Alexander Kriss


10 games reviewed
66.4 average score
70 median score
20.0% of games recommended
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Mar 31, 2015

Had the realization of that universe been more fully fleshed out—expansive and deep rather than restrictive and boardgame-like—Spaceships could have found success as a kind of post-human strategy game. Instead it feels lifeless. But not in the existential, gazing-into-the-void-of-space way. More in the way that an aging child realizes that her blanket is just a blanket, and promptly stops caring about it.

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55 / 100 - Californium
Mar 15, 2016

Californium can't get past writer's block

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58 / 100 - Mad Max
Sep 28, 2015

By granting me what I thought I wanted—free reign to explore—Mad Max pushes its source material out of the fast and tantalizing drive of action movies and into the slow, repetitive plod of open-world action games. It delivers a vast, meticulously rendered desert with nothing special to see.

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60 / 100 - Shadwen
May 23, 2016

Shadwen is a stealth game forever trapped in a state of adolescence.

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Nov 10, 2015

By the end I questioned the very choice to play; participating in the game felt like consenting to the retraumatization of a vulnerable young person about whom I genuinely cared.

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Jan 12, 2016

The emotional core of That Dragon, Cancer is real—so real, in fact, and so personal, that I ended up feeling like an outsider looking in. I pitied the Greens for having to endure this awful series of events, but I did not come away feeling connected to their experience, or enlightened by it. This was not because the game tried but failed to connect with me, but because it didn't.

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74 / 100 - Stasis
Sep 21, 2015

If you were to play through Stasis without stopping to take in all the optional content, you would experience an aesthetically appealing, linear, cliche-ridden adventure -- you would feel cold and alone. But by placing your adventure in the context of all the other tragedies aboard the Groomlake, a kind of familial intimacy develops.

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Apr 13, 2016

Despite the kinks, some of which may be ironed out in future installments, 1979 Revolution represents an unusual and largely successful mix of an adventure game and history lesson.

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80 / 100 - Broken Age
Apr 28, 2015

The usual point-and-click caveats are present here: some puzzles are so obvious as to feel like filler material, one or two so esoteric as to drive the player to frustration. The division of Shay and Vella's worlds can sometimes make what is actually a sizeable game feel artificially constricted, particularly in the first act. But these are minor quibbles compared to the mix of delight and unease that a playthrough of Broken Age evokes.

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83 / 100 - Darkest Dungeon
Feb 1, 2016

What surprised me was how much this simulation of the irascible human spirit reminded me of some of my favorite moments playing RPGs around the table with friends.

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