappings (certain antique characters take prominence over the usual supporting cast, Nancy’s not really a detective here, she’s aged sixteen rather than her usual “vaguely in college” for these games, etc.), which seems like a strange choice on the face of it? Like, you based your tenth game, Shadow Ranch, on your all-time best seller, sure. You’re gonna pop your golden goose time travel Nancy Drew Number 1 right after that on game 12? Maybe they just hadn’t thought of it before now and couldn’t resist making it once the idea was floated? I get it, this game rules.

THE YEAR is NINETEEN THIRTY. Despite the onset of the Great Depression, some things never change and you know that means Nancy’s dad is still rich as FUCK which means that she is a sixteen-year-old who OWNS A CAR which, at the opening of the game, she is using to drive to the small town of Titusville, Illinois to run an errand for her dad and visit 17-year-old Emily Crandall, the now-owner of the town’s famous Lilac Inn after her mother’s recent passing. Emily’s currently being overseen by her mom’s old pal Jane Willoughby until she comes of age, but it’s not going well because 1. Jane knows nothing about raising teens OR running inns and 2. The Crandalls were told by their eccentric old millionaire neighbor Josaih Crowley that he was gonna leave them a ton of money, but he’s ALSO recently died and seems to have left his fortune entirely to Local Asshole And ESP Teacher/Grifter Richard Topham instead, so it seems like Emily might have to sell the Inn and figure some shit out. So she’s not doing great emotionally, financially, OR, increasingly, mentally. However, NANCY DREW is here and rather than just being a sympathetic ear like most friends would probably be she smells BULLSHIT and she’s ready to POKE HER NOSE WHERE IT DOESN’T BELONG to solve an EXTREMELY OBVIOUS MYSTERY lol. There’s also the guy who executes the will and works at the bank but he’s just here to be a red herring mostly like come on we all know what’s going on here. There are stolen jewels and hidden passages and no fewer than three old clocks actually (!!!), y’know, Nancy Drew shit!

The thing that sets this one apart, more than the period setting (more on this in a minute), is that this game is honest to god as close to an open world experience as I think you could get in a low budget point n click adventure from 2005. Because Nancy is a wealthy heiress who has deigned to take pity upon these poor depression-stricken Midwesterners and help them out in her leisure time, she is equipped with a car, and it’s not just narrative set dressing. For the entire game you have free reign of the town, and you spend a lot of time driving from place to place with charmingly clunky top-down mouse-based controls. Between her typical Cyber Adventure Activities Nancy also finds the time to do odd jobs for the citizens of Titusville, deliver telegrams for modest pay, and embark on a Zelda-esque comically long chain-of-deals quest, all the while balancing a small but important economy of her relatively tight purse and her relatively small gas tank, along with a few other things you can buy throughout the experience. The game’s got driving AND a rudimentary currency system? Beat still my heart the ambition.

Part of what makes these things fun is that they never get in the way of the rest of it. Where Blackmoor Manor, which does feel like it forms something of a pair with this game, had a hard time dolling out its content in a satisfying way, Secret of the Old Clock is paced near perfectly, shuffling you from character to character, event to minigame to puzzle to driving sequence with only the barest amount of friction towards the end, where Nancy goes up to the villain and says (I’m gonna spoil the villain’s identity if you care lol) “here’s essentially undeniable proof that you are gaslighting Emily into thinking she’s crazy so you can make her sell the inn in the very short period of time you’ll still be her guardian so you can make money off of the sale what the fuck” and then Jane says “that’s stupid no I didn’t” and you have to go get more proof via the titular secret from the old clock and there’s a lot of stuff going on in that fifteen minute period that really feels like it could have propped up a perhaps in hindsight saggy middle but YOU KNOW WHAT I was having a good time throughout so MAYBE I am just looking for nits to pick? Who can say.

Another compliment I’ll give the writing is that Her manages to intertwine a lot of disparate and frankly kind of dumb characters and storylines together into something that almost seems coherent at the end if you don’t think about it for too long. I found out after I finished the game that this story is a blend of elements and characters from the first four Nancy Drew novels and knowing this really contextualizes the game’s story for me; I think the patchwork here is done well, but not well enough that it doesn’t show.

If I were to name any REAL gripe with the game it would be that I don’t feel like it takes any element quite as far as I would like. The period setting rules and they do a lot to nail the aesthetics and the dialogue without making them cartoonish, but then a lot of the larger scale puzzles and stuff are so high tech as to border on like, whatever you would call the 30s equivalent of steampunk? I wish we could have committed to the bit a little more! Similarly nobody really seems to treat Nancy like what she is: a child whose presence in a lot of these places and questions about a lot of these topics would be fuckin weird dude. I’m not saying I want like a gritty 1930s misogyny simulator or anything, but there’s even less resistance to Nancy’s sleuthing in this game than there usually is in these, and that struck me as a little weird considering this story takes place in a world where she’s younger than usual AND not yet a semi-famous detective.

Similarly, it feels like there was an opportunity here to talk about the ways young women were mistreated in American society, by systems of power, by adults who should know better, by other women who have experienced the same hardships, and that by utilizing familiar characters in this past setting we could highlight how things are not so different today for vulnerable people as we like to say they are? And there’s a little bit of that for sure. A dude who seems already pretty well off knowingly stealing from two women who actually need the money and an orphaned adult gaslighting and preying upon a recently orphaned young woman at a major turning point in America’s economic history isn’t NOTHING to work with, but it does feel more incidental to this story than Her’s most obviously passionate prior efforts. A bit of a bummer when the soil is this fertile, but like, look at the game immediately prior to this one lmao, this is Pulitzer shit by comparison.

And I really don’t want to end on a down note here. I want to be as clear as I can possibly be: this game is probably the purest straight joy I’ve had with this series so far, just three hours of good-natured fun. Any gripes I have, any minor disappointments, are effortlessly washed away by everything else going on here. They nailed it. An Absolute delight.

PREVIOUSLY: CURSE OF BLACKMOOR MANOR
NEXT TIME: LAST TRAIN TO BLUE MOON CANYON

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES

This is a work from the time when Square was the strongest game company in Japan, both in name and reality.
If there is a point or an ultimate in storytelling in a game scenario, this work is the closest to it.
For me, this is one of the standards of "game scenario". When I play a game that deals with robots, especially a later one, I always think of this one first.
In this sense, "13 sentinels" was a failure. (I'll write more about it in my review of The 13 sentinels).

As a child at the time of its release, I was simply overwhelmed by the worldview, which was based on mythology and religion, with parodies and homages to multiple science fiction and anime.
To digress a little, let me explain the historical/cultural context in which this game was made.
Christianity is not generally understood in Japan (although some people are very passionate about it), so the heretical Gnosticism is not understood, nor is Nietzsche, who criticised Christianity itself, except for a few crazies. Freud, Jung and Adler have also gained acceptance in recent years, but only subtly.
I have no idea how this tendency to disregard religion has evolved in other countries.
In the case of Japan, the Aum Shinrikyo affair has led to a view of religion that can be seen as fearful, contemptuous or allergic.
In this context, with the exception of a series of works by Atlus (Megami Tensei and its offshoot, Persona), the culture of understanding and incorporating mythology and religion into games has died out.
Nowadays, myths and religions are treated as ornaments that look good and "seem to have a deeper meaning that we don't know what it is".

Again, For me, the standard of game scenario is this work. It's like a trauma.
It is both happy and unhappy.
When it was released,
“Wait, wait. I don't understand all that theological and philosophical!"
"Do you usually put in stories/parodies of minor works like this?”
"It's crazy! Whoever made this is crazy!"
I was like.
As of 2021, I played it again.
"It's crazy…”

The conclusion of the game is quite simple, however, despite all the mythological and philosophical themes and episodes.
Human weakness and strength, cruelty and kindness, ugliness and beauty. Above all, men and women. Fei and Elly are two people who make you feel all kinds of emotions.

It's easy to get caught up in the huge number of settings and deep themes, but the heart of the xenogears is the story. The later Xeno series forgot about this.
Xenoblade 2 has been released, but it's probably a strategic defeat. (I don't feel like playing.)
Not that it matters, but the Xeno series is like Woody Allen. (Repeating the cycle of masterpieces and bad movies)
I hate believers. A masterpiece is a masterpiece, and if it doesn't live up to that, it's a defeat, and if it doesn't, you're just a bad.

There's a lot more to say, but it's probably over 10,000 words, so I'll leave it to someone else.
Is it a something sign that this year (2021) there are some many good commentary videos on this game?

Explanations and videos of Xenogears that I thought were good. (Memo for myself.)

I think it's great what they're trying to do.
https://www.youtube.com/user/WarialaskyPlays

A clear explanatory video that goes beyond the Perfect Works. (Japanese)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnCo3HQnRF0

A very challenging Xenogears video that goes beyond the strategy guide. (Japanese. He's crazy.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdvNteIg9dw

Its hard for me not to compare this to Fatal Frame 2, which I'm realizing might be one of my favorite PS2 games. Its less scary than 2, the gameplay and models aren't quite as polished, and it doesn't have the same fondness for leaving things unspoken. But when you throw all that away, its still just a really engaging horror game. Its easy to get sucked into playing, moving from location to location, learning about the various tragedies that have plagued this mansion. Learning what happened to Yae after Fatal Frame 2 is CRUSHING but it also just adds even more depth and nuance to this world. I don't know if the games are all that good at dialogue- the papers you read kind of blend together. But the imagery and storytelling is second-to-none. God I wish these were playable on modern consoles.

a rare game where the first half is sort of mid and the second half is really great. for a rather unorthodox early metroidvania to be remade with this many successes is certainly a big win for mercurysteam, even with the design choices that don't quite hit. while the overall find-and-kill-metroids structure drags in the first half, it improves greatly as the boss fights get more complex and more tools become available to the player.

starting off the game, I was instantly thrown off by the control scheme, parrying system, and graphics. because samus returns has free aim, you now use the left trigger to lock in place, whereas the rest of the time you can do eight-way aiming while running using the circle pad. this took some getting used to, as the free aim is a lot more useful than the other aiming options and was my go-to in virtually all combat situations, yet I'm not used to being locked in place like that during a metroid game. the other big addition are melee counters/parries, which are mapped to the X button. I often found myself trying to press X to fire missiles, and I'm not quite sure why this was... regardless, I eventually fixed my muscle memory to fire with Y and use X for the parry. like many others have said, the melee counters slow down the pace when running around, as many creatures are specifically meant to be killed via parry. even in late game creatures could stomach 5+ spazer + plasma shots to the face but would be killed instantly when being shot after countering, and while this may have been a neat concept to add depth to metroid combat it makes the enemies a pain to handle when they can't be killed quickly outside of counters. most metroid games allow you to tank hits, quickly clear out areas, and/or simply ignore enemies while exploring, whereas here it feels like you're forced into momentary encounters with enemies you don't care about. on top of all of this, the graphics have a washed-out look with low-poly 3D indicative of much of the 3DS's catalog. due to the console requiring its flagship games to contain 3D effects, a lot of games that would have been perfectly good with spritework instead got rudimentary polygon models instead. it's not a terrible look but I really prefered the previous 2D games' graphic design in comparison to this one.

as I played further, I started to get less and less interested in the structure of the game. the game is split into 8 separate areas + the surface, and each one is an isolated yet fully explorable search action area. the prerequisite for moving to new areas is to kill various metroids and submit their DNA to a large circular shrine, which once filled with DNA will lower dangerous liquid from around it and thus open deeper parts of the planet SR388. these early metroid fights (the alpha ones) get boring pretty quickly after the first couple of them, even with the elemental attacks they add. there are some gamma fights as well, but these are rather annoying prior to unlocking the space jump. none of this is helped by the fact that enemies deal a significant amount of damage in this game, and early-game deaths are common until you really learn the ropes. out of the first half, area 3 was by far the most tedious area. 10 metroids reside in this sprawling area with few major powerups, and it was in this section where I put the game down for a while to focus on other games.

I eventually picked the game back up to finish area 3 and move on with the rest of the game. thankfully there are some upsides to this entry even early on: aeion abilities being one of them. from near the beginning you have the ability to scan areas both to fill out your map remotely as well as find blocks that can be somehow destroyed to solve puzzles, get upgrades, and progress. this is a huge boon compared to prior entries, such as metroid fusion where I complained quite a bit in my review about how frustrating it was to progress with constant hidden destructable blocks. there are also some neat other abilities, such as a time-slow ability that can be used to dodge enemy fire or to run across disintegrating blocks, and a shield that is invaluable both for certain puzzles as well as when you have lots of aeion and little health. post-area 3 the amount of abilities distributed increases significantly. in a usual metroid game finding a new powerup is a significant milestone, whereas here I found that the developers tended to lump multiple powerups together into a short period of play with long stretches in between. thankfully once I had some of the stronger beams and the gravity jump, the game felt much more open for me. I could finally start playing metroid as I remember it, where exploration is quick and without much obstacle, and where enemies are cannon fodder instead of walking QTEs.

where the game really shone is in the major bosses in the second half of the game. prior metroid bosses have been fun but don't usually have much depth. these bosses are much more complex and involve multiple phases and attack patterns, with later phases often combining or refining attacks from earlier phases to force the player to adapt as the fight goes on. the balance is perfect between having a slight puzzle with each battle and allowing the player to unload ammo into the boss, and each fight has optional parries that open up opportunities for enhanced damage. there are also uses for multiple weapons in each fight, such as using the power bombs during the omega metroid fights to interrupt certain attacks and regain valuable super missiles. the three major bosses during this section all were a rare goldilocks difficulty for me, where it took multiple attempts to learn the patterns, but never felt like I was beating my head against the wall or struggling against unforgiving game design. after the two GBA games fell at the opposite extremes of the difficulty spectrum (fusion's fights were frustrating and frequent versus the few trivial boss fights in zero mission), it's really impressive that mercurysteam managed to make boss fights these exciting and well-designed.

I can't recommend samus returns in its entirety, but I can absolutely say it's worth trudging through the slower first half in order to reach the highs of the second. everything from available options, environment variety, boss depth, and pacing get noticably better after the halfway point. for this section I honestly could not put this game down, making me regret a little bit that I had struggled to maintain focus with it previously. while initially my response to this game worried me with the knowledge that this same team is handling dread, I'm very assured that the team will continue to design high-octane fights and scenarios without the restrictions of remaking a 30-year old game boy title.

This is the Inkle game I always wanted.

I’ve always been an 80 Days Respecter but I’ve always found that game a little too random, a little too oblique, and a little too big to truly love. Just a tad too unwieldy to make me want to explore its nooks and crannies, and with not enough substance to those nooks and crannies to make the searches worthwhile (this isn’t a problem for a lot of people but I’m a spectacularly unimaginative person – this sucks about me and I hate it but it’s just true!).

So to get something very similar in format but condensed down to a TIGHT fifteen minute loop, with very few characters and locations and key items to interact with that nonetheless spiral into a complicated web of information and time management? AND one that never loses sight of a core story of two people who seem, y’know, basically decent and good and warm getting, if not quite justice then at least what’s theirs, and getting it best together in a way that feels satisfying and deserved? Beat still my heart dude, this game was made for me.

Showing you just enough of the outline of a character to let you know exactly who they are and what they’re about has always been Inkle’s bread and butter, from Sorcery to 80 Days (I still haven’t played Heaven’s Vault I’m sorry I know I’m Part Of The Problem), but this is their peak with this for sure. I love Veronica, I would kill for her, and I would absolutely help her assist in the coverup for murdering her husband she wouldn’t even have to tiptoe around it. Anders to, that dude could tell me to do anything I would do it. I’m easy.

Something that I think is especially nice about this game from a play perspective is that finally arriving at the Golden Ending where I hit all three kind of checkboxes the game asks you to in one run really felt like the ending of an extended tutorial. Now that I had satisfyingly concluded the story and gotten the closure I wanted, it was time for the real shit: hijinks. Can I…kill everybody else on the ship in one go? Frame this guy? What about this guy? Break into this guy’s room? See if this lady has any dirt on her? I’ve been routinely doing this action at this time, what if I mix it up and fuck around right at the start, just to see what happens. Not feeling the pressure to play optimally is as freeing as trying to play in a hyperspecific way. It’s a surprisingly flexible system that I’m still poking around with a couple hours after clearing the game.

I had originally settled on one rating in my head before I had started writing today but I think I talked myself up, I just really love this game, positively uplifting for me.

2021 is the year I decided to FINALLY play REmake.

What a game. The Spencer mansion is just so immediately compelling and stays that way for most of the game's length. I was surprised by how many interesting puzzles there are. There are some duds but for the most part, I had a blast solving most of em.

This is an adventure game disguised as a survival game and I really enjoyed that about it. The plot and voice acting is pretty wacky but that's to be expected and in line with my prior experience with the franchise.